by Lily Maxton
“Wait…are you telling me it just occurred to you?” She sounded incredulous. “You must be completely oblivious.”
Robert waved her off. “Now is not the time for insults, George. Does Miss Worthington feel the same way toward him?”
Georgina sighed. “I couldn’t say. Miss Worthington is not quite so telling with her emotions. But I daresay one husband she’s vaguely fond of will do quite as well as the other—she doesn’t seem to dislike him, at least.”
“She said she wanted someone to choose her…but Hale…well, if he was going to do something, shouldn’t he have done it by now?”
And therein laid the problem. The only way he could call off the wedding without being a complete cad was if Alice married someone else instead, but John Hale, whether he loved her or not, obviously wasn’t willing to ask her.
Yet.
“He doesn’t really seem the type to take risks,” Georgina agreed. “And he’s intimidated by Mr. Worthington. He may need a little encouragement.”
“I can do that,” Robert said quickly. He’d helped John Hale before, albeit over a much smaller matter. But if he really, truly loved Alice, maybe Hale just needed a push in the right direction.
And maybe Robert could give him that.
Maybe the situation wasn’t quite as hopeless as he’d thought.
Chapter Twenty
Somehow, Georgina and Robert managed to persuade Mr. Hale and Miss Worthington to go on a walk while the others stayed behind. It was cloudy, the landscape light gray and lush green, meeting on a far-off horizon. Occasional flashes of bright blue tried to emerge from behind the clouds, but the sky never quite managed to shake off its shroud.
They passed by the outbuilding where Robert and Ian had stargazed and where Robert had kissed him for the first time. The remembrance hit him with enough force to knock his breath away. He could still feel Ian’s mouth against his lips, the fabric of his coat clenched in his fists. It was a permanent sensation now, etched bone deep, branded like a tattoo.
Out of the corner of his eye, he saw Mr. Hale draw a breath to speak to Miss Worthington and then slam his mouth shut abruptly, pink tingeing his cheeks. He fell behind to walk with Georgina instead, and with a sigh, Robert took his place beside Miss Worthington.
This might take more effort than he’d assumed.
He offered his arm, and Miss Worthington placed her gloved hand on his elbow.
They made some idle small talk until the conversation turned to billiards and Robert could bring up Mr. Hale without seeming too eager.
“He’s improved greatly,” he said after glancing back to make sure the man in question was out of earshot. “A little confidence goes a long way.”
“He’s still quite shy, though,” Miss Worthington said.
“There’s nothing wrong with being shy, is there?” Robert said lightly.
“No. Not as long as one can still stand up for oneself when it matters.”
“You’ve known Mr. Hale for some time. You must be close?”
“Not as close as we once were.”
“Oh?”
“We were inseparable when we were children, but eventually my father found it inappropriate. Everything is innocent when one is seven or eight, but at some point—I think I had just turned twelve or thirteen—my father put his foot down and said I couldn’t keep spending time alone with a boy.” Miss Worthington laughed softly. “He was my closest friend, you know. Sometimes I could look at him and know exactly what he was thinking, without words at all. It’s not like that anymore.”
Was that a hint of wistfulness? Or was Robert only hearing what he wanted to hear?
“I’m surprised there was never talk of a match between you.”
“Mr. Hale is planning to become a law clerk…I think my own parents had loftier aspirations for my marriage.”
“And what about you?”
“I don’t care about that so much. But there would have been other problems, I think. I don’t know if I could be with a man who couldn’t stand up to my father.”
That wasn’t promising.
He started to speak, but the sound of voices stopped him. He looked up, and realized, unintentionally, he’d led them straight to Ian—like a wanderer following the North Star. The other man was on a ladder, removing burned thatching from the roof of his destroyed cottage.
He was in dark-brown trousers, work boots, and a white shirt, sleeves rolled up to his elbows and forearms streaked with soot.
