Chapter Thirty-Five
“Jesus Christ, man. You look no better than the night I found you bleeding out on the street.” Leave it to Wells not to sugarcoat his thoughts.
“That is an absurd exaggeration,” Benjamin mumbled as he stumbled toward the washstand.
Considering his exhaustion, he should have just allowed himself to collapse on the bed.
However, years on the streets, living in filth, had made him reverent of the fine linens and clean bedding he now had access to.
And though he could well afford to replace the sheets ten times over, he could not bring himself to allow the grime that he had accumulated on his skin and clothes to soil such a pristine setting.
“That is what you think.” Wells had followed him into the club, past the gaming floor, and through the halls to his suite without relenting.
When Benjamin looked up from the bar of expensive soap he was lathering, he saw that Wells was serious.
Since becoming the duke, it was rare to see anything beyond the aristocratic hauteur on the man’s face—an effective facade that kept the man far away from the title.
But now, Benjamin could see genuine concern.
Wells straightened. “I have indulged this wild hunt long enough. It is time for you to give it up. The man has gone insane—some informants are saying they suspect he caught the French disease sometime last year during one of his romps in the gutter. It has eaten away at his brain. There is no one left on whom to exact revenge.”
Benjamin watched the grey water trail down his forearms into the basin. This would not be enough. Perhaps he should ring for a bath to be brought up.
“There is nothing left for you there,” Wells said. “He cannot hurt you anymore. He cannot touch Charlotte. You must let this go before it eats you alive. Ben? Are you listening to me? You should go to her. Be with her.”
“I cannot!” Benjamin smashed his fists on the washstand, upsetting dirty suds onto the plush maroon carpet under his feet.
He whirled, heart hammering like a caged animal, and Wells stared with unconcealed surprise.
“I cannot.” He repeated more quietly but no less forcefully.
“You do not understand. I can never be with her. This—” He gestured wildly to his sullied clothing.
“Is all I can do for her. I can never be with her, but I can do this. I can stop this man—the evil of his family. I can stop it.” His voice was rising again, and the raw scrape of the words was tinged with hysteria.
“Why?” Wells’ hands were held palm up, as if he was approaching a wounded animal. “Why, Ben? Why can’t you be with her?”
“Do not call me that!” he roared again. “That is why! I am Ben, the son of a woman who was made a whore. The bastard of a man who never cared to acknowledge me or my sister. I am made of street rubbish, and I have been driven to unspeakable things. Things that would destroy her if she ever knew. I was fooling myself to think I would dare to keep her—to marry—” the words stuttered and stopped when his breath caught in his throat.
He closed his eyes and shook his head, trying to shake away the cloud of pain that enveloped him at the thought.
“That night—the one you found me, after all those years.” He kept his eyes closed, his heart hammering as he was transported back in time to the cluttered streets off the docks where he had been working in a fish packing house by day and spent his nights carrying coal up from the barges to be delivered to the sleeping homes of London. “It was not just a footpad skirmish.”
He knew Wells had been shocked to see his childhood friend as he fled the docks, so delirious with blood loss that he could not make sense of why Wells would have been in such a part of town at such an hour, he had not been able to come up with any more elaborate explanation for the seeping slash that ran down the side of his neck.
“I figured.” Wells’ voice came through the fog of memory, but Benjamin did not open his eyes.
“I was working the coal shipments, like I said.” He could still feel the splintering cut of the rough wooden pallets they loaded the buckets of coal into the carts.
“I had just filled my last cart of the night and was taking a shortcut through a back alley to the pub where we were paid. I had to be at the packing warehouse by five, and if you did not collect your coin the night of the work, the pub owner would withhold it, and you would never get paid.”
He had learned that the hard way, and after a day without food, he had never taken the risk again.
Even with the funds from both jobs, he only ever had enough to buy an oatcake or two for breakfast and a pasty for midday.
It was not enough to fuel the backbreaking labour, and he could not survive on less.
