Unnatural

by Joanna Chambers

  “It’s not just thieves and murderers,” Sinclair went on, his tone haranguing. “It’s fraudsters, smugglers, sodomites—”

  “Father!” Isabel interrupted. “Please, this is hardly suitable for the dinner table.”

  She turned her head to glare at poor mild-mannered Bertie, who shuffled in his seat and mumbled, “She’s right, sir. Ladies present and all that.”

  Sinclair opened his mouth, probably to argue with his son-in-law if his belligerent expression was anything to go by, but happily, the footman chose that moment to deliver a clean glass to him and pour him more wine, distracting him. Laughton took the opportunity to change the subject, looking to his right to catch Iain’s eye.

  “So you have resigned your commission, Mr. Sinclair. What will you do now?”

  Iain shrugged. “I shall have to give it some thought.”

  “Ah yes, he has turned in his regimentals,” Iain’s father interrupted. “The first officer of our family to do so less than halfway through his military career.”

  The old bastard. This was always his way with Iain. James had witnessed it many times before, the persistent criticism, often delivered with seeming good humour.

  James glanced at Iain. His jaw had tightened slightly, but other than that, his expression was mild. He was good at hiding his reaction to his father’s barbs but James knew they bothered him.

  “I thought you’d be pleased, Father,” Iain said lightly, “since you were of the view that I was no better than a glorified footman in the King’s service.”

  “Iain—”

  That was Iain’s mother, her voice pleading, face drawn and unhappy, but for some reason, Iain’s comment just made his father laugh.

  “Did I say that?” he chuckled, raising his wineglass to his lips. “I don’t remember.”

  Hardly surprising, James thought, since the man was probably three sheets to the wind when he said it.

  “Well,” Iain’s father continued blithely, “it’s true enough. From what I can make out, you do nothing but attend social engagements and provide your opinion on His Majesty’s clothing. Three years of balls and parties should be sufficient for any man.”

  James winced. The contempt in the man’s voice was plain to hear, and no matter how unconcerned Iain looked to hear his words, James knew they wounded him. All his life, Iain had striven to make his father proud, but there was no pleasing him.

  If Sinclair had intended to give his son a set-down in front of the other guests, however, it certainly hadn’t worked. The revelation that Iain had been in the King’s service had the other guests agog, and soon he was being quizzed about His Majesty’s famously lavish entertainments while the elder Sinclair fell into morose silence and applied himself more assiduously to his wine.

  As dinner drew to a close, the younger ladies begged Kate and Edward to permit some parlour games.

  “I’m not playing any damned games,” Iain’s father grumbled. “I’ve been looking forward to a quiet glass of Port.”

  More like a bottle, James thought sourly. He’d suffered through postprandial Port with the elder Sinclair before. Anything was preferable.

  “You shall have your Port, Mr. Sinclair,” Kate said politely. “It will be served directly. But there’s no reason, is there, that the young people can’t play a few games if they particularly want to? What do you think, Edward?”

  She sent him a significant look and he nodded. “Excellent idea,” he agreed, smiling.

  “I must say, I’m not at all sure I agree.” This was Mr. Potts. “Playing fast games only leads to—”

  “Oh, nonsense,” Kate interrupted briskly. She offered Potts a wintry smile. “Besides, you needn’t be troubled, Mr. Potts. You’re perfectly welcome to stay here with Mr. Sinclair, and any of the other gentlemen who are disinclined to join in.”

  “I wouldn’t dream of leaving you alone to chaperone all the young ladies,” Potts replied in a repressive tone.

  Opposite James, Sylvia rolled her eyes, and he bit his lip against a laugh.

  In the end, most everyone elected to play parlour games, apart from a few of the older ladies who withdrew to take tea, and some gentlemen who didn’t want to miss out on their Port. Kate led the way back to the drawing room to get started. They began with a game of charades—even Potts couldn’t object to that, though he did remark at one point upon the young ladies’ “unfeminine shrieking”, a comment that earned him a glare from Kate and some muffled giggles from the young ladies in question.

