Chapter 18

Benedict had to commend himself. He was, as it turned out, an absolute genius.

He'd always known that a marriage of convenience was a good thing, after all. Plenty of people had mocked him—his good friend Evan came to mind—but they were all wrong, and Benedict was right.

Benedict was, actually, even more right than he'd expected. Because he hadn't anticipated the most convenient part of having a wife: that every morning, he woke up with a deliciously rumpled, marvelously tempting woman lying right beside him.

It would have been, he knew, a bit more proper to retire to his own bedchamber after lovemaking. That was really what he was meant to do. But whoever made that rule had neglected to remember that doing so was rather inconvenient which was completely contrary to his purpose.

Also, he allowed, their lovemaking had ended up being rather more vigorous than he'd expected. He was tired. He didn't want to get up and cross to his own room. It just seemed like an awful lot of work.

So, after the first few nights of bedding his wife, he stopped trying to convince himself that he was going to return to his own rooms and instead convinced her that she should just come to his rooms in the first place as his bed was bigger.

Convenient, he thought smugly as he rolled awake one morning to find Emily's face, free of worries in sleep, already tucked pleasantly into his neck.

Her curls were spread out in a wild carpet beneath her head. She'd not braided it the night before which meant he'd properly tired her out before they'd fallen asleep. He grinned at the thought. She'd no doubt glare and mutter about "insatiable men" as her maid undertook the lengthy process of detangling her mass of hair, but he couldn't feel sorry about it, no matter how much she glowered.

Hair like that should always be down. It made her look like a wild, pagan goddess in a painting that was kept safe from ladies' innocent eyes. He loved her hair down, even though it did sometimes tickle his nose while he slept.

No matter. He loved the smell of her hair, too. It smelled…soft.

Recognizing that his thoughts had grown nonsensical, he disentangled himself from Emily's limbs, leaving her to sleep longer. Time away from her might not be as pleasant as time with her, now that they'd sensibly channeled the strange energy between them into bed sport instead of arguing, but there was convenience, and then there was wasting daylight, and Benedict was veering dangerously towards the latter category.

He commended himself on his sensible nature as he buckled down to several hours of work in his study (tackling correspondence that had gone woefully neglected while he was, ahem, tied up with his wife) and scolded himself for the traitorous jolt of excitement he felt when Emily entered the room near midday.

"Emily, I'm bus—wait, what's wrong?" The objection to the interruption died on his lips as she saw the way his wife was frowning at the papers scrunched in her hand.

"Oh," she said absently, looking up at him, her face pale. "I'm sorry, I—I'm interrupting. I just…" She bit her lip, glancing down again.

Benedict was out from behind his desk before he even registered standing up.

"Come, sit," he urged leading her to a chair. "What's wrong? Are you injured?"

She gave him a confused look. "What? No, of course not. I was merely going through the Countess' parlor as you suggested?—"

He stifled his grimace. He might have represented that suggestion to Emily as a gesture of goodwill, of welcoming her into the home over which she now presided as mistress. He might have neglected to mention that his actual inspiration for doing so had been because he'd known it would annoy his mother, whom he still hadn't forgiven for her antics on his wedding day.

He had to stifle another grimace when he followed Emily's gaze towards her lap and put the matter together.

"You found more letters," he said grimly.

"I found more letters," she agreed. For a moment they looked at one another in perfect accord, their faces matching masks of dismay, resignation, and the definitive knowledge that this was going to be such a bloody headache.

Then Emily shook herself bodily and tried to stand.

"Apologies," she said, sounding flustered. "I don't know why I came in here—it was just instinct to…" She gave her head another little shake. "But this is not your concern, surely. I'll leave you to your work."

"Stop," he said, blocking her path to escape. "Just wait a moment. You were right to come show me this."

"I was?" she asked, clearly surprised by this response.

Benedict wanted to frown, but he felt this would be sending the wrong message when he was wondering how he'd managed to convince his own wife that she couldn't come to him with matters about the household—about his own family. The rules he'd explained to her hadn't included a dictate to never speak to him, after all. Why did she insist on making things so complicated? A marriage of convenience was not a difficult concept.

But showing his frustration at her inability to instinctually comprehend something so simple as basic guidelines for marital harmony likely would not make him seem any more approachable or agreeable, so he bit down his reaction.

"Yes," he said, keeping his voice calm by firm. "If my mother has been involved in something, I need to know."

She sighed heavily and handed over the pile of papers which was, Benedict noticed with relief, considerably smaller than the initial stack he'd found.

"I'm not sure what she has or hasn't done to be honest," Emily admitted as he scanned the short missives. "As with the other letters, it's more implication and innuendo than anything else. If we didn't already know about Dowling, I don't know that I'd consider them incriminating at all."

