by Emily Larkin
“Not bad news, I hope?” Daniel said.
Part of him—the angry part—wanted to screw the letter up without reading it. The hurt part was hoping for an apology.
Tom hesitated, and then slid his thumb under the wax seal.
Lucas’s letter was very short.
I’m sorry. Will you please come to Pendarve with me?
Tom stared at those words. An apology, but not enough of one—and an olive branch.
He didn’t want pages of contrition and pleas for forgiveness, he just wanted three extra words: I’m sorry. I love you. Will you please come to Pendarve with me?
“Bad news?” Daniel asked again.
But Lucas is never going to tell me he loves me, is he?
Tom sighed, and refolded the letter. “No. Good news, actually.”
Chapter Twenty-Three
December 14th, 1808
Whiteoaks, Wiltshire
Tom arrived close to dusk. Lucas followed Robert into the great entrance hall to greet him. Tom looked weary and travel-stained, his neckcloth limp, his coat creased, his jaw unshaven. Their eyes met. Tom gave a nod. A curt nod, not a casual, friendly nod.
“Glad to see you again,” Robert said, shaking Tom’s hand. “Heard the news yet?”
“What news?”
“You won’t believe it! None of us did. But I’ll let Lucas tell you. Make yourself at home, Tom.” He clapped Tom on the shoulder, and headed back to his study, his footsteps brisk.
Lucas and Tom looked at each other.
Emotions warred in Lucas’s breast—joy and sheer relief at seeing Tom again—and fear, because all the reasons he’d asked Tom to leave still existed. The drumbeat was loud in his head: Tom, Tom. He wanted to step towards Tom and hug him, heedless of the consequences—and he wanted to stay where he was and tell Tom that this had been a mistake and that Tom should go.
The moment lengthened, both of them silent. Tom’s lips were compressed and there was no merriment in his eyes.
He’s still angry with me. And regret joined the churning mix of emotions in Lucas’s breast. Regret that he’d angered Tom, that he’d hurt him, because the last thing in the world he wanted was to hurt Tom.
“Thank you for coming.” He offered the words awkwardly, diffidently.
Tom gave another short nod. “What news?”
“A letter from Tish.” Lucas fished it from his breast pocket and held it out.
Tom unfolded the letter and read swiftly. His eyebrows came together in a frown, and then climbed his forehead. He glanced at Lucas, as if for confirmation.
“She’s married your major. The announcement was in the newspapers today. Letitia Trentham and Icarus Reid.”
Tom looked back at the letter and read down to the bottom. “Tish and Reid,” he said, when he’d finished. “My God.” If he’d been angry before, he wasn’t angry now. He looked bemused, a little worried.
“She’s asked us to visit her on the way to Pendarve. I looked it up—Woodhuish—it’s not far out of the way. I thought we could . . . if you want to?”
“Yes,” Tom said. “I do.” He handed the letter back. “Tish and Reid. My God.”
“I’ll send Smollet ahead to Pendarve.” Lucas nervously turned the letter over in his hands. “You and I can travel by post-chaise. Four days down to Devonshire, see Tish, then on to Pendarve.” Having uttered the words, he felt a spurt of panic. Alone. With Tom. And on the heels of panic was a stab of longing so intense that it hurt.
Tom’s eyes focused on him. He was no longer thinking of Tish and Major Reid; his attention was fully on Lucas.
The drumbeat in Lucas’s head became louder. “If . . . if you wish?”
Tom thought about it for a moment, and then nodded. Not a curt nod.
“Thank you for coming,” Lucas said again, almost a whisper.
This time, when he said it, Tom smiled at him. Not one of his wide, merry smiles—a small, lopsided smile, half sad, half wry—but it was still a smile.
The painful stab of longing came again and the drumbeat grew even louder, and counterpoint to those things was fear. We will be each other’s ruin. Lucas clutched the letter and literally trembled with the strength of his conflicting emotions.
Chapter Twenty-Four
December 15th, 1808
Whiteoaks, Wiltshire
They left Whiteoaks close to noon and stopped for the night at a posting inn just south of Grovely Wood. The post-chaise—spacious, clean, well-sprung—was a vast improvement on the mail coaches Tom had spent the last three days in, but in every other respect the journey was disappointing.
