It reminded Martin of those months when Will only seemed to find the world bearable through the haze of laudanum, as if oblivion was the best he could hope for. That comparison was troubling, but it might have been even more so if Martin hadn’t remembered that, when they were children, Will could spend an afternoon watching a spider weave a web. Sometimes, for good or for ill, Will’s mind just went wandering. If Will needed to spend a day staring at the wall, so be it.
When, on a March morning, Will hadn’t budged from his chair for over an hour, Martin realized that this was the first Gloomy Day during which he was capable of actually doing something useful for Will. He brewed a fresh pot of tea and topped off Will’s cup, then dressed in a clean shirt and the better of the two pairs of trousers that sat in the trunk at the foot of the bed.
“Will,” he said, his voice sounding loud in the stillness of the room. Will didn’t answer, so Martin put his hand on the other man’s shoulder. Will, as he did whenever Martin touched him, however incidentally, almost leaned into the touch, and Martin wanted to slap himself. Will was probably starved for touch, stuck here in a cottage with only Martin for company. All those weeks, Martin had only thought about how he couldn’t bear to let Will touch him because every touch sent his mind reeling in forbidden directions, but he had neglected to remember that Will needed to be touched. Feeling like he was crossing a Rubicon, he squeezed the shoulder that was already under his hand, and then leaned in a bit in an awkward attempt at a sideways embrace.
Will turned his head to look up at Martin as if surprised to find him there, and then covered Martin’s hand with his own. Martin could feel the calluses on Will’s palm, the chill of his fingertips. It felt impossibly lovely, skin on skin, as if affection could be absorbed through flesh and bone. He could have stayed there for hours, awkward angle and all, soaking up the sweetness of it.
Instead he cleared his throat. “I’m going for a walk,” Martin said. “I’ll be back in a bit.” He had leaned, so now their faces were close, close enough that he could see the individual hairs that made up the scruff on Will’s jaw, the faint lines that had no business being around the eyes of a man who was barely twenty-three. It also meant he was close enough to see when something shifted in Will’s expression, when his gaze flicked down to Martin’s mouth and then back again.
He managed to give Will’s shoulder another squeeze before standing upright and making his way to the door. Before crossing the threshold, he turned around, grabbed the blanket, tucked it around Will’s shoulders, and then all but ran outside.
He walked until he was out of sight of the cottage, then braced himself against a tree. He was a fool, a prize idiot, stupid in ways he hadn’t even considered.
Martin was quite aware, and had been for years, that all he had to do was crook his finger and Will would come running. The fact that Will had walked away from his home and his work in order to play nursemaid to Martin was proof enough. But until today, Martin hadn’t considered that Will would oblige in more . . . carnal matters. He had tried very hard not to think of Will and carnal matters at the same time. He tried not to think of carnal matters, full stop, but that was another predicament entirely.
But now that he had the idea in his mind, it was hard to dislodge. He knew Will liked women, but that didn’t mean he only liked women. Martin was fairly sure he himself liked women as much as he liked men, which was to say not particularly much. He supposed he was capable of being attracted to anybody, as long as they were Will Sedgwick. That was a problem he had long since become accustomed to: he knew how he felt about Will, and he knew there was nothing for it, and that was that.
But if there was a possibility—if Will might be interested in the same thing—
He nipped that line of thought in the bud. Will was interested in nothing of the sort. Will had looked at his mouth exactly one time, and Martin had no experience whatsoever with what men looked like when they wanted to be kissed, so it didn’t matter what he thought he had seen.
And even if Will had been open to the idea of a kiss, that was probably because he had noticed Martin’s attraction—and really, the spiders in the rafters had surely noticed by now—and responded out of whatever madness made him want to agree to anything Martin wanted.
