“Make the right decision, son,” his father said. “If not for the sake of your family, then for Benedict’s sake. If he is sent to Bedlam, you will have to go about the rest of your life knowing you caused his fate.”
With that, his father and the footmen were gone. Alex could hear the murmur of voices outside the sitting room door, then his father’s footsteps carrying him away. The silence of the room was disrupted by an odd sound—guttural and tortured. Slumped forward, the tears dropped onto his hands and the legs of his breeches, and Alex realized the sounds were coming from him—uncontrolled sobs that ripped from his chest and burned his throat.
Impotence smothered what was left of his resolve, and Alex drowned in his own hopelessness.
There was nothing left to do but fall on the sword and damn he and Ben to a life apart. Alex had no weapons with which to fight this battle, not even the strength of his title, as it was only a courtesy until he inherited. No one would come to his aid; it was all up to him. As there was nothing Alex wouldn’t do for Ben, he would have to spend the rest of the night coming to terms with what he had to do.
If he was destined to be miserable for the rest of his days, it would be in exchange for Ben’s freedom. It was the one consolation he had to hold onto as he surrendered to the emotions tearing through him, and wept.
After Alex had spilled every detail of the fateful night that had driven an immovable wedge between them, Ben hadn’t said a word. He sat still and silent until the end, his face unreadable. When Alex finished, he tried to launch into an apology, but Ben would have none of it. He had simply risen from his stool and left the gallery, his steps purposeful.
Alex sat alone for a little while, allowing himself to really feel the loss of the weight that had borne down upon him. There was still more to be said, but Alex didn’t think either of them could manage it just now. He was content to allow Ben his space in hopes that they would continue their conversation later.
He spent the rest of the afternoon in the nursery, enjoying every second he could spare to spend with his Ella. Her sunny disposition went a long way toward improving Alex’s mood, and he’d left to dress for dinner with a smile on his face.
That smile didn’t last long, as he found no sign of Ben when returning to his bedchamber. Neither Hamond nor Simmons had laid eyes on him all day. He allowed Hamond to dress and groom him, then made for the dining room. Perhaps Ben had preferred not to dress for dinner, which didn’t bother Alex a whit. He simply needed to see Ben, to know that he hadn’t ruined everything by finally telling the truth.
Ben wasn’t in the dining room and didn’t make an appearance for the meal. Fisher did join him, though he’d been a silent companion once learning that Ben had wandered off and was nowhere to be found. Alex could barely stomach a single bite, and spent the duration of mealtime pushing things about on his plate. He didn’t even possess the desire to sample the cheesecake presented for dessert. Once Fisher had finished demolishing three plates full, they parted ways, with Alex trudging up to his room. Worry had him wanting to send a search party for Ben, but Alex stayed his hand. Ben was safe and would return on his own terms. Alex didn’t want to make matters worse by interfering.
Shedding his coat and cravat, Alex took up a book and waited. Ben didn’t appear for another three hours, washed and changed out of his training attire. He looked haggard and worn, a thick sprinkle of whiskers shadowing his jaw. Upon finding Alex awaiting him, Ben approached and took the chair beside his.
At first, neither of them spoke. Alex closed his book but remained silent, waiting for Ben to steer the conversation. As of now, Alex had no idea where they stood or where to begin.
Finally, Ben issued a deep sigh and met Alex’s gaze, his mouth drawn down. “I’ve spent the day thinking about everything you told me, and comparing it to my side of the story. I have gone over it several times, thinking of what you might have done differently and what I might have done had the shoe been on the other foot.”
“You would have been braver than I am,” Alex replied. “You would have told both our fathers to go to the devil. You would have fought every footman who tried to keep you locked in your room. You would never have agreed to marry someone rather than be with me.”
Ben studied him closely for a moment, slowly nodding his head. “Yes, I would have.”
“I always knew you were the brave one. I wasn’t strong enough to fight, Ben, and I’m so sorry. If I had to pay for my mistake for the rest of my life, it would be no more than I deserve.”
