Chapter 23
If it wasn’t your intention to hurt me, you wouldn’t be running off to become the sacrificial lamb. Eva’s words pierced his heart like a thousand and one arrows.
Sprawled on the train bench, Henry watched hazy London appear through a dense drizzle of grey cloud. His thumb circled the engraving on the back of his watch. His leg bounced up and down.
The one person in the world who could convince him to throw duty to the wind could not sway him to defy his father’s orders, such was the power Edwin Asheford had over him. And Henry would keep giving in to his power because he needed to keep Lottie and Eva safe. He needed to play the game by his father’s rules until he found a way to achieve freedom. That meant sacrifice. Whether or not he would become the sacrificial lamb remained to be seen. Still, as he approached the ominous grime of London, he could not help but wonder whether he had made the right decision.
The train came to a halt.
“King’s Cross,” an employee announced from the end of the carriage. “Ladies and gentlemen, we have arrived at King’s Cross station.”
This was Henry’s stop. He sat still for a moment. The desire to stay frozen in place increased with each passing second.
“Last call for King’s Cross.”
Damn this all to hell.
Henry jumped to his feet and hurried off the train. He walked a few steps, leant a hand against the brick wall and focused on his breathing.
Passers-by gave him strange looks. Sympathy flashed across a woman’s homely face. But most refused to make eye contact. With a whistle, the train screeched and began to roll past the platform.
He clenched his teeth. A cold sweat had begun to bead across the nape of his neck. Nausea rolled in and out of his belly like the tide on a windy day. Anxiety attack. That was what Eva had called it. He brought a trembling hand to his heart.
A fleeting craving for laudanum made him salivate. It had been a long while since he last had the urge to give in to the addiction of escape.
No one should be this afraid of their own father.
He exhaled a jittery breath. It was not too late to return to Asheford Hall, to embrace Eva, his fiery little imp. Perhaps they could instead run off to a foreign land and start a new life … only to be hunted down by his father months later. Hell,Father will never let up and that is precisely why you must meet him.
His mind wandered to Eva huddled before the fire at Bondieux House, wearing his trousers, a bewitching smile on her lovely face as she quietly sang along to her favourite music. His heart constricted. At that moment, he knew he would not hesitate to enter the lion’s den if that meant keeping her safe.
***
Henry’s boots hammered against the black-and-white marble floor of Asheford Sons headquarters. He halted before the heavy black door of his father’s office, his rushed breath barely breaking through the hard lump in his throat.
He licked his dry lips as he hesitated to knock.
The lion waits in his den.
With a final deep breath, Henry lifted his chin, squared his shoulders and swallowed the rising bile. You don’t keep a hungry lion waiting. He knocked hard.
“You may enter,” his father’s voice came from inside.
Henry swung the door open to see his father’s tall, thin form standing before a roaring fire. Above the mantelpiece hung a portrait of Henry’s mother – calm, poised, a gentle smile on her pink lips and a radiant sparkle in her blue eyes.
He clenched his teeth so hard that a pain lanced his jaw. His mother’s face had the power to bring out all the demons he had spent sixteen years trying to bury.
Hands clutched behind his back, Edwin slowly turned. He had a full head of greying black hair, silvery whiskers, a sharp nose and cold grey eyes capable of penetrating even the most resolute of defences.
“At last, my son has come to visit.” Edwin fixed Henry with an apathetic frown. It was an expression he remembered well.
Henry’s mouth twisted.
Edwin’s office boasted the opulence of a crime lord who hoarded all his best treasures in one vault. Smelling of dust and fire, it was as dark as a dungeon and its shelves visibly buckled under the weight of stolen artifacts. A wide desk sat before the fireplace, presumably from where his father commanded his army of criminals with written letters in ominous grey envelopes.
“Will you not approach and embrace your father?”
“Let us get to the point of the meeting.”
“Have you business elsewhere?”
A rush of heat crossed Henry’s face. “I simply do not wish to dawdle.”
“Do step closer to the fire. I wish to see you.”
“You can observe me perfectly from this distance.”
A muscle in Edwin’s mouth twitched.
