Will knew he shouldn’t be bothered by that—it was the simple truth that Martin had been raised to be a gentleman. Without Will around, he’d starve or freeze in a matter of weeks. And Will wanted Martin to have the luxuries, large and small, that he had been raised to expect. Will had never known a life in which supper dishes miraculously got washed by unseen hands, or buttons reattached themselves overnight, or the larder refilled itself at regular intervals. Will never thought about sewing buttons or washing dishes as unpleasant tasks: they were just what one did. But to Martin those acts would always be an effort, a reminder of something that had been lost. Will wanted better for him; he didn’t want Martin to live out his life feeling resentful every time he needed to wear a shabby coat or eat off chipped china.
Still, it stung to hear Martin say that life in this cottage had been unsatisfactory in any way.
“I’m utterly dependent on you,” Martin went on. “And I don’t want to be.”
Will knew it would be useless to protest that this was help freely given. He couldn’t blame Martin for not wanting to be dependent on him; Will felt deeply uncomfortable and slightly ashamed about needing help on his worst days. He’d almost rather go without food or a fire in the hearth than let Martin see him at his worst. It was one thing to be looked after by servants, but another thing entirely to be looked after by a friend. With that in mind, Will tried to make peace with what Martin had said: Martin would eventually go to his aunt, who would find him a wealthy wife. Then not only would Martin have the kind of life he was accustomed to, but he could be looked after by servants and physicians who knew what they were doing. He would be safe and cared for.
Of course, that would also mean that this new physical aspect of their friendship would come to an end. At least, Will thought it would, because unless Martin married a very open-minded woman, being together would involve a degree of dishonesty that Will didn’t think he could endure. But the rest of their friendship would remain intact. They wouldn’t lose anything they hadn’t had the previous day. That was fine, he told himself. The strange thing fluttering in his chest was probably just relief.
“Don’t mind me,” Martin said, nudging Will’s knee. “I’m just being a sulky bastard.”
“Yes, but you’re my sulky bastard,” Will said. He took the tea out of his hand and placed it on the windowsill, then climbed onto the bed so he was kneeling over Martin’s lap. “Thank you.” He put a finger under Martin’s chin and tilted his head up, then kissed him.
“What are you thanking me for?” Martin asked.
“For being my sulky bastard,” Will said, then kissed him again, this time deeper.
It was all easier this time, maybe because Martin knew what to expect, or maybe because Will knew that his part involved a steady litany of praise and reassurance. Martin let his hands explore, roaming over the curve of Will’s arse and the planes of his back. Will hadn’t expected that—most people either avoided his scars, as if touching them would remind Will of their existence, or they made a great show of lavishing attention on them. Will didn’t mind either way, but it felt right that Martin would treat his back just like any other part of his body.
“Why are you smiling like that?” Martin asked, breathless. “I’m not here to amuse you.” The asperity of his voice was rather undercut by the fact that he was arching up beneath Will as their erections rubbed together in the space between their bodies.
“Yes, but you amuse me anyway,” Will said, and Martin’s only response was to pinch his arse and then move his fingers rather daringly close to Will’s cleft. Jesus. Will knew Martin was a quick study, but this was— “God, yes, please keep doing that.”
Martin laughed, the complete tosser.
Later, after they cleaned up and ate breakfast and then returned to the bed once again, Martin traced a path on Will’s shoulder blade that Will knew was the tail end of one of his scars. “You know, you and Ben are the only people who never ask me about all that,” Will murmured. Martin had simply shown up at the address Will had mentioned in his last letter and set about making sure Will had food to eat and someone to drag him home from whatever hellish places where he had sought relief. There had been no tears, no hand wringing, no well-intentioned offers for Will to unburden his soul. Martin just did his damnedest to get Will to go home to Cumberland with him, and when Will refused, stayed by his side until Sir Humphrey died and Martin had to go north to sort out the estate.
Martin raised his eyebrows, but didn’t stop the path of his fingers. “Did you want me to ask?”
“No,” Will said at once.
