Read Online Love in the Time of Scandal by Caroline Linden - Free Book Online Page B

damage was done; there was a side of her he’d never seen before, and he could only be glad she had revealed herself before it was too late. But it was incontrovertible that Penelope Weston had wrought some mischief, and he positively burned to confront her about it. If he didn’t, she might take it as a sign of cowardice or weakness. It was all too easy to imagine Penelope blithely telling every young lady of the ton that he was a coldhearted scoundrel whom everyone else had already refused to marry.
    “Damn,” he muttered once more. It wasn’t remotely true, but two rejected marriage proposals were bad enough, and rumors like that could dog a fellow for years—and he didn’t have years to spend on finding a bride. He really hadn’t thought it would take this long. England was full of ladies in search of a handsome nobleman to marry, and at least a few had plump dowries. It just appeared none of them wanted him.
    Unlike many of his mates, Benedict felt more than ready to marry. Not out of any poetical yearning for love or because he was eager to settle down, but because he was tired of being jerked back and forth by his father’s whimsy like a puppet on a string. The Earl of Stratford kept a tight rein on his family, controlling his wife and children through every means at his disposal. Benedict had managed some level of escape, but he was still tied to his father by the purse strings. More than once the earl had cut off his funds with no warning. More than once Benedict had had to go crawling back to beg for money, which was given only after a period of penance and some act of contrition. For years he’d endured it, but his father’s demands grew too punishing. Stratford had set him every objectionable task possible: sacking loyal servants of long standing, making unreasonable demands of solicitors and tradesmen, snubbing acquaintances who displeased the earl, bullying art dealers who didn’t meet the earl’s standards. Enough was enough.
    For a gentleman in Benedict’s position, though, independence wasn’t easy. He had no profession except soldiering, and that hardly paid well—if anything, it cost a great deal. He had no capital to invest, not even a small sum he could have used to take himself to America or the West Indies, where a man might start from nothing. He had no head for politics, no exceptional talent, nothing except his name and his face . . . which were both, to be blunt, very appealing to ladies. Obviously the answer was a wealthy bride.
    Unfortunately heiresses seemed to be in short supply this year. Even including scandalous widows and the daughters of merchants, he’d met only a few women who seemed tolerable. Benedict didn’t really want to exchange his father’s tyranny for a wife’s, but every woman of reason and property had half a dozen suitors already. When his sister wrote to him last spring that a wealthy man with two beautiful daughters had bought an estate near Stratford Court in Richmond, it seemed like a gift from heaven. A quick journey home proved him right. Abigail Weston was beautiful, kind, modest, and sensible. To his delight, they got on well together. He could envision a companionable life with her. For a few short weeks last summer, everything had seemed within his grasp.
    If only he had known that courting Abigail Weston would wind up being a colossal mistake. It certainly hadn’t appeared to be one at the time. No one had told him she was secretly in love with another man. No one had warned him he’d lose her to Sebastian Vane, who had once been his dearest friend before his father had managed to ruin that, too.
    Losing Abigail’s hand hurt, and not merely for the sting of being found wanting next to Sebastian. In her, he thought he’d found the perfect solution: a wife he could care for and respect, with a fortune that would render him, finally and for all time, independent of his father. Instead he had been rejected, rather strongly, and then he’d had