squid-inspiration:

Thomas Hamilton: A Life. – Chapter 3

Thomas is locked away.

Also appearing: not pleasure but necessity, a bite of lamb, half a man, five months of silence, black ink, enough hands for a healthy pair, and an arrival in chains.

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They came for Thomas while he was at the table with Miranda.

The human mind, Thomas knew, was a curious thing. In moments of great upset it would sometimes pick the unlikeliest things to focus on.

Unsurprisingly, he would always remember rising to his feet when the door flew open, demanding to know what was going on when the men strode into the room. Miranda’s distress and the way he had to beg for her to stay put, because her expression made him afraid she was going to stab someone with a fork, and then it would have been two of them in trouble.

When it became clear where he was being taken, and why, Thomas beseeched Miranda to stay with James.

“Promise me!“ He struggled against the hands pulling him towards the door. Thomas felt grim satisfaction that it needed three to restrain him. „You have to take care of each other, whatever happens, I need to know you’ll be alright –“

Miranda was screaming for the men to let her husband go, but one of them clamped a soaked handkerchief over Thomas’ mouth and nose, and as he inhaled his strength left him, like water draining out of a punctured skin.

What he later remembered with strange sharpness was his earnest concern about the bite of lamb he had been eating, dropped to the floor when the doors had crashed open. That Miranda would have to order the servants to clear it away with the rest of the uneaten meal and the dishes.

Waste of a dead thing, and his teeth marks still in it.