It Takes Two to Tumble

by Cat Sebastian

  “The children have been jumping from a branch into the lake, which, while daring, isn’t as safe as I might like. I thought I’d tie a rope for them to jump from, to take them out a bit further from the lakeshore, where the water is deeper and clearer of weeds.”

  Phillip bit back the urge to say that the safest and most appropriate solution was for the children not to jump into the lake at all. But that wasn’t an option, it seemed. And Phillip dimly remembered having jumped his own fair share of times into this very lake, although that seemed so distant in the past as to have happened to a different person. Had he actually enjoyed jumping into the lake? He must have, but that kind of joy seemed so remote, so inaccessible to his present-day self that he couldn’t quite believe it. He regarded the branch. It appeared sturdy and strong. “Then what you want is a bowline knot.” The vicar’s knot was a slapdash affair. This was the first time in a week that Phillip had felt even slightly competent. “Here, let me up.” He tossed his coat onto the grass at the base of the tree and swung himself up onto the lowest branch.

  “You don’t need to—” the vicar started to protest.

  “It’s the least—oh, damn.” Phillip lost his footing, but Sedgwick caught his hand and steadied him.

  Now they were face-to-face at the trunk of the tree, sharing the same branch, rather closer than Phillip had counted on when he had thought to clamber up. “A bowline knot,” Phillip said, because he had to say something, and knots were as safe a topic as any, “is the most secure way of making a loop at the end of a rope, and it’s easy to untie even after it’s carried a load, in case the children want to move it.”

  “Show me how,” Sedgwick said, and if there were any words in the English language guaranteed to buy an old sailor’s patience, asking how to make a knot might just do the trick.

  Phillip demonstrated. “See, over and under. Right over left.” It was getting darker, and he doubted Sedgwick could properly see his fingers or the rope, but he seemed to be paying attention. “The only problem with this sort of knot is that it sometimes works itself loose when it isn’t bearing a load, but it’ll be fine if you check it before every use. Even the children could, if you showed them.”

  “Or you could show them,” Sedgwick said. “They might like your company out here. They use the boathouse as a secret lair. Peggy’s been pestering me about rowing across the lake, but I told her I wasn’t fool enough to have them row me to the center of the lake only to throw the oars in and leave us all stranded.”

  “But maybe I would be?” he asked, smiling despite himself.

  “Well, you’re the nautical chap. I’ll sit in the shade, saying a prayer to—oh, rats, who’s the fellow who looks after mariners?” He bit his lip in a way Phillip found far too interesting. “St. Elmo!”

  Phillip raised his eyebrows. “It’s been a long time since I’ve seen the inside of a church, but I feel certain that’s not how we’re supposed to do things in England.”

  A smile played on the vicar’s lips. “Don’t tell anyone,” he said confidingly.

  “Your secrets are safe with me,” Phillip responded, only realizing after he had spoken that the words had come out more seriously than he had intended. Secrets, indeed.

  “You can go first,” Sedgwick said.

  “Pardon?”

  “To try the rope.”

  Absolutely not. “The water will be freezing.”

  “And . . . ?” Sedgwick was already untying his cravat, a giddy light in his eyes.

  “And I don’t fancy a cold plunge.”

  “Then stand back while I have a go.” He shucked his boots and threw them to the ground. He stood on the branch in nothing but his breeches, shirt, and braces. “Ready?”

  Good God, he was really going to do this. “It’s getting dark. You’ll drown.”

  Sedgwick laughed. “I’ve been swimming in this lake night and day my entire life.” And with that he took hold of the rope and was flying over the lake. He hit the water with a splash that reached Phillip’s trousers, and even through the fabric Phillip could tell the water was icy. As he waited for Sedgwick to surface, Phillip found that he was holding his breath.

  When Sedgwick finally appeared, he was smiling brightly. “The water’s lovely,” he said, a bald lie.

  “Is it?” Phillip asked. “Then you ought to enjoy a good long swim.”

  “I’d feel stingy hogging all the lake to myself. Miserly. Very wrong. It’s a mortal sin, I’m nearly certain. You really ought to come in and keep me from vice.”

