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“And to think, a duke’s blood runs in my veins.”
He stared down at his wrists, unclasping his cuffs to watch his veins tick beneath his skin. If he were a lesser man, he might plead with the Duke to claim him—but that life was not deserved, so he would not live it. As weary of duty he may have been, who would care for the men he had homed? Who would care for Lamb?Lamb. What a poor friend he had been to Lamb since their return to London—all in the name of his ruse.
He had burned all he had to ash. A familiar, prickling feeling ran across the nape of his neck, and his fingers curled for it.Despair.And when he despaired, there was one thing above all else he desired: sanctuary in a bottle. His friend would best know how to quench his thirst.
Floorboards groaning underfoot, teasing him, he walked down to his old nursery, hoping to find the boy. The room was dark and empty, smelling faintly of dust and other bodily things he dared not consider. Lighting a sconce with the candle he had brought, he began rummaging beneath the mattresses on the floor, hoping to find one of the veterans’ stashes. There was nothing, not beneath the cots, in the fireplace, in the old, battered dressers either. With his hands on his hips, he turned to Lamb’s bedroll, his addiction and his pride battling for dominance in his heart.
“What good is pride to me now,” he groaned, dipping before the boy’s station and throwing back the stained quilt. “Nothing.” With a sigh, he tore the case from his pillow.
A collection of notes scattered against the floor—torn pages of some sort, though he could hardly make them out in the dim light.
Benjamin picked them up... and froze.
They were Charlotte’s unpublished poems.
“Impossible,” he breathed, scanning them as though the answers to all his questions might write themselves atop them.
“Fletch, what—“ he heard from behind him. Turning, he saw Lamb halted in the doorway, and the boy blanched. “That’s not yours.”
Benjamin’s hand curled around the poems as he regarded his friend, though the word stung inwardly. It didn’t make sense for the poems to be here, though it was hardly like they could have crawled themselves from his desk drawer. The boy looked the picture of fractured innocence, with his freckled face and light hair, his wide eyes and chin… but he wasnotinnocent.
“You are a thief,” Benjamin uttered incredulously, not wanting to take his eyes from Lamb. The boy seemed to shrink before him. “You took these… from my office.”
“I—“ Lamb began, wanting to protest. He cut himself off and looked behind his shoulder.
“Don’t move,” Benjamin ground out, “Do not dare move.” He held the poems before Lamb. “Why did you take these?” he asked, knowingexactlywhy. He was the missing link in the chain—the one who published the poem that led to my ruin.
“I-I didn’t know what they was when I took ‘em first—I swear!” He leaned against the door frame, sliding halfway down it. “Please, Fletch. I didn’t mean you no harm!”
“You stole from me,” he said, needing to come to terms with the betrayal. “After everything I have done for you…”
“I can give you back the advance. I can—“
“Advance?” Benjamin spat. “You think I care for the money?” He didn’t understand; he couldn’tbeginto understand. “How did you know? How did you evenknowwhat these were and what to do with them?”
Lamb’s throat bobbed. Benjamin could hardly connect memories of the boy to the person who stood before him. He saw Tommy in his mind’s eye, a boy of six-and-ten, with the sun in his hair and the sea behind him. He was there again, with muck on his face and a musket in his hand, as they fought to dethrone the would-be French emperor. Lamb merely stood there, frightened, haloed by the light from the rest of the house. “I can’t tell you, Fletch. I can’t! It’s not right, I know. I did a bad thing—”
“A bad.. .thing?” Benjamin laughed, and it seemed to spook Lamb from his skin. “Tell me,now.” When Lamb didn’t speak, he threw the letters aside. They cascaded through the air, landing around his bedroll. He lunged toward the boy, pinning him to the wall. His head knocked viciously against the exposed brick, and it reminded him of the sounds of cannons. “Tell me, Lamb!”
The boy began to cry, and it almost persuaded him to stop. He could not—not when his throat ached for liquor as it did; not when his heart fell to his gut where Charlotte had unseated it; not when he looked into his friend’s face and saw only an enemy. He shook him and growled again.
“It was Harper!”
The house fell silent around them. He thought he might like to rip the tongue from Lamb’s mouth for having uttered the name, curse that it was. And then he heard it again in the theatre of his mind—Harper.
And suddenly, he realized all he had missed in his neglect. Lamb’s mention of Harper’s past visits. His visits to Benjamin’s chambers alone. Their fighting and Lamb’s insistence that he hadchanged.
“He poisoned you against me,” he hissed, letting his hands fall from where they had wrapped in Lamb’s shirt. “When was he here?” Lamb’s eyes widened, glistening still, and he shook his head quickly. “WhenLamb?” he roared.
“A-always…” Lamb stammered. “H-he’s been by a few times when you’ve been out. He’s known of your plans, Fletch, of your poem plans.”
Benjamin didn’t want to believe it. He swore he could hear Lamb’s heartbeat in his ears—could feel his own beat out of time. Drawing away, he hung his head in his hands. Harper had been in his home. Harper, whom he thought to have left behind in another life, had been haunting him ever since that night in Twicham. He had not outrun him. He was not clever enough for that—clearlyif he could allow the man to play him as he had.
“No, no, no…” he breathed. He remembered the last time he had seen Harper at the Richmond affair. He had thought it coincidental, but… “You reported back my every move, didn’t you? He’s known everything all along.”
He didn’t turn back to Lamb, but he heard, “He made me, Fletch. He said if I helped him do this, you would befree. He said you would give it all up and come home.”
He imagined Harper knocking on his door. He pictured him taking the stairs with Lamb beside him, laughing, then rifling through his effects. “I need to know what he’s done. All of it.”