“No,” Ben replied, shocking Alex to his core. “You did the right thing. I would have done all the things you just said. I would have died fighting. And you would have been damned as a result of my folly. Neither of us would have gone unscathed.”
Alex shook his head, uncertain he had heard Ben correctly. “You … you aren’t angry with me?”
Ben ran a hand over his face. “Not for leaving me to await you in Dover. As much as it pains me to admit it, you made the right decision. I only wished you had found some way to tell me, even after you had wed Katherine. A letter, a visit … something.”
“I didn’t think you would hear me out.”
“I would have.”
“Would you?” Alex challenged. “I tried to pay a call after Katherine and I returned from our wedding trip. I was told you refused to see me.”
Ben sat up straighter, eyebrows knitting together. “What?”
“Your father’s butler turned me away and told me not to return. You didn’t want to see me, ever.”
Ben shook his head, then lowered it into his hands. “Goddamn it. I was never told you had come to call. My father is the one who turned you away.”
Alex frowned. “Weren’t you able to get word to me somehow? Even just to demand an explanation?”
Ben raised his head, a haunted expression overtaking his features. “I couldn’t. You see, he didn’t follow through with his threat to commit me, but when I returned from Dover, he had other plans in mind. First, the beating. He had three footmen keep me caged in so he could abuse me as he saw fit. As I lay there bleeding and aching, the footmen took me to my bedchamber. I didn’t leave that room for three months.”
Intuition made Alex feel sick, his skin crawling as he guessed at what Ben would reveal. “He didn’t.”
“He did. A mad-doctor paid to be at his beck and call meant no one had to know that I was being treated for insanity due to immoral behavior. I fought the treatments with everything I had at first. But after being half-starved and beaten until I could barely breathe, I didn’t have the strength anymore. I could only muster the strength to live through each day, certain it would be my last.”
“Ben,” Alex whispered, grief bringing tears to his eyes. “What you must have suffered.”
Ben was beyond this room now, staring into the fire and reciting the atrocities committed against him as if they hadn’t happened to him, but someone else. “Purgatives to clear my body of foul spirits. Gruel and water, because a rich diet encouraged depravity and excess. All my clothes were taken away so I couldn’t leave. Ice baths and near-drownings in the tub … the water was so cold it felt like dozens of knives stabbing me in the chest. A strait-waistcoat when I grew violent … leeches to pull the poison out of me.”
A hot tear tracked down Alex’s cheek, his heart aching as he was confronted with what his decision had resulted in. “How did it end?”
A soft smile curved Ben’s mouth. “Aubrey and Nick. They had visited several times after realizing they hadn’t seen me about Town in a while. My father did to them what he did to you. He turned them away, telling them I was indisposed and would see no one. But they wouldn’t accept it. They returned and pushed their way inside, running up to my chamber to find me shivering in an ice bath. I’d lost two stone of weight and hadn’t been allowed food in days. Nick threatened to hire a magistrate if I wasn’t allowed to leave. Aubrey pulled me from the tub and carried me to the bed—I was too weak to stand. He dres
sed me while Nick argued with my father, and in the end our friends had their way. They took me from that house and helped nurse me back to health. My father tried to retrieve me, turning up at Aubrey’s townhouse to put up a fuss … but I wasn’t there. Aubrey and Nick had stashed me in the upper room over Rowland-Drake to hide me from him. Aubrey and Elizabeth’s nurse fed me and kept me comfortable until I was strong enough to care for myself. I lived in that upper room for two months before returning home. By then my father had returned to Norfolk. I dismissed the entire staff and hired new servants who were loyal to me and not him. I took up training with Fisher and spent my time trying to forget you. Somehow, I never could. You haunted me in my dreams and my waking hours. It was torment.”
Alex turned his chair to face Ben’s, placing a hand over one of his. “I never forgot you either. I longed for you, I mourned what we could never have. But I never suffered as you did, and I will never forgive myself for it.”
“There is nothing to be sorry for. I blamed you, but it was my father’s choice. He is the one who put me through hell. I suppose for a time it was easier to blame you for all of it.”
