Chapter 5
FIVE
What started as a job of desperation and a last-chance bid to keep his gardening business from going under quickly turned into the most interesting job Graeme had ever had.
Hawthorne House was a wealth of history, and even in the present day, the stories he uncovered around every turn were fascinating.
“We absolutely hated each other at first,” Jake, Rafe Hawthorne’s partner, in glassblowing and in life, explained to him as the three of them enjoyed a mid-afternoon break in the shade of some of the estate’s trees one afternoon.
“Jake was a complete arse when we first met in America,” Rafe explained.
“I was not, I was just competitive,” Jake defended himself with a laugh.
“You were an obnoxious git,” Rafe snorted, deep affection in his eyes. “He lied about who he was and stole apprenticeships and placements from people to get ahead.”
“I have talent,” Jake said, pretending offense. “You get all your ideas from me these days.”
“See? A total liar,” Rafe said, elbowing Jake.
Graeme glanced back and forth between the two of them like he was watching a ping-pong match, a wide smile on his dirt-smeared face.
He loved watching the two of them together.
He loved watching all of the Hawthorne pairings together.
His whole life, he’d been raised to believe being gay was a grievous sin and that nothing but misery followed anyone who didn’t fight with everything they had to resist their wicked impulses.
Misery and disaster had certainly kicked him around when he’d finally done something about his.
But watching the Hawthornes was like having some sort of precious treasure revealed and like having someone hug him and say, “See? It’s going to be alright”. They were proof that things in reality weren’t what his conservative family had always said they were.
As wonderful as it was to be surrounded by healthy, complex, beautiful queer relationships, as the days wore on, it left Graeme feeling hollow and yearning, like he’d missed the most important boat of his life and was stuck where he was now.
Nothing drove that point home more than watching and listening to Ryan helping Art with the excavation of the gamekeeper’s cottage.
“Why do you have to sweep away at everything like this is some sort of dinosaur dig?” Ryan asked late in the morning, nearly two weeks after the excavation had started.
“It doesn’t matter if it’s a dinosaur or a teacup,” Art answered. “The point is to disturb the original site as little as possible while uncovering its mysteries.”
“Yeah, we all know how you like disturbing things,” Ryan replied in a dry, teasing voice.
“I beg your pardon?” Art answered him with mock indignation.
“You’ve been begging me for a lot of things lately.”
“Cheeky!”
Graeme tried not to sigh and feel left out.
He had finished planting the kitchen garden and had moved on to the rose garden, which was also adjacent to the lawn where the gamekeeper’s cottage had once stood.
There was work to do all over the garden, transplanting the roses that could still be saved and digging up the ones that hadn’t been properly cared for so that he could transport them to the greenhouse for rehabilitation, but he’d set himself up working in the corner closest to where Ryan and Art were digging and brushing away so he could listen to them flirt.
“According to the diaries Mum found, the fifth Countess of Felcourt used to spend time sulking in this gamekeeper’s cottage when her husband was being a pill,” Ryan said. “At this rate, I want it rebuilt so I can slam the door on you and sulk myself.”
Graeme tried not to stop and stare at the two men over the waist-high rose bushes at the edge of the garden. It wasn’t like working in the kitchen garden, where he had a whole brick wall to hide his spying from the pair.
“So are you saying I’m the husband?” Art asked, straightening from where he knelt in the dirt. Ryan stood nearby, his arms crossed.
“No, of course not,” Ryan teased him. “You’re the one on your knees, after all.”
“And wouldn’t you love it if I showed you what I could do from down here,” Art sassed, his gorgeous eyes glittering with lust and mirth.
Graeme sighed too loudly, startling himself. He covered his inadvertent burst of emotion by slashing at the bush in front of him with his pruning knife a little too hard. Whatever Ryan and Art got up to on their own was none of his business. They obviously liked each other. A lot.
That shouldn’t have made him so unhappy.
It wasn’t like anything had really happened between him and Ryan anyhow.
Sure, they’d become fast friends right from the start.
They had far more things in common than Graeme ever would have guessed.
The design connection was a strong one, but it went deeper than that.
Ryan was the sort of man Graeme would have wanted to be with, if he could have let himself be with a man at all after Damien.
