Page 6

Six

Sandy

To Sandy’s great disappointment, Peregrine didn’t fulfill his most delicious wish of being fucked while still trussed up, but he did crawl over Sandy with those broad shoulders and those muscle-swollen thighs and push Sandy’s bound hands above his head. And then he’d proceeded to kiss Sandy so thoroughly that Sandy was certain he was now ruined for all other kisses for the rest of his life.

Sandy knew what his best friend Juliana would say—that he’d made similar claims in the past, and they’d all fallen equally flat. Sandy had a great weakness for other rakes and rakesses, and often found himself the seduc- ee rather than the seduc- er . He usually knew when he was being seduced for someone else’s amusement—being a rake himself made him quite clear-eyed when it came to such things—but he frequently surrendered himself to the melodrama of a love affair anyway, simply because it was fun and because he was bored.

But this was different somehow.

This wasn’t a seduction, and there was nothing jaded or amused about the way Peregrine Hind kissed him. There was a solidity to Peregrine’s touches, a gravity, and Sandy craved the weight of them. He loved the way those touches pulled on his heart and on his breath.

Sandy came with Peregrine’s mouth hot and sucking on his neck and their erections trapped between their stomachs. Peregrine followed him soon after.

After Peregrine had untied him and cleaned them both, he laid back down on the bed next to Sandy. Sandy’s heart stuttered as the highwayman ran his fingertips over Sandy’s mouth, his pale eyes burning into Sandy’s. What was Peregrine thinking right now? What was he feeling and wanting? More touching? More sex?

Did he want to tell Sandy—again—that this didn’t change anything?

The idea of that was unbearable. “The best part of being in bed with a rake is that I don’t expect you to croon sweet nothings to me after,” Sandy informed Peregrine.

The highwayman just gave him a bland look.

“Do I seem like the type to croon sweet nothings?” Peregrine asked after a pause.

“Well. No,” Sandy admitted. Peregrine seemed like the type to be found taming a wild horse up in the hills, or perhaps completing some quest that involved trudging through a barren wasteland and killing a dragon or something. There was nothing sweet about him. He was all flint and chill, with only rare glimpses of the deeply banked fire within.

But Sandy liked that about Peregrine Hind—perhaps more than was good for him—and instead of pleasuring Peregrine into a sleep deep enough for an escape attempt, Sandy propped himself up on an elbow so he could watch Peregrine’s face. “Then why are you in here still?”

A pause. “I don’t know.”

“You don’t know?”

The highwayman frowned. “I suppose I don’t want to leave.”

“A common reaction to my company,” Sandy replied with a grin. He slid his hand down to Peregrine’s cock to play it with it, thinking that was the real reason Peregrine hadn’t wanted to leave, but Peregrine caught his wrist and stopped him.

Sandy froze. That was a first, and it couldn’t be because Peregrine wasn’t interested in more bed-play—his cock was already stirring for more. But Peregrine seemed to ignore it, his eyes on Sandy’s face.

“Why didn’t you want to talk about Far Hope?” he asked. “Before, when I’d asked about it?”

Far Hope.

The question was so surprising that Sandy couldn’t even think of a way to deflect. He looked up into a veiled expression belied by an avid, searching gaze. That gaze betrayed something haunted and yet miserably alive, locked deep under the surface like living fire beneath the earth. But there was more than pain in the highwayman’s eyes. There was something that spoke of surviving, of prevailing.

Of strength, maybe.

Suddenly Sandy found that he didn’t want to deflect.

“Your voice is pure Devonshire,” Sandy said after a minute. “Did you grow up near Far Hope?”

Peregrine’s expression remained unreadable. “Close enough.”

“I don’t suppose you’ve heard any of the rumors about it? About what happens there?”

“My mother once said that they keep their own ways at Far Hope,” Peregrine said. “I’d always assumed it meant the Dartham selfishness was congenital.”

