Two Rogues Make a Right Read online

  That had all gone to hell in the span of a summer. First, Martin’s father had discovered Will in Martin’s bed after one of those nights he had sneaked in. It had all been innocent, but Martin’s father had the sort of mind that saw prurience everywhere, probably because Sir Humphrey was rather devoted to prurience himself, but Martin hadn’t known that at the time.

  Soon after this, Hartley started avoiding Martin. Martin assumed this was because Hartley, too, thought Martin was debauching Will, and Martin was too insulted to bother with olive branches. Soon after that, Martin’s father arranged for Will to get a place in the royal navy as an officer’s servant, which would put him on a path to becoming an officer. It was more than Will could have hoped for without Sir Humphrey’s intervention, but at the time it had been blindingly obvious to Martin that this was an effort to separate Will from Martin. Martin supposed that Hartley came to the same conclusion, because once Will left, Hartley had never uttered another friendly word to Martin.

  Around the same time, Martin’s father began pouring money into the Sedgwick household. He paid the oldest brother’s university fees and sent the younger boys to a proper school. He took Hartley about with him to house parties and hunts, to London for the season, to all the events Martin had been excluded from. At the time Martin thought his father regarded Hartley as the son he wished he had—healthy, clever, handsome. He thought his father was punishing him for his failures as a son by bankrupting the estate in favor of his own replacement.

  It had taken years for Martin to understand that Sir Humphrey had never had fatherly feelings toward Hartley, and even longer to grasp how young Hartley had been when Sir Humphrey had first persuaded him to trade intimacies for his family’s welfare. Martin had spent his entire life trying and failing to please his father, and it was only after Sir Humphrey died that Martin learned the extent of his father’s evil. By then, he had spent years regarding Hartley as his enemy. Now he suspected that Hartley had first avoided Martin out of shame or embarrassment about the nature of his relationship with Martin’s father. Martin had a long list of regrets, and toward the top of the list was that he had effectively abandoned Hartley at a time when all his brothers were away from home and he was being taken advantage of by a much older man.

  Martin felt entirely justified in being leery of seeing Hartley again. He couldn’t do it without a proper apology, but he didn’t know how to even start. Some things couldn’t be apologized for.

  Gingerly, Martin got to his feet and reached for the sheet of toweling that Will had left nearby. Out of the corner of his eye he saw Will stepping near. “I’m not going to fall,” he snapped.

  “There are clean clothes in the trunk at the foot of the bed.”

  Martin dressed himself in a threadbare linen shirt and a pair of trousers that hung off him. God knew where they had come from. Perhaps Hartley had sent these too. Perhaps Hartley was paying for all of this, from the cottage to the soap to the round of cheese. Martin bristled at the thought, but found that he didn’t care as much as he might have a year ago. If Hartley wanted to be stupid with the money Martin’s father had left him, Martin wasn’t going to object.

  As he fastened the trousers, he heard a splash and turned in time to see Will lowering himself into the tub. He hastily looked away. Slowly, and with a great deal of shame, he looked back. Will was in profile, backlit by the fire, but even in silhouette Martin could tell that he was whipcord thin. He always had been; he was made of fine bones and a bare minimum of muscle, overlaid with freckled skin. It had been the sight of Will, casually stripping before plunging into the lake, that had been Martin’s first clue that he might not be entirely like other men. And still, a single glimpse of him made Martin’s heart twist around inside his rib cage in a way that the sight of nobody else ever had. The birds weren’t visible from this angle, but the scars across Will’s back were, and that was what finally propelled Martin to behave decently. He climbed into bed, pulled the covers up to his chin, rolled so he faced the wall, and pretended to sleep.

  Will was aware of Martin’s gaze on him as he shaved. “What?” he asked, angling the small hand mirror so he could get a look at his jaw. “Hartley’s visiting again today and he’ll act disgraced if I’m scruffy.”

  “I’m the one who’s scruffy,” Martin said. Out of the corner of his eye, Will saw him touch his face.

