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Twenty-Nine

KILMARNOCK ABBEY, EDINBURGH - JULY 16, 1816

TOM

I fought past the instinctive panic. It was safe here, in Xander’s arms in this too small bed, in the too small room, in the ruined house, wearing breeches that were rapidly becoming very uncomfortable.

“What about it?” I whispered, hoping the tremor in my voice wasn’t too noticeable.

It was, if the way he squeezed my knee was any indication.

“You’re wrong. I said it before, and I’ll say it as many times as you need to hear it—I have never been unaffected by you, not after the masquerade at least. But you’ve been laboring under a misapprehension that I don’t feel as you do.”

My heart skipped at the thought, but weeks of loneliness, of unreciprocated feelings, were not so easily shaken. “But?—”

“My body recognized you after that night, even if my head did not. My heart threatened to pound out of my chest. My skin positively itched to meet yours. I was shaken and jittery. And you’re not the only one with dreams of lips and cock.”

I could only shudder as one hand smoothed down my back.

“No, I was not unaffected. And it was not easy for me to leave, not at all. But I thought it was for your own good. In fact, I’m still certain it was, but I’m too weak to send you away.”

“It’s not your choice to make.”

“No, it’s not. But you do not understand the consequences of the one you’re making.”

I made to protest, but he shushed me.

“You understand it intellectually. But the actual experience—it’s not the same. We’re different, you and me. Rumors have swirled around me since I was a schoolboy. Something about me, the way I am, people just know. But you, I never suspected. No one would. You could live out your days in town with a pretty wife and handsome children and not a single person would ever question you. You wouldn’t risk ostracization and hanging.”

“But I wouldn’t be happy.”

He sighed, the effort raising my chin on his chest. “There is a happiness to be found in security, in anonymity. It may not be perfection—but there is no perfection, not for people like us.”

“You’re determined then to never strive for perfect happiness?”

“Spoken like a man who has never struggled to blend in. A man with no concerns but his own.”

Fury found me in that moment—how dare he presume to know me? I shot upright. It was an awkward maneuver given the undersized, over-occupied bed.

“I have concerns. That you have not taken the time to know them does not mean that they do not exist,” I snapped.

“I didn’t—that is not what I meant.”

“Because I’m not a duke, I know nothing of responsibilities? Because what I am is not obvious to all, it is easy? You are tortured because you are seen by all, but no one sees me, has ever seen me, and that is its own kind of torture.”

“Tom, please…”

“I think you should return to your bed, Your Grace. After all, it wouldn’t do for you to be found here. It might ruin my reputation.”

He rose but dropped his forehead to mine in a way that had my heart clenching even amid the anger swirling in my stomach. “I want to see you, desperately. I just could not bear it if you lived to regret me. I’ll see you in the morning,” he whispered.

With a parting kiss to my forehead, he left. The door snicked shut behind him and I was left alone in the waning moonlight.

The sun hadn’t yet kissed the horizon when I was up and out of bed. I found my trunk in the corner of the kitchen—forgotten in the exhaustion of the night before—and changed into fresh clothes before setting out for the shed.

My body still ached, but my mind was finally, blessedly numb. The ax called to me, rusted, and in desperate need of a sharpening, but strong and powerful. Unfortunately, we needed the pine for Fenella’s pen, not firewood, and I couldn’t manage the pit saw alone.

Instead, I yanked open the shed and set about emptying its contents onto the lawn. Various pieces of farming equipment whose uses I had only the vaguest notion of, small garden tools, twine and stakes, a rusted toolbox, a wooden ladder, hoes, shovels, the lot of it lined the lawn before the sun began to crest.

I found a broom and set to work upsetting the spiders next, wiping away their hard work from the now empty shed, before sweeping the floor. A mouse hole was left behind and I found a small piece of wood to cover it and tried to remember what the housekeeper at Thornton had used to keep them at bay. Cinnamon, perhaps?

Every time thoughts of Xander brushed against the corners of my mind, I pushed them back. That I’d had this thought yesterday—to clean up the shed and turn it into a private place—when we were interrupted by the return of Godfrey and Lock, was a coincidence.

I had just begun to work on the windows with a rag and spit when I was greeted by a pleasant bleat.

