Andrews! He had had that abomination's neck practically in the noose. He hadn't forgotten the look of terror on the boy's face at Henderson's hanging. It was one of the few pleasant things he had to meditate on in this place. And now the midshipman had become a first lieutenant, raking in prize money and glory, with the world entirely ignorant of his disgusting little secret.
Why had Kenyon not discovered it yet? Was he too blind, as some over-genteel country bumpkins were, to recognize what he saw? Was he corrupt enough to overlook it, as were some of the effete men of the town?
Or was he ... Walker took in a long breath of realization, gasped at the pain, then coughed and coughed, eyes streaming and the dull ache in his back woken up into red hot agony once more. Damn this injury! Damn this place of sickness where he felt as effectively imprisoned as he might in a French cell. When the fit wore off, he lay down, trembling, and finished the thought with a smile.
Or was he implicated
? Kenyon didn't look like a filthy bugger, but then so few of them did. But if they were at it together, then a few encouraging words and coins offered to the disaffected members of the
Seahorse
's crew should have them both.
Walker drifted off to sleep to visions of the two of them, tied back to back, one noose around both throats, slowly throttling together in the busy naval bustle of Ordnance Island, on the gallows, looking out on a fleet glad to be cleansed of them. Such a satisfying dream! He woke smiling.
Chapter 13
"That was encouragement." Peter smiled at his own reflection in the small mirror he had propped against his sea chest in the corner of their attic room, while Josh—still painfully jealous—pretended not to have heard him.
The landlady came grumbling up the stairs with a couple of jugs of warm water and poured one into the basin before Peter, then smiled a fox's smile. "Nice to have you back, gents. I did hear you was come into a small fortune on account of that thirty-two was stuffed with guns for the rebels. Wish you joy if that's so, and have you thought of taking the larger room downstairs?"
"Thank you, Mrs. Hodges," said Josh, once he realized that Peter was too taken up in his own thoughts to reply. "I'm sure Captain Kenyon will consider it, when he has had time to wash the salt off and isn't so perished with hunger."
"Ah, as to food," she said, pretending not to look as Peter took off his wig and placed it on the stand, "how it stands as far as to food is this..."
Josh wasn't in the mood to listen to another improbable litany of bad luck that would end with them having no dinner. "We will dine at the Cat and Fiddle," he interrupted, with the firm voice he had cultivated to command the prize crew on the thirty-two "and speak to you about accommodations afterwards."
Hopefully to say we are moving out
. Pointedly, he held the door open.
When she had gone, he crossed over to his side of the room, took off his own wig and put it in its box. Folding his coat over his sea chest, he unbuckled his breeches at the knees, and sat down on his mattress, hugging himself for comfort.
"Meeting me at the harbor," Peter insisted in a dreamy, contemplative voice. "It was encouragement."
Peter was, Josh thought, trying to concentrate on the way the reinforced stitching around his knees pressed into his cheek, not a cruel man. He was not doing this in order to hurt Josh, whatever it might feel like. No, Peter was not cruel, but he was, at times, horribly oblivious, and it could amount to much the same thing.
* * * *
Peter looked worried now at the lack of response. Josh could feel the gaze on his bent head like two searching points of light. He could tell that some of his own misery had finally penetrated that noble but thick head from the almost silent way Peter unfolded himself to standing, took the two steps that separated his domain from Josh's, and knelt, hand on the mattress next to Josh's stockinged foot, his knee next to it, bowing the bed and tilting Josh towards him.
And after all, Josh thought, could Peter really be blamed for misunderstanding, when Josh had deliberately tried to mislead him? It was irrational to hope that somehow Peter would read in the silences all the words Josh refused to speak;
I don't want you to love her; I want you to love
me
. I don't want you to leave me. Stay with me forever!
Stupid words that could never be said. It was wrong of him to even cherish them in his heart, five hundred times worse to say them. He should rejoice that Peter at least could leave this sin behind, go forward into a welcome respectability, with a wife to love him and children to connect him to the future. He did not have the right to want to take all that away, imprison Peter forever in a world of lies and shame. He should be a better man than that.
"It's nothing, sir," Josh said at last, when he had successfully fought down the clawing protestations of his own selfishness. "I'm just a little out of sorts."
He thought of Mr. Robinson, with whom he had shared a brief but intense moment of jealousy, and wondered whether he should pour a more rational restraint on the rejoicing. Should he say, "But do not get your hopes up, I think she has another admirer, and perhaps a more favored one?" For Kenyon had the blindness of privilege. Obstacles removed themselves from his path, and he had not yet learned how to see them.
Josh did not want to be the man who taught him. If Josh had his way, he would be the force that leveled Peter's path ahead of him and removed the stones, so that he did not even bruise his feet on his journey to greatness. But Josh wondered if that too was selfish. He wondered, often, whether it might be better for Peter, and the world, if Joshua Andrews was removed from it. But always when the knife was in his hand, he would pause and think of the torments of Hell, and fear held him back. Better to sit here, with the attic windows open and the whitewashed garret filled with light, trying to enjoy Peter's closeness without hoping to possess it, than to cut it all short for something worse.
