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The bass from the speakers thudded through the floor of Bar Sinister like a warning, the lights slicing crimson and violet through the room in violent flashes. The crowd moved beneath them with the reckless abandon of people determined not to remember the morning after.
Shelley grinned as she handed Taggie another drink.
“You’ve actually come out,” she said. “I was beginning to think Rupert Campbell-Black had permanently domesticated you.”
“I’m not domesticated,” Taggie said, laughing, though it sounded thinner than she meant.
“No?”
“No.”
“So why have you checked your phone six times already?”
Taggie looked away. “I’m not checking for Rupert.”
Shelley gave her an arch, unbelieving stare.
“Fine,” Taggie muttered. “It’s just habit.”
Rupert and Cameron had split up nearly a month month ago. Everyone knew. Nobody knew the real story. Rupert had gone colder, quieter, harder to reach, throwing himself into horses and work as if motion alone could keep whatever was broken from showing. Taggie had tried not to think about him too much.
She failed.
She slipped the phone back into her handbag. “No more checking.”
“That’s better.”
They touched glasses.
✧･ﾟ: *✧･ﾟ:*✧･ﾟ: *✧･ﾟ:*
Half an hour later they were at the bar, the music louder now, the air thicker with sweat and perfume and spilled alcohol.
Taggie was laughing at one of Shelley’s stories when she became aware of a man beside her.
Tall. Blond. Smiling with the easy confidence of someone who expected doors to open.
“That’s a dangerous laugh,” he said.
She looked up.
“Oh?”
“Makes everyone else want to know the joke.”
He had expensive clothes, immaculate hair, and a smile that never quite reached his eyes.
“I’m Ben.”
“Taggie.”
“I know.”
That unsettled her.
She frowned. “You do?”
“You’re difficult to miss around here.”
Shelley caught Taggie’s eye, gave her a teasing grin, and drifted off towards the dance floor.
“I’ll leave you to your admirer.”
“Shelley—” But she had vanished into the crush of bodies.
Ben ordered drinks before Taggie could properly refuse. “I really shouldn’t…”
“It’s Friday.”
“So?”
“So one more.”
One became two.
Then three.
Taggie rarely drank much. By midnight, the alcohol had blunted her edges and turned the room soft, slippery, and wrong. Her laughter came too easily, too high.
“I think…” she said, swaying slightly, “…I may have overdone it.”
Ben’s smile sharpened. “I’ve got something that’ll sort that out.”
He produced a small tablet from his pocket.
Taggie stared at it. “What is it?”
“Something people take in clubs.”
“I don’t—”
“It’ll make you feel better. Relax you. Everyone does it.”
There was something about his tone now. A pressure beneath the charm.
Taggie hesitated. “I don’t know…”
“Come on,” he said, quieter. “Don’t be difficult.”
The words landed wrong.
Her skin prickled. “I really don’t think—”
“It’s harmless.”
She was already drunk enough to distrust her instincts and ashamed enough to ignore them.
A bad combination.
“…Okay.”
✧･ﾟ: *✧･ﾟ:*✧･ﾟ: *✧･ﾟ:*
Nothing happened for several minutes.
Then everything did.
The music turned monstrous, battering at her skull.
The lights stretched into long, searing streaks.
Faces distorted and shifted in the crowd like masks in a bad dream.
Her heart slammed violently against her ribs.
“I…” She caught at the bar, fingers slick. “I don’t feel right.”
Ben’s face changed. “Just relax.”
“I don’t—”
The room lurched hard beneath her.
Her stomach pitched. “I think I’m going to—“. She barely made it to a bin before she was violently sick.
Then again.
And again.
The smell, the noise, the heat, the lights—all of it seemed to close in on her.
People stepped back, some in disgust, some in annoyance.
Shelley came running. “Taggie!”
Taggie looked up, eyes huge and wet with panic. “The walls…” she gasped. “They’re moving.”
“They’re not.”
“They are!”
Her hands were shaking so badly she could barely hold on. “I can’t breathe…”
“Yes, you can.”
“No…” Tears spilled down her face. “I’ve done something awful…”
Shelley stared at Ben.
“What did you give her?”
He gave a thin shrug. “She wanted it.”
“N-no” Taggie cried, the words breaking apart in terror. “I didn’t know—”
She bent over again, retching until there was almost nothing left in her. Her whole body trembled with shock.
