A Question of Class (21 page)

“Mmm, lovely,” he muttered.

A solid bang stopped him mid-chew. They both glanced up at the ceiling, as if the source of the sound might materialize through the floorboards.

“What was that?” asked Mrs. Daggett.

“Perhaps one of the maids dropped something?”

“The maids are out at the market and no one else is in the house.” She paused. “What’s going on, Mr. Thomas?”

“Let me go and investigate.” Benjamin headed toward the front hallway. “You stay here, it might be dangerous.”

“Oh no you don’t. I’m coming with you. There’s someone else in this house.”

They went up two flights of stairs, Benjamin bounding as quickly as he could with Mrs. Daggett close on his heels.

“It came from here.” She pushed past him toward the study.

“No, it was more from the front of the house, closer to the street,” he responded.

Mrs. Daggett froze, her hand on the doorknob to the study. “If you’re up to no good, Mr. Thomas, there’ll be trouble.” She opened the door.

The study was empty. In the middle of the rug a large book was lying open, and Benjamin could see a hollow had been made in the pages, large enough to hide a notebook or ledger. Catherine had fumbled in her haste.

“There is something between you and that girl,” said Mrs. Daggett. “You brought me downstairs so I wouldn’t notice her creeping in.”

“You’re right.”

It was Catherine. She came out from behind a damask curtain at the far end of the room. She clutched a satchel, and her eyes were focused on Mrs. Daggett.

“You can do what you like, Mrs. Daggett,” she said. “Tell Mr. Carpenter, tell my husband what I’ve done. By the time you reach them, we will be long gone.”

“You!” said Mrs. Daggett. “Mr. Delcour will beat you for this. You’ve brought ruin to him. And you.” She turned to Benjamin. “You’ve fallen for her, I see. When will you men learn a girl like this is not to be trusted? She’ll destroy you as she did Mr. Delcour.”

“You have it wrong.” Catherine moved steadily forward. “It was Mr. Delcour who destroyed me. And now he’ll be getting what he deserves.”

With that, Catherine ran out of the room. Benjamin followed, and Mrs. Daggett, once she’d recovered, began screaming at the top of her lungs.

When they got outside, Catherine pointed down a side street. “We can take a pair of horses from Mr. Delcour’s stables.”

At the mews, she charmed the stable boy and was rewarded with a pair of horses. In no time they were tacked up and heading north as fast as they could go. Once they were in the country, Catherine brought her horse to a walk. “I can’t gallop the whole way. I need a moment.”

Benjamin scanned the road behind them and pulled up beside her.

“I’m sorry,” she said. “The book dropped from the desk. I was clumsy.”

“Yes, you were. Now we’re both in serious trouble.”

“I know. I should’ve been more careful.”

Nothing she could say would placate him. Benjamin’s stomach churned and he wanted to scream. Something about telling Mrs. Daggett his story had set off a fire in him. “You should’ve been more careful, long before today.”

“What do you mean by that?”

“Delcour, Bonneville. You seem to be leaving a line of unhappy men in your wake.”

“How can you say that?”

“You got what you wanted, you have your sister,” he said. “And now you’re on to the next man who can give you a helping hand. Or perhaps you don’t have to bother anymore, now you have your precious bottle of wine.”

She stopped her horse. His horse stopped, too, even though he pressed his legs to move it forward.

Her face was ashen. “You have what you wanted. You’ll be able to send Mr. Delcour to jail. Isn’t that what you’ve been after this entire time?”

He couldn’t respond. Before, all he wanted was to see the look on Delcour’s face as he was hauled off to prison. But now, faced with the proposition of losing Catherine, it seemed like an empty victory. He thought of his sister, and what she’d think of his behavior the past few days.

“My sister was miserable living with Delcour. He started playing around with other women almost as soon as they were married. Perhaps a man like that deserves a woman like you.”

“You’ve made Dolly into a kind of saint, you know,” said Catherine. “She made mistakes, too, not the least of which was agreeing to marry that man.”

“She didn’t have a choice,” he bellowed.

“And neither did I.”

“Don’t you dare compare yourself to my sister.” He was being cruel, but a twisted part of him couldn’t stop it.

She sobbed quietly, and Benjamin realized the damage he’d done. He was wrong, and opened his mouth to apologize.

“Catherine, I...”

Benjamin was unable to finish. At the sound of men’s voices he whirled his horse around. They were in serious trouble.

16

“Keep behind me.” Benjamin looked over at Catherine. Her face was pale and her eyes enormous. “Do you hear me?”

She nodded and pulled her horse back. He moved his forward a few paces and stopped.

Two men on horses galloped hard up the road. The eyes of their mounts were wild and Benjamin heard the crack of a crop cut through the noise of their shouts.

“Can’t we outrun them?” asked Catherine.

“No, they’re coming up too fast. Whatever you do, stay on your horse.”

The pursuers pulled up a few yards from Benjamin. “Are you Mr. Benjamin Thomas?” asked one of the men.

“No. Who do you think you are? My wife and I are out for a quiet ride.”

The man turned his attention to Catherine. “And are you Mrs. Catherine Delcour?”

She sat, stone-faced, on her mount. Benjamin was glad to see she’d squelched her fear. Not many women would be able to do so under the circumstances.

“What do you want?” asked Benjamin.

“I think you know,” the man sneered. He had a mercenary look in his eyes, and was dressed poorly, as was his partner. Benjamin guessed Carpenter had ordered a couple of his oafs out after them. From what Benjamin could tell, only one of them, the leader, was a good rider. The other, who had an ugly scar across his cheek, looked as if he spent most of his life on his own two feet and was unsteady in the saddle.

