He and Tom rode over to the folly once Tish had gone. They climbed the stone steps to the grassy courtyard; Tom glanced in the direction of the dungeon. “Later,” Lucas said. “Let’s get the painting finished first, in case it rains.”
Tom looked at the sky and shrugged. He set the easel up.
Lucas stood in the familiar pose and tried not to worry, but the conversation with Tish gnawed at him. Tish couldn’t know . . . could she?
The more he thought about it, the more certain he became that Tish did know—and that she’d been warning him to be careful.
It became difficult to stand still. His heartbeat was spiky with agitation. “Tom,” he blurted finally.
“What?”
“I think Tish knows. About us.”
When Tom painted, he had an expression of narrow-eyed yet slightly unfocused absorption, as if he was daydreaming and concentrating hard at the same time. That expression vanished now. “What? Nonsense!”
“She was asking about you—about us—and then she told me to be careful.”
Tom stared at him for a moment, the paintbrush held in mid-stroke, and then shook his head decisively. “No.”
“But—”
Tom put down the paintbrush and crossed to where Lucas stood. “Tish told you to be careful because she’s worried about you. Everyone’s worried about you.” He cupped the back of Lucas’s head in one hand, leaned close, kissed him lightly. “She doesn’t know. No one knows. All right?”
“But—”
“Relax, Lu. She doesn’t know.”
Lucas closed his eyes and leaned into Tom. His agitation began to unravel. Tom was correct. Tish couldn’t know.
Tom kissed him again—softly, gently, reassuringly—and stepped back. “Ten more minutes and I’ll be done. All right?”
“All right.”
Tom was good to his word. Ten minutes later he stepped back from the easel, surveyed the painting critically, and then said, “Finished. Come and have a look. Tell me what you think.”
Lucas had been watching the painting grow for days, but there was a big difference between an almost finished painting and a finished painting. He peered closely, trying to determine what Tom had done in the past hour to make Sir Gawain stand out so vividly. “It’s incredible. What did you do?”
Tom shrugged. “Mostly shadows and light.”
Lucas examined the painting while Tom cleaned his brushes and packed away his painting kit. If he hadn’t known that Sir Gawain was himself dressed in a tailcoat and breeches and with an old rapier in his hand, he would never have guessed it. This was Oscar—older and taller, but still unmistakably Oscar—wearing chainmail and a tabard and brandishing an impressive longsword.
“I don’t know how on earth you do this, Tom. It’s like magic.” And then he hesitated. “Can I pay you for it?”
Tom snorted. “Don’t be ridiculous.”
“But you’ve spent hours—”
“I enjoyed it,” Tom said. “I like spending time with you.” He hesitated, and then said, “Wellesley wants me back by the twenty-second.”
Lucas felt the smile drain off his face. “He’s recalling you from furlough?”
Tom shook his head. “Just wants me to give testimony. Shouldn’t take more than a day or two, and then I really should visit m’ brother. I’ll be gone ten days, two weeks at the most.”
Lucas stared at him in dismay. Two whole weeks without Tom.
“And then we can go down to Pendarve. Just the two of us.”
Lucas nodded, but the dismay didn’t go away, because at the end of December, Tom would leave. And he wouldn’t just be gone two weeks. He’d be gone months. Years. Maybe forever.
Tom glanced in the direction of the dungeon. His head tilted, asking a silent question.
Lucas’s dismay stuttered to a halt.
Tom stood looking at him, his head cocked to one side, his lips quirked at the corners.
Lucas’s throat grew tight. His heart thudded loudly.
“Now?” Tom said.
Lucas blushed, and nodded.
Tom laughed. “I love the way you blush, Lu.” He took Lucas’s hand and tugged him towards the dungeon. “I’d like to paint you with oils,” he said, as he led Lucas down the twisting stone staircase. “You’re wasted as Gawain.”
Coolness and shadows and privacy enveloped them. Lucas’s heart began to beat faster in anticipation. The sound of Tom’s name was loud in his head: Tom, Tom, Tom.
Tom pushed him firmly back against the wall, and stepped close, pressing the full length of his body against Lucas. “You should be Atlas,” he whispered in Lucas’s ear. “Or Samson.”
