Chapter Text
Perhaps Colin still had some of these drugs from his travels. God knew that Benedict needed it: that, a strong drink, and twenty hours of sleep.
She was impossible. Benedict stared at the dark ceiling, kicked the balled-up bedsheets in which he was entangled, jumped on his feet and started to pace the room again. Having a restful night while SHE was sleeping two stories higher, was not a feat he could accomplish. She could count herself lucky that he had was a real gentleman: other men, in his shoes, would not have taken kindly to her rejection. Being his mistress was not something one should have to blush for, and to laugh like that in his face! He was a Bridgerton for God’s sake, perhaps a mere second son but still rich, handsome enough, and… and oh, he was but a failure.
He rang for a servant to brew him some chamomile tea, and dumped a good amount of brandy in it for good measure. Once properly equipped, he headed out to the garden and settled on a swing, half-hoping that Eloise would come out and quibble with him. But the silence in the house was deafening, and he drank alone, waiting for the first rays of dawn. Unless…
He’d recognize the patter of her steps everywhere, even barefoot on dewy grass. He knew her pattern, everywhere she was: in the books she recommended to Eloise, in the way she did Hyacinth’s hair, the clean smell of her clothes that remained in her wake.
“I couldn’t sleep either.” she said.
He scrambled to his feet to face her. There was nothing good to say to her: asking her if she had changed her mind would be unthinkable, and they were past all forms of niceties.
“I’m sorry.” He offered, voice catching in his throat.
“I’m sure you are.” Her voice was measured, her lips barely moving. “But do you know why?”
He saw a sliver of a chance, and threw himself whole in it.
“I’m sorry for everything, Sophie. For entering your life. For threading you along, making you believe, making you hope, for falling in love with you. For hurting you, although I never wanted to. I’m sorry I asked you…”
He did not say it, and she had the grace to cut him off with a wave of the hand. Her eyes were tired.
“That is not enough, Benedict.”
“What would be?”
“I don’t know.”
He was standing two feet away from her, in the early morning fog. After a sleepless night, her scent was like butter before a cat… but so much was unsaid, and her quiet, disappointed demeanor seemed unbreakable. But the solution, suddenly, was obvious.
It dawned upon him at the same time as he moved towards her, kneeling in the fresh cool grass.
“Marry me.”
He looked up at her: the early dawn hemmed her with a red glow, she was divine, out of his reach, an angel brought to earth to make him repent. It was good to be nothing at her feet, to be below her and to put himself in her hands.
Her laugh was incredulous.
“No.”
He looked up in shock.
“Sophie, please! You would have my life. My fortune. I do not care who your parents were, and no one should. You are the love of my life: I would walk with you across Mayfair, and dance with you in the queen’s ballroom. I should like to be proud of my wife.”
She walked closer to him with her light steps, a ghost hovering above the grass. The fever of the early summer made his head swim: he dreamed to reach out, grab her ankle, kiss her foot. He felt the warmth radiating from her, denied to him. The words tumbled out of her in the dark, lashed with poison.
“Marry you, Benedict? That is not enough. I grew up in the shadows of those like you, Benedict. Eating crumbs from your feast, a ghost in the velvet-clad corridors you prowl. You want to be at my side? I want you at my feet, on your knees.””
A white, blinding fear exploded behind his eyes. She would leave, and he would lose her again. Images of life before her flashed in his mind: the debauchery of his atelier, unnamed women laying by his side, waking up at noon to the metallic scent of sex and spilled liquor. Sweet bile rose to his throat.
“Please! I would do anything, Sophie.”
“Prove it.”
She hadn’t raised her voice, cold and equivocal. There was only the quietness of her certitude, a blade neatly splitting him in two.
“I will! I would…”
“You never do anything you say, Benedict. You will not know how to love, and you will not save me. You will grow old and alone, a failure with too much money, with shamefully much money. You let your sisters suffer, and your mother cry, and you have broken heart after heart. Well, let me stand there and avenge them.”
There was nothing else to do. He crawled forwards in the dew, wrapped his hands around her calves, and kissed her ankles in deference. The hem of her skirts tickled his face. She wore soft tights, gently embedded with dust and the smell of lavender oil He would perhaps, after this, never get to touch her skin again. An intense fear that she would pull away tore at him, but Sophie only seemed to stiffen: she lifted her foot and gently, but firmly, pushed at his shoulders.
“You wish to marry me? You will suffer for it.”
And she pushed him with his foot, turned on her heel, and left him alone, cheek in the grass, under the naked morning sky.