  When everyone grew bored of charades, Miss Whyte suggested Kiss the Lady You Love Without Anyone Knowing. Potts immediately protested, and this time, though she looked irritated about it, Kate had to agree with him.

  “I have an idea,” she said. “Let’s play Hide and Guide and Seek. James, isn’t it a perfectly splendid game?” A half-dozen pairs of eyes turned to him expectantly.

  “I’ve never heard of it,” one of the young ladies said.

  “That’s because it’s a Hart family game,” James explained. “We played it all the time when we were children. It’s just like Hide and Seek, only you play in partners, and when it’s your team’s turn to seek, one of you guides and the other seeks—the seeker has to wear a blindfold and obey the guider’s instructions.”

  Iain met his gaze over the young ladies’ heads. “James and I were the unvanquished champions,” he said, grinning.

  “Oh, hardly!” Kate exclaimed, though her protests were drowned out by the young ladies all noisily agreeing that it sounded famous. The very mention of blindfolds had them all atwitter.

  When they all calmed down, Kate began to organise them. “There’s quite a lot of us, so we’ll have lots of teams,” she decided. “All right, I know. Let’s have one team of hiders and one of seekers for each room. We’ll draw lots for who hides and who seeks in each one. If the seekers find the hiders in the allotted time, the hiders will have to pay a forfeit and if they fail, vice versa.”

  The young ladies began bouncing with excitement at the thought of forfeits.

  “Right, then,” Kate announced. “Everyone who wants to play, pick a partner.”

  Sylvia and Miss Whyte both ran towards Iain in a most unladylike fashion.

  “Oh, now I must protest!” Potts cried. “You cannot be thinking of letting young ladies play such a game partnered with young unmarried gentleman?”

  Kate laughed. “Why? Do you think they should be partnered with the old married gentlemen?”

  Potts began to splutter, and Edward had to step in to smooth things over. “Come, Alfred,” he said, clapping his brother-in-law on the shoulder, “Kate didn’t mean to scandalise you—she’s only teasing, aren’t you dearest one?” He sent Kate a significant look, and she tried to look serious, only to start laughing again.

  Edward rolled his eyes at her and turned back to the outraged vicar. “No need for alarm,” he continued. “There’s no question of ladies and gentlemen being partnered with one another—even the married ones. We’ll pair ladies with ladies, and gentlemen with gentlemen, all right?”

  James had to suppress a chuckle when Potts immediately declared himself satisfied and suggested partnering Edward with himself—Edward’s expression was priceless. His own amusement was curtailed, though, when a voice behind him said, “Partner me, James? We have our record to uphold after all.”

  It was Iain, of course, his smile strained and uncharacteristically nervous.

  As much as James might want to refuse him, he knew it would be foolish to do so—what would the other guests think if they heard him resisting such an innocent suggestion? Besides, now that he and Iain were standing together, everyone was already assuming they’d paired up, and were partnering themselves accordingly.

  “I—ah, I thought I might sit this out,” he tried weakly. Disappointment flashed over Iain’s face, and immediately, James felt a pang of regret, swiftly followed by another of anger. Why was he so soft when it came to Iain Sinclair? He needed to toughen up. Remem
ber just how much pain Iain had caused him over the years.

  Unfortunately, Sylvia overheard his pathetic excuse.

  “Oh, don’t be a spoilsport, James!” she pleaded. “If you don’t play, we’ll have odd numbers and Mr. Sinclair will have to sit out! Everyone else is paired up now.” Several more young ladies joined in, chorusing her plea.

  “Come on, Hart,” Iain said. “You can turn me down, but you can’t disappoint the ladies, now, can you?”

  “Oh, fine,” James grumbled at last. “I’ll play.”

  Ever officious, Kate soon had everyone lined up and lots folded up on a plate to be selected from.

  “You pick,” Iain said when Kate asked them choose. James selected one of the folded up paper lots and opened it.

  “Library,” he read aloud. “Hiders.”

