Page 2 of Two Rogues Make a Right
“Do you know where you are?” Will asked.
No he bloody well did not know where he was. “Thousand thousand years ago,” he mumbled.
Beyond the pounding in his head, he heard a vial being unstopped, then felt a cool hand on his cheek, followed by the unmistakable foulness of willow bark tincture in his mouth. He tried to spit it out—dignity was quite beyond him—but Will stroked his hand down Martin’s throat and made a truly regrettable soothing sound, and Martin did not know whether to try to recoil or to purr like a cat. Before he could decide, he was asleep.
When he woke, the room was brighter, and that was unfortunate in every way, because it turned out that light was almost as ghastly as whatever was happening on the left side of his chest. For lack of anything better to do, he opened his eyes slowly, trying to make them adjust. Maybe the pain in his head would distract him from everything else. After he got one eye a third of the way open, he could make out the rough wood frame of the bed he lay upon. Beyond that were a pair of bare windows, clouded and cracked. Above his head was a ceiling crossed with dark wood beams. He was vaguely aware of a fire crackling somewhere behind him. When he breathed tentatively through his nose, careful not to strain his lungs, he could tell that it was a wood fire, not coal. On the one hand, he was more than a little alarmed to find himself in a totally unfamiliar place; on the other, this was certainly not his aunt’s London townhouse, nor was it Lindley Priory. Relieved to have established that, he let his eyes drift shut again.
The next time he woke, it was once again dark. Somehow he had managed to roll onto his side. From this position, he could see a fire burning high and bright in a stone hearth. Before the fire was a plain, straight-backed wooden chair, and in that chair was Will Sedgwick, fast asleep, his mouth slightly open, his hair a disgrace, his jaw covered in highly lamentable stubble. He wore a coat of some rough brown substance that might once, much earlier in its lifetime, have been called wool. Martin was surprised to discover that he had been expecting a much younger version of Will. This was not the Will of long-ago summers, of hillside rambles and multiplying freckles. This Will was tired, haggard, and very pale. Martin strongly suspected that he was all of those things too. Good to know, he supposed. He certainly felt haggard and wrung out, but he also could not remember a time when he hadn’t felt that way.
There were hands on his shoulders the next time he woke, and then another hand on the small of his back, lifting. Martin attempted an “unhand me” but it came out a sad mumble.
“Need to get you sitting, love,” Will said, because he was the stupidest man to ever live and had never guarded his tongue, not once in his life.
“Shut up,” Martin said.
Will didn’t take his hands away, even after hauling Martin upright. “I’ll shut up as much as you like after you have a swallow of this.” He held up a vial.
Martin ignored this. “How long have I been here?”
“Just under a week.”
“Not my aunt’s house,” Martin said, forgetting that he had already worked out the reasons for which this hovel could not have anything to do with Lady Bermondsey.
“No, not your aunt’s house.” Will was now smoothing hair off Martin’s forehead. It felt good, which was not permitted. Martin shrank away from his touch.
“Promise me you won’t send for her.”
That made Will frown. That was appropriate, if slightly belated, because he ought to have been frowning minutes ago instead of petting Martin like a cat. “I can’t do that.”
Oh, Martin knew that face. It was the face of Will having a moral quandary. There was no use talking to him when he was in that sort of state, too profoundly in love with the idea of the moral high ground to actually get anything done. Something useless, like—fondness, maybe—swirled around in the vicinity of Martin’s heart. “Fuck off,” Martin said, for lack of any better ideas. He was almost positive he heard Will laugh. “And open the window, will you. It’s sweltering in here.”
When he woke the next time, blessedly cool air wafted across his body. The pounding in his head had diminished enough to let him think somewhat cogently. This was not London. The only sounds from outdoors were the hoots and shrieks of owls and the wind agitating bare wintry branches. He also knew that it wasn’t Cumberland, although he would have been hard-pressed to say how he knew he wasn’t home. Nor was it Will’s house, because Will didn’t have a house—he barely had a pair of trousers, judging by the looks of him. Will had taken him somewhere, and Martin didn’t know whether to be grateful or to be outraged that Will had walked away from his life to sit in a—hut, or whatever this place was—playing nursemaid to his dying childhood friend.
Martin sighed. Good lord, he was tired of dying. He had been dying for over twenty years now and was slightly appalled that even consumption didn’t seem to have finished the job. Whatever illness had prompted this little rural interlude had been worse than usual, however. He had the wrung-out and ragged feeling that only came after a long, brutal fever. But now he could fill his lungs partway and was aware of something resembling hunger, so he supposed he’d live to see this whole revolting cycle through from the beginning.