Besides, if Martin acted on that sort of base impulse, he really would put paid to Will’s future. Getting him sent to the navy had been bad enough. Being unable to help him after he returned had been even worse. To cut him off from the sort of proper loving partnership that he deserved would be the ultimate disaster. Because Martin knew Will, knew him down to the bone, and he knew that if they got together, however briefly, Will would stay by Martin’s side forever. He was appallingly loyal and had no common sense whatsoever, especially where Martin was concerned.
During the years they had known one another, Martin had done nothing but take. It was the most unequal friendship ever known to man. And he was determined not to take another thing.
Once Martin collected himself, he went to Mrs. Tanner’s house, which he knew was situated on the other side of a small wood, and which he recognized by virtue of seeing all the barnyard animals Will had described to him over the past months—a goat, a pig, various species of fowl. The cottage itself was ramshackle in a way that even the gamekeeper’s cottage had not yet achieved. There seemed hardly to be a perpendicular pair of lines in the entire structure; everything bent and sagged in an alarming manner.
When he knocked on the door it was answered by Mrs. Tanner, her brow furrowed in consternation at the sight of Martin on her doorstep. “Something wrong?” she asked, not bothering to address him by a name she had surely guessed was false.
“No, no, but Mr. Sedgwick is a bit under the weather. I wanted to let you know that he won’t be around until tomorrow, in case you were expecting him. But if you need an extra set of hands, I might be able to be of use.” He couldn’t quite imagine what he could do, but Mrs. Tanner brought them supper almost nightly in exchange for Will’s help, and Martin felt that making the offer was the minimum required of him. And, if he were being honest with himself, he wanted Mrs. Tanner to stop looking at him with barely banked alarm, as if Martin were about to start ravishing young women and hosting orgies.
She gave him a long, skeptical look, almost a glare, as if she thought he were mocking her. Then she seemed to come to some kind of decision. “You can gather the eggs.”
“Gladly,” Martin said, trying to look like he gathered eggs every day of his life, like he was an expert in all matters egg-related. He turned in the direction of what appeared the area of the garden where a motley assortment of fowl congregated. They didn’t seem to have any kind of system for where they laid their eggs, and he wasn’t certain if this was typical of birds or merely of a piece with the disorder of the entire property. Soon enough, however, he spotted a small blue egg halfway beneath a rosemary bush. He bent down, picked it up, and held it gently in his hand. He found another egg, this one speckled and brown, being jealously guarded by a chicken, but he managed to spirit it away. A third egg, then a fourth, and Martin’s hands weren’t big enough to hold any more, so he returned to the house.
“Where would you like these?” he asked, rather proud of himself.
The house was dark and gloomy, but still he could see Mrs. Tanner lift her eyebrows as she relieved him of the eggs. “The next time you set about collecting eggs, you might want to use a basket.” Indeed, he remembered seeing a basket by the door, but hadn’t realized he was meant to use it. “And you might consider getting all the eggs. This time of year they lay two dozen a day. I sell them at market.”
“I didn’t realize,” he said. “I can go back out and—”
“Don’t bother.” She sat at a small deal table, much worn and with one leg of a contrasting wood. Martin wondered if that were one of the items Will had mended for her. There was only one chair, although a three-legged stool stood nearby. He guessed that there had never been a second chair, and almost certainly
never a Mr. Tanner.
“The next time Mr. Sedgwick is poorly, you don’t need to trouble yourself in coming by.” Her tone was not unkind, but Martin had the distinct sense that she was putting him in his place, showing him how little he knew and how meaningless his offer of help was. “Daisy’s been bringing in the eggs since she was four,” she added in a seemingly offhand way.
Yes, he was definitely being put down a peg. “I apologize for wasting your time,” he said, and tried to sound sincere. He was sincere, damn it. But he already knew he was useless and didn’t need this woman to drive home the point. Apart from the single trunk of possessions that he had left behind at his aunt’s house, he owned nothing. Even the clothing he wore was Will’s. Mortifying both of them in the process, Will had given him the coins that now jingled in his pocket, an audible reminder that he didn’t have tuppence to his name nor did he have any prospects of ever having more unless he went to his aunt, and he was determinedly not thinking of that right now. He couldn’t even gather eggs properly. He had, very literally, nothing to offer.