  Edward and Potts drew the seekers’ lot for the library, which Potts looked disappointed about. James wondered if he’d been secretly hoping to get the chance to accidentally fondle one of the young ladies while blindfolded.

  “All right, hiders,” Kate called out. She was holding Edward’s pocket watch aloft. “Get ready to go to your allotted rooms. When three minutes is up, the first team of seekers will begin searching—we’ll do each room in turn because it’s more fun that way. Ready?” She paused, eyes on the watch, tracking the hands. “Go!”

  Iain grabbed James’s sleeve and began pulling him towards the door.

  Chapter Ten

  James and Iain dashed out of the drawing room with the rest of the hiders and plunged down the corridor. Sylvia and Miss Whyte peeled off first, entering the music room, then Iain and James were next, diving into the library a few doors further down, while the other teams scrambled past them.

  Iain slammed the library door closed, and they both began to look round frantically—there were quite a few places to hide, but most of them were pretty obvious: behind one of the wingback chairs, under the desk...

  “Behind the curtains,” Iain said.

  James glanced at the floor-length curtains that covered the bank of windows to their left. “Too obvious,” he replied. “That’s the first place they’ll look!”

  “Not there—” Iain replied. He pointed at the other wall—at the small, round window, high up on the wall behind the desk. “There.”

  “Oh bloody hell,” James muttered, but he couldn’t help but smile.

  “Come on, it’s perfect.” Iain grinned. “No one will think to look up there.”

  In an instant, he was standing on the chair behind the desk and swinging himself up onto the narrow ledge. The window was fully circular, though its outermost edges were obscured by a pair of short velvet drapes. It’d be awkward, standing there, waiting for someone to find them, but it could be done.

  And anyway, it was too late to protest now. The first three minutes would be coming to an end imminently. Iain leaned down to offer his hand to James.

  “Quick!” he said. “Before they come.”

  Ignoring Iain’s hand, James scrambled up onto the ledge beside him, teetering a little when he turned to face Iain, who immediately reached out a hand to steady him. James instinctively pulled back, even though it made him wobble more.

  Iain sighed and withdrew his hand. “Brace yourself against the glass,” he advised. “It’s safer that way. The ledge is very narrow.”

  James nodded and did as Iain said, leaning against the cold glass, and immediately felt steadier.

  “All right?” Iain asked. When James nodded, he leaned outwards again, taking hold of the edges of the drapes and yanking them together, shutting out the candlelight from the library and enclosing them in sudden darkness. He settled back into position opposite James, mirroring him.

  “When you hear the door open, you need to stay absolutely silent,” he whispered.

  “I know,” James muttered, his tone exasperated, feeling all of ten years old again.

  The stirrings of the seekers emerging from the drawing room began to reach them, then—voices laughing and the sound of feet walking down the corridor. As the group drew closer, James tensed, but they passed by, chattering, heading for one of the rooms beyond them apparently.

  “They must’ve decided to start at the far end of the corridor,” James murmured.

  He caught sight of a glint of white from Iain—a ghost of smile perhaps. “Or they’re picking names out of a hat again.”

  The only illumination reaching them now came from the near-full moon that hung outside the window, fat and pale gold. James’s vision began to adapt to the darkness. He could make out the outline of Iain’s head and the broad shape of him leaning against the window.

  “How long did Kate say the seekers would be allowed to try to find us?” Iain asked.

  “Three minutes.”

  “That’s ages! They’ll find us easily—there’s hardly any hiding places in here.”

  “It’s amazing how quick the time goes when you’re blindfolded and a lot depends on how good the guide is,” James pointed out.

  They were murmuring under their breaths, and it made every word that passed between them feel absurdly intimate. Everything felt absurdly intimate—the tiny space they were inhabiting, and the words that were spooling out in whispers between them. The very air that they were sharing in their little cubbyhole.

  The intimacy was almost unbearable, and a part of James wanted to thrust the curtains aside and jump down to get away from it. Stalk out of the room and start packing his portmanteau right now.

  Another part of him wanted never to leave.

