Chapter Thirty-Nine
It was harrowing watching Frederick experience opium withdrawal.
It was a protracted and miserable process full of tremors, nausea, restlessness, and delirium, made that much more dire by Frederick’s already weakened state.
From what Benjamin could discern, he had been holed up in the opium den for nigh on a month, Deering stopping in periodically to pay his tab and encourage further consumption until the man’s own madness took full control.
It sickened Benjamin that he had not kept a closer eye on Freddie in his sister’s absence.
It had hurt too much to even think of the Aston family, and he had—foolishly perhaps—thought that it would do the boy some good to be responsible for himself for once.
More painful than watching Freddie suffer through his detoxification was watching Charlotte suffer alongside him.
She was at his bedside day and night, sleeping awkwardly in the upright chair for only minutes at a time, ready to spring into action at the slightest disturbance.
She administered water and broth, mopping his brow and soothing his panic when a particularly vicious delusion set in.
By the end of the first week, Benjamin was finally able to convince her to let him hire a nurse to see to Freddie so that she could rest.
“Just as it is your job to care for Freddie, it is my job to care for you,” Benjamin had said sternly before Charlotte could launch another argument against leaving her brother for a single moment.
Somehow, it had worked. And like Charlotte had with Freddie for the last week, and likely had with himself the three days of his own convalescence, he watched her sleep. After eight hours, he climbed into bed alongside her and did not wake until she began to stir the next morning.
“Good morning,” Benjamin said sleepily, eyes still a bit bleary from the shockingly deep sleep he had enjoyed nestled beside Charlotte’s warm body.
“Morning?” Charlotte blinked, disoriented as time and events fitted themselves back into place in the sleep-jumble of her mind. “Oh, my. It is morning. How long did I— Oh, I must—”
Benjamin rested a stilling hand on her bare shoulder; her sleeveless cotton chemise was slightly askew from her occasional turning in the night.
It was a delightful sight, Charlotte sleeping warm and rumpled, the wrinkles of the pillowcase imprinted on one rosy cheek.
It filled him with a decadent contentment that went beyond sensual desire or even aesthetic appreciation.
There was a new satisfaction in his soul that Benjamin could never have imagined.
“He is alright, Charlotte. The nurse is watching him, and the doctor believes he is already out of the woods.” He felt some of the coiled tension leave her body as she released a breath he did not realise she was holding.
The air puffed across his face, and he smiled.
“It is no guarantee that he will not fall back into use someday—it is a lifelong struggle for people to overcome the disease of addiction. And even if he can keep himself clean, he must live with the guilt of what he did to his family forever. It is not an easy path.” He stopped when Charlotte reached a hand up to touch the beard-roughened skin of his cheek.
“Thank you, Benjamin. Thank you for saving me. Saving my family.”
“You are my family.” He held her soft hand to his cheek and then brought it down to his beating heart. Charlotte smiled softly and moved both their hands to the raised skin at his shoulder that was just starting to scar.
“And you are mine.” She took his other hand in hers and held it to her own heart, his fingers splaying over her sternum and collarbone, thumb just skimming the edge of her scar. “Forever.”
∞∞∞
Benjamin had never imagined he would have any sort of wedding.
And he certainly had not imagined a large one that would be the talk of London.
But their impending nuptials had already been written about in three different papers, and the Southwark Cathedral was the smallest venue that could host all the staff of Elysium, their friends, and Charlotte’s family.
Despite his notoriety, Benjamin had always enjoyed a rather subdued relationship with society.
He liked to think the high-flyers understood and respected the power he might wield over them, especially if they got too close.
But upon marrying a society lady—even one that had long ago been labelled a spinster bluestocking—Benjamin found himself cast in a wholly different light.
Now, attached to Charlotte, he was a formidable businessman. Wealthy and well-to-do and, if the gossip rags were to be believed, a dashing catch indeed. That he had always had very public friendships with not one but two ducal titles, seemed suddenly a stamp of quality. He was a man about town.
In the weeks leading up to the wedding, Benjamin had been inundated with invitations to this soiree and that ball and another musicale.
For Charlotte’s sake, he had attended a few, but it did not take long for her to convince him that the insipid social whirl of her past was just that: her past. Neither of them put much stock in the hallowed circles of the ton, and the packed cathedral before him proved it.
There were urchins and street thugs and washing women and prostitutes lining the wooden pews.
Elkington and Elsie had not been able to make the trip down from Edinburgh, but the rest of their friends and family were here, mingling without concern with the common guests, the subduing atmosphere of the church doing nothing to quell their eager chatter as the organist began to play and the tall carved doors opened.
Everything else fell away as Benjamin saw her.
Dressed in a diaphanous swath of creamy gold, and hanging on the arm of the Duke of Wells, was his Charlotte.
Even across this distance, their eyes met and held—full of all the unbelievable joy and hope.
He could not believe the stroke of fate that had brought them together, standing as many paces apart in a damp, misty field in one of dear Mother England’s most miserable glooms to date. Charlotte. His Elfin Queen. His wife.