by Emily Larkin
Tom’s arms tightened around him. He pressed a kiss into Lucas’s hair. “I know I’m not Julia, but I will always be here for you. Always.”
“I know,” Lucas whispered. “I know.”
* * *
Whiteoaks became easier to bear after that. They went for daily rides, and somehow those rides always ended up at the folly, and they’d go down into the dungeon or climb the ruined tower, and Tom would ask if he could kiss him, and Lucas always said yes, because when Tom kissed him, the world fell away and he felt happy. And after the kisses Tom would whisper in his ear Do you want my mouth or my hand? and he always said the same thing: Your hand, because when Tom used his hand it felt like they were making love—Tom pressing him against the wall, the two of them straining together, their cocks striving in Tom’s hand. Afterwards, when they stood leaning into each other, panting, the urge to cry would come again, but he always managed to hold it back.
During those moments in the folly the aching sense of loss, of amputation, went away, and even though it returned afterwards, it was never as bad as it had been. Lucas found it easier to smile and pretend that all was well. Robert stopped watching him so worriedly and Almeria no longer glanced at him every ten minutes. Robert’s sons came home from Eton for a few days and spent most of their time sliding down the banisters. Tom joined in. “Come on, Lu!” he cried, as he swooped past. So Lucas did. By the time he reached the bottom, he was laughing.
It was the first time he’d laughed in sixteen months. It felt good.
More of his relatives arrived—brothers, sisters, cousins, nephews, nieces—gathering for the annual Kemp house party. Whiteoaks became busier, noisier. October became November. Tom’s general wrote to say that the inquiry was finally starting, but it would be some weeks before his testimony was required.
“Guess who’s arriving today,” Tom said one afternoon, when they stood in the ruined tower looking down at the grassy courtyard.
Lucas leaned against the stone wall, feeling sated and relaxed. “Tish?”
“No, worse luck. Bernard.”
Lucas groaned. Bernard Trentham. His second least favorite cousin. “Please tell me Caroline’s not coming.”
“She’s not.”
“Thank God for small mercies.” If Bernard was his second least favorite cousin, Bernard’s sister Caroline was his least favorite.
“Tish gets here next week.”
“Good.” He felt a pang of grief, because Tish and Julia had been best friends, and thinking of Tish always made him think of Julia. But at least I have Tom, and he shifted his weight so that his shoulder pressed against Tom’s, and took comfort in his nearness, his warmth.
“Lu . . . you remember George Trentham?”
“Uncle George? My mother’s brother? Of course I remember him.”
“He never married.”
“No.”
“And he wasn’t in the petticoat line, was he?”
Lucas shrugged. “Not that I ever heard.”
“I remember he had a great friend, always traveled with him.”
“John Wallace? Lord, yes, they were as close as brothers. Did everything together. Even shared the same townhouse in London. Never saw one without the other.”
“Lu . . . do you think they were lovers?”
“Uncle George?” Lucas recoiled. “Of course not!”
Tom laughed, and shook his head. “If you could see your face, Lu.” He leaned close and kissed Lucas’s cheek. “You are so straitlaced.”
Lucas flushed. “Uncle George was not a gentleman of the back door,” he said stiffly.
Tom looked amused. “How do you know?”
“He was a respectable man. They both were! Everyone liked them!”
“So?”
Lucas turned his head away. He frowned down at the little courtyard below, with its grass and its tumbled blocks of stone and the crumbling wall on the far side with its huge gothic arch. For a moment, he saw Uncle George in his mind’s eye—the round apple-red cheeks, the bristling white eyebrows, the twinkling eyes—and heard his deep, rich chuckle. Uncle George had been a good man, generous and kind and jovial.
Which doesn’t mean that he wasn’t a back door usher, a little voice pointed out at the back of his head.
Lucas rejected this thought, but it kept nibbling away inside his skull until he had to look at it squarely. Had Uncle George and John Wallace been lovers?
The more he thought about it, the more he thought that Tom was right. Uncle George had been a bachelor his whole life. So had John Wallace. They’d done everything together, even shared a house together.