“I’ve always supposed that if you wanted to talk about it, you would. And,” he added after a pause, “I thought you might have had your fill of talking at the court martial.”
That was such a wild understatement that Will actually cracked a smile, which was not something he had ever anticipated doing when talking about the Fotheringay, but he knew this wasn’t even the first time Martin had managed it. “My father wanted to write a poem about it.” He coughed out a little laugh, expecting Martin to find his father’s antics amusing, but Martin only narrowed his eyes and looked ready to commit murder. “Hartley bribed someone at the Admiralty to give him the transcript of the court martial. My younger brothers still don’t know what to say to me. They remember me one way and see me like this and it makes them uncomfortable. But you and Ben treat me like I’m still me.”
Martin looked away. “It’s not every day I’m put in the same category as the saintly Benedict Sedgwick.”
“Ben is good to everyone. You’re good to me.”
“You really shouldn’t make that sound like a compliment.”
There was no point in arguing with such arrant foolishness, so Will leaned in and kissed him.
Martin hadn’t expected an epiphany to arrive in the form of an escaped pig. But piglets, it turned out, were very slippery and wished for nothing so much as anarchy. Whenever presented with a dull moment, they began devising new and horrible ways to get out of their pen. Martin, unwilling to let Will’s new project escape into the wilderness, had spent the hours since the piglets’ arrival alternately scolding them for ingratitude and chasing them around the perimeter of the cottage.
“I’m really not sure you can expect gratitude from an animal we intend to sell to the butcher,” Will said, leaning against the plane tree and watching Martin’s efforts with a badly concealed air of amusement.
“There you are,” Martin said, cornering one of the escapees against the woodshed. “Finally. William, are you going to help me retrieve these creatures or are you— Ha!” he exclaimed, lunging as the piglet approached, and finally meeting with success as his fingers closed around its midsection. “Why are they so heavy? And so naughty? None of this can be normal.”
Will took the animal from Martin’s arms and shoved it back into its pen. “You stand guard and shout if they try to make a break for it, and I’ll wedge some stones beneath the bottom rail,” he said. “When they’re a bit bigger they’ll just try to knock the entire fence down.”
“Why do you sound impressed?” Martin called. “This is disorderly behavior. Reprehensible.” He watched as Will took flat stones from an old, crumbled wall and began wedging them around the perimeter of the pen.
“Good work catching that pig,” Will said. “I didn’t think baronets could do that sort of thing.”
“Oh, fuck off,” Martin said happily, preening at Will’s praise.
“In fact, you might be the first man with a title to ever have done something useful.”
“I’ll show you useful,” Martin said, with what he hoped was a sufficient amount of innuendo.
“Promises, promises.” Will had straw and feathers in his hair and a good deal of dirt everywhere else, which was pretty much how he looked every day when he came home from Mrs. Tanner’s. His sleeves were rolled up and his collar was loose. He didn’t look at all like a gentleman. Martin was aware that he was probably equally disreputa
ble looking, which meant that he too looked nothing like a gentleman. Having been raised secure in the knowledge that his title and standing were his most important qualities, Martin felt some lingering shame at spending his days living in a way he would once have dismissed as squalor. He had just flung himself into the mud to catch a pig, for God’s sake. Bigger and louder than the shame, however, was relief that he didn’t have to be that past version of himself anymore. He could let all of it go—his father, Lindley Priory, his entry in Debrett’s. None of it had ever done him any good; he had known from his earliest childhood that he was an insufficient heir, too thin and sickly to be trusted to survive to adulthood, too sallow and ill-mannered to bring into company. He could just . . . stop being that Martin Easterbrook. Instead he could catch pigs and share a bed with the only person who mattered to him.
This was, he knew, a pipe dream. He couldn’t stay here forever. The day would arrive when he had to go to his aunt and face his future. But for now he could live like none of that mattered. For however long he and Will were to stay in Sussex—a few months, maybe a year, Martin assumed, although they had never discussed the particulars—he could try to live a useful life.