✧･ﾟ: *✧･ﾟ:*✧･ﾟ: *✧･ﾟ:*
Bas Baddington had seen enough.
He crossed the room with a face like iron, and the noise around him seemed to shrink away.
“What happened?”
Shelley pointed at Ben with a hand that shook with fury. “He gave her something.”
Bas looked at Taggie—white as chalk, sobbing, barely upright—and his expression hardened further.
“You.”
Ben tried for bravado and failed. “She’s fine.”
Bas stepped closer. “She is not fine.” He looked to security. “Don’t let him move.”
Then he took out his phone and made the call he had clearly already decided to make. There was only one person he wanted here now.
✧･ﾟ: *✧･ﾟ:*✧･ﾟ: *✧･ﾟ:*
Rupert answered on the second ring.
“Bas?”
“I need you at Bar Sinister.”
Rupert’s voice sharpened. “Why?”
“It’s Taggie.”
Something in Rupert went instantly, dangerously still.
“What happened? Is she ok?”
“I think someone’s given her drugs.”
Silence.
Then, flat and immediate: “I’m coming. Don’t let her out of your sight.”
✧･ﾟ: *✧･ﾟ:*✧･ﾟ: *✧･ﾟ:*
He drove like a man with nothing left to lose.
By the time he reached the club, he was already running.
Inside, the air was thick with noise, heat and the metallic edge of panic. He found Taggie on the floor with Shelley, wrapped in a coat that did nothing against the shaking.
She was crying too hard to speak properly.
When she saw him, her face crumpled. “R- rupert…”
Something brutal and helpless moved through him. He dropped to his knees. “I’m here, angel.”
She reached for him with both hands. “I don’t know what’s happening…”
“I know.”
“I’m scared.” Then she was sick again, violently, onto the floor beside him.
He gathered her hair back without hesitation, his jaw so tight it seemed carved from stone.“It’s all right.”
“I’m sorry—”
“No.”
Another wave hit her. She retched, gasping, until nothing remained.
Rupert kept his hand on her back, steady and relentless. “Easy, sweetheart.”
Shelley looked near tears. “I’m so sorry.”
Rupert’s eyes lifted. “What happened?”
Shelley pointed across the room.
“Him.”
Rupert looked.
Ben.
Trying to laugh, trying not to look afraid, security on either side of him.
Something cold and terrible settled in Rupert’s chest.
He eased Taggie into Shelley’s arms.
“Hold her.”
“Rupert—”
But he was already getting to his feet.
People moved out of his way before he even reached Ben.
The smile Ben attempted was pathetic. “Look, mate—”
Rupert hit him before the sentence was finished. The punch drove him into a table. Glass shattered. The room exploded into noise.
Ben tried to regain his feet. Rupert seized the front of his shirt and slammed him against the wall.
“What did you give her?”
“I didn’t—” Rupert hit him again.
The crack of impact cut through the club.
“You drugged her.”
“It wasn’t—” A third blow. Harder.
Blood appeared at Ben’s mouth.
“You thought that was funny?”
Security started forward but Bas held up one hand. “Stay out of it.”
Rupert kept Ben pinned to the wall with terrifying force.
“If she ends up in hospital because of you…” His voice was very quiet. “…you’d better hope the police reach you before I do.”
Ben said nothing. Could say nothing. He would not even meet Rupert’s eyes.
Rupert let go abruptly and Ben slumped to the floor.
Bas nodded once to security. “Call the police.” Hands closed around Ben before he could run.
Rupert turned away from him as if he no longer existed.
Taggie was still shaking when he came back.
Still crying.
Still whispering that the walls were moving and the air was wrong and she couldn’t tell if she was dying.
Rupert crouched beside her. “I’m taking you home.”
“I don’t want to be alone.”
“You won’t be.”
“You promise?”
“I promise.”
He lifted her carefully. She clung to him, face buried against his chest, her whole body trembling with aftershocks of fear.
“I’m sorry…”
“No,” he said, his voice rough now. “You are not sorry. You are not at fault. Do you understand?”
She only shook harder.
✧･ﾟ: *✧･ﾟ:*✧･ﾟ: *✧･ﾟ:*
Penscombe was silent when they got there, the kind of silence that felt watchful.
Rupert carried her straight inside.
Taggie could barely stand. Another wave of sickness hit as soon as he set her down. “I’m going to—”
“I’ve got you.”
He got her to the bathroom just in time.