He was tall and graceful and sophisticated.
He wasn’t overly fey, like he had been raised to think all gay men were.
In fact, if he didn’t know with absolute certainty that Ryan was gay, he never would have guessed.
He was masculine and confident and everything Graeme wasn’t.
But it wasn’t just Ryan, it was Art, too.
Art was the complete opposite of Ryan in a lot of ways.
He was outgoing and flirty. He could snap in and out of camp whenever it suited him.
From everything Graeme had learned in the last week and a half, Art actually did fit the stereotype his family had believed in that gay men were whores.
Art flirted and fawned mercilessly. The difference was that none of it felt predatory, only fun. And Graeme liked it.
He liked it a lot. Art terrified him in so many ways because he brought out a side that Graeme had always been taught to tamp down.
Art touched and winked. He whispered naughty suggestions, and he made Graeme want to take the bait and find out what could happen if he just let go. Art was exactly what—
“Oy! Dreamy-eyes! Are you going to cut that rose or are you just going to stare at us all day?”
Graeme jerked hard and yanked himself out of his thoughts at Art’s call. Dammit, he’d stopped working and started staring at the two of them, and after telling himself he absolutely wouldn’t. And he’d been caught.
“Sorry,” he called back, raising one hand to wave, his face blaring with heat. “I didn’t mean to bother you. I was just…thinking.”
“Yeah, you were,” Art said, flirty as hell. Worse still, he put down the trowel he’d been using and pushed himself to stand. “Why don’t you come over here and bother us some more?”
“You’re a menace,” Ryan laughed, shaking his head at Art. He glanced Graeme’s way, too, though, an invitation in his eyes.
Graeme’s insides shook like they’d been tossed in the air and didn’t know where to land. Art’s flirting was blatant and obvious, but Ryan’s was just as potent. Having one man tempting him down a dangerous path was one thing. Two of them was a beautiful nightmare.
“I’ve got all this work to do,” he said, nodding to the long line of overgrown rose bushes. “Pruning should have been done earlier in the year, but now’s as good a time as any. Although this will mean you won’t have as many blooms this year.”
“Are you telling us that the bloom has gone off the rose?” Art asked, walking slowly and seductively toward the rose hedge. “Already?”
Graeme laughed and lowered his head, more out of sheer panic as his feelings overwhelmed him than because he thought the joke was funny. When he glanced up, face still pointed down, Ryan had joined Art in walking towards him.
The two of them looked so perfect together. That was the problem. The problem for him, not for them. They were a brilliant pairing. Both of them were handsome, both were confident and easy with themselves, and both knew what they wanted in life. Unlike him.
They were them and Graeme was on the outside. Any chance he’d had of starting something with either of them was gone. They were clearly into each other.
“You’re doing it again,” Ryan said, his voice surprisingly kind as the two of them reached the other side of the thick hedge.
Graeme blinked, knowing he’d fallen into staring again, but said, “Doing what?”
Ryan and Art exchanged a knowing look…that made Graeme feel even more on the outside.
“If you have questions, love, you can just ask us,” Art said. “I know you’re brimming with curiosity about all sorts of things.”
Graeme’s face heated to epic levels. He’d talked to Art more than a few times since both the garden and the excavation project had gotten started.
Most of those conversations had started out with him insisting to himself that he would take the lead and find out more about Art and his life, but had ended with him confessing things that he hadn’t wanted to.
Although he had yet to say a word about Damien to either Art or Ryan.
“I think I’m just a bit exhausted is all,” he said, hoping that would be a good enough answer to stop any indecent questions. “The rose garden has been neglected for so long that it’s going to take ages to bring it back. Especially since I don’t have a crew.”
Ryan’s grin turned into a look of concern. “Sorry,” he said, walking away from where they all stood toward the gap in the hedge where he could enter the garden. “I’ve been spending all this time procrastinating my work by helping Arthur here, but I can see you need help more than he does.”
“I think our boy Graeme needs much more help than we’ve been giving him,” Art said, innuendo thick in his words. He, too, strode down to the gap and into the rose garden.
“What can we do?” Ryan asked, approaching Graeme along the old path that was now strewn with cut, thorny branches.