37Please respect copyright.ＰＥＮＡＮＡJYb0GpS5GMBenedict left the club late in the evening.
His head ached from three hours of tedious conversation. Anthony had dragged him to dinner with some acquaintances, and Benedict had sat listening to arguments about horses, politics, and someone's gambling debts. He had smiled, nodded, drunk wine that tasted sour on his tongue. He had played the part of the dutiful brother, the respectable gentleman, the second Bridgerton son who had everything in order and no secrets worth mentioning.
But all the while he had been thinking of Caspian.
Where he was at that moment.
Whether he was sleeping.
He hadn't come in three days, which meant the surveillance had tightened. Meant he couldn't come.
Or something worse had happened.
Benedict turned up his collar and quickened his pace.
The night was cold, sharp in a way that had no business belonging to May. Fog crept between the buildings, caught on the lamp-posts, softened the edges of everything. The streets had emptied; now and then a late carriage rattled past, and the occasional pedestrian hurried by with his head drawn into his shoulders.
Benedict turned into an alley, cutting across.
It was darker here. The lamplight barely reached the edges of the passage, leaving the middle in dense shadow. It smelled of wet stone and rot and the stale water that gathered in the drainage channel.
And then he heard it.
A dull, heavy impact.
Another.
And then a sound: suppressed, pained, the sound a man makes when he is trying to keep it inside and cannot.
A voice, low and vicious.
The words were indistinct, but their meaning needed no translation.
Benedict stopped.
At the far end of the alley, against a blank wall, shadows were moving. Three figures, bent over someone on the ground.
One of them kicked the prone body: hard, practised. The figure on the cobblestones lurched, hands coming up to shield the head.
Benedict ran.
He did not think. He did not count them. He did not calculate.
The first blow was clumsy, his fist glancing off one man's temple. The man staggered but kept his feet and shoved Benedict hard in the chest. Benedict barely stayed upright, skidded on the wet stones, and crashed shoulder-first into the second man.
That one swore.
"Where the hell did you come from?"
Benedict hit him without aiming, wherever he could reach. He felt hard bone under his knuckles, heard a crack, felt his own sharp intake of breath. His knuckles ignited with pain.
Someone grabbed him by the collar.
He wrenched free and drove his elbow back. He connected; the man behind him hissed and let go.
Two of them were standing before him now, breathing heavily.
The third had taken a step back.
Tall, wiry. His face hidden in the shadow of his hat.
Something gleamed in his hand.
A knife.
"That's enough," he said, with an almost bored composure.
His voice was nearly languid.
"I'd suggest you go on your way, sir."
Benedict said nothing. His heart was hammering so hard the sound of it filled his ears.
From the corner of his eye he caught sight of an old barrel lid propped against the wall. He grabbed it and threw it.
The man with the knife sidestepped it easily, but took a step back.
The others retreated as well.
"You've chosen a poor evening for heroics, sir," he said quietly. "This is none of your concern."
Benedict moved forward.
"Get out."
The man with the knife smiled faintly.
"All right. You've had your luck tonight."
He jerked his chin at the others. They were already backing away, one holding his jaw, the other wiping blood from his lip with the back of his hand.
Before he left, the man looked at Benedict one more time.
"Give him a message."
He nodded toward the figure on the ground.
"Tell him the Viscount is losing patience."
A pause.
"Next time the conversation will be considerably shorter."
And they were gone, their footsteps dissolving into the fog.
Silence returned.
Somewhere water was dripping.
And in the distance, a dog was barking.
Benedict stood, breathing hard.
His hands were still clenched. His knuckles burned.
The adrenaline was ebbing, and with it came a cold, clear understanding: there had been three of them. One with a knife.
He might not have been in time.
Benedict turned sharply.
Looked down.
At first he saw only a dark coat, torn at the shoulder.
Then a hand against the stones.
Then hair, tangled, matted with filth.
And then the face.
For a moment his mind refused to accept what he was seeing.
*No. Not him.*
But it was.
Caspian lay on his side, curled in on himself, arms pressed against his ribs. His knees were drawn up toward his chest. Blood darkened his lips, a thin line running from the corner of his mouth to his chin. His hair at the temple was matted with it.
Benedict dropped to his knees in the dirty puddle.
