Chapter 17 #3
“You’re still a prig, old boy.”
“I know.”
“You can stay here if you don’t want to use the townhouse.”
“Thank you. I should return home as soon as I can, but I’d probably fall out the saddle.”
“Get a few hours’ sleep. Just don’t wake me when you leave.” George ran a finger round the rim of the decanter and licked it clean. “By the way, what happened to that mongrel of yours?”
“Micha? He’s still with me.”
George frowned. “I don’t trust the fellow. He’s using you, and I have no idea what game he’s playing.”
“I don’t think he is,” said Thomas quietly. “I think he’s a good man who has had a difficult life. He changes a little every day. And he makes me happy.”
“For a supposedly good man, he was quick enough to betray a friend.”
“Pardon?”
“Your housekeeping harlot. He sold her out to get me off his back.”
Thomas’s eyes widened. For Micha’s sake he wanted to dissemble—pretend he already knew—but he was under-practised in dissembling, despite his father’s best efforts. “What? Why would he do that? And how? I don’t believe they even know each other.”
“Something to think about, eh?” drawled George infuriatingly. “Good night.” He tipped an imaginary hat and staggered from the room, taking with him any hope Thomas had of sleeping.
Thomas fidgeted away a couple of hours on George’s sofa, as plagued by doubts and questions as he had been the night before and prepared to depart in the early hours of the morning.
He cleaned himself up as best he could, considered taking the train, but, impatient to leave, he borrowed one of George’s horses and set out a little after dawn.
It was another long, gruelling journey, made considerably worse by yesterday’s aches and his newly acquired collection of bruises.
He did not push his mount, stopped often to rest, and was already too weary to give much thought to anything beyond the man who waited for him at the rectory.
He arrived in Nettlefield close to midnight, saw to his horse, and let himself into his house.
Thinking Micha would most likely be sleeping, he took care not to make too much noise, but then he heard the sound of footsteps upon the stairs, and there was Micha, half-drowned in shadows, clad only in his trousers and a very rumpled shirt.
“Thomas.” Micha rarely spoke his name, except in mockery, and now it was uttered not so much with something that was recognisable as gladness but something else, something deeper, something raw.
And Thomas forgot all of George’s cryptic warnings in the simple pleasure of homecoming, when home was no longer about a place, but a person. He opened his arms, and Micha rushed into them.
“How ridiculous,” he muttered into Thomas’s neck. “Two days and I turn moonstruck.”
Thomas clutched at him.
“And you should know you smell like a dead horse.” Micha pulled back a little. It was hard to see in the gloom, but his brows dipped into a frown. He caught Thomas by the chin. “Wait. What have you been doing? What happened?”
Thomas winced as one of Micha’s fingers brushed against the tender place on his lip. “Nothing, really.”
“‘Nothing, really’?”
“Well, George, but . . . I hit him first.”
Micha made a sardonic gesture. “Oh well, that’s fine then.”
Thomas stifled his amusement, not entirely successfully.
“It’s no laughing matter.” Micha took Thomas by the hand and dragged him into the library, where he lit a lamp and then let out a low hiss at the sight of Thomas’s face.
“It looks worse than it is,” offered Thomas, awkwardly.
“It better,” growled Micha. “Or I’ll fucking kill him. Now sit down and let me clean it properly.”
Thomas was all too glad to cast off his sweat-stained coat and sink into the nearest chair.
He must have dozed because, when next he opened his eyes, Micha was there with a cloth and a bowl full of water.
He put them down, unceremoniously pushed Thomas’s legs apart, and dropped to his knees between them.
It was strange, for Thomas had kissed this man’s lips, held his cock in his mouth, but this seemed an entirely different intimacy.
It abashed him, somehow, even as it pleased him. “You don’t have to do this.”
Micha’s upturned face looked starkly beautiful in the lamplight. Lucifer before his fall. “I’m going to,” he snapped. And then, more kindly, “I want to.”
