CHAPTER EIGHTEEN
Duncan
Hawarden Castle (New), (Castell Penarlag, Newydd)
Duncan stood with one shoulder against the rough wooden frame of the tack room door, sleeves rolled, collar open, trying very hard to behave as though Archie’s nearness was not the most distracting force in the known world. Archie was no help at all.
He had mud at the hem of his trousers, rain in his golden curls, and that bright, impossible ease about him that made every room feel arranged for his pleasure.
He was laughing at something, some story already half lost to Duncan because Archie’s mouth had become more compelling than the words coming out of it.
“You are not listening to me,” Archie said.
“I am.”
“You are not.”
Duncan lifted a brow. “You are being tiresome on purpose.”
Archie smiled, slow and delighted. “Only because it works so well.”
There had always been something dangerous in Archie’s cheerfulness.
Most people mistook it for simplicity. Duncan never had.
Archie used lightness the way other men used rank or intimidation.
He moved through the world as if he had every right to enjoy it, and he made people want to be included in that enjoyment.
Duncan wanted more than that. He had wanted more than that for an embarrassing length of time.
The trouble was that wanting had become impossible to hide from Archie, who noticed everything he was not meant to, had begun to look back with a knowingness that made the air between them feel increasingly thin.
“Why are you looking at me like that?” Duncan asked.
“Like what?”
“As though you have discovered something amusing.”
Archie stepped closer.
Thunder gathered beyond the stables, low at first, only a murmur moving over the hills.
Then it rolled nearer, deepening above the slate roof until the sound seemed to pass through timber, stone, and skin alike.
Rain began in scattered dark marks across the yard.
One drop. Then another. Then too many to count.
Duncan felt the storm answer something in him he had been trying all summer to keep quiet.
Archie was eighteen now. Duncan was nineteen. Old enough, in the eyes of their families, to be spoken of as men when it suited inheritance, ambition, or war. Young enough that the truth still felt capable of destroying them.
Archie was close enough now that Duncan could smell rain on his coat and clean skin beneath it, close enough that the whole world seemed to narrow to damp air and the quick beat of his own pulse.
“I have discovered something,” Archie said. Duncan should have stepped away then. He knew it even as he stayed exactly where he was.
“And what is that?”
Archie’s eyes held his.
“That you only ever speak to me in complete sentences when you are trying not to say something else.”
Duncan let out a breath that might have become a laugh if it had not lodged somewhere lower in his chest.
“That is an absurd claim.”
“Is it?”
“Yes.”
Archie tilted his head, studying him with a gentleness that did far more damage than teasing ever could.
“You look at me as though you are forever on the verge of either leaving the room or setting it on fire,” he said. “I thought it fair to wonder which.”
Rain thickened around them, soft and steady now, making the evening smell of wet hay and summer earth and horse leather gone dark with damp.
Duncan looked at Archie and understood, with the miserable clarity of youth, that this was the moment in which he might still preserve himself by lying. He had never been very good at lying to Archie.
“I have no wish to set anything on fire,” he said.
Archie’s mouth curved.
“No?”
“No.”
“Pity.”
That smile did it.
Or perhaps it was the rain, or the nearness, or the intolerable fact of wanting someone so much that even breathing in the same corner of the world had become a kind of affliction. Whatever the cause, Duncan said, more sharply than he intended, “Archie.”
Archie went still.
The teasing left his face. What remained was hungrier and more open and infinitely more dangerous.
“Yes?”
Duncan had no prepared speech. Only the truth, standing in him with its hands at his throat.
“If you know what you are doing,” Duncan said, “you ought to stop.”
Archie did not move.
“Do you want me to?”
Duncan’s answer never made it to his mouth, because Archie lifted a hand.
Duncan saw the motion as if from a great distance, the rain-damp sleeve, the capable fingers.
Archie did not touch him. He let his fingertips hover near Duncan’s jaw, a breath away from contact.
The heat of him was a brand in the cool, damp air.
Duncan’s breath hitched, sharp and audible beneath the rain.
“See?” Archie whispered.
For one suspended heartbeat, Duncan forgot every useful thing he had ever learned.
The world sharpened.
Then Archie closed the last impossible distance.
His mouth found Duncan’s, sure and warm and tasting faintly of rain.
The kiss answered a question Duncan had never dared to speak.
For one instant, he went rigid with the shock of it, every warning in him rising at once.
Then recognition moved beneath the panic, quiet and devastating. His hands came up to Archie’s coat.
He held on.
Archie made a small sound against his mouth, pleased and startled and young, and Duncan felt the whole shape of his life alter around it.
Rain tapped against the slate. Somewhere deeper in the stable, a horse shifted and stamped.
The world continued in all its ordinary ways while Duncan discovered that ruin could feel like relief.
Archie’s hand came to the side of his face. That was nearly worse than the kiss.
His thumb brushed Duncan’s cheekbone with such unbearable tenderness that Duncan almost stepped back from it. Instead, he leaned into the touch before pride could stop him. Archie drew away by inches. Duncan kept his eyes closed.
If he opened them, the moment might become something they had to name. If he kept them closed, it could remain rain and breath and the rough wool beneath his fingers.
“Look at me,” Archie whispered.
Duncan opened his eyes.
Archie’s face was close enough that Duncan could see raindrops caught in his lashes. The knowing look was still there, though softened now by wonder.
“See?” Archie breathed again.
He did not move to kiss him. He only held Duncan’s gaze, his hand still resting against his face. The question hung between them, asked and answered in the same silent breath.
Duncan saw it then. The daring. The danger. The impossible rightness. He saw, with a clarity that frightened him, that he had already crossed whatever line he had imagined would save him. He had no complete sentences left.
Instead, he let go of Archie’s coat with one hand and covered the hand at his cheek. Their fingers tangled together, awkwardly at first, then with purpose.
A surrender.
A plea.
Archie’s smile then was slow, real, and devastating. He leaned in, and this time, Duncan met him halfway. When they finally broke apart, it was only by inches. Archie’s forehead tipped against his. Both of them were breathing too hard.
“Well,” Archie said, breathless and smiling in a way Duncan would remember for the rest of his life, “that does rather complicate things.”
Duncan laughed then, helplessly, because it did.
It complicated everything.
He should have said something sensible after that. Something grave. Something about caution or secrecy or God or consequences. Instead, he kissed Archie again, because he was nineteen, the rain was falling, and the only honest thing left in him was want.