Chapter Thirteen
Elizabeth entered the breakfast room the following morning and found herself face to face with Mr. Mason. He was clearly feeling much improved.
“I see you are much recovered,” she said coolly.
He inclined his head in greeting and rose to sketch a slight bow. “I am recovered enough to take a meal at a table rather than in my bed like a sickly old man. Is this the normal way of things? For a companion to eat with the family?”
“It is not in most houses,” she answered as she took a plate from the sideboard and began to fill it. “But Lady Vale always breakfasts in bed and I am unwelcome in the servants’ quarters. They find it unnerving to have one of their ‘betters’ dining in the kitchen with them. They’d find it equally unnerving to have to serve my meal on a tray in my room as if I were a guest. So a breakfast is laid out, I eat, and whatever is left is taken to the kitchen and garden staff.”
His response was not flippant or cold, but thoughtful and clearly heartfelt. “It is difficult for you… living between two worlds. Raised in a genteel manner but working in a position that is still not quite a servant, but far below what your upbringing prepared you for—I am sorry, Elizabeth.”
“Miss Masters,” she corrected.
“No,” he replied. “I will not pretend we are strangers. Not when you have cared for me, not when we have kissed.”
Elizabeth gasped and glanced around the room. Thankfully, the footmen were all out in the corridor and no other servants appeared to be lingering at the moment. “Will you kindly not say those things? What if someone heard you?”
“What if they did?” He placed his fork on his plate with enough force that it clattered. “You are a young, unmarried woman and I am a young, unmarried man. People would be more shocked if we’re not engaged in a flirtation than if we were!”
“What you are suggesting goes beyond flirtation,” she replied. “And I am not that sort. Not anymore.”
He frowned at her. “What did he do to you? Did he break your heart, Elizabeth? Did he hurt you physically?”
“He lied. He lied about everything,” she answered hotly. “And when he betrothed himself to another woman, he assumed that I’d be happy to exchange my expectations of matrimony for the reality of being his mistress. I declined.”
“There is more to it than that,” he insisted.
Elizabeth had seated herself at the table but, with the topic of conversation, her appetite had left her entirely. Pushing her plate away, she then threw her hands up. “Fine. If you must know, Freddy was most displeased at what he saw as my rejection of him… he told everyone. The gossip followed me from Hertfordshire to London and back again. It followed me into my first position as a companion and again in my work as a governess. It wasn’t until I came to work for Lady Vale who disdains society completely that I have managed to free myself from it.”
He settled back in the chair. “He deserved a thrashing if not more.”
“Well, he won’t get it. He’s a lord and my father was not. He was simply a local landowner who made the grave mistake of not holding on to his wealth. Being poor left me with few marital prospects, being foolish left with me even fewer.”
“And your family? Did none of them stand for you when this all came to light?” he asked. There was no pity in his tone and a kindness that she had only seen in him that day in the Square.
Elizabeth shrugged. “Why should they have? All that they taught me, every lesson about decorum and morality that they attempted to instill in me, I had tossed away for nothing. My father insisted I leave and, luckily, one of my aunts was kind enough to help me find a position. I haven’t spoken with any of my family since.”
“Do they not even write you?”
It was a painful admission, made all the more painful by the fact that only a few days earlier her last letter to them had been returned, unopened and refused. “No. They do not. They have made it quite clear that they wish nothing more to do with me. The least that I can do is attempt now to be the dutiful daughter I should have been all along and respect their wishes.”
*
Benedict studied her expression, looking for any crack in the veil she wore. There was none. She believed it, he realized. She was utterly convinced of her own wickedness and the fact that her family was right in disowning her.
“Judgmental prigs,” he said.
Her eyes widened at his coarse language. “Mr. Mason!”
“They are,” he insisted. “I told you once before, I only look like a gentleman. I learned to speak as one, dress as one, and comport myself as one because it’s good for business. It afforded me opportunities to support myself and my sister in a way that would allow us to be comfortable and to have options. But I thank God that I do not now and will never think like them. The lot of them are fools!”
“You only say that because you don’t understand—”
He shushed her. “I operate a gaming hell. I assure you, I do understand them. I see them when they come in betting money they don’t have, losing land, losing family heirlooms, writing markers for more than all their properties together will earn in a year. They drink, they game, they whore. And then they turn around and do it all again regardless of whatever consequence they’ve had to face because of it.”
She clammed up then, unable to refute what he was saying.
“But you,” he continued, “by virtue of being a woman, are allowed not even one mistake… not even one ill thought out and impulsive affair because you believed yourself in love. Am I correct?”
She continued to stare at him wide eyed. “You’re only saying things you think I wish to hear. You may describe yourself as egalitarian if you choose, but I cannot believe that anyone is truly that accepting!”
“Then I am very sad for you, indeed, Miss Masters, because it appears that no one has shown you any mercy or understanding in your life. And that is an utter shame.”
“I find I am no longer in the mood for breakfast. Excuse me, Mr. Mason. There is some correspondence for Lady Vale that I must see to,” she said stiffly as she rose from her chair.
“Don’t,” he said.
“Don’t what?”
“Do not run away from me… do not assume that I am like the people you knew before. There is a connection between us, Miss Masters. It was there from the moment you first barreled into me in the Square. Tell me you do not feel it… I dare you.”
“It is nothing more than a simple attraction,” she denied. “And whether you are who you claim to be or who Lady Vale believes you to be, there is reason enough on both counts not to indulge in it.”
“Because I’m not a gentleman?” Was she as small-minded about such things as the people who pushed her into her currently lowered status?
“No. Because we are barely acquainted and such forward conversations do not serve either of us well. And also because it is quite apparent to me that you are not a man with marriage on his mind, and I am not a woman who can afford to entangle herself with any man who wants less than that,” she insisted. “Excuse me, Mr. Mason.”
There was a finality in her voice as she said it then, a tone that brooked no argument. Her head was high and her back was completely straight as she walked out of the room. She was right, of course. He did not have marriage on his mind. It was something that he assumed he would do one day as all men did, but he had not yet in his life met a woman who had immediately brought the topic to mind. Until her.
He’d heard Mary waxing poetic about love at first sight. The idea that a man and woman might be destined for one another, two halves that would make a whole in anything more than a physical sense, had always seemed silly to him. He found himself less certain of that now. In the face of his immediate connection to her, her ability to alternately arouse and infuriate him, the fact that he seemed to have a nearly identical effect on her—all of that supported the notion that whatever existed between them was something significant, something larger than they themselves were and something that was simply meant to be.
He’d come to Bath to find Mary. It seems all he’d found were other women to vex and drive him mad. Between Lady Vale’s delusions, Miss Masters’ prickly nature and Mary’s foolishness in placing herself in harm’s way, he was at his wits’ end.
Benedict pushed his own plate back, his appetite gone. He rose slowly, still moving with far less speed than he was accustomed to. His shoulder ached, but the throbbing of the wound that marked it as fevered had finally abated. Within a matter of days, he would be able to once more search for Mary himself. Until that time, he would simply have to remain dependent upon Lady Vale’s hired investigators.
Leaving the breakfast room, he prayed fervently for Adler to find something that would lead him to his sister’s whereabouts. Until that time, he would just make peace with the current Bedlam he found himself in.