Chapter Text
His mother had to be bored. That was the only explanation for the fact that Aldersey Hall was currently swarming with so many sharp-eyed women and preening men. Calling them rabble would imply some kind of charm or at least authenticity, and those seemed to be the only things not in attendance this year.
Which was why Benjamin Covington, the Marquess of Pembrook, was battling a thick fog at the farthest end of the estate for an early morning ride. Beside him, his companion tightened his grip on the reins, gloves creaking in the cold.
“Really, this is an ungodly hour.” In a rare show of dishevelment, Augustin Huxley’s cravat knot was sightly askew, which meant the fastidious Earl of Strafford hadn’t even woken his valet before heading to the stables. Ben was almost touched. “Remind me again why we’re out here.”
“Because if I have to spend another minute listening to Lady Campbell’s shrieks through the wall,” Ben said, “I will cause bodily harm to her or another one of our guests.”
“I thought you liked loud women.”
“I’m beginning to think I don’t like anything.”
Huxley readjusted his hat. “Hardly a groundbreaking revelation.”
In fairness, Ben was developing something of a reputation. Aloof, withdrawn. Disinterested.
Allegedly. The only gossip he heard was what his mother forced on him, usually on long carriage rides when he could not escape to his study. Not that Huxley’s snide jabs were much better.
“I thought you favored early mornings,” Ben said, since they seemed to be sharing their long-held beliefs about each other.
“Not after losing roundly to your father at the tables last night.”
Ben turned off from the graveled path to take the shortcut through the forest. “I did warn you.”
“Yes, well. You should thank me for substantially augmenting your inheritance.”
“As if he won’t immediately spend it on some decommissioned blockade runner. Besides, I would never insult you by implying generosity.”
“And that is why we are friends.”
Friends was perhaps an overly warm word for what they were, but it was close enough now that the days of boyhood rivalries were behind them.
They rode in silence, skirting the rock outcropping that looked west toward the village and the reed-studded lake, ringed with lush early autumn foliage. A burst of pheasants took flight as they approached a thicket of brambles.
“Shooting will hardly prove a challenge,” Ben observed.
Huxley made a noise of agreement. “Though I am obligated to remind you that scandal, not sport, is the entire point of house parties. And the pond is well stocked, if you’d ever bother to cast a line.”
Ben ground his teeth together against a sigh. “Not you too.”
His parents had become unbearable lately. Apparently any mundane thing could be made into an argument for the institution of marriage.
“You’re just so much more tolerable when you’ve dipped your wick within living memory.”
“Please stop talking.”
Huxley did fall silent again, thankfully. But his lingering smirk was almost worse.
The day had warmed pleasantly by the afternoon, and it was decided that the schedule would proceed unchanged. So the house had disgorged its guests onto the lawn for archery, or at least to watch it from a safe distance. Blankets spread on the grass encouraged sprawling, and tables held enough light refreshments to satisfy the late risers.
The audience—archers and spectators alike—looked on as the women lined up one by one to shoot their first rounds, the sun at their backs. Some had an eager man hovering nearby to offer advice or to reposition their elbows with lingering touches. A few even had their own flocks, all vying for the lady’s attention.
Lady Grenville missed the target entirely, to a smattering of dutiful applause.
“An inspiring show of female competence,” Lord Egremont drawled to the cluster of men waiting farther back at their own line, in the latest addition to his grating ongoing commentary, which Ben knew from past experience would cease once it was the men’s turn. His irritation boiled over.
“Perhaps you can show off your embroidery skills after this, Egremont.”
“Archery is a perfectly suitable activity for young ladies.” Egremont raised his voice so it could be heard by a group of passing women. Ben refrained from closing his eyes in exasperation. “Beyond its wholesome association with Artemis, it requires poise and fortitude, and lends itself well to displaying the well-dressed feminine form.” Two women nearby fluttered their fans and gave him approving looks. “Besides, it’s a useful skill.”
Nearly as useful as Egremont’s distorted interpretation of Greek mythology. “When was the last time you killed something with a bow?”
He sneered. “I favor a gun, naturally. What about you, Pembrook?”
“I can’t recall, but today is seeming an increasingly likely answer.”
Huxley laughed, which was never a good sign. “You may get your chance soon enough,” he said to Ben under his breath, recovering. “It appears the ladies are nearly finished.”
One woman stood with a more lively group full of bluestockings and abolitionists, grinning at something a naval officer was saying. She was outfitted in an unremarkable day dress, nearly shabby in its simplicity.
“Who is she?” Ben nodded in her direction. “I don’t remember her at the first night’s ball.”