"What can I do," Peter's long-fingered hand closed on his ankle, then slid gently, teasingly up his calf, rolling the silk down and repeating the operation on skin, "to make you feel better?"
At the touch, bitter lust came boiling up from within him. Josh gulped a great breath against the tightness in his chest, raised his head and rested it against the wall, closed his eyes so that Peter would not see the anguish—for even he was not
that
blind—and reached out. His fingers tangled in newly brushed hair, pointed with dampness, and he pulled the hair ribbon out so that black silk strands would sweep forward and enclose Peter's face.
Peter gave a soft, small chuckle and leaned in, his lips gentle on Josh's forehead and his closed eyes, less gentle, less chaste as they worked their way down the angle of his jaw and to his neck. Josh's entire soul seemed to be concentrated in the patch of skin beneath Peter's mouth. Everything else hurt. It hurt to think, his chest felt as though the veins were severed and every beat of his heart was filling it with blood, and he whimpered, undoing Peter's cravat and shirt buttons with silent desperation, as if Peter's skin could heal him.
Peter laughed again, and drew away. Josh opened his eyes to find the man walking over to the door, locking it against prying visitors. Josh filled his eyes with the sight of that strong, slender back, the dark hair falling to a point between his shoulder blades, the light of the windows sifting through the finely woven shirt, hinting at the plains of Peter's chest. Josh breathed in again, his own skin waking up, feeling the press of his clothes like a tantalizing caress that did nothing but make him itch for more. His fingers tangled in his neckcloth, pulling the bow into a knot, and he yanked it savagely before abandoning it and tearing his shirt off without it, the cloth still knotted about his neck.
"You're always so ... eager," said Peter, with a smile, as though this was praise. It seemed it was. "I love that." He took hold of the neck-cloth and pulled Josh's face to his own, and Josh, who wanted the kiss to take away the feeling that he was bleeding to death, drowned in it gladly.
"Shirt off," Josh demanded, pulling at it impatiently while Peter wriggled his wrists out from the lace cuffs. When it was thrown into the center of the room, he could finally lock his arms around Peter's back and pull the man down on top of him, wanting to be crushed by the weight. Every inch of skin that touched Peter felt alive, every part that did not was a howling wilderness, and he trembled between them feeling that he would break apart with the need and the anguish and the joy of it.
Catching his fever, Peter knelt up to unbutton both pairs of breeches, shove them down, before lying down again, bare prick hard against Josh's. Josh cried out, some part of his purgatory escaping his control in a pleading little whine of need, and he hated himself for this, he hated ... He thrust up against Peter, witless and instinctive, his eyes closing from the wave of pleasure, the bliss and horror of it. Sensing Josh's mood, Peter bowed his head and bit Josh's shoulder, and the spike of pain mixed with the stroking, building pulse of pleasure, where they slid together, making it feel honest, permitted,
real
.
Wordlessly, Josh spread his legs, asking for more, the knowledge that this might be the last time winning out effortlessly over the reluctance to beg, and when Peter tried to reach for oil, Josh panicked and would not let him, winding himself around the man, holding on as hard as he could, until Peter, moved by some instinct more aware than his reason muttered "Shh, I'm not going anywhere," and slicked himself with spit instead.
It was a brutal coupling. Looking for something to hold onto, Peter's hands found the neck-cloth, twisted it until Josh could hardly breathe. The burn and hot piercing pain of penetration made him want to scream with pleasure and gasp and writhe and demand more, and the thought that Peter was choking him, the punishment so infinitely deserved, so lovingly bestowed, made tears leak from the edges of his eyes. Josh wrenched at Peter's hair and bit his mouth and wriggled backwards, impaling himself on Peter's strength. He came like dying, in a rush of surrender that, just for one moment, overwhelmed the self-disgust and let him feel clean.
"You're a sick little bastard," said Peter, afterwards, as they lay together in the sunshine, lazily kissing. His tone of voice said "I love you", but Josh was more inclined to believe his words.
"I know."
"Oh, now," Peter raised himself on an elbow and looked down, his eyes full of concern, his hair ink dark, spilling over his shoulder, "I meant it affectionately."
Josh had to laugh at that. How could the man possibly remain so terrifyingly innocent, so pure, after what they had just done? He shifted on the mattress, fished out from beneath him a pulled off button and felt the moment of peace begin to unravel. "So," he whispered, "you have the money to buy a house now. Will we not be sharing any more?"
"Is that what this was about?" Peter looked enlightened. He smoothed the tangled curls from Josh's forehead with a tender hand, leaned down and kissed where he had bitten. "I think that would be a little precipitate, don't you? No, it's true I was thinking of moving away from Mrs. Hodges curiosity and her non-existent catering, but I am hoping that, whereever I go, you will come with me."
