Unnatural

by Joanna Chambers

  “I’m rather surprised he’s here,” Iain added. “It’s the first time he’s been to one of these parties in years, isn’t it?”

  She gave him an odd look, then said, “He might say the same about you.”

  There wasn’t much Iain could say to that, so he just smiled at her, acknowledging the point, and helped himself to a slice of seed cake.

  For the next little while, Iain made small talk with his mother and Anthea, sipping tea and nibbling cake that may as well have been dust for all Iain could taste. But even as he went through these motions, all he could think of was James standing over by the window. As soon as he could decently move on, he did, slowly beginning to work his way round the room. He chatted to the other guests, strolling from group to group, slowly, inexorably making his way towards James. He greeted the guests he already knew with his usual good humour and introduced himself to those he didn’t with easy charm. Despite his preoccupation, it wasn’t particularly difficult to get through the social niceties. This was, after all, how he spent most of his time in the King’s service. It was just a matter of donning the same well-worn disguise he used every day. A mask that had long ago grown so comfortable, he barely felt it anymore.

  It seemed to take forever to wend his way round the room, but eventually he was there, stepping up to join James and the prosy-looking vicar who was still bending his ear.

  “Hart,” Iain called out as he approached. He always called James “Hart” in front of others. “It’s good to see you—it’s been an age.”

  James looked up. He said nothing, just looked at Iain with a flat expression Iain had never seen before that made his stomach feel hollowed out.

  Oddly shaken by that reaction, Iain turned to the vicar offering him a strained smile. “How rude of me. We’ve not been introduced. Mister...?”

  “Potts,” the vicar supplied. The errant Christopher’s father? Iain wondered. They shook hands.

  After a pause, Potts asked, “And you are?”

  “Capt—sorry, I beg your pardon, Mr. Sinclair.” He offered the vicar an apologetic smile. “I’ve just resigned my commission, and I am not quite used to my change of title.”

  “Pardon?”

  That came from James. Iain turned back to find James was looking at him as though he had grown another head.

  “I’ve resigned my commission,” Iain repeated. “I am no longer in the army.”

  James stared at him. Eventually, he said, “Well, I confess I’m surprised.”

  “How long were you in the army, Mr. Sinclair?” Potts asked.

  Iain didn’t even acknowledge the question, too caught up in James. “Why would you be surprised?” he asked.

  “It was the only thing you ever wanted to do,” James replied. “It’s difficult to imagine you doing anything else.”

  Their gazes caught and held. There was a beat of silence that stretched too long, until the vicar cleared his throat, reminding Iain abruptly of his presence. The way Iain jerked his head to look at the man—and James did the same—clearly indicated they had practically forgotten his presence.

  Potts pressed his lips together, annoyed. “Well,” he said loftily. “If you’ll excuse me, I’ll leave you gentlemen to your conversation.” And with that, he swept off.

  Iain glanced at James, who frowned at the vicar’s back for a moment before giving Iain his attention again, his expression somehow guarded, only the slightest pucker between his dark blond brows. And Iain found, for probably the first time ever, that he wasn’t at all sure what James was thinking.

  It was a disconcerting thought. He used to find James so easy to read. From boyhood, James hadn’t seen the point in subterfuge. He was the most straightforward person Iain knew. Direct, utterly lacking in any guile. As different from Iain as could be, and Iain had loved that about him. Loved that, if he asked James a question, James would answer immediately and with absolute honesty. Loved too that his directness owed nothing to innocence or naïveté but was simply an expression of his essential character.

  He’d loved it, and he’d hated it too, because there was no hiding with James.

  Until now.

  “Have I offended him?” Iain asked as they watched Potts walk away.

  “Probably,” James replied, then he shrugged. “But I suspect being offended is Mr. Potts’s natural state. He’ll be pleased to have something to feel aggrieved by, I expect.”

  It was a typically James thing to say, and therefore reassuring. Iain smiled at him.

  “I’m glad you’re here, Jamie,” he said softly. “I’ve wanted to talk with you for a long time. When we quarrelled—”

  “We did not quarrel,” James interrupted. His quick, nervous glance at the other guests was new, unlike him. He lowered his voice still further before he spoke again. His tone was very firm, though, despite its hushed quality. “I offered my heart to you, and you refused me. That is all.”

  “James, please—” Iain broke off when he noticed James’s brows lowering unhappily. Only then did he realise that he’d taken a step towards the other man, and that his own voice was probably too loud.

  James took a discreet step back. “I have nothing to say to you.” He sounded bewildered, as though he couldn’t imagine why Iain was standing there in front of him. “We said everything that needed to be said the last time we saw each other.”

  Iain swallowed hard. “James.” He clenched his fists at his sides. “Now is not the time, but please, hear me out privately. I can’t bear us not being friends anymore.”

  James blinked at him. “I’m sorry about that,” he replied at last, “truly. But the fact is, I can’t bear being your friend.” His tone was kindly, but the words were deadly, and all Iain could do was stare at him in silence, his chest aching.

  After a long pause, he cleared his throat. “Well,” he said carefully. “I hope to change your mind about that—to show you that my friendship is worth having.” He paused. “I hope I can convince you, James. If I cannot, then I probably don’t deserve to call you my friend anyway.”

