Band Sinister

by KJ Charles

  “That was your choice.”

  “Was it? I’m a notorious bastard, which might be overlooked if I was also an eligible bachelor, but I’ve never inclined to a woman in my life. I’m not like John and Corvin, I omit that entire side from my composition. I would be a swine to marry under false pretences, even if I felt it right to hand on the Rookwood inheritance to a child of mine. And yes, granted, I have made no effort to establish myself here as anything other than a gambling, drinking, probably devil-worshipping atheistical rake of the first water and with the worst friends, so I can hardly complain about the results, but I regret them now.”

  “But you don’t want to mix in Yarlcote society. Do you?”

  “Not at all, no. And where does that leave us after your sister has recovered the use of her leg, when you no longer have the excuse of her injury to stay in my house, when the world will see you enjoying the company of the man whose brother ruined your mother—or, worse, assume it’s Amanda that I’m enjoying.” Guy sucked in a breath. “Quite. Tell me if I’m wrong, please do, but I cannot see that it’s possible for me to remain here, or visit you in the future, without causing you more damage than I am prepared to do.”

  Guy swallowed. “Very well. I see what you’re saying.”

  Philip grabbed his hand. “No, you do not, if you think this is a polite dismissal. It’s the very opposite. I don’t want to go away and leave you behind. I am looking for a way to avoid exactly that. This isn’t even close to enough.”

  “No, but, what?” Guy said. “You told me, you said that, that we—people—would have encounters and fall in love, even, and get better. That’s what I thought you meant, that you’d go, and I should expect you to go.”

  “I might have meant that,” Philip said. “I have entirely failed to consider any of this properly, and I’m sorry, but I haven’t fallen in love since I was eighteen or so, I didn’t even notice I’d done it, and I didn’t expect you to fall in love with me either, and—”

  “Wait! What?”

  “Aren’t you?” Philip said, with a distinctly cold sensation. “That is, I thought— If I am labouring under a misapprehension, now would be a good time to tell me before I make an even bigger fool of myself.”

  Guy’s mouth moved slightly, then he waved a hand. “Could we tackle this one part at a time? Did—did you say you’d, uh, fallen in love?”

  “Yes.”

  “With me?”

  “Obviously with you.”

  “Well, it’s not really obvious, because you hadn’t mentioned anything about it!”

  Philip twisted round, dropping to his knees on the warm stone, so that he could take both Guy’s hands and see his face. “Guy. I suspect I have been falling in love with you since you came through my doors, terrified of everything and still fighting for your sister. You’ve given me your trust and your innocence and your body, and if I had any sense at all I would have spent the last week telling you I adore you, instead of trying not to face up to the consequences. Which...are real, and difficult, and we are going to have to speak about them, unless you want to give me my marching orders. But we should perhaps spend a moment on the fact that I love you as I have never loved anyone.”

  “You said you loved Lord Corvin.”

  “I do, but when I fell in love, I was a boy, and a damn fool one at that. As a man, I have never once fallen in love, still less found it returned.” His chest with tight with tension, but he made himself say it. “Until now?”

  “Until now,” Guy said and lunged forward.

  It was several moments until Philip came up for air, and he didn’t want to. He’d rather have drowned here, with Guy warm and frantic in his arms, their legs tangled together, Guy’s fingers in his hair and his mouth on Philip’s with devouring need. It was everything of which he might have dreamed, and he eased back anyway, because it was time to wake up. “Guy.”

  “Mmm?”

  “I love you,” Philip said again. “And I can’t simply move to Yarlcote, or come visiting every month. Can I?”

  “Ugh,” Guy said. “If it were me—but it’s Amanda.”

  “You don’t think she might marry, at all?” Philip suggested. He couldn’t break David’s confidence but there was no harm in a general enquiry.

  “I can’t see how. We don’t have a penny put by for a portion, and—well, she’s always said, she won’t conceal her past from any suitor.”

