A Gathering Storm (Porthkennack Book 2)

by Joanna Chambers

  “You mean about Jacob Roscarrock being your father?”

  Nicholas let his head fall back against the headrest. “Yes.”

  “I won’t gossip to anyone about it,” Ward reassured him. “You don’t need to worry about that.”

  Nicholas laughed. “Oh, I’m not worried about that. Everyone round here knows already.”

  Ward smiled sympathetically. “It did help explain a few things.”

  “Such as what? Why Godfrey Roscarrock offered me his patronage?”

  “That would be one.”

  Nicholas gave another mirthless chuckle. “Yes, he’s not the sort that would ordinarily give a Gypsy bastard a leg up in life.”

  Ward winced inwardly at that dry comment. “No, but he’s your grandfather.”

  Nicholas’s mouth twisted up at one side. “He’s Harry Roscarrock’s grandfather. I think of him more as my sire’s sire.”

  Ward’s stomach clenched in pity.

  “How did your parents meet?” he asked.

  Nicholas shrugged. “Jacob Roscarrock met my mother when he was visiting a friend in Derbyshire. My mother’s people were travelling through the county at that time. Jacob was already married, but he decided he’d fallen in love with my mother and they ran away together to London. When he ran out of funds and found himself with a squalling brat on his hands, he decided he wasn’t quite as in love with her as he’d thought, and came back to Cornwall to his wife and his money—or rather, Godfrey’s money.”

  “Leaving you and your mother behind?”

  Nick offered a mocking smile. “Not only that, he abandoned us in London with the rent unpaid. Left us to the mercy of an angry landlord and a hoard of other unpaid creditors.”

  “Good God,” Ward breathed, hardly able to believe such villainy.

  Nick’s lip curled. “He underestimated my mother, though. She sold the ring he’d bought her and made her way from London to Porthkennack, confronting him with me in her arms. She only wanted money from him, but then she discovered that Godfrey was the one holding the purse strings, not Jacob.”

  “And he supported her? Your grandfather?”

  Nick gave a bark of laughter. “In a manner of speaking. Being Godfrey, he refused to agree to her proposal that he settle a decent sum on her in exchange for our disappearance. Instead, he gave her a life interest in a cottage at the edge of the Roscarrock estate and a tiny annual stipend—just about enough to live on, but not enough to escape on. So we ended up being trapped here.”

  “Why did he do that instead of just paying her off?”

  Nicholas shrugged. “Punishing her for her gall, would be my guess, and Jacob too, for his behaviour. Maybe even my father’s wife, for being barren. He likes to control people.”

  “Does he recognise you now? As his grandson?”

  “Are you joking?” Nicholas asked. He grinned, but it was like the grin of a fox, feral and snarling. “No. But he gives me employment, and I have Rosehip Cottage rent-free.”

  It didn’t sound like much to Ward, but he said nothing more, only asked, “What about your mother’s family? The Hearns?”

  “What of them?”

  “Have you met them?”

  Nicholas shook his head. “They shunned Ma when she ran off with Jacob Roscarrock.” Then, sounding almost wistful, he added, “I’ve been thinking about tracking them down. My mother wanted me to go to them once she was gone. She worried about me being alone.”

  “It can’t have been easy for her,” Ward said. “A lone woman with an illegitimate child.”

  Nicholas shrugged. “We were protected to some extent by the connection with the Roscarrocks. At least, no one in the village was blatantly hostile to us. Oh, there were always snide remarks, and I was forever getting into fights with the village boys, especially Jed, when he called my mother a whore.”

  Ward winced. Children could be cruel.

  “And of course, people were wary of her because she was Romany and they thought she might put a curse on them. But that was also what brought them to her door—because they thought she could speak to dead people, and make love potions, and tell them their futures. And they would pay her a few pennies for that. It helped us get by.”

  “They thought she could speak to dead people . . .”

  Did Nicholas believe his mother could do those things? Ward wanted to ask him, but that really would be an impertinent question and he’d asked enough of those today, so with some difficulty, he quelled the urge.

  “Is that the time?” Nicholas said suddenly, sitting forward, eyes fixed on the clock on the wall.

  Ward looked over his shoulder, noting with surprise that it was after five already.

