Page 53 of An Innocent Bride for the Duke

“From the Huxley estate, there are two obvious routes he might have taken to get here,” he surmised.

“Presuming that he stuck to the paths,” pointed out Damien.

“Indeed, he may not have done,” acknowledged Benedict, “but we must begin somewhere. Now, this path goes through the fields where the cattle graze, I think, and this one around the hill where the old folly stands.”

“Which one first?”

“The folly,” Benedict replied with a certainty that surprised him as much as it surprised Damien. “A hill is a good vantage point for a man who likes to spy upon people, isn’t it? I dare say that Ashbourne does not make so free of Rosemere when you or I, or even the gamekeepers or other male servants are around.”

“If you hadn’t been born into the peerage, you might have been an acclaimed thief-taker,” jested his friend as they shouldered their guns and set off along the path towards the folly. “You put yourself so easily into the mind of the ill-intentioned.”

“I suppose I do,” agreed Benedict shortly, reflecting silently to himself that developing such strong awareness and insight around ones environment and household members was the only way to survive a childhood such as his.

It took twenty minutes to reach the hill where the folly stood. They circled it first, noting signs of some regular ascent on the far side of the hill, furthest from Rosemere, despite the main path on the near side.

“Someone doesn’t want to be seen coming up here,” pronounced Benedict as they made their own way to the top. “Lady Esher said that no one uses the folly these days. Louisa and Seraphine used to play in it when they were young but since they’ve grown-up, it just sits here.”

“As follies are intended to do,” said Damien with a wry smile, as they reached the top of the hill. “That is their entire purpose.”

Benedict almost laughed but then felt his jaw tighten again on observing several more small piles of cigar ash around the outside of the folly, all of which must have been dropped there since the last heavy rain. This was evidently a favorite spot for the unwelcome watcher.

“No dust,” he noted, approaching and examining the dark metal handles on the heavy wooden doors. “That either speaks well for the assiduity of Lady Esher’s groundsmen, or…”

Pushing and holding one door open and indicating for Damien to do the same with the other, the two men let the sunlight pour into the empty folly. There was certainly enough dust inside, both on the floor and the stone seating around the narrow upper window gaps, sparkling motes dancing in the sunbeams.

Amidst the dust lay the tracks of footprints, crossing and recrossing in every direction, overlying and blurring one another. The dust on the seats was disturbed too, as if someone had sat or kneeled in many of them recently, especially those facing Rosemere.

“…or there is a regular visitor to the folly,” Damien completed Benedict’s broken sentence.

Nodding, Benedict pointed to the slatted window gaps.

“Just the right height for a tall man with a telescope, aren’t they?”

Anger pulsed in him with every heartbeat. How dare Lord Ashbourne trespass like this upon the Rosemere estate and household? How dare he spy upon its ladies? What on earth could he hope to gain by such outrageous behavior? Frightening a young lady in the orchard was hardly likely to endear any would-be suitor, and in any case, Louisa was already publicly promised to Benedict.

“I cannot have this,” added Benedict, letting the door go and stepping outside again.

“The man must be deranged,” Damien remarked, shaking his head. “What are you going to do?”

“Whatever I have to do to keep Louisa safe,” replied Benedict.

“Then you do have feelings for your bride-to-be?” his friend put to him. “I know what you told me but seeing you together these past few days, I did wonder whether…”

“I cannot give Louisa love, but I will give her protection,” Benedict interrupted, cutting off Damien’s words that he did not want to hear and marching away down the hill.

Chapter Twenty-Two

Louisa awoke with a start, sitting straight up in bed and having to catch her breath as though she had been running.

Dear God, what dreams and nightmares!

She supposed that the panic of the previous day had disordered her mind in sleep. First, she had dreamed again of being hunted around a woodland setting by a man she could not see, his vicious laugh curdling her blood. Then, the Duke of Northwick had come to her rescue, just as he had done on the previous afternoon in the orchard at Rosemere.

There had been some kind of fight in which Benedict had proved victorious, and when his foe lay dead on the ground, Louisa saw that it was a dragon rather than a man. Well, that was only a scene from her old sketch book, wasn’t it?

After that, rather than kneeling at her feet as Sir Benedict had done before Lady Elizabeth in the book when making his proposal of marriage, Louisa’s dream Benedict had only lifted her in his arms and carried her deeper into the woods.

In her dream, the duke’s unusually colored eyes had burned with ardent physical desire and yet his kisses and his words to Louisa were gentle, echoing both his own statements in the library and what Seraphine had said to her in the art room.