She was sick again, then again, coughing and shaking so hard her teeth chattered.
Rupert knelt beside her and held her hair back with steady hands, his face rigid with controlled fury.
When it eased, she sagged against him, limp with misery. “I feel horrible.”
“I know, angel.”
“My head…”
“I know.”
“The room won’t stop moving.”
He ran a cold flannel over her face.
“It’ll pass.”
“What if it doesn’t?”
“It will.”
“I’ve ruined everything.”
He looked at her sharply. “No.”
She blinked at him, wet-faced and frightened.
“You trusted the wrong person tonight. That is all.”
Fresh tears spilled down her cheeks. “I was so stupid.”
His eyes darkened. “No.”
“I should have known.”
“You were manipulated.”
He wrapped a blanket around her shoulders with a sort of brutal gentleness.
“You are not the one who should be ashamed.”
Taggie shut her eyes.
After a while, the worst of the nausea began to recede, leaving only weakness and dread.
Rupert settled her on the sofa in the library, with a bowl, water and towels close at hand. He stayed where he could see her face.
He did not leave.
Each time she jolted awake, convinced the shadows were shifting or that she couldn’t breathe, he was there at once, voice low and steady, telling her where she was, what had happened, and that she was safe now.
As dawn bled over the grounds at Penscombe, Taggie finally slept, exhausted beyond words, one hand still locked around Rupert’s sleeve.
Rupert remained beside her in the darkening edge of morning, his bruised hand resting on his knee, his expression fixed and unreadable.
He had not failed her but he had come terrifyingly close to something he could not bear to name.
✧･ﾟ: *✧･ﾟ:*✧･ﾟ: *✧･ﾟ:*
By the time the first proper light had filled the library, Rupert had not slept at all.
He sat half-twisted in the armchair beside the sofa, one leg gone numb, his shirt stained, his jaw still tight from everything he had not said.
Taggie slept fitfully under the blanket, her face pale even in the morning sun, one hand curled stubbornly around his sleeve as if some part of her still feared he might vanish if she let go.
He did not move.
From time to time she stirred, her brow furrowing, and each time Rupert leaned forward at once.
“You’re safe,” he murmured quietly. “You’re at Penscombe.”
The words seemed to reach her even in sleep. Her breathing would steady again, and her grip on him would loosen only slightly.
At half past seven the house began, very cautiously, to wake.
Mrs. Bodkin appeared first, taking one look at Rupert in yesterday’s clothes and Taggie asleep on the sofa and understanding, with the instinctive efficiency of a woman who had managed emotional catastrophe for years, that questions could wait.
“Oh, darling,” she said softly.
Rupert stood then, carefully disentangling himself from Taggie’s hand and replacing his sleeve with the corner of the blanket before she noticed.
He stepped towards Mrs. Bodkin and lowered his voice. “She was given something at Bar Sinister. Bas called me. She was very ill in the night.”
Mrs. Bodkin’s face sharpened instantly with alarm, then fury. “Who?”
“A man Bas has handed over to the police.”
“Good.” It was said with such icy conviction that Rupert almost smiled despite himself.
“She’s sleeping now,” he said. “But she’s had a rough night.”
Mrs. Bodkin nodded briskly. “I’ll make tea. And dry toast. And I’ll stop anyone blundering in here asking idiotic questions.”
Rupert exhaled. “Thank you.” She touched his arm briefly before going.
Not long afterwards, Taggie woke properly.
At first she lay still, blinking at the ceiling as though trying to remember where she was and why every inch of her felt dreadful.
Then memory returned in fragments—the club, the tablet, the terror, Rupert’s voice, being sick while he held her hair back—and she made a small, mortified sound and turned her face into the cushion.
Rupert was beside her at once. “Easy.”
She groaned. “I’m alive then.”
“Stubbornly.”
She looked at him through her fingers, wretched. “I feel like death.”
“That’s a promising sign. It means you’re considerably less likely to be dying.” That coaxed the faintest flicker of a smile from her, but it vanished quickly.
Then she saw him clearly: still in the same clothes, exhausted, a dark bruise beginning to show across his knuckles.
Taggie stared. “Rupert…” He followed her gaze and flexed his hand once as if it were irrelevant.
“It’s nothing.”
“You hit him.”
Rupert’s expression did not change. “Yes.”
There was a long pause.
Taggie pushed herself up too quickly, immediately regretted it, and pressed a hand to her head. “Oh God.”