He walked the rest of the distance to the village and bought a pair of Bath buns at the bakery; Will had a sweet tooth and deserved something good after a hard day. He had a momentary thrill of accomplishment—he had successfully acquired buns!—that immediately dissipated when he realized that this was the single thing he had achieved in months: buying Bath buns with somebody else’s money.
He needed to start figuring out what was going to come after this. Will had a life in London, a whole future waiting for him. It was already appalling—kind, but appalling—that he had walked away from all that in order to take care of Martin. And now Martin had to make sure that Will was able to return to his life as soon as possible.
Which, really, was now. Martin was as healthy as he was ever going to be. He couldn’t in good conscience keep Will here any longer.
Will managed to thank Martin for the Bath bun, even though he mainly felt guilty that Martin needed to look after him when it was supposed to be the other way around.
“You don’t need to eat it,” Martin said when he saw Will staring gloomily at the bun. “It’ll keep until tomorrow.”
“No, I want to.” Will took a bite and swallowed. It really was good, and the sugar momentarily cheered him up. “I just—you didn’t need to go all the way to the village.”
“Obviously not, William,” Martin said dryly. “But I wanted to.” He broke off a piece of his own bun and popped it into his mouth. “You were in one of your sorry moods and something had to be done.”
Will found himself smiling. Martin could be relied on not to treat him with kid gloves even when he was at his most pitiable. It was one of the things he loved best about Martin—he never treated Will like the aftermath of a tragedy, even when Will was feeling especially tragic. From time to time he’d catch a trace of concern in Martin’s eye, but never pity. Martin seemed to see Will as the same person he had always been, the person he had grown up with, but to whom bad things had happened. Will had learned that often when a person learned about his past—the debacle on board the Fotheringay having been the subject of countless newspaper pieces, as it wasn’t every day a near mutiny occurred near enough to English shores for the actual court martial to take place in Portsmouth—they started to treat him as too broken to be taken seriously.
He took another bite of the bun, then washed it down with a mouthful of hot tea. He realized this meant Martin must have made tea at some point after coming home, although Will couldn’t say he had noticed. What he did notice was that Martin looked better than he had in months. The walk had put color into his cheeks, and months of Mrs. Tanner’s cooking had put some meat on his bones.
“You look well,” Will said, before he could consider whether it was a good idea.
Martin paused a fraction of a second, his cup halfway to his mouth, then raised an eyebrow. “Naturally,” he said into his teacup.
“I mean that you look healthy.” And he really did, but he also looked—some tiresome part of Will’s mind would only supply the word handsome.
“Yes,” Martin said, suddenly serious. “About that. I ought to go to my aunt.”
“Oh.” Will didn’t bother to conceal his disappointment. He began breaking his bun into crumbs.
“I don’t really have anywhere else to go,” Martin went on. “You know Lindley Priory is being used as a charity school now,” he said, casually eliding over the fact that he had all but given away his ancestral home for a nominal rent. “The terms of the lease don’t include the dower house, though. I could live there, I suppose.”
“You shouldn’t go there,” Will said. Martin had spent his childhood as all but a prisoner within the walls of Lindley Priory. It was in Cumberland, only a short walk from where Will and his brothers had grown up, but infinitely more stifling and dreary.
“And you shouldn’t tear up that bun if you’re not going to eat it. Look,” Martin said after Will had dutifully stopped mauling the bun, “I’m thin on options. I can’t stay here forever, and I—well, frankly, I’m going to have to beg my aunt for help.”
