A Gathering Storm (Porthkennack Book 2)

by Joanna Chambers

  And with a muffled groan, Nick obliged.

  They breakfasted in the parlour they’d dined in the night before. After last night’s coupling and this morning’s more languid performance, they were able, finally, to concentrate on eating, and each polished off a large breakfast of coddled eggs, ham, sausages, and fried potatoes.

  “What’s your plan then?” Nicholas asked, dropping his napkin onto his empty plate and leaning back in his chair. “We’ve the whole day free, haven’t we?”

  “Yes, the séance isn’t till evening,” Ward confirmed. “Shall we take a turn about town? There are several bookshops I’d like to visit, but other than that, I’m happy to accompany you wherever you’d like to go.”

  It was only once the words were out that it occurred to Ward that Nicholas mightn’t want to spend every moment with him. Quickly he added, “Unless— You’d probably prefer some time alone . . .”

  Nicholas’s eyebrows drew together. “Why would I?”

  Ward tried—but probably failed—to hide his pleasure and relief at that swift response. His smile felt impossible to hide, even as he tried to rein it back in. “All right then. Is there somewhere particular you’d like to go, or shall we just have a walk around?”

  “I wouldn’t mind taking a look at the new railway,” Nicholas said.

  “Excellent idea!” Ward agreed. The line from Truro to Penzance had only just opened the previous year. “Anything else?”

  Nicholas thought. “When I come down for the livestock auction, I usually go to the White Hare. They have the best stargazy pie I’ve ever tasted.” He frowned a little then, looking at Ward. “Though it’s a fairly rough sort of place, so . . . perhaps not.”

  Ward wondered if Nicholas was thinking of the day Ward had gone into the Hope & Anchor and seen Nicholas for the first time. He’d felt like a fish out of water, but look where his boldness had brought him. To this place, today with Nicholas. Which only went to show that sometimes one found unexpected treasures in the strangest places.

  “I’d like to go there with you,” Ward said. “I’ve been itching to try this famous Cornish delicacy everyone keeps telling me about. Although—” He patted his stomach and made a rueful face. “At this moment I can’t imagine I’ll ever eat again.”

  Nicholas chuckled. “Oh, I think your appetite will recover.”

  Ward grinned. “I’m sure it will,” he said, and he wasn’t talking about food.

  They set off shortly after breakfast. The Fox and Swan was a mile or so west of Truro proper and as it happened, the railway was on the same side of town. They headed south to Higher Town where the small station was located, strolling down country lanes that were densely green with early summer growth.

  It was a lovely day. The sky was a cloudless stretch of blue, and the sun shone with early warmth and the promise of more heat to come. They’d scarcely been walking five minutes before Nicholas shrugged off his coat and slung it over his arm.

  “Wish I hadn’t brought the damned thing,” he grumbled. He’d worn his usual tweed while Ward’s light fawn coat was of cool linen.

  “Your coat’s too heavy,” Ward pointed out. “You should have worn one like mine.”

  “Perhaps I would have, if I owned one like yours,” Nicholas said mildly.

  Ward immediately felt ashamed of his thoughtlessness. He had wardrobes of garments to choose from, some suitable for warm, summery days like this and others for cold, wintry ones. Nicholas’s clothes were perfectly respectable, but they were clearly of a different order of elegance from Ward’s and his choices were presumably much more limited.

  Ward didn’t usually notice the difference between their clothes, but here in Truro, he found himself doing so, and other things besides. The difference between his own cut-glass vowels and Nicholas’s warmer, rounder ones, his stiff manners with the serving girl and Nicholas’s easy good humour.

  “Have you been to the railway before?” Nicholas asked, interrupting Ward’s thoughts.

  Ward glanced at him. “Yes, Pipp and I came down last year to meet with the architect of Varhak Manor. Afterwards, I took the train to Penzance to visit a friend. What about you?”

  “Not yet,” Nicholas said. “I’d dearly love to go on a train, but I’ve no reason to visit Penzance.” He smiled. “That’s the trouble with this railway line. It doesn’t go anywhere I need to be.”

