“Pray, compose yourself, old boy...”
“You best watch your condescending tongue,old boy,” Seth growled. “You fled from Aldenbury that night. You saved yourself.Remember?”
“I had no choice.”
“And Ichoseto return to try and save them both. So do not stand before me now, assuming a stance of superiority, feigning to bear greater concern. That you are somehowmoreaggrieved by the events of that night, by the deaths of my father and your brother. The truth stands clear between us.”
“You need to calm your blood...”
“And if I don’t?” Seth boomed, his arm slicing through the air, a motion that sent Luke reeling back, tripping over the edge of a rug before collapsing into an adjacent armchair. “I am the one who bears loyalties here, Helmsley,” he snarled as he made to stand before his friend, “if I decide to stow away these documents, then that decision rests with myself and myself alone. For a decade, this quest has consumed me. While you have been out, savoring what pleasures life had to offer, I have been trapped in self-exile with the singular aim of vengeance. I am entitled to some respite from this torture.”
“Respite?” Luke scoffed. “To indulge in fantasies of Lady Charity then? Of the daughter of the very man who killed them?” He looked like he was trying to stand again, but Seth was having none of it, planting himself squarely in front of the man to block his path.
“Christ, man,” Seth rubbed a hand over his face. “That is my affair. Always has been, just like the Aldenbury Club wasourconcern, not yours. And never once before had I grilled you on abandoning it to that inferno.”
“And that’s precisely it, isn’t it,” Luke grumbled beneath clenched teeth. “Even as the elder brother, always overlooked, never in your circles. It should have been me at the helm of his part in that blasted club…”
“What?” Seth jerked his head sharply up to Luke. “Now's hardly the time for your petty squabbles regarding your standing at Aldenbury. Or is that the crux of it... that your envy feeds into your guilt? That even as Arthur was trapped in those flames, your bitterness about him managing the club with me consumed your thoughts until his final breath?”
“That’s quite enough, Axfordshire.”
“Decided,” Seth stepped back. “I'm putting this away, and if…whenI decide to dig it back up, to pursue Lord Holmwood for his crimes, it is my call and mine alone.”
"But you should be on him without letup," Luke blurted out, finally getting to his feet.
“Yet I have no more evidence than I had a decade ago,” Seth hissed at him. “Besides, I haven’t seen you putting on the line what I have to prove his guilt. Who was it that sneaked into his house that night to scour his study? Who has made attempts to infiltrate his inner circle to seek out a disgruntled friend or acquaintance? Never you. It has always been me. For so long, I have wondered why that was.”
Suddenly, Luke looked ready to charge, his nostrils flaring wide and his shoulders heaving up and down with heavy breaths. “Iwould be careful if I were you. You are walking into error, old boy...”
“Then I do so with my eyes wide and fully prepared. Leave now, Luke. Quash your own temper first, lest you say something you regret. My mind is made.” Seth turned away, signaling the conversation's end.
The door slammed with force behind him as Luke exited, causing the candle on his escritoire to teeter dangerously on the edge. Seth unconsciously steadied it, preventing it from falling and setting off a potential blaze. No sooner had he done so that he snatched his arm back in horror.
He let out a deep sigh, one he hadn't realized he'd been holding back, and sank with force into his armchair.
It is over. For now.
Not possible…
Charity lingered in the hallway, besieged by cold shadows. She’d heard nearly every word through the darkness. The first shout had reached her in the drawing room where she had abandoned the pianoforte she’d been attempting to coax some melodies from, compelled to investigate the source of the outcry. She was on the verge of pushing into the study when her father's name pierced the air.
Now, she knew everything.
Seth endured the loss of his father and his dearest friend, Arthur, in the Aldenbury fire. But could it truly be? Could my own father be to blame for all of Seth’s past traumas?
She heard Luke leave the room and recede down the corridor in the direction opposite to where she hid. Once the door clicked shut, she ventured after him, her fingertips grazing the walls to guide her.
“Luke?” Her voice reached out as she stepped into the grand entrance hall. Luke must have halted and turned back to face her, for his heavy footsteps abruptly ceased.
"Lady Charity?" His approach was tentative. "Oh… My sincerest apologies, my Lady, but were you witness to our little… exchange, perhaps?”
“Only parts of it,” she admitted, uncertain of how much she wanted him to know as he neared.
“Then I’m truly sorry you had to overhear it for the first time like that.”
“So, it is all true then…?”
“You really should speak to—”