He took Thomas’s hands and spread the fingers. His touch was surprisingly gentle as he cleaned the scraped and swollen knuckles.
“An ill-advised right hook,” explained Thomas.
Micha said nothing. His head was bent over his task, a curl of dark hair falling forward across his brow. When he was done, he leaned forward a little more and lightly kissed Thomas’s fingertips.
“I’m so sorry I smell like a dead horse,” whispered Thomas, freshly dismayed by the state he was in and Micha’s tenderness. “That cannot be very attractive.”
Micha glanced up with a rare grin. “You’re wearing clothes you’ve slept in, you’re covered in blood, and your face looks like you walked repeatedly into a wall. Attractiveness went out the window some time ago.”
“Well, my face was not much to celebrate to begin with.”
Micha pushed himself to his feet. And then he was in Thomas’s lap, heat and solid strength, and the sweet shock of his closeness. “I happen to like your face. So don’t go getting it punched again.”
Thomas smiled and split his lip open.
“I can’t believe what an idiot you are,” muttered Micha as he dabbed up the blood and cleaned the wound. His words were angry, but his hands were careful. Even loving. And what little pain they caused was salved almost immediately by the proximity of his body.
“You should see George.”
“Gave him what for, did you?” asked Micha, with a wry look.
“Absolutely. I did some serious damage to his fists.”
Micha actually laughed, and Thomas half-suspected he was being humoured, but he was too warmly contented to care.
He closed his eyes and let himself be tended.
When he opened them again, Micha had put the water bowl aside and was simply looking at him, his expression softer than usual but typically unreadable. “There. All done.”
He would have moved, but Thomas caught him and held him. “Don’t go.”
Micha cleared his throat. “This isn’t terribly comfortable, you know,” he grumbled. But he stayed.
Finally, he asked, “Does it hurt? I think . . . I might have some laudanum somewhere?”
Thomas reached up and touched his lips to Micha’s. “How good you are, but I’m fine.”
“Not good. And I hope it was fucking worth it.”
“Not really.” Thomas sighed. “My poor brother. I grieve for his pains and can do little to alleviate them.” He reached out and ran the rough fold of his fingers across the edge of Micha’s cheekbone.
Micha’s lashes fluttered, and he let Thomas touch him, without protest. “How little we truly know of other people’s lives,” Thomas went on.
“We think we understand, but we don’t. We just see the crudest shadows. ”
Micha shrugged. “Maybe it’s better that way.”
Thomas was silent. Perhaps Micha was right. Perhaps there were some things that were better left unknown. But Thomas had kept his peace for years, and it had brought him no closer to happiness. “Micha?”
“What?”
“George told me something . . . about you.” Thomas felt the tension that suddenly rolled through Micha’s body, as though he had slipped a blade between the man’s ribs. “He said you knew Mrs. Clark? In her previous life.”
“I haven’t fucked her.” He sounded as sharp and brittle as glass.
Given how reluctantly Micha spoke of anything to do with himself, or his past, Thomas had half-expected a denial, though not of this particular familiarity.
“It would not trouble me if you had,” he said gently.
“I have no claim on you.” He paused. “What concerns me is that you would betray her to my brother, knowing full well the likely consequences.”
Micha turned his head away, showing just the shadow of his profile. “I didn’t think he’d try to force her.”
“But you must have seen the precariousness of her position.”
Micha was trembling now, with some volatile combination of anger and fear.
He untangled himself from Thomas, the convulsive movement rousing from temporary slumber a jangling collection of bruises and minor scrapes.
“What do you want from me?” he snarled, almost stumbling in his haste to get away.
“Contrition? ‘Oh forgive me, sweet benefactor, for my moral lapse’?”
Thomas stared at him, shocked by the sudden change, the loss of the care he had sacrificed for his question. “Of course not. And I’m not your benefactor. I am your—”
“My what? What are you, Thomas? My keeper? My patron?”
“Your lover? Your friend? Am I not these things?”
Micha’s whole body hunched. “I don’t know. It seems to depend on whether or not you like my behaviour.”
