by J. A. Rock
Hartwell sighed.
“Could it be,” Gale wondered aloud, “that it is not the decor which offends you but rather watching the Warrington boy nestled cosily in an alcove with that pompous, animate wax statue?”
Hartwell did not even wish to look where he knew Gale was looking. He had glanced in that direction too many times this evening already. Across the room was indeed a little alcove, its curved walls decorated with enough white wreaths to resemble a loosely disguised ritual for summoning Beelzebub. A white brocade settee had been placed with its back to a broad, arched window. On that settee, Balfour and Warry had been engaged in conversation for some half an hour.
About what, Hartwell could not imagine. The only topics he had ever heard Balfour speak on were creatures he had killed hunting, sherries he possessed that were finer than all other sherries, horses he sought to purchase but never would because their fetlocks were all dysfunctional, and the shortcomings of other members of the ton.
But perhaps to someone as dull as Warry, these topics were of interest.
“I care not what he does,” Hartwell said. “I am offended only by the number of wreaths.”
“Well,” Gale said. “I am in theory here escorting my sister—”
“Clarissa?” Hartwell inquired, seeking any change in topic.
“No, I believe it is one of the others. Mary, perhaps?”
“You do not have a sister Mary.”
“It is so difficult to keep track. Do I have an Annabelle?”
“You have an Anne-Marie.”
“That must be who I am thinking of. Yes, well, she has made a new friend, and they appear to be hitting it off quite nicely and are currently under the watchful eye of the friend’s mama. I do believe I could get away with a few turns about the garden, should you require…air.”
Hartwell shook his head slowly. “I shall stay here. I must ask Rebecca to dance.”
“Ah, yes of course.” Gale sounded highly ironic, which irritated Hartwell further. “Is a date set to announce the engagement?”
“My parents are only just returned to Town. I thought I would give them another day or two of believing I am hopeless before showing what a good and worthy son I am and announcing my intention to marry.”
Gale studied him with what seemed like mild curiosity and complete disinterest both at once. “From your tone, it sounds as though it will be a joyous occasion indeed.” He gazed across the room yet again. “I do not know which of you looks more as though he has just been told he will be stoned to death at first light—you or young Warrington.”
Despite himself, Hartwell aimed another glance in that direction—just as Warry tipped his head back and laughed at something Balfour had said. “He’s laughing,” he told Gale, his jaw clenched.
“Mmm. So convincingly,” Gale murmured, still watching the scene in the alcove.
Hartwell was in no mood for whatever Gale thought he knew about the whole of humanity. “If I can, I will find you later. Right now, I wish to get punch.” He stalked off toward the punch bowl, aware that he had until quite recently fancied himself above such childish storming and muttering. He had only just convinced himself not to dash his newly poured glass of punch across the infuriating whiteness of the nearest wall when he saw Balfour lead Warry to the dance floor.
This was too much. He knocked the entire glass of punch back in one gulp.
“Why, hello. You look like just the sort of brooding gentleman with homicide in his heart with whom I cannot resist the prospect of a dance.”
He closed his eyes at the sound of Becca’s voice.
“Come,” she said softly, taking his arm. “I have been watching too. I am just as sick at heart as you. But let us go dance as though we are not insufferable mother hens who would cluck at a grown man for waltzing with whomever he wishes.”
Out to the dance floor they went. Hartwell’s body knew the steps well enough, which was a blessing, for his mind could focus on nothing but the sight of Warry and Balfour, Balfour’s broad hand between the slightness of Warry’s shoulders. Waltzing! Why, just last Season, Lord Richfield had asked Becca for a waltz at the Haverfords’ rout, and her mother had nearly set fire to the drawing room with the heat of her silent disapproval. She may have wished a match for Becca above all other things, but the impropriety of waltzing with a man one barely knew trumped even her desire to see her daughter wed.
As they turned about the floor, Hartwell caught glimpses of Warry’s besotted expression.