"Caspian."
His voice broke.
"Caspian, can you hear me?"
The eyelids stirred.
One eye opened slowly, grey-blue, unfocused, as though he did not immediately know where he was.
Then his gaze found Benedict's face.
"Ben..."
An exhale. Almost without sound.
"I'm here. I'm right here."
Benedict touched his shoulder carefully, then his ribs.
Caspian flinched with pain.
Bad.
Very bad.
"Can you get up? Try."
Caspian attempted to push himself up on one elbow. His arm shook. He groaned through his teeth and nearly went down again.
"Damn it," Benedict whispered.
He got an arm around him.
"Hold on to me. Like that. I have you."
Caspian leaned against him with nearly his full weight. His feet moved slowly, unevenly. Every step came with a ragged exhale.
Benedict felt the trembling of his breathing beneath his fingers.
***
The walk to the Chelsea house seemed endless.
They moved through the dark streets, past shuttered shops and sleeping houses with their black windows.
Benedict talked quietly, barely attending to what he said.
Anything.
The weather.
That it was only two more streets.
That everything would be all right.
The meaning did not matter. What mattered was the voice.
Sometimes Caspian answered with a low sound, barely more than a groan. Sometimes he said nothing for too long.
When that happened, Benedict held him tighter.
"Hey. Don't fall asleep. Do you hear me? Look at me."
Once, a night watchman came toward them carrying a lantern.
The light caught both their faces.
The watchman frowned.
"What's happened here?"
Benedict, without slowing, said:
"My friend fell from his horse."
The watchman looked at the blood, the torn coat, the laboured breathing.
He did not believe it. But he nodded and went on.
By the time they reached the house, Caspian could barely stand.
Benedict unlocked the door with one hand, keeping hold of him with the other.
Caspian leaned against the doorframe and closed his eyes for a moment.
"Hey."
Benedict touched his cheek.
"A little further. Do you hear me?"
He drew him gently inside.
"We're nearly there."
***
In the drawing room, Benedict lowered him onto the settee as carefully as he could. He slid a cushion under his head, holding his shoulders as Caspian sank slowly onto the fabric.
He did not open his eyes.
But he was breathing.
Roughly. Irregularly. With pauses between each breath that went on too long, that made Benedict go still each time and wait for the next.
He got to his feet quickly.
He lit candles: one, then another. The room contracted around them, the light pulling furniture and walls and the figure on the settee out of the darkness.
He went for water, clean cloths, and a bottle of brandy. He set everything on the small table beside the settee.
Only then did he kneel down again.
And look properly.
In the light, everything was worse.
The left side of Caspian's face was a single dark bruise. The eye had swollen shut completely, the lids fused together. On his cheekbone there was a ragged cut, deep, the bleeding stopped but the blood dried in a dark crust.
His lip was split, blood dried on his chin. More of it had dried in his hair at the temple, matting the strands together.
Benedict noticed the blood on his own shirt only now, and immediately stopped thinking about it.
"Let me see."
Caspian did not answer. He turned his head slightly, as though granting permission.
Benedict unfastened his coat carefully, button by button. His fingers were trembling for some reason, and he had to make himself slow down.
Every movement drew a quiet sound of pain.
The shirt had stuck to the skin.
Benedict dampened a cloth and began to work it free, separating the fabric from the flesh with care.
"Bear with me," he murmured, barely above a whisper.
When the cloth finally came away, he saw the ribs.
The entire left side of Caspian's torso was covered in dark bruising, spreading in uneven patches. Near the lower edge of the ribs, the colour deepened almost to black.
Benedict pressed his fingers there gently.
Caspian drew a sharp breath and clenched his teeth so hard the muscles stood out along his jaw.
"Broken?"
"No."
His voice was rough.
Caspian opened his one good eye.
"I know what that feels like. No."
"Does it hurt to breathe?"
A faint, ruined smile touched the split lip.
"Everything hurts."
Benedict cleaned the wounds in silence. The cloth moved over his skin with care, and the water in the basin darkened. He did not rush, working the blood away slowly, stroke by stroke, and beneath it found what was worse: bruising, deep and livid, raw abrasions.
Sometimes Caspian flinched when the cloth found a tender place. But he did not complain.
