18 January 1891 — Crouch Home, Swallowbury

Ben had mostly quit cigarettes since his return from Canada, because it was harder to find them consistently enough to sustain a habit, but he'd dug half a pack out from somewhere and lit one this morning. He was only half smoking it; mostly the embers were just slowly burning it down towards his knuckles while he stared out the window, thinking. He was supposed to be working at the moment. He was set up at the desk in the house's third bedroom (a study for their purposes, though it had most likely been intended as a nursery when Aldous had found the place). The surface was nearly covered with papers — organization had never been his strong suit — but of all the clutter only one letter was on his mind: the description of his son.

He was in quite a bind. He knew writing to her to ask for details at all had been a mistake, particularly with how fragile his relationship with Melody was at present. He'd thought knowing something might help fill that strange aching hole that had opened up in his chest when he thought about having a son out there he'd never met, but it seemed now that it might be unfillable; everything she said only left him wanting more. He'd drafted a response, but hesitated before sending it. Even if the child had been conceived before he'd married Melody, carrying on like this and writing secret letters to the mother felt like cheating.

There was something nagging at him, too. He felt as though he should have known who was writing him, or at least been able to piece it together from the clues she'd given him so far. Healers in the family. He was the only man who'd visited her bed. She'd seen him recently. It felt as though the answer was right there — though what would he do with it if he did know?

He didn't realize Melody had come in until she spoke. He blinked, coming back from deep in thought. There were snowflakes on the windowpanes now; it had started snowing. How long had he been lost in thought?

"Sorry, what?" he asked, shuffling the papers on his desk as though tidying it, though really he was just ensuring the letter from the woman, and his unsent response, were not visible at a glance.

  

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As foolish as it was for her to believe, Melody truly believed the night in the parlor (and then again shortly after in her bed) that they had come to some kind of agreement. A fresh start, a promising one at that. However, as the morning broke through so did the confirmation that nothing had changed. The tension wasn't forgotten, the fights never far from her thoughts. They remained together for obligation and little else, and she was devastated by the revelation.

Another morning of breaking her fast alone set her skin on edge. They were meant to be planning a trip, they were supposed to be trying, and yet, as seemed to be the norm since before Christmas, she was alone. Melody didn't know what to make of it all, but she knew one thing for sure: she couldn't allow the silence to continue unaddressed.

She mustn't.

Melody knocked on the closed office door once and when his voice didn't call out she let herself inside. She called his name softly once, then firmly a second time. When no response came she approached the desk, only for him to turn and shuffle papers along with his own greeting. "We should talk," she said firmly, her eyes narrowed at his sudden actions. What was so important that he felt the need to suddenly organize? What was he hiding?

  

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Ben looked at Melody blankly. He was sensing some tension, but was unable to place it. Maybe it was only irritation at having to repeat herself; maybe her first greeting had been softer and more mild. Still, we should talk sounded too ominous for him to just brush it off. He hadn't done anything to upset her, had he? He'd hardly talked to her since he'd gotten the first anonymous letter, aside from pleasantries in passing. He hadn't been avoiding her, but any time he spent talking to her was time he might accidentally let something slip, or that she might catch on. Had she caught on? He couldn't think when she would have, but he couldn't rule it out. She was shrewd, and it wasn't as though Ben was a master of duplicity. He'd never even considered having to hide anything this big before, and maybe he wasn't doing a very good job of it.

"Sure," he agreed, angling his chair so that it was half facing the room, instead of just the desk and the windows as it had been. He remembered his cigarette only because his finger brushed up against the lit end, giving him the slight sting of hot ash on his skin. He shook his hand slightly and took another drag of the cigarette. "What about?"

Of course, there was only one thing he was capable of thinking about at the moment: the letter he'd received from the mother of his child. Although at first he'd tried to deny it, Ben was sure the child was his, particularly now that he'd read a bit of her description of him. It just felt true, somehow.

She'd said he mostly talked in babbles, which meant he was young. When did children start using real words? Two or three? — but the fact that he was born before Ben had married that narrowed the window significantly. Older than a year, less than three. How many women could his mother possibly have been? The answer was right there, he could feel it.

  

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He appeared distracted, which only served to raise another red flag. Had he decided to divorce after all? Was he writing to solicitors with the intention of blind siding her? Melody wanted to doubt it, didn't at all believe him to be the sort, but she was far too paranoid to dismiss the idea altogether. Ben very well could still decide at any moment to change his mind, and then what?

"Well," she began, wholly uncertain of any one topic to focus on. The vacation seemed long forgotten, their marriage even further than that. There were no holidays or grand parties coming up in the near future to demand their immediate attention. Really, short of the obvious questions she had, they had nothing pressing to speak of.

Bloody hell.

"Has .. has your opinion changed?" Melody asked bluntly but in a quiet tone. Her arms were folded tight across her chest, a small frown on her face. "I thought ... " Never mind what she thought, it hardly mattered here. "It's just, I need to plan if it has."

  

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Ben was busy doing math in his head, which had never been his strongest suit. One to three years, minus nine months. Almost two years ago to almost five years ago. What had he been doing five years ago? He'd returned from America in 1884 and started cursebreaking, so anyone he'd encountered on his various tours around Europe was out of the running, as was Una Walsh (not that he'd ever slept with her, anyway). In Egypt he'd started sort-of seeing Angie Swan, but it couldn't have been her. She would have told him sooner, even if she didn't want anything from him for the sake of the child, because they had that kind of casual and open relationship, he thought. There was also the bit in the letter about how Ben had been the only man to visit her bed — he highly doubted that had been the case with Angie Swan. Or Apollodora Vablatsky, the only other contender from 1886.

