Page 59 of An Innocent Bride for the Duke

“Uncle Benedict is coming too!” Ezra insisted again fiercely, not really understanding his father’s assertion but hearing in it the possibility of Benedict vanishing.

“Of course he’s coming,” sighed Fanny as thought it was the most obvious thing in the world. “He’s going to marry Louisa so they must be together, like Mother and Father.”

“The wisdom of children,” Seraphine chuckled as Damien raised her hand to his lips and kissed it. “You must stay with me always, Damien, you know.”

“That is no hardship at all,” he told his wife, turning her hand over and kissing her palm this time, before she caressed his face.

Meanwhile, Benedict gave a long sigh and allowed Ezra to scramble up onto his knee and take the buttered roll that he had prepared for his own breakfast.

“You’re coming too!” the boy said again, glaring at him with childish belligerence before attempting to stuff the entire roll in his mouth.

“I am coming with you, Ezra,” Benedict confirmed, breaking the bread to a more manageable size. “You need not argue.”

The little boy’s fears were not actually without foundation. While Benedict planned to attend the picnic, this was largely because of his fears of Lord Ashbourne’s further trespass and the danger to the rest of the party. Without this duty, he might well have kept away, for the good of everyone, especially Lady Louisa Ascot.

Raising his eyes slightly across the table, he perceived her looking towards him now with an expression of something close to tenderness. Likely, Benedict supposed, Louisa was more looking at little Ezra, of whom she was very fond. Her dress was white muslin today and her honey-gold hair pinned and bound with a green ribbon.

Again, Benedict pictured Louisa as the personification of a warm, ripe summer. Part of him longed only to lure her away into the woods, kiss her into a state of burning desire, and hear her plead for fulfillment before he satisfied her completely. The wedding was so close now. Could it still be wrong to wish he could take her her now..?

If Benedict waited until the children were napping and Lady Esher resting too, there would be no need to rush. He could lead Louisa to her fullest pleasure before he sought his own…

“Penny for your thoughts, Benedict,” Damien’s voice broke in abruptly upon his private fantasies, and Benedict pushed all erotic daydreams roughly aside.

“They’re rather more costly than that,” he demurred and turned his attention to breaking more bread for Ezra.

Get a grip on yourself, Northwick! You can wait until the wedding night…

“Marriage is a most solemn commitment,” declared Mr. Terrence with great cheerfulness as he ate another slice of pork pie. “It is my duty to make sure that my parishioners understand this before they think to enter upon it.”

“Wine, Rector?” asked Benedict, smiling and raising the bottle from the picnic blanket. “Lady Esher has provided us with plum wine from her own orchards.”

He rather liked the earnest but jolly little rector who had spent at least half an hour in serious conversation with Louisa before apparently considering his job there done and coming over to join Benedict, on the opposite side of the group. Presumably, having given his standard pre-wedding speech to the bride, he would now do the same with the groom.

Ezra and Fanny were already down at the lake edge with two nursemaids and an accompanying footman while Lady Esher was beginning to doze in a portable chair. Beside her, Louisa read aloud from a poetry book, her voice a pleasant background murmur, like the lapping of the lake on its shore.

A little beyond them, near the first trees of the woodland, Seraphine and Damien were laughing together, likely considering whether they could yet sneak away together and enjoy similar pleasures to those that had fueled Benedict’s earlier fantasies.

“Thank you, Your Grace, I should never refuse any food or drink from Rosemere, for not only is the quality of the highest standard, but all is made and given with love, the finest of all seasonings. But let me pour my own measure for I cannot allow a duke to serve me.”

Benedict laughed and filled both of their glasses regardless of the clergyman’s reservation.

“I think you will find that Lady Esher’s plum wine tastes equally good whether poured by your hand or mine, Mr. Terrence.”

Raising his glass, Benedict clinked it against that of the rector.

“To a long and happy marriage,” toasted Mr. Terrence. “I wish you both joy.”

“You do approve of the match, then?” Benedict asked him, perhaps a little mellowed by the plum wine.

“Lady Louisa approves of you, and Lady Esher’s account gives me every reason to think that the young lady is right to do so,” answered the rector with a shrug. “You evidently care for your future wife’s wellbeing and that bodes well. It is not for me to judge beyond that.”

The apparent nonchalance of this reply threw Benedict and he laughed.

“I was expecting rather more of a lecture, Mr. Terrence, but it seems you will not give me one.”

“A lecture on what?” enquired the rector.

“Morality, perhaps. Sin, certainly.”