a blessing. He had been growing closer and closer to seducing her, and that would have been a very bad idea, indeed, for both of them.
He pondered that as Richmond helped him into his perfectly tailored coat. A widow was considered fair game, and sooner or later someone would break through the wall of cheerful unconcern she’d built around herself. He’d done a great deal to shatter the foundations of that fortress—all it needed was an enterprising man to breach it.
He frowned. Not, for God’s sake, a useless fribble like Wilfred Hunnicut. She ought to have better taste than that. He cast his mind through his acquaintances, trying to envision the perfect man for her. She was someone who needed marriage, and a firm hand to control her more extravagant starts. Someone who understood and sympathized with her charitable work, not someone who’d take advantage of the more willing members of the gaggle behind her back.
“Your lordship?” Richmond’s voice was anxious. “Is there something wrong?”
Benedick stepped away from him, picking up his neckcloth. “Why should something be wrong?” he said irritably, turning toward the mirror to tie it. And then he caught sight of his face. He looked positively thunderous.
He could remember his father looking just that way, when confronted with some injustice or wrong. He’d looked that way when they’d all travelled to the Lake District to see Miranda’s firstborn and to prove they could tolerate the villain she’d fallen in love with and chosen to marry.
He was feeling the same way toward any of the men he pictured marrying Charity Carstairs, which was absurd. She could hardly match his sister’s wretched choice in the Scorpion. Lucien de Malheur wasn’t your ordinary scoundrel, and there was no one imaginable who could reach his depths of depravity.
Except, of course, the mysterious members of the Heavenly Host, and whoever among them was guiding them into such treacherous waters.
He composed his face into his usual saturnine calm, tying his neckcloth deftly. At least the interfering, disturbing Lady Carstairs was out of the way for the next fortnight, and he could concentrate on the Host without worrying about her. Without being forced to endure her proximity. Without being tempted.
Worthingham House took up a good half a block on Grosvenor Square, a massive edifice built at the end of the last century to demonstrate the Worthinghams’ consequence in society and political power, a consequence that was still in order. He doubted the duke or duchess had anything to do with the Host, but the guest list for their annual ball was massive, and no one dared ignore it, lest they be considered disrespectful and find themselves on a decidedly lower rung of the social order as punishment. Which meant most or all members of the Host would be in attendance, and perhaps growing giddy, and reckless with the night of the full moon fast approaching. He’d even done a bit of research that afternoon in the massive library his parents had acquired. In the Old Religion they were nearing the festival of Imbolc, festival of the maiden, though he was relatively certain his pagan ancestors hadn’t performed rape and blood sacrifice as part of their celebration. He knew from his years at Oxford that men could twist anything to their own meaning, and he’d even remembered a class studying myth and folklore, including the Old Religion. There’d been several of his acquaintance taking that class, though for the life of him he couldn’t remember which ones. It had been more than twenty years ago and while it had fascinated him at the time, he hadn’t thought of it since. Was the leader of the Heavenly Host one of his erstwhile classmates?
Maybe seeing his schoolmates tonight would jog his memory. Though in fact that same class would have been held other years, and younger students, older students would have learned of the same ritual, been able to take and pervert them to their own use.
He glanced at Richmond. “You can send the other servants to bed, Richmond, and retire yourself. I won’t be back till late, and I can certainly put myself to bed.”
“And what of Lord Brandon, my lord?”
He thought back to their short but vicious fight early that day. “He won’t be returning.”
“Very well, my lord.” Richmond’s perfect expression showed nothing of what he was feeling. Only his old eyes reflected the same pain and resignation that filled Benedick.
He’d been in his library, waiting for Brandon to drag himself out of bed. He