Page 19 of Two Rogues Make a Right
“I’m really quite—”
“Oh, stuff it,” Martin said. “I can’t watch you sleep on the floor like a dog. Either we take turns or we share the bed.” Martin knew that if he had a sliver of common sense he’d refuse to let Will into the bed with him. He wasn’t even entirely certain why he was pressing the matter. Maybe he wanted to prove to himself that mere proximity to Will wouldn’t transform him into a grotesquely rutting lecher—wouldn’t transform him into his father. Or maybe he just liked the idea of opening his eyes and knowing Will was there. “The fact is that when I see you over there, I feel guilty and ashamed, and I don’t need more of that in my life, thank you.”
Martin couldn’t quite make heads or tails of the look Will shot him, but it didn’t matter, because a quarter of an hour later they were side by side in the bed. Martin, accustomed to having the entire mattress to himself, awkwardly tossed and turned, all the while conscious that his tossing and turning was likely keeping Will awake. Eventually Will let out a low laugh. “Do you need a bedtime story?”
“Oh, fuck off,” Martin said, smiling into his pillow despite himself.
“It’s worked in the past,” Will reminded him, rolling onto his side so they were facing one another.
“I had half forgotten about that,” Martin admitted. Sometimes, when Martin had been deemed too sick to go outdoors, Will would sneak into his room late at night. He had charted secret paths through sculleries and back staircases and once even arrived through an open window. At the time, Martin had been furious that nobody at the Grange seemed in the least bit interested in whether children were asleep in their beds or roaming about the countryside risking life and limb. Will would sit by his bed and tell Martin stories in a whisper so quiet that Martin’s nurse wouldn’t be wakened, and then slip out once Martin was asleep. They carried on like this for the entire summer of their fourteenth year, until one morning Martin’s nurse found them both curled up together in bed. Will had fallen asleep in the middle of the story, that was all. But Martin’s father was always on the lookout for vice, and within a week he announced that he had secured a place for Will in the navy. Martin had been horrified: anybody ought to have been able to see that Will had no business in the navy. He was absentminded, flighty, and sensitive. But Mr. Sedgwick was glad to have at least one of his sons’ futures settled, and Will was dazzled by thoughts of adventure and faraway lands.
“You’re not even listening,” Will chided.
“I must be more tired than I thought,” Martin said, and then faked a yawn. He remained very still, and Will was asleep in minutes.
Martin woke to discover an arm flung across his middle. He must have gasped or made some other stupid noise because the arm was immediately retracted. The next time Martin woke, Will’s arm was once again around him. This time Will was pressed against Martin’s back. And, oh God, this had been a terrible idea. All Martin could think of was how lovely it felt to have Will so close, as if warmth and safety were seeping into his skin. If they stayed like that, Martin would start to believe that he was the sort of person who deserved this sort of thing, that it had to mean something that their bodies fit together so well and so comfortably. He told himself that this was probably how everybody was; perhaps people just touched one another all the time and it always felt good and they let themselves like it.
He next woke to full sunlight and the sound of the door being flung open. “William Sedgwick,” Mrs. Tanner bellowed. “I told you I would murder you myself if you so much as looked at Daisy.”
Will, his face buried in the back of Martin’s neck, hardly stirred at this intrusion. Martin extricated himself and rose to a sitting position, holding up a finger to his mouth. “Daisy asked Will to flirt with her to improve her standing with some lad who, you’ll be pleased to know, isnotthe ostler,” he hissed. “I assumed she had told you of her plans, and if she didn’t, I apologize for not speaking to you first. I assure you that neither Will nor I have any interest in your daughter, and Will was fairly horrified by even pretending to flirt with a girl of her age.”