Sandy wanted to be wounded by that, but the truth was that his father had been a selfish and cruel man, and Reginald had inherited every drop of that selfishness and cruelty right along with the title.

At least Sandy wasn’t willfully cruel. Or so he hoped.

“It means there are secrets at Far Hope,” Sandy said, “and they all branch out from this one: there is a hidden kingdom inside the one we live in. It has many of the same citizens, but it’s invisible and it’s never spoken of to outsiders.”

Peregrine regarded him. “Then why are you speaking of it to me?”

“Because I want to, and because—this feels ridiculous to say, given that you’re planning to kill me—I trust you. Besides, I can always claim you tortured it out of me, if I survive this.”

“If you survive this,” Peregrine echoed, his voice betraying nothing, no confirmation...or refutation either.

Sandy planned on escaping before the matter of his survival became a pressing issue, but a small arrow of hurt—a lover’s hurt—burrowed between his ribs at the realization that Peregrine still intended to kill him. Silly, since his eventual death had been the bargain struck from the very beginning. But Sandy had grown so fascinated by this bleak force of a man, become so strangely affectionate toward him, and he childishly wanted Peregrine to feel the same way. Less for reasons of survival than for reasons that were perilously rooted in the organ beating in his chest.

“Anyway,” Sandy said, pushing all that away and down, down where he wouldn’t have to feel it right then, “this hidden kingdom is centuries old. Maybe older. And though its citizens are all over the island, Far Hope is its seat, its ancestral home.”

“What’s the purpose of this kingdom?” Peregrine asked.

Sandy scoffed. “What’s the purpose of any kingdom? To continue to exist, of course.”

Peregrine tucked his arm behind his head, the better to look at Sandy, and the gesture was so casual, so familiar and cozy , that Sandy’s chest gave an unexpected squeeze.

“I know what you’re really asking, though,” Sandy continued, “and the Second Kingdom has no political ambitions, no designs for more wealth or power—or at least, it’s not supposed to. It’s supposed to be a place where people associate freely for pleasure alone. That is our raison d’être, in fact. No law but pleasure . No limit but acquiescence. No rule but secrecy.”

“This sounds like a world tailored for you.”

“Or I for it,” Sandy murmured, recalling not the opulent parties in the star-chambered ballroom, but instead, the fickle attentions of his parents, his father’s cold smile.

“You were raised for it, then?” Peregrine asked. “To live in this secret world?”

“In a manner of speaking.” Sandy had barely existed to his parents—even Reginald the heir had barely existed to them—because their mother lived for the Second Kingdom and its delights, and their father cared only for his manipulations and schemes. But Sandy had existed more than enough to his godparents, the gentle Foscourts, who’d practically adopted him. He’d spent every moment he could at Kelstone with them and their daughter Juliana, and when he was old enough, it was from them that he learned how the Second Kingdom should be. How it used to be before his father took over.

And then Reginald after him.

“There’s more than living in the Second Kingdom for a Dartham, you see. The Duke of Jarrell is the head. The ruler.”

“Reginald,” Peregrine said. It wasn’t a question.

“Yes, Reginald. He is the duke, and so the Second Kingdom is his. Fortunately, the Kingdom’s members are all over the island, and there are plenty of revels held where he’s not present. And so, I spend my time in London whenever I can help it, only returning when it would cause a scandal for me not to.”

Sandy didn’t mention that he’d all but fled to London once his education had been finished, desperate to leave behind the messy, poisonous atmosphere his parents had created and which Reginald had perpetuated. Sandy had thought that in London—and at court, no less—he’d find more people like the Foscourts, who were unbound from convention, but friendly and steady too. He could almost laugh at the absurdity of that younger Sandy if it didn’t make him so depressed to remember it.

“But...?” Peregrine prompted.

“How do you know there’s a but?”

Peregrine just looked at him, and Sandy gave a sigh. “Yes, fine. There is a but . I stay away and partake mainly of the Kingdom’s pleasures outside of my brother’s purview, but sometimes I feel so restless and unhappy that I can’t stand it. And sometimes that restlessness feels like homesickness.”