  Phillip tried to keep his face stern. “I’ll pray to one of your saints.”

  “No, you won’t. I think you’re an atheist. And, what’s a good deal more concerning to me at this moment, a coward who’s afraid of some cold water.”

  “I thought you said the water was lovely.”

  “And so it is.” Sedgwick’s teeth were chattering. “In a bracing way. Now come in.”

  If there was a way to resist this man, he hadn’t found it. Phillip unwound his cravat. He threw it and his waistcoat to the ground, hoping they didn’t get too muddy to put back on later. Then he pulled his shirt over his head.

  “I didn’t realize it was to be that sort of swim,” Sedgwick said, and the overt flirtatiousness of it nearly knocked Phillip into the water.

  “I don’t fancy a walk back to the house in a freezing, wet shirt,” Phillip said, striving for a normal tone of voice, whatever that even was in this situation. “You’ll envy me my dry clothes, just you wait.”

  And then, chasing an old forgotten joy and the flicker of hope that he might feel such a thing again, he dove in.

  The water was freezing. Ben thought he must have gone mad to have even considered jumping in. He hadn’t any intention of getting in the water, but he couldn’t spend another moment on that branch flirting with Dacre. And there was no question that they were flirting. Ben might be inexperienced but he wasn’t a fool. Jumping into the lake seemed his best and most dignified mode of escape, but the only thing he could do to lessen the horror of the cold was to lure Dacre in too.

  Dacre surfaced beside him, dark hair slicked back from his forehead. They could both stand at this depth, but just barely. “Fuck shit bollocks,” he ground out. “Bugger.”

  “A bit chilly?” Ben strove for a level of insouciance that wasn’t possible when your teeth were rattling in your head.

  “F-fuck yourself.”

  Ben laughed. He was too cold for proper arousal, otherwise he might take undue notice of the breadth of the captain’s shoulders, the spare musculature of his upper arms and chest. And he didn’t want to let his gaze linger on things he might not be able to stop himself from remembering when he was warm and dry and alone.

  “Oh, that’s a pity,” Dacre said, and for a second Ben thought the man knew Ben’s private imaginings. But his gaze was on Ben’s shoulder, and Ben had the notion that he was being ogled through the water. “I was afraid that would happen.”

  “What?” He looked down at his chest, thinking he’d see a leech or some other underwater horror.

  Dacre slid two fingers under the strap of Ben’s braces and lifted the sodden fabric slightly away from Ben’s body. “Too bad, really.” He tugged slightly, and Ben drifted closer, his body nearly weightless under the water.

  “What do you mean?” Ben whispered. He didn’t know whether he hoped or feared this really was about leeches and not something entirely different.

  “This,” Dacre said, and brought his free hand up to Ben’s shoulder, plunging Ben underwater. The last thing Ben saw before ducking beneath the frigid water was the captain’s face lit with a wicked smile.

  But it was better to be under the water, away from the night air that seemed to chill him even more than the water, away from tempting sights and smiles. So he stayed underwater and swam as far as he could before coming up for air. By then he was not precisely warm, but slightly less freezing.

  Dacre was swimming towards him with a neat hand-over-ha
nd stroke. “Warmer if you keep moving,” he said, treading water by Ben’s side.

  “Bastard,” Ben said without heat. He was too cold to be serious. He did the only thing a man could possibly do, which was to take hold of the captain’s hard, slippery shoulders and dunk him beneath the water in return. Dacre surfaced laughing and shivering, taking his plunge as his due, as a necessary part of whatever code of retribution he had triggered by dunking Ben.

  By then the sun had fully set, and their only light was a crescent moon that hung low in the sky. But the night was clear and the moon reflected off the lake, so they could see enough for safety.

  Or at least they wouldn’t drown. Other kinds of safety, Ben couldn’t vouch for. If he spent another minute in proximity to Dacre’s bare torso, he might start stroking it.

  Worse, he felt like Dacre wouldn’t mind.

  Worse still, he felt like they’d both have a jolly time, and go happily to bed where Dacre could show Ben what he’d been missing out on during these years of celibacy, and then they could both be properly resentful and awkward in the morning. No thank you.