Chapter 14
Next week saw Adam and Emily meet in the marketplace in King's Square. She had a jaunty little hat of lace on top of her carefully dressed blond hair, and it threw a pattern of shadowed flowers onto her face. There was one right in the center of her full lower lip in particular that seemed to taunt him. His eyes refused to settle elsewhere, and if he managed to wrench them away, they would stray to the gauzy fichu that protected her milk white breasts from the sun. And that lead to thoughts more appropriate for private darkness than for conversation with a delicate young lady. He could not help feeling that he must shock and unsettle her.
She concealed it well, however, if it was so, set her parasol on her shoulder and strolled down the stalls of produce with a radiant smile, Bess following behind with a basket and a disapproving look.
"May I talk to you alone, Miss Jones?" he asked, turning over the rabbit's foot in his pocket which had so far brought him such singular bad luck, but which was all he had to turn to in this moment of decision.
Her smile edged with curiosity, she said "Bess, go down and buy me a shilling's worth of those beautiful oranges, will you? Oh, and tell One-Eyed Sam I'll be down in a moment to pay for the lobsters."
Such a capable young woman. He had admired her bravery on board ship, after the battle, but he admired too how easily she had adapted to this strange country, and her calm and businesslike dealings with creditors, suitors and her foster mother—still prostrated by the heat and unable to rise from her bed. Emily was not a romantic girl, who might be swept away by emotion, and though he had the highest opinion of her because of that, this was a moment when he felt he might prefer it were so.
Walking past the pillory without paying any attention to the poor wretch who stood there, covered in refuse and bruises, he paused in front of the town hall and looked up as if to admire the architecture. When she came to his side, still with shadow roses on her lips, his nerve almost failed. What he meant to suggest was foolish in the extreme, and might well be interpreted as immoral, but at present he could see no other way forward.
"Miss Jones," he said, solemnly, looking from the dazzling white walls to her more dazzling face. "Will you marry me?"
A glow began in her blue eyes that made them rival the tropical sky for intensity, and she leaned forward, placing her hand on his wrist. Not on the cuff, but on the skin. There was a little shock of connection and he felt enlarged, powerful, exhilarated—ready to be swept away by joy. But what she said was, "Something has changed? That's wonderful! What has happened to make you ready to dare this step?"
Her faith was like a slap in the face, and he thought resentfully that he had not said that. He had asked a simple question to which he might have preferred a simple answer. But that was unfair. Despair was driving him to be unfair, these days; his temper was short and his manners snappish.
"Nothing has changed, alas," he said.
But that you invited Kenyon into your house, and today he will attempt to storm your heart as he stormed through that privateer at sea, with your father holding all the doors open for him.
"But that I can't stand the waiting any more. The truth is that I don't ever see things changing for the better and..."
And I want to make sure of you before someone else does.
"And you are ready to use my dowry to open a shop?" Her look of delight had clouded but was still uncomfortably hopeful.
He was insulted by the suggestion. "I am not a fortune hunter, Miss Jones. I would not accept a penny of your money were I starving in the street."
It was hard to believe that a face as beautiful as hers—so round and merry, soft as swan's down—could become suddenly so shrewish and so harsh. "What then?" she said. "Shall we live on, air? I wonder you expect my father to fall in with such a suggestion. It would take much working upon him to persuade him to see me settled with a tradesman, though I assured him day and night it was what I knew and would prefer. But what? To marry and expect him to support us both? I do not see how that would be any more admirable."
The justice of this rebuke struck Adam to the heart, and it was too hard to bear, receiving disappointment at her hands as well as from the rest of the world. Rather than apologize, he stood up straighter, locked his hands behind his back and said, "I am not proposing to ask your father for either upkeep or permission. I am suggesting that we present him with a fait accompli. Come away with me into the hills, there is a little chapel there at which the priest will marry us without banns or witnesses. It could be done tomorrow, and no one the wiser."
Emily took a step backwards and her mouth fell open into an "o" of disbelief, then she shut it with a snap and tossed her highly coiffed head. "Am I to understand you are suggesting we
elope
, Mr. Robinson? Am I to understand that you are suggesting I deceive my father not merely now, but for an untold number of years afterwards?"
Looking at her then, he began to understand why Victory was always depicted as a woman. She was not large, and there were times, previously, when she had put him in mind of a kitten, soft and playful, affectionate. But now there was a light of martial glory about her. Perhaps it was merely her eloquence that made him feel small, tongue-tied and guilty as a boy standing before his mother, convicted of stealing cake from the larder. She was clad in light white muslin, but it might as well have been armor, and her tongue was all the sword she needed.
"No," she said, scornfully, "I know what it is. You do not trust me."
Struck to the heart by this, Adam opened his mouth to protest that of course he trusted her, but the words eluded him as she went on.
"You do not trust me to wait for you until your fortunes are repaired. What advantage otherwise is there in a marriage we conceal from all, but to take away from me my power of choice? I thought better of you, Mr. Robinson. I thought you understood that my regard for you is freely and willingly given but
cannot be compelled
."