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Benedict and Sophie had been stuck at My Cottage for a good week already, the storm they had gotten caught in was far worse than anything anyone could have imagined and the Crabtree’s had been unable to get back from wherever they were so Sophie had been left to care for Benedict.
His cold had taken a turn for the worse and he had been bed bound and Sophie had spent the first few days, for the first time in her life, grateful that Araminta had forced her to cook. She had been able to make a broth and spent a few days spooning to the sick man in his bed.
She had read to him when he was awake and they had talked when he felt strong enough and every moment Sophie spent in this man’s company she fell more and more in love with him. It was hard, him not recognising her as the woman from that night and she longed to tell him but at the same time, she was terrified.
She was nothing but a lowly housemaid… the bastard daughter of a dead earl… nothing good could come from revealing her true identity to him and given his fever, which had been on and off like the storm outside, she didn’t even see the point of telling him.
But the storm seemed to recede along with Benedict’s fever and after nearly a week of bedrest and some solid foods, he was starting to feel like himself again.
“You know you didn’t have to do all this?” he said to her, one afternoon nearly a week into their stay.
“Who else was going to do it?” she asked with a bemused smile as she poured the water in the bathtub for him.
“I guess… but this… the bath, the cooking… it is more than a normal housemaid would know how to do” he said as he watched her.
He still couldn’t get over how familiar she was to him, how comfortable she made him and how content and happy he felt with this woman. He barely knew her, but he felt like he had known her all his life…
“I…” she swallowed “after I left my first family… the one who let me take lessons with their daughter… they were not so kind. I was forced to work more jobs and learned… I could probably manage an entire household by myself now” she said with a sad smile.
Benedict looked at her, she must have left the family when she was young to have learned such an array of skills and he couldn’t help but admire her “I’m sorry” he said, he had no idea why but he was, he hated that she had to go through that.
He felt a strange bond with this woman, he’d saved her and she’d clearly saved him… if it wasn’t for her… he didn’t want to think about it.
Sophie gave a nervous half smile “You need not be sorry for me Mr Bridgerton. Those skills have come in very handy this week” she said with a smile. “Now your bath is ready… I'll leave you to bathe and i’ll come back in a bit and we can look to take care of that and whilst you bathe i’ll change the sheets for you” she said, gesturing to the scraggly beard that was starting to form on his handsome features.
“Thank you” he grinned at her
30 minutes later Sophie returned to the room, she had changed the linens in his room, and she’d opened the window to let some air in, and checked on the stew she was making for dinner. It wasn’t much but there wasn’t much in the way off food left and she was trying to make everything last.
The storm had settled and she had tried, whilst Benedict was sleeping to make her way to the village but the road was blocked by a heavy tree. She had managed to pass a note through to someone on the other side to send to Benedict’s family to tell them he was fine, that he had taken ill but was recovering but she hadn’t been able to do much more than that.
Benedict was sat in the bed, his shirt not on but he was covered up, and looked more awake and healthier than he had done for days but still he looked quite weak. “Thank you for the bath, I do feel much more like myself now… well save for this” he said scratching his chin.
Sophie had found the small leather box with his razor in “let’s take care of that shall we?”
“Have you done this before?” he asked, raising a brow.
“What, shaved someone?” she asked with a smile “I suppose that is a reasonable question to ask a person before they take a steel blade to one's throat…” she grinned
Benedict looked at her while waiting for an answer “yes… I have the family I worked for before the Cavender’s. The master couldn’t afford a valet and as his hands grew week, he asked me to take care of it for him, his wife was unable to”
“How come you left their employment?” he asked her curiously as she began taking the things out of the box.
“They passed on” she said sadly “and they had no other family”
“You sound as though you have not had much luck with your employment” he said
“Oh you have no idea” she said, the words barely above a whisper and Benedict wasn’t sure he had heard her correctly.
“I beg your pardon?” he said, wondering if she would repeat herself.
“I said, let's get you shaved” she lied, he didn’t believe her and he saw the redness in her cheeks, she really was a terrible liar, but he decided not to bush it,
He watched as she added a little soap to a dish and worked it into a lather with the brush. She brought it over to his bedside and frowned. “What?”
“Your beard is quite long.” she said with a frown
“I’m not as scruffy as that.” he frowned scratching the hairs on his face
“It’s longer than anything I've ever shaved.” she admitted. She tilted her head to the side, like an artist examining her canvas. “It would be best if we could trim it first.”
“Alas, I have no shears.” Sophie had a sudden vision of a gardener going after his face with the hedge trimmers and had to stifle a snort of laughter.
“What?” Benedict demanded, looking confused.
“Oh, you don’t want to know.” she grinned as she picked up the brush. “Let’s give this a go.” Benedict lifted his chin, allowing her to coat the left side of his face with the soapy lather. It wasn’t as thick as she’d like but it would have to do, she knew there wasn’t much else to be done and he really did need to have this shaved off. He looked almost wild.
She worked carefully, using one hand to stretch his skin while the other scraped the blade down from cheek to chin. With each pass she rinsed the blade in the washtub, watching as the water grew thick with his whiskers. “You have quite a lot of red in your beard, did you know that?” she observed. “Does anyone in your family have red hair?”
He started to nod his head. “Don’t move!”
He looked at her sideways. “Don’t ask me questions.” he said with an amused smile
“Touché.”
‘My Aunt Georgiana has red hair, Strawberry Blond she likes to call it… but there are specks of red through most of our hair, in the right light anyway… My sister… Daphne’s in the closest to red” he said with a smile “but we all look uncommonly alike…”
“Do you?” she asked, though she knew this to be true.
“Indeed.” He tipped his chin up as she went to work on his throat. “Thank you again for writing to them, my mother will be worried” he said with a smile, she had told him that she would write to them after he had admitted he should have been back in London a few days ago.
