A Game of Hazard
by Mab
It must be presumed that the residents of the estates and farms around the village of Ashford liked the rural life – those who were of the gentry at least – for otherwise they would surely have resided in town. But that did not mean that they were averse to a little novelty in their lives. When Captain Ellison took his grandparent's estate in hand, there was some hope that he might add to the small society of the area. Alas, that Captain Ellison was a semi-invalid and something of a recluse. Although the presence of his servant, 'black as my coal scuttle' as one household's cook expressed it, added some small excitement to conversations over various tables, whether they were of polished or scrubbed wood.
Captain Ellison recovered his health. He took on a house guest. Mr Sandburg was something of a problem to the community, especially that part of it with pretensions to gentility. He was charming and affable, but certainly no gentleman. He was also far too handsome for the comfort of some parents. Captain Ellison's handsome appearance was of no concern as his antecedents and fortune were well-known. But as both Mr Sandburg and Captain Ellison remained obdurate bachelors and, as it became clear that any house that wished to welcome James Ellison must also welcome Blair Sandburg, people accustomed themselves to seeing the two men in each other's company.
When Captain Ellison sent out invitations for a soiree, very nearly a ball even, to celebrate his friend's birthday, everyone in the neighbourhood considered that it would set off the beginning of the summer in a charming manner. But as Mrs Abingdon later often said to her bosom friends, the summer of 1816 was 'that dreadful time, my dears'.
It was a merry little group sitting in the red salon. There was Stephen, brimming over with pater familias pride. There was Louise, watching her placid eight-months son with tender affection. There was a nurse elsewhere in the house, who must be very bored as she had very little to do. Louise took fierce pride in doing a startling amount for her child, by the standards of their class.
There was Blair, seated tailor-fashion at Louise's feet, holding small Thomas William Ellison with the usual amused fondness he had for children and good-natured animals. There was Jim, watching all of them with affection, especially Blair, and occasionally wondering why it was that he found his mood descending into irritation. For all his gladness to see his family, he could only presume that the stress of guests and planning was wearing on him.
“I wish you would take a chair, Blair. It is most improper to sit on the floor in that manner,” Louise said, but with no particular disapproval.
“But where else should I be seated but at the feet of the most beautiful lady in the room?”
“I am the only lady in the room, and if you don't stop talking nonsense I shall have a fan fetched, so that I may use it to crack you over the knuckles.”
Blair bent his head to make a very rude noise at young Thomas William, who responded with an appreciative gurgle. Then he looked up and appealed to Stephen.
“You haven't been taking Louise out to enough assemblies and parties. Otherwise she would be fully sensible of the honour done her in having my attentions.”
Stephen's mouth twitched. “It is true, my love, that many married ladies feel that their consequence is incomplete without a court of gallants to squire them in their husband's absences.”
Louise smiled. “But you are so seldom absent from my company, Stephen.”
“And thereby my hopes are dashed,” Blair remarked, gently joggling the child, who kicked his small legs. “How can I keep in practice in flirtation when you and Stephen persist in being quite vulgarly in love?”
“Is it so vulgar to be in love?” Jim asked.
Blair's face lit with a tenderness to match Louise's, only his emotion was entirely directed at Jim. His voice remained light and amused. “But of course, Jim. I believe that you informed me that our arbiter of all things tonnish, Mrs Abingdon, was horrified to see young people 'paddling palms'. I shudder to think what she would make of Stephen and Louise.”
Stephen rose and stood behind his wife, gentle hands upon her shoulders. “Do we dare risk the disapproval of Mrs Abingdon?”
Jim and Blair exchanged one brief, regretful glance. Stephen and Louise were good company, but their exhibition of domestic bliss occasionally reminded the two residents of Ashford Hall that their own affection could never be publicly sanctioned. They were both finding the comparative lack of privacy difficult, and it would only be made worse by the soon-expected arrival of Naomi with her husband and servants. For all that, Jim did not regret the decision to hold the party for Blair. They had gradually entered local society, and by the careful balance of these things Jim owed his neighbours a return of hospitality. Besides, it would give pleasure to Blair, who always shone brightly in company and enjoyed the noise and exertion of music and dancing.
“I fear that you must, for I should dislike to see you change,” Blair said. Little Thomas was growing fretful and he handed him back to his mother.
“I think that I had best take him upstairs,” Louise said, and retired to glory in maternal possession in the hastily created nursery.
Later that day came the noise of Charles Spring's carriages - a rather grand one containing Charles and Naomi, and one smaller and crowded with Charles' valet and Naomi's abigail and the baggage. Jim came out, bolstered by Blair's presence, and greeted their guests.
“It's a narrow road you have leading to your home,” said Mr Spring, stretching his short legs upon the gravel path.
“It's a simple life in the country, is it not?” Jim retorted. As Naomi's husband and William Ellison's acquaintance, Spring represented a threat on two fronts to Jim, even though he told himself his concern was ridiculous. For all the jowly good nature of Mr Spring's face, he had a shrewdness that discomfited Jim. Perhaps it was merely a transference of his occasional discomfort with Naomi. For Blair's sake, Jim and Naomi had put aside the issue of the dreadful quarrel of 1814, but the memory still rankled. If Naomi had only let him see Blair when he first came to the house… Jim put aside such concerns and told himself that done was done. Naomi was a charming woman and, more importantly, Blair's much loved mother.
Jim found he had little appetite for his dinner. The rhythms of the house were completely different, and he couldn't smile quite so benignly in the evening as he had in the afternoon. Afterwards Naomi and Louise indulged esoteric rituals of baby worship in a small parlour while the men sat and drank port at the dining table.
“Your father is well,” Mr Spring reported. Jim grunted something noncommittal, and tried to restrain annoyance at the look that passed between Spring and Stephen. Those two had entered into what Jim could only regard as unholy alliance now that their rivalry for Naomi's attentions had been so definitively settled. After the first disastrous misunderstandings about his marriage, Stephen's relations with their father had taken an upswing with the arrival of a namesake grandson, even if the baby was named firstly for Louise's late father.
“He was saying that he looked forward to seeing you next time you visited London.”
“No doubt,” Jim replied and sipped his port, looking deep into the dark red heart of it. His legs were stretched under the table and he received a small prod from Blair's foot opposite. “Although I'm not sure when next I'll be in London.”
Spring took a sip of his own port with the air of a man who had done his duty. “Summer is a better time for travelling at least,” he said, and broke into a complaint against the state of the roads, “turnpiked, but where does the money go to?” Jim took a deep sigh of relief when he was finally able to make his excuses and retire to bed. There was comfort when Blair joined him, but despite the distraction Jim was aware he was unfamiliar with his home.
The morning of the party dawned a little chill and grey, but without the threat of rain. Blair had retired to his room sometime about four, a contrivance that both of them detested, but there were too many other people about for them to be comfortable with their usual arrangements. He reappeared in Jim's room only a little shy of a quarter to seven, dressed and even shaved.
“Good morning,” he pronounced.
Jim smiled sleepily. “Is Joel about, then? I see I can't use you to sweep chimneys any longer.”
Blair stroked a newly smooth chin. “He'll attend you shortly. He was dropping veiled hints that he had a small errand to perform first.” He raised his eyebrows. The last few days had been filled with sly questions and not very subtle efforts to discover what Blair might expect as a birthday gift. Last night he had leaned over to investigate under the bed for suspicious parcels, before Jim had dragged him back and shown him that the provocation of doing such a thing bare-arsed naked was not to be borne.
Jim knew that Joel's errand was to collect Blair's gift as he had charged Ashford's butler with hiding the parcel after it had been abstracted from Stephen and Louise's baggage. Blair's curiosity and resource were formidable, but of no avail to a determined man who held all the keys of the house. Jim was growing a little nervous. He had spent a quite ridiculous sum of money on Blair's gift, without being entirely convinced that Blair would like it. Several weeks back they had journeyed to London. Stephen and Jim had gone out together, while Blair visited his mother. Stephen had expressed a desire for his brother's advice in choosing a gift of jewellery for Louise, and had then dragged a protesting Jim to his tailor.
Stephen's tailor was not Weston or Stutz, but he was talented nonetheless. In his premises, there was a dressing gown of opulent magnificence sitting upon a dummy. It was velvet, and a rich cardinal red. Stephen had taken one look and exclaimed, “Good God! Has the Prince-Regent honoured you with his patronage then, Simmons?” His tone was not admiring.
The tailor sniffed. He had made Stephen's coats for years and knew him for a man who, for a wonder, paid his bills. “It was an order from my Lord Leaford. And then he must needs have an apoplexy before he can take possession of it, and his brother holds the purse strings now and declares it no longer required. The damned thing may yet bankrupt me.”
“Don't look to me to save you,” declared Stephen, and turned his attention to the selection of a waistcoat. In the meantime Jim found himself unwillingly fascinated by the dressing gown. As an item of clothing it was nonsensical. As an object of sensual appreciation it held him in thrall. The way the red took on strange depths as the light moved against the napped material – he shook his head, a little concerned that he might drop into one of his trances. He ran one finger against the material. The silky-soft weave yielded gently to his touch, and he could see that the dye was evenly laid throughout the fabric. It would cost a hellish sum.
Simmons noted Jim's interest. “I fear it would never fit a man of your length of limb, sir,” he said regretfully. Jim nodded in agreement; but it would fit Blair, he was sure. He saw, as clearly as if he was there, Blair snugly wrapped in this ludicrous garment, the red lending warmth to his skin and a happy contrast to the blue of his eyes. He swallowed. It was foolish. Two weeks later, shortly before he and Blair returned to Ashford, it was a fait accompli. He sent money and instructions to Stephen, who had gleefully and bawdily teased his brother as to what purpose his heightened sense might find for all that red velvet, but had obtained the dressing gown and brought it with him when he and his family had removed to Ashford.
And now Jim worried if Blair might find the gift inappropriate. He would have been far better promising Blair a trip to London's printers and bookshops, and giving him a waistcoat of Stephen's choosing to hold his impatience. But too late now. Joel had arrived with the box. He laid it on the bed with so much ceremony that Jim was convinced that he knew exactly what was within. “I'll return with hot water shortly, Captain Ellison.” Jim waved him away, all his attention on Blair as he opened his present. Blair's expression of anticipation turned to dazedness, and Jim swallowed back disappointment as Blair laid the garment, in all its extravagant foppery, upon the bedcover.
“Given those garish neck cloths you've taken to wearing, I thought you might find this suitable for your dawn trips to the book room, “ Jim growled. “At least you'll have no excuse for scandalising the housemaids by being half-dressed.”
Blair was still stunned. “I shall half-dazzle them in this. A pity I can't wear it to the party this evening. I should be the talk of the county for years.” He laid a hand over the front of the dressing-gown, and despite his anxiety, Jim was mesmerised by the passage of Blair's hand over the material. The movement of Blair's hand turned to a caress, and a speculative smile blossomed on his face. He looked up and asked, “Is this a gift for me, or for you, Captain Ellison?”
Jim's heart eased. “Mutuality is surely the foundation of all successful human relations, Sandburg.”
Blair picked up the dressing-gown and gently rubbed his face against the velvet, smiling broadly as he watched Jim's rapt attention to the act. “Jim, your gift is completely ridiculous, but I love it anyway.” He placed the dressing-gown gently over a chair. “Nearly as much as I love you.”
“Prove it,” Jim said, and held out his arms.
The gathering looked like being a success, to Jim's great relief, and Blair's considerable pleasure. Jim had conferred at length with his brother, Louise and Naomi about invitations and catering. Naomi and Louise had taken over the arrangement of the rooms and Louise especially showed a turn for generalship that amused Jim as much as he found it useful. He occasionally wondered if Stephen ruled the roost in his household as much as he thought. Blair watched these efforts on his behalf with bemused smugness and ran errands as directed. Otherwise he teasingly distracted Jim from the upheaval in Ashford's usually quiet routine.
And now the house was filled with music and chatter, and the rhythmic thud and clatter of the dancers in the entrance hall. Some fifty guests had come, many of them out of curiosity as much as anything. There had been no entertaining at Ashford Hall for many a day. Jim and Blair knew perhaps two-thirds of them, neighbours met out riding or in the village, those who had dared to call as it became clear that Jim was no longer quite the recluse he had been when his health was poor.
The rest – sons and daughters, visiting friends and relations that the invited guests had begged be included – blurred into a mass of smiling, sweaty faces. Naomi stood by the stairs, acting as hostess. Jim felt unreasonable annoyance at her ease in the position – this was his house, his home. Then he shrugged the feeling away as ridiculous; he had asked her to fill the role after all.
Blair passed him, two glasses in his hands. “Thirsty, Sandburg?” Blair chuckled, his face flushed. “Yes, but I'm attending to our guests first. Mrs Abingdon brought Mrs Bannister with her, and she's telling me of South America.”
The name meant nothing to Jim, but then Naomi had greeted as many of the guests as he had. “You'll be safe in Mrs Abingdon's chaperonage at least. Are you enjoying yourself?”
Blair's eyes sparkled with hectic amusement. “Very much so. And I look forward to expressing my thanks for all your effort in a proper manner.”
Jim narrowed his eyes, the better to disguise the frank sexuality in his gaze. “I'd more likely appreciate an improper manner.”
Blair laughed briefly, a sound that was deep and lewd. “Exactly, my friend. But there are ladies waiting on refreshment.” He made his way through the throng and moved by he knew not what impulse Jim followed him. Mrs Abingdon had commandeered a sofa with her accustomed sense of consequence, and the woman sitting next to her must be Mrs Bannister. Blair was on one knee with his usual informality, the better to hear the conversation Jim guessed. A strange frisson of unease passed over him and he moved forward to the small group. Blair and Mrs Bannister rose at Jim's approach, while Mrs Abingdon remained enthroned.
Blair made a simple introduction “Mrs Alicia Bannister – Captain James Ellison.” Both parties bowed, and raised their eyes in assessment. Mrs Bannister was tall for a woman, in height something between Blair and Jim. She wore burnished golden hair in a becoming style that did not at all proclaim her the widow that Blair's use of her first name suggested. The fashion for low-cut evening gowns flattered a deep bosom and Jim wondered if South America was all Blair's interest. He was seldom jealous of Blair's tendency to admire handsome women and men, but a surging wave of it overcame him now.
Mrs Bannister's glance was just as keen on Jim, who was austerely dressed in grey and blue. There was a look almost of shock on her face, before it altered to uneasy amusement.
“You have a charming home, Captain Ellison.”
Jim inclined his head in stiff acknowledgement while Blair looked on in some surprise. Jim's manners were seldom what one would call easy, but he normally had far more address than this. Seeking to fill an awkward silence Blair said, “Mrs Bannister lived some years in Peru, and she's been telling me most interesting stories.”
Jim turned to his friend, and looked with vast relief into those bright blue eyes. He had had the strangest sensation while looking at the woman before him, sharp with the tang of mixed rivalry and lust.
“Ladies.” He inclined his head to Mrs Abingdon “I trust that you're finding your evening enjoyable. Please excuse me.” And with that he turned and sought the hall with its distractions of music and dancing, aware that he'd behaved badly. He was unsurprised to find Blair at his elbow shortly after.
“Are you all right?” Jim nodded. Blair was unconvinced and lowered his voice. “Is this too much for your senses? Do you need to retire?” His hand closed around Jim's arm, but Jim felt none of the usual comfort from the gesture and angrily shook it off. Blair's concerned expression faded to a polite mask. “As you wish. I shall go speak with some more of our guests.” He turned away and then stopped as an idea struck him. He turned and spoke softly, an expression of exasperated fondness on his face. “She's a charming woman. But you must know you have nothing to fear.” Jim shrugged in apology and Blair left and joined a group of young men standing under the staircase.
The next Jim saw his lover that evening he was part of that same group of young men, laughingly directing the arrangement of lamps on the terrace outside the dining room. Young John Timms was his lieutenant, and was flourishing a rapier, points covered for practice. It was one of the pair that was usually stored in the book room. Blair had ordered them the winter that Jim was recovering from his run of illness – he had admired Jim's cavalry sabre and jokingly suggested that a little fencing would offer Jim some healthy indoor exercise. Jim had no formal training except for his experience of hack and slash in battle, and the occasional fights, both friendly and unfriendly that relieved boredom amongst the men between engagements. But Blair had ordered a book on fencing, “A Manual for Gentlemen Desirous of Knowledge of the Duello.”
They had indulged themselves with mock battle throughout that first winter as Jim gradually regained strength, and it was still an occasional sport. Timms deep-voicedly proclaimed the pleasure he had taken in some sessions at the famous school of Angelo. Most of the young people were spilling out onto the terrace, along with some of the older folks, some of them disapproving, others amused by the commotion.
Timms demonstrated some passes and moves, Blair moving alongside him, while one wag amongst the audience fetched his riding whip and mockingly imitated their moves to general hilarity. One particularly hoydenish young lady loudly requested 'a real duel' before another scandalised female voice hushed her. The young men noisily took up the request, and Blair and Timms turned to each other, Timms demonstrating the formal salute.
Blair's voice rose clear and amused over the tumult. “I take it that we will stop well before first blood?”
“I certainly hope so, Sandburg.” Timms pushed his spectacles a little further up his nose. “Have at you, sir!” The two men crossed swords with cautious theatricality, testing skill and judgement. After a minute or so, they grew more confident and there was a flurry of parry and thrust. The audience cheered or jeered according to their natures, but Jim stood silent. Blair must be well in his cups to make such an exhibition of himself; but he could hear his lover's voice cheerfully declaring, 'but you know that I'm no gentleman.' It made a pretty picture in the lamplight – the two men in a dance as ritual and enthusiastic as any performed to the music inside, and Jim felt a tight knot of lust in his belly as he watched Blair lunge and with a flourish pass his sword through the airy space between Timms's arm and body.
