Page 62 of The Ruin of a Rake
Since I rode the mare from Wiltshire, she is currently waiting for you in the stables of the Three Oaks, which is where I intend to break my journey back to London. If you hear that I passed through the neighborhood, you’ll understand that I didn’t wish to burden you with my presence and the noisome memories of our last encounter.
Yours in most sincere friendship,
Julian Medlock
Courtenay tried to school his expression into something other than raucous joy, but that wasn’t possible, so he buried his face in his horse’s mane. In one masterstroke, Julian had restored Courtenay’s horse, given him a broodmare, and come up with an excuse for the two of them to meet.
Courtenay saddled Niccolo himself and rode to the Three Oaks. For half a second he wondered why Julian hadn’t come to Carrington, but then realized that Julian intended them to have a public reconciliation. That would be the final genius of Julian’s plan—Courtenay would get to be generous and decent by forgiving a man who had tried to shoot him in such an unsportsmanlike way. Courtenay was fairly dazzled. If this was what the man was capable of at four and twenty years, what would he be doing ten, twenty, years from now? Courtenay fully intended to be by his side to find out for himself.
Julian assumed an air of ashamed embarrassment when Courtenay walked through the inn’s door, when what he really wanted to do was get to his feet and fling himself into Courtenay’s arms. It had been a long two weeks. He and Eleanor had apologized to one another profusely and apologetically. Apologies were easy when you were happy, Julian now understood. Gratitude was even easier, and Julian was intensely grateful for his sister and brother-in-law’s asinine scheming to save his neck. He even refrained from telling them how they could have gone about it better.
He felt like he had a stockpile of warm sentiments and he could distribute them freely and without restraint. He had spent years being miserly with his affections until he had learned better from Courtenay. Being loved by someone as open and generous as Courtenay filled Julian’s coffers, and now he could afford to be less cheap. Maybe it was just knowing that he was capable of loving someone and worthy of being loved in return that did the trick.
Eleanor, herself basking in the affections of a plainly smitten husband, was similarly inclined. Ned’s basket of rocks—geodes and fossils and strange things Julian couldn’t identify—must have won her over. Or maybe they had loved one another all along and only had to find a way to trust that they were loved in return.
Courtenay was scanning the tap room, plainly seeking Julian out. Julian didn’t try to draw attention to himself, partly because he was still playing a role and partly because he wanted to savor this moment of Courtenay searching for him, eyes darting across the room until finally finding Julian and filling with relief.
Yes, that was how it was when your soul was in pieces and somebody else had one of them. Only when you were together would the pieces fit into place and become whole.
Courtenay made his way across the room and slid into the seat across from Julian. Julian needed a moment to figure out how to not reach across the table and clasp his hand, stroke his arm, anything. He shoved the pot of tea across the table.
“You ordered tea,” Courtenay said.
“I like tea,” Julian responded.
“You like sugary milk.” Courtenay, as if to demonstrate the point, poured about an inch of tea into Julian’s cup and then added a nearly equal amount of sugar before stirring it and sloshing in some milk. When he slid the cup over to Julian, their knuckles brushed.
“Ilovesugary milk,” Julian said, and he was surprised to find that he was a little choked up, his voice thick and his eyes prickling with utterly unnecessary tears. Of course Courtenay had come, there had never been any question. He was reckless and loving and kind and of course he had come to Julian. But the loveliness of it, sitting at a table in a tavern with the person who possessed a stray fragment of his soul, and knowing they could do it again and again, that there were meals and moments stretching out infinitely before them—it was more than he could bear with equanimity. Even the poor inadequacy of the charade—they couldn’t touch, couldn’t speak freely, had to endure the absurd pantomime of reconciling after a quarrel that they had only staged to prevent the truth being found out—underlined the rare preciousness of what they truly had.
Julian sipped his tea, which Courtenay had doubtless intended as a parody of the tea he preferred but was actually the best tea he’d ever had.
