by KJ Charles
“‘The devil can cite Scripture for his purpose’,” Guy said. “Shakespeare.”
“Oh, very good. But, quite seriously, I don’t believe that any reasonable deity would create humankind with the sexual urge and then damn us for using it. Using it poorly, or unkindly, yes. But not at all.”
“That’s what marriage is for. Or should be, at least.”
“And for those of us, men and women, not made for marriage?”
“I don’t know why you say ‘those of us’.” That didn’t sound challenging or aggressive. It sounded very like a question.
“For the moment, consider it wishful thinking,” Philip said. “Let me be frank. I find you intriguing, and extremely appealing, and delightful company, and very much a man who deserves more pleasure in his life. If you’d like to take that pleasure with me, I’d be honoured. If you aren’t so minded, don’t take offence at the offer, and I shan’t at the refusal. And if you decide you’d prefer Corvin, for example, I shall bow out like a gentleman, although I shall probably kick him in the shins at some point from pure envy.”
Guy’s eyes were huge, catching the green of the lush lands around them. Philip smiled into them. “You are entirely lovely and I’d like to prove that to you, but only if you wish. And now we are going to walk on, and you can tell me what you think when you’ve found out what it is.”
He set off. Guy was stock still, but hurried to catch up in a scrape of stones and dust.
“Is that the tree in question?” Philip asked, pointing at a huge, bare-branched tree some way away, on top of a hill.
“What? Yes.”
“It looks less leafy than I’d expected.”
“It was struck by lightning, several times. I really don’t want to talk about trees now. How on earth am I supposed to reply to what you just said?”
“Exactly as you prefer. You could say no, and I shan’t approach the subject again. Or you could say you’d like to think about it, and do so for as long as you need. Or you could say yes, and allow me to expand your knowledge beyond the pages of Suetonius and Catullus. May I add, though, that ‘yes’ now is not ‘yes’ forever. You have the prerogative of changing your mind.”
They walked on a few more steps. “I’m sorry,” Guy said at last. “I’ve never had a conversation like this in my life and I’ve no idea how one ought to conduct it and I don’t really have any idea what you’re offering me, or asking of me. I’ve only ever read about, uh, amours in novels, and this is not like the novels.”
“Not the generally available ones, certainly,” Philip said. “It really is quite simple, you know. I’m entirely charmed by you, and I’ve been wondering for some time how you might react if I kissed you. Any thoughts?”
“I don’t know,” Guy whispered.
“Between us, and feel free to tell me to mind my own business, have you ever been kissed?”
Guy shook his head, looking away in obvious embarrassment. Philip sighed. “People are so obtuse. I shouldn’t let it worry you. We all have to start somewhere, if we start at all, which is not compulsory.”
Guy made a stifled noise. “Is it not hard, just—just making all your own rules to live by?”
“Near impossible I should think, if you’re alone. I don’t have the courage or the intellect of the philosophers who change the world, although I dare say each of them stood on the shoulders of giants themselves. Had I been alone, I should probably have made some miserable, resentful attempt to fit into the preordained rules and restrictions. One must when there is no alternative, and I suppose a life of stifled endurance is better than none. But I wasn’t alone.”
Guy turned his face away. They walked on in silence, amid the sound of birdsong and the chatter of jays, the low hum of insect life busily working around them, Guy’s harsh breaths as he struggled for control. Philip would have pulled one of his friends into a hug without a second thought. He’d learned physical affection from Corvin, albeit late in his childhood and with horrible awkwardness, and he was far more aware than the others of the impact of a loving or kindly touch, and how long some people might go without feeling such a thing.
They walked up the hill to the great tree, the silence stretching out between them but not, Philip thought, uncomfortably. He was content to be silent when someone needed to think, and Guy was very clearly thinking.
The Gallows Oak was an impressive skeleton of a tree. A long blackened gash jagged down the top of the trunk, but even so a few green leaves sprouted from odd branches. Evidently the oak wasn’t quite prepared to give up.
