The Dotted Line: A Tangled Gentry Romance by Claire Cullen

Author:Claire Cullen [Cullen, Claire]
Language: eng
Format: epub
Published: 2017-03-27T16:00:00+00:00

Harry’s whole demeanour had changed when he returned to the table. It was unusual not to see a smile on his friend’s face.

“Is Benn okay?” Leo asked.

“He’s fine. He went to lie down. That’s a nasty cough he’s got there,” Harry replied, though his words were distracted.

“Are you going to tell me what the problem is, or do I have to guess?” It was an old joke of theirs, born from the fact that Leo had always been a terrible guesser. Playing Pictionary or charades had never been a strong point for him.

“I’ve met Benn before. Years ago.”

Not unexpected. They didn’t run in exactly the same circles but close enough that there could have been some overlap.

“Where?”

“Do you remember my cousin, Pierce?”

“The one with…”

“The one with the drug problem,” Harry finished for him. “The family hasn’t had much contact with him in recent years. But do you remember him when we were teenagers? It would have been about six or seven years ago now. He’d started getting into trouble at fourteen and by seventeen he was headed for a lot worse. His father and grandfather decided he needed straightening out.”

“I remember. They sent him to that reformatory place, right? The one outside Hanley village.”

“That’s the one. Thornlake. He was there for the better part of a year. We went to visit him about six months into his stint there. I remember the feel of that place, it was eerie. All the hairs stood up on the back of my neck and I couldn’t wait to get out. It was a great deterrent too. None of us put a foot out of line for months afterwards in case we'd be sent there.”

“What does that have to do with Benn?”

“That’s where I saw him. Poor kid was on his own, doing laps around the running track with two staff watching him. He looked terrible. Pale like he never saw sunlight, stick thin. It was freezing and we were all bundled up in coats and hats and they had him running in shorts and a vest. He ran past us as he was finishing up his lap and there was such a look of despair in his eyes. My mother asked the staff if he was okay. They said he was a special case but that he was fine. So, we asked my cousin. Pierce said none of the others knew anything about him. Not a name, not his age. But they all knew why he was there. Only son and heir of a prominent family and gay as a fruitcake. They’d sent him there to get him straightened out, literally.”

Leo sat in shocked silence for a moment.

“They sent him to a reformatory school for being gay?”

“That’s what everyone said.”

“But that’s insane.”

“That’s real life, Leo. A lot of people are nowhere near as understanding as our fathers about the whole thing.”

“Well, his father must have come around if he didn’t object to Benn marrying me.”

“It might depend on the inducement. How much did the family get for entering into this arrangement?” It was a good point.

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