He turned his head and saw Mrs Bannister beside him, her eyes glittering in the light, the skin of her bosom a pale glow. “Boys and their games – it's entertaining, is it not, Captain Ellison?” The air reeked of arousal (and was there a hint of anxiety beneath it?) but Jim perceived it with sudden disgust rather than desire. He stepped forward, his voice loud.
“Put up your swords, gentlemen. I've no wish to manage a public fencing school.”
Blair turned to him, expecting to see fond disapproval. Seeing only plain and simple disapproval, he smiled placatingly, albeit hiding annoyance. “It's true it's growing cool, and too many ladies without wraps.” He turned to Timms. “Your servant, sir. Another time perhaps.” The group broke up, and everyone returned inside. Joel announced that supper was ready, and people descended on the cold meats and pastries as if they had never before seen food. And Jim found his eyes resting on Mrs Bannister as she moved through the crowd, before he turned to find Naomi looking quizzically at him. Heat travelled his face but he kept his expression bland and offered her his arm to escort her to the supper tables.
It was nearly half-past one in the morning before the last guests made their departure. Stephen, Jim and Naomi gave last orders to those servants who were not yet to sleep. Blair was nowhere to be seen, indeed had spent the entire evening among the guests. No more than he ought to have done by expected rules of courtesy, but Jim knew that Blair had avoided him. There had been no hooded looks, no occasional meetings as they moved among the throng.
He wearily walked up the stairs, exhausted but knowing that sleep would be a long time coming. The sounds of people moving in the house outside of the normal round suddenly seemed too strange, too noisy, the smell of the staling food was unpleasant - and Jim was filled with tension once more.
His own room was empty. Jim stood still and breathed in the familiar scents - soap, beeswax, the very faint scent of lavender off the freshly laid sheets. Blair's scent permeated the room also, but Blair was not there. It was unwise, but what good was it to be able to track every little movement through the house if he couldn't avoid being seen? Jim stepped into the hall, listening. Naomi and Stephen had followed him upstairs, but there was always the possibility that their servants might appear, dismissed for the night and on their way to their own beds.
Satisfied, he knocked softly upon Blair's door. He heard the quiet, “Enter,” and acted on the permission.
Blair sat in the large chair that had found its way to his room, all the better for Blair to read in. There was a book in his hand now, but it dangled in his grip, dismissed as uninteresting. Blair looked up in wary hope. He was loosely swaddled in the magnificence of the dressing-gown, and in the glow of candlelight the sight was all that Jim could have wished for.
He turned the key in the lock of the door. Blair smiled more confidently. “The effort of marshalling a grand occasion is clearly a strain upon you. Have you recovered your temper?”
Jim said nothing. Two long strides took him to stand before Blair, and he pulled Blair up into his arms, pressing long, thorough kisses against his mouth. Jim's hands swept in smooth touches that confirmed that Blair wore nothing else, nothing else at all except for the yards of sinful red velvet. All the night's tension was twisted into sex, and Blair lifted his hands to Jim's shoulders to brace against the desire that buffeted them both.
Blair pulled away with a small moan. “Jim. I don't know if I can keep quiet enough – not if it goes how I think it will tonight.”
Jim's voice was a harsh rasp against his ear. “And how do you think it will go?”
Blair leaned back against the high mattress of his bed. He hadn't bothered with buttons and the folds of velvet fell back from his body, the revelation of naked skin and half-hard cock a strange contrast to Jim's slightly dishevelled evening dress.
“With me biting on my pillow, I suspect.” He smiled brilliantly. “But I must resign myself. Do you plan to wear that all night?” Jim was already stripping off his clothes, while Blair watched appreciatively, stroking his hand slowly up and down his shaft until it rose in full readiness.
Naked, Jim stepped between Blair's legs and bent to kiss him once more. “I saw a rajah once. From a distance. He looked very nearly as splendid as you, but not as wanton – or self-satisfied.”
“A rajah am I?” Blair's legs lifted to wrap around Jim's hips. He placed one hand across the back of Jim's, which clutched at Blair's hip through the crush of velvet. “Then this must be tribute.” A long sigh marked Jim's kisses trailing down his neck, crossing the sweet line of collar-bone. Blair moved the hand at his hip between their bodies and directed it around both their cocks, and they remained still to watch Jim's hand sensually curve up then down once more. Blair leaned his head into Jim's shoulder and gently clamped his teeth there – as much to gag himself as to create a pleasant sensation for Jim.
Jim gasped at that and moved his hands to Blair's shoulders to push him down to his back on the bed, burrowing his hands under warm fabric to hold Blair while he sucked at the tight pink nipples that rose so satisfactorily under his mouth. Blair writhed and gripped his legs that much more tightly around Jim, locked Jim's body to him as firmly as Jim held him. Just a few thrusts, and all would be finished. Jim ground down and then bared his teeth at Blair's whimper. “Silence, love,” he murmured.
Blair levered up against Jim, his hips moving wildly, until the pleasure took him entirely. His chest heaved with the effort of breathing, and then everything caught in one long indrawn breath. Jim whispered hotly into his ear, “That's it, that's it, yes, so beautiful.”
Blair stilled after a while and pushed up gently against Jim's chest. “Your back must ache as well as your cock.”
Jim stood, aware of the coolness on his belly as air struck the moistness of sweat and semen. He had a vague idea that he might fuck Blair, but then his friend went on his knees before him, and mouthed at Jim's flesh, kissing and licking at his erection, nuzzling at his balls and pubic hair. The red velvet robe puddled around Blair like a brilliant pool of blood, but Jim pushed away that idea and instead braced one hand against the bed post while the other cupped one side of Blair's face. Blair made some small noise of approval before he took Jim fully into his mouth, sucking carefully but fervently. He braced his hands against Jim's hips, hands that were rough from controlling horses' reins gentle against the smooth skin. Jim wondered if he might be the one to cry out. He bit his lip instead, and clenched his hand against the bedpost until he came, his head lolling back as he gasped for breath.
Blair released him, and looked up with a satisfied smile. “And if your mood is not improved now, Jim, then it must be pistols at dawn between us.”
Jim knelt and placed his hands on Blair's warm, softly clad shoulders.
“My mood is somewhat improved.”
“So it should be. I'll help you with your things.” Blair leaned over to pick up Jim's shirt, and dragged it over his head as if he were five. “Ashford is a pleasant place, and I know you've come to love it dearly, but I sometimes prefer our bachelor's quarters in town.” Blair had made the decision to not retain any servants at his house in London. Naomi kept an eye on it and sent servants to clean before Jim and Blair visited, but they kept no-one in the house after dark except Joel. “At least there we can spend the whole night together without worry. I have a vision that Stephen will knock on your door demanding a doctor because Thomas is suffering rickets or the putrid sore throat, or plague, and discover us compromised. If he doesn't already question the nature of your beautiful gift.”
Jim smiled at the increasingly unlikely list of Thomas's ailments and sat on the bed to pull on his breeches. “They'll all be gone soon enough, and we won't have to take quite so much care. And as for the gown – well, he has teased me about the peculiarities of my senses, and I've not said anything to redirect his thoughts.”
Blair was sitting on the bed, still unbuttoned although no longer as blatant as he had been earlier, and Jim admired the sight with less urgent appreciation while he finished dressing.
“You look very fine.”
Blair smiled. “It's as I said – it was a present for you as much if not more than me.” He pouted teasingly. “I feel quite cheated.” Jim leaned towards him to nibble at the full lower lip.
“I fear you must live with your disappointment.”
“Indeed, and you must go back to your room.”
Jim decided that he could be excused the removal of his cravat on a visit to wish his friend good night, and held it loosely folded in his hand. He stood and unlocked the door. “Good night, Sandburg.”
Blair's eyes were soft in the dim light. “Sleep well, Jim, and thank you; for everything.”
Jim returned to his own bed, and slept. Work continued in the lower rooms of Ashford Hall until nearly four in the morning. Louise woke when her husband came to bed, and rose and looked in on her son and his nurse, never realising that her brother-in-law was with Blair. Naomi and her husband quietly discussed the evening, speculating on Jim's strange mood, although Charles' speculations were more limited in scope than some which Naomi chose not to voice. Mrs Alicia Bannister was driven to her home by Mrs Abingdon's second coachman, jolted by her understanding of what Jim was as much as she was jolted by the rough country roads. Once home, she stalked her house in agitated reflection, and investigated small oiled bags of herbs. It had been a long time since they were harvested, and she wondered if they would still be potent. She brewed a bitter tea, and drank it all.
Blair woke about eight to a clear, crisp morning. He pulled on last night's shirt and breeches. The dressing gown he left draped at the bottom of the bed, but not before gracing it with a brief, reminiscent touch. He settled himself at his small desk, and took out paper, pen and ink. Last night's conversation with Mrs Bannister teased at his mind, and he began to scribble down as much as he could remember, tapping on the desk with the index finger of his free hand occasionally, and sighing over his hopes that he was remembering names correctly. After a while he caught the sound of lusty cries from young Thomas and wondered if it would wake Jim. He sanded three pages of close-written notes and put them into a small portfolio that he kept in the desk.
He put his head out the door. If he listened carefully, he thought that he could hear the sound of activity below stairs. Joel appeared around the corner of the hallway, bearing the usual cans of hot water for washing and shaving.
“Good morning, Mr Sandburg.”
“Joel. I trust you slept well after all your work.”
“Yes, thank you.”
“And shall we wake Jim together?”
“Permit me to open the door for you, sir.”
Blair laughed at that. “I suspect you of considering me cannon fodder.”
Joel made no answer other than a discreet smile.
It seemed that the banter in the hall had awakened Jim if the cries of the baby had not. He was leaning up on one elbow, as beautiful as ever to Blair's eyes. “Come, Jim. You should make yourself decent to entertain your guests at breakfast.”
Jim flopped back down on the mattress with a small moan. “Must you be so annoyingly cheerful in the mornings, Sandburg?”
“It's a sad thing when his youthful vigour and enthusiasm leaves a man.”
Jim's hand waved in a vaguely disdainful manner. “Don't be smug, Sandburg. Today, six and twenty. But one day…Assuming that no-one murders you out of irritation first.”
“Given such a threat, I think I had best dismiss Joel, and wield your razor myself. At least I'll know where the blade will be.”
Jim smiled. “Be on your way, Joel. I don't doubt that Mrs Burgess could do with your support.”
After a lingering period spent in washing and shaving and dressing, Blair and Jim made an appearance downstairs. Naomi and Charles were already there. Naomi sipped daintily at a cup of chocolate, while her husband sustained himself with a generous serving of beef and small ale.
Blair kissed his mother on the cheek. “You look blooming despite all your hard work last night. Thank you, Mama.”
“It was no hardship, Blair. Indeed, I very much enjoyed myself, and I hope to enjoy myself again today.” Naomi's pleasant voice was teasing as she addressed herself to Jim. “I think I must steal my son away.”
Jim made no reply, simply lifted one brow
“You have plans, Mama?”
“I intend to go visiting in the neighbourhood.”
Blair was deeply fond of his mother but he couldn't entirely hide his horror at this suggestion. “And why does this grand plan require my presence?”
“I wish the two of us to meet with Mrs Bannister.”
Jim looked down at his breakfast and took a hasty swallow of coffee. His uncomfortable fascination with the woman seemed even more distasteful this morning. Blair tilted his head to gaze at Jim and then turned back to his mother.
“I am mystified.”
Naomi laughed. “It's not so much of a mystery. Mrs Wakeham who is, I fear, a rather silly woman, was carrying with her a miniature that Mrs Bannister painted of one of her children. It showed skill, and I am of a mind to introduce myself and ask her if she might do some small picture or sketch of you.”
Blair hooted with laughter before realising that his mother was entirely in earnest. His amusement turned to confusion.
“Mama, you cannot be serious.”
“And why not?”
Blair sputtered. “Why do you need a picture of me?”
“Why does anyone need anything outside the necessities of life? It would be pleasant to have a remembrance of my handsome son. It would provide a source of conversation when friends visited. It would offer employment and, I hope, pleasure to Mrs Bannister. I understand that her circumstances are reduced and she earns a little pin money by means of her accomplishment.'
“You'd be better having a portrait of yourself, Mama.”
Mr Spring spoke up. “That was seen to some time ago, remember?”
With that defence overcome, Blair looked at Jim in obvious appeal, but he could think of nothing to gainsay Naomi's arguments that wouldn't recall his jealousy of the previous night. It seemed to Jim that his interest in Mrs Bannister required some sort of apology, even if it was unspoken and unacknowledged. “Accommodate your mother, Sandburg. If nothing else, you'll be able to ask the lady to tell you more tales of South America.”
Blair's face cleared as this possibility registered. “Very well, then, I shall play at dutiful son.”
Naomi and Blair set out on horseback before midday. His mother had taken well to horse-riding again after many years away from it, just as Blair had. The land they travelled through was still fresh in the early summer days, and the sky was a sweetly heartbreaking blue.
The beauty of the country-side did not distract Naomi from broaching a topic that worried her. “I hope that I will not cause annoyance to Jim by throwing you in Mrs Bannister's way.”
Blair had dismissed Jim's earlier moodiness with the memory of last night's sex, and the morning's accord.
“He was tired and strained from having that herd of people tramp through his home on my account. He knows that my attention to her was no more than hospitality.”
Naomi shrugged, unwilling to comment. If anyone ever asked her to name one truth about her son and his lover, it would be that they were besotted with one another. Jim's stares last night had cast that into doubt: his expression had not been that of man judging a potential rival.
“He was strained from so many people demanding a sword fight on his terrace, I imagine.”
Blair smile was sly. “We were perfectly well-behaved.”
“For a rabble of street urchins,” his mother returned, and urged her horse into a faster gait, just for the simple pleasure of it. The two of them made their way across fields and pasture, to the modest house in which Alicia Bannister lived.
It had been intended as a fishing box originally, attached to Squire Abingdon's estate, which was much the largest in the area. The squire was not much of an angler and he saw no reason why the house should not grant him a small rental. Alicia herself found it well-suited to her needs. It was modest enough to assure the community that she was not rich, but respectable enough that she would be condescendingly welcomed. It was centrally placed amongst the houses and estates of the area, and relatively close to the village and the road. It permitted her to stable the riding horse which she demurely described to the friends she was making as 'her one luxury.'
Mrs Bannister had become fast friends with Miss Margaret Avery, and enjoyed the patronage of Mrs Abingdon, and as a result was already well familiar with the lives and habits of many in the neighbourhood. When Mrs Bannister opened her blue eyes wide, and leaned forward to confidentially express her gratitude that she had found such kindness, it was quite amazing how she could direct the conversation. Her gratified hosts were delighted to gossip with such a deferential lady.
Alicia had been agitated in spirit since she came into the area, which made her masquerade of sweetness difficult on occasion; but until she came face to face with James Ellison she had not understood why. It had never occurred to her that she might meet another person with her gifts in civilised society. It was, she thought, a piece of folly. After all, she was civilised, was she not? The folly was in part mended by her store of drugs. The knowledge of them was hard won, and she would use it. Somewhere far behind her was a swarthy, dark-eyed child that if it still lived must now be six or seven years of age. There should be no more, and she would not be distracted from her little adventure by the demands of a mindless rut.
After all, why was she blessed with ears to hear the approach of danger, eyes that could see without a betraying light, a nose to literally smell out treasure and the deftest of touches with a lock-pick, if it was not to take advantage of these gifts? She had looked forward to the party held by Captain Ellison as a fine opportunity to assess the jewellery worn by her neighbours. Understanding had come over the course of the evening, and was finally confirmed when James Ellison had stood before her, raking her over with heated, suspicious eyes. She wondered how much he understood of what he was.
When she looked out her window and saw Blair and Naomi's approach, she laughed out loud. Not Captain Ellison, but very nearly as good. She called out to the stout, oblivious lady she employed as cook and housekeeper and prepared for her guests.
Blair rode to Alicia Bannister's house four days after Naomi and Mrs Bannister had made their arrangements. It had been a pleasant if sometimes guarded meeting, with undercurrents that made Blair wonder how much gossip Alicia Bannister had heard of the life he and Naomi led before Naomi became Mrs Spring. Perhaps it was merely that one adventurer recognised kindred spirits. Both Blair and Naomi saw little signs that Mrs Bannister's past life was not all genteel country seclusion, and presumed that she might well see the same in them. Blair and his mother had gossiped comfortably about their speculations on the way back to Ashford.
Naomi and Charles had departed the day after, which was as well. Blair had assumed that, with the great event of the party achieved, Jim's erratic temper would improve. Instead, Jim had grown withdrawn and silent. The night before Blair had approached Jim and attempted to wheedle out an explanation of his friend's mood. Jim had turned and without so much of a twitch of his jaw in warning had roared at Blair to cease his meddling and leave him be.
Blair had obeyed with speed and was in no good mood himself this morning. He could imagine few things more tedious than sitting for a portrait, but at least Mrs Bannister's conversation would be interesting. Blair could make his escape from Ashford and settle his own temper, which was still high. He would go home soothed by civilised activity, and try once again to find out what was distressing Jim, for he was in no doubt that Jim was in some sort of trouble. Jim's tongue could be sharp, but he was not a man to snap at trifles. Blair tried to quiet his resentment that Jim had not yet confided in him.
Alicia greeted him warmly, and Blair was human enough to enjoy a beautiful woman smiling at him with gracious charm after Jim's powder keg explosion last night. She settled them in an upstairs room fitted with a table, easel, cupboard and two plain chairs.
“I'll just do a few sketches today, to get an idea of your face, before I touch paint to canvas.”
Blair smiled. “I'd have thought you must have some idea of my face already when we've met and conversed twice now.”
Alicia returned the comment with easy flirtation. “Are you keeping count of our encounters, Mr Sandburg?”
“I enjoy any charming company.”
“As do I. Now, lift your chin a little.”
“Perhaps you might tell me something of Peru?”
“When I draw, I become quite engrossed in my work. But I shall offer you some stories as a reward for your patience after.” She stood and moved close, and with gentle fingers tilted Blair's chin. “There, much better.” Alicia's house was filled with some heavy, pleasant scent and Blair traced it on the fingers that stroked his jaw. He sat still for a half an hour while Alicia scribbled over pale creamy paper with genuine pleasure.
