Chapter 2
A lfie rolled his shoulders, trying to ease the stiffness from his muscles. A single night’s rest in a decent bed wasn’t nearly enough to undo the weeks of strain.
By the time he’d realised Dominick had forgotten his promise to come to Alfie’s room and gone in search of his wayward lover, Alfie had found him passed out face down on the bed, one boot still dangling from his foot. It’d taken a good deal of pushing and pulling to get him undressed and under the covers, but it was worth it to awaken in the morning and see the sunlight that peeked through the curtains falling across Dominick’s bare shoulders as he slept. Alfie left him to it, the morning light lifting his spirits as he made his way back to his own room to dress.
He’d been away from Scotland too long, because he’d forgotten that just because it was sunny now, didn’t mean there wouldn’t be rain later. In his case, the rain was purely metaphorical, which made it worse. It was one thing to be miserable when it rained, at least that had some sort of poetic feeling to it. It was far worse to be miserable when the sun was shining and birds were chirping merrily outside the window.
The first metaphorical raindrop had been the raw egg he’d gotten for breakfast, Janie apparently afraid of burning herself again. Then the deluge followed when Gil set a stack of papers on his desk. A sizable stack. Several months’ worth, in fact.
“Only correspondences, some investment opportunities you might consider, and an interesting paper on increasing the yield of wool per animal that I thought you might find edifying,” Gil had said. “There are, of course, the rents, taxes, property standings, and various local matters to attend to, but there’s no need for you to get into business your first day back. Enjoy the respite.”
Now it was well past noon and if Alfie had to read one more word about the superiority of the Border Cheviot over the Scottish Dunface for both meat and wool production he might start bleating himself.
He pushed away from the desk to go look for a distraction. Fortunately, his greatest distraction chose that moment to walk in.
“Here you are,” said Dominick. He looked down at the stack of papers that had only slightly dwindled. “Why are you wasting such a fine day on paperwork?”
“I was just asking myself the same question. Care for a walk?”
“If you're up for it.”
Alfie rapped his cane gently against Dominick’s chest. “I might be gripping this a bit tighter than usual, but I should be fine.”
Dominick grinned, placing a hand over the end of the cane. “The cane, you mean, or me?” With his other hand he closed the office door behind him.
It was certainly a tempting thought. By God, it was a tempting thought. But as much as the idea of Dominick bending him over the desk and thoroughly making a mess of the paperwork appealed, doing so in the middle of the day with the windows open and house full of servants wasn’t worth the risk.
Alfie held onto the image a moment longer, then released it with a sigh. “Later. You said yourself, it’s too fine a day to spend indoors. Shall we detour through the kitchen and see if there’s anything we can eat?”
Dominick looked more pleased than he should at Alfie countering his offer of sex with a bit of cheese and apple, but as long as he was happy, that was what counted.
When they reached the kitchen, they found Janie with a bandage wound around her hand being tutted over by Mrs. Finley.
“Is your hand still troubling you, Janie?” Alfie asked. “I heard you’d burned yourself last night.”
“Sir!” The word came out of Janie in a squeak. “You ought not be down here! That is, this is your house and your kitchen, of course. What I meant was, I wasn’t expecting you, your sort, to come down here. Am I late for luncheon? I apologise, sir. It’s been some time since I’ve done it. I’ll make something up right away.”
Alfie held up his hands at the barrage. “No need, in fact we just came down to scrounge up a picnic. Your hand though, it’s all right?”
Janie blushed fiercely, the bright red of her face clashing with the even brighter red of her hair.
“Yes, sir. Thank you. Mrs. Hirkins gave me a salve the last time I burned myself that I’ve been putting on it.”
Mrs. Finley muttered something under her breath. Alfie raised an eyebrow. His housekeeper was usually a model of her species: proper, professional, and pleasant to a fault.
“My apologies, sir,” she said at his look. “Only it doesn’t smell like the salve I would have made.”
And that was just what Alfie needed, some sort of feud developing between his current housekeeper and his former one. As his eccentric parents had never had more than a handful of staff, he wasn’t entirely sure how an earl was supposed to handle squabbles amongst his workforce, so before that could go any further, he changed the subject. “Speaking of the Hirkins family, how is the newest arrival?”