Benedict made a humming sound of agreement.

I can pay Theo, too, my dear, the scrap in his hand read. Emily was right, he realized. If the sexes were reversed, he'd have assumed these letters some coy negotiation between a gentleman and his mistress. It was too much to hope, wasn't it, that illicit sexual encounters were the only thing his mother had gotten up to? Could he dare believe that she'd been blackmailing Dowling over some matter pertaining to their interpersonal matters?

"It really isn't the contents that are interesting at all," Emily continued. "It's the recipient."

His head jerked up. "What?"

She reached out and took the letters from him, reshuffling until she found the one that she wanted to place on top. It was so short he'd scarcely paid it any mind.

G—I'm growing impatient. –P

Now, he followed Emily's tapping finger to that first initial.

"G," he breathed. "Who the hell is G?"

The set of Emily's mouth was grim. "Your guess is as good as mine—or ours, I should say," she amended. "There was one letter in the previous bunch addressed to G as well. Frances noticed it when I showed her and Diana the letters."

Benedict swallowed hard against the instinctive wave of shame that threatened at the news that Lady Frances Johnson and the Duchess of Hawkins both knew about his mother's perfidy. He shouldn't have been surprised—if Emily was close enough with the pair that they'd all remained in the Duchess' bedchamber while she gave birth of all things—but it still stung his pride.

The prickle of discomfort was short lived, however, as it was quickly overshadowed by an idea that clicked into place in his mind. He looked back to the letter he'd been previously exploring.

Yes, this wasn't a letter to Dowling or Theo as his mother had evidently called the man; it was a letter about Dowling. He'd seen what he expected to see—letters between his mother and her deceased lover—not what was truly there.

"She paid Dowling for something," he said, showing Emily the letter.

"'I can pay Theo, too,'" she read. When she looked back up at him, her eyes were bright, keen, and intrigued even as her mouth grew tight with worry. "So she wasn't just blackmailing Dowling—wasn't just getting money from him. She was paying him—or paying him off—about something else. But what?"

She frowned to herself, lips pursing in thought. "I wish we could ask Diana," she muttered to herself. "She's the one with the head for all of this conniving and scheming. But I suppose it wouldn't do to pull her away from her baby for what amounts to almost no new knowledge at all. Unless you have an idea what all this was about?"

Emily was looking at him, expression hopeful. He despised himself for not being able to make good on that hope.

Benedict shook his head helplessly, the pleasure he'd experienced in the last few days quickly buried beneath the mountainous rubble of his troubles. God, but his mother was an eternal headache. Even when she was blessedly out of his house, she managed to infect every corner of his life with her miserable presence.

"I don't know," he admitted bleakly. "And I don't have the faintest idea how we could find out."

It took a mere six days after her marriage for Emily's sisters to come and find her. When the twins arrived in the Countess' parlor (which Emily had, thank the good Lord above, cleared of any scandalous letters from the Dowager Countess—the last thing she needed was for Amanda to insert herself into that debacle), Emily jolted in shock.

After the years and years of complaints about how Emily was always overbearing and underfoot, she'd expected them to last at least a little longer before they came asking for a favor.

And they were clearly here to ask for a favor, she noted wryly to herself. Rose looked too sheepish and Amanda too unconvincingly angelic for the two to have any other purpose.

"Hello, darlings," she said, setting aside her ladies' magazine. It was expected that a new countess would do some redecorating around the house, and Emily intended to do some proper research before making any large changes—though she already knew she'd go for something a bit more understated than the Dowager Countess' taste for the sumptuous.

"Hello, Emmy," Amanda said with a beaming smile. "Aren't you looking well! Marriage really does suit you, you know."

It was blatant flattery. But perhaps marriage had changed Emily because instead of arching a brow and reminding her sister of the merits of honesty, she decided to play along.

After all, there was no rule that said she had to make things easy on her troublesome little sisters, was there?

"Thank you, Amanda," she said graciously. "Have the two of you come to see my new home?"

Rose was standing frozen, clearly trying to figure out the rules of this new game—or deciding if this Emily was some sort of elaborate imposter that had replaced her real sister. Amanda's eye twitched as she looked wildly around the space.

"Er, yes!" she lied brightly. "This room is, um, very nice. Very, very, ah, colorful."

The second descriptor, Emily allowed, was more honest than the first. There had been less of a cohesive theme to the decoration scheme of this parlor than the suggestion that every expensive item that had ever caught the Dowager Countess' eye had been thrown into one space. Emily had removed some of the more headache-inducing objects already, including an enormous gilt mirror. That was how she'd uncovered the second set of letters which had been hastily tucked behind the mirror's frame.

Not that she planned to so much as think about those letters with her sisters present. Emily had never seen proof that her sisters' talent for troublemaking extended to outright clairvoyance, but it was better to be safe than sorry in situations like these.

