Tom sat on the floor, gathering the strength to stand. At least it was a clean floor. He felt half-drunk, a little dazed. Pleasure still reverberated in his bones, like a bell long after it had been struck. Who would have thought Lucas could make love like that? Fierce and dominant.
It’s going to work between us. He knew it with certainty. Lucas had almost initiated the sex, and he’d certainly controlled what they’d done. It wouldn’t be too many days before he was asking for what he wanted, instead of diffidently suggesting card games.
He turned his head and looked at Lucas, sitting on the floor alongside him, magnificent in his nudity. He reached over and hooked an arm around Lucas’s neck, pulled him close, kissed him high on the cheek. “I love you.”
Lucas didn’t say the words back to him. He tensed, a flinch, almost a recoil.
And just like that, Tom’s sense of half-drunk pleasure was gone. Hurt and anger came rushing in to take its place. He released Lucas and climbed stiffly to his feet.
He kept his head turned away from Lucas, found his handkerchief, wiped his chest clean, started dressing. His ribcage was tight and his movements jerky and his eyes stung and he was so angry with Lucas, angry with him for having sex like that—unbridled and passionate on the floor—and then rejecting him. Because that’s what that stiffening had been: a rejection. It had been Lucas saying I don’t want your love.
Lucas stood and began dressing, too, silently.
Drawers, stockings, breeches. Shirt, waistcoat, neckcloth. Tom sat to pull on his boots, stood to shrug into his tailcoat, and still neither of them had spoken. The air in the bedchamber was brittle. They both knew he was angry, and they both knew why.
Tom shoved his gloves in his pocket, picked up his hat, and crossed to the door. The key made a quiet snick as he turned it.
“Tom?”
Tom halted, and squeezed his eyes shut for a moment, and blew out a short, sharp breath, and turned to face Lucas. “What?”
Lucas hadn’t put on his boots or his tailcoat. He stood in stockinged feet, holding a piece of paper in both hands, and he was six foot two and built like a prizefighter, and yet somehow he managed to look uncertain and shy and awkward and unhappy.
“What?” Tom said again.
Lucas turned the paper over in his hands, hesitated, and then laid it on the table, pushing it towards Tom. “This is for you.”
Whatever it was that Lucas had laid on the table was an apology; that was blindingly clear. Everything about Lucas was apologetic—the angle of his head, the set of his shoulders, even the way his hand pushed the paper—and it was clearest of all in Lucas’s voice. He’d said “This is for you,” but underneath that, clearly audible, was I’m sorry I upset you.
Tom stayed where he was for several seconds, wrestling with his anger, with his hurt, and then he pressed his lips together and walked back to the table. “What is it?” He put down the hat, picked up the paper—and froze.
For a moment his eyes refused to believe what they saw. It was a mistake. It had to be a mistake. He’d misread it. It didn’t say—couldn’t possibly say—what it did.
He read it three times. Four times. And each time it said the same thing.
Thirty thousand pounds. Thirty thousand pounds.
His brain stuttered to a halt for several seconds—and then leapt into action, galloping in several directions at once. Thirty thousand pounds. He could sell out. He could give half to Daniel, more than half—two thirds—and he’d still have a small fortune. He could afford to paint in oils. He could buy a curricle. Hell, he could buy a house.
He looked at Lucas, now watching him warily, and then back down at the bank draft.
He wanted it. God, he wanted it.
His heart was beating fast, and his fingers trembled slightly, and he felt a little light-headed—and beneath those things, was hot, bitter rage.
Tom put the bank draft carefully back on the table. “I told you I don’t want char—”
“It’s not charity. It’s not my money. It’s Julia’s.”
Tom stood with his mouth half-open while his rage collapsed inwards on itself and the rest of his sentence congealed on his tongue. Julia’s money.
“It was Robert’s idea. Not mine. But he asked me about it. He wanted to know what Julia would have thought.”
Tom closed his mouth.
“I told him she’d want you to have it. Because I know she would.”
Tom swallowed. Christ. Thirty thousand pounds. He picked the bank draft up again. His fingers trembled more strongly than they had before.
“You can sell out,” Lucas said, his voice diffident, as if afraid of giving offense.
Tom glanced at him. “You want me to?”
Lucas hesitated, and then said, “It’s safer.”
Safer. That wasn’t what he’d wanted Lucas to say. He wanted him to say Yes, please, because I love you and I can’t be without you. Which was stupid, because Lucas would never say that. Lucas would rather cut out his tongue than say that.
He looked at the bank draft. Julia’s money. Robert’s idea. And then he looked at Lucas standing awkwardly on the other side of the table. “You’d prefer it if I didn’t sell out, wouldn’t you?”
Lucas hesitated again. “No.”
The hesitation lasted less than a second, but it hurt even more than the flinch had. Tom’s anger flamed to life again. “You’d prefer it if I went away and never came back, wouldn’t you? If we never did that again.” He gestured at the bed, at the floor. “Wouldn’t you?”
Again, Lucas hesitated.
“Fuck you,” Tom said fiercely. “And fuck your money.” He threw the bank draft down on the table, wrenched the door open, and flung himself out into the corridor.
He went down the stairs fast, so angry he was crying. Or maybe the tears weren’t from anger, maybe they were because Lucas had hesitated, and that had been like a kick in the chest and it damned well hurt.