Will wanted to argue, to say that Martin could always have a home with him, but that wasn’t helpful or even true. Will didn’t know if the play would sell or whether he’d have anything to live on in a few weeks. It was only because of his arrangement with Mrs. Tanner that he had been able to stretch his meager funds this far. On days like this, he didn’t even know whether he’d be in his right mind for much longer. Besides, it was good that Martin was thinking to the future: only a few months ago he seemed content to waste away.
“This is your property, you know,” Will pointed out instead.
Something odd flickered across Martin’s face—embarrassment or maybe shame. “I can’t stay here alone. I can’t fend for myself the way you do.”
“I could—”
Martin shook his head. “Let’s not talk about this anymore. Not right now, at least. Now,” he said, dusting the crumbs from his hands, “I think it’s my turn to read aloud.”
They settled into the rhythm they did most evenings, one of them reading while the other toasted bread at the fire or brewed tea. Sometimes they played a few hands of cards using a deck that Will found in the loft. Will realized he had taken that routine for granted, and that when it came to an end he would miss it. He didn’t like to think of what might happen afterward. He didn’t, if he were honest with himself, want to go back to London. He didn’t want to go back to a shabby set of rooms, to shapeless days stretched out before him. Here, there was always something that needed to be done, if he felt like being busy, but he could sit idle if he had a day like today. And he liked seeing Martin every day. For years their friendship had been confined to letters and occasional meetings; seeing him daily, sharing a home with him, made something glad and grateful rise up inside Will.
“Will!” Martin called, and Will felt a chunk of Bath bun hit the side of his head. He grinned up to where Martin glared at him. “I’ve read the same paragraph three times. You aren’t paying attention at all.”
Will dragged his chair over to the bed where Martin sat, propped his feet on the bottom of the mattress, and shut his eyes as Martin resumed reading.
Chapter Seven
While Martin was cautiously pleased that he was able to go on ever longer walks, roaming about the Sussex countryside at ungodly hours every morning was not his idea of a good time. The alternative, however, was watching Will dress, sneaking looks out of the corner of his eye like a Peeping Tom. He was, frankly, disgusted with himself.
Later in the day Martin could control himself, but in the morning his guard was down. Fresh from a night of sleep and with the usual annoyance of an erection, he found himself regarding Will through a haze of want. Later on he could bury all that under the usual shame and guilt and maybe even some grief, but first thing in the morning his brain was in a shocking state of vulnerability. So every day after waking, Martin dragged himself out of bed and in
to his boots and through the front door.
By the end of March, when winter had slid into a bleak and soggy spring, Martin could easily make it all the way to the village and back without getting winded. Mrs. Tanner and her astounding brat of a daughter brought enough food for three men to eat, and since Will had always picked at his food as if he were afraid of being poisoned, that left the rest to Martin. His trousers were starting to fit snugly and he could no longer count all his ribs. When he chanced a glance in the tiny mirror they used for shaving, he saw that the circles under his eyes were all but gone. Of course, he also saw that the face looking back at him was more like his father’s than ever, but that was no surprise. It was a timely reminder not to let his baser impulses get the better of him. It was a timely reminder to keep his thoughts away from Will.
In point of fact, he tried to keep those thoughts at bay, full stop. Better simply to pretend that none of that existed than to succumb and find himself reliving his father’s sins. Sometimes when he got home from his walk and found the cottage empty and smelling of Will’s soap, he let himself pause for a moment to want things that he couldn’t have and didn’t deserve. Just for that minute, he let himself want, and even that felt like an unearned indulgence.
One morning, he returned from his walk to find Daisy clearing the cobwebs from the rafters with a whisk broom. Her hair was up in a kerchief and her face was in its usual scowl. She was an accomplished scowler, managing to take the expression all the way from her pale, furrowed eyebrows to the tip of her sharp little chin, a masterful feat Martin had only seen achieved by his own father.
“You,” she said, pointing the broom at him like a weapon, “need a haircut.”
“You,” he said, “need to mind your own business.” He resisted the urge to feel the ends of his hair, which were sweeping his jaw at a highly unfashionable length.
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