Page 30 of Hastings (Brothers in Arms #15)

CHAPTER 30

M adelyn went upstairs with Essie as soon as they got home, much to Stephen’s frustration. He needed to talk to her about what happened between her and Hastings. And he needed to speak to Hastings.

“Hastings, if I might have a moment,” he said as Hastings tried to slink off after they got home.

“I’ve got to…go,” Hastings said unconvincingly. “And do something.”

“No, you don’t,” Stephen said. He was holding the horse’s bridle and Hastings came over and snatched it out of his hand, making the horse neigh an objection over the too-sudden movement.

“I’ve got to put the carriage away,” Hastings said.

“I’ll come with you,” Stephen offered. Hastings stopped.

“Just give me a minute, Stephen,” he snapped. That stopped Stephen in his tracks.

“I didn’t mean to upset you,” he told Hastings. “I just think we need to talk.”

Hastings sighed. “You’re right, of course. But I really do need a minute to collect my thoughts, if that’s all right.”

“Of course. I’ll just wait in the parlor.” Stephen watched him walk away, his heart heavy. Hastings was clearly rethinking their relationship now that he’d been with Madelyn. Stephen couldn’t blame him. She certainly had more in common with him and was a far more suitable match as far as society was concerned. It was no wonder he’d decided she was the better choice.

When Hastings came into the parlor he looked as downcast as Stephen felt. Stephen decided he should lead the conversation so Hastings wouldn’t have to upset himself more. Stephen was nervous and feeling a little sick over it all. He’d taken off his jacket because he was sweating over having to have this conversation.

“I know what happened between you and Madelyn this afternoon,” he said immediately.

“I figured as much,” Hastings said. He stopped and they faced one another across the room. “If you want me to go, I understand. I’ll have Sir Barnabas send another man.”

“If you want to go, I won’t stop you,” Stephen said, trying to hide his breaking heart. “But I’m not sure it’s a good idea to move Madelyn yet.”

“You’re going to kick Madelyn out?” Hastings said with angry surprise. “I’d have thought better of you.”

“Of course I’m not kicking her out,” Stephen said, confused. “Don’t you want to take her with you?”

“Why would I do that?” Hastings seemed genuinely confused. “She wants to be with you.”

“But she was with you.” Madelyn was correct about how confusing this all was.

“Yes, but she doesn’t want me. Not really. She said as much today. I’m not the kind of man she wants to care for. You are.”

“She obviously cares for you,” Stephen told him. “Don’t be an idiot.”

“I’m not an idiot,” Hastings said. “I just know that you’re better for her, and she’s better for you.”

“Well, maybe that doesn’t matter to us,” Stephen said with blinding clarity. “Maybe we want you anyway.” Despite everything, despite Madelyn, despite knowing Hastings was going to leave him, he wanted him. Hastings thought he was bad for Stephen, and Stephen agreed. But for very different reasons. Stephen knew when Hastings left it would break his heart. He very much feared it was too late to prevent that.

“So, you agree I’m bad for both of you,” Hastings argued.

“You are putting words in my mouth,” Stephen told him. “I have feelings for you and Madelyn. I don’t care if it’s wrong or right or they damn me for it.”

“Well, then, it’s a good thing I’m here to do the right thing for you if you can’t do it for yourself.” Hastings was mad and so was Stephen. Hastings unbuttoned his jacket and pulled it off with sharp, angry movements before throwing it on the sofa.

“I’ll tell you what I told everyone else, it’s my life and I’ll damn well do what I please. And if that is to love both you and Madelyn, then I’ll do it.” He hadn’t meant to mention love.

“You can’t be in love with me,” Hastings told him. “I’m all wrong for you. I’m a man, first of all, and that is not a good thing despite what all your friends have going on. And secondly, I’m a killer. Don’t forget that, Stephen, because I don’t, not for a second.”

“You are a man who has been forced to kill by circumstances and Sir Barnabas James,” Stephen told him. “That is not the same thing as being a killer.”

“It is,” Hastings said vehemently. “I shouldn’t even be allowed to touch you or Madelyn. I’ve done some awful things, Stephen.”

Stephen quickly walked over and took Hastings’s hands in his. “I don’t care. The past is the past. I care about the future. Our future.”

“There is no our future,” Hastings said. “I’ll be going back to London, and you’ll stay here, where you belong.”

“You belong here, too,” Stephen tried to tell him, but Hastings was shaking his head.

“No. You and Madelyn belong here. She wants so badly to fit into this life with you. Did you see her tonight? I’ve never seen her so happy.”

“You have been happy here, too.” Stephen pulled him close. “I want to make you happy here.” After a moment’s hesitation, Hastings wrapped his arms around Stephen and rested his forehead against the side of Stephen’s head. Stephen turned so his lips rested against Hastings’s cheek.

“That’s not going to happen,” Hastings said softly. “But I’m glad you feel that way.”

“Am I interrupting?”

Stephen jerked away and saw Madelyn in the doorway.

“Not at all,” Hastings said. He separated himself from Stephen, but not too far. Madelyn was no innocent, Stephen supposed, nor was she a fool. She knew exactly what they’d been up to.

“Then may I join you?” she asked, and without waiting for an answer stepped into the parlor and closed the door behind her.

Maddy felt Hastings watching as she walked over and sat down on the sofa. She had to move a jacket to do so, and just held it out, waiting for one of them to take it. Stephen had spun around so his back was to her, so Hastings walked over and took it from her. He tossed the jacket on the table in front of her.

“Thank you,” he said politely.

She could tell he wasn’t sure what was about to happen. She enjoyed unsettling the sharp Hastings, who thought he knew it all. She wasn’t upset, though she ought to be. She’d been so worried that day she’d almost fallen off the stool that Hastings would ruin everything. Wasn’t this exactly what she’d feared? But Hastings wasn’t the only one culpable. She’d ruined it, too, because she wanted him, and so she’d taken him. She’d always been impulsive like that, unable to resist whatever she desired when it was within her reach.

She’d followed their voices to the parlor when she’d come looking for Stephen. She’d stumbled on the two men having a heated, intimate discussion. Whenever she found them together there was passion of one kind or another, and she was not unaffected by it. When she saw them in an embrace, an echo of the embrace she’d witnessed before, Maddy couldn’t have made her feet carry her away if she’d set them on fire.

She’d see many undressed men before. She’d worked the docks with the pickpocket crew, and they’d slept all in one room many a time when she was young. She’d had bare-chested brutes come after her more than once. But she’d never looked twice at them, not even the ones she’d had physical relations with. It had never been a case of desire on her part—just a means to an end, a way to protect herself and survive a hard life.

No, what had slammed into her as she’d watched these two men last night had no relation to anything she’d ever felt before. And even now, when they were in shirtsleeves and their embrace had been tender rather than carnal, Maddy found herself wanting them. This was desire, she was sure of it, more even than what she’d felt with Hastings, and that had been madness. She was positively burning up with the need to be with them, to see them, touch them, do what she’d done with Hastings earlier, and what she’d been dreaming about doing with Stephen. The possibilities before her were endless and arousing.

She watched Stephen’s strong back. He was so well-built it was almost impossible to believe he was a parson. He looked more like a stevedore. She’d noticed the other night that the freckles on his face were repeated on his shoulders. She wanted to lick every one of them. As she watched he put his hands on his hips, still facing away from her and she saw him take a deep breath. She bit her lip to keep her smile in check. If she had to hazard a guess, he was trying to control his arousal before he turned back around. He needn’t have bothered, of course—she’d seen such things before. Her sensibilities could withstand the hint of it beneath his clothes.

Hastings had taken a chair across from the sofa and was taking his cravat off as he sat there. He probably didn’t feel the need to cover up any arousal he was feeling. Which, really, he shouldn’t. He was not as muscular as Stephen, but he had a whipcord strength about him, as if his energy was just lying in wait until he snapped it out and cut you with it. It was exciting in a different way than Stephen’s bulk. Both men had hair on their chests and Maddy found that exciting, too. How different they were from her.

She let her gaze roam up from the small triangle of Hastings’s chest that was now showing above his waistcoat, and she caught him watching her. She knew that Hastings saw through all her disguises. He knew who she was underneath all the pretense, and he hadn’t shown her the door. Sometimes she hated that and sometimes it made her feel safer that he knew so much about her. Tonight, it made her feel better about all she’d done and what she wanted to do with them, for some strange reason.

“Madelyn,” Stephen said in a firm voice, turning to face her, his hands still on his hips. He’s clearly come to some decision about what he was going to say to her. She cut him off.

“Maddy,” she said, smoothing her skirt out and staring at his magnificent chest and arms. Good Lord, what a man.

“I beg your pardon?” he asked, a frown marring that perfect brow. He should be a model for statues of Greek gods.

“My name,” she said with a sigh. “I’ve always been Maddy.”

“Why didn’t you ever tell me that?” Stephen asked, clearly upset.

“Or me?” Hastings looked equally stunned. She supposed he would be. They’d had sexual congress, for heaven’s sake, and he hadn’t known her preferred name.

“Because I thought I needed to be someone else here,” she told them. “I thought I needed to be that person to fit in, to make you let me stay.”

“Oh, Made—Maddy,” Stephen said. “I would have let you stay no matter what your name.”

“I know,” she said. “Now. Now I know it. But when I arrived here I didn’t. I didn’t know you, or this place, or anyone, really. I was on my own and making it up as I went.” She shrugged. “I’ve had a lot of practice at that, at taking care of myself, you know. And I thought it was important to hide who I really was and to be the person you wanted so you’d let me stay. That’s always worked in the past. But I’m not that person I was pretending to be. The thing is, I’m not who I used to be before, either. But what or whoever I am now, well, I’m Maddy.”

“Mads,” Hastings said quietly. “That’s what Essie calls you.”

“And you,” she said, laughing a little. “That’s a new one, actually. I hadn’t heard it before. I kind of like it, something someone made up just for me.” She paused for a moment “Stop feeling sorry for me,” she told Stephen sharply, when she saw the pity on his face.

He shook his head. “I’m not. I won’t.”

“He can’t help it,” Hastings said, heaving a sigh. “It’s how he was made.”

“You don’t,” Maddy said.

“No, I don’t,” Hastings agreed. “I know where you come from, and I’m quite impressed at where you’ve gotten yourself. Also, with the fact that you didn’t let it all turn you into a monster. I’ve seen that happen all too often.”

“Yes. So have I.” She pulled her legs up next to her on the sofa, tucking her skirt in like a lady would. “But my mother didn’t, so I was determined not to, either.” But she had let them turn her into a monster, hadn’t she? She’d killed for them, lied for them. She wouldn’t do it anymore. She couldn’t, not after being here. Not after loving these two men. But she didn’t tell them any of that.

“How do you know?” Stephen asked he was looking around for his jacket. He finally grabbed the jacket from the table and tried to put it on, but it was Hastings’s, so it was far too small, and he had trouble pulling it back off. Watching his bumbling lightened her mood.

“What my mother was like?” she asked. “I asked people, and they told me. Most people liked her very much, although there were one or two who thought her above her station, mostly because they didn’t understand what her station was before she fell on hard times.”

“Did they try to bring you low?” Hastings asked. He was watching Stephen, too. He’d finally found his own jacket and pulled it on. She didn’t try to hide her admiration, which only made Stephen blush.

“Oh, yes, lots of them did. They thought I was above my station, too. So, I ran off to the docks when I was still small and joined a gang there. Still working for Bleecker, of course, but I was small and tough and smart, and I could pick a pocket with no one the wiser. My captain, Dickie Bales, he practically raised me, bastard though he was. But he was fair and kept a roof over my head and food in my belly.”

“Good God,” Stephen said quietly. “That’s no childhood for a small girl.”

“That’s no childhood for anyone,” she told him. “But it was my lot, and many more like me.” She shrugged. “There were worse fates. I could have been sold to a madam.”

Stephen paled noticeably, and even Hastings looked unnaturally grave. “You wouldn’t be here today if you had been,” he said. “I’ve seen what happens to those children.”

“Anyway,” she said, changing the subject. “I just wanted you to know who I am and why I am the way I am. That’s all.” She smiled at him. “And I’ll stay or go, whatever you two want me to do.” She held her breath, because the truth was she very much wanted to stay.

“Well, we want you to stay, of course,” Stephen said, as she’d hoped he would.

“All right,” she said. “On one condition.”

“Ah,” Hastings said with a grin. “There you are. I knew there was going to be a snag somewhere.” He crossed his arms, causing his shirt to gape more over his rather divine chest. She caught his amused gaze and realized he was using her preoccupation with him to distract her. “What do you want?”

She pointed at Stephen. “Him.”