“You also need a shave.”
That was tragically correct. He had shaved every few days ever since Will had taught him, but the looking glass was tiny and he kept missing spots. “Are you offering, or are you simply stating the obvious?”
“Offering.”
He raised an eyebrow. “I can’t wait to hear what you mean to extract from me in exchange.” Daisy offered nothing for free, and he found that he grudgingly respected her for it.
“Nothing,” she said. “I’m just tired of seeing you look like something the cat dragged in.”
“Daisy, my child, I was raised by one of history’s greatest liars and you are but a sad amateur. Tell me what you want from me, or leave me in peace.” He pointedly sat at the table, a dog-eared copy of Tom Jones open before him.
“I need you to flirt with me. At the inn. In front of Jacob.”
“Is Jacob the ostler? Our Casanova of the Southeast?”
“No,” she said, scowling. “The ostler is a dirty old man. Jacob is one of the lads who works in the taproom.”
“You’ll want Will for that. He’s an accomplished flirt.” He remembered Will at seventeen, home on leave, rich in pocket change and tales of far-off lands, charming his way quite blatantly into the beds of more than one woman, and in such a way that years later they still asked Martin when Will was next due home. Martin had been struck dumb by jealousy, but also impressed and even proud that the friend of his childhood had turned into such a man. Will’s next ship had been the Fotheringay, and now Martin thought that leave had probably been the last peaceful time in Will’s life.
“You’re better looking though,” Daisy said, pulling him back to the present, “and that’s what I need.”
“You’re blind and deluded. And I don’t think I could hold up my end of a flirtation if my life depended on it. You cut my hair, I’ll persuade Will to do your bidding. And I’ll make sure he brushes his coat beforehand.” He stuck out his hand. “Deal?”
She ignored his hand and proceeded to comb his hair with a ruthlessness he had not known possible.
“Good God, why are you like this?” he asked. “Do you mean to make my scalp bleed?”
She snorted. “No point in being sweet and gentle.”
Martin, who had not once in his life considered being sweet or gentle, could not disagree. “Well, no, I quite—”
“Have you taken a look at me?”
He craned his head to get a good look. “You’re . . . about sixteen. Yellow hair. Blue eyes. Clear skin. If you quit scowling, I’d say you were quite pretty.”
“Nobody ever accused you of being much of a thinker, did they. If I quit scowling, and came over all sweet and gentle, I’d never have a minute to myself, now, would I?”
Much struck by this logic, Martin could only nod. “Quite.”
Daisy muttered something that sounded like, “Look what happened to my mum,” but before Martin could inquire as to what she meant, she tugged his chin to the side. “Keep your head still,” she snapped.
“You don’t want every beau in Sussex chasing after you. Very wise. That sounds tiresome in the extreme. Perhaps that’s been my secret strategy all along. I’m afraid that my good looks, combined with decent manners, would be very distracting.”
He thought that he heard her laugh, but didn’t dare turn his head to check. She began snipping at his hair with a pair of sewing shears, and he was half convinced she was deliberately marring his appearance until she stopped and shoved the looking glass into his hands. “How’s that?” she asked.
“Huh.” Martin twisted his head to various angles. “That’s really not bad at all. Thank you.”
She proceeded to attack his face with shaving soap and a razor, and it was only fear of having his throat slit that kept him from objecting.
“You could be a valet,” he said, running his fingers over his newly smooth jaw. “Where did you learn to do that?”
“Seen my mum do it, haven’t I?”
The cottage door swung open, letting in a blast of cold air. “Oh,” said Will, arrested on the threshold.
“You might consider shutting the door,” Martin suggested.
“Right. Yes,” Will said, and proceeded to shut the door, fumbling with the latch no fewer than three times. Martin sighed. When Will was distracted, he was lucky not to walk off a cliff.
“Daisy was making me presentable.”
“Right,” Will said, staring. “Yes.”
“You have an assignment. You’re going to the Blue Boar tonight and flirting with Daisy in plain view of some young man of hers.”