Finally she lifted her head. “I can offer you only tea, I fear.”
Blair smiled. “And conversation also. Your stories of Lima were most entertaining, but did you never travel the interior of the country?”
“Once or twice.” The second time for an unending period of nearly a year and a half, barefooted or wearing grass sandals at best, but Blair had no need to know that. “My husband had many mercantile interests.” She was safe with this topic. Mr Sandburg of the friendly face and Jewish name would have no top-lofty ideas about the vulgarity of trade. “Guano is most unromantic but also very useful, and he had more traditional mining interests as well. There are many metal mines in the country, and once I travelled with him. Please follow me to my sitting room. We shall be far more comfortable.”
They walked down the narrow stairs, more of the heavy scent permeating Blair's clothes. Alicia took one deep breath of his body scent – savoury and pleasant. Yes, very pleasant. She wondered how much delight Captain Ellison took in it.
“There are tribes that live far from such civilisation as exists in Peru, great tracts of forest. There is unrest sometimes. Not everybody welcomes the governance of Spain, even when there are benefits, and sometimes men will hide from trouble and then return.”
They seated themselves and she rang for her housekeeper. “I heard one story that I thought might interest you. Miss Avery mentioned you took an interest in primitive man.” Alicia smiled in a knowing, gentle way. “I suspect my friend of having a small tendresse for you.”
Miss Avery was nearly fifty, with a tendency to blush still. Blair merely said, “She's a kindly lady.”
“Indeed. My informant, in Peru that is,” Alicia's face dimpled, “told me of a man he met in a tribe he took refuge with. One of their warriors, and a very valued man, for he could see better, hear better than anyone else. Quite supernatural.” She looked at Blair with a carefully practised expression of sophisticated amusement. Such stories could hardly be true after all.
Blair took the bait. He had enjoyed the morning's conversation. Alicia was intelligent and beautiful, but he'd regarded these things as a small solace in the tedious business of pleasing his mother. Now he leaned forward in genuine interest, and Alicia listened triumphantly to the quickened beat of his heart.
“Such skills must have been very useful. Only enhanced sight and hearing?”
“So I believe. My – guest told me that this man was a wonder in the hunt; they use darts to bring down game amongst many of the tribes, or else primitive bows and arrows.”
“It would be a wondrous thing, although more suited to the wilds. I try to imagine such a being in a city and wonder how he would cope – the noise and the smells.”
Alicia lowered her head and smiled. Fishing, little guide, she thought. So curious to know whether you have a place. “Oh, such as London in August! Not bearable to any creature.” Alicia laughed merrily. “The warrior did not even deal with the small disruptions of the village. I understand that he lived apart and on his own,” she lied, and then carried on with a tangent of the description of his clothes and weapons.
Blair swallowed his foolish disappointment that there was no equally supernatural companion to the jungle warrior and listened to Mrs Bannister's second hand descriptions of strange customs with vicarious pleasure. His fingers itched for paper and pen to write it all down. The visit wore on and Blair finally stood and made his excuses.
Alicia reached for his hand. “You must see the prospect from the back before you go. So nonsensical that the prettiest view is to be seen from the kitchen door.” Blair stiffened in surprise and she smiled with carefully judged friendliness to remind him that she was a woman of sophistication, not bound by rules meant for silly virgins. It was hard not to do anything that would scare him off there and then. The drugs could only dull so much, and his hand was warm and strong in hers. She put aside assessment of his likely talents as a lover – he was too tied to his sentinel for a game of seduction with her. She wondered what James Ellison would make of the mix of scents that he would find on Blair. In the state she knew him to be entering they would undoubtedly provoke jealousy, whether of her or of Blair she cared not, so long as they kept the lovely Captain Ellison as off his balance as possible.
Blair duly admired the view and then left, wondering why he felt uncomfortable with Mrs Bannister, for all her friendliness and interesting tales. “Domesticity is making you timid,” he scolded himself, and then blushed as he realised that Miss Avery was approaching. Hopefully she hadn't heard him.
Miss Avery was red in the face herself, with the heat of her walk and the importance of the news she had to impart. “Oh, Mr Sandburg, the most dreadful thing. The Wakehams were burgled last night. I was on my way to tell Mrs Bannister, so that she may be on her guard.”
“Burgled? By stealth or were they threatened?”
“Oh, by stealth, but clearly a burglar, for the window was left wide open when they awoke. And Elizabeth Wakeham is inconsolable for she has lost the jewels that belonged to her grandmother, and some very fine miniatures in filigree frames.”
“Sad news. Will they have heard it at Ashford, do you think?”
Miss Avery smiled. “That will depend on who has been out and about this morning.”
Blair lifted his hat to her, before he rode on. The word had passed to Ashford via tenants and servants and Jim was gone to the Wakehams to offer his condolences and to determine exactly what had happened. He returned in the evening. His greeting was tentative, but Blair's smile was welcoming. He was happy enough to let bygones be bygones, especially as he hoped that talking about the day's events might give him a chance to lead on to whatever was troubling Jim.
Jim frowned as he drew near. “Your clothes stink, Sandburg.”
Blair's eyebrows raised in surprise. “No worse than usual – oh. Of course. Mrs Bannister uses incense or some such.”
Jim's scowl deepened. “Yes, Mrs Bannister… Change your coat at least, for God's sake.”
Blair looked around him. No servants were nearby. “Jim. Is that what's been bothering you? Alicia Bannister? Mama asked me about it but I…”
“I'm not concerned by what your mother asked you.”
Blair swallowed back anger. “How is it with the Wakehams?”
“They are distressed, and a little frightened, for all that nobody heard or saw anything.” Jim said nothing more, but turned to go upstairs. Blair followed him, and received a sharp look.
“What?” he exclaimed. “I need to change my coat, remember.”
Jim rolled his eyes.
“Did you try to use your senses? Perhaps you might be able to discover something.”
Jim shrugged, irritation barely contained. “The Wakehams are very hospitable. Whoever the thief is, he left no trace, and the house is awash with the scent of guests and children and dogs.”
Blair found himself taking an interest despite himself. “What of the dogs?”
“Elderly, and some of them drugged.”
“A professional job, then. Unless it's one of the servants trying to make it look like a stranger.”
Jim shrugged again.
“Why will you not talk to me, Jim? If I've caused offence I have a right to know. How else can I make amends?”
Jim turned to look at Blair. The long sharp lines of his face were harshly drawn in the dim light of the hallway.
“You've done nothing. My humour will mend itself soon enough.”
“And when will that be?” Blair was unable to even pretend at neutrality. The last week had worn at his natural good temper, and he had no more patience for whatever Jim was about. His only answer was a firmly closed door.
Once behind that door, Jim leaned against it, exhausted. He could hear and smell Blair outside in the hall. He knew all the signs of resentment and hurt in his friend; the quickened heartbeat, the heat that flushed his skin. Blair murmured, “I wish…” and then broke off and went to his own room, leaving Jim to wrestle with his own unruly mind.
Blair wished that Jim would confide in him, but Jim hardly knew how to explain; that irritation had turned to a sense of threat; that he was obsessed with a woman he had seen in barely more than passing; that his senses felt wide open, not physically painful but immensely distracting. It was the second issue that was the sticking point, and how could he explain any of it to Blair when he couldn't explain it to himself. The old fears of madness that preyed on his mind when his senses first magnified were now in their turn magnified. There was danger, of course there was danger if thieves were abroad, but that didn't justify his moods or his treatment of Blair.
He took off his coat, and was for a moment lost in the way the weave felt under his hands. The spare orderliness of his bedroom was suddenly too much, too cluttered, too close. He left, clattering down the stairs, and went to roam once more in the park outside. He passed Joel on the stairs, without acknowledgement.
Joel watched his employer leave the house, and briefly mulled over Jim's strained face and rigid back. He went and conferred with Blair. Neither man had any joy of their discussion but the result of it was that Blair went out into the dusk of the evening in search of Jim.
There was a small rise to the north of the house, set with trees and shrubs. Blair found Jim there, seated on the ground under a tree. He sat down also, but at a distance.
“Joel commanded I find you.”
Jim stared out across the dimming land. “It's not like you to use another as your scapegoat.”
Blair's voice was sharp with confusion and suppressed grief. “I thought it would be good for you to remember that I'm not the only person who is anxious for you.”
Jim's mind couldn't register that anxiety, only the strange press of instinct upon him. “Sometimes, I can't be inside. And then when I'm outside, I feel,” Jim struggled for words, “as if I'll be spread on the wind and be gone…”
“So it's your senses then?”
Jim stood, his fragile calm once more shattered into agitation. “It's everything, Sandburg. And you can't help.”
Blair took a determined breath. “You and I have explored your senses before now – not always with your willing co-operation, I'll grant you. You've been avoiding me since the night of the party – how can you know whether I could soothe you or not when you hardly will look at me, let alone spend time in my company?”
Jim laughed. “Soothe. Like I'm a baby or a madman.”
“You're not mad, Jim. Troubled, yes, but…”
“You can't know that, Sandburg.” Jim's voice rose, and Blair shouted back.
“Of course I know nothing! You won't talk to me!”
Jim grabbed Blair and pulled him close, spun him so that he was pinned against the trunk of a tree.
“I barely slept last night. I felt as if the sky was going to fall. And when I did sleep, do you know what I dreamed?” He hoisted Blair with his grip in the front of his coat, that damned coat that stank of her and her house. “Should I tell you?”
Blair's voice was calm, despite the suffocating beat of his heart. “Yes, you should tell me.”
“I was in the red salon, with Alicia Bannister. I was fucking her, I was seated on the sofa with her sitting on my cock as if I was her throne. I held her breasts in my hands and it was the sweetest thing…” Jim stopped, and swallowed convulsively. Blair gripped at his shoulders, trying to find support as much as anything, but it felt supplicant, sexual, and Jim pressed harder against him.
“There was only one thing missing, and that was you, and there you were. Not willingly, not happily, but you were there, and you kissed me, and you kissed her and you went to your knees in front of us and serviced both of us with your mouth. God!”
He ripped himself away from Blair, who remained leaning against the tree. “Still so sure you want me to talk to you?”
“Jim, it was only a dream. The mind throws all sorts of odd things up in our sleep.” Blair's voice shook.
“It wasn't just a dream!” Jim roared. “None of this is a dream! Christ, I wish it was.” He sat down hard on the ground and leaned into his bent-up knees, his face buried in his crossed arms.
Blair sat beside him. “If it isn't a dream, then it's real, and if it's real it can be understood.”
“Oh, the would-be scholar thinks he can find the answers,” Jim mocked. Blair's face flushed.
“We could try together,” he said quietly.
Jim shook his head. This last week he had needed increasingly to prowl, or to hide or rut like some animal. He didn't want Blair laying those instincts bare, nor did he want Blair taking the brunt of his temper and sarcasm, which he would because he never knew when to withdraw. He didn't want to uncaringly use Blair the way he had in that accursed dream. Jim would overcome this, as a thinking, rational man ought.
“Perhaps you ought to go to London, visit your mother.”
“No!”
“Oh, for…stay or go as you wish. But don't complain if I'm not much in the way of company.” Jim stood again. “I need to walk. Alone.”
Blair was tight-lipped. “Very well.” He watched Jim walk away, and returned to the house, shook his head at Joel's silent look of enquiry and went to his room. With shaking hands he took out his portfolios and journals. Over the last year or so he had tried to write something of what he observed in Jim; speculated to himself as to the nature of the relationship between them; made comparison, sometimes grave and sometimes trivial with what other scholars had written. Other scholars. He heard Jim's sarcastic remark again in his head, and blinked hard against the burn in his eyes. There must be some way to help Jim. Surely there must. He threw himself onto the bed to read and think, and eventually fell asleep, surrounded by a litter of papers and books. Jim saw him there when he returned later to the house, as he obsessively walked the hallways and ensured that all was undisturbed and safe.
The next day Jim again visited the Wakehams. He went on to see Squire Abingdon, who was the local magistrate. He spoke to the parish constable, a man more accustomed to sending vagrants on their way than investigating a well-executed housebreaking. He spoke to his own tenants, asking them to keep an eye out for anyone or anything unusual. He went back to his home and collapsed on a chair in the book room, feeling that he had done nothing at all useful.
Dinner was a quiet meal. Blair asked as to the day's journey and Jim snarled that given he hadn't sniffed after that woman that it was no business of Blair's where he went. Blair left the room, and Jim followed and made a stilted apology. Blair hinted that a fuller apology could be made in his bedroom after the household went to bed, but he was disappointed. Jim found that the only way to deal with his situation was to push any and all sensual feeling deep underground. To think of Blair was to think of Alicia Bannister, and that was to be open to every little nuance of sensation, and that only made the dreams that he couldn't stop all the more vivid. Besides, he dreaded the possibility that he might touch Blair and find himself thinking of her.
Blair rode the next day to his second sitting for the portrait. Mrs Bannister had claimed that she would only need two, and that she could then complete the picture from memory. Blair couldn't even regard this session as a relief from the mood of the house. Jim had declared himself in the throes of some sort of sexual infatuation with this woman, however unwillingly. He was distant and surly by turns and Blair was increasingly frightened that he was watching the foundering of whatever he and Jim shared.
Blair's greeting to Alicia Bannister was somewhat short as a result, but she ignored it, and was charming as ever. Blair had spent the last few days frantically speculating as whether this woman played any conscious role in the oddities of Jim's behaviour. All Blair could think of was Jim spitting out the events of the dream that had so disturbed him, indeed, disturbed them both for all Blair's brave words. All of it was tied together; Jim's obsession with Alicia and the robbery at the Wakehams, but how the knot was formed was beyond Blair's ability to trace. So he watched Alicia Bannister, something that was hard to do with discretion as she was continually looking at him for the purposes of the picture. Was she purely a calm and cultured woman, or did he discern the glitter of a secret in her eyes? He couldn't judge, and Mrs Bannister's subtle smile gave no clue to her thoughts.
Blair finally rose to leave, no closer to an answer than he had been before.
“I should be finished this in a day or so – I work hard when the fit is upon me. Shall I ride over with it?”
Blair could imagine few things worse than Alicia Bannister's arrival at Ashford. “Please, don't put yourself to the effort. It may even be simpler to send it straight on to my mother.”
Alicia smiled. “But surely you would wish to see the finished article? And would not Captain Ellison be interested, such good friends as the two of you are?”
Blair felt a small prickle of downright fear. All his life he had learned to ignore or divert subtle barbs of suggestion. He looked sharply at Mrs Bannister, and saw something in the depths of her eyes that he didn't trust.
“As you wish,” he said as smoothly as he could. “But I doubt that Jim will be much company. He's very concerned with the burglary.”
“Oh, it's more than one now. My groom went to the village and came back abuzz with the news. Mrs Timms found one of her maids lying dead at the foot of the stairs, and jewellery and money gone, or so he says.” A shiver ran through Alicia. “It's a frightening thought for a woman on her own.”
“Dead?” Blair asked in horror.
“Her neck broken, I understand. But it's not something I wish to dwell upon.”
Blair made his escape. If Jim hadn't already heard this news he would wish to hear it as soon as possible. He arrived at Ashford to discover that the news had come via Squire Abingdon, who had sent out brief notes through his footmen and grooms to as many of the local landowners who could be conveniently reached.
Jim was pacing the book room and clutching the note in his hand. “Abingdon has requested a meeting to form a prosecution association. He wants to ensure that once the thief is caught that there will be no doubt that the business will go to trial.”
Blair looked doubtful. “And how will the thief be caught?”
Jim's face was grim. “A good question, Sandburg. A good question. I wish I knew the answer.”
“When is the meeting to be held?”
“In three day's time. Mr Timms should be returning from business in London.”
“Maybe he'll bring a Bow Street Runner with him.”
“Maybe. But all people can do is keep watch, and one man can't do that for a whole neighbourhood.”
Blair sighed. “Although God knows you've tried. You'll wear yourself to a shadow, Jim.”
Jim shrugged. “It's not as if I sleep well, Sandburg. And if I'm not here I can't shout at you or Joel or anyone else.”
Blair tried a smile. “It's not as if I'm sleeping that well either. Perhaps I should join you.”
Jim turned away. “I don't think so.”
Two days later Jim sat with the estate accounts before him. He had several times considered employing a bailiff but he found that he liked the control of his land, and the contact with his tenants. Today the evidence of well-husbanded land failed to content or even distract him. Instead, he sat in his chair and thought over the visit he had felt compelled to pay to Mrs Timms. With both her son and husband absent, she had been distraught, and the household had been in uproar. The dead woman was not simply one of the housemaids, but Mrs Timms' own abigail, by name Jane Crawford, and with her for years. She had been laid in state in her bedroom and Jim had been unable to get near the body for the crowd of mourners. Not that he knew what he might have discovered even if he could have.
However frustrating the puzzle of the break-ins, it was better to think of them than Alicia Bannister, or the scent of Joel's worry or the hunched set of Blair's shoulders. Jim hadn't touched him since that night under the trees, but Blair continuously walked the house as if expecting a blow. Jim regretted it, but he had reached a delicately numb equilibrium and he feared to unbalance it. Blair was irritation and fascination combined, and Jim didn't want to feel anything right now. Better to consider the housebreakings.
When Joel announced that Mrs Bannister had arrived, Jim glanced unseeing at his books with something approaching despair. He swallowed back an urge to laugh. What was there to laugh about after all? Instead he stood to greet her, accepting that his carefully nurtured balance was about to be completely overset.
She entered the room, a flat parcel held in one hand. “Captain Ellison,” she declared with frank and deceitful simplicity. Her heartbeat was rapid and she was rank with the scent of arousal. Her voice made something within him thrum in wild vibration.
“Mrs Bannister,” he returned, oddly calm now that he finally faced her. He had hated the dreams once he woke, but they were always filled with delight.