  James just sighed. “You’re being obtuse. Don’t you remember what you said to me the last time I saw you?”

  “I remember. I—”

  James went on as though he hadn’t spoken. “You wanted me to stop embarrassing you with my—what was it you called it? Oh yes. My ‘childish devotion’.”

  Iain winced at that reminder. “James—”

  But James was already sidestepping him. “As pleasant as it’s been to renew our acquaintance the simple fact is, I see no point in restoring our friendship.”

  And giving one last polite nod, he walked away, crossing the floor to join another group of guests, leaving Iain standing on his own in the middle of the drawing room.

  Chapter Seven

  Then: 1818

  23rd September, 1818

  London

  As James waited for Lieutenant Iain Sinclair to arrive at the Hart family townhouse one chilly late September morning, he found himself noticing for the first time how very pink the drawing room was. The sofa he sprawled upon was upholstered in ivory fabric dotted with tiny pink flowers. It matched the pale pink wallpaper and the rose-pink curtains on the windows. Everything had been chosen by his mother, of course, and pink was her favourite colour.

  The fact that he had only noticed this today of all days was not because he was ordinarily unobservant. Quite the opposite. It was because his mother had finally decided to remove the crepe covers from the furniture and have the drapes changed back from the heavy black ones that had covered the windows for the last year since his father’s death. His mother still wore her widow’s weeds, but the formal period of full mourning was past now—although James wasn’t sure his own grief would ever truly be over.

  Now that his father was gone, James was, apparently, the head of the family. He didn’t feel like the head of the family, though. His household was a very feminine one, and he was the youngest person in it, and the only male.

  J
ames’s mother and four sisters all adored him, but they were about as likely to pay him any mind as they would be to fly in the air. If he governed them at all, it was in name only, as this ridiculously pink-and-white room proved.

  In truth, he felt starved for male companionship—or perhaps he was just starved for Iain. He hadn’t seen his friend since his father’s burial the year before. Since then, he felt like he’d made up two or three years’ growth, putting on four inches and filling out his slender frame besides. At nineteen, he felt he’d finally grown up, just when he’d thought he was going to stay short and skinny forever.

  He couldn’t help wondering what Iain would think of him now, and of course, that thought brought an old and much-revisited memory to the forefront of his mind—of Iain and Mellick in the boatshed at Wylde Manor. Except that now, James imagined himself in Mellick’s place, falling to his knees and looking up and...

  ...and this was not the time to be thinking of such things. The last thing he needed was to be sporting a cockstand when Iain arrived...

  To distract himself, he stood and went to the mirror over the mantelpiece to fiddle nervously with his cravat again. He’d spent ages trying to perfect a creditable Waterfall this morning but had ended up handling the linen so much, the starchiness had gone out of it. Now it was wilting, and continuing to tweak at it wasn’t helping. Ah, well, he was never going to be a dandy, that much was certain. Sighing, he turned away from the mirror and paced to the window that looked out onto the Square.

  Where the hell was Iain?

  It was a cold autumn day, and everything was grey and dull, from the overcast sky to the rain-slick cobbles. A gusty, unpredictable breeze was sending up bits of straw and fallen leaves from the gutters to dance round the ankles of the few passersby. Everyone was huddled into their coats, shoulders hunched against the wind. All except one man, who came round the corner in a flash of scarlet, tall and upright, splendid in his uniform.

  Lieutenant Iain Sinclair strode across the square with purpose, and everything about him was vital and bright.

  James’s breath caught in his throat at the sight of him. He felt sure there would never be anyone else who would be able to make him feel like this. He’d always admired Iain, since they’d been boys, but after the night he’d seen him with Mellick, three years before, everything had changed. Before then, if James had thought about his friend’s distant future at all, it was a future in which Iain had a woman by his side and a full nursery. He would, of course, win the loveliest of girls to be his wife and have the most accomplished and beautiful children.

  Except it had turned out that Iain was probably about as interested in young ladies as James was, lovely or otherwise. And if someone like Iain—someone with all the masculine virtues—felt that way, didn’t that mean something? People always said that men who indulged in forbidden acts with other men were weak, venal, degenerate. But James had been observing Iain for years before he saw him with Mellick, and there was nothing weak or degenerate about him. He wasn’t just handsome and accomplished, he was good. Brave and kind. Everything a man ought to be.

  James had thought about this a lot over the last few years. And ultimately, he had done as his father had always taught him: considered the evidence and drawn his conclusions from that, determining, finally, that there was nothing wrong with Iain Sinclair. And if that was right—and he felt sure it was—then the next, inexorable conclusion was that there was nothing wrong with James either. That they weren’t wicked degenerates, just another sort of person. Classifiable, like James’s specimens, with a place on the taxonomic table as valuable as any other sort of being in the world.

  Iain was drawing close to the house now, and when he glanced up at the drawing room window and saw James standing there, he lifted his hand in greeting, his bright smile flashing. He’d grown a moustache since the funeral. It was the same glossy dark brown as the hair on his head, and beneath it, his teeth were white and even. James sighed. He really was a handsome devil.