“Hello, Fenella.”

She snuffed a greeting, nudging my shoulder.

“We’ll finish your pen today. How does that sound?”

There was no reply, but she let me scratch behind her ear.

“I don’t know why everyone is so hard on you. You just want a little love, don’t you? And that’s not a bad thing to want. No, it’s the same thing everyone wants. But foolish people think they know what’s best for you, don’t they?”

My musings earned me a huff, but it was more likely due to the fact that I had stopped scratching.

“They try to keep you out of the house, but you’re just lonely. I understand, no one wants me around either.”

“ I want you around.” Xander’s voice washed over me, soothing an ache I’d been able to ignore thus far.

“I wasn’t talking to you,” I muttered, not glancing his way.

“That’s fine. I just needed you to know. Are you hungry?”

“No.” I turned back to the window, clearing decades of grime with the kind of methodical concentration that comes from petulance.

“Do you want a hand?”

“No.”

“Would you mind company? Besides Fenella, I mean.”

“Go break your fast Xander.”

“Tom… You’re right. I don’t know what is best for you. And you deserve to have everything you want.” He was surely waiting for me to turn to him, but I stubbornly refused. “Especially if that is breakfast.” When I didn’t respond again, he added, “Keep an eye on him, Fenella. And don’t shit in the shed.”

Fenella bleated her agreement as Xander’s boots crunched along the gravel. As soon as he was gone, I lamented his absence. I was aware, on a purely intellectual level, that mine was an overreaction. But it was also yet more evidence that he didn’t understand my feelings—not truly.

He might be right, that I didn’t know what it was to be ostracized, and I didn’t have responsibilities the way he did. But he didn’t comprehend the loneliness of confusion either. For years I’d wondered what was wrong with me, why I wasn’t quite like everyone else. There was no world in which I could go back to the moment before I’d laid eyes on Alexander Hasket, to return to the darkness of ignorance. I had seen the sun, I couldn’t go back to the unending night.

The empty shed was returned to a more or less presentable state—it could use a new window or two. But a glance out on the lawn reminded me that the shed itself represented very little of the work I’d created. Tools that needed cleaning, sharpening, and sorting lined the space in front of the entrance.

Christ, I was a damned fool. I was also starving now that he’d mentioned it, but I was too proud by half to saunter into the full kitchen looking for a slice of toast and a cup of tea. My head throbbed in that way it always did when sleep eluded me and exhaustion staked a claim to my body.

With a sigh, I set about finding a space for the tools. Cleaning and sharpening would need to wait for another day, perhaps a day after Xander sent me packing for acting the part of a petulant child.

Worse still, if I had any hope of completing the recently run-off Fenella’s fold in the foreseeable future, I needed a second set of hands to cut the lengths of wood. Yesterday, I’d had the fanciful notion of Xander manning the other side of the pit saw. But now I was certain that wasn’t a likely outcome.

The tiny part of my heart that was still hopeful, left a corner of the shed clean and empty. It was absurd. Dukes did not take second sons into tool sheds and instruct them to drop to their knees, no matter what my absurd fantasies might suggest.

The crunch of gravel against boot alerted me to another visitor. Once again, it was Xander, meeting my gaze with a tentative furrow to his brow. In his hands was a small tray with a plate and glass.

“You can be as mad at me as you’d like, as long as you’re full while you do it.” The words poured out of him in an anxious, nearly indecipherable jumble.

“Thank you,” I whispered as he set the tray on an upturned tin bucket. I took another from a stack I’d recently placed beside a shed wall and handed it to him.

“What is this for?”

“Sit. If you want to.”

He set it down eagerly, before rounding it and plopping down.

His limbs were too long by far for the bucket.

“Who is the cricket, now?”

Soft, full lips slid to one side in that way that made my heart skip. “Are you going to eat?”

“Yes,” I said, grabbing the last bucket and turning it upside down. It was taller than the one I’d given Xander because I was just the tiniest bit petty—and my legs were longer.

He humphed but didn’t say anything. Yes, Your Grace, you may have the second nicest bucket.

The bread and jam were good once again and the tea, though cooling, did soothe the ache behind my eyes.

