Page 46 of It Takes Two to Tumble
He felt Ben go rigid. “And would we know where you were?”
“No, but—”
“We wouldn’t know if you were alive or dead. You’d come back every year or two, maybe even longer, and expect to take up exactly where you had left off.”
Well, yes, that was exactly what he had in mind.
“That’s not enough,” Ben said. “It’s not being a father or a... whatever this is between us. It’s being a visitor.”
Phillip wanted to protest that it was all he could manage, that he wasn’t capable of more and didn’t even know if he wanted to be. “I need to return to my ship,” he said instead.
They stood together, Phillip’s forearm braced on the wall behind Ben’s head, their mouths almost touching. Ben tipped Phillip’s chin so their lips were nearly touching, then leaned forward to close the gap. Their lips brushed together, achingly familiar.
“Come back to dinner with me,” Phillip whispered. He was willing to beg for scraps at this point.
“Phillip.” Ben sighed. He took Phillip’s hand and pressed it against his chest. Phillip could feel Ben’s heart pounding, knew he wasn’t unaffected. “Don’t you see that I can’t? I love you, and it will kill a part of me to sit at your table as your guest, knowing we’ll be parted in weeks.”
Phillip took Ben’s hand and kissed it. “I love you too. But I have to go. You know this.”
“Do you really? I feel disingenuous invoking your children when I’ve already said that I want you here. But, Phillip, you’re abandoning them. It was one thing for you to be at sea when your children had a mother. But for you to leave them now, effectively orphaned, for months and years at a time when you’re all they have? That seems cruel.”
Phillip stepped back, away from Ben. “I’ve spent most of my life at sea. That’s what my life is.”
“Would you even write? Ned told me you wrote maybe one letter a year.”
He had a dozen excuses at the ready, any of which would serve to deflect Ben’s question. But instead he tried honesty, tried for once not to put any distance between him and someone he loved. He tried to ignore the insidious whispers and listen to the truth, which was that Ben cared for him, and that he trusted Ben. “I have no more use for letters than Jamie does. I can only read a little and writing is quite impossible. I gather it’s a family failing.”
He watched as realization dawned in Ben’s eyes. “I hadn’t realized,” he said weakly. “Phillip, I didn’t know. I wouldn’t have thrown it in your face just now if I had known.”
“I know.” He lifted Ben’s hand to his lips and kissed it. “I’m very good at concealing it.”
“You were so long at sea. You must have sent and received letters and kept records.”
“My lieutenants read and write for me. I know how to get by on a ship. I’m a good captain and I know how to work around the one task I can’t perform. Here, life is an endless parade of things I’m not equipped to manage.”
“Oh, Phillip.” Ben sighed. But then he drew himself up and put some distance between the two of them. “If that’s your decision, fine. But you’re leaving behind everyone who loves you.”
Phillip gave him a tight smile. Yes, yes, that was exactly what he was doing, damn it. He was also leaving behind everyone he loved.
Chapter Twenty-One
When the clock struck noon and the paper on his desk was still blank, Ben cast down his pen and gave up trying to write his sermon. The day was almost obnoxiously lovely and he wished he had someone to share it with. He could go to Barton Hall, he supposed, but he knew perfectly well how that would end: he’d stay for dinner, or the night, or indefinitely, and then he’d fritter away his time with no purpose, no income, nothing to separate him from those who had drifted in and out of his father’s house.
He didn’t dare call on the Crawfords, not until some more time had passed. If he knew Alice as well as he thought he did, she was likely insisting to all her visitors that she had broken the engagement herself. Mrs. Crawford, however, had no doubt told her tale of woe to enough talkative confidantes. He knew enough of village gossip to understand that it would blow over as soon as something more interesting happened; his broken engagement would only be mentioned in whispered asides. For heaven’s sake, his father had lived openly with two women, and he had managed to ride out the scandal. Ben could weather a broken engagement.
But he wouldn’t be here to weather it, and that was the crux of the issue. He couldn’t envision a future in which he wasn’t a part of Kirkby Barton. But he needed to find a way to earn a living, and there were no prospects in a village this small.
He opened the cupboard and took out his stoutest boots and oldest, most faded coat and went to the kitchen to tell Mrs. Winston that he meant to take a walk. But the kitchen was empty and cold, the fire banked, as if this was already not his home. So he stepped outside into blinding sunlight. He picked up a fallen branch to use as a walking stick and set off on the path around the lake he had taken so many times.
He had been born in the shadow of this crag and had only left sporadically for school and briefly for university. This was his home and he felt rooted to it. His brothers had all left, he was cordially distant from his father, Phillip was leaving, and he didn’t know if he’d ever repair things with Alice, but he belonged here. Frustrated, he slapped his walking stick into the earth.
“Slow down for God’s sake!”
Ben spun to see Hartley walking briskly to catch up with him.
“Damn it, Ben, but I nearly had to break into a run and I do not have on the boots for that. I’m sitting on the rock right here until I stop sweating. Revolting.” Hartley fanned himself with his hand. “You’ve done a fine job avoiding me.”
“I haven’t been—”