  “Goodness, I hadn’t realised how late it was. You must be starving! We had no luncheon. Would you care for something to eat now?”

  Nicholas got to his feet. “Thank you, but—”

  “Really, you must let me call for something. I’ll be wretched if you don’t let me feed you after such a long day.”

  “Sir Edward, I—”

  “Come now, you’re not allowed to call me that anymore,” Ward interrupted, holding up his hand. “We agreed. If I’m calling you Nicholas, you have to do likewise and call me Ward.”

  “‘Ward’?”

  “Short for Edward,” Ward explained. “Edward was my father’s name, so I got Ward.”

  “I see,” Nicholas said slowly, as though he wasn’t quite sure what that had to do with anything. “Well, I’ll try to remember. In the meantime, I’d best get back. I left my dog at home to fend for himself today. He’ll be getting anxious.”

  Ward remembered the one-eyed creature that had been with Nicholas in their previous encounters. “This is your white bulldog, I take it?” he said, as he too rose from his chair. “What’s his name?”

  “Snowflake. Snow for short.”

  “Do you generally have him with you?”

  “Always,” Nicholas said. “He doesn’t do well alone. He was badly mistreated before I got him.”

  “Well,” Ward said impulsively, “when you come back next Sunday, bring him along. There’s no need to leave him at home when he could be here with you. I certainly have no objection.”

  Nicholas looked surprised, and for an instant, a faint smile tugged at one corner of his mouth, till he suppressed it. He cleared his throat. “Thank you,” he said stiffly. “That would be . . . helpful. Snow’s wretched when he’s without me.”

  “All right then,” Ward said, meeting his gaze. “That’s settled. And perhaps next week you will stay for dinner, since you are bringing Master Snowflake?”

  To Ward’s amazement, Nicholas actually chuckled at that. “Master Snowflake? He’s a dog you know, not a child.”

  Ward flushed, but he didn’t mind the teasing at all. He was just relieved that Nicholas, who had seemed so distant and cool when he first arrived today, had unbent so much as to make a joke at his expense.

  It was only once Nicholas was gone that he realised that Nicholas hadn’t answered his question about staying for dinner next week. Or yet uttered Ward’s name.

  “You haven’t touched your dinner, Master Edward.”

  Ward looked up from the journal he’d been writing in. “I wish you wouldn’t call me that, Pipp,” he said, but he spoke without heat. He well knew he would always be Master Edward to Pipp, at least in private. It was the name by which the family servants had called him when he was a sickly boy and Pipp, then a footman, had been assigned as Ward’s personal servant. Now Pipp was—Well, Ward wasn’t sure there was a name for what Pipp was. Part butler, part secretary, occasionally part nanny to Ward’s irritation. Pipp’s role in Ward’s household was beyond the usual master and servant one, though they went through the motions of Ward pretending to give instructions and Pipp pretending to follow them.

  “My apologies, sir,” Pipp said insincerely. “Nevertheless, you will observe your dinner remains uneaten.”

  Which was Pipp’s roundabout way of demandi
ng an explanation.

  Ward eyed the congealed plate of food at the edge of his desk without enthusiasm. “I didn’t notice you bringing it in.”

  “That’s because Martha brought it in and she’s too frightened of you to speak.”

  Ward shrugged unrepentant. “I’ll just have some tea and toast.”

  “Certainly not,” Pipp said, glaring. “You’ve had nothing since that half-eaten scone when Mr. Hearn first came this morning. If you’re going to be as distracted as this every time he comes, you’ll fade away to nothing.”

  “Oh, for goodness sake, Pipp!” Ward snapped. “I’m six-and-twenty, not six.”

  Pipp stared at him for several long moments over the tops of his half-moon spectacles, plainly offended by Ward’s sharp tone. Then he sniffed.

  “A man of twenty-six wouldn’t ask for toast for dinner.”

  Ward just shook his head, infuriated and amused in equal measure.

  “How about a nice bit of roast fowl with some Duchess potatoes?” Pipp wheedled.

  “All right,” Ward sighed. “Have a tray brought up.”

  Pipp didn’t bother to hide his triumph. “Very good, Mast—sir,” he said, and swept out of the study.

