Page 68 of Love in the Time of Scandal
A muscle twitched in Clary’s jaw. “Where is she?”
Penelope twisted loose of his grip and started across the deck. It wasn’t that large a boat but she couldn’t see Benedict; the sails, straining at the lines, obscured everything from this position.
Clary pursued her. “I won’t ask again,” he said, raising his voice. “Where is she?”
“Somewhere you can’t hurt her!”
He swore. This time when he grabbed her, she couldn’t wrestle free. The wind drove his hair straight back from his face, emphasizing the sharp hook of his nose and the point of his chin. He looked like a demon, and the cold hatred in his eyes made her suddenly afraid. “Last chance,” he said, looming over her.
“Let me go,” she said, biting off every word.
For a moment he didn’t move. His fingers bit into her arms. “As the lady wishes.” He released her with a little push, so that she staggered a step backward. Her leather half boots slipped on the wet deck. Penelope reached for the railing to catch her balance. The yacht was tacking hard, canted over at a good angle, and the rushing water was very near.
Then Clary put one hand in the middle of her chest and shoved, sending her head over heels backward into the Thames.
“Really, Benedict, I’m disappointed. I trust her father paid you a pretty penny to take her. She’s a stubborn, headstrong female with little delicacy about her.”
Benedict tried not to let his father’s careless insult goad him. “I’m very well pleased with the marriage.”
Stratford cut him a narrow-eyed look. “Not much of a beauty, is she?”
In spite of himself, a faint smile curved his mouth. Penelope might not be the earl’s idea of a beauty, but she shone with vitality and verve and Benedict thought he’d never seen anyone more bewitching. “I couldn’t disagree more.”
The earl sniffed. “I take it that means she’s as loose and wanton as gossip holds. I’m astonished you would make such a woman your bride.”
“Every word of that gossip was a lie.” Not that Benedict wasn’t deeply, quietly elated by her wantonness inhisbed. The smile lingered on his face.
His father saw, and it displeased him. Benedict realized that, but there was nothing he could do to stop it. In fact... let Stratford know that his marriage wasn’t a disaster. Let him realize that Penelope was no shrinking violet to be cowed and intimidated. Let him be very aware that his influence was waning, almost to the point of nothingness.
Stratford faced forward again, into the wind. “I never thought I’d see the day a common chit got my son by the ballocks.”
“Penelope,” said Benedict, “is my wife, not a common chit. It doesn’t become you to speak so coarsely of the future Countess of Stratford, sir.”
“What a proud day it will be when a coal miner’s daughter presides over Stratford Court.”
“I quite agree,” he said, as if the earl had expressed approval.
His father exhaled, his breath steaming faintly in the cooling air. Penelope would probably say it was the smoke of brimstone. Benedict’s lips twitched. He shouldn’t find her irreverence as amusing as he did. “Then perhaps you will begin educating her on her duties.”
Something about that word “duties” always made his shoulders tense. In Stratford’s world, duty meant something beyond its ordinary meaning. Benedict had learned, through painful years of experience, that when his father brought up duty, it portended a disagreeable task or an unreasonable demand. “The only duty she has is to me.”
“And your duty is to me.”
Benedict’s hands clenched. Everything always came back to the earl’s demands. “I’ve fulfilled that duty many times over.”
“And you would deny your own father a simple request?” Stratford raised his brows. “I find that hard to believe. It is a small thing; there’s no need to grow snappish and petulant,” he went on before Benedict could reply. “You need only exercise your husbandly authority over your wife and persuade her to be cooperative.”
The unease that had hovered around him all day burst into full-blown alarm. “No.”
“No.” Stratford’s eyes glittered with pique. “Really, Benedict? After all these years, you must know that is not an acceptable answer.”
Once it would not have been. Once he would have been holding himself taut and still, praying that the request would be minor or at least easy to fulfill, never daring to refuse. Not that his father didn’t usually find some fault in his actions, no matter how hard he tried to please. He no longer remembered every beating—they had blurred together by now—but he acutely remembered the feeling of placing his hands on the earl’s desk, bowing his head, and bracing himself for the first blow of Stratford’s thin wooden cane. It was supple enough to bend without breaking, landing one stinging blow after another. In his mind, Benedict could still see that cane, propped against the frame of the wide windows in the earl’s study, an ever-present reminder of the consequences of defiance. Stratford’s only mercy had been that he used it over clothing, preferring to leave bruises and aches instead of scars.
Benedict closed his eyes a moment and inhaled deeply. Those whippings were a thing of the past. “After all these years, I am a grown man, no longer subject to being beaten for disobedience. How I choose to exercise my husbandly authority is strictly my right, and any man—anyman—who interferes with that right will find his interference turned back on him.” He met his father’s furious eyes. “I mean it, Father,” he added, softly but with warning. “Leave her alone.”
After a moment the earl turned away. “I don’t wish to have anything to do with her. However, it appears she is in possession of some information I need. After she answers a single question, you may take your common strumpet of a wife and do what you will with her, far from my sight.”
Damn it. “What information?” he demanded, racking his brain. What could Stratford possibly want from Penelope?
