Lord Perfect (The Dressmakers 3)

He remembered the men talking about Jack Wingate at the club. He could still hear the mingled contempt and pity in their voices. He could hear the disgust in his father’s voice, when he spoke of the Dreadful DeLuceys.

Benedict had seen countless times what happened when some unhappy soul became the subject of scandal: the titters and whispers behind fans, the smirks, the not-so-subtle innuendoes, the not-at-all subtle caricatures hanging in shop windows or pinned inside umbrellas for all the world to see.

The prospect of becoming such an object was not pleasant to contemplate. The prospect of her being tittered and whispered about and caricatured was intolerable.

“Denial is the only sensible response,” he said.

“Do you truly believe it could be so simple?” she said. “All we need do is say, ‘It isn’t true’?”

“No,” he said. “We pretend a faux pas has been committed. We elevate an eyebrow. We allow ourselves a faint, pitying smile. If people persist in being tiresome, we adopt the expression and tones of one who is bored witless and endeavoring to be polite, and say, ‘Indeed’ or ‘How very interesting.’ ” He demonstrated as he spoke.

“That is very good,” she said. “But are you sure it will be sufficient?”

“It had better be,” he said.

In the distance he made out a faint twinkle near the side of the road. “That looks to be Twyford,” he said. “We had better decide how to proceed once we locate the children.”

They devoted those last minutes to working out the logistics of going their separate ways.

It was a more melancholy experience than he was prepared for.

He had not long to be melancholy, however, because at Twyford, they learned that no one—man, woman, or child—had disembarked there from the Courser.

They drove on, to Reading.

Chapter 11

THE SKY WAS LIGHTENING BY THE TIME Benedict and Mrs. Wingate had made the rounds of the likeliest inns in Reading. By this point, she was on the point of collapse, though she refused to admit it.

They stood near the ticket office of the Crown Inn, she watching every vehicle that came and went while quarreling with him about their next step.

“This grows ridiculous,” he told her. “We have wasted valuable time taking the word of innkeepers and servants who are half asleep. It makes as much sense to wait in Reading for the Courser to make its return trip, and speak directly to the coachman.”

“That will be hours,” she said. “The children might be halfway to Bristol by then.”

“If you would only apply a little logic, you would see how very unlikely that is,” Benedict said as patiently as he could. “They are two children with next to no money. They must rely on their wits and the kindness or gullibility of strangers. Even your daughter, spawn of Satan that you believe her to be, cannot travel at any great rate unless she hires a post chaise. To afford it, she must take to highway robbery. She would then need to find, in a short space of time on a small piece of road, a victim willing to hand over an unusually heavy purse.”

Mrs. Wingate regarded him through slitted blue eyes. “Have you any idea, Rathbourne, how utterly detestable you become when you adopt that tone of patient superiority?”

“The trouble is, you are tired, hungry, anxious, and afflicted with an aching hand,” he said. “The trouble is, you had confidently expected a happy outcome only to have your hopes dashed. Consequently, you are too low-spirited at present to appreciate that I am perfect and therefore cannot be detestable.”

She gazed at him for a moment, up and down, then up again. Then, “Did your wife ever throw things at you?” she said.

“No,” he said, blinking, not merely because the question surprised him but because he was trying to picture Ada doing it and couldn’t.

“Was she an aberration then, like Lord Lisle?” she said. “You did say all the Dalmays were emotionally extravagant. Yet she never threw anything at you.”

“She never did,” Benedict said. “We never quarreled. We were strangers, as I told you before.”

“She could not have been as emotional as you claim,” she said. “Perhaps she merely seemed so, compared to you. A mild show of feeling or a lack of perfect logic must seem extreme to a man who is so determinedly in control of everything.”

“Once upon a time, I imagined I was in reasonable control of my life,” he said. “Now I have a missing nephew, a stupendous scandal looming like a great storm cloud on the horizon, and you.”

And the dreadful truth was, he was enjoying himself.

