Page 16 of A Promise of Love

B ennett Henderson stepped carefully around the puddle of vomit.

Young Hartley was not up to drinking all night.

The youngest of his group, the boy naturally gravitated to Bennett, had even taken to emulating his own taste in liquor and its quantity.

The fact that Hartley was not quite up to the challenge was amusing, as was the puppy-like adoration .

What Bennett really wanted was a companion of the soul, someone who would understand his deepest desires and most forbidden aspirations. Someone who would encourage his most terrible of wants .

Anthony had done that .

Sweet Anthony, two years his junior; Anthony would have done anything for him. The times they’d had, the debaucheries they’d practiced, it was almost too much, the memories. They summoned up a longing he could not dismiss .

The last two years hadn’t been the same without him.

Not only had he lost his brother, but his best friend, his gambling companion, and more.

How many times had they shared a woman between them?

How many times had they shared a look of such utter understanding across the body of a spent and sweat dampened female body .

Anthony’s complicity in the forbidden equaled his. Anthony was his other half, his brother, his friend .

Hartley staggered from the corner, where he’d pissed again, too drunk or uncaring to find a chamber pot.

The stench in the common room was growing, but none of the inhabitants seemed to mind it.

It was just another of those subtleties of his life which differentiated him from the rank and file of his fellow soldiers .

In this year of Our Gracious King, George II, the most favored and least onerous duty was that of soldiering.

For a small fortune, a captaincy could be purchased, with the result that most of the officers in King George's army were noble second or third sons, or like he and Anthony, the only sons of a minor peer.

The ranks of English officers, therefore, were less concerned with changing the world for the better than simply staying alive.

They led their men the way a hundred generations of gentlemen had before them, with haughty superiority and an inbred belief in the rightness of themselves and England, if not their cause .

If the Scots suffered for their invasion, it was because the upstarts had the audacity to challenge the world's greatest power. If fields were burned and houses razed, and babies slaughtered and women raped, it was no less deserving of their insurrection and rebellion .

Bennett no longer bothered to listen to his companion's conversation, his attention on the ashes of the fire, allowed to grow cold not because the air was less chilly than before, but because none of their group would stoop to refuel it .

Bunch of trailing sycophants. But they too, had their place in the world, he thought with a smile.

It was not a warm or a comforting smile, but one that held a hint of rapaciousness to it, a tinge of cruelty to the upper lip, a mocking derision in the ice blue eyes.

It was, a casual observer might feel, a look to cause one to wish his doors locked firmly, his windows shut tight against the evil night air .

“Where is dear Lawrence, that he has not refueled our fire?" In his voice was more than question, it was an invitation, a luring finger beckoning all who would be led toward the most immoral carnality .

As obtuse as the group was, they caught his meaning well enough .

The young subaltern was terrified .

The pitiful mewling of his approach made Bennett Henderson smile.

Two of them divested the poor fool of his uniform without haste, their tender strokes and intrusive touch softening the edge of his fear.

His arousal was a pitiful thing, half masted, more pulled from him than generated by true lust. He was too frightened to feel anything but the spiking of his fear .

But his buttocks were so beautifully round, their whiteness only newly marked. Dear Lawrence was an apt plaything for when the storms of this godforsaken place precluded their patrols, when the rain promised only floods and Scotland’s eternal chill .

Bennett lounged in his chair, watching as his companions kissed and readied their victim.

He flicked his fingers, and the instrument of his choice was placed upon his palm.

Standing, he surveyed their prize, the trembling young he-goat, nearly hairless, frightened, so afraid that the air was colored red with it .

He breathed it in deeply, the stench of this fear and smiled .

Without subtlety, Bennett swung his arm and the whip sliced through the air, the keening sound seeming to strip the tint from the young man's face until it was whiter than parchment, paler than a winter's moon .

He relished these moments, craved them the way some of his brother officers lusted after virgins. When he tasted blood, it was of his own making, and the anticipation of it was almost as heady as the deed itself .

Almost .

His smile was sharp, grinning, his feet wide spread, his stance poised and in control.

Bennett opened the placard of his pantaloons, prepared himself.

But for the state of his rampant arousal, he would have been mistaken for a victorious soldier, exhilarated from a battle hard won.

This was a battle of sorts, he supposed, but there was never a question of victor .

He moved closer, near enough to see the tears coursing down the young man's face, close enough to smell the cloying sweet scent of terror that jerked his arousal even tighter, harder.

He bent, tenderly placed the young man into position, and flicked the whip gently, almost lovingly across the spread buttocks.

His companions merely laughed, ennui giving way to anticipation, buggery an apt sport for a wet night in the Highlands .

At the bellow of pain, he nearly laughed, so great was his euphoria at this moment.

But the scream was almost too guttural, too masculine, lacking the real tones of pure terror.

He pretended though, closing his eyes as he thrust himself forward.

His arm lifted and the high pitched whine of the whip's strokes were a complement to his own shout of release .

"Judith!" he nearly screamed, and it was rage that brought him to his senses at last .

It should have been her white body beneath him, her moans he heard, her blood he spilled .

One day, he would find her. Until then, he had her memory. Long nights filled with ecstasy .

And the sounds of her screams .