by Bonnie Dee
“If it’s too painful to tell me what he was like, tell me what happened the day you lost him.” Tobin apparently wasn’t concerned after all. He was some kind of ghoul.
Bennet glared at him. “Good Lord, why do you think recalling his death would be easier than recalling his life?”
Tobin’s face puckered into a scowl. “Hmm. Good point.”
He was right, though. The memory of Jacob’s death came to Bennet all the time, in his sleep, as he worked with his dogs, as he walked the dales in rain or snow or sun. Every. Single. Day. Whereas when he tried to remember the life he’d had with Jacob—those memories of pleasure and companionship hurt even more.
Tobin bent, picked up a rock and weighed it in his hand. “I read an account of that day. There was a mob involved. Were you there?”
“Mr. Tobin, I don’t know you well, but I think a rat terrier could take a lesson in persistence from you.”
“That’s me, yapping away at the rat hole.”
“Do you ever leave off?”
“Rarely. That’s why I’m good at my work.” Tobin flipped the rock in his hand out of the barnyard. He gave it a good spin, and Bennet imagined him in white flannels, bowling in a cricket game.
Tobin picked up another rock. “I expect if I push too hard, you’ll stalk off after making some remark about sending me back to Faircliffe.”
“Which you’ll ignore.”
The fair, freckled face bloomed into a full smile. “You do know me.” The smile vanished as did the playful tone. “What were you told about that awful day?”
“Christ, told? I didn’t have to be told anything. I was there.”
The stone in his hand dropped to the ground, landing on a cobblestoned part of the yard with a clatter. “I’m so very sorry, Mr. Pierce.”
His old name, Mr. Pierce. That didn’t jar nearly as much as hearing Jacob’s name had.
Bennet pulled in a long breath. “We’d been standing with a group watching a street performer’s act.”
“Go on, please, if you can,” Tobin said—a suggestion, not a command, for once.
Bennet told the story as quickly as he could, with only a few details. He left out the fact that sometimes, in the middle of the night, he absurdly blamed the man with the dancing poodles because the act was so amusing. The dogs had pranced on their hind legs and hopped and skipped in circles. Bennet would never forget that moment or those dogs, because Jacob had worked himself into a frenzy of hilarity over the mildly amusing act. His gaze met Daniel’s, and the jolt of love Pierce had felt must have shone on his face.
He told Tobin, “I think we smiled at each other, and maybe that was the mistake, but I suspect our problems began the moment Jacob kissed his thumb and brushed it across my cheek.
“I believe the wrong person in the crowd saw our, ah, mutual affection, because I heard a sharp hiss and a mutter of ‘Nancys!’ The people’s amusement over the dancing dogs quickly turned into a different sort of entertainment.”
Tobin said, “I read about the incident, and I know the spot—one of those East End streets barely better than an alley.” He gave a slight cough, one of those sounds gentlemen used to cover their embarrassment. Bennet had forgotten those small, polite conceits.
Tobin went on. “The article about the attack mentioned that the crowd had shouted insults. I expect I know the sort.”
“Sodomite,” Bennet said flatly. “They only shouted and jeered at first. Perhaps we might have walked away, but Jacob never could surrender or back away from a fight. I was walking off, determined to get away from there in a hurry, but not Jacob. He turned around and actually took a few steps toward them, the idiot. He said, ‘Oh, go boil your arse, or do I mean boil your head. Same thing, I imagine.’ He wouldn’t leave it alone.” Bennet felt the usual impotent fury at his friend. And then he realized that Jacob’s outspoken nature and inability to leave well enough alone reminded him of Tobin, though perhaps the lawyer wasn’t as inclined to sneer at the world.
“No matter what he said, that crowd was filled with savages.” Tobin’s cheeks were flushed. “Stupid, vicious savages.”
“Sometimes I think the insults were only an excuse to attack. We were too well dressed for that area. The crowd grew, and at least a few got greedy. They wanted money.”
