Her Perfect Match (21 page)

Benedict was thrumming with questions, but he said nothing until the carriage door closed and they began the long journey back to London. In the dim cool of the vehicle, he reached across to take Vivien’s hand.

She looked up and her eyes were so sad that it hurt him to look into them.

“You want to know,” she whispered. “You desire explanations for what you have seen and heard today.”

He nodded. “It would be difficult not to desire them given all that has transpired,” he admitted.

She swallowed and he saw her struggle on her face. Vivien had worked hard to control everything and anything she revealed to those in her life. Confession was not something she made easily and now the pain of it was palpable.

“You must realize by now that I was not always Vivien Manning,” she began, her voice trembling.

“Yes,” he said, squeezing her fingers.

“Alice Roth is the name I was born with and lived with for the first eighteen years of my life.” She shook her head. “That girl,
Alice
, was a very different person than I am. She was raised by middle-class merchants with some success in their shop. They wanted her to marry a boy of status elevated from theirs, joining the riches of two families and providing them with a means to move up in local Society.”

Benedict nodded. “You wanted something different.”

She laughed. “Actually, I didn’t. I had been raised to do as my parents requested. They were harsh taskmasters—I never believed there was another way but to obey and make up in some way for the disappointing fact that I was their only child and a girl on top of that.”

He pursed his lips. “So what prevented your following their plan for you?”

“A man,” she said, her breath short. She turned her face from him to stare outside at the passing green hills and trees. It was a lovely scene, but her voice contained no pleasure. “A boy, but I thought he was a man. He was the second son of a second son, of little importance to your Society but of great importance to mine. He was visiting family in the shire and we met in town. He pursued me and I convinced my parents that his star was on far faster a rise than the young man they wished me to marry.”

He wrinkled his brow. “So you wished to raise yourself to loftier places. It is understandable.”

“No,” she laughed, utterly humorless. “I was not so wise as I am now. His loftier standing was nothing to me. I believed he cared for me. And when he cornered me in a barn at a country dance, I did not resist at first. We were in love, after all, or so I told myself. But when he went too far in his attentions, I refused him.”

Benedict shut his eyes. “And he violated you regardless.”

“Yes.”

She stopped talking for a moment and he could see she was reliving whatever had happened to her that night so long ago. And despite all the pleasures she had given and received since that time, she was still moved by the memories. Memories he wished he could erase for her.

“Afterward, I put on my clothes and asked him when we would wed,” she said. “I was terrified and in pain, but I believed he had a right if he was to be my husband. He laughed at me and it was clear he had never intended to be an honest suitor. He wanted my virginity and that was all. Once he took it, stole it, there was nothing left for him to desire.”

She straightened her spine and he felt her attempt to put all her strength back into herself after her confession. But there was a new vulnerability there only he could see.

“But I still don’t understand the estrangement between you and your family,” he pressed. “Your mother was almost wild with her anger toward you.”

“My mother…” She sighed. “She was always a little mad, overly emotional, painfully critical. She blamed me for the stress on our family if only for the fact that I was a girl. My father was a balance for her and we were often partners in an attempt to calm her.”

“You told them what had happened?” he asked.

She nodded. “When I came home, my dress torn and my face streaked with tears, I had no choice but to answer their questions. My father was appalled, as was my mother. But in her mind, it was the loss of a future that was the true horror. We had turned aside my prior suitor because of the belief that this gentleman’s son would wed me. Now I had no suitor and no virginity. I was ruined and so were they.”

Benedict shuddered. “That could not have been her true thoughts. She felt no compassion for you in the attack?”

“Compassion is not an emotion she has ever truly felt. Perhaps she is not able,” she said with a shrug that had to be more dismissive than those words made her feel. “But her madness only increased after that. She railed and shouted, she cried and called for friends to pity her. Of course that let the story be shared and verified and soon it was clear I could
never
marry well. My mother called me a whore and that is what I was in the eyes of everyone in Sapsgate.”

“Great God,” he muttered, stunned by her words. He might struggle with his family bonds, but his mother loved him. His brother loved him. He did not doubt those things for a moment.

She shrugged. “My father was sitting in the dining room a few weeks later, my mother screaming at me, railing on about how our lives were ruined. He suddenly stiffened and fell to the floor, dead before his napkin fluttered down beside him. The doctors called it an apoplexy, my mother said I murdered him. That night I slipped from the house with what few belongings I could carry and went to London on a post carriage. I have never returned.”

“You changed your name,” he said.

She nodded. “I changed everything. I became a new person. I all but killed poor Alice Roth, left her behind in Sapsgate. Vivien Manning was born and I have been her since the moment the carriage pulled down the road.”

Benedict examined her face in the dim light from the window. Her voice was utterly calm, but he could see the strain around her eyes. She feared his reaction to all she had told. She feared the new intimacy that telling had created between them.

“I
like
Vivien Manning,” he said softly as he reached out to caress her cheek.

She smiled slightly. “So do I,” she admitted. “She is far stronger than I ever thought I could be.”

“She certainly is strong as well as kindhearted.” He shook his head. “Why did you offer your mother money after all her unkind words to you?”

She pondered that for a moment. “Because she is a sick woman, troubled by demons that existed long before my innocence was stolen in a barn. When my father was alive, she had someone to take care of her, to temper her worst impulses. Now she is alone and her torments must be her only companions. I pity her more than hate her. Though I cannot say that I did not loathe her for a very long time.” He shook his head and she frowned. “You do not approve?”