  “Well, it won’t be long before they finish the line between Truro and Plymouth, and then you’ll be able to go anywhere. All the way to London in a single day. And then from London all the way to Scotland.”

  “I’ve never been to London,” Nicholas said, “or Scotland.”

  “I’ve not been to Scotland either,” Ward admitted, “but I can tell you, you’ll love London. I mean, it’s dirty and noisy of course, and dangerous in places, but there are so many wonderful things to see. There’s no place in the world more alive, I think.”

  “You miss it,” Nicholas observed. “No wonder. It’s so quiet in Porthkennack.”

  “I didn’t mean that I miss it,” Ward said. “Only that I would like to show it to you.”

  As soon as the words were out, he felt colour flood his face at how thoroughly betraying they were. Nicholas turned his head to look at him in surprise, and Ward quickly averted his gaze, realising with something very like relief that they were almost at the station.

  “Ah, here we are,” he exclaimed, picking up his pace and striding towards the tiny office. “I’ll ask the stationmaster if there’s a train due anytime soon. I believe there are a few each day, so we might be lucky.”

  It turned out there was a train due in forty minutes, so they waited, standing side by side, leaning against a low wall that looked over the platform, while Ward explained how steam engines worked, and the problems that had been encountered with the rival atmospheric system, so recently abandoned by Mr. Brunel in neighbouring Devon.

  “Perhaps they’d have finished the line from London to Penzance already if they’d stuck with steam engines,” Nicholas said, sending a teasing glance Ward’s way. “And then you could’ve taken me to London like you said you wanted to earlier.”

  Ward’s face flamed, and Nicholas chuckled softly, though not unkindly. He turned his back, settling his hips against the wall so that he was facing away from the tracks, looking Ward directly in the eye.

  “Where would you take me, if we could go there tomorrow?”

  Nicholas’s mouth was hitched in a familiar half smile and there was something wistful in his gaze that made Ward feel strangely tender to him, and that made his own embarrassment fade.

  He said, “I’d take you to the British Museum to see the Rosetta Stone and the Elgin Marbles. And then to Hyde Park. You can walk for miles there. Perhaps we’d even go boating on the Serpentine. Or riding on Hampstead Heath—we could go up to Parliament Hill. You can see the whole city from there.”

  Nicholas’s gaze was warm. “That all sounds wonderful.”

  Ward grinned. “Oh, that’s just for starters! I’d take you to the zoo and to Astley’s circus, and there are dozens of music halls and theatres we could go to. I’m not one for those sorts of entertainments usually, but I’d love to show you—” He was babbling so quickly, his voice cracked, the words petering out on a croaky rasp.

  “I can’t even imagine a place so lively,” Nicholas said. “The most entertainment I’ve ever seen is the Christmas mummers, and the music hall here in Truro a time or two.”

  “Did you like the music hall?”

  Nicholas gave a huff of laughter. “Some of it. There were one or two good singers, several awful ones, some decent acrobats, and a so-called mind reader my mother could have given a run for his money.”

  “Your mother read minds too?”

  “No,” Nicholas scoffed. “But she could read people. Why do you think all the village women came to her about their loved ones who’d passed? She was very astute. Very good at understanding what people wanted to hear.”

&nb
sp; It was in that moment Ward realised that Nicholas didn’t—really didn’t—believe in his own mother’s powers as a medium. It shouldn’t have come as a surprise—he’d alluded to as much several times before, and yet Ward felt stunned.

  Nicholas didn’t seem to notice. He gave a sigh and turned back to look over the wall again. “My life has been small, Ward. I’ve lived all my life in Porthkennack. Truro is about as far from home as I’ve ever been.”

  “There’s nothing wrong with staying in a place you love,” Ward said.

  Nicholas gave a short laugh. “Well, it’s true I’ve never felt a burning desire to leave Porthkennack. And it would be all too easy to live out my days there. But . . .”

  “But what?”

  “I have never truly belonged.”

