The Lawrence Browne Affair

by Cat Sebastian

  “Eat up, lad,” Mrs. Ferris said, returning to the long kitchen table where Georgie and Simon sat at one end. “There’ll be more where that came from at supper.”

  When Simon finally finished, they bundled into their topcoats and headed for the sea. Georgie cast a look over his shoulder towards Lawrence’s tower, but the curtains were drawn.

  The door flew open, slamming into the wall behind it with a bang that shattered Lawrence’s nerves.

  “You are not dead, I see.” Georgie glared at Lawrence. “Or indisposed. I hardly know whether to be relieved or disappointed.”

  Lawrence nearly said that Georgie looked neither relieved nor disappointed, but furious. Instead he raised an eyebrow and returned to his book.

  “In the event that you wondered, your child arrived alive and well. No,” he said, as if struck by an insight, “well would be an exaggeration. He’s half-starved. Do they not feed children at these schools?”

  Lawrence doubted that Harrow starved its students, and recalled Percy returning home for holidays as stout as ever. “I hardly know. I didn’t go to school. My father didn’t see any purpose in educating a mad second son.”

  That seemed to take some of the wind out of Georgie’s sails, because his expression softened for a moment. “Is that so? The more I hear about your father, the sorrier I am that he’s dead, because I’d dearly like to kill him myself.” And from the hard gleam in Georgie’s eyes, Lawrence didn’t doubt that he meant it.

  Thinking to steer this conversation away from his failure to attend Simon’s arrival, and also because he liked seeing Georgie rise to his defense, Lawrence said, “He was afraid that my madness would embarrass the family.”

  “As far as I can tell, your father and brother did a damned fine job of embarrassing the family without your help, but you’re keeping up the Browne tradition of appalling behavior with today’s performance.”

  So much for trying to change the topic. “About that—”

  “I had a place set for you at dinner. Did you even wonder who would dine with Simon if you weren’t there?”

  Of course he had not. He had other things to worry about besides dinner arrangements. “Judging by your attire, I’d say you had dinner with the child, which seems only right, seeing as how you were the one who insisted on his coming here.” Lawrence would have liked to linger over the sight of Georgie in narrowly tailored evening clothes. “I’ve decided not to see him.”

  “I gathered as much.” Georgie shook his head, his lips pressed into a tight line. “It’s a cruel plan.”

  “What would be cruel would be for him to meet me and form an attachment.”

  “Rubbish.”

  “I’m not right in the head—”

  “Oh, I see we’re having this conversation again.”

  “I’m not, Georgie. I know it. You know it too. I don’t want Simon”—he stuttered a bit over the name—“to come to know me, only to watch me get worse.”

  “Why do you think you’re going to get worse?” Georgie perched on the arm of the sofa, and Lawrence tipped his head against the back of the seat to better see him. “Has something happened?”

  Only that he was petrified by the idea of leaving his study, or meeting new people, or being assaulted by too much noise, or really doing anything that took him out of the cocoon he had created for himself. But Georgie was already all too aware of those deficits, and remained unconvinced. “My father got worse and worse until he killed himself. Percy . . . ” He snorted. “He started out bad enough, and I hardly need to tell you how things were at the end.”

  “And you have nothing to do with either of them. I’m bored of this conversation.” He languidly extended a hand to examine his fingernails, such a transparent attempt to feign indifference that Lawrence nearly smiled. Only the slight furrow between his eyebrows betrayed that this was a topic that he even cared about in the slightest. Lawrence wanted to pull him close and kiss that wrinkle. “We’ve had it at least twice before. You aren’t mad, and even if you were it wouldn’t be in the same way as your abominable brother and father. You aren’t living their lives, and you don’t need to atone for their sins.”

  “That’s not what’s happening here,” Lawrence protested. “I know that I have nothing to atone for.” As he spoke, he knew it to be the truth. Whatever the state of his mind, he wasn’t like his brother or father. This knowledge had been creeping up on him for weeks, and now he had no choice but to confront the possibility that he would not wind up like either of them. He might have an entire life stretching before him, and he didn’t know what to do with it.

