Page 14 of Two Rogues Make a Right
Besides, if Martin acted on that sort of base impulse, he really would put paid to Will’s future. Getting him sent to the navy had been bad enough. Being unable to help him after he returned had been even worse. To cut him off from the sort of proper loving partnership that he deserved would be the ultimate disaster. Because Martin knew Will, knew him down to the bone, and he knew that if they got together, however briefly, Will would stay by Martin’s side forever. He was appallingly loyal and had no common sense whatsoever, especially where Martin was concerned.
During the years they had known one another, Martin had done nothing but take. It was the most unequal friendship ever known to man. And he was determined not to take another thing.
Once Martin collected himself, he went to Mrs. Tanner’s house, which he knew was situated on the other side of a small wood, and which he recognized by virtue of seeing all the barnyard animals Will had described to him over the past months—a goat, a pig, various species of fowl. The cottage itself was ramshackle in a way that even the gamekeeper’s cottage had not yet achieved. There seemed hardly to be a perpendicular pair of lines in the entire structure; everything bent and sagged in an alarming manner.
When he knocked on the door it was answered by Mrs. Tanner, her brow furrowed in consternation at the sight of Martin on her doorstep. “Something wrong?” she asked, not bothering to address him by a name she had surely guessed was false.
“No, no, but Mr. Sedgwick is a bit under the weather. I wanted to let you know that he won’t be around until tomorrow, in case you were expecting him. But if you need an extra set of hands, I might be able to be of use.” He couldn’t quite imagine what he could do, but Mrs. Tanner brought them supper almost nightly in exchange for Will’s help, and Martin felt that making the offer was the minimum required of him. And, if he were being honest with himself, he wanted Mrs. Tanner to stop looking at him with barely banked alarm, as if Martin were about to start ravishing young women and hosting orgies.
She gave him a long, skeptical look, almost a glare, as if she thought he were mocking her. Then she seemed to come to some kind of decision. “You can gather the eggs.”
“Gladly,” Martin said, trying to look like he gathered eggs every day of his life, like he was an expert in all matters egg-related. He turned in the direction of what appeared the area of the garden where a motley assortment of fowl congregated. They didn’t seem to have any kind of system for where they laid their eggs, and he wasn’t certain if this was typical of birds or merely of a piece with the disorder of the entire property. Soon enough, however, he spotted a small blue egg halfway beneath a rosemary bush. He bent down, picked it up, and held it gently in his hand. He found another egg, this one speckled and brown, being jealously guarded by a chicken, but he managed to spirit it away. A third egg, then a fourth, and Martin’s hands weren’t big enough to hold any more, so he returned to the house.
“Where would you like these?” he asked, rather proud of himself.
The house was dark and gloomy, but still he could see Mrs. Tanner lift her eyebrows as she relieved him of the eggs. “The next time you set about collecting eggs, you might want to use a basket.” Indeed, he remembered seeing a basket by the door, but hadn’t realized he was meant to use it. “And you might consider getting all the eggs. This time of year they lay two dozen a day. I sell them at market.”
“I didn’t realize,” he said. “I can go back out and—”
“Don’t bother.” She sat at a small deal table, much worn and with one leg of a contrasting wood. Martin wondered if that were one of the items Will had mended for her. There was only one chair, although a three-legged stool stood nearby. He guessed that there had never been a second chair, and almost certainly never a Mr. Tanner.
“The next time Mr. Sedgwick is poorly, you don’t need to trouble yourself in coming by.” Her tone was not unkind, but Martin had the distinct sense that she was putting him in his place, showing him how little he knew and how meaningless his offer of help was. “Daisy’s been bringing in the eggs since she was four,” she added in a seemingly offhand way.
