Leo woke with the depressing awareness that he was someplace new, which was quickly chased away by the discovery that James was beside him.
He reached over James’s still-sleeping body to fumble on the bedside table for the wristwatch he knew would be there, in the same way that he knew James’s toothbrush would be on the left side of the sink and that he wouldn’t eat a bite of breakfast until he had downed an entire cup of tea and got his hands on that morning’s newspaper. James did things a certain way, sometimes without even realizing he was doing so. Something in his mind was soothed by the knowledge that his watches and toothbrushes and cups of tea stayed in their proper places.
It was the sort of behavioral tic that in anyone else Leo might have found silly, but he felt fiercely defensive of James’s carefully ordered world. He would cheerfully shoot anyone who mislaid James’s toothbrush, and was only stopped by the consideration that this would displease James and also cause a great deal of annoyance for both of them.
As he shifted on the bed, he saw that a pillow and a quilt had been artfully arranged on the sofa so as to make it look as if someone had slept there. He also saw that James was buttoned up to the chin in his favorite pajamas.
According to the watch, it was half past eight, which meant he had managed a respectable eight or so hours of sleep. A few years ago, this would have left him feeling fresh as a daisy, regardless of how many nights of sleep he had missed. But now he could easily duck beneath the covers and achieve another eight hours.
Careful not to wake James, he replaced the watch, and in doing so paid attention to the way the muscles on one side of his body seemed composed entirely of bruises.
He was, by his best estimate, nearing thirty years old. And if this was how his body reacted to being in his late twenties, he couldn’t imagine how bad things would be in a decade. There were good reasons hardly any field agents were over thirty-five. Granted, few agents survived long enough to discover what kind of toll the job would take on an aging body, but that was not a comforting thought. A year ago, he would have determined to push past whatever limits his body dared to impose on him. But a year ago he had worked for a man he trusted rather than a faceless and slightly bureaucratic MI6.
A year ago he hadn’t had James.
His mind and his body were in complete agreement that it was time to quit. But then what would he do? He wasn’t fit for any line of honest work, and while he had a bit put aside for a rainy day, it wasn’t enough to spend the rest of his life as a man of leisure. Leo was too intimately acquainted with poverty to take lightly the prospect of not having work.
He needed to quit, but first he needed to sort out the next few decades of his life. From this end, thirty seemed terribly young, with too much blank space stretching out before him.
He turned his head to look at James. He could, he supposed, tell James all about these doubts that beset him. But that would only result in James offering him everything from a home to money to promises of devotion. The thought made Leo squeamish; it would be churlish to take advantage of James any more than he already had. It was bad enough that he had effectively made James’s home his own during the time he spent in England. It was bad enough that he was letting James—well, love him. There was really no question that James loved him; the fish in the sea and all the mute beasts had that one figured out, and so did Leo. Leo loved him back, which was entirely immaterial.
But the fact remained that James was everything lovely and Leo was quite content to be allowed to exist as one of the satellites orbiting James Sommers, to be allowed to share his meals and his bed, to have James’s light shine in some limited way on Leo’s shadows.
“I can hear you ruminating,” James said groggily, rolling over and dropping an arm across Leo’s chest. “Rude.” He blindly groped for the watch, found it exactly where he expected it to be, and examined it.
“I wonder if we missed breakfast,” Leo mused.
“I wonder if there will even be any breakfast.” He stretched and rolled to face Leo. “Yesterday’s tea was half a packet of digestive biscuits. Evidently, Mrs. Carrow only does supper.”
There was a broad range of possibility between a packet of digestive biscuits and a hot meal prepared by one’s cook, and Leo guessed that Martha Dauntsey knew it and had her reasons for the packet of biscuits. “I met Mrs. Carrow last night when I used the telephone in the lodge to make my sham call to my sham sister. Will Carrow is a mechanic who was stationed at a nearby airfield during the war and now is saving up money to buy the garage in town.”
“I’m surprised he didn’t offer to fix your carburetor straight away.”
“Oh, he did, but you see, I found the entire experience of being in a breakdown very alarming and needed strong drink and nourishing food.”
James snorted.
“Mrs. Carrow is an artist who makes a living selling watercolors to tourists—seagulls and sailboats and fishermen’s cottages, that sort of thing—but the other stuff she had in the lodge was—” Leo hesitated. He didn’t know whether art was good or bad, but he knew the difference between tourist tat and something else. “I think it might be something special. In any event, she came to live here after getting bombed out of her lodgings in London and before that had never been in service. Neither of them had. They live in the lodge free of rent in exchange for light work, and viewed your uncle as a sort of pet they were glad to look after.”
“I’d like to know why in heaven’s name my uncle didn’t spring for proper servants. I know it was hard to find help during the war, and it might be even harder now, but surely he could have done something. And why didn’t he have the roof repaired or the windows fixed? And why isn’t there a single fire—electric or otherwise—to be had in this entire house?” As if to demonstrate the need, he burrowed closer to Leo, bringing the blanket tightly around them.
Leo thought his heart might skip a beat. He ought to be used to this by now. They had spent enough nights together, enough mornings together, that it was no longer practical to count them (it was thirty-two). Surely that was enough time for any reasonable person to get used to being…cuddled, or whatever this was. Leo doubted he had ever been cuddled in his life before he met James. He certainly hadn’t known that he wanted any such thing. When James touched him like this, he felt—Christ, he felt safe. And it didn’t make any sense. Leo’s career—hell, his life—depended on his ability to assess danger and seek safety, and he knew perfectly well that there was no possible peril that James could protect him from with a blanket and a strong forearm.
Leo swallowed and tried to collect himself. “I’d like to know how much was in those bank accounts that are mentioned in the will. I’d like a chance to talk with Lady Marchand, because if anyone knows what her father was thinking, it ought to be her.”
