7Please respect copyright.ＰＥＮＡＮＡvIt4v1ZQuX7Please respect copyright.ＰＥＮＡＮＡHRljjKV8Cz
7Please respect copyright.ＰＥＮＡＮＡcpMVLz8bKt
Morning came grey.
Not dark, but grey: that particular London grey which promises neither rain nor sun, only hangs over the city. Benedict had been sitting at his bedroom window for several hours. He had not lain down. He could not see the point.
*Caspian is no more.*
He turned the words over and over, as though repetition might make them familiar, might make them stop cutting. They did not stop. Each time exactly the same. Like the first.
The house made its sounds below. The footsteps of servants. Violet's voice somewhere in the depths of the corridor, a quiet conversation with someone, the words indistinct. Life continued, and there was something almost insulting about it: that people were walking and speaking, that someone downstairs was heating water for tea, while he sat here with two words that should not have been true.
He looked at the street. At the figures moving through the morning fog. At a horse pulling a cart. At a boy with newspapers, shouting something unintelligible, offering the day's news to anyone who would take it.
Caspian read the newspapers every day. He set politics aside and went straight to the announcements: concerts, exhibitions. He had laughed once at an advertisement for some patented remedy for melancholy, said that if it were really so simple he would have bought a case.
Benedict closed his eyes.
Five years as a ghost. And now finally, completely.
He did not weep. Tears would have been some kind of action, some kind of response, and he had none of either left. Only silence inside him, cold and very still, like standing water.
A knock at the door.
"Come in," he said, without turning.
Mary entered. She set a tray with tea on the table.
"You are expected downstairs, sir," she said quietly. "Her ladyship asked me to tell you."
Benedict did not turn.
"Later."
"She said when you are ready, sir."
He was quiet for a moment. Then he turned, passed a hand over his face, pulled on a shirt, and went down.
Two people were already seated in the drawing room.
Violet sat on the sofa, straight-backed, in a dark blue dress, hands folded in her lap. Beside her, in the armchair by the fire, sat Lady Danbury. She had arranged herself as though the chair belonged to her by right: her cane between her knees, a hat with a feather, her spine perfectly erect.
Benedict stopped in the doorway.
He was unshaved. The cut above his brow had not fully closed, and the bruise beneath his eye had darkened overnight.
Lady Danbury looked him over slowly. Her gaze paused at the cut. Her lips pressed together, fractionally: which, from her, said a great deal. She rarely kept her opinions to herself, particularly where appearance was concerned.
"Sit down, Benedict."
He came forward and sat.
The cane touched the floor quietly.
"Tell me everything." A pause. "Violet has given me the broad strokes. Now I need the details she doesn't have."
Her gaze did not release him.
"And kindly omit nothing."
Benedict passed a hand over his face, gathered himself, and began.
He went through everything he had told them the night before. Lady Danbury did not interrupt. She asked only the occasional short question.
"How old is Caspian?"
"How long has this been going on?"
"Violet tells me you intended to leave for Rome?"
Benedict only nodded.
When he reached what had happened the previous night, when he repeated the words that had been delivered to him in the alley, Lady Danbury was silent for a long time, looking at the fire.
"Viscount Waverley," she said at last, slowly, as though tasting the name. "Yes. I know him. Or rather: I knew his wife."
Benedict raised his head.
"Anna Waverley." Lady Danbury turned her head slightly, looking toward the window, at something visible only to her. "A clever woman. Quiet. The kind of person who sees everything and says little, because they understand that words carry a price." She was silent for a moment. "She loved music. She played beautifully." Her gaze returned to Benedict. "The boy inherited that from her, I imagine?"
"Yes," he said quietly.
"She would not have approved of what her husband has done." It was not sentiment; it was a stated fact. "She died too young." Lady Danbury struck the floor with her cane, once, twice. "The Viscount was always a man of great ambition and very little imagination. A dangerous combination. Ambition without imagination makes a person blind to consequences."
"He understands the consequences," said Benedict. "He is counting on them."
"He is counting on the consequences he can see." Lady Danbury looked at him directly at last. "That is an entirely different thing, my dear."
"What can you do?" he asked, without preamble.
Lady Danbury raised an eyebrow: not in surprise but in something closer to satisfaction, as though she had been waiting for exactly this question, without any prelude.
"The Viscount believes this is his game," she said calmly. "Newspapers, rumour, reputation. He plays on the ground he knows." A pause. "But there is ground he does not know. Or fails to account for, which amounts to the same thing." She rose, leaning on her cane. "I am going to the Queen."
Silence.
"Lady Danbury," Benedict began, "I cannot ask you to "
"You are not asking." She looked down at him, and in her expression there was no condescension, only something that resembled a decision already made. "I am doing this myself. And I have my reasons." She considered for a moment. "Anna Waverley was my friend, though not a close one. The Viscount erased her son like an unwanted document. That is sufficient."
