Edward flinched as if he’d been struck. Gabriel continued, too agitated to stop.
“You allow yourself no agency. You play with people, you use them, you discard them as callously as if they were dropped gloves, and it sickens me.” He took a breath, familiar heat building behind his eyes. “If I am upset about anything, it’s being trapped with you. Trapped by my own need to do good in this world.”
Edward stared at him for a short, sharp instant, before looking down to the kitten in his waistcoat. When he looked back up, the wintry light in his eyes chilled Gabriel to the core.
Chapter Eighteen
“You’re a damned liar.” Edward’s words dropped to the bottom of Gabriel’s stomach. “Maybe not about my selfishness or my libertine tendencies...but then, you don’t know the truth of that, and you never will.” He laughed bitterly. “But it isn’t true that you don’t want to be here with me, and you know it.”
“You’re talking nonsense.”
“No, I’m not. Because you remember.” Edward was suddenly close, too close for comfort, close enough for Gabriel’s lungs to suddenly constrict. “You remember lying on that chaise longue, don’t you, writhing with fever...you remember my face above yours, you remember reaching out, and...” He ran a finger along Gabriel’s jawline, sending a sweet, dark shiver through his body. “Well?”
With a sudden start, the memory flooded back. Gabriel shut his eyes, briefly overwhelmed by the sensation of fever burning his forehead, the scratchy fabric of the chaise longue under his back...
...Edward’s lips on his.
“Are we beginning to remember? This is rather like a confessional—dark, and close, and secretive...” Edward’s voice was a low, silken purr, flooding Gabriel’s senses. “Would you like to bare your soul? Tell me why you really decided to stay? I’ll bare mine too. I’m sure you have a marvellous manner when it comes to sinners.”
This was all he’d ever wanted. Everything he’d dreamed of—more than everything. Edward, noticing him. Needing him.
Gabriel closed his eyes, trying to control the ferocious beating of his heart. If only he could play the game, say the right thing...
But he couldn’t. He had no idea how. All he wanted to do was pull Edward to him, show him exactly what he wanted from him, what he could give. And doing that...well, that really was impossible.
Especially when he knew that for Edward, it would be little more than a pastime. Something to keep away the dark.
He stood abruptly, realising that he was breathing hard. He struggled to control himself, all too aware of Edward’s eyes on his. “Even if...even if I know more of your proclivities than I wish to discuss, we can agree that they’re irrelevant.”
“I don’t think they’re irrelevant at all.”
“And perhaps that’s why we’re all here now, awaiting an uncertain future.” Gabriel saw Edward’s face change, and continued nonetheless. “Because you gave a little too much thought to your proclivities at the expense of everyone else.”
Edward smiled. “So this is you warning me off?”
“I’m not warning you off anything. I’m a grown man in full possession of my faculties. I can keep my hands to myself.” Gabriel knew he was blushing at his own words. “And I will do so, for as long as this peculiar situation lasts.”
“That almost sounds like a challenge.” Edward raised a single arched eyebrow.
“Even if you choose to take it as such, it will do you very little good.” Gabriel bowed sharply, trying to ignore how weak his knees had suddenly become. “Goodnight, Caddonfell.”
As he turned, he waited for Edward’s reply. All that came was a small, low mew from the kitten.
Shaking his head, tired beyond measure, Gabriel left the room.
* * *
The kitten looked at Edward quizzically before digging a paw full of small, needle-sharp claws into his chest.
Good Lord. The day had become more and more insupportable horror on horror piling up, suffocating him. Edward reached into his pocket for a cigarillo, rolling it in his fingers absentmindedly as he stared out of the black windows, searching for any light from either moon or star.
There had to be something—anything—to comfort him. To release him from the tension rippling through his body like poison.
In London anxiety could be chased away—drank away, smoked away, bedded down with some stranger in glittering opulence. But here in Hardcote...memories. Every moment of his past lay here, coiled like snakes, ready to strike.
