Jonah was exhausted and fairly drunk by the time he’d told the story a half dozen times to various groups of people and accepted more drinks than he’d ever consumed in one sitting. He needed the alcohol to steady his nerves, he told himself. But the truth was, it felt good to have his fellow showmen stand him one drink after another and welcome him completely into their company for perhaps the first time. If anyone wondered why he’d been out in the paddock at that time of evening or guessed he’d been looking for Rafe, they gave no indication of it.
“Jamie’s run off, I guess,” Mindy announced as she joined the group sitting in the chow tent. “Looks like she ran straight to her wagon and grabbed a few of her things while the rest of us were at the paddock.”
“How can you tell? Her place is always a mess,” Ellen Fisher said.
“Her favorite dog, Toodles, is missing.”
“Some of us should go after her, bring her back and make her pay for what she’s done.” Henry rose from the table, ready to take action, but he swayed on his feet. He’d started drinking long before Jonah had.
Claudia waved him down. “Sit. Let the girl be. She’s going to be miserable enough out there on her own. What do you want to do? Run her out of town once we catch her again? Our world’s a small one, and I, for one, am going to tell everyone we meet what she’s done to us. Orcully might hire her, but no one else ever will.”
Jonah glanced at the large woman and at Dimitri, stuck to her side like a burr. Easy for her to be charitable about snotty Miss Jamie now, because Claudia had the prize Jamie had been too blind and arrogant to claim—Dimitri’s considerable devotion had been transferred to her.
“What about Treanor?” Fisher bellowed, determined to make someone pay for their woes.
“Locked in Lance’s cage till we decide what’s to be done with him,” Parinsky answered. “What do you think, Grimstone?”
Jonah moved his bleary gaze slowly over to the man who made his head spin more than the alcohol did. For a man who’d had a gun held on him and had been in a fistfight with his captor, Rafe managed to look as cool and unruffled as a well-groomed cat.
“’Tis not for me to say. Mindy?” Rafe turned his attention to the new owner of the carnival, thus reminding everyone else who was now in charge.
“We handle our own, so I won’t turn him in to the locals. Anyway, it’d be his word against ours about everything that happened. Other than a few broken or stolen items, the troubles were too small to earn tar and feathers.” She leaned against the table and stared down at her hands. “But if he poisoned Lancelot…” She shrugged. “That we’ll never know.”
It was Dimitri’s turn to rise from his seat. He rested the hairy knuckles of his ham-size fists on the table and leaned on them. “I’ll take care of him. No one else need have a hand in it. I’ll take him out and deal with him, then send him on his way with his lesson learned.”
No one in the tent had any doubts about how the strongman would deal with Treanor. Dimitri’s shoulder muscles seemed to ripple in anticipation beneath the stretched fabric of his shirt.
Mindy nodded decisively. “Good. Go ahead.”
Jonah swallowed, a bit awestruck by the brutal repayment, the eye-for-an-eye judgment of the carnival code. No fines or jail cells here. Merely a sound pummeling, then send the man on his way. He flashed back to the night he’d received a similar judgment and punishment from his cousins.
All of a sudden, he was too tired to keep his head up, so he let his chin drop to his chest and closed his eyes.
“Aw, looky here. Talbot’s done in just from a thimbleful of whiskey.” Jonah heard Fisher laugh and then felt strong arms lift him from his seat.
“Come on. Time for a rest.” Parinsky of all people spoke near his ear. “Your ribs aren’t broken, but you landed hard, and you’re going to be pretty sore come morning.”
No, not you, Jonah wanted to say. I want Rafe to put me to bed. He stumbled along with his arm slung over the older man’s shoulders. And then somehow he was inside Sam’s trailer and tumbling onto that blue-striped mattress.
Parinsky pulled off his shoes and stood over him, hands on hips. “Pathetic. You really can’t hold your liquor, but you proved more useful than I gave you credit for, boy.”
“Thank you.” Jonah covered his eyes with an arm and willed the trailer to stop spinning. He wasn’t so very drunk, he decided. Exhaustion was in there too—his mind and body, exhausted. He heard footsteps, the door closing, and then silence. His mind shifted, darting restlessly from one thought to another but unable to settle on any of them. He relived the moments of terror seeing Treanor’s pistol pointed at Rafe and the feeling of helplessness before he’d taken it into his head to ride a horse into the middle of the situation. Hardly heroic, since he’d landed flat on his face, but at least it had provided Rafe with an opportunity to turn the tables on his attacker.
He recalled Rafe’s face hovering over him, his brief embrace, but after that Rafe hadn’t given him another moment. He’d told what had happened then stayed in the background while the others congratulated Jonah on saving the day. Jonah reflected that a simple thank-you would have been nice. All the cautious distance wasn’t important now that Rafe was leaving. He’d risk a heck of a lot to feel Rafe’s touch one more time.
Perhaps he could have taken advantage of the moment. Half-awake, mostly drunk, he wondered if he could have whispered a demand for a kiss of gratitude. The thought of asking Rafe for a kiss in the crowd of well-wishers made him smile—or grimace.
The sound of the door opening made Jonah raise his heavy eyelids and blink away the blurriness to focus on the figure who had entered the room. His heart soared—or maybe it was his uneasy stomach heaving—as the beloved dark-garbed shape strode across the floor toward him.
Rafe sat on the edge of the bed, his weight drawing Jonah toward him, and rested a hand against the side of Jonah’s face. “Are you all right?” he asked as he had after turning Jonah over earlier. “Not in too much pain?”
“Not too much. Though I’d be better if everything would hold still.” Jonah belched loud and deep, and his stomach calmed a little.
