asked, Who will be my companion now?
“It was not the same when you left,” Ceci replied. She lifted Beatrice’s hair off her neck a moment before the comb resumed its gentle tug. “I shall return when you marry Sebastian.”
Beatrice nodded. What shall I do until then?
Chapter Five
“M ichaelmas?” Sebastian asked, certain he had misheard the earl. Surely Lord Wednesfield could not expect him to wait almost two months to claim Beatrice. “I do not see the need to put the wedding off.”
The earl’s stare reminded Sebastian of the days of his boyhood when the earl had treated him almost as one of his own sons, teaching him how to be a gentleman and landowner even as he taught his sons Jasper and John. That same expression had been the earl’s response to foolish questions; seeing it now, Sebastian frowned. What was wrong with what he had just said? There could be no reason to delay the wedding.
The earl shook his head, the stare turning to a look of disgust. “No, there is no need. It does not matter that when your son is born men will count on their fingers and say the boy is of Thomas Manners’s getting. So long as you claim him, what does it matter that men call him bastard behind his back?”
The earl’s quiet, thoughtful tone annoyed Sebastian, all the more so because he deserved the earl’s scorn. He had made foolish assumptions. Still, two months? “Why so long, my lord? Beatrice has been a widow for over a fortnight.”
“Are you so eager?” the earl asked, his eyebrows lifting.
Something the dark depths of the earl’s eyes made Sebastian wary, wary enough to hold his tongue. “No, my lord, I am surprised. But I see your point. Michaelmas it is.”
The earl smiled. “That was simple enough, lad.” The smile deepened. “I do not think the rest will pass so easily.” He raised his mug of ale to his mouth and drank deeply.
The apprehension tightening Sebastian’s muscles eased. The drink was an old trick of the earl’s, meant to make the man on the other side of the table believe he was gathering his thoughts when, in truth, he had already carefully considered everything he meant to say. Affection and admiration, so much a part of his relationship with the earl he could not remember a time when he had not felt them, surged through Sebastian.
The earl lowered the mug and sighed, wiping his mouth on the back of his hand. “It is not right of me to criticize the dead, nor should I speak ill of his father to any man.”
What had this to do with Beatrice and him, with their marriage? Sebastian said nothing, waiting for the earl’s apparently idle remarks to become his opening move.
“I have told you this a hundred times—land is the only wealth.”
A hundred times? The earl had said that to him a thousand times. Every time his father had sold another farm, another parcel of acreage, he had heard the earl’s words in his mind. And faced with what his father had left of Benbury, he had recalled the earl’s words with bitter regret. If land was the only wealth, Lord Lionel Benbury had left his son nearly destitute. Thank God and the saints for his shrewd uncle Henry Isham.
“So when your father came to me to offer me the manor at Herron, I tried to persuade him not to sell it. He would not listen to me, Sebastian, so in the end I bought the land from him. I thought that if I had it, someday you might be able to buy it back from me.”
“Perhaps, my lord.”
He had been born at Herron, snug and sweet in the center of its fields; it had been the manor he had loved best, mourned the most when it was sold. Fat when his father had lost it, Herron had surely grown fatter with the earl’s management, putting it far beyond the reach of his purse for some time to come.
“I do not think Herron was the only land your father sold. Forgive me, but your father was a fool.”
He was, my lord. Sebastian could not say it, however true it might be.
“I cannot restore everything he sold, but this I can do. Herron is Beatrice’s dowry.”
“Herron, my lord?” Had he heard aright? His heart pounded heavily against his breastbone.
“There is one condition,” the earl said, “and on that I will not yield. Herron will revert to me or my heirs if Beatrice dies childless.”
“My lord, how is this? Your daughter may well be barren. It is certain she bore her late lord no children.” God help him if she were—he could not afford a childless wife.
The earl scowled at him. “You married her out of hand some years ago, Benbury. Do you dare to complain of her dowry now? I owe you nothing.”
Sebastian spread his hands. “Then give me nothing. At least then all I have shall be mine, not liable to be snatched away because my wife cannot bear a son.”
“I said Beatrice must bear you a child, not a son.” The earl held his scowl for a moment more. “Blessed Jesú, Herron can be yours by midsummer next year if you do your work well.”
He wanted Herron more than he could say, yet he feared to take it. How could he hold it? How could he bear to let it go?
I would rather have half its worth in gold, my lord, or a quarter’s worth, than have that land slip through my fingers once more.
He could not say that to the earl.
“Very well, my lord. Herron Manor is Beatrice’s dowry. I think it a far too generous dowry, but I am not fool enough to quarrel with you. You have my gratitude.”
The earl snorted. “Never tell a man he has given you too much. He might believe you.” He glanced at Sebastian. “Now, as to Beatrice’s dower property, I think a jointure would be proper.”
Sebastian raised his eyebrows. Give control of Benbury into Beatrice’s hands if she outlived him? “No, my lord.”
“No? After I have given Herron for her dowry?”
For a moment Sebastian was tempted to tell the earl to keep Herron if that was its price. Another idea occurred to him. “Let her have Herron for her dower. No less, since it is such a rich property. And no more, so that my son can manage his lands even as she lives.”
The earl opened his mouth as if to argue and then grinned. “Herron it is.” He leaned forward, the grin deepening until he looked like a small boy contemplating a raid on the buttery. “Let us see if we can come to blows over the details.”
Three hours later, wrung out from the effort of keeping his wits sharp enough to bargain with the wily earl and then to keep the lawyers from further entangling a tangled agreement, Sebastian signed his name to his marriage contract. The settlement was not as bad as it might have been, had the earl been inclined to take advantage of the situation Sebastian found himself in. If the terms did nothing to ease his worries, at least they did nothing to worsen them.
“All that remains are the banns and the wedding,” the earl said in a satisfied voice. “Afterward—will you keep your post at Court? Shall I see what I may do to obtain some favors for Beatrice?”
Beatrice at Court, where she could attract admirers as venal as Conyers? No, Beatrice would spend the rest of her life safely locked away at Benbury, no matter how she wept and pled. As for him, if he never returned to Court he would die a happy man. His father had insisted the only way a man could make his fortune was to orbit the king as the sun orbited the earth. Perhaps that was true, but it was also true, that there were few swifter ways to lose a fortune. Had he loved the intrigue and glamour of Court, he would still leave it; he could not afford its demands.
“No, my lord. We shall live at Benbury.”
“You will lose many chances at preferment,” the earl said, his brows drawing together over his nose.
Sebastian looked down at his hands. The earl was right; Court was the only place to dip into the largesse that flowed