“Did Mr Sandburg mention my plan to bring my little artistic effort to you?” Alicia's eyes were huge as she held out her free hand. Perhaps Jim was dreaming now. Certainly he felt quite unreal as he walked towards her and took her hand in his. It was ungloved and warm in his own. Alicia spoke some more but Jim didn't hear it. There was only her soft skin and the scent of her body, and he lifted her hand with slow deliberation to hold it close to his face. He inhaled sharply. The scent was different to what he remembered from his dreams, somehow more acrid, but that no longer mattered as he turned her hand in his and took one slow lick of her palm. Nothing else mattered. Nothing.
Alicia smiled and a shiver travelled through her. Jim smiled in his turn, his expression serene and easy, and took yet another lick. He moaned like a starving man set before a banquet and was about to reach out for her when a voice pierced through his dreamy anticipation and ripped it to shreds.
“Dear God.” It was Blair, wide-eyed and pale with shock, standing in the doorway with a book in his hand. “I – I wanted the companion to this volume…I…” Then he was gone.
Jim still held Alicia's hand in his, in a grip that caused her pain, not that she showed it. Indeed, her whole attitude spoke of complete gratification. “You almost make me regret, Jim.” Her voice was caressing. “But some things can't be.” She tried to withdraw her hand and he released her, slow horror filling him. “I hope that Mrs Spring enjoys the portrait. I think it an excellent likeness, myself.” With that she left the room, to see Blair standing on the stairs, his eyes ablaze with jealous hurt. “Yes, I could regret this.” She smiled, and swept out of the house to claim her horse for the ride home.
It was a long afternoon and a strained uneasy evening at Ashford, and the whole house noticed the fact. There was a lively discussion in the stables as to whether Mrs Bannister was setting her cap at Captain Ellison or Mr Sandburg. Jim fled the house to walk for much of the day, and returned to curtly inform Mrs Burgess that there was no need of any formal dinner, that he had no need of food, and to provide whatever Mr Sandburg requested. As Mr Sandburg requested nothing and spent most of the day in his room, below-stairs cooked for itself, and noted Joel's gloomy distraction.
Blair hid in his room. He made no effort to tell himself that his actions were anything else. He opened books and looked unseeing at the words. They might all as well have been illustrated volumes, and the only picture he saw was Jim's head bent over Alicia's palm, his sweet agile tongue licking at her like a hound offered water cupped in its owner's hands. There was a storm building in him, compounded equally of sickly fear and a dark possessive rage. He saw Jim returning to the house in the evening twilight. Jim couldn't have walked to her house and back – there wasn't the time between now and that little tableau in the book room – but he had to stifle the fantasy that Jim had done so, and restrain the urge to punch his hand through the window-pane and send broken glass raining down.
He could not understand it all, which added to his anger. Over the last two years, he fancied that he had come to understand James Ellison very well indeed; his pride and his guarded tendernesses and fears. The idea that after all he knew nothing festered in his heart.
Jim was unable to walk away his own sick despair and confusion, or to reconstruct the shell of control he had sheltered behind before Alicia came. He went to his book-room and stayed there for the remainder of the evening, taking what punishment he could in her lingering scent. The room held far deeper traces of Blair, and that was punishment too. It must stop – this dichotomous obsession had to stop or he would lose Blair, if he had not already done so. He couldn't approach Blair yet, not even to offer an abject apology. He was too frightened of what he might see in his face.
Joel made enquiry once as to whether Jim required anything. “Nothing. And don't stay up, I can attend to myself tonight.” He made his way to his bedroom about eleven. All was in order – a candle was lit, the covers were turned down. The bed was empty, and likely to remain that way, he supposed.
That uncomfortable awareness was full in him tonight. His senses weren't out of control as they had been in the year before he met Blair; there was no pain or trance, just an openness that would bring him whatever he sought to know: the weave of his bed sheets and cover, the movement of the leaves of the trees outside in the park, the sounds of his house and its inhabitants. So much that he could discover; just not the understanding of his own errant instincts, or the intentions of the man in the bedroom along the hall.
His clothes were a distraction; the seams chafed, the drape of the cloth dragged at his limbs. He took them off and stared out his window for a long time, watching the moonlit shadows change. Perhaps if he let it, his sight might travel out across the landscape, orienting itself to some strange compass. The thought was a strange one and it frightened him and he tried to furl his opened sensibility. Finally, he went to his bed, and rumpled the bedcover in a fitful rest that was marked by half dreams where he roamed the quiet fields. At perhaps one in the morning he heard a sound that he realised was Blair, talking to himself in his bedroom. He wasn't aware enough to catch the words, just the knowledge that Blair slept no better than he did. Suddenly ashamed of his cowardice, Jim sat up in bed, and then stilled as he heard Blair's door open, the quick sound of softly stepping bare feet, the quiet snick of the latch of his own door.
Blair stepped in, and shucked the dressing gown, left it lying over the top of a bureau. Nude, he approached the bed, and Jim could hear Blair's heart hammering, feel the shape of him expressed through the heat that radiated off him. There was a sharp, sweet scent rising from behind Blair and the muted echo of it from his fingers, mixed with all the varying scents of Blair's body. Jim swallowed, excitement and anxiety cresting within him. Blair's face and attitude were hardly lover-like; they more expressed grim determination.
Blair said nothing, simply climbed onto the bed and sat astride Jim. Jim reached out and clung to him, ran his hands across Blair's strong smooth back. He had barely touched him for what seemed like forever and now he didn't know how to let go. Blair buried his face in the crook of Jim's shoulder. He was trembling, for all the stern assurance on his face and Jim tried to soothe him with slow strokes across his back and arms and hair. Blair lifted his head, and took Jim's face between his hands.
“You can see my face, can't you?” It was quiet but clear.
“Blair…” Jim hardly knew what to say, but he had to say something to make restitution for his recent behaviour and the nadir of today's calamity, and for the pain he saw in Blair.
“You can see my face.” The statement brooked no interruptions.
Jim nodded.
“Then you can see that I mean whatever I say.” Jim nodded again, his head held firmly between those broad hands which smelled maddeningly of the oil that he knew Blair had used. One of Jim's hands slid down Blair's back all the way down to the crease of his arse, and the side of his index finger rubbed along Blair's hole, which was slippery and loose. Blair shut his eyes, and squirmed against the touch, before he pushed Jim to lie down and then leaned against Jim's shoulders, pressing him down against the bed. Jim's exploring hand came adrift and came to rest against Blair's hip.
They were both erect now, and Jim gasped as Blair draped himself over him, their legs tangled together, the warmth of their bodies mingling together. Blair pressed the lightest of kisses to Jim's mouth and smiled in sour amusement as Jim arched up.
“I wish I knew that it was me you wanted right now. I'm through with standing aside. And I won't be complaisant.” He nipped sharply at Jim's earlobe. “Do you hear me?”
“Yes…Blair, wait...” Jim knew that he should try to stop this, to explain and apologise – but he had no explanations. And vulnerable to every little sensation as he was this night, Blair's touch made him as crazed with desire as the scent surrounding the woman had done. There was no difference between the two hungers – until Blair forced his confused instincts to make the distinction.
“Are you listening to me, Jim?” The question was punctuated with a twist of fingers against a nipple, and Jim arched up again, and opened his eyes to see Blair's face hovering above his. Fierce, frightened eyes scanned Jim's face.
Jim moaned before he managed an answer. “Yes.”
Blair sat up astride Jim once more. He reached behind him and took Jim's cock in a warm hand, and wriggled back to direct it to the entrance to his body. They were joined in one steady movement of pleasure. Blair braced his hands on Jim's shoulders. He rocked back and forth, and then muttered, “I may well sound like a lunatic, but I don't care. I don't care, Jim.” His voice was low and breathless with emotion and the effort to control sensation. “You,” he lowered his head to take a desperate kiss and Jim opened to him without a protest even when Blair bit hard at his lip, “you belong to me. You're mine, and no-one else's.”
Jim could make no answer except to thrust against the warm grip that held his cock, the solid weight that sat across his body.
“Mine, Jim.”
Jim still struggled in confusion. He couldn't even say if it was true, but he wanted it to be true. In the end, it was Blair that he wanted and needed, and he said it, accepted the weapon put into his hand for the fight. “Yes.”
“Good.” Blair began to move with more strength, his eyes always on Jim even though he could see little in the night dark of the bedroom. Jim could see him, and touch him, and his hips rose to meet pleasure and, finally, a level of certainty, while Blair's hands moved in rough abandon over his skin.
“Are you waiting for me?”
“Yes.” It was, it seemed, the only word that he could find tonight.
“How considerate.” Jim's heart twisted at that, even as his body twisted under Blair's. “Just come, you need it, don't you, you bastard?” Blair's voice was rough, shaken with the rhythm he exacted from both their bodies. “And after I can have you, arse or mouth – yes – mouth, clean the taste of her out of your mouth, come on…” And Jim arched one last time, his hands clutching against the tops of Blair's thighs, his face tensed in extremity. Blair leaned over him, whispering, “Yes, yes, that's it,” his own face frowning in concentration as he judged how best to make Jim lose himself.
Jim came back to a gradual awareness of Blair's weight over him, the possessive grip of Blair's thighs against his hips, the way that Blair's arse held his cock until he moved. Jim sighed as he slipped out, but then Blair shifted forward onto his hands and knees. Jim slid down the sheets between his thighs. Blair's body looming over him, the scent of his unsatisfied body – all of these things settled some of the chaos inside Jim. How could he have thought that turning away from Blair could have helped him?
“Jim. Please. Please.”
The angle wasn't easy. Jim wrapped his arms across Blair's hips, and lifted his head to take Blair's cock into his mouth. It was awkward but he didn't try to turn Blair, just accepted that this was somehow right, despite the growing ache of his neck and jaw. Blair cried out once at the first touch of Jim's mouth, a noise that might have been sex or grief or anything at all but should never have come from Jim's room in the small hours of the night. Jim didn't care, and neither did Blair. He thrust his hips hard, again and again, his arms and legs trembling, while Jim anchored himself with one hand and used the other to stroke at Blair's balls and play with the fluttering muscles of the tender hole slick with Jim's semen. Another wild noise from Blair, and Jim tried to swallow, finally pulling his head away as his body demanded that he must take breath.
Blair collapsed in a curved heap against the headboard, Jim lying in the lee of his body, surrounded by Blair's scent and warmth. There was silence between them and then Blair reached down to stroke gently across Jim's jaw.
“Are you all right? I was hardly careful.” He was startled and more than a little frightened by what he had done. It was, he hoped, more than a madness of jealousy. When he had come to Jim's bedroom he had been governed by a strange surety, but he was no longer so certain in the aftermath.
“Do I deserve care?” Jim asked.
Blair swallowed; a noisy sound in the stillness of the dark room. “Yes, of course you do, oh God, Jim.”
Jim turned to his stomach and leaned up on his arms to clumsily stroke Blair's face in his turn. “Men so often say that they can't help themselves, and I've always mocked that excuse. A lesson to be learned.” His voice was bitter.
Blair scrambled down the mattress and pulled Jim's head against his shoulder. “Is that how it truly feels? That you have no choice?”
Jim buried his face against the offered shoulder - what did it matter that Blair couldn't see him – he still needed to hide.
“When you came back to me, after our quarrel, I told myself that I would never willingly hurt you. And I did, of course, but I thought it was for the better, to make you leave me.”
“And this?”
“It's like being tossed in a storm at sea. I'm sorry, Blair, so, so sorry.”
Blair's hand stroked over Jim's head, gently and continuously, comforting them both.
“You've been like this since the night you met her.” He paused in thought. “Probably before that, even. I thought it was just the strain of turning your ordered life upside down for your guests, but…You've been distracted and irritable for weeks now.” Blair forced himself to recall the terrible scene of the past afternoon, to consider it with the eyes of an observant scholar rather than a desolated lover. Alicia was unfazed by the carnality of Jim's attention – her face had been flushed, her eyes glittered; but with pleasure, not embarrassment or uncertainty. She had departed the house with complete self-possession, leaving Jim behind in appalled humiliation.
Jim shifted in Blair's hold and secured an arm around his waist. “She's a beautiful woman, but I doubt that many men slobber into her palm on the basis of five minutes' acquaintance. She understands something of this, Sandburg, I know she does.”
Blair smiled at the use of his surname. Jim sought distance from their difficulties, but at least he didn't seek distance from his lover.
Blair nuzzled his face against Jim's disordered hair. “We must talk to her.”
“You think she'll say anything useful?”
“She can be a woman of sense when she wishes. Besides, what people will not say can be very nearly as interesting as what they will.”
“We must talk to her?”
“You can hardly bend her over the table and flip up her skirts with me there to stop you, can you now?”
Jim laughed breathlessly but it was too close to tears. “High praise for my skills as a lover.”
“You think so, do you?” Blair resumed stroking Jim's hair. “Tomorrow is Squire Abingdon's meeting. We can call on Mrs Bannister on our way back.” His voice grew insistent. “You cannot live like this, Jim. And neither can I. Perhaps we should go to London. Maybe distance would help.”
“No!” Jim tried to calm himself and Blair, stroked across Blair's suddenly rigid back. “Not until there's some resolution to the housebreakings.”
“The housebreakings is it?”
“I swear. The housebreakings, not her. I promise.”
They slept then. Jim woke a little before dawn when there was no more than a tinge of grey light in the night sky. Blair lay next to him, his face slack with sleep, one arm slung across Jim's torso. Jim watched him, and tried to imagine what he might have done if it had been Blair enmeshed in a weird infatuation, if he had found Blair with someone the way that Blair had found him. He couldn't bear it, imagining his own pain and transferring that imagining to Blair. He pulled him closer still, and kissed his lips, loose still with sleep.
Blair stirred at that, and looked at him with shadowed eyes, uncertain of Jim's mood. “A new day,” he said.
“Indeed.” Jim lay on his back and stared at the ceiling. With Blair warm against his side, it was suddenly easier to analyse his watchful mood of the night, even if he still didn't understand it. The ceiling gave up no secrets, until Jim surprised himself and Blair when he said, “There was another burglary last night.”
Blair propped himself on an elbow. “How do you know that?”
“I just do.”
Blair laid his head on Jim's chest, and sighed as Jim's arms closed around him. “This was the hardest thing – that you wouldn't touch me.”
“And how could I do that when I was determined on cuckolding you?”
“If you were determined on it , it would have happened. Jim. We're agreed that she knows something of why this is happening to you. She said something to me, that she'd heard of people like you in Peru, men with heightened senses. Perhaps she's seen this - response - before.”
Jim stared unseeingly at the plaster above him. “But why her? And why now?” His eyes widened with shock. “Unless like calls to like.”
Blair lifted himself, trying to read Jim's face in the shadows.
“Not some story she's heard, but herself. But then why isn't she…” he paused.
Jim's hands moved restlessly over Blair's skin. “In my state? I wish I knew.”
“Presumably your sensibility has subjected you to some - mating instinct. I know this is an uncomfortable thought, but that's my point, we must think about this.”
“Easy for you to say.”
Blair crawled fully on top of Jim and kissed him hard in an echo of the night's possession. “Not easy at all. But easier than the idea that you'd turn away from me when you needed help.”
“I didn't want to use you.”
“Pride, Captain Ellison. It will be your downfall.”
Angry, Jim shut his eyes. There were times when the tangle of obligation and affection between them was too much for his stubborn reserve. Blair realised he had been too forthright for Jim's mood and moved to get off him, but Jim held him steady, and took a deep breath.
“Stay. We have to face the day soon enough. Stay for now.”
Blair smiled in relief and tucked his head on the pillow against Jim's, left his body sprawled to half cover Jim's. They dozed like that until the sun was full risen, and slanting pale through the window curtains to lay gentle stripes across their bodies.
The ride to Squire Abingdon's house was quiet, both men speculating on whether Jim's instinct of another theft would be proven true. They approached the house, and a groom came out to take their horses to the stables, while a footman said, “Squire's apologies, sirs, but he's with Mrs Abingdon. We were robbed last night.”
Jim stopped dead in the doorway. “Was anyone harmed?”
“No, sir, excepting one of the dogs. Thief poisoned them to keep them quiet, and one never woke up. Was Miss Corinna's favourite and she's right distressed. All the house is.”
“I can imagine,” replied Blair, but his attention was all on Jim rather than the news. They were shown into the dining room, where other local landowners waited, Jonathan Wakeham and George Timms among them, some of them raising eyebrows at Blair's presence. Anger and outrage were vibrant in the room although the discussion was restrained out of respect for their host's recent losses. Robberies happened in the cities, not in this small privileged corner of the countryside.
Abingdon appeared eventually, full of apologies, and the meeting got down to business. Promises of subscription were made, but there was one small problem, as George Timms pointed out. It was very well to have the money to prosecute the thief, but how was the thief to be caught?
“Enquiry agents must be paid,” Jim replied. “Send them among as many pawn shops and jewellers as possible.”
“For all we know the damned thief has buried his swag and is waiting for peace before disposing of his gains.”
Jim shrugged. The room was full of distracting scents, including that of Alicia Bannister. She was a friend of Mrs Abingdon, indeed he supposed it was likely that she would visit here once she heard the news. That knowledge kept breaking into his concentration, and he was suddenly grateful for Blair's quiet presence next to him.
“I'm not saying it's likely to catch the thief, but barring catching him in the act the possibilities are limited.”
“And you've been active in inquiries, more active than that fool of a constable, I've heard.”
Jim took a deep breath of Blair's scent. “In the army, we had sometimes to make inquiries as to cheating and theft. Besides, the more people putting their thoughts to solving this, the better.”
Abingdon sighed. “That the same person or persons have committed the crimes is undoubted. Do you wish to investigate, Captain Ellison?” The offer was no more than a courtesy, and Jim accepted it in the same spirit, aware as he had not been before that his scrutiny of all the sites of the thefts might look strange to others. But it didn't matter. With his senses he might discover something. Even if it might not be proof to the understanding of others, it might help lead him to proof.
