CHAPTER FIFTY #2
Duncan shuddered a breath, equally discombobulated by the nearness.
He touched him then with the care of a man who had spent twenty years learning the cost of carelessness.
Waist. Ribs. The warm line of his side beneath loosened fabric.
The place where Archie’s breath caught and returned as something unguarded. Archie went quiet under his hands.
That was what finished Duncan. The absence of wit. The surrender of every bright defense. Archie, who could turn fear charming and pain clever and loneliness into performance, had gone silent except for breath.
“Look at me,” Duncan said.
Archie opened his eyes.
There was no cleverness in them now. No rescue available through charm. Only heat, trust, and an old astonishment that had somehow survived into middle age.
“I am looking,” Archie whispered.
Duncan bowed his head.
What happened after that felt less like a decision than an arrival.
The seat shifted beneath them. Archie’s hand tightened at his neck.
Duncan’s body answered the nearness with such force that he had to stop, forehead pressed to Archie’s, breathing through the shock of wanting him this much after all these years.
Archie laughed once, breathless and wrecked.
“What?” Duncan asked.
“I thought it might have become easier by now.”
Duncan’s mouth moved against his temple. “Has it?”
“No.”
“Good.”
Archie made a sound caught somewhere between laughter and pain.
Duncan kissed him again.
The room lost its edges by degrees. There was breath and warmth, the drag of fabric, the pressure of hands, the soft velvet beneath Archie’s shoulder as Duncan pressed him back against the settee.
The fire made gold of everything it touched: Archie’s loosened collar, the pale line of his throat, Duncan’s hands where they worked at the buttons of his waistcoat with more care than patience.
Archie helped him after the third button. His fingers were not steady. That undid Duncan more surely than boldness would have.
He bent and kissed the place where Archie’s pulse beat hard beneath his jaw. Archie’s head tipped back against the velvet. Duncan felt the answering pull of him, the hand closing at his sleeve, the restless shift of Archie’s hips when Duncan settled his hand between Archie’s taught thighs.
“Tell me if you want me to stop.”
Archie looked at him then, flushed and furious with feeling.
“Don’t you dare.”
Duncan’s breath left him.
After that, restraint became something more dangerous. He opened Archie’s shirt with slow fingers, kissed the heat of his chest, the narrow path below his ribs, the vulnerable give of him as Archie tried and failed to remain composed. When Duncan’s hand moved lower, Archie caught his wrist.
For one suspended second, Duncan thought he had misread him.
Then Archie guided him exactly where he wanted him.
The trust in it nearly ruined him.
Duncan touched him through the linen first, giving Archie time, giving them both the mercy of one last boundary. Archie’s breath broke at once. His eyes closed. His hand tightened around Duncan’s wrist, not to stop him, but to keep him there.
“Duncan.”
“I have you.”
The words came out before he could make them more careful.
Archie went still.
Then the last of his composure left him. He arched into Duncan’s hand, helpless and beautiful and no longer pretending at distance. Duncan held him through it, through the shuddering breath, the hand locked at his sleeve, the sound Archie tried to bury against Duncan’s shoulder and failed.
The moment was intimate enough to hurt.
Beautiful enough to frighten him.
When it passed, Archie sagged back into the settee, undone and alive and looking at him as if the world had altered its terms. For a long moment, neither of them spoke.
Then Archie said, hoarse and faintly astonished, “That was not what I expected when I came to the library this evening.”
Duncan laughed before he could stop himself. The sound loosened something in him. He leaned forward and kissed the corner of Archie’s mouth, light and warm.
“Nor I.”
Archie found his hand and laced their fingers together. His smile came slowly. Real. Devastating.
“And yet,” he said, “I find I am not at all sorry.”
The study settled around them again, though altered. For several minutes, neither of them moved toward sense.
The study held its warmth around them, fire low, whisky forgotten, Vale’s papers waiting on the desk with the cold patience of the dead.
Duncan rested his forehead against Archie’s for one last breath and allowed himself the dangerous mercy of wanting nothing beyond the room.
Then Archie’s hand tightened lightly at his waist.
“You are thinking again,” he murmured.
“I had stopped for nearly a minute.”
“Heroic.”
Duncan drew back, not far, only enough to see him properly. Archie’s hair was wrecked, his mouth softened, his expression stripped of its usual clever armor. He looked younger for a moment. No, Duncan thought, not younger. More known.
That made the ache worse.
Archie followed his gaze toward the desk. “Vale is still there, I suppose.”
“Unfortunately.”
“Dead men have appalling timing.”
Duncan smiled faintly and reached for the handkerchief on the side table.
They restored themselves in silence, the kind that might once have embarrassed them and now only proved they had survived the truth of one another.
Archie tucked his shirt back in with a rueful glance.
Duncan straightened his cuffs because his hands needed something ordinary to do.
When they returned to the desk, the room felt changed and exactly the same.
The papers were still waiting. The fire still worked at the coal.
Outside, the windows held only darkness and the soft whisper of a coming storm.
Archie sat. Duncan resumed his chair. Nothing had simplified.
The comfort, if there was any, lay in that.
At last, Duncan reached for Vale’s letter once more.
“There’s another note.”
Archie lifted a brow.
“I was afraid you’d say that.”
Duncan read aloud.
“The longer the subject remains after crossing, the greater the chance of synchronization. Such travelers may begin to feel disturbances in advance and, if exposed repeatedly, may find return or re-entry less random than before. I cannot prove this. I dread that I am right.”
Archie stared at him.
“So, Voss may have taught himself the openings?”
“Yes.”
“And if he has?”
Duncan folded the page shut.
“Then he is not merely exploiting history. He is moving with it.”
The study went cold despite the fire. Archie’s gaze shifted to the dark window.
“And Ceci?”
Duncan knew at once what he meant. If Voss could synchronize, then Ceci, having crossed once, might be vulnerable to the gate in ways none of them yet understood. He looked down at the copied line in her hand, then back at Vale’s warning.
“We keep her away from it until we know more.”
Archie gave him a look. “You say that as if she were a horse with a bad fence habit.”
“She may be worse.”
“She is definitely worse.”
The humor lasted only a second. Then Archie leaned forward, elbows on knees, and looked at Duncan with all the joking gone.
“Whatever this becomes,” he said, “do not make me stand outside it to keep the peace.”
Duncan held his gaze.
“I won’t.”
Archie’s smile faded into attention. The relief there was almost too private to witness. They sat in silence for a while after that, two glasses on the table, Vale’s letters between them, the house asleep around them.
And Duncan thought, not for the first time, that courage had always sounded noble in books and felt, in life, much more like this: a room after midnight, the truth said plainly, and no one leaving.