The Match of the Century (8 page)

Ben moved forward, but Elin held back. “Did I offend him?”

He had her by her cloak and gave it a yank, pulling her. “What? By letting him know what a service he’d done for the nation in helping to save the mighty duke of Baynton’s future duchess? Hurry on now, will you.” He moved ahead of her.

Elin grabbed her cloak and pulled back. She had no intention of being led through the forest all night as if she was a toddler. Nor did she understand his testiness.

“I never mentioned myself,” she declared, careful to keep her voice low.

“No, you were too busy babbling about my brother.”

“What does that mean? And will you slow down? Or are you so annoyed with me you wish to walk off?”

“I’m not annoyed with you,” he threw out without easing his pace. Indeed, they had reached a path that even she could see in the forest. He turned, walking backward to remind her, “There are men who wish to kill you, or have you forgotten?”

“I hope you trip over a tree root.”

Ben laughed, the sound almost bitter. “I don’t know why I try,” he said to himself. He turned around and went striding off.

Elin took three quick skips to catch up to him. Walking right at his elbow, she said, “Try?” She shook her head. “This is you trying to do what? Leave me behind? Pretending innocence? I know you too well. When you are in a good mood, you match your step with mine. But when you are being testy with me, you seem to enjoy watching me run to keep up with you.”

“I’m not testy,” he answered testily, not breaking his stride.

He carried the sack Osprey had given them slung over one shoulder. She grabbed ahold of it, the same way he’d taken her cloak and pulled back.

Ben stopped. “
What?
” The sound was loud in the night woods. Too loud. They both knew it, and she could almost see his face flush at his silly mistake.

“What have I done wrong?” she whispered. “You are out of sorts with me. We’re both tired. I’m exhausted. This day has been—” Her voice broke off as she searched for a word and had to settle on, “
Trying
. But I don’t understand how
I
have annoyed you.”

He did not want this conversation. The tension radiated off of him, the same way it had the night of her betrothal party.

“Very well,” he said, the words curt as if she should already understand. “In London, it is good to be a duchess or related to the Duke of Baynton, but out here a person must prove himself. I proved myself to those men, and I believe I’ve proved myself to you, over and over again. Yet you focus on my sainted brother, the anointed one. The Chosen.”

“Ben, I appreciate what you are doing for me. I saw those men respect you. They offered their lives to help us.”

“But . . .” he prompted, as if anticipating what she would say.

“But?”

“There is always a ‘but, Ben’ with you.”

“Stop that. You are being ridiculous. I meant no insult to you or to them. I am thankful you are here. I just thought . . .” Her voice trailed off as she realized she had wanted to impress the innkeeper and Big Roger.

“You just wanted them to know that you were important,” he accurately finished for her. “As if being a mere person who was in trouble and needed help wasn’t good enough. Well, Elin, they didn’t care. It made no matter to them. But don’t worry. I’ll see you back to my brother. The two of you can talk about how important each of you are. You can even have dinner parties on the subject.”

He began walking away, but after a few steps, he stopped. He looked over his shoulder at her. “Coming?”

“You are important, too, Ben.”

“The devil I am.” He came back to her in two strides. “I was important once, important of my own making. I was a good officer, Elin.”

“I believe that.” After all, he’d left her to become a good officer.

“And, yes, I have a
well
of resentment in me,” he confessed. “I’ve never wanted to be second-best. And I believe I know why Jack ran away. He hated the competition. Father pitted him against Gavin all the time but not because he wanted Jack to excel. No, he just wanted Gavin to be better. The rest of us didn’t matter.”

Elin had thought she knew Ben well.

She now realized there were layers to him that she had never known.

“You believe Jack ran away?”

“And that it wasn’t foul play? Or some other such nonsense?” Ben shrugged. “I don’t know. But I learned what happens when I cross my father. Oh, yes, I learned indeed, and Jack had always been the more daring of all of us. Perhaps he learned that lesson as well and grew tired of it. Perhaps, he, too, didn’t want to be the duke-in-waiting in case we were ever called upon. He wasn’t that sort. He always bucked the rules.”

“But the second son needs to be close at hand . . . if the title is to be handled correctly.”

“
Think
, Elin. Look among the
ton
. What younger sons are doing anything of purpose that makes them happy?”

“Many are scholars. Some have been in the military.”

“They are the ones who have other brothers than mine. If Jack were here, I’d be fighting the French right now, and he’d be the one expected to dance to Gavin’s tune.”