“The shed is much improved. Thank you.”

“Yes, I evicted all the spiders.”

He nodded, clearly for lack of something else to say if his aborted hand gestures were any indication.

Eventually, I finished breaking my fast and downed the last of my tea.

“Is your head improved?” he asked.

“I beg your pardon?”

“Your head, it was aching. Did food help?”

“How did you know my head hurt?”

“You had a little furrow—between your brows. And I caught you rubbing your temples when I found you earlier. Is it improved?”

“Yes, thank you.”

“I’m glad.”

Breakfast had been a gesture, and a considerate one at that after I refused it, and I felt my resolve soften.

“You were right—I don’t know… what it is to be you. I should stop… speaking—making choices—on your behalf.” His expression was nervous, and he spoke in fits and starts, hands aborting the steps in their usual waltz.

“I might have… overreacted. I’ve been feeling indolent lately. And in my youth, I was peacekeeper between Michael and Hugh, more than brother. I served a function. But I wasn’t a person. With you, the night of the masquerade, it was the first time I’ve ever felt… complete, in my own right—and you could not even see my face.”

“I meant what I said. I want to see you, all of you. Last night—before the argument—I’ve never known anything like it. But I want more than that. I want everything with you, Tom, everything I’ve never allowed myself to want. Every absurd thing that everyone else gets without a second thought. I want breakfasts and luncheons. I want to nurse you when you’re sick, and I want you to do the same. I want to share a bed with you—one that you actually fit in—because I want to know if you steal the bed covers or if your toes are cold at night. I want to fight with you and I want to make up with you.” He’d leaned forward on his bucket, his hand reaching for mine before getting distracted, swept away with the music that was his beautiful declaration.

“Well, it seems we’ve had at least a few of those. I’ve broken a fast with you twice. And we had supper, but luncheon should be easy to manage. My head is much improved thanks to your nursing. And we’ve definitely fought now.”

He must have caught the note of mischief at the end because he swallowed, harsh. “We haven’t made up yet, though.”

“If I promise to remember that you’ve been making decisions for everyone for years, do you promise to try not to make them for me?”

His nod was exaggerated and slow and the sight warmed my heart.

“Then I suppose we could consider ourselves made up. You should know, though, my family doesn’t much care for that step in the disagreement process. I’m not certain I know how it’s done.”

His lips were trapped between his teeth, holding back a smile that spilled out into the corners of his eyes anyway.

“I can show you.”

“Oh, good.”

“I’ll need somewhere private to demonstrate a proper apology. You wouldn’t happen to know of a spider-free shed with an unoccupied corner, would you?”

“Do you know, I think I’ve seen one quite recently.” I made no effort to hide my grin. Instead, I set my tray back on the first bucket.

After a surreptitious glance around, Xander’s fingers caught the fabric of my sleeve and tugged me into the back corner of the shed. The corner I’d left conspicuously empty, even in my irritation.

My back hit the wall with an arousing thunk at the same moment his lips crashed onto mine. Last night had been soft and sleepy. This morning was filled with the lingering bite of irritation, evident in the harsh grip in my hair and the way I dug my fingers into broad shoulders, belying our teasing words.

I pulled back, desperation for air overwhelming even my lust. Xander had no such needs. He traced the line of my jaw with the edge of his teeth, following it with his tongue in a filthy display that had a curse escaping my chest.

“So convinced you’re unwanted. That I’m unaffected,” he muttered, thrusting against my thigh. His cock was hard again and impossible to miss even through the thick buckskin of his breeches. “Does that feel unaffected?”

Incapable of words, I shook my head, his fingers tightening even further in my hair.

“I’m aching and you’re certain I don’t want you.”

He yanked aside my shirt, tracing the angles of bone and muscles with sharp nips. “You’re so damn beautiful like this—disheveled and wanting. Drunk with need for me. And you think I wouldn’t spend every second with you on your knees or your back for me, just like this, if I could? If I had my way, you’d never leave my bed again.”

“Xander—”

“You’re not leaving this shed until you understand—” his lips found my nipple and my knees went weak. Only the wall and his body kept me upright. I didn’t know—hadn’t thought such a thing could feel like that .

