Thank you for continuing to read this rather long story, and for your reviews; they bring sunlight to my rather cloudy days. :)

Apologies for any spelling/ grammar mistakes

Thomas gave Alex his answer; to just exactly what he found out Jimmy had done to him. There were denials, tears, and the inducement of shock, but Thomas had no pity. If there were any punishment for the lies the footman had told, this was it. But Thomas did not comfort Alex, he still needed time, he didn't care if Alex hated him for it, once he learned the truth he would understand. He left Alex drying his eyes in his bed sheets to go across the hall to the blonde footman, to tell him exactly the same as what he had said to Alex. Just as Doctor Clarkson said; Jimmy remembered nothing about the incident. How coincidental. It was hardly believable that the two first hand witnesses to such a crime both had no memory, one from injury, one from alcohol. Jimmy was sat in bed, as Mr Carson said, he had been confined to his room pending a decision of what to do with him. He was desperate to see Alex, he had been told that he hit him over the head, and he wanted to apologise, knowing he must have been drunk out of his mind to do such a thing, because he really couldn't imagine any reason for him to do it. He had no visitors, he was left alone to his thoughts, all dark, all terrible. He couldn't even remember if he managed to go through with sleeping with Rose, because that's why he got drunk in the first place. The first thing he thought when he woke up was a hope that he hadn't had sex with Rose. The amount he had drunk, judging from the empty bottle of whisky on the side which was about two thirds full prior to the night before, made him think that he would have done anything, even sleep with Rose, a woman. What a prospect.

A pyjama clad Jimmy stood to meet Thomas as he came silently into the first footman's room, looking down upon the younger man with unfeeling, a bruise lingered on Jimmy's cheek from where Thomas had hit him, it was an eyesore, but Jimmy didn't blame him, not after what Doctor Clarkson said had happened. "How is he? Is he all right?" Jimmy sought after Alex, no one being able to say anything more to him than; 'he'll live'.

Thomas paced down the end of the bed, like a frustrated lion being tossed into a goat pen, making careful deliberations of how to tear the latter apart. "Lucky for him he doesn't remember a thing."

"Nor do I. I remember dinner, then drinking, then… waking up." A smile tugged at the corner of Jimmy's mouth before it receded back into a frown, as the under butler refused to face him, but hearing his voice, being beside him, knowing what he did, made his hands grab for the collar of Jimmy's pyjamas.

"How could you? How could you?!"

"I didn't mean to do it! I was drunk out of me mind! I don't even remember hitting him!" Jimmy shrieked helplessly, his fingers wrapped around Thomas' wrists.

"And everything else? Stalking him around the house like a lusty schoolboy, and when he wouldn't give you what you want you try to rape him?!"

'Everything else' could be forgotten, 'everything else' was true, Jimmy couldn't deny it, but it didn't matter, it didn't matter believing he was a promiscuous fool, a homosexual… but a rapist…. It was a dream, a nightmare, he was still drunk, he had to be, these words deformed themselves, a dyslexia of the ears. "Rape? What are you talking about? No, no, no I wouldn't do that. I couldn't! Why would you say that?!"

"Then how do you explain me walking in on you in the middle of the night, your trousers undone, Alex practically passed out over the table, shorts down about his knees after you hit him over the head?! Huh?"" Thomas pulled Jimmy closer to his face, they felt each other's breath, their saliva spewing out onto the other, bright and dark of blue eyes, with a tinge of red seeping about the edges, widened, locking fiercely.

"I don't know, I don't- But I would never do that! I wouldn't!"

"You did once before. Remember?" The blonde's eyes burned so hard they melted, oozing tears from between their lids, afraid of what more brutal evils Thomas had to say of him, "What's the matter, Jimmy? You don't remember Alex screaming at you to leave him alone when you came at him drunk the first time? And you hadn't drunk half as much as you had last night, if that empty bottle there is anything to go by!" Thomas averted his eyes to the empty whisky bottle on the side which he recognised as his own, and knew how much there was in it when it had 'gone missing'.

Jimmy's eyes went to the ceiling before they closed. He was so close to Thomas, he wanted to fall into his arms and sob and to be embraced, comforted, oh god how he wanted him, but there he was, so far away, with every accusation he grew still further, but it was Jimmy fading, it was like he was being slowly poisoned, slowly dying. "I… I … god…no… I don't remember, why can't I remember?"

"How convenient of you." Thomas only sneered, pushing Jimmy away, whose body fell forward, shaking hands clutching at his hair.

"I just… I don't understand. I couldn't have. There's got to be another explanation!"

"I was there! I saw it! What other explanation could there be?!"

"I…. There has to be. There has to be." Jimmy whispered, folding his arms up about his shoulders.