  “Not as bad as when I found you in London. You had beard, and the doctor told me I had to shave it off and cut your hair.”

  Martin’s hand flew to his head.

  “No, I didn’t cut your hair. But I did shave you, and you swore at me the whole time, so I didn’t do it again.”

  “I rather wish you had.”

  Puzzled, Will turned to look at Martin. “You know you can use the razor anytime you want, right?”

  “I’m afraid I don’t know how,” Martin said after a moment. Will wiped the blade on a wet cloth and regarded his friend. Martin’s cheeks were pink and his gaze fixed on the floor. “I’ve always had a valet.”

  Will blew out a breath and tried not to dwell on Sir Humphrey’s failings as a parent and a human. “Want me to teach you?”

  “Would you?” Martin asked doubtfully, as if Will had offered him something highly valuable but also untoward. Will didn’t know what had put the uncertainty in Martin’s voice. He already knew that Martin hated being helpless, but that usually just made him cranky and impossible. This was something else. His eyes were flickering between Will and the razor with something like longing.

  “I offered, didn’t I? Why didn’t you ask earlier?”

  At that, Martin’s cheeks darkened even further. Will had never seen him so flustered. “It’s just that it would feel so good to have a shave.”

  Will opened his mouth to argue that this was exactly why Martin ought to have asked for help weeks ago, but then he understood what Martin was saying. “You don’t want things to feel good?” Martin’s prompt glare was answer enough. Will sighed. “Come here,” he said, wiping the last of the shaving soap off his face and getting to his feet.

  Martin sat in the chair Will had vacated.

  “So the first thing you want to do is use this brush to make lather from this wet cake of soap. Like so.” Will twisted the brush on the top of the cake, then handed both to Martin. “Then dab it all over your face.” He watched as Martin silently followed his instructions. “You’re missing a spot on the left side, near your ear.” He held out the hand mirror and also indicated the area on his own face. Still silent, Martin continued to spread the foam.

  “Good, really good,” Will said, handing him the razor. “Now start with your neck. Tilt your chin up a bit.” He took Martin’s hand and adjusted the angle of the razor, then did the first stroke with him. “Yes, just like that.” Will pulled the second chair over and sat in it backward, so he could hold the mirror up for Martin. “No, here, you have to sort of pull your mouth to the side. There you go.” It wasn’t the first time he had taught someone to shave, although Martin at twenty-three was rather different from fifteen-year-old cabin boys, who were always comically proud of themselves for needing to shave in the first place. “There,” he said, leaning in, “you’ve missed a spot.” He spoke only as loud as he needed to be heard a scant foot away.

  “Where?” Martin asked, equally quiet.

  “The corner of your mouth.” He tapped his own lip. “That’s it.” He liked watching Martin’s face become revealed like this, liked watching Martin’s long fingers at work. He also liked the closeness, and the occasional questioning glances Martin shot him, as if seeking approval. It was rare to see Martin so vulnerable; even at his sickest, he had been prickly and sardonic, but as he gingerly slid the blade across his skin, he seemed so uncertain. As Martin scraped off the layer of scruff that had concealed the bottom half of his face, Will saw the familiar contours of his friend’s face materialize—sharp cheekbones, slightly pointy chin that echoed the widow’s peak of his hairline, lips that were the only softn
ess in the uncompromising landscape of his face. Will had known, in an abstract sort of way, that at some point Martin had grown up handsome. But there had always been so many other more pressing matters, and even at his stupidest Will knew better than to start thinking that way about his best friend.

  Now, though, Will badly wanted to reach out and wipe the extra shaving soap from Martin’s cheekbone with his thumb. He wanted—well, he wanted. He shoved that realization firmly off to the side, more than a little dismayed with himself for having let it happen in the first place.

  “There you go,” Will said, when Martin finished. Martin touched his fingertips to his jaw. He had been nearly silent while shaving and now had an almost frantic, wild look in his eyes. “Doesn’t that feel better?” Will asked, trying to break the tension, but achieving the opposite result—Martin now had one hand wrapped so tightly around the cloth that his fingertips had gone white. “You did really well,” he added softly, trying to be soothing.

