Drink to Remember, Smoke to Forget

6: The Quartering of Mister Tomlinson and Mister Styles

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Louis knew the manor like a second home. He knew every nook and cranny, every squeaky floor panel, and every broken dent in the crown molding. It was a haven to Louis, despite it being rundown and in desperate need of repairs. In all the nearly three hundred days he had spent as an employee at the museum, Louis could always count on it to comfort him after a long, laborious day of work.

However, as he stood at the entrance of the manor, he did not feel comforted to be there—quite the opposite. Despite the eerie resemblance, the New England Colonial manor owned by Mr. Abrahams was not the same as the one he spent three years inhabiting, nor the neglected government building it was before the museum acquired it for a whopping twenty-five cents. It was almost as if it were a foreign film dubbed in English; though it may have looked roughly identical, it all felt wrong and disjointed. The furniture was different, the walls were covered with wallpaper instead of paint, there were rich hardwood floors instead of an ugly shag carpet, and the embellishments and the portraits strung about were one's Louis had never seen before.

All that he saw on Captain Kelley's tour of the manor baffled him, but no more so than at the end, when they were personally escorted to their rooms.

As Louis climbed up the grand staircase to the second floor, Louis did not know exactly what awaited him behind closed doors, but in his mind's eye, he knew it would not be the same as the room he grew to love at the museum. And, to his mind's avail, he was right. When the solid wooden door to Harry's room swung open in a grand revelation, Louis saw nothing of the personalized room he and Niall spent most of their days. The sight sent a shiver down Louis' back.

In the center of the decent-sized room was a bed fit for a king, a Hepplewhite field bed adorned with a netted canopy and a quilt linen bedspread. The bed itself nearly put the room to shame, which was proven quite adequate upon further inspection. The walls were decorated in an old English wallpaper pattern, and the floor was equally decorated, but instead with an early English needlepoint rug. For furniture, there sat a bedside table with a lone candlestick, a wooden chair in the corner, and on the opposite side, a table with a seemingly cleaned chamber pot resting atop it. A mirror and a small painting hung loosely on the walls, as well.

"This shall be your room, Mr. Styles," the captain said, pointing at Harry. "Rest easy. I will make sure that a doctor is sent to you in the morning."

Harry did not say much of anything in response, just a quick goodnight before he entered his room and closed the creaky door behind him.

"And if you will just follow me, Mr. Tomlinson."

Though Louis wished more than anything to stay behind and speak with Harry, having been barred from communication during the entire boat ride to the manor, Louis obediently followed the captain down the hall to a plain wooden door.

"My room, I presume?" Louis mumbled tiredly as he stood and watched as the Captain struggled to open the door, no doubt jammed from the summer humidity.

"Aye, if I can get it open, it is," Captain Kelley said with a laugh in his voice as he pushed stray wisps of golden hair out of his pale blue eyes. The wind must have blown them loose from the long ponytail he had tied down his back with a thin black ribbon.

Though it was not just his hair that the elements seemed to have tampered with, the Captain's appearance as a whole was in absolute disarray. Or at least, in as much disarray as a British soldier was allowed. With his cravat hung loosely around his neck and his uniform wrinkled and stained with dirt and grass, it was apparent to the naked eye that the Captain had had quite a hard day since he awoke some hours ago. Yet even despite all that, the Captain's face showed no sign of wrongdoings. With a slight blush on the pale of his face—no doubt a result of his Irish roots—and a twinkle in his eye, the Captain's smile shone brightly. He was unmistakably handsome, in a rugged and humble sort of way. Not in the same way someone like Harry was handsome, but handsome all the same.

"As I said, this is to be your room, Mister," Captain Kelley said once he managed to work the door open with a few swift kicks with the back of his heel.

"Thank you, Captain Kelley," Louis whispered as he grabbed hold of the brass doorknob and moved to enter the room.

"Goodnight to you," the captain whispered back. "If you shall need me, my apartment is downstairs to the right of Mr. Abrahams's study. I will stay the night, but I will return to the commons by the morning."

With not much else to say, Louis simply nodded in response to the captain, before stepping into his room and closing the door on the captain's retreating form.

Just like Harry's, the room held the same little amount of dust-covered furniture; a rug, a mirror, a small table, a chair, a clean chamber pot, and a bed. However, unlike Harry's, his bed was far more extravagant, and an odd trunk rested at its end. In what little moonlight that shone in from the room's only window, Louis could just about see that his bed was a mahogany four-post with a red linen quilt bedspread and a lace canopy. The trunk as well appeared to be made from mahogany and bound in metal drop handles. From Louis' knowledge of 18th-century furniture, the top dome of the trunk was most likely covered in horse leather.

But none of that mattered to Louis at the moment. All he could bring himself to think about was the same question that had run through his mind ever since he stepped foot in that damned clearing: How would he explain all this to his parents?

To Louis' disappointment, he did not know how to answer. And thus, for minutes after entering the room, Louis simply stood and stared at nothing, his eyes on the verge of tears.