Mrs. Finley’s face lit up at the question. Whatever animosity she might or might not have with the eldest of the Hirkins clan, it obviously did not apply to the most recent addition to the set.
“Oh, James is just the most beautiful thing. He was sleeping when I went in to see him. Bairns do quite a bit, the first few months. They use up all their strength being brought new into the world. He looked like a perfect angel from Heaven. Agnes as well, like the Madonna and Christ Child, bless them.”
“I’m glad to hear it.” Dominick said. “If he grows up half as strong as his mother, he’ll be a man to watch out for. She gripped my hand so tight she nearly broke it.”
From anyone else, the words might have been meant as a joke, but from Dominick they were the highest praise. He’d been gathering up some odds and ends around the kitchen as Alfie chatted, and gestured towards the kitchen door with a nod of his head.
“I look forward to seeing them both when they’re ready for it,” said Alfie, then followed Dominick out into the glorious sunshine.
For once, the weather seemed inclined to remain sunny, at least for the foreseeable future. Likely it was just biding its time, waiting for them to grow overconfident and stray far afield before the heavens opened.
But for now at least, Alfie could enjoy walking through the overgrown gardens so long neglected by the previous earl, the distant views of the sea ahead of him and Dominick by his side. Dominick was content to walk in silence, the hum of the bees in thickets that had once been neatly landscaped flower beds only punctuated by a crunch of his apple. Even after all their time together, Alfie couldn’t help but steal sideways glances at him, the way Dominick’s golden hair glinted in the sun, the way his shoulders eased here in a way they never had in London. The country air suited him.
Alfie grew so caught up with his glances that he missed a root that had broken free from a rose bed and now snaked across the path. He stumbled, Dominick’s sudden grip on his arm the only thing keeping him from a faceful of thorns.
“All right?” Dominick asked. He’d dropped his apple to grab Alfie and it rolled to a stop against the treacherous root.
“I’m fine.” Alfie knocked the half-eaten fruit into a hedge with his cane. “Perhaps that’s enough being a jungle explorer for the day, however. Shall we take the road into town? I’m not sure I’ll make it that far, but the exercise will do me good.”
He recognised the pinched look on Dominick’s face as one that meant, “I‘ll agree, but I’ll be watching you like a mother hen to make sure you don’t overdo it.”
Although Dominick might have preferred the word “hawk” to “mother hen”. He’d gotten better about his hovering, but there were some things about Dominick that were just, well, Dominick . It shouldn’t please Alfie quite so much that looking after him was one of them.
They exited the gardens through a rusted gate that required their combined strength to force open and strolled along the oak-lined drive towards the main road to Kilconquer.
Along the way, one of the barn cats emerged to inspect the trespassers to its kingdom. It was a tiny thing, but its objections to their presence were loud. Dominick paid for their passage with a bit of hard cheese he’d packed away for lunch. Alfie then spent some minutes dangling his pocket watch for the cat to bat at before it finally tired of its clockwork prey.
He smiled as it trotted back towards the stables, tail held high and more certain of its position of master of Balcarres than Alfie had ever been.
From there, the drive curved gently and the trees became thicker, the woods fully surrounding them by the time they finally met the road to town. When they reached the front gate, it seemed like a good chance to rest his leg and have whatever cheese the cat had left them.
The gates themselves had long been removed, but on either side of the drive stood tall stone pillars announcing the entrance to the manor, despite the distance still required to reach it. At the base of one of the pillars lay a large log perfectly suited to both a rest and a picnic. Alfie sat, his upturned face warmed by the sunlight that filtered through the trees and his whole body warmed by Dominick’s thigh pressed against his own.
Eventually, he heard the rattling of wheels coming down the road. A farm wagon heavy with hay turned the corner, the nag at its head trundling along at an even but slow pace, the farmer at the reins clicking his tongue at her occasionally in some sort of man-to-animal communication Alfie would never understand.
It was quite the bucolic picture, something his adoptive mother might have bought on a whim to be hung on a wall somewhere and promptly forgotten about. He raised a hand in greeting as the farmer approached.
“Good afternoon. Beautiful day, isn’t it?”
The farmer didn’t respond, merely continued on his steady way. Perhaps he hadn’t heard him.
