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Benjamin still could not move. “The rest?”
“I offered to have you here, damn what the Duchess would say,” he admitted, inching forward. “But Milena would not be without you, and my wife could not stomach the sight of her. It was senseless.” He sighed.
“And after?”
The Duke’s hand crept along the armrest. “In the end, she refused my help entirely. When I heard she had died, I… it was years later.”
He extended his hand to take Benjamin's, but he pulled it away. He shot to his feet. “No,” he breathed. “I don’t believe you. Even if I did, I’m not… I don’t need younow!”
The Duke nodded sadly, looking up at him, his chin quivering. “I know. It’s enough to know you live.”
Benjamin looked to the door. He could not make sense of things while Gamston was staring at him, while he stood in a home that should have been his. He couldn’t even tell fact from fiction. His life was a tangled mess of stories. It was too much. Too soon to decide. Too quick to look upon the man he hated as the genesis of his being.
“Tell no one,” he stammered, “I must… Ican’t—”
“I know, and I won’t.”
And with a final shared breath, Benjamin stumbled away.
Stepping back through the doors of his home, Benjamin experienced the place completely differently. The rooms felt smaller. The sounds rang strangely. The smell was not one he recognized. The occupants were like rats. It was as though he had left the house its owner and returned a stranger.
He was reeling from what the Duke had claimed. He had gone seeking vengeful answers and had come away with a father. Each step he took laboriously up the stairs further cemented his confusion.
He needed to rest. He needed to think.
And the last thing he needed, as he curled up into his cot, was Lamb knocking at his door. Yet there he was, his sandy-colored hair slicked back with grease, looking sheepish, boyishly curious.
Benjamin could hardly open his eyes in the darkness, the peace from sleep simply too tempting to entertain whatever wild fancy had taken his friend.
He raised a hand, trying to wave the boy away, but Lamb did not budge.
“Where’ve you been, Fletch?” he asked, and his voice was small—not unlike a lamb’s bleating for its mother. “You’ve been gone a while. Worried sick, I was. Always am when you don’t tell me where you’re goin’.”
Benjamin turned onto his back and kicked his boots off. “I won’t trouble with my leaving anymore, Lamb. There’s nowhere for me to go after tonight.”
“I see…” Uninvited, his fellow veteran ambled into the room. “You cleaned up nice and well since the other night.”
Benjamin arched a brow. “You heard?”
“I saw, I did. Right mess it was. Could’ve given you a hand flippin’ this place topsy-turvy if you asked.”
“Do you make it a habit of coming up here when I’m not around?” Benjamin teased, but Lamb only grunted in reply. “What do you want? Tell me quick so you can leave.”
Lamb cleared his throat, stumbling over his words. “Er, this came for you, it did.” He fished a note out of his back pocket and handed it to Benjamin.
“No more letters, Lamb.”
“Oh, but you’ll wanna’ read this one, Fletch. That lady and her other lady, they dropped it off. Said something about—“
Benjamin jolted up, nearly knocking his head against the angled wall above his cot. He snatched the small, decorated envelope from Lamb and tore it open. His breath hitched as he read…
The man who is not Huxley,
Meet me where flowers stopped growing and poets now bloom.
Your sinner,
Char