“Gavin is not that demanding.”

“I am the judge of how he is. I’ve lived under him. I did try, Elin. I want you to know that. But Gavin expected me to wait on him every day. And I know it isn’t his fault. He was just doing to me what Father did to him. How he stood it, I will not know. Then again, Father put his mark on Gavin at an early age.”

“But not on you.”

“Because there was Jack.”

“Not always. Not after he disappeared.”

“Right.” He shifted his weight as if chewing on her observation, then dismissed it with a shrug. “It’s all in the past. Father’s dead. Jack is probably dead as well. Mother always claims that he is not. She says she has a mother’s heart, and she would know if he had died. But none of it matters. My task now is to take you to Baynton, the man who has everything.”

Again, she heard a touch of bitterness in his tone. He considered her a chore. His whole manner spoke of it, and maybe she was.

Of course, how would she feel if their roles had been reversed, if she were the one expected to take him to the woman who would be his wife?

Elin didn’t like the idea, and she wasn’t certain why. Something had happened between them years ago, something dark, and she sensed he held her accountable.

“It must be hard to live with such resentment, Ben. What is wrong? What happened to you?”

There was a beat of anger-laden silence, as if asking for understanding had also been the wrong thing to say.

Finally, he spoke. “Come, Elin, we have a long way to go.”

Chapter Eight

W
hat is wrong, Ben? What happened to you?

Elin’s questions echoed in his mind as he traipsed through the woods. He wasn’t certain exactly what she meant. He also didn’t wish to explain himself to her.

He told himself to brush aside his annoyance with her. She wasn’t the girl of his youth. She’d proven that by her behavior in London and her words at the Oak.

She wanted to be a duchess.

There was no middle ground there. There could be nothing between them. She was marrying the right brother. Huzzah! Let there be light and little dukes all around.

Ben thought he was taking them north. The earlier blanket of clouds passed and left a night sky full of stars. Cold weather always made the sky more vivid, or at least it seemed so in his mind.

He tried to keep his steps short, but he was too aware of Elin’s presence. She’d been right—he did want to run . . . and she deserved better than that.

Ben appreciated the silence between them as they concentrated on placing one foot in front of the other. He walked ahead, feeling for thorny bushes, fallen logs, and dangerous ruts in their path. He wasn’t worried about animals. Although they tried to be quiet, they made enough sound to warn away badgers, deer, and hedgehogs. Ben was more certain they would meet bats above all else.

No, his senses strained for sounds of Elin’s pursuer, Darby. It helped keep his attention off of her, which is why he hadn’t realized how tired she was. But when he turned to offer her a drink from the jug of cider Osprey had included in their sack he was shocked at how exhausted she appeared. He made her take a drink and offered some of the dried apple slices, but she waved them away.

“We need to keep going,” she murmured.

“No, we are going to sleep,” he decided.

“But—” she started, and he shut her off.

“Trust me, Elin. I know what I’m doing.”

She pressed her lips shut then. He took her hand and led her off the path until he found what he deemed a suitable place for the night. There was a circle of five trees with the shelter of a good number of shrubs and bushes. The ground was dry and fairly level. “This will do.”

Elin practically collapsed under one of the trees. Curling up with her heavy cloak around her, she rolled on her side, using her arms as a pillow. He sat next to her, leaning his back against the tree.

It felt good to rest.

“Here,” he said, “you can rest your head on my leg.”

She shook her head no, not even bothering to open her eyes. Her breathing became deep and regular.

What is wrong, Ben? What happened to you?

Almost with a will of its own, his ungloved hand went to her tangle of curls. She had rarely worn it loose like this. She used to tie it back, not having time to fuss with all the pins and irons of hairstyling. He remembered how she complained about her maid following her around.

Only when her parents came to Heartwood did she buckle down and become the debutante heiress of their expectations.

Their
expectations. She was wrong when she said he’d always known she was Gavin’s. In the beginning, he never thought about it.

“Do you remember the first time we really met?” he asked her sleeping form. “Not through our parents but when we knew we were kindred souls?” He rubbed one of her silky curls between his fingers before releasing it. “It was the day you rode your horse into the pond and disturbed my fishing. I was furious, and you laughed. You challenged me to a race. You were twelve, and you’d outdistanced your groom.” He liked the memory. “We were waiting in the stables for him when he returned, flustered because he couldn’t find you. We became inseparable on that day.”

