Page 52 of The Ruin of a Rake
“Thank you.” Julian tried not to read too much into the gesture. Sugar syrup in one’s medicine did not constitute a declaration of love, or even a truce. He lifted a feeble hand to pet the sleeping kitten. It was still at the fragile stage of early kittenhood, all bones and fluff.
“Do you want me to take the cat away?”
“No.”
“Good, because the two of you look adorable, and besides, there are two other kittens hiding in the bookcase, waiting for their chance to stake their claim.”
Julian squirmed. He knew he didn’t look anything close to adorable. He was sweaty and disheveled and wearing nothing but one of Standish’s borrowed nightshirts. He could smell himself, which was never a good sign. Courtenay, meanwhile, was reprehensibly handsome in his evening clothes, even after a night of sitting in a sickroom. Julian thought he’d never get used to the stark fact of Courtenay’s beauty. Or, rather, he never would have, in a world where he was given the chance to find out.
“The kitten was probably cold,” he said, stroking one of the cat’s impossibly tiny ears. “And I’m the warmest thing in the room. It would be mean-spirited for me to send him away.”
Courtenay touched Julian’s brow. “Not as hot as you were when I brought you here. Perhaps you’re recovering?”
“Or perhaps the fever will return tonight, and tomorrow night, and the night after.”
“Is that what usually happens?”
“When I was a child, yes. But since coming to England it’s been mild.” Or, as mild as these things ever were. He remembered entire summers with fevers coming nightly. Then, he had thought it would kill him. Now, he still thought it might kill him, but likely not for decades, perhaps not until he was already old and infirm.
“Do you want me here, Julian?”
“Yes, please,” he answered, too quickly, but he didn’t care. “You’re the only one I want here.” You’re the only one I could stand to have here, he wanted to say.
“Then I’ll stay.”
Relief washed over Julian. He didn’t know whether he was still delirious or whether the illness had weakened his resolve, but he had never before wanted anyone with him when he was sick. He had always tried his hardest to send even Briggs and Eleanor away. He remembered what Courtenay had said about fighting desire being like tethering a balloon, and wondered if he had always wanted a companion, somebody he could turn to when he was at his most miserable, somebody to whom he could expose this most secret part of himself.
“Until you’re well,” Courtenay added.
That brought Julian crashing back to earth. Courtenay wasn’t here out of any affection for Julian, but out of some misguided sense of obligation. “No, damn it, please go if you’re going to be a martyr about it. I’d rather have Briggs, in that case.” He knew he sounded peevish and ungrateful but that was better than sounding pathetically disappointed.
“Of course I want to be here. When I thought you were...” He gestured as if he couldn’t come up with the word, but the word wasdyingand they both knew it. “There wasn’t anywhere else I could have been.”
He didn’t say that he wanted to be here. He said that he couldn’t have been anywhere else, and Julian didn’t know if that was better or worse. Before he could puzzle it out, he shut his eyes and fell asleep.
Chapter Twenty-One
Julian woke to the sound of Standish’s voice and the bizarre feeling of not knowing where or even when he was. He cracked open an eye just enough to see that he was in Eleanor’s drawing room. At some point, Julian couldn’t quite be sure when, he had graduated from the sofa in the back parlor to a chair in the drawing room. This was supposed to be a sign of improvement, it was supposed to be heartening. The dangerous part of the episode was over, but now Julian was a wrung-out rag, a dried husk of a man. This was the worst part, the weariness and weakness, the bodily stiffness, the bone-deep sense of bored uselessness. It was in this state of mind that he had writtenThe Brigand Prince.
“You’re good at this,” he heard Standish say.
“I’ve had practice.” It was Courtenay, somewhere behind Julian’s chair. Judging by the sounds of silver clinking against china, he was stirring something. Over the last day—two days, three days, however long it had been—the tincture had grown decreasingly noxious. “I like making sick people comfortable.”
“He’s a terrible patient, though. Once he threw a dish at a wall. Broke the dish and a window.” Julian had been ten bloody years old and so fucking tired of being sick in bed.
A pause stretched out. Would Courtenay laugh with Standish about Julian’s peevishness, his bad temperament? “But he must have been a child,” Courtenay said with a mildness Julian knew to be deceptive.
“I suppose he must have been. It’s funny, but I don’t remember him being a child. I mean, not a proper child.”
Julian wasn’t sure if he could actually hear Courtenay grind his teeth or if he just knew that it had to be happening.
“I find it hard to imagine Julian being a less than proper anything,” Courtenay said.
“What I mean to say is that he was never climbing trees or stealing sweets from the kitchens.”
“You know more about those days than I do, but my understanding is that old Mr. Medlock gave Julian a good deal of responsibility as a way of sticking it to Julian’s father. Julian didn’t have much opportunity to steal sweets.” He paused, and when he spoke again he had resumed his customary charm. “Besides, I have it on good authority that he used to harbor wounded animals in the library. I believe Eleanor specifically told me of a mongoose.”
Standish cracked a laugh. “Good God, I had forgotten about that. But even then, he acted as if the mongoose had to be given quarter in the library as a matter of course, and anyone who had the temerity to suggest otherwise was out of line. As if the mongoose had to be in the library, not because Julian wanted it, but because it was written in some book of household management. He’s always been like that.”