  “Jesus Christ,” Martin rasped, getting to his feet. The razor clattered to the floor, the cloth dropping after it. “I’m going for a walk.”

  Will stood alone in the cottage, not entirely certain what had just happened.

  “You look less terrible,” Hartley said, eying Will narrowly. As always, he looked more put together than anyone who had spent four hours on a stagecoach had any right to.

  “Thanks ever so,” Will replied, rolling his eyes. He watched as his brother slid onto the stool beside him, greeted the innkeeper by name, paid for both his and Will’s pints, and then pulled a sheaf of paper from his coat pocket and placed it beside Will’s tankard.

  “Here’s what I have.” Will started to page through it. “No,” Hartley said, snatching it back. “Don’t read it in front of me. Take it home, mark it up, and then next week I’ll make a fair copy.”

  The first time Hartley visited, in an undisguised attempt to check up on his little brother, Will confessed to writing a play. He had started it in London and finished it while sitting up at night by Martin’s bed. When Hartley asked to read it, Will was too tired to object—besides, it wasn’t as if Hartley didn’t know that Will was given to overwrought sentiment. But when he came back the following week, Hartley only remarked that it would make a better comedy than tragedy, and had all but begged to try his hand at altering it. They had been passing the manuscript back and forth ever since, Hartley adding dark humor and Will refining the language. If all went as planned, they would offer it to a theater manager Will knew.

  “How’s Martin?” Hartley asked carefully after their pints arrived.

  “His fever hasn’t come back,” Will said, equally carefully.

  “Good.” Hartley patted him awkwardly on the arm. By Hartley’s standards, this was a full embrace, almost mawkishly sentimental. Will didn’t think Hartley cared much whether Martin lived or died except for how his death would distress Will, so he supposed he ought to be touched by the effort his brother was making.

  “How’s Sam?” Will asked, eager to change the subject. That set Hartley off on a lengthy monologue. It was almost unsettling to see Hartley this happy. He was actually smiling, an honest-to-god smile that showed teeth.

  “I’m glad you’re happy, Hart.”

  “Ugh.” Hartley scowled. “Spare me.”

  Will hid a grin in his tankard.

  “I wouldn’t exactly hate it if you were happy, too, you know,” Hartley went on. “And I can’t help but feel that holing up in this godforsaken place with Martin Easterbrook—”

  “Hush. We’re not using that name.”

  “—is not exactly a path toward contentment.”

  Will took a long pull of his pint. “I couldn’t be content knowing that he was alone. You know that.”

  “Hmm.” Hartley regarded him appraisingly. “I wonder if I do.”

  “I’m trying to get him well. That’s all. Then he can . . .” Will’s voice trailed off.

  “Mmm? What can he do then? Harass tenants? Run away from his aunt’s house in order to haunt my attics? What grand plans will Martin return to?”

  “A person doesn’t need plans to make their life worthwhile.”

  Hartley’s expression softened. “As much as it pains me to say this, it’s probably for the best that he’s with you. You seem to be the only friend he has. His aunt hasn’t exactly been tearing up the country looking for him.”

  Will felt his face heat in anger and something else. “You talk about him like he’s a stray dog in need of care. He’s my friend and I hate that I’m all he has,” he said, because that was the thing that saddened him the most.

  “You might want to consider why that is,” Hartley remarked, taking a sip of ale.

  “Why I care for him?”

  “Why nobody else does.”

  “His father cut him off from all society,” Will said. “And now he’s prickly and distrustful. He’s so used to being alone that he deliberately alienates anybody who might be fond of him. He’s been doing that all our lives.” Will didn’t add that Martin also seemed to be punishing himself—it seemed both too private and too confusing for Will to articulate.

  “Believe me, I recall,” Hartley said tartly. “Then maybe answer the other question. Why do you care for him when he manifestly does not want to be cared for?”

