Chapter Text
Ben sighed as he stretched an arm out towards the bedside table to check his pocket watch. Quarter-past-two. He was fifteen minutes late.
He smirked to himself, then gently roused the lovely sleeping woman sprawled naked across his chest. She mumbled something incoherent, then proceeded to roll over and fall straight back to sleep. She’d been lovely, whatever her name was. He was terrible with names, prostitute or not. Regardless, she nearly sucked the life right out of his cock, and for that, he had to commend her. He slipped out of the bed and dressed himself before leaving a respectable donation on the table and hightailing it out of there.
He was in no real rush to get home, truly. In fact, he was dreading it. But, if he was another fifteen minutes late, his mother was likely to cut off his bollocks and make him eat them. There were two evils at play here and, unfortunately, meeting his fiancée was the lesser.
Rey Palpatine. A name he hadn’t heard in a very long time, and a face he hadn’t been able to forget, much to his displeasure. His mind was a cruel place sometimes.
He hadn’t spoken with her since they were children. He’d been six-and-ten the last time they were together, she’d been one-and-ten. They’d known each other since she was a babe and he was still in the nursery, though. Back then, her parents had still been alive, so she hadn’t been under her conniving grandsire’s rule yet.
She’d been an unruly hellcat, more than anything, as they grew up. She’d had far too much energy from the moment she could walk. As soon as she could talk, she never stopped. Her questions had always been an unceasing flood, like she had to know every detail of every thing, and it’d driven him mad after a time. The worst thing about her (aside from her unfailing obstinance) was her affinity for getting into trouble, usually of the dangerous and/or life-threatening varieties. And she’d always managed to drag Ben into the mess headfirst right alongside her.
The amount of times he’d been admonished because of her terrible choices were countless. “You are older than her, you should’ve known better.” “If she had gotten hurt under your watch, you would not be getting away with just a talking-to.” “Ben, I do not care if she didn’t listen.” “Did you even try to stop her?”
But, somehow, there’d been a time where he didn’t mind having to associate with her. A time where he didn’t even really mind chasing after her, or getting into trouble with her. But those memories were faded and foggy and no longer felt as though they belonged to him at all.
Something horrible happened one cold March day, though, and it broke him for good. The guilt and frustration only made him grow to resent her as time wore on. He no longer liked to be in her company when it made him feel so awful. But their parents were friends, so they continued to be thrust together often and expected to entertain one another. Eventually, as they got older and the guilt of failed responsibility festered and turned necrotic within him, Ben became overly hostile. He mocked her dresses, tugged on her plait, purposely tried to frighten her. Then he simply started to ignore her. The second their parents left them alone, he’d walk away without a word, or he’d sit down and open a book. She never lingered. She never spoke to him after that point, or tried to goad him into partaking in some horrible idea of hers. She stopped smiling at him. Her giggling stopped when he no longer supplied the jokes. She barely even looked at him, and when she did, it was through eyes that were equal parts dead and murderous.
He’d betrayed her. He’d hurt her. He’d pushed her away so forcefully, he’d turned himself against her and vice versa. They were enemies of his creation—a direct result of that horrible day and what he’d done. Or, rather, what he hadn’t done. He tried not to think about it. He fought off the memory with shaking fists. Eventually, it stopped appearing in his dreams so much.
But now, he was to marry the object of all his agony.
Ben tugged on the cravat at his throat which currently felt like it was doing its damndest to choke him out.
“You are already abominably late,” his mother hissed, her voice pitched low and violent. “The least you can do is stop fidgeting and put a damn smile on your face before I decide to cripple you. Now.”
His hand fell away. The cravat doubled its homicidal efforts. He forced an expression onto his face that was the (very, very loose) definition of a smile. It looked more like “annoyed resignation” but alas, what can a man do about that in the face of his certain demise.
The death of a bachelor. The end of an era. The reaper of joy had finally come for him. The grief for this monumental loss throbbed like a toothache. He’d never see whatsherface with the great tits and mind-bending tongue tricks again. Good thing he tipped her well.
As the front doors to the house opened, Ben could’ve sworn he heard a death knell off in the distance.
Briefly, before she came into view, he finally began to wonder what she looked like now at the age of five-and-twenty. Did she finally grow into her front teeth? Did her chestnut hair still get easily tangled? Did she still always have dirt smeared on her person somewhere?
Always such a ragamuffin, he thought.
