Page 13 of Two Rogues Make a Right
Will didn’t know why Martin refused to listen to reason when it came to his father. It was almost as if he wanted to blame himself entirely for his own predicament. Will had no trouble acknowledging the role both their fathers played in their sons’ present circumstances: poor, ill-equipped for any profession, and emotionally raw. He went to put his arm around Martin, then remembered that Martin didn’t want to be touched, and pulled his hand back.
“I read that manuscript you left on the table,” Martin said.
“Youwhat?” Will sputtered.
“Was I not meant to? It was sitting right in the open. I wouldn’t have read it if I thought it was a secret. It was very good.”
“It wasn’t a secret.” Will’s cheeks were burning hot. “The good lines are all Hartley’s.”
“And the parts where I actually—” he gestured to the vicinity of his chest “—feltthings, that was you, damn you.”
“Probably,” Will said, grinning despite himself.
“What do you plan to do with it?”
“We offered it to a theater manager who is a friend of a friend. I suppose we’ll hear back any day now.”
Martin made an appreciative noise. “Perhaps I’ll be well enough to return to London in time to see it staged.”
“Are you eager to get back?” Will asked cautiously.
“Eager,” Martin repeated. “William, you know better. I haven’t been eager for anything in ages,” he said, dry as dust. “I suppose I’m grimly resigned to returning to my aunt’s house at some point. I can’t very well stay here, living off your charity, can I?” Martin went on.
He sounded acutely miserable, and Will badly wanted to promise that Martin would never have to return to his aunt. But that was a promise Will couldn’t make. “I’m literally living in your house for free, so that’s a funny definition of charity,” he said instead.
“What about you?” Martin asked. “Are you eager to get back to town?”
The truth was that he wasn’t. He wanted to plant a few rows of carrots and be around when they were ready to harvest. He wanted to chop more firewood and know that he’d be the one to put it in the hearth next winter. He wanted—he wanted a lot of things, he was beginning to realize, and he wasn’t going to have any of them. “I miss my friends,” he said, because it was the truth, of a kind. “I’d say I miss Hartley but he hasn’t given me a chance to miss him.” For a moment he thought about telling Martin what he had already told Hartley, that being in the country made it easier to avoid temptation. After all, Martin already knew the worst. During those first months after Will had returned to England, Martin had been the one to drag Will out of opium dens and hells of every variety. But Martin looked fragile and young, and he was looking at Will with something like faith, and Will didn’t want to shatter it, however misguided.
“It’ll be grand when we go back to London,” Will said brightly. “You’ll see.”
Chapter Six
A few times since they had been living in the gamekeeper’s cottage, Will had what Martin privately thought of as a Gloomy Day. This was probably making light of a serious matter, but Day of Remembering Being Tortured by a Madman on a Boat seemed a trifle grim, however accurate, so Gloomy Day would have to do. On those days, Will would sleep even heavier and later than usual, then spend the rest of the day with a teacup clutched in his hands, his gaze apparently fixed on something like a whorl in the plaster or a crack in the windowpane. Sometimes he seemed not to hear when Martin spoke to him. Martin, for the most part, left him alone; he found that if he refilled Will’s teacup or put a sandwich within arm’s reach, Will would absently drink or eat. If Martin dropped a blanket over Will’s shoulders, it would remain there hours later.
It reminded Martin of those months when Will only seemed to find the world bearable through the haze of laudanum, as if oblivion was the best he could hope for. That comparison was troubling, but it might have been even more so if Martin hadn’t remembered that, when they were children, Will could spend an afternoon watching a spider weave a web. Sometimes, for good or for ill, Will’s mind just went wandering. If Will needed to spend a day staring at the wall, so be it.
When, on a March morning, Will hadn’t budged from his chair for over an hour, Martin realized that this was the first Gloomy Day during which he was capable of actually doing something useful for Will. He brewed a fresh pot of tea and topped off Will’s cup, then dressed in a clean shirt and the better of the two pairs of trousers that sat in the trunk at the foot of the bed.
“Will,” he said, his voice sounding loud in the stillness of the room. Will didn’t answer, so Martin put his hand on the other man’s shoulder. Will, as he did whenever Martin touched him, however incidentally, almost leaned into the touch, and Martin wanted to slap himself. Will was probably starved for touch, stuck here in a cottage with only Martin for company. All those weeks, Martin had only thought about how he couldn’t bear to let Will touch him because every touch sent his mind reeling in forbidden directions, but he had neglected to remember that Will needed to be touched. Feeling like he was crossing a Rubicon, he squeezed the shoulder that was already under his hand, and then leaned in a bit in an awkward attempt at a sideways embrace.
Will turned his head to look up at Martin as if surprised to find him there, and then covered Martin’s hand with his own. Martin could feel the calluses on Will’s palm, the chill of his fingertips. It felt impossibly lovely, skin on skin, as if affection could be absorbed through flesh and bone. He could have stayed there for hours, awkward angle and all, soaking up the sweetness of it.
Instead he cleared his throat. “I’m going for a walk,” Martin said. “I’ll be back in a bit.” He had leaned, so now their faces were close, close enough that he could see the individual hairs that made up the scruff on Will’s jaw, the faint lines that had no business being around the eyes of a man who was barely twenty-three. It also meant he was close enough to see when something shifted in Will’s expression, when his gaze flicked down to Martin’s mouth and then back again.
He managed to give Will’s shoulder another squeeze before standing upright and making his way to the door. Before crossing the threshold, he turned around, grabbed the blanket, tucked it around Will’s shoulders, and then all but ran outside.
He walked until he was out of sight of the cottage, then braced himself against a tree. He was a fool, a prize idiot, stupid in ways he hadn’t even considered.
Martin was quite aware, and had been for years, that all he had to do was crook his finger and Will would come running. The fact that Will had walked away from his home and his work in order to play nursemaid to Martin was proof enough. But until today, Martin hadn’t considered that Will would oblige in more... carnal matters. He had tried very hard not to think of Will and carnal matters at the same time. He tried not to think of carnal matters, full stop, but that was another predicament entirely.
But now that he had the idea in his mind, it was hard to dislodge. He knew Will liked women, but that didn’t mean he only liked women. Martin was fairly sure he himself liked women as much as he liked men, which was to say not particularly much. He supposed he was capable of being attracted to anybody, as long as they were Will Sedgwick. That was a problem he had long since become accustomed to: he knew how he felt about Will, and he knew there was nothing for it, and that was that.
But if there was a possibility—if Will might be interested in the same thing—
He nipped that line of thought in the bud. Will was interested in nothing of the sort. Will had looked at his mouth exactly one time, and Martin had no experience whatsoever with what men looked like when they wanted to be kissed, so it didn’t matter what he thought he had seen.
And even if Will had been open to the idea of a kiss, that was probably because he had noticed Martin’s attraction—and really, the spiders in the rafters had surely noticed by now—and responded out of whatever madness made him want to agree to anything Martin wanted.
