“Of course he was.” Charlotte let her head drop. “You worry he will remember you.”
Benjamin’s mouth pinched, though the wildness in his eyes had yet to ease. “Oh, he will remember me all right.”
“There’s more, isn’t there?”
“He was…” He hesitated. “When I was sent home, I didn’t have a sovereign to my name. Whatever I could scrounge up, I drank away. He found me in London and offered me work.”
Charlotte didn’t quite like the sound of that. “What sort of work?”
If only for a moment, she could have sworn she saw Benjamin’s eyes mist over. He was quickly back to his inscrutable self. “Fuel for nightmares.”
The question was not hers to ask, but she wanted to know more. She could have guessed his life had not been easy, far from it, but to imagine him treading the path of crime… her throat was thick as she muttered, “Like fraud?”
“That came after.”
All at once, the curtains were drawn on their evening. All luster, all sparkle of their night fell dead at her feet like stars from the sky. Before her was not Huxley but Benjamin Fletcher—the man who had stolen credit for her poems, who had stolen her revenue, too. Benjamin had not danced. He had not spoken with her family. He had not broken bread with them. No, that character had been a gentleman of her imagining.
They merely shared a face.
She reached out to touch it, and his skin was cold beneath her fingertips. “It cannot be the only way. There must be more in this life for you.”
“Like dancing, writing poetry, and brushing elbows with peers?” He smiled pityingly. “Not for me, Charlotte. This has been an errant dream.”
The words felt like a dagger through the chest. “You wish to put an end to our charade.”
“I don’t wish for it, but we must.”
Charlotte nodded, and the gesture betrayed every thought in her head, every beat of her heart. Suddenly, she could see Benjamin at the seams. She wanted desperately to pull at them with a ripper and unearth what had been tucked away beneath his skin. Again, she could only nod.
“We will carry out your plan to its end, and quickly—to that accursed poetry reading first, and after that…”
“After that, we will go back to our lives.”
Love and torment.
Benjamin turned to leave.
CHAPTERSIXTEEN
“When I suggested we put in motion the next step of ourfriendship, this isn’t quite what I had in mind.”
Benjamin shifted in his seat. They were sat at the far back of Turner Hall, in a large domed building of the Vauxhall pleasure gardens, a week after the Richmond affair. He had walked through the park feeling as though he could have been anywhere else in the world. Anywhere but London. The nook cried of decadence, a feast for the eyes—not so much for the soul. Between the hanging lanterns, the exotic planters, the stalls, the feathered ladies, the constant caterwauling, the dratted peacocks and partridges, Benjamin didn’t feel quite so odd, for the whole place was an oddity.
The hall in which they sat was a touch more sober. Its walls were white, curved, accommodating pillars here and there, reminiscent of what little he had gleamed of ancient Rome in his childhood reading. Windows were far, and few between, but through them seeped a lazy late-afternoon light.
By far, the most beautiful thing in the room was Charlotte, settled beside him and mulling over the program for the poetry salon. Her hair refracted the light, haloed red. Fleeting. Not his to admire for long.
“Had you entertained more salacious thoughts?” she whispered, not bothering to look up. She seemed of fair disposition despite his quick egress at the Richmond soirée a few nights past. He brushed the thought aside, not wanting to think any more of his captain’s surprising show at the affair. The week had been one of torment, dotted with flashes of Harper on the battlefields of the Continent. Benjamin wouldnotlose himself to them now. He was quite overwhelmed with feelings of dread already.
“I beg your pardon, sister?” St Chett breathed from beside her.
Charlotte clicked her tongue against her palate. “I said, how very entertaining this reading will be!”
“Much better,” the Marquess droned. “When do you present, Huxley?”
“Mr. Huxley is fourth,” Charlotte interjected.
“I’m fourth,” Benjamin repeated, and it eased a grin from the Richmond heir.