  “She isn’t the only woman to make a mistake of that nature.”

  “I know. But after Mother, and with her, uh, indiscretion having been awfully public... She wouldn’t lie about that. And she’s right not to. It would ruin everything if a husband found out afterwards.”

  “A sensible man would understand.” David would be highly unlikely to blame a woman for behaving with a fraction of the licence permitted to men, Philip thought, although he’d seen worse hypocrisy in more unlikely places.

  “If only we knew any,” Guy said. “The fact is, you’re right. I think if you came visiting us, everyone would assume the worst of Amanda. But I could come here, couldn’t I? To see you?”

  “For a few days every few months. Yes. Or you could come to London.”

  “We can’t.” Guy shut his eyes. “We haven’t any money. Really, we have none. Aunt Beatrice gives us enough of an allowance to pay Mrs. Harbottle and Jane, but we’ve saved nothing. It’s been bad enough for Amanda to be trapped in Yarlcote without scrimping every penny. And Aunt Beatrice is quite serious about us staying here. We’re not even allowed to pay visits, not that we’ve anyone to visit, since she’s our only family.”

  “That isn’t much of a way to live.”

  “It’s the only way we have. We’ve talked about it. If we dismissed Mrs. Harbottle and saved for a couple of years and I found a position— But we can’t come to London that way.”

  “No.”

  “I don’t imagine Amanda wants to go anywhere near Society again in any case. But suppose we did, and then something happened to me? Aunt Beatrice would be all Amanda had left. We can’t burn that bridge.”

  “Granted, but it’s been five years since Amanda’s indiscretion. Surely your aunt could loosen her grip?”

  “Her second daughter is on the verge of making an excellent marriage to an earl-in-waiting,” Guy said. “We can’t make ourselves a nuisance now. And my aunt is strict but, you know, she was truly horrified by my mother’s behaviour, and Amanda’s scandal was really dreadful. She’s so very respectable herself, I can’t blame her for not wanting people to remember we exist.”

  “You’re more charitable than me. Damn your mother. And my half-brother,” Philip added hastily. “The pair of them.”

  “I don’t know if I can blame them either,” Guy said, adjusting himself to lie more comfortably on Philip’s chest. “My father didn’t concern himself with anyone else’s happiness, and if Sir James was anything like you, I don’t blame my mother for running away with him. If she felt as I do, if she saw happiness and love and the alternative was a lifetime with a man who didn’t care—”

  “She left you in his charge.”

  “We’d have been in his charge whatever happened. If she’d tried to take us, he’d have had the law on her. No, the only question was whether she shared our misery or reached for her own happiness. And I’m not saying I’d have made her choice, but I do think I understand it better now. I hope she was happy while she had the chance.”

  “Christ, I love you,” Philip said. “And, to return to that subject—”

  “We can’t go to London,” Guy said again. “Aunt Beatrice has a third daughter, who is sixteen. Once she’s married, perhaps—”

  “Guy, this is years of your life!”

  “I know. What am I to do about it? It’s not as though Amanda could live here without me. She’d die of loneliness, and in any case, Aunt Beatrice would cut her off. I couldn’t do that.”

  Philip considered his next remark. He was almost certain it was a foolish one, but he said it anywa
y. “I’m well off. Well off enough for three.”

  “No,” Guy said flatly. “Don’t be absurd. You can’t be seen to keep Amanda.”

  “I would avoid being seen.”

  “And what would happen if you decided you no longer wanted a little country innocent?”

  Philip bit back his first response. It was a fair question. “I would hope I should behave decently, but I don’t expect you to wager both your futures on that.”

  “I couldn’t.”

  Naturally he couldn’t. Amanda would always be first, of course she bloody would, with Guy never claiming his own happiness at her expense, and Philip wasn’t sure if he loved Guy more for that or simply wanted to shake him.

  “Then we return to visits,” he said. “I am quite sure I could show more interest in my lands, you know. Come up every few months.”

