Harrow’s Liquor Cabinet
HARROW’S LIQUOR CABINET
By morning, Gideon stood at the study window, regretting several things at once.
The brandy most immediately.
A dull ache pressed behind his eyes, his mouth tasted foul, and his stomach had taken a firm stance against the previous evening’s decisions.
And because Gideon hadn’t slept at all really, he’d had far too much time to think.
About Beatrice. About this friendship. About Harrowgate.
And Dash marrying Lady Hannah.
Behind him, Dash shifted on the sofa. Then came a low, wretched groan—less the sound of a duke waking than of a man being exhumed.
Gideon did not turn around.
“Still alive, then,” he said. “I must admit, I was beginning to worry.”
Dash cursed in French and buried his face in his hands.
Gideon’s grip tightened around his cup.
“You did not kill Sebastian,” he said.
Dash went still.
“You’ve made more than one decision based on this assumption. I want to set that record straight, once and for all.”
“My knuckles were bloody, Hawk.”
“You sparred with him. Yes. You were drunk. We were all drunk.” Gideon set down his tea. “But Sebastian walked away afterward. You were insensible by then.”
Dash lifted his head, pale and furious. “You cannot know that.”
“I can and I do.”
Dash’s mouth twisted. “If not me, who?”
Gideon looked away.
“We’ll never know.” How he managed to fall to his death.
Whether it was an accident or he was pushed or whether he flung himself into the sea.
Gideon himself could only vaguely recall Sebastian leaving the glow of the fire, stumbling about, vanishing into the dark…
and then nothing until the next morning. After he was already gone.
But there was one part of that night Gideon could never put behind him.
“I was the one who raided Harrow’s liquor cabinet.”
He had broken into the headmaster’s office. Broken the lock on the cabinet himself.
And carried the means of Sebastian’s death back to the others with his own hands.
For a moment, only the ticking of the clock marked the silence.
Then Dash gave a rough, humorless laugh. “God, Hawk.”
Gideon’s gaze snapped back.
“You cannot mean to take responsibility for the whole bloody catastrophe.” Dash winced and pressed a hand to his temple. “That is arrogant even for you.”
“This is not arrogance.”
“Isn’t it?” Dash looked at him through bloodshot eyes. “It has always been your particular talent, Hawk. We got into trouble as boys, and you stepped forward first. Took the blame first. As though the rest of us had no wills of our own.”
Gideon’s jaw tightened. “This was different.”
“No. The consequences were far worse.” Dash’s voice roughened. “But everything else was the same.”
Gideon said nothing.
Dash shifted, grimacing at the movement. “Your father died while you were away. Somehow you took the blame for that. As though a son could hold back death by remaining obediently under his father’s roof.”
“Do not.”
“I will, actually.” Dash’s gaze sharpened despite the ruin of him.
“Because you are doing it again. With Sebastian. With me. With God knows who else.” He exhaled hard.
“If you had not brought spirits, someone else would have. If not that night, another. We were idiots—reckless, stupid, desperate to prove ourselves men.”
“Do not absolve me.”
“I am not absolving you,” Dash said. “What you did mattered. Of course it did.”
His gaze held Gideon’s.
“But you were not the only one there making foolish choices.”
Gideon looked away.
“You cannot take responsibility for everyone, mon ami,” Dash said, quieter now. “Nor for everything. You never could.”
Beatrice’s voice moved through Gideon’s mind before he could stop it.
“Just because of what happened between us, does not give you the right to take over everything in my life…Can you not see how stifling that is? How insulting?”
Bile rose in the back of his throat.
Dash sank back against the sofa, exhausted by the effort of coherence. “We all chose badly. Sebastian too. That is the worst of it, I think. Not that one of us controlled everything. That none of us did.”
Gideon turned toward the window.
He did not want wisdom from a hungover duke who had spent the past several days drinking himself half-dead over a widow.
Especially not when the man was right.
He had thought himself careful. Vigilant.
Honorable, damnit!
Perhaps he had simply been gripping tighter and tighter until she had no choice but to tear herself free.
Behind him, Dash shifted.
Then went still.
Gideon glanced back.
Dash was staring at the ring on his finger.
Whatever had moved through him did so all at once. His expression sharpened, ruin giving way to something dangerously like hope.
“She still wears it,” Dash said.
Gideon frowned. “Wears what?”
“The ring.” Dash lurched to his feet and immediately swayed.
Gideon caught up a bowl and thrust it toward him. “Sit down before you disgrace us both.”
Dash ignored him. “He lied.”
“Who lied?”
“Grimm.” Dash wiped his mouth with the back of his hand, suddenly looking much more alive, though he still had the complexion of a freshly warmed corpse. “He must have.”
“Dash—”
But Dash was already moving, or trying to.
And Gideon knew that look. For the first time in days, his friend was listening to something other than despair.
So Gideon let him go.
Long after Dash staggered out in pursuit of whatever hope he had found, Gideon remained in the study.
Damn Dash.
Could he keep her safe without keeping her under his thumb?
Could he stand close enough to help, but not so close that he crowded her?
He did not know.
And that was the hell of it.
For the first time since Beatrice had ordered him out of her brother’s drawing room, Gideon wondered if making this right would not require some grand gesture or clever plan.
It might require the one thing that felt most impossible.
He might have to trust her.