What had Gale meant by Warry laughing “so convincingly”? Warry looked happier than Hartwell had seen him in months. He attempted to focus on Becca, who was ravishing in a gown of deep burgundy, her hair pinned up and set with garnets. She had said it was all right that they remain simply friends. That he need not ever act any other way toward her. But what sort of arrangement was that for her? She was so beautiful, so funny, so wonderfully alive. She ought to be waltzing with somebody who could love her in all the ways one person might love another.
When they turned again, Balfour had one waxy hand cupping Warry’s face, and was gazing down at him with the look of a man who had just got all he wanted in the world.
Hartwell stumbled. Becca yanked him back in step. A moment later, he stumbled again. “Hartwell,” Becca said firmly, releasing him in midstep without a thought, it seemed, for the other merry couples who still turned around them. “Go outside and take a few breaths. Come back in when you are ready to play your part again.”
He stared at her numbly. That was all it was, wasn’t it? A part to play. Everyone there was to some extent a player in a vast drama that was never quite true to who people really were or what they truly desired.
He nodded wordlessly, grateful to hear the music winding down just as he began what seemed an interminable trek to the back garden. Maybe his retreat would not seem so out of place.
The garden was, thankfully, empty. Anyone who had been outside taking the air had hurried in again when the waltz started up. He paced back and forth amid the hedges, which were draped in white muslin apparently intended to resemble snow. He paused before a monstrous tree in a vast stone pot. If he stood on the far side of it, he was blocked from view of the house. He leaned against the pot, which was nearly as tall as he, feeling the prick of the bottommost evergreen branches through his hair, the cool smoothness of the stone lip against the back of his neck.
It was spring. A time of love and joy, he thought bitterly. Why on earth did the Marchlands wish to make it winter again?
Spring was for frogs and flowers. For games of chase about the garden. For hiding behind trees to tell secrets.
For…
A memory flashed through his mind—his father’s hand striking his cheek, sending him reeling across the library into a shelf of stuffy old books.
“I do not care that it is ‘acceptable.’ It is not acceptable for my only son, my only hope for an heir.”
The pain in his cheek had been dull compared to the lingering burn of Warry’s lips on his.
No.
Hartwell fairly shook himself like a wet dog. That was not how things had transpired the day he’d been caught kissing Warry. He and his father were always quite amiable. That moment with Warry in the back garden was but a silly peccadillo to be left behind in the haze of childhood. He and his father had laughed about it. He had told his father that very day that his true love was for Becca. That he would marry her one day.
No, that wasn’t right either. He raked a hand furiously through his hair. He had certainly not been the one to plant the ridiculous idea of marrying Becca in his parents’ minds.
Another flash of memory: He was pleading with his father, promising that he would one day marry Becca. Anything to persuade his father that his desires urged him toward a wife who would provide heirs and not a husband who, even if Hartwell loved him more dearly than life itself, never could. No. No, his mind was making more of that day than there had been to it, taking his father’s disappointment and
stretching it out like the growing shadows of a nightmare into something much larger and darker than it was. It wasn’t his father who hated some hidden part of him, it was himself. His father’s faint suspicion and cautious disapproval didn’t run so deep or so violently. Yet he was, to a degree, deeply afraid that it could if only those suspicions were proven.
He looked round at the sound of footsteps, angry and relieved at once to have his thoughts interrupted.
His relief dissipated when he realised the footsteps were Warry’s.
Warry appeared equally startled to see him. “I needed some air,” Warry said defensively.
Hartwell stared.
It seemed that light shimmered all around the other man, though the garden held only the glow of the moon and the weak flickering of candles from inside the house. Barely enough for the two men to identify each other.
Warry was not meant to kiss him that day. He was meant to be too frightened of putting a foot wrong. He was meant to flee at the merest whiff of indecency. The Viscount Warrington was like the Marchlands’ assembly room—so pure and snow-white that he began to seem wicked through sheer excess of virtue.
