Page 32 of A Kiss Gone Wylde
“Died with her. A tragedy all around.”
Realization dawned on her then. “You were at Vauxhall because you were spying on Wainwright. You suspected him and were there trying to avenge a woman whom you supposedly do not even remember? A woman who had been dead for… how long?”
“Nigh on ten years.”
Benny let out a shuddering breath. “One does not devote a decade to avenge someone they did not love, Payne!”
“I was there, spying on him, because if he was guilty I wanted him to pay for his crimes, in part for Anne’s benefit. But I’ve come to realize that what I was actually trying to do was ease my own guilt. If I hadn’t run off to the continent, but had proposed to her as I knew she wanted me to do—if we had married, it would never have happened.”
Benny listened to him spout what she could only classify as complete and utter poppycock. Then she countered ,“Except that you and I were married when Wainwright took me. It seems to me, Payne, that if Wainwright had wanted her, nothing would have stood in his way. Neither her marital status nor the presence of her husband would have halted him. He’d have simply found a way to separate you from her, to get her alone and do the horrible things that he wanted to do because that is who he is… or was,” Benny insisted. “Surely the events of today are proof of that!”
He grew silent again. Benny waited for him to say something, and when he did, it was the last thing she wished to hear. “I’ve carried this burden for a decade. I do not know how to, or even if I can, simply lay it down.”
Swallowing the tears that threatened, she stated emphatically, “And I do not know how to be a devoted and faithful wife to a man who spends his days thinking of what might have been with another woman.”
“That is unfair. I have never even mentioned her! You are the one insisting we discuss her even now,” he snapped.
“Because from countless people today I have heard how devoted you were to her! How her death all but wrecked you and by your own admission, you’ve spent the last decade trying to avenge her. How can I think anything else?”
He remained stubbornly silent, unwilling or unable to acknowledge the truth in her statement. So Benny continued, “If she were a living woman, it would be one thing. I could be catty and mean. I could say awful things about her until they made you reconsider wanting to be with her. I could, if I were prone to fits of jealousy, scratch out her eyes for daring to even glance your way. But there is no way for me to compete or do battle with the dead. She’s sacrosanct for you. Your factual memories of her may be gone, but the pedestal you’ve placed her on in your mind is still very much present.”
“That is not true,” he protested sharply.
“Isn’t it?” Perhaps because she wanted to believe him, Benny offered him the opportunity to sway her. “Tell me this is what you want… that you want only me and not some other version of who you thought her to be?”
He threw his hands up in the air. It was a gesture she recognized. Frustration.Stop being so demanding. Stop asking questions. Can’t you be like other young ladies and simply do as you are told?Those questions and countless others had been leveled at her all of her life. And he was no different. No man wanted a wife that could be described as ‘difficult’ or ‘having a mind of her own’.
“Benny, we are not a love match,” he protested. “Despite what the gossips might say and despite our little fabrication from that night at Vauxhall, we are practically strangers to one another!”
Oh, how it stung. It flayed her pride. Her tender vanity, already fragile, was shattered by it. But it was the curious ache in the center of her chest that left her truly puzzled which threatened to rob her of every last shred of dignity. She wanted to weep and could not.Would not. “You are right. We are strangers. But I never asked for your love, or even if you could love me. I asked only to be the one that youwanted… and immediately I am met with protests of how little we know one another and how little we feel for one another. That, Payne, is an answer in and of itself.”
“An answer to what? I am positively confounded by this entire exchange,” he murmured, his exasperation carried on the sigh that followed.
With every word he spoke, he left her a bit more determined to guard herself against him and to salvage what little pride still remained. She would not beg for his respect any more than she would beg for his love. Both only had value if they were given freely, after all. “I think I will sleep in another room… You need your rest and the presence of a confounding woman would surely interrupt that.”
“I never said you were confounding, only that the conversation was,” he corrected with a bite to his voice.
“Well, I’ve failed in another way it seems. I am apparently a terrible listener in addition to my other many flaws.”
He dropped his head to his chest, sighing with exasperation. “For how long?”
“For how long what?” she asked, knowing full well what his question pertained to.
“For how long will you punish me by sleeping in a guest room?”
Benny shook her head. “I’m not punishing you. But if you do not know me well enough to be certain that you actually want to be married to me, then I certainly do not know you well enough to give you unfettered access to my person. We both know that if I remain inyourchamber with you, my will and determination will waver. Distance is the best way to ensure that I can keep what is left of my badly mangled pride.”
With that, Benny tightened the sash on her wrapper and strode from the bathing room. She sailed straight through their bedchamber and into the corridor where she found one of the maids putting away linens in a cupboard. She seemed to forever be halting someone from that particular task.
“Which of the guest rooms has been used most recently?”
The maid, not understanding the importance of the question, answered absentmindedly. “The gold room, my lady. His lordship’s cousin was here for a visit not even a month past.”
“Have all my belongings gathered and taken there. I’ll be moving into it tonight.”
The maid dropped the armful of linens she’d been holding and gaped at Benny as she turned and strode down the hall toward the gold room and the first of what she imagined would be many, many lonely nights.
20
