Chapter Thirty
Back then
Their Windsor routine settled itself without any real effort from either of them.
Tristan’s car drove up the Long Walk on Saturday afternoons, and by the time the engine cut off, James would be at the door to welcome him.
The de-roling came first, and then the formless weekend opened up around them.
They walked the grounds in all weathers.
James knew every path from childhood, and Tristan had developed a genuine if largely theatrical hatred of mud, and the commentary never stopped.
Lunch ran long at the kitchen table that the household kept stocked and then left alone, with James making sandwiches whose structural integrity Tristan critiqued mercilessly.
They read in the sitting room in the evenings, Tristan’s feet jammed under James’s thighs for warmth, and talked about nothing in particular until the fire burned down in the grate.
Tristan kept up the pretence of sleeping in his own room. The housekeeper had it aired and turned down for each visit, fresh towels squared on the rack, the bed made to Windsor standards.
Each Saturday, after the corridors had gone quiet, Tristan padded down the hall in his socks and entered James’s rooms without knocking. And each Saturday, James was waiting for him with the covers turned back.
What happened between those covers had been moving at Tristan’s pace from the start.
The first weekend, Tristan had wanted James’s hands on him, and asked for nothing more.
He’d lain on his back with his head tipped into the pillows, breathing hard while James worked him over and learned what made him writhe and swear.
By the second weekend, Tristan’s fingers had found James’s cock unprompted, wrapping around him with a sureness that left James gripping the headboard.
The third weekend, Tristan had pushed James flat onto the bed and taken him into his mouth.
He’d been clumsy about it, but James had threaded his fingers through Tristan’s hair and left it to him to find his rhythm without steering.
When Tristan surfaced, smiling and triumphant, James had pulled him in, kissed the taste of himself off his mouth, and told him he was extraordinary.
“Don’t patronise me,” Tristan had said, wiping the corner of his lip with his thumb. “Rate me. Out of ten.”
“Seven.”
“Seven?” Tristan’s outrage was magnificent. “A seven? I gave that everything I had, James.”
“You gave it everything and more. But there’s a learning curve, Tris, and I’d hate to rob you of the motivation to improve.”
Tristan had shoved him flat and climbed on top of him, both knees planted either side of James’s hips, grinding down onto his cock. “I’m going to get so good at this that you won’t be able to look at my mouth without going instantly hard in your pants.”
“I look forward to that. Socially awkward as that may become.”
And that had been how it unfolded. Every weekend, Tristan came to bed bolder than the last time, and James matched him beat for beat, giving him exactly what he asked for.
? ? ?
Lex and Barnaby had driven down from London with Vidal and Beauchamp crammed into Lex’s Range Rover.
James met them at the Home Park gate, with Tristan at his shoulder and the gamekeeper, Muir, a step behind.
Muir was a compact Aberdonian in his sixties who had served three monarchs and whose respect for the Crown was exceeded only by his reverence for the livestock, which he kept in immaculate condition.
“Your Majesty.” Muir touched the brim of his cap. “The girls are in the lower meadow. I’d avoid the Limousin bull today, Sir. He’s in a temper.”
“Thank you, Muir. We’ll confine ourselves to the girls.”
The lower meadow was soft underfoot from overnight rain, and the herd had gathered near the water trough in a loose, sociable cluster.
These were James’s Highland cattle, a shaggy, rust-coloured mob with fringes that hung lower than Tristan’s, and they received the approaching party with benign indifference.
Lex had never met a Highland cow and was immediately besotted. He climbed over the fence rather than use the gate, landed in the mud with both boots, and made a beeline for the nearest heifer with his hand out.
“Bash.” He turned to look at Barnaby, lit up. “She’s got a fringe. Bash, look at her fringe.”
Barnaby, still on the far side of the fence, studied the cow with none of Lex’s apparent joy. “She does.”
“She looks like you, Bash. When you wake up.” Lex had both hands in the cow’s forelock now, scratching behind the base of her horns. The cow leaned into him and closed her eyes. “I love her. What’s her name, Muir?”
“Balmoral Heather, Sir.”
“Heather.” Lex gathered a fistful of fringe and held it up off the cow’s eyes. “I’m gonna get you a hairband, Heather. A whole bag of them!”
“You can go in, you know. They won’t bite,” James said.
“I’m good here.” Tristan eyed the mud.
In the field, Vidal had planted himself in front of a different cow and was delivering what appeared to be a formal introduction, one hand pressed to his own chest. Beauchamp stood a metre behind him, holding Vidal’s jacket, which had been removed for the occasion.