It is you, Warry, you false thing. You are the reason for my present condition. You are the reason I will announce my engagement to Becca in three days’ time. Why are you out here? What more could you possibly want from me?
“Breathless with the giddiness of new love?” Hartwell asked dully.
The moonlight caught Warry’s eyes, which were so still as to be unnerving. “I suppose you would know nothing of it,” he replied.
“I know better than any when it is a lie. A show put on for those barking spectators whose tongues will wag if you so much as let your smile slip whilst you waltz.”
“If you are speaking of your own interrupted waltz with Becca, yes, you made quite a spectacle of yourself. Tongues were already wagging as I left.” Warry’s tone was hard and cold, echoing the false winter around them.
“Did you come out here to badger me?”
“No. As surprising as you will find this, not everyone arranges their lives based on your movements.”
“I did not imply that everyone does. Merely you. I have allowed you to dog my steps since nearly your first breath, and you have given me nothing in return but hours of vexation and tedium.”
“I shall go back inside to Balfour, then. He seems far from bored with me.”
Anger welled in Hartwell’s chest. Shocking that such heat could engulf his heart so thoroughly in a fraction of an instant. As Warry turned to go, Hartwell grabbed his arm, tugging him back behind the stone pot.
“Tell me the truth,” Hartwell demanded as Warry fell against him with the force of the pull. “That is all I ask.”
“The truth of what?” Warry growled, shoving Hartwell off and then whirling them both in a circle that ended with Hartwell’s back slammed against the massive stone planter, Warry somehow gripping his wrists, pinning them against the stone surface. Even Warry looked shocked.
Hartwell was dizzied with feeling: desire, frustration, a sorrow that seemed to reach back through all the years he and Warry had known each other. A longing so deep he might drown in it. How could a mere pup break him like this? Because Warry was far from a mere pup. And that was what made Hartwell’s heart pound.
They were both breathing hard. The moon shone directly down on them, outlining Warry’s lips in silver. The whites of his eyes gleamed. Hartwell had to wet his own lips just to be able to speak. He started to shift his arms, a tentative experiment, and Warry shoved his wrists harder against the stone. The force of it sent an unexpectedly pleasurable jolt through Hartwell.
“What is it you plan to do to me?” Hartwell attempted a rakish smile. Had a feeling he failed.
Warry didn’t answer. Just held Hartwell there, staring at him.
Slowly, Hartwell moved again, and this time Warry let him lower his arms. Warry didn’t let go of Hartwell’s wrists, but Hartwell took hold of Warry’s as well and rather politely walked them both in a circle so that now Warry’s back was against the planter. Hartwell did not push or pin him, simply backed him up until Warry could, perhaps, feel the coolness of the stone through his coat and shirt.
“Tell me you feel nothing for me,” Hartwell said. “Tell me you feel nothing in this moment, and I will leave you be. Tonight and forever. I will never speak to you again if that is what you wish. I merely ask that you do not lie to me.” The softness of his tone belied the force of feeling within him. He tried not to shiver at the way his thumb had slipped under the cuff of Warry’s coat and was now pressed upon the pulse of his wrist.
The warmth of Warry’s breath and body cut through the chill of the evening as the other man panted hard, his head tipped back against the planter. His wrists still in Hartwell’s grasp, he nonetheless shoved out with such force that he caught Hartwell in the chest, his palms connecting with the front of Hartwell’s coat with a womp.
Hartwell gripped him a little tighter. Warry shoved him again, this time forcing Hartwell back a step. “You know nothing of me. You know nothing of my life!” His voice was low, but so raw with anger that it hurt Hartwell’s own throat to hear it. “You spent the whole of our childhood treating me as though I were weak, and—and completely unnecessary. You do not now get to stare at me from across the room as though I belong to you. I never have.”
He tried to shove Hartwell again, but Hartwell lifted his wrists and held them over his head against the stone. Not hard. Warry could escape easily if he wished.