The dreadful truth was, he was relieved they hadn’t found the children yet.

It was madness to feel this way. Everything Benedict cared most about was at risk. He knew this; he never forgot that storm cloud on the horizon.

But it had been a very long time since he’d courted trouble. He’d forgotten how stimulating it could be.

“Lady Rathbourne must have been a stoic,” Mrs. Wingate said. “That is the only way she could have borne six years of marriage to you without throwing something at you.”

“A Dalmay is as likely to be stoical as I am to sprout fins,” he said. “But if you wish to quarrel with me about my late wife or my in-laws or anything else, may we not do it over breakfast?”

“I am not hungry,” she said. She dragged her hand through her tangled hair. “I am too frustrated to be hungry.”

“If we do not stop to eat and rest, Thomas cannot stop to eat and rest,” Benedict said.

Her gaze went to the footman, who was talking to one of the grooms. Her brow knit.

“He has been awake for more than four and twenty hours,” Benedict said, ruthlessly flaying her conscience. “He has had little to eat since we left London, some twelve hours ago. He has ridden in the least comfortable part of the vehicle. He has fought off drunken ruffians. He—”

“Yes, yes, you have made your point,” she said. “One hour, then.”

“Two,” he said.

She closed her eyes.

“Perhaps three hours would be better,” he said. “Do you feel faint?”

“I do not feel faint,” she said. She opened her eyes. “I was counting to twenty.”

BATHSHEBA DID NOT quarrel with him about his late wife or anything else at breakfast. She had all she could do not to fall asleep on top of the eggs, bacon, potatoes, bread, and butter he’d ordered heaped upon her plate.

He had an even taller heap, which he swiftly demolished.

After breakfast, she staggered up to the room he’d hired for her and went straight for the bed, the upper mattress of which was level with her shoulders. She somehow clambered up the set of steps. She sank onto a mattress of cloudlike softness.

The next she knew, a chambermaid was talking to her and the sun was streaming in the window. The angle of light told her

it was midmorning.

“You ordered a bath, ma’am,” the chambermaid said. “Shall we bring it up now?”

Bathsheba sat up and looked about her. She’d stayed at countless inns, but never in a room as luxurious as this. A washstand, a dresser, and a set of shelves lined the walls. A mirror stood on the deep windowsill, and a tall horse dressing glass nearby. At the opposite end from the bed, more chairs surrounded a small table. Pristine white curtains draped the window and the bed. The bed linens were clean and dry. A fire burned in the grate, eradicating all traces of the previous night’s and early morning’s chill and dampness.

Now she was to have a bath. With hot water and good soap. In a tub in a great, sunny, warm room. Unheard-of luxury.

But not for Rathbourne.

“How I long for a bath,” she had said—or mumbled, rather—at some point during breakfast.

And he had told Thomas and Thomas had told somebody and no one had seemed the least put out.

Now she watched a pair of servants carry in a tub. Behind them came a short parade of more servants carrying pitchers and buckets.

As soon as they had all gone out again, she latched the door and tore off her clothes.

AFTER BREAKFAST, BENEDICT and Thomas retired to the narrow servant’s room adjoining the guest chamber Benedict had hired for “Mr. and Mrs. Bennett.” Leaving Mrs. Wingate to sleep in solitary splendor atop three mattresses, Benedict took a nap on the narrow cot, Thomas on the floor beside him.

Sometime later, feeling sufficiently refreshed, Benedict rose and bathed, using the large basin Thomas had borrowed from next door.

At present, having done his best with his master’s clothes, the footman was seeing about the carriage. Since that would take time, and the bill must be settled and the servants given their gratuities, Benedict decided Mrs. Wingate need not be wakened for another quarter hour or so.

He was about to sit down to pull on his boots when he heard loud whispering in the corridor outside.

“It can’t be Lord Rathbourne,” said one voice.

“Mistress says it were,” said the other. “She seen him at the ticket office.”