“They might have been,” Lucas said finally, grudgingly, and he glanced at Tom and found he was looking at him. “Maybe,” he said, and then after a moment, even more grudgingly, “Probably.”
Tom smiled a faint, unreadable smile, but said nothing.
They stood there in silence, and then Tom laughed, and said, “If Bernard knew—”
“He’d have an apoplexy.”
Mischief lit Tom’s face. “What a marvelous thought. I must tell him.”
“Don’t you dare!” Lucas said—and realized Tom was teasing him. “You’re a damned loose screw,” he said severely.
Tom grinned. “And you’re a nodcock.” He leaned in and kissed Lucas lightly—and Lucas kissed him back—and then the afternoon dissolved into bone-melting pleasure again, and he was happy, purely happy.
And after that, they rode back to Whiteoaks and discovered that Bernard Trentham had arrived.
Chapter Eleven
Bernard Trentham was only half a dozen years older than Tom, but he behaved as if he was in his fifties: staid, pompous, disapproving. But Bernard had been a fifty-year-old his whole life—or at least as long as Tom had known him, which was almost twenty years.
Bernard shook Tom’s hand and made the same not-quite-joke he always did: “Ah, the Honorable Thomas.”
Tom smiled tightly.
“And how is your brother, the earl?” Bernard asked.
“I haven’t seen him yet.” And he realized, with a faint sense of shock, that he hadn’t written to tell Daniel he was back in England, hadn’t even thought about Daniel. He felt a twinge of guilt. I must visit him before I leave England.
Bernard droned on and it was nearly ten minutes before Tom escaped. “Christ,” he said to Lucas, in the privacy of the library. “He gets worse every time I see him. Poor Tish, having him as a stepbrother.”
Lucas put down his book. “Did he mention his mother, Lady Mary?”
“Yes.”
“And his grandfather, the duke?”
“Yes.”
“And his father-in-law, the viscount?”
“Yes.” Tom crossed to the fire and leaned against the mantelpiece. “Thank God he hasn’t brought that prim, fubsy-faced wife of his.”
“You mean, the viscount’s daughter?”
Tom gave him a look.
Lucas grinned—and he looked so beautiful, so golden, that Tom’s heart tightened painfully in his chest.
He looked away, swallowed, looked back. “Two of Tish’s suitors are coming. Bernard invited them.”
Lucas lost his grin. He blinked. “What? Bernard invited them to Whiteoaks?”
“Robert invited them, at Bernard’s request.”
Lucas frowned. “Robert did? Dash it, he knows she gets hounded enough in London—”
“Don’t blame Robert. I think Bernard badgered him until he gave in.”
Lucas grunted. The beautiful, golden grin was gone.
“One of them’s that idiot Stapleton, but the other one’s Henry Wright. You remember Henry? A year ahead of us at school?”
Lucas nodded.
“Bernard called him Sir Henry.”
“His father died a couple of months ago. Left him in a devil of a mess. Debts up to his eyebrows.”
Tom grimaced. “Shame. I always liked Henry. Very up-front.”
“And in need of an heiress now.”
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“At least he won’t hound Tish. He’ll ask, she’ll say no, that’ll be it.” He shrugged. “I understand why Henry’s after her, but why is Stapleton? I thought he inherited a fortune.”
“Run through it already. Gambler.”
Tom thought of his father. He kicked the grate with his boot. Gamblers and fortunes were a bad combination. “What’s Tish’s count this year, d’ you know?”
“Proposals? Fifteen, last I asked.”
“A coachwheel says she’s past twenty by now.”
Lucas considered this for a moment, and then nodded. “You’re on.”
Tom pushed away from the mantelpiece. “Dinner in half an hour.” He crossed to the armchair and ran his fingers through Lucas’s hair—a light, swift caress that was over before Lucas could stiffen in alarm—and then continued to the door. “Come on, you know you take forever to change.”
* * *
After dinner, once the ladies had withdrawn and the decanters of port and brandy had been placed on the table, talk turned to boxing. The upshot of that conversation was an informal sparring session the next day, in one of the unused salons. Eight men gathered: the four Kemp brothers, three Kemp cousins, and one brave brother-in-law. Tailcoats were shucked and footwear removed.