  And then Ben would be the sort of fellow who was engaged to marry one person and went to bed with somebody else. And that would never be right. But looking over at the captain, he couldn’t help but think that touching this man, seeing what happened, might carry its own kind of rightness. This wanting felt like such a part of Ben’s soul that it had to mean something, had to carry with it its own kind of moral gravity.

  Damn it. The icy water must have frozen his conscience. He could almost hear a line from the poem that had made his father’s name, something about turning your face to beauty like a flower to the sun, and that being the only righteousness the world could ever know. Never had Ben been able to figure out what good a sentiment like that could do anyone on a day-to-day-basis. But when he saw Captain Dacre, when he watched the moonlight glint off his bare shoulders and the water drip from his dark hair, when he felt within his own chest something stir that had been asleep so very long, he thought he might know what his father had meant.

  The fact that he was finally understanding his father’s poetry was not, he thought, a good sign. He sighed and ran a cold-stiffened hand through his hair. The trouble always was that there was nobody to talk to about his peculiar predicament. He didn’t know how to live as a man who desired other men, and he didn’t have anyone to look towards for guidance.

  “You look like you stepped on something suspicious.” Dacre’s voice pulled him out of his reverie. “Wait, did you?”

  Ben felt his mouth twitch upward in the beginnings of a wry smile. “If I told you I was thinking of the Bible, would you believe me?”

  A slight hesitation. “I daresay you ought to think about it sometimes. It’s your job.”

  Ben laughed despite himself. “You say it like it’s the most unsavory part of my job. As if I’m the rag collector. ‘Oh, I do suppose you ought to sort through that dirty business sometimes. It’s your job, after all.’”

  “Well, I don’t think it’s the most sordid part of your duties.”

  Ben smiled. He knew all the arguments against religion, had learned them at his father’s knee, in fact. But he didn’t want to go into that now. “I’ll race you back to the shore,” he said, and took off without waiting for the captain’s go ahead.

  Dacre won anyway, and soon they were dripping and shivering on the grass.

  Ben immediately peeled off his shirt, regretting that he didn’t have a dry shirt to put on. “You were right about the shirt.” He made for the boathouse, thinking he could at least find one of the blankets the children had stowed there.

  “I have a lot of experience jumping into cold water,” the captain said, following him towards the shelter. “Usually you want to be as naked as possible, but . . .”

  “But?”

  “I felt like it would be a good idea to keep on as much clothing as possible tonight.” He fell silent, and the moment stretched out dangerously. “We’d better have a couple layers of fabric between us at all times, vicar.” On the last word, the door to the boathouse snapped shut, and Ben was very aware of how there was very little of anything between them now. They stood inches apart, bare chested in the gloom and seclusion of the boathouse.

  Ben felt his chest tighten. Dacre’s admission of desire was uncharted territory for him, and he didn’t know how to respond. He settled for irony, and knew it to be a cheap substitute for sincerity. “You fear my roving hands,” he intoned. “My reputation as a libertine precedes me.”

  The captain’s huff of laughter was barely audible, mingled as it was with the soft sounds of night birds and rippling water. “Not precisely. How on earth did a man like you wind up a vicar?” The way he spoke the words wasn’t quite a question. He didn’t expect Ben to supply a reasonable answer; he asked the question because he didn’t think there was a reasonable answer, and Ben wasn’t in the right frame of mind to justify his choices.

  “Do you know, you’re the second person I’ve spoken to today who said much the same thing.”

  “Good God, if you have conversations like this more than once a day, I’m surprised you don’t have a reputation as a libertine.”

  Now Ben laughed in earnest, and it did something to ease the tension that was building in his chest. “Not precisely like this.”

  “Good,” the captain said, and it was a rumble. When he stepped closer, Ben didn’t move away, because by that point he felt well beyond any need to pretend that he didn’t want Captain Dacre within touching distance. They were so close Ben could hear the water dripping from Dacre’s hair, could hear the other man’s breathing, and any reason Ben might have had to step away seemed very distant and abstract.