  Ward looked down at the journal. He’d written pages and pages of notes, recording every detail of the day that he could remember, then, at even greater length, his thoughts and follow-up questions. Nicholas Hearn was a fascinating man and Ward had only just begun to explore the complicated layers of his nature and history. Whether or not the man had any natural abilities so far as spirits were concerned remained to be seen, but he was intelligent and sensitive, and those two characteristics together gave Ward hope that Nicholas would be able to help him, even if he was only one subject and Ward had been hoping for at least half a dozen.

  When his dinner arrived—delivered by Pipp himself this time—Ward polished off both the roast fowl and a dish of ginger pudding, discovering with some surprise that he was hungry after all.

  Pleasantly full, he bathed and retired to bed, expecting to drift off directly.

  He did not.

  Instead, he lay awake in the darkness, and his mind returned to Nicholas Hearn.

  He was painfully aware of the irony of having blackmailed Nicholas into assisting him under the implied threat of revealing his true nature, when Ward himself was a shameless, unrepentant sodomite.

  Oh, the things he would do to Nicholas Hearn, if he could . . .

  Ward’s cock thrummed at just the hint of such thoughts, stiffening under his nightshirt at the memory of Nicholas Hearn walking up the stairs this morning to greet him, taking Ward’s hand in his own and meeting his gaze.

  Nicholas was a few scant inches taller than Ward’s five foot seven, his build lean overall but with broad shoulders. When he’d been standing in front of Ward, his hair had shone with the lustre of a magpie’s plumage. And then there were those disconcerting, silver-bright eyes.

  Everything about Nicholas Hearn tugged at Ward, attracting him closer, in the same way his magnets drew the iron filings. Something about the man demanded Ward’s attention, some kind of energy perhaps. That lean, lithe form seemed to Ward to hold a fierce and palpable power that called to him.

  There had been a few occasions that day when he’d wondered if he’d felt Nicholas’s gaze on him while Ward wasn’t looking. It was possible he’d imagined it. One did imagine things, sometimes, especially when one lusted after someone the way Ward lusted after Nicholas.

  With a muffled cry of frustration, Ward pushed his sheets aside and yanked up his nightshirt, baring his slim body to the cool night air. His nipples hardened in the chill, gooseflesh rising as he took hold of his shaft in his right hand and began to stroke himself.

  His mind’s eye went straight to a visual memory of Nicholas: standing before Ward down by the mill stream, a somewhat shadowy presence in the waning light. Only his white shirt stood out, almost luminous in the dusk, a bright contrast to the strong brown throat and lean forearms exposed by his open collar and turned-up cuffs.

  Today, Nicholas’s arms had been covered, but when Ward had taken his hand in greeting, he’d discovered something new he hadn’t known before: that Nicholas’s hand was calloused, far rougher than his own.

  Ward’s hands—certainly the one that was sliding over his shaft anyway—were very far from calloused. His hands were soft from lack of manual work. Hardly surprising, he supposed, given how little he did with them, other than leaf through books and write up notes.

  Just these thoughts—of Nicholas fully clothed, of the callouses on his hands—had Ward’s shaft impossibly hard before he even started pleasuring himself in earnest. A bead of fluid blossomed at the eye of his cock, and he collected the bounty with his thumb, groaning as more oozed up. He smeared the wetness around his cockhead, distantly fascinated by the way the fluid dried so quickly and stickily.

  Nicholas.

  His strong, lean body.

  His barely reined-in anger that evening at the mill stream.

  His smile at the end of today, half-hitched and oddly warm.

  In his imagination, Ward kissed Nicholas, even though he’d never shared a kiss with another man. Not that he was innocent—he’d done plenty of much more wicked things than kiss, but only with Alfie. Alfie was handsome and skilled and very expensive, but when he’d asked Ward, at their first meeting, if Ward would want to kiss him, Ward had found himself declining. Even now, he wasn’t entirely sure why. If Alfie had simply done it—kissed him without asking—he certainly wouldn’t have objected. It was the fact that he had asked, and perhaps too that there had been a tone to the question, a silent expectation that the answer would be no. Perhaps even that it ought to be no.

  So no, Ward had never known a lover’s kiss, but that did not stop him dreaming of sharing one with Nicholas Hearn now. As he stroked himself rhythmically, he let his mind dance over the possibilities. Having undressed the clothed Nicholas of his memory, Ward knelt at his feet to suck his cock, bent himself double to take him deep in his body, fucked him hard in return.