Philip stood with the tree behind him and took in the view. The Yarlcote countryside stretched ahead of him, rising and falling in gentle curves of green edged with darker hedges or stone walls. They had gained enough height over the walk that one could see it as a landscape, and also that Philip’s thighs were aware of the unusual effort.
“I should bring John here,” he remarked. “I don’t know if he’d change his mind about the countryside, but he’d like this.”
There was an answering scrabble behind him. Philip turned and saw that Guy had seated himself on a thick branch, swinging his legs like a schoolboy.
“Good God. What are you doing up there?”
“We always used to sit here,” Guy said. “You get a better view and it’s peaceful. I can come down if you need.”
Philip gave him a narrow look. “You appear to be suggesting I can’t climb a tree.”
“Can you?”
“I don’t know. I haven’t tried. All right, where does one put one’s hand?”
Guy pointed out a helpful knot and a stub of a branch. Philip followed instructions, slipped twice, cursed, put some effort into it, and found himself, after a brief, undignified scramble, more or less up at the branch. Guy extended a hand. Philip grabbed it—
I haven’t touched him before.
—hung on for dear life, and managed to twist round and plant his arse next to Guy’s. Regrettably, he had to let the man’s hand go to do it.
And there they sat, in a tree for God’s sake, legs dangling, looking out at England. Philip was conscious that the climb and the lichen on the old dry bark had probably played hob with his breeches, that he would appear ridiculous to any passer-by who recognised him as Rookwood of Rookwood Hall, and that he wouldn’t want to admit to John or Corvin what he’d been doing. How fortunate that I don’t care, he told himself, the old saying that one could repeat until it was true.
Except that Guy was looking serene here in a place he loved, and he’d been on the back foot since Amanda’s accident. This was good. It would probably be even better if Philip underscored his own ineptitude by falling out of the tree or some such, but he felt they had enough broken legs to be getting on with, so he shuffled a bit to seat himself more securely.
“You’re very well there. The branch won’t break.”
“I’m glad to hear you say so. I suppose you could climb to the top if you wanted.”
Guy twisted to give the branches above them an assessing look. “I have done, though not for years. You can see for miles if you reach the top, and the tree sways under you like a cradle in the wind. We’d sit here for hours, Amanda and I, watching the clouds and listening to the birds. We once sat here in a summer storm, getting soaked to the skin, because she wanted to know what it would be like. Nurse was furious—the clothes, but also the danger of lightning—but it was worth it. It’s a wonderful place to think.”
“I must own dozens of trees,” Philip said. “And Corvin has vast tracts of the things, and yet it’s never occurred to me to climb them. That feels like a serious omission.”
“You were probably too busy doing disreputable things.”
“Nameless crimes and Godless orgies and all the other evils people think I come here to pursue.”
“What did you come here to pursue?”
“My original quarry was Silesian white beet,” Philip said. “Although it does now seem to be you.”
“You don�
�t give up easily, do you?”
“You haven’t asked me to. If you’d rather I dropped the subject for good—”
“No,” Guy said, very quietly. “Don’t do that.”
Philip had two stalwart, handsome, experienced friends game for more or less any activity he might suggest and, in Corvin’s case, some he’d never think of unaided. It was ridiculous that something as trivial as that soft permission should constrict his chest with anticipation. “That would be preferable for me. I’d rather like to expand at some length on what I find irresistible about you. Are you aware how much your eyes change colour in different lights? And the way you blush—yes, exactly like that. The colour sweeps across your face so readily and it makes me wonder how responsive the rest of you might be. Your mouth, regarding which I think the less of John as an artist because he hasn’t abandoned his canvas to paint it. And the fact, above all, that you’re listening to me rhapsodise on your charms and you’re smiling. I did say you were like your sister. Your beauty hides itself away, invisible until you decide someone is worthy of seeing it. And then you smile, and it shines.”