“Please don’t sit up so fast.” He steadied her with one hand at her shoulder and passed her water with the other. She took a few obedient sips, then held the glass in both hands.
“I can’t remember all of it,” she said quietly. “Just bits.”
“You don’t need to.”
“But I do.”
Rupert crouched in front of her so she had no choice but to meet his eyes.
“No,” he said gently. “You don’t owe anyone a perfect account of being frightened.”
Her throat tightened. “I was so stupid.”
Something flashed across his face then—not anger at her, but anger for her. “Don’t say that again.”
She blinked.
“I mean it, Taggie.” His voice was low, controlled, and somehow more intense for it.
“You were not stupid. You were lied to. Pressured. You were unwell and frightened, and some disgusting idiot took advantage of the fact that you were kind enough to believe him. That is his shame, not yours.”
Her eyes filled at once. “I should’ve known better.”
Rupert shook his head. “You should have been able to go out, have too much to drink, laugh with your friend and come home with a headache. That is what should have happened.”
The tears slipped over before she could stop them. “I was so scared.”
“I know.”
“No, I mean really scared. I thought—” She stopped, swallowing hard. “I thought I might never feel normal again.”
Rupert’s face softened completely.
He reached out and brushed one thumb beneath her eye, wiping away the tear with absurd tenderness for a man who had very recently punched someone into a wall.
“I know, sweetheart.” The endearment undid her.
She put down the glass before she dropped it and covered her face. Rupert stood at once and sat beside her on the sofa. A moment later she leaned into him helplessly, and he folded an arm around her without hesitation.
For a while neither of them spoke.
The house remained quiet around them, as if everyone inside it had collectively agreed that the library was sacred ground this morning.
At last Taggie said in a muffled voice against his shoulder, “Did everyone find out?”
Rupert considered lying, decided against it.
“Some people know something happened.”
She made a miserable noise. “I’ll never go anywhere again.”
“Yes, you will.”
She looked up. “I won’t.”
“You will,” he repeated. “Not today. Possibly not next week. But one day you’ll go somewhere noisy and badly lit again, and you’ll probably refuse sensible shoes and make appalling decisions about cocktails, and you’ll be perfectly all right.”
Despite herself, she gave a weak laugh. “I do not make appalling decisions about cocktails.”
“You once ordered something bright blue called a Neptune’s Kiss.”
“It had gin in it.”
“It had glitter in it.” That was enough to bring a proper, if tiny, smile to her face.
Rupert watched it appear with visible relief.
“There you are,” he said quietly, as if he had been waiting for proof she was still herself.
Taggie’s smile faded after a moment into something more serious. “Did the police really come?”
“Yes.”
“And Ben?”
“Bas kept him there. The police took statements.”
Her fingers tightened in the blanket. “Will I have to talk to them?”
“If they need to speak to you properly, they can do it later. Not today unless you want to. Bas and Shelley both saw enough to make things very difficult for him.”
Taggie nodded, though she still looked shaken.
After a pause she said, “Did you really tell him the police should get to him before you did?”
Rupert glanced at her. “Bas has an unfortunate tendency to remember everything word for word.”
“So that’s a yes?”
“That’s a yes.”
She looked at his bruised hand again. “You could’ve got yourself arrested.”
“Possibly.”
“Rupert.”
He sighed, not repentant in the slightest. “Yes, all right. It was not my most statesmanlike moment.”
“It was idiotic.”
“Almost certainly.”
Another silence.
Then Taggie whispered, “Thank you for coming.”
He looked at her as if the idea that he might not have was incomprehensible.
“Of course I came.”
“I know, but…” She twisted the edge of the blanket in her hands. “I know things are complicated.”
Something in Rupert’s face shifted. Complicated. A useful word. A safe word. A dishonest one.
Since his split with Cameron, he had become an expert in silence—working harder, riding longer, speaking less. It had been easier than examining the wreckage too closely. Easier, too, than admitting that through all of it the one person he wanted near him was the person sitting beside him now, pale and exhausted and still apologising for things that were not her fault.
He looked away for a second, then back at her.“Taggie.”
She stilled.
“When Bas rang…” He stopped, jaw tightening. “I have never been so frightened in my life.”
She stared at him.
“I thought something had happened to you and I—” He broke off, as though what came next was far too revealing to be said carelessly.
Taggie’s voice was very soft. “And you what?”
