Page 3 of This Earl of Mine

Voices and footsteps intruded on his errant fancies as the obsequious voice of Knollys echoed through the stones. A fist slammed into the grate, loud enough to wake the dead, and Benedict glanced over at Silas with morbid humor. Well, almost loud enough.

“Wake up, lads!” Knollys bellowed. “There’s a lady ’ere needs yer services.”

Benedict’s brows rose in the darkness. What the devil?

“Ye promised ten pounds if I’d find ’er a man an’ neversay nuffink to nobody,” he heard Knollys say through the door.

“Are they waiting to hang too?” An older man’s voice, that, with a foreign inflexion. Dutch, perhaps.

“Nay. Ain’t got no more for the gallows. Not since Hammond yesterday.” Knollys sounded almost apologetic. “But either one of these’ll fit the bill. Off to Van Diemen’s Land they are, at first light.”

“No, that won’t do at all.”

Benedict’s ears pricked up at the sound of the cultured female voice. She sounded extremely peeved.

“I specifically wanted a condemned man, Mr. Knollys.”

“Better come back in a week or so then, milady.”

There was a short pause as the two visitors apparently conferred, too low for him to hear.

“I cannot wait another few weeks.” The woman sounded resigned. “Very well. Let’s see what you have.”

Keys grated in the lock and Knollys’s quivering belly filled the doorway. Benedict shielded his eyes from the lantern’s glare, blinding after the semidarkness of the cell. The glow illuminated Silas’s still figure on the bed and Knollys grunted.

“Dead, is ’e?” He sounded neither dismayed nor surprised. “Figured he wouldn’t last the week. You’ll ’ave to do then, Wylde. Get up.”

Benedict pushed himself to his feet with a wince.

“Ain’t married, are you, Wylde?” Knollys muttered, low enough not to be heard by those in the corridor.

“Never met the right woman,” Benedict drawled, being careful to retain the rough accent of an east coast smuggler he’d adopted. “Still, one lives in ’ope.”

Knollys frowned, trying to decide whether Ben was being sarcastic. As usual, he got it wrong. “This lady’s ’ere to wed,” he grunted finally, gesturing vaguely behind him.

Benedict squinted. Two shapes hovered just outside, partly shielded by the jailer’s immense bulk. One of them, the smaller hooded figure, might possibly be female. “What woman comes here to marry?”

Knollys chuckled. “A desperate one, Mr. Wylde.”

The avaricious glint in Knollys’s eye hinted that he saw the opportunity to take advantage, and Benedict experienced a rush of both anger and protectiveness for the foolish woman, whoever she might be. Probably one of the muslin set, seeking a name for her unborn child. Or some common trollop, hoping her debts would be wiped off with the death of her husband. Except he’d never met a tart who spoke with such a clipped, aristocratic accent.

“You want me to marry some woman I’ve never met?” Benedict almost laughed in disbelief. “I appreciate the offer, Mr. Knollys, but I’ll have to decline. I ain’t stepping into the parson’s mousetrap for no one.”

Knollys took a menacing step forward. “Oh, you’ll do it, Wylde, or I’ll have Ennis bash your skull in.” He glanced over at Silas’s corpse. “I can just as easy ’ave ’im dig two graves instead of one.”

Ennis was a short, troll-like thug who possessed fewer brains than a sack of potatoes, but he took a malicious and creative pleasure in administering beatings with his heavy wooden cudgel. Benedict’s temper rose. He didn’t like being threatened. If it weren’t for the manacles binding his hands, he’d explain that pertinent fact to Mr. Knollys in no uncertain terms.

Unfortunately, Knollys wasn’t a man to take chances. He prodded Benedict with his stick. “Out with ye. And no funny business.” His meaty fist cuffed Ben around the head to underscore the point.

Benedict stepped out into the dim passageway and took an appreciative breath. The air was slightly less rancid out here. Of course, it was all a matter of degree.

A broad, grizzled man of around sixty moved to stand protectively in front of the woman, arms crossed and bushy brows lowered. Benedict leaned sideways and tried to make out her features, but the hood of a domino shielded her face. She made a delicious, feminine rustle of silk as she stepped back, though. No rough worsted and cotton for this lady. Interesting.

Knollys prodded him along the passage, and Benedict shook his head to dispel a sense of unreality. Here he was, unshaven, unwashed, less than six hours from freedom, and apparently about to be wed to a perfect stranger. It seemed like yet another cruel joke by fate.

He’d never imagined himself marrying. Not after the disastrous example of his own parents’ union. His mother had endured his father’s company only long enough to produce the requisite heir and a spare, then removed herself to the gaiety of London. For the next twenty years, she’d entertained a series of lovers in the town house, while his father had remained immured in Herefordshire with a succession of steadily younger live-in mistresses, one of whom had taken it upon herself to introduce a seventeen-year-old Benedict to the mysteries of the female form. It was a pattern of domesticity Benedict had absolutely no desire to repeat.

In truth, he hadn’t thought he’d survive the war and live to the ripe old age of twenty-eight. If hehadever been forced to picture his own wedding—under torture, perhaps—he was fairly certain he wouldn’t have imagined it taking place in prison. At the very least, he would have had his family and a couple of friends in attendance; his fellow sworn bachelors, Alex and Seb. Some flowers, maybe. A country church.

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