He closed his eyes and went back to sleep.
Two truths were dawning on Will Sedgwick.
The first was that he had, very possibly, almost certainly, kidnapped Sir Martin Easterbrook. He hadn’t meant to—in his defense, he had had a lot on his mind—but he was aware that a magistrate, or, really, anybody with a functioning brain, would take one look at this situation and know precisely what to think. But Martin had been wavering between unconsciousness and delirium, and the doctor said he needed country air, so Will had done the only thing he could think of. He knew exactly what the papers would make of it: Invalid Baronet Kidnapped by Disgraced Sailor. Never mind that they had been friends for fifteen years. Never mind that they had grown up together. Never mind that Will, during his more maudlin moments, thought Martin might be his other half, the true north on his compass, the person his soul reached for like a plant to the sun—
The second was that Martin was going to die. That part really shouldn’t have come as a shock. For six months, Will had assumed that Martin was already dead, foolishly reasoning that nothing short of death would stop Martin from answering Will’s letters. He thought he had gotten used to the idea of Martin being dead. But it turned out that suspecting somebody was gone was quite different from the prospect of watching them slip away, cough by cough, under one’s own care.
Martin was going to die in a one-room gamekeeper’s cottage, under an assumed name, and with no company but Will. This, Will supposed, was no worse than his dying in a garret or an alley in London, which was likely what would have happened if Will hadn’t intervened (he was resolutely thinking of it as intervention, not as assault followed by kidnapping) so in that sense he hadn’t done Martin any harm. But they were already in Sussex, and Will had already deposited half the contents of his coin purse into the coachman’s outstretched palm, when it occurred to him that he really should have brought Martin to his aunt. So what if his last coherent words had been a plea that Will not bring him to his aunt? The fact was that he had a relation who could pay for doctors and seaside asylums and whatever else one was meant to do with a consumptive. Will had four shillings and a bottle of laudanum, and barely enough self-control not to drink it himself.
On a good day Will barely felt competent to manage his own life, and being responsible for another person’s—the most precious person’s—was daunting at best. He was not in the habit of eating regular meals or keeping predictable hours, but now he had to keep track of Martin’s medicines and make sure he drank and ate a few times a day. And Martin fought him every step of the way, as if Will’s ministrations were an annoyance, as if he wished Will had left him to rot in London.
They had a few things going for them, at least. The cottage was well stocked with oats, which was fine since a thin porridge was all he could get down Martin’s throat. He’d need to go to the market soon, but he couldn’t leave Martin alone yet, and he barely had enough coin to buy a round of cheese, but that was a problem for the future. There was enough firewood to last them through the winter, but if Martin’s fever didn’t break soon, they wouldn’t be needing it that long. If the worst happened, he’d have to write to Martin’s aunt to pay for the funeral expenses, but by then Martin would be in no position to complain about it.
At that thought, his eyes got prickly and hot. He stepped outside, hoping the cold air would clear his thoughts. It was almost dawn, the first rays of feeble winter sunlight just beginning to fade the night sky to the southeast. The cottage was nestled into the edge of the Ashdown Forest, with an open stretch of heath and meadow before it. In the spring it would probably be properly pretty, but now, only two weeks past the solstice, it numbered among the grimmer landscapes Will had ever seen. When he went back into the cottage, Martin was shivering again. Will could hear the sound of his chattering teeth all the way from the door. He hastened to the bed, grabbing the vial of willow bark tincture on the way.
“Time for a dose,” he said, trying to keep the panic from his voice. He laid a hand on Martin’s forehead and found that it was once again hot. His fever had been coming and going since they arrived, usually climbing as evening approached and abating during the night. But it was morning, and Martin’s forehead was hotter than it had ever been.
Martin turned his head away with a petulant little noise. Will tried to convince himself it was a good sign that he was being fractious even now. “Sorry, love, but you need to.”
“Let me die in peace,” Martin rasped. It might have been comically theatrical if Will didn’t believe Martin meant it. The effort of speaking brought on a coughing fit, so Will took out his handkerchief and wiped the blood from the corner of Martin’s mouth.
“Some other time,” Will said, and poured a spoonful of the tincture into Martin’s mouth. Martin swallowed, then coughed and swore. Will soaked a flannel in vinegar and started bathing Martin’s forehead. Maybe this was it. Maybe this was their last hour. Everybody had one, sooner or later. He tried to make peace with the idea of Martin dying here, in this cottage, of this being the end to a friendship that had lasted most of their lives. He had made peace with a lot of things lately, and was starting to suspect that his idea of making peace was other people’s idea of expecting the worst, but that might merely be a semantic difference.