He couldn’t be here, surrounded by his childhood. Not without a distraction, something to help him escape the pain, the fear that clung to those half-remembered days. His secrets were his, and his alone...but they were so large and grew teeth in the dark.
Gabriel Winters was one of the few shining moments in that merciless stretch of years. And now...well. He had grown.
Even if Gabriel rejected it, rejected him, Edward could see the light in the man’s eyes. He felt it too, the pull, the connection.
But he’d hurt him. Just another one of the innumerable things he’d done to survive that had left others hurting.
His gaze hardened as he stared out into the darkness. He would have Gabriel, the man’s own objections be damned. He would see him stripped, panting, begging for him.
He would hunt, and take pleasure in it. Just as soon as he’d managed to swallow the hurt, the shaking, dagger-sharp vulnerability, that came with being everyone’s problem.
Chapter Nineteen
Night enveloped Hardcote House, trapping it in a dense, rustling cloud of restless black. Edward tossed and turned in his childhood bedroom, his sleeping face showing the same desperate panic as his dreaming one.
The nightmare was always the same. He was in Hardcote House, in the gallery that ran along the upper floor, trying to reach his mother’s room. He had to let her out; he could hear her crying.
The key was hidden in the secret drawer in his father’s desk; he’d managed to steal it, creeping on slippered feet, the metal of it cool in his hand. But now came the hard part. He couldn’t wake little Maurice, sleeping peacefully in his bed two doors away.
Twenty steps away, then fifteen, then ten...he could do it. He could free her. They could finally run away, all three of them, and leave the Duke of Caddonfell to prowl around his empty house alone.
No! He’d thought the name. He couldn’t think it too loudly; his father could hear everything, even the words inside his head. But he was only five steps from his mother’s door, now, so very close to saving her—
“Boy! Don’t lay a finger on that door, or you’ll live to regret it!”
A long shadow spread over the gallery. Too late to turn back, too late to save anyone—but his hand had already closed over the handle of the door, stuck fast, unable to move however much he shook the door. He was trapped.
Mother! Only silent air left his mouth. Mother, please! But now even his mother’s sobs had vanished. Silence came from his mother’s room, mysterious and terrifying.
The thin, savage sound of a riding crop cut through the air. Edward pulled at his hand with all his might, tears running down his face, as his father’s shadow solidified into form. Tall, stooped with age and bitterness, his blue eyes glittering with cold triumph, he focused on the figure of his oldest son.
“Deviant. Sodomite.” And now it was the Duke of Sussex’s voice raining down on him like blows, the opulent gallery transformed into a common stable, reeking of straw and muck. “My God, you’re worthless. You need to be corrected, damn you.”
No!
At the first blow, Edward woke. He stared at the bedroom ceiling, bedclothes kicked away into a tangled clump.
He’d always hated nights like these. The nights that had made him want to escape, long ago, the sobs of his mother barely visible over the howling of the wind. However far he’
d travelled from Hardcote, he seemed fated to return to it. Return to the pain, and the sorrow, and regret.
He tried to focus on the frescoes stencilled on the plaster. For all he knew, or cared, the little painted angels were breaking free from their appointed corners and frolicking around the chandelier.
What really mattered—what mattered more than sleep, or nightmares, or terrible memories—was that in the guest bedroom three doors away, Gabriel Winters lay sleeping.
Had he really thought he could care for Gabriel dispassionately, the day he’d brought him in with fever? He’d never felt less dispassionate. The man’s body brought him to a fever pitch that he hadn’t felt in years, a wild, yearning helplessness.
He’d worked far harder, to feel far less. With Gabriel he didn’t have to try. All he had to do was recall the man’s face, those questioning, grave eyes, and he was as hard as a rock.
Gabriel. The man who’d been selfless before adulthood, the child who’d followed Hardcote’s priest around on Sundays, who’d always confessed to his parents any mischief he’d made.
