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“Oh my goodness, where are my manners?” Lady Thurlby said. “I cannot thank you enough for bringing my darling girl home safely to me. Certainly, we can forego the usual niceties. I am Lady Alice Jennings, Viscountess Thurlby, and this is my daughter Miss Susan Jennings and my youngest daughter, Miss Rebecca Jennings.”
“I would say ‘How do you do?’ but I believe I already know how everyone is,” Ben said, hoping his light words would be helpful. “And with the same informality, allow me to present myself. I am Benjamin Fortescue, Eh—” The wordearlstuck in his throat.
The elder sister gave him a searching look, blast it all.
“Well, Mr. Benjamin Fortescue, I shall be eternally grateful you were at hand to find my injured daughter and bring her safely home,” Lady Thurlby said.
“I am afraid you are mistaken, Lady Thurlby,” he replied. “As it was I who caused your daughter’s injury in the first place. I startled her when I called out, you see, causing her to stumble.”
“I was crossing old Mr. Arnold’s stile, like I always have done in the past, Mama,” Miss Rebecca said in a weak voice. “Oh, Mama,” she cried. “My packages! They are still back at the stile.”
“I shall see to it that they are returned,” Ben said as Lady Thurlby tutted and patted Miss Rebecca’s arm while her sister continued to study him much too closely.
“I won’t hear of it,” Lady Thurlby said, still patting her daughter reassuringly. “I shall send one of our footmen.”
“Very well,” he said with a slight nod of acquiescence, relieved that he wouldn’t have to return this afternoon despite his offer. “Now that I am reassured Miss Rebecca is under the best of care, I shall leave. Perhaps I may call tomorrow to see how the patient is doing?” He owed it to the young lady to call upon her, but seeing her in this distressed state felt all too familiar. Tomorrow, it would feel less so, he hoped.
“That’s very kind of you, isn’t it, Rebecca?” Lady Thurlby said.
Miss Rebecca cast her woeful eyes at him.
“Very well, then, until tomorrow,” he said, trying to ignore the look she’d given him. “Lady Thurlby, Miss Jennings, Miss Rebecca,” he said. He bowed to each of them and then took his leave.
Once outside, he filled his lungs with air and began his journey home using the same shortcut he’d just used with Miss Rebecca Jennings. He stopped when he reached the stile to collect her packages: a large box, a hatbox that, sadly, had flattened during her fall, and two smaller packages wrapped in brown paper, one of which held the unused stockings.
He stacked them, resting the smaller packages and hatbox on the large box, and placed them on the top step of the stile. He could do that much for the Thurlby footman who would come along shortly.
With that small task completed, he returned home and made himself a pot of tea. Had it been later in the day, he might have chosen a brandy instead. He took the tea to his great-uncle’s library and sat in the large, overstuffed chair he had discovered when he’d arrived yesterday.
He sipped the tea and closed his eyes.
“You,” Gemma said with a breathy whisper. Her eyes had grown dim, and she had seemed to struggle to focus on his face. “I want you.”
“I’m right here, Gemma,” Ben replied, taking her cold hand in his. “I won’t leave you.”
“No,” she breathed, closing her eyes, a single tear streaking down to her ear.
He felt helpless. There was nothing he could do at that point except stay at her side.
She heaved a sigh, and her eyes fluttered open again. “I’m sorry,” she said. Then her eyes closed and remained closed.
Ben sipped his tea again. At the age of twenty-six, he had become a widower with a newborn baby girl in his care. His year of mourning was nearing an end. Even so, he wasn’t ready to face London Society with the unanswered questions that continued to plague him. So when documents had arrived informing him that he had inherited a small estate in Lincolnshire, he had jumped at the chance to come to this backwater part of England to escape Winton Court, the infant in his nursery there, and the lies he’d lived with for the past twelve months.