Rupert gave a short, humourless laugh.
“And I discovered, rather inconveniently, that there is almost nothing I wouldn’t do if it meant getting to you.”
The room seemed suddenly much quieter.
Taggie forgot, for a moment, her headache, her nausea, all of it.
“Rupert…”
He rubbed a hand over his face, then dropped it.
“This is not how I intended to say any of this.”
“You intended to say it?”
A faint colour rose along his cheekbones, which on Rupert Campbell-Black was nearly as shocking as a thunderstorm indoors.
“Eventually.”
She looked at him in astonishment.
He met her gaze directly now, with the sort of steadiness that came only when he had decided there was no retreat worth making.
“I know last night is not the moment to ask anything of you,” he said. “And I’m not asking. You’re tired and shaken, and all I care about at this second is that you’re safe. But I am done pretending that you matter to me in some vague, civilised way that can be tidily ignored.”
Taggie’s heart began to beat much too hard for someone who had been sick all night.
Rupert went on, more quietly now. “You matter far too much. More than is sensible. More than I intended. More, frankly, than is convenient.”
A tear slid down her cheek again, though this time it was for an entirely different reason.
He saw it and frowned slightly. “Oh Lord, don’t cry duckie. I’m making a complete wreck of this.”
“I’m crying because I feel awful,” she said, half-laughing through it. “And because you’re being impossible.”
“That sounds more promising.”
She shook her head, then regretted it. “Don’t make me laugh. My skull may split open.”
“Right. Serious only. Tragic devotion. Minimal wit.” That brought another wavering smile.
Then she looked at him with sudden vulnerability. “I worried about you too, you know.”
Rupert’s expression softened. “Did you?”
“Yes.”
“Shelley noticed.”
Taggie gave a tiny groan. “Shelley notices everything. It’s deeply inconvenient in a friend.”
She took a breath.
“When you and Cameron split up, I kept telling myself it wasn’t my business. That you were fine. That if I checked my phone it was only habit.” Her mouth twisted. “Apparently I’m a terrible liar.”
Rupert’s eyes held hers. “Yes,” he said gently. “You are.”
For a second they simply looked at one another, months of crossed wires and careful restraint and bad timing narrowing suddenly into one quiet morning in the library.
Then Mrs. Bodkin entered carrying tea, toast and the expression of a woman who could read a room in under a heartbeat.
She stopped.
Rupert and Taggie sprang fractionally apart—not enough to be convincing.
Mrs. Bodkin raised one eyebrow with magnificent restraint. “I see,” she said.
Neither of them answered.
She set the tray down. “Tea,” she announced, with the dignity of someone choosing not to mention the obvious. “Toast. Aspirin. And before either of you tries to look noble and self-sacrificing, Rupert, you are to shower and change before luncheon because you look like the end of a Russian novel.”
Rupert actually laughed. “Yes, Ma’am.”
“And Taggie, darling, no self-reproach. If I hear one syllable of it, I shall become extremely tiresome.”
Taggie gave her a watery smile. “Yes, Ma’am.”
Mrs. Bodkin patted Taggie’s shoulder, gave Rupert a look that contained several paragraphs of maternal insight, and swept out again.
The silence she left behind was gentler now.
Rupert handed Taggie a piece of toast. “Eat.”
“I may hate you.”
“That’s acceptable.”
She nibbled obediently, then glanced at him over the edge of it. “What happens now?”
Rupert leaned back slightly, though his hand remained close beside hers on the sofa cushion.
“Now,” he said, “you recover. You drink tea. You let everyone else be useful for once. And when you feel human again…” He paused.
Taggie waited.
“When you feel human again,” he said, “perhaps I take you to dinner somewhere thoroughly uninteresting and well lit, where no one offers you anything except decent wine and overcooked fish.”
Taggie smiled properly then—the first real smile of the morning, small but radiant. “That sounds incredibly dull.”
“I’m counting on it.”
She set down the toast and, after only the slightest hesitation, slipped her hand into his.
Rupert looked at their joined hands for a moment as though committing the sight to memory. Then he lifted her fingers and pressed them lightly to his lips.
Outside, morning had fully arrived at Penscombe.
The terror of the night had not vanished; it would leave traces, no doubt, and there would be difficult conversations and aftermath and anger still to come.
But in the library, with sunlight on the carpet and tea cooling on the tray and Taggie’s hand in his, something had shifted at last.