Page 83 of Bound By her Earl

“I thank you for your concern,” he said. “I apologize again for intruding on your day; I shall be happy to see myself out.”

And then he left, finding himself counting the seconds until he saw Emily again.

CHAPTER 23

Fidgeting was terribly unladylike, but Emily could not stop her knee from bouncing restlessly the entire time Benedict was gone. It was silliness, she knew—he was headed off to have an uncomfortable conversation, not to march off to war—but she couldn’t help it. She would not feel right again until he was back home where he belonged.

So she bounced and paced and squirmed, throwing decorum to the wind, not even stopping when it started to clearly make the footmen twitchy.

And she cared not a whit for propriety when, upon seeing her husband cross the threshold, she threw herself directly into his arms.

To her mild surprise, and in contrast to the reassurances he’d given her before he’d left, perhaps an hour or so earlier (though it had felt like a year to Emily’s anxious mind), he clutched her with equal fervor.

When she pulled back to look at his face, she saw his heavy brows drawn down in a clear expression of distress.

“Was it so very dreadful then?” she asked quietly.

He huffed a ghost of a laugh. “It was that,” he confirmed. “But let us go inside, so we can speak in comfort and in privacy.”

Benedict’s idea of ‘comfort and privacy’ turned out to mean sitting upon the bed, Emily nestled between his outstretched legs, her back leaning heavily against his front, his arm around her waist. She had no objections to the position though shedidstruggle to keep her attention off the place where his manhood, evident in his well-tailored breeches, pressed nicely against the round of her backside.

That was for later, she told herself sternly. They had more important matters to deal with for now.

“So your mother did threaten him,” she summarized when Benedict reached the end of his recounting. As he’d spent the entire time rubbing his thumb hypnotically against the curve of her stomach, she felt it best to place a checkpoint on her comprehension. “But after he saw the first one, read it was a threat, he started sending them back directly?”

“So I gathered,” Benedict confirmed. Point one for Emily’s higher mental faculties even when beguilingly tempted.

“That means the timing is correct,” she mused. The scrap of paper in Priscilla’s drawer hadn’t been dated; they’d been relying on its depth in the drawer to suggest its age. “All of this coincides with Grace’s murder.”

Even after all these years, the wordsGrace’s murderburned in her throat.

“It’s damning evidence,” Benedict said with a sigh.

“If she hadn’t turned the thing around into violence, I’d almost feel bad for her,” Emily mused. “Not that Ido,”she added hastily when Benedict made a strangled noise of protest. “But there was this one bit in the letter where she wrote ‘You still love me’ and then crossed out the ‘still.’ It’s almost like she realized, no matter how deep she got into her fantasy of the thing, that he’d never loved her to begin with, so she couldn’t argue that it was ongoing. It’s really rather sad.”

“I’d me more inclined to sympathy if she didn’t hire a murderer in revenge—andstrike you in the face,” Benedict said acerbically.

“Well, one of those is rather different in scope than the other,” Emily pointed out reasonably, “but yes, I take your point.”

They sat in silence for a long, quiet moment, each seeming to understand implicitly that they needed to draw strength and comfort from the other. Benedict continued to stroke his thumb over Emily’s middle, slowly moving toward her hip, the move at once soothing and arousing.

“I hate her for this,” Benedict said lowly, his voice agonized. “I hate that I’ve only just gotten up the wherewithal to send her away, and now, I have to go back. I hate that she is the kind of person who I could even suspect of such a thing, let alone one who likely did it. I hate her for not being better when she has scarcely ever been presented with a reason to be so selfish, so conniving, so awful.”

Emily turned her head, so she was nestled more firmly into the crook of his neck, and breathed in the warm, masculine scent of him.

“Will you be angry if I say I hate her, too?” she asked, her lips caressing his pulse. “I hate that she was not what you deserved, and I hate that her petty jealousy likely stole my beloved friend from me.”

“No,” he murmured. “I’m not angry with you. Never with you.” He reached up, pressed his fingers beneath her chin, and tipped her until he could press his mouth to hers.

Emily wanted to say more, wanted to say that she, too, could not be angry with him, not any longer, wanted to say that he’d stolen her heart despite his commandments to keep it safe, wanted to ask him if there was any hope that he might come to care for her in return. Didn’t it feel as though he did when he spoke to her thusly? When he kissed her thusly?

But the words were frightening, and his kiss was drugging, so Emily let her questions fall back down deep inside her, let herselfbe tugged away by pleasure until there was nothing left but the effortless joy of being held in Benedict’s arms.

Benedict squared his shoulders and held his wife’s hand firmly in his.

“I shouldn’t have brought you with me for this,” he muttered for about the dozenth time. “It’s no place for a lady.”

She gave him an unimpressed look. “It’s a dower house, Benedict. It is quite literally designed for ladies. Besides, we’ve been over this.”

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