  With that fevered swirl of images in his head, he was very soon ready to come and, recognising that, began to regret his own too-quick efficiency. At the last, he tried to pull back, banishing his more lustful thoughts and endeavouring to think only of the man as he’d first seen him, down by the mill stream. But it was no good. Even the thought of Nicholas’s mocking smile and angry gaze pushed Ward closer to his climax. Those perfect, lean forearms crossed over the man’s chest.

  The moody slope of his broad shoulders.

  Ward came with a hiss and a stifled groan, his blood-warm spend spattering his pale torso. For a moment he was all tension—arched back, stiff arms, clenched fingers—and then he was all softness, his tight grip loosening on his shrinking cock, his heavy arm slumping to the mattress.

  His body throbbed with the woolly good feeling of having climaxed, and he let himself enjoy it fully. That was one thing his days of childhood sickness had taught him: that moments of pleasure and comfort ought not to be squandered. So he relished his pleasure, not hurrying to wipe the mess away, just lying there as the final pulses ebbed to nothing.

  From The Collected Writings of Sir Edward Fitzwilliam, volume I

  When I returned from that first London trip, my father allowed me to set up a very basic “laboratory” of my own at home where I was able to carry out some simple, practical experiments. These enabled me to witness in operation the scientific principles expounded by Mr. Faraday and other eminent gentlemen of the time. Although George and I were apart during the school term, we were as close as ever when he came home for the holidays. He would spend hours with me in the “laboratory,” listening patiently as I explained the principles and theories that fascinated me, exclaiming with gratifying wonder at the experiments I performed. Occasionally, I would allow him to drag me outside. Through his determined efforts, I eventually became both a tolerable horseman and swimmer, although there was nothing
he could do for my cricket.

  The whole of the next week, Nick was preoccupied with thoughts of the day he’d spent at Varhak Manor. Or perhaps, more accurately, he was preoccupied with thoughts of the master of the house—his master too now, he supposed—Sir Edward Fitzwilliam.

  “If I’m calling you Nicholas, you have to do likewise and call me Ward.”

  Ward. It suited him, Nick thought, though he still found it difficult to imagine using it to the man’s face. Names could be strangely intimate things. It was one thing for Sir Edward to address him as Nicholas—he didn’t care about that at all. No one else called him by that name anyway—but somehow the invitation to call Sir Edward Ward was troubling, smudging the clear boundary that Nick had set up in his mind between them.

  Ever since the invitation had been issued, though, Nick found he couldn’t think of the man as anything but Ward. That bothered him more than it should have.

  Nick also found himself revisiting, over and over, the strange, timeless period he had spent in a trance, tethered to the world only by Ward’s devil-harsh voice. To his surprise, he hadn’t hated it. Hadn’t felt, as he’d feared, as though he was in Ward’s power. He’d been clearheaded and coherent throughout when he’d expected to feel out of control and confused, as though he were drunk or half asleep.

  Nevertheless, it had been a distinctly odd experience. His words had come out, unbidden, without him deciding what to say beforehand. It was as though a door had closed on the part of Nick’s mind that made him stop and think and reason, so that the words that tumbled from his lips were painfully true. Except, that wasn’t wholly accurate, because there had been times too when he’d refused to answer questions, rudely even, like a recalcitrant child. He smiled at the memory, and at how surprisingly patient Ward had been. Perhaps it was more that a different side to Nick had been unlocked by the trance, a more spontaneous fellow, who answered as he wished without weighing the consequences first?

  All in all, it had been a strange day. Certainly not as unpleasant as he’d feared, other than that excruciating talk they’d had in Ward’s study when he’d first arrived. Up until then, Nick had been thinking of Ward as a shameless blackmailer, but whilst blackmailer he might be, he was far from a shameless one. The man had plainly been mortified when Nick had raised the subject, unable even to look him in the eye as Nick forced him to address it, all red-faced and stumbling over his words. Nick had almost felt sorry for him, which really was ridiculous. But Christ, that was the only explanation he could come up with for his absurd offer to go there every Sunday for the whole summer. He was certain now that Ward would have accepted less. What had he been thinking?