Because of Jack’s disappearance, his father had refused to send Ben away to school. For a parent who had benignly ignored his younger children, his father had become a madman in his search for Jack. He’d had armies of men walking across the school grounds and using pikes to explore the bottom of ponds on the property. He’d hired a series of men to investigate and track what could have happened to Jack
if
his son had left the school, and they found nothing.

The disappearance became the talk of London. Ben didn’t know very much except that the brother he admired was gone and that his father refused to let him go to school. Instead, the duke hired a number of tutors who saw to Ben’s education.

Ben had been disappointed. He’d been anxious to go out in the world, as was done by every son of every other important family.

“You helped me through all that,” he said to Elin. Funny, he’d grown so angry over the years, that he’d forgotten how much her friendship had meant. Elin had understood. Elin had listened.

Did he need any other reason to love her?

Ben stretched out beside her, remembering another night when they had slept side by side. The warmth of her body had felt good then as it did now.

He had the urge to lean closer, to drink in her scent.

That night was the first and only time they’d kissed. Of course, he remembered that kissing Elin had been as natural to him as breathing. She’d filled his senses . . . and they had been both so young.

Ben had a habit of writing out his last wishes on the eves before battle. He would let himself think of Elin then. He could recall every detail from the moment the storm had descended on them to their running for the shelter of an abandoned cottage, to their earnest fumbling.

“There had been no furniture in that cottage,” he whispered to her sleeping form. “We were much as we are now.”

They had huddled close, needing each other’s body heat with their wet clothes. Elin had been shivering, and night was falling fast. Ben had been wearing an oilskin coat. He had taken it off and offered it to her. His jacket and his shirt were dry. She could be warm.

“And the next thing I knew, we were kissing.” Ben lightly touched Elin’s hair. Her back was against his side. He yearned to turn in to her, but that was tempting the devil too much.

Their lovemaking had been a miserable experience. For both of them. They had been two virgins without an inkling other that what they’d seen in the animal kingdom. He’d hurt her. He hadn’t understood then. He’d been mortified at her reaction.

“It would be better now,” he promised the sleeping Elin. A promise that he’d never have the opportunity to prove.

Elin was right. She wasn’t his. His father had lashed that fact into his thick skull, a lesson never to be forgotten.

“Besides,” he confided, “I do like Gavin. I care for him as a brother although I haven’t ever said so. He’s arrogant and single-minded and pursues all the wrong things, but he is the only brother I have left.” He started to touch her hair again, then pulled his hand back.

Instead, he moved so there was some distance between them.

Tomorrow, in daylight, he’d work out where they were and how to see her to safety, to Gavin.

Until then, he needed to keep his hands and his mind off of her. Many things in his life had changed, but, surprisingly, Elin’s spirit and her ability to move him was still the same.

Elin woke with her mouth open and drool running down her cheek.

She’d slept hard. Too hard. And her eyes were so crusted with sleep, she had no desire to open them.

Then she became aware that she was not in her comfortable feather bed or in her nightdress. She shifted, rubbed her eyes, and opened them.

For a second, she couldn’t remember where she was. She was wearing her cloak and the lovely peacock blue day dress out of the softest wool imaginable that had quickly become her favorite out of the ones Madame Odette had made for her. She even wore her shoes.

Why would she sleep in her shoes—? A breeze curled around her, bringing her fully to her groggy senses and reminding her that she slept on the ground.

Ben.

All recollection returned with that one word. Madame Odette was dead, Elin was running for her life, Ben was helping her, and she must look horrid. Terrible.

Elin pushed herself to sit upright, combing her hair out of the way with her fingers. Her curls were going every which way with a will of their own.

The day was well advanced, or so she thought. Not only was the sky overcast, but she’d slept in the shadowy shelter of a copse of pines. Thickets surrounded her haven and, all things considered, the pine-needle floor had been comfortable.

But where was Ben? She thought about calling his name, then feared attracting any attention. Silence was better.

She stretched and rose to her feet. There was a cool heaviness in the air. Rain. She didn’t want to think on it. Instead, she went in search of Ben. She found him not far from the pines.

He lay on his back, stretched out on the trunk of a huge fallen tree. The tree had snapped close to its roots and still had gray, withered leaves on its branches. He stared up at the sky, one foot on the ground, the other bent at the knee. She wondered what he was thinking, and in that moment, seeing him at ease, her heart ached for their lost friendship. She’d never trusted anyone as much as she had Ben.

