Breakfast the following day was a somber affair. Lady Karstark had left, and Amelia had started spurting out ideas—one of which was the suggestion that Benedict approach his grandfather for help.
It had been a mistake.
His reaction to the words “Marquess Harrington” rivaled his reaction to the news of the Karstark clearances.
After a series of colorful curse words, he’d stormed out of the room. For the first time that month, Benedict hadn’t come to her room at night. And when she’d knocked on the connecting door, he didn’t answer.
This morning when he walked into the dining room, there was a bluish tinge beneath his eyes, and his jaw sported blondish-red stubble. His hair was more disheveled than usual, as though he’d spent the entire night running his hands through it.
“Good morning,” Amelia said cautiously.
“Morning.” It was a grunt more than a greeting, and he barely looked at her as he moved to the sideboard.
Tentatively, she continued. “I was thinking that we should hold a meeting—a war council if you will—to come up with a response to Karstark’s plans.” He wasn’t the only person who had spent the night thinking about the disaster.
He didn’t respond, instead dumping food onto his plate, sauce splattering everywhere.
She tried again. “We need to find jobs and housing. That’s the priority. The rest can follow.”
Again, no response.
“I’ve heard that many Scots who have been asked to leave their farms have found new lives in America.”
He slammed his plate down on the far end of the table. Short of taking his breakfast out of the room, he couldn’t have put more distance between them if he’d tried. “Asked to leave? That’s how you’re describing the highland clearances? What a civilized term.”
She sighed, biting back a sharp retort. “Please don’t snap at me. I’m just trying to help.”
“By suggesting they leave their lives for a new country?” He pointed his fork at her, the sausage on the end wavering with his anger.
Ten, neuf, eight, sept, six, cinq, four, trois, two, un.
She smoothed her napkin on her lap before meeting his gaze. “It’s an option, and I just thought that you may have some business connections that could be useful.” He could likely open up a whole range of opportunities in the cities and on the frontier where new communities were being built. It wasn’t a dreadful idea.
“What would be useful, princess, is a law against this practice. Or systems in place that allow people to work their way into independence rather than remain in effective slavery.”
She took a deep breath. “Of course, but those systems and laws are not in place, and we need to deal with the problem in front of us.”
“What do you think I’ve spent all night trying to do?” She hadn’t heard that tone of voice from him since he’d argued with her father—that frustrated, scornful accusation.
“Just tell me how I can help,” she said quietly.
“You can’t,” he said. “This isn’t something you can fix by rearranging furniture and making things look pretty.”
Oh.
“Well, thank you for clarifying our roles. From business partner to bauble in a day—what an exhausting transformation.”
Thankfully Cassandra entered, effectively ending their argument before it could truly develop. She and Benedict had agreed to keep the news away from his sister for as long as possible.
“Good morning, poppet,” Amelia said. There was heavy silence while Cassandra filled her plate. Benedict refused to look at Amelia, which was perfectly fine. She didn’t want to look at him either.
If Cassandra noticed the difference in their seating arrangements, she said nothing, instead turning to Amelia expectantly. “What do the papers say this morning?”
They had developed an enjoyable morning routine of social pages and gossip. It wasn’t quite the same as morning calls following each ball, but it was as close as she was going to get out here.
And if it took her mind off her bear of a husband, then she’d be glad of the distraction.
Amelia unfolded the paper and scanned the first page of the society section. “Lord Gerton is apparently looking for a new wife. He’s been seen at Almack’s twice, and lord knows no man goes there unless he’s on the hunt for a new ‘Lady Whatever’ or he’s bullied by his wife, his mother, or his daughters. As he has no wife, nor mother, nor daughters, he’s on the lookout for a new Lady Gerton.”
“What happened to his last wife?” Cassandra asked as she shoveled eggs onto a fork.
“It’s a mystery,” Amelia whispered.
“Really?” The girl’s eyes bugged open. As it turned out, a childhood full of novels turned one into a sucker for intrigue.
“It’s a mystery why it took four years for him to bore her to death. I thought she’d perish in two.” She waited for some sort of response from Benedict—his usual, self-righteous quip or a comment about how inappropriate gossip was. All she got was silence.
“You can be bored to death?” Cassandra asked.
Amelia shrugged. “Technically, she died of the ague, but no doubt she caught it deliberately—an unpleasant way to escape an unpleasant marriage.” As she said the words, she recognized the cynicism. She was sliding back into her snide, spiteful past self. She could hear it happening; she just didn’t feel like stopping it. It felt good to be snippy. Familiar.
“What else does the paper say?” Cassandra asked.
“Miss Margaret Farnsworth was spotted in a multi-hued dress at the Belford soiree. I’ve told the girl a dozen times that she looks like a peacock when she chooses her own clothes. Without me there, she’ll likely become a laughingstock.”
“Because life can’t go on in society without you?” Benedict drawled.
Amelia shot him daggers, hoping they’d land somewhere painful. “I’m sure life in London will go on. It will just be a little less well-dressed.”
Completely oblivious to the maelstrom undercurrent, Cassandra said with confidence, “When we go to London, we’ll be the best-dressed ladies there.”
“Of course we will.”
“And we’ll take tea with Lady Belford, ride through Hyde Park, dance at Almack’s, and be fine ladies of the ton.”