  Georgie regarded him with a shrewdness that made Lawrence feel that his thoughts were as visible as a specimen in a glass jar. “I wonder what will happen when you realize you aren’t mad. So much of your life hangs from that one supposition. It’s like the story you were telling me about that Italian fellow who thought electricity was inside the dead frog—a lot of his science was rubbish because of that one error. What will you do with yourself when you grasp that your mind is only different, not deranged?”

  This so closely mirrored Lawrence’s own realization that he was momentarily startled. So instead he tried to turn the tables. “You won’t be here to find out what happens then, will you? You’ll have finished your business at Penkellis and moved on.”

  Georgie opened his mouth, and for a moment Lawrence thought he would confide in him. Instead he slid off the arm of the sofa and swung a leg over Lawrence’s lap, straddling him and looking him levelly in the eye. “I will always be glad to have known you, Lawrence.” He brought a hand to Lawrence’s jaw and stroked his beard. “I want you to remember that. When I’m not here, I want you to know that wherever I am, however we part, I’ll be better for having . . . ” He hesitated, then touched his own heart before bringing his hand to rest on Lawrence’s chest. “For having had you as a friend,” he said.

  Lawrence took hold of Georgie’s hand and trapped it on his chest, partly so Georgie could feel the way his heart pounded, partly because he hadn’t the faintest idea how else to respond. All he knew was that he needed to hold Georgie close and keep him safe and spend the rest of eternity enumerating his every quality. He realized with disorienting certainty that this was love. Judging by the bleak tenderness in Georgie’s dark eyes, he knew it too. But what they had felt so fragile and out of place, built of blown glass on unstable ground in the middle of a hurricane. Beautiful, but never meant to last.

  All Lawrence could think to say was, “Stay, then. Don’t leave.”

  Georgie wriggled his hand free and took hold of Lawrence’s shoulders. “I don’t stay,” he said slowly. “It’s the nature of my line of work.”

  Confess, he wanted to say. Tell me the truth. Tell me why you’re here, so I can know that I love you despite it, and you can know it too. Instead he raised an eyebrow and said, “Being a secretary, you mean.”

  Georgie returned the raised eyebrow. “Being a secretary,” he said firmly, but Lawrence thought he saw a flicker of surprised amusement in the other man’s eyes. This wasn’t quite honesty, but more like leaving the door open to the truth. The truth was something they could both see out of the corners of their eyes, lurking in the shadows of an adjacent room. If they didn’t look right at it, they could pretend it wasn’t there.

  “Anyway,” Georgie went on, “I meet a good many people, but I try not to get close to them. Not to care about them.”

  “I see,” Lawrence said solemnly. “It’s probably best for secretaries not to get too close to their clients.”

  Now Georgie laughed. “Yes, damn you. My point is that . . . ” He broke off and leaned forward to brush a kiss onto Lawrence’s lips, and when he spoke again his expression was serious. “It’s no way to live. I find myself . . . ” His eyes grew bright, and he blinked quickly, as if trying to hold back tears. “I find myself quite alone, and without any prospect of that changing. I wish I had gone about things a bit differently, but there’s no use wringing m
y hands about that now. But you can do better. Meet your son. Know him. Let him know you. Let him love you, Lawrence. I know it’s hard. But I know it’s the right thing.”

  “And why should I trust that you know what is right?”

  “Touché. Perhaps because I’ve found it out by the process of elimination?” Another kiss. Every time they got closer to acknowledging the shadowy truth, Lawrence felt the delicate, fragile thing between them grow stronger, the ground beneath it less shaky. “But truly, Lawrence, I’ve tried living the other way. So have you, for that matter. It’s no good to be alone. Don’t let Simon be alone.”

  Lawrence wished he could be so sure.

  CHAPTER SIXTEEN

  “That one looks good, I think?” Georgie asked hopefully.

  Simon threw him a pitying look. “Not nearly big enough.”

