Page 35 of The Lawrence Browne Affair
Lawrence growled. “You are driving me out of my mind.”
“Oh?” Turner, who had been studying his fingernails, looked up idly at Lawrence. “You concede that you were previously in your right mind?”
“Turner, I cannot abide this racket. Or with any of the rest of it.” He rubbed his temples and squeezed his eyes shut. “I swear that I heard some sort of carpentry going on outside my window well before dawn.”
“Nonsense, the carpenters could hardly have worked without light.”
“Turner. Georgie, I’m begging you. Do something.”
The silence stretched out, and when Lawrence opened his eyes he saw the secretary regarding him carefully, all traces of irritation and feigned boredom quite gone. “All right. Go for a walk. Barnabus is in the kitchens and could use a run. He has much the same opinion of carpentry as you do, Lawrence.” He froze. “My lord,” he corrected.
Lawrence wanted to say that he preferred the sound of his own name on Turner’s tongue, not the title or honorific that had been his father’s and brother’s. He wanted to say that it filled a spot in his heart that he hadn’t known was there, a spot he full well knew he didn’t deserve to have filled.
“To hell with ‘my lord’ and ‘Radnor.’ Call me Lawrence or nothing at all. I want you, Georgie.” Lawrence watched the man’s dark eyes grow momentarily wide. “Towork, damn you. I need you. I had a thought about zinc—oh never mind. I need you helping me, not scrubbing floors and mending things. I can’t get on without you.” He hardly knew how he had managed before Turner came here.
“Speaking of mending.” Turner’s gaze raked up and down Lawrence’s body. “I need you to try on your new clothes.”
“Absolutely not.” This was the outside of enough. “My clothes are fine.”
“No, they are not. They are the opposite of fine. They are coarse and ill kept. Your son—do not look at me like that, Radn—Lawrence—yoursonwill be embarrassed to see you so badly dressed. You need a valet—”
“Stop this!” He must have shouted, because Georgie went still, and the noises outside momentarily quieted. “I apologize,” he said in a normal tone of voice. “I had a valet, but he left.”
“I daresay he did, if you insisted on dressing like a convict and growing a beard.”
Lawrence unthinkingly raised a hand to his chin. “I was under the impression you liked my beard.” The man had rubbed his face against it, for heaven’s sake. As if Lawrence were in danger of forgetting such a thing.
“So I do.” A hint of arch amusement, but nothing more. “But it’s just the thing to strike terror into the heart of a schoolboy. When?”
“Pardon? When what?”
Turner cocked his head to the side. “When did your valet leave?”
“I can’t rightly say. Two years ago? I noticed one day that he had gone.”
“You noticed one day . . . ” Turner glanced away, brushing a strand of raven-dark hair behind his ear. He hadn’t had a haircut since coming here, and now the ends touched his collar. “How long would it take you to notice that I was gone, my lord?”
“That’s a stupid question. You know perfectly well that I mark every moment you’re with me.” They were standing quite close in order to hear one another over the din of the sawing and hammering and gravel-raking. Beneath the smell of sawdust and cleaning polish, Lawrence could detect Turner’s scent, and he focused his mind on it as desperately as a drowning man might cling to a rope.
“I don’t know anything of the sort,” Turner said, his eyes flashing darkly.
Lawrence shook his head, dumbfounded that Turner hadn’t caught on. “I can’t help but notice you being there, so you’d damned well best believe I notice when you aren’t. The last few days when you’ve been away . . . I’ve noticed.” He let his voice drop on those last words.
“Because you prefer being alone, no doubt.” Turner looked up at him with an expression that did not belong on his cool, calm face. He looked young, raw, vulnerable.
“That’s not it.” It ought to have been, but it wasn’t. “I didn’t . . . I wanted you back. I . . . ” Lawrence was on the verge of telling Turner that he had missed him, that every moment without him was the pointless ticking of a clock that didn’t even keep proper time. But he had already revealed too much, to Turner and to himself. “As I said, I need your assistance.”
That strange expression dropped from Turner’s countenance, replaced by his usualfroideurand then some. “My absence was for a good cause, my lord.”
“Leave off this ‘my lord’ gammon, will you?”
“Oh, you’re in a charming mood. As I was saying, my absence was for the very good cause of making your house suitable for your son.”
“You don’t understand. This house will never be suitable for Simon or anyone else.” Including you, he wanted to say. “I had hoped to spare Simon the sight of this place.” He had hoped to spare Simon the sight of himself.
Turner regarded him speculatively. “You have memories of this place that the child will not share.”
“And thank God for it.”