Guy’s expression was living proof of that. He was blushing fiercely, and his eyes were bright, and Philip cursed every single impulse that had led them to the bare branches of the most visible landmark in the county, with a special malediction for the four-mile walk back to privacy and safety.
“Do you always talk like this?” Guy managed.
“Almost never.”
“You needn’t pretend. I do know you’ve plenty of, uh, experience.”
“I do. It just hasn’t been of the type that involves excruciatingly lengthy walks and climbing trees in order to win a hearing.”
“I suppose that would be difficult in London.”
“And time-consuming, though doubtless terribly healthy.”
“What would you normally say?” Guy pressed.
The answer to that was, Care for a fuck? Philip doubted that would help his cause, and in any case, it wasn’t actually true. It was what he’d say to John or Corvin, but this situation was in its way as foreign to his experience as it was to Guy’s.
He took a breath. “To be quite honest, I haven’t found myself in this precise situation before.”
“Up a tree?”
“With an innocent. I’ve never seduced anyone until now. That’s generally Corvin’s job.”
“Is that what you’re doing? Seducing me?”
“I think I must be. Is it working?”
“It...might be.” Guy shot him a look from under his lashes, glanced away almost at once. Philip had seen it done a hundred times, and far more skilfully, by paid boys and wondered why they bothered. Now he understood.
“You’re very charming,” Guy went on. “I’m sure you know that. And I’m quite sure you know precisely what you’re doing when it comes to—to seduction. But I’d rather you didn’t say things you didn’t mean.”
“I haven’t,” Philip said, somewhat indignantly. “I am, if anything, notorious for my refusal to utter polite lies. If I tell you you’re lovely, you may believe I think it.”
“My experience—well, not mine—that is, I believe that people, men, tend to say a great deal to get what they want. I would really prefer honesty. I don’t know if I could tell if someone was lying to me, and I don’t think that would be kind.”
“No. If I recall correctly, the only promise I have ever made you on this matter is that I will take no for an answer. You have my word as a gentleman on that. Otherwise, what honesty do you want?”
“I’d like to know why you’re, uh, seducing me,” Guy said. “Because you’ve said lot of nice things but I’m not, well, Lord Corvin, and I’m not really sure what you want, or why me. And I would rather know. I don’t much want to be made a fool of. I’m not saying you would do that,” he added hastily. “We wouldn’t be having this conversation if I thought so. But I would like to understand.”
Philip exhaled. “Well. For one, I know you’re not Corvin, but I fail to see how that is a point against you. I’m not Corvin either. I believe I just told you in some detail at least some of the reasons why I am going to these extreme and arboreal lengths; I might add that I very much liked the way you looked at me at dinner the other night, and during that uniquely interesting hour sitting for John, and I’d like to see that look again. No, I’d like to see that look satisfied, and if you would care to be relieved of your innocence, I want to be the man to do it. I think I could please you, Guy, and I should love to see you take pleasure from me.” Guy shivered, a visible motion. “And if you ask why to that, well, any competent lover finds as much joy in giving pleasure as taking it, and I do hope I’m competent.”
“I’m sure you are.” Guy’s voice sounded rather high.
“It isn’t complicated, in the end,” Philip said. “We eat, drink, and are merry, for tomorrow we die. Be merry with me?”
Guy nodded. It was silent, but it was heartfelt for all that, and Philip wanted nothing more than to get down from this damned obvious spot and find somewhere more discreet. Or, even just to be sure that no passing peasant could see them or was looking. He wanted to kiss Guy in the arms of this absurd tree, where he felt safe. He might have dared with Corvin, and be damned to anyone who might see; he wouldn’t put Guy at risk in that way.
And, he realised, with the sun on his face and the land stretching out in front of him, he was enjoying this moment of awareness, and agreement, and quiet companionship. Everything happened as quick as you like in London: everything was available for the asking except time, which was always at a premium. He usually found the slower rhythms and season-long deliberations of the country intolerable, and had spoken more than once about his desire not to die of old age waiting. Still, for now, he could take his time. There was no need to rush.
