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“Hah, well.” Darcy puffed, whisking a hand through his hair and looking only into the firelight. He peeled the eye patch away from his face, spun it around on his forefinger by its band. “No, I am not.” The weight behind his words was heavy, a palimpsest that carried a history.
“Who was that woman who you met at the stairs? Who was looking at us?”
“Nobody to trouble yourself with.”
He was not in the mood for evasive answers. Bron stood. “Right, well, if that is all you needed of me, I should probably get going to bed.” He retrieved the clutter of his things before moving toward the open door. There was a part of him thatexpected—wanted—Darcy to stop him a second time, to invite him to sit down again and acknowledge the moment they’d shared together that evening, if he had felt something between them … or at the very least, reveal all that had occurred between him and Giovanni.
But Darcy let out only a breath before sinking into the armchair himself, decanting a whisky and then saying, “I admit I have enjoyed myself tonight more than words can express, both earlier on the dance floor, and even now in here with you.”
Bron latched onto every word, felt himself pivoting toward him.
“But you’re probably right. It is late. Take yourself to bed.” Bron felt his chest deflate. “Goodnight, Bron.”
“Goodnight,” he managed, carrying himself through the door and leaving him there. When he glanced back, and he did so only once, it was to find him reaching for the poker and stabbing at the fire, and then twiddling with his eye patch in perfect silhouette. With a glass tipped to his lips, Darcy was a pirate docked in a pub after years at sea, huddling to the edge of the hearth for warmth, and Bron was a mermaid, slithering away beyond the bounds of his reach and his capture.
Bron loosened the laces of his corset, and his chest caved outward; he slipped out of the skirt and into a deep sleep as soon as his head hit the pillow.
He was soon dreaming of a moment that could’ve almost been true, though removed from himself, he a spirit hovering above and watching as it unfurled. There they were in Cambridge in a college dorm. At first the two figures were Darcy and Giovanni, but as he settled deeper into sleep, he came to realize it wasn’t them at all. It was himself, another version of himself, who sat by the single mattress and who was comforting the boy who’d been crying.
“Bron.”It was Harry’s voice, croaky, like parchment paper, a voice that had finally broken.“I don’t understand how you can live like this and just be okay with it all.”
“I … I don’t know,”he’d said.“Perhaps I’ll leave one day.”
The setting was not a Cambridge dorm at all. It was a school. Yes, it was St. Mary’s! The peeling wallpaper. The rickety springs of the bed. The drip drip drip of the pipework that filled the bucket nearest the windowsill. And he, as much a feature of the place as the floorboards.“I guess it’s just … my life right now.”
“Yes, your life.Yourlife to do whatever you want with.”Bron knew the real reason Harry had been sent there—that his parents, who were always jetting off on a holiday guised as a business trip, had Harry’s life already planned out for him. He was to focus on his education and eventually study medicine at Corpus Christie College, Cambridge, just like his father had before him. Andhisfather before him. That’s all they really cared about.
Was there a chance that Harry could really be there in Cambridge, in the same place Bron was now?
“My life is all planned out for me, but not yours. You’re free. I just hate it here.”
“I know.”
“Bron, I need you to help me. Will you help me?”
“Yes, yes, I’ll help you.”
“Will you follow me? Follow me anywhere I go?”
“Yes, I’ll follow you.”
“I need you to—”
Harry’s mouth went slack, gaped open, a face resembling a young boy’s and then a man’s and then neither. It whimpered, called his name, a throaty sound, again and again until it reached a scream.
“Bron! Bron! Help!”
Then Harry’s face was Darcy’s face, now Giovanni’s, and then a child’s face again. Harry’s. Everything spinning around him, turning the world upside down.
“Bron.”
“Bron, Bron, help!” it screamed.
Nails bit into his shoulder blades, and he was shaken awake. The shrieking face morphed before his eyes into a little girl who shook him in his bed. Ada was screaming and tugging at his arms. He hadn’t any idea what was happening, but the urgency with which she pulled at him made him run after her. He was reeling from delirium.
His nose was clogged, and as she dragged him through the hallway, the smell of char and burning wood hit him. He threw open the door to the library, coughed on the smoke-thick air, the flames trailing up the curtains and eating away at the books.
“I couldn’t sleep, I couldn’t sleep!” Ada sobbed. “But I heard something and—my books—my books were in there, so I went to get them—” She slammed into him.