Lucas’s words yesterday had given him hope: Smollet sent on ahead, just the two of them in the post-chaise. He’d imagined them kissing, touching, maybe indulging in some hasty sex—but he’d known within half a minute of climbing into the carriage that there would be no kisses, and definitely no sex. Lucas was tense, radiating Don’t try to touch me as strongly as if he’d said the words aloud.
Tom sat alongside Lucas for thirty miles and stewed with frustration. Rain drummed on the carriage roof. Three times he opened his mouth to have it out with Lucas, and three times he stopped himself. Wait until we’re out of the post-chaise and he doesn’t feel so cornered.
Seen in the dusk and the rain, the posting inn was a dour place, but inside it was unexpectedly pleasant. The private parlor was cozy, the meal first-rate, and the wine surprisingly decent. Lucas relaxed fractionally, but everything about him still said Don’t touch me.
Tom, whose mood had mellowed with the wine and the food, found himself growing cross again. After the covers were removed he leaned back in his chair and sipped the last of his wine, waiting, not saying anything. Tension gathered between them, a frisson that reminded him of the night he’d kissed Lucas in the Brook Street Mews—the air seemed to bristle with expectancy, with anticipation.
He finished his wine and put the empty glass on the table. Lucas glanced at it, and seemed to become tenser. Tom waited a moment, then pushed back his chair. Lucas’s gaze fixed on him. He reminded Tom of an unbroken horse, apprehensive, ready to bolt.
Tom stood. “I’m going to bed,” he said, and waited for Lucas to say something, anything.
But Lucas didn’t speak; he just sat there, looking tense. Tom saw the conflict on his face—the shame, the longing.
Out with it, Lu. Ask me to spend the night with you. But it became clear that Lucas wasn’t going to say it, and he was damned if he was going to be the one who always pushed, the one who always begged. “Good night,” Tom said, and turned away from the table.
He paused at the door and looked back, giving Lucas one last chance.
Lucas was standing, and he looked so miserable that Tom relented. “Coming upstairs?” he said.
Lucas hesitated, and then nodded.
They climbed the stairs together, and halted in the corridor outside their rooms. Tom said nothing, just waited, and after a long moment, Lucas opened the door to his bedchamber.
Tom followed him inside and closed the door and locked it.
The room wasn’t large. The bed dominated the space, a four-poster with piled-up pillows and a blue counterpane.
Lucas went to stand by the little fireplace, looking taut and nervous.
Tom halted in the middle of the room. Ask me to spend the night with you, damn it.
Silence grew between them, but it wasn’t a silence filled with anticipation, it was a silence filled with anxiety—and that wasn’t how sex should be, wasn’t what he wanted.
“You know what?” Tom said flatly. “Let’s not do this.” He turned and walked back to the door.
“Tom . . .”
He halted with his hand on the door handle, and looked at Lucas. “If you want something from me tonight, you’re going to have to tell me what it is, because I’m not Julia and I can’t read your damned mind.”
But that was a lie. Anyone would be able to read Lucas’s mind right now; his inner torment was clear to read on his face.
Tom’s anger fell away. He sighed, and crossed to where Lucas stood, and pulled him into a hug.
Lucas flinched slightly, and then leaned stiffly into the embrace. He was trembling.
“It’s all right, Lu,” Tom said, and he pressed his face into Lucas’s hair. “It’s all right.”
Lucas relaxed by slow increments. His shoulders lost their stiffness. His head bowed. His forehead rested on Tom’s shoulder.
“Do you want me to stay with you tonight?”
“Yes,” Lucas whispered.
Chapter Twenty-Five
It took three more days to reach Woodhuish, and they were good days. And good nights. But not great, because while Lucas allowed the sex to happen, participated in it, enjoyed it, slept in Tom’s arms afterwards, Tom was aware of an invisible and insurmountable barrier between them: Lucas’s shame.