The two men wandered through the house, Blair walking unasked and unnoticed behind them both. Abingdon led them upstairs to his dressing room. “I had a store of guineas here, and some old jewels worn by my father and an uncle.” He smiled in deprecation. “They decked themselves out well in those days.” Jim said nothing, found that he could say nothing. The room was rank with the smell of Alicia Bannister. He had thought nothing of the other traces of her in the house, however disturbing he might have found them. But now…he ran his hands over the chest of drawers and knew that she had been in here, where no female visitor had any business. He rubbed his fingers against the bridge of his nose, and tried to think.
Abingdon led them from the room and took them downstairs to a small parlour. “This is the window where we think he made entry.” Not even caring how it might look, Jim ran his nose up and down the length of the window frame and casement. If he had needed the confirmation, it was there. Fury filled him.
“If you will excuse me, sir.” He turned on his heel without any further explanation and strode out of the house, leaving Blair to make whatever excuses he could and then hurry after him. Squire Abingdon watched them go, and returned to the dining room and his other guests, who were taking wine and discussing all aspects of the thefts. Captain Ellison's manners and eccentricities received an airing also; his brusqueness, his past illnesses, his regrettable habit of foisting his Jewish companion into society. Elsewhere in the house, Mrs Abingdon instructed that the lock and key to her bedroom be well oiled, and made plans for the ivy to be stripped from the wall. And Miss Corinna Abingdon sat with the gawky maid who tended to the children's bedrooms and planned her favourite dog's burial with tearful adolescent fervour.
Jim explained nothing about their abrupt departure from the Abingdon's house, and physically shook Blair off when he demanded an explanation. Blair followed in his wake in exasperated confusion, which transformed into anxiety as Jim recklessly urged his horse on across country. Blair did his best to encourage his mare, which gamely followed but barely kept up. Jim rode on without caution or thought, his mad urgency transmitted to his horse. Blair concentrated on keeping his own seat and tried not to think about the consequences if their mounts found a rabbit hole, or if either of them misjudged the heart-stopping leaps across hedges and walls.
When Blair realised that their destination was Alicia's house, he barely knew what to think, and anxiety turned to full-blown fear. What in God's name did Jim mean by this? Blair knew that Alicia was a visitor to the Abingdon house. Had Jim sensed something, seen something there that drove this manic ride? Blair forced his nearly exhausted animal on, and was desperately relieved when Jim slowed enough on the approach to the house that Blair could catch him up.
They both dismounted and Blair slewed himself immediately into Jim's path, his hands gripping hard at Jim's arms.
“Not another step until you tell me what this means.” He was breathless with the exertion of the ride and anxiety. Jim was in worse case, breathless with exertion yes, but also with instinctive fury. And now Blair was blocking his way to that bitch? Jim didn't think so. But Blair was better prepared than he had been at Abingdon's and he clung to Jim like a bulldog. Jim was forced to slow his headlong charge to Alicia's door, and he found breath to say, “She's the thief, Sandburg.” Blair's astonishment gave Jim the chance to break free of his hold and without ceremony he threw the door open. Blair ran after him, not knowing Jim in this mood, and fearing that his presence was all that stood between any event from rape to murder.
Alicia was upstairs in her bedroom when she saw Jim and Blair arrive. Nothing escaped her, not the lathered and exhausted state of the horses or the confusion and anger and fear on the face of the guide, and certainly not the fury on the sentinel's face. She saw Blair's useless efforts to stop Jim, and heard Jim's strangled statement, “She's the thief, Sandburg.” She rose to go downstairs, the sound of her heart throbbing in her ears, her blood up in anger and also atavistic lust, because James Ellison looked quite, quite splendid in his furious rush to her door. Whether he wished to fuck or fight, she was prepared to meet him on equal terms.
They came face to face in her hallway, two tall, handsome people, like and completely unlike; Alicia was halfway down her stairs, Jim looking up with stark anger on his face. Blair stood behind, his face schooled as blankly as he knew how, and his eyes watching everything.
“Captain Ellison. Mr Sandburg. This is unexpected.” She smiled like the predator she was, all pretence of female decorum and modesty discarded, and kept on her steady walk down the stairs until she was nearly eye to eye with Jim. Anyone could have seen that Jim was hugely disturbed, but her abilities allowed her a particularly piquant enjoyment.
“Might I pass? For this interview, I do not think that you will want my servants listening.”
“It's no concern to me that your servants know you for what you are.”
She still smiled.
“But if anyone has a secret, is it not you?” And she looked past Jim to run her gaze up and down Blair. Blair looked steadily back at her, but his heart ran in his chest like a startled animal. Jim heard it, and it recalled him to some semblance of thought. He stepped back and gestured in ironic courtesy.
“Thank you,” Alicia said sweetly, and stalked past him, her nostrils flaring delicately. “You have ridden your poor beast hard.” She shut the door of her parlour behind them. “Why this urgency to see me?”
“Squire Abingdon was robbed last night.” Jim's voice came out of a constricted throat.
Alicia raised a hand to her breast in a theatrical gesture. “And I have permitted my groom leave to visit his family. You quite frighten me.”
“Your groom is no doubt visiting your fence,” Blair growled.
“That has the sound of cant, Mr Sandburg. I cannot take your meaning.”
Blair made a disgusted sound and turned his head briefly as if he could not bear to look at her.
Jim's hands clenched. “I know what you are.”
“As do I, Jim. I know exactly what you are. Perhaps you might go forth and declare me the thief, but how will you prove it? Whereas I, I don't need to prove anything. I shall merely whisper, with shy doubt, my sad suspicion that Captain Ellison's friendship with Mr Sandburg is perhaps too close. Who shall be more believed, I wonder?”
Jim took one step towards her, and Blair was beside him, a hand clutched hard around his upper arm. “Jim, enough. She's right, you can't prove anything.”
“At least you are thinking clearly, sweeting.” Her eyes returned to Jim. “He's a weakness, you know. Far better to learn to do without a guide. More,” her eyes sparkled, “self-sufficient.”
“Why?” Blair demanded. “Why do this?”
“Jim was a soldier. And you've lived on your wits, from all I've heard. Don't you ever miss the thrill of risk, of the game?”
“Is it a game to leave a woman dead behind you?” Jim ground out.
Alicia shrugged. “I understand Mrs Timms was most fond of her abigail. A sad loss. And now, gentlemen, I believe this interview is at an end. I have packing to do. I plan to move on – this is hardly a comfortable neighbourhood after all.” She went to the door, and Jim followed her, his walk as stiff with suppressed passionate emotion as hers. His eyes blazed with frustration. The front door shut behind Jim and Blair with smug challenge.
Once outside, Jim walked on shaky legs and took refuge in fussing over his horse, stroking its nose and burying his face in its mane. Blair stood by in impotent distress, and fought to find some comfort. “Perhaps we can trace the movement of her groom,” he suggested.
Jim nodded. “Perhaps,” he said, and mounted his horse once more. Blair followed suit and the two of them left at a far more sedate pace than that with which they arrived. Jim was silent for a while, and then he turned to Blair.
“She lies, Sandburg.”
“About many things, Jim. Did you have anything particular in mind?”
Jim shook as if he was a dog coming out the water, and his horse laid back its ears in nervous displeasure. “She came here, and she…she spat on people's trust, used them.”
Blair was silent. He understood his friend's anger, but Blair's past was such that he couldn't absolutely deplore Alicia's actions without questioning at least some of his own.
“It's what thieves and their cohorts do. Cheats too, for that matter.”
Jim looked at him fully then. “You are nothing like her.”
Blair shrugged. “I might have been.”
Jim urged his horse closer. “No,” he declared, and reached out a hand to grasp Blair's wrist. He shuddered again. Blair's skin was warm and the pulse beat in his wrist seemed to travel into Jim's own hand, and reverberate under his skin. He was still in the grip of whatever forces Alicia Bannister's presence had precipitated and it irked him, even as he admitted the power of it. Surely knowing what she was should break the link of fascination between them? But not yet. He urged his horse into a canter and tried to think only of the sensation of riding.
Instead, another sensation forced itself upon him – the recollection of Blair's wrist under his hand, the way that the beat of his heart had travelled into him. What had Alicia called Blair? A guide, and a weakness? He looked back at Blair, doggedly riding behind him, and wanted him with a rush of heat just as urgent as any he had felt for that woman. His dreams had insisted that Alicia was everything that his body wanted and needed, that she was his due, his chosen mate. Perhaps in another time and place, he determined, but not this one. Blair returned the look, anxious once more.
Jim halted his horse. They were riding under a clump of trees, and the wind rustled through the leaves and pattered through the adjoining hedgerow. He dismounted and watched every little movement of Blair's body as he approached and also dismounted: the grip of Blair's thighs against the horse, the movement and flex of his legs as he climbed down to the path. The sun reflected its disrupted light against the sheen of Blair's hair; his hat was lost to the wild ride before. Jim reached out one hand and rested it in the curls at the back of Blair's head. Alicia had said weakness; was it a weakness to need? Because he needed Blair, he knew that, and especially now in the turmoil that moved in him. He kissed Blair.
Blair opened to him with a small noise, and Jim pulled him closer, held him hard against his body. It was awkward to pull him down the gentle slope of grass to the fragile shelter of the hedgerow without letting go, and they nearly tumbled, until Jim laid Blair down on the grass.
Blair's eyes, wide and astonished, looked into Jim's, which were narrow and intent. “Are you crazed?” he gasped. It was a futile question and one that Jim didn't answer. Instead, he kissed Blair again and laid one hand at his groin. Blair pulled his mouth away and said, “For God's sake, at least tell me that there's no-one nearby.” He pushed at Jim but the weight of the tall body didn't shift. Jim lifted his head, with an expression that reminded Blair of some hunting animal. His head tilted, his nostrils flared. Then his gaze returned to Blair with anticipation, and he bent his head to devour Blair's mouth, while one hand worked at the fastenings of Blair's clothes.
“I must be mad,” Blair muttered, but his hands reached under Jim's coat and held on to the broad back, the flexing arse, and he made a small choked cry when Jim's teeth set gently in the side of his neck. He lifted his hips off the ground as Jim feverishly worked his breeches and drawers down, and pushed aside the front of Blair's shirt to take a firm grip of Blair's cock. Blair registered with a fine detachment the scent of the crushed grass on which he lay before he pushed up into the hand which held him and turned his head to press kisses against Jim's shoulder and neck. Jim grunted in satisfaction and encouragement and Blair thrust again and again into the rough dry hold, gazing up at the dappled green and blue of trees and sky above him until he was no longer held but delightedly flying free on the pulse of his heart and his body.
Jim raised his hand and sniffed at Blair's semen. Blair came back to himself enough to realise that Jim was still more or less dressed, even though his shirt was pulled askew and his coat had somehow been dragged off and lay on the ground beside them. He put his hand to work undoing Jim's breeches and hardly understood the significance of Jim's hearty spit into the mess on one hand until Jim pulled Blair's coat off with the other and pushed at his shoulder to indicate that Blair should turn to his belly.
Blair's face was stricken and aroused at the same time. “Jim, I don't know…”
“Yes, you do.” Jim reached down to stroke at his erection and his eyes briefly closed in pleasure as his hand moved slickly over it. Inexorably, he pressed Blair down to the prickly, cushioning grass. Blair tensed as Jim bluntly sought entry to his body – for one short moment it wasn't day lit afternoon but a night ten years ago, and the weight that pressed him down wasn't Jim. Jim stilled and made a noise, barely more than a rumbling growl, but it was intended and received as comfort and Blair relaxed enough that Jim could push onwards to his goal.
Blair moaned and Jim kissed his temple and whispered, “Not long, sweetheart, I can't last long, Jesus, you feel so good.” He tried to move gently; slow and steady was the way, and then Blair lifted his arse back against Jim and with low noise Jim came, surrounded by Blair, his heat and smell and the tickle of his hair against Jim's nose. And then it was over and Jim withdrew and lay on his back next to Blair, his face, which turned to the sky, oddly youthful in his blank dismay at what he'd just done.
Blair pulled quickly at his clothes, kneeling upright as he struggled to tuck in his shirt. “From one extreme to the other,” he said softly. He looked around nervously. For all that Jim had made some assurance that there was nobody nearby, Blair suspected that a pack of fox hounds in full cry could have run up to them before Jim would have realised they were there - and maybe not even then.
Jim turned towards Blair. He should have looked ridiculous, nearly fully dressed with his cock hanging out limp and damp, but Blair saw none of it.
“Did I hurt you?”
“I'm a little tender,” Blair admitted, “but no more than I've been many a time.”
Jim lifted his hips and hauled his drawers and breeches back up. “You were frightened.”
“Just a little startled, Jim, I swear, it was only an old memory rising where it didn't belong. I'm all right.”
Jim also rose to his knees and put his hands on Blair's shoulders. He inhaled, and looked at Blair with a hard expression that was his habitual camouflage of fear. “I can smell blood.”
“Which only goes to show how sensitive your sense of smell is. I'll attend to myself when we get home. It's nothing, I know my own body.”
Jim stood and stared down at the knees of his breeches, and fiddled uselessly at the disarray of his neck cloth. “I've seen the young folk at haying look less plainly bedded than you and I right now.”
“A rabbit disturbed my horse. I fell, you tended to me. Easy enough.” Blair laid one hand in Jim's. “I…you seem more yourself now.”
Jim's fingers closed hard around Blair's. “For what that's worth if it can only be achieved by practically forcing you in the road.”
“Stop it. We will go home and care for ourselves and we'll think.” They collected their horses, which were happily munching the grass at the side of the path.
“Do you believe that she's truly finished with the people here?” Blair asked.
Jim rubbed a hand down his face. “She…she loves the challenge, the risk. I could smell it on her along with everything else. No, she may be planning her departure, but I'm not convinced that she's done yet.”
Blair considered the idea of climbing into the saddle with some dismay. He was sore and leading his horse suddenly seemed an excellent idea. Jim looked at him with rueful apology and the two of them set off towards Ashford Hall on foot.
It was close to midnight, and Ashford slept – except for Jim and Blair, who lay quietly tangled together in Blair's bed.
“One way I know she's still on the prowl,” Jim sighed. “I still feel – whatever this thing is. It began when she came here, presumably it will stop when she leaves.” He settled his palm into the small of Blair's back.
“So you still want her then?” Blair's steady voice gave the lie to his feelings, but there were no secrets from Jim when they lay this closely together.
“No! At least, not in any way I can't ignore now.” He kissed Blair, slowly and thoroughly but distractedly too. “I shouldn't have turned away from you. But that was never the whole of it. The first thing I felt was…irritation and a sense of danger, and my senses are…” He paused. “Everything fills them. It's – God – it's like being fucked by the entire world. Overwhelming.” He held Blair's face and calmed himself with a more manageable piece of the overwhelming world. Blair rubbed his face against Jim's palm.
“What are we to do, Jim? We can't let her carry on.”
Jim took another kiss, aware that he was treating Blair like some soothing elixir – a dose whenever discomfort grew too great.
“I had a thought. I don't know whether it will work or not, but what do we have to lose?”
“A thought, eh?” Blair's voice was amused, and relieved. “Speak on, mighty philosopher.” Jim's mouth quirked, and then straightened as he returned to his idea.
“I knew, I knew this morning that something had happened, that there'd been a robbery, because – I think – of the connection between me - and her. But I was fighting so hard that I never understood what I was sensing. I didn't want to be close to her.”
“I know.”
Another kiss.
“If I let it, it would be like feeling the sun on your skin whether your eyes are open or closed. Tonight, she's resting, but another night, I think I could find her, follow her.”
Blair leaned up on one elbow. His face reflected his wonder. “That is amazing.” His voice was awed.
“Not from my perspective.”
“Perhaps not, but still…” Blair's considered Jim. “How will it work? Do we lie in wait?”
“I'm no mountebank to declaim that she'll be outside such and such a window at two of the clock. I think that once she's on the move I can follow her. And we'll have to hope that we can find her in time.”
Blair lay back down again and worked an arm under Jim's neck. Jim sighed and leaned his forehead against Blair's. “It scares you, doesn't it?” Blair asked.
“You have no idea, Sandburg.”
“Can you sleep? You need it.”
“I can try.”
Blair kissed him, a butterfly brush of lips across his forehead. “Then try.”
Both men slept eventually, until Joel discreetly scratched upon Blair's door early the next morning. Jim stirred first, his hearing catching the soft noise, but his movement awoke Blair.
“Mr Sandburg?”
“Yes, I'm awake, Joel. Just a minute.” Blair rose from the bed and pulled on his dressing gown. He went to the door, but turned to smile back at Jim. “Far easier than struggling into a pair of drawers, I'll grant you.” Blair turned the key and opened the door for Joel.
“Good morning, gentlemen.” Joel's dark eyes rested on Jim, and something stiff in the set of his shoulders relaxed.
Jim looked back at him. “I believe that you will find me a little improved, Joel, but we have trouble.”
“Trouble? I could never have drawn such a conclusion.” Joel's tone was acerbic, and Blair ducked his head to hide a smile.
Jim winced, but shrugged. Blair was not the only person he had ill-treated in his moodiness.
“You two old campaigners must work something out,” Blair said.
“Must we, now? And who is the enemy?” Joel asked.
“Mrs Alicia Bannister,” Jim replied. It was ever a small triumph to disrupt Joel's professional suavity, and his astonished expression gave Jim some badly needed amusement.
Joel put aside the dignity of Ashford's chief servitor to sit leaning forward in the big chair by the window. “What in God's name is this story?”
It was a long conversation, peppered with questions and explanation alike. Jim sat tailor fashion, the covers draped up to his waist, while Blair sat on the edge of the bed, letting Jim provide such explanation as he wished. Jim made no direct remark upon his desire for Alicia, although he offered some of their theory that there was a connection between them due to their shared heightened senses. Joel didn't seek any further gloss upon that part of the tale, but he looked at Blair with sympathy and relief. Blair looked tired and worried this morning but the contained misery Joel had earlier noted was banished. Jim still looked strained, but far more present than he had been before.