Lucas tried to find a reply to this, but his mind was blank. All he could think of was how good it felt to have Tom pressed against him like this, thigh to thigh, chest to chest.
Tom didn’t wait for a reply; he kissed Lucas, and it wasn’t a soft, gentle, reassuring kiss. It was rough and hungry. Lucas’s hips rocked involuntarily—and Tom rocked back—and Lucas didn’t wait for Tom to ask him, just said, “Hand,” hoarsely, and they both fumbled with their breeches. His whole body jolted when his cock touched Tom’s, and jolted again when Tom’s hand wrapped around them both.
They made love fast, frantically, biting each other’s mouths, panting, groaning. The rhythm of Tom’s hand was merciless and the sound of his name was deafening in Lucas’s head: Tom, Tom, Tom. His climax was short, sharp, brutal, close to pain.
Afterwards, they stood leaning into each other in the cool dimness of the dungeon, their cocks nestling quietly in Tom’s hand, and the feeling of intimacy between them was far greater than when they’d been straining together. Lucas rested his forehead on Tom’s shoulder, closed his eyes, and felt the familiar urge to cry, felt the familiar conflicting emotions: panic and joy and shame, pure happiness counterbalanced by the sense that they were hurtling towards ruin. He wanted to say, We have to stop this, and at the same time, Hold me forever.
Tom sighed, and opened his hand.
Lucas opened his mouth to say, Don’t, and managed to swallow the word. He fumbled with his drawers, with his breeches.
“Uncle Lucas? Uncle Tom?” The voice was young and female, echoing in the stone stairwell. “Are you down there?”
Tom recoiled away from Lucas as if the words had been a musket shot.
“Uncle Lucas?” This time Lucas recognized the voice: Selina, Robert’s eldest daughter. Riding boots clattered on the steps.
Tom hastily crossed to the other side of the dungeon.
Lucas shoved his shirt-tails into his breeches.
“There you are!”
Selina appeared around the bend in the stairway, her sister Emma behind her, and behind them, Emma’s governess.
Shit, shit, shit, whispered a panicked voice in Lucas’s head. Were his breeches properly fastened? His shirt fully tucked in? He didn’t dare look down and find out.
“What are you doing down here?” Selina asked brightly.
There was a thin, sharp, terrible pause, and then Tom said, “I thought it might make a good backdrop for a painting, but it’s too dark.”
Selina skipped down the last of the steps. “Do you think so?”
No, no. Go back up. Selina and Emma wouldn’t recognize the faint, musky odor of sex, but the governess might.
“Dramatic, but too gloomy,” Tom said, at the same time that Lucas blurted: “Tom finished Sir Gawain. Did you see it up there?”
“Yes,” said Selina. “It’s divine.”
“Will you paint us, too, Uncle Tom?” Emma asked shyly.
“Emma,” the governess reproved in a quiet voice.
“Maybe,” Tom said. He moved towards the staircase and made an ushering movement with his hands, like a farmer’s wife trying to herd geese. “When’s your birthday?”
To Lucas’s utter relief, they yielded to Tom’s urgings, turning and heading up the stairs again. “February,” he heard Emma say. “And Selina’s is in August.”
Tom followed on their heels.
Lucas stayed where he was, listening to the receding echo of voices and scuff of feet. His heart was pounding against his ribs, his lungs clenched as tightly as fists. Awareness of how close they’d come to disaster reverberated in his head. If Selina had come down the steps earlier, if she’d not called out . . .
What fools they’d been, reckless and careless and unmindful of danger, thinking they were safe when they weren’t.
He pressed the heels of his hands to his eyes. To be almost discovered by Robert’s children.
An unforgivable thing to do to Selina and Emma, to Robert, to Almeria. He and Tom would have deserved to be ruined.
Lucas lowered his hands and opened his eyes and took a deep breath. This stops now.
He started for the stairs—and stepped on something soft. The handkerchief Tom had used to catch their seed.
“Christ,” he said, under his breath. He picked it up—crumpled and damp and smelling of sex—and shoved it in his pocket.