Page 42 of The Wallflower Manifesto
“Shut up, Bentley,” Abe grunted, attempting to maneuver the other man back down the hall.
It was clear that going up the stairs was going to be a dangerous endeavor, if not an outright impossibility. Instead of going that route, Abe pushed Freddy toward the little receiving room near their front door and toppled him onto a chaise by the fireplace.
“Do not move,” he ordered, and took the stairs two at a time to retrieve necessities from the bedrooms upstairs for the other man.
When he returned, Freddy was already dozing, his head tipped back on the arm of the chaise with his mouth wide open.
“No you don’t,” Abe muttered, gripping Freddy’s shoulder and shaking it. “Wake up. You’re going to choke to death like that.”
“Yes, death,” Freddy mumbled, though he obediently lifted his head for the pillow and allowed Abe to remove his jacket, waistcoat, and shoes. He even accepted the proffered carafe of water and took a delicate sip of it, wrinkling his nose in distaste.
“Drink it all,” Abe ordered, pushing the water back toward Freddy’s mouth. “Every drop.”
“Every drop,” Freddy mirrored with the tone of a bratty child, but he did so as well as he could. A great deal of the water ended up down his front rather than in his belly.
Abe kept an eye on him, grabbing the crumpled gambling slips off the floor and dousing the candles Freddy had left haphazardly lit about the place. He didn’t trust the other man not to suffocate himself in a pillow or fall into the fireplace or even wander back outside in search of a gambling table in this state, so he’d have to sleep down here too.
Freddy watched him, a mix of disdain and confusion on his drunken face, but he did not argue or comment. He didn’t domuch of anything other than hold the empty water carafe in his arms like a buoy on the open sea.
He seemed to be slipping into sleep before Abe had even finished managing the chaos, and had to be tilted backwards and covered with a quilt. He was murmuring nonsense questions about Silas’s party, about the guests and the grandeur and so on.
“Was my wife there?” he asked, absurdly, tears creeping down his cheeks. “Was Claire there? Will you tell her I’m sorry?”
It was a relief, Abe decided, once he began to snore. Unconscious Freddy was far superior to drunk, self-loathing Freddy.
Still, he found himself sitting next to the sleeping man for some time before he was ready to settle down himself. He leaned back in a chair as far as he could comfortably get and forced himself to close his eyes.
Surprisingly, after a time, he did manage to find his way to sleep.
He dreamed of glossy brown curls on a pale shoulder. He dreamed of a tiny study and lively Iberian music thrumming through the walls. In his sleep, he smiled.
CHAPTER 17
The last three days had been something of a mess. If Abe’s father were present, with all his endearing Aberdeen-isms, he would have called the whole affair a “swim in drumly waters.” And then Rosalind, bless her, would say, “Da, no one knows what that means.”
Abe made a mental note to write to his family. It had been too long.
He could add a blank page to his rapidly growing pile of work in the first-floor study. What damage could one more page do, after all?
The morning after Freddy’s fuddling had seen the arrival of Mrs. Harrison, who found them both mostly clothed and asleep in the little sunroom near the front door.
Abe resented, on some level, that he appeared to have been part of whatever debauchery she assumed went on in this house the night before, but Freddy had looked so relieved to not be alone in his shame that he hadn’t corrected her.
He’d even taken a hearty swig of the charcoal water she prepared, as though he, too, needed to recover from a particularly nasty bottleache, and rather than getting up and about his day like he had planned, he’d sat in the dark room as she drew the curtains for them and put on a fortifying broth.
Honestly, it hadn’t been a bad day. Everyone needed rest now and then. The timing had just been unfortunate. Abe had to bottle the burst of energy the previous night had gifted him, in hopes of using it later, and sit in shadowed silence with a man who probably found even the act of thinking too painful to consider for half the day.
By the time their well-meaning housekeeper ushered them upstairs to bathe and nap, he was actually ready to just give in to the siren song of lethargy until the sun came up again.
The second day had allowed him to escape the house after breakfast, in search of the impersonator calling him or herself Francis Aiden, which had resulted in nothing but dead ends and bad weather.
He’d stopped by Bow Street in an attempt to speak discreetly to Silas about his concern over Freddy, but Silas was never in these days. As much as Abe trusted Cresson, it didn’t seem right to leave such information for a relayed message, and so he’d simply resolved to try again later in the week.
And the third day … well, the third had been the murkiest of them all, and it had only just begun.
Mrs. Harrison had arrived earlier than usual that morning. She’d resolved to send Freddy out to the market in pursuit of ingredients for the night’s dinner. She had decided, afterwitnessing his little fall from grace, that more complex tasks would help distract his mind from the lure of bad habits.
Abe thought this was sensible enough, and he wasn’t going to lie, Freddy’s sauces and gravies were coming along very nicely. He’d even started making their meals on Mrs. Harrison’s days off. They were a bit rustic, but the man seemed to have a firm grasp on flavor already.
