They easily fell into stride as they walked along the footpath that traversed the woods. They always did, as if their bodies remembered all the rambling they had done as children, as if it didn’t matter how much time had passed or where they were, or even what bad deeds they had done or had done to them.
“Oh,” Will said, more an indrawn breath than an actual sound. He found himself standing before a proper bluebell wood. “I had no idea this was here.” There was a bluebell wood near the Grange but he couldn’t remember the last time he had happened upon it at the exact time the flowers were blooming.
“I stumbled across it a few days ago and the flowers weren’t quite out yet,” Martin said. “Thought you might like to see it.”
“Thank you,” Will said.
“You would have come across it eventually,” Martin said. He was still doing his best to be prickly and fractious, but he stood so close to Will that their sleeves brushed. Lately, Martin was constantly placing himself within touching distance. Will wasn’t sure he even knew he was doing it.
“I’ve had a lot of lovers,” Will blurted out.
Martin turned toward him and blinked. “Congratulations,” he said dryly, but with a smile playing at the corner of his mouth.
“Usually women, actually.” Oh God, he was making this worse. His face was flaming and he didn’t dare look at Martin. “In case that matters.”
“Your father must rejoice that at least one of his sons might give him a grandchild,” Martin said, casually examining his fingernails.
“You’re impossible.”
“Mmm,” Martin hummed in agreement.
“My point,” Will said, striving to remember what had possessed him to discuss his prior love life, “is that Jon is a friend. We’ve gone to bed together a couple of times but it isn’t anything more than that.”
“He looked at you like he might want it to be.”
“Then surely I ought to run away with him immediately,” Will said, throwing up his hands. “Because that’s how these things work. Sit down, for heaven’s sake.” He gestured at a felled tree that formed a convenient bench. They sat side by side, shoulders touching.
They were dancing around the issue. He had always known that Martin was his dearest friend, but lately it had come to seem that dearest and friend didn’t come close to explaining what they were to one another. And that was with the two of them as chaste as nuns; he didn’t know what happened if anything sexual were added to a friendship like theirs. Martin wasn’t Jonathan—a friend with whom he could blithely fall into bed. Will didn’t know how to go to bed with somebody he was willing to lay down his life for. Worse than that, he didn’t know how to go to bed with someone he knew he’d never walk away from. He felt like he had been dealt into a card game with stakes he didn’t know and couldn’t afford.
“He stopped by because he wanted to give me this,” Will said, reaching into his coat pocket and bringing out a folded paper. He handed it to Martin and watched him open it.
“Is this—The Bride of Malfi?” Martin asked, staring at the playbill and then grinning at Will without a single trace of his earlier irritation. “And it’s opening in two weeks? I’m going. I don’t even care if the city is blanketed in smoke and awash in a foul miasma of disease. I need to see it. I’ll sit in the pit and wear a disguise so my aunt won’t recognize me. A false nose. A gray wig. A plague doctor’s mask.”
Will laughed and grabbed Martin’s hand. Seized by mad impulse and pure affection he brought Martin’s hand to his mouth and kissed his knuckles. He heard Martin’s sharply indrawn breath, saw his eyes go wide, and nearly did it again. He could imagine letting his lips linger just a little, brushing across the back of Martin’s hand. But he couldn’t—he shouldn’t.
Instead of trying to say anything, instead of doing anything that might make it worse, Will shifted his grip on Martin’s hand so their fingers were laced together, then rested their joined hands on his thigh. It felt like a bridge, personal and intimate but not necessarily sexual; he wanted to show Martin that he was offering—maybe not more, but everything he had.
“Is that . . . all right?” Will asked, not even completely sure what he was asking about.
Martin didn’t say anything, and he turned his attention back to the bluebells, but Will felt a brief squeeze on his hand.
“I think I’ll always be jealous,” Martin said several minutes later, but as if he were continuing their previous conversation. “I envied your shipmates, William, in case you wonder how perverse my jealousy can be.”
Will let out a burst of shocked laughter. “That might be the first time anybody envied a single soul on the Fotheringay.”
“I envied that they were near you, not anything else, obviously. Just that they were near you. I made Father hire a French tutor because I was jealous that your mother could speak to you in a special language.”
That was so ridiculous that Will couldn’t keep a straight face. “You must have been eight years old.”
“Possibly seven. I started early on my path toward maniacal jealousy.” Martin spoke lightly, but Will could hear the self-reproach beneath.
“But, Martin. That’s—it’s darling.” He remembered Martin at that age—tiny and imperious—and could picture him furiously studying his conjugations.
“I feel certain you shouldn’t think so.” Will didn’t need to turn his head to know Martin was blushing. “You’re really a terrible judge of character.” The air was heavy with the scent of bluebells and the weight of everything they were almost saying.
“I thought of you every day,” Will said quietly. “Sometimes I thought you had to know, even from the other side of the world.” He swallowed. “I had your letters all but memorized.” He thought of that packet of letters, and how he had clung to it like a talisman to a dead God, like a latchkey to a home that had burned to the ground. Sometimes, if he stopped to wonder what had happened to that carefully folded and refolded stack of papers, tied and retied until the string broke, he thought his heart might break. “I don’t mind you being jealous,” he finally said.
