Page 60 of Restored

“Very well,” he said. “Next Friday.”

16

Henry

Henry slept better the night after he visited Redford’s than he had in a long while.

Perhaps it was being intimate with someone again. The physical release he had experienced had been powerful. But no, it wasn’t just that. He wasn’t celibate—he had regular assignations with likeminded men—but none of them ever made him feel like this. Echoes of the deep sense of wellbeing that had suffused him as he and Christopher came together still pulsed through him.

That wellbeing was a feeling he had forgotten, one that came not just from finding release, but from holding someone very dear to you, and touching that person freely. Henry hadn’t realised how much he had missed that. How wonderful it was.

The whole of the next week seemed to drag interminably, and all Henry could think of was Christopher.

To distract himself from his thoughts, Henry immersed himself in duty, attending to the pile of outstanding correspondence that had accumulated since he’d come to town and paying a number of long-overdue calls.

Finally, though, it was Friday again.

Henry took his breakfast in his room that morning, then called for a bath, taking a long time over his ablutions. He scrubbed himself till his skin was pink, already anticipating the evening ahead. Of undressing in front of Christopher.

Kit.

By the time he made his way downstairs, Marianne, Jeremy and Freddy had all gone out, and Henry found himself at something of a loss. For the first time in a long while, he was entirely free to do whatever he wanted. It felt both liberating, and at the same time, strangely empty. For the last number of years, his life had been shaped by the needs of his family and the rhythms of life in the country. He was used to the events of his day being shaped around those two pillars. But here, now, there were no estate matters to attend to and no family ones either.

There was only one thing he wanted to do—but it was too early to go to Redford’s.

He repaired to the library and tried to give his attention to the morning paper, but was unsuccessful—his thoughts continually returned to Christopher. To how it had been between them all those years ago, when Christopher had been unmistakably his. When he could have gone to the house at Paddington Green any time he chose. Could have spent the whole day in bed if he wanted.

He wished now he had allowed himself that occasionally, instead of religiously keeping to his twice-weekly visits. But at the time, he had been trying to contain what felt like a worryingly uncontrollable desire to spend all his time with the young man with whom he had been so infatuated.

With the benefit of hindsight, his self-denial had been idiotic—what would it have mattered if he’d let himself have a little more happiness? But back then he’d had some idea that, if he tried hard enough, he could control his essential nature. Hell, back then, he hadn't even thought of his desire for men as beingpartof his nature. He’d thought of it as a preference—or rather, a weakness. A self-indulgent weakness that he could set aside if he were only disciplined enough.

Later, he had come to understand how wrong he was. That his desireswerepart of him, deeply and intrinsically. That by denying them, he was denying his very self. But at the time, he had been unable to think of them as anything other than selfish cravings to be suppressed so far as possible.

Leaving Christopher and going back to Wiltshire with Caroline had been a turning point for Henry. His self-denial had become complete as he devoted himself to his family, ignoring his desires entirely and lashing himself with guilt whenever he so much as thought about them—because how could he be so selfish when his family needed him?

As for Christopher, when it became apparent that Henry was never going to receive a reply to his letter, he tried not to think of him at all if he could possibly help it.

But he could not control his dreams, or the idle thoughts that would sometimes catch him unawares.

The year after Caroline’s death had passed in a kind of blur—Henry couldn’t remember feeling much of anything, except a grinding sort of grief—but as time wore on, his desires gradually came bubbling back to the surface, refusing to be suppressed.

Henry tried everything he could to distract himself. The children took up much of his time during the day, and he filled the rest with busy work he could have handed off to his steward. He began drinking late into the night after the children had gone to bed to avoid his dreams and numb his pain. Whatever he did, though, it made no difference. Despite being surrounded by people, he felt very alone. There was no one whoknewhim—the real, whole man.

After Alice died, his melancholy grew much worse. And on one long and sleepless night, he’d left the house and walked into the middle of the woods at the edge of the grounds. There was a deep pool there, where he and his brothers used to bathe when he was a boy.

He’d stood at the edge of that pool for God only knew how long, staring at the still, black water and thinking how peaceful it would be to slip under that glassy surface and simply… cease to be.

The one thing that had kept him standing on the bank was the thought of the three children back at the house who still badly needed him.

He could not leave them alone in the world.

At last, dawn had broken, and with it the worst of the dark spell that had held him there. He’d turned on his heel and begun a slow trudge back to the house. As he’d emerged from the edge of the woods, he’d looked up to see the sun rising over the turrets and belvederes of Avesbury House, flushing the sky delicately pink. And in that moment, he’d had a revelation: if he was to go on, he had to accept this was his nature and reconcile himself to it.

After that terrible night, somehow, slowly, Henry had managed to crawl out of the pit he had fallen into. It had not happened in one night or one week or one month. It had been a much slower and more painful journey, one that lasted years. But the revelation he’d had that morning had been the first step on a path to some sort of acceptance.

Much later, he’d begun to seek out other men who shared his nature, and who understood the need to be discreet and careful. But there was no one like Christopher. No one who was dear to him in that way. Henry made sure of that.

His encounters were infrequent and forgettable. That was all he wanted. Perhaps, it was all he could bear. There was a very big difference between the temporary physical intimacy those encounters offered and what he’d had with Christopher.