The Pursuit Of…: A Worth Saga Prelude

by Milan, Courtney

  They’d made twenty-seven miles today, and he was no doubt tired.

  “At an inn?” John made a face. “Hardly worth the coin.”

  “Uh. Coin isn’t…” Latham flushed even brighter. “I have a bit on me, as it happens. I should think that a room at an inn…”

  “Two rooms,” John said. “That’s what they’ll be willing to give us. More like one room and a berth in the stables, if I’m lucky.”

  Latham understood his point immediately.

  “Nonsense. You’re sharing your journey; I’m sharing what I have. Any particularity on my part was lost during the last years at war.”

  John felt his nose wrinkle. “Who was your father again?”

  “Um.” Latham’s eyes screwed shut. “A…man? A potter. Right. He made pots.”

  He’d been a tailor before. The truth was more like neither. With that talk of university? With the officer’s braid John had seen on his shoulder that night? Unlikely. Even more unlikely with his mention of being a second son with the usual choice of law, church, or army.

  Potter’s son, John’s good backside. What kind of potter’s son developed any sort of particularity about sharing his room in the first place? Didn’t matter, though. John had known the man was a liar from the first evening.

  Instead, he jerked a thumb at the inn. “They will care in there. They’ll let me stay in your room, but only if you pretend I’m your servant. And I’m not.”

  Latham’s mouth scrunched together. He stared at the stone building, as if imagining the warm rooms inside. A cold breeze brought with it the scent of something savory—stew, perhaps, and John heard the other man’s stomach gurgle. “We’ll see about that.” So saying, he marched in the direction of the inn.

  He was going to get both their heads bashed in. John sighed, then followed.

  Latham marched into the inn with the air of a man who owned the place.

  The man who actually owned the place, a balding man wearing a stained apron, brightened when he caught sight of him.

  “Sir,” he said, completely ignoring John, “a thousand welcomes to you. You have the look of one who has been involved in the war. Officer?”

  “Indeed,” Latham said jovially. It was, John supposed, not entirely a lie. He had been in the war. He had been an officer. He just didn’t mention that he’d fought for the other side.

  The innkeeper bowed distinctly. “Thank you for your service, sir. How can I help you?”

  “My good man. A room, if you please.” Latham’s manners had changed. They were like glistening icicles hanging from the eaves—cold and perfectly formed. Glancing at the tables nearby, he added, “Dinner as well. Your goodwife appears to set an excellent table.”

  The innkeeper nodded. “Of course, of course, sir. If you could come over here?” He gestured to John. “Your master’s luggage—”

  Latham tilted his head. “My pardon! I thought that was clear when we entered. Corporal Hunter here is no servant. We were comrades-in-arms.”

  “Former corporal,” John muttered. “Now no longer in the infantry.”

  The innkeeper paused. He frowned at Latham. He glanced at his dining area.

  “I’ve just a pack,” Latham continued. “I’ll take it up myself. But I’d like to wash and have dinner. If you could direct us—”

  “I’ll hold a table for you, sir, but your, ah…”

  “Hunter is his name. And he is my traveling companion.”

  John winced.

  “Your companion may eat with the servants, if you please. And we have a place in the stables for him.”

  “It doesn’t please. It doesn’t please at all.”

  “It’s not negotiable. I must think of the comfort of my other guests.”

  Latham frowned.

  It wouldn’t take him long to give up his principles. It never did. Rationality said that Latham could get his warm room and dinner, and if John couldn’t… Well, it wasn’t Latham’s fault, was it? There was no principle so fine that it could stand up to a dish of warm stew at a comfortable table after a twenty-seven-mile walk.

  Latham shook his head, let out a gusty sigh, and turned to John. “Well, Hunter.” Their eyes met, and John did not look away. If Latham was going to abandon him for a warm bed, he’d not give the man the satisfaction of backing down. “You win.”

