Lord Perfect (30 page)

Bathsheba was too surprised at the outburst to speak.
She could only stare at him. His handsome profile was set in hard
lines.

"It was not a man," he said. "Not in the
way you think, at any rate. She fell under the spell of an
evangelical preacher. He persuaded her—and a great many other
misguided creatures—to bring salvation to the poor. They did
this by handing out Bibles and preaching at people who regarded them
as a joke or an insult. I have dealt with the poor, Bathsheba. They
need a great deal, but I do not believe they feel any great want for
aristocratic females dressed in the latest stare of fashion telling
them they are proud, vain, and licentious."

She longed to touch him, to lay her hand on his arm. She
could not. It was nighttime, but this was not a lonely stretch of
road. This was a main thoroughfare through England's most famous
watering place.

"I was mistaken," she said. "Perhaps she
was emotional, after all."

"I
wish
she had thrown something at me," he said. "But I had no
idea of the extent and depth of her—her
passion
for the cause. I hardly knew what she was up to. I didn't ask. I
dismissed it as a typically muddled feminine whim. I should have put
a stop to it. Instead, I now and again stirred myself to make
sardonic observations that went over her head. Then I went on about
my so much more important business and forgot about it."

"You didn't love her," she said.

"That is no excuse," he
said angrily. "I married her. I was responsible for her. She was
my oldest friend's
sister
,
plague take me—and I
ignored
her. Thanks to my neglect, she went into the back-slums prophesying
hellfire and damnation, and came out with a fever that killed her in
three days."

"Jack rode a horse he was warned against," she
said. "The beast threw him. It took him three months to die."

"It is not the same," he said.

"Because he was a man and she was a woman?"
she said.

"Your marriage was a success,
though all the world condemned it," he said. "Mine was a
failure, though everyone applauded it."

"It takes two," she said, reminding him of
what he'd said after the first time they made love. "Some unwise
marriages do turn out well, for the participants, at any rate. Any
number of arranged marriages turn out well, too. Why should not a
marriage based on duty? A marriage of convenience? A political
marriage? You are not unreachable, Rathbourne."

"Not for you," he growled. "But you are
different."

"The difference is, I grew up learning to make do,"
she said. "You and Lady Rathbourne did not. I do not say you
bear no responsibility. You should have made more of an effort. But
so should she have done. Men are difficult creatures, yet a great
many women—even the silliest, weakest-willed women—do
manage to train them eventually."

A short, shocked silence.

Then he laughed, and she felt the bottled-up rage and
grief dissipate.

"You wicked woman," he said. "I open up
my heart to you. I reveal my secret shame—and you make a joke
of it."

"You need a joke," she said. "You paint
too black a picture of your marriage. A great many women would be
thrilled to have husbands who ignore them. It is preferable to being
humiliated or abandoned or beaten. You were not the perfect husband,
yet I should calculate that you were far from the worst."

"Merely mediocre," he said. "That is a
great comfort."

"That is the trouble with believing you are the
center of the universe," she said.

"I do not—"

"You are like the king of your own small country,"
she said. "Because you use your power for good, you are weighted
down with cares. It is hard work to be a paragon. And because you are
perfect, your mistakes cause you far more anguish than they would do
ordinary, fallible persons. You need a joke. You need a Touchstone."

"A touchstone?"

"From
As
You Like It
," she said. 'The
jester."

He threw her a glance. "I see. And you have
appointed yourself to the position."

That and others, she thought. Companion, lover, and
fool. Oh, above all, fool.

"Yes, my lord," she said. "And you must
allow me to speak freely. That is the special privilege of the court
jester, your majesty."

"As though I could stop your
saying what you liked, or doing what you liked," he said. "Yet
I will
request
that you not address me as 'your majesty' nor yet 'my lord.' For this
once in my life I need not be 'my lord.' For once I needn't be
anybody in particular. I must have a new name for this stage of the
journey. I shall be…" He considered. "Mr. Dashwood."

"I shall be Miss Dashwood," she said. "Your
sister."

"No, you will not," he said. "You do not
want a separate room at the inn."

"You do not know what I want," she said.

"Yes, I do. And so will everyone else. No one will
believe we are sister and brother."

"They believed it before," she said.

He turned into the courtyard of an unprepossessing inn.

"That was
before
,"
he said. "Now it is impossible for you to conceal your lustful
feelings for me."

He had no idea how much she was concealing. Lust was but
a fraction of it.

She lifted her chin. "That was
before
,"
she said. "I experienced a momentary, aberrant emotion—"

"We shall see about that," he said.

No, we shall not
,
she answered silently. In only two days she had let herself become
too attached. He could easily become a habit. If she was to have a
prayer of extricating herself, she must start now. She would be
unhappy, yes, but she'd been a fool to imagine she and Olivia could
ever be happy in England.

Where could she go that wasn't haunted by the ghosts of
her history?

He halted the carriage, and a pair of stable men stepped
out into the well-lit yard.

"The Swan is far from fashionable," Rathbourne
said in a low voice as he helped her alight. "We shall be the
only patrons here who are not commercial travelers. An ideal
situation for us. A number of my elderly relatives reside in Bath,
and a great many others visit from time to time. Regrettably, none
are decrepit enough not to recognize me."

Relatives, everywhere, she thought. Political allies and
foes, everywhere. Every moment he spent with her put him at risk.

