Page 39 of The Ruin of a Rake
“Youwerea child, then.” Courtenay said, staring at him curiously.
Julian felt his breath hitch. “I was never a child!” He hadn’t meant it to sound so vehement, so angry. But he hadn’t had any kind of childhood, not when it was divided between the sickroom and the counting house.
Courtenay didn’t look surprised, though. He nodded, as if to indicate that he had guessed as much, or that he commiserated without the need for further elaboration. His silence felt like a gift, and Julian didn’t know how to respond. He felt like he ought to be grateful, and hated it. He had gone a good long time without accruing debt of any kind and didn’t want to start today, and especially didn’t like the notion he had that he might not mind so much being indebted to Courtenay.
The deliberate clink of dishes interrupted them, saving Julian from figuring out how to proceed. The inn servant placed hot platters before them with an amount of clatter and fuss that Julian would ordinarily have found excessive and ill-bred, but now he was glad to have a few moments to collect himself.
Julian pointedly ordered a pot of tea. When he turned back to Courtenay, he saw that the man had carved a joint and heaped slices of it onto both of their plates. He found that he was pleased by this bit of domesticity.
“Stupid habit,” Courtenay apologized, holding the carving knife with an air of embarrassment. “But I used to do it for Simon and Isabella.”
Again, the hint of a Courtenay he hardly knew, somebody who had sat at a table with a family he had lost. It should have been hard to reconcile this man with the man whose sprees of libertinism were common knowledge. Then again—he glanced at the untouched ale, thought of Courtenay’s vicious mother—maybe not so hard after all to reconcile those two sides of the coin.
“Tell me about them,” Julian said.
And Courtenay did. By the time their plates were empty and their teacups drained, Julian had heard tales of Courtenay’s travels with his sister and nephew around Italy and through the Mediterranean and Adriatic. He also told Julian stories about trying to teach his nephew to swim, and the dog he had taken in during a cold winter, the times his sister and nephew had both fallen ill with fevers.
“My sister wanted to see everything. At the beginning, there was a year or two when she insisted on not waking up in the same bed more than seven times in a row. Simon thought it was all a grand adventure, but what he really wanted was to visit the stables at every inn we stayed at. He wound up learning every language the stable hands spoke.”
“It all sounds very jolly.” Julian felt unreasonably envious of Courtenay’s nephew, allowed to explore and wander and never confined to sickrooms or forced to contend with ledgers.
“I ought to have known better,” Courtenay said. “Isabella’s health had always been delicate and the constant traveling took a toll.”
Julian’s heart stuttered. He hadn’t realized Courtenay’s sister had been unwell, hadn’t realized Courtenay believed he could have saved her by acting differently. “Based on what you’ve told me, there wasn’t anything you could have done to persuade your sister to settle down in one place. Am I right?”
“Yes, but—”
“So, your guilt over the matter is predictably self-indulgent.” He tried to imagine what he’d want someone to tell Eleanor if she had chosen to stay in Madras, if she hadn’t managed to convince Julian to leave before another summer weakened him further. “You loved your sister and you did your best.”
Something of his tension must have bled into his voice, because Courtenay reached across the table and briefly touched Julian’s hand. Courtenay couldn’t possibly understand why Julian found this topic personally disturbing, but he could tell that Julian was disturbed, and he cared. And that meant more to Julian than he could have anticipated.
When Courtenay picked up his tale again, he let it veer into anecdotes that were slightly off color—he’d reference a former mistress or being caughtin flagrantein a delicate situation—and he’d hesitate before proceeding.
“You’d better not be thinking of leaving that out,” Julian said in one such instance. “I’d feel cheated.” And he would feel cheated, not only because those were the juicier parts of Courtenay’s tale, but because they were at all part of Courtenay’s tale. He wouldn’t be the man he was, sitting across a scarred wood table from Julian if he hadn’t been the sort of man to run off to Athens with Italian princesses (a lady who had since reunited with her husband) and have an affair of long standing with his sister’s coachman (a man who now owned a tavern near Naples).
Julian had initially thought the roast a trifle dry, but by the time they rose from the table, he considered it was the best meal he had had in his entire life.
Chapter Sixteen
The sun had set by the time they returned to the stables where Medlock kept his horses near his London lodgings. It was an unseasonably warm evening for April, and it was the first time Courtenay felt agreeable about the weather since he had set foot on English soil.
“Care for some tea, Courtenay?” Medlock asked with the too-casual tone of somebody with an ulterior motive.
“Not really, Medlock,” Courtenay responded, amused. Not well-practiced in seduction, was Medlock. And that only made Courtenay like him more, damn it, because any other man would leave the seduction up to Courtenay—but Medlock liked being in control. Courtenay rather liked Medlock being in control too.
“You’ll come up anyway, I dare say,” Medlock retorted.
Yes, God help him, he would. He followed Medlock up the stairs and settled into a low chair, watching as Medlock dispensed with his manservant. Medlock never looked better than when he was telling people what to do. He wasn’t precisely handsome, nor even striking or any of the other adjectives people used to describe men with unconventional looks. No, Medlock was the opposite of striking. He was aggressively neutral. But the way he moved, the way he spoke, the things he said—Courtenay’s heart thumped in his chest whenever he caught a look at the man. He was aware of a growing conviction that Medlock looked precisely the way he wanted a man to look like, whatever that even meant.
“Come here,” he said after Medlock locked the door behind him. His trousers already felt too tight.
Medlock came and stood before him, his usual haughtiness tempered by a hint of awkwardness that made Courtenay want to laugh with happiness. Courtenay took hold of his hands and tugged him down into his lap. Medlock adjusted himself so he was straddling Courtenay’s knees, and it wasn’t clear whether Medlock was sitting on Courtenay’s lap or pinning him down. Courtenay was fine with either option.
“Thank you,” Courtenay said, looking up at Medlock. “For today.”
Medlock’s quicksilver eyes gleamed. “It was a rare pleasure to deal with your mother. It’s not every day I get to be as rude as I like.”
Courtenay smoothed his hands down Medlock’s sides and felt the man shiver. “You’re very good at being rude.”