“Do you not think,” asked Thomas, “I have some right to know what might drive you to such an act of wanton cruelty?”
“Oh you have rights now, do you? To judge my actions. To know whatever it is you want to know about me.” Micha’s voice climbed to something that was too ragged to be a shout.
“You think because I let you have my body that you can take whatever else of me you want? How does that make you better than your brother?”
Thomas rose painfully to his feet. “My words were ill-chosen. And I apologise. But I thought . . . I don’t know . . . a little bit of truth sometimes might be something lovers shared. Something you wished to give.”
“Well, it isn’t.”
There was a deep and endless silence, like tumbling into a dark chasm. “Do you have no faith in me?”
“I have faith in nothing.”
“You can’t live that way.”
“You know nothing of me, or how I live.”
Thomas put a hand to his brow and squeezed the bridge of his nose, as if that could lessen the pounding in his head. “I have heard that a lot, lately.” He took a breath that hardly seemed to fill his lungs. “Micha, this is no use.”
“Of course not,” said Micha, viciously. “I haven’t pleased you, so you’re done with me.”
“For God’s sake—”
“And leave Him out of it.”
“For fuck’s sake, I love you. How can you say this to me?
” Thomas closed the distance between them and put his hand over Micha’s thundering heart.
“‘Whither thou goest, I will go and where thou lodgest I will lodge: Thy people shall be my people and thy God my God.’ I love you but you would have me love nothing but shadows.”
Micha’s hand came up and closed over Thomas’s, his fingers curling into frantic claws. “Shadows is all I am.”
“No. I know who you are; you show me sometimes. I love that man and this man, and every shade and shard of you. But I cannot fight against you for you.”
“Can we not . . .” Micha’s voice trailed away a moment. “Simply go on? As we are?”
“Which is what? You said yourself that I’m not your friend or your lover.” Thomas leaned a little closer, letting the now-familiar warmth of Micha’s body brush softly against him like the memory of a touch. “What would you have me be?”
Micha twisted away but only slightly. “I spoke in anger,” he muttered.
It was, as ever, not quite an apology or an explanation, and, for once, Thomas did not let it be enough. “Then tell me, Micha,” he pressed, “what am I to you? A friend in whom you do not confide? A lover you do not love?”
“Please don’t make me do this.” Micha’s voice softened unexpectedly, though his eyes were bleak. “You’ve given me something close to peace, something close to happiness.”
“I would give you everything,” said Thomas simply.
Micha’s lip curled into its familiar sneer. “And your price?”
“It’s not a transaction.”
“It’s always a transaction.”
Desolation swept through Thomas like winter. It was hopeless. Micha was as unreachable as George. As Edward. “Let me love you,” he pleaded. “Let me be your friend. Sometimes you make me think you must feel something for me too.”
There was a brief silence. “You are the best man I’ve ever known,” said Micha, as though the words were wrenched from him.
“And I have done nothing to deserve you. But I can’t.
” His voice was steady and without inflection.
“I can’t.” And, all the while, something frantic flickered in the darkness of his eyes, like an unheard scream.
The hand that still rested atop Thomas’s hand was icy.
And then he was pushing Thomas away, silence and emptiness filling the new-made space between them.
Micha’s chin came up. The coldness settled over his face.
“So what now?” he asked. “You will want me gone.”
“No but—”
“Surely you cannot want me to stay?”
It was all so swift and so sudden. Bewilderment flared into anger. “What I want,” snapped Thomas, “is for you to think about this. Must you simply react, like a beast with its leg in a trap? Take a day, take a week, but, at least, think about it. If you care for me at all.”
“Yes,” returned Micha dully. “I care.”
“I don’t know what holds you back. Fear or mistrust or doubt or pain. But is it truly worth keeping? Come to me, or fly from me, but choose. Do not let your demons drive you.”
And then, wearily, sore in body, heart, and soul, Thomas walked from the room into the darkness, and he did not look back.