"The Queen may not " Violet began.
"Charlotte will hear me," said Danbury, without boastfulness. "She does not always agree with what I say. But she listens." Lady Danbury picked up her gloves from the table and began to draw them on. "That is more than Viscount Waverley can claim."
She turned to Benedict from the doorway.
"One more thing." Her voice sharpened. "No independent action. Do you hear me? None whatsoever. You have already gone out alone at night, and we can all see how that concluded."
Benedict said nothing.
"Benedict," she said, with emphasis.
"I hear you."
"That is not a promise."
"I promise," he added.
Lady Danbury studied him for another moment, measuring. Then she nodded.
"Violet." She inclined her head slightly: a brief gesture, but there was warmth in it. "Feed the boy. He looks like something the fog brought in."
And she left.
That same day Benedict wrote to Granville. Briefly, without detail:
*The journey is postponed; circumstances have changed. I offer my sincere apologies.*
He sealed the envelope and gave it to a servant. Then he sat back down in his chair.
Granville would understand. Or he would not: it hardly mattered now.
***
The days that followed were strange. Not empty, emptiness implies an absence, but here there was too much of everything. Too many people in the house, too many voices, too many glances that moved across him with the care of people walking alongside something fragile.
Eloise did not ask how he was feeling. She did not say that everything would be all right. She simply came each morning with a book, sat down in the armchair by the window, and read, or made a show of reading. Benedict caught her eyes on him now and then, but she always looked away with such a serene expression that he almost smiled.
She left when it was time to leave. She came back. She brought tea, set it on the table without a word, did not wait to be thanked. If he was silent, she was silent too. If he spoke, she listened. She had a gift for being present without pressing, and it was harder to do than it appeared.
One night he could not sleep and went out into the corridor. She was sitting on the window seat with a candle, in her dressing gown with her hair loose, entirely unlike the Eloise the world was permitted to see.
"You're awake too," he said.
"I'm reading," she replied, without looking up.
He sat beside her. She moved to make room, without a word. They stayed like that until dawn: she with her book, he with his thoughts, and it was enough.
One evening she said, without lifting her eyes from the page:
"I am angry with him. With the Viscount."
"I know."
"No, you don't understand how much." She looked up. "He stole a man's life. Not as a figure of speech: literally. Five years under a false name, without documents, without family, without the right to exist as himself." She stopped. "I think about it, and I want to do something quite impermissible for a lady."
"Eloise."
"What?"
"Thank you," he said quietly.
She looked at him. For a long moment. Then she returned to her book.
"Don't thank me. Just wait and see how this ends."
***
Colin came every day. Sometimes with Penelope, sometimes alone. He would sit beside Benedict, suggest a hand of cards, tell him something amusing and inconsequential: about people they both knew, about the club, about the latest exhibition at the Royal Academy. Benedict listened. Sometimes he answered. Colin did not require more.
One evening they were sitting in the study and Colin fell silent in the middle of some story. He looked at his brother.
"Ben," he said. "I don't know how to say this correctly. I understand that you " He stopped, and then began again. "I just want you to know. Whatever happens, you are my brother. That doesn't change."
"You don't condemn me?" Benedict asked.
Colin was quiet for a moment, honestly, without rushing.
"I don't know yet what I think," he said at last. "About a great many things, I don't know. But I know you. And that is enough for now."
It was more than Benedict had expected.
Penelope came the following day and brought him a book. She simply set it on the table, said nothing, only smiled. He looked at the cover. Dante. *La Vita Nuova.*
He did not ask how she had known.
Anthony did not speak to him. But on the third morning Benedict found a single sheet of paper on his writing desk. A few lines in Anthony's hand: sharp, slanted. Legal terminology, references to precedents. Something about rights to property. Something about the possibility of formally amending a record of status.
No salutation. No signature.
Benedict looked at that sheet for a long time. Then he folded it carefully and placed it in his breast pocket.
***
Violet told him nothing of what was happening. Only now and then at breakfast she mentioned it in passing: Lady Danbury had sent her regards; Lady Danbury had been occupied; Lady Danbury asked them not to be hasty.
Benedict waited. It was the hardest thing.
He did not paint. The easel stood in the corner, untouched. The closed sketchbook lay on the table. Sometimes he opened it, looked at the last drawing: Caspian at the pianoforte, only lines, only the movement of hands. Then he closed it again.
He thought of him constantly, remembered things in no particular order: the way Caspian laughed with his head thrown back. The way he read aloud, shifting his voice for different characters and pretending not to notice Benedict watching. One morning he had risen before Benedict, and when Benedict woke the smell of coffee was drifting from the kitchen, and there was a quiet sound, Caspian humming something to himself in Latin as he stirred the pot.
Benedict had lain there and listened, thinking: *this is happiness. Ordinary, inexplicable, this.*
Now he did not know.