Mrs. Tanner looked back and forth between them. Will, amazingly, was still asleep. “Oh,” she said, as if recognition were dawning. “I see. Well. I hadn’t figured either of you gentleman to be—well, I suppose it takes all kinds, and I do beg your pardon—”
“I begyourpardon, madam,” Martin said. “I haven’t the faintest idea what you’re talking about. What I mean to say is that neither Mr. Sedgwick nor I have any interest in sixteen-year-old girls. Please curtail your wilder flights of conjecture. Be gone with you.”
He had been harsh, he knew that. In that high-handed speech, he heard the echoes of his father’s voice. And Mrs. Tanner hadn’t even been insinuating any insult or threats of exposure. But his blood boiled at the idea of any harm coming to Will—not an insult, not a twisted bit of gossip, not a nasty rumor. The very idea made Martin want to salt the earth and burn the fields.
It was not, he realized, his best quality. It was a vindictiveness and ruthlessness that suggested he might have more in common with his father than a superficial resemblance. With a pang, he remembered the Cumberland tenants he had squeezed and used in order to raise money; that, too, had been for Will.
Mrs. Tanner was staring at him with wide eyes and Martin scrambled for something civil to say. “I apologize. I’m a bear when I wake up. Please tell Daisy she can have the morning to herself, thank you.” Without replying, the woman backed out of the door.
“Back to sleep,” Will mumbled, tugging Martin back to the mattress. Martin, idiot that he was, let himself be dragged down and tucked against Will’s warm body, even though he knew he didn’t deserve it.
Chapter Eight
Martin was simultaneously pleased and dismayed to discover that building a pig enclosure was the sort of work that required Will to take off his coat and roll up his sleeves. He had a lamentable weakness for Will’s forearms, quite possibly a weakness for any part of Will’s body that he chose to uncover.
“Can’t put that rail up so high,” Daisy said. She too had her sleeves rolled up, which explained why the two sons from a neighboring farm had come to help build the pen, and why Martin could therefore lounge on an overturned barrel rather than actually participate in any of the manual labor. “The piglets are still too little, and they’ll scramble out underneath it.”
Much discussion ensued, and Will proceeded to notch the wooden rail precisely where Daisy had indicated. Daisy was a font of wisdom when it came to rural living. Martin hadn’t the faintest idea what she and her mother were talking about half the time, but it was clear that they managed to make do with a couple of animals and a talent for poaching. Daisy never mentioned any father, and Martin was now fully convinced that the late Mr. Tanner was an entirely fictive entity, designed to give Mrs. Tanner a scrap of respectability.
Will approached, wiping sweat off his forehead with the back of his hand. Martin got to his feet and handed him the flask of ale. Through the damp and threadbare fabric of Will’s shirt, Martin could see the faint shadow of the birds that were inked on his arm. He let himself look for a moment before dragging his gaze away.
“I understand the general principle of penning pigs,” Martin said. “But how does it apply to animals who can fly?”
“With chickens and ducks, there’s a lot of optimism involved on all sides,” Will said. “And also shoving them all into a henhouse at night. Did you know, they build hog pens differently here than they do in the north?”
Martin knew nothing of the sort and could think of few topics less fascinating, but listening to Will go on was a treat in itself. “Tell me more about your pigsties, William.”
Will elbowed him. “The pig enclosure at the Grange was made of stone. There was even a little house at one end, where the pigs could get out of the sun.”
“I don’t remember you having pigs.”
“I believe one of my father’s guests let them out after reading too much Rousseau. But we did have pigs when I was very young, when my mother and Ben and Hartley’s mother were around to make sure they got fed. To make sure all of us got fed, really.”
Sometimes when Martin thought about conditions at the Grange during Will’s childhood, he had to stop what he was doing and just seethe in anger for a little while. He pushed that thought aside for now. “So pigs in Cumberland live in stone-walled splendor. How will our Sussex pigs live?”
“In relative freedom. Rousseau might even approve. Except for the part where we’ll eat them. In any event, they’ll have three times the space as the Grange pigs, and Daisy and I—or Daisy and her beaux—will build a sort of portico at one end so they don’t get sunburned.”