CHAPTER SEVEN
If Guy had been asked at any point in his entire adult life prior to this week how he might envisage himself speaking to Sir Philip Rookwood, “planning illicit amours” would have been the least likely answer imaginable, matched only in its implausibility by “up a tree”. Yet here they were, unless Guy had taken ill and this was a detailed fever dream. Considering how heated he felt, it wasn’t impossible.
He wasn’t an idiot, even if he was inexperienced. He knew very well that rich London gentlemen toyed with country innocents for their entertainment; he’d heard enough ballads on the subject, and he was well aware that the erratic baronet with his unthinkable life wouldn’t be staying in Yarlcote long, whereas Guy was here forever. Philip’s words had made his skin tingle and his blood thump, but they were only words and, as he’d pointed out, held no promises.
But Guy wasn’t a young lady who required promises. Far from it. He had carefully refused ever to think about the sort of feelings Philip evoked in him, let alone act on them, because the consequences were too terrifying, and because he wouldn’t have had the faintest idea how to begin. And now he was staying in what might as well be an isolated castle for a period outside time, with its sinister master proving as unexpectedly hospitable as any fairytale beast. He was being offered something that might finally be an answer to the questions he couldn’t ask and the longings he couldn’t stem, and he was damn well going to do it. Whatever ‘it’ proved to be. Guy wasn’t quite sure of that, practically speaking, but whatever it was, he would trust Philip, and snatch this chance because there wouldn’t be another. He would not recoil in fear and spend the rest of his life wishing he’d been bolder. He’d done that too often.
It might prove calamitous; he could imagine a thousand ways in which it would. His mother had thrown her cap over the windmill and destroyed them all; it would be a bitter irony indeed if Guy too let himself be ruined at a Rookwood’s hands. But he’d sat and listened to the Murder speak as they chose for hours, and it had felt as though he’d been in a box without even knowing it, and someone had taken a crowbar and pried off the top. Guy had blinked at first, and shied away from the light as too painful.
Now he felt the urge to stretch.
Philip was apparently perfectly happy on the branch, contemplating the landscape. His well-cut and decidedly fashionable clothes were utterly incongruous in a blasted oak tree, but the sunlight haloed his fair hair and put sapphire into those cool eyes. Guy watched his profile, lost in wanting, and when Philip turned his head and smiled, Guy didn’t look away.
“Shall we go back?” Philip suggested. “If you’re ready. And if you can advise me on removing my person from this tree, because this is going to be inelegant.”
It was indeed inelegant, and Philip swore impressively when he discovered a long scratch on his boot, but it didn’t seem to impair his mood. He wasn’t a precisely cheerful man so far as Guy could tell, his humour tending to the flippant or the sarcastic, but he seemed content to walk in silence, almost as though they hadn’t agreed to...well. Nothing new to him, Guy supposed. No wonder he didn’t look as though his every nerve ending was afire.
Guy cleared his throat as they walked down the hill. “Did you say beetroot?”
Philip shot him an amused glance. “I don’t think I said anything, but if I had, it wouldn’t have been that. I was thinking of an entirely different subject.”
“I mean earlier,” Guy ploughed on. “The reason you came here. Is that the white beet you’re growing?”
“Indeed. With the right manufactory, one can extract sugar from it. The French are building their own domestic sugar industry as we speak.”
“Actual sugar? Out of beets?”
“I assure you.”
“But does it not taste of, well, beetroot?”
“It can be absolutely vile, yes,” Philip said. “The strains, and indeed the manufacturing processes, are being refined yearly on the Continent. Domestic sugar production in the near future is a possibility, or should be. The French government is both mandating and funding their industry with a far-sighted approach to national sufficiency; you may guess for yourself if our own government is doing the same. Sugar production at home might mean less profits from the plantations, you see, and since the plantation owners sit in Parliament, we need not expect them to vote against their own interests. If we want to create an English sugar industry, we’ll have to do it ourselves.”