He ventured further. Dining room, absolutely blank as though the house was newly built. Upstairs, inflatable mattresses in two bedrooms just as empty. A bathroom clean of any imprint, and another featureless corner room that would make a lovely space for an office.
“You’ve exorcised it,” he said, with a feeling of almost savage satisfaction, as he found Michael again, standing silently in the centre of the potentiality, waiting for his verdict.
“Yes.” Michael pulled him close and rested his forehead on Finn’s shoulder. “I was thinking I could sell it and move in with you.”
“Were you now?” Finn tried for indignant. He should have been able to manage indignant, since Michael’s assumption that he could move in whenever it pleased him was so presumptuous. But it was also right. Finn had got used to having Michael around the place. He liked the warmth in his bed and the warmth in his heart, and he didn’t want to start another year without having it full-time.
“I don’t think I have the space for that,” he said, and joy came twisting up out of his contrary heart at the thought that he refused to do the expected even in this. “You see, I was thinking I would move in here. Expand the bookshop into the flat. Start selling a selection of modern works, and maybe a little of that electronic stuff. D’you think you could live with that?”
Michael looked him in the face like he’d never seen him before. Then slowly he turned full circle, Finn still in his arm coming with him.
“It’s . . . It’s all new.” Michael frowned, as though he was trying to place a hard concept, but Finn could feel his body tremble faintly from where it was pressed so closely against him. “I took everything out.”
“You see, my flat—” Michael had understood his meaning, that was clear enough. It just needed gently coaxing into words. “My flat is very much my flat. But this. We could both bring something to this. This could be ours. D’you think you could do that? In this place where I don’t think you were very happy for a very long time, d’you think I could make you happy in the future?”
He was pretty damn sure he could, but he wanted Michael to be sure too, wanted him to have faith that the bad times were over, that he would never be so cold, so alone, or so broken ever again.
Michael gathered him close, gentle but inexorably strong, and kissed him, deep and thorough and sweet. “You idiot,” he said at last, after the deal had been sealed a thousand times over. “You already do.”
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Historical
Blessed Isle
The Crimson Outlaw
Captain’s Surrender
False Colors
His Heart’s Obsession
All at Sea
By Honor Betrayed
The Reluctant Berserker
Fantasy
Under the Hill: Bomber’s Moon
Under the Hill: Dogfighters
Too Many Fairy Princes
The Wages of Sin
The Witch’s Boy
Contemporary
Shining in the Sun
Also in the Trowchester series
Blue-Eyed Stranger (April 2015)
Blue-Steel Chain (July 2015)
Alex Beecroft was born in Northern Ireland during the Troubles and grew up in the wild countryside of the English Peak District. She studied English and philosophy before accepting employment with the Crown Court where she worked for a number of years. Now a stay-at-home mum and full-time author, Alex lives with her husband and two children in a little village near Cambridge and tries to avoid being mistaken for a tourist.
Alex is only intermittently present in the real world. She has spent many years as an Anglo-Saxon and eighteenth-century reenactor. She has lead a Saxon shield wall into battle, and toiled as a Georgian kitchen maid. For the past five years she has been taken up with the serious business of morris dancing, which has been going on in the UK for at least 500 years. But she still hasn’t learned to operate a mobile phone.
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Trowchester Blues Page 24
