“What profession?” His gaze dipped to Ash’s leg. “What can you do but sit behind a desk, Ashleigh?”
It felt like a slap, that casual dismissal. And not least because it spoke to his secret fear. Whatcouldhe do? He knew nothing but banking and soldiering and was unfit for either. “I n-need to consider w-what — ”
His father slammed his hand flat on the table, making him jump. “Enough,” he snarled. “Enough of this. I’ve been patient, but it’s time to pick up your life again. I shall write to Pollock directly, and if you’re damned lucky he’ll give you another chance. God knows you don’t deserve it. Now get out of my sight.”
Shaken, Ash turned and left.
He was furious. Furious with his father, but angrier still with himself for not fighting harder, for not giving voice to the outrage simmering inside. But he was frightened, too.
Terrified he’d drown in this suffocating old world that had him by the ankle and wouldn’t let go.
CHAPTEREIGHTEEN
Boyd was mucking out Bella’s stall when Harry stepped into the stables, the light bright on this spring afternoon and the air full of horse shit and hay.
But Harry’s mind was elsewhere, back with Ash and whatever he was taking from his bastard of an old man. He was uneasy about Ash’s decision to turn down the position at the bank, not least because he he’d done it out of some barmy notion that the two of them could run off together. As if this bloody world would ever permit that! But when he’d seen the fury on Sir Arthur’s face, he’d felt afraid for the first time.
Christ. Ash had always been a dreamer, but the ideas he’d talked about last night were all kinds of impossible — and liable to end with one or both of them in chokey if Ash breathed a word to anyone else. Would he be mad enough to speak to his father, to ask him for money to start a stud farm with his bloody stable hand?
“Back from the big smoke, then,” Boyd said, leaning on the handle of his broom.
“Aye.” Harry shook his thoughts away, struggling to appear his usual self. No point in them both raising suspicions. He took the broom from Boyd. “Where’s John? Why ain’t he mucking out for you?”
“His ma wanted him in the scullery this morning — it’s washing day.”
Harry grimaced. As much as he didn’t care for the lad’s sneaky ways, a morning in the steam of the scullery on washing day was nobody’s idea of fun. But he couldn’t deny he was glad to escape John’s sly gaze.
He started to sweep, enjoying the feel of physical labour after two days sitting about on trains and poking around London. Not that he hadn’t got some exercise last night. He hid his smile at the memory, his skin heating with a betraying flush as he remembered rolling around naked with Ash. God, but he looked fine in the throes of passion, sensual and loving. And lovable — that was the key. He’d never met a more lovable bloke than Ash, not to his way of thinking. He stirred all sorts of warm feelings, and not just the ones below the belt.
When he thought about it, he realised he’d probably been in love with Ash since that evening in the support trench at Wipers when Harry had found him sitting with Little Bill, the night before they were first rotated into the firing line, helping the lad write a letter home to his mum. Ash had been patient and kind, not patronising like some of the officers, and the distraction had helped settle the boy’s nerves for what was to come. Ash had caught Harry’s eye over Little Bill’s bent head, smiled, and that had been that.
Harry had been beguiled.
Still was.
He spent the rest of that day exercising the horses in the paddock, hoping that Ash might wander past so they could share a few moments and he could find out what Sir Arthur had had to say for himself. But there was no sign of Ash all day, which was wise yet more prudent than Harry had expected. He couldn’t decide whether it was a good sign or bad.
By the time he’d caught up with all the jobs he’d missed during his two days away and had settled the horses into their stalls for the night, it was growing dark and Harry had missed his chance to have supper with Boyd and the rest of the staff. That had been deliberate. After last night, he wasn’t fit company for anyone but Ash, and he needed time to think — alone. So he walked down to the Oak instead and sat in a corner nursing a pint.
He didn’t come to any startling conclusions, nor any way out of his predicament — that being, he was in love with a man who was so far above him they couldn’t even pretend to be friends. A man who was idealistic and reckless and, in Harry’s opinion, didn’t quite have his feet on the ground. Hard as he thought about it, he couldn’t see any future for them beyond a few stolen hours and the constant threat of discovery and shame.
Shame.
Bloody hard to accept that something so beautiful should be a matter for shame, but unlike Ash he was a realist. He’d grown up in a hard, unbending world far from the sleepy contentment of Highcliffe House and he’d never had the luxury of dreaming about impossible futures. Truth was, other people would see their love as shameful, would look on them with disgust. Harry couldn’t deny it made him want to take the world by its throat and shake some bloody sense into it — after four bitter years of war, hadn’t he and Ash earned the damned right to live and love in peace? — but the realist in him knew that rage was dangerous. Safer by far to hide in the shadows, to let the darkness shield them both from the judgmental old bastards determined to keep anything from changing.
And none of that brought him any nearer a solution. Because there was no solution.
When he’d reached the bottom of his glass, he made his way along the lane back to Highcliffe House. His small room above the stables beckoned, but he headed to the outhouse to relieve himself first. It was close to eleven by then and the house was already dark and shut up for the night. Even Ash’s room had no light.
Didn’t stop Harry lingering, though, watching the curtains in Ash’s ground floor window breathe in and out with the breeze. He should go to bed. He’d be up before dawn to start the day. Only he couldn’t seem to move his feet. Hands shoved deep in his pockets, he stood there under a cool, clear sky watching wisps of cloud racing across the stars and remembering last night and how it had felt to sleep with Ash in his arms. They’d slept squashed together in dugouts, too, them and a few other men, muttering and dreaming in the frigid winter nights, huddled close for warmth. And on airless summer nights, too, their noses grown numb to the stink of sweaty unwashed men — and the worse stink of the unreachable dead beyond the wire.
But now, back in this civilized world, they were apart. Ash in the big house, Harry in the stables, and the no man’s land between them as impassable as ever. With a heavy heart, he made his reluctant feet turn away, back to the stables.
He hadn’t taken a single step, however, when he saw a light in Ash’s window — the flare of a match, the red glow of a cigarette tip. And, ghostly behind it, Ash’s pale figure.
Harry’s heart leaped and for a moment indecision froze him in place. To go to Ash was dangerous. It wasstupid. And yet the tang of cigarette smoke had already reached him from the open window, and he could think of only one reason why Ash would be sitting there smoking in the dark. Quietly, he crossed the gravel path.
Ash sat in the window, shirtless, all pale shadows and unfathomable dark eyes. But he started as if from a dream when he saw Harry. “Christ!”