Benedict flinched at each word Cassandra spoke. And Amelia relished it. “Precisely.”
That was clearly his last straw.
“Cassandra, you weren’t raised to be a lady. You have a brilliant mind, and I won’t have you waste it on watercolor and flower arranging.”
He could not have found words that hurt Amelia more. She couldn’t help but look to the sideboard at the flower arrangement she’d spent the previous evening creating. She’d used snowdrops—because Benedict always commented on them and she’d wanted him to start an awful day with something beautiful.
Anger dissolved into humiliation, which dissolved into grief remarkably quickly. She picked up the paper to hide the tears in her eyes.
She’d worked hard to be the perfect lady her whole life. It was the reason she got up, the focus of her days. Whether it was conversation, piano, dancing, or arranging flowers, she’d striven to be the best at it.
Tens of thousands of hours wasted because apparently those skills held no value in her new life. It hurt to think about, so she focused on the newspaper.
Oh. My. Goodness.
There she was again. Yet unlike her previous appearances in The Times, the sketch was not one of a perfectly dressed future duchess. Her hair was unkempt, her clothes rags, and she was sprawled on the ground, skirts above her knees with a bandy stick on the ground next to her.
Curse Benedict for convincing her to play that stupid game. Curse whoever had passed along the news to the gossips in London, and curse the dashed cartoonist. She would wring his neck.
“What does it say?” Cassandra asked.
“It’s none of anyone’s business.” She closed the paper. Then folded it, and folded it again, hammering on it with her fist to get it to sit flat.
Benedict raised one eyebrow before turning to his sister. “Cassandra, go take your breakfast in your bedroom.”
“But only married ladies can take breakfast in bed. Amelia said so.”
“Lady Amelia is not the head of this household. Off you go.”
With a hop, Cassandra took her plate to the sideboard and started piling it high. Ridiculously high. Enough food for three breakfasts high.
“You’ll make yourself sick,” Benedict said.
“I’m taking my book. Bed, breakfast, and a book. I’m never going to leave.” She gave a wide grin before she danced out of the room.
Amelia couldn’t wait to see her shiny, happy bubbly-ness leave. This was as awful a morning as could be had, and there was no room in it for hope or innocence.
Benedict glowered. “Whatever disagreement we may be having, you will not take it out on a child.”
“Oh, loosen your breeches. Remarkably, not everything is about you.”
He rolled his eyes. “I don’t have the energy for this.”
Seriously?
He wasn’t the one who’d had his life turned upside down. He wasn’t the one who’d gone from having everything to nothing, and he wasn’t the one who’d just been disgraced in a newspaper read by all of England.
“This is all your fault. You convinced me to take part in that stupid bandy match with all your talk of ‘being a human being.’ Jackass.”
“Princess, I don’t know what you’re talking about, but I have the small matter of half my friends losing their homes to deal with.”
“This is what I’m talking about.” She threw the paper in his direction. “You’ve made me a laughingstock.”
She couldn’t help the tears that assailed her. She drew in a ragged breath. It was one thing for society to think her trapped in a common life. It was another for them to think her common.
Benedict unfolded the paper. “This? Really? For heaven’s sake, it’s an idiot cartoon, drawn by an idiot, for other idiots to read.”
“And that’s what you really think of me, isn’t it? Just some cotton-headed aristocrat.”
“No, that’s not what I said.”
“I read that paper. Am I an idiot? With all my flower arranging and watercolors?”
He exhaled loudly. “I don’t always understand your priorities.”
She stood, tossing her napkin onto the table. “I do know that there are worse things happening in the world. There are worse things happening right here. But that doesn’t mean I can’t care about being made a mockery of. These are the people I grew up with. I used to have value. Except apparently now I don’t.”
Her father had always told her that she was only worth the title she could marry. Over the past few weeks, she’d thought maybe he was wrong. He wasn’t. Even her contributions to the firm had been sidelined in a night.
“It was one silly cartoon. It doesn’t define you.”
“Except apparently it does. Lady Karstark is right. No responses to our invitation were lost in the mail. I’ve been cut.” The tears rolled down her face freely, and rather than have him see them, she walked toward the door.
Before she could exit, he grabbed her hand.
“Useless buggers, the lot of them,” he murmured into her ear. Guiding her back to the table by the waist, he pulled her into his lap and hung his chin on her shoulder. “They’ll regret it when they’re old and grey and friendless.”
“In their hundred-room Mayfair houses surrounded by help and enjoying the finest dresses?” She wiped at her cheeks.
“Big houses are lonely. And you’re better surrounded by people who want you rather than people paid to wait on you.”
She turned and sobbed into his neck. His arms wrapped around her like they were the only thing anchoring her in a storm of sorrow. The gentle stroke of his fingers in her hair just made her cry harder.
“There is so much more to you than the dresses you wear and the people you have to tea. I just wish you’d see it. Isn’t it enough that the people in this house think the world of you?”
It caught at Amelia’s heart to hear it. He thought the world of her. And he was quickly becoming her world. But could she be happy here? To never dance at another ball, smell the soot of London, feel the buzz of the opera? She was born to that life, raised to it, loved it. Could she ever be happy tucked away in the country?
“No,” she whispered. “It’s not enough.”