“Pretty girl you have there,” said the one with the scar.

“Shut up,” said the leader. “I’ll handle this.” He pointed at Catherine. “Get off your horse.”

“I will not.” She put a protective hand over the satchel.

“You’ll do what I say. We’ve been told by Mr. Carpenter to bring you back to him.”

“I’ll make up my own mind where I go,” she said. “And it won’t be with you.”

The leader didn’t reply, instead he ordered the scarred man to dismount. The man did so, clumsily, his horse dancing in place. The horse was as unsure about his rider as the rider was about the horse.

“Dismount, Mrs. Delcour,” repeated the leader. “I’m not going to ask again.”

“Don’t do it,” said Benjamin.

The scarred man on the ground leapt at Catherine while the other urged his horse forward into Benjamin’s. Benjamin pressed one heel into his horse’s flank and sidestepped away.

“Let me go,” Catherine screamed.

Benjamin pulled his reins to the right and whirled his horse around. The man with the scar had pulled Catherine off her horse and was dragging her toward the side of the road. She kicked hard, making it difficult for the man to get a grip on her.

Benjamin was suddenly transported back to Haiti. The screams, the grappling, sent a rush of adrenaline through his body. He froze for a split second, then his anger took over and he twirled his horse back around. This time he wasn’t a frightened young boy hiding in the roadside, in fact he was stronger and smarter than these two put together. Benjamin would deal with the leader first, and hope Catherine could keep her attacker at bay in the meantime.

The leader lunged his horse forward into Benjamin’s once again. The two men exchanged blows, each trying to knock the other off his mount. Out of the corner of his eye, Benjamin noticed Catherine’s attacker was on top of her.

“Ow! You bloody bitch. She bit me,” yelled the man, clutching his ear.

Benjamin, entangled in his own fight, heard the other man slap Catherine hard. Benjamin finally got a solid punch in. As the leader pulled back to recover, Benjamin dismounted from his horse and ran toward Catherine. The scarred man was about to hit her again, but Benjamin caught his cocked arm and twisted it. The man cried out in pain. With a solid blow to the head, Benjamin knocked him out cold.

“You think you’re so clever, do you?” asked the leader.

Even though his words were tough, the man’s voice had lost its edge now his partner was incapacitated. He kicked his horse hard and galloped toward Catherine, raising his crop in the air.

Benjamin jumped in front of her, arms outstretched. At the last minute, the horse veered away. A searing pain ripped across Benjamin’s cheek as the man slashed the crop across his face. Ignoring the stinging, Benjamin reached up and grabbed the back of the man’s coat, pulled hard, and yanked him off his horse.

Benjamin tasted blood from the gash. His fury at Delcour, stifled for years, coursed through his veins as he punched the man, over and over, until he lay motionless in the dirt.

* * * *

Catherine saw Benjamin grimace with pain. “Are you hurt?”

“No, I’m fine,” he said. “Just banged up.”

“Come to the side of the road and sit for a moment. Can you make it?”

She wrapped her arms around him and helped him to a rock a few paces from the roadway. Her heart was racing and she still wasn’t sure what had happened. She’d been pulled from her horse and all hell had broken loose.

“Thank you, Benjamin.” Catherine knelt down and examined the wound on his face. It wasn’t as deep as she had feared. She tore a piece of cloth from the bottom of her skirt and dabbed it gently on his cheek.

“How’s the Yquem?”

Catherine pulled the satchel open and peered inside. “Surprisingly, it’s still in one piece. Unlike our attackers.”

“We’d better head out now.”

“My mount appears to have run off, but yours is still here. Can you manage? We’re still several miles from the house.”

He nodded. She held the horse by the reins as Benjamin got into the saddle. She made sure the satchel was secured around her and took his hand, put one foot in the stirrup, and landed neatly on the horse’s rump behind him.

“You steady there?”

She wrapped her hands around his waist and nodded into his back. The closeness of him, and the smell of him, brought the memories of the past few days flooding back, and she couldn’t speak.

“Mrs. Daggett must have alerted Carpenter,” he said. “We need to get to the Mount and fetch Sophie and you’ll be on your way.”

She didn’t say anything as they headed north. Back in the townhouse, while retrieving the ledger, she’d heard Benjamin’s voice coming through the open window of the study. She’d moved closer, listening, and was horrified by what he’d said to Mrs. Daggett about her. That she’d bewitched him and betrayed him, all part of a long pattern of scandalous behavior. Catherine could tell by the tone of his voice he had meant every word. Benjamin believed she’d tricked him, and used him, when nothing could be further from the truth. In fact, Catherine loved him, more than anything. She loved the way Benjamin looked at her, even when he was angry, and the timbre of his voice and the quiet way he had of being in the world. She loved him.

For a moment, she considered telling him the truth about her marital status. Then she remembered Percy’s reaction. She couldn’t know if Benjamin would be relieved by the news he hadn’t bedded a married woman, or horrified she’d been living in sin with Morris for the past five years. It was possible it would confirm everything he already thought about her, and wasn’t worth the risk. She wouldn’t be able to take the pain.

She would let Benjamin believe she was moving on to the next man. With the proceeds from the Yquem, Catherine would build a new world wherever they ended up next. And she would happily die a spinster. The memories of her time with Benjamin would more than warm her on the many lonely nights to come.