Staring at Ben’s profile, Alex reached with his free hand to push back the fall of Ben’s overgrown hair. The scar on his temple showed clearly, white and puckered.
“Is that how you got this scar? I’d noticed you touch it quite often, but didn’t want to ask.”
Ben looked at him again, making no move to push Alex’s hand away. “No, my father didn’t do this to me. I did it to myself.”
“What do you mean?”
“I mean … one night, I’d had enough. I didn’t think I could go on any longer. I was still in so much pain, and couldn’t function as I once had. I was drunk more often than not, and slept the hours away to escape the realities that awaited me.”
Alex tightened his hold on Ben’s hand, disbelief a stunning force. “Ben … please tell me you didn’t …”
“I did,” Ben replied without batting an eyelash. “I loaded my pistol, put it to my head, and pulled the trigger.”
Chapter 10
“The shocking news of the nuptials of the Hon. Mr. G—once one of London’s most notorious rakes—eventually gave way to speculation and anticipation. How long might it take for the man to grow bored of his new bride? Apparently, far longer than many of us supposed, as Mr. G has not been seen about Town in months.”
-The London Gossip, 31 January 1820
Benedict supposed he had shocked Alex into a stupor. After finally revealing the truth behind the scar on his temple, Benedict had waited for the expected hysterics. There had been none. Alex only stared at him, lips parted and eyes unblinking.
There was nothing for Benedict to do but keep talking. “It was sheer luck that Aubrey happened to visit that night. He was shown into my study, where I sat with an empty brandy bottle and my pistol, trying to work up the nerve to end my life.”
“Dear God,” Alex whispered, his voice small and broken.
Benedict had remained steady through the recitation of his darkest moments out of necessity. He had never spoken of this to anyone, and only Nick and Aubrey knew the extent of his trauma. Only Aubrey knew the true reason his father had put him in the hands of Dr. Pruett. Now, he was cutting himself open all over again, making himself vulnerable to the person who had initially wounded him—however unintentional it had been.
“Aubrey tried to talk me down,” Benedict murmured, aware that his voice had grown hoarse and that his chest was so tight he could barely breathe. “He told me that my life was still worth living. I couldn’t see it then, but he promised me that I would see it for myself if I tried hard enough. But I was too distraught.”
“Ben.”
Benedict couldn’t seem to stop now that he’d begun, all the poison and pain that had gnawed away at him pouring out in a deluge. “I told him he should let me die. I was too broken to go on, to be a good friend to him or anyone else. I didn’t think I could ever love anyone as much as I loved you, and you were out of my reach. There was nothing else to live for. So … I lifted the gun and told Aubrey to leave. I couldn’t do it with him watching me. He begged, he pleaded, he threatened. In the end, I was weak … I put my finger on the trigger. Aubrey ran across the room and dove over my desk, his fingers closing around the gun just as I pulled the trigger. He managed to wrench it far enough that when it fired, the bullet merely grazed me.”
“The hole in your office wall … I saw something shiny and round embedded inside it. That was the bullet you tried to shoot yourself with.”
Benedict snorted. “Technically, I did shoot myself, and it hurt like hell. Burned my skin away and sent me toppling out of my chair. Aubrey threw the gun aside and came down beside me. He refused to leave me alone in the days following, too afraid I might decide to do it again.”
“And … did you?”
Benedict found he could no longer meet Alex’s gaze. It was too penetrating and knowing, too hypnotizing in its intensity. “I wanted to,” he admitted, staring down at his hands. They began to blur before his eyes, his eyes prickling. “Every year on the day of your marriage, I would sit and think of that day. You, so painfully handsome in your wedding attire. Katherine, perfect and lovely and acceptable as your match. Aubrey begged me not to attend, but I couldn’t stay away if for no reason other than assuring myself that it was real. On the anniversary of the wedding, I sat in my study and stared at the safe where I kept that pistol, and contemplated taking it out. But, looking at that hole in my wall served as a reminder of my lowest point. Once my body recovered from Dr. Pruett’s torture, I began putting my life back together. I had friends, and Aubrey’s family became my family. I was free of my father and had made it clear he would never exert that kind of control over me again. I did have something to live for. It’s why I never had the hole patched. I needed to see that bullet to remind myself how close I came to death. If I could survive that, I could survive anything.”
