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64Please respect copyright.ＰＥＮＡＮＡYx0LDkfJG4
Benedict didn't sleep that night.
Returning home well past midnight, he walked past his bedroom and went straight up to the attic, where old canvases and unfinished works were stored. He lit three candles, arranged them on the floor, sat down with his back against the wall, and simply sat there, staring into the darkness.
Caspian's voice still echoed in his head.
"Darkness is not the absence of light. It is the presence of something else."
Benedict closed his eyes, trying to hold onto the sensation, that burning, that spark that had ignited in him during their conversation. For the first time in weeks, he felt not emptiness, but hunger. Impatience. The desire to seize a brush and...
"And what? What was he supposed to paint?"
He didn't know. But for the first time, this didn't frighten him. Not knowing seemed not a failure, but a possibility.
When dawn painted the sky over London a dirty pink, Benedict descended to his room, changed into a fresh shirt, and left the house without waiting for breakfast. Violet called out to him from the stairs, but he pretended not to hear.
He needed to get to the studio.
***
Bloomsbury greeted him with morning silence. The streets were just waking up, shopkeepers opening their shutters, maids washing stoops, somewhere in the distance the bell of St. George's Church rang. Benedict climbed the narrow staircase, unlocked the studio door, and the smell of turpentine hit him in the face like a slap.
He approached the easel where an unfinished canvas stood, another attempt at a landscape, lifeless and correct. He removed it, set it against the wall. Took a new one, clean. Stretched it. Secured it.
The white canvas stared at him, as always mocking and empty. But today Benedict wasn't afraid of it.
He took the palette, squeezed out paints: burnt umber, lamp black, ochre. Dark colors. Caravaggio's colors. Added white lead, cadmium. Dipped the brush.
And froze.
"What do you feel?" asked an internal voice, similar to Lawrence's.
Benedict closed his eyes. Remembered last night. The sofa in the corner of Granville's drawing room. Caspian's gray-blue eyes, cold as a winter sea, but burning when he spoke of Caravaggio. His hands, gripping the worn volume of Dante. The line of his cheekbones in the candlelight.
"The moment of recognition."
Benedict opened his eyes and began to paint.
He didn't think. Didn't plan the composition, didn't make sketches. Simply allowed the brush to move, laying stroke after stroke. First the darkness deep, almost black, but not dead, alive. With hints of blue and brown, with a suggestion of depth.
Then light. Not bright, not triumphant. Muted. A beam falling from somewhere to the side, picking out from the darkness the contour of a face. Not a portrait he wasn't trying to recreate Caspian's features. Just... presence. The sense of a person in the darkness. Someone who sees you, even when you think you're invisible.
Hours passed. The light in the window changed from morning to afternoon, then to evening. Benedict didn't notice. He painted, erased, painted again. His fingers went numb. His back ached from the strain. He didn't stop.
When he finally stepped back from the canvas, dusk was already gathering outside the window.
Benedict looked at the work and exhaled.
It was... alive. Not a masterpiece. Not something they would accept at the academy. But for the first time in months, the canvas before him breathed. There was tension in it. Light and darkness didn't simply coexist they argued, attracted, repelled.
Benedict sank to the floor, leaning his back against the wall, unable to tear his gaze from the painting.
He had done it. Finally.
But understanding came next, cold and sobering: this wasn't his achievement. Not entirely. The spark hadn't come from within. It had come from him. From Caspian. From the conversation. From those gray-blue eyes that still stood before Benedict when he closed his own.
"Passion is collision."
Granville was right. Caspian was right.
Benedict needed flint. He needed... him.
***
The following days, Benedict tried to find Caspian.
He returned to Granville, but he only shrugged.
"I told you, he appears and disappears. Sometimes he's gone for weeks. I don't know his address. He's not the type to leave calling cards."
"There must be something. At least some clue."
Granville thought.
"The only thing I know for certain: he's obsessed with books. Old, rare, Italian ones. Once mentioned he spends half his salary at book dealers. Start with bookshops..."
Benedict left Granville with a single lead. If Caspian loved books enough to spend half his salary on them, then he frequented bookshops. And the oldest and best in London, Hatchard's shop, was on Piccadilly.
***
Hatchard's shop was packed to the ceiling. Shelves piled one upon another, books lying in stacks on the floor, on tables, on windowsills. It smelled of dust, leather bindings, and secrets alluring as the promise of forgotten worlds.
Behind the counter stood an elderly clerk with glasses on the tip of his nose.
"Looking for something specific, sir?" he asked as soon as Benedict entered.
"I'm looking for a person," Benedict answered, "young. Dark hair, light eyes. Reads Dante in the original. His name is Caspian Blackwood."
