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“That is not a good idea.”
“Because you need the distance between us to maintain your resolve?” He lifted his hat and ran a hand through his hair. “Gads, Thea. I would never press my attentions on you when you do not want them. If nothing else, at least trust that.”
“I do.” He was a good man, if a bit misguided. He could abuse hearts, but he would never hurt me if I did not marry him and we remained only friends. I knew it as surely as I knew the sun would fall and the stars would shine.
“Then talk to me.”
“I am trying to.”
We stared at one another, and the torment in his gaze was too much for me. I grasped the saddle with two hands, unhooked my legs from the pommels, and slid to the ground. I crossed to the faux Grecian temple and climbed the stairs before Benedict caught up with me.
“I want to know what turned you away from me after the assemblies,” he said, “and I want to know what turned you away from me all those years ago when you first came to Chelton. I cannot fight the demon I do not know, and whatever it is that is forcing you away from me, I want to know what it is.”
I stopped and faced him, my breaths heaving and my pulse racing. I no longer felt the cold biting my exposed skin or the warning bell telling me not to look too deeply into his darkening blue eyes. “You are a flirt, Benedict. I cannot take anything you say as truth. You speak flowery, beautiful things to me, then turn about and say them to the next pretty girl. It is impossible to know whether you mean anything you say, and I will not live a life where I am constantly questioning how you feel about me.”
He stood silent, shocked. “The assemblies . . .”
“You smiled at Miss Dodwell and every other woman who partnered you with the same warm affection you gave me.”
His eyebrows shot up, a quiet scoff tearing from his throat. “And shortly after you arrived at Chelton? I thought we had gotten along smashingly, and then one morning . . .”
“You told a girl at the fete that she had eyes the color of the purest sapphires and no other gems could compare.”
His eyes widened. “How the devil do you remember that?”
“Because you had told me the very same thing only the day before.” I closed my eyes and shook my head. “I cannot trust your affections, Benedict. Do you not see that?”
“I certainly understand why you previously came to that conclusion, but I was young then, hardly out of the schoolroom. I was wetting my feet in social activities and with girls. I had not yet understood what it felt to love someone, and I liked making pretty girls smile.”
“At the expense of a disingenuous compliment?”
“Just because I delivered the same compliment to another girl, that does not make it disingenuous.”
“You cannot tell two separate girls thatno other gemscompare to their eyes. You are lying to at least one of them.”
“Well, I was a fool then. You will hold my faults from my youth against me now?”
“No,” I said quietly. “That would be unfair.”
“Thank you—”
“I hold your faults fromnowagainst you.”
He scoffed. “The ball? Oh, come now. Because I smiled warmly?”
I shook my head. “I sound mad. I know I do. But it was not that you smiled, Ben . . . it was how you made me feel special with that smile, and then I saw you handing it out without reservation to every woman on your arm that evening. You flirt so easily, with little regard to how it is received or even cherished by the woman.”
He removed his hat and tossed it onto the stone bench, raking his hand through his hair in agitation. “I do not know how I might defend myself in this situation. How am I to convince you that it is not the same? That I might smile and laugh and call a woman beautiful, but that does not mean she has any place within my heart?”
How, indeed? My heart cracked, my chest jolting from the impact, and I questioned my choices. The longing to step forward and into his embrace surged within me, but I could not survive a heartache of the same volume my mother had endured. I could not live with a man who lavished attention so fully on others that he slowly drifted away from me. And I could not find a way to feel secure about the truths Benedict now shared.
It was unfair, but I did not have an adequate answer, and I hated myself—and my father, by extension—for doing this.
“It is not possible,” I said weakly.
That only appeared to harden Benedict’s resolve. He appeared as though he wanted to step closer to me but refrained, and I admired his control. “You do not have any feelings for me? Tell me right this moment that you do not feel anything for me at all, and I will walk away from you.”
How could I speak such a falsehood? When I invited his kiss last night, I’d given myself away. “That is irrelevant to the point—”
