Chapter 13

For a moment—having been so convinced she was as good as lost to him—Sir Horley could only stare. “I was held up,” he said at last, “by a man trying to kill and eat me.”

Belle looked genuinely startled. “Oh no, I told Benjamin and his wife most explicitly that they should under no circumstances kill and eat you.”

“Well”—he strove for his best approximation of nonchalance—“they went off message.”

“Why would they do that?”

He continued to regard the mini-idyll Belle had established, the coachmen having established one of their own some distance away, where they were already tucking into their repast, and then dropped to his knees beside her on the grass. “I don’t know, Belle. I expect because once killing someone and eating them is on the table, it’s very hard to put away the silverware.”

“You may be right,” she conceded. “Would you like some breakfast?”

“Would I like some breakfast?” he repeated, uncertain if she was being deliberately callous, though that would not have been like her.

“Do you object to breakfast?”

“No, it’s just . . .”

He broke off, not knowing what came after the just . Because a mild brush with death and a couple of hair-breadth ’scapes followed by a repast was probably an average Thursday for a Tarleton. Any emotional revelations he had personally experienced upon a tree stump were neither her doing nor her responsibility. As far as he could tell, she wasn’t angry or disappointed in him, they still seemed to be engaged, and were still upon the road to Gretna Green. Typical, really, that while he’d been searching his soul and wrangling his heart and falling apart over an empty space in a previously shared bed, Belle had been laying out a picnic. It was a lesson in humility and absurdity both, and probably sorely needed.

“Actually,” he said, “breakfast would be perfect. Being nearly killed and eaten does, paradoxically, give one an appetite. I am, however, apprehensive of the pie.”

“I’m beginning to share that apprehension. What do you think it contains?”

“If we’re fortunate, cat.”

“And if we’re unfortunate?”

“Priest.”

“Priest?”

“Fop. Grocer. Royal marine. I’d really rather not speculate.”

“That’s probably for the best,” said Belle faintly. Then she rallied. “I’m sure the bread and cheese will be safe. As well as delicious.”

For several minutes, they devoted themselves to the business of eating. The bread was freshly baked, and the cheese was potent, and there were fresh strawberries to follow. It was a far superior repast to the hard biscuit and salted meat provided for soldiers, but being reckless, outdoors, and recently endangered reminded Sir Horley of his army days. They were not memories he usually cared to dwell upon. Still, he had rarely tasted food he appreciated more. Or he would have if not ...

“Belle?” He had spoken before fully realising he was going to, and the uncertain note in his voice made him feel foolish.

She glanced up, in the process of stuffing an enormous slice of cheese directly into her mouth. “Mmmrffsorry. I’m not being very ladylike.”

“That’s nothing you need to apologise for.”

“I just ...” She paused to chew, then swallowed heavily. “I just like cheese so very very much.”

This was not where Sir Horley needed or wanted the conversation to go. But it was a reprieve of sorts. “I had no notion.”

“Well, no. Nobody has any notion. I was too busy being a heroine, you see.”

“I’m not sure I do see.”

“Have you ever heard of a heroine who likes cheese?”

“I’m sure there must be some.”

Belle shook her head emphatically. “Not at all. Heroines must be thinking grand thoughts of love and marriage or proving their virtue in the face of blandishments or other menaces. They have no time for cheese.”

“That is to their loss.”

“It is to their loss,” Belle declared. “It has certainly been to mine, but I intend to make up for it starting”—she pulled out an imaginary pocket watch—“ten minutes ago. Now, what were you going to ask me?”

“Oh.” Having raised the issue, then avoided it, Sir Horley abruptly found himself dissembling. “Nothing of any significance.”

“You are going to be a very annoying husband if you keep saying things and then insisting upon their unimportance.”

A fair point. “I suppose I happened to be wondering why it was that you left me behind at an inn with a man who had floated the idea of ... not to belabour the point ... killing and eating me?”

“Good heavens.” Belle dropped her cheese. “I would consider that quite significant.”

“Perhaps,” admitted Sir Horley.

“It would certainly bother me in your position,” Belle went on. “But, you see, I very much did not do that.”

“You didn’t?”

“Not at all. I truly thought I had comprehensively dissuaded them from killing and eating you. I would not have gone otherwise.”

“And why”—Sir Horley may have been underdressed, but he felt naked—“why did you leave at all?”

“Would it not have seemed very peculiar to the innkeeper and his wife if I had refused to flee from the man who was abducting me?”

That did make a kind of Tarletonian sense. “And you couldn’t have told them we had settled our differences?”

“I could. But they had already gone to so much trouble, readying the carriage, preparing an escape route, sneaking into the room, and knocking you out with nitrous. I didn’t want to be impolite.”

“Bellflower, are you seriously telling me that you left me with an economically inclined pie-maker because you didn’t want to be impolite?”

Her eyes had grown wide. They were a different shade to Bonny’s, but there was still something entrancing about the blueness of them—like a corner of sky, glimpsed from between bars. “I truly did not believe you were in danger. I thought you would catch me up, and we could continue our journey. Indeed, I have been waiting here for quite some time. Surely that would be a strange thing to do, if I thought you were providing a rich, delicious filling.”

That made sense, even by the standards of non-Tarletons. But it offered little consolation. Not that Sir Horley expected any.

“Next time,” said Belle, “I shall be impolite. No, I shall be downright rude.”