Huxley followed his line of sight. “Miss Johnson, I believe. She arrived late. I’ve never seen her before.”
“Almack’s?” Ben never went. The son of a duke would find himself in a candlelit meat market, and as someone with no intention of marrying in the foreseeable future, it was a useless place for him. For his part, Huxley simply enjoyed the spectacle of watching social machinations, and Almack’s seemed purpose built. It was the same reason he enjoyed his parliamentary duties. He would know if she’d attended, most likely as a companion.
“No.”
“I suppose that doesn’t mean anything.”
“No. The patronesses are the devil’s own,” Huxley said. “Though I would have at least heard of her.”
“Then she is nobody.”
“It would seem so.”
Still, Ben’s attention kept drifting back to her after the women had wandered farther up the range to watch the men shoot, secretly regretful that she hadn't taken her turn despite being outfitted for the sport. There was something unpolished in her movements, like she had forgotten that she wasn’t alone. She swatted absently at a buzzing insect without so much as pausing her conversation with Sir Finley Burrard. And she seemed uninterested in the parade of aristocracy on display, her back to the archers. Perhaps she was married. But it was Miss Johnson, wasn’t it?
Huxley nudged him, harder than necessary. “Your turn.”
Ben shook himself. Archery was as natural as fencing or riding for him, but it still wouldn’t do to be distracted.
He stepped up to the line and plucked an arrow from the waiting pouch. Beyond giving the fletches a quick brush with his gloved fingers, Ben skipped the performance of checking the arrow shaft for imperfections. His father had too much respect for accuracy to allow a flawed arrow to be anything but kindling. A breeze came from the southwest.
Nock, draw, anchor, release. It was effortless and without conscious thought; his lessons and endless drilling had long since paid off. Cheers went up.
Ben didn’t need to look. Perfectly centered, perfectly straight. He gave a nod to the usual murmurs of congratulations.
Huxley sighed as Ben returned. “Let me guess—the prized silver arrow will spend yet another year on the grounds of Aldersey.”
“And how many years have you had to improve?”
“Too many. At this point, it’s simply tradition that you win.”
“I’ll give you a replica for Christmas if it means so much to you,” Ben said.
“That’s dangerously close to thoughtful.”
Ben’s half smile faded as Miss Johnson approached the line. Her close-cut spencer was the color of old vellum. The oiled leather of her brace had been embossed with vines in bloom. Nearby conversations died away.
Perhaps she was confused.
“The ladies’ line is at fifty yards,” Ben told her.
She did not turn toward him as she tested her bowstring. “That hardly seems sporting.” Her voice was throatier than he’d expected, and as velvety as aged brandy.
Now that he looked more closely, her shooting glove was worn along the seams, and a tassel to brush off her arrows hung from the leather belt at her hip. Sometime during the afternoon, she’d lost her hat, and tendrils of chestnut brown hair drifted in the slight breeze.
Undeterred by his interruption, she proceeded with little ceremony, nocking an arrow. Her full draw was smoothly lethal, with the precision of practice. Her hooked fingers anchored against her jaw. Shoulders steady, muscles tensed. Unconcerned with the gracefulness of her form, the turn of her neck, the position of her audience. To her, only the target existed. Her chest rose and she exhaled. Then nothing. No movement, no breath. It seemed to him that there were no other sounds in the world.
With a relaxing of her hand, a flow, she loosed the arrow. Shouts rang out from the guests on the sidelines with opera glasses, and still she did not move. Something like alarm took hold and Ben glanced behind them to make sure nobody had been inadvertently shot while he’d stood transfixed, but Viscount Farrington was already leading a charge to the target. Miss Johnson let her arms fall to her side, her expression unchanged and serious.
Those who lingered were beginning to turn to look at him.
Huxley clapped him on the shoulder. “Bound to happen some day.”
Ben squinted at the target. It almost looked like…
“She split it!” Lord Farrington’s unbearable aristocratic accent carried across the field, no small amount of glee in the announcement.
Ben’s stomach swooped sickeningly. There was no way.
And yet.
The haze of disbelief faded quickly, and something furiously sharp took its place.
She turned to face him, cold and quiet. “Perhaps we should draw a line farther back.”
“Well done,” he managed. He couldn’t stand to look at the windswept braids in her hair or her pointed nose or her soft, brutal mouth.
Then a triumphant cluster of her friends gathered around her, closing her off from him, and it was for the best. A sleepless night had left him irritable.
That was it: a lack of sleep. A cup of coffee would put him back to rights.