  “This game.” John shook his head. “I really hate winning this game, and yet I find myself continually dragooned into playing.”

  Latham sighed. “Do we eat with the servants and bunk in the stables, or continue on?”

  “We?”

  Latham gave him a quirk of a smile. “I’m too overcome with exhaustion to make a decision. It’s in your hands.”

  John met his eyes. Latham was a liar, and—by his own admission—a traitor. But he’d asked for his opinion.

  And so instead, John shrugged. “I suppose tonight we can bunk in the stables. You’ll toughen eventually, but for now, we’ll compromise in deference to your softness.”

  “Excellent.”

  Latham turned to the innkeeper. “Dinner for two, then. With the servants.”

  * * *

  Latham got them a private corner to wash, and, after the innkeeper grimaced at the thought of an officer—a white officer—eating with the servants, a table in the back of the kitchen with stew for them both.

  The innkeeper was even—almost—apologetic to Latham when he conducted them out to the stable. “Should be warm enough in the hayloft,” he said, as they climbed the rickety ladder. “We’ve a full complement of horses tonight.”

  It was warm. The hay poked through the blankets they unrolled but it was—in a relative sense—the most comfortable that John had been on this journey.

  Their bedrolls were inches apart, meaning that in the gloom, when John turned over, he saw Latham looking back at him.

  Those damned eyelashes. Pretty was pretty. It didn’t mean a damned thing at all, except that the random conformation of features that nature had endowed Latham with were, on balance, pleasing to the eye.

  “How’s your shoulder?”

  John shrugged and unwound his sling. The doctor had said that he might recover full use of his arm, or that he might never have it. Slowly, he stretched his hand out to full extension, flaring his fingers. He could feel the answering pain in the ball of his shoulder, but it was dimming every day.

  “I think,” he said, “the doctor had no idea what he was talking about. It will be fine.”

  “Good.” Henry’s smile lit his face.

  He was so damned pretty.

  It had never bothered John that he liked looking at pretty men, no matter what churchgoers said. If he’d let the world around him decide what he ought to think of himself, he’d still be enslaved in South Carolina. Lizzie, the sister he’d raised, would be twenty-three and beautiful alongside him in slavery—if he were lucky—and sold somewhere else if he were not. If he’d listened to everyone else, there would be nothing he could do to protect her.

  Instead… He thought of her last letter, of the months and months since she’d sent it, the panic that he refused to indulge lurking at the back of his mind. I’m coming, Lizzie. I’m coming. Just be there when I arrive.

  In truth, John had found his natural inclinations to be incredibly convenient. When he’d been just out of childhood, he’d had no desire to start a family, even though his master had suggested he do so. Loving a woman, having a child—that would have made enslavement his home. It would have been the worst thing he could have done. They’d have tied him to his master even more than his sister had, and leaving her the first time had almost broken his heart. Lucky that he had never wanted women in that way.

  It was luck that he liked looking at pretty men instead. Luck that his eyes traced Henry’s forehead, and he wondered what he looked like underneath that shirt.

  A prickle of awareness seemed to catch deep in his throat. It had always come naturally to him, with men. Looking at them and remembering to look aw
ay. Wondering what if…

  He couldn’t help but look at Latham and wonder what if. It was only natural. Latham was exceptionally beautiful, and unless the British signaled these things very differently than Americans, his inclinations ran parallel to John’s. There were enough men like them; during the war, there had been times John had reached out and blindly sought comfort from a fellow soldier.

  Latham, he suspected, had likely done the same.

  There would be no seeking comfort between them, though, not unless he wanted things to change too much. John had a family, and who knew what trouble they were in? Every moment’s delay meant precious hours when he could be with them instead. He had to make good time; he couldn’t let himself become beguiled into lengthening this journey.

