It had been nerve-racking digging up his precious flower. First, he’d pried up the slate slabs lining the ground. After which, he’d dug around the roots—well beyond. That left him with a hole half a foot deep and wide. Benedict’s fingers had trembled when he brushed the dirt away to reveal the root ball. After a painstakingly long effort, he had placed his violet within its new home and set it atop the long oak table—now centered in the room—while he cleaned the glass.
With the cobwebs banished, the floor swept—minus the new, very large crater—the rotten wood tables and broken pots removed, the windows washed, and soon the cracked glass cleared away, the greenhouse was becoming a pleasant enough situation in which he might spend his days.
The thought of Eliza here, in this place he’d made beautiful for her, flashed through his mind. An impossible, exquisite dream.
Distracted, he brushed a hand against a piece of glass that hadn’t fallen from the pane. He hissed and yanked it back. Dark red bloomed across his palm, pooling in the lines there. Benedict watched in numb fascination as the patterns formed, deepened.
A drop slipped from his wrist and fell to the stones below. The stark crimson against the slate grey shocked him into action, and he sought a rag. Finding none, he yanked his shirt off andripped a strip from the bottom—it was too filthy to ever be white again anyway.
He trapped the strip against his forefinger with his thumb, then looped it around his hand until he ran out of length. Satisfied, he tucked in the loose end.
“So this is where you’ve been hiding.”
An icy chill shot through Benedict’s veins, freezing him in place. His father’s footsteps echoed behind him as he strode into the greenhouse—ominous thumps along the stones, drawing ever nearer.
At last, Benedict summoned the will to turn, to face the man who’d carved him in his image. Over the years, his father had hacked at him with a chisel, chipping away the kind bits, the loving pieces of him. He’d dug into Benedict’s flesh and mind and heart until there was nothing left but hatred and cruelty.
Ambrose’s frigid eyes met Benedict’s before running along his frame—searching for remaining weaknesses to cut away.
“I’ve hardly been hiding,” Benedict said.
“What would you call this then? Not only did you fail me, your sister, even Blackwood, but you ran back home crying. Then you lock yourself away in this dung heap, too afraid to face me.”
“I did face you. I wasn’t aware there was anything left to be said.”
His father assessed him. Benedict didn’t know what he was probing for, but it was clear that he hadn’t found it.
“It is a humiliation, you know—to have such a son.”
“Trust me when I say the greater humiliation is to have you as a father.” The words spilled from Benedict without permission, slithered into the air twisting and writhing until they found his father’s ears. Benedict saw the precise moment they penetrated his father’s hatred in the way the man stilled—unnatural, unalive. Benedict’s thumb dug into the still bleeding cut on his palm.
“I beg your pardon?” his father asked, deathly calm.
“‘A man owns his failures.’ You always told me that—between lashes formyfailures. And yet here you stand. You’ve been hiding for twenty-eight years. Because Wayland won a fair game. Decades you’ve hidden behind the lie that he cheated you. You’ve shaped your entire life around maintaining that fiction. You’re willing to let your home, your legacy, and everyone in it rot rather than face the truth—which is thatyouare a failure.”
Nothing could have stopped the avalanche of accusations spilling from Benedict’s lips. Something about this ultimatefailurehad left Benedict incapable of a sense or fear.
Ambrose took a single, pointed step toward him.
Benedict’s gaze flicked—for the briefest of seconds—toward the little violet on the table resting between them. His heart recognized the mistake instantly, stilling before his father had even moved.
Between one breath and the next, Ambrose struck. He was impossibly fast, so quick that Benedict heard the smack of clay against stone before his eyes registered the motion.
“Leave,” Benedict growled.
Instinctively, Benedict understood the danger inherent in his father’s raised brow before he recognized the symbolism—the precise expressionhehad employed the night he returned when Ambrose had demanded his whip.
Comprehension washed over Benedict.
He managed half a step before two men swarmed into the greenhouse behind his father. Enys and Stark—two of the men who practically lived at the local tavern. They had a tendency to swap the same five pounds with his father—back and forth it moved. Each man in pursuit of the riches inherent in a game of hazard.
He’d fought both men in his youth when he and West had first been honing their skills in the ring. But it was just that—a bit of organized sport. Not like this. Whether his father had waived a debt or promised them a few shillings, the result would be the same.
Pain was coming to claim Benedict.
He pressed his thumb into the cut on his hand once more. He very much regretted leaving the hammer by the back wall. The floor was uneven, and he couldn’t recall where he’d set it—backing up wasn’t an option.
The second he wavered, weighing the choice to give them his back to reach the weapon, was a second too long.