  It was dark in the boathouse, too dark to communicate by glances or gestures. That left only speaking or frank touches, and Ben didn’t think he was capable of the former. He had always been better with his actions than with his words anyway. So he took his hand and stroked his fingertips down Dacre’s forearm, learning the sinews and hairs by touch. He heard a sharp indrawn breath, then Dacre’s hands were on him, tugging his hips close.

  When their lips met they both went still, and Ben had the fleeting impression that Dacre was more startled than Ben was himself. Ben wasn’t startled at all, come to think. Dacre’s mouth felt right on his, as if Ben had been waiting all his life to taste the stern line of this man’s lips, as if this was what Ben’s mouth was for and he was only now realizing it. He slid his hands from the captain’s shoulders to the lean muscles of his upper arms, pressed his own bare chest against the other man’s, gave an experimental lick along the seam of the captain’s mouth, and it all felt right. He was waiting, he realized, for this to feel wrong, for it to feel shameful or traitorous, but it only felt good, and safe, and honest.

  Dacre made a noise at the back of this throat, a sound of capitulation that was somewhere between a moan and a groan, and then he was kissing Ben in earnest. One of his hands was at the back of Ben’s head, holding him steady for Dacre’s devouring kisses.

  “Oh, damn it,” the captain said against the sensitive skin of his neck. “Sedgwick. Are you—”

  Ben cut him off by taking his mouth in another kiss. Dacre steered him so Ben’s back was against the rough wood wall of the boathouse, one of Dacre’s arms braced on the wall beside him. There was nothing but the wall behind him, Dacre a solid mass in front of him, and the desire growing deep within his belly.

  “Won’t do,” Dacre breathed. “Splinters.” And then they were on the floor, side by side, trousers discarded and a blanket beneath them.

  It was all so much easier than Ben could have imagined. Dacre’s hands exploring, waiting a moment for Ben to object, then grasping, stroking. Ben might have thought he’d find it strange, maybe overwhelming, to be touched so intimately by another person. It was neither of those things, and that itself was surprising. Dacre’s hands felt like they belonged on Ben’s body, and when Ben thought to return t
he favor, fumbling with the backward logic of another person’s body, his hands felt perfectly right there as well. His fingers wrapped around Dacre’s shaft as his face nestled into Dacre’s shoulder, a carpenter’s joints fitting together perfectly, as if this had always been the plan for their bodies.

  They were quiet except for necessary whispers. Yes. Shh. Please. I have you. Ben tipped over the edge into bliss and felt Dacre follow, and all he could think was that it had all been so easy, so right, and that it would have been a good deal simpler if that hadn’t been the case.

  Chapter Nine

  The morning post brought a letter in Phillip’s sister’s acrobatically spiraling hand. Usually, at the cost of a headache and a good deal of patience, Phillip could make out enough of a letter to pretend to understand its contents. Ernestine’s penmanship, however, refused to stay still. The letters jumped around the page and twirled out of his brain before he could corral them into anything resembling words. By the time he gave up, he had worn the paper soft around the edges.

  Thinking to employ one of his usual tricks to enlist help, he set off in search of the land steward or an upper servant. This would conveniently take him into the bowels of the house where he would be unlikely to run into Sedgwick. He hadn’t been able to slot the previous evening’s events into the category of convenient pleasure. Their kisses had been too hungry, their caresses too gratuitous, their shared pleasure too pregnant with feeling for Phillip to be able to carry on in the way he generally did—which was to ignore that anything had happened in the first place.

  Somewhere along the way, his thoughts muddled by memories of the previous night, he must have missed a turn, because he found himself in the kitchens, where the cook, her cheeks red with exertion and emotion, seemed to be taking out her frustrations on a piece of dough.

  “Never heard of putting wine in a suet pudding, no matter what they do in London or anywhere else,” she muttered. “My mum worked five years in the kitchens at the Priory and never saw nobody put wine in any suet pudding.” She punctuated each sentence with a slap of the dough onto the worktable. She was plump and rosy, her cap and apron equally clean and white and starchy. Phillip realized he was being confronted with a variety of human he hadn’t encountered in years: an Englishwoman in her kitchen. He had summoned the cook the day of his arrival to order that the children be sent to bed without supper, but he hadn’t yet been to the kitchens.