She'd learned that lesson the hard way with the twins. Many, many times over.

But that didn't mean she couldn't have her fun.

"That's so sweet of you," she said, beaming at her sisters. "Would you like a tour? I'm getting acquainted with the place still myself, of course, so we might get turned around a bit. It took barely more than an hour when the housekeeper first took me, and I'm sure it wouldn't be that much longer for us."

She saw the moment she overplayed her hand. It was evident in the way Rose stopped acting like a startled rabbit, hiding from a predator, her expression instead dropping into a very human, very unimpressed smirk.

"She's toying with us," she told her twin dryly.

Amanda's panicked smile at the thought of an hour-long tour shifted into an expression of abject outrage.

"That's terribly rude, Emmy," she scolded. "It isn't at all nice to tease."

And the irony of that statement was so delicious that Emily had to laugh for several long minutes. Her sisters did their best to maintain their disapproving expressions but didn't last very long. Whatever their flaws, the twins were not opposed to a good joke at their own expense.

"Sorry," Emily wheezed when she'd finally gotten a hold on her laughter. "I couldn't help myself. What do you need, sweets?"

"Well," Rose said delicately, sitting on the settee across from Emily. Amanda dropped onto the chaise with considerably less grace. "We were hoping for some advice."

Emily closed her eyes briefly, relishing her vindication. "One does so love to be proven right," she commented to herself.

"I told you we should have asked someone else," Amanda grumbled.

Rose ignored them both.

"We went to a ball with Papa last night, you see," she explained, sounding as though she were treading very carefully though this conversation. "And I fear that he is not…behaving in the most sensible manner as pertains to your recent marriage."

If Emily hadn't been swearing in her head with all the foul oaths she knew, she might have allowed that Rose would make a fine wife to a diplomat, given how tactfully she'd phrased that.

Instead, it was all she could manage not to let her internal ire become external.

"What did he do?" she asked tiredly.

"He won't stop bringing it up!" Amanda exclaimed, sitting up sharply. "He seems to have this idea that if everyone is talking about your scandalous tete-a-tete anyway—which, honestly, Emmy, I really don't think they are because Lady Bowdoin wore the most horrid hat to church on Sunday; truly, she nearly put out Mr. Clayton's eye with the dangly bits she'd stuck on there?—"

"Amanda," Emily prodded.

"Right. Well, Papa seems to think that if others are talking about it, he should talk about it first?" Her tone clearly conveyed her doubt as to the wisdom of this strategy.

"He keeps sort of shouting that it's lovely to have an earl in the family," Rose explained, wrinkling her nose. "I think he's trying to make it sound like lovely is the same as love match and that this is the reason for…everything," she surmised. "But it isn't really working."

"I should think not," Emily muttered, nearly impressed with how dramatically her father had erred. "That will accomplish nothing except extending the talk."

Rose winced. "There has been something of a…renaissance on the topic."

"And," Amanda interjected, sounding deeply aggrieved, "my dance card was scarcely more than half full because of it. Half, Emmy! Can you imagine?"

Emily, in recognition of her sister's evidently genuine if vaguely silly distress, did not mention that she had never once had a dance card that even came close to being half full.

Besides, dramatic delivery notwithstanding, Amanda did have a legitimate point. Their father was damaging the twins' social—and therefore marital—prospects. And he was using Emily to do it.

"Right," Emily said, rubbing her temples. She hadn't had a full night's sleep in days, and while she wasn't precisely complaining about it, a clear head would likely have been helpful at the moment. "Right. Well, clearly we can't let Papa continue to be your chaperone."

"I knew you'd solve it," Amanda said triumphantly, conveniently forgetting that she'd been convinced of no such thing not two minutes prior.

"I suppose," Emily went on, mind spinning, "that the best thing would be for us—Benedict and myself that is?—"

Amanda paused her crowing to gasp. "She calls him Benedict," she whispered gleefully to her sister.

Emily ignored this.

"—to gradually return to Society and just act…normal about things. People will see us together, will get their muttered comments out of their systems, and then everything will return to normal." She looked at Amanda. "Including the fullness of your dance card."

"Yay," said Amanda without an ounce of self-consciousness or irony.

Rose's reaction was more measured but no less heartfelt. "Thank you, Emily," she said sincerely. "I know we are bothering you while you're meant to be spending time with your new husband?—"

"Benedict," Amanda repeated in an awed whisper, and Emily wondered how long it would take before Amanda became bold enough to use Benedict's Christian name to his face. Unfortunately, it would likely not be long at all.

"—but we really do appreciate it," Rose concluded. "It has been a touch, ah, challenging with Papa."

"I understand," Emily said graciously. "Don't think on it a minute longer."

