Chapter Twenty-Seven
Back then
The worst row James and Benton ever had came out of a buff folder marked FRENCH PROGRAMME, and it was James’s own fault, for not listening.
He had the broad shape of it. The French President liked him, which always helped.
The trade agreement they were flying out to celebrate had taken Downing Street two years to grind into being, an ingenious arrangement of tariffs on soft cheese and the machined parts inside turbines.
James had already been briefed on it twice and still couldn’t have told you why any of it was good for either country.
He was to spend three days in Paris, the last of them given over to a factory tour in the morning and a banquet at the élysée at night. Benton was partway through discussing the security cordon for the factory when James cut in.
“I can’t miss my Windsor weekend.”
Benton looked up from his folder. “You’re not due home until the Sunday, Sir. I’ve kept that morning in Paris clear for you, so you needn’t fly back through the night after the banquet. I thought you might appreciate the slower pace.”
Normally he would have, but he needed to get back to Windsor. By now there’d been a string of these weekends with Tristan, and he’d long since stopped pretending that he could do without them.
“Bring me back the moment the banquet’s done. There’ll be a flight that puts me into Windsor early Sunday.”
“Sir. As a rule, we can’t move travel arrangements that have been months in the building. You know that. There’s the cordon, the élysée’s own running order, the press manifest—”
“You’ll manage it,” James said. “Work your magic, Benton. You always do. I trust you with it completely.”
Benton squared the folder on his knee, his fist clenching. “If I may, Sir, Mr Whitlock is easy company. He’s very easy to grow fond of, and I see that as clearly as anyone. But when it comes down to it, he isn’t an insider. Not in the way your companions have always been.”
“Caroline trusts him, and so do you, Benton,” James pointed out. “Clearly enough that the two of you have pulled him into your scheme.”
Benton set down his pen. Then he turned in his chair to face James square on.
“James.” The name sat oddly in his mouth, and James looked up.
Benton had never invoked his first name while they were talking business before.
“The stakes are rather higher when the King is involved. Tristan is a man of ambition and drive. We all know that one of the reasons he agreed to the scheme was so he could raise his profile.”
James busied himself with fixing the cuff of his shirt, so that he wouldn’t give in to the urge to slam his hands down on the desk.
“Make the changes to my travel plans, Benton,” he said.
“I’ll be at Windsor on the Sunday morning.
See to it. Arrange a car to bring Tristan up on the Saturday evening, and have his rooms made ready before he arrives. ”
Benton inclined his head. “Of course, Sir.” He went back to talk of the cordon and the press manifest as evenly as if the scheduling change had never come up.
Paris passed in a blur of motorcades and toasts read off cards, and Benton never once returned to the matter of the revamped itinerary.
He ran the changed schedule as though it had been the plan all along, delivering James to the factory floor and to the élysée on time, then onto the dawn flight without a word of comment.
By the time the car came up the Long Walk on Sunday morning, James had managed three hours of sleep across two countries.
Tristan was waiting at the entrance to James’s apartments. “Figured I’d make the effort to come see you in. You’re crazy, you know that? Rushing back to the UK for one half-day here.”
James had spent the flight assuring himself that he was being perfectly reasonable, and here was the proof of it.
“I’m glad you’re here, though. Just to be clear,” Tristan said. “So let’s get on with it. You’ve got Paris all over you. Hands first, Jams.”
James knew the drill by now; they’d carried this out at the start of every visit. He shook out his hands, then his arms, until his wrists were loose. Tristan did the same beside him, hips going in their slow figure-of-eight, looking as possessed as ever.
“Five things you can touch,” Tristan said. “Name them as you go.”
James meant to do it properly. He meant to find objects around them, the way he’d done it before. But the second he laid eyes on Tristan and that smile, he gave up on objects entirely.
Instead, he laid his mouth to Tristan’s forehead. “Tristan.” From there he moved on to his cheek, kissing the softness of it. “Tristan.” Then the tip of his nose, “Tristan,” before he finished against his mouth with the barest press of his lips. “Tristan.”
He stepped back. Tristan stood where he’d left him, his eyes wide and dark. Then he lunged up onto his toes, his fists knotting in James’s lapels, and kissed him, taking ownership of the fifth touch. It pulled the breath clean out of James.
Tristan broke off the kiss, already turning to put space between them, but James hooked an arm around him and drew him flush against his chest.
He spoke into Tristan’s hair. “We’ve not finished de-roling, Tris. Ask me your question.”
Tristan was trembling in his arms, too far gone to manage his usual line, so James started them off.
“Have I got Tristan here with me?”
Tristan shuddered, then settled. “Yes.”
A long moment passed before he managed the other half of it, his voice unsteady at James’s collar. “Are you feeling like Jams now?”
James kissed his temple. “Always,” he said. “Around you.”
Tristan stayed where he was, his face tucked into the side of James’s neck, but his breath had gone short and frantic.
“This is crazy,” Tristan said. “We can’t do this, James. We’ve both got our jobs, all the goals we’re working towards. And I’m supposed to be fake dating your sister.”
James had turned the same cold truths over on the flight, whilst left to his own thoughts.
The sensible tactic would be to take this graceful exit, and keep to the status quo, but there was no possibility of that now that he knew what it was like to be kissed by Tristan, and to have him soft and pliant in his arms.
“I’m not going to pretend we’re not stepping into something complicated here,” he said, drawing back to look at Tristan. “But I won’t ask you for more than you can give me, Tris. We keep it small, we keep it ours, and nobody else needs to know about it until we’re ready.”
“And if it goes wrong?”
“Then it goes wrong, and we’ll have had this.”
Tristan went quiet. Then he ducked his head, his fringe dragging against James’s jaw. “I don’t understand,” he said. “I’ve never been attracted to another guy before. Not once, not ever. And then there’s you.”
James pushed Tristan’s loose fringe back off his forehead, trying to bring some order to the way it fell across his face.
“You’re not the only one out of his depth here.
I’ve gone completely the other way around with you.
There’ve been plenty of men, Tris. But I’ve always kept it at just that.
That’s easy for me. I take them to bed, and that’s where it begins and ends.
I know it can’t go anywhere with them, so nothing else really matters beyond that.
” He let his hand settle warm on the side of Tristan’s neck.
“I’ve never come at it properly like this, with the jigsaws and your dreadful puns, and letting myself be fond of you long before I let myself want you. ”
Tristan held still under his hand. “So what’s different this time?” he asked. “You’ve got the easy version down to an art. Why’s it gotta be the hard way with me?”
“There was someone I wanted for years,” James said. “Barnaby.”
Tristan didn’t react to the name.
“We tried when we were very young, and we didn’t work out.
And for a long time I thought that if I couldn’t make it work with him, someone I loved that much and who I knew adored me, then I didn’t stand a chance of anything normal with anyone else.
I…got around, Tristan. There was a thing with Vidal for a while, which was great fun.
And I have a safe, very loyal group of friends I can call on for quick fucks. ”
James let his thumb travel along Tristan’s jaw. “I’ve spent my life seeing to everyone else’s happiness. Bash has his boxer, Vidal has Beauchamp, and my own Private Secretary’s found his place with my sister. Somewhere in all that it landed on me that I might be allowed the same.”
“James—”
“I deserve to be happy too, Tristan. And at the moment, that’s you.”
Tristan didn’t answer with words. He fisted a hand in the front of James’s jacket, pulled him down, and kissed him, slow and certain.