“If I understand this, then you hope to catch her in the act. But how?”
“You may forget sleep for the next few nights, Joel, if nothing else,” Jim said.
“That part is plain enough. It's as well that the moon is full if we're to roam the countryside in the dark. But…”
“I'll know,” Jim said roughly. “I'll just know.” His eyes shut, and Blair put a hand on his knee.
Joel rose from the chair. “No reason that you cannot be shaved in the meantime. Perhaps you had best return to your room, sir, and I will bring your pistol to you as well. I assume that you wish to have the cleaning of it yourself.”
Jim sighed. “Yes, do that. And as for you, Sandburg, you've always wanted to swagger about with a sword belt at your waist. You'll have your chance.”
Blair nodded solemnly. “Not quite what I ever imagined. But I suppose you're right. We shouldn't underestimate her.”
The day dragged on, until the sun set in a red and streaky sky. Jim's household wasn't surprised by his intended night patrol. The robberies made everybody nervous.
Jim found Blair in the book-room shortly before ten o'clock. Blair was sitting moodily in a chair, looking at the rapier lying on the table. “I bought that for amusement. It's a strange thought to consider using it to hurt somebody.” His face twisted in a morose smile. “No matter how deserving they might be.”
“Never doubt that she is.”
“I know. It's still strange though.”
“Maybe Jane Crawford's name will familiarise you with the idea.”
Blair shuddered and then rose and buckled the sword around him.
“You're comfortable with it?” Jim asked.
“I'll manage. And at least I shall see you in full martial flig as well. I sometimes regret that I've never seen you in your uniform. Armed with sword and pistol will have to do.”
“If you say so.” Jim went to look out the window, into the park at night. There was something rising within him that made him certain that tonight was the night, an excitement that he'd always tried to repress before. He shut his eyes and leaned his forehead against the coolness of the window pane. Avidity, greed, challenge, all of it churned in him, and he opened his eyes to see the candle-lit room around him almost with surprise.
Blair stood beside him. “How goes it?”
“Well enough, I suppose, if feeling her intentions can be judged that way.”
Blair put one hand around Jim's arm and looked into his face with earnest eyes. “Take care tonight. Your judgement has been occasionally awry recently.”
“Putting me to the blush, Sandburg? I'll take care, and you do the same.” Jim bared his teeth, in challenge of his own to Alicia. “I suspect that Joel will be the only cautious one among us.”
The two of them walked towards the stables. “So,” said Blair, “it's 'tally ho'. I hope that nobody else shares this idea. Else, the countryside will resound with the noise of nervous thief-takers firing at every shadow.”
“I'll notice them well before they notice us.”
Blair looked troubled. “What of her?”
“We'll see.”
Joel was already there, offering sugar to the hack that was used for him and other servants to ride errands. It was comforting there in the stables, and all three men mounted and rode out into the summer night wishing that they were in their beds.
“Any suggestion as to the direction of our hunt, Captain Ellison?” Joel asked.
Jim took a deep breath, and tried to take comfort in Blair's encouraging look. He wished that the recent past had never happened, that he hadn't spent his days and nights in blurs of anger and lust, but when he reached he knew where the source of it all was. “That way,” he said, and urged his horse onwards. An hour and a half's quiet ride across field and path confirmed their destination for all three of them.
“Not Miss Avery's house?” Blair's anger was quiet but vehement.
“I wonder if she wishes to make a point to us or herself. We had best leave the horses before we come upon the house. We'll have enough trouble surprising her without worrying about them making noise as well.”
“If you say so. I fear I'm not suited to stealth.”
“You'll be fine, Mr Sandburg,” Joel said softly. “If it comes to that, there is more of me to move about than when I was in Spain.”
Blair grinned, needing conversation suddenly. “Army food is notoriously bad, after all.”
“So is English food, for that matter,” Joel returned slyly. His voice became more honestly wistful. “I miss the meals of my home, sometimes.”
Jim could normally have been expected to make some comment to this, but he was silent. He had no objection to the quiet exchange because he knew that his quarry was still distant, but it was of no interest to him. He was aware of the comfort of the two men at his back, but all the depth of his concentration was on what he might find ahead.
Miss Avery's house lay in open gardens against a southerly facing slope. It wasn't a large house but it was accounted a pleasant one. Leaving the horses beside a birch tree, the small party of hunters moved towards the house, until Jim put out a restraining hand. He heard the tiny intake of air as Blair prepared to ask a question, and forestalled it with a hand over his mouth. Blair froze in surprise but was obedient to the silent command. He and Joel waited, aware that they were come to the endgame. Jim stood still and listened, his head tilted, his face absent as he waited for whatever news the quiet night air would carry to him.
He stared at the night-still house. Not so quiet as it appeared, he realised. There was the sound of movement upstairs, the creak of boards in a hallway, and he understood that Blair was right, they were not the only people keeping watch this night. It would be ironic if Miss Avery's butler accosted them as the robbers. But there were other sounds, the squawk of a curious hen in the coop at the back of the house, the soft pad of feet; and Jim could hear her, could almost see her as she crept through the kitchen gardens, stepping through the plants the better to avoid making noise on the gravel paths. Alicia would know this place well. No doubt Miss Avery had proudly permitted her new friend the run of her little manor.
Jim made a staying gesture and ran for the house, pistol in his hand, the other hand steadying the comforting weight of the sword belt. Blair took a step after him before Joel's big hand closed over his shoulder and pulled him up. The index finger of Joel's other hand rose to his lips. Blair looked after Jim's hurrying figure in an agony of frustration, but Joel's hand retained its determined grip. Jim was lost to Blair's sight in the shadows around the house, and unable to wait any longer he shook off Joel's grip and followed.
By day the mellow brick of Miss Avery's house soaked up the heat of the sun, and even now, Jim could feel the breath of the day's warmth radiate back into the night air. He felt a brief, sad moment of fellow feeling for Alicia Bannister. She knew what this was like too. He wondered that if he knew she was there, then could she sense him as well? He remembered the sharp, acrid taste of her palm against his tongue and smiled. Control, he thought, might well have come at a price. He rounded the side of the house, past the long low annexe that housed the laundry room and the stores of wood and coal that fed the stoves and fires.
She was there, finally forced to walk on the path, but moving so lightly…Jim permitted himself one honest moment of admiration. She was tall and lithe and deceptively mannish in her breeches and jacket, with an ancient bicorn hat jammed over the betraying golden hair.
He should have approached down-wind, he realised, as her head lifted. Awareness flowed over him like a tide – the smell of her, the speeding heart rate, the way her eyes widened in the dark as she judged the path of her retreat. He lifted the pistol and fired without compunction. Her laughter rang out, nervous, daring him to do his worst, and he almost felt the whistle of the ball across her shoulders as she darted aside, running headlong back the way she came.
“Across the back,” he shouted out to his companions, ignoring the flurry of movement from within the house, and barely checking that Joel and Blair were behind him. Then he sprang forward into the chase.
The full moon cast a muted grey light over the land – enough to take direction from, but not enough to prevent the occasional stumble as the three men cast themselves pell-mell in pursuit of their quarry. Not that Jim needed the light. He flew after Alicia like a hunting beast and Blair and Joel were hard put to keep pace with him. He could see her just ahead of him, and he gathered breath to shout after to stop. It was a surprise when she did, and a surprise when he saw the bright flash of a firing pistol, and an even greater surprise when he fell to the ground with fire lodged in his body. Alicia grinned in triumph and ran on.
Blair reached Jim first, crying out, “No, my God, no.” He pressed his hand to the wound, and shuddered at the wet heat of blood. Joel knelt beside Jim, and stripped off his own coat, ripping at the sleeve with a strength born of panic before moving Blair's hand and pressing the makeshift pad against Jim's shoulder.
Blair watched Joel's ministrations. “Will he die?” he asked, his voice young and very loud in the night stillness following the gun's report.
“I've seen worse,” Joel replied. Which was reassurance of a sort, but both men knew that infection carried off the victims of quite superficial injuries.
Blair looked at Jim lying pale and insensible on the ground, and was overcome with a rage unlike anything he had known before. “Look after him,” he said to Joel, ignoring the other man's noise of protest, and he rose to his feet and renewed the chase. He didn't have Jim's unerring sense of direction, but Alicia must have a horse nearby. She might have kept it away from the house in the interest of secrecy, but he doubted that she had planned to carry her loot entirely by foot. He knew that there was a bridle path nearby and he set out, hardly noticing the awkwardness of the scabbard hung around his waist. He had no thought as to the wisdom of his action, only determination that she should not escape.
He heard the soft whinny of a horse and the quiet thud of hooves and froze in his place. It seemed to be coming towards him and with a deep breath he stepped quietly towards the noise. The horse loomed out of the dark at him, and whickered nervously which Blair hardly heard over the thud of his heart. He went up to it, and gently stroked the animal's neck. He reached for the bridle, which was in one piece but rough and frayed. He wondered how it had got loose. Here was the horse – and its rider would be in search of it. Uncertainly, Blair looked around, trying to control his own nervous breathing and to listen. He heard nothing that did not belong in a moonlit spinney. There was the gentle burble of the nearby stream, the snuffle and grunt of a badger not so far off, the quiet murmur of leaves and branches moving in the small night breeze. The crack of a twig as Alicia moved out of her cover, sword in hand.
“I must ask you to unhand my horse, Blair.”
“You shot Jim,” he blurted, and drew his own sword. His hand was still a little tacky with Jim's blood, roughly wiped on the ground before he resumed his chase.
Alicia sounded amused. “I did try to not kill him. I'm accounted an adequate shot. A pity that you didn't give me time to reload. I could have tried to not kill you.”
“Put down your sword.”
“Oh, Blair. To what purpose? So that the hangman may enrich himself by selling pieces of the rope they'll use to kill me? I don't think so.”
“They might transport you.”
Alicia laughed, rich and bitter. “I should so enjoy whoring myself on the prison hulks.” Then she lunged at him.
Blair brought his own sword up, wondered if the silvery flash in the moonlight might distract her. She was like Jim after all, possessed of a heightened sensibility. But the blades flashed and rang in the grey light, and Blair found himself hard pressed. Fury and determination drove him. The memory of Jim dropping in the echo of a pistol shot filled him with horror.
Alicia was fighting for her life. Blair was perhaps the stronger, but Alicia had an advantage of reach, and of the heightened senses which meant that for her the small space where they duelled was not cast in black and silver shadows but instead was clear as daylight. Blair parried one thrust and began to understand the depth of his folly. Alicia forced him towards the stream and the uneven ground there. With one demonically clever slash she forced Blair to leap back without any chance to consider his footing. He found that he was falling straight back and tried desperately to twist himself. There was a wrenching pain in his back and then the shock of cold water.
His head went briefly under, before he struggled on to all fours. The water was barely more than eighteen inches deep. He turned his head as he tried to stand, expecting to see Alicia turn and run for the horse while Blair was slowed by the weight of the water. Instead, she gathered herself and leaped at him like a hunting cat, landing with surety upon his back. The impact forced him flat, his head once more under the water. Panicked, he tried to rise, so winded that he could not have breathed in even if it hadn't been impossible to reach air.
Alicia dropped to her knees, one in the small of Blair's back, the other braced on the streambed. Her hands pressed with all the weight of her body down on Blair head. “I came to wisdom in the embrace of water, little guide,” she hissed. “I wonder what you will find.” Blair could make no answer. Her words were lost in the bubble of the stream and his own frantic, roaring heartbeat, before darkness took him.
Joel was debating the wisdom of leaving Jim unattended to go back to the Avery house to seek help. He gazed into the night and wondered where Blair was, and was filled with fear. Rash, impetuous young idiot. He sighed, recognising fear turned to anger, just as the stricken pain on Blair's face had turned to the wrath that sent him alone after Alicia. Joel remained where he was, not caring to imagine Alicia Bannister slinking through the night like a weasel in search of a hencoop to find Jim unconscious and unattended. He was too heavy to lift in any way that might not set his wound to bleeding again, so Joel steeled himself to patience.
His patience was only partly rewarded when Jim stirred. He choked as he tried to draw in a breath and clutched his hand to his blood-wet jacket.
“Be still, be still. It's not bad, but that doesn't mean it can't be dangerous.” Joel laid his hand, broad and warm, over Jim's, which was cold with shock and loss of blood.
Jim groaned. “Blair?” he asked. When his friend did not reply, he struggled to sit up, with Joel's unwilling assistance. “Where's Blair?”
“Mr Sandburg followed after Mrs Bannister.” Jim stared as if Joel had spoken in an unknown language.
“Where is he?”
“I don't know. Captain Ellison, you and I should…”
Jim struggled onto his knees, before the pain of jarring his shoulder dragged an agonised sound from his throat. Joel knelt by Jim's side. “We should go back to the house, have you attended to. Miss Avery has a groom and a gardener, we can get help, start a search.”
“No, no, we have to find Blair. Get me up.” Joel hesitated, until Jim snarled out his order. “Get me up, damn you!”
Joel carefully tucked the arm on the wounded side into Jim's coat, and then slung the good arm over his own shoulder. “Ready? Up you come.” Both men grunted in effort.
Jim's skin was drawn harshly over his face as he looked into the darkness. His nostrils flared. “That way,” he commanded. The pace was slow despite the urgency that burned off Jim like waves of fever. “Towards the stream,” Jim muttered. It was darker under the trees, harder to see, and Joel flinched in startled alarm when Jim made an ungodly noise. Joel had seen battlefields and wounded men but he had seldom heard such a sound from a human throat. Jim tore himself from Joel's support and stumbled forward. The noise resolved into words – “Ah God, ah Christ, no, please no.” He turned back to Joel. “Help me!” There was the splash of water as Jim nearly fell into the stream and then Joel finally understood what the dark shadow was that lay in the water.
“Oh my God.”
Jim reached out one-handed, trying to drag Blair from the water, but he didn't have the strength, indeed all but toppled on top of him. Pity and horror and his own grief squeezing his heart, Joel stepped into the chill water that rose around his knees and wrestled what was surely Blair's corpse onto dry ground. Jim immediately dropped to his knees alongside, and leaned over Blair, his good hand shaking at a cold, wet shoulder.
“Sandburg! Sandburg! Help me turn him over. You can press the water out of him. Hurry.”
Joel followed the command, but with little hope. “Jim, can you hear anything?” He expected the reply to be negative, asked the question to try and lead Jim to acknowledge the truth. Jim refused to answer, scrambling around to lean down to Blair's face. “Don't do this, don't do this, Blair, wake up.”
Joel leaned his hands gently on Blair's back and pressed, and Jim said in satisfaction, “Yes, that's it, there's only a little water after all.”
Joel repeated his hopeless question. “Do you hear anything?”
Jim looked up, his face a pale smear in the dim light. “This isn't how it's supposed to be.”
Joel swallowed, tears suddenly very close. “No, no it's not.”
“Not how it's supposed to be,” Jim said, the stunned voice reminding Joel of how he had sounded when he was so very ill, and also without Blair. He lay across Blair's body, his good hand cupping Blair's head. Joel put out his own hand to comfort, to try to investigate Jim's injury which had more than likely opened again in all this activity, and then quickly drew it back. There was a strange sensation when he touched Jim, something that reminded him of the illicit priests who held ceremony in the slave quarters in Jamaica. There was a faint spark of blue light, a will-o-the –wisp glow, and Jim muttered, “not over yet.”
Joel stood, in reflexive fear and awe. And then Blair choked, and coughed. Joel clumsily knelt once more and held Blair's head through the spasm as carefully as was possible allowing for the awkwardness of Jim's position upon him. Blair showed no signs of waking but he clearly was breathing, a rasping croak sounding in his throat. Joel looked at the two men huddled together on the dewy ground. He had made his own accommodation with James Ellison and Blair Sandburg, with whatever it was that they were to each other, but he had never feared it. He was afraid now.
Jim realised that Blair would breathe more easily if his weight did not rest on his ribs, and dizzily sat up. He felt drained and confused, but one thing he was certain of. “The bitch is nowhere near. Go and get help. We'll be all right.”
“I'll reload the pistol anyway.”
“Don't waste time. I told you it's safe enough. She's long gone. Put the hue and cry after her, and get someone to bring Blair home.” He stroked a finger along Blair's cheek. “He shouldn't be outside in the night air. It's not good for him.”
Joel stood and looked down at the two of them. His face was troubled, and then he bowed with small but definite formality and turned back towards Miss Avery's house. Jim dropped his head, unable any longer to ignore the sickening throb of pain that radiated out from the pistol ball that still remained in his shoulder. It would have to be dug out, and he grasped at Blair's still, cold hand to gather courage for the coming ordeal.
His vision was greying, and he gripped Blair's hand even harder. He wanted more than anything in the world to have the pressure returned, but Blair's hand remained lax in his. Jim's emotions were as unbalanced as his body. The empty silence in Blair when Joel pulled him out of the water had been the whole dead world; and he could only admit that silence to himself now that the dear heart beat once more. He didn't understand what he had done, or how he had done it. He did know that it wasn't finished yet – instinct told him that more was needed. He felt chary of instinct – it was instinct after all that had left him unwillingly obsessed with Alicia.
He was shivering when Joel returned, accompanied by Miss Avery and her groom. The two injured men were gracelessly loaded onto the floor of Miss Avery's small gig and taken back to her house. The groom was sent for the doctor, the gardener was sent to the constable, who sent to Squire Abingdon. It was morning before a vengeful party crowded up the winding path to Mrs Bannister's house, but she was gone, leaving the hysteria of her housekeeper and the disarray of her bedroom behind as evidence of the speed of her leaving. Of the stolen items, there was no evidence at all.