The clerk squinted.
"Blackwood, you say?"
"Yes. Do you know him?"
A long pause. The clerk removed his glasses, wiped them with the edge of his apron, put them back on.
"I know one young man," he said slowly. "Comes once a week, sometimes more often. Buys old editions, Italian texts. Pays cash, always the exact amount. Not talkative." He looked at Benedict appraisingly. "Are you his friend?"
"I... yes. You could say that. I need to contact him. It's important."
The clerk shook his head.
"I don't know his address. But he usually comes on Saturdays. Toward evening."
Saturday. Today was Thursday.
"Thank you," Benedict exhaled. "Thank you very much."
He left the shop with a feeling of relief mixed with impatience. Two days. He could wait two days.
"Could he?"
***
Saturday stretched for an eternity.
Benedict spent the morning trying to concentrate on anything. Had breakfast with the family, listened to Hyacinth's story about the new governess who was "unbearably dull." Eloise interrogated him with her gaze, clearly suspecting something amiss, but he ignored her.
After lunch, he couldn't stand it and went to Piccadilly. It was only three o'clock, too early, but Benedict couldn't stay at home. He bought a newspaper, sat down in a coffee house across from Hatchard's, and began to wait, pretending to read.
Four o'clock. Five. Six.
The street filled with the evening crowd—carriages, pedestrians, merchants closing their shops. Benedict was drinking his third cup of coffee, and his hands had begun to tremble from caffeine and nerves.
Maybe the clerk was mistaken. Maybe Caspian wouldn't come today. Maybe this was a mad undertaking, and Benedict was sitting here like a lunatic, stalking a man who probably didn't even remember their conversation.
And then he saw him.
Caspian was walking along Piccadilly from the direction of Green Park, a tall silhouette in a dark frock coat, hands in pockets. He moved slowly, thoughtfully, not noticing the crowd around him. On his face was the same detached expression as at Granville's house, as if he was here, but not quite. A ghost among the living.
Benedict froze, clutching the newspaper in his hands.
Caspian reached the shop, pushed the door, disappeared inside.
Benedict jumped out of the coffee house, nearly knocking over his chair. Crossed the street, dodging a carriage. Stopped at the shop window, trying to catch his breath, collect his thoughts.
What would he say? "Hello, I've been looking for you all week because you helped me paint something alive, and now I can't stop thinking about you"?
It sounded insane even in his head. But he was already here. Had already seen him.
Benedict pushed the door and entered.
Caspian stood by the far shelf, leafing through a book in a worn leather binding. He looked up at the sound of the bell above the door, and their eyes met.
Surprise flickered in the gray-blue eyes, quick as a flash of lightning. Then wariness. Or... joy?
"Mr. Bridgerton," Caspian said evenly. "What a surprise."
"I was looking for you," Benedict blurted out before he could change his mind.
"Looking for me?" Caspian closed the book but didn't return it to the shelf. "Why?"
"I..." Benedict faltered, realizing the absurdity of the situation, "wanted to continue our conversation. You said that perhaps, if fate deemed it necessary..."
"I say many things," Caspian interrupted, and weariness sounded in his voice. "Not everything should be taken seriously."
"But I did take it seriously," Benedict took a step closer, lowering his voice. The clerk was busy with another customer, but still. "After our conversation, I returned to the studio. And for the first time in months, I painted something... alive. You helped me. I don't know how, but you did."
Caspian looked at him with a long, unreadable gaze.
"I'm glad," he said finally, "sincerely. But that was your achievement, not mine."
"No." Benedict shook his head. "You said that passion is collision. A spark. I collided with you, and it ignited." He took another step, and they were almost close. "I need it again. That conversation. That... impact."
The mask of detachment on Caspian's face wavered.
"You don't know what you're asking for," he said quietly.
"Then explain it to me."
"Not here."
"Where?"
Caspian hesitated. Benedict saw the struggle in his eyes: desire and fear, attraction and repulsion.
"I have a studio," Benedict blurted out, "in Bloomsbury. We could... just talk. Like last time. About Caravaggio. About Dante. About anything."
"Just talk," Caspian repeated with a bitter smile.
"Yes."
The pause stretched. Somewhere on the street, a carriage rumbled past. The bell above the door chimed as another customer left.
"All right," Caspian exhaled, "but only once. One conversation. And then you'll leave me alone."
Benedict nodded, though he already knew it was a lie. Once wouldn't be enough.
"The address?"
Benedict dictated it. Caspian didn't write it down, but Benedict saw him repeating it to himself, memorizing.