  The pain in that confession was audible. Ward wished he could take Nicholas into an embrace and hold him tight, but of course it was impossible. The station master was pottering close by, and there were people gathering on the platform on the other side of the wall as the time for the next train’s arrival approached.

  “I was just the Gypsy woman’s brat or the Roscarrocks’ bastard.” Nicholas shook his head. “I didn’t belong in the village, and I didn’t belong at the big house. I didn’t belong anywhere.” He rubbed at the back of his neck, though his voice was deceptively calm when he added, “If I could’ve married, maybe things would be—” He stopped. “Well, there’s no use thinking of that.”

  Ward’s heart twisted.

  “If I could’ve married . . .”

  That very thought had crossed his own mind many times. How much easier life would be if he married. He could have children, creating a branch of his family that would be his to govern, and that would integrate in easy, predictable ways with his wider family, with his sisters and their husbands and children. For a man as wealthy as Ward, a suitable marriage could be arranged with ease. He could even keep a man on the side, to meet his own secret needs—that was what others did. He knew of several men like that, with a family ensconced in one house, and a male lover in another.

  But Ward couldn’t do that. He wasn’t sure why it was quite so unthinkable to him, only that it was. To live intimately with a wife and family and yet keep the essence of himself from them—he knew it would eat away at his very soul. Yet the alternative, to never express the part of him that loved men, was equally impossible. Not because he was a slave to his appetites, but because those appetites were intrinsic to who he was and to suppress that would be like cutting off the air he breathed.

  “If I could’ve married . . .”

  When Nicholas had spoken those words, Ward had known he felt the same way.

  And Ward had ached for him.

  Ward stared at Nicholas’s strong, square hands resting on the wall in front of them. He glanced around to see if anyone was looking at them, checking his surroundings with the ingrained habit of a man used to being careful. No one was watching. No one seemed the least bit interested, in fact, in the two men standing at the wall, at the back of the platform. No one saw Ward inch his left hand close enough to Nicholas’s right that the sides of their hands touched, from the tips of their fingers, down the length of their pinkies, all the way to their wrists.

  To the casual observer, it had the appearance of the lightest, most innocent of touches. Entirely unintentional. And yet Ward felt that touch with every particle of his being, warm and tingling, a spark that zinged between them as bright as the tiny blue flashes Ward had seen sparking above the brim of his hat on the Archimedes the night he’d last heard George’s voice. Ward realised, with something like amazement, that even as he stood there quietly, staring straight ahead, his heart was thundering, and he was holding his breath.

  When he finally worked up the courage to look up from their touching hands, it was to find Nicholas’s gaze fixed on him, his silver eyes stormy and wild. In the distance, a long shrill whistle sounded through the air, signalling that the engine was nearing. The crowd on the platform shifted and murmured with excitement, straining their necks to catch their first glimpse of the approaching locomotive, but Nicholas’s eyes stayed on Ward, and Ward’s on Nicholas, even as the engine screeched to a noisy, gasping halt before them.

  After the steam engine had come and gone, Nick and Ward walked into the town proper, strolling at an unhurried pace towards Boscawen Street.

  It was past noon now, and Truro was bustling. This was the biggest town in the county, and today, Saturday, its busiest day. The streets were crammed with market stalls selling all manner of things—bolts of fabric, spring cabbages, sprats preserved in vinegar, powdered remedies for every possible ache and pain—an unimaginable variety of goods compared to even the busiest of market days in Porthkennack. Customers from all walks of life thronged the streets, gathering round the stalls to examine produce and bargain with the vendors, while hawkers circled amongst them, laden with baskets and trays that spilled over with bright ribbons, savoury pastries, shiny apples.

  Nick had donned his coat again several streets back, before the crowds got busy. As warm it was, he felt better knowing his money was carefully tucked in his inside pocket, out of reach of any thieves in the crowd. Ward seemed far less concerned about such thoughts than Nick, even though he was a more obvious mark in his elegant, expensive clothes. He strolled along with his arms swinging by his sides, seeming relaxed and at ease, practically inviting pickpockets, but Nick made up for his insouciance by glaring at anyone suspicious looking who got too close.