Alex lurched from his seat, going to his knees before Benedict. With a wet sniffle, Alex threw both arms around his waist and buried his face against Benedict’s chest.
“I’m so glad you survived,” he said, his voice cracking. “Promise me you’ll never do anything like that again. I would die if you left me that way. I wouldn’t survive it.”
Something within Benedict crumbled, releasing the pressure that had been building for years. He slumped against Alex, weary of fighting, needing closeness with another person when he was so raw and in such pain.
No, he didn’t need to be close to just anyone. It was Alex he needed, and just now he wasn’t ashamed to admit it. Laying his head atop Alex’s, Benedict clung to him, allowing himself to feel the weight of all that had been said.
“There now,” Benedict murmured. “My story wasn’t really anything to cry over, was it? Alex, stop it.”
Raising his head to look at Benedict, Alex revealed the wet streaks on his cheeks, which were flushed pink. “But Ben … you’re crying, too.”
Benedict blinked, registering for the first time the warm tears trickling toward his jaw. They kept coming as the pressure in his chest released, sending a wave of relief through him. His breath quickened as if he might start sobbing, but Benedict held it in, his shoulders quaking from the force of it. Alex was on his feet, pulling Benedict up and urging him into a tight embrace. Benedict couldn’t have freed himself if he tried … but then, it would be a lie to assert that he wanted to. Burying his head in Alex’s neck, he allowed himself time to experience the emotional release, and the kind of closeness he hadn’t allowed anyone in so long.
Alex stroked his hair and kissed his brow, before taking his hand. “Will you come to bed with me? Or I’ll send for dinner?”
“I found a tavern with a decent stew and ate there. Bed sounds perfect.”
He let Alex pull him along, exhausted now that all had been revealed. Benedict felt as if he’d been physically pummeled, his body aching and his head swimming. The soft mattres
s cradled him, and the pillow was a sweet relief to his pounding head. Alex took a few minutes to come to bed, and when he did, he wore only his breeches. Alex helped Benedict out of his shirt, then laid behind him, spooning his body in a comforting hold. His bare hand fell against Benedict’s chest, fingers toying with the springy hairs. Alex nuzzled the back of his neck, pressing soft kisses along his nape.
His body began to stir in response to the stimuli, but Benedict didn’t have the strength to act on it. Instead, he sank into the warmth of Alex’s hold and gave himself over to sleep. The last thing he heard before falling asleep was Alex’s soft whisper.
“I love you, Ben.”
Benedict woke the next morning to Alex’s hand toying at the fastening of his trousers. Through bleary eyes, he realized it was not yet dawn. Instead of allowing himself a few more minutes of slumber, Benedict reached for wakefulness, nudging his cock against Alex’s question hand.
“Good morning,” Alex’s sleep-roughened voice rumbled in his ear.
Benedict murmured something in response, the pleasure of fingers stroking the length of his cock making it difficult to string words together.
Alex chuckled, the vibrations in his chest rippling across Benedict’s back. “At least part of you is wide awake.”
Benedict grunted when Alex gave him a squeeze, then began working him in slow, lazy motions. “It’s always the first part of me to wake up.”
“Hmm … so the fact that I’m touching you has nothing to do with it?”
“Of course not, don’t be ridiculous.”
“Then I suppose I should stop.”
Benedict caught Alex’s hand before he could pull it free. Pressing it back against his cock, he rolled his hips, surging his erection against Alex’s palm.
“Don’t you dare.”
Alex laughed again, but obliged him, his strokes becoming firmer and faster. Alex’s breath quickened against Benedict’s back, nibbling lips and a searching tongue finding the places along his neck and shoulder that made him shiver. Another hand worked his trousers further down, then cupped one of his buttocks and squeezed.
Chasing Benedict (The Gentleman Courtesans Book 5) Page 19