He couldn’t imagine Lucas ever initiating sex between them, saying in an urgent voice, “Tom, I need you now,” just as he couldn’t imagine Lucas joking about what they did. Lucas would die rather than say “Get your saber out, Tom, and let’s have a swordfight.”
He’ll be glad once I’m gone. Glad when this is over.
For some reason, that made him both angry and sad. He wanted to hit something, and at the same time wanted to cry.
He stared out the window at the Devonshire countryside—gray, damp—until he’d mastered both those urges, and then looked over at Lucas, dozing in the far corner of the post-chaise.
Why did I have to fall in love with you?
He might as well ask why the sun rose in the east each morning. The answer was the same: Because it was meant to be. It had been impossible to not fall in love with Lucas all those years ago. Just as it was impossible not to love him now.
He fished his sketchbook out of his pocket and drew Lucas. If he ever had the occasion to paint an archangel, he’d use Lucas as the model—that golden hair, the symmetry of his face, the perfect blend of beauty and masculinity. And the purity.
Tom lowered his pencil and looked at Lucas. He should have painted Lucas’s face on Sir Gawain. Lucas was Sir Gawain made flesh: chaste and pure.
Until I corrupted him.
He remembered the night of Lucas’s birthday, remembered what had happened in the Brook Street Mews. Two times when he could have turned away—two times when he’d chosen instead to cross that line.
Lucas probably wishes I hadn’t.
Tom sighed, and closed the sketchbook and slipped it back into his pocket. Every time he came home on leave he’d be faced with that choice again—and he’d make the same decision again—and have to break down Lucas’s resistance again.
But it would be worth it, because Lucas was worth it. Quiet, private, tidy, steady, good-hearted Lucas. Lonely, grieving Lucas. Lucas who deserved to have a lover, who deserved intimacy and moments of physical ecstasy, who deserved to fall asleep being held by someone who loved him—even if those things brought him as much shame as pleasure.
Tom reached over and took Lucas’s hand.
Lucas stirred, opened his eyes, smiled sleepily.
Tom felt his heart lurch in his chest, as if the post-chaise had run into a pothole. He smiled back, and tightened his grip on Lucas’s hand. I love you. I will always love you.
* * *
Tish had written that she would be staying at Woodhuish House with a Lady Ware, whom she described as a newfound cousin. The closest inn was three miles away, the Golden Hind. From the outside it was the most painstakingly clean country tavern that Tom had ever seen—fresh whitewash, scrubbed doorstep, no grass daring to grow between the cobblestones.
The innkeeper was as neat and scrubbed as his inn—and massive, taller than Tom, broader than Lucas. If I ever paint Goliath, this is the man. He had the deformed ears and scarred eyebrows of a man who’d had a career in the ring. His name suited him: Mr. Strike.
Tom looked at Mr. Strike’s humorless face and thought, Lu and I need to be careful while we’re here. This was a rigid, exacting man. A man who would pay attention to what his guests did.
He revised his opinion when he saw the chambermaid. She brought them hot water, then lingered in the corridor, flirting. There was nothing demure about the assessment she gave them both—head to toe—or the offer that followed that and the saucy flick of her skirts as she headed back down the stairs.
Tom watched her out of sight. Why would he want a woman, however pretty and willing, when he had Lucas? “The innkeeper’s not such a stickler for propriety as I thought. Not if he hired her.”
“Did she mean what I think she meant?” Lucas said.
“I think it’s pretty clear what she meant.”
“But . . . both of us? At the same time?” Lucas looked so shocked that Tom laughed.
“You’re such an innocent, Lu. Yes, both of us at the same time. I’d swive her, while she, er, smoked your cheroot. Or the other way around.”
Lucas digested this statement, an expression of distaste on his face. “Have you ever—?”
“No.” Although he’d once spent a memorable afternoon in bed with two women—but he didn’t think Lucas would like to hear that tale.
“Smoke a cheroot? Is that what you call it?”
“It’s what Armagh sometimes called it, when he was joking.” Tom saw the colonel in his mind’s eye, grinning, saying I feel like smoking a cheroot, Lieutenant, and yours is the closest.
Lucas’s face stiffened, as it always did at mention of Armagh.