Despite this advice, Emily herself had to think on the matter for many, many more minutes. Making the promise to her sisters had been, after all, the easy part.

Now all she had to do was convince her husband—the man who had organized his entire search for a bride out of his desire to keep his name out of gossipmongers' mouths—to return to the direct line of scandal.

"That," he said simply when she'd explained the scheme, "is a terrible idea."

"Benedict—" she began.

He interrupted her. Lord, but she'd thought they were past all that.

"And," he added, as if she hadn't spoken at all, "a waste of time. The whole benefit of being married is that a man no longer has to do the dreadful things he's compelled to do when trying to get married."

And she'd thought the interrupting was rude! How lovely to know that she was merely an excuse to avoid Baroness Montman's Annual Spring Musicale, not, say, an entire human being.

She took a measured breath, reminding herself that she was asking him for a favor, and that shouting at him was unlikely to make her case for her.

"I understand your reticence," she said evenly. "But Benedict, these are my sisters."

He had already returned to the papers on his desk which, really, was so dreadfully rude it was going to give her a nosebleed. At her words, however, he looked up at her in faint surprise.

"Well, you are welcome to go, of course," he said like this settled things. "I am not your jailer, Emily. Do feel free."

And then he, once again, went back to his work.

Emily clenched her jaw until it hurt.

"It doesn't work," she said, her tone now decidedly terse, "unless you are with me. We have to appear normal. Together. Otherwise, the ton will assume that you're ashamed of me and will continue to talk."

"That," he said shortly, "is idiotic."

She was approximately ninety percent certain that he meant to say that the ton was stupid for assuming such a thing, not that she was stupid for predicting such an assumption. But she'd swallowed down her pride several times already in this conversation, and her patience was apparently at its end.

It was only the issue of patience, she told herself. It was not that her feelings were hurt because he seemed so uninterested in helping her. Not at all.

Whatever the cause, the acid in her voice was apparent.

"Right," she said, dripping sarcasm. "So, your little maxim about showing a united front in public—that was only when it was something you cared about, then? Because I seem to recall you very stubbornly insisting that you are not a hypocrite, and I cannot say that I believe that in this moment."

The shift to a fearsome frown was so swift that Emily was briefly transported back to her father's foyer, back to the ballroom where they'd first quarreled.

"Don't be deliberately obtuse," he reprimanded. "This is not a matter of providing a united front in public—you are attempting to coerce me into going into public to demand a united front."

"If you think there is material difference between the two, you are less clever than I thought," she sniped back. "But apparently, I am only good for some things. Good enough for your bedchamber, but not good enough to say that I don't embarrass you?—"

"Benedict! I've returned!"

Of all the people in all the world, there was nobody Emily wished to see less in that moment than the Dowager Countess. Yet there she was, swanning into the room with timing so bad it was farcical.

She ignored Emily entirely.

As did Benedict, Emily noted with an internal shriek of rage. His mother's entrance snapped up every ounce of his attention in an instant. It was not positive attention, she allowed, but still. It was a bitter, ugly reminder of where she stood in his eyes.

"What are you doing here?" he asked flatly as the Dowager Countess swept her skirts dramatically before sitting in an armchair and propping her chin on her fist with an insouciant grin.

"I live here, Benny; don't be silly," the Dowager Countess trilled. She had ignored Emily completely and continued to do so, the gesture becoming more and more obvious in its intentionality as it went on.

"It's not even been a week," Benedict growled.

"Hasn't it?" The Dowager blinked innocently. "No, I'm quite sure it has."

"You were meant to be gone a month," he said, now sounding as though he were clenching his teeth very hard. Good, Emily thought sourly. She hoped it was uncomfortable.

"A month!" Priscilla exclaimed as if the very idea were preposterous. "Certainly not. You must have noted it wrong, Benny. Perhaps you ought to write things down. Mixing these things up will make you look terribly foolish, you do know."

"Do not start with me, Mother," Benedict warned.

The Dowager, however, spoke over him. Ha. Emily hoped he liked getting that little taste of his own medicine. If the way his face reddened was any indication, he did not.

"Well, I'm back now, so there's no use worrying over it, is there?" she said, waving a careless wrist. "Besides, I'm sure things have gone entirely to pot without me. Shall I speak to the cook to make sure we'll have something suitable on the table to eat?"

This was, Emily decided, quite enough. Seeing Benedict's irritation was not sufficient recompense for listening to this utter nonsense.

She would offer the Dowager one piece of praise, however.

The woman was so dreadfully rude that she let Emily behave just as badly without a single worry over the propriety of it all. It was liberating, Emily thought. Maybe her sisters were on to something.

It was, however, less satisfying than she'd hoped as she turned on her heel, leaving the room without a word—only to hear deafening silence call after her.