Janice Preston - Saved By Scandal's Heir

It’s Benedict. You are safe. He would never attack you.

It was his fault. It wouldn’t have happened if he had—

Harriet cut off that inner diatribe, but other random thoughts still hurtled around inside her head. She hauled in a deep breath, desperate to calm her terror, desperate to think straight. Benedict paused a few feet from her, his face flushed, his chest rising and falling.

‘Harriet? Why did you run? What is it? What are you afraid of? Me?’

Harriet shook her head. She did not want his pity; she did not even want his guilt for what he had put her through. ‘I am not afraid.’

‘That is what you said last night, too, but your eyes tell a different story,’ he growled as he stepped closer. She flinched and he moved back, frowning. ‘What kind of a man do you think I am? I might be my cousin’s heir, but I have not inherited his tendencies, you may rest assured of that.’

Harriet swallowed, her pulse steadying. ‘I know,’ she whispered. ‘I never thought you had. But...’

But it was complicated. She was afraid. Still. Oh, not in the way she had been afraid on the stairs, hearing those feet thundering up the stairs behind her. Chasing her. That had been blind panic. Her current dread, though... Words she could hardly bear to think, let alone speak, crowded into her mouth and she barricaded them behind clenched teeth and pursed lips.

What she feared, almost more, were the memories Benedict had awakened. She was afraid of her own body’s treacherous clamour for his embrace. She was terrified of where her weakness might lead.

She wanted him. So much. Even after everything.

But she could never forgive him.

‘But...?’

Harriet sucked in a deep, deep breath, noticing Benedict’s hot green gaze dip to her décolletage as she did so. That brought her to her senses enough to say, ‘But I believe the past should stay in the past. Last night...you would have...we would have...if I had...’ She swallowed. ‘I have no wish to revisit our childish indiscretions,’ she said firmly. ‘I shall bid you goodnight, Mr Poole, and I trust I shall have no need to rely upon your hospitality for much longer.’

She turned and walked away, another rush of tears blurring her vision. She did not allow herself to think. Like a wounded animal, she craved a dark corner and her instincts led her straight to her bedchamber, where she shut the door behind her. There was no key, no bolt. Desperate, Harriet grasped hold of the heavy wooden chest set at the foot of the bed and tugged it, inch by inch, until it was set in front of the door. She cared not what the maid might think in the morning, when she came to light the fire. All she wanted was to feel safe but, as she collapsed onto the bed and allowed the hot flood of tears free rein, she acknowledged it was not Benedict she feared.

It was her own weakness that terrified her.

* * *

The next morning, Harriet woke late after a restless night. She arose and tugged on the bell rope to summon hot water before crossing to the window and twitching the curtain aside. The day was bright and clear and the snow that had clung tenaciously to the ground throughout the previous day might never have been.

The bedchamber was cosy, courtesy of the fire lit by a chambermaid earlier that morning. Harriet wondered what the kitchen gossips had made of the fact that the maid had to knock on the door and rouse Harriet before she could gain admittance. Together they had dragged the chest back to the foot of the bed, Harriet excusing her odd behaviour by saying she was scared of ghosts. The maid’s sceptical look had seemed to say, ‘But everyone knows ghosts can travel through doors and walls. A barricaded door is no protection.’

A tap at the door revealed a different maid carrying a pitcher from which steam spiralled.

‘I’ve been sent to help you dress, milady, if you are ready now,’ the girl said. She told Harriet her name was Annie. ‘Breakfast is set up in the morning room for you.’

‘Thank you,’ Harriet said, turning to the washstand to wash whilst the maid pulled back the covers to air the bed and then waited until Harriet was ready to don her dove-grey carriage dress. ‘Is Mr Poole... Has Mr Poole breakfasted yet?’

Please say yes. She could not face him after last night. When he had followed her up the stairs, the sound of his footsteps behind her had brought the terror and the anguish flooding back. What must he think of her? Had she managed to misdirect him with her talk of the past and their childish indiscretions?

And earlier, in the dining room—dear heavens, how she had been tempted, once again, to lose herself in his embrace, even after her loss of control over his provocation. How she had yearned for him, her body melting with desire. And that, she had thought, as she’d tossed and turned in her bed last night, her mind whizzing, was a near miracle considering how she had grown to abhor the marital act—she would not dignify it by thinking of it as making love—with Brierley. As recently as one year ago, her body might not have responded so readily to Benedict. But then she had set out to erase the memory of Brierley and his vile ways from her mind and her heart and...yes...her body. And she had succeeded, when she had, after great consideration and much soul-searching, taken a lover. And, with his help, she had overcome her fear.

‘Oh, yes, milady. Mr Poole is ever an early riser. Comes from living in foreign parts, Mr Crab—’ The maid stopped, her hand to her mouth, eyes rounded. ‘Beg pardon, milady, if I’m speaking out of turn. My mum always said I never know when to stop.’

Harriet laughed at the girl, relieved to learn she would not meet Benedict at the breakfast table. ‘That is quite all right, Annie. Now will you show me to the morning room, please?’

She had taken breakfast on a tray in her bedchamber yesterday and the house was so vast she had no confidence in finding her way on her own. Before they reached the morning room she had discovered that Mr Poole was once again perusing the estate ledgers with Sir Malcolm’s agent in the study.

The morning room was a beautiful sunny room with a view to the east, over lawns that curved away, down into a valley that Harriet remembered from her childhood. In her mind’s eye she saw happy, carefree days when the sun seemed to be forever shining and adults and their complicated world and rules barely existed, other than to provide food and shelter. Memories were strange things, she mused. From her adult perspective, she knew her childhood had also consisted of lessons and church, duty and chores, but those untroubled sunny days playing with her friends—and with Benedict—eclipsed all else. She pictured the shallow stream that gurgled along its stony bed at the bottom of the slope, with the choice of a wooden footbridge or stepping stones to cross it. As children, of course, they had always chosen to cross via the stepping stones, jostling and daring each other and, inevitably, someone had ended up with wet feet.

The opposite slope of the valley was wooded and stretched up in a gentle curve until, just beyond the far edge of the wood, a grassy hillock, bare of trees, jutted skywards. At the top of the hillock was the folly, modelled upon a ruined medieval castle complete with tower. Harriet’s stomach knotted. Here were memories she had no wish to dwell upon.

She finished her breakfast of toast and coffee and then went upstairs to visit Janet, to see how she fared. Janet was sleepy but out of pain; the housekeeper, Mrs Charing, had been dosing her with syrup of poppies in accordance with the doctor’s instructions.

After sitting with her maid awhile, Harriet decided to leave her to sleep. She would go for a walk, to blow some of the cobwebs from her brain. She wrapped up well in her travelling cloak, pulling the fur-lined hood over her head. It was a beautifully bright day, but there was still a cold easterly wind. Harriet strode out briskly enough to keep herself warm.