Midsummer Eve at Rookery End by Elizabeth Hanbury Read Free Book Online

but above all I wanted to forget you. And I still do. You haunt my dreams, damn it! Oh, I expect you will find that admission amusing – no doubt you have utterly forgotten me – but I am past caring. Put simply, Miss King, I crave release and thought that by reacquainting myself with your immoral nature, my fascination with you would be broken at last.”
    Deborah spun around. “What nonsense is this? It was you who deserted me!” She choked back a sob. “E-Even if you had decided you did not love me, you were aware of my situation … you knew that since the death of my father I had been desperate to escape my aunt’s aegis and yet you abandoned me without a word!”
    Sir Benedict, now standing perfectly still, stared down into her face. “I did not abandon you. I waited at the church for over an hour. When you did not arrive–”
    Deborah blinked. “W-What did you say?” she interjected faintly.
    “I said I waited for you.”
    “But you cannot have done so!”
    “I tell you I did,” he replied curtly.
    “I was at the church too and you were most definitely not there,” she said. “Don’t lie to me.”
    He raised his brows. “I may be many things, but I am not a liar, Deborah. I sat on the front pew with my head in my hands when I realized you were not coming. The clergyman at St. George’s was anxious to leave, but I persuaded him to wait in case–”
    “St. George’s!” cried Deborah, her eyes wide with shock.
    “Of course. That was where I arranged to meet you for the ceremony at eleven o’clock – the details were all in the letter I sent you.”
    “I never received it.” The colour had drained out of her face and she slumped down onto a wrought-iron chair.
    “But I gave it to Mary, your maid,” said Sir Benedict, frowning heavily. “She promised to pass it to you.”
    “Then that explains everything,” she replied in a stricken tone. “Mary was loyal to my aunt and not to me.”
    The import of this statement was not lost on Sir Benedict. “Oh, my God,” he muttered, aghast.
    Deborah regarded him again directly. “Mary only gave me a message, Benedict,” she whispered. “She said I was to meet you at Grosvenor Chapel in South Audley Street at eleven o’clock.”
    They regarded each other in silence as the awful truth dawned. Sir Benedict uttered a savage curse. “So your maid and your contemptible aunt colluded to send you to the wrong church!” He stopped, his breath rattling in his throat as he struggled to control his emotions. “What an obnoxious pair of tabbies! Shameful!” He then entered into a wide-ranging animadversion on Mary and Lady King; it was remarkably fluent, littered with expletives and concluded with a fervent wish that Deborah’s aunt spend the afterlife in purgatory.
    “Benedict,” demurred Deborah, reproach mingling with the tears now standing in her eyes, “you’re not supposed to speak ill of the dead.”
    He pushed his fingers through his hair once more. “I mean it, Deb. Don’t expect me to be a hypocrite, for I never liked Lady King and you know it! She was a spiteful old crone who didn’t show you any kindness. Indeed, she went out of her way to make you unhappy and did not look on my suit with favour, although Lord knows why when my background and financial circumstances were acceptable.”
    “She became my guardian when my father died, but she did so against her will – she was only my aunt by marriage,” said Deborah, rising to her feet and smoothing out her gown with shaking hands. “I did not discover until many months later that Mary had been spying on me in all manner of things. Even then it was only by accident that I uncovered her duplicity and demanded that she be dismissed. My aunt evinced no remorse. I own I did not like her much and never understood why she set her face against our marriage.”
    “Out of sheer spite and bloody-mindedness, that’s why!” he cried. “When you failed to appear at church, I wrote to you, but