  Georgie had no idea how they were supposed to get the mistletoe down from the tree, and even less what they were meant to do with it once they got it back to the house. But Mrs. Ferris and Simon both insisted that vast quantities of greenery were instrumental to any proper Christmastide, and Georgie was hardly in any position to argue. His own understanding of Christmas was that it was a particularly good time to pick pockets, so many people having an extra shilling or even a new watch. But he could hardly suggest larceny as an alternative to boughs of holly.

  He and the child had bundled into their coats and scarves, equipped themselves with kitchen shears and an alarming-looking handsaw, and prepared to divest the Penkellis woods of all manner of ivy, holly, and mistletoe, maybe even a few fir boughs. Basically, if it was green at this time of year, it was fair game for plunder.

  They had lingered in the hall for a while after midday, waiting to see if Lawrence would come down. Even now, Georgie cast a glance over his shoulder to see if he could discern a figure heading towards them.

  “He isn’t coming,” Simon said, resting a tentative, mittened hand on Georgie’s arm. “It’s all right.”

  It wasn’t all right, not even close. Last night, sitting close together, hands intertwined, he thought he had gotten through to Lawrence. But obviously he hadn’t. He wondered if Lawrence even wanted anyone in his life at all. Maybe he really was happier alone in his tower, seeing no one, caring about no one.

  “No worries,” Simon continued, a sympathetic note in his voice, as if Georgie were the one whose feelings needed soothing. “I don’t even remember him.”

  Georgie desperately tried to blink away tears. Crying in front of the child would only make things that much worse for both of them. “That isn’t the point.”

  Simon regarded him, his nose red with cold. “Uncle Kemble says Lord Radnor isn’t my real father anyway. So it’s only natural that he can’t be bothered.”

  “Uncle Kemble can sod right off, then,” Georgie said promptly, before recalling that this language was not suitable for an eight-year-old’s ears. “Damn!” No, that was no improvement. Simon’s eyes were wide. “I’m sorry. But your uncle is a thoroughgoing bastard if he says that sort of thing to you.”

  Simon gave him an appraising look. “He’s not my favorite.”

  “And your aunt?”

  “She is . . . better.”

  “A ringing endorsement.”

  “Ha. They don’t like me much, and they aren’t as jolly as Uncle Courtenay, but they aren’t bad, not really.” Something about the child’s tone suggested that he knew what kind of behavior might constitute “really bad.” Georgie didn’t like that one bit. But they were supposed to be having a festive afternoon, gathering holly and ivy and whatever the hell else country people needed for Christmas, and he didn’t want to spoil it by asking too many unpleasant questions.

  “If I lift you, do you think you can climb the tree and get that big clump of mistletoe?”

  Of course the child agreed. That was something all eight-year-old boys must have in common, city or country, rich or poor. Simon weighed next to nothing, and Georgie was able to hoist him overhead onto a sturdy-looking branch. A few minutes later, Georgie noticed snowflakes landing on the sprigs of mistletoe scattered at his feet.

  “We ought to go back to the house before it starts falling in earnest,” he suggested.

  Even from several feet below, Georgie could see Simon’s disdainful expression. “It’s snow, not artillery fire,” the child said. “The ground isn’t nearly cold enough for it to stick, at least for the next few hours.”

  “And we’ll have frozen to death by then, so the snow will be of no import to us.”

  Simon landed neatly at the base of the tree. He would have been a worthy addition to any crew of housebreakers, if he hadn’t been the heir to an earldom. “I like snow.” He said it with the emphasis on the last word, as he had said “I like cakes” and “I like the sea” the day before. As if he were reminding himself of the things he liked, that there were things he liked, in the face of an otherwise unpleasant world.

  No, Georgie was reading too much into the boy’s statement. Simon liked snow because he was a child and children liked snow. “It’s pretty, I suppose,” he said, watching fat snowflakes settle on the fir branch he carried. “Picturesque.” And so it was, in an aggressively charming way.

  If a gently born young lady were to sketch the scene, she would entitle it “Christmas in the Country” or something equally pleasant. The drawing would show a man and a boy making merry, and nobody who saw it would guess that Georgie was a crook, or Simon the misbegotten child of a countess and God knew who. Nobody would know that the child’s putative father refused to leave his tower, that the house was a rotten shambles, and that the child was sad and unwell.