Rafe grinned and stroked his cheek. “Virgin stomach. I know a concoction that will help with that and ensure you don’t have a big head tomorrow.”
He started to rise, but Jonah grabbed his hand and pulled him back down. “Not now. Stay here with me for a little while.”
Rafe sank back down, and his warm hip pressed against Jonah’s as a comforting hand rested on Jonah’s chest. His shining, dark eyes were two deep wells Jonah felt himself tumbling into.
“You may have saved my life tonight. Thank you.” The low voice was a caress as surely as the palm that patted his chest. “Treanor was like a cornered rat. I don’t think he ever meant to get in so deep. The Orcully Brothers promised him and Jamie prime slots in their show and a hefty paycheck if they’d help undermine our show enough to make me sell out. But I don’t think Jack ever meant to do physical harm to anybody until Jamie spilled everything to me. He knew I’d reveal them to Mindy. Whether he really would’ve brought himself to shoot me dead and hide the body…well, I find that hard to believe.”
“People can do some extreme things to hide the truth if they’re scared enough.” Jonah covered the long-fingered hand on his chest and felt the bumps of Rafe’s knuckles and the twisted silver ring he wore on one finger.
“True enough.” Rafe was silent for several moments, and Jonah was content to listen to him breathe. “Yes. Fear is a ridiculous thing, isn’t it? I want to tell you something. Because… I suppose because I think I owe you the truth. It might make it easier for us to say good-bye if you know the truth.”
“Us to say goodbye,” he’d said. Good to know it wasn’t easy for Rafe either.
“Go ahead,” Jonah urged. His muzzy head cleared as he realized Rafe was finally going to reveal something important about himself.
“The reason I left home… A woman died because of my brother. He claimed it was an accident, that he didn’t mean to do it. But it happened, and he covered it up.” Another long silence filled the air between them. Rafe stretched out on the mattress next to him. “I couldn’t bring myself to betray him nor support him, so I simply left.” Another pause. “I ran away.”
Jonah wanted to touch him, but didn’t dare interrupt the flow.
“I’ve been running for almost ten years.”
Jonah forgot his uncertain stomach—even his need for a kiss. He dragged himself up to prop his head on an elbow. “Tell me,” he whispered. “All of it, Rafe. You and I both deserve trust.” He wasn’t sure what he meant, but he could see Rafe’s slow nod.
“Yes. Yes we do. But it’s ugly, my friend.”
Jonah, still feeling drunk, had to laugh. “Come on. You’re talking to the man who lived through the episode of Reverend Burns. I dare you to dredge up something as ugly as that.”
Rafe ran his fingers up along Jonah’s arm, up to his cheek, and pushed a lock of hair from his forehead, a gesture of fondness. Jonah closed his eyes tight. God, he’d missed pure affection. The sex was wonderful, but this was more important. Perhaps it was just as well Rafe was heading off to Jolly Old England. He wasn’t sure he could be near Rafe if he withheld the warmth of his good regard. He sank back down the mattress, wishing he could drape himself across Rafe’s body instead, but if he did that, talk would end.
“I’ll tell you, and you decide,” Rafe said. He was silent for another long moment, then began haltingly. “I was confused back then. Unsure of who I was. You know.”
Jonah supposed he meant he’d struggled with his preference for men. He recalled his own confusion as he’d waited in vain for the true adult sort of attraction to grow inside his heart—the one for women. He’d stopped hoping for that change when he’d met Burns.
Rafe seemed to be waiting for a response. Maybe he thought Jonah had fallen asleep, so Jonah nodded.
“We were holding a house party at our country estate that perhaps had gone on too long—a fortnight, I think. We held lively parties, events that demure debutantes wouldn’t attend, but nothing entirely scandalous. My mother enjoyed that—dancing, flirting—hell, we all loved it. But she knew better than to forfeit our family’s influence in society.”
A family with power? He’d known that, of course, but for the first time it occurred to Jonah that perhaps that background explained how Rafe could easily guide the carnival and his aura of brooking no nonsense. A man of vast influence was beyond Jonah’s experience, which extended as far as his father’s reach with the church’s flock. He felt as if he came from a very small, sheltered world, but he tended to feel that way around Rafe, except when it came to sexual matters.
Then Jonah was the master, at least occasionally. He smiled hazily, thinking of their sweet bouts of making love. That was what they did. Perhaps even stubborn Rafe knew the name for it, making love. But he could feel Rafe’s tension as he waited to tell his tale, the very one he’d been waiting to hear.
“Go on,” he prompted. “Your family’s party in the country.” His stomach tightened because he knew the story of a woman’s death, and Rafe’s banishment would not be a pretty one. Jonah suddenly felt less drunk.
Rafe sighed. “After one long night, I’d had too much to drink and was walking it off, just strolling through the gardens down to the lake. It was about five in the morning, more than an hour before dawn.”
He rolled onto his back and pushed his palms into his eyes as if trying to banish an old vision. “I went down to the lake, and that’s where I saw Edward, my brother, crouched by the shore. I knew him at once but couldn’t see what he was doing because there was only one lantern, and it was turned low. But then I saw. He was tying bricks to a corpse, a lovely girl. She was one of our guests, a vivacious, marriage-minded girl who had her eye on Edward. He had rope and bricks and had weighed down her legs, her arms. He was working on her neck when I stumbled over him. Almost literally.”
Jonah inhaled sharply but didn’t speak.
“He told me her death was accidental. She’d suffocated during love play, he swore. She’d gotten too loud in her passion, and he’d covