Page 28

“WHAT MISERABLE weather,” Rudolph said, standing at the window of our shared inn room as he stared out at the ink-black night.

The rain had started about halfway to Marlborough, a downpour that had left the roads muddy and treacherous and had cast a decidedly unpalatable light over our journey.

At Ashford Hall, the rain made things cozy and calm, the drum of water on the ancient roof a balm for any insomnia a man could be struggling with, but at an unfamiliar inn with company that I had spent all day deep in thought about, I was finding my inability to go for a quick, head-clearing walk an annoyance. “I hope it clears up by the morning.”

“That would be ideal,” I said, sitting on the edge of my bed as I unlaced my boots.

We had left Harry with the horses, and I was looking forward at least to a good dinner and the decent night’s sleep I was sure to get despite…

well, despite my continued uncertainty regarding Rudolph.

What had happened in the morning had left me with more questions than I thought possible, not only because of my role in James’s ongoing attempts to infiltrate the Ashford fortune but because I was finding it more and more difficult to deny the physical attraction I had to Rudolph despite my lack of romantic feelings.

I was, contrary to how this memoir may make it seem, not much of a romantic at this time in my life.

To that point, I had engaged in a string of dalliances with men who were of like mind, who recognized that the pursuit of true romance was far riskier than one-night love affairs in inns that catered specifically to a clientele like myself.

Before Arthur, I had made peace with a life of acting only on this attraction, and despite my feelings for the lord it was a difficult habit to shake, particularly when faced with Rudolph.

If I had met him in one of those smoky gentleman’s clubs inhabited by my kind, it would have been easy to take him as he was, but in this situation…

. I had the rest of the summer to spend with this man, and if he was interested in me above and beyond mere sex, using him for just that would only complicate a matter that already felt so complex.

Blackmail, too, was weighing on my mind as I finished taking my boots off, setting them beside my bed and looking at Rudolph’s back.

He was standing with his hands in the pockets of his trousers, his coat draped over a nearby chair, and in only a light traveling shirt I could see the muscles of his shoulder through the fabric.

I could see his reflection in the window, his dark eyes gazing outside before he abruptly looked at me, a smile twitching on his lips.

“Mr. Whitmore, please,” he said, turning away from the window and taking a step towards me.

“What could you possibly be staring at me for?”

“I’m thinking,” I said, looking up at him, my fingers digging into the edge of the bed where I sat. “You know, don’t you?”

“Know what?” He was right in front of me now, and I was all too aware that I was moments away from opening a door that I couldn’t close, a Pandora’s box that would color the rest of my summer.

There were two reasons why I was considering this: first, to get it out of my system, and second, because I wanted to prove to myself that even considering this in the first place was a result of physical attraction and nothing more.

“We’ve already deduced that I know you’re a sodomite. ”

“That’s not what I mean,” I said, even though I knew full well that he was trying to bait me into admitting my attraction.

I didn’t care anymore, not really, because I felt deeply that Rudolph was not the sort of man to hold it against me.

Everything he had done to this point had been mostly teasing, not malicious, and as irritating as it tended to be, I doubted that if I told him the truth he would do much worse than make fun of me for the rest of the summer. “You know that I find you handsome.”

“Everyone finds me handsome,” Rudolph said, and he was abruptly kneeling on the edge of my bed, a hand resting on the side of my throat as his thumb pushed my chin up so I was looking at him. “But do you find me handsome in a way that makes you want to act on it?”

“If we had met under different circumstances, yes,” I said, my eyes meeting his dark gaze, a thrill going down my spine. “But you… well, this , feels like a betrayal. I can’t change how I feel about Arthur the same way you can’t change how you feel about me.”

“And how do I feel about you?” he murmured, a dangerous note in his voice.

“Stop asking me questions,” I said, my own tone dropping to match his. “You need to understand how seriously I’m taking this. I have no desire to hurt you, nor do I have any desire to prevent what could be a perfectly good friendship between us by saying the wrong thing.”

“Friendship,” Rudolph echoed, a thoughtfulness in his voice that I was unaccustomed to in a man who was constantly treating everything with a great degree of flippancy. “Why is it when you look at me you see friendship and not more?”

I looked at him, took in his dark features that mirrored my own, considered what he was asking. “I think it’s Arthur,” I said finally. “I think that has colored everything else around me, if I’m being honest with you.”

He sighed and let go of my jaw, twisting a little so he could sit down on the edge of my bed alongside me.

The tension had gone out of the room now, and I realized that I had successfully defused the situation; the decision I had just made was the one that Rudolph was prepared to accept.

I realized a few moments too late that I had genuinely thought about kissing him and was glad that the madness had passed.

“I thought you would be more logical than this.”

“Normally I am,” I admitted. I had never encountered a situation before where I was acting on pure emotion, and it was unsettling that it was happening now.

After all, I was in a position now where I had no idea whether Arthur shared even a tenth of my emotions, and yet I was willing to throw away a perfectly good chance at an affair just for the opportunity to show Arthur that I was serious about him.

“You said before that you thought Arthur was fond of me, but when I left… I said some things that I can see now would have only hurt him. Did he confide in you?”

“He won’t confide in me, not about this,” Rudolph said, leaning back on his hands.

I wondered if this was part of being in my thirties, passing up a perfectly beautiful man for the mere possibility of another, and tamped down that feeling; I was beyond the point of being able to doubt myself.

“When our relationship ended, we made a promise to one another that we would keep our romantic lives private, both to guard against future blackmail attempts and to spare each other any sort of pain. Everything I’ve said to you until now has been based solely on intuition, but… .”

“But?”

“He’s been writing you letters,” Rudolph said, confusion rocketing through me at the words.

I hadn’t received a single letter from Arthur, unless I counted the invitation, and yet Rudolph made it sound like he’d written more than one.

“He claims he wasn’t, but I caught sight of one when I took lunch with him one day.

It absolutely had your name at the top.” He looked at me, brow furrowed. “What has he been writing you?”

“I wasn’t lying to you in London,” I said, shaking my head. “I didn’t receive a single letter from him while I was away. Whatever he’s been writing, he hasn’t been sending me.”

“Interesting,” Rudolph said, but for me it was far more than interesting.

If Arthur had been writing me letters and not sending them, what could possibly be his motivation?

The thought of unsent letters sitting in his library, some sort of testament to the state I had left him in, filled me with an anticipatory fear, an anxiety that he was aware of my feelings and was so upset by them that he found himself needing to journal them away.

As though figuring out where my thoughts had led me, Rudolph turned to face me.

“Did you know Charles when their mother died?”

“Yes,” I said. We had known one another for a year at that time, awkward youths of fourteen when his mother had passed away, and I remembered being in our dormitory when the messenger had come to deliver the news.

She had been sick, we had known that much, but death had not seemed possible.

He was changed after her death; Charles had never been a man I would accuse of being mature, but there was a seriousness in his nature that had not existed before that winter.

I would catch him in these fits at times, staring out a window or focusing on some spot in the wall, and would know that it was because the thoughts of his mother were too strong to allow him to exist entirely in the present at the time.

“I remember it better than I thought I would.”

“If Charles was affected, think of Arthur, too. He was a misery, honestly, and he was having trouble coping. We were fresh to university at the time, and it was hard to see him, but it was Felix who came up with a remedy. He was to write letters to his mother as though he were just telling her how university was going, and it did seem to help. I think being able to pretend she was alive, even if it was just for the amount of time it took him to write a letter, was a balm to his soul. If he’s taken up the habit again…

well, that tells me that your departure was weighing on him quite heavily. ”