Chapter 24
Twenty-Four
Lady Pemberthy was at the foot of the stairs. Her white face and aghast expression made it clear she’d heard everything. Wonderful.
She pressed a hand to her broad bosom, flinching as he strode past.
“I believe your niece will need you.” Even to him, his voice sounded icy. “I’ll see myself out.”
Then he was in the street, the echo of the door he’d slammed behind him loud in the quiet. Some builders glanced over from the house opposite, took one look at his face, and hurriedly resumed their work.
There was, he decided—stupid thoughts being the easiest to hide behind—no protocol for moments like this. Not when one didn’t drink. And not when public spectacle was anathema.
He went home. There were the bundles, still in the hallway, blue satin and white spilling from the disbelieving rent he’d made in the paper. Tom gave a happy shout of welcome, feet skidding as he rounded the corner and ran into the hallway.
“Not now.” He had no idea what the boy was even saying. He waved away the noise. “No. Not now.” He went upstairs to his room.
There was nothing to be gained by pacing, was there? Nothing to be gained by dragging his hands through his hair tight enough to tear it from his ringing skull. He looked for a moment at his reflection, hands braced on the dressing table edge, but the reflection there was just as stupid. More so.
Sobriety seemed suddenly overrated. What harm could there be in taking the edge off?
He went to his father’s room, holding his breath against the smell.
But there was none. Or nothing unpleasant.
Only shaving foam and coffee and soap. His father was downstairs—yes, he remembered now, there were all those cogs over the floor…
No decanters on the dressing table. None on the shelf. But he normally kept them in the cupboard at the side. Sebastian opened it. Found it empty.
The bedside table, then.
Empty too.
Wonderful. He couldn’t even get a drink, could he, in his own house?
He marched downstairs. But the office, the sitting room, and the drawing room were all empty.
He ignored his father’s greetings and whatever it was he said about gears and went to the kitchens.
The chef said nothing at all as Sebastian took the brandy from the work surface near where a sauce was being prepared.
It was hardly the first time the kitchen had been raided by a Thorne.
Back in his room, the first glass didn’t help. The second didn’t either. But he poured a third and started it grimly, resolved upon this course. He was perfectly capable of getting drunk, thank you very much.
There was a knock at the door, which he ignored. Another knock, and then the handle turned and his father stepped in, hesitating and diffident and irritating with it. Was he the earl, or was he some stupid mouse?
“Well?” snapped Sebastian.
His father took a step inside the room, though he kept his hand on the door, giving a troubled glance at the glass in Sebastian’s hand.
Sebastian, sitting at his dressing table with one booted ankle on his knee, picked up the decanter and slopped the glass full.
“Why not fetch a glass and join me, Father? I can’t recall if we’ve ever shared a bottle of anything in our lives. Surely it’s high time we did.”
His father’s jaw worked. A nervous swallow.
Then he carefully and quietly closed the door behind him, as though the precision of his movements were important.
Just as carefully and quietly, he came to sit on the end of Sebastian’s bed.
He tucked his hands under his thighs and kept his eyes on the floor.
“No, thank you, Sebastian. I don’t think I will.”
Sebastian huffed a laugh. “Oh, don’t play the saint.
Though you’ve done an admirable job of cleaning your room.
I couldn’t find your new hiding place, though I admit I didn’t look too hard.
But don’t pretend anything has changed. I saw you when I came in last night, flailing and raving in your room.
It took both Daniels and Doctor Phillips to pin you to the floor. ”
What an edifying sight that had been to return to after he’d stormed away from the ball. He’d been in no state to feign composure even for a moment. He’d returned to the familiar comforts of home.
His father’s lips pressed together as he studied the rug at his feet. A flicker of shame, perhaps. Or hurt.
“It is the delirium tremens. It is all part of the…the process. Doctor Phillips explained it all to me when we decided on this current course of…of weaning. He is a good man, Doctor Phillips. A very good man. He’s been researching the issue for many years.”
“Weaning,” repeated Sebastian, not hiding his scorn. He drank off half his glass in one go, eyes mocking as his father glanced up in embarrassment. “What son is supposed to witness his own father’s weaning? Should I get you a nurse? Should she bring up warmed bottles with a sucking teat?”
