Page 36 of Two Rogues Make a Right
“Mr. Sedgwick and I grew up together and he kindly looked after me during my last illness. I hesitated to trouble him for any further expense. That is all.”
“Totroubleme—” Will shook his head. “The money from the play is sitting there on the chimneypiece and I’ve told you to help yourself.” And Martin had even done so a few times to do the marketing. Perhaps he hadn’t wanted to take a sum as large as the stagecoach fare. Or perhaps he hadn’t wanted Will to pay for Martin to leave. That latter explanation sent a chill down Will’s spine. Had Martin not thought he was permitted to leave? Did he think he was as much a prisoner here as he had been in his father’s house? Will steadied himself with a hand to the door frame, trying to make sense of what was happening.
“How long do you need to pack your things?” Lady Bermondsey asked.
“Martin, may I speak to you indoors, please?” Will cut in, and stepped through the still-open cottage door, Martin directly on his heels. “You do know I wouldn’t have stopped you from leaving, don’t you?” he asked as soon as the door shut behind them. “If you want to go, then by all means go. I would never try to stop you.”
Will expected Martin to be relieved, but instead his jaw tightened and he refused to meet Will’s eye. “Of course you wouldn’t,” he said.
“Why didn’t you tell me, though?”
“I didn’t know she was going to come and get me,” Martin said, his gazed fixed somewhere over Will’s shoulder. “I thought she’d give me a draft on her bank for the coach faire, and then I’d go up to town a day or two ahead of you.”
Will furrowed his brow. “Why wouldn’t you have just gone up with me?”
“I wanted to part here, rather than at Charing Cross.”
“Part?” Will repeated.
“It’s time for me to stay with my aunt. What we talked about the other day, we both know it’s going to only get worse if we keep doing this. Let’s cut our losses.”
Will pressed his lips together so he didn’t say anything he’d want to take back. He knew that byourlosses, Martin meant Will’s losses. It had been Will’s inane crisis the other day that prompted Martin to write to his aunt. He was trying to spare Will future pain. He was trying to make a sacrifice for Will, not to hurt Will. “Were you going to tell me beforehand?” he asked, as gently as he could.
“Honestly, I was hoping that after we got to London you’d be distracted.”
Will tipped his head back on the closed door. This was all so typical of Martin. Evasive, passive, intent on stepping sideways around his meaning. He was used to his desires being treated with scorn at best and punishment at worse, so he had learned to appease. And now he was treating Will as a person who needed to be appeased, someone who might turn on him. That, more than anything, came close to breaking his heart.
Will took Martin’s hands in his own. “I’m not going to be distracted from how I feel about you, you know. But if you want to end things now, if you want to go with your aunt, then I’m not going to stop you.” He wanted to try to persuade Martin that he was wrong, that they didn’t need to do this, but he was afraid that Martin would see that as Will trying to pressure or manipulate him. He told himself that this was what Martin needed, and tried to ignore the sensation that felt suspiciously like his heart splitting in two.
Now Martin looked at Will almost as if he expected Will to say more. “You’re telling me to go,” Martin said when Will remained silent.
“I’ll be in town next week and we can see one another then,” Will said, trying to sound happy about it.
“Will,” Martin said, and it sounded like a protest, but Will couldn’t understand what Martin was protesting.
“It’ll be fine,” Will said. “We’ll still be friends. Just like before. It’ll be easy, you’ll see. We’ve been through worse than this, right?” And then, because he had to, he had to do it one last time, he took Martin’s face in his hands and kissed him. “I’ll see you in a week,” Will said, pushing aside the jealousy and sorrow and reminding himself he was doing the right thing.
Chapter Fourteen
Martin supposed he shouldn’t have been surprised when his aunt refused to have the carriage stop at Bermondsey House until Martin had visited the tailor. “All your things are still in your room,” she said. “Including your clothes. But I daresay nothing will fit you anymore, so we may as well buy new.”
Martin, having been cast out of the cottage and sent packing to London, found that he didn’t much care where he was, and let his aunt and the tailor hold lengths of fabric in front of his person as if he were a sofa in need of reupholstering.
“Six pairs of pantaloons, I should think, and another six pairs of trousers,” Aunt Bermondsey said. “Mostly pale gray. Waistcoats in gray, black, and various blues. Coats in black, gray, and blue. All the usual shirts, cravats, underthings, and so forth.” The tailor’s assistant took furious notes, while another assistant pulled bolts of fabric from the shelves that lined the room. “If you have an ensemble he could wear immediately with minimal tailoring, that would be even better.”
Martin allowed himself to be led behind a folding screen, then went through the motions of removing his clothes with a sort of mechanical detachment that he suspected was just his mind’s way of holding off a tantrum. He was breaking his heart only a week before he meant to; surely that shouldn’t matter so much. He had always thought that doing the right thing would offer some sort of moral reward but it turned out it felt like complete shit. No wonder people resorted to villainy.
One of the assistants dropped a clean shirt over Martin’s head and a pair of dove gray pantaloons of the softest wool were placed in his hands. The feel of crisp linen and expensive fabric offered some distraction from his dark mood. There really was something to be said for decent clothing, and it probably was only further proof of his bad character that he thought so. The threadbare shirts and loose trousers he had been wearing in the country were perfectly fine, of course. But this felt the way clothing was meant to feel. He slid the pantaloons over his hips and buttoned up a subtly striped gray waistcoat with no small degree of enthusiasm, then stepped out for his aunt’s approval.
“I knew I was right about the gray,” she said, regarding him through a lorgnette that she could not possibly require. “But those pantaloons need to be taken in. So does the waistcoat, for that matter.”
“The pantaloons fit perfectly,” Martin argued. He pinched the scant inch of fabric at his hip.
“On a man twice your age or twice your size loose pantaloons would be forgivable, even advisable. But on you, they need to be snug.”
“I can’t imagine how you expect me to sit in anything more snug than these,” Martin protested.
“Who said anything about sitting? Just lounge and lean, darling. You’ll thank me.”