  Georgie decided that he didn’t need to think of those unsavory elements either. “It’s beautiful,” he said, tugging Simon’s wool cap down low over his ears. “I’ll race you back to the house.”

  As a rule, Lawrence didn’t drink. He didn’t like the taste of anything stronger than cider, and he had all too clear a recollection of his father’s drunken rages to feel that intoxication was ever a good idea. But he had a notion that there was a bottle of brandy somewhere in this tower, and he meant to find it. This was a day that called for strictly medicinal doses of whatever spirits he could lay his hands on. He was either going to go downstairs and meet Simon, or he would stay here and incur Georgie’s wrath. And he didn’t think he was equal to meeting either of those fates entirely sober.

  The brandy couldn’t be in the study. Georgie had turned that room inside out, and if he had found a bottle of brandy he would have placed it on a shelf that bore a neatly lettered label reading “brandy,” right in between the borax and the charcoal. In his bedchamber, he flung open the doors to his clothes press, but instead of brandy, he found neatly folded linens and unfamiliar clothing. He nearly took a startled step backwards.

  This must be the clothing Georgie had purchased in Falmouth. Lawrence had worried that Georgie might have let his imagination run wild at the tailor, and that he would expect Lawrence to wear brightly colored waistcoats and fancifully arranged cravats. But what Lawrence saw before him was nothing if not sedate: a pair of coats in bottle green and brown, a few pairs of buff-colored breeches, two waistcoats, and an array of snowy white shirts and cravats.

  It was all entirely unobjectionable. Lawrence couldn’t help but smile when he imagined how bored Georgie must have found the task, choosing such drab attire among a haberdashery’s worth of brighter and richer fabrics. He must have rejected bolt after bolt of silk and wool before settling on the least interesting of the lot.

  But no. That’s not what he had done. Lawrence looked more carefully at the contents of his clothes press. These waistcoats were similar in cut and color to the ones he already had. Georgie had tried to pick clothes that would feel familiar to Lawrence. That was just the sort of thing that he would think of, just as he had lined the walls of the study with that felt. He seemed to understand what Lawrence needed to get through each day, without Lawrence needing to specifically ask f
or it.

  At some point, Georgie had become indispensable, not only to Lawrence’s work but to his life—his heart, damn it. It wasn’t only that Lawrence liked the way he looked and smelled and sounded. It wasn’t only that he made Lawrence smile and want and feel in ways he hadn’t ever thought possible. Those qualities were all well enough, but what stole Lawrence’s heart was that Georgie grasped how his mind worked, when sometimes Lawrence didn’t even know it himself.

  He spread one of the waistcoats out on the bed, as if by studying it he might understand his attachment to the person who had chosen it. Frowning, he ran his finger along the line of ivory buttons. At some point, Lawrence had become used to loose strings, missing buttons, stains and holes and other signs of wear. This garment, fresh and unspoiled, seemed like it ought to belong to somebody else. Somebody who appreciated nice things. Somebody who cared about presenting a decent appearance to the world.

  That was the point, after all. Today that somebody had to be Lawrence. He needed to care how he looked. Georgie had insisted that Simon would be troubled by seeing his father poorly attired. Lawrence had always thought it fitting that his outward dishevelment matched his inner disquietude. But today he needed the opposite to be true. He needed the outward appearance of neatness to create the illusion of inner stability.

  He pulled out the green coat. Pinned to the lining was a note written in Georgie’s perfectly slanted hand.

  While not strictly correct, this attire will do for the country. As I don’t foresee a trip to Almack’s or a presentation at court in the near future, we can content ourselves thusly. In the bottom drawers you’ll find boots, braces, and so forth. I placed a razor and a cake of shaving soap on the washstand. If you find yourself in need of a sustaining draught, I put a bottle of brandy in the top drawer of your writing table.

  There was no signature. There was no affectionate closing. And there never would be—Georgie was too careful to risk his neck or Lawrence’s in such a way. But the paper carried a trace of Georgie’s absurd London perfume, and that was as good as any written declaration. Lawrence held the paper up to his nose and breathed in the scent.