“Of course. I would hate for your family to worry about you” she said with a smile
They then fell into silence as Sophie continued her work.
She was finding it much more difficult to do a proper job than when she’d shaved her previous employer. Benedict’s whiskers were nearly a half inch long which was much more difficult and different to the single day’s growth she was used to.
And that was nothing of the fact that this was Benedict.
And he had once kissed her. And she liked it, Very much and no matter how much she tried to tell herself otherwise, she loved this man.
When she leaned toward him, the air seemed to change around her, swirling with awareness, like it had that night… It was almost electric, stealing her breath and prickling at her skin. And then when she finally did draw air, it was as if she was breathing in him. Her entire body prickled and she just wanted to melt into him.
He smelled delicious, which made no sense, since he smelled like soap and sandalwood.
And man.
And heat.
Dear God, she was going mad. She was going to go mad…
You couldn’t smell heat. And the smell of soap wasn’t delicious. But nothing seemed to make sense when she was standing this close to Benedict Bridgerton, the man of her dreams and her wildest fantasies…
He was everything she wanted, everything she knew she couldn’t have.
He addled her brain, and her lungs felt tight… or light… or something.
Honestly, it was a miracle she was able to keep her hand steady. “Can you turn your head just a bit?” she asked. “I need to get that spot by your ear.” He complied, and she leaned even closer. She needed to angle the razor just so to avoid nicking him.
She was so close now she could see her breath ruffling his hair. It would be so easy just to sigh, to let herself melt into him, to feel her body against his. She press her lips against his skin, to taste him… to drink him in… but that… that wasn’t possible. He didn’t even remember who she was, and he had probably forgotten all about her the next day. She might be skinnier and have shorter hair… but everything else was just the same… he just… he had forgotten her… and that was the worst possible pain.
But for one moment, one perfect moment, he was all hers, in this moment… she felt something in her. A longing that she’d never felt and she needed him.
“Sophie?” She heard his voice, but she couldn’t seem to do anything about it.
She felt almost suspended, as if the air was thick enough to hold her in place. And then, as if her brain had needed an extra moment to get through to the rest of her body, she pulled herself back, blinking away what she could only assume was the fog of desire and all the things a woman should not know about.
“Sorry,” she said, the word seeming to come more from her throat than her lips. “Lost in my thoughts.” It wasn’t a lie.
“It need not be perfect,” he said, his voice weirdly strained. “As long as you get the bulk of it off, I can do a closer shave tomorrow.” he was staring at her, watching her face as she worked and his entire body felt on fire, tingling in a way that he had only felt once before in his life. The day he had met her.
He opened his mouth to speak again but as he said her name, his voice laced with desire she snapped to attention.
“Of course,” she answered, “yes…” she took an unsteady step back. “I… ah… that will take much less time And I am sure you are still tired.”
“Right,” he agreed, though he wasn’t sure what he was agreeing to.
“You’ll want… ehrm…” She blinked a few times, trying to get her brain to work but his bare torso was most distracting and honestly she could barely take her eyes off him. “Do you want to don a shirt?”
“Perhaps after we finish? I do not wish to get more things wet” he said with a lopsided smile.
“Of course,” she said blinking a little stupidly.
She looked down at his chest. A small blob of lather clung to the light sprinkling of hair, just above his nipple. She reached out to wipe it away, but the moment she touched his skin, his hand wrapped around her wrist.
“No,” he said, his voice laced with something Sophie didn’t recognise but Benedict was sure he was going to burst into flames the moment she’d touched him.
He wanted her… he wanted her so badly right now his bones ached and honestly, his honour was hanging by a thread, it was taking all his self-control not to haul her onto the bed and have his way with her.
She licked her lips, which had gone unaccountably and uncomfortably dry. “Don’t do that,” he choked out, his voice hoarse and raspy. Her eyes flew to his, and she was electrified, she was entranced, gripped by the intensity of his blue gaze, honestly, she could drown in his eyes.
She felt it in her chest, a pounding, pulsing thing, and for a moment she could not speak. His hand was hot against her skin, his touch unexpectedly tender as he held her wrist.
Benedict felt the magic and the tension in the air. He couldn’t explain it. He didn’t understand it… how on earth had this woman come to mean so much to him in the space of a week? It was getting too much being alone with her like this.
They either needed to leave, or the Crabtree’s needed to get here soon or he was going to do something he would owe a thousand apologises for.
“I can’t leave you like this,” she said. He stared at her, uncomprehending, blinking at her confused, like he must have misheard. Was she talking about…
She motioned to his beard, full on the right side, completely absent on the left. “You look rather half-cooked.”
He touched his chin, right at the spot where whiskers met skin, and let out a little puff of amusement and like that the moment was broken, the spell and the magic over.
“You look ridiculous,” she said. He stroked one side of his face, then the other. Sophie held up the razor and brush. “Perhaps I should finish.”
And finish she did… and just as she put the razor down, their eyes meeting each others and Benedict’s hand wrapped around her wrist again drawing her in and they were getting closer and closer, drawn together and as Benedict went to caress her face, wanting to kiss her, wanting to drag her onto the bed with him and wanting to seduce her… the door to the room flew open and Mr and Mrs Crabtree bustled in looking flustered and worried, begging their employer for forgiveness and Benedict had never been less happy to see the caretakers.
It had been, until 3 months later, the best shave Benedict had ever received… but 3 months later when Sophie shaved him again, this time as his wife… they hadn’t been interrupted, they hadn’t been disturbed and he had hauled her onto the bed and did all the things he had wanted to do to her that first time… and after as he lay there with his wife, spent and exhausted, Benedict decided, he would never shave himself again.