“Must there be a next time?”

Her brows lifted. “I mean ... you’ve met us.”

Consoled after all, a smile tugged at the corner of his lips.

“It would probably help,” Belle went on, “if we both refrain in future from telling people we are abducting the other. But you have proven yourself catastrophically susceptible to drama, and I cannot be answerable for the consequences of that.”

“I beg your pardon.” He couldn’t tell if he was amused or appalled. “I am not catastrophically susceptible to drama.”

“But you are,” Belle returned placidly. “It is one of the many things I enjoy about you.”

“If anyone is catastrophically susceptible to drama, it is you.”

“Am I denying it? I am noting it as a quality we have in common.”

“No, no, no. You create drama. I am merely in the vicinity of drama perpetuated by others.”

“Yes. Because you like drama. Why else did you put all that effort into befriending Valentine?”

“Actually that was guilt.”

“But you’ve been nothing but kind to him.”

“Again, it wasn’t kindness, it was guilt.”

“For what?”

“Well, I tortured him for years.”

Belle, who had been sitting cross-legged by the cheese, propped a chin onto her hand and leaned forward, her expression rapt. “Please do tell me all about torturing Valentine.”

“Perhaps torture is slightly too strong a word.”

“Oh, you think?”

“It ... I ... I knew he was ... as I am. And I thought he believed himself above it. Above me. So I went out of my way to make him uncomfortable.”

“You monster.”

“I had no idea he was wholly oblivious. Nor that he was hurting from it.” Sir Horley sighed, the truth springing free with surprising ease. “And then when I saw him with Bonny, when I understood how it was between them, and how close he was to throwing away something that most of us spend our whole lives seeking, I ... don’t know. I felt bad. Because Valentine is so many things that I am not. Better things. But I also think I probably just wanted someone to be happy.”

“That is very tragic,” said Belle. “But it is also very drama.”

“No,” protested Sir Horley, stirred afresh. “Not at all. Drama would have been, to take an example at random, shooting Valentine? Or trying to take Bonny for myself by kidnapping him, or seducing him, or engineering a situation where I rescued him from lions.”

“From lions?”

“Or wolves. Or antelopes. These are just suggestions, Belle.”

Belle was silent for a moment or two—or at least as silent as possible for someone who had returned to vigorously inserting cheese into her mouth as though both cheese and mouths were going out of fashion. Then she said, “I hope this will not be taken as a lack of affection towards my brother, but I am concerned you are harbouring a too-generous impression of Bonny.”

“Is that not what love is?” asked Sir Horley, with a faint smile. “An excess of generosity?”

“I suppose”—her mouth curled with that hint of irony he had always found charming—“I am the wrong person to be speculating. But my own deepest level , shall we say, of esteem comes when I can see a person fully, including their faults, and suffer no diminution of that esteem.”

“Perhaps that speaks more to the irrelevance of the faults, rather than the nature of esteem. My own would not be so easily dismissed.”

“But Sir Horley, you have shown me nothing but your faults for two days solid, as well as insisted upon some I do not believe you possess, and I am still with you.”

“Had we not ridden roughshod over your reputation, I would encourage you to question that decision. And what does this have to do with Bonny? Do you think Valentine sees him as anything other than perfect?”

“No,” Belle admitted. “Bonny would not be with anyone who considered him less than an angel on loan from heaven. But you must have noticed that he is extremely vain, to say nothing of shallow, bossy, and fundamentally incapable of accepting a world different from his experiences in it.”

“These qualities matter no more to me than they do to Valentine.”

“I am not speaking of what matters. I am speaking of what is seen.”

“How enjoyable I am finding it”—Sir Horley felt he was permitted a little tartness, given the conversation—“to be reminded of my unsuitability for your brother.”

“All I’m asking,” Belle returned placidly, as she began to pack up what remained of the picnic, “is whether you’ve at any point given consideration to the notion that he might be unsuitable for you ?”

In all honesty, Sir Horley had not considered it. “And, by contrast, are we so compatible as a couple?”

“We are friends. Is that not a kind of compatibility?”

He sighed. “Belle, you cannot talk someone out of love.”

“I understand that, Sir Horley. But I don’t believe you are in love with Bonny.”

“Oh?”

“I believe you love what you think he represents. And what you hate in yourself.”

Sir Horley opened his mouth. Then closed it again. “I think I might at this point prefer to return to the man with the knife.” Or his tree stump.

“Please don’t do that. I have over-stepped, I can see that now.”

The worst of it was, she wasn’t wrong. He had rather a history of loving what he couldn’t have or perhaps just expecting not to have what he loved. “How about, in the spirit of marital negotiation, we never speak again about my feelings for your brother?”

“As you prefer.”

“And ...” He abruptly ran out of emotional momentum.

“Yes?”

“I . . . I did not . . . Belle, I . . .”

She made a heroic attempt to save him from himself. “I will never again trust in the good intentions of a murderous cannibal, irrespective of their kindness in the moment.”

“No, I ... I mean, that’s probably wise, in general. But”—how to admit it was not, ultimately, the murderous cannibal that had dismayed him—“I found ... I found I did not like to wake alone this morning. After we. Even though we—even though I—we did not—even though it is—”

He got no further because Belle put the basket aside and dived into his arms at such speed, and with such conviction, that it knocked him onto his back, one of his elbows going straight through the suspect pie.