“And she’s a menace at battledore and shuttlecock,” Miss Rowe preened to the growing audience of new admirers, her arm around her friend.
For some reason, Ben needed to know the color of Miss Johnson’s eyes. So he could pick her out of any crowd for the rest of his life.
She was blushing, shoulders lifted just slightly, as if to protect herself from the press of bodies and the sudden weight of attention.
She glanced up.
Hazel. A dancing, flecked hazel.
Ben turned and headed for the house.
His mother, radiant, beamed at him as he approached the terrace, and the corner of his father’s lips twitched with a repressed smile.
Ben leveled them both with a hard stare. “Don’t.”
“I’m tempted to make you hand it over to her yourself,” his father said dryly.
The silver arrow nestled cozily on its deep crimson velvet cushion beside them. Ben hadn’t noticed it in years, the novelty of its lifelike fletching and etched woodgrain having faded years ago.
“I’m sure the gesture will mean more coming from the Duke of Essex.”
“Doubt it.”
“I will have to decline the honor. I have other business to which I must attend.”
“Of course.”
The business of reading geological treatises in silence, but nobody needed to know that. And the company of silent books would be an improvement over this gloating lot.
His mother had composed herself. “You did very well, dear.” Her expression was kind.
Ben gave a quick bow. “Thank you, Your Grace.” Stiffly formal. Distant.
Ever sensitive to any slight against her, his father’s grin crashed to a frown. “That’s enough.”
She rested her elegant hand on her husband’s arm. “It’s alright. He’s had a difficult time.”
Ben didn’t stay to listen to the grumbling reply.
Unsurprisingly, treatises did not improve his mood in the least. He suffered through dinner without incident before gulping down a generous glass of port and retiring for the evening.
The bed was warmed and turned down, plump and inviting. And yet it wasn’t the solution.
Ben paced. He needed real exertion—the kind that worked his body more than his mind. Tomorrow he would spar with Huxley, if the idiot didn’t spend another night getting cleaned out at the tables.
Ben sank into the armchair by the crackling fireplace.
He wasn’t embarrassed by his loss; that much he’d parsed. Baffled, yes. He lingered on it, replaying her movements. Her unselfconscious walk, the way the afternoon light had fallen over her as if in a painting. Her the natural subject and he the lurking observer, baffled and trounced, and transfixed by the natural swing of her hips all the more because of it.
Irritation mixed with long-unmet needs, and somehow the two were conspiring to make him achingly hard. Ben swore and settled in for a functional release. It was maintenance like any other. He splayed his legs wide, cock in hand.
Immediately, it was the right choice. At the first stroke, a low pull told him it would be a quick thing.
He imagined her holding a racket, mid-game. She would whip the shuttlecock over the net with a satisfying swish and thunk, her focus nearly palpable. Perhaps her hair would fall loose in the heat of the day. Sweat beneath her chemise, behind her knees. Thighs damp and flushed where nobody could see.
Had she enjoyed it? Knowing that her arrow was inside of his, had split it and wrecked it. She was probably still thinking about it, still floating on the buoyant pride of besting the future Duke of Essex. Her, sitting downstairs in the drawing room, silently remembering, too distracted to join in the speculation about Lord So-and-so’s fortune or plans for the next day.
And that was what he wanted. Ben wanted to crowd out everything, to fill her dreams and make her wonder if he’d even noticed her beyond the moment. Or if maybe he was doing exactly what he was currently doing, alone in his room. He wanted her to look at him tomorrow and wonder.
Mind numbing incoherence pulled images together into a frenzied, filthy collage.
Hazel eyes closing, lips parted. Her strong back arching in his arms, taut and straining. Her moans thick, desperate. Her cunt, so wet that he couldn’t fuck it fast enough. So unimportant that he could pump it full, ruin it and never speak to her again. Her nails biting into his shoulders, scraping down his back.
He came in a rocking, thrusting mess, his grip too tight and the surges too close together to breathe through. His head swam, his feet digging into the carpet against the riptide, and the emptying pulses kept going long after he’d run dry.
He sucked in air with a gasp and blinked up at the ornate plasterwork that circled the ceiling.
Blessed clarity. The day’s memories used up for a required alleviation, paper-thin daydreams consumed in a quick, burning burst and left to cool and blow away in the night air. A stranger put back in her place.
Ben cleaned himself off, went to bed, and dreamed of nothing.
One of the truly inspired traditions of a house party was the separation of the sexes for most of the day. It meant that he could rise at his leisure, spend hours sparing—fists and sabre, attacks and parries—and never once concern himself with crossing paths with her.