“I say,” Alfie tried again, casting about for any topic of discussion less banal than the weather. “That’s a lovely beast, does she have a name?”
At that, the farmer glanced over at him sharply before quickly looking away again. Without a word, he shook the reins, urging the horse faster. She complied, increasing her plodding to a brisk stroll and within a few moments they were past, disappearing around the next bend.
Dominick snorted. “I may not have figured out all your fancy toff manners yet, but I know an insult when I see one.”
“Yes,” Alfie said, shaken by the unexpected disrespect. “A near perfect cut direct , in fact. At the wrong soiree, a look like that could mean a duel.”
“I doubt he’ll be attending any soirees any time soon. Just as well; the wagon wouldn’t fit through the doors.”
“No,” said Alfie, but he wasn’t really listening. It wasn’t his first time being disliked or even hated, but those had all been by people he knew. Such clear dislike from a complete stranger bothered him more for some reason. “Do you think he realised who I was? Perhaps we thought we were vagrants.”
That made Dominick laugh out loud. Alfie looked over and all right, perhaps Dominick had a point. While their clothes were simple by his standards, their shirts were still of the finest linen, their trousers expertly tailored, and there was gold thread embroidering the buttonholes of Dominick’s coat. The ebony sword cane that rested against Alfie’s knee with its silver trim was probably worth more than the farmer’s house.
“Besides,” Dominick said, laughing again, “after we came rattling through last night with the earl’s carriage, the earl’s horses, and the earl’s driver, likely every household within fifty miles knows the Earl of Crawford has returned.”
Even though the sun still shone, the day didn’t feel quite as warm as before. Something in the farmer’s look made Alfie feel the way he had the first day of university, small and somehow guilty at the same time.
“Let’s head back,” he said stiffly, swiping up his cane and heading back towards Balcarres House without waiting for Dominick’s reply.
Dominick caught up to him quickly.
“We were sitting a bit close,” Dominick murmured, his voice a heavy rumble.
“That’s my concern,” replied Alfie. “We’ve been away for months, and if there’s been talk in the meantime about the strange new earl and his handsome companion…”
“You are very strange and I am quite handsome.”
“Nick.”
“I know, I know. What should we do about it?”
Alfie took a moment to think. The wind had picked up and the rustle of leaves sounded like hushed whispers behind their backs.
“I’m not sure there is anything to be done,” he said at last. “At least not right now. If there are rumours, enquiring about them would only make things worse. Still, a bit of discretion wouldn’t go amiss.”
“I’m discreet.”
Despite the seriousness of their conversation, Alfie barked out a laugh. “Nick, you’re about half an inch from holding my hand.”
Dominick looked honestly shocked at their proximity before he stepped over, putting a few feet of space between them.
“All right, all right, I see your point. No strolling arm-in-arm. Anything else?”
Alfie shrugged. “Spend more time apart? I don’t mean I’m going to pack you off on the next mail coach, but you go riding more without me and I’ll do more of whatever it is earls do. Paperwork, apparently.”
“I’ll happily leave you to that,” Dominick said. “This is all a lot of bollocks, but then you’ve always been a hassle.”
Halfway up the drive Dominick snapped his fingers. “I know what it was! It wasn’t me at all. It was you asking about his horse!”
Alfie furrowed his brow. “What was wrong with that?”
“It wasn’t what you said. It was how you said it.” Dominick waggled his eyebrows. “Longingly, I would say. Lustfully, even.”
Alfie let out a squawk at the absolute obscenity of Dominick’s suggestion, but that only spurred the man on.
“Like the way a bull looks at a cow. Or a blacksmith at a milkmaid,” offered Dominick with glee. “Downright obscene, it was.”
Alfie couldn’t help but laugh, his mood lightening just a fraction. “And what would you know about any of those things? Lots of milkmaids wandering around Spitalfields, were there?”
Dominick had drifted back towards him without either of them noticing. He bumped their shoulders together and leaned in, his lips brushing Alfie’s ear as he spoke.
“I know obscene,” he whispered. “And I know the way I look at you. The way you look at me.”
With that he pulled away and the look in his eyes… Yes, that was a look Alfie knew too. Perhaps he could be tempted to spend such a fine day indoors after all. Discretion be damned.