Page 47 of Chasing Benedict
“Would you?” Alex challenged. “I tried to pay a call after Katherine and I returned from our wedding trip. I was told you refused to see me.”
Ben sat up straighter, eyebrows knitting together. “What?”
“Your father’s butler turned me away and told me not to return. You didn’t want to see me, ever.”
Ben shook his head, then lowered it into his hands. “Goddamn it. I was never told you had come to call. My father is the one who turned you away.”
Alex frowned. “Weren’t you able to get word to me somehow? Even just to demand an explanation?”
Ben raised his head, a haunted expression overtaking his features. “I couldn’t. You see, he didn’t follow through with his threat to commit me, but when I returned from Dover, he had other plans in mind. First, the beating. He had three footmen keep me caged in so he could abuse me as he saw fit. As I lay there bleeding and aching, the footmen took me to my bedchamber. I didn’t leave that room for three months.”
Intuition made Alex feel sick, his skin crawling as he guessed at what Ben would reveal. “He didn’t.”
“He did. A mad-doctor paid to be at his beck and call meant no one had to know that I was being treated for insanity due to immoral behavior. I fought the treatments with everything I had at first. But after being half-starved and beaten until I could barely breathe, I didn’t have the strength anymore. I could only muster the strength to live through each day, certain it would be my last.”
“Ben,” Alex whispered, grief bringing tears to his eyes. “What you must have suffered.”
Ben was beyond this room now, staring into the fire and reciting the atrocities committed against him as if they hadn’t happened to him, but someone else. “Purgatives to clear my body of foul spirits. Gruel and water, because a rich diet encouraged depravity and excess. All my clothes were taken away so I couldn’t leave. Ice baths and near-drownings in the tub … the water was so cold it felt like dozens of knives stabbing me in the chest. A strait-waistcoat when I grew violent … leeches to pull the poison out of me.”
A hot tear tracked down Alex’s cheek, his heart aching as he was confronted with what his decision had resulted in. “How did it end?”
A soft smile curved Ben’s mouth. “Aubrey and Nick. They had visited several times after realizing they hadn’t seen me about Town in a while. My father did to them what he did to you. He turned them away, telling them I was indisposed and would see no one. But they wouldn’t accept it. They returned and pushed their way inside, running up to my chamber to find me shivering in an ice bath. I’d lost two stone of weight and hadn’t been allowed food in days. Nick threatened to hire a magistrate if I wasn’t allowed to leave. Aubrey pulled me from the tub and carried me to the bed—I was too weak to stand. He dressed me while Nick argued with my father, and in the end our friends had their way. They took me from that house and helped nurse me back to health. My father tried to retrieve me, turning up at Aubrey’s townhouse to put up a fuss … but I wasn’t there. Aubrey and Nick had stashed me in the upper room over Rowland-Drake to hide me from him. Aubrey and Elizabeth’s nurse fed me and kept me comfortable until I was strong enough to care for myself. I lived in that upper room for two months before returning home. By then my father had returned to Norfolk. I dismissed the entire staff and hired new servants who were loyal to me and not him. I took up training with Fisher and spent my time trying to forget you. Somehow, I never could. You haunted me in my dreams and my waking hours. It was torment.”
Alex turned his chair to face Ben’s, placing a hand over one of his. “I never forgot you either. I longed for you, I mourned what we could never have. But I never suffered as you did, and I will never forgive myself for it.”
“There is nothing to be sorry for. I blamed you, but it was my father’s choice.Heis the one who put me through hell. I suppose for a time it was easier to blame you for all of it.”
Staring at Ben’s profile, Alex reached with his free hand to push back the fall of Ben’s overgrown hair. The scar on his temple showed clearly, white and puckered.
“Is that how you got this scar? I’d noticed you touch it quite often, but didn’t want to ask.”
Ben looked at him again, making no move to push Alex’s hand away. “No, my father didn’t do this to me. I did it to myself.”
“What do you mean?”
“I mean … one night, I’d had enough. I didn’t think I could go on any longer. I was still in so much pain, and couldn’t function as I once had. I was drunk more often than not, and slept the hours away to escape the realities that awaited me.”
Alex tightened his hold on Ben’s hand, disbelief a stunning force. “Ben … please tell me you didn’t …”
“I did,” Ben replied without batting an eyelash. “I loaded my pistol, put it to my head, and pulled the trigger.”
CHAPTER 10
“The shocking news of the nuptials of the Hon. Mr. G—once one of London’s most notorious rakes—eventually gave way to speculation and anticipation. How long might it take for the man to grow bored of his new bride? Apparently, far longer than many of us supposed, as Mr. G has not been seen about Town in months.”
-The London Gossip,31 January 1820
Benedict supposed he had shocked Alex into a stupor. After finally revealing the truth behind the scar on his temple, Benedict had waited for the expected hysterics. There had been none. Alex only stared at him, lips parted and eyes unblinking.
There was nothing for Benedict to do but keep talking. “It was sheer luck that Aubrey happened to visit that night. He was shown into my study, where I sat with an empty brandy bottle and my pistol, trying to work up the nerve to end my life.”
“Dear God,” Alex whispered, his voice small and broken.
Benedict had remained steady through the recitation of his darkest moments out of necessity. He had never spoken of this to anyone, and only Nick and Aubrey knew the extent of his trauma. Only Aubrey knew the true reason his father had put him in the hands of Dr. Pruett. Now, he was cutting himself open all over again, making himself vulnerable to the person who had initially wounded him—however unintentional it had been.
“Aubrey tried to talk me down,” Benedict murmured, aware that his voice had grown hoarse and that his chest was so tight he could barely breathe. “He told me that my life was still worth living. I couldn’t see it then, but he promised me that I would see it for myself if I tried hard enough. But I was too distraught.”
“Ben.”
