Chapter Nineteen #2
Lyndon’s cock nestled between Rollo’s buttocks as if coming home. The swollen head teased at the gaping hole. Rollo shuddered into him with a whimpering sigh. So soft and pliant like this, when he was at Lyndon’s mercy. So capricious and scratchy when he wasn’t.
“Perhaps I’ll rest myself here awhile first,” Lyndon tormented. False bravado. The 1st Royal Dragoons on his mantel, if they came to life, couldn’t have held him back.
“Then I shall dissolve in a lake of agony all over these fine sheets,” panted Rollo. “Inside. This second!”
For all he wanted to tease, for all he wanted to take back control, Lyndon couldn’t stop himself.
Inch by inch, he sank into his lover, sensing when to push forward from Rollo’s needy cries and gasps, and then sensing when to still.
When to kiss him, when to whisper the foolish type of sentiments one only ever felt moved to whisper in the heat of the damned thing, yet carried on the tip of one’s tongue for most of the day.
And then, as heat and want and urgency flooded him, it became simply two desperate bodies pressed against each other, united as one, cock’s surging and hearts thumping.
Doing that silly, undignified, indecorous thing that bodies were made to do, that after a certain point they did instinctively, of their own accord.
And Lyndon held Rollo’s hands tightly in his through all of it.
He left gentle caresses on Rollo’s skin.
He buried his nose into the warm column of Rollo’s neck, breathing in his biscuity smell.
And Lyndon’s heart ached with how he was so maddeningly, undeniably falling in love.
Afterwards, they snoozed where they fell, messily tangled and too wrecked to move. When Lyndon eventually hauled himself away, it was to bring Rollo a washcloth. Sleepily, Rollo allowed him to wipe it across his belly and between his lax, open thighs.
“You are a kinder man than you allow others to see, Lord Lyndon.”
“You are alone in that opinion, pup.”
“No.” He shook his head. “Your servants here would disagree. And so will your old London acquaintances, given time. You are changed. Whilst we cannot help others judging us by our past, it should not dictate our futures.”
“Huh.” Lyndon’s brain wasn’t quite ready for a philosophical discussion regarding the past. Nor a future. Especially one pertaining to himself. But then, if not in the dark stillness of a bedchamber with one’s lover as a shield, then when?
He climbed back into bed. Fearful Rollo might return to his own bedchamber, he made it challenging for him by wrapping him up in his arms and, to be certain, resting his solid leg across both of Rollo’s.
Then he took a deep breath. “You once asked me why I became a changed man. I did not give you a fully honest answer.”
In the curve of Lyndon’s arm, Rollo lay very still. “Do not feel obliged to do so now,” he answered softly. “That you are changed is enough. It relates to your friend, does it not?”
“Yes,” Lyndon exhaled. “Will Elliot. The son of Henry Elliot, a tenant farmer. His mother was Mary Elliot, she worked in the kitchens alongside Cook. They were good, honest folk.”
“I have seen their grave markers at the chapel. That they were well-loved, and remain so, is clear.”
“I keep them tidy,” admitted Lyndon, “because Will cannot.”
He stared up at the ceiling, unseeing, letting his reminiscences wash through him.
“When he was small, Will used to come to the house with his mother and play with Benedict and myself as she worked. We are of an age. And then, as we became older, he would come to the house alone and play private games with me.”
“You had a great tendre for each other.”
Lyndon huffed a small laugh, giving his bed mate a sharp poke. “We did. I believed it to be nothing but a youthful folly, but have since come to realise that I have an…an attraction to both the male and the female sex. Alas, for Will, I always suspected it was nothing but a passing infatuation.”
He rubbed his nose against the top of the Rollo’s fair head, breathing in his sweet warm scent.
“Will was a virile, unworldly youth with a preference for women. But there were very few comely and unmarried ones within ten miles of Goule. If things had been different, I daresay he would have soon found one and consigned me to the playroom along with dusty old swords and dresses.” He chuffed again.
“And for my part, it’s hard to believe, but I was far more winsome than I am now and, of course, possessed the intrigue of being the son of a duke living in this fine house. ”
He smiled at the memory before an unpleasant thought struck him. Rollo was not much older now than Will had been then. What if… “You are not that way yourself? Awaiting a time when you can more readily seek out female company?”
Rollo snuffled a laugh against his chest. “Do I act like a man created to please a woman? I should sooner sprout wings and fly.”
Lyndon let out a relieved sigh. “Over the last few weeks, I have wondered if you were created solely for the conflicting purposes of annoying and pleasing me.” His jealous streak flickered to life. “And no one but me.”