There were two other men helping him with the repairs, tenants of Llynmore, and Robert felt his heart ache. He would have helped Ian. He should have been the one helping him. One of the other men noticed them and said something to Ian, who paused, glancing over his shoulder.
Unerringly, he found Robert first. Then his gaze drifted down, to where Miss Worthington’s hand rested on Robert’s arm. His expression didn’t change. It was like stone, cold and immovable.
Robert felt his heart fall with the weight of lead. He needed to reach Ian, needed to explain.
Ian said something to the man and climbed down the ladder.
Robert’s feet moved, some force that was stronger than himself pulling him forward like an ocean tide, drawing Miss Worthington in his wake.
“I needed to speak to you about something. Privately.” Robert remembered at the last moment that he had walking companions. “Go on ahead,” he told the group. “I’ll catch up with you in a few minutes.”
Georgina shot him a strange look as they passed but didn’t comment.
Ian thanked the other men for their help and they went on their way, which left Robert alone with Ian for the first time since he and Alice had agreed to marry, the moors and the silence surrounding them.
Chapter Twenty-One
Looking at Robert was like looking at the sun—it was difficult not to, but it was painful. It didn’t hurt Ian’s eyes—it hurt down to his soul.
He knew what Robert had decided. Hadn’t missed Alice Worthington’s hand on his arm, light but somehow possessive.
And it was what Ian had expected, wasn’t it? Hell, it was what he’d wanted, even. If not for himself, then for Robert, at least.
So why did it feel like his heart had been ripped from his chest?
Through some strength of will, some edge of iron that had been forged through isolation, and absence, and longing, and moving through life alone, Ian didn’t let the pain show. He wasn’t affected by Robert. Not at all.
The silence was loud between them, filling in the spaces between his heartbeats.
“Well?” he finally said.
Robert swallowed and then nodded at the cottage. “You’re making good progress,” he said.
Ian forgot, sometimes, that Robert was young. He hid it behind confidence and charm, but he couldn’t hide it now, when words failed him, and like a shield in front of him, his hand was clasped so tightly around his forearm that Ian worried he might bruise himself.
But Robert was young. He was younger than Ian in years, yes, but in other ways, too. Robert might have known loss, but he had never known abandonment. It cut, but in a different way, more jagged, a wound that couldn’t heal completely. Because it was not simply the way the dice had fallen, it was a choice, and no matter how strong one was, some part of them would always wonder why they hadn’t been good enough. Robert didn’t know what it was like to be rejected by the people who were supposed to love him more than anyone else. He’d never tasted that bitterness at the back of his throat.
And Ian prayed that he never would.
As sick as he felt when he saw Robert with Miss Worthington, he was relieved, too.
Robert could keep his innocence. It wouldn’t be Ian’s fault if it was ever taken away.
“Is that all you wanted to say to me?” he asked. “Should I congratulate ye?”
Robert flinched, and Ian had to use every last bit of strength he had left to keep from reaching for him.
“No, that’s not all,” Robert ans
wered hoarsely. “I did agree to marry Miss Worthington…I didn’t feel like I could do anything else. But Hale is in love with her, and I suspect she feels something for him. I think with some maneuvering, a different marriage could occur.”
Everything inside him stilled. He stared into Robert’s dark eyes, so open and hopeful. He shouldn’t be so open and hopeful, so idealistic, Ian thought, feeling curiously numb, or someday the world was going to tear him apart. That was just what the world did, what people did—they latched on to a weak point and pressed down until it broke.
Finally, Ian laughed. “Hale? Good luck with that.”
“What?”
“Hale isn’t going to ask her to marry him. He’s terrified of her father. If that’s what you’re hinging your hopes on, ye might as well give up before you start.”
“But it’s our only chance.”
“Townsend…just…just stop,” Ian said. He could see the hitch in Robert’s chest when his breath faltered and Ian felt like he’d dealt him a physical blow, but he didn’t relent. “You rushed into this. You rushed into it with blind faith that everything will fall into place, but it won’t.”
