Page 67 of Waiting for Love

Olivia showed the appropriate degree of pleasure and gratitude for this concession. Jasper wore an annoyingly condescending look of approval. And possibly self-congratulation. Along the route, he remarked upon the sights to see in London, even though Olivia had been there before when she was younger and had certainly seen most of them. Olivia made all the correct responses. From time to time, Benjamin put in a word: his favorite museum exhibit, a curiosity shop on Tyburn Road that she might find amusing, a recommendation for the apricot ices at Gunthers. He hoped he didn’t sound as patronizing as Jasper.

After they had taken tea at the posting station where the draft horses were exchanged, Olivia volunteered to ride with Milly, Miss Jamison, and the two little ones so that Georgiana could spend a few uninterrupted hours with “grown-up ladies.”

The journey took the entire day. Entering the outskirts of the city at dusk, Benjamin noticed Jasper growing invigorated. Of course. He was eager to return to his club, the races, the parties, even the halls of Parliament. The man had more friends than Bacchus. At Oxford, Jasper could not walk across a field without collecting men like cockleburs. But Benjamin shouldn’t poke fun. Jasper had also made his own university experience bearable.

He’d come to the school on a scholarship as a servitor, the lowest of the low. He had to work for the privilege of attending. He was assigned to one of the residence houses as a bootblack or boy-of-all-work. His fellow students, many of them, served up unimaginably menial tasks for him to perform. They took perverse pleasure in doing so.

Very early on, Benjamin became aware of Lord Taverston, a student living in the house. Lord Taverston never felt the need to degrade someone else to inflate his own importance. If he needed something done, he ordered it done, but without gratuitous insult. So when Benjamin came upon him one night, slumped in a doorway, incapacitated with drink, rather than leave him there, he hauled him up to his room and made sure he was passed out on his stomach rather than his back. He didn’t know how Jasper discovered it had been him, but a few nights later, Jasper invited him out drinking, “just in case it happened again.” It didn’t. Jasper was more careful after that, though he could still drink vats dry with his fellows. And those fellows learned not to harass Benjamin when Jasper was around.

But that was not how they became good friends.

The following year, Crispin entered the college. Crispin was…not at all like Jasper. Jasper had the typical gentleman’s disinterest in learning. He came to school to carouse away from parental eyes. But whereas Jasper never lost sight of the essential dignity of his position, Crispin was wild. He lacked all discipline.

One would not recognize the boy seeing the man he had become.

Crispin terrified Jasper. Or rather, Jasper was terrified for him. He did everything in excess. Too fast. Too much.

When they were halfway through the first term that year, he disappeared. Jasper admitted only to irritation. Three days turned to four, then five, and more. The seventh night, Benjamin was sleeping in his dank cellar room when he was awakened by a knock and the groan of the door. Jasper stood in the doorway with a taper.

“Can I trust you to be discreet?”

“What? Yes. Yes, of course.”

“Then come with me.”

Jasper waited while he pulled on his clothes, then they sneaked out of the cellar, out of the house, and out the gate. It was the middle of the night. Leaving the grounds was against every rule. If they were caught, someone would have rapped Jasper’s knuckles severely. Benjamin would have been sent down.

He followed Jasper to the ugly side of Oxford Village, to a brothel the boys all agreed was best avoided. Jasper shoved open the door, scattered coins as though sowing seeds, and said, “Where is he?”

“Now who you be looking for guv’nor?” a nearly toothless sow asked, toeing a few of the coins into a pile. “We don’t have boys, but if you want—”

Jasper stepped forward and pressed his boot down on her toes. “Don’t. Play. Games.”

“Daisy!” she called out, eyes fearful. “Take the guv’nor to Cris.”

“Cris? Damn him.” Jasper spat on the floor, enraged this earl’s son now had bawds calling him by a diminutive of his given name. “Benjamin!”

“I’m coming.”

The place was squalid. The girl who led them to Crispin was so malnourished she looked forty but was probably half that. Crispin lay on a filthy, thin bed in a dark back room. He was nearly naked, stupid with drink, and stank of gin and worse. Jasper cast about for Crispin’s clothes and found them lumped in a corner. Damp with God-knew-what.

Jasper swore a blue streak. Then he took off his own jacket and put it around his brother’s shoulders. He wrapped the blanket around Crispin’s waist like a skirt.

“Stand up, Crispin.”

Crispin could not. Jasper and Benjamin each took an arm around their shoulders and dragged him back to the house.

That was the first time.

Jasper kept a close eye on him the rest of the term. If Crispin went whoring, Jasper went with him, or else he gave Benjamin a few shillings and sent him along to be sure that Crispin returned afterward.

When the term ended, and they went home to London on break, Jasper invited Benjamin. Payment, he assumed. But in the Taverstons’ warm, welcoming home, he felt it was more than that. Jasper was not rewarding him with a peek at life in an earl’s house. He was rewarding him with the chance to become better friends. An opportunity to better himself.

Back at school, Crispin again abandoned any pretense of studying. He drank and whored at a pace that Jasper could not match. This time, when he disappeared for a fortnight, Jasper pretended rigid indifference.

Benjamin was carrying slop buckets to the alley when he heard a “Pssst, sir. Sir! Lord Taverston, sir.” He peered through the dark until he spied the girl Daisy.

“I am not Lord Taverston.”