Page 3 of Enemies with an Earl
He’d led the enemy here.
He knew he should be afraid. Of the consequences. Of what happened next. But all he could feel was…nothing.
Cold, numbing betrayal.
“You.” A man pointed at Felix, where he sat on the floor in the cell in the watchroom—Felix and at least twenty other men from the alehouse.
Two constables entered, yanked Felix to his feet, and ushered him out of the cell. He had no idea how long he’d been detained; he’d lost all sense of time. It had been long enough that quite a few men hadn’t been able to hold their bladders any longer. He drew in a cleansing breath as he was finally greeted with air that didn’t hold the sharp stench of urine.
He had no doubts as to where he was headed. They’d slowly been taken away from the holding room one by one. To be set before the magistrate.
Felix’s gut tightened so hard he had to clamp his mouth against a gag. He had to hope there wasn’t sufficient evidence to charge him of anything warranting more than a fine. Or imprisonment. Dear God.
But that was better than hanging. They wouldn’t hang him, would they? A peer had never been hanged for sodomy. Everyone always fled before it reached that extreme. The only small positive in this nightmare was Benedict had never joined him in the cell. Which had to mean he got away. Felix's eyes drifted shut for a breath. At least one of them had.
He was brought into the courtroom, and his knee bounced erratically as the magistrate droned on, words Felix couldn’t hear over the panic buzzing in his ears. They had no proof. The only thing he could truly be charged with was attempted sodomy. He tried to take a calming breath. A fine. A short imprisonment. That was the worst of it. He had been alone in his room. No one witnessed anything. They had no proof. He chanted it over and over in his mind.
A witness was called to the stand, and Felix’s head jerked up. A witness? Witness to what?There had been nothing to witness.
And that was when everything grew so much worse. The air turned cloying, too thick to breathe. Because William approached the stand. Felix watched as the man who'd just been intimate with him earlier that night, went on to inform the magistrate that he witnessed Felix committing a most “unnatural and heinous crime” with another man. That if Felix wasinspected, they would have sufficient proof of Felix’s crime.
Felix hadn’t realized a person’s body could hollow out, like someone had taken a scalpel and sliced out each one of his organs until he was left nothing but an empty bleeding mess. He shifted on the hard wooden bench where he sat, the uncomfortable sensation of theevidenceWilliam had left behind drying on his skin. A glaring mark of the man’s betrayal. And Felix was helpless to do anything about it because if he said anything, it would only implicate him. So, he had to sit in silence, while the first man he’d ever allowedinsidehim condemned him to the gallows.
A clerk approached the magistrate and slid a note before him. The magistrate’s eyebrows lifted infinitesimally as he scanned it, but then he nodded. “Charges are dropped. The plaintiff is dismissed.”
William’s mouth dropped open, and he sputtered in outrage.
“Order!” the magistrate barked, cutting through the man’s tirade. “This hearing is concluded.”
A heavy silence fell over the courtroom. The clerk approached Felix and beckoned him to follow. What on earth was happening? All eyes in the courtroom burned into his back as he followed the man. His body shook, as though the chaos of the night had eaten away at his muscles, leaving them weak and ineffectual. Why would the magistrate dismiss his charges, him, so swiftly—for no apparent reason?
Once in a back hall, the man paused and lifted a key. “Let me help divest you of those, my lord.”
My lord. Elation and panic surged through him. Which the man must have noticed. “No one besides myself and the magistrate knows.”
How? Who? What did…? Felix couldn’t form a single question, his mind a discordant echo of disorientation.
“He’s awaiting you in the carriage just outside.” The man pointed toward the discreet exit.
Felix sucked in a breath, hoping he was going to see who he thought he was going to see when he stepped out of the building.
Please, please, please.
He passed through the exit and froze, gaze landing on his father sitting in the carriage in the back alley of the courthouse.
In the next moment he was at the carriage’s opening, yanked into his father’s arms, tight, warm reassurance wrapping around him in a painfully fierce grip. The kind only a father could give. One that said if he squeezed Felix hard enough, held Felix close enough, he could ward off all harm, all threat from his son. God, Felix hoped his father could.
Felix sank into that unyielding hold, and the agony of the night finally broke free. Sobs wracked his body, violent, consuming, choking off his air. He let it all out, one convulsing cry at a time—the betrayal, the fear, the helplessness—until all that remained was the quiet, steady belief that he was finally safe in the protection of his father’s arms.
“H-How did you know? How did you f-find me?” he said hoarsely, his words muffled in his father’s neck.
His father rocked him softly, fingers tightening in Felix’s hair where he held Felix to him, the same way he had when Felix had been a small child. “Benedict came to us. Reckless lad stole a horse to get to us. Told us of the raid.”
Felix deflated slightly. Benedict was safe. And he had saved Felix.
He pulled back from his father and settled against the squabs at his father’s side, his head falling on his father’s strong shoulders.
“What about the rest of them?” he whispered.