Robert’s fingers were taut against the fabric of his coat. “Is this…is it because of what you said, about me not being happy keeping secrets? I’ll tell them.”
A cold chill ran along Ian’s spine, and suddenly, though the day was warm enough, it felt like winter. “No. You won’t.”
“I will…they’ll understand. We’re not like your family…after our parents died, all we had left was one another. We’re closer than most siblings. Telling them won’t break anything between us, I’m sure of it.”
Ian had no idea how Robert could be sure of anything. Hate was something that came without warning or thought. It wasn’t reasonable, so it couldn’t be predicted.
Before he knew what he was doing, he had a fistful of Robert’s coat in his hand, and he’d pushed him against the stone wall.
The other man blinked at him, looking a little dazed.
“I’m not going to let ye take that chance,” he growled.
Robert’s eyes narrowed, a flash of something hot. Anger. Good, Ian thought. Being angry was better than being vulnerable. He could take his anger; he could take all of it. But he couldn’t take his hope.
Hope wasn’t a language Ian knew. It had failed him, for too long and in too many ways.
Robert’s gloved hand wrapped around Ian’s where it was latched on to his coat, and he simply held him there, warm leather against bare skin. It was the first contact they’d had in days and Ian wished…he wished… It didn’t matter what he wished. None of his wishes ever came true.
Ian’s wants were as useless as a boy throwing pennies in a wishing well, longing for his dead parents to give him some sign that they were still there.
“I’m starting to wonder if this is about me at all,” Robert said quietly.
Of course it was about him. What did he think they’d just been talking about?
“You haven’t spoken to your family in over ten years. If you reached out to them now, things might be different.”
Ian laughed harshly, and the sound grated against his own ears. “I doubt it.”
“But you don’t know, do you?” His voice was low and even and relentless. Ian felt it striking against something inside him, sharp and merciless. “You don’t know. Maybe they said those things to scare you into changing. Maybe, if they knew you wouldn’t change, that you couldn’t, they would have changed their minds, instead. Maybe it was a bluff.”
“And maybe it wasn’t.”
“Maybe it wasn’t,” Robert agreed. “But you’ll never find out, will you? And it doesn’t matter anyway. You’ve clung to your resentment all this time; you’ve kept their betrayal alive. You started inflexible and you’ve only become more inflexible. It’s fine if you can’t forgive them; I wouldn’t, if I were in your place. But you won’t let yourself forget, either. Bitterness is your weapon, and you think it makes you stronger, but it only makes you weak.”
He didn’t want to hear this. He didn’t want to hear any of it.
“I’m not weak,” he snarled. And then, because he felt like a cornered animal and he didn’t know how to protect himself, he turned on Robert, instead, stringing together more wasp-edged words than he sometimes said in a full day. “And look at you. I was fine, alone. I was fine, before you. And you come to me. You come to me and weasel your way into my life and you ask more and more of me. You take more and more until you have my friendship and you have me in your bed and you still want my heart on a silver platter. And what use do ye have for it? Hale isn’t going to change anything. He doesna have the bollocks to go after what he wants.”
“Oh?” Robert said, his voice edged and sharp. “Is that how it was? You’re a liar. You were right there with me every step of the way. I didn’t take a thing.”
Ian didn’t respond. He had a feeling that if he looked too closely, he would be proved a liar.
Robert took a deep breath, as though trying to calm himself. “And Hale will come through, if I can persuade him.”
But Robert was right, about him, about everything. Ian didn’t know how to let go of the things that hurt him. He didn’t know where he would draw his strength from if he didn’t have that. He would be a boy again, abandoned and frightened and wounded.
He never wanted to be that boy again.
“And if ye can’t? What does that leave me? Will you give me your body, even when someone else takes your name?”
In the shelter of the cottage wall, in the open air but hidden from view, Ian dragged Robert against him and kissed him, a desperate, hard press of lips to lips.