He couldn’t say the rest, that Jacob’s body was recovered stripped of his wallet, his pocket watch and his jeweled fob. The usual shame rose in Bennet’s chest. He hadn’t stopped his friend’s murder.
“Why the hell didn’t they just take the money and leave?” Tobin sounded angry, almost anguished.
His passionate response allowed Bennet’s rage to flow again. “I thought someone would help. But no.” He shook his head hard, unwilling to allow tears again. “No one stopped to help. Some only watched and didn’t attack, but no one helped Jacob. They smiled. I saw the gleam of white teeth showing in the smiles.”
“Oh my God.”
Bennet contemplated the scene in his head. “Then again, maybe I invented those details. I know I didn’t imagine how he…” He swallowed and tried again. “I remember how Jacob screamed to me. He screamed my name and told me to run, and then he choked, and that was the end.”
Tobin didn’t speak. That made a nice change.
Bennet forced himself to return to the bleak, familiar memory of that street. “I remember blood. I think I saw his final spasm of death and his blood and something lighter, his brain or skull, on that street. Perhaps that’s from all the dreams I’ve had afterwards. It was so very dark there, except for a single lamp burning at the end of the street. After I knew he was gone, I ran. And ran.”
Tobin said, “Saving yourself was the only intelligent thing to do.”
“I often agree with that, but sometimes…” He swallowed bile again. “I ran from there, and then I couldn’t seem to stop running. I thought if I stopped, the anger might take over. And if that happened, I might kill someone. I still dream of smashing the policeman I saw watching, then walking away.”
“A policeman? Are you telling the truth?”
Bennet found he could talk to Tobin about the copper who’d turned his back. He had spoken of it only once before, to two polite yet even more indifferent officials. After those encounters, he didn’t bother to bring the story to anyone else.
The usual anger filled him, but to see Tobin’s blue eyes blazing made his own silent fury seem less impotent. Someone else understood.
“Hell, no wonder you took off.” Tobin picked up another rock and threw it hard so it smashed into a post, alarming a squawk and flap from a chicken that had been picking at the new grass nearby.
Bennet said, “I had to. I went as far from London as I could. I couldn’t bear to be near people for more than a few minutes.” Past tense? He would have said that the restless irritation he always felt in the presence of his fellow man carried on today, but no. He had to admit the truth to himself. He could stand to be near this persistent pest, Tobin.
“You abandoned the name of Daniel Pierce,” Tobin said. “Why?”
“To avoid people like you, of course.”
He’d expected Tobin to laugh or at least smile, but the lawyer only shook his head. “Some people can disappear without consequences. You aren’t one of them.” He spoke gently, almost apologetically.
“I had no one who loved me, other than…” He didn’t say Jacob’s name.
“But you did have obligations. Why didn’t you send word or say anything once you settled here?”
“I took one thousand pounds of my own money and little else,” Bennet snapped. “I don’t owe anyone anything. Why should I be disturbed?”
Tobin didn’t speak. How surprising to learn he knew how to be quiet after all.
Bennet sighed and shifted from foot to foot. “To be truthful, I hadn’t meant to be so mysterious. I didn’t leave an addres
s, because I didn’t expect to settle anywhere. This place… The silence and the beauty caught me. I-I decided to reinvent who I was. I’d leave the running and pain forever. I’d allow Daniel Pierce to die too.”
“Perhaps you mean allow him to die instead of the man who actually did pass away that day?” Tobin rubbed his chin, leaving a tiny smear of dirt on his skin—after he’d taken the trouble to bathe himself in the frozen water. “You took his first name.”
Bennet considered growing offended, but the idea that he could take over the role of his dead friend was absurd. “Ha, I’m no more Jacob Phillips than I am Jip the dog. Jacob was fierce and tenacious and…” He shook his head. “I was too much the gentleman in my training. I could not turn into a snarling beast when it was required.”
“If you had, you would have been killed too.”
This was a familiar argument he’d often had with himself, and he gave his own automatic response. “One can’t help seeing a lack of response as cowardice.”
