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“I wondered,” I said, hoping she would tell me more. “My search originally took me to Gallingher Park, but Mrs. Parker had not been able to help me. She told me you were only at their home for a week.”
“Indeed, though not as a guest.”
My stomach dropped. “You were a kitchen maid for Mrs. Parker too?” She was a high enough society matron to fuel rumors, were she to learn of it.
“A governess.” Thea’s voice grew lazy, the slow words leaving her mouth and passing through syrup before reaching my ears. She was halfway asleep, if I had my guess. Warm light from the single candle flame flickered over her face, and in her state of near-sleep, she seemed so small and delicate, I had the unexplainable urge to protect her.
I shook the thought. Ridiculous. This wasThea, not a lady in need of rescuing.
And I was no rescuing knight in gleaming armor.
“You, a governess?” That was far better than a kitchen maid, or a maid of any sort, really.
Her lips turned up in a semblance of a smile, though she did not open her eyes. “It did not last.”
“Shocking.”
“To you, perhaps. Some people actually like me, Ben.”
My heart did a strange pulse, and I blew out the candle to avoid looking at her further. No one else called me Ben outside of my family. No one. But somehow, when Thea did it, my body reacted without my mind’s consent.
I liked it.
Shaking off the feeling, I pulled off my boots and slipped under the thin blanket. The room was dim and cold, hardly any starlight sneaking through the window to soften the darkness. The fire in the hearth had burned out and the coals were not throwing enough heat to warm us. I was extremely aware of the sound of Thea’s breathing growing deep and even, and it was not until I was convinced she was asleep that I felt my body relax.
Chapter6
THEA
Iopened my eyes to a large hand dangling directly above my face. I’d always been quick to react, but I suppressed my initial shock and emitted nothing louder than a sharp inhale. Morning light slanted through the cloudy window panes and rested on Benedict’s skin, and I took the moment to observe the bend of his fingers and the dark hair covering his knuckles while my heart returned to a normal rhythm. From his hand alone, he appeared strong, the fingers large and capable. Limp with sleep, they also appeared deceptively harmless.
This hand had hardly touched me, but it belonged to a man who was as careless with the female heart as he was with his handkerchiefs. Easily discarded and possessed of little worth.
When I arrived at Chelton as a lonely girl of almost sixteen, I’d been overcome by the enormity of the Bradwell residence. I’d lived a life of relative luxury as the daughter of an English ambassador living abroad, but the constant traveling and living in countries where I failed to speak the languages perfectly had resulted in a lonely existence, and a hole in my heart I’d been eager to fill. Lady Edith had been just as eager to fill it, and she presented me as a member of the family, a surrogate sister to the Bradwell brothers—or one brother in particular. With James a few years older and Henry off in the military, Benedict had been the one nearest my age and available to entertain me.
If only he’d gone to Eton as his brothers had, then I would not have been forced to put up with him. As it stood, he was at Chelton with his tutor until I went off to Mrs. Moulton’s finishing school and him to university, and every moment we spent under the same roof was torment for the both of us.
I closed my eyes and pushed away the memory pecking at me like an angry bird. If I had not foolishly allowed my heart to become engaged, to believe the flirtations he spoke, it would not have hurt as deeply when I was forced to watch Benedict flirt with every other girl in the parish. The man was like every other gentleman of power and privilege—a cad.
In those early weeks at Chelton, Benedict ruined what could very well have been a good friendship between us by giving me reason to believe he might hold atendrefor me, then swiftly cutting me down. After my experiences in Sweden and Vienna, I was wary of gentlemen. My experience with Benedict was the final straw, and I vowed to never again be taken in by a handsome gentleman with a brilliant smile. It was the smile of a wolf, after all.
He stirred, as though he could feel the vitriol of my thoughts, and his hand dropped lower, nearer to my face. I sucked in a breath and pressed my head further back into the pillow, meeting with the hard surface of the floor. Benedict’s fingers curled slightly, swinging from the movement, the backs of his knuckles grazing over my nose. I stared at them. It was too late to roll away from his touch without knocking into his hand, and I didn’t want him to know he had me trapped. I could not cede anything to this man.
Quietly, I drew in a breath and let it out slowly, hoping the wind on his fingers would make them pull away. Benedict mumbled something incoherently and shifted, and I blew softly on his fingers again.
They dropped lower, resting against the side of my face, and I followed the trail of his arm, sprinkled with dark hair until it met with the billowy white shirt sleeve, until I reached the edge of his shoulder, which was leaning precariously over the side of the bed.
It was then I noticed the way the rest of his body lined the mattress. It slipped slowly over the edge, and it seemed as though I watched it happen from above and not while lying beneath the man on the floor. He fell over the side of the bed and landed hard on top of me with a heavy thud. The air knocked from my lungs, and I inhaled hard.
Every inch of Benedict Bradwell was lying on top of every inch of me, and I could feel the racing of his heart and the panic in his lungs as though they pulsed in time with my own.
“What in the—”
“You are on top of me,” I said, struggling to breathe and ignore the warmth spreading over my skin. The pressure of his weight on me had a surprisingly comforting effect that I had to, at all costs, disregard.
Benedict blinked, his sleepy eyes hovering just above mine. He pushed up on his forearms, and I sucked in a deep breath once my lungs were no longer encumbered by his heavy body.
“Forgive me,” he said softly, his gaze falling to my lips.
