The Wedding Game(57)

Then he left her and walked down the hall to his room.





Chapter Twenty

Amy was gone before breakfast had finished, making mock apologies about a sick aunt. She must have explained to her sister, for Belle nodded along with the news as if it was the most natural thing to be left behind in the middle of a family crisis with the man who had walked out on their engagement ball.

He gave her a reassuring smile across the table. ‘She will be back soon.’

‘Because we do not have an aunt,’ Belle said quietly. ‘Once she remembers that, she will come back for me.’

‘You are probably right. In the meantime, please, make yourself comfortable in my home.’ He tried to think of something that might interest her. ‘There is a fresh litter of pups in the stables. I am sure none of them is as nice as Mellie, but they might welcome a visit.’

She smiled and rose from the table. ‘I will go see them directly.’

Now there was nothing left for him but the waiting. Amy would find the truth and form her own opinions of it. Then, if she was wise, she would do what he hoped and spread the news about London, bringing a halt to this foolishness.

If she broke the scandal, she would be seen as the brave rescuer of her sister. Belle would have survived a narrow escape from a duplicitous villain and not become the cast-off goods of a gentleman. The result would be the same. But in society, appearances were everything. At the end of the day, Arabella must be blameless.

When he looked up, young Cottsmoor was standing in the doorway of the breakfast room, hands closed into fists and held out before him. Slowly he opened them, revealing the black and white kings of the library chess set. His expression turned hopeful.

Ben pointed to black, as he always did, and smiled back. Then he led the way to the library.

‘You will regret giving me the advantage of the first move,’ the boy said with a grin, once the door was closed. ‘I have been practising since the last time we were together.’

‘I am glad to hear it, Your Grace,’ he replied. ‘If only for the sake of the country. We need clever men to lead us.’

‘Thank you, Mr Lovell,’ he said and broke out in snorts of laughter. ‘Can you not call me John, like you used to?’

Ben smiled. ‘It would be a great insult for me to be so informal, Your Grace.’

‘I promise not to chop off your head, or whatever I am supposed to do to people who do not behave.’ He moved a pawn tentatively forward.

‘Ask your uncle. I am sure he will have the answer,’ Ben said.

‘He would say you should be whipped,’ the boy said, sounding slightly worried.

‘Because he does not like me,’ Ben agreed.

Stay away from the boy. Now that Cassandra is dead, you have no business with the family, you worthless cicisbeo.

Ben’s lips thinned in a bitter smile. Dislike was too mild a word to describe what old Cottsmoor’s brother felt for him. But it did not matter. They were only words, after all. He’d heard worse than that from Cassandra, towards the end.

He stared down at the board. It was clear that what had seemed a hesitant beginning had been a ruse to draw his knight. He countered and took a pawn.

‘Then I will not tell Uncle when I visit with you. And I insist, as Cottsmoor, that when we are alone, I will be John and you will be Ben, just like it used to be.’ The boyish laughter had disappeared and the Duke stared coldly into his eyes, demanding obedience.

‘Very well, John,’ said Ben with an impressed nod. ‘You are becoming quite intimidating.’ Though still a cub, he was definitely a lion in the making. And the cub had just taken his bishop.

‘In a few years, I will care for nothing and no one,’ John answered in a surprisingly adult tone. ‘I will think no further than my own pleasure, just like the last Cottsmoor.’

‘You will not,’ Ben said, in a tone just as imperious as the boy’s had been. ‘You will think of your King, your country and the needs of its people. The Dukedom is a reward for the honourable service of the first Cottsmoor. His successors should prove themselves worthy by their actions.’

‘That is not what the last Cottsmoor would have said,’ John said. ‘Not to me, at least. He was too busy doting on the heir.’ Anger made John reckless. He had exposed his queen.

Unfortunately, what the boy said was true. The Duke had doted on his first son to the exclusion of everyone else. Though John had been born into the most privileged of lives, the loneliness of his years was still sharp in both their memories. ‘Cottsmoor had his reasons.’

John responded with a grim smile, ‘And if he can see me now, he regrets them.’

‘As do I,’ Ben said softly. ‘I know how difficult it can be to have no father.’ And yet he did not know at all what it must have been like for John. When Ben’s own father had died, the loss had nearly crushed him. But it was very different to share a house with one man who refused to acknowledge you existed and another who knew but was forced by circumstances to deny it.

‘There was nothing you could have done,’ John reminded him.

‘I should have found a way,’ Ben said. The regret lingered like a bitter aftertaste.

‘It was not as if you were allowed in the nursery.’

‘It would not have been appropriate,’ Ben agreed. Even Cottsmoor’s extreme generosity had its limits. They stopped well short of his wife’s paramour dandling infants and playing at peekaboo.