April 10th, 1810
Lincombe Park, Devonshire
Afternoon sunlight shone into the nursery, laying golden rectangles on the floor. A nursemaid sat in a rocking chair, quietly knitting, and alongside her were two cots. Lucas followed Tish across the room. He found himself tiptoeing.
Click click click, went the nursemaid’s needles.
Lucas held his breath and stared down at the babies. Tish’s twins. Tiny and pink and fast asleep. Julia and I looked like this once. He felt a pang of sadness, and waited for the feeling of having lost a limb, but it didn’t come. Instead, he caught a fleeting scent of bergamot, as if Julia stood alongside him.
“Icarus says it’s his fault. His grandfather was a twin, and his father.”
Lucas nodded, and peered more closely at the babies. Which was the girl? Which the boy?
Tish turned to the nursemaid, middle-aged and comfortably plump. “Agnes, could you give us a few minutes’ privacy, please?”
“Of course, ma’am.”
The girl was the one on the right, Lucas decided, because her nose was a fraction tinier than her brother’s.
“Lucas?”
He turned his head and looked at Tish. Motherhood suited her. She’d lost some of her angularity, acquired some curves, and she had a warm, soft, happy glow.
“Icarus and I have been discussing names. We’d like to call them Lucia and Julius. But only if you’re happy with it.”
Lucas took a breath—and found himself unable to speak.
He looked back at the sleeping twins. Tears filled his eyes. He blinked them away.
Lucia and Julius.
The faint scent of bergamot came again and he knew that Julia liked the names.
“And we’d like you and Tom to be their godfathers.”
Godfathers. It was such a simple word, and yet it had such weight. Almost as much weight as father.
“Would you like that?”
Lucas nodded, and fumbled in his pocket for his handkerchief. “Yes,” he managed to say.
“The christening is next month. Merry and Charlotte will be the godmothers.”
Lucas nodded, and mopped his eyes and blew his nose. He gazed down at the babies. Tom’s and my godchildren. “Will they have the same knack as you? With the lies?”
“Lucia will have one, but we won’t know what it is until she’s an adult.”
Lucas stared at the two tiny faces. It was impossible to imagine them as adults. He had a strange, dizzying sense of possibilities opening out in all directions, and it took his breath away, rendered him speechless with wonder. All he could do was gaze down at them, Julius and Lucia, barely a month old, with their whole lives ahead of them.
That evening, while he was tying his neckcloth, he heard a familiar tap-tap on the door. “Come in.”
He watched in the mirror as Tom entered, dressed for dinner. Tom strolled over to the window. He didn’t detour for a kiss, because Smollet was in the room. Smollet knew they were lovers—and they knew he knew—and Smollet knew they knew—but nothing had ever been said between them. It was a secret the three of them shared—a tacit collusion, an unspoken agreement. And part of keeping it secret was what they did now: behaving as nothing more than good friends in front of Smollet. The touches, the kisses, the endearments, were for when they were absolutely, utterly, unequivocally alone.
Tom sat on the broad windowsill and looked out at the gathering dusk and the distant glimmer of the ocean. He swung one foot idly. “I swear Tish’s dog is even bigger than the last time we were here. If it wasn’t as gentle as a milk-cow, I might have to be afraid of it.”
Lucas finished with the neckcloth. Smollet helped him into his tailcoat.
“Done?” Tom asked.
“Done.”
Smollet picked up Lucas’s discarded clothes, laying them carefully over his arm. “Will there be anything else, Master Lucas?”
“No. Thank you, Smollet.”
Tom stopped swinging his foot. He waited until Smollet had left the room, and then said, “Reid says they’d like to name the twins Julius and Lucia.”
Lucas nodded.
“You all right with that?”
Lucas nodded again.
“He says they want us to be godfathers.”
“Yes. Tish told me.” And—damn it—he was teary-eyed for the second time that day.
Tom pushed away from the windowsill and hooked an arm around Lucas’s neck and hugged him. Lucas hugged him back. He thought about Julia and felt the old sadness, and then he thought about Julius and Lucia. Who would they be? Not he and Julia, that was certain. They’d be their own unique selves. And he and Tom would watch over them. They’d hold the children’s hands while they learned to walk, and pick them up when they fell, and carry them when they got tired. “It’ll be almost like being parents.”
“It will,” Tom said. “And it’ll be fun. We’ll be the best godfathers ever!”
“We will.” Lucas gave an unsteady laugh, and drew back from Tom’s embrace. He wiped his eyes and checked his neckcloth in the mirror—slightly crooked—and then turned and looked Tom over.
He tweaked Tom’s collar-points and straightened his neckcloth. Tom stood still and let him, a half-smile on his face.
Lucas smoothed Tom’s lapels over his chest. There was a small, slim, hard rectangular shape over Tom’s heart: a sketchbook. Lucas laid his hand on it, and thought of thin sheets of paper stopping musket balls. Each day that I have with him is a gift.
“I love you,” he said quietly, even though he’d already told Tom that once today.
Tom’s half-smile became a whole smile.
Lucas laughed with the sheer pleasure of being alive. He kissed Tom—quick and tender—and took Tom’s wrist and tugged him towards the door. “Come on, we’ll be late for dinner.”