He sensed her presence and in one fluid, graceful movement sat up. Last night, he’d been tense and sometimes angry with her. But now he smiled, and for a second, it was hard for Elin to think. She’d forgotten what a disarming smile he had. His was full of white teeth and the right hint of devilment.

“I trust you slept well,” he said.

“Fair.” Her voice sounded as if she were imitating a frog. She cleared her throat.

“Here have something to drink.” He picked up the jug of cider they shared from the ground beside the log and offered it to her.

Elin came forward and took a sip. The cider was tart. “I’m feeling the exertion of yesterday. Especially that roll down the hill.”

“Can you travel?”

“I don’t have a choice, do I? Did you sleep?”

“I did,” he answered, rising to his feet. “I had a good night.”

“You should have wakened me instead of waiting. We should be moving on.”

“Aye, but you also needed to rest. Yesterday was a hard day.”

That was an understatement. “Will we reach some place civilized today?”

“I hope, if the rain doesn’t stop us. But first, you need to eat. Breakfast will be more of Osprey’s dried apples with a piece of the hardest cheese I’ve ever chewed on.” His teeth flashed their agreement in his mobile, wonderful smile. He seemed so relaxed that her own anxiety eased a bit.

She handed the jug to him. “I need a moment.”

He understood what she was saying. “There is a brook about forty feet in that direction. You’ll hear it as you draw closer. If you need anything, call me.”

Elin nodded her obedience and tried not to hobble in a way that he’d notice. She didn’t think she succeeded.

All around her was the deep green of the pines and hollies dominated by the browns and grays of the other trees and plants. It was undisturbed and peaceful.

She heard the sound of the brook running over stones on its rushed way to wherever it needed to go. It had etched its way about five feet down a bank. After a few moments to herself, she carefully climbed down the steep bank and, keeping her cloak dry, tested the water. Nothing could be colder than this stream. She cupped her palm and drank a sip or two before splashing her face and removing the last traces of sleep from her eyes.

At last she began to feel ready for the tasks ahead. Even her sore muscles were easing. She might even manage to walk halfway decently again.

Her curls were loose and carefree. She ripped the lace trim off of her petticoat and used it as ribbon to tie her hair up so that it was away from her face.

But she didn’t go back to Ben immediately. Instead, Elin savored this moment.

She wrapped her arms around her knees and rested her chin upon them, listening to the sound of the water. All was good right now. She prayed she had the courage to continue on without fear.

Across the steam from her, a rabbit stuck his head out of a burrow hidden by a clump of grass. He saw her and quickly retreated. Elin waited, knowing that for curiosity alone, the animal would return, and so he did. This time, he even took a step toward the water before deciding that taking a drink was a far-too-risky endeavor with her there.

Footsteps came up behind her. She wasn’t concerned. She sensed it was Ben even before he said, “Elin, are you all right? You have been here for a while.”

She tilted her head to look up at him. He stood about three feet up from her on the bank. If she squinted her eyes, she could imagine him as the Ben of her youth. He’d been lanky and broad-shouldered then, but now he had a man’s presence. “I was woolgathering.”

“You always did that,” he said good-naturedly. “But we have a ways to go, and you haven’t had anything to eat. Come along.” He moved toward the top of the bank.

Elin stood, but instead of following, she asked, “Are we ever going to talk about what happened between us?”

Ben stopped. “Between us? Yesterday? At your betrothal party?”

He knew what she meant. She knew it, and she was a bit stunned over her own audacity in mentioning the past openly.

This morning had brought a truce of sorts between them. She was now challenging what peace there was between them—and yet, she must.

“About the night we spent in that cottage together,” she said, her voice calm in contrast to the tightening in her chest. “About your leaving the next day.”

He crouched as if to bring himself to her eye level. The easiness had left his manner. Instead, a muscle worked in his jaw.

Yes, it was still between them. It would always be between them unless they confronted it now.

“I miss you,” she dared to say. “I miss the”—she paused, searching for a word that could protect her—“friendship we had.” She broke her gaze away from his, astonished at her honesty. She’d spoken up. She’d revealed more than she’d ever thought she would to him.

“Friendship?” he said. “Is that all we had?”

Her heart gave a start. “All?”

He dropped his arms to rest on his thighs. His gaze slid away from her to something in the distance that only he could see; and then he swung his attention back to her. “I loved you.”