Heat swept through Ian like wildfire, filled him, burned him, left him reeling. Why was it always like this? Why couldn’t he protect himself against this? Why did touching Robert make him feel like he’d flown too close to the sun and somehow emerged on fire but alive?
But the kiss wasn’t returned, and after a shocked pause, Robert pulled back and Ian let his hands fall.
Robert pressed his knuckles to his mouth. “I can’t,” he said, voice muffled. “You know I can’t. It wouldn’t be fair to her, or to you.”
Ian’s chest ached. Despair settled over him, dark as a shroud.
He didn’t know exactly why he’d kissed Robert. Maybe to prove to him that this really was the end. Or maybe he’d wanted to prove it to himself.
Some part of him had suspected Robert wouldn’t kiss him back. Because Robert was kind, and he was loyal, and he was everything, everything Ian had ever wanted but didn’t know how to ask for. He was everything he couldn’t bring himself to ask for.
“I didna think so,” he said, so coldly that he nearly hated himself. So coldly that he wondered what was wrong with him, that inside he could be churning like a storm and outside was nothing but crisp, clear skies. “Go marry the girl, Robert. Stop wasting my time.”
And just like that day so many years before, he turned and walked away. It was easy, he thought, to walk away from the people you loved. It was easy.
You just didn’t look back.
Chapter Twenty-Two
Georgina had taken away his bottle of whisky.
Robert squinted up at her. It was dark. The only light in the room came from the dying fire. But he wasn’t sure if it was night. The curtains were drawn tight.
There were many things he wasn’t sure about. Like what day it was. Or when he’d last eaten. Or taken a bath.
He sniffed and smelled stale sweat. Cringing, he laid his head down on the table, letting the cool wood relieve his overheated face. Not long ago, at this very table, he’d become a betrothed man.
He paused. He didn’t think it was that long ago. But his brain was a little fuzzy.
“I’ve never seen you this foxed,” Georgina said. “I’ll be honest, Robert—it’s a bit disheartening.”
“George,” he mumbled. “I won’t be a bachelor much longer. I need to do these t
hings while I have a chance.” He heard his own voice from a distance, slow and slurred. So much for being articulate to the last drop.
“You need to pull yourself together. This is not helping anything. And we have guests.”
“George,” he said suddenly, quietly, desperately. “Where did Ian go?”
His sister paused for the smallest second. “He left his room at the castle. He decided to stay at the cottage north of here. The one that’s about a twenty-minute walk?”
He knew which one she meant. It had been abandoned years ago, and Annabel had stayed in the derelict structure briefly two years ago. But since then it had fallen apart even more. Did it even have glass in the windows?
“That place isn’t fit to live in.”
“That’s what I told him, but he seemed certain of his decision. I doubt he’ll be there much longer, anyway—the repairs on his own cottage are moving along quickly.”
“Yes, I knew that. I think.”
But he’d been trying not to think about it. Every time Robert recalled his argument with Ian, dread made his chest tight and his breathing stagger. Even if he did manage to push Mr. Hale and Alice together, it wouldn’t matter.
Ian wouldn’t be waiting for him at the end.
Robert wondered if he should have seen this. Everything had been fine when they were wrapped up in their own little world, but as soon as the outside world encroached, as soon as an obstacle emerged on their path, Ian balked.
No, he hadn’t just balked. He’d taken a flying leap off the carriage. Run off into the heath somewhere, never to be found again.
It made sense, he supposed. Ian—unyielding, solitary bastard that he was; Ian—who kissed a boy only to forget his name; Ian—whose family had betrayed him, and who, in turn, built up a wall of stone, would go into a relationship expecting the worst.
And when their carriage slammed into the obstacle, Ian would escape, bruised perhaps, but whole.
He didn’t seem to realize there were other options…like moving whatever blocked the road, or going around it…because these things took patience and trust and love and effort. And no one had ever given him that before. No one had ever shown him how it was done.