  He felt it as instinctively as if he were still in battle, as if they were still locked in combat. It was Latham or John, Latham or John, and the stakes might no longer have been his life, but he’d promised Lizzie he would see her again, and if what he feared…

  No, he couldn’t think about his fears, not here, not in the darkness, not hundreds of miles away where he could do nothing about them.

  “You were entirely right,” Latham said softly in the dark. “I’m an inherently frivolous man, I’m afraid.”

  “You don’t even shut up at night,” John said unfairly. He had shut up that afternoon. Shockingly.

  “I hadn’t thought my principles through. If all men are created equal, it stands to reason that it includes all races. I hadn’t thought about it at all until today, and I should have. You have every right to be annoyed. I had to go over the matter. It took me a bit.”

  “Well, then. It’s good you set your mind at rest.” There was a bit of a sarcastic edge to John’s voice. He didn’t even mean it that way; anything that distracted him from the things he’d heard about, of black families driven out in winter, no food, nowhere to go… Worrying wouldn’t make it better. It just made his stomach clench. He sighed in the darkness. “I hope you sleep well.”

  “No, wait. I wanted to—that is, I needed to—” Latham reached out and set a hand on John’s good shoulder.

  John was too shocked to flinch away. Even through his undershirt, he felt that touch. A spot of warmth, a hint of nerves, sparked where the man’s fingers lay.

  Don’t be an idiot, John.

  “It’s this,” Latham said earnestly. “I hold these truths to be self-evident. That you were created equal. And that everyone who treated you as less debased themselves. I believe that you were endowed with unalienable rights: Life. Liberty. The pursuit of happiness. I believe that when you withdraw your consent to be governed, all men of conscience should stand by your side.”

  That spot blossomed into heat. They were face-to-face, inches apart, close enough that John could have leaned forward and touched Latham’s lips with his own. And oh, for a moment, he wanted to do it. He wanted to forget his worries. He wanted to take everything this man offered—his principles, his person.

  Ah, he thought at that unfurling emotion. This. This. This is why I need to keep him at bay.

  He wasn’t going to let go of his defenses for so small a gift as ordinary human kindness.

  Life. Liberty. The pursuit of happiness. God, what he would have given for his family to have been born with the recognized right to just one of those. It hurt, having this pretty man—this treacherous liar—mouth sentiments that he’d yearned for before in the darkness of night. He wanted to reach out and lay hold of the man, to claim those lies for the truth he yearned for.

  Instead, he made himself lie still. Told his overactive nerves to quiet down. He looked in the other man’s eyes, made himself concentrate on the hay poking his side until the discomfort took over his desire.

  “According to you,” John said, “I was born with those rights. They’re not yours to give. I won’t thank you for them.”

  “It’s just…” Latham sighed. “Never mind.”

  “Are you done?”

  “Yes,” Latham said. “I…think so.”

  “Good.” John turned around, offering the man his shoulder. “Go to sleep. We’ve a long ways to go.”

  Chapter Five

  John could feel sleep tugging his eyes shut, fogging his brain. The hayloft was warm; the straw was comfortable. Beside him, Latham drifted off in no time at all, a solid presence that he could sense even in the darkness. It would be all too easy to fall into a deep sleep.

  But even slumber seemed a lie. To sleep with his back to another man was to take that man for his comrade. It required a certain degree of trust, and to give it unearned seemed anathema. Comfort was a freedom-stealing lie.

  Life. Liberty. The pursuit of happiness. Stretching for ideals like those, well… They just made him forget that at the end of the day, he didn’t know where his sister was. If she was well. If she was alive. There was no room for ideals in his life. There was no room for anything except fighting. Surviving.

  After Latham’s breaths evened out, John slipped out of the blankets, made his way down the rickety ladder by feel, found his coat, and slipped out the barn door.

  It was frigid outside the barn. The stables and the two wings of the inn made a little open-sided courtyard. The moon was a slim, silver crescent overhead, providing just enough light for him to make out a stone well in the center of that space.

  There were stars overhead, twinkling with a faint, mocking light.

