Chapter 24
William
Iput a calendar up on the wall in my father’s study and crossed off the date.
I’d numbered every day until Halloween. In the morning, I’d have a hundred and sixty-three days to save the estate.
I picked up my copy of Oathkeeper and slid it onto the shelf between The Knight’s Vow and To Betray a King, the first book in Fanshaw’s second Knights-Errant trilogy.
My hand hovered over it, finger poised to tip the spine towards me.
Adventure awaited inside. Petey’s words echoed through my mind.
“No,” I said to myself, to the room, the ghost of my father. “It’ll be waiting for you in a hundred and sixty-three days—and not a minute sooner.”
Then the lights flickered off.
It was gone midnight when I heard Petey arrive home at the folly.
I was sat up in bed in the belvedere, surrounded by candles, my notes for saving the estate strewn all around me.
I’d been unable to go to sleep until I’d seen him—needing to explain away my mother’s incredibly unhelpful contributions to my love life.
I was stacking up my papers when Petey’s head popped up in the stairwell.
“Why are you sitting up here only lit by candles?” he said. Even through the soft glow, I could see he looked shattered.
“Atmospherics?” I tapped the wooden structure underneath my bed. “I think the hot tub blew a fuse. I couldn’t be bothered walking two miles to the cellar to fix it.”
“You have a hot tub up here? You’ve been holding out on me.”
Petey stumbled up the last few stairs and sat on the edge of my bed. His boiler suit was tied around his waist, his vest rumpled, the pale white skin of his arms glowing gold in the candlelight. My breath caught. He was spectacularly beautiful—like a bleached-blond angel.
“How’d it go?” I asked.
“Armando announced their engagement at the ball. Everyone’s drunk. Indira put the wedding off till Friday so they can sleep off today’s excitement—and so the crew can get some rest.”
I smiled. “Good TV, though, I bet?”
“Great TV.”
He yawned. I presented Petey with a fist to bump, and he duly bumped it. I held my arms out, gesturing for Petey to come to me.
“You do not want to hug me,” he said. “I am ripe.”
“The three best smells in the world are, in no particular order, a stable, a dirty kit bag after a long bus ride home from an away game, and—I’m willing to bet you any money—your armpits right now.”
“You’re a stink pig?” Petey’s eyebrows bounced. “Yeah, actually, that checks out.”
I had no idea what he meant. All I cared about was the fact Petey was smiling and crawling up the bed towards me on his knees.
He lay down beside me, sinking into my body.
He smelt of sweat and pine needles and second-hand cigarette smoke.
I twisted around him and buried my face in the milky white flesh of his pit.
In a loud, exaggerated manner, I breathed it in.
“Well?” he said.
“Perfection.”
“Liar. I should go for a shower.” He sat up to go, but I pulled him back by his arm.
“Don’t,” I said. I needed to explain. I couldn’t chicken out on something two nights in a row. That wasn’t the way the British won two world wars. “About my mother—”
“It’s OK.” He moved to sit, facing me, on the edge of the bed—one leg folded in front of him, the other dangling off the side.
“It’s not,” I said.
“No, it really is. It helped, actually.”
“My mother has never helped any situation. Ever. Literally famous for it.”
“I didn’t understand before,” Petey said, his eyes sincere. “But I’ve been thinking about it, and… I think I get it now.”
My heart started to race. Got what? What did he think he understood? I sat upright, crossing my legs. I rested my hand on Petey’s ankle. He put his hands on my knee.
“So we’re clear: Yes, William, I like you.
I think you’re gorgeous and hilarious and fascinating, and I really, really want you to kiss me.
But I want you to know… there’s no hurry.
I’ve realised, since getting to know you, that you’re worth waiting for.
We’ll move at your pace. There’s no pressure. ”
My breath quickened. Petey’s eyes were looking directly into my soul. I’d never felt so seen by anyone before. I knew, in that moment, it had to be now. I reached up and felt the exquisite soft skin of his cheek with my hand, traced the line of his jaw with my fingertips.
“I…”
“It’s OK.”
“I…”
I closed my eyes and leant towards him, waiting for my lips to connect with his. Instead, I felt Petey’s hand slide into mine and turn it. His hot breath and tender kiss grazing the palm of my hand. I opened my eyes.
“What is it?” I said softly. “What’s wrong?”
“Nothing at all.” He smiled. “But… I have an idea. Do you trust me?”
I wove my fingers into his, unable to keep the grin off my face. “Of course.”
Petey kissed the back of my hand and let it go.
He stood and turned away from me, plucking off his vest—the smooth alabaster skin of his back glowing in the candlelight.
Slowly, he undid the knot of the sleeves of his boiler suit and let it gently slide to the floor, revealing tight cotton boxer briefs in a vivid royal blue.
The way they cupped the rounds of his pert little buttocks could have steered ships onto rocks. I was gone. Completely gone.
“What are you doing?” I said, starting to shiver.
“Blow the candles out.”
