“I did not ask for your opinion, nor do I want it.”
Weston rolled his eyes before pushing past Benedict. Half a step away, he paused and turned back. “You’re better than this—better than him. You know it’s wrong. Deep down, you know Wayland didn’t cheat your father. Ambrose lost a fair wager. He staked your whole future and lost because he cares for nothing but himself and his own pride. Ruining Wayland won’t bring back the childhood you ought to’ve had. It won’t stop your father from selling Bella off to one of those leering old goats. He won’t suddenly respect you for it. But it’ll destroy your soul.”
“When did you become a bleeding poet?” Benedict snapped.
Weston sighed and crossed his arms. “I won’t tell your secrets. But you ought to think on what I’ve said. The match is at eleven on the thirteenth. I’ll see you there—unless you want to talk before.” He spun on his heels and stalked to the door.
“Goodbye,” Benedict grunted.
Benedict’s armsached when he returned home. He was grateful to find Bella abed. The rhythm of fist against hide was usually enough to quiet his raging thoughts. Tonight had been a notable exception.
The disappointment on West’s countenance refused to leave his mind, his friend’s words echoing in his ears.
But West was wrong. Wayland was a cheat. His father wouldn’t lie aboutthat. Other things certainly, but not that. Benedict was not forging ahead assuming this plan would right his childhood. His childhood had been fine—only dampened by their lack of fortune and the devastation of his mother’s death.
So why could he not silence West’s accusations? And why was his stomach churning, anxious and gnawing?
The call of his half-empty bottle of scotch was too much to ignore. The familiar rattling clink of neck against glass snapped through him. Astonished, he glanced down to find his hand shaking at precisely the same tempo his mother’s had that night.
It was his earliest memory, that night his father returned from town. Benedict had been three years old and abed when he awoke to the tromp of horses coming up the drive. Silently, he crept from his bed to the landing at the top of the stairs to peer over the railing.
Sometimes his mother’s startled cry—the one she made when the doors opened and two men dragged his father into the house—still haunted his dreams. For a brief moment, he’d thought his father dead.
But then the man had slurred, “Get outa my house, ya filthy cogs!” as he stumbled to a knee.
“I really think we ought to help you to your bed,” the taller man said—a man Benedict now knew as Augie Ainsley. Benedict never knew the other; it wasn’t Wayland.
“Get out! Or’ll send th’ dogs after ya!”
Ainsley had looked to his mother for guidance. “Go,” she’d said, with heartache in the tight reply.
Ainsley had nodded, offering her an expression Benedict had been too young to name. “Is there anyone else I might call on to assist you?”
“Weston—in the stables,” she’d hissed, referring to West’s father.
“Come,” he’d said, hauling the other man away.
Benedict’s father groaned as he slumped to one side. His mother knelt beside him and struggled against his weight in her effort to act as ballast.
His mother was a beautiful woman, with delicate golden features dotted with the same freckles Bella now complained of each morning. And her heart was just as delicate, guarded. That was the night Benedict watched his father crush it.
“Get’ff!” he commanded.
“I cannot leave you on the floor,” she responded with more force than usual.
“Th’ floor is all I ’ave left,” he groaned.
Benedict’s mother half shoved his father off as she shot to her feet, fingers pressed against her mouth. “What have you done?”
He retched pathetically in response.
“What have you done, Ambrose?”
“’Ve been cheated, ya daft cow.”
“How much?”
“Go to th’ devil!” He stumbled back up to his knee. She stepped back, and he slumped forward once more.
