Page 37 of Two Rogues Make a Right
A mere half an hour later—he did not dare contemplate what this service was costing his aunt, because if she wanted to be idiotic with her money, he wasn’t going to stop her—he tried on the altered pantaloons. Regarding himself in the cheval glass, he had to concede that, yes, his aunt had been correct about the grays. She was probably also correct about the pantaloons. He had never wasted time in considering his looks beyond an awareness that he was attractive in the way all the Easterbrooks in the portrait gallery at Lindley Priory were attractive; he had always had graver matters to occupy his mind, things like bad lungs and despotic fathers and empty bank accounts. Besides, even if he had once been handsome when he was at the peak of his health, he was now underweight and pale. But his reflection looked... elegant. Perhaps a trifle delicate—there would be no concealing his thinness or the pallor of his cheeks—but he looked rather like the drawings of men in fashion plates.
He spared a small, stupid thought for all the things he’d never do in these clothes—all the pigs he wouldn’t catch and laundry he wouldn’t learn to wash. It was a fistful of dirt on the grave of a life he hadn’t ever quite believed he’d have, and which he knew he didn’t deserve. His attempts to be useful now seemed laughably inadequate. The fact was that he had no idea how to even keep himself fed without someone else’s aid. And if he couldn’t keep himself fed, then he couldn’t hope to look after Will, if Will needed him.
He remembered those frantic months after his father died, trying to scrape together the funds to get Will out of London. He had failed miserably, succeeding in nothing more than harming his tenants and providing himself with enough shame to last a lifetime. He still received rents from those farms, but had directed that it all be deposited in the parish poor box or put toward the running of the charity school that now occupied Lindley Priory. He couldn’t bring himself to touch the money, and didn’t think he could live with himself if he tried. No, the only hope he had to be useful to Will was by making the sort of marriage his aunt wished for him.
His aunt caught the attention of a passing tailor’s assistant. “Please also furnish Sir Martin with all the usual country attire,” she said, not bothering to look up from the stack of fabric samples on her lap. He nearly gagged at the sound of his title, but his aunt was using it relentlessly.
“I know you don’t like it,” she said when they were back in the carriage. “But it’s both your name and your greatest asset. No, don’t look at me like that, I’m not in the mood for the universal rights of man and I never will be. Practically speaking, your title is your greatest asset, and that’s all there is to it.”
“Be that as it may, it’s still worth precisely nothing. It hasn’t done me any good at all, as you well know.” He was being peevish and difficult and he couldn’t bring himself to stop.
“I shouldn’t think it would, not when you’re holed up in a hut in West Sussex. You’re hardly likely to find an heiress at a pig farm. But your timing couldn’t be better. It’s the very beginning of the season so we have three full months to get things settled.”
“I already feel sorry for the girl.”
“It wouldn’t have to be a proper marriage,” his aunt said, without missing a beat, as if she had already given the matter some consideration. “There are plenty of young ladies who wouldn’t expect you to have anything to do with them. You wouldn’t need to share a house, let alone a bed. You confer a title on them, they confer some money on you, everybody lives happily ever after.”
He narrowed his eyes and turned sideways on the seat to face his aunt. “You seem to be making a number of assumptions.”
She sighed. “Darling, I’m making exactly one assumption, and it’s that you don’t want to go to bed with women, and frankly I don’t care. Why are you looking at me like that? I found you keeping house with a young man, both of you in a frightful state of dishabille and covered in various bite marks and so forth. You ought to be grateful I got you out of there before you got yourselves arrested. Love in a cottage is all very romantic, and I’m certain I’ve read many tiresome poems on the topic, but a little bit of discretion would not go amiss in the future, nephew.”
Martin tamped down a swell of horror that she had seen all that. “And yet you still want me to marry some poor unsuspecting woman.”
“Oh, be quiet. Not every woman wants a man in her bed. You could come to a very peaceable arrangement.”
For one horrifying moment Martin thought he might cry. It had been a long day. His aunt’s hand covered his own. “New clothes do go a long way toward mending a broken heart, I always find,” she went on, and he didn’t have it in him to protest that she had the wrong end of the stick. He was almost grateful that she seemed to understand.
“No clothing is that good,” he sniffled.
“We’ll visit the bootmaker tomorrow, then,” she mused.
When the carriage stopped in front of Bermondsey House, Martin excused himself from dinner and followed a maid to the bedroom that was to be his. Peeling off his new clothes, he tried not to remember where he had been not twelve hours earlier. When he glanced in the looking glass, he tried not to take stock of the faded bite and bruises on his neck. If he thought of those things, he’d miss Will too much.
As that thought settled over his heart like a lead weight, he felt more than a mere thirty miles from the cottage. Maybe this distance would give him the strength to move past these months with Will. After all, Will had been able to part from Martin without any sign of distress. Martin had always suspected that his own feelings ran deeper than Will’s and now he had evidence. It was just as well that they ended this before Will’s feelings became more entrenched, because Martin felt truly miserable, and the only bright spot was that at least by parting now he had spared Will from that pain.
Will leaned against the closed door, his eyes squeezed shut, his heart pounding against his ribs, until he could no longer convince himself that he still heard the sound of hoofbeats and carriage wheels retreating down the lane. He could hardly stand to look around the cottage, knowing Martin wasn’t there.
It was better this way, better to end their—his mind stumbled over the wordaffair—at the beginning. Their hearts would mend easier that way. Martin had been right. Besides, this separation was only temporary. In a few days—tomorrow night, even, if Will hurried—they’d both be in London. And, no, it wouldn’t be the same, but they could be together. As friends, which had been enough for most of their lives, and which would still be enough tomorrow. If something angry and demanding lurked in the pit of his belly, he could just ignore it.
Will wrenched open his eyes and took in the unmade bed, the book Martin had been reading still facedown on the table, the cup of flowers. He wanted to shut his eyes again. Instead he threw on his coat, grabbed his coin purse, and left the cottage. He found Mrs. Tanner plucking a goose while Daisy collected the feathers.
“Didn’t expect to see you today,” Daisy said.
“I have a favor to ask. I’m going to London tomorrow, rather than next week, and I’m hoping you can look after the cottage and feed the pigs for the extra time that I’ll be away. I’ll pay you, of course.” He took the coin purse out of his coat pocket. “If I’m not back in two weeks, the pigs are yours.” He tried not to dwell on thatif,because then he’d have to admit that he wasn’t coming back—he couldn’t, not without Martin.
“What about your young man?” Mrs. Tanner asked.
“He already left.”
“He can’t have,” Daisy said, her brows furrowed. “He asked me to show him how to do the wash one day next week.”
“The wash?” Mrs. Tanner squawked, regarding her daughter with wide, scandalized eyes. “Thelaundry? Agentleman? I’ve never.”
“That’s what I said,” Daisy agreed. “I’ve never seen a man do the wash in my entire life. But he insisted.”
“I’d like to know how you suppose laundry gets done aboard ship if not by men,” Will said absently, distracted by the idea of Martin setting out to learn how to perform such a humble task.
“Probably very badly,” Mrs. Tanner said. “Probably not particularly often either. And I’d bet nogentlemendo laundry on any ship.”
