Page 21 of Two Rogues Make a Right
“Let’s go outside and sit on a rock and you can be cross with me in daylight, then.”
Martin snorted, but followed Will out the door. Will gestured at the rock he had meant to sit on, but Martin waved a dismissive hand, and they kept walking into the woods.
The landscape of this part of Sussex consisted of both enclosed pasture and unenclosed heath and woodland, forming a peculiar patchwork more evident now in the spring than it had been when they arrived in winter. Raised in the country and possessing an adequate knowledge of what kind of living could be scraped from the land, Will doubted that the actual property belonging to Friars’ Gate would support so much as a small farmstead, nor was it meant to. Will suspected that the previous occupant of the gamekeeper’s cottage merely cleared the underbrush to make it easier for the gentlemen guests of Friars’ Gate to shoot pheasants. As far as Will could tell, everyone in the village viewed the land and streams around Friars’ Gate as fair game for poaching and fishing, just as much as if it had been unenclosed. And Will thought that was probably good for Martin—he saw the rabbit snares and heard the birdshot; this was a chance for him to be a good landowner, to see that he didn’t need to be like his father.
They easily fell into stride as they walked along the footpath that traversed the woods. They always did, as if their bodies remembered all the rambling they had done as children, as if it didn’t matter how much time had passed or where they were, or even what bad deeds they had done or had done to them.
“Oh,” Will said, more an indrawn breath than an actual sound. He found himself standing before a proper bluebell wood. “I had no idea this was here.” There was a bluebell wood near the Grange but he couldn’t remember the last time he had happened upon it at the exact time the flowers were blooming.
“I stumbled across it a few days ago and the flowers weren’t quite out yet,” Martin said. “Thought you might like to see it.”
“Thank you,” Will said.
“You would have come across it eventually,” Martin said. He was still doing his best to be prickly and fractious, but he stood so close to Will that their sleeves brushed. Lately, Martin was constantly placing himself within touching distance. Will wasn’t sure he even knew he was doing it.
“I’ve had a lot of lovers,” Will blurted out.
Martin turned toward him and blinked. “Congratulations,” he said dryly, but with a smile playing at the corner of his mouth.
“Usually women, actually.” Oh God, he was making this worse. His face was flaming and he didn’t dare look at Martin. “In case that matters.”
“Your father must rejoice that at least one of his sons might give him a grandchild,” Martin said, casually examining his fingernails.
“You’re impossible.”
“Mmm,” Martin hummed in agreement.
“My point,” Will said, striving to remember what had possessed him to discuss his prior love life, “is that Jon is a friend. We’ve gone to bed together a couple of times but it isn’t anything more than that.”
“He looked at you like he might want it to be.”
“Then surely I ought to run away with him immediately,” Will said, throwing up his hands. “Because that’s how these things work. Sit down, for heaven’s sake.” He gestured at a felled tree that formed a convenient bench. They sat side by side, shoulders touching.
They were dancing around the issue. He had always known that Martin was his dearest friend, but lately it had come to seem thatdearestandfrienddidn’t come close to explaining what they were to one another. And that was with the two of them as chaste as nuns; he didn’t know what happened if anything sexual were added to a friendship like theirs. Martin wasn’t Jonathan—a friend with whom he could blithely fall into bed. Will didn’t know how to go to bed with somebody he was willing to lay down his life for. Worse than that, he didn’t know how to go to bed with someone he knew he’d never walk away from. He felt like he had been dealt into a card game with stakes he didn’t know and couldn’t afford.
“He stopped by because he wanted to give me this,” Will said, reaching into his coat pocket and bringing out a folded paper. He handed it to Martin and watched him open it.
“Is this—The Bride of Malfi?” Martin asked, staring at the playbill and then grinning at Will without a single trace of his earlier irritation. “And it’s opening in two weeks? I’m going. I don’t even care if the city is blanketed in smoke and awash in a foul miasma of disease. I need to see it. I’ll sit in the pit and wear a disguise so my aunt won’t recognize me. A false nose. A gray wig. A plague doctor’s mask.”
Will laughed and grabbed Martin’s hand. Seized by mad impulse and pure affection he brought Martin’s hand to his mouth and kissed his knuckles. He heard Martin’s sharply indrawn breath, saw his eyes go wide, and nearly did it again. He could imagine letting his lips linger just a little, brushing across the back of Martin’s hand. But he couldn’t—he shouldn’t.
Instead of trying to say anything, instead of doing anything that might make it worse, Will shifted his grip on Martin’s hand so their fingers were laced together, then rested their joined hands on his thigh. It felt like a bridge, personal and intimate but not necessarily sexual; he wanted to show Martin that he was offering—maybe not more, but everything he had.
“Is that... all right?” Will asked, not even completely sure what he was asking about.
Martin didn’t say anything, and he turned his attention back to the bluebells, but Will felt a brief squeeze on his hand.
“I think I’ll always be jealous,” Martin said several minutes later, but as if he were continuing their previous conversation. “I envied your shipmates, William, in case you wonder how perverse my jealousy can be.”
Will let out a burst of shocked laughter. “That might be the first time anybody envied a single soul on theFotheringay.”
“I envied that they were near you, not anything else, obviously. Just that they were near you. I made Father hire a French tutor because I was jealous that your mother could speak to you in a special language.”
That was so ridiculous that Will couldn’t keep a straight face. “You must have been eight years old.”
“Possibly seven. I started early on my path toward maniacal jealousy.” Martin spoke lightly, but Will could hear the self-reproach beneath.
“But, Martin. That’s—it’s darling.” He remembered Martin at that age—tiny and imperious—and could picture him furiously studying his conjugations.
