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Sophie consumes him. His eyes are thirsty for her, searching every room he enters for the sight of her in her maid's uniform, every inch of her true self neatly pressed and tucked away. His feet unknowingly traverse every inch of Bridgerton house in the hopes of doing another awkward half step in its halls, the only dance they are allowed in public. He mucks up Anthony's ledgers, littering every stray scrap of paper with her visage, but saves his more private sketches for his journal. A slope of a thigh. Her dark hair unbound, the way it might spill like a waterfall over a bare shoulder. But what he returns to, over and over, are her eyes and how luminous they are in her face, catching light better than any chandelier.
They prove to be his undoing even now. He has her braced against the wall, their breathing hot and hurried, and she is biting down on one of her irrepressible smiles the way she is prone to, like any joy must be secreted away before it can be stamped out.
Don't do that, he wants to say. Don't hide yourself from me. I want to see it, know it all.
Instead, he leans forward and catches that same lip between his teeth, delighting in her hitch of breath.
“What is so funny?” Benedict asks, hushed, and she tucks her nose into his neck instead of answering right away, huffing out her near silent laughter.
"Nothing," says Sophie, lifting her face and brushing her mouth with his once, twice. Her eyes are so bright and he cannot help but smile into her kiss, his heart turning over in his chest at the sight. "Everything. I do not know."
“You are Sophie,” Benedict says, in light-hearted accusation, but there is a hint of truth for Sophie is always singularly self possessed. “You always know.”
“Very well then,” says Sophie. “I heard your knees creak.”
“They did not,” Benedict says, scandalized, but it's all jokingly meant and he is soon tucking his face into her neck in his efforts to smother his own laughter. He quiets quickly, not wanting them to get caught out, and settles for mouthing at her neck, trailing kisses up the underside of her jaw to her ear.
“I should like to spend my time with you,” Benedict murmurs, imagining her spread out on his bed in My Cottage and taking all the time in the world to devote himself to her pleasure. What new sounds could he elicit her to make? What would the tilt of her head or the curve of her neck look like against his sheets? His sketches would surely pale in comparison to the real thing.
He only regrets it when Sophie goes still and he pulls back to see her eyes and mouth have turned grave. It's as if all of the warmth is sucked out of the room, leaving none of their previous happiness behind.
“That would not be possible,” Sophie says. “Do not be foolish.”
It is foolish. Time is one thing they can never have. Even this stolen interlude is going against the ticking of the clock.
“Forgive me,” Benedict says, tucking a stray wisp of hair behind her ear. She does not smile, still looking at him in that flat, unblinking way. “I just wish…”
He doesn't say anything more. He doesn't need to. They both know what he wishes. That they didn't need to hide, that they were not both bound to their stations.
He ducks down again to kiss her, wanting to stretch out the moment just a tad longer, to commit all of this to memory not solely to commemorate on paper but to be able to turn over and over in his head when he lies in bed alone at night, restless in his skin and sick in his heart at the thought of never having any of it again. Sophie frames his face in her hands and kisses back with as much tenderness as heat. It tastes like a farewell when before they were saying hello or it's nice to see you again and he hopes, prays, that this will not be the last, that there will be more smiles, more laughter, more Sophie.
She slides her hands down to his chest and carefully pushes so that he will set her back on her feet. He watches her straighten her dress and smooth down her hair and a thousand things tighten his throat but he somehow can't bring himself to say any of it. All he can do is grab her hand before she can turn away and bring it to his face so he can press a delicate kiss to the inside of her palm.
"Tell me a secret," Benedict says, tangling their fingers together after bringing their hands back down to their sides, "and I shall tell you one in return."
Sophie looks at him for a long moment with those eyes he can't capture the true likeness of no matter how hard he tries. He wonders if she will leave without saying anything, having humored him enough for the evening, when suddenly, miraculously, she smiles. It is like a dawn breaking over her face and Benedict's heart is left tripping in its wake.
"My French is not as good as you think," says Sophie, cheekily. "It is just better than yours."
“Sophie,” he says, delighted.
“Your turn,” she says.
"I hate watching you hide yourself from me,” Benedict says, finally letting loose what he has long kept trapped behind his teeth. Didn't they say the truth would set you free? Funny, how all he can feel is his heart in his throat as he watches Sophie reel back.
Sophie looks wounded. “Benedict—”
She makes to drop their joined hands but Benedict scoops them up again. “I know,” he says, pressing a kiss to her knuckles. “Forgive me again. But that is my truth.” Even if it was more a truth for a dagger, in this case.
Sophie swallows and just looks at him, her eyes flickering over his face as if in search of something. “Another truth then,” she says, finally. “Since mine is so paltry in comparison.”
“Not paltry,” Benedict corrects. “Delightful.”
“I hate leaving you, just as you hate to watch me leave.”
Benedict is the one left feeling struck this time. He blinks rapidly, swallowing against the battering of his heart, and kisses her at a loss of anything else to say, save for the same, unspeakable things. Don't leave. Stay with me forever. Be my wife. Words left to be scribbled and crossed out in the margins of his notebook, preserving only the sketches of her bright eyes and alternately smiling and frowning mouth.