Henry averted his eyes to look at his mother. He knew his father well enough to assume that it was a strategically placed object; another fiendish string with which to control Henry.
Edwin came forward and stopped in front of his son. A familiar whiff of cologne curled toward Henry, taking him back to his boyhood days.
“The portrait captures her beauty well, does it not?” Edwin said. “I spent years searching for an artist with adequate skill to paint my Rosalind.”
Henry’s stomach hardened as he looked into his father’s eyes. They were two grey pools bereft of life. “After sixteen years, you will still not allow her to rest.”
A flash of darkness swept across Edwin’s face. “I see your mother in those blue eyes of yours.” He leaned closer. “Yes, there she is. That is a blue I have not seen in many years.”
“For God’s sake,” Henry said weakly. “She is dead.”
A guttural roar escaped Edwin’s lips as he swiped a silver chalice from a pedestal. It landed with a clang on the flagstone floor. “She is alive! Somewhere out there she breathes, waiting for me to return.” Edwin paused, sweeping back his dishevelled hair. “How is your sister? My lovely Charlotte. I have heard that she excels in science at her school in Paris.”
It took a great deal for Henry to remain composed. “You have inquired about her?”
“What kind of father would I be if I did not inquire about my children?”
A tense silence fell between them.
Edwin did not inquire about his children for the sake of fatherly duty. Henry and Lottie were nothing more than props in their father’s game of greed. He did not know love. He knew obsession, control and revenge.
“You appear flushed,” Edwin said. “Have I said something that offends you?”
“I wish for you to get to the point.”
“The point regards the Davenports.”
Henry snorted. Predictable.
“Does that strike a happy chord in your heart?” Edwin said.
“A chord of contempt.”
“Ah.” Edwin returned to his desk and gestured to a tray holding two glasses and a wine bottle. “Would you like a glass of champagne?”
“No.”
Edwin glared. “Is Fanny Davenport not pretty enough for you?”
“Do you intend that I marry her?”
“It could be said.”
Henry breathed deeply. He had to remember to play the game. “Of what value are the Davenports to you? Surely it cannot be more wealth. Do you plan on reaching the Americas with the company?”
“It could be said,” Edwin repeated.
Games. Always with the damned games. Edwin did not speak truths. He liked to keep a veil of mystery over his intentions so that his opponents could never get the upper hand. Henry’s heart was thudding hard. His palms grew sweaty with unease.
“You can ignore your fate all you want, my son.” Edwin poured champagne into the glasses. “But you must eventually acknowledge that you are my sole heir.”
“That does not make me your property,” Henry said through clenched teeth.
“You ridiculous boy. It is not a matter of property. It is a matter of doing right after five years of doing wrong.”
“I do not follow.”
“You owe me.”
A rush of heat entered Henry’s face. “I owe you nothing!”
Edwin slammed the bottle down hard onto the table. “Do you remember Rhys’s funeral? Do you remember my words to you?”
Yes, those words played in Henry’s mind constantly. You should have been the one to burn in the flames.
“I sincerely hope that you took those words to heart,” Edwin said, sneering. “That they sliced up every inch of your brain, causing permanent injury upon your psyche.”
Henry lowered his gaze, the tendons in his neck straining. It always stung to hear such hatred from his own father.
“I hope the last five years of your existence have been as miserable as you have made mine. You owe me your life for the things you have done.”
“The things I have done? Enlighten me, Father, what bloody things have I done to warrant your endless scorn?”
Edwin marched across the room. “You took away my Rosalind … my Rhys! And you conspired with your grandfather to bring forth my end.”
“I will not entertain your sick fantasies,” Henry shot back. “For God’s sake, will you continue to make up lies and distort the truth for your own insane delusions? I told you countless times that I was never involved with the attempted destruction of the time-travelling technology.” Henry pressed his feverish face close to his father’s. “And if you want to continue blaming me for their deaths, allow me to throw the literal blame in return. It was you who impregnated our mother, causing her to die in childbirth. It was your reckless, crime-lord ways that led to Rhys’s and Grandfather’s deaths—”
Edwin laughed. It was how Henry imagined the devil to sound. “Is that what you believe happened to Rhys?”
