Chapter 24 #2
“More than anything.” A breath he did not realise he had been holding rushed out of Micha, roaring in his ears.
He knew he should have lied and made it easier on both of them.
Unfortunately, he had lost the habit, along with his other dependencies.
“But you . . . your faith . . . I didn’t understand before.
It’s as real to you as I am. It’s who you are. It’s—”
“It’s who I’ve become,” interrupted Thomas gently. “Because of you.”
Micha laughed, with a trace of his old bitterness, swiftly whisked away with the cherry blossom on the breeze.
That, too, had faded with the lies, the laudanum, and the memories of hands and bodies and strangers.
“I’m so fucking in love with you.” His eyes stung, the light pressing against his eyelids like needles. “And this is bloody typical.”
“Micha, please don’t talk like this. Something has changed and I don’t understand what it is, and”—Thomas’s voice twisted in sudden uncertainty—“you’re worrying me.”
Thomas had told him once: It’s all connected. Micha hadn’t understood at the time, but he did now. Him, and God, and love and faith, and Thomas and Nettlefield, inseparable and impossible. “You can’t give up everything for me. And I don’t want you to.”
There was a long silence. Thomas’s hand closed desperately over Micha’s, trapping his fingers between flesh and stone. “I’m not Isidore.”
“I know. He left me for his world. You gave me faith in yours.”
“My love, you are my world. Without you, I would still be lost.”
Micha swallowed. There were hooks in his throat, catching his words, making them hurt. “And you’ve changed me too. I was base metal before you found me.”
“You were always gold,” whispered Thomas.
“Only in your eyes.” Micha lifted the knot of their hands and kissed across Thomas’s fingertips.
“But I’m not the man I used to be. I want to love as you love, with my whole heart and what little goodness I possess.
I want you, almost past bearing, but I can’t—I won’t—be the villain in your story.
I’m not going to take you from your faith, and your home, and the people you care for. ”
“Do I have no say in this?” Thomas’s voice trembled like the grass at their feet. “I chose you.”
“Yes.” Micha smiled, jagged as the cracks in his heart. “And I chose you. So I’m leaving.”
“No. I . . . no. Please. Please.”
The despair in Thomas’s voice seared Micha to blood and ashes. “Don’t,” he choked out. “Don’t. You know you’re needed here. I love you, but I don’t need you. You’ve already saved me.”
“No.” Thomas’s hands struggled in Micha’s, as if he could hold him forever with something as simple as the touch of skin. Perhaps, had everything been different, he could have.
Micha gazed at him helplessly, but Thomas’s attention was locked on the writhing muddle of their hands. “Thomas,” he pleaded, “you have to understand. You made me believe. I believe in you. I believe in this love of yours, this boundless, endless love, and I cannot keep it for myself alone.”
“You think this life is so important to me?” Thomas had gone as still as the carved monuments that surrounded them.
For long moments Micha was silent too. Then, “Tell me truly, Thomas, if I was to say, ‘Very well, let us go and post that letter now,’ would you?”
“The post office is closed,” Thomas whispered, for he was hopeless at dissembling.
“Would you?” Micha asked again. And when Thomas said nothing more, he plucked the envelope from his hand.
“What are you—”
Without another word, Micha tore the letter to pieces.
“Micha, I worked hard on that.”
“I know you want to send it. I know you wish you could. But I also know you can’t.”
Thomas tried to frame some kind of answer and, instead, uttered only a noise of bewildered, incoherent misery.
He pulled himself sharply from Micha’s hold.
“Without you,” he said, “how can anything else mean anything to me?” Then he leaned in and kissed him, right there in full daylight, in the middle of the churchyard.
Micha tried to protest, but beneath the sweet, familiar pressure of Thomas’s lips, his words became a gasp, which became an offering.
He unspooled beneath spring’s careless sun in threads of amber and gold, love and loss and an ever-restless wanting.
Thomas pushed him down and stretched full-length over him, locking them in an embrace so shockingly, undeniably carnal that Micha forgot himself.
The stone was cold beneath his shoulders, but Thomas was all heat and strength, pinning Micha beneath him and grinding their bodies together, rough and relentless, upon the harsh edge of pleasure, the sweet edge of pain.
Micha writhed, moaned, and clutched mindlessly at Thomas, driving up against him, surrendered to the madness of a moment, and a kiss made raw with the salt of tears.
Suddenly he could think of nothing but Thomas, the way their bodies moved together in love and passion, and lay together in sleep.
All their smiles and touches and little jokes, as countless as the stars.
He turned his head, tearing his mouth away from Thomas.
“What the fuck are you doing?” There was no answer.
Just the movement of Thomas’s lips over his throat, a string of savage little kisses that made Micha’s pulse crackle like fireworks.
“Someone will see, and it will ruin you.”
Thomas glanced up, wild-eyed. “If that is what it takes to keep you, I will be ruined.”
Their mouths met, urgent and hopeless, Micha helplessly caught between pushing Thomas away and pulling him closer.
If only there was not a world beyond the closed circle of their bodies.
If only there were no other people who mattered.
If only there were no choices. If only someone would come and take everything else away. “Don’t do this.”
“Don’t make me stop.”
