(no subject)
Master Windham, the physician reports, grows inexplicably more ill every day. It's as if some outside force is squeezing the life right out of him. The good doctor sighs the words, wiping his glasses on his coat before setting them back onto the bridge of his helplessly distracting nose. It's dreadful, really. Just dreadful. Such a successful man. But no man, politics or wealth aside, can fight nature's course, he supposes.
Aubrey just listens, nods his head like a proper son-- lets faint remorse touch his face, because his father is lying in his death bed and really, Aubrey has always been a fairly good liar.
He thinks about wishes and beetles as he descends the winding staircase. There is a part of him that still cares for the man, the father who treated his second son like a ghost. They are, after all, blood. And Aubrey, however indirectly, wished the man dead. But underneath the tang of guilt is the bittersweet taste of forbidden, secret victory. It's thick on his tongue, lodging in his throat so tightly that he finds it hard to breathe. One step closer. Every day he gets one step closer.
His feet meet the base of the stairs, and he catches the gentle clinking of china in the great room. Aubrey pauses, tilts his head to the sound. Guests, perhaps. There have been an annoying amount of strangers passing in and out of the normally quiet manor. People who have come to pay his father their respects (eager, maybe, to send him on this way; the man was a politician after all). Good manners dictate that the youngest Windham should greet them.
He steps into the great room. "Good afternoon."
Aubrey just listens, nods his head like a proper son-- lets faint remorse touch his face, because his father is lying in his death bed and really, Aubrey has always been a fairly good liar.
He thinks about wishes and beetles as he descends the winding staircase. There is a part of him that still cares for the man, the father who treated his second son like a ghost. They are, after all, blood. And Aubrey, however indirectly, wished the man dead. But underneath the tang of guilt is the bittersweet taste of forbidden, secret victory. It's thick on his tongue, lodging in his throat so tightly that he finds it hard to breathe. One step closer. Every day he gets one step closer.
His feet meet the base of the stairs, and he catches the gentle clinking of china in the great room. Aubrey pauses, tilts his head to the sound. Guests, perhaps. There have been an annoying amount of strangers passing in and out of the normally quiet manor. People who have come to pay his father their respects (eager, maybe, to send him on this way; the man was a politician after all). Good manners dictate that the youngest Windham should greet them.
He steps into the great room. "Good afternoon."