But dinner was inevitable.
Miss Johnson was seated well away, and he was thankful for small mercies. Still, being in the same room as her made Ben uncomfortably aware of the sound of his own voice over the constant chime of silverware and of the exact places he let his gaze fall.
Her friends called her Rey when they thought no one else could hear. He’d gathered that much from the pre-dinner conversation, and it fit her. Clipped and quick with a sighing breath hidden within.
Too much. He had already thought about her too much. Ben applied himself to the simple work of eating after a day of proper exercise.
Soon enough it was over, and the women left for the drawing room. His shoulders relaxed as the familiar haze of fine tobacco and expensive vintages filled the air. Ben let himself be lulled to comfort in the steady rumble of surrounding conversations. In the corner, the clock ticked.
Huxley had been absent for far too long, which rarely boded well. The man was less of a standard-issue rake than a notoriously crafty reprobate, fond of restraints and riding crops and making people crawl, if rumors and his evasive responses could be believed. And a house party was rife with opportunity. Not that Ben cared about a lack of discretion, but the other guests might.
Ben slipped into the corridor to begin his search. He turned a corner and discovered him, leaning over a hall table, utterly absorbed by the minute brush strokes of a portrait that had hung there for years.
“It’s not for sale,” Ben said. “You’ll have to find your own dusty heirlooms.”
Huxley didn’t respond. Something moved on the other side of the corridor, between pools of candlelight.
Miss Johnson. Of course. The trap had been sprung on them both, whether she realized it or not.
Driven by some primal, unthinking urge to appear unfazed in his own home, Ben approached her.
“I’m afraid we have yet to be introduced,” he said.
She regarded him cautiously, like she hadn’t expected him to be capable of speech. “I believe you’re correct. You are Lord Pembrook, are you not?”
“I am.”
He waited, but no name was forthcoming, and really it was his fault for breaking protocol. She couldn’t very well introduce herself, and Huxley was not the type to assist, especially when amusement was so close at hand. He let Ben flounder, pretending to inspect the oil painting of the ninth duke’s favorite hunting dog while he sipped at his glass of smuggled whisky.
Rey’s gown was a dove grey, the shawl draped over her arms trimmed in black lace. It was arresting, but so unlike the vibrant colors that fluttered around the dining table. And, come to think of it, she’d worn the same the previous night. Ben formed the question before he could stop himself.
“Forgive me, are you in mourning?”
“Yes, for the peace I enjoyed before you approached me this evening.”
Huxley choked on his Scotch. Ben ignored him.
“If you'll excuse me, I will allow you to find it again,” he told her and turned to go.
“I say, Covington,” Huxley drawled as Ben passed by, “didn’t notice you there.” He tipped the rim of his glass at the painting. “Such a shame that none of your bitches are this fine. She seems well suited to the sport.”
Ben crossed over to him in two strides and grabbed him hard by the arm before he leaned in to hiss under his breath through gritted teeth. “Would you kindly fuck off?”
Huxley kept his voice just as low. “I don’t think I will.”
“Do you know what her name was?” A soft feminine lilt came from somewhere in the vicinity of Huxley’s right elbow.
Both of them turned to look at the intrusion, who was now considering the portrait of the gleaming hound alongside them, arms crossed over her chest.
“Daphne.”
Rey nodded and Huxley sucked in a nearly silent breath, and Ben felt his mistake before he comprehended it.
“I believe,” he added lamely, mortified to be so sure of the name of a long-dead dog but not that of the woman standing beside them, who had apparently been sleeping under his roof for days. A woman he had imagined bent over and pleading.
“Beautiful.” She smiled a little at the painting, the curve of her lips a flash of daybreak in the dark corridor.
“Have you any dogs?” Ben blurted.
“Newly acquired.” Her smile faded. “They are unaccustomed to me.”
A fixable problem. “Time and food will do much to remedy that.”
“Like people.” She pulled her shawl closer around her shoulders. “Though the hounds were bred for protection and blood sport rather than companionship. The effort would be wasted.”
“A shame,” said Huxley. “The same may also be said of some people.”
Ben furtively stepped on his foot.
“I’m partial to dogs,” she said.
“A wise choice, Miss Johnson,” Huxley replied.
She graced him with another quick smile, and Ben could have flipped every table in the house. She turned to face him. “You may call me Daphne, if the situation requires. Since it is a name you know.”
And then she was gone.
Ben closed his mouth.
“You rather fucked that,” Huxley observed after a long silence.
“I ought to call you out.”
He shrugged. “Don’t bother. I heard your aim isn’t what it used to be.”