"I saw Rose." Thomas said, more calmly than before.

"Rose?" He really does know everything.

"She told me that you were ready to sleep with her… but you couldn't do it." Jimmy couldn't help but feel a small sense of relief at this revelation, but also a worry (which he couldn't think about in detail now) that maybe he would spend his life alone, because he knew for certain now that he couldn't be with a woman. Except what Thomas learned from her only served as evidence to inflame Thomas' accusation. "You were so desperate that you would go to her! Her! A woman! Not just any woman, a lady of the house you work for! You couldn't have me, Alex rejected you, Rose slipped through your fingers, so instead you had to take it!"

"No!"

"Yes!"

"It can't be true, it can't be. Oh my god. Oh my god." Jimmy threw himself back against the nearest wall, facing away from the room, from sll signs of light, putting his arm up to have his eyes bury into it to conceal his weeping. "I didn't did I?" He wailed softly.

"What?"

"I didn't actually…? Did I?" Jimmy swivelled, his red eyes, flooded with tears, his hand up to his mouth in fear that Thomas might say 'yes' only made the under butler doubt that Jimmy could have done such an abhorred act, but there was also belief in the young man's eyes that he was guilty, and it was enough to rid that doubt from Thomas' mind.

Both their hearts ached, and in agony Thomas uttered; "No."

"Oh…" Jimmy wept, "thank god…. Thank god. Oh Thomas…" Jimmy tore himself away from the safety of the wall, his face shone with the moisture of his misery by the glow from the fireplace, "what am I? What have I become?"

"I don't know anymore. I don't want to know." Thomas turned from the young man, wiping under his nose with the back of his gloved hand.

Jimmy tried to approach Thomas, but stopped when he saw how repulsed the older man was by him. The same way he felt after Thomas kissed him that night while he slept, but this was worse. If Jimmy could have stepped away from himself he would have. "I wouldn't have done it. I never would have. I must have been out of me mind. I would have stopped myself, please you have to believe I wouldn't have done it."

"I can't believe you, because of course you would lie."

"You really think I would do something like that?"

"I didn't think you would say what you said to me in London, I didn't think you'd use a Lady of the house to release your urges, I didn't think I would come down to find you, trousers undone behind Alex passed out after you hit him on the head! I don't know you anymore." Thomas shook his head in disdain.

"Why would I do something like that?" Jimmy asked himself as much as he asked Thomas, tears continuing to fall down his cheeks.

"Maybe you were just tired of people rejecting you, of not being number one in everyone's eyes!"

"No, no. Please Thomas you have to believe me, I would never purposely do anything to hurt you or Alex, you have to believe me; I'll never forgive myself if you don't."

"Good, I hope you can't." Thomas couldn't stay in Jimmy's presence, he went to the door, the young man fell to his knees in weakness.

"I'm sorry. I'm so sorry." He whispered.

Thomas, leaving his hand resting on the handle, wanted Jimmy to know that it would take more than an apology to forgive him. "How could you? How could you? After what that man did to me? You saw what he did to me! You know! I was beginning to trust you again and you do this! You do to someone else, to our best friend, what he did to me! You're sick… and I hate you." Thomas cried, his voice turning gravelly through his own pain.

"Thomas-"

"Shut up! You can stay until you make other arrangements, but you are no longer employed in this house, and until you leave if you so much as look at Alex in any way that makes him uncomfortable, you even touch him, I will call the police myself. Got it?"

"Thomas-"

"That's Mr Barrow to you, James… You're no better than the Duke."

The door shut, and the world turned back into one devoid of reality, there was no attempted rape, no Rose, no blackmail, nothing. A life that no one knew about except for those involved. No one would know of Jimmy's evil, in the same way no one would know of the Duke's. The misery of Jimmy's assorted crimes is that no one knew the truth, and it was lies, the lies Thomas was led to by his own awful experience, which made the former first footman write a short note which he slipped under Alex's door.

One hour later that note was read, the second footman bolted out of the door, he went to Jimmy's room apprehensively, he opened the door but didn't enter, calling for the blonde who did not answer. He went in the dark room. It was empty, except for the furniture. The only sign of it having been lived in was an empty bottle of whisky on the side. Alex looked back down at the note in his hand, and put what he saw before him together with the words on the paper and he knew what it all meant. He had to find Thomas, but first he went back to his room and dropped the paper in the flickering embers of the fire. The ink burned down, letter by letter, along with the rest of it, the flames turned black against the paper and smoke rose, but Alex smiled to himself in relief, he had suffered, but his secret was now safe. Jimmy said so with his own hand;

Your secret will always be safe with me, I swear it.

If we meet again, I will ask you to forgive me.