Micha shuddered, waiting, almost hoping for the rustle of footsteps, the indrawn breath, the outraged cry. But there was nothing, just an enclosing silence, and an envelope of sky. “Please stop.”
Thomas gazed at him, truly stricken now, the hollow centres of his pupils as deep as wounds.
If Thomas touched him again, Micha knew he would let him.
Welcome him, yield to him, never let him go.
They would fall to ruin, laughing and together.
He wanted it so much he ached and burned and could barely breathe, but he did not hope for it, because he knew Thomas would never force him. And he was right.
Thomas rolled clumsily away and crumpled into the long grass that wreathed the base of the sarcophagus.
He drew his knees tight against his body and wrapped his arms around them, as graceless as a felled albatross.
“Stay,” he said, at last, whispering not to Micha but to the mud, the weeds, and the snowdrops.
“If you won’t leave with me, stay with me instead. ”
Micha, bereft upon cold stone, hauled himself up. “As what?”
“As we are. As whatever you wish to be.”
“And your church?”
“I can . . . I will . . . oh, I don’t know, Micha.” Thomas blinked tears from his lashes. “You know I cannot find iniquity in love, but the world would make it so. How do I live that lie? How do I serve the Lord while I do?”
“If we leave, you can’t serve Him at all.”
“And what of us, Micha? What of love? What about”—Thomas’s voice was almost lost to anguish—“me.”
Micha slipped off the sarcophagus and knelt in the grass beside Thomas.
“If that’s what you wish. Let’s put ourselves above the whole world, abandon those who need you and everything you believe.
Let’s live for nothing but each other. Come away with me now.
I’ll give you everything I am, and I’ll never leave your side. ”
He held out his hand, steady as stone, and Thomas lifted his eyes to Micha’s.
Reached out.
And hesitated.
Micha’s lips quirked into something too painful to be a smile. “This is why I fell in love with you, Thomas. I wouldn’t change you, not even for forever.”
“Oh God.” Fresh tears had gathered like fleeting diamonds upon Thomas’s lashes. “I can’t bear this. It will rip me apart.”
“In some ways, it changes little.”
“How can you say that?”
Again, Micha tried to find a smile. And, this time, he almost succeeded. “I don’t need to be with you to love you. I always will.”
“But where will you go?” It was half-question, half-protest. “What will you do?”
Micha cast his mind to the banknotes George had thrust upon him what felt now like a lifetime ago. “Don’t worry about me. I’ve some resources to fall back on, since your brother tried to pay me off—”
“He what?”
“He was trying to protect you. He thought I had some nefarious purpose. Which, I suppose, I did.” He shrugged. “In any case, I could never bring myself to use his money. Now it seems fair enough that I do.”
Something rather cynical fleeted lightly across Thomas’s face. “He does seem to be the only one of us getting his desired outcome.”
“You have your path, Thomas. And I will find mine.”
“If you ever need anything,” Thomas said, pleading, “you will come back?”
Micha reached for his lies and, this time, found them easily. “Of course.”
“And you will not fall prey to . . . hard times?”
“No. I’ll even wrap up warm, eat green vegetables, and always carry an umbrella.”
Thomas gave a hopeless, shattered laugh.
“I promise you”—Micha firmed his voice—“I will be quite well. I was thinking I could be a drawing master.”
“But you can’t draw.”
“Or, a secretary, I could be a gentleman’s secretary, don’t you think?”
“No, I don’t. I think you’d be a terrible secretary.”
And now they were both laughing, clutching for each other as though it could make a difference, until, at last, there was nothing left but impossible promises and already-uttered words.
Thomas made a convulsive movement, his hands coming together almost in prayer. “Please, Micha. Please, don’t leave me. There must be—”
“Uncle Thomas, Uncle Michael?” The cry rang through the churchyard, like the peal of Sunday bells. Micha tore his eyes from Thomas to see Hope, bounding with unladylike vigour, towards them, her hair and her bonnet strings flying. “Why are you both sitting on the ground?”
Thomas could not find his words quick enough, so it was left to Micha to gather himself and perform a hollow charade of playfulness. “We can sit on the ground if we want to.”
Hope considered this gravely. “Yes,” she conceded, “I suppose you can. Esther sent me to fetch you because the tea is getting cold and there will be no plum cake left.”
“That would be tragic.”
“If you were excessively attached to plum cake, yes. Which I am not. I think it brings out the worst in plums and the worst in cake.”
“But it’s Thomas’s favourite,” murmured Micha.
Hope nodded. “Which is why Esther thought you should hurry.”
Micha nudged Thomas gently, and he climbed to his feet, as jerkily as a puppet. He looked dazed, like a man lost in someone else’s dream.
“Are you coming, Uncle Michael?”
He smiled. It was the first time he had faked a smile for so innocent a purpose as reassuring, and it came to him with surprising ease. “Soon.”
Hope tucked her hand into Thomas’s, and Micha saw the way his fingers tightened around hers, as though she was the last real thing left in the world.
“I have been reading a most edifying book,” she said.
“Oh?” Thomas’s voice sounded rusty but was otherwise steady. “What about?”
She gave a little skip. “Cannibals.”
Micha watched them as they walked away, the man he loved and the girl with a thousand futures spinning in her eyes like stars. The sun cast its capricious eye upon them too and, in a moment of idle kindness, fashioned them each a crown of gold.