Except, as he stood shoulder-to-shoulder with his parents in the foyer and the footman stepped aside, it was not a ragamuffin who walked in behind her grandfather. Not a ragamuffin at all.
Her complexion was sun-kissed and freckled, like stars spattered across the sky during golden hour. Her hair was gathered in a thick, loosely-curled coiffure atop her regal head. There was not a speck of dirt on the deep blue taffeta and silk of her dress, either. Ben could’ve easily mistaken her for any proper lady of the ton, if it weren’t for that look in her eyes.
Dead and murderous in equal measure.
Yes, that was still her, alright.
Ben swallowed, his throat annoyingly dry. He’d kill for three fingers of bourbon right about now.
She followed in her grandfather’s hunched shadow. The man was so ancient, Ben was surprised he could still stand on his own two feet, even with the assistance of a walking stick. As he got closer, the smell of wig powder and herbal oils barely covered the underlying stench of rot. He was Death personified at this point and it repulsed Ben to see his fiancée with her head bowed behind such a man.
“Ah, Duke and Duchess Solo,” the old earl said in a voice that was oddly reminiscent of a rusty door hinge. “A pleasure to see you both again.”
“Indeed it is, my lord,” Ben’s mother, Leia, said, curtsying politely. Ben felt an elbow in his ribs forcing him to bow and as he did, he thought his mother’s stealthy ability to silently berate him in public ought to be studied.
“You remember our son, Benjamin?” Leia asked, wrapping a tight hand around the back of Ben’s bicep.
The old earl appraised Ben with a scrupulous yet filmy eye. The attention didn’t fail to make Ben’s skin crawl. The corners of his forced smile began to falter with distaste.
“Ah, yes,” the earl muttered. “You’ve gotten quite tall and broad, haven’t you? Last I saw you, you were quite the gangly thing. Not much to look at.”
I could knock you over and kill you with a mere breath, old man, Ben thought poisonously.
But the ancient eldritch horror moved aside with crackling joints and gestured at the young lady behind him to beckon her forward.
“Come, girl. I doubt introductions are necessary, are they?”
And then she was right there, standing right in front of him, looking up at him with eyes that bore no sparkle, no shine, no sign of life beyond a scathing dislike. A match made in Hell, indeed.
An expression ghosted over her dainty features that resembled the look of a person who had just bitten into a rotten piece of fruit. By the time she was holding her skirts and dipping into a stiff curtsy, it had vanished.
“My lord,” she said tightly. She greeted his parents with a much more pleasant expression upon her face.
Ben smirked. She hated this, too. His very presence tortured her just as much as hers did him. Even though they were on equal footing in that respect, it felt like Ben was coming face-to-face with the greatest foe he’d ever encountered. Their battle would be a legendary one, he could feel it.
Leia cleared her throat loudly. It seemed as though a suggestion had become trapped in there.
Barely avoiding an eye roll, Ben scooped up Rey’s hand and bowed low over it. His eyes locked onto her annoyed ones as he placed a kiss upon her knuckles. The same knuckles, he assumed, that longed to punch him in the face.
Dare you.
“My lady,” he murmured, all soft and gentlemanly. It nearly made his stomach turn. “How lovely it is to see you again.”
Most women of polite society would’ve replied to that with something along the lines of “likewise” or “you flatter me.” Not her, though.
“I suppose it must be,” she muttered under her breath.
Ben almost laughed.
“Well,” Leia said primly, “would you like a tour of our home, my lord? Miss Palpatine? You will be the duchess of it all someday soon, after all. Couldn’t hurt to learn a few things early, no?”
Rey seemed to shrink away from the reminder of her pending marriage.
“She would appreciate a tour, of course,” the earl said. “I, on the other hand, would appreciate swift directions to your nearest chamber pot. The old bowels just don’t hold like they used to.”
At this, Rey winced and screwed her face up in a grimace. Ben got the distinct impression she rather detested her nauseating grandfather (rightfully so). Though not, he imagined, as much as she detested him (also probably rightfully so).
“Oh, er—of course. Cecil, will you show the earl the way?” Han, the duke, waved their butler over. Threepio promptly performed his duties and led the old bat down the hall.
Ben watched them go with what could only be described as bemused horror.
After the stilted tour, supper was spent in forced conversation and backhanded pleasantries.
“Do you have any unique hobbies, Miss Palpatine?”
“Why yes, I do enjoy gardening quite a bit.”