“It is what you told me … that they died in a retaliatory hit by a rival gang.”
“Ah, yes, that.”
A confusion gripped Henry. He watched as his father wandered back to the champagne tray. The stagnant silence became unbearable.
Henry raised his voice. “That is what you told me.”
“It was a tiny lie to fuel your penchant for vengeance,” Edwin finally said.
“I beg your pardon?”
“I wanted you to take my side and join the company, so I told you that Rhys was murdered. But, alas, you were not so easy to mould as I thought and so I was forced to entertain your fantasies of playing landlord and governess to your sister. I thought it would dampen your temper, make you sympathetic to my cause but time only made you wickedly bitter.” Edwin frowned. “Perhaps it was my fault. If I had not stopped Josiah from threatening you, maybe I would not have such a defiant boy today.”
The revelation was a blow to Henry. A strange new fear rose in his chest. “What happened to them?” he heard himself say.
“Oh, they were murdered.”
Suddenly, Henry was at the desk. In his confused fury, he swiped the glasses of champagne to the ground. “You fucking bastard! What happened to them?”
“Betrayal is an act that must be punished.”
Henry went rigid.
“Were you not meant to be in that carriage on that night?” Edwin said.
God, no.
“Answer me, son!”
“I-I was.”
Edwin’s hands came hard onto the table. “But you sought to get your cock wet with the servant girl instead. So, Rhys made it his duty to see your grandfather home safely.”
“No…”
“You and your grandfather both conspired against me.” Edwin pointed into Henry’s face. “You both removed my treasures, crushed my ambitions and took away my Rosalind. Furthermore, you continue to bring shame to the family name with your cowardly ways.”
Henry launched himself at Edwin, whose hands found their way around Henry’s collar. Edwin pulled him across the table.
“You, my boy, will do as I say,” Edwin spat. “Otherwise, you will force my hand again.”
Henry pushed at his father’s shoulders and stepped back, his pulse strumming hard in his head. He could not think. His vision grew blurry. Had his father just admitted to killing Rhys and Albert?
“If you refuse to marry the Davenport bitch in a month’s time, I will force your sister into an arrangement with the Davenport boy, Angelo. He is a queer man. There are rumours that he has a penchant for fondling young boys. Could you imagine subjecting your sweet, innocent sister to such a sinful life? Surely you do not want her to come to harm?”
Edwin picked up part of a shattered champagne glass from the floor. It was a jagged shard of glass on a thin crystal stem. “There is to be an event announcing your engagement at the Grosvenor Hotel in two weeks. June the seventeenth at seven in the evening.”
Henry stepped back against a chair. A rush of rage swept through him. He flung the chair away and it hit the floor with a loud thud.
“Cheer up, son. You are to be married!” Edwin raised the broken glass. “The Asheford and Davenport holy matrimony will not only bring forth the next generation but will also make your father a very happy man indeed.”
Ghastly thoughts spun out of control in Henry’s head. He would fall into a fit of madness if he did not leave at once. He turned to the door.
“Just one moment, there is another matter,” Edwin declared loudly.
A prickle touched the back of Henry’s neck.
“Have you seen Josiah?”
Henry forced himself to speak. “I have not.”
“Strange,” Edwin muttered. “It would seem the man has vanished from this century.”
“Perhaps you should keep a tighter leash on your mutts,” Henry scoffed.
“That is precisely what I intend to do, son.”
The urge to flee raced through Henry’s veins and he could not push the door fast enough to get away from his father. It was only when he stepped into the bustling street did Henry notice he was holding his breath. He inhaled the smoggy air with a gasp. It did little to sway his nausea.
Father killed Rhys and Albert.
He walked a few steps, feeling numb from the waist down.
Father killed Rhys and Albert out of petty spite.
He turned into an alley and collapsed against the wall.
Father killed Rhys and Albert out of petty spite, and he won’t hesitate to do the same to Lottie, unless you do his bidding.
A sour feeling unravelled in his stomach. He vomited into the gutter. He had become the sacrificial lamb and there was nothing he could do to stop the lion from mauling him to shreds.