He simply breathed carefully, shallowly, as though every movement of air required effort.
Benedict bound the cut on his cheekbone, drawing the cloth snug. Then he cleaned the blood from his hair, moving the damp cloth gently along his temple.
His hand paused there for a moment, almost without meaning to.
He withdrew it.
He poured brandy into a glass.
"Drink."
He held it to Caspian's lips.
Caspian took a small sip.
He grimaced, coughed: a sharp spasm that moved through his whole body and sent his hands back to his ribs.
"God "
"Easy. Again."
The second sip he took more slowly.
Then he lay back against the cushion and finally allowed himself to go slack.
Benedict set the glass on the table.
For a moment he simply looked at him.
Then he lowered himself to the floor beside the settee.
His back against it. His face toward the hearth.
The coals there had nearly gone out, only an occasional dull red spark moving across them.
Benedict drew his knees up and wrapped his arms around them.
He sat without moving.
He listened.
Caspian's breathing gradually changed. The roughness softened. The pauses between breaths grew shorter.
Each time air entered his lungs again, Benedict felt something inside him release slightly.
Wax dripped from a candle onto the holder.
The coals crackled in the grate.
The minutes moved slowly.
At last the breathing behind him steadied: still heavy, but without the frightening irregularity of before.
Benedict closed his eyes.
Only then did he understand how completely exhausted he was.
Some time passed.
Then, quietly, behind him, Caspian whispered:
"Benedict."
The room was dark, only the faint glow of the dying coals moving on the walls. Perhaps ten minutes had passed, perhaps longer; they had been silent, listening to each other breathe.
"My father."
Benedict did not move. Did not turn.
"Viscount Waverley. An old family. An estate in Derbyshire. The House of Lords."
A pause. Outside, water dripped from the roof with a steady, cold, indifferent rhythm.
"I was the only son. The heir. My mother loved me. My father..." Caspian paused, as though measuring the next words carefully. "Tolerated me."
"I always knew I was different. From childhood. I had no name for it; I simply felt it. I learned to hide it. Learned to be correct."
Caspian fell silent. Benedict heard only his breathing, slow and uneven, with long pauses, as though every word was extracted at cost.
"When I was fifteen, there was a boy. The gardener's son. We spent whole days together. One afternoon he kissed me behind the stables."
He gave a barely audible sound: not quite a laugh, and nothing like amusement. The sound of someone who has long since stopped finding anything funny.
"I thought I would die of happiness. A week later he was dismissed. My father had found out, I never knew how. One morning he was simply gone."
Benedict pressed his hands into fists, feeling the pain move through his chest.
"Then Oxford."
Caspian's voice slowed, grew heavier, each word seeming wrung from him:
"I was eighteen. The first day. I walked into him in a corridor. He was carrying a stack of books, and they went everywhere. He dropped to his knees and started laughing. Simply laughing, at himself, at the books, at all of it."
Caspian exhaled slowly.
"I started laughing too. We spent twenty minutes collecting books off the floor and laughing like idiots."
He closed his teeth, and said very quietly:
"Thomas."
The name came out like something fragile: a thread that might break at the slightest movement.
"Thomas Hargreave. A baronet's son. Fair hair, always dishevelled. His laugh when he laughed, everyone around him laughed. It was impossible to resist."
Silence settled through the room, dense as fog.
"We became inseparable. We studied for examinations, argued until dawn, wandered the city at night. He could talk about anything: Greek tragedy, why horses have such ridiculous tails, whether justice exists at all or only in theory. I listened to him and understood: with this person, I did not have to pretend."
Caspian stopped. His shoulders drew in; his hands were shaking.
"We were friends for two years. And all that time I knew. Knew that what I felt for him was more than it should be. Far more. But I said nothing. I was afraid of losing the only real friend I had ever had. Afraid of seeing in his eyes what I had always seen in my father's."
"And then one day... I noticed how he looked at me."
Benedict turned slowly.
Caspian lay with his eyes closed. Tears were running along his temples, mixing with the dirt in his hair. He made no effort to wipe them away.
"It was an evening. Late, past midnight. We were in my room, drinking wine, talking about something I can't even remember now. And I looked at him. He was looking at me. Not the way a friend looks. Not like that at all."
