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“You know it,” Cam said to him. “‘Twas only the one night, or I thought it’d be. Comfort for us both.”
“You compared me to a lost puppy,” Blake said, but lightly.
“That was later,” Cam said. “I was explaining.”
“I know the outline of the story,” Ash said. “I didn’t know there was a cane involved. I’m a scholar. I require details.”
“You’re recovering,” Blake said. “No exertions.”
“You were ill, too,” Ash protested, “and worse than I was—and anyway I’m not going to be exerting myself nearly as much as you are, I promise you that—”
His joys. His brightnesses, the pair of them: starlight in Ashley’s hair and hazel eyes, midnight velvet in Blake’s. A matched set, especially given that they’d been friends for so long: since childhood, far longer than Cam had known them.
He knew, now, that they had wanted each other, and had been equally afraid to admit it, for all those years as well. Ash had never believed that Blake could want him; Blake had done an excellent job building a persona of rake, adventurer, flirt, seducer of women; and therefore Ashley—thin, prone to headaches, surrounded by books and an Oxford professor’s obligations—had ached for every drop of attention. Blake, of course, had built that entire life and persona precisely because he’d believed he could never have the one person he yearned for the most: his clever scholarly best friend, a castle of spires and translations and ink-stained cuffs because Ash never paid attention to his sleeves.
Cam knew they loved each other. He wondered again, fleeting as the roll of dry thunder outside, why he was here. What he was doing.
But that was a poor thought, and unworthy of Blake and Ashley. They loved him equally; not as long-standing, perhaps, but that did not make it lesser. They told him so. And showed him. Repeatedly.
The night was coming in, but they’d made good time. Ash’s driver was skilled, and the horses were good—Cam’s family would’ve approved, if he still spoke to them—and this was the last leg of the journey. He’d bring Ash and Blake home, tonight.
Himself, a physician, a horse-trainer’s son—a near-legendary horse-trainer, of course; certain racing circles muttered the name of the Fraser stables with awe—in the carriage of the Duke of Auburndale. Himself in a carriage with not only that duke, but an earl, and a scandalous celebrated one at that. On the way to his house, or their house, except the them in question had changed, he supposed. Six years on, he still occasionally caught himself thinking of the rooms, the practice, as both his and Hugh’s.
He’d mostly trained himself out of it, not confusing clients and all. But sometimes he forgot. Or wasn’t paying attention. Old habits like scars.
Blake Thornton had been a glorious splash of color, the night they’d met. Vibrant, in the grey dull rain outside a bookshop, and shortly thereafter in Cam’s bedroom. Wild rover’s hair, ink-pool eyes, sun-browned skin. More pink and red, after: flushed with exertion, and submission, and satisfaction.
Cam said aloud, interrupting the debate about which of them needed more fussing over, “You’re both right; Blake, you were more in danger, there, more of a scare for us.” It had been. A fever, something tropical, something Cam—for all his expertise—did not precisely recognize. It’d been vicious, in part because Blake had been determinedly ignoring his own well-being for some time, until it’d become unignorable. “Ash, you also know he’s got over it. Resilient, that one. Yours, though, those lungs. I’m still not liking that.”
Ash started to argue, paused to cough, made a grumbling resigned sound. “Yes, fine…it’s better, though, you said…”
“I did and you are, but that’s not all healed, not yet.” Ashley had been more obviously ill—a bad cold that’d settled into his chest, lungs, thin frame—and it lingered, though he hadn’t been in real danger, the way Blake had. That one had been recognizable, treatable, a known quantity.
Cam privately worried a bit about the headaches, but Blake had said that Ash’d had those for years, mostly to do with stress and exhaustion. Worse as of just over a year ago, when Ash had unexpectedly inherited the title, and had had to deal with family grief and abrupt estate management and the disruption of his entire cozy professorial life.
Cam knew about grief. And loss. He’d been afraid, in the long black nights in that whimsical ornate Mayfair bedroom, that he might lose Blake too. He’d genuinely not known whether he would. He’d done everything he knew, all his physician’s training and old family doctoring herb-lore, hands not shaking because he refused to let them, in battle.
He’d won. This time, for all three of them, he’d won.
Scotland at dusk rumbled by, outside the carriage window. Somnolent indigo fields and hills giving way to the outskirts, now. Edinburgh, that tumble of history, built on rock and pride and lifted banners. Old as legend, new as the crackle of medicine and education and professional buildings, spilling over the banks of the old city.
Old, and new. Home, and not. Because he’d made it home, the first time, when his family told him not to return; he’d made it home with Hugh, in students’ rooms and pubs and laughter and the shared passion of learning to help people, to heal.
And now he’d be leaving. A fortnight to pack up, to close those doors, to move and open up a practice in London, where Blake Thornton wrote sensational adventure tales and smiled like hopeful firelight, and Ashley Linden balanced a duke’s responsibilities with cool precise joy in translations of ancient Greek and detailed plans to build a great library.
Stories. Past and present.
He said, because it was true, “I’m glad you’re here with me. You know that, aye? The both of you.”
Ash nodded, and put the other scholar’s hand over Cam’s as well, so that those slim fingers enfolded his, safe and sound.
“We know.” Blake leaned in to kiss him, a murmur of a kiss, a breath along Cam’s jawline. “We’re here for you, too. It’s our turn, isn’t it? We’re all yours. Whatever you need.”
“Such a promise,” Cam said, truly amused, and kissed him in turn. “I’m holding you to it.”
And he thought, as the city and his life approached, that they both meant it: they would be here for him. They believed that was fair. Our turn, Blake had said.
It wasn’t about that; it wasn’t about evenness, or owing each other, or any of that. He did not want them to feel obligation.