“Why do you look so daft?” Will asked.
“I could feed the pigs,” Martin said.
“Is that something you want to do? Your dream can come true, young man. I can make it happen,” Will said grandly.
Martin elbowed him. “I just mean that I can be useful. I don’t think feeding pigs is my life’s work, but it’s . . . work.”
“You know,” Will said, his lips quivering with the effort of suppressing a smile, “if you really want to be useful, you could draw me a bath. Maybe that’s your life’s work.”
“I can’t imagine why I’d want to do such a thing,” Martin said, leaning with feigned ease against one of the posts of the pig pen, idly examining his fingernails.
“I don’t think you want me all sweaty and filthy in the bed,” Will said, stepping near.
Really, it just figured that Will had no idea that sweat and filth looked so good on him. “Perhaps I’ll draw a bath for myself,” Martin said. Will was inches away now, blatantly crowding him. “And then sit in it until the water gets cold.”
“There are better things you could do with your time,” Will said, speaking the words into Martin’s ear, his cheek almost against Martin’s own. Martin could feel the stubble on Will’s jaw, could smell clean sweat and fresh earth. He swallowed hard. Behind him, the pigs were making rude noises and never in Martin’s wildest imagination did he imagine that the gentle harmonies of pig snorts would be the accompaniment to any seduction he was a part of.
“Prove it,” he said, achieving something close enough to cool indifference.
Will’s hand landed on Martin’s hip as his teeth grazed Martin’s throat. “I’ve got a shelf full of Defoe novels that you’ll probably find weirdly titillating and a hard on with your name on it.”
“Tell me something I don’t know,” Martin scoffed.
As if that were some kind of invitation—and maybe it was—Will leaned in closer, rocking his hips against Martin’s. “I’m about two seconds from dropping to my knees and seeing what you’ll let me do to you.”
Martin jerked his hips forward involuntarily. “There’s a real chance the answer to that is literally nothing.” Will had been extremely patient these last few days, working around the edges of Martin’s limits. But they both knew that Martin was most comfortable when they both pretended that everything they did was for Will’s pleasure.
“Could be,” Will said. He kissed Martin’s throat, just a graze of lips over the place where his pulse beat. He really was filthy, and Martin was certain he ought to care. “Worth finding out, I’d say.” Another kiss, this one harder. “But not until I have a damn bath.” Will wrenched himself away. “Right. Yes. I’m going to take that bath, while you go find Daisy at the Blue Boar and tell her she doesn’t need to tidy up for us tomorrow morning. While you’re there, get a jug of ale and put it on our tab, will you?”
Martin hadn’t even known they had a tab, but of course they did. In villages everybody ran tabs, otherwise every shopkeeper and barman would be perpetually counting out farthings.
“And maybe get a loaf of bread if the baker is still open. We still have some of Mrs. Tanner’s jam. There won’t be any milk for your tea, but—”
“It’s all right,” Martin said, slightly stunned, as he finally understood that Will was attempting to provision them for a day spent in bed. “I can take my tea black.” He swallowed.
Will did something between a salute and a wave and sauntered off into the cottage. Martin was left staring after him, then shook himself into some semblance of intelligence and headed for the village. As always when he went to the village, he had the urge to pull his hat low over his forehead, but if anyone had recognized him as bearing a striking resemblance to the former owner of Friars’ Gate, they didn’t mention it.
Daisy was behind the bar at the Blue Boar, and her eyebrows shot all the way up to the ruffle on her cap when she saw him. “Out and about on your own?” she asked, pouring him a half pint of bitter without his asking. “Mr. Sedgwick must be worried sick, wondering what’s happened to you.”
“Very droll. I’m here for a jug of ale and to tell you not to bother coming tomorrow morning.”
“Why?”
“Because the cottage is already in a state of impeccable cleanliness and you deserve a morning to yourself,” Martin said, because it was the first thing he thought of. “Also, would you show me how to do the wash?”
“How to wash what?”