"What did you do?" Benedict asked quietly.
"I said everything I felt. Everything I had been afraid to say from the beginning."
"And he?"
Caspian swallowed:
"He stood up. Walked around the room. I thought: now he will leave, and it will all be over. But he didn't leave. He stopped at the window and looked out at the street for a long time. Then he turned and said that he had thought he was losing his mind. That he had thought it was only him."
He swallowed again, as though swallowing tears.
"For several weeks we were happy. Truly happy. We hid in empty lecture rooms, late nights, locked doors. We made plans: after we graduated, we would leave. Italy, Greece, anywhere no one knew us. We would simply live."
"One night we forgot to lock the door."
Benedict closed his eyes.
"The Dean. And someone else, a professor, he couldn't remember who. They walked in and saw everything."
Caspian was quiet for a moment. When he spoke again, his voice was flat, unnaturally so.
"We were sent down that same day. Our things were put out into the street. Our names were not published: the families were too prominent. No one wanted a scandal. But the rumours spread within hours."
"His father came the next morning." Caspian's voice grew quieter. "I watched him take Thomas away. Thomas looked back once. Only once. I saw his face."
"I wrote to him every day. The letters came back unopened."
His voice became nearly soundless:
"A week later, Thomas's father came to my father's club. Drunk and in a rage. He was shouting: where is your son, Waverley? He has killed my only child."
Benedict moved slowly to sit beside the settee.
"Thomas hanged himself," Caspian said, barely voiced. "In his room. In his parents' house. A few days after being sent down."
His shoulders shook. He dropped his head, pressed his teeth together, but his breathing was already breaking apart, coming in ragged pulls, ugly and beyond his control.
Benedict put his arms around him carefully, mindful of the ribs. He said nothing. He simply held him and felt Caspian shaking beneath his hands, felt him trying to hold himself together and failing.
Then the breathing levelled. Not calm, simply quieter: broken, but still alive.
"It was my fault," Caspian whispered. "If I had said nothing "
"No," Benedict said quietly, moving his hand through his hair. "You are not responsible for that. You both made your own choices. You did not decide for him."
Caspian did not answer. He could not.
"Three days after Thomas's funeral, my father summoned me to his study." He spoke at last, when his breathing had grown steadier. "He sat across from me and said: Caspian Waverley no longer exists."
"What?" Benedict said, very quietly.
"He died of a fever. The burial is on Friday." Caspian was quiet for a moment. "An empty coffin. A service. A notice in the paper. He gave me money and made himself clear: if I were to appear in society, he would arrange an accident." Another pause. "The dead are not searched for. And I am officially dead."
Benedict said nothing.
"That was five years ago," Caspian added. "Five years."
Benedict looked at the ruined face, the bruising, the closed eyes. At a man who had been broken without being killed.
"Why does he keep you here? Why not simply let you disappear?"
"He likes knowing I am suffering. Death would be too swift; it wouldn't interest him. He wants me hiding, afraid of my own shadow. Waking every morning and remembering that I do not exist."
Benedict was silent.
"Tonight I thought I had lost them," Caspian continued. "I doubled back for three hours. I thought about leaving altogether, going somewhere entirely different. But I went back to the room, and they were already waiting in the alley."
A pause.
Benedict covered his hand with his own.
The fire had nearly gone out.
"We need to leave."
Caspian opened his eyes.
"What?"
"England. Somewhere no one is looking for Caspian Waverley."
"You're serious."
"Completely."
"Your family "
"I am a painter. I can paint anywhere. Rome, Florence, Naples: it makes no difference to me."
"You would be leaving everything behind."
"I cannot watch them kill you."
A long silence.
"I love you," Caspian said.
"I know."
"Whatever happens... remember that."
"Nothing is going to happen. We are leaving. Together."
Caspian nodded. He closed his eyes.
Benedict stayed where he was, holding his hand, until the breathing became steady and deep.
Outside, the sky was beginning to lighten.
And across London, the Viscount Waverley's men were composing a report about the man who had intervened in the alley. The second Bridgerton son. A painter who had no business being there.
37Please respect copyright.ＰＥＮＡＮＡ6ZcT5ZfvCW
37Please respect copyright.ＰＥＮＡＮＡUm3KPmkQDe
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