He ushered her inside.

While not as elegant as the inn in Reading, the Swan was
by no means shabby or cramped. A neatly attired maid bobbed a quick
curtsey before promising to summon the innkeeper.

"It may well be cleaner, drier, and better run than
the fashionable establishments," Rathbourne said. "Yet no
one with any pretensions to fashion would dream of coming here. They
would not wish to risk rubbing shoulders with tradesmen—if,
that is, they know of its existence. But we are well out on the
Bristol Road at the edge of town. I learnt my lesson, you see, in
Reading."

Bathsheba had learnt a great deal since then.

She had been unsure what to do until he confided in her
about his wife.

Lord Perfect was not infallible. When he'd wed, he'd
made an error of judgment that could have ruined forever his chances
of finding true happiness.

She would not be another, worse error of judgment.

He would not see it that way, of course. Rathbourne was
used to deciding and commanding and taking responsibility. He was
chivalrous as well as imperious.

He would never let her act as she knew she must do.

The innkeeper approached and, as Rathbourne had
predicted, proved a gracious host.

Yes, he had a suitable room for Mr. and Mrs. Dash-wood.
He would have the fire built up, to take off the damp. Perhaps the
lady and gentleman would like to adjourn to a private dining parlor
for refreshment meanwhile?

At that instant she saw the solution to her difficulty.
"I should like that very much," she said. She looked up at
Rathbourne. "I am famished—and perishing of thirst."

BENEDICT HAD NOT meant the meal to go on for so long. He
had meant to get her naked as soon as possible.

She distracted him, though, with stories about her life
with her vagabond parents. At first he was vastly entertained, for
she made their numerous misadventures into farces.

But as the anecdotes flowed, so did the wine. By
degrees, as the wine loosened her tongue, the picture she painted of
her girlhood grew darker, and he was no longer amused. Again and
again he caught himself clenching his fists. Again and again he had
to make himself unclench them.

"It is amazing you had any education at all,"
he said at one point. "You seem never to have remained in one
place long enough or had peace and quiet enough for books and
lessons."

It took all his self-control to keep
his voice cool and steady. Her parents were despicable. Her childhood
was a
scandal
.
She might as well have lived in an orphanage for all the tender care
she received.

"I realized at an early age that I couldn't count
on my parents for my education, academic or moral,"" she
said with a laugh. "I could always find a quiet corner, and
there I would stay with a book. I learnt to make myself invisible.
They would forget about me, and I'd be left in peace… unless
they needed to soften somebody's head or heart. Then they'd bring me
out, all blue-eyed innocence, and enact a touching scene. They found
me particularly useful with irate landlords. I hated it, but I learnt
not to spoil the scene. Otherwise I'd have to endure copious weeping
from my mother and the entire speech from King Lear about ungrateful
children from my father."

She pressed a fist to her forehead and declaimed, "
'Ingratitude, thou marble-hearted fiend, / More hideous, when thou
show'st thee in a child, / Than the sea monster.'" She lifted
her glass and drank.

The method was not dissimilar to that employed by
Peregrine's parents. Still, however misguided, they at least had
their son's best interests at heart. Benedict very much doubted her
parents considered anybody's interests but their own.

He refilled the glass. "So that's where you learnt
your Shakespeare," he said.

"I studied the bard in self-defense," she
said. "They chose only the bits that suited them. I chose the
ones that suited me. They were always acting. Nothing was ever
genuine. When they played the loving parents, it was a play."
She smiled at the glass in her hand. "My governess was real,
though. My one and only model for proper behavior. Oh, and Jack was
real. The genuine article."

Benedict hoped Jack Wingate had appreciated her as she
deserved. If he could not bring her riches, the man should at least
have brought her love, devotion, kindness, gratitude. It would be so
easy to give her these things.

Easy, that is, for everyone except the Earl of Hargate's
eldest son, who was allowed to do no more than bed her— and
then only if he walked away soon after and forgot her.

She tipped her head to one side as though considering.
"Perhaps I should not have appreciated my governess and Jack
half so much had my previous life been… less imperfect."
She shrugged, then lifted the glass and drank.

Benedict drank, too, and ordered more.

Had he been less imperfect, he would not have ordered so
much wine. While he was not an abstemious man, he rarely drank to
excess.

She, however, was made for excess.

And he was not as free of flaw as he ought to be.

The more she told him, the more he wanted to know about
her. This might be his last chance.

Not that intellectual enlightenment was his sole aim.

He was a man, after all, his motives as sordid as any
other's.

If getting her tipsy would quiet whatever qualms she
felt about their recent lovemaking and would get her naked more
quickly and easily, then he was not quite perfect enough not to order
another bottle. And another.

And the stories continued. But as she was mimicking her
parents' rage and horror when they found out that Jack had been
disinherited, Benedict became aware of wanting desperately to throw
something against the wall. Somebody, actually. Her father as well as
Wingate's.

He told himself they'd had enough to drink, and the
night was getting no younger: He wanted her relaxed, he reminded
himself. He did not want her unconscious.

"That's enough,
Mrs.
Dashwood
," he said, snatching the
wineglass from her. He drained the contents and stood. The room
tilted slightly. 'Time for bed. Important day tomorrow. Decisions."
He set the empty glass down with a
thunk
.