Warry gasped, looking up at Hartwell with an expression Hartwell recognised as fear, even in the dark. He loosened his grip further, a numb horror winding through him. Never in all his life, not even now, half sick with jealousy and quite furious with himself for it, would he have wanted Joseph Warrington to look at him in fear.
Yet Warry’s next gasp, which ended in a shuddering exhale through parted lips, was far from fearful. And that was even worse.
He released Warry altogether. His and Warry’s harsh, shallow breaths were drawn in unison for a moment before Hartwell spoke. “Then go. If I do not belong to you in any small way, if there is no part of the last nineteen years you would keep, then go.” He had wanted it to sound benevolent, dignified. Go with my blessing. Instead he sounded hurt and bewildered.
Warry held his wrists in front of him, almost as if imploring Hartwell to take them again. Hartwell knew that was wishful thinking. “I did not say you do not belong to me. I said I do not belong to you.”
Hartwell had not realised his misspeak. “Is there any difference?” he asked hoarsely.
Warry’s eyes were so wide they seemed replicas of the moon. And in the darkness at their centres was a need that was unmistakable as it echoed Hartwell’s own.
The next moment, it was Warry who had Hartwell’s wrists again and was kissing him madly. His mouth was warm and soft and forced against Hartwell’s as though he had been starving for such contact for a long, long time.
Hartwell got a hold of himself and slipped his hands from Warry’s grasp to cup his face. With every ounce of strength inside him, he gentled the kiss, using his hands to lessen the pressure, to draw the moment into something long and tender.
This was peace.
This was a dip in time, silent and delicate as a doe placing her hoof in fresh snow, where they no longer existed in reality. Where Hartwell could simply have this.
With a deep inhale that drew Warry’s breath along with his own, he pressed his body the whole length of Warry’s, his knee sliding between the other man’s legs. The whimper Warry made held both shock and need in it, and oh, the thought of having Warry somewhere he could properly undo him made every muscle in Hartwell’s body tense with desire.
He pulled back suddenly. Good God. To have lectured Warry about his reputation the other night, and to now have…
Oh no. Oh God.
“We cannot,” Hartwell said curtly. Oh, for Christ’s sake, he had not meant to say
it like that. But fear was rapidly overtaking even desire. If his father found out, or Becca, or Balfour, or anyone…
Then came a moment longer than any before, in which the haze in Warry’s eyes cleared to allow in recognition—and then a betrayal that seemed to hone the moon’s silver light to a blade.
“Go back to him.” Hartwell spoke quietly. “Since you care for him so.”
Warry stared at him with such hurt and fury that Hartwell could not help but feel a brief sense of satisfaction. Now you know what it is to watch you waltz with Balfour.
It did not last. There could be no satisfaction so long as he saw hurt in those blue eyes.
Warry tore himself from Hartwell, folding his arms against his midsection as though Hartwell’s very touch might have poisoned him. “I should have known,” he muttered. He stood there, hunched over, anger in every line of his body. Then he strode toward the house. Hartwell leaned back against the stone, breathing hard, and after a moment peered over his shoulder, watching Warry step back into the light.
Chapter 10
“An engagement!”
Warry straightened from where he’d been slumped on the chaise longue as his mother swept into the drawing room.
“Isn’t it wonderful!”
He struggled to respond, afraid, in his confusion, that she spoke of the arrangement between himself and Balfour. Then he recalled the news that had been imparted to him in last evening’s haze.
“Yes, yes, wonderful indeed!” his mother went on, picking up one of the cakes Warry had left on the tea set and taking a bite. She swiped crumbs from the corner of her lip with her pinkie. “I don’t know when I’ve been so happy! Your sister is finally engaged. She and Hartwell certainly kept us waiting long enough. I had begun to fear it would never happen.”
Warry let his head flop back against the cushion.
“We’ve decided to formally announce it at Lord Balfour’s ball next week, which is the first true event of the Season.” By true, of course, she meant important, by whatever metric it was these things were measured by the ton. “Warry, dear, I’ll need your word that you will be there.”