Chapter Twenty #2
He committed his lover’s heartfelt sentiment to the walls of his memory, hanging it amongst his most treasured possessions to savour later when his lover departed.
“This is the moment when you tell me my love is returned, by the way,” Rollo prodded. He smiled at him tentatively. “Otherwise, I’ve made a complete clot of myself.”
Lyndon huffed a soft laugh and ran his fingers through Rollo’s fine hair. “This picnic blanket is far too small for two complete clots.”
He shook his head wonderingly. How hard he’d tried and failed to make sense of things over the last decade.
He’d searched for it in a bottle, at the card tables, the racetrack, in the beds of bawds.
And after all that, he’d found the answer here at Goule, in the shape of a beautiful young man, who, bizarrely and against all the odds, wanted and loved him.
“Your love is returned,” he replied, the words slipping from him easily. So easily, he wanted to repeat them, over and over, even as a tiny corner of his happiness whispered the conversation wasn’t truly finished.
And so, he did, in between hauling Rollo into his lap, grabbing his face, and kissing him as if his entire existence depended on the success of it.
“I’m not your only tribe though. Am I?” He cupped Rollo’s chin, needing the truth. “You have people waiting for you at Rossingley who miss you very much.”
“I do, and I shall return to them gladly.”
Lyndon nodded as if he expected as much, ice already snaking through his veins despite the heat of the day. But he would not stoop to begging. He would keep his self-respect intact. In front of Rollo, at least.
“Except then, I shall come back here.”
Lyndon’s heart thieved a beat. “You will?” God, he sounded desperate.
“Of course! I shall return to Rossingley, ensure Willoughby breaks off whatever is brewing between himself and Miss Lavinia Higgins, give everyone a hug, then inform my father I’m passionately in love with you, and return here.”
“When you put it like that, you make it sound very straightforward.”
Lyndon remained unconvinced. There were many a slip twixt cup and lip.
In Lyndon’s mind, Rossingley had taken on mythical proportions, like a palace from a children’s fable.
And the way Rollo told it, his family were enthroned there in a perpetual state of nirvana.
How on earth could Lyndon, with his gloomy old hall, his jealousies, and his crosspatch tendencies, ever measure up to that?
Why on earth would his pup ever trek back to dull, dreary Goule?
“It is,” Rollo exclaimed. “Three weeks’ work at the most. I shall join you here in plenty of time to prepare for the duke’s visit in the autumn, and afterwards we shall all travel up to London together.”
“We shall?” said Lyndon faintly. This part of the plan sounded even less likely. It assumed Benedict would overlook Lyndon’s less favourable traits, for a start, and invite Lyndon to lodge in his London home, seeing as Lyndon no longer owned one.
“Of course.” Rollo wormed his way in closer.
“I mean, obviously, only for the season. Papa says nobody with any sense stays in town longer than that. And we would have to be terribly discreet, although Papa and Kit always seem to manage things. But I’d like to…
” He coloured a little. “I’ve never done the full season.
All the routs and soirées and all that nonsense.
Willoughby and I were too young until now. Would you come with me?”
I’d ride to the ends of the earth for you.
“An association with me would not bode well for your social currency,” Lyndon felt obligated to point out. And as for Rossingley’s opinion on the liaison, he shuddered to imagine.
“Absolute tosh, Fitz. You are Ashington’s twin brother.
And would be a part of Ashington and Rossingley’s intimate circle.
No one who cared about their own social currency would dare cut you.
You shall accompany me to every ball, whereupon I shall dance and flirt with every eligible daughter and make you insanely jealous. ”
“You can’t, and you won’t,” Lyndon growled, “because you belong to me.” He pushed Rollo onto his back, and with his other hand, Lyndon wrenched loose the fall of his own breeches. To hell with the servants and whoever else chose that moment to wander past his lake.
Rollo’s laughing eyes gazed up at him as Lyndon tugged down his trousers, cursing as the voluminous folds of their shirts impeded his progress.
“I can and I shall.” Rollo lifted himself for up a kiss as Lyndon found his prize, and his cock found bare flesh. “But I shall only have eyes for you. The pain of our farewell will be but a scratch, you’ll see. I shall be back before you even notice I’ve gone.”
*
AS WAS THE warp and weft of things, the moment of Rollo’s departure the next morning dragged on for far too long, yet was over in a flash. And still, Lyndon succeeded in making an utter hash of it.
Even though he had sworn not to, he woke in an enormous, childish sulk.
Made a million times worse because he’d woken alone.
With Dobson already loading his valises, Rollo had crept from Lyndon’s bed at first light, which had given him far too much time alone, prior to his own toilette, to contemplate and to brood and to doubt.
How easily he was swept away on a tide of love and desire with Rollo in his arms!
How readily he believed in Rollo’s promises of a rosy future, how the troubled waters of his mind stilled.