“She’s a child!”
“Calm down. Nobody’s asking you to touch her. Just bat your pretty eyes a couple of times and do whatever it was you used to do to make the blacksmith’s daughter come over all sweet.”
Will was now a very satisfactory shade of tomato. “I couldn’t—”
“What time, Daisy?” Martin asked.
“Five. Be there for supper and then sort of loiter around afterward.” With that, she swept out of the cottage.
“But I don’t want to—” Will started.
“That was the price of my haircut. I’m selling your virtue. Deal with it. And put on the green coat and a clean shirt. Do our Daisy proud.”
Will was still staring at him as if he had never seen a man with a proper haircut. He brought his hand up to his own thatch of shaggy brown hair. “Maybe I ought to ask Daisy to cut my hair as well.”
“No!” Martin cleared his throat. “I mean, basic grooming would ruin the moody artistic effect.”
Will tucked a strand of hair behind an ear. “I’m going to look like a vagrant compared to you.”
“Yes, well, there’s no helping that. This—” he gestured to his face “—such as it is, is the culmination of generations of Easterbrook breeding. In fact, it’s all I have to show for all those generations.”
Will smiled, the real smile that showed the dimple in his left cheek. “You’re in a fine mood.”
“It’ll pass.” But Martin was grinning too. How lowering that a simple haircut and a good shave could put him in such good spirits. A decent pair of trousers would probably send him into paroxysms of joy. He had forgotten how much he liked being neat and presentable. Lately he had started daydreaming about getting his boots properly polished. He felt ungrateful, worse than ungrateful, for even wondering; he was living essentially on a friend’s charity, and he didn’t have the right to even think about wanting fine things. He had deliberately given all that up when he left his aunt’s house, but he didn’t know how to live without it.
“You all right?” Will asked, his head tipped a bit to the side as he regarded Martin.
Martin smiled tightly. “I told you it’d pass.”
Will kept telling himself it was only a haircut and that there was no reason for him to be acting like such a fool about it. But every time he caught sight of Martin, freshly shaved and neatly trimmed and unarguably handsome, it was like a blow to the gut. When he noticed Martin pausing before the looking glass to preen a little, it only made things worse, for some perplexing reason—surely, vanity shouldn’t make someone more attractive. Perhaps it was just that seeing Martin act confident and happy about anything was a bit of a thrill and a relief.
Will had known for a decade that he liked the looks of Martin, in a general aesthetic sense. He was Will’s dearest friend; of course Will liked to look at him. And for the past few weeks he had been aware of an attraction, which he was doing his best not to dwell on. But now he was wondering if there was more to it than that, if maybe the combination of friendship and attraction created some third thing. Will suspected that if Martin had been anybody else, Will wouldn’t have hesitated to give a name to what he was feeling.
“Off we go,” Martin said after picking some invisible lint off Will’s sleeve. “We don’t want to keep Daisy waiting.” He bustled Will out the door.
“If we’re lucky, a parcel of books will be waiting for
us.”
“Excellent. From Hartley?”
“No, I bought them myself. The owner of the theater is going to stage the play, so I have a bit of money.”
“What?” Martin elbowed him. “Were you ever going to tell me?”
“I can’t quite believe it’s happened. It’s not much money, really. We’ll get more if the play is a success, but it’s only—”
“Will. This is excellent news.” He turned to Will, flashing his most dazzling smile. Will had forgotten such a smile even existed, and was taken aback. “Congratulations.”
Will stared hard at his friend, saw how his profile was caught in the setting sun, and was struck by how fleeting this all could be. A chill, a cough, and Martin could be gone. He was filled with a wave of—not sorrow, because the time for that had come and gone—but the urge to make this count. If their time was finite, then he ought to—he didn’t know what. He ought to take these tiny incandescent moments and figure out a way to hold them in his heart. Instead he shoved his hands in his pockets and scuffed the toe of his boot. “Hartley is ecstatic,” he said.