Neither Jim nor Blair knew any of this. Blair continued semi-conscious at best. He would swallow a few mouthfuls of water or broth, and his eyes occasionally flickered open, but recognised nothing. Jim had very nearly bitten through the leather belt offered him when the doctor dug out the ball. Joel and the doctor came nigh to blows over the doctor's intention to bleed both men, until Jim roused enough from the fog of shock and pain to support his servant's decision before he fell back into a heavy sleep.
Jim and Blair had been placed in the same room, and there they stayed for three days, before Jim finally gathered the strength to declare that they would impose on Miss Avery no longer. This decision was partly courtesy but mostly a desperate need for his own home. After the first heavy sleep Jim spent much of his nights fitfully stirring with the pain of his shoulder, and worry for Blair, who would not wake and had to be cared for like a baby. Jim would rise from his own bed and lie uncomfortably on Blair's, disturbing Joel's rest often as not. Jim noticed reserve in Joel that had never been there before and didn't know how to bridge it. He couldn't deny what had happened by the stream, what was still happening for that matter.
He was having strange dreams, sometimes when he was awake even, dropping from the mundane world of the bedroom around him into a dimly lit jungle. He was a great black panther, like those occasionally seen in India, but this jungle was not India, of that he was sure. He was hunting, always searching, following after the scent of a wolf, the occasional distant mournful howl. Always hunting, but never finding.
Miss Avery sent to Squire Abingdon that Jim and Blair might use his carriage and return to Ashford Hall in moderate comfort. It was a dull June day, with the wind carrying odd scents to Jim's nose. He gazed out the window, Blair's deadweight laid across his lap and secured with his good arm. Joel sat opposite, ready to assist if needed.
“When we get home,” Jim said, “you are to put him in my room.”
Joel frowned. “Are you sure that's wise?” He lowered his head and then raised it, and the two of them looked each other in the eye. “These last few weeks…” Joel's voice twisted into rural accents, “dancing around each other like jealous sweethearts, the pair of 'em.”
Jim returned to looking out the window. “The circumstances didn't always lend themselves to discretion, Joel.” Joel's eyebrows rose at this understatement. Jim wondered briefly what Joel would think if he knew just how little discretion Jim had been pushed to. “It doesn't matter. I - I need him to be in my room, close to me. I can't explain it any more than that.”
Joel shrugged his shoulders. “You are still bringing him back, I think. I've seen you looking into the distance when you sit with him.”
“Do you understand any of this? Because I don't.” It was a plea from the heart.
Joel looked at Blair. “I've teased him with stories of strange happenings in Jamaica, but no – I understand it no more than you. How could anybody?”
“She understood something of it, I think, and used it against me like a whore using sex against some green boy.” Jim's eyes lit with an angry light, and then an uncomfortable flush spread over his face. Joel could not know the whole truth of that, but the recollection was humiliation enough.
“I'll find some excuse – for your bedroom. It will be easy enough for the first few days I hope. I'll claim something to do with the nursing of you both – saving travelling in the night.”
“We must send for Blair's mother. I had hoped,” Jim's arm tightened across Blair's shoulders, “I had hoped that he might be more recovered, but I cannot delay any longer.”
“Mrs Spring will be of great assistance.”
“She will at least cast some veil of respectability over nursing Blair, which is surely one of life's greater ironies.”
“It would not be my place to comment on such a matter, sir,” Joel said dryly.
Jim barked out a harsh laugh. “Naomi is now far more respectable than Blair and I can ever aspire to, for a surety.” He swallowed. “I just wish that he would wake. Do you remember Lieutenant Wallace?”
Wallace had taken a bad blow to the head, and had diminished into coma, until finally he had died, although the field doctors had argued whether it was of the injury or of the weakness caused by his incapacity to take in food and water.
“This is different.”
“Because he was dead when you brought him out of the stream?”
Joel shivered. “I have seen a great many wonders since Captain Pendergrast took me out of Jamaica.” He tried for a reassuring smile. “I hope to see many more.”
Jim smiled with a thin press of lips. “I occasionally asked myself what wonder might keep Blair silent. I am well paid for foolish curiosity.”
Blair was established in Jim's bedroom, with Jim neither knowing nor caring what excuses Joel used below stairs. That Blair would wake from his coma had become his obsession. Jim watched over him, spooned fluids into him, assisted in cleaning Blair, even shaved him with Joel's help, hating the way that the whiskers made Blair's slack face unkempt and vulnerable. He feared the dreams of the jungle, but he fell into them with strange relief. If there was an answer under those blue-lit leaves, he would find it. And finally, one night, seven days after their pursuit of Alicia, it came.
He had run, as he always ran, growing tired now, but still determined. Something, some unformed feeling, made him run harder, until with a last desperate burst of pantherish energy he found himself at the foot of a great building. It was covered in vines and greenery so that it was more like a hill than the ziggurat-like construction that he could discern underneath. The wolf was perhaps a third of the way up its heights, flanked by stone statues of snarling beasts carved in squat, square shapes. All around, Jim smelled his enemy. It enraged him and he snarled a warning. The wolf turned around then, and looked down at him. It made a rough, interrogative noise and then turned to look up once more.
Jim wanted – God, how he wanted speech, his own form to warn Blair. But he had no words, only an animal's voice. The wolf looked back once more, then again ahead. It shook itself, its head bowed in dejection, and then it turned back. Its eyes were longing, 'come with me, let's go together,' they seemed to say, but Jim refused to take one further step into enemy territory. Instead he tried to outstare the wolf – 'come back, back with me to safety.' The wolf was nearly at the bottom, only five or six feet above Jim, and he contemplated a brief foray up the steps – a quick leap behind the wolf and then he could harry it down, force it away from this place. It stopped, and Jim tensed, before the wolf gathered itself to leap down towards him. There was a flash of blue light, and an earth-shaking shock as if lightning had struck from the ground into the sky, and then Jim woke.
He was sitting in the chair placed by the bed, Blair's hand enclosed in his own good hand. Blair's eyelids fluttered, and Jim held his breath. So many times Blair's eyes had opened sightlessly, and then shut once more. This time they opened, and locked on Jim's face, dazed but comprehending.
To his later shame, Jim's first words were an anguished accusation. “Why didn't you come back before?”
Blair opened his mouth, but only a croaking sound came out. Hurriedly, Jim poured water into a cup and awkwardly held it to Blair's mouth, and then wiped away the small amount that trickled down his chin. Blair licked his lips. “Before?” he questioned, his voice still rough.
Jim held Blair as tightly as one good arm would permit. “It's been seven days!”
“I'm sorry.” Blair paused, rubbed his head weakly against Jim. “I thought I had to…I needed…” He stopped. “It doesn't matter. I'm sorry I frightened you.”
Jim rubbed his own cheek against the dishevelled hair. “Frightened? Sweet Jesus.”
“She shot you.” It was suddenly recalled, and Blair's voice was as anxious as Jim's. “She shot you, are you all right?”
“Manifestly, Sandburg.” But the sharp, dry words came out in a voice perilously close to tears.
Jim stood and went to the small dressing room where Joel was sleeping. He blinked his way out of sleep as Jim shook his shoulder, crying, “He's awake, Blair's awake.”
“Mr Sandburg is awake?” he asked stupidly.
Jim smiled with seraphic patience. 'That's what I told you. He should have something to drink – and something to eat, but nothing heavy.” He turned on his heel to go back to the bed where Blair lay, quiet but undoubtedly awake and aware.
Joel came and stood beside him, wearing the rumpled shirt and breeches he wore, never knowing when his sleep might be disturbed. He took Blair's hand. “Welcome back, Mr Sandburg.”
Blair smiled. “Thank you, Joel. And never worry about his lordship's demands to feed me. I'm thirsty, but anything else can wait 'til the morning.”
Jim's face was lit with a wide bedlamite smile. “If I am 'his lordship' then I insist that I be obeyed.”
“I shall make tea and a little gruel,” said Joel.
“Oh dear God,” Blair muttered. “I had rather brandy.”
“Tea and gruel,” Jim returned, before relenting a little. “And brandy.”
Joel went downstairs to the quiet kitchen, and raked the embers and boiled water and made tea and started the gruel, and all the while Jim sat on the bed with Blair resting in the crook of his arm, and finally lost the battle to not weep in overwhelming relief.
Naomi set forth to Ashford with speed, unaware that she passed the courier carrying news that Blair was awake and recovering. When Jim came out to greet her with a smiling face she didn't know whether to embrace him or slap his face for panicking her so.
“He is better, then.” She chose to embrace Jim, but carefully given that his left arm rested in a sling.
“Yes, although still weak. We sent word but we knew you would most likely have already set out. I'm sorry for the anxiety you must have suffered.”
“If he's safe, that's all that matters. Take me to him.” Jim led her upstairs, to his own bedroom she noted, and wondered at it. He stood by the door as Naomi went to her son.
Blair lay in bed. He smiled when she came in.
“Mama! I thought I heard the sound of a carriage, but it would be more than my life is worth to rise. I have been threatened with any number of dire punishments, and I look to you to make Joel and Jim see sense.”
His face was animated, but this speech left him the smallest touch breathless.
“As your mother I am more likely to agree with them.” She bent to kiss his forehead, and then stayed leaning over him, her hands tightly grasping his shoulders. “Oh, my dear, my dear.”
“It's all right, love, it's all right. I'm sound enough, and I'll be hale and hearty soon.”
She released him, and sat down in the chair beside the bed.
“Here you are, nearly drowned, I understand. And Jim injured. What has been going on?” A look passed between the two men. Jim shrugged his shoulders, as if to say 'she's your mother'.
“You remember I wrote you of the housebreakings?” This was spoken in a tone that reminded Naomi of a small boy saying, “Mama, about my blue coat” or “Mama, you know that Mr Appleby has a fine pear tree,” and her answering tone was the one she had used on those occasions.
“Yes?”
“It was Mrs Bannister. And Jim and I attempted to catch her in the act, with Joel's help,” he added as if that made all the difference, “and things went awry.”
“Awry indeed! Mrs Bannister.” Her voice shook with anger. “A lady with a flair for mischief, it would seem.”
“That's one word for it.” Naomi angrily recalled the odd attention Jim had paid to Alicia Bannister at the party, and was angered out of all proportion by his laconic statement.
“And was this fine plan your idea or Blair's?” she snapped.
“We both decided,” Blair said, so quickly that she swallowed back another angry rejoinder. Whatever had happened, Jim and Blair were clearly as much in each other's counsels as ever, which Naomi supposed was a good sign in its way. Jim said nothing, but apology was in his eyes as he looked at Blair.
“Well, I must organise myself. And perhaps Mrs Burgess will be so kind as to make tea.” Jim nodded and left. Naomi stood. “So much for the uneventful life of the countryside. I will expect a more complete tale later.”
Blair shifted under the covers. “There is little more to tell, Mama. Mrs Bannister shot Jim, I went in pursuit of her, we fought and I lost. Not so good with a sword as I might have thought. And Jim and Joel found me, and here I am.”
“You and she fought with swords – but Jim wrote that you nearly drowned?”
Blair smiled the glib, professional smile of the gamester, rather than the sweet expression of her beloved son. “I was a little clumsy, my dear.”
He was white-faced, and Naomi knew that there was surely far more to the story, but she also knew that she was unlikely ever to hear it.
Later, in the evening, Jim knocked at her door. He carried a flat parcel, wrapped in brown paper. He was pale and tired looking.
“I didn't know what to do with this. I thought that you should decide.”
“What is it?”
“It's the portrait that damned trull made of him.” Jim thrust it into her hands, and left.
She stood unmoving in the door frame, before she collected herself enough to shut the door. She sat on the side of the bed and with trembling hands unwrapped the paper. Her son's beautiful face looked out at her, bright with intelligence, graced with a quizzical smile. The artist had matched the colour of his eyes exactly, she thought inanely. Alicia Bannister could see this in Blair and recreate it, and still try to kill him. Naomi would never understand it. Never.
Two days after Naomi's arrival at Ashford Hall, Stephen stepped down from his carriage. Louise had had the news from Spring's servants when she called upon Naomi. Stephen decided that if he himself had heard nothing direct from Jim then the news was either not worth worrying about or very bad indeed, and chose to make the journey. When Jim came to greet him with his arm still in its sling, Stephen was shaken with resentful anger.
“I take it I failed to intercept the letter you have undoubtedly written me explaining recent occurrences?”
Jim's expression was uncommunicative, although the shadows under his eyes bespoke their own story. “It's been complicated. Come inside, Stephen, and rest.”
Stephen strode inside, handing his belongings over to a servant before he went into the red salon, and found Naomi there. She looked up at him and smiled. “Stephen. I have written to Louise to tell her all.”
“Indeed. I'm grateful that someone has thought to provide tidings.” Naomi looked past him to lift a reproachful eyebrow at Jim, who had followed his brother.
“You'd have heard soon enough, and it's all over now.”
“Blair nearly drowned, I understand. And you, did you wrench your arm dragging him to safety?”
“I was shot,” Jim confessed. He was sorely tempted to duck his head against the likely explosion, but it didn't come. He would have deserved it, he knew, but now that Blair was on the mend, Jim had found Naomi's presence enough of a burden without adding Stephen. Now that the worst pain of his shoulder was passing, Jim spent much of his time sleeping, as did Blair, and guests in the house would only make it more difficult for Jim to take his rest where he most desired it; beside his lover.
Stephen exhaled one slow breath, his lips pressed hard together. “I see. You do have news for me, brother mine. And how is Blair after all this?”
“He is improving, although he grows tired for nothing in particular,” said Naomi. “And he is quieter than usual.” Both she and Jim noted Blair's quiet distraction. She tried to discuss the matter with Jim, and accepted his plausible soldierly metaphor that marching close to death was excuse enough for Blair's occasional mental absence. It was indeed plausible, but she knew there was more. Jim kept silent as to the strange shared dreams.
A room was soon made ready for Stephen and he went up to rest after the rough discomforts of the coach ride. Jim had explained that Blair was resting, but he felt it discourteous to at least not see if Blair was fit to receive him. That at least was the excuse that Stephen made as he walked quietly down the hall to the room which he knew was Blair's when he and Jim lived at Ashford. The door was ajar and Stephen pushed it open. Blair lay on his bed, clearly asleep. Only the top of his head was visible, his short curls dark against the white linen of the pillow. His body was hunched under the heavy warmth of the red velvet dressing gown, which lay over him like a coverlet.
Stephen turned with a startled awareness of presence behind him. Jim stood there, his gaze flicking between Stephen and the man on the bed, and he made no apology for whatever might be in his face as he looked at Blair.
Stephen took one last look at Blair's still form, and finally acknowledged that the garment that draped and comforted the young man on the bed was as much a love gift as the fine amethysts which he had presented to Louise at Thomas's birth. He turned towards the door and Jim made way for him. Once in the hallway, Stephen said, “We have much to talk about. Sit with me in my room.” Jim nodded and followed him. He didn't sit however, instead he stood and looked out the window, every inch the soldier at attention.
Stephen sat on the bed, his face worn with more than the weariness of travel.
“I am a very great fool.”
“Not so much of a fool as you were as a boy.” Jim's voice was clipped.
“Oh, far greater. I have lied to myself, always a foolish thing.”
Jim looked far, far out over his land, but not at his brother.
“I told myself that your senses were all the excuse for Sandburg's residence with you. I was grateful that you had a remedy to the suffering that your sensibility caused you, as well as a friend.” Stephen didn't look at Jim. One sat, the other stood, each with their backs to each other. It was easier for both. “I know London, Jim. I've seen the effeminates that infest the parks, swishing their handkerchiefs, and I know what they do. I never thought to associate my brother with them.”
Jim was silent, but his view of the land outside was blurred.
“For God's sake, Jim! Have you nothing to say?”
“When did you guess?”
Stephen sighed. “Earlier than I would like to admit. So I did not admit it, not even to myself.”
Jim turned, his face grim. “I won't give him up. Any more than you would give up Louise or your son. And if you think Ashford infested, you know what to do.” He moved for the door but Stephen stood in his way.
“Does Naomi know?”
“From the first. You can hardly expose us to her.” Jim was already frantically considering the continent or even America, if Stephen chose to broadcast his knowledge; poisonous seeds to grow, at best, to a crop of ostracism and spite.
Stephen ducked his head. “They are an – uncommon family. And I won't expose you to anybody.”
Jim's chin jutted. “The family honour will be safe at least. You have your son to think of after all.”
“And my brother also. Jim, if I can guess, then so can others.”
“They can suspect, but they can prove nothing. No more than you.”
Stephen was tempted to tear his hair out. He had never intended to bring this matter to a head, but here they were. He wished for happy ignorance once more, but he had chosen to enlighten himself; although he could wish that his brother had made his own arrangements for Blair's birthday gift.
“Traps are set on the basis of suspicion.”
Jim's jaw was clenched in stubborn silence.
“If you're found out the scandal will stain all of us! And if you're taken in flagrante…”
“Then you'd best keep your voice down, little brother.”
Stephen shook his head, as if to clear it. To no avail. “Is it… is it to do with your senses? Because Blair helps them?”
Jim grimaced. “I've had dealings with women, but more with men. And I was a normal man for all of them.”
“Is that why you left home? My God, does Father suspect?”
“I left because life was insupportable for several reasons. And at least Father's perpetual judgements were good for teaching caution!” Jim stopped and took a breath. “I don't believe he knows, or even suspects.”
“That's something, at least.”
Jim crowded close to his brother, trying to make his way to the door. He wished this interview over; better yet, expunged.
“I'm what I've always been, Stephen. Deal with it as you wish.” Stephen finally turned aside. He lay on the bed and considered its old-fashioned canopy, while his brother made his way to Blair's room and waited for him to awake.
Dinner that evening was an uncomfortable meal. Blair had awakened in time to insist on coming down to dinner and to dress for it, but given that Jim had not chosen to tell him more than that Stephen had arrived, he was left in ignorance as to the undercurrents he sensed. That they were there he had no doubt, and deathly tired of floundering in what he didn't understand, Blair chose the direct route to knowledge.
“Why are you and Stephen scowling at each other?”