“She didn’t seem upset when Mr. Trevelyan read the will. Surprised, and maybe slightly offended, but not distressed.”
“Is her husband so wealthy that she wouldn’t notice extra money and an entire extra house?”
“I don’t think Blackthorn is worth much to anyone except Martha, and that’s only because she hasn’t anywhere else to go, as far as I can tell. As for Sir Anthony, he’s a Harley Street doctor, so he isn’t hurting for money.” There was a tightness in James’s voice that made Leo pay attention.
“You don’t like him,” Leo observed. He pushed some hair off James’s forehead.
“Is it that obvious?” James sighed.
It certainly was, which in itself was interesting. James was by no means an accomplished liar, but his manners were unexceptionable; he knew how to deliver whatever falsehoods courtesy required. Last night, though, Leo had noticed James’s jaw clench whenever Sir Anthony spoke.
“Why don’t you like him?”
James let out a breath and turned his attention to the ceiling. “I went to see him about my battle fatigue or shell shock or whatever you’d like to call it. He’s the only psychiatrist whose name I knew, and he’s a sort of relation, so I thought it made sense. But I forgot that he attended my father. I’m not sure I had even known, to be honest, considering how young I was at the time.”
Leo could imagine that James, nerves shattered and future in ruins, might wish he had a family, and therefore might look for help to someone he thought of as a relation, however old and remote the connection. “What did he say to you?”
“He said that it was no surprise that I was unbalanced after the war, considering how my father reacted. He also said that I ought to go to a nursing home indefinitely, because I have what he called a family history of mental disturbance. He said that two close family members took their own lives and he thought—well, he thought I needed constant supervision.”
Leo took a deep breath and let it out through his nose. “Did you?”
“Pardon?”
“Did you need—it’s none of my business, but were you thinking of—”
“No, no. It wasn’t like that. When I got home from France, I was pretty much the way I am now, only more so.”
Leo nodded. James startled easily and seemed to get lost in memories of the war when something happened to remind him of those times. He was hardly the only person in England with that set of symptoms, and unless there was a part of the story that James was leaving out, it was perhaps excessive for Marchand to suggest that James needed to be locked up as a suicide risk.
And yet, Marchand may have been erring on the side of caution. If Marchand had been James’s father’s doctor, he might not want to lose another Sommers. Leo understood the urge to keep James safe. But still—the doctor had obviously disturbed James.
“I’m sorry that happened,” Leo said, judging that James did not now or possibly ever need to hear a defense of his cousin’s husband.
“I felt like he was putting ideas in my head,” James said. “I hadn’t wanted to do away with myself and then he made it seem inevitable. As if I was doomed by a family curse.”
That brought Leo up short. “He can go get fucked. I’ll go tell him so myself, if you don’t mind.”
“Maybe wait until we’re ready to leave,” James said, his cheeks flushing.
Leo loved that James, however civilized he was, liked the reminder that Leo was ready to be very uncivilized indeed on his behalf.
James was silent for a moment. “I ought to be more generous about Sir Anthony. It’s awful to lose a patient, and to have lost my father and then Rose in quick succession must have been awful.”
Something about James’s phrasing didn’t sound right. “Was Rose Sir Anthony’s patient?”
James frowned. “It’s funny you ask. No. I don’t think so, at least. You know, he used to tell Rose that she needed a doctor. At the time I assumed she had a headache or an upset stomach or something, because at the time I always had one or the other.” He paused, and Leo wondered if it was dawning on James that his childhood stomachaches and headaches might have been part and parcel of the anxieties that troubled him now. “But maybe Sir Anthony had noticed that Rose…wasn’t doing very well. Even if Rose wasn’t his patient, he must have felt responsible. No wonder he was peculiar during my consultation.”
Leo didn’t point out that James’s conclusion only made sense if Sir Anthony Marchand really believed that Rose Bellamy had taken her own life. Leo was certain that someone in this house either shared Rupert Bellamy’s suspicions or knew more than they were letting on, and that person might well be Marchand.
“We ought to get out of bed,” Leo said. “But first, will you tell me what you think happened to your cousin?”
James was silent for a long moment. “I don’t know. One morning Rose simply wasn’t there, and the house was in an uproar looking for her. And then my uncle—not Rupert, but Reverend Sommers—drove down from Wychcomb St. Mary to take me back to the vicarage. Later on, people said that Rose had a swimming accident, but—” He paused. “I tried not to think about it. And nobody talked about it, which made it all the easier not to think about.”
Leo nodded, taking in this information. There was a lot James wasn’t saying. What did he mean by an uproar? Who was there that day? Who summoned Reverend Sommers to take James away, and why? Who were the people who said Rose had a swimming accident? James might not know the answer to any of these questions, but he knew more than he thought. People always did. And Leo was good at weaseling his way into the corners of people’s minds.
He shouldn’t do that. There was no need to ferret out the Bellamy family secrets. This situation called for sympathy, not espionage. He ought to—pat James’s hand, perhaps? Kiss his forehead? He had no clue. He could manage that sort of thing when he was playing a role for a job, but he was trying to be honest—or something resembling honest—with James.
“I wonder if nobody at all talks about her,” James went on. “Based on what Lilah said, they don’t. And that seems unfair, almost. Unfair to her memory, I suppose. People deserve to be remembered.”
Leo clenched his fist. Graveyards were filled with the forgotten. People slipped out of memory as easily as a knife through butter. But not for James. Not for people like James.
“All right,” Leo said. “I’ll see what I can do.”
James raised his eyebrows. “I didn’t mean for you to—”
“Let me,” Leo said, and forestalled any protest with a kiss. He didn’t have much to offer James, but ferreting out secrets was something he could do.