“You ought to. It’s the sort of thing my father would do.”
“No, your father would take it out on the person he was jealous about. You were properly civil to my friend, then sulked for two minutes and brought me to a lovely bluebell wood to make things better.”
He heard Martin let out a soft breath and knew he had gotten it right.
Chapter Nine
Will had been gone all day, first running errands for Mrs. Tanner and then inspecting some piglets he wished to buy. He was tired, hungry, and more than a little dusty when he got home, and therefore not in the best possible frame of mind when the first thing he heard upon opening the door was a cough.
Will looked at his friend’s pale cheeks, heard the hacking cough, and gritted his teeth. “I’m sending for the doctor.”
“It’s a cold.” Martin sat at the table, a cup of tea before him and a book open on his lap.
“I’m serious. Have you been like this since I left this morning?”
“It’s a cold, you silly man,” Martin repeated, but he didn’t sound like he believed it.
“That might have sounded more convincing if you hadn’t been wheezing while you said it,” Will observed. He turned back toward the door. “I’ll be back in an hour with Mr. Booth.”
“I wish you wouldn’t. I mean, at least sit down with me for a minute and tell me how your day went before you turn me over to the not particularly tender mercies of the physician.”
There was something in Martin’s voice that was more than the usual sniping. He tried to remember how Martin had reacted during their visit to the doctor in London, but Martin had barely been conscious at the time. “You’ve never even met Mr. Booth. He might be perfectly nice.”
“They’re all the same,” Martin grumbled. “Poking and prodding and bloodletting, followed by medicines that make me too weak to even sneeze properly, and all of it generally accom
panied by ominous lectures and calls to prayer.”
“I won’t let him do anything you don’t want,” Will promised. “And if he tries to lecture you, I’ll kick him out.”
“You say that, but when he starts going on about how I’ll die without some patent remedy that does nothing but make me vomit, you’ll sing a different tune.”
Will passed a hand over his mouth. “Look. You said you prefer when this sort of thing is out in the open, so I’m just going to tell you that if you die in the night, I’ll feel better if I know that I did everything possible to help you.”
Martin narrowed his eyes. “Do you know, that’s almost exactly what my father used to say before locking me in my bedroom and drugging me stupid. To be fair, I’m not entirely sure whether he hoped to improve my lungs or my morals, but the principle stands.”
Will stepped forward and put his hand to Martin’s forehead. “You have a fever.”
Martin ignored him. “He was such a hypocrite. To think that he was carrying on with Hartley at the same exact time he was punishing me for even looking at you.”
Will’s heart stuttered in his chest. He held one of Martin’s cold hands in between both of his and rubbed, as if bringing warmth to this one part of Martin could restore him to health. “Your father was a piece of shit and I wish he were alive just so I could kill him again.”
“You’d have to wait your turn.”
Will crouched before him, not letting go of Martin’s hand. “All right. Can I send for the doctor tomorrow, if you aren’t feeling better?”
“Do you know, that’s why he sent you away. He found us in bed together and jumped to conclusions. So he found you a place in the navy.”
“That’s not what happened. Nobody sent me away.” Will brushed the hair off Martin’s forehead so he could get a better look at his eyes. Glassy, too bright. Will frowned. “We’ll talk about this when you’re well. For now, tell me if I can get the doctor tomorrow.”
“Leave off, Will. I get to decide. Only me. I’m not delirious or unconscious, and you need to stop.”
Will got to his feet and added a log to the fire, then hung the kettle over the flames. He stayed silent until the tea had steeped, then poured a fresh cupful for Martin.
“Should I apologize for having brought you to the doctor in London?” he asked softly. “I didn’t know what else to do. I don’t want to take your choices away. Ever. I just—my mother was very much the heroic martyr. She’d let things get to a desperate state before even agreeing to lie down. Once she fainted while hanging out the wash and we didn’t even find her for hours. And then we all blamed ourselves for not noticing. I’m trying to do better by you than I was able to do by her.”
Martin frowned into his teacup. “You cannot possibly know how badly I wish you didn’t have to tend another invalid.”
“You’re not another invalid, you idiot.”
“See,” Martin said, his mouth curving in the beginnings of a smile, “now I know you don’t really think I’m dying because you wouldn’t have called me an idiot.”
“That just goes to show how little you know. I’m sure I called you an idiot ten times a day that first week we were here, and I couldn’t have been more positive that you were about to die.”
“You’re a terrible liar, Will, so don’t even try. I remember you calling me sweetheart, and love, and all manner of soft things.”
“I did.” Will swallowed. “And you told me to stop.”
Martin rolled his eyes and then slid his hand across the table so his fingertips brushed Will’s.
“What’s this?” Will raised an eyebrow. “Is this your way of telling me I can call you those things again?”
Martin was blushing and Will didn’t think it was just because of the fever. “If you insist.”
Will grinned and got to his feet. “Time for supper, love.”
“Insufferable,” Martin muttered.