  He should just leave. The open road called to him in the gloom, beckoning him on. Latham was too soft. Yes, he’d kept up thus far, but only because John’s arm had restricted his movement. He was getting better—he stretched his arm out, feeling a twinge, but it was a good twinge. He could go faster, farther, longer.

  He would do anything for his mother. For Lizzie. He would do anything in his power. He just didn’t know what he needed to do, and the unknown ate away at him.

  He should leave. John was doing his best to avoid despair; Henry preferred to stay in inns and eat freshly baked bread by the fire.

  John’s master had told him once that while he didn’t hold with beating his slaves, others did—and that it wasn’t cruelty because black men didn’t feel pain the way white men did. That, he had said, was why he always had his slaves on the most dangerous jobs in his shipyard. If they fell from the heights, or if a beam pinched their shoulder… Well, it wouldn’t hurt them as much, would it? It was simple humanitarianism, his master had said.

  That sentiment was bullshit of the highest order.

  John felt pain. The cold of the night made his skin into miniature cobblestones. It bit into his toes. John ought to have put his shoes on before leaving the stables. The cold did nothing to alleviate the ache in the pads of his feet, that persistent throb of flesh abused by the day’s journey.

  He sat on the edge of the well and felt his thighs protest.

  He wasn’t magic; he felt pain.

  Lizzie, Lizzie. I’m coming.

  He felt hope, too, no matter how much life had tried to rob him of that. He’d felt it in the afternoon. He’d felt it that night, looking into Latham’s eyes. He felt it now, thinking of Lizzie’s last letter. Life could not be so cruel as to take his loved ones away now, not when he’d survived an entire war to come…home.

  Home, such as it was. Home was Newport, a city where his family was being threatened simply because they were free and black. Some home.

  Life could be so cruel.

  Latham was nothing but trouble, and really, John ought to leave.

  That he didn’t, that he sat out here in the cold looking at the stars, letting numbness seep into his fingers… That was idiotic.

  The barn door creaked. He turned.

  Latham didn’t say anything as he crept out. He’d brought half the blankets with him, and he wore them draped over his shoulders like a multipointed cape.

  “Couldn’t sleep?” he asked once he stood close by.

  John nodded.

  “Looking at the stars?”

&nbs
p; John nodded again. “My mother told me that the stars were different in Africa. When she first got off the ship in Charleston, it was night, and she thought she’d been taken to hell.”

  Latham didn’t answer.

  “I recognize,” John said dryly, “that the earth is round and that the stars are fixed at a great distance. I labored for a shipwright. I’m no fool.”

  “I had not said otherwise.”

  Somehow that just made John angrier. “It’s really about your own feelings, you know.”

  “Your pardon?”

  “All your talk of people being equal. It’s not about me. It’s about you. You want to believe all people are equal because it excuses your transgressions. You say ‘all men are created equal’ because back in Britain, you never questioned your tea or your sugar or your rum. You didn’t ask who grew the cotton you wore. You never needed to. Your talk of equality is a sword, not an olive branch. If you say we are equals, you think I’ll forget that you are complicit in the misery your kind inflicts on mine.”

  Latham still did not answer.

  It was easier to talk this way than to think how helpless he was, how many miles still separated him from his desperation.

  “All you idealists have a bit of Thomas Jefferson in you,” John continued. “You fall short of your professed ideals and seek to make up the difference by condescending to those you see as beneath you. But your condescension does not make me feel equal.”

  Latham sat on the well next to John. He wrapped the blankets about himself, then set one elbow on his knee and his chin on his hand. Swathed in blankets as he was, it made him look like some sort of gnome.

  “It’s a fair criticism,” he said quietly. “Very fair. In my defense, it’s a new ideal for me. I’m still trying to make everything fit.”

  “That’s a terrible defense,” John replied. “Am I supposed to excuse you because it has only recently occurred to you that I could be on your level?”