How peacefully his demons slumbered. And all because a youth of nineteen years, with no more knowledge of the workings of the world than the old beech tree outside his window, said so.
As young bucks, Lyndon and Will had also once believed in their own invincibility, and look how that had turned out.
Lyndon had always taken Benedict’s constancy as his divine right, too, not to mention the bottomless wealth.
Then he’d had it all pulled from under him in the blink of an eye.
What did Rollo know of the harsh realities of life, cocooned at bloody Rossingley all these years?
By the time he’d completed his half-baked toilette, Lyndon had worked himself into a foul temper.
He scowled at himself in the glass, at his fiery coppery locks.
Who cared that his hair looked as if a dangerous winter animal nested in it?
It wasn’t as if anyone would be running their silly, dainty little hands through it any time soon.
As he slammed his bedchamber door behind him, Lyndon all but concluded that his destiny was to be alone.
Heartfelt declarations of love whilst wrestling on a soft woollen blanket under a limpid blue sky did not change that.
His sulking intensified throughout breakfast. Instead of indulging Rollo’s excited chatter with his usual snippy witticisms, Lyndon treated him to a series of grunts until, eventually, his lover gave up and fell quiet.
Undaunted, Lyndon directed his smouldering, barely suppressed misery at Cook’s excellent beef sausages.
“These are undercooked,” he declared.
“Mine are fried to perfection,” answered Rollo coolly.
“And my poached eggs have sat too long in water. The yolks are as hard as yesterday’s bread.”
“And yet you have eaten three.” Rollo threw him an amused smile over the rim of his coffee cup. “Is the coffee too bitter, also?”
Lyndon nodded. “As a matter of fact, it is. I drank the second cup just to be sure.”
With a long-suffering sigh, Rollo put his own cup down. “Care to tell me what’s really the trouble?”
“You leaving me is the trouble.” Lyndon balled his napkin in his fist. His fingers itched for his bow. “My bed’s going to be lonely tonight. And cold.”
“Three weeks, Fitz,” Rollo answered in a voice suggesting Lyndon was testing his patience.
Already dressed in his travelling clothes, he had chosen a place setting halfway along the dining table.
If he wasn’t leaving, he’d have been in Lyndon’s lap, feeding Lyndon tasty slivers of crisp bacon from his long, greasy fingers.
And peppering his mouth with greasy kisses. Another reason to be sulky.
“Longer,” grunted Lyndon. “You’ll be so happy at your perfect, flawless Rossingley, with your perfect, flawless papa, and perfect, flawless twin that you won’t return.”
“Don’t tempt me,” Rollo warned. “If you continue like this, then I shall regret that I’m not already there.” His tone softened. “Fitz, darling, please don’t spoil things. I wish Rossingley were closer to Norfolk, too, but it isn’t. So that’s that. We just need to be grown up about it.”
Grinning, he selected a triangle of toast. “And you have more than a decade on me in that regard. So perhaps you should lead by example.”
God, he looked young. Lyndon’s heart ached as he watched Rollo slather his toast in butter, then take a healthy bite. How on earth he’d tricked himself into imagining this beguiling young man would be constant and faithful only to him, for the rest of his days, was an utter mystery.
“Having a decade on you is part of the problem. I should know—I’ve been as young as you are now. You say you love me, and I believe that you do. Currently. But you won’t come back. Everybody gets fed up with me in the end.”
Lyndon dropped his knife and fork with a clatter and pushed his chair back. He’d burst into tears if he stayed much longer, or worse, drop to his knees and plead. “If you’ll excuse me, I shall sojourn to the drawing room.”
“Wait! Is that it?” Rollo stood, too, a look of hurt on his face. “After making love all night, is this how we part? On a quarrel?”
Lyndon’s throat tightened. What did he want? Tears? Entreaties?
“I’m not a man for showy goodbyes,” Lyndon stated. “We said all we needed to last night in each other’s arms. I…I…” His eyes filled. “Goodbye. Until we meet again.”
*
ROLLO HAD BECOME a firm favourite amongst the servants.
Despite the lashing rain (naturally, Rollo had packed the fine summer weather to take with him), they lined up on the drive, every single one of them, to wish him a pleasant journey.
It would have been churlish of Lyndon to disallow it.
Irritatingly, Berridge dragged him from the drawing room to join them, with Cook at his shoulder.
It had been many years since she’d tanned his arse with her rolling pin, but the expression on her face suggested he wasn’t too old for her to give it another go.
Thus, Lyndon was obliged to play lord of the manor.
Which was how he ended up, under the cover of an umbrella, solemnly wishing his lover a safe, short trip.
When really, he wanted to crush Rollo against him as he’d done all night, apologise for being such an ass at breakfast, then take a leaf out of Count Rodolfo’s book and lock him in his bedchamber and throw away the key.
But it was far too late for that, and all his servants were watching him with curiosity. Before Lyndon knew it, in a cloud of spitting gravel, Rollo was gone.