“Linens and shirts and that sort of thing.” It had occurred to him that he did not want people examining any bedlinens he and Will had debauched. This was likely prudish and almost certainly eccentric, but he wasn’t exposing Will to even the shadow of a rumor. At Lindley Priory, there had been a vast and steamy laundry where maids boiled and beat the household linens, then dried them in the sun. That was satisfactorily anonymous in a way that turning your underthings over to your neighbor was not. Besides, it seemed that laundry was something else he could do, like feeding the pigs. It wasn’t, perhaps, an important task, but it had to be done, and somebody had to do it. Maybe, given time, the Martin Easterbrook who tended livestock and thought about laundry could also do other useful things. “If it wouldn’t be too much trouble, that is. I’m not trying to do you out of work,” he added, when she still hadn’t replied.
“That,” she said, an odd expression on her face, “is almost sweet.”
“No it isn’t,” he said automatically.
“You’re really harmless, aren’t you?”
“Take it back.” He was utterly confused about what was going on.
“You’re stroppy, to be sure—”
“I beg your pardon, but are you calling me stroppy?”
“—but it’s all on the surface.”
“I assure you that I’m foul tempered down to my very soul.”
She patted his forearm. “Drink up, lamb. One day next week I’ll teach you how to do the wash.” He had the uncomfortable sense that they had just taken part in two very different conversations.
On his way home, a loaf of bread under one arm and the jug of ale in the crook of his elbow, he picked a handful of primroses that were growing beneath the hedges that lined the lane. This was reprehensibly transparent of him even though he was fairly certain he had long passed the point where mysterious aloofness was an option. But he still felt like he ought to pretend that he hadn’t passed that point, for Will’s sake if not his own self-defense.
When he opened the door and thrust the flowers at Will with all the ceremony of a man trying to get rid of something nasty, he felt like he had crossed an irrevocable line. Judging by Will’s expression—dazed and surprised but very far from displeased—he was pretty sure he was not the only one who thought so.
Chapter Twelve
Not in his wildest
imaginings could Will have anticipated Martin bringing him a posy, but he supposed that if he had, he definitely would have expected it to be accompanied by the look of baffled mortification on his friend’s face. Martin had never known what to do with an emotion other than be embarrassed it.
“Why are you looking at me like that?” Martin asked after depositing the bread and ale onto the table.
Will suspected that the look Martin referred to was best described as hopelessly fond. He dumped the contents of a teacup into the hearth, filled it with water from the ewer, then gently placed the posy inside. “Thank you,” he said, hooking two fingers into the waistband of Martin’s trousers and pulling him near.
“I don’t know what you’re talking about.”
Will grinned and settled both his hands on Martin’s hips, one chastely atop his hip bone, the other creeping lower. He kissed Martin’s collarbone through the linen of his shirt. “You know what?” he asked, steering Martin backward through the room.
“I daresay you aren’t going to keep it to yourself,” Martin sniped, because he was still prickly from having experienced a stray feeling. Will grinned into the skin of his neck, felt Martin’s pulse pounding away under his lips. He guided Martin a few steps further until his back hit the door.
“I almost brought in a few stalks of larkspur.” He kissed the underside of Martin’s jaw. “I was going to act very casual about it, as if I had just thought they might brighten the cottage up a bit, but thought you still might actually throw up.”
“Haven’t ruled it out,” Martin said, still peevish, but his hands were on Will’s back, holding him close.
Will reached behind Martin and slid the bolt into place. “There,” he said, satisfied that they’d be safe and undisturbed, and returned to kissing Martin’s jaw. One of Martin’s hands slid up to his hair, holding his head in place, and Will didn’t quite know what was going on until he realized Martin was angling his lips over Will’s. They kissed like that for a while, Will’s body keeping Martin flush against the door, until Will was fully hard and could feel that Martin was much the same. Then he started sliding Martin’s coat off, first one sleeve and then the next, never breaking the kiss. The waistcoat went next, and by the time he started untucking Martin’s shirt, Martin was already tugging it over his head.
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