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Lamb shifted on his feet, and the room yawned. His breath was a pant as he explained, “He came here a few weeks ago, maybe more… when everything started to change.” A beat. “He came here, and asked where you was. I-I told him you was out… and he said he knew all about what you was up to now.” The boy swallowed loudly. “Last time… he wanted one of those.”
Benjamin could see Lamb’s trembling pointer finger out of the corner of his eye, directing his attention to the poems on the ground. A shiver ran through him as everything became so… clear. No one had invited the Captain to the Richmond ball. He hadfollowedhim there! Where else had he dogged without his knowing? What else did heknow? Of Huxley, of Hathaway, of… Charlotte.
“That was how he knew where to find me,” he whispered to himself. “He was taunting me.” Resolutely, he turned to Lamb. “You let him in. You let him… forwhat?”
“I told you, Fletch… I wanted you back. You’ve been gone so much since you made all them new friends. I was missin’ you. I was needin’ you.”
Benjamin shook his head. The pain in Lamb’s voice seemed genuine, but he was impervious to it. “You’re a grown man. You should have need of no one. I have mothered you too long,” he bellowed, “All of you!”
“No, Fletch! Don’t say that.” Lamb’s fingers dug into his arms. “You don’t know what it is to live like us! You don’t have thedreams… we’re in this together, you said. You and me—“
Benjamin scoffed. “Aye, I thought we were. Then you backstabbed me.”
His disdain gave way to something worse as his thoughts colored withher. If Harper knew all he did… then the boy had put them all in danger. “He’ll use her…” Benjamin murmured.He’ll use Charlotte to get back at me. He will never let her be free.
“Her?” Lamb said, though his voice sounded faraway as Benjamin panicked. “Who’s—“
Benjamin made for the door. “I have to go,” he said mostly to himself. “I have to go and make this right.”
The sun was cresting over the Richmond manor, turning the sky a shade of red that held no delight for Benjamin. He had sat on the curb opposite the townhouse since he had fled Five Fields the night before. He had spent some time lingering outside of pubs, wondering whether he should walk the same path as his mother and collect empty bottles to outnumber his regrets. It certainly seemed easier than making amends.
It had been hours since he had left, though he could not say with any certainty how many. They had passed in a blur, his mind so wracked with revelation and fear that he hadn’t been able to move from his spot since the rising of the sun. Somehow, the knowledge that Harper had been shadowing him paled in its evil to the thought of him harming Charlotte.
Charlotte, who was so sweet and clever. Charlotte, who had asked for nothing beyond a taste of freedom. Charlotte, who he had cursed with his greed. He would not leave her at the mercy of his enemies. Especially because, despite himself, he had meant every word he had pronounced in the greenhouse.
HelovedLady Charlotte Fitzroy, undeserving as he was for ever having known her. And so rescuing her was as natural as breathing—more natural than breathing, for he would easily give up breath if he could secure her safety, her happiness. He knew it made no sense for him to dream of her. She was his better in every way… but he had nothing left to lose.
He got up from where he sat and staggered toward the door.
The rapping of his hand against the painted wood sounded through his body, passing through him. He waited a minute and then one more until finally, a footman came to the door.
“Yes?” the man inquired, his jowls long and heavy. In his tone, he asked,What the deuce could you want at a time like this?“Mr. Huxley!” he added with sudden recognition.
“I have come to seek an audience with Lady Charlotte,” he drawled, surprised to find he was not nervous at all. He felt as he had in battle, needing only to survive. “There is a most pressing thing I have to ask her.”
The footman furrowed his brow. “Sir, it is very early. His Grace’s household is not yet risen.”
“I have no need for his household and every need of her.” He smiled, sleep dazing him to etiquette. “For I have every intention of asking her to be my wife.”
CHAPTERTWENTY-THREE
After having tossed and turned through the night, Charlotte decided to do something she had not done in a while. She sat down at her writing desk, and wrote.
She tried to capture exactly what she was feeling, not in verse as was her writer’s habit but in prose. Her thoughts colored the page black and blue: fear, confusion, betrayal,and, most surprisingly,joy.
It was a dark joy, of course, not unlike the kind expressed when seeing a particularly disagreeable lady of the ton be scandalized. It took root—though she feared to eventhinkthe answer let alone commit it to paper—in Benjamin Fletcher’s confession.
Quill scratching against paper, her wrist almost as tired as her spirit, she explored the sin of his love. There was a chance, she knew, however small, that he had meant it. That, somehow, Benjamin had fallen in love with her. She had never been in love before, at least not to her knowledge. She had forever guessed at love in her poetry, harnessing feelings of admiration, lust, fancy, drawn from books and recounted stories that had forever felt unattainable. It was not as if she was ignorant to Benjamin’s effect on her; roguishly handsome as he was… but to speak of love, to speak of it so ardently?
A dark joy, indeed.
Darker yet, because Charlotte realized that shemissedhim. She knew herself to be mad at that moment—a gift from her father. Benjamin was not a man with whom a lady should fall inlove, especially not after he had lied to her at length and used her. And yet…
“And yet,” she whispered when the sun began to color the sky scarlet. “The thought of being without you,” she spoke aloud the words she penned, “is more painful than the thought of being with you.”
Closing the diary, she sighed. This was the place for him, for a man like Benjamin Fletcher—in writing, in memory, no matter how much it hurt.
She sagged back into her chair and breathed, brushing the ends of her hair together like two paintbrushes until she grew restless again… until, in fact, the sound of a door closing drew her attention. The manor seemed to shake for it, wind howling through the hallways. Someone was at the door—themaindoor to the house. Not a footman gone for the post. Not a delivery boy with the day’s shopping.
