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After a few more moments of observation, he merged back into the moon shadows beneath the trees.
He predicted the presence of more patrols, possibly constant around the house itself, but likely fewer where he was headed—down to the river.
He could slip in beneath their safe little nest.
Barton Combe was vulnerable and he was more than willing to exploit that vulnerability tonight.
The entrance, or end of the tunnel under Philipa’s house, depending upon your perspective Ben supposed, was protected by an ancient iron grill that might once have given a man pause for thought. Now rusty, it was barely a matter of a shake, and it came away in Ben's hands. Slimy, covered in roots and trailing ivy, dank and uninviting, Ben's way to the one he sought was now possible.
Do, don't think. It had once been his motto. How ironic. Again. How much better his life might have been had he given certain decisions a little more consideration.
He had to stoop double inside, yet still brushed his head occasionally on the timbers supporting the excavation.
His phone torch app illuminated twisted roots, turning them into macabre fingers reaching down from above to snag his progress. Ben could not recall if he had ever heard stories of anyone—smugglers avoiding the revenue men, or priests the flames of protestant righteousness—actually using this path. Such a tale would have been told with wry amusement and a great deal of skill at storytelling whilst they were twisted together in the warm embrace of darkness. Ben couldn't afford to interrogate his memory for such a moment. Not now.
Nikolas’s powers of storytelling hadn’t done Ben much good over the last decade.
The tunnel ended abruptly at a wooden barrier, which he knew to be the back of a wine rack. There was nothing else for it but to hope to luck and enter the cellar. He was due a little luck, he reckoned.
As he'd suspected, the cellar was empty.
The main door to the rest of the house, which exited into the vast entrance hall, was locked.
That didn't matter either: he had been here before, done all this before. His life was a constant repetition of the same events played out in slightly altering circumstances and all revolving around the same dark mass at its centre.
There were echoes ofhimeverywhere now. Ben could hear mangled, gleeful whispering against his ear as he slipped alone and soundless up the concealed stone steps that rose from the cellar to the top of the house.
He had been a very different Ben Rider then. He had been entirely hollow, a man with no depths, or at least, none he showed to the world. He skated through life on his looks, and people were drawn to the perfection of the artfully styled package. He had a heart, but he’d packed it away when he was eight along with the clothes his mother had bought him, the books she’d loved to read to him, and the photographs of them together—his better life. Even at such a young age, he’d realised a shattered heart wasn’t much use to anyone.
But that man, Sir Nikolas Mikkelsen, for all that he’d mocked Ben, hurt him, bewildered him, ignored him, fought him, bullied him, manipulated him, lied to him, only that man had made Ben feel safe again. For some reason, Ben’s broken heart had begun to mend when he’d met Nikolas Mikkelsen, and now it could not beat without him.
It was why he was here.
There was no one in Nikolas’s old room when Ben emerged silently from the priest hole. He’d known Philipa had left it empty—not from any sentimentality about their marriage, but because it was dark and small and no one else wanted it.
She slept in her own suite, of course. And he had seen her future husband leaving that afternoon.
Keeping up appearancesfor a gullible public.
* * *
Ben had a complex relationship with the woman he now watched in her sleep. Once, he’d been in awe of her, overwhelmed whenever he was in her presence. After all, he’d been fucking her husband, not something he understood from his own perspective let alone hers. Then, gradually, over the four years he’d spent visiting Lady Philipa andSir Nikolasat Barton Combe, he’d almost come to be seen as her wayward, prodigal son—the rough diamond she tried hard to polish to a shine. She’d lavished what passed for love in her aristocratic, haughty world upon him. Ben’s room, Ben’s favourite food…
Sometimes, after a weekend spent bouncing uneasily between her genuine and affectionate attention, and Nikolas’s feigned indifference, Ben had found it hard to remember which one he was actually visiting.
Motherless, adrift as he had been, Philipa had filled a little part of his emotional void. Nikolas hadn’t, that was for sure.
But now, Ben could feel little of that affection or gratitude as he studied this thorn in his side.
There was something between Nikolas and Philipa—there always had been a bond between this oddly matched pair—thathehad been unable to break.
So many times Nikolas had fallen in line with his ex-wife’s demands. He outwardly held all the power, and yet today Ben had seen him powerless.
And Nikolas Mikkelsen didn’t do powerlessness. He mocked these royals for their unearned entitlements, and yet did not recognise this very trait in himself. He seemed genuinely blind to the fact that he felt entitled too—to power. Nikolas thought everyone lived lives of deceit. Their secrets were currency he invested in, more potent even than his billions. When he understood their intentions, he spent his money to garner authority and influence, smoothing his path in life.
And this wasn’t all. Nikolas used his body too, to elicit devotion, obedience and even love in those around him.
Ben knew that Nikolas had learnt both these strategies as survival mechanisms before he had even reached his teens, and could not find it in himself to apportion blame.