Yes, he was definitely being put down a peg. “I apologize for wasting your time,” he said, and tried to sound sincere. He was sincere, damn it. But he already knew he was useless and didn’t need this woman to drive home the point. Apart from the single trunk of possessions that he had left behind at his aunt’s house, he owned nothing. Even the clothing he wore was Will’s. Mortifying both of them in the process, Will had given him the coins that now jingled in his pocket, an audible reminder that he didn’t have tuppence to his name nor did he have any prospects of ever having more unless he went to his aunt, and he was determinedly not thinking of that right now. He couldn’t even gather eggs properly. He had, very literally, nothing to offer.
He walked the rest of the distance to the village and bought a pair of Bath buns at the bakery; Will had a sweet tooth and deserved something good after a hard day. He had a momentary thrill of accomplishment—he had successfully acquired buns!—that immediately dissipated when he realized that this was the single thing he had achieved in months: buying Bath buns with somebody else’s money.
He needed to start figuring out what was going to come after this. Will had a life in London, a whole future waiting for him. It was already appalling—kind, but appalling—that he had walked away from all that in order to take care of Martin. And now Martin had to make sure that Will was able to return to his life as soon as possible.
Which, really, was now. Martin was as healthy as he was ever going to be. He couldn’t in good conscience keep Will here any longer.
Will managed to thank Martin for the Bath bun, even though he mainly felt guilty that Martin needed to look after him when it was supposed to be the other way around.
“You don’t need to eat it,” Martin said when he saw Will staring gloomily at the bun. “It’ll keep until tomorrow.”
“No, I want to.” Will took a bite and swallowed. It really was good, and the sugar momentarily cheered him up. “I just—you didn’t need to go all the way to the village.”
“Obviously not, William,” Martin said dryly. “But I wanted to.” He broke off a piece of his own bun and popped it into his mouth. “You were in one of your sorry moods and something had to be done.”
Will found himself smiling. Martin could be relied on not to treat him with kid gloves even when he was at his most pitiable. It was one of the things he loved best about Martin—he never treated Will like the aftermath of a tragedy, even when Will was feeling especially tragic. From time to time he’d catch a trace of concern in Martin’s eye, but never pity. Martin seemed to see Will as the same person he had always been, the person he had grown up with, but to whom bad things had happened. Will had learned that often when a person learned about his past—the debacle on board theFotheringayhaving been the subject of countless newspaper pieces, as it wasn’t every day a near mutiny occurred near enough to English shores for the actual court martial to take place in Portsmouth—they started to treat him as too broken to be taken seriously.
He took another bite of the bun, then washed it down with a mouthful of hot tea. He realized this meant Martin must have made tea at some point after coming home, although Will couldn’t say he had noticed. What he did notice was that Martin looked better than he had in months. The walk had put color into his cheeks, and months of Mrs. Tanner’s cooking had put some meat on his bones.
“You look well,” Will said, before he could consider whether it was a good idea.
Martin paused a fraction of a second, his cup halfway to his mouth, then raised an eyebrow. “Naturally,” he said into his teacup.
“I mean that you look healthy.” And he really did, but he also looked—some tiresome part of Will’s mind would only supply the wordhandsome.
“Yes,” Martin said, suddenly serious. “About that. I ought to go to my aunt.”
“Oh.” Will didn’t bother to conceal his disappointment. He began breaking his bun into crumbs.
“I don’t really have anywhere else to go,” Martin went on. “You know Lindley Priory is being used as a charity school now,” he said, casually eliding over the fact that he had all but given away his ancestral home for a nominal rent. “The terms of the lease don’t include the dower house, though. I could live there, I suppose.”
“You shouldn’t go there,” Will said. Martin had spent his childhood as all but a prisoner within the walls of Lindley Priory. It was in Cumberland, only a short walk from where Will and his brothers had grown up, but infinitely more stifling and dreary.
“And you shouldn’t tear up that bun if you’re not going to eat it. Look,” Martin said after Will had dutifully stopped mauling the bun, “I’m thin on options. I can’t stay here forever, and I—well, frankly, I’m going to have to beg my aunt for help.”