"Tomorrow evening," Caspian said, "after ten. I'll be there."
He placed the book back on the shelf carefully, almost tenderly and headed for the exit without looking back.
"Thank you," Benedict called after him.
Caspian didn't answer. Simply nodded and left.
***
Sunday evening blanketed London with a damp shroud. The rain began after sunset, not a downpour but a fine drizzle that made the pavements slippery and turned the gas lamps into blurred yellow patches in the darkness.
Benedict spent the day in a state close to fever. In the morning, he pretended to read the newspaper at breakfast, though he didn't understand a word. During the day, he tried to sketch in his room, but the lines came out wrong, meaningless. In the evening, he barely touched his dinner, until Violet asked if he was ill.
"Just tired, Mother," he lied, avoiding her perceptive gaze.
Eloise kicked him under the table and hissed when the others were distracted:
"You're acting strange even by your standards."
"Mind your own business."
"My business is boring. Yours clearly isn't."
He didn't respond, but felt her gaze on him until the end of dinner.
At half past nine, Benedict went up to his room, locked himself in, waited an hour. When the house had settled into silence, he changed into a simple shirt and trousers, threw on a dark frock coat, and slipped out through the servants' entrance.
The rain greeted him with cold drops on his face. Benedict raised his collar and strode toward the corner of the square where one could usually catch a cab. But tonight the streets were emptytoo late, too wet.
He walked.
By the time he reached Bloomsbury, his clothes were soaked through, hair plastered to his forehead, and water squelched in his boots. But Benedict didn't care. Something hot, impatient beat in his chest, drowning out the discomfort.
He climbed the familiar stairs, unlocked the studio door. Inside it was dark and cold. Benedict lit candles one, two, three arranging them around the room until the space filled with soft golden light. Lit the small stove in the corner. Shook off his wet coat, hung it on the back of a chair.
And began to wait.
Ten o'clock passed. Half past ten. Benedict paced the studio, unable to sit still. Straightened canvases. Mixed paints he wasn't going to use. Looked out the window at the empty, wet street.
Maybe he wouldn't come. Maybe he'd changed his mind. Maybe this whole idea was madness, and Caspian had realized it.
And suddenly, a knock at the door.
Three knocks. Quiet, cautious.
Benedict froze, his heart leaping to his throat. He crossed the room, flung open the door.
Caspian stood on the threshold, soaked through, raindrops streaming from his hair, darkening the shoulders of his coat. The candles behind Benedict cast uneven light on Caspian, and the artist in him noted everything at once: the exhausted pallor of his skin, the shadows of fatigue under his eyes, the tense line of his jaw. Beauty that held more pain than peace.
"You came," Benedict breathed.
"I said I would," Caspian's voice was quiet but firm. "May I come in, or have you changed your mind?"
"No! I mean, yes. Please, come in." Benedict stepped back, letting him pass.
Caspian entered, and the door closed behind him with a soft click. He stopped in the middle of the studio, looking around canvases against the walls, an easel with a clean canvas, the stove radiating faint warmth, candles turning the room into an island of light amid London's darkness.
"So this is where you create," he observed.
"Try to," Benedict locked the door, turned around. "You're soaked. Take off your coat, it's all wet. You'll catch cold."
Caspian looked at him with a long gaze in which sad irony could be read.
"Caring for me, Mr. Bridgerton?"
"I just don't want you to get sick. And call me Benedict. Please."
A pause. Then Caspian nodded and removed his coat. Benedict took it, hung it next to his own. Under the coat was a shirt—simple, white, and damp from the rain, but not soaked through.
"Wine?" Benedict offered, nodding at the bottle he'd brought the day before. "I have wine."
"Wine would be welcome."
Benedict poured two glasses, trying to keep his hands from betraying his agitation, and handed one to Caspian. Their fingers touched Caspian's fingers were ice-cold from the rain and Benedict nearly dropped the glass. Such a simple touch, yet his skin burned as if he'd touched flame.
Caspian took a sip without breaking eye contact.
"And why am I here, Benedict?"
"I wanted to show you something." Benedict approached the wall where the canvas he'd painted after their first meeting stood. He turned it toward the light. "Here. This is what I painted after the evening at Granville's. After our conversation."
Caspian came closer, looking at the painting. Darkness and light intertwined in struggle. The outline of a face barely discernible in the half-light. Presence without form.
"This..." he broke off, and Benedict saw how his face changed. The mask of detachment cracked, and beneath it flashed surprise. Real, genuine. "This is completely different."
"Different?"
"Different from what you described. Dead technique, beautiful emptiness." Caspian shook his head. "Here there is... life. A question. Something that makes you look."