Tom turned his head away to hide a smile. It was foolish, but he liked Lucas’s jealousy. It told him Lucas didn’t want to share him with anyone. He pulled out his pocket watch. “Too late to visit Tish today.”
* * *
He spent half the night in Lucas’s bed—among other things, smoking Lucas’s cheroot—before creeping back to his own room. He fell asleep thinking of Lucas—and woke worrying about Tish and Major Reid. But when he saw them three hours later, at Woodhuish House, he stopped worrying. Tish hadn’t married Reid out of pity, and Reid hadn’t married her for her money. They were in love. Tish looked so luminous that his fingers itched to draw her, and Reid was unrecognizable as the man who’d visited Whiteoaks.
Tom hugged Tish and shook hands with Reid. “Lord, Major, you’ve put on at least a stone! Tish been forcing you to eat?”
Reid glanced at Tish, laughter in his eyes.
Tish went pink. “Not any longer.”
The last remnants of Tom’s worry evaporated. This was the man he’d served with. Too thin still, but alive in a way Reid hadn’t been in Wiltshire. There was ease in Reid’s body and contentment in his smile. The damage that had been done to him in Portugal was mended.
He and Lucas ate luncheon at Woodhuish House with Tish’s new cousin, Lady Ware—petite, blonde, pregnant—and her husband, Sir Barnaby.
“What do you think?” Lucas asked afterwards, when they were riding back to the inn on the hacks they’d hired.
“A good match,” Tom said, without hesitation. “Reid’s strong enough not to let her boss him, and they’re clearly, uh . . .” He searched for a polite way to say having great sex. “Compatible.” He wasn’t certain what made it so obvious—something in the way Tish and Reid had looked at each other? Whatever it was had been as unmistakable as it was indefinable, and it made him think about sex, about naked skin and sweat and heat and panted breaths. It made him want to tumble Lucas into bed, even though it was only mid-afternoon.
He was pretty confident that Lucas was thinking about sex, too, that the prickling, humming sense of anticipation between them wasn’t just his imagination, and when they dismounted in the stableyard he was proven correct. Lucas scuffed the toe of one boot on the clean cobblestones and said diffidently, “Want to come up to my room for a bit? We could, um, play cards?” And then he met To
m’s eyes and blushed so vividly that Tom was glad the ostler had already turned away.
“Yes,” Tom said. “I do.”
The pretty chambermaid met them on the stairs, and brushed against Tom’s arm so that he felt her soft breasts.
Tom almost laughed. Nice try, love, but I have a much better offer.
He followed Lucas into his room, locked the door, and leaned against it. Lucas crossed to the table and picked up the pack of cards and stood fidgeting with it, still blushing, looking awkward and self-conscious and hopeful and shy all at the same time.
Tell me what you want, Lu.
He knew what he wanted. Lucas’s fat, rosy cock in his mouth. Nothing could match the intense intimacy of it, the way Lucas filled all his senses. He loved the salty taste of Lucas’s skin and the bitter taste of his mettle. Loved the faint musky scent of his sweat. Loved the size of him, the smoothness, the hardness, the heat. Loved the sounds Lucas made, the helpless groans, the way he shuddered and trembled.
Tom straightened away from the door. “Forget the cards,” he said, taking the pack and tossing it on the table. “Take everything off.”
Chapter Twenty-Six
They stripped off their clothes. Lucas’s fingers fumbled with haste. Tom, Tom, Tom. They kissed greedily, urgently—Tom’s cock burned against his belly, almost branding him—and then they were on the bed, rolling over one another, almost wrestling, kissing fiercely, their mouths hard, hot, hungry.
He found himself on his back. Tom broke the kiss, panting, and sat up. Lucas tried to sit up, too, but Tom shoved him back down and bent and captured Lucas’s cock in his mouth.
“No,” Lucas said, and grunted as Tom sucked hard. His balls tightened, and his hips twitched helplessly, and then he said, “No,” again more loudly, and sat up and grabbed a handful of Tom’s hair, pulling his head up.
They stared at each other, both breathing heavily. Tom’s pupils were dilated, his cheeks flushed, his lips glistening.