  “Yes. We could have that.”

  Philip didn’t want that. He wanted Guy in his bed, waking up with him, not given time to brood and worry and wait. He didn’t want to roam England on his own, wasting time, snapping at his friends, counting the days till the next visit. And, very probably, sleeping with Corvin or John to take the edge off, or not doing so because he wasn’t sure what Guy would think. “Ah, hell. There’s something else.”

  “There can’t be.”

  “I fear so.” He rolled away and sat up, hugging his knees. “I told you about Corvin, and John, and myself. I’m not sure I told you everything.”

  “What else is there?”

  “The depth of it. They’re my best friends, and my lovers, and the closest thing to family I have ever had. It has been the three of us, and sometimes only the three of us, for close on twenty-five years. We’ve been fucking since we were sixteen, in pairs or all three together, and that may not be the kind of love about which the poets write, nor the kind I feel for you, but it’s still as real and true as anything in the world. And when John married—well, he made his vows truly and sincerely, and he kept them, and it was an appalling mistake. His wife didn’t understand why he wanted to spend time with people she despised. She was a radical, she’d have happily seen my and Corvin’s heads in the guillotine basket, and she thought him a hypocrite for his friendships given he shared her political beliefs. And she never came to understand because he couldn’t tell her the truth of us. Or perhaps he could have, but he didn’t, and it destroyed the trust between them. The damned fool thing was that he truly loved her. But he loved us too, and it was extremely hard for everyone. For us without him, and him without us, and him without her, and I imagine for her throughout the whole damned business.”

  “Right,” Guy said slowly. “That sounds rather dreadful.”

  “It was. She left him after two years for a fellow radical who didn’t have unwanted aristocratic connections. They emigrated to the Americas, which seems extreme but who am I to criticise, and that’s gone some way to assuaging John’s guilt, but you will understand why I don’t want to repeat his mistake. The question is how to avoid doing so.”

  “I’m not quite sure what you’re asking of me.”

  “Nor am I,” Philip said. “Perhaps simply that you hear me out and consider what you think, and we start from there. I’m not going to ask you to accept Corvin and John in your life as they are in mine. But they are in my heart and always will be. I’d be lying if I said otherwise.”

  “You mean, as lovers?”

  “I don’t know. In all honesty, that’s scarcely the most important part of it for me, and given our history, I don’t know if our ceasing to fuck would make a great deal of difference to you. Not if what you wanted was my undivided devotion. John didn’t share our beds when he was married and that didn’t help at all.”

  “No. I see that. Um, what do they think about me?”

  “They want me to be happy,” Philip said. “Whatever that may mean. I’m hoping this conversation may lead, somehow and by circuitous paths, to that end. I’m trying very hard not to present you with a fait accompli, still less an ultimatum. If you want a heart-whole man without encumbrances—”

  “I wouldn’t have a great deal to offer one, even if I found him,” Guy said. “I wouldn’t be heart-whole either and then we’d all be in trouble. Is there a particular difference between what you feel about me, and about them?”

  “Christ, yes,” Philip said. “Corvin’s a prick, and John’s an obstinate swine, and they both drive me to incoherent fury on a regular basis.”

  Guy spluttered. Philip grinned at him. “And Corvin has a heart so big I don’t know how he carries it around, and John plants his feet against the world and stares it down, and they both loved me before I understood what the word meant. Whereas you trusted me with your truth, and took me to your tree, and found words in Latin when you were afraid to say them any other way, and your eyes hold all England. It’s like asking me if there’s a difference between fine wine and poetry. Of course there is, but it’s hard to make useful comparisons. I love you; I also love them. And that leads me to say that if you felt the need, or desire, to take other lovers, well, I couldn’t and wouldn’t object. You probably should.”

  “I—don’t think I want to.”