“There was a couple in the alley I cut through. Not uncommon for the docks. Sailors often can’t afford more than a pinch and poke behind the tavern.
But this was different.” His skin began to crawl at the memory.
“You get used to seeing violence on the streets. It is not pleasant, but it is a fact of life. You learn to turn your head and mind your business. But this—” He stopped as his gut turned at the memory.
“He was brutal. She was not even crying anymore. I think she was already half dead by the time I arrived.” He gritted his teeth.
Watching the scene behind his eyelids was almost as real as the night itself.
“I approached quietly, hoping I could take him by surprise. I could hold my own in street fights against other starving youths, but I had grown so thin. I did not have much hope against a robust gentleman. It was clear from his togs that he was a gentleman slumming around, finding his pleasure in the gutter.” Benjamin’s lip curled in disgust. “But then he turned—maybe he heard me coming. And I saw that it was not just some gentleman—it was him. Reginald Deering. The man who raped my sister and forced the pregnancy on her. The pregnancy that killed her.” He stopped, his breathing rough and choppy.
Wells simply stood, allowing the space and silence for him to continue.
“I wish I could say I attacked him right there on the spot. He had clearly beaten the woman in his arms to the brink of death before assaulting her. He had destroyed my sister, the gentlest soul I had ever known, and the only person I had left. But I just stood there. Dumbfounded.” Benjamin fought back the bile of shame that rose in his throat.
“He must have recognised me too. I had gone to the house when Delia came back bruised and battered. The butler had turned me away, but not before I threatened his master with some form of na?ve retribution. Then, after she had died, I had sat outside the house for days. Waiting for my chance—to do what? I am not sure. But they must have taken notice because Reginald knew me. He sneered and said, You? He let the woman go, and she fell in a heap against the wall. I did not go to help her. I was frozen to the spot. And then Reginald laughed and called me a piece of scum. No better than that dirty slut of a sister, are you? he said.” Benjamin's words were flat, as if he were reciting a story he had heard from another.
“For the best she died before she produced yet another dirty bastard like yourself. And then I lost it.
“I was on him like a rabid animal. Clawing, punching, biting. He screamed and pulled out a knife. I should have seen it in his boot, but I had not had a single thought in my head after I realised it was him. He lunged and caught me, but I did not feel it. I wrestled the blade out of his hands, and we both fell to the floor. I had not even turned fully; one of my arms was trapped under his body. And then it stopped. He stopped fighting and just gasped. I pushed him off me, and that is when I saw his blade sticking out of his gut. I had stabbed him. I still do not know if I did it on purpose or not. It was just done. There was so much blood.”
He could still smell the way the coppery smell of Reginald’s blood mixed with the ever-present stench of fish and smoke.
It took a few long moments of drawing breath through his nose before he could fight away the nausea.
“Much of the blood must have been my own. I passed out for a moment, and when I came to, it was like I was awake, but in a dead body. But then I saw him. His empty eyes were still so full of hate, staring right at me. There were people coming. Men from the docks. I think one of them crewed for Deering because he knew Reginald’s name.
I can only hope he did not recognise who I was through all the muck and the blood.
Otherwise, Deering knows that I killed his son.
Some part of me must have realised I would hang for it.
So I pulled myself up and ran. And ran and ran.
” His breathing was more even now, and he looked up at Wells, still standing in the doorway.
“And that is when I found you.”
“And that is when you found me. And I tried to start my life over.” He slumped into one of the chairs by the fire.
“But I never really left it behind, did I? Nothing I can do will erase what has happened. And now, knowing that Deering had a hand in all of it, Reginald’s abuse, Delia’s death?
And how he has fixated on Charlotte—this is the only thing I can do for her without dragging her down into the gutter with me.
The blood is already on my hands. I can end this. ”
Wells came and sat across from him, his dark hair glowing like coals in the firelight. “What? You plan to kill him?” The words were blunt and practical, and Benjamin shook his head.
“I do not know. If it comes to that, yes.”
“It will not win her. You know that, right?”