  Ward paused to buy a Bath bun from a baker’s boy with a tray of goods hanging from his neck. As they walked away, he broke it in half and passed one half to Nick.

  “I thought you said you’d never be hungry again,” Nick said with a grin, before tearing off a corner. It was sweet and tasty, with candied peel and raisins scattered through the warm, fragrant dough.

  Ward grinned back. “I was thinking of you. I know you’ve got a sweet tooth and you’re missing Mrs. Waddell’s scones this week.”

  They finished the pastry between them, just as they reached Caddo’s Bookshop. Ward brushed the final crumbs from his fingers before he pushed open the narrow door, Nick close behind him.

  It was gloomy inside despite the brightness of the day, and the bell rang with a melancholy peal, but the man who sat at the high desk at the front of the shop wore a bright and merry expression when he looked up from his book.

  “Sir Edward!” he exclaimed when he spied Ward, and hopped down from his stool. “How good to see you! I’ve several volumes set aside for you to look at that I think you may be interested in.”

  “I’m pleased to hear it, Mr. Caddo,” Ward replied, stepping forward to greet the man. “I shall be delighted to take a look at them.”

  For the next half hour, Ward and Caddo did nothing but talk books. Nick browsed the shelves as he waited, soon realising that the shop sold mainly books of a scientific nature. A few handwritten signs scattered about the shop gave clues: Geology, Mathematics, Natural Sciences.

  Ward ended up purchasing no less than four books and two journals. Caddo wrapped everything up in brown paper and string, making a loop at the top that Edward could slot his fingers and thumb through to carry them easily, and then they were on their way again.

  “Where’s the next bookshop?” Nick asked.

  “Oh, it’s very close—only a few minutes’ walk.”

  It was a glorious day, sunny and bright. Ward swung his package of books at his side as they walked and they talked easily of this and that.

  After a while, Ward asked, “Do you read much, Nicholas?”

  “Not as much as I should,” Nick admitted. “My mother couldn’t read at all and saw little purpose in books—though she could tell a story better than anyone else I ever met. She had scores of them by memory. We never had any books in the house. I did all my lessons up at Roscarrock House, and she didn’t like me bringing books back.”

  He saw Ward’s expression shift into one of sympathy,
and for some reason, that bothered him. Quickly, he looked away, adding lightly, “I’m not much of a one for reading anyway. I’m more the outdoor sort.”

  “What were your lessons at Roscarrock House like?” Ward asked.

  Nick shrugged. “They were all right. I had them from four till seven each day. At first, my teacher was Harry’s tutor. He was a nice gentleman. Mr. Price.”

  “Isn’t that rather late in the day for a boy to be doing lessons?”

  Nick was puzzled by the question. “I was a stable boy—I had to do my work first. I started at seven in the morning, but they let me finish early for the lessons, since Harry’s were done by then and they couldn’t have Mr. Price working all night.”

  At Ward’s look of surprise, Nick chuckled. “You didn’t think Harry and I got our lessons together, did you? As though Godfrey would have allowed that!”

  Ward just blinked. “And you were working? How old were you?”

  “Twelve when the lessons began, eleven when I started in the stables. Godfrey wanted to get my measure before he wasted any time or money on me.” He forced a smile, but had a feeling it was probably little more than a twist of his lips.

  Ward looked troubled. “How long did the lessons go on?”

  “Till I was nineteen. Mr. Price left when Harry went to school. After that, it was a mix of the village schoolmaster, the curate, and Mr. Lang—he was the steward before me.”

  “What did you learn?”

  Nick shrugged. “When I was younger, the same as any other schoolboy: mathematics, grammar, history, geography, a little Latin. Then later, the business of being a steward: animal husbandry, bookkeeping, that sort of thing.”

  “Did you ever read a book just for fun?” Ward asked, his expression curious.

  Nick frowned, thinking. He honestly couldn’t think of one.

  Ward must have read the answer on Nick’s face because he didn’t wait for a reply, merely said, “I’ll wager I can find you a book that you’ll enjoy reading. You wait and see.”