The Right Hand Of The Father

chapter 32

He stared down at the boy in his bed. His son. His son was in his bed. Again.

It had been different before, George thought as he stared at the boy, his stomach roiling. Before he hadn't known. Hadn't known that Alexander was his son. He'd just been a pretty boy. A boy with sweet kisses and warm thighs and a tight arse. A boy who liked to snuggle him in his sleep and nuzzled his nose into George's neck when they were close. A boy whose cries of pleasure sounded like a chorus of angels in the dark of the night. He'd been a boy to love and George hadn't known.

It was a sin but it was a sin committed in ignorance.

This though? George stared down at the sleeping boy in his bed. He had known and still he had stripped himself bare. Pressed his lips against the boy's and let his fingers map out that delicate skin. He had swallowed the boy's gasps of pleasure and touched the boy in places that no man should know his own offspring. And he had done it knowingly. Had willfully committed incest. Had allowed his son to blot his own soul with the same sin.

Alexander was his son. A child he was meant to guide and counsel and keep on the right path. Instead, he had brought him to this brokenness. This craven of unnatural desire. He had not only debauched him, stolen his innocence, he had pushed him into the arms of a poison peddler. A pimp. A panderer with a noble title. Had made his only son plead for his own death. For the chance to end his own life. And then, instead of wisdom and temperance, George had sinned against the boy again.

He swallowed as he took in the boy's sweat drenched hair. The way he shivered. The paleness of his skin. The delicateness of the bones in his face and his wrists. He looked so much like Rachel when he slept. The same full lower lip. The pale skin. 
George closed his eyes as he shuddered, thinking about Alexander's long dead mother. He had watched her sleep so often. Had marveled at how such a tiny thing could seem to fill his arms. The feel of her pulse against his own.

He remembered the first time he'd seen her. They had been in St. Croix only two weeks and they were flooded with social invitations. Balls. Dinners. As if Lawrence, actively dying and unable to rise from his bed, would be able to banter social niceties. Like George would be willing to leave him and take the risk of coming back to find that his brother had died alone. She had come to the door with a basket. A large basket and an even larger sun hat to protect her pale skin.

She freckled.

He had been amazed by that when she'd lost her hat one day when they'd been on a walk. It had been blown off her head by the wind and cartwheeled off the cliffs and out to sea before he could catch it and by the time they'd gotten back to the house that he and Lawrence had rented, her nose had been starting to speckle and he'd fallen completely in love like a man collapsing from too much drink. He'd been undone by the sight of brown spots on the tip of her nose.

But that first day she had come with a basket. Told him that she'd heard his brother was ill and had brought some supplies. Strong coffee fresh off a boat from Jamaica for him (sitting with someone who was ill was tiring and he would need things that kept his energy up). Honey from her family's own hives to coat Lawrence's throat and give him nutrition when he couldn't manage to eat. A herb concoction that was to be brewed in a tea that one of the Hebrew doctors in the town gave his patients to ease their pain (she knew they wouldn't avail themselves of the Jewish doctors but truly she'd found they were much better at managing pain than Dr. Carver the society physician since he seemed to believe it was a way for the ill to atone for their sins). A small ham. Some cheese. Verbena and lavender oil to burn in oil braziers so Lawrence could breathe the smoke and let it relieve his lungs.

"Ask her to stay for tea," Lawrence had croaked as George had bustled into the room to make sure that Lawrence was presentable for company before he introduced them — their at home standards had become lax given Lawrence's illness.