Chapter 5 - Stephen #2
The Bellamy property ended at a line of dense shrubbery.
Stephen navigated through where it grew thin, moving branches aside with deliberate precision.
The borrowed coat was his only means of blending into spaces like tonight’s.
He couldn’t afford to damage it. Beyond lay open countryside, the field that separated the neighboring estates.
He’d taken this route before on nights when he’d borrowed time that wasn’t his.
Those nights he’d moved quickly, eager to be gone before his luck turned.
Tonight he couldn’t seem to find that same urgency, each step heavier than it should have been, as if he were leaving something vital behind in that golden light.
Stephen forced himself to focus on the uneven ground beneath his feet. The field stretched dark and uneven, patches of loose earth and hidden ruts threatening to trip him with each stride.
The tightness in his chest refused to ease. He’d expected the cool night air to help, the distance from that stifling crowd to clear his lungs. Instead, the pressure only seemed to intensify the further he walked from the Bellamy estate.
He kept walking.
The Rutland estate materialized ahead, its dark outline sharpening against the night sky. The familiar shadow should have brought relief, but each step toward home only made the ache worse.
Stephen pressed a hand against his ribs, confused by the persistent pain. The closer he drew to that welcoming threshold, the more each breath required deliberate effort.
Maybe he’d tied the waistcoat too snugly, trying to look the part.
Once he could wear his own clothes again, everything would settle.
His entire body felt wrong tonight— hands throbbing where his nails had broken skin, jaw aching from tension he couldn’t quite release, chest tight for reasons he refused to examine too closely.
The servants’ entrance gave way beneath his hand, and Stephen slipped into the familiar dimness beyond. The corridor stretched quiet and empty, most of the staff already retired for the night. He moved quickly toward the back stairs, taking them two at a time despite the darkness.
His attic room waited above, small and cramped but mercifully private.
Stephen closed the door behind him and moved through the narrow space, ducking beneath the slanted ceiling as he crossed from the doorway to his bed.
The meager quarters barely accommodated his cot and a washstand, leaving little room to stand upright except directly beneath the small window.
He changed quickly, borrowed clothes stripped off and replaced with his nightshirt.
The floorboards creaked beneath his feet despite his attempts at silence as he knelt beside the bed, prying up the loose board where the fine garments lived.
The coat went in first, folded despite his haste.
The waistcoat followed, then the cravat and shirt.
His hands were smoothing the board back into place when footsteps echoed in the corridor outside.
Stephen barely had time to straighten before the knock came.
“Turner.”
Phillips’s voice carried that particular note of disapproval reserved for servants who stepped out of line. As Lord Rutland’s butler and the highest authority among the household staff, his authority was absolute. “You missed the evening inspection of the silver.”
Stephen’s gaze darted to the small window. The sky held the deep quality of night that came in the hours before dawn.
How long had he been away?
He’d always been meticulous about timing, and never missed his duties. In seven years, he’d never forgotten.
Never.
What had happened to him tonight?
Stephen crossed to the door and opened it to find Phillips standing in the narrow corridor, still impeccably dressed despite the late hour. His silver hair remained perfectly groomed, his black coat immaculate even after a full day of managing the household.
“My apologies, sir. I was feeling unwell.” The words were not entirely false—the pressure in his chest still hadn’t eased, and his entire body felt foreign in ways he couldn’t explain. Though not in any manner he could confess to Phillips.
The butler studied his face intently, leaving Stephen with the unsettling sensation that his guilty thoughts were written plain across his features.
“You’re feeling better, I trust?” Phillips asked finally.
“Yes, sir.”
Phillips’s gaze lingered a moment longer before he gave a tight nod. “See that this doesn’t happen again, Turner. Lord Rutland values reliability above all else. I shall see you tomorrow at five.”
“Of course, sir. Thank you for your concern.”
Phillips turned away without another word, his footsteps echoing down the servants’ stairs.
Stephen closed the door and sank onto his narrow bed, the coarse wool bedding rough against his skin. Through his window, a faint glow still lit the night sky where the Bellamy estate burned bright.
He’d risked everything tonight by staying longer than he should have, by forgetting his tasks and the time, by letting the evening become something other than what he had planned for it.
His position, his invisibility, the comfortable life he’d built within his constraints.
All for a conversation that could never be repeated.
The memory refused to fade. Her voice when she spoke with such genuine passion, the way she’d actually listened as if his interpretations mattered, that moment when they’d stood close enough that he’d felt the air shift between them.
He fell back against the thin mattress with a groan, pressing the heels of his hands against his eyes until sparks danced in the darkness. But even this could not banish the image of her.
It needed to end here. Tonight. Whatever strange pull he’d felt toward her, whatever this ache in his chest meant, none of it could matter.
They lived in different worlds, separated by barriers no disguise could permanently bridge.
Even if they met again under the same pretense, she would never truly see him.
Only the fiction he had constructed. And the truth, if it ever came out, would be worse than never having spoken at all.
The rational part of his mind knew this. Accepted it.
The rest of him wanted to put his fist through the slanted ceiling. Who his parents were, that was all that mattered.
Not that he could read Latin and Spanish. Not that he understood philosophy or could discuss literature with more depth than half the gentlemen of the ton. Just blood. Just birth. Just the blind luck of which family name he’d been born to carry.
He’d never particularly resented it before.
Had even found a measure of contentment in his position.
A roof overhead, regular meals, work that didn’t break his back.
It was more than many had. But tonight, the arbitrary nature of it all settled like lead in his stomach, heavy and bitter in ways he couldn’t quite swallow.
Through the window, dawn began its slow creep across London’s rooftops, turning darkness to gray. Soon he would need to dress in his livery, descend those narrow stairs, and resume his place in the hierarchy that governed this world. Today, tomorrow, every day after.
It was the only option available to him. The only sensible choice.
But as he drifted into fitful unconsciousness, the tightness in his chest remained—stubborn, inexplicable, refusing to fade.
But it would. He told himself it would.
It had to.