Just to Have You (Blackwood & Friends #3)

Chapter Twelve

Chapter Twelve

Ben: "Do you regret it?"

Griff: "Of course not! I am glad it happened with you. I trust you more than any other person. I am worried, however... maybe your opinion has changed of me, or you do not hold me in high regard any longer-"

Ben: "There is nothing that could ever happen between us that would change my regard for you."

(B & G conversation on the topic of 'That' day 9 years prior)

Helena Abbot's eyes had been depthless with an innate sadness, though by no means condemning, when Oliver had said he no longer desired to prolong their relationship. He knew that she wouldn't rage, or tantrum, or make demands of him as some had done in the past, and if she did he would have acquiesced to whatever she asked of him- within reason.

Helena's sadness stemmed differently and he realised it for what it was only after the encounter with her. She had known the time would come when he would end their arrangement, that there was never to be a future longer than the affair he had sustained with her. And her parting words to him had shown him how vastly astute and intuitive she had been from the outset, and he respected her endlessly for it, though it had also bestow him with small twinges of guilt at the prospect that she had been aware of this knowledge from the outset.

They had parted amiably after sharing a companionable drink together in the parlour of his bachelor's apartment, and he had offered her a truthful explanation of his aversion to continue their arrangement, and Helena had smiled softly, voiced little protest, murmured her ascent at times. He had seen her out and she had poised on the steps leading from the residence, the street quiet and damp on the cool threshold of night, and turned her head to him. Her eyes reflected his sentiment of before, that her sadness had been borne from an expectancy that he had met.

"There will never be another woman, Ollie," she had told him, her voice soft and lilting as it stirred the shadows of her face. "You have set me up against the standard of her, you have set us all up, and none of us will ever be able to attain it."

"Who?" he had asked, but he suspected he knew. He suspected he had known it for perhaps longer than he wanted to ever admit it.

Her smile was tight, though not unwelcoming. "I shall expect an invitation to the nuptials."

He had watched her disappear for a moment before flagging the next available hackney, ending his emotional turmoil in a few bottles of brandy from Nate's stock at The Den, though the company there had been as dismal as any he had encountered before since the club was temporarily closed and his companions decidedly sober.

Mercifully a distraction had arisen the next day in the form of legal jargon and jurisdiction which required his interpretation and involvement on the behalf of his companions, which Oliver gladly accepted and set about with a keen avidness. He had spent most of the morning at Newgate Prison shifting through testimonies and proposals with the magistrates and constables involved, before employing the services of a barrister he trusted to handle the proceedings further. It was a task he took pleasure from for the simple reason he was good at it. His mind worked quickly, deftly, as his eyes scanned records, charges, anything pertaining to legal jurisdiction- though sadly, with his failing eyesight, it would be a pleasure short-lived and on borrowed time.

He didn't allow the prospect of the gradual deterioration of his vision to affect his temperament- Oliver had long ago accepted his fate, preordained by more than one physician, surgeon or doctor that there was simply nothing they could do other than adjust his spectacles upon each visit. But it was inevitable, it seemed, that within several years the probability that he would scarcely be able to see at all was a possibility that he anticipated.