"It's you," Benedict said, and the words escaped before he could stop them. "Not a portrait. But... a sensation. What I felt when we talked."
Caspian turned sharply to him, and something like fear flickered in his gray-blue eyes.
"You shouldn't say things like that."
"Why not?"
"Because it's..." He fell silent, looking away. "It doesn't matter. Show me how you work."
Benedict wanted to object, wanted to ask what Caspian had meant, but something in his strained voice almost fragile stopped him.
"All right," he said instead. "Sit. I'll make some sketches."
"Sketches?"
"Of your face, hands," Benedict took a sketchbook and charcoal. "If you don't mind."
Caspian hesitated. Then sat on a chair by the window, crossing his arms over his chest.
"Draw."
Benedict settled across from him, placing the sketchbook on his lap. He began with the outline the line of the jaw, cheekbones, that bump on the nose that made Caspian's face so memorable. The charcoal glided across the paper, leaving soft, blurred lines.
"Tell me something," he requested without looking up. "About anything. I need your voice to capture the expression."
"What do you want to know?"
"Where you're from. How you came to London. Why you read Dante in the original."
Caspian smiled, but there was no mirth in the smile.
"I was born in Devonshire. Studied at Oxford, two years, until... circumstances changed." He fell silent, looking out the window at the rain. "I started reading Dante there. My professor said the Divine Comedy must be read in Italian, otherwise you lose the music. He was right."
"And you learned Italian for Dante?"
"For the music," Caspian turned to him, and something distant flickered in his eyes. "You know what struck me most? Not hell. Everyone reads hell, everyone remembers the circles, the punishments, the horrors. But paradise... Dante's paradise is light. Pure, unbearable light. And Beatrice, who leads him ever higher until he sees God."
"Do you believe in it? In paradise?"
"No." The answer was quick, almost sharp. "But I believe in the striving for it. In the desire to rise. In the fact that a person can be better than he is."
Benedict looked up from the sketchbook, struck by the strength in his voice.
"You speak like someone who tried."
"Tried what?"
"To rise."
Caspian fell silent. Something changed in his face, a shadow ran across his features, and he turned away to the window.
"Perhaps," he said finally. "Or fell. Sometimes it's hard to tell one from the other."
They fell silent. Benedict continued to draw, now Caspian's hands, the long fingers grasping the wine glass. The silence wasn't heavy, but strangely comfortable. As if words weren't needed.
An hour passed. Maybe more. The candles were burning down, wax dripping down the candlesticks. The rain outside the window intensified, then subsided.
Caspian suddenly looked at his watch, a small pocket watch on a chain that he pulled from somewhere in his waistcoat.
"It's late," he said, and regret sounded in his voice. "I must go. I have... business in the morning."
Benedict looked up, and disappointment stabbed his chest—sharp, unexpectedly painful.
"Already?”
"Already.” Caspian rose, and the fragile, intimate moment shattered like glass. He was composed again, detached. The mask returned to its place. "Thank you for the evening. And for the wine."
"Wait," Benedict also stood, setting aside the sketchbook. "Will you... will you come back?”
Caspian froze by the coat rack, his hand on his coat.
"Why?"
"Because I'm not finished," Benedict nodded at the sketchbook. "Sketches are only the beginning. I need more time to..."
"To what?"
"To understand why I can't stop thinking about you. To see you again. To hear your voice."
"To truly paint you," he said instead.
Caspian looked at him with a long, unreadable gaze. Benedict saw the struggle in his eyes—the desire to agree and the fear that it was a mistake.
"I'll think about it," Caspian said finally. "Maybe."
"Maybe isn't no."
"Maybe is maybe." He put on his coat, buttoned it. "Good night, Benedict."
"Good night, Caspian."
The name sounded intimate in the silence of the studio. Caspian froze for a moment, as if he wanted to say something, but changed his mind. He nodded and left, closing the door behind him.
Benedict listened to his footsteps on the stairs until they faded. Then he went to the window and watched as the dark figure appeared below, on the street, and dissolved into the rain and darkness.
He lowered his gaze to the sketchbook. The sketches looked back at him—Caspian's face from different angles, his hands, the curve of his neck.
"Maybe."
Benedict smiled for the first time that evening.
It wasn't "no."
And as long as it wasn't "no," he had hope.
Outside the window, the rain finally stopped, and between the clouds appeared the moon pale, cold, but still light.
Benedict sat on the floor, leaning his back against the wall, and waited for dawn, leafing through the sketches and thinking about the man who was afraid to rise but still strove toward the light.
64Please respect copyright.ＰＥＮＡＮＡ5XqErPYcdj
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