Page 67 of Her Wily Duke

“Looks like it. I really think you ought to talk to her, as soon as possible.”

“And say what, exactly?”

“Tell her you’re sorry for ever thinking that her father was someone whose advice could be trusted, with respect to marriage.” James had to speak loudly now over the increasing sound of rain and hail. “Let her know that henceforth you’re going to be nothing but kind and loving.”

“I can’t promise her that,” said Benedict, “because what if I get angry? What if… what if, as my father feared, that anger and cruelty runs in my blood? And anyway, my father always said it was a mark of weakness to apologise to a woman. He said no wife would ever respect a man who said he was sorry.”

“Well… you could listen to your father, just like you listened to her father… if you want your marriage to go on being as happy as it is now.”

Silence filled the room for a moment, and Benedict took a rather large swallow of his brandy. James was right, again.

“Ah… yes, I see what you mean…”

“Have you given her the thing yet?”

James voice was softer, and filled with a quiet intensity which had not been there before. Benedict frowned, unsure what he meant by the question.

“What thing?”

“‘What thing’? You know exactly what thing!”

The potion. Benedict had, in part, hoped to avoid discussing that. He still felt rather odd about having believed that such a thing might work, in the first place.

“Yes, but I felt bad,” said Benedict, “so I stopped giving it to her.”

“That was your second mistake. Around when did she start avoiding you again?”

Benedict didn’t have to think hard about it.

“Around the time I stopped giving her the potion.”

“Well, problem solved,” James said briskly. “Apologise and start pouring a few drops of the potion into her tea every night. I can guarantee she’ll be her usual docile, subservient, loving previous self in a day or two.”

But Benedict wasn’t so sure that he wanted Ariana to be what James had just described. He felt guilty and embarrassed at having given her the potion in the first place, and when Ariana had begun to sleep in the same bed with him again, he had not moved to take advantage of that fact, although she had seemed possibly receptive, because if she welcomed his advances, he had realised that he couldn’t be sure that she was acting of her own volition. He wanted her to choose him, for who he was, not just because he had dropped a potion into her tea. He sensed that the relationship would quickly unravel if she ever learned the truth of his desperate experiment with potions!

“I don’t want to ruin what we have,” he said aloud, “by continuing to control her like that.”

“It doesn’t sound like there’s much for you to ruin at this point, if what you’ve told me is true. Do come and find me again when you run out.”

***

In the hallway, not far from Benedict’s study, Ariana stood listening with a feeling of mounting horror, exacerbated by the level tones of the men’s voices. She had intended to just let Benedict know that she was going up to their parlour, when she had heard the voices, and stopped.

She would not interrupt if he was speaking with someone. Perhaps she should send Peggy to tell him. But now… she knew that eavesdropping was wrong, but their words had captured her, dragged her in, and she had frozen there, listening. The words were terrible. And they changed everything.

She could never love Benedict again, not after what she had just heard. What was worse, she wasn’t sure she had ever loved him, not if he had done as he’d said, and given her something….

Helena had been right, as she usually was.

Helena had tried to warn her, but Ariana had been so besotted she’d refused to listen. Benedict had never given up trying to control her and their marriage, not really. He had just found other ways to do it. Why go to all the trouble of putting time, energy, and effort into a marriage, why suffer the annoyance of arguments and rebellion, when you could buy love in a glass jar? Why work to earn someone’s respect when you could trick them into giving it?

At the very point when she had begun to feel safe in their relationship, her feelings had been being manipulated by the man she had thought to trust.

She could never be really safe, not here, not with him – not anywhere near him. She would only be safe if she left the dreadful darkness of Darkmire Abbey, with its history of illness, poison, and madness.

She turned away, moving quietly, hurrying to the stairs.

She didn’t know where she was going to go – for going to her mother was not an option – this would break her mother’s heart. But she knew that she had to leave now, before Benedict followed his friend’s advice, poisoned her tea again, and made her powerless to resist him.