  Guy reached out, a tentative movement. Philip took his hand feeling his muscles relax. “Perhaps not, or not now. But I can’t offer you what you deserve. I can’t ask you to be entirely mine, and pledge my own disreputable self to you in return, and I shouldn’t if I could. We won’t see one another for months on end, and I am neither making nor holding you to promises that stretch out over months till they snap. That kind of thing sounds wonderfully romantic at the time, and then we have to live. And I certainly shan’t ask you to accept my friends before you’ve had a chance to consider what it means to be—let’s say, primus inter pares.”

  Guy thought for a moment. “I’ve got Amanda. Which isn’t the same, but—”

  “She will always come first. I know.”

  Guy’s hand tightened on him. “First among equals. Philip, you didn’t conceal this. I knew you loved them. I’m just not sure how it works that you love me too.”

  “Corvin’s lesson. The more love you give, the more you are capable of giving. It’s only when you shut off the source that it dries up. Or, at least, that principle works for us. Others would disagree.”

  “I’m going to have to give this some thought, if you don’t mind,” Guy said. “I don’t want to say anything until I’m sure what I think. It’s all quite far from my experience.”

  “I’m sorry to make this so complicated. You should probably have had some simple, straightforward amour for your first, and instead you find yourself with a bastard baronet in what Corvin insists on calling a four-sided triangle.”

  “Triangles don’t—”

  “I know.”

  “I’m sure he says these things to annoy you,” Guy said. “It is complicated, but thank you for being honest with me. I would much rather know where I stand, even if it’s a bit— Oh my goodness.”

  “What?”

  “Before she met you, Amanda was asking if you had orgies, and I said I was sure you didn’t. Well. I do hope she doesn’t ask that again.”

  “I haven’t had anything that I’d call an orgy in years,” Philip said. “That’s quite a different thing, and requires more than three people. Also more organisation than you might think, and a great deal of tidying up afterwards. Three of us is just a rather crowded bed.”

  Guy choked. “I dare say. I don’t even know how you’d manage with three.”

  That sounded like a hint. Philip cocked a brow. “I could tell you, beloved, if you’d like to hear about it. You might find it quite shocking, or then again you might not. Sometimes it’s nothing but making love with extra hands. Two people you adore, stroking and kissing and telling you they want you.” Guy shivered. Philip grinned. “And other times—let me see, how does one express Pedicabo ego vos et irrumabo in the passive voice?”

  Guy opened his mouth to answer, and then his brows shot up as
meaning caught up with grammar. “You mean, uh, one person for each verb?”

  “Indeed.”

  “At the same time?”

  Philip had a powerful memory of John’s hands on his head, Corvin gripping his hips. “Very much so.”

  “Philip!”

  “I will tell you such a bedtime story tonight,” Philip promised him, delighting in the betraying wash of colour. He wondered briefly if Corvin had a point, what it might be like to see Guy writhing under his hands, or John’s, or both. “And you will think about all this, as long as you need, and we will find some sort of answer between us. But whatever that answer is, I love you. Hold to that?”

  “Always,” Guy said, and buried his face in Philip’s chest.

  THE OTHERS LEFT THE next day. Corvin kindly deputised four members of his staff to keep the Hall running, so that Philip didn’t have to live with Yarlcote servants and the inevitable creeping around that would entail. He’d have to face that when he visited in the future: people in the house who could not be trusted, looking for secrets and guilt. He hoped Sinclair wouldn’t rebel at the thought of enforced rural seclusion without Cornelius to entertain him. The last thing he needed was to find a new valet.

  The following week was one of the happiest he’d known, if he’d been able to shake the sense of the end of Arcadia approaching. Rookwood Hall was an echoing place with his noisy group whittled down to himself, David, and the Frisbys, but the days were still sunny. David decreed that it was time for Amanda to put weight on her splinted leg, and she hobbled up and down the corridor with him and Guy hovering in attendance. The four of them ate together, in nonstop, laughing talk, and if Amanda had any suspicions about Guy’s private activities, they didn’t show.