  Sometimes it was a little heartbreaking that Hartley needed these things explained to him. “Because he’s my friend,” Will said. That was true, he supposed, for all it was a radical simplification. He didn’t really think anybody could explain the whys and wherefores of friendship. Either you cared for somebody, or you didn’t, and there wasn’t much sense trying to make sense of it. Will and Martin had been friends since Will knew what the word meant, and it wasn’t as if he could just undo that, nor did he want to. “And also,” he added, sensing that Hartley needed this spelled out for him, “he’s only in his current situation—poor, alone, etcetera—because of his arsehole father. He never had a chance. Sir Humphrey was—” Will’s grip tightened around his pint “—ashamed of him. For being sick or maybe just because his father was a terrible person. But he never got to go to school and meet people of his own—” Will had nearly said of his own station but caught himself at the last moment. “He only had us. His aunt was hundreds of miles away. He has no connections and no money and it’s not fair to him that I’m the best he has. He doesn’t belong here in a drafty cottage with—with me, you know? He’s—he’s a baronet.”

  Hartley’s eyes went as round as guinea pieces. “Which is . . . a good thing?”

  “No, obviously.” Will’s face heated. “I mean, it’s terrible.” For God’s sake, he had written a dozen screeds on the uselessness of the aristocracy and the evils of inherited wealth. But none of that had to do with Martin. “We were raised to think of him as the heir to Lindley Priory and I can’t see him like this without thinking that he’s been done out of his birthright.”

  “Birthright,” Hartley repeated softly. “Listen to yourself. And anyway, he has been. Done out of his birthright, that is. There’s nothing we can do about it.”

  “It’s just—it’s a fucking tragedy, Hart, that it’s come to this. I spent the winter thinking he was going to die in a poky cottage on his own estate with nobody to look after him but me.”

  “But,” Hartley said, with obvious effort, “if I heard someone say ‘I fell ill and my friend took me to the country and looked after me’ I’d think that person was lucky to have such a loyal friend. Why would I be wrong to think Martin is lucky to have you? Leaving class and his arsehole father out of it, thank you.”

  “Nobody should have to depend on me,” Will said into his pint. Out of the corner of his eye he could see Hartley open his mouth and snap it shut again.

  “How long has it been?” Hartley asked at length.

  Will didn’t need to ask what Hartley meant. “I bought my last bottle of laudanum in August. Haven’t been to any opium dens or anyplace similar since even before that.”

&
nbsp; “That’s good,” Hartley said, not bothering to conceal his relief.

  “It’s hard, though,” Will said, and drained the rest of his pint. “I don’t want him to be around if I stop being able to resist temptation.”

  Hartley passed a hand over his mouth. “Jesus. I wish I had something useful to say.”

  “So do I,” Will said, sliding his hand along the bar and squeezing his brother’s arm. “At least being in the country means that much less temptation. Anyway, that’s why I need him to get better and send him on his way, all right?”

  Hartley looked like he very much wanted to protest, but knew better than to try.

  Chapter Five

  “Come for a walk with me,” Martin said, casting aside the worn copy of Bungay Castle he had been reading. He could see the sun shining from the window nearest to his bed. It was March now, and they had been at the cottage for over two months.

  Will put down his pen. “It’s still cold.”

  “If I start hacking we’ll come back. Come on. I want to stretch my legs. I haven’t been further than the wood pile yet.” He also wanted to confirm a suspicion that had been lurking at the back of his mind for some weeks. Martin got to his feet and grabbed a coat off the peg by the door. Outside, the landscape was mostly drab browns and grays with shoots of green signaling that winter might eventually end. Further from the cottage, the landscape opened up to a vista of rolling hills, a stand of spindly trees, a yew hedge in the distance. He walked on, past a few patches of bare dirt that might have once been a vegetable garden, past the well, past a rickety fence and straight to the top of the nearest hill. There, in the distance, he could see the barely remembered roofline of Friars’ Gate.