Chapter Twenty-Six
It was July, and Courtenay felt warm to his bones, warmer than he had thought possible in England. He lounged in a cane chair on the bowling green at Carrington, watching Radnor’s secretary and Simon attempt to assemble the herd of cats that had come to live here. Eleanor and Standish were spending a week at Carrington Hall before leaving on a voyage. They intended to go around the world and collect a good many rocks and butterflies and whatever else Eleanor fancied. Being joint subjects of a mild scandal had apparently been precisely what they needed to cement their new bond. Standish looked pleased as pie, quite possibly because he had unburdened himself of a half dozen bloody cats, who would now be living at Carrington Hall.
Courtenay had been about to congratulate himself on keeping the dower house serenely free of all feline visitors, when he noticed that Julian, who was deep in conversation with Radnor about the particulars of steeple engineering, was cradling a cat in the crook of his arm. It was the same cat who had taken a fancy to Julian during his illness. Well, that was fine. Courtenay liked cats. And if Julian required a cat, he could have as many cats as he damned well pleased.
Not that Julian—or any number of cats—was precisely living at the dower house. They couldn’t share a house—at least not yet. Julian had insisted; they were, for all outward appearances, two men forging an unlikely friendship after the strangest of events. So, Julian had taken a house in the village, ostensibly to supervise the repair of the steeple. In the fall, they would go to Paris for a few weeks and enjoy greater proximity, before returning to Radnor’s Cornwall estate for yuletide—Simon had declared Christmas at Penkellis to be a firm tradition, and everyone helplessly agreed. Later Julian and Courtenay would go to London for the season, where Courtenay, if all went as planned, would take up his seat in the House of Lords. If the kingdom wanted to throw the poor to the wolves, Courtenay at least wouldn’t be silent about it. If they liked that cycle, they’d repeat it again the following year, a predictable pattern, together. Meanwhile, Courtenay was content to sleep at the dower house and spend his days weaving in and out of Julian’s company, while working on his estate and playing with his nephew.
He knew Julian would fall ill again. That would also be part of the pattern, part of the cycle that organized their lives. Julian’s attitude toward his illness seemed to be mostly irritation that he was occasionally bedridden. He didn’t dread recurrences, so Courtenay decided to follow his lead. No use in being morbid, no sense in grieving losses that might never come to pass. They had laid up a stockpile of tincture and that was the best that could be done. And looking at Julian now, sun-bronzed from time spent out of doors, a crop of freckles on his nose that Courtenay pretended he hadn’t noticed, it was easy to believe that his episodes were minor aberrations.
Sometimes when Courtenay came home from calling on tenants or supervising improvements, he found Julian already waiting for him in his study, scribbling something on a loose sheet of paper. When Courtenay had crept up on him and peered over his shoulder, he saw a passage involving Don Lorenzo.
“I thought he had fallen into a ravine,” Courtenay had said, startling Julian so he nearly jumped out of his chair.
“People survive these things all the time in gothic novels,” Julian had said. “Besides, this isn’t for publication.”
“Oh? May I read it? When it’s done, that is. I did enjoyThe Brigand Prince, despite everything.”
“Oh, you’ll read it all right,” Julian had said, with a look of intent mischief. Courtenay gathered that this manuscript was something filthy and was dearly looking forward to reading it.
That pleasant line of thought was interrupted when Eleanor started waving at a carriage in the distance.
“Oh, hell,” Radnor said. “I thought we’d have until supper at least.” He looked rattled, the way he always did when he had to talk to people outside the circle he tolerated—a circle that now, startlingly, included Courtenay and, by extension, Julian. Courtenay watched approvingly as the secretary angled himself so that he was closer to Radnor. Radnor’s dog, who Courtenay had previously mistaken for an enormous rolled-up carpet or a sack of laundry, had slept through the cat invasion and the arrival of a carriage, but at his master’s mild distress he perked up an ear.
The carriage approached and came to a stop. Out tumbled a towheaded boy in short pants, followed by two ladies who descended more gracefully, one in a sea of pale blue muslin and the other in a gray traveling costume. Courtenay squinted and pushed his hat back to get a better view. It was Lady Montbray and her companion. “We’re a bit early,” Lady Montbray cried. “But Julian said William could have a cat if we hurried.”
William, he assumed, was the child who was presently chasing one of the more spirited animals. “You can have three cats, at the very least,” Courtenay said, rising to his feet and kissing the air over Lady Montbray’s glove before clasping Miss Sutherland’s hand in warm affection. “They come and go in multiples of three.”