  James raised his own arm automatically, loving the way Iain’s smile widened a little at the sight, and the glint of humour and affection in the man’s eyes as he mounted the steps.

  He disappeared from view as he approached the door and James turned away from the window, heart racing, breathless with excitement. His palms felt suddenly damp, and he wiped them on his trousers nervously. It had been a year. Would Iain notice how much he’d changed? He hoped so, even as he dreaded any mention of it.

  And then the door to the drawing room was opening, and Iain was striding into the room, his shako under his arm. He cast it aside—tossing it onto the pink-and-white sofa without so much as a sideways glance—then he stepped right up to James and took his shoulders in his hands, leaning back a little to look him over.

  “My God, Jamie!” he exclaimed. “Look at you! Christ, if you grow any more, you’ll be taller than me, and that will never do!” He grinned at that, lifting his hand to ruffle James’s hair with rough affection.

  James laughed a little shakily, his mouth stretched helplessly wide in a smile that would not be contained. He was still a little shorter than Iain, but there were only a couple of inches between them now.

  “I’ve grown a lot this year,” he admitted.

  Iain laughed and released him. “You look very different. A man now. Not a boy any longer.”

  James bit his lip against his smile, pleased that Iain saw him as he was.

  “And you’re at university. Are you liking it?”

  “Famously,” James said, trying to sound casual. “Would you like some tea?”

  “In truth, I’d prefer a tankard of ale,” Iain said, still grinning. “This is the first day of leisure I’ve had in a long while and I’m back on duty tomorrow morning. I didn’t even put off time to change my clothes but came straight here. And now—well, since I find you’re a man now, Jamie, shall we make merry hell together? I’d as lief make the most of this day!”

  “By all means, ale rather than tea,” James replied cheerfully, secretly delighted by this turn of events. Iain must truly see him as a man now to suggest such a thing. “Where shall we go?”

  Iain’s expression turned mischievous. “Have you ever seen a boxing match, Jamie?”

  THE BOXING MATCH WAS happening in a field at the back of an inn just past the outskirts of the city. Iain suggested James drive them there, and James was happy to agree—it would give him a chance to show off his brand-new curricle.

  When he’d first gone to the carriage makers to purchase a gig, he’d been immediately drawn to a flashy high-perched phaeton. Thankfully, he’d taken his older cousin with him, and when Anthony had seen James’s choice, he’d laughed, declaring it was precisely the sort of curricle he’d expect a lad of nineteen to choose.

  The one he’d ended up purchasing, following Anthony’s advice, was plainer and sleeker—lighter too. It drove like a dream, turning on a sixpence, and when Iain clapped eyes on it, his approving expression obliterated any remaining doubts James had harboured about his selection.

  Iain gave a low whistle. “What a beauty,” he said, his gaze reverent. “I’ll bet she handles well.” When the groom led James’s new bays out of the stable, Iain was even more impressed—well, the man loved his horses, and the bays were a beautifully matched pair. Iain stepped forwards to rub their noses and croon nonsense to them while the groom got them rigged up to the curricle. Only when they were in their traces and ready to go did he jump up beside James, settling himself on the narrow bench.

  And then they were on their way, first trotting out of Mayfair, then out of the city altogether, past the outskirts and right into the countryside beyond.

  They spoke nonstop as they drove, or at least James did. He told Iain about university and the new friends he’d made, about the dons and their eccentricities, and his first experiences as a young man living on his own. He loved the sound of Iain’s ready laughter at his self-deprecating stories, basked in the interest and warmth in his
blue gaze.

  “And what about you?” he asked at last, realising a little shamefacedly that he’d done nothing but talk about himself since they set off.

  “Oh, I’m well enough,” Iain said. He spoke with his usual ease, but James still found himself glancing over, alert to the tiny note of reserve in his words. Iain added, “My squadron is being posted somewhere in the north for a while—Manchester, most likely.”

  “Why there?”

  “You’ll have heard about the political unrest, I’m sure,” Iain said, shrugging. “Protests and riots abound. We’re being sent to keep order.” He sighed then, deeply.

  “You don’t look very happy about it.”

  “No,” Iain agreed. “I’m not. I didn’t join the army to fight Englishmen.” He paused. “And certainly not Englishwomen.”

  James took that in, a little shocked. After a while, he said, “You think there will be fighting, then?”

  “Of a sort. There won’t exactly be an equality of arms.” He shook his head. “My fellow officers keep telling me I’m lucky to be alive after what happened to my regiment at Waterloo, that I should be glad of getting such an easy posting—but I don’t find this easy. They expect us to charge on order at crowds of our own countrymen and women.” He shook his head and sighed heavily.

  James had never seen Iain looking so unhappy.

  “Have you ever thought about selling your commission?” he asked.

  Iain shook his head. “I couldn’t do that,” he said.

  “Why not?”

  Iain stared straight ahead, saying nothing for a long time. James thought he wasn’t going to answer at all till at last he shrugged and said quietly, “It’s a matter of family honour.”

  Just that. And somehow James knew it wouldn’t be a good idea to ask Iain what he meant. Instead, he nodded and let a companionable silence fall.