Martin’s fever crept throughout the evening, and Will tried to tell himself he was overreacting. After all, Martin wasn’t coughing blood, and he ate half a loaf of bread along with his stew for supper, so maybe it really was just a cold. But for a consumptive, mightn’t a simple cold be truly dangerous? Will wished he knew what he was supposed to be doing. He was gripped with the fear that he was doing wrong by Martin, and that anybody else could have done better.
It was a rare cloudless night, and Martin could only catch the most futile of glimpses of the starry sky through the cottage’s tiny windowpanes. When Will’s breathing finally grew deep and steady, and the arm he had flung over Martin loosened its grip, Martin eased across the mattress and then gingerly set his feet on the floor. Carefully, he managed to stand without the bed frame squeaking. He cracked the door open just enough to slip outside.
It wasn’t so very cold, and besides, he had a fever. Being in the cool night air was probably a good idea, even. Tentatively, he took a deep breath and found that he could almost fill his lungs. His head ached, but that was nothing new. Even his fever wasn’t particularly troubling—it wasn’t like he was actually seeing things or fainting. He was almost certain that this wasn’t a worsening of his consumption. Probably this time, at least, he’d recover. He was less certain about the next time, and the time after that. Because there would be future illnesses, and eventually there would be one from which he couldn’t recover. Even if it were forty years away, it still would come. It probably was the fever making the obvious seem profound, but Martin felt struck by how finite and precious his time was.
Behind him he heard the door open and the sound of Will’s bare feet on the ground.
“What the hell,” Will said. “It’s the middle of the night and you don’t even have on a dressing gown. Or shoes. Jesus Christ, are you trying to kill yourself?”
Martin forbore from pointing out that they didn’t have a dressing gown. He crossed his arms and gave Will his best glare. “I thought I saw a shooting star.”
“You thought—the sky will be teeming with shooting stars in the summer. And it’ll be warmer. We’ll make a regular picnic of it, I promise. Just get inside, all right?”
It wasn’t often that Martin actually got angry with Will, but now he was. “No,” he said, clenching his fists. “I want to look at the goddamn stars. They may still be here in the summer, but maybe I won’t, and I don’t want to wait.” Will stood perfectly still, his eyes dark circles reflecting the moon. “I don’t want to wait for anything anymore.”
“Right,” Will said after a moment. “Right.” He went indoors and returned with the pillows and blankets from their bed, and arranged them on the ground against one wall of the house. “Mrs. Tanner will think we’ve taken leave of our senses,” he muttered. “Come here,” he said, sitting with his back to the wall. Martin lowered himself to sit beside Will, but Will stopped him. “No, it’ll be warmer like this.” He guided Martin to sit between his legs, and Martin leaned against Will’s chest, no fewer than three quilts pulled up to his chin. It was lovely just being this close to Will, just knowing this was something he was allowed. He could feel Will’s heartbeat against his shoulder blade, could feel him breathe. Even without the stars, this would have been enough.
“You can see Ursa Major,” Will said, gesturing to a patch of sky near the plane tree. “And if you look for Polaris, which is right over the overhang on the pig pen, you’ll find Ursa Minor.”
Martin supposed that if he squinted he could detect a star that was brighter than the others, but as for the rest of them, he’d have to take Will’s word for it. “Did you learn these at sea?”
“Not those. Everybody knows those. I remember showing them to you when we were boys.”
“I always suspected you made half of those up, like you made up the stories you told me.” Martin was wondering if perhaps he needed spectacles—if, somehow, in decades of being tended by various nurses and medical men, they had all missed something as obvious as that.
“I made some of it up, sure,” Will said, and Ma
rtin laughed. Will kissed his temple and Martin found himself pressing into it, curling his body even closer against Will’s. He let out a sigh, something between relief and anticipation, because he had wanted this for so long, just a sign that he wasn’t the only one who wanted. He knew he was wrong to want this, knew that Will would be throwing away all his goodness and honor on someone as unworthy as Martin. Then, as if that sigh had given voice to everything Martin felt, Will kept kissing him—first his forehead, then his cheek, then the side of his neck, all while stroking his hands up and down Martin’s sides.
“God,” Martin said. Every nerve in his body felt alive with sensation. This—whatever it was, this heady combination of arousal and affection—didn’t quite push away all the unpleasant illness-related sensations, but rather coexisted alongside them.
“Is this what you wanted?” Will murmured into Martin’s shoulder, his voice raspy.
Something about that question brought Martin up short—he imagined Will doing all this to humor him, and it made him want to shy away.
“I mean,” Will said, “are you all right with me holding you like this?”
“Yes,” Martin said immediately.
“Good.”
Martin suspected he was supposed to be doing something. With his hands, perhaps, or more likely his mouth. He doubted that most of Will’s many lovers had just sat there in his lap. And yet, Will hardly seemed to be suffering. At that moment he was nuzzling into the place where Martin’s neck met his shoulder, as if he wanted to get as near to Martin as he could. At the same time, Martin could very plainly feel Will’s erection pressing against his back. There was no ignoring it—except Will did seem to be ignoring it. God, Martin wanted to touch him. He wanted to lie down and have Will’s body cover him, press him into the ground, never ever stop kissing him.
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