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“Thank you, Snow.” Ben was touched . . . and also mortified that he’d not been able to hide his pathetic state of mind from the people in his employ.
He strode through the house and out the back into the garden and beyond the border hedges to the parkland on his property. Once there, he found a stick that would be useful for parting the grasses and shrubs as he walked. The air was chilly and the sky partly overcast, which suited his mood.
He whacked away at the grasses as he went. Why did Aylesham’s personal request that Ben attend the House of Lords give him such guilt? The nation was neither won nor lost by the appearance of a single nobleman. Surely the country hadn’t languished from Ben’s absence last year and wouldn’t this year either.
Why did his mother, after nearly a year, suddenly wish to visit her namesake? She had been perfectly content in Edinburgh with Kelso during Ben’s year of mourning. He suspected she’d donned partial mourning once in Scotland and had been out of official mourning the past six months. Mama and Gemma hadn’t precisely gotten along, but then, sadly enough, Ben hadn’t precisely gotten along with either of them. Mama had been of the persuasion that children were to be seen on occasion and left to tutors the rest of the time. She loved him, and he loved her, of course, but they weren’t close and never had been.
Which was part of the reason why he had been at the point of making arrangements for Rose to be taken to Winton House in London and going there himself so he could decide what was to be done about her: whether she should be fostered out, for example, so she may have two parents to rear her, perhaps even show her affection, more than he’d been shown by his own mother and certainly more than a deceased mother could offer her own baby. He himself wasn’t certain he could love Rose, who was the evidence of her mother’s final betrayal to him.
So why had Isaac Jennings’s sermon yesterday morning upset him so? “‘Who is the greatest in the kingdom of heaven?’” Isaac’s words still burned in Ben’s ears. “‘Except ye be converted, and become as little children, ye cannot inherit the kingdom of heaven.’” Ben should have stayed home from church services.
He whacked a shrub out of his way and immediately stumbled over a root. Instinctively, he used the stick for support as he regained his footing. He needed to pay better attention to what he was doing. But, blast Isaac Jennings. To add insult to injury, he had also told the story of the Savior on the cross. “‘Woman, behold thy son! Behold thy mother!’” he’d exclaimed from the pulpit. “Are we not each other’s brothers and sisters? Are we not all God’s children?”
Did Isaac have mystical powers that let him see into Ben’s very heart and soul?
He kept on walking through the overgrowth of the woods near his property line until he found himself at the fence that separated his property from Alderwood and the stile that had been built there so both families could have access to each other. The blasted stile.
He could still see Rebecca tripping, her arms wheeling in the air as she had tried to find her balance but had eventually fallen. He could still feel how his heart had pounded as he had raced over the brambles to reach the young lady, could hear her cries of pain, could sense the guilt he’d originally felt at startling her in the first place.
He could still see her face, eyes closed, pale, her cheeks wet with tears . . .
Ben gripped the top of the fence with both hands and lowered his head. Her girlhood dreams had come to a crushing halt due to him.
And yet . . .
And yet, somehow, she’d expressed her love for him—he, who had been the cause of her accident. And somehow, despite the personal pain he’d brought with him to Lincolnshire and his desire to protect his own heart at all cost, he had fallen in love with her too. He had not intended for it to happen. It was as accidental as her injury had been.
She had asked him to consider traveling to London for her come-out ball. How could he not? How could he refuse her?
He knew not how long he remained at the stile, eyes closed, thoughts searing his mind and racing heavenward, before he raised his head, looked at the stile that had played such an important part in their initial meeting, then returned to the house.
He had three letters to write and then had packing and travel to arrange. His words to Rebecca he would deliver in person.