Gabriel, the good man. The man Edward always remembered before doing something particularly unforgivable. A kind of better angel.
But the angel had fallen. The angel was ripe for taking, in his considered opinion...and here he was, lying in bed, doing absolutely nothing about it.
He tried to rationalise his lack of action, lying there in the dark. He was unprepared, lacking a plan...but here, in the privacy of a cool spring night, he could face the real reason why.
He was afraid. Afraid of how much he wanted it. Of how right it seemed. Because all he did, all he knew how to do, was hurt people.
He couldn’t hurt Gabriel. Just couldn’t.
Gabriel could hurt him, though. Hurt him very badly. How sick Edward was of being someone’s first taste of deviance...their first, and their last.
Firsts always meant lasts, somewhere down the line. With Gabriel, the idea of a last anything made Edward’s insides coil.
Getting out of bed with an irritated punch of the mattress, he moved to the window. He opened it a fraction, enough to feel the cool night air blow over his face—and enough, unfortunately, to blow his candle out.
“Sod.” Clouds had obscured the stars. Edward waved his own hand in front of his face, unable to make out anything in the pitch-black.
The sensible thing to do would be to sleep and wait for daylight to come. Given his complete lack of sensible decision-making over previous days, being unconscious was probably the correct choice.
Alas, he was already closing the window by feel. He was already groping his way across the room, bumping into pieces of furniture, and turning the handle of his door.
There were matches in the study. New candles, too. Just two doors down from his bedroom, and one door away from a sleeping Gabriel Winters.
Calling Bryce would wake Gabriel. The only way to resist temptation, to leave Gabriel sleeping soundly, was to make the journey himself.
With light, he could stay awake until morning. He could read, drink, play at cards. He could fight the urge to fantasise, to run his fingers down his body and tease himself to shuddering release, thinking of Gabriel.
Restraint was only possible with light.
Lord knows what he’d end up doing in the dark.
Chapter Twenty
The corridor stretched out before him, black and silent. Edward stumbled as he moved, keeping one hand against the wall as he felt his way along. In the dark, he could feel the cracks in the decade-old wallpaper. He could even smell the rot beginning to make its way through the house, slowly but steadily flourishing on neglect.
He had not been attentive to his estate. He’d given the entirety of its management to Maurice, along with all the funds required. Stanhope pride wouldn’t allow the place to go to complete ruin, even though it needed a good dose of modernity. But just thinking about renovating Hardcote House, having to spend time entombed within its walls, was enough for panic to flood his chest.
The ghosts of Hardcote weren’t visible to the human eye, but they existed nonetheless. They hurt more than any fanciful spectre could.
I will not have my son be a deviant! God help me, I will beat it out of you!
Edward flinched. His father’s voice still burned, even if the throat it came from lay cold in the earth.
This was a stupid idea. He had to get back to his room, away from the memories. He wasn’t strong enough. He never would be.
Silence and darkness filled his throat, smothering him. The house, his house, was as quiet as a tomb.
Too quiet. Gabriel’s deep, even breathing was absent.
The man was awake. Or perhaps the fever had returned, stronger this time, strong enough to steal away his breath...
A cold sweat broke out on Edward’s forehead. He leaned against the wall, stranded in the corridor, adrift on a wide, dark ocean.
A sound ripped through the darkness. The faint rasp of a match. A pale, eerie pool of light glimmered under the door of the guest bedroom.
Edward couldn’t move. He opened his mouth, trying to call out, but couldn’t. The house had left him grappling with a weakness that robbed him of any will of his own.
The door of the guest bedroom creaked open. Gabriel walked slowly into the corridor, candle held aloft, his back to Edward. In the darkness, the man’s tall, powerful frame made him look larger than life. Towering.
Breathtaking, whispered the treacherous part of Edward’s soul.
“Who’s there?” Gabriel’s voice filled the corridor. “C—Caddonfell?”