“But how are you?”
Will ought to have known that Martin would pick up on his omission, but the truth was that he didn’t know how he felt. He was proud, not to mention relieved, to have earned some money. He was nervous about having his work performed on stage in front of hundreds, if not thousands, of people. And he was afraid that, somehow, this was going to mean he needed to move back to London sooner than he wanted. Hartley was already talking about how Will could have one of the sets of rooms above the pub so they could work together on another play. And Will did want to work on another play, this time without Hartley having to make weekly stagecoach trips. But—not yet. It was nearly April, and they had been at the cottage for almost three months. It felt like a fortnight, like a decade. And he didn’t want it to end. He knew he was being selfish and shortsighted, but for a moment he didn’t care. Hell, he couldn’t even remember the last time he had been selfish, and didn’t he deserve—no, he knew that it was lunacy to think people got what they deserved. But he might get what he wanted, and maybe the fact that he wanted it was reason enough to ask.
“I don’t want to go back to London,” Will blurted out. He felt Martin’s eyes on him, shrewd as ever.
“Neither do I,” Martin said lightly.
“We’re doing well here, right? You’re healthy, I’ve written a play, and we’re both doing better than we were a year ago.”
“True,” Martin said. “Although we could hardly be doing worse.”
“So let’s stay. We both know that we have to go back some time, but let’s stay for now. For a little while longer.” He swallowed. “It’s just—I like being here. With you.”
“I like being here with you as well,” Martin said. His eyes were fixed on the lane straight ahead of him.
“I suppose I ought to ask your permission to keep using your house,” Will said.
“Don’t be stupid.”
“So will you stay? For a bit?”
“I said don’t be stupid. As if I would say no.”
The idea of having more time together made Will almost sick with happiness. He didn’t trust himself to say anything sane, and scrambled around for something that at least wasn’t maudlin. “I’m thinking of getting some piglets or a couple of geese.”
Now Martin turned to him and gave him a crooked smile. “Why?”
“They’re easy to keep and easy to sell when we leave.”
“Hmm,” Martin said thoughtfully. He had obviously never considered animals in that light—of course he hadn’t, he was a bloody baronet. But the empty garden around the cottage had been driving Will around the bend for months. It was a waste not to put it to good use.
“You can help me build a pen for the pigs,” he said, trying to sound serious.
“I’ve never built a damned thing in my life,” Martin said, putting on an especially fussy tone. “You can build the pen and I’ll lounge around decoratively while I watch you.”
God help him, but that image should not have made Will feel quite so heated. They arrived at the inn before Will could further investigate the issue. Daisy, who evidently spent her evenings pulling ale and clearing dishes at the Blue Boar, spotted them at once and beckoned them toward a table by the fire.
Will got to work straight away. He wouldn’t ever describe himself as a flirt, but he supposed most flirts wouldn’t. He knew how to make people feel that they were the center of the universe, that was all. There was something worth liking in nearly everybody, and it was no hardship to figure out what it was. The trick was to do so while also hinting, in the vaguest of ways, that it might be nice if they were able to continue this charming conversation in the nearest bed. That’s all it was, a hint. Most of the time he didn’t go to bed with anybody, or even intend to.
Well, sometimes he did go to bed with people—not so much more often than anybody else his age, and it wasn’t his fault if not having much preference as to gender opened up the field quite a bit. Besides, it wasn’t like he was seducing innocents or breaking up homes; he was only after a bit of companionship and comfort, just like anybody else, right?
As he flirted and teased, he knew Martin was watching him. That shouldn’t have made it easier, but it did, and he decided not to think about why.
“Good lord,” Martin murmured when Daisy took away their empty dishes, bending over the table in such a way as to ensure that Will got an eyeful of bosom.
“I feel like a lecherous old pervert,” Will complained.
“It’s for a good cause. Daisy’s seemed happier this evening than she has in the past two months combined. She really is pretty. I hadn’t quite noticed.”