“Petey, I…”
He turned to face me. His body was beautiful. Like a Pre-Raphaelite Narcissus.
“It’s OK. Nothing is going to happen that you don’t want to happen. Just… blow the candles out so we don’t burn everyone to death in their beds, because that would be a massive downer and I would like to avoid it, if at all possible.”
I did as instructed. Petey grabbed my hand in the dark and led me down the stairs.
“Where are we going?”
He didn’t answer, so I followed him in silence out the folly door, along the corridors and out of the house, down to the path by the Long Water.
“Is there any reason we’re in our jimmy-jams?” I said finally.
“William, I’ve almost never seen you in anything else. I’m following your lead. ‘When in Rome,’ you know?”
It was a beautiful, clear night—a blanket of stars twinkling in the sky overhead.
The frogs had finished their chorus, and the evening was quiet.
The air was cool against my skin, but my hand was sweating where it held on to Petey’s—where our bodies connected.
I was still so high on adrenaline, I giggled as we picked our way barefoot along the path beside the lake.
“This feels so naughty,” I said.
Petey squeezed my hand. “Naughty would be pushing you in,” he said, with a cheeky grin.
I laughed. “I’d like to see you try.”
“Is that a dare?”
“Go on, try.” I let go of Petey’s hand, folded my arms, and sank my weight into the ground. “Give it a shot.”
He chuckled. “I would never.”
“Oh, you absolutely wou—”
His palms slammed into my chest, but I didn’t move.
“You’re going to have to try harder than that,” I said.
He tried again, pushing my shoulder this time, and I pretended to wave like a scarecrow in the breeze. “Put your back into it.”
Petey’s eyes narrowed. He walked behind me, his leg slipping between mine, his arm wrapping around my neck like he planned to trip me up karate-style.
There was a lot of grunting and swearing, but I wasn’t going anywhere.
Then Petey’s foot slipped on the gravel, and he was swinging from me like a rope.
“Steady there, Tarzan,” I said, sweeping him up in one arm and depositing him back on two feet. “How about we stop before you hurt yourself?” I didn’t really want him to stop. I was enjoying the closeness, the feel of his bare skin against mine.
We ambled slowly along the path until we reached Lady Caroline’s Bridge.
“After you,” I said, letting Petey take the steps ahead of me.
The stone was cold under my feet. The air smelt of earth and water, mown grass and cow parsley.
The view back to Buckford Hall was breathtaking—the house reflected perfectly in the still water.
Then Petey stopped. He stood right in front of me, facing me, his hand reaching out.
I couldn’t see, hear, or feel anything but him.
He was leaning against the pillar of the bridge.
My eyes locked into his. But before I could move towards him, his face broke into a mischievous smile—and his foot splashed down into the lake, kicking water up and all over me.
“You didn’t.”
“I did.”
And he did it again. So I wrapped my arms around his shoulders and locked my wrists together.
He giggled nervously and tried to wiggle free—but I held him tighter.
My plan was to get him away from the water, to sit him down where we’d sat the previous night.
But as I shifted my weight to budge him, his leg swept my own out from under me, and before I knew it, I was falling.
Petey was falling with me. My body tensed in shock from the cold and the wet and the surprise. My mouth filled with lake water.
“Oh, holy shit, it’s freezing!” Petey said as he broke the surface, gasping for air.
“Are you OK?” I asked, flicking my hair back out of my face and treading water.
“I’m fine. You?”
“It’s deeper than I remember here. And really cold.”
“I won,” he said with a cheeky grin. He had duckweed in his hair.
I laughed, unable to control it—my body looking for every opportunity to convulse, to generate some heat.
I moved towards him, intending to pluck the stray greenery, but my inner child took over and instead I put my hands together to make a big paddle and sliced them down into the water, almost drowning Petey with the splash.
“You bastard!”
He splashed me back. So I splashed him back.
So he splashed me back, and I was laughing so hard I almost choked on the water.
I kicked my legs out and swam maybe twenty, thirty metres out into the middle of the lake—to a spot where I knew I could touch the bottom.
I turned to watch as Petey bobbed slowly towards me in a gentle breaststroke, his head never going below the surface.
“Truce?” he said when he finally reached me. He held out a pinkie.
I linked my finger into his. “Truce.” I pulled him towards me, and Petey’s legs wound their way around my hips, his arms wrapping around my shoulders.
He was weightless in the water. My hands held his waist. He was so slender, he seemed almost fragile to me.
How was I allowed to hold this gentle, breakable, perfect, precious object?
It was cold, and he shivered. I pulled him closer to me, so our bodies could warm the still water between us.
Petey squeezed his legs tighter around my hips.
His breath was short and sharp, and it felt hot against my face.
My heart was thumping in my chest. Every cell in my body was telling me this was it.
This was the moment. Very slowly, ever so slightly, Petey nodded—urging me on.
I leant into him and he leant into me, his eyes flicking down to my lips for a second before he closed them.
I didn’t close mine until my lips had locked with his.