Ben had hidden a smirk behind his wineglass at this comment. Of course she loved playing in the dirt, she always had. And yet, there was not a speck of it anywhere on her—not even under her fingernails, he’d noticed. Her lady’s maid must have had to scrub her skin raw just for this occasion. Bet she loved that, he’d thought. Being forced into spotlessness, powdered and rouged and streaked with hints of kohl, shoved into uncomfortable skirts and corsets just for me. He found it to be a rather entertaining thought.
Ben was not exempt from such frivolous questions either, much to his displeasure.
“Do you have any scholarly topics you favour, boy?”
Ben had swallowed the acrid taste that bloomed on his tongue each time this reanimated corpse called him “boy.”
“Indeed. I do enjoy history, with a particular fondness for military strategy. I also enjoy art and science.”
“Mm, I see. Do you possess any particular skills?”
I made a woman come, hands-free, in under a minute. I’ve even gotten them off without touching them at all. All I did was tell them what to do.
“Um, carpentry.” His smile was as roguish as they come. “Oh, and I’m quite good with a sword.”
He’d felt rather than saw her gaze jump to his face after he spoke those words. A strange tingling sensation crawled over his flesh, beginning along the back of his neck. It was like he could feel her ill intent radiating off her attention; he could practically hear the curses she was spewing at him in her mind. Annoyed but always determined to come out on top, he’d caught her eye and winked.
Her lips peeled back slightly in disgust and she went back to stabbing the potatoes on her plate with the sort of brute force that was unbecoming of a lady.
There were other standout comments from the evening, such as:
“You have a lovely home, Duchess Solo. I am honoured to join you.”
“We are so thrilled you and Ben can get to know one another again after being apart for so long!”
“You two used to be thick as thieves. Emphasis on the thieves.”
“I speak Latin, German, and French. A favourite? If I must pick, I suppose I do enjoy the French language most. It is the one I mastered first.”
Ben’s eyebrows had ticked up despite his bone-deep boredom. “Français? Toi?”
Softly, and with a flawless French accent, she’d replied, “Je crois que c’est ce que j’ai dit, mon seigneur.” Or, in the harsher English she no doubt would’ve preferred to say it in, “I believe that is what I said, my lord.”
Ben had chuckled quietly to himself. God, she was going to be fun to tease into oblivion. He was about to ruin her life in so many ways. But then again, it seemed she was set to do the same to him.
After dessert had been served and consumed, Ben found his mother looking at him with a certain conspiratorial glint in her eye and cold, sickening dread dripped down his spine as a result. Whatever was coming next, he already detested it.
“Benjamin, why don’t you escort Miss Palpatine on a walk through the gardens? Her lady’s maid can chaperone.”
He was right to detest it.
“Oh, but Mother, we have only just eaten. I’m quite stuffed—”
“Gardens? I would love to see them,” Rey interrupted. She was smiling, but it was directed at his mother, not at him. He noticed she still had dimples—even though she wasn’t smiling quite wide enough, their noticeable indent was there. “Lucy and I can go alone, I’m sure we will be fine—”
“Nonsense,” Han piped up, something he very rarely did. Clearly, Leia had bribed him with something good in preparation for tonight. “My son will accompany you. Ben. Go.”
Ben grit his teeth together behind a tight-lipped smile, so hard his jaw throbbed, and stood from the table, pushing his chair in slowly so it made a horrendous screeching sound against the floor. As he walked around to Rey’s side of the table and offered her his arm (without looking at her, mind you, because he was far too enraged to do that), he tried to plan the quickest route through the gardens in his mind. Whatever method would get this over with faster.
Her hand on his arm was so light he could barely feel it. Her palm was practically hovering over his jacket sleeve, a clear display of just how little she wanted to touch him.
As he led her towards the garden doors through the drawing room, he thought to himself, This is Hell. I am in Hell.
A loveless marriage he did not agree to, with a fiancée he barely knew anymore and did not care for who still managed to hate everything about him. He had not once been accused of being the very picture of saintly piousness, but this felt like an especially cruel form of forced repentance. And for what sin in particular? For whoring? Drinking? Smoking? Gambling? Boxing? The list went on and on, actually.
So, perhaps his suffering was justified in God’s eyes. But with all respect to Him, Ben would rail against this punishment every damn step of the way.
He decided at that very moment, as he reached for the gilded handle of the garden door, that he would ruin this marriage—ideally before it even began.