“This one has an EXTRAORDINARY dignity,” Vidal announced. “She is REGAL, James. She carries herself like a woman who has outlived three husbands and reaped all the benefits.”
“That’s Balmoral Clover,” Muir said. “She’s six.”
“She is TIMELESS.”
Tristan’s shoulders shook, and when James glanced over, he had his face in the crook of his own elbow to muffle the laughter.
It was one of those moments James knew he’d keep in his memory forever. Not because anything paradigm-shifting happened in it, but because Tristan was easy in the company of his friends, at last, and the sight of it settled James.
He reached over the fence rail and took Tristan’s hand because none of the others were looking.
“Did you know, Tris, that Barnaby used to be deathly afraid of cows? Absolutely terrified. He was seven, and the Duke took him to see the cows at the Chatham village fete, and a Jersey looked at him wrong. As you might imagine, Bash was a nervy child.”
Barnaby’s head snapped round to him. “That is a grotesque misrepresentation of what actually happened, James.”
“He had to be carried to the house.” James pressed on, raising his voice over the indignant squawk. “By a footman. In floods of tears.”
A clod of mud sailed through the air and struck James on the shoulder of his jacket. Barnaby was already brushing the dirt off his hands on Lex’s Barbour, discarded over the fence rail, his expression glacial.
“Worth it,” James said, and didn’t let go of Tristan’s hand.
? ? ?
The cake fight began over tea and did not end over tea.
Barnaby and Lex’s wedding had been in the planning stages for three months by then, and the question of the cake had been tabled, shelved, revived, and re-tabled so many times that it now functioned as the detonator in any gathering that included both grooms.
“The issue,” Barnaby said, setting his teacup down with exacting care, “is tradition.”
“The issue,” Lex said, leaning forward in his chair with both elbows on his knees, “is that fruitcake is disgusting.”
“Fruitcake has been served at every significant royal and aristocratic wedding in this country for the last three hundred years.”
“Yeah. So it’s time you people stop pretending to enjoy it.”
“It is a wedding cake, Lex,” Barnaby snapped. “It’s not for a birthday party in Barking.”
“Don’t start with Barking, Bash.”
“I’m not starting with Barking. I’m simply pointing out that a red velvet cake with cream cheese icing, however much you enjoy it, doesn’t belong at a reception held at my family seat and attended by the Archbishop of Canterbury, and five hundred guests expecting a certain standard of—”
“I don’t give a shit what the Archbishop expects, Barnaby. It’s our wedding. The bloke marries people for a living. He can handle a sponge.”
On the far side of the room, Vidal had produced a notebook and was recording the exchange. James caught his eye.
“Research,” Vidal whispered. “For my speech.”
Tristan had drawn his knees up and was watching the argument with rapt attention. His head went back and forth between the verbal combatants.
“What if,” James began, in a carefully neutral tone, “there were two cakes?”
Both grooms turned to look at him.
“A traditional fruitcake for the ceremony,” James said, “and a red velvet for the evening do. Two cakes. Two constituencies served. A compromise in the finest tradition of British diplomacy.”
Barnaby considered this, as did Lex.
“No,” they said, in unison, and returned to their argument.
James lowered his voice for Tristan. “I’ve tried that three times. It’s never worked.”
“Why not?”
“Because neither of them wants a compromise. They each want total victory.” James picked up his tea. “It’s rather like the Falklands, but with fondant.”
? ? ?
That night, Tristan arrived at James’s room late.
James was reading, propped up on the headboard in a t-shirt and boxers, reading glasses perched on his nose, when the door opened and Tristan slipped through it.
He’d showered, hair damp at the ends and pushed off his forehead, and he was wearing a pair of James’s pyjama bottoms, the hems pooling round his ankles since James had a good four inches on him.
He climbed onto the bed and sat cross-legged at the foot of it, which was unusual.
Tristan’s standard approach was to crawl up the mattress and land directly on top of James.
The fact that he’d stationed himself at a distance, with his hands in his lap, told James that he’d come in with a topic to raise.
“Good day?” James asked, setting his book aside.
“Great day.” Tristan picked at the edge of the duvet. “I like your friends, Jams. Even Barnaby’s warming up to me, and I didn’t think that was possible.”
“Barnaby’s warming up to you because you told him his reloading was elegant, and he’s been starved of shotgun compliments since Lex started overshadowing him at clay shooting. He’s a sore loser, that one.”