“Mr. Bennet or Mr. Pierce or whatever you wish to call yourself—”
“I’m Bennet.”
“You’re no coward. You took up farming with only books to guide you. You’ve made a success of it with your own two hands.” Tobin looked around the small, rather shabby yard and hut and seemed to glow with a sort of pride, as if he’d had a hand in shaping the place.
“There was no choice,” Bennet said. “The work saved me.”
Enough of confession. He’d admitted he was Pierce, and he’d told his story. Bennet felt curiously empty, as if he’d been sick. Perhaps he’d spewed the worst of the poison, but he doubted that was possible. “And I must return to the work now. I haven’t seen Bets for a time, have you?”
Tobin shook his head.
“And one of the lambs was struggling. I have to see if it has fed properly.” He avoided meeting Tobin’s eyes as he walked past him. At the entrance to the barn, Bennet risked a glance back. Tobin stared out at the hillside that was dotted with sheep, a curiously closed look on his usually expressive face. Perhaps he was insulted that Bennet walked away, as Tobin predicted he would.
Bennet forced his mind back to his duties, the glorious, endless treadmill of work on the farm.
Chapter Ten
Tobin watched Bennet—Pierce, the man who’d hit him like a one-two punch to the stomach—walk off. Again. Keeping Bennet in his presence was like trying to hold on to water. The man kept slipping away, striding across the land or hiding out in his sheep barn, determined to embrace his solitude at all costs. Tobin’s urge to comfort him in some way made him take a step as if to follow, but he restrained himself. Bennet’s stark revelation of the terrible attack against his lover begged for a little time alone. Tobin would grant him that.
He turned and walked into the slate-roofed house while mental pictures flashed through his mind. He could picture the scene as vividly as if he’d experienced it himself: the taunting individuals who abruptly turned into a dangerous mob; a young man’s paralyzing fear as he watched them take down his friend like dogs ripping apart a fox; and then the running…and the guilt at being unable to rescue the man he held most dear. God, no wonder Pierce had left London and never looked back.
Tobin stood inside the quiet house that so reflected its practical, hard-working owner. Every stick of furniture or possession was utilitarian, not an artistic splash of color or beautiful form in the décor—although there was a certain beauty in its sheer simplicity. And a comic note to the more wobbly furniture. The only clue to the man and the life Jacob Bennet had left behind was a couple of shelves of books tucked into a corner near the fireplace—and under one of the table’s too-short legs. Hard to picture the rough farmer as the Cambridge scholar he’d once been.
Tobin wandered over to read the spines of the books, running a finger along them. In addition to the histories, there were guides concerning animal husbandry and sheep raising, and there was a volume containing both The Iliad and The Odyssey, a book of Wordsworth’s poems, a tattered copy of Thoreau’s Walden, and an illustrated version of Robinson Crusoe. Tobin smiled at the last two books which so reflected Bennet’s isolationist attitude. The man was shipwrecked by choice—Tobin would be happy to act as his man Friday, for tonight, at least.
Tobin moved into the kitchen, stirred up the fire in the stove and set the huge kettle to heat. He had about as much experience in a kitchen as he had in a sheep barn but figured he would try his hand at putting together a simple meal for Bennet. Maybe hot food would lure the reluctant beast indoors.
Twenty minutes later, the scent of scorched beans and frying meat did its work. Bennet threw open the door and strode in on a gust of damp air—the breeze promised yet another bout of rain.
“What are you doing?” he demanded.
“Cooking.” Tobin lifted a spoonful of the beans, and they fell back into the pot with audible clinks. “I’ve got beans here, bread toasting in the oven, and ham frying. The tea should be well-steeped by now, so you can pour yourself a cup if you’d like.”
Bennet walked over to stare at the beans. “What have you done to them?”
Tobin squinted at the dried-out legumes. “Undercooked them, I should think. But I’ll add a little ham grease and stir them up, and they should be right as rain.”
“Dried beans require overnight soaking.” Bennet looked into the frying pan. “That’s not ham, it’s lamb, you idiot, and you’ve fried it to shoe leather.”
