Benedict nodded.
“En garde. Fence!”
This time Colin was the first to take the attack. “If you need some advice about women ...” he said, driving Benedict back to the corner.
Benedict raised his foil, blocking Colin’s attack with enough force to send his younger brother stumbling backward. “If I need advice about women,” he returned, “the last person I’d go to would be you.”
“You wound me,” Colin said, regaining his balance.
“No,” Benedict drawled. “That’s what the safety tip is for.”
“I certainly have a better record with women than you.”
“Oh really?” Benedict said sarcastically. He stuck his nose in the air, and in a fair imitation of Colin said, “ ‘I am certainly not going to marry Penelope Featherington!’ “
Colin winced.
“You,” Benedict said, “shouldn’t be giving advice to anyone.”
“I didn’t know she was there.”
Benedict lunged forward, just barely missing Colin’s shoulder. “That’s no excuse. You were in public, in broad daylight. Even if she hadn’t been there, someone would have heard and the bloody thing would have ended up in Whistledown.”
Colin met his lunge with a parry, then riposted with blinding speed, catching Benedict neatly in the belly. “My touch,” he grunted.
Benedict gave him a nod, acknowledging the point.
“I was foolish,” Colin said as they walked back to the center of the room. “You, on the other hand, are stupid.”
“What the hell does that mean?”
Colin sighed as he pushed up his mask. “Why don’t you just do us all a favor and marry the girl?”
Benedict just stared at him, his hand going limp around the handle of his sword. Was there any possibility that Colin didn’t know who they were talking about?
He removed his mask and looked into his brother’s dark green eyes and nearly groaned. Colin knew. He didn’t know how Colin knew, but he definitely knew. He supposed he shouldn’t have been surprised. Colin always knew everything. In fact, the only person who ever seemed to know
more gossip than Colin was Eloise, and it never took her more than a few hours to impart all of her dubious wisdom to Colin.
“How did you know?” Benedict finally asked.
One corner of Colin’s mouth tilted up into a crooked smile. “About Sophie? It’s rather obvious.”
“Colin, she’s—”
“A maid? Who cares? What is going to happen to you if you marry her?” Colin asked with a devil-may-care shrug of his shoulders. “People you couldn’t care less about will ostracize you? Hell, I wouldn’t mind being ostracized by some of the people with whom I’m forced to socialize.”
Benedict shrugged dismissively. “I’d already decided I didn’t care about all that,” he said.
“Then what in bloody hell is the problem?” Colin demanded.
“It’s complicated.”
“Nothing is ever as complicated as it is in one’s mind.”
Benedict mulled that over, planting the tip of his foil against the floor and allowing the flexible blade to wiggle back and forth. “Do you remember Mother’s masquerade?” he asked.
Colin blinked at the unexpected question. “A few years ago? Right before she moved out of Bridgerton House?”
Benedict nodded. “That’s the one. Do you remember meeting a woman dressed in silver? You came upon us in the hall.”
“Of course. You were rather taken with—” Colin’s eyes suddenly bugged out. “That wasn’t Sophie!”
“Remarkable, isn’t it?” Benedict murmured, his every inflection screaming understatement.
“But... How ...”
“I don’t know how she got there, but she’s not a maid.”
“She’s not?”
“Well, she is a maid,” Benedict clarified, “but she’s also the bastard daughter of the Earl of Penwood.”
“Not the current—”
“No, the one who died several years back.”
“And you knew all this?”
“No,” Benedict said, the word short and staccato on his tongue, “I did not.”
“Oh.” Colin caught his lower lip between his teeth as he digested the meaning of his brother’s short sentence. “I see.” He stared at Benedict. “What are you going to do?”
Benedict’s sword, whose blade had been wiggling back and forth as he pressed the tip against the floor, suddenly sprang straight and skittered out of his hand. He watched it dispassionately as it slid across the floor, and didn’t look back up as he said, “That’s a very good question.”
He was still furious with Sophie for her deception, but neither was he without blame. He shouldn’t have demanded that Sophie be his mistress. It had certainly been his right to ask, but it had also been her right to refuse. And once she had done so, he should have let her be.
Benedict hadn’t been brought up a bastard, and if her experience had been sufficiently wretched so that she refused to risk bearing a bastard herself—well, then, he should have respected that.
If he respected her, then he had to respect her beliefs.
He shouldn’t have been so flip with her, insisting that anything was possible, that she was free to make any choice her heart desired. His mother was right; he did live a charmed life. He had wealth, family, happiness ... and nothing was truly out of his reach. The only awful thing that had ever happened in his life was the sudden and untimely death of his father, and even then, he’d had his family to help him through. It was difficult for him to imagine certain pains and hurts because he’d never experienced them.