AllFreeNovel
Share Us
“Our life,” Ash corrected, catching up. “Together. From now on. You said so, aye?”
The echo, his own accent, made him smile: Ashley and languages. “Aye. D’you mind that we’re missing it? The balls, the parties. The Season. Your invitations.”
Ash, clutching the teacup, grew mildly horrified. “I’m a professor—or I was. I like history. I trip over my own feet when I dance.”
Blake said, “As of yesterday, the Rose is putting on a theatrical adaptation of The Earl of Thorns at the Castle of the Mad Alchemist. I need to be out of London. For this fortnight, or for the next five years, preferably.”
“I might have plans regarding that adaptation,” Ash murmured. “When we get back.”
Blake swung that way. “Oh no—”
“It’s based on your book, and we should know what they’ve done to it, and I like everyone celebrating you!”
“So do I,” Cam interjected, “and yes, we’re going, and you can tell us how they’ve got it wrong, after, but it’s still your story up there, and we’re proud to be here with you, lad.” Blake sighed, but smiled, and nodded, so that was all right. “And you both don’t mind that we’re…that I’m…” He borrowed Blake’s flippancy, shoved his spoon into the porridge, disrupted the pool of cream. “I love you both. But I’m not an earl or a duke, I’m not one of you, and I won’t be.”
“You sound even more Scottish,” Ash observed dreamily, “when you’re being blunt, and I love it. Yes, of course we know.”
“We want you.” Blake reached across the breakfast table to set a hand on Cam’s arm. Informal, all of them: Ash was wearing Cam’s dressing gown, thick and quilted, because they’d wanted him to stay warm. None of them had proper coats on; Blake had lit the fire, and his hand and forearm were strong, tanned, under a rolled-up sleeve. “I knew I wanted you the night we met. And then again, when you came to help us in London…the way you feel, the way I feel around you…it’s right. You and Ash—you both feel so right. Like I’ve never been so balanced, so secure.”
“We love you,” Ashley agreed. “It confused me, at first—I knew how I felt about Blake, I always did, but then you were so…it was like the missing piece of a puzzle. Like a word I’d been struggling with, not knowing, a gap in a line of poetry, and then one morning I woke up and I understood it, how that shape and that sound meant that word, and the line was complete.”
“We’re here for you,” Blake said. “We said so, but I don’t think we realized…it’s asking a lot of you, isn’t it? Our lives will change, at least in some ways, but not like yours will.”
Ash put his head on one side. “Oh. Is it about your—your Hugh? Oh, sorry, was that the wrong question? I didn’t mean to just blurt it out.”
“No,” Cam said. Breathing was difficult, not because he didn’t feel loved—he did, so much—but for precisely that reason: so much, and they knew him, both of them; they saw him and touched him, here in this house, in this room, and it’d been so long and it was so clear and so bright. “No, I…I can talk about him. It’s not…he’d be happy. I believe that. I’m happy.”
“It’s not guilt,” Blake said. “Then…it’s just too much? All of it?”
“No. Never. I’m here for you both.” He put his hand atop Blake’s, moved it to encircle Blake’s wrist; glanced at Ashley. Pleaded, “I love you. You know that. I said yes to our plan. I want to live with you.”
Blake nodded. Ash said, “But then…” and stopped.
“I don’t know,” Cam said. “If I could bloody well diagnose myself—” But he stopped, shook his head. “I don’t know.”
“No,” Blake said after a moment. He’d turned his arm slightly, leaning into the caress, Cam’s hand around his wrist. “But…do you want us to not help, for a morning? With the packing, the inventories, all of it.”
“I know you’re good at that,” Cam managed. “I don’t mind, honestly.”
“Hmm. I think Ash and I should go for a walk, today. Up the hill, for those views. Picturesque.” Blake paused. “And don’t say we’re both still recovering.”
“You are!”
“I’m tough as leather,” Blake said, “and Ash, well…I’ll take care of him. We’ll walk slowly.”
“I’m not an invalid!” Ash protested, a statement instantly undermined by a tiny cough.
“We’ll be fine.” Blake’s eyes met Cam’s, and stayed there, peaceful. “We won’t be out too long. We’ll come home to you.” And the deep ink-pools of his gaze said more: I know you worry, I know you want to care for us, I know what you told us, about Hugh and a carriage accident, and the way you didn’t know, then; you didn’t know what’d happened until two days after, when someone thought to inform Hugh’s professional partner in the practice…
Blake paused again, put on that wicked lazy smirk, and added, “You can make it an order, if you’d like. Come home to you. I’ll make sure we listen; I’m all yours.”
“You’re a bloody menace is what you are,” Cam muttered. “Looking like that, with those eyelashes…”
Blake deployed the eyelashes to even greater effect, on purpose.
Ashley, picking up on the shift in mood—a lightening, a change, Blake’s teasing and the way Cam’s whole self responded—put in, “I like dramatic views. Getting to do some of the explorations, for a change. Not merely in stories.”
“You’re just as bad,” Cam said to him. “Should toss you back in bed and sit on you, shouldn’t I…” But he didn’t mean that, and he knew he didn’t; an odd lightness, the relief of being known, suffused his bones. “Fine. Only an hour or two, mind, and you come back if the weather changes; I don’t want either of you aggravating anything.”