“You miss Far Hope.”

“I don’t miss Far Hope as it is,” Sandy clarified. “It’s almost like I’m homesick for a Far Hope that doesn’t exist. For the Far Hope that lives only in my mind.”

“Why doesn’t it exist?” Peregrine asked, sounding genuinely curious. “What’s the difference between the kingdom where there’s no law but pleasure and the kingdom in your mind?”

“What else?” Sandy responded. “ Who else? Reginald. He is a shadow that covers everything.”

Peregrine seemed to think about how he wanted to phrase his next question. “You say there’s no limit in the Second Kingdom but acquiescence. Has he violated that limit?”

“Among the members? No, not that I know of. But with Reginald, anyone who isn’t a member of the Second Kingdom, or fantastically wealthy, isn’t a person to him and doesn’t merit a limit.”

There had been a relation of Reginald’s wife who’d come to stay after her father’s death, a girl who came with a profitable mill and water rights—so long as she was married off to someone willing to cede those rights to Reginald in exchange for a well-connected bride. The relation, Lydia, hadn’t wanted the marriage, had fought against it until the duchess had locked her in her room to keep her from running. She’d run anyway. Sandy had been at Oxford at the time, and so he’d only heard the tale from the servants once he’d returned for that year’s Michaelmas.

No, there’d been no limit of acquiescence for Lydia. Nor concern after she’d fled. Only spittle-flecked tirades about what Reginald would do if he ever caught her, and the occasional gloating over the mill, which had stayed in Reginald and Judith’s ownership after the girl’s disappearance.

Then there were the enclosures, which he’d only learned of last year—again from the servants. Sandy very much doubted the farmers and cottagers around Far Hope had acquiesced to having their livelihoods taken away.

“The Kingdom is supposed to be about pleasure above all—a place where vice is celebrated. But good vice, do you understand? Openness instead of narrowness. Liberality instead of restriction. But Reginald only sees the Kingdom as another way to increase his wealth and his power. He can’t be as ruthless with the members as he is with everyone else, but it doesn’t stop him from finding other ways to achieve his end of getting ever and ever richer. His machinations taint everything in the Kingdom.”

“And the other people in the Kingdom? Do they feel the same as you? Is there no way to...remove him from his role?”

Sandy cocked an eyebrow. “What are you, a Leveller? No, he is the duke, and the duke is the head of the kingdom. It’s always been that way.”

“Perhaps it could be a new way.” Peregrine studied him. “Except you mentioned earlier that you didn’t want to be the duke. I take that to mean you don’t want to be the ruler of the Second Kingdom either?”

Sandy didn’t answer at first, his mind flashing through the responsibilities, the burdens, the poisoned wells big and small that Reginald left everywhere he went. And as Sandy cataloged the work Reginald’s successor would have to do, he idly ran his palm over his captor’s lightly furred chest and stomach. Peregrine had a tall, broad frame, but despite his powerful shoulders and thighs, there was a spareness to him to spoke of a life without rest or luxury, and Sandy wondered again what had set him on this path, why he’d chosen this desperate vocation.

And for the first time that he could ever remember in his petted and pampered life, Sandy itched to take care of someone else. He felt it like a catch in his breath, like an ache in his bones. He wanted to feed this man until his lean frame filled and thickened. He wanted to make Peregrine sleep enough and eat enough—and fuck until all the tension was bled from his limbs.

He wanted Peregrine’s grim heart in his hands, and he wanted to treasure it forever.

A stupid wish.

“I don’t,” Sandy said after a long a time. “I’m—I think I’m?—”

He drew in a breath. Even after thinking about how he wanted to answer, he found the words hard to say. “I’m scared. Of it.”

Peregrine didn’t give him a look of disgust or of disbelief; he didn’t prompt Sandy to say more. Instead, he waited patiently while Sandy pressed his face into the highwayman’s warm shoulder and spoke the words against his skin.