He lifted his gaze to hers in surprise. “I approve of you enormously. And the fact that you have shared this very private view of yourself is something I appreciate. I realize it was not easy to do.”

She had been sitting across from him in the carriage, but now she slipped over to his seat. Settling her head into the crook of his shoulder, she spread her fingers out across his chest and sighed.

“In truth, it was easier to share this with you than I ever thought it would be,” she admitted. “I certainly did not expect I would end up confronted by my mother, with you standing by defending me, but since it has happened, I can truly say there is no one else I would have rather had at my side in that unguarded moment.”

He leaned down to kiss the top of her head, breathing in the sweet scent of her hair. A swell of love washed over him, brought on by her trust and her strength.

“I would not have wished to be anywhere else,” he whispered. “Now rest. I’ll wake you when we reach London.”

The events of the day had already taken their toll, for instead of arguing, Vivien settled closer, her breath heavy and slower as she drifted away into what he hoped would be a dreamless sleep. He settled into a more comfortable position and held her all the way to London.

Chapter Nineteen

Vivien handed her wrap over to Nettle and smiled at her butler. If he had an opinion about the fact that she had spent two nights away from home, when in the years he had served her she had barely spent one away, he said nothing about it.

“I trust nothing was amiss during my absence?” she asked.

“No, miss,” he reassured her. “Though you did have quite a few cards left for you.”

With a sigh, she took the stack he held out on a silver tray. She would end up throwing away the lion’s share of invitations and requests for her company anyway, but the chore of going through them all still fell to her.

“Thank you,” she said with a smile for him that was not forced. “Would you bring tea to my personal parlor?”

“Indeed,” he said with a quick bow. “I shall have it prepared immediately.”

She began to flip through the cards as she moved up the stairs toward her private chambers. As she expected, most were invitations to gatherings, inquiries into when her next party would occur and even one rather blunt and bold solicitation of her company.

She sighed as she sat down in the comfortable settee beside her fire and sorted the piles into correspondence she would answer and what she would not even bother issuing a response to.

As she sorted the cards, the door to her chamber opened and her maid, Rachel, came in with a tray laden with tea and cakes. The girl set it down and took a quick glance at the open door before she edged toward her.

“What is it?” Vivien asked, surprised by her normally lighthearted maid’s odd behavior.

“This message came for you yesterday,” she whispered and held out another envelope.

Vivien pushed to her feet and took the message. She recognized the address of her solicitor scribbled across the front of the envelope. She glanced up and motioned for Rachel to shut the door.

The girl did so and only then did Vivien say, “My solicitor sends messages here regularly—why the secrecy?”

“The boy he sent over to deliver it must have been an assistant,” Rachel explained. “He was talking about houses in Italy when he brought it to the door.”

“Oh great God!” Vivien said, blanching as she gripped the paper until it crumpled in her fingers. “What did Nettle say?”

“Nettle wasn’t the one who answered the door. He had gone to visit a friend while you were away from home,” Rachel explained. “It was Mrs. Pratt who answered and I jumped in and took the missive for you myself before she could understand what the man meant.”

Vivien squeezed her eyes shut. Mrs. Pratt was her housekeeper, and at least she was a discreet woman.

“I told the messenger that he should not share a lady’s private information with her servant,” Rachel continued. “And he was quite rude, but he did shut his running mouth and present me with the letter. I would have left it with the other correspondence on your tray, but I didn’t want any of the other servants to somehow stumble upon it.”

“I appreciate that,” Vivien said and opened the letter. She unfolded the sheets of paper within and read the first out loud. “‘Dear Miss Manning, After much search, we believe we have found a situation in Italy to meet your stated needs. Enclosed find the particulars and a few artist’s drawings of the home. Yours, etc.’”

She looked up at Rachel before she turned to the second sheet. “You are the only other person who knows about my plans at present,” she said, uncomfortable in this attempt at intimacy, even though she wanted to share the moment with someone. “Would you like to see the house?”

Rachel nodded. “I would!”

Vivien drew a long breath and turned to the second sheet, a line of descriptives and figures on cost, which she skipped until she came to the first drawing of the home. She caught her breath. The little house in Naples was perfection. Beautifully built and with gardens along the front, it cried out as private and cozy, exactly what she had been seeking.

“But what about Napoleon?” Rachel asked as Vivien handed her the sketch. The maid cooed even though her question had not been answered.

Vivien waved her hand dismissively. “With enough money, anything can be done, even during a war.”

She looked at the second sketch, a small collection of beautiful sites in the area near the house itself. She pictured herself walking the streets, buying bread, roaming the parks and museums of the city. Except in her mind she was not alone.

Benedict was with her.

She shook her head and shoved the paper toward Rachel before she got to her feet.

Rachel nodded over the images and then set the papers aside. “So this is the place then, isn’t it?”

Vivien hesitated. The location was everything she had requested from her solicitor, and yet she felt less than satisfied.

“I…don’t know…” she admitted, more to herself than to Rachel.

The maid moved closer. “Are you having second thoughts, miss?”

There was a hopefulness in her maid’s voice that was unmistakable and Vivien turned to look at her with a smile. “I do not really know. The Season is only a few weeks old and already I have completed nearly every duty on the list we compiled together. Now this house has fallen into my lap and it makes the idea of leaving London so very real. Can I do it?”