Page 40 of Two Rogues Make a Right
“So,” Martin said, “this is the friendly rapport we have to look forward to.”
“No,” Will said, gruffer than he intended. “It’ll just take some time to adjust.”
Martin gave skeptical little hum. “Has it ever occurred to you,” he said, a dangerous note in his voice, “that things could have been different?”
“Different in what way?” Will asked, not sure he wanted to hear the answer.
“We were both doing marvelously in the country. If we wished to feed pigs and live in near poverty, we could have spared ourselves this detour into trauma and illness. We could have simply stayed in Cumberland. There are cottages by the dozen and any quantity of livestock.”
It took Will a moment to understand. “You’re talking about what would have happened if I hadn’t joined the navy, if instead I had tried to scratch out some kind of living up north. You’re imagining that we could have stayed there and somehow wound up feeling as we did in Sussex. Feeling as we do,” he amended.
“Precisely,” Martin said tightly.
“No, Martin, I don’t think about that. I don’t let myself. I don’t know who I’d be if I hadn’t—if none of that had happened. And neither do you.” Will clenched his fists. He had thought Martin cared for him the way he was, not as a second-rate version of the person he would have been, and he tried not to be too disappointed to learn the truth. “There’s no what if. This is not something I can while away a morning hypothesizing about. That universe doesn’t even exist in my imagination, all right? It can’t. I won’t let it.”
Martin looked like he had been slapped. He looked like he wanted to go to Will, to take him in his arms, and Will didn’t know why he wouldn’t. Martin might be in a mood that was foul even for him, but he was never anything other than kind about the things that had happened to Will at sea. Will braced himself, waiting for Martin to say something—to either make it worse or to make it better. But they were interrupted by the arrival of a servant carrying a silver tea service, and the tension in the room dissipated. They sat, Will on the edge of a strange backless sofa and Martin in a chair made of wood carved to look fine as gossamer. Will had the distinct sense that if either of them moved wrong, all the furniture in the room would crumble to toothpicks, and he almost wished it would, just to give him an excuse to walk out the door. He watched silently as Martin poured the tea.
“Any luck finding a bride?” Will blurted out. He had been aiming for jocular friendly banter, a remark that would show Martin he supported his plan and didn’t intend to let his own feelings get in the way of their friendship. Instead it came out bitter and hostile.
“I’ve been here three days.” Only the faintest lift of an eyebrow disturbed the impassivity of Martin’s expression.
“I’m trying to be supportive.”
Martin blinked. “Why? It’s a bit of a blow to my pride that you’re so complacent about this, that you’re so ready to walk away from me.”
“I’m not walking away from you,” Will protested. “That’s my point.”
“Ah, yes. Silly me. Nobody walked away from anybody else. This is just a cessation of fucking, followed by a return to how things used to be. It was your idea, even. My idea was to spend the rest of our lives going to bed together. No. Bugger that. My plan was to spend the rest of our lives loving one another.”
That was the first time Martin had said the wordloveand it just figured he had to do it during a fight. Will was equal parts fond and devastated. “While you’re married to someone else.”
“Correct.” The syllables were crisp and uncompromising. “Did it occur to you,” Martin hissed, “that I don’t want to be passed around from pillar to post like an embarrassing burden, and that I don’t like this any more than you do? Considerably less, in fact. Did it occur to you that I might, just possibly, be humiliated not to able to earn my keep in some way? That I don’t enjoy being entirely helpless? That maybe, just maybe, after being told my whole life that I’m a useless waste of space, I might want to prove that I’m something more?”
Will felt a wash of shame pass over him, because the fact was that he had not considered any of that. All he had thought of was how miserably, hideously jealous he was at the idea of Martin belonging to anyone else. “I’m sorry,” he said.
Then, as Will watched, some of the surliness slid off Martin’s face. “I know I’m being a bastard. But I’d go back to Sussex with you now, right this minute.” His jaw was set, but he didn’t meet Will’s eyes, instead gazing at the small, perfect teacup he cradled in his hand. “If I thought that was a good idea for either of us. But if this needs to end—which it does, if you can’t accept that at some point I’ll marry—then it’s better to end it sooner rather than later.” He blew out a breath. “This awkwardness will be temporary. God, Will, we’ve been through worse. We need to remember what it’s like to be friends in the usual way.”
“Right.” Will got to his feet. “I know you’re right. I just—” He clenched and unclenched his fists, trying to will away the anger and jealousy that threatened to well up within him. “I just can’t do this right now. I’m staying with Hartley. You can ask for me at the Fox on Shoe Lane.” He didn’t suggest coming back to Bermondsey House.
Chapter Sixteen
Will’s visit at Bermondsey House had been about as disastrous as possible, and Martin knew it had been mostly his fault. They were going to need some time—time for Will to move on, and time for Martin to learn to act like he had. That was all. Maybe it would help if they didn’t see one another for a while. After all, there had been years during which they hadn’t seen one another, and they had still been friends.
That gave Martin an idea. He swept into the morning room and found his aunt’s writing desk unoccupied. As soon as he dipped the pen into the inkwell and scribbled the date at the top of the page, he felt like he was on sure ground for the first time in days. There was something about the familiarity of writing to Will that soothed Martin far more than Will’s presence had. Letters had been the medium of their friendship long before their bodies were. The neat stack of letters sitting in Martin’s trunk stood as proof that they could do this, that they could exist as something other than lovers, that the past few weeks hadn’t ruined anything.
“Dear Will,” he wrote, and then the rest of the words flowed out, with none of the awkwardness they had in the Bermondsey House drawing room. It was as easy and natural as talking to Will when they shared a pillow. He wrote about a friend of his aunt who lost an ear bob in the punch bowl the other night. He wrote about visiting his mother’s grave in the parish churchyard. It was one page, front and back, filled with mostly trifling concerns, and containing not even the faintest suggestion of anything that could get either of them into trouble, but when he signed his name he knew he had written a love letter.
And when Will wrote back—a letter filled with slightly less trifling material than Martin’s, but with words underscored and scratched out and ink blotted in a manner befitting a twelve-year-old—that was a love letter too. He had closed with a simple “Yours, W.S.,” but theyourswas underscored by the tail of theY, and the postscript simply read “Soon.”
There was no undoing the fact that they loved one another. Even if they never touched one another again, even if they never saw one another again, even if they never spoke or wrote the words—the truth was still there. At some point, the fundamental material of their friendship had undergone a sea change and it couldn’t be reversed. Martin had already known that he would go through the rest of his days in love with Will, but now he had to face the possibility that Will might do the same. When Martin reread Will’s letter, the stubbornness was there in every pen stroke, in every turn of phrase, and Martin feared Will was going to hold on to this. It was a stupid thing to do, and Will was going to do it anyway, and Martin was an idiot for not having seen it earlier. What was worst of all was that this knowledge made Martin love him even more.
Well, Will was a stubborn fool. That was hardly news. What mattered now was what Martin did about it. Clearly Martin was going to have to do the thinking for both of them.
“You haven’t seen Martin in days,” Hartley said.
Will looked up from under the table where he was tightening screws. “I didn’t realize you were keeping an eye on me.”
Hartley shrugged, not bothering to deny it. “I’m trying not to act completely insane about it, but I’m worried you’re going to get your heart broken and repair to the nearest opium den.”
