Victorian Boy || l.s. ✔︎

CHAPTER XXVI

"No man chooses evil because it is evil; he only mistakes it for happiness, the good he seeks." 

― Mary Shelley, A Vindication of the Rights of Men

Louis never lied to Harry.

He was so clever he didn't have to. Like a fox, sly and cunning, he merely threw Harry off the scent.

The young Duke backed away from the bed.

If Louis pushed him in the drawing room that meant he moved the planner, and if he moved the planner then it was in his possession, possibly in that very room.

"Harry, don't!"

Louis was confined to the bed and could not stop him. Harry tore through the bedchamber in search of the crucial piece of evidence.

It was not in the desk, nor the chiffonier nor the linen trunk. Perhaps he had destroyed it.

Harry rummaged through the shelves, the wardrobe, the sideboard. It was nowhere to be found.

As he pulled the brass handle of the vanity, his boot met the floorboard with a hollow thump.

He dropped to his knees and rolled back the gaudy Persian rug. He was right. The floorboard was loose.

"Please, Harry, I'm begging you."

He held up a candle and peered inside the void.

Whose name would Harry find in that book? Was Louis protecting William? Someone else? Why?

He brushed off the sawdust that coated the embossed lettering and traced the initials on the cover with his finger.

"No!" Louis cried.

Harry opened the planner and flipped to its final entries counting back five days. One, two, three, four... He held his breath. Five.

The Duke of Warwick had only one appointment that day:

The Duke of Somerset.

Harry's own title stared back at him, a title that four years ago belonged to... his father.

It was preposterous. Surely Louis realized that this was some sort of mistake. When he looked up at the Duke, he had turned his head.

"Louis, you don't actually think my father capable of..."

Reluctantly, Louis faced him.

"I saw him with my own eyes."

"Well, your eyes deceived you." Harry could not hide the tremor in his voice.

"I did not want you to find out this way. I did not want you to find out at all. I'm so very sorry, Harry."

He stood and stomped his boot with indignation. "There is nothing to be sorry about because my father would never do something like this! How dare you accuse him of such a crime?"

Even in his weakened state, Louis would not falter. "Your father came to the manor five days before James was to be introduced to society. He said my brother was a danger to public health."

"Stop this! My father dedicated his life to the sick. He most likely wanted to help James, not harm him."

"Your father was not dedicated to the sick, he was terrified of them. He wanted James locked up, if not at home then in one of his ghastly sanatoriums. My father refused to institutionalize his eldest son."