Rollo giggled. “Then I shall delight in my endeavours to succeed in both.”
Kissing distracted them for a few minutes. Lyndon might have let that and more distract him for a good while longer, except Rollo pulled away.
“And?” he said. “That is not the end of the story, I feel.”
Lyndon shut his eyes briefly. Nothing dampened one’s ardour like a terribly sad tale, but today had been a day for unburdening. He’d never related this one, not even to Benedict, though all his family knew the bones of it.
“Will and I had spent the early afternoon down by the lake on a summer’s day much like today. We swam to stay cool and then lay on the bank in the sun to dry off.” He pressed his lips against Rollo’s forehead as if to remind himself he could. “And to do a little of what we’re doing now.”
The memory of what came next turned Lyndon’s belly sour.
Goose bumps prickled the hairs on his arm, and he squeezed Rollo tighter.
“Cousins of ours were coming to stay. I had promised Mama I would not be late for tea. When I heard their carriage wheels spitting up gravel, I said my goodbyes to Will and left him there, waiting for his own mother to finish working in our kitchen. They often walked home across the fields together; he helped carry whatever linens she took home to press or mend.”
He swallowed, his mouth suddenly dry. “And I heard nothing more. I thought nothing more until dinner that evening. There were twelve of us at the table. The meal dragged out, my cousins were dull, and they had interrupted my afternoon of lovemaking. And then…and then, without warning during the fish course, Mama told everyone that the body of Mrs Elliot, the farmer’s wife, had been dragged from the lake not two hours earlier.
And her son, Will, alongside her. And that the rhubarb was forced this year and more woody than last. And that Cook should be commended for the excellent turbot. ”
Hot tears pricked at his eyes. He tried in vain to blink them away.
“And that was that. As if it didn’t matter, as if an ordinary young woman who laundered your drawers whilst you sipped champagne and dined on excellent turbot, was expendable.
And that her death was as noteworthy as a poor rhubarb crop but certainly no more. ”
Lyndon dashed the heel of his hand across his eyes. God knew he wasn’t perfect, but he cared for those who loyally served him with a great deal more compassion than that.
“But Will lived,” confirmed Rollo.
“Barely.” Lyndon shook his head. “I despised my mother from that day forward, though she never knew. Whilst my resentment of my father had already festered for years, that he allowed that horrific event to pass in such a callous fashion strengthened it into a hatred which began to consume me. And swept along in its path, a bitterness grew towards Benedict, whose birthright was no more his fault than my own.”
Dampness trickled into his hairline unchecked.
Unblinking, Lyndon stared up at the ceiling, waiting for his eyes to dry and the dull ache in his chest to subside.
He’d read somewhere that grief was as individual as snowflakes; his manifest itself in a cold, dark anger, which he’d never quite resolved.
Rollo remained silent, and for a long minute or so, there was only the sound of their breathing.
“What do you believe happened at the lake?” Rollo’s fingers tangled with the coarse hair covering Lyndon’s chest, his nails scratching at the skin.
Lyndon gave a small shrug. “No one is sure. On account of our guests, Mrs Elliot had worked later than usual. Will might have taken another swim to cool down. Or she may have slipped, walking along the lake’s edge, and Will tried to save her, or the other way around.
The pond weed is virulent on the shaded side down by the woods, and the bank easily crumbles when the weather is dry.
Will has no memory of any of it, so we shall never know. ”
He sighed. “In a way, it matters not. Because that is not the end. Will’s father perished six months later.
He’d been left with a much beloved young wife in a wicker casket and a son more like a waxwork effigy than the boy he loved.
Though he took to drink, the local folks say he died of despair and a broken heart.
I cannot find it in my own heart to disagree. ”
“And a vital piece of you perished too,” whispered Rollo. He hugged Lyndon close, every bit of him clinging, as if he would crawl inside if he could.
Lyndon huffed a humourless laugh. “Or lies at the bottom of that damned lake. And I have spent the last decade searching for something to fill the hole it left.”
Perhaps, in this funny, wise, sweet young man, he’d found it.
He stroked Rollo’s hair, planting kisses to the top of his head, his forehead, his eyelids, working his way down until he sought out Rollo’s slack, pliant mouth.
Rolling him onto his back, Lyndon blanketed his lithe body with his own, captured by a sudden need to touch his lips to every living, breathing part of him.
Raw, carnal, lust took over as his mouth trailed a path down Rollo’s soft belly.
All thoughts of the past fled. There would be no ghosts in this bed.
Not tonight. No “what could have beens,” no “if onlys.” Just two men, together as one.
And for the first time in a long while, that was enough.