“What’s this about?” Leo asked when they were upstairs in James’s room. He traced his thumb over the line that had appeared between James’s eyebrows. Not one bit did he like the haunted look that kept chasing across James’s features.
James settled his hands on Leo’s hips and leaned in with a sigh, resting his forehead against Leo’s. Some of the tension drained out of his body, as if he had been waiting for this. Leo couldn’t resist ducking his head and brushing his lips against James’s. It was barely a kiss—Leo knew that once he started kissing James, he wouldn’t want to stop, and first they needed to talk.
“Every time we turn a corner,” Leo said, his lips moving against the corner of James’s mouth, “you’re ready to jump out of your skin. Downstairs you looked like you had seen a ghost.”
James huffed out a humorless laugh and pulled away. “This place is filled with ghosts. I just didn’t expect my father to be one of them.” He reached into his inner jacket pocket and pulled out a small envelope, then tossed it on the bed.
Leo paused in loosening his tie and sat on the bed, then picked up the envelope. He raised a questioning eyebrow at James, who only gestured for Leo to go ahead. The envelope itself was old and yellowed but crisp and smooth, as if it had sat in someone’s desk for decades before being taken out and used. Across the front, James’s first and last name were written in a wavering hand. Leo slid a finger under the flap and unsealed the envelope.
Inside was a single photograph. A young man posed with two women and two little girls. The man wore an old-fashioned morning coat, a top hat, and a rather impressive mustache. The ladies wore the sort of gowns from before the Great War that made women look like they were about to pitch forward. Both the children wore pinafores and a profusion of ribbons. But Leo only spared the ladies and children a cursory glance. His attention was riveted by the gentleman, who looked so much like James that there was no questioning the family connection.
The mattress dipped as James sat by Leo’s side, close enough that their thighs touched. Leo automatically put his arm around James’s waist, still inwardly thrilling that he was allowed to do that.
“My father,” James said unnecessarily.
All Leo knew about James’s father was that he had been badly shell shocked during the Great War, was sent to an institution, and took his own life sometime thereafter. He also knew that James’s mother had remarried and left the country. This sequence of events had been recounted to Leo in a vague enough way that he was fairly certain James’s mother had run off with a man while James’s father was still alive. James had subsequently spent his childhood either at school or in the homes of various relations. “He was awfully handsome. The woman on the left is your mother?”
“Yes. The other woman is my father’s sister, my aunt Charlotte. The girls are Rose and Camilla.”
That evening, Leo had tried to detect a family resemblance between James and Lady Marchand, but beyond dark hair and a general air of patrician well-being, he didn’t see any likeness. Between James and Martha there was even less, and between James and Lilah there was none at all.
But this picture of James’s parents was an unexpected glimpse at his antecedents. It was like seeing what James could have been in different circumstances. James always had a wary air, lines around his eyes that had been earned by work and worry. This man in the photograph had none of it—not yet, at least. He flipped the photograph over and saw the date: June 1911. The man would lose that carefree quality soon enough.
“After my father was sent to the nursing home,” James said, “everybody did their best to pretend he didn’t exist. There were never any photographs of him, and certainly nobody mentioned him in my hearing. At the time I thought he had done something terribly shameful. After all, my mother ran off and nobody mentioned her because she had done something scandalous. So it all added up—my parents weren’t mentioned because they were wicked, and nobody wanted to embarrass me by reminding me of their existence.”
As far as Leo cared, it was an unspeakable luxury to be born into a family that could feed and house a child, to parents who had probably loved and wanted a child. To have that memory whisked away by relatives—however well-meaning—seemed to Leo so shortsighted as to be very nearly depraved. When a good many people hadn’t any family at all, or who had families that were actively terrible, it seemed a shocking waste.
“How old were you when your father went away?” Leo asked, squeezing James’s thigh.
“I’m not certain. I was born during the war, so I suppose he was ill my whole life. I certainly never knew the man in this photograph. When we visited, he didn’t really talk.”
Without knowing more, Leo couldn’t say whether Rupert Bellamy had been motivated by spite or by something else. This photograph that James now regarded as if it were an undetonated grenade might have been meant for James to think of his father in his prime. Or it could be a cruel reminder that James came from what the deceased regarded as bad stock.
At best, it was thoughtless to force James’s hand in coming here, confront him with an uncomfortable bit of family history, and then make him think about his cousin’s untimely death. Leo did not think very highly of this Rupert Bellamy.
“Do you have any other pictures of your father?”
“My uncle—not Rupert, but the uncle who was the vicar in Wychcomb St. Mary—had a photograph of him in uniform. But most of the family photographs wound up in my aunt’s possession, here at Blackthorn.” He tapped his aunt’s image, then sighed. “I don’t want to think about this anymore. How was your trip?”
He said trip as if Leo had been on holiday. Leo forced a smile. “It was uneventful.”
“Likely story.”
“It was fine,” Leo insisted.
“Leo. You don’t have to give me details. But you needn’t lie to me, all right?”
Well, of course Leo needed to lie to James. Some of the truth was classified and the rest was unsavory. And while James knew, in broad terms, what kind of work Leo did, hearing the details might make him finally realize exactly what kind of person Leo was. Perhaps he had allowed some of his dismay to show on his face, because James leaned over and kissed his temple, of all things.
“I know you aren’t going to tell me the unvarnished truth, you silly man, but I want you to know that you can tell me whatever you want.”
And that only made things worse. It was as if James didn’t understand that he had invited into his bed—his home, his life—a person who was the embodiment of the things that woke him up in the night.
“Of course,” Leo said, and squeezed James’s knee.
“You look exhausted. I can’t believe you drove all the way here in that state. You didn’t even bring any luggage.”
“I knew you’d have packed extra,” Leo said absently, and James gave him a strange, soft look.
James slid to the floor, kneeling at Leo’s feet to pull off his shoes. “Come now, let’s get you undressed. Do you need a bath?”
“I showered at your house. Had to get rid of the blood.” James shot him an alarmed look. “Not my blood,” Leo said reassuringly. Christ, he had to stop talking.
“Good,” said James, and set about taking Leo’s clothes off, hanging each item carefully in the wardrobe. This was not a seductive undressing, and Leo needed to fix that immediately.
He grabbed James by the tie and watched in satisfaction as James realized what Leo meant to do. James gave him a look that was equal parts amusement and affection.
“But you’re exhausted,” James protested.
“Mm-hmm,” Leo agreed, and reeled James in for a kiss.