“I don’t have many virtues, but I do have these: I’ve never forced anyone into a decision they didn’t want to make, and I’ve never defrauded someone who couldn’t afford it. I’ve wheedled and whined and coaxed and flirted, but I’ve never locked someone in a room until they married whom I wanted them to marry. I’ve never used my position and influence to coerce someone poor and scared into my bed.”

Peregrine stiffened under Sandy, but before Sandy could think too much of it, Peregrine was shifting so that he could wrap his arms around him. The warmth that tickled through Sandy’s chest at this gesture was ridiculous. Who felt flattered by being held by a lover? And how could this small thing outweigh the fact that Peregrine was going to kill him?

But for the moment, it did. He relaxed into Peregrine’s arms, rooting against the older man’s muscled shoulder until he was totally comfortable.

Once he’d finally settled in, Peregrine asked, “Are you worried that if you’d become like Reginald if you were the duke?”

Like Reginald...like his father and mother...

Sandy had gone to London thinking he would finally be done with all the noisome games and fleeting affairs which filled the days of Reginald’s denizens, and instead, he’d been drawn into just as many games, just as many affairs, all of them as noisome and fleeting. Perhaps he wasn’t a villain like Reginald yet, but he’d hardly acquitted himself as a saint at court. Who knows what he’d be like with enough power, enough vipers whispering in his ear?

“Yes, of course I’m worried about that,” Sandy said with a sigh. “Wouldn’t you be? If your own natural virtues were so few to begin with?”

“I’m a highwayman,” Peregrine reminded him. “My natural virtues are very few.”

“I don’t believe it,” Sandy said, running a hand over Peregrine’s stomach again. “I think you have some tragic, noble reason for taking to the road.”

Peregrine didn’t answer, but Sandy felt a new tension beneath his hand, something like stillness. Indecision, maybe.

He tilted his head up to look at the man holding him. This close, Sandy could see the dark grains of stubble on Peregrine’s jaw and the tiny white starburst of a scar near his temple. His lips were parted, revealing the blunt edges of the teeth which had scored Sandy’s neck and chest just an hour ago.

He could also see a faint, barely perceptible struggle in the thief’s eyes. It was almost invisible—one blink too many, one blink too long—but Sandy had watched enough card players weigh whether to keep playing to recognize it.

Sandy was too impatient, too eager for anything of Peregrine’s, for anything of this man’s history or heart. “You can tell me,” he said quickly, knowing he was playing his own hand too fast even as he played it. “I want to hear all about that tragic, noble reason. I want to know what my brother did to you. I want to know everything about you.”

For an instant, it looked like Peregrine was going to tell him. Like he was going to trust him. His lips parted, and his throat worked, and his brow furrowed as if with effort, and?—

The instant passed. Peregrine’s face slid into its usual stony chill, and he efficiently disentangled himself from Sandy.

“Peregrine,” Sandy said as the highwayman stood and walked to where his clothes were draped over a chair. “Stay at least. You don’t have to talk. But stay.”

“No.”

Sandy’s hands fisted on the bed. He hated being dismissed like this, and more than that, he hated that he’d told Peregrine things he’d only ever told Juliana, and now Peregrine wouldn’t even look at him.

And—and—he didn’t want Peregrine to leave. Sandy was already cold without him, and the highwayman was better than warm; he was solid. Steady.

He made Sandy feel steadier just by being nearby.

Peregrine stepped into his breeches, not looking at Sandy. “You should sleep.”

“ You should sleep. Here. With me.”

“I’ll be outside,” he replied. “In case you were thinking of escaping.”

“I’m always thinking of escaping,” Sandy said, annoyed now.

Peregrine didn’t bother to respond. He left Sandy the candle, and Sandy stared at the dancing flame for a long time after his captor left, acutely aware of how ridiculous it was to cry over a lover’s abrupt exit when the lover was his future murderer.

Sandy did it anyway.