Oh, that stutter. Edward’s heart came alive in his chest. Do not think about that stutter.
Best to creep away. He turned, as silently as possible—and swore as he bumped into a heavily framed landscape painting.
The next few seconds were a blur. Edward gasped as the air was knocked out of him; he tumbled to the floor, struggling for breath, Gabriel’s hand tightening around his neck. Hisses and sizzles rose from the expensive Turkish rug as wax melted into the threads.
Edward blinked frantically, panicking, running rapidly out of air. What on earth could he do or say to calm Gabriel? The man was sightless, disoriented, and confronting a possible intruder...
“You bloody idiot.” His words came out as a desperate wheeze. “It’s me. Just me.”
“Ed—Caddonfell?” Gabriel pulled his hand away from Edward’s neck, his breathing heavy and harsh. “What in God’s name are you doing wandering around at night with no candle?”
“My candle blew out, you lunatic! Why are you half murdering any soul that happens to pass by your door?” Gabriel’s heart was pounding against Edward’s own, disproportionately fast. Edward tried to ignore how it made him feel. “I didn’t realise vicars were so battle hardened!”
“You are currently in hiding from people intent on killing you.” Gabriel’s voice changed. “Perhaps you’ve forgotten.”
“And you think the ruffians would have silently broken into my bedroom and began wandering along the corridor?”
There was a long moment of silence. “Well. It seems illogical, when you look at it like that.”
Edward couldn’t restrain a burst of disbelieving laughter. Everything seemed illogical when he looked at it now: the situation, the past three days, his life up to this point...desperately illogical. Desperately complicated.
He was suddenly very aware of Gabriel’s body pressing against his. Yes, this was very, very complicated.
But oh, how good it felt to laugh. Laugh like he didn’t have a care in the world. Laugh like Gabriel didn’t, to all intents and purposes, despise him.
Gabriel’s voice cut through the merriment. “I still deeply dislike you.”
“You deeply disliked me for much of our childhood. I was always getting you into the most ridiculous scrapes.�
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“You always did have ludicrous situations hanging on your coattails.” Gabriel sighed. “You...you always were so unafraid.”
Edward felt the subtext humming in the dark. He’d grown accustomed to this, the vague, coded ways in which men talked about his desires, and their own.
The fact that it was Gabriel made the feeling new again. Illicit. Thrilling. And he was lying in his arms, not moving away.
Edward took a deep breath, hoping that his voice wouldn’t quiver. “I couldn’t be anything other than what I was. Even if it meant trouble.” Even if it meant getting brutally, savagely beaten in every place that could be covered by clothes. “I chose my path.” He softened his voice, trying not to sound surprised. “You...seem to have chosen a different one. Quite markedly different.”
“I... I made a pact. With God.” This time, Gabriel’s laughter was slightly bitter. “If He let me be as I am, and feel as I feel, I would serve Him as best I could.”
Edward was careful not to laugh. How exactly like the Gabriel he remembered, serious and idealistic at the same time, knotted together with a very specific logic. “That’s why you chose the church?”
“Yes.”
“And that pact...it stopped you being afraid?”
“Afraid of the noose? It did.” Gabriel shifted, a new note of doubt entering his voice. “It did.”
Edward closed his eyes, despite the darkness. It was the only way he could control the wild, airy feeling clawing at his chest.
Gabriel’s next words were so quiet, Edward barely heard them. “I... I am sorry. I don’t—well, I do think those things about you, I’m not going to lie about that, but I am sorry I spoke to you so cruelly. You probably think me the worst kind of hypocrite, given that...given that your—your desires are ones I share.”
“No.” In a sudden burst of fear, of regret, Edward threw his arms around Gabriel’s broad back. He couldn’t have Gabriel breaking away from him; he needed this body, a shield, a comfort. “No.”
The Vicar and the Rake (Society of Beasts) Page 8