Tom, who was a mediocre boxer, fished his sketchbook out of his breast pocket and opened it to a fresh page.
The Kemps were a family of large, strong, athletic men, and Lucas was one of the largest and strongest, but for all his brawniness he was light on his feet, fast and agile. God, he was magnificent—and yet completely unaware of his magnificence, just as he was unaware of the admiration he was garnering as he demonstrated a number of moves with his cousin, Arnold—the common parry and opposite parry, the side step and drop step, the chancery hold and pinion. When he laid Arnold on the floor with a cross-buttock throw that even Tom could see had been superb, Lucas didn’t swagger, because Lucas didn’t know how to swagger; he just held out his hand to Arnold and hauled him to his feet again.
The men broke into pairs to practice the moves; the room filled with the sound of panted breaths and scuffing feet, grunts and laughter. Tom made quick sketches—knuckles and knotted brows, grins and grimaces. Half an hour passed. Waistcoats and neckcloths were flung aside and shirt-sleeves rolled up. The room began to smell strongly of sweat. Tom’s sketchbook was nearly full. He closed it and watched Lucas spar with his second-oldest brother, the Very Reverend Hugh Kemp.
No one looking at Lucas would believe that he’d been a virgin until last month. He was so damned masculine, so virile, the absolute epitome of manliness.
“No,” Lucas said, when Hugh attempted a chancery hold, “Like this,” and Hugh, who was pompous and starchy and destined to be an archbishop if ever Tom had seen a man destined to be an archbishop, didn’t bristle, but instead paid frowning attention to Lucas’s instruction.
The pugilists broke for ale. Lucas came to stand with him. “Sure you don’t want to spar?” he asked, gulping down his ale. “Good exercise.”
“I’d rather sketch.” Boxing wasn’t his sport. Swords were another matter; he could hold his own against Lucas when it came to fencing. But if he ever crossed foils with Lucas, he wanted the two of them to be alone, so that when they grew hot and sweaty and out of breath, they could—
Tom stopped that thought in its tracks. Down, boy, he told his cock, before it could get any ideas. He took a hasty sip of ale, and another, and found himself gazing at Lucas’s open shirt collar. He imagined kissing Lucas there, imagined tasting his warm, salty skin, and stifled a sigh of longing. “Riding, later?”
Lucas’s cheeks became faintly pink. He nodded.
After the ale had been drunk, Robert asked the two most skillful boxers—Lucas and his next-oldest brother, Edward—for an exhibition bout.
Tom watched the two men take their places. Edward belonged to the sporting set in London. He was a regular out and outer, a top o’ the trees—and he had the swagger to go with it. The swagger Lucas lacked.
A stranger might mistake Lucas’s quiet self-assurance for shyness, but Lucas wasn’t shy. He was as confident as Edward, just without his braggadocio.
But he’s not confident about sex, Tom thought. He’s shy in the bedroom. And he remembered Lucas’s blushes, his tentative explorations, and felt a pang of emotion: tenderness and protectiveness mixed together.
“Ready?” Robert said.
Talk ceased. All eyes turned to the two brothers: Lucas standing calmly, Edward strutting. Tom didn’t begrudge Edward his posturing and his bravado. Everyone—including Edward—knew that Lucas was going to win this fight.
“No blows to the face,” Edward said. “I like my nose the way it is, little brother.”
Tom had watched Lucas box hundreds of times—at Eton, at Oxford, at Jackson’s Saloon in London—and whenever he watched Lucas fight he always came to the same conclusions. It wasn’t Lucas’s size and strength and speed that made him so formidable an opponent. It wasn’t that his science was excellent—although it was excellent. What made Lucas formidable was his calmness, his almost introspective focus. Lucas’s temper never frayed when he was boxing, he never became frustrated or impatient or reckless—and that, to Tom’s mind, was what gave Lucas his edge.
