Author's Note: I can't believe no one did this already. I really wanted to read it, so I had to write it. Please feel free to take the idea & do a better job, just let me know so I can enjoy it! The timelines simply won't work - travel taking time, especially in those days, but I don't care. Anyway, having seen Helm walk away from an explosion & fire caused by 'military explosives' in an office full of chemicals and glass instruments with no damage beyond a smoke-stained shirt, one had to wonder...
Also no new content to this chapter, just a quick grammar fix with thanks to Malady Pond du LesHeuresRoses - nice catch.
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"Benjamin, don't leave me," she pleaded, tried to catch his hands. She was lovely, tousled from their lovemaking, but he did not pause. He wanted to smile at her, kiss her, and steal her away from her enslavement, but still he hurried upstairs and was gone. Captain Walker was too close and Benjamin Adams was a healer, not a fighter. He left Charlotte to face her master's anger alone.
The beautiful Negress was dead. She had died not an hour after she spoke those words - at the hands of the master from whom Adams had run. That knowledge didn't help Robert Helm as he shook himself fully awake, just as changing his name hadn't kept Charlotte from haunting his dreams. He had thought a sojourn in Europe would help. He had heard of a poet whose words would live forever, and - so the whispers said - whose entire self may yet do the same. Lord Byron was dangerous and already notorious, and such visible company meant that he had been all but invisible in the background. It had provided some welcome distraction and safety of sorts, but that was all.
One day he would claim not to have felt guilt since the eleventh century, and perhaps it was true. Certainly he was capable of regret, and the death of Charlotte was simply one more. Perhaps death was not journey's end, but another turn in the road, as he said to Mary; he didn't know what he believed anymore, but it had seemed to calm her. Would that the sentiment had the same effect on him. The stars were still glowing above him - it was not yet dawn, but he knew he would get no more sleep tonight. Besides, it was kinder on the horse to ride in the cool. He kicked out the fire, saddled his horse and rode on for California.
He had had to abandon Benjamin Adams when he left Switzerland. Walker was getting too close, in spite of his care in hiding in Byron's shadow. He hadn't had another identity ready to walk in to, which meant he had had to pick up an old one. Fortunately, although Robert Helm had a great deal of history in Europe, he was unknown in the New World. The tiny Spanish town was also unlikely to attract many of Helm's compatriots, and the fewer the safer. Perhaps there would be Spaniards who were fellow veterans of the penninsular war, but he had had little to do with England's allies. No one would recognise that he had looked then exactly as he did now.
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It was time to go. Robert Helm had been in this place quite long enough.
He told himself even a fool like Walker would find Santa Helena eventually, especially since it was so close to the coast. Though he wished them well, Camilla's ship full of escaped slaves was unlikely to fail to attract attention - that kind of tale was endlessly repeated in sailor's bars, and in time would reach the ears of attentive slave captains. And if not Walker, then someone else who recognised that a doctor who never sickened, walked away from explosions and fought as well as distinguished soldiers was probably more than he seemed.
He told himself he couldn't cope much longer with the Spanish obsession with honour. Death before dishonour. Measuring honour. Honour at the point of a sword - even the women, for goodness sake! And it was contagious. He had found himself caring for slaves (again), fighting when he could have run or simply done nothing and generally siding with 'justice' rather than 'law'. Not a way to live forever.
He told himself he did not care for a woman who thought violence solved anything, but needed to hide behind a mask to enact it. He told himself he did not care for a woman who was self-centred and spoilt, no matter how vivacious her eyes. He told himself he could not care for both.
He was old enough to know he was a liar, and wise enough to accept himself as he was.