Chapter Twenty-Nine
“YOU HAVE A visitor, my lord.”
Lando tipped his brandy tumbler this way and that, aware Inglis awaited his response but not trusting his voice.
“A Mr Christopher Angel, my lord. The young man says it’s important.”
“For both of us, I’ll wager.”
“That is my understanding, my lord.”
A low ache tugged at Lando’s chest, and the brandy soured on his tongue. The time for farewell had come; at least Kit was affording him that.
“Then you had better show him in,” Lando managed eventually. He examined his robe, Kit’s favourite grey one, and he allowed himself the smallest of sad smiles. “I’m decent.”
He’d never asked Kit why he favoured the gold earring, dangling from its slender hook. He’d admired it aplenty though. He’d kissed it and fondled it and traced the curve of it with his tongue. Tonight, candlelight glinted off its golden surface, reflecting Lando’s dreams and desires back at him, mocking him. The dark velvet ribbon nestling against Kit’s strong nape absorbed the shadows, Lando’s hopes along with it, and his crushing need for this man.
His vision blurred, and he gulped in a sharp breath. He should stick to port.
“I am here to thank you for your gift,” Kit began. “As we both recognised, my gratitude was poorly executed. I have reflected greatly and wish to apologise.”
Though the earring brightly shone, Kit’s olive skin tones bordered on sallow as if he hadn’t slept. Lando’s own features were drawn too. Pritchard had entered his master’s bedchamber that morning to find him awake, dressed, and staring up at the bleak dawn sky.
“I have…struggled to…” Kit began, then stopped.
“I have too,” Lando supplied, and briefly, their eyes met before Kit’s gaze dropped to the floor. An aching silence stretched between them. Lando pressed a hand to his tense hollowed-out belly.
“My uncle Charles and you always lived separate lives, did you not?”
Lando started at the sudden swerve. “Yes. By necessity. Charles had his soldiering and his life in Kent. And my sons were younger. At home more often. He visited when he could.”
“And you both paid the price. Throughout your time together. Not merely at the end.”
“Yes.” A sickening pain pulled at Lando’s chest with the memories of dozens of snatched afternoons, secret hurried rendezvous, handwritten notes burned once read. Memories of a love half-lived that he’d stored away since meeting Kit now resurfaced.
“I do not want that for you again, Lando. You are undeserving of it.”
As he clutched the brandy glass between his trembling hands, bracing for the agony ahead, a single tear trickled down Lando’s cheek. Helpless to stop it, he closed his eyes, letting others join. Perhaps things wouldn’t be so bad after all. He’d survived once; he’d survive again. Perhaps the memories of two half-lived loves knitted together made a whole. Fighting the swelling sickness in his heart, Lando wearily rested back against the armchair, heavy thoughts drumming in his head, a familiar melancholia already knocking on the door.
The first he knew that Kit had crossed the room to kneel on the rug before him was when the dry, warm heat of his palm pressed against Lando’s hand, teasing it away from the brandy glass.
“Lando, my love,” Kit murmured, his voice a honeyed balm. “That is not a future for you and me. We are both undeserving of it.”
Bringing Lando’s hand up to his mouth, he kissed the knuckles, keeping it there to caress, his breath hot against it. “I want us to live every day to the hilt. Together. I don’t want to waste a moment. I want to live freely with you or as freely as two men such as us are able. And…and if gifting me the Gartside estate is the only way that we can always be close to each other, then that’s what I shall allow you to do. And I shall accept your gift with pleasure.”
Knuckle kisses turned into mouth kisses. Sweet, tender caresses unburdened Lando of his jangling thoughts, turning them instead into pictures of sunny afternoons, the lazy, hazy sort of afternoons. Ones made especially for lovers chasing each other through long grass, for picnics, for sharing dishes of ripe strawberries, for helpless laughter, for seamlessly shifting into the next and the one after that.
Kit’s soft kisses bled into one another. Breathlessly, he claimed Lando’s mouth, sucking and licking, a little brutal and a little possessive, with his love running bold and strong through each and every one of them as if for the first time. And then his arms came around Lando, and for a long while, he just held him, wrapped up in his undying love. His kisses strayed to Lando’s neck, his jaw, and his hair. He licked up the tears from his cheeks, a few of his own mingled with them. He whispered his love, promised his everything, and more.
And then, despite having no music and the drawing room furniture an impediment to gallivanting, when there was a perfectly decent ballroom upstairs, Kit drew Lando up to his feet and performed a deep, ridiculous bow.
“I believe this waltz is ours, my lord,” he said.