His father’s jaw tensed. A small show of temper. Good. Good. Sebastian was in the mood for a fight. But the old man let out a breath, full of sorrow not rage, and pushed himself up from the bed. He took a step towards the door.
“I hoped…I’d hoped with Tom, and the aunt, and most of all Mrs Ardingly, that Jonathan Tait hadn’t quite beaten all the heart out of you. But I think perhaps I was wrong.”
Sebastian sat still, burning as his father took several weak steps towards the door. He was reaching for the handle when Sebastian said, his voice cold enough to send shivers down his own back, “And who was there to protect me, Father? You blame me for my own beatings, do you?”
Perhaps the words were ice, because his father froze.
Sebastian got up, and despite everything, there was still some part of him that was dismayed when his father cringed as though he feared a blow. But that hurt could fuel his anger. Anger was stronger than pain. And if he couldn’t be strong right now, he would be nothing, nothing left.
So he put a hand on the door, blocking his father’s escape. God, he was inches taller than the man. Since when?
“If Jonathan Tait left me a shred of heart, do you know what crushed it? You. Having to clean you up. Having to pick my own father up from the floor, night after night, and wash his own filth off him. I’ll never forget that smell as long as I live.
What heart am I meant to have left? What…
what softness was supposed to help me survive that? ”
His father’s shoulders shook. Shoulders that were bent and curving. The man had a stoop. The breath he let out was more a gasp than a sob. “Sebastian…Sebby…I—”
He turned with a lurch, as though to embrace him, and Sebastian recoiled in horror. No. No. He would have no one sob against his chest. There would be no tears. None.
Instead, he strode to his desk, picked up the glass of brandy, and forced it into his father’s hand. The man fought him, feeble and trembling and sobbing. “No, no, no…” But Sebastian wrapped his own fingers hard around his father’s bony ones then opened the door and pushed the man through it.
“Go finish the job. Drink yourself to oblivion. And let me do the same.”
Of course, having given his father the glass, Sebastian drank from the decanter.
Like father, like son.
He supposed he passed out at some point because he was dimly aware of waking.
He stirred, muggy and dizzy and sick, and found himself in his bed.
Someone had removed his boots and his neckcloth and placed a basin by his side.
He flopped on his back, staring up at the bed canopy, all the colours and patterns swirling, and tried to believe it was his valet.
But he could smell his father’s soap.
Damn the man. His fingers clenched into the bed covers at his sides. Damn the man. Couldn’t he leave him alone to hate him? Hate was so much easier than love. It hurt less.
He tried to get out of bed and stumbled, landing heavily on his knees.
He swiped the clock from his bedside table and found it was only a few hours since he’d returned home.
His blood was still full of brandy, and God he felt wretched, sick, like the one time in his life he’d succumbed to the influenza.
But there was an inch of amber liquid left in the bottom of the decanter, and he drank it like ambrosia, letting himself feel the burn of it.
There were his boots, set neatly in the corner. Unpolished, but they would do. There was a clean necktie. He fashioned the simplest knot his clumsy fingers could manage. What did it matter, these folds of damned cloth? What did any of it matter? He went downstairs.
Ah. Dinner. He smelt it as he reached the hall. Yes, it was that time, he supposed. His father and Tom were at the dining table, sitting at one corner of the enormous expanse. Even with the leaves removed, it still sat twelve.
They both looked up when he dragged out a chair and dropped into it. Tom opened his mouth, but his father gave a minute shake of his head.
“This chicken dish is very good,” his father said inanely. “Try it with these mushrooms.” He pushed the dishes over. Sebastian glanced at them and picked up the wine, filling his glass.
“Some bread at least would be wise,” his father said.
“And yet I have no appetite.”
“Tom, if you’ve finished—”
“But there’s syllabub!”
“Take the bowl, boy, go on. If you find Daniels, he said he was going to teach you the knots he learned in the navy, remember? Run along. That’s it.”
Sebastian’s hand tightened on the glass. Such a cloying, sickening tone he took with the boy! As if he would have ever been allowed to run around the house with dessert, annoying the servants.
“You’re spoiling him,” he said once the boy had slipped from the room.
“Don’t you think he deserves it?”
“I think he’s hardly special. There are thousands of street rats like him a stone’s throw from the door.”