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“Lester, a moment,” Wesley said, in his most imperious voice. Sebastian had been walking into the Bluebell Room, but paused.

“Yes sir, Lord Fine?” Lester said.

“I am a man who deeply values his privacy,” Wesley said. “You must tell the staff that they are not to disturb me in my room, is that understood?”

“Yes sir,” Lester said, with a politely blank expression that perfectly hid whether he found the order or tone of voice insufferable.

Wesley went into his room. He gave it time, preparing for bed but listening to the footsteps in the hall. When all had been silent for a good thirty minutes, he ducked out of his room and into Sebastian’s.

Sebastian was already in the bed, just a lump under the covers on the side farthest from the door with the blankets pulled up over his head. He’d lit the candle on the nightstand, which filled the room with the softest light.

Wesley crossed the room and slipped under the covers on the empty side. He stretched out his arms, reaching for Sebastian and finding him curled on his side facing the other direction.

Sebastian’s sleepy voice came from under the blankets. “Wesley?”

“Well, it’s not Valemount.” Wesley entwined his arm around Sebastian.

“ Wes. ” Sebastian gave a soft, relieved sort of sigh, already shifting closer to Wesley. “But you can’t be in here—”

“Don’t tell me what to do.” Wesley pulled Sebastian against him.

“Sir Reginald is likely drunk off Valemount’s liquors and sleeping like a brick.

The Rylands will be too busy with each other to give a solitary fuck what we’re doing—they have ten children for a reason.

” He rested his head against Sebastian’s.

“You’ve ruined me for sleeping alone. I can only think of all the touch I’m missing. ”

Rain had begun, pattering against the window as Sebastian ran his hand down Wesley’s arm, entwining their fingers. “Okay,” he said, his voice quiet but happy. “You know I like you here.”

His hair was soft against Wesley’s face, the sound of their mingled breaths layered in his ears over the gentle rain. Wesley would need to sleep light, listening for footsteps, but it was a small price to pay for this closeness. He closed his eyes.

He woke only once in the night, because Sebastian was murmuring in Spanish. “Cuídalo mucho. Protégelo.”

Wesley cracked an eye. “Duck? Are you awake?”

Sebastian didn’t answer, only rolling over to rest his head on Wesley’s chest, right over his heart.

* * *

Sebastian stirred when Wesley snuck back to his room in the darkness just before dawn, but dozed off again, coming awake an hour later for breakfast. He dressed in his country tweeds, mind on the night before.

He had the vague impression of a dream, of the moors and music, of stone ruins, perhaps, but whatever it had been had vanished with the morning light.

A footman took Sebastian downstairs to the morning room. Wesley was already there, speaking with a couple who looked to be in their late forties, a white man around Sebastian’s height with brown hair and eyes, and a white woman with blond hair in a neat bob.

“Don Sebastian, good morning,” Wesley said, perfectly proper, and not at all like they’d spent the night together. “Have you met Lord and Lady Ryland yet?”

Introductions were made and conversation was easy over breakfast. Sebastian liked hearing stories of children’s antics, and the Rylands had ten times the usual amount to share.

Their children were apparently on their way to the coast with their grandparents, and the Rylands would join them after tomorrow’s hunt—the one Sebastian was trying hard to pretend wasn’t going to happen.

Sir Reginald stumbled in late, grouchy and hungover. Wesley and Sebastian left him to his own breakfast, heading down the hall. The house was a flurry of activity, servants bustling about, preparing for the duke’s return and the arrival of at least a dozen more guests.

“I realize the weather isn’t much to your liking,” Wesley said, as they hastily stepped into a small study and out of the path of three maids heading for another wing.

“But what would you say to a walk on the moor? It’s cold, but it’s not raining, at least. We might see birds, or rabbits, or some of the famous Dartmoor Ponies.

Ponies in the daylight even,” he added meaningfully.

Sebastian wasn’t going to say no to that.

They got their overcoats and hats. The kitchen staff was willing to make them up a lunch basket, which they took with them as they hiked across the moor, a landscape of rocky hills broken up occasionally by hearty bushes and small clusters of trees.

The morning fog gave way to cool gray skies as they wandered up hills and into ravines, and passed more than one ancient stone wall, crumbling in places but still standing.

At one point, Wesley pointed out a kestrel high in the heavy clouds that promised more rain to come.

For lunch, they climbed to the top of the highest tor, high enough to give them a view of the manor and its grounds. “Are you going to be completely insufferable if I admit to having read Hound of the Baskervilles ?” Wesley was looking over the side of the tor into the ravine below.

“I knew it.” Sebastian’s gaze had fallen on the guest house, and was lingering. “What did the butler say about the guest house, again?”

“That it was built on the ruins of the original fifteenth-century manor, and the foundation needs maintenance.” Wesley took a seat on a stretch of stone wall at the tor’s edge, facing the manor and grounds. “Though it looks fine enough from here.”

“No ladders or scaffolds,” Sebastian observed, joining him on the wall. “It looks in good repair.”

“Unlike those ruins over there.” Wesley pointed beyond the guest house to the east, to a small building of crumbling stones beyond the edge of the manor’s gardens. “You can tell from up here that it was once a chapel.”

Sebastian squinted at the ruins Wesley was pointing out. “I think you’re right. It’s still got the arches and part of the roof.”

“And more tellingly, the graveyard,” Wesley said.

“There’s a mausoleum that’s newer, eighteenth century maybe, but those chapel ruins could be as old as the original manor.

Perhaps some of the graves are too.” He tilted his head.

“I wonder if Alfred Fairfield, the previous Duke of Valemount, is buried in the mausoleum.”

Sebastian gazed out at the gray dots of gravestones against the brown December moor. “He was Lady Nora’s father, yes? What happened to him?”

“Went to Kenya on a group safari about two years ago, never came back,” Wesley said. “Apparently he’d gone out alone tracking game, but dropped his gun with the safety disengaged and it went off. Shot him right in the ribs.”

Sebastian pursed his lips. “How do you know what happened if he was alone?”

“I rather like it when you’re suspicious,” Wesley said approvingly. “I suppose we can’t say for certain, but there were several others on the hunt who substantiated the story. Some of them are on this hunt: Louis Fairfield; Lord Thornton; my cousin Geoffrey, even.”

“And they saw the body?”

Wesley paused. “I suppose I never asked Geoffrey point-blank if he saw Alfred Fairfield’s body,” he admitted.

“It’s hardly the sort of question one thinks to ask without a reason.

But there was an article in the paper about it, at the time, and I remember a doctor was quoted saying the wound was clearly inflicted by the dropped gun. ”

“A doctor ,” Sebastian repeated. “And after this doctor declared the previous duke accidentally shot himself, then his brother, Louis Fairfield—who was on this safari—became the new duke?”

“That he did,” Wesley said, more slowly, exchanging a look with Sebastian.