  The silence between them grew heavy, thick with unsaid things—at least it felt that way to James. Perhaps, though, he was imagining the tension. Perhaps—probably—Iain was feeling perfectly relaxed, just leaning against the window in the moonlight, waiting to be found. James was so suddenly certain of that, that the words that drifted out of the darkness towards him utterly confounded him.

  “I’ve missed you, Jamie.”

  The words were whispered so softly that James wondered if he’d really heard them or if he’d just imagined them.

  “Sorry?” he said stupidly.

  “I’ve missed you,” Iain repeated. “Missed our friendship.”

  James swallowed, unsure how to respond. Iain sounded sad—bleak, even—but James couldn’t see his expression to verify that. All he could see was the gleam of the man’s eyes in the darkness, like a ripple across a pool.

  “I’ve missed you too,” he said at last, honestly. “But you know why I broke off our friendship. I can’t bear being around you when—”

  “You won’t have to be around me,” Iain interrupted. “I’m leaving England. I’m sailing to India at the end of the summer.”

  “India?” James hated the devastation he heard in his own voice, plain as day in all this darkness. He added weakly, “I thought you told Laughton you didn’t know what you’d be doing.”

  “Yes, well, I have my reasons for that.” There was a brief silence as James tried to take that in, then Iain added softly, “I accepted Kate’s invitation because I didn’t want to leave England without us having made peace with each other. With all this...anger between us.”

  James searched the darkness between them, willing himself to see Iain’s expression, but there were only maddening hints. Something about the precise angle at which he held his head that spoke of a heaviness upon him. The sorrow in his voice. The thickness of the emotion in the air between him.

  “Leaving England,” James echoed redundantly. His voice was tinged with disbelief, and distantly he wondered at himself, at the sudden grief that was swamping him. He had been the one to cut off all contact two years before, the one to say he wanted to never see Iain again. Yet now, when he was about to get his wish, the thought caused a pain so sharp, it was as though the last two years hadn’t happened at all.

  Perhaps a little part of him had always believed that, one day, Iain might come round to his way of thinking. He knew—had always known—that Iain c
ared for him. He knew too that the man desired him physically. And if Iain didn’t feel the same desperate love for James that James felt for him, neither were his feelings those of mere friendship. But they were not equal to James’s feelings.

  “Yes,” Iain said. “I’ve been offered a post in India. It’s not with the army, but it’s similar in a way. I will be living under another name.”

  “Subterfuge?” James guessed, dismayed. “Spying and such?”

  A huff of amused consent. “That sort of thing. You can see why I didn’t want to talk about it at dinner.”

  “Yes,” James said, adding helplessly, “That’s dangerous work.”

  Even in the darkness, he saw Iain’s shrug, the broad outline of his shoulders shifting briefly upwards in a familiar gesture of unconcern. People thought Iain Sinclair was reckless. Devil-may-care. They looked at him and saw the brave cavalry officer. The daring captain. Sometimes James wondered if he was the only person that the saw the desperation under the courage. The lack of self-care that made Iain strangely invincible. Since the first time they’d met, all those years ago, James had known it was a mask.

  “I know how angry you were the last time we saw each other,” Iain murmured. “And I don’t blame you, Jamie. But I’m asking you to consider forgiving me. And perhaps even writing to me again.”

  Oh, the letters James had written this man over the years. The outpourings he’d sent. About his home and his family, his father’s death, his passion for science, his little discoveries and his travels all over the country for specimens. All his hopes and fears and passions.

  And all his embarrassing feelings for Iain, buried in every line...

  I wish you could’ve been there...

  Perhaps next time we can go together?

  I’m so looking forward to seeing you in the summer...

  “Write to you?” he said now. His voice was suddenly too loud, and he lowered it to a whisper to add, “Why should I, Iain? You were never much good at writing back. Everything was always one-sided with us.”

  Iain exhaled another of those little huffs of air. This one carried no amusement, but rather regret. It was extraordinary, James reflected, what could be communicated without words or facial expression, though perhaps the meaning of such tiny sounds and gestures was discernible only when one knew the person very well. When one could read the smallest movements of their body.