1887 was when he'd met Melody. So it was after he'd met her, it had to have been. After Art's last letter Ben had been holding out some slight hope that it might have been well and truly before the Princess chapter of his life, which might have put him in the clear if she ever found out. Not that he ever particularly intended her to.

"Sorry, my opinion?" he said, realizing that he had heard her words but failed to take in any of her meaning. "Opinion on what?"

  

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"The divorce." She replied coolly despite the fact that her blood was beginning to boil. "Did you sober up after that night and change your mind?"

  

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If anything was going to pull Ben off of his train of thought, it was the word divorce. He sat up straighter in his chair, nicking his knuckle with the tip of the cigarette again and flinching. "No, no," he answered quickly, shaking his head. "Of course not. No, not at all. What gave you that idea?"

(She hadn't found out about the letters, had she? Was she reconsidering the issue of divorce?)

  

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Although his second flinch of pain from the lit cigarette was enough to spark her concern, Melody made no effort to display it. She was too frustrated, too overwhelmed, too done to pull attention from what was otherwise an important conversation. "We've barely spoken in weeks. Doesn't seem like much of a fresh start..."

  

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Ben felt a flood of relief as she explained the cause of her concerns. He should have been a little more present and active in her life, he supposed, to avoid concerning her, but this at least could be easily explained away. It wasn't as though she'd caught on to anything that he didn't want her to know. He took another drag of his cigarette and held the smoke in as he cast his eyes around for an ash tray to put it out; it was down to the last bit of tobacco anyway and he didn't want it to actually burn him the next time, or light one of his papers on fire when he accidentally let hot ash fall all over his desk. After a moment of searching he found it, stubbed out his cigarette, and exhaled the smoke in a large cloud towards the window.

"Sorry. I've just been busy," he said, which wasn't even entirely inaccurate. Spending too much time thinking about the anonymous letters and condensing his normal work down into whatever hours remained in the day had left him busy, indeed. "It's nothing," he continued. "Nothing serious. It'll pass."

This, of course, was less accurate. Ben couldn't say that it wouldn't pass, but he couldn't say that it would, either. He'd never expected an announcement like this, and he couldn't have anticipated the way it had suddenly taken up residence in his brain, lurking behind every other thought. But he was so close to figuring out at least one part of the riddle. He knew he hadn't slept with anyone the year he'd met Melody — he'd spent all summer flirting with and then pining after her, and then he'd spent the fall and winter in Canada. He'd been on his best behavior in Canada, trying to convince Aldous to let him come back sooner rather than later, so there wasn't any possibility of anything having happened. He hadn't even been drinking much, those months.

  

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Melody was not at all reassured by his statement. There was a distinct difference between being busy with the every day stressors of life and emotionally removing himself from an already tense marriage. Their last conversation hadn't even lasted five minutes, and it was so unsubstantial that Melody was hard pressed to remember its topic. Her frown deepened as she looked from him back towards his chaotic desk. "Busy with what?" She asked tensely. It couldn't be work, these were the few quiet weeks of the year now that New Year's had ended. "What will pass?"

  

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The window of possibility for when he could have fathered this alleged child was narrowing significantly. He'd gotten back to England in 1888, and had that whole entanglement with Bella Scrimgeour, but despite what everyone in the world including her father thought, he hadn't actually slept with her. So it could only have been summer of that year at the earliest, and summer of 1889 at the latest — at the end of the season he'd gotten involved with Melody again, and he'd just been sulking around Excalibur from then basically until the day the two of them unexpectedly eloped. And, actually, if the child had been born before they'd eloped, that meant... what was nine months before February? June — so late summer of 1888 to early summer of 1889. He had less than a year of time to go through in order to figure this out.

Melody was talking to him again.

"Work," he lied, gesturing vaguely at the mess of paperwork on his desk. "Trying to get a big contract off the ground. Once I'm finished with this deal, though, I won't be so busy anymore. Promise."

  

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"Alright." Ben might not have wished to divorce her still but Melody knew better than to believe things between them were truly okay. "I'm going to take Gus for a walk, then. Good luck with your contracts." Best not to stand around dwelling over it when he was a million miles away. Perhaps next year they would make good on their vacation.

  

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Ben's mind had drifted back again even before he'd finished talking to her, retracing his steps from one summer to the next. He didn't have far to go before he realized. The woman he'd met in the shop. The one-time thing. He hadn't even known her name. But he'd seen her since then — he'd seen her just weeks ago. I saw you in passing in public recently. Shit. It was her, it had to be her. That must have been why she'd been so awkward about seeing him. She recognized him, and she knew, of course she already knew — and the kid —

Shit. The kid.

Ben had already met him.

Fall of 1888. She'd said he was born in summer of 1889. The math made sense. That was him. Ben had talked to him. He'd put an arm around his shoulder. He'd given him a bar of chocolate. He'd learned his name — what was it? What was her name? She'd told him — she was married now, but she hadn't been then —

Melody was leaving.

"Y-yeah," Ben called, shaky and a beat too late. "See you. Thanks."

He had a son.

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