Vaguely, I was aware that the pathetic whimpers were probably mine. But God himself could be standing outside this shed waiting, and I wouldn’t have been able to hush them.

“You made your choice,” he muttered, switching to the other side to repeat the exquisite torture he’d provided the left.

Breaking off with a gasp, he dragged the shirt up and off entirely, dropping it on the floor of the shed without a care, before finding my sternum. “I tried to leave, to be a good person. But you followed me.”

His fingers worked on the buttons of my breeches with no hint of gentleness, no caresses, just inelegant want, even as he bit the soft skin just below my naval.

“You followed me here. Now you’re mine. You’re never going to feel unwanted or unseen again. Every single time I want you, you’re going to know about it. All day long. I’m going to tell you about it until you’re so drunk with lust that you’ll let me do whatever I dreamed of, fantasized about. And you’re going to thank me for it.”

He tugged my breeches down and swallowed my cock like he’d been planning for it his entire life. Dark, hot eyes met mine, throat bobbing, and that was all it took. A second in the wet warmth of his mouth and I spilled without a second’s warning.

The world darkened for a moment before returning in little golden sparks. My breath was a harsh, ragged echo in the shed as I fought for air, my lungs seemingly incapable of finding it.

Xander’s groan was the only thing that kept the shame at bay. At least until he pulled back, gulping, before whispering, “Good. Again?” as he traced a finger around the tip of my still half-hard cock. “Say yes.”

I nodded, incapable of speech between panted breaths. It was quite possibly a lie, I’d never peaked that hard in my life. But I would have died before giving him a different answer, before disappointing him.

His approach was gentler this time, nuzzling and kissing before he took me back in his mouth. Somehow, the sensation was even more incredible the second time. Perhaps because I had more than a second to enjoy it. The combination of his soft tongue twisting wickedly and the lust in his eyes was quickly enough to bring me back to full stand.

Soft hands traced my thighs, soothing at first, then dragging blunted nails along the skin there as I rapidly approached another peak. One hand slid between my legs to cup my balls before the other rounded the back of my leg. I realized his plan the second before he executed it, but no amount of time could have prepared me for the reality of a finger sliding between my cheeks, tracing a circle around that entrance.

Another peak ripped from me, spilling my very essence into his waiting mouth in great shuddering breaths.

He shushed my whimper at the chill when he pulled back and stood. With uncooperative and sluggish fingers, I reached for the buttons of his breeches. He batted me away, making quick work of them himself. Xander’s breaths were even harsher than my own when he grabbed his proud, ruddy cock and began working it in quick, short strokes.

The efficiency was beautiful. I couldn’t help but hope that one day I would know how to touch him that well. I could be the one to bring him to a swift climax or draw it out until he begged—whichever pleased us both.

With a shuddering gasp, he came, his seed decorating my thighs, my abdomen, my cock. And then that same hand—the one that had worked his member to such beautiful effect—found mine again.

It was too much, too hot, too slick, too sensitive, too wrung out. My hips moved away of their own volition. “Shhh, let me,” he murmured, as he gently painted his spend across my skin.

The sight, the understanding, it was the single most arousing thing to ever happen to me in an impossibly long morning of most arousing things. He finished with a quiet, pleased, “There. Mine,” before catching my cheek with his clean hand and brushing away tears I hadn’t noticed as he pulled me down for a kiss.

When we broke apart, he eyed me, his gaze heavy as he traced the ruined lengths of me. I was sticky and covered with darkened bruises. My shirt probably draped over a rusty scythe. My breeches were crumpled at my feet. And I could only begin to guess about the state of my face and hair.

“Was it too much?”

I was aware enough—of him, nothing else was capable of penetrating my mind—to catch the slightest note of vulnerability in words. “No—well, yes, but in the best possible way.”

A little tension leached out of his shoulders and his forehead found mine. “I should have asked first.”

“There’s nothing you can do that I don’t want, Xander. Nothing you can give me that I won’t take and nothing you can ask of me that I won’t give.”

I felt his eyelashes flutter but when I glanced up, they were squeezed shut. A single tear slipped out and I reached up to brush it away before kissing his forehead.

“You can’t rid yourself of me now,” I whispered.