“Oh.” Tobin lifted a piece of meat with a fork. “I don’t know if I could bear to eat it anyway, not after all I’ve been through with lambs over the past twenty-four hours. How can you manage to take them from hoof to plate once you’ve known them so intimately?”
“I don’t name them,” Bennet gruffed.
Tobin nodded ruefully. “I certainly couldn’t imagine facing Jeffers, Bagsworth or Childs on my dinner plate. I can see now where naming them might be a problem. Wouldn’t do to become too close to one, now would it?” He glanced sideways at Bennet, letting that pointed dig sink in.
Bennet seemed to get the message. He gave a little grunt and opened the oven door to fork out the awkwardly sliced bread that was burned in spots but golden brown in others.
“Not bad. At least we can have bread with our tea.” Tobin grinned at Bennet and was pleased to see the man’s lips working hard not to smile. At last, he lost the battle and a smile broke loose.
“Get you out of the kitchen,” Bennet growled, making a shooing motion. “I’ll fix us a meal.”
So far, so good. Tobin had penetrated Bennet’s perpetual gloomy cloud once more and brought forth a smile. A little more pushing and gentle persuasion and he might have the man back in his embrace again before the night was over. If he could get Bennet to open up as he’d done before, get him to trust or allow Tobin to offer solace… Well then, Tobin could feel his work here was complete. Good Lord, what had happened to his original mission to locate the missing heir and bring him back to face his responsibilities? It seemed he’d tumbled down a rabbit hole and entered Bennet’s mad world, forgetting his duty in the process.
One night can’t hurt. The insidious voice inside seduced him away from all lawyerly thoughts. One night of comfort and passion, and let tomorrow take care of itself.
Tobin took the forks and cups Bennet gave him and placed them on the table. He poured two cups of tea, then stood nearby and watched Bennet move efficiently around his small kitchen. In a trice, the man had put together a plain but filling meal of leftover potatoes and some sort of gravy. Lamb, no doubt, but Tobin would try not to think of his fleecy friends as he ate. Anyway, his stomach was grumbling so fiercely, he couldn’t bring himself to care.
He sat across from Bennet, and the pair of them dug in. No grace or refined manners at this table—just two men who’d worked up hearty appetites. Tobin remembered Stephen’s thoughtless ways and couldn’t imagine what he�
�d seen in his most recent lover. Experienced mouth, skillful hands and much clever chatter with little substance—that was about the sum total of Stephen Ash. Maybe it was bad of Tobin to reduce a man’s entire character to such a dismissive equation, but he honestly remembered little depth when he recalled Stephen.
“Good enough?” Bennet suddenly asked.
“Oh. Yes. Very filling,” Tobin answered.
“You’re quiet.” It sounded almost like an accusation.
“Just remembering someone I knew and wondering what attracted me to him. He was a pleasant enough fellow, I suppose, but there was no… I don’t believe I’ve ever felt the sort of caring you’ve talked about.” He caught his breath, wishing he hadn’t brought up the subject of the murdered Jacob. The last thing he wanted was for Bennet to close those shutters or jump up from the table and walk away again.
But for once, Bennet stayed put, fork in hand, mulling over a mouthful of potatoes and gravy. “You speak so openly. Don’t you realize how dangerous that is? It’s as if you forget having a male lover is a crime in most people’s eyes.”
Tobin shrugged. “Naturally, I wouldn’t bring up the topic with just anyone, but I’m talking to you. We understand each other and should be able to speak freely about all the things we must normally keep hidden.”
Bennet set down the fork. “With a tongue as free as yours, it’s too easy to slip. One day you’ll say or do the wrong thing at the wrong time, and what will happen to you then?”
The man’s protectiveness was touching rather than irritating. Tobin smiled across the table at his host. “I promise to be careful. I’m not as incautious as you deem me. But isn’t it a relief to be able to talk openly with someone now and then?” He hesitated, then went on. “Don’t you feel a little bit better now that you’ve actually told someone what happened to you and your friend?”