Perhaps the ale had gone to his head because this made Will choke out a laugh.
“Why are you laughing? I’m quite immune to the charms of women, as I think you know.” Martin spoke the words with the hint of a challenge, his chin high.
“I do know,” Will said immediately, even though he hadn’t known, not really. But he had to say something affirmative before Martin got the wrong idea. He ransacked his ale-addled mind to come up with something else that might be suitable. “I’m not immune to anybody’s charms,” he blurted out.
Martin choked on his ale. “Good God, of all the ways to put it,” he said when he recovered himself. “Your family. I mean, really.”
That made Will laugh, and so the two of them were laughing like a pair of fools, warm and cozy by the fire. Will’s heart was full with the hope that there could be more nights like this, more days in the sunshine, more time spent laughing and talking and doing all the things they hadn’t been able to do before.
“I haven’t seen you look so well in years,” Will said as they left the inn. The night had grown cold, and he reached out to wrap Martin’s muffler more securely around his neck. He let his hands linger a moment too long, let himself stand a bit too close. He told himself that he was glad to have Martin alive and near, that the drink had made him even more affectionate than usual, and that it didn’t have to mean anything more than that.
“I could say the same to you,” Martin said, not stepping away from Will’s ministrations. And then whatever he saw in Will’s eye must have given him pause because he frowned. “Let’s get you home.”
It was absolutely mad that after more than seven years in the navy and heaven knew how many hours spent in opium dens, all it took was three pints for Will Sedgwick to start petting at people like they were kittens.
“Your hair is soft,” Will said, taking off Martin’s hat and running his fingers through his hair. “Like a duckling. But all tidy, now that Daisy’s cut it. Like a tidy duckling. A very well-bred duckling.”
“This duckling’s in Debrett’s,” Martin said, putting his chin in the air.
Will seemed in danger of wandering into a ditch, so Martin took him firmly by the hand and returned him to the center of the lane.
“Did you know?” W
ill began. So they were at the Did You Know stage of inebriation, then. Martin knew it well, and suppressed a fond smile. “Did you know that your fingers are very long?” He held up their joined hands, pressing them palm to palm, as if to compare.
“Yes, well, that’s generations of elegance and breeding at work.” He was trying not to focus too much on the sensation of Will’s skin against his own, Will’s hand clasping his tightly, but something of his predicament must have shown on his face.
“Shit. I’m so sorry,” Will said, dropping Martin’s hand. “I forgot.”
“You forgot what?” Martin asked.
“You don’t like touching. It’s all right, you know,” Will said with the wide-eyed earnestness of the highly tipsy. “We can be friends without touching. Or with touching. There’s no touching in letters.”
“There is indeed no touching in letters,” Martin had to agree.
“I lost all your letters on the ship.”
Martin let the silence last while they walked a few paces, in case Will wanted to say anything else; as a rule, he didn’t ask Will about anything that happened on board that ship, not wanting to poke at wounds that had only just healed. When the pause stretched out, Martin cleared his throat. “It’s not that I don’t like being touched. I like it very much. I just didn’t want to give myself the wrong idea,” he said, and then immediately regretted it. Well, in for a penny. “I don’t mind if you touch me,” he said. His face heated; he had meant only to convey that he was sufficiently in charge of his own emotions not to be led into perdition by a hand on his sleeve. But he made himself bite his tongue. Any clarification would be protesting too much. He was determined to be very normal about all of this: they were friends choosing to share a small cottage, and it would be bizarre and unnatural to insist on not being touched.
Besides, said a small and slightly drunk voice in his head, You do like when he touches you. You like it and you could easily get him to touch you all the time.
When they got home, they set about rebuilding the banked fire and putting their muddy boots outside the door. “If we’re both to stay here for a while, then I can’t let you sleep on the floor any longer,” Martin said when Will dropped his pillow onto the floor before the fire. “It was one thing when I was—the patient, I suppose, and you were looking after me. But you have to let me have my pride.”
Two Rogues Make a Right Page 7