*Was that the last time? Did I notice, then, that it mattered? Did I remember it well enough?*
It seemed he had not. It seemed one never remembered anything well enough.
On the fifth day Colin found him in the library, sitting with a book he was clearly not reading, looking out of the window.
"Come out somewhere," Colin said.
"No."
"Just a walk. Not far." He smiled. "Pen says you haven't left the house in three days."
"I promised Lady Danbury that I wouldn't "
"A walk in Hyde Park does not break any promises."
Benedict looked at him. Then he closed the book.
They walked in silence. The park was nearly empty at that hour: a few riders in the distance, a couple out with dogs. The sky was the same grey it had been for days, but the air smelled of damp earth and something green, something of spring.
Colin walked beside him with his hands in his pockets.
"Was he a good man?" he asked suddenly.
Benedict did not answer immediately.
"Yes," he said at last. "Very."
"Tell me something about him," Colin said.
Benedict walked, looking at the ground. Then:
"He could quote Dante from memory. Whole cantos. And he could also make a soup from whatever happened to be left in the larder." Benedict paused for a moment. "He laughed at himself when he did something clumsy. Not with embarrassment, not with irritation: simply laughed. And after five years of being utterly alone, he was still kinder than most people I have ever known."
Colin listened without speaking.
"He played the pianoforte," Benedict continued. "Beautifully. Not the way people play at evening parties, for an audience. But as though..." He stopped, looking out at the grey water of the pond. "As though it were a conversation. Something private." He was quiet for a moment. "I drew him. A great deal. I have never drawn anyone the way I drew him."
"I would have liked to meet him," Colin said quietly.
Benedict did not answer.
They stood by the water a little longer. Then they turned and walked back.
***
On the eighth day after Lady Danbury's visit, Violet called him to the study.
She was standing at the window, not sitting: standing, which was unusual for her. She turned when he came in. Her face was composed, but there was something in it, something she had not yet said.
"Sit down," she said.
"Mama, what "
"Sit down, Benedict."
He sat.
"Lady Danbury went to the Queen," she said, evenly. "Yesterday. Queen Charlotte received her." Violet pressed her lips together briefly. "The Queen knows who Viscount Waverley is. She knew his wife. And she does not approve of what he has done."
"That means "
"It means the Queen has taken the matter in hand. What she will do, and how, is not for us to know." Violet looked at him directly. "But Lady Danbury says: when Queen Charlotte undertakes something, she sees it through."
Silence.
Outside, London went about its ordinary business. Children's laughter, somewhere in the distance. A carriage passing.
"And that is all?" he asked. "We simply wait?"
"Yes," said Violet. "We wait."
He rose. He moved through the study, from the door to the window and back. He stopped.
"Mama, I don't know how to wait. I have already "
"I know." She came to him and took his hand in both of hers, warm and steady. "I know, my dear."
She was quiet for a moment, holding on.
"When your father died, I spent two years waiting to believe it was true. Waiting for him to come back. Waiting for someone to tell me there had been a mistake." She looked at him, and in her eyes was something very old, very hard-won. "Waiting is not inaction. Sometimes it is the only thing that can be done. And it costs just as much as anything else."
Benedict looked at her.
"You knew," he said quietly. "For a long time? About me: you knew?"
Violet held a brief pause.
"I suspected," she said at last. "Mothers always suspect more than they say." The faintest movement at the corner of her mouth. "I was waiting until you were ready."
He closed his eyes for a moment.
"I'm sorry it took so long."
"There is nothing to forgive." She pressed his hand. "Go. Eat something. Mary tells me you haven't touched your breakfast in days."
***
On the tenth day, someone knocked at the door.
Benedict was in the library. He heard it: loud, insistent, nothing like the knock of an ordinary caller. Voices in the hall.
Then Violet's voice, startled. Audible even through the closed door.
Footsteps on the stairs. Quick.
The library door swung open.
Violet.
The expression on her face brought Benedict to his feet before she had spoken.
"The hall," she said. "Now."
He went out.
Two men stood in the hall in dark livery, unfamiliar, impeccably cut. Between them, one shoulder leaning against the doorframe, eyes closed, his face as grey as the London sky before rain
Caspian.
Alive.
For a moment Benedict simply stood.
His heart struck so hard that breathing became difficult.
Then he moved forward.
Three steps across the hall. He could not afterwards remember making them.
At that moment Caspian opened
his eyes.
Grey-blue. Dimmed with pain, but alive.
He saw Benedict, and smiled: that faint, stubborn smile Benedict knew too well.
"You," he said, his voice barely holding. "I knew... you wouldn't stop."
Benedict said nothing.
He simply stepped forward and held him.
Tightly.
As though if he let go, Caspian would disappear again.7Please respect copyright.ＰＥＮＡＮＡPyXVkzDWLt
and then Add to home screen.