Both men were silent, until Naomi attempted to peaceably fill the gap. “I think you will find that Stephen - regrets - that he did not hear about you directly from Jim.”
Stephen spoke at that, but he wasn't looking at Naomi. His look went from Blair to his brother. “True words enough.”
“There's little point in speech when one party wouldn't want to hear it anyway,” Jim retorted.
Blair's eyebrows rose. “I doubt Jim meant offence, Stephen. He's been preoccupied with me, I'm afraid.”
Stephen stood. “I know exactly how Jim has been preoccupied, thank you, Sandburg. If you will excuse me.” He strode from the room. Blair watched him in startled surprise and then turned towards Jim. There was no reproach in Jim's face, but Blair was scalded with heat as if he had been discovered doing something shameful.
“He knows, then?” Blair asked.
“Yes, he does.” Jim tilted his head back and took a deep breath.
“I'm sorry, Jim.”
“You have nothing to be sorry for, Sandburg. Don't concern yourself.” It was all that Jim would say on the matter. Instead, he offered Naomi his escort for a walk in the grounds before the light was gone. The three of them walked together in the end, Naomi linked arm in arm on one side with Jim and on the other with Blair. They talked of inconsequential things such as whether one of the rose bushes was blighted, and Naomi's intention to gift them with some dahlia roots, until she said, “Stephen came by post-chaise. Perhaps he will accept an offer of a seat in my carriage when I return home.”
“Naomi…”
“It is traditional of mothers-in-law to meddle, is not?” Her face became impish at Jim's expression. She was all of seven years his senior. “Besides, maybe it is not so bad as you think. He could have removed himself from the house and spent the night at the inn at Ashford. He hasn't done so.”
Jim sighed. “True. But he…” He stopped. He couldn't speak of this to Naomi, for all that she must have known this particular pain. He looked across her to Blair. For once, Blair's gaze wasn't on Jim. There was something of tremendous fascination to be found in the grass.
“I can well imagine that Stephen has been unkind in the first shock. But you cannot be surprised that he is angry or grieved.”
“No, I'm not surprised.” The defeat in Jim's voice cut into Blair like a knife. He knew that Jim preferred men, knew that their shared beds were entirely agreeable to him, but still he felt as if he was to blame for this rift between the brothers.
“Well, then,” said Naomi, “I shall suggest that we both return the day after tomorrow. You do not need me here, and Stephen might be grateful for an honourable opportunity for retreat.” She smiled. “It is much easier for a woman to travel with a man making arrangements, after all. Inns. Toll gates. So fatiguing.”
Jim had to laugh. “You are a rogue, Mrs Spring.”
“Not at all, Captain Ellison. And now I think I shall go inside. And I expect that you not keep my son out much longer in the evening airs, either.”
She left them. Jim looked down at Blair, sensing his distress. “It's not as if you didn't see this coming, Sandburg. You were wiser than I.”
“Don't pretend that it doesn't matter to you.”
“It matters, but other things matter more. And your mother is right, it's getting damp and you should be indoors.”
“Jim, I get tired, true, but my lungs are well enough.”
Jim took Blair's elbow and began steering him towards the house.
“I can almost pity, Stephen, trapped with no escape from your mother. She can deal words with great precision.”
“And what of Stephen? Can he deal words with precision?”
Jim hesitated. “I feel like a glass of wine. You?”
“Jim.” Blair's tone was exasperated.
“Later, if I must. Do you wish a glass of wine?”
“Not now. I have notes I wish to write more fully. Perhaps my room will do for 'later'?” He smiled at Jim, and a spark of desire flashed between them. There had been kisses, but no more since Blair awoke from his coma.
“I think so. Try not to cover yourself with ink stains, professor.”
Blair turned for the stairs, and spoke in low tones that were only for Jim's ears. “But think of the amusement of making me clean.”
Upstairs in his room, Blair tried to settle to the task he had set himself. He had hastily scrawled down some notes as an aide de memoir, but was now determined to write them more fully. Already, some of the impression of his long dreaming was fading, and Blair would not lose it. It was too important to him. But he was restless and at one point he rose from his chair and looked at himself in the small mirror. “You look very well for a corpse,” he told his reflection. His face looked back, its lines sharply angled in the shadows cast by the candlelight. The flickering shadows reminded him of the pattern of moonlight through tree branches, and his skin flushed hot, and then a cold that recalled the splash of water. Hastily, he sat down, and held his head in his hands until his heart beat calmed.
He had been so tired the last three days that he had barely had the energy to consider what had happened, both before and after he pursued Alicia. Especially after. But as his strength grew, so did his disquiet. Joel's composure bothered him. He had always been phlegmatic but the friendly nature that radiated out like cloud-shaded sunlight from behind the servant's formality was nowhere to be seen. Blair was awed by few things, least of all his own self, and Joel's distance pained him. And Jim's solicitude was becoming wearing. It was only a week and half since he had a pistol ball taken out of his shoulder. Blair knew that Jim was in far more discomfort than he.
And now there was this division between Stephen and Jim to add to the more metaphysical questions confronting them. Blair rubbed hard at his face with both hands, and wished for answers. He returned to his writing, and was nearly finished when the door opened. It was, of course, Jim.
“It's growing late,” Blair said in surprise. It was dark and he had lit the candles without any sense of the passing of time, engrossed in the wonders he was trying to recall. “Have you been drinking all that time?” he joked.
“I made one glass last a long while. It's an excellent colour, that claret.”
Blair looked more carefully at Jim. “Did you fall into one of your trances?”
“I might have. But not for long,” Jim lied hastily. “How is your writing going?”
Blair sighed. “I write. I just wish that I understood.”
“I suspect that even Lazarus took more than three days to unlock the mysteries of resurrection.” Blair winced at Jim's sarcastic tone.
“Jim…”
Jim shrugged in apology. “I can't find comfortable conversation this evening.”
“Then why converse?” Blair asked. He wanted to know what had passed between Stephen and Jim, but he thought that Jim might speak more easily with some of the tension released from him. And Blair was no longer tired as he looked at James Ellison.
Jim lifted an eyebrow at Blair's cheerful question. “No more inquisition?” But he turned the key in the lock.
“Only about your shoulder.”
“It's getting better. Time to give up the sling, I think. It will be the better for movement.”
Blair took the sling in question and carefully worked it off and placed it on the bureau. “And the pain?”
“Only if I'm incautious.” Jim raised his hand with exaggerated care to stroke across the back of Blair's head, and Blair smiled.
“Well. You must not be incautious.”
Jim held his hand against the soft silk of Blair's hair and bent to seek a kiss. Pain, grief, confusion; all of it was forgotten in the sweet salute of their mouths. Jim's good hand went around Blair's waist, Blair's arms encircled Jim. Blair leaned back his head and with a low noise Jim put his mouth upon the pulse point to find yet another indisputable and glorious proof that Blair lived. He would take as many proofs as he could get.
“I want you to fuck me tonight.”
“Gladly. But what of this?” Blair's hand rested lightly on Jim's shoulder.
“We're men of resource, Sandburg. We'll think of something.”
Blair was already easing off Jim's shirt. He paused and gently, very gently rested his lips against the scabbing where the ball had entered, where the doctor had dug with his knife. The scab lay rough and ridged against the softness of Blair's mouth, and he wondered bitterly where their resource had been in dealing with Alicia Bannister.
“It's hardly pretty,” Jim protested uncomfortably.
“It will leave a scar.”
“So it will. It's not the first.”
“My stoic soldier,” Blair mocked gently, and knelt to finish the job of undressing Jim. “Step – there. Into bed.”
Jim did so, leaning upright against the headboard as he watched Blair with eyes that were very dark. “Your clothes, now.”
Blair grinned. “It would be sensible.” If he had thought of it, he might have imagined this coupling would have been urgent, a desperate affirmation of life. Instead, Blair felt a pleasant languorous desire that rose gently from the exhaustion that had so often claimed him the last three days. Jim sat patiently enough, his cock rising as he watched Blair strip.
“You've grown thin.”
Blair climbed onto the bed and sat astride Jim. “Then you should be grateful I demanded real food and not invalid's gruel this evening.”
Jim cupped Blair's jaw in his hands. “I'm grateful that you're here to demand anything.” He held Blair close to him, echoes of the frantic sex they'd last shared unnerving him. Blair leaned on one hand to keep pressure away from the injured shoulder and then swung away to sit on the mattress beside Jim.
“Lie down, yes, like that.” Gentle hands directed Jim to lie on his side, as Blair knelt behind him and rubbed his hands all over Jim's skin in warm, soothing circles. Blair leaned down and rested his forehead on Jim's upper arm, before he looped an arm over Jim's hip to gently cradle his cock and balls. One long quiver went through the quiescent body.
“I told Stephen I wouldn't give you up.”
Anger broke through Blair's pleasurable haze. “Did he ask it of you?”
Jim sighed. “No. But when a man speaks of taint and scandal, expectations are implied.” He shut his eyes, and rested his own hand over Blair's, used Blair's warm, moist palm to press his cock against his belly.
Blair was overcome with an urge to weep. “You wouldn't give me up to death. But some might think a brother has more claim.”
Jim turned awkwardly to his back. “The only claim is between you and me. You were the one who said I belonged to you.”
Blair nodded, his face caught between laughter and grief, his hand remaining caught against Jim's body. Jim released him.
“I still want you to fuck me.”
“I'll…I'll get the oil.” That task accomplished Blair returned to the bed. Jim lay on his side once more, one knee drawn up, the broad expanse of his back pale and vulnerable. One thigh gave evidence that the marks on his shoulder were indeed not the only scars that he carried. Blair smeared oil on his fingers, watched them move in and out of Jim's body, felt the gradual yielding. Felt the trembling that wasn't entirely born of pleasure shake through the big man lying so otherwise still.
“Jim?”
“Just fuck me. Please.” Jim was curled as if in pain. Blair spooned behind him and pressed hard against Jim – into his body, against his back, Blair's forehead mashed against Jim's skin, their bodies mingling and joining. “Give me your hand,” Jim gasped, and once more brought Blair's hand over his genitals, held the surety of Blair's touch. Currents of pleasure moved in him, deep and strong, and as they pulled him down he dragged Blair with him to an entirely more joyful drowning.
Jim put aside Stephen's letter. His brother was not a man comfortable with writing, but the day's post had brought Jim hope that Stephen was coming to some accommodation with his understanding of Jim's nature. Occasional letters from Abingdon and enquiry agents died away and the post ceased to be a cause of nervous hope or distress until towards the end of an overcast July day, when Jim received an unpleasant surprise. A boy from the village brought a parcel. It was carefully handed over to Joel who carefully handed it to Jim, whose nostrils flared in distaste almost as soon as he saw it in his servant's hands.
He put it on the table, and stared at it as he might stare at an adder suddenly appearing among the shelves of his books. He couldn't even say that it smelled of her. It must have passed through many hands, sat in a coach rubbing against other parcels and bags. He knew where it came from, though. There was a small knife amongst the items at his desk. He picked it up and cut through the string, peeled back the layers of brown paper. There was a portfolio of solid card within, delicately and expensively marbled, its edges tied with tightly-woven blue silk ribbon. And this, carefully wrapped within its layers of paper, did smell of her. There was the smallest coil of lust in his gut, quickly over-ridden by anger and disgust.
He braced himself and opened the portfolio. There was a letter on the top, written in a strong, flowing hand.
My dear Captain Ellison
I was forced to remove from the neighbourhood so quickly that I neglected a few necessary little errands. I always meant to share these with you. If you will forgive a poor joke, I trust that you will find these trifles illustrative of my fascination and esteem.
I have learned that dear Blair is alive and well. In which case, I believe that you and he will have had an extraordinary experience, and I hope that in your gratitude you will hold no grudges against a woman forced into occasionally unfortunate actions by a hostile world.
Yours (alas, for the last time) with respect
Alicia Elizabeth Bannister
No grudges… Jim screwed the letter between his fists. That was insufficient and he unfolded it enough that he could rip it into very tiny pieces indeed. Then he turned over the other papers in the portfolio. There were five of them, two drawings in pen and ink, three in pencil. They were all of Jim and Blair together, and they were explicitly obscene. They were also, he was forced to acknowledge, beautifully done. The likenesses were true, her anatomy impeccable. She could have done no better if she had been present in a bedroom with them. Jim's mouth tightened. For all he knew, she had spied upon them in some way. And there was power in the clean, vigorous lines of the work, over and above the seduction of the subject matter. They should be immediately consigned to a fire – but Jim couldn't look away.
There was one of Blair lying on a bed, his wrists caught in Jim's hands as Jim straddled him on all fours. Both were clothed, except that their breeches were undone enough to reveal substantial erections. Another portrayed them naked, Blair kneeling at Jim's feet, Jim's hands caught in his hair as he presented his cock to Blair's mouth. The next, as if for some lewd diptych, was almost identical except that Blair's face was pressed to Jim's groin, his eyes shut, and his mouth distended. The last two showed Jim fucking Blair, one face to face, the other with Blair lying on his belly, Jim's face partially hidden as he kissed or mouthed at Blair's neck. That recalled that afternoon by the farm path, a memory that still shocked and aroused him in equal measure.
Jim looked, paralysed almost by ambivalent emotion. Then he looked more closely at the attitudes of the two of them. Nothing of Blair taking initiative was in these pictures, nothing of tenderness or affection. Just how tight was that knuckled grip in Blair's hair? Was that lust on Jim's face or brute triumph? And was Blair's grimace one of pleasure or pain? With a noise of deep revulsion, Jim bundled the pictures into the grate, and knelt to carefully stoke the small flames. The damning pictures were nowhere close enough to ash when Jim heard Blair's step at the door.
“I've finished my letter to Mama, and I desire a long walk.” Blair's determined note of cheer faltered as Jim turned, his face flushed and marked with unmistakeable apprehension. “What is it?” Blair asked sharply.
Jim could say nothing, and Blair crossed the book-room floor in quick concern. “What is wrong?” he asked again. The ink-drawn lines of Blair's face, twisted in whatever emotion Alicia had seen fit to draw, lit into light and visibility before the shape of the papers finally collapsed in vivid flame. Blair looked at the fire, at the portfolio and brown paper still sitting upon the table.
“A parting gift, I take it.”
“No gift,” Jim ground out. “I'm sorry you had to see that.”
“I saw hardly anything, thanks to your promptness. What did you see?”
“Nothing that I'm obliged to share with you, Sandburg.” Jim wiped a hand across his mouth, as if to wipe away some foulness.
“Jim.”
“Mrs Bannister has a unique view of what is between us. Her 'gift' was better in the fire.” He stood, aware as he seldom was as to how much taller he was than Blair. “Trust my judgement in this.”
Blair's eyes turned back to the fire, which was heavy with unconsumed paper ash; his face was marked with a frown. “If you insist. For now.” He turned to Jim. “My letter must still be taken to the village. Do you wish to take a little exercise, Captain Ellison?”
Jim sighed. He needed, deeply, to be with Blair, to walk with him out in the clean air; but he knew that Blair would take the opportunity of the relative privacy of the walk to seek out a detailed explanation.
“It's a lowering sky, Sandburg. If you get caught in a rainstorm, I shall be forever damned in Joel's eyes.”
“I believe that I can protect you from Joel. Walk with me, Jim.”
Jim went to the door and shut it. Then he took Blair's face in his hands and kissed him, with care and reverence. Blair's set expression was softened with passion - and also with mischief - when he was finished.
“My mother still awaits my letter.”
Jim pressed a last kiss to Blair's brow. “Let me find my coat and hat.”
Decorous dress achieved, the two of them walked towards the village.
“None of the agents have reported anything new?” Blair asked. Both Jim and Abingdon had paid men to seek word of Alicia Bannister. There had been nothing. She had gone to ground with great skill.
“No.”
Blair sighed. “In some ways I'm glad. Sometimes it all seems like an evil dream now. To see her face to face...And then I think of all the questions I would like to ask.”
“If you think that she would answer them.” Jim snorted his disbelief at the likelihood of that.
“She could be no worse than you. Unless you wish to prove me wrong?”
“There's an inducement,” Jim drawled. But it was clearly insufficient, as he walked on in silence.
“I could wish you hadn't burned her – communication.” Blair's memories of Alicia were distressing, but he had grown increasingly obsessed with what she knew of Jim's nature. Books and atlases on Peru were piled beside Blair's bed. He would have to learn Spanish to understand some. None of them told him what he truly wished to know. None of them gave him a word for Jim's gifts, and none of them offered an explanation of what role a 'guide' might play in the expression of them. “There might have been clues there.”
A pang of guilt bit Jim. I believe that you and he will have had an extraordinary experience He pushed it down. Blair's new obsession made him nervous. Great gifts came at great price. Jim knew that and he occasionally wondered what obligation was due for the miracle of Blair walking straight and strong beside him.
“I doubt that malicious and pornographic scrawls would offer anything useful.”
“Pornographic? Now I really am affronted by your high-handedness.” Blair's face had turned drolly lascivious, but Jim was not in the mood to be amused.
“I put her works where they belonged.”
“You know, Jim, just because the gatekeeper is dubious, it doesn't mean that there's no value in what's beyond the door.” Blair didn't mean the pictures, and Jim knew that.
“It doesn't mean that I should dance through with flowers in my hair, either,” he retorted.
Blair stopped short, and barked out a laugh. “Captain Ellison, I am lost in admiration. A masterful effort of diversion, and such a charming image. Your field reports must have been wonders.”
Jim smiled tightly. “They were coherent at least.”
Blair stepped back into the rhythm of walking once more. Accepting that Jim was unlikely to discuss the issue any further (for now at least) was not the same as liking that fact.
“It's so charming an image, I'm inclined to bring it to life.”
“Only in your imagination.”
“But there are flowers in profusion in the gardens at Ashford. I'm sure I could pick out something suitable.”
“Over my dead body, Sandburg,” Jim said, with more determination than tact.
“Ha! We'll see, Jim. We'll see.”
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