The bout was a friendly one—no blood, just sweat. Lots of sweat. After fifteen minutes, Edward was red-faced and laboring and beginning to flail wildly. “For God’s sake,” he rasped, breath whistling in his throat. “Finish me off!” And so Lucas did, with another one of his superb cross-buttock throws.
Edward made no attempt to climb to his feet. He lay where he’d fallen, theatrical in his defeat, gasping and groaning.
The man alongside Tom let out a sigh. “Damn, Lucas is good.”
Tom glanced at him. It was Lucas’s cousin, Arnold.
Arnold’s expression mirrored the tone of his voice: admiration, underlain by a rueful envy. He wanted to be Lucas.
Tom thought about Lucas’s years of lonely celibacy. No, Arnold, you don’t want to be Lucas. And then he thought about riding out to the folly later that afternoon and how close he and Lucas would be—mouths kissing, cocks touching—and how not lonely Lucas would be then.
He looked across at Lucas, sweaty and magnificent in the middle of the salon, quietly laughing at his brother’s histrionics, and all the air left his lungs, as if it was he who lay winded on the floor and not Edward.
I love you, Lu. I will always love you.
* * *
Six days later, he and Lucas were trotting slowly through the park, and Tom was happy and relaxed and his cock was still pleasantly warm, when they came into the avenue of oaks and saw a lone figure walking—the height, the thin, boyish figure, the austere elegance of the woman’s clothes . . . there was no one it could be but Letitia Trentham.
“That’s Tish!” Tom said, and he whooped loudly, startling his mount, and together he and Lucas thundered down the long avenue.
Tom whooped again as they swept past Tish in a swirl of dead leaves, and then he jumped down from the saddle and strode back to her and hugged her, lifting her off her feet. “Tish, m’ love. God, but it’s good to see you.” And Lucas hugged her, too, and they were all laughing, and it was so right, the four of them being together again, and Tom looked around for Julia, knowing she was there—but she wasn’t.
His laughter drained away, but the sense that Julia was standing beside him didn’t vanish. It was so strong, so real, that he actually looked around a second time.
“When did you arrive?” Lucas asked.
Tom brought his attention back to Tish.
“An hour ago,” she said.
It was nearly two years since he’d last seen Tish, but she hadn’t changed at all. She had a face that begged to be drawn. Not because it was perfect in its symmetry, like Lucas’s, but because it wasn’t. All her features were slightly out of balance—nose too long, mouth too wide, cheekbones too prominent—until she smiled, when suddenly everythin
g was in balance. She was smiling now, as she asked, “How are you both?”
“In fine form,” Lucas said. “What’s the count now?”
“Eighteen so far this year.”
Darn it. Tom dug in his pocket and flipped a half-crown at Lucas.
Lucas caught it. “You’ll find a couple of ’em here this week, Tish. Bernard nagged m’ brother into inviting them. Stapleton’s already arrived, and Henry Wright’s coming on Monday. Wright’s a decent fellow—he was at Eton with us—but I don’t think much of Stapleton.”
Tom fished another half-crown from his pocket and waggled it between his fingers. “A new wager. Stapleton and Wright to propose by the end of the week.”
Lucas pursed his lips, as if debating this offer.
“I am here,” Tish said indignantly.
Tom grinned at her. “I know, love.” And even if Julia was no longer with them it felt marvelous to be together again, teasing each other. He stuffed the coin back in his pocket. “Walk back with us?”
Tish tucked her hand into the crook of his arm. “I met an acquaintance of yours in London last week. Icarus Reid. He was a major before he sold out.”
“Reid?” Tom said, startled.
“He said he’d be passing through Wiltshire. I told him you were here, suggested he look you up.”
“I hope he does,” Tom said. “Good man, Reid.”
* * *
That evening, after a rowdy game of Speculation, Tish said to him in an undervoice, “Come riding with me tomorrow morning. Before church. I need to talk with you.”
Tom grinned at her. “An assignation, Tish?”
“Eight o’clock,” Tish said, not grinning back.
Tom lifted his eyebrows. Was this something to do with Major Reid? He laid a hand to his breast and gave a bow. “I’ll be there, dear heart.” But Tish didn’t smile, she merely said, “Thank you.”