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“I owe you nothing,” Benjamin retorted, keeping his voice steady.
“You owe me everything, Fletcher. Lest you forget, Iownyou.”
“Once,” Benjamin swallowed, “I won’t deny it. That time is long past.”
Harper smiled, and it turned up the edges of his thick mustache. “May I?” he asked, gesturing for a seat. Benjamin nodded. He would entertain the man as long as it took for him to grow weary and leave or as long as it took to run. “You’re right, in a way. You superseded my expectations of you. When I heard you had come down to London to make something honorable of yourself, I thought,My Benny? Surely not. He would not be satisfied with a trade or in labor.”A beat. “And I was right.”
Benjamin said nothing, circling around the middle beam in the flat to position himself closer to the front door. “I no longer live a life of crime.”
“But you hardly live a life of integrity,” Harper said through a smirk. “Try to spin me a tale, Benny, but know there’s no point to it. I know everything.” He pulled a coin from his pocket and clinked it against the table. “I know of your fraud. I know of your homes. I know of your betrothal to the daughter of a Duke. How you managed that… well, it certainly wasn’t out of any righteousness, was it?” He let the coin spin on the table. Round and round it went, stopping only when Harper squashed it flat with his hand. He whistled through his teeth again, and another figure appeared at the door. It was Lamb.
Benjamin snarled. “I should have known,” he muttered, holding back the urge to throttle his friend. “What did he do to convince you this time, hm?”
Lamb blanched, looking between the two men with wide eyes.
Not turning to look at him, Harper laughed under his breath. “He didn’t need much convincing, Ben. He was always the more… malleable of the two of you.” He snapped his fingers, drawing Benjamin’s attention back to him. He hated it, how he was still a dog on his leash. “The War may be over for us, but old habits die hard. Tell me, how have you been?”
“I will not share pleasantries with you,” he said, clenching his fists. “What do you want?”
“I want to resume our collaboration,” Harper intonated. “Seems to me you’re in a rather fortunate spot—as am I. You may have thought yourself swift, but I saw you at the Richmond gathering. Aye, I saw how you ran from me, too.”
Benjamin’s brow knit painfully. “A collaboration? If you know all you say you do of me, then you know that my days as a highwayman are long over.”
“Oh, I don’t mean that, Ben. I want you,” he drawled, getting to his feet, “to thinkbigger. Think of all we could achieve with your friends in high places. We could have London in the palm of our hands, with your missus and her father turning a blind eye.” Benjamin could see the glint of greedy malice in the man’s eye. A monster born of avarice, through and through. “We wouldn’t have to swindle old gents in carriages. We could pluck from the King’s coffers themselves.”
Harper’s very presence seemed to deliver the room unto darkness. With every move he made, he siphoned away the air a little more. With every word he spoke, he poisoned Benjamin’s mind. Somehow, his proposition tickled at the back of his head, where he was keeping his greed under lock and key. Like Arrack, like Charlotte’s touch, the promise of heists lived in him like an addiction. And if he had not cast a glance to her spot on the bookshelf, he might have even considered scratching at the itch.
“No,” he pronounced, feeling his face twist in contempt. “I refuse.”
A moment passed in silence as Harper looked him over. Then, the captain smiled. “I don’t believe I asked your stand on the matter, Benny. This is a thing that will happen whether you will it or not.” Finally, he drew the pistol from its holder and set it on the table. “I have ways of convincing you to do my bidding.”
Benjamin scoffed in derision. “Put a bullet through my head, then. It won’t get you any closer to what you want.” His eyes darted to Lamb, though the boy had not moved from the door.
“I wouldn’t be so sure, Ben. You could hardly protect that girl of yours from six feet under… that’s if I don’t decide to cast your body into the Thames, of course.” He dragged the coin over the tabletop. “The fun I could have with her. I hear she likes veteran cock—“
“Don’t,” Benjamin rasped, “You will not utter a word about her.”
“No? And what if I told you I have a cartridge with her name on it?” He got to his feet and walked over to Benjamin. Leaning close, he said, “That’s the problem with playing with whores, Ben. Love only arms your enemies.”
A droplet of spittle landed on his neck, and there was something in it—mockery, challenge, disrespect—that sparked revolt in his heart. Without thinking, he grabbed Harper by the lapels of his coat. With a deep, guttural growl, he spun the man around, throwing him deeper into the drawing room.
He heard Lamb cry his name, but he was too consumed by his ire to hear it. Harper staggered back, knocking a vase from a sideboard. It shattered at the feet. Benjamin barreled over to him, pushing him up against the wall. He drew his fist back as far as he could, clenching it, knowing that he wouldneverbe rid of a man like Harper, that he would dog him until his dying days. Like all the officers in his charge, Benjamin was nothing more than a pawn.
“That’s it, Benny boy,” Harper hissed, licking his lips. “Show me what you’re made of!”
Flashes of his time at war played before his eyes, blinding him. He saw Harper in the sun outside of Brussels, training his friends in the field. “That’s it,”he had said then, too, “Show me what you’re made of!”Memories of Waterloo, the taste of steel, and the tolls of death transported him from his haven in London to the worst years of his life. He could not believe, at that moment, that he had spent his time back in England chasing the same high of battle. He had not survived the War—he was stilllivingit. Fighting every day for his survival, for a chance towin.
So, he drew his hand back even further and aimed for Harper’s face. The Captain dodged, and Benjamin’s fist connected with the wall. A blinding pain shot up his arm as he recoiled, giving Harper enough time to take him for himself. His fist connected with his jaw, and the sound of his teeth, bottom row against top, clicking together made him sick. Harper growled, sending him over to the bookshelf, and the tomes he had dutifully stacked and sorted tumbled all around him.
Before Benjamin could make sense of things, Harper picked him up again with incredible strength. He thrust him close to the open window, and the chilly London air nipped at his neck.
“Who wouldn’tlivefor this?!” Harper bellowed. “This islife, Ben! This is what it means to be a man! Pretend all you want, but I know who you are!” He was crazed, his eyes bloodshot. He wrapped his hands around Benjamin’s neck, and slowly, he felt the breath seep from his mouth. “You need crime as much as it needsyou.”
He floated there, suspended, for what felt like hours. He cast a glance upward, his eyes threatening to close, and he looked at the clouds, wondering whether he had met his end. He thought of his mother; he thought of his friends. With his final breath, he thought of Charlotte…
And then, Harper’s body went slack. He released Benjamin, and he staggered away... far enough to see Lamb brandishing the flintlock backward. He had knocked their captain over the head, and before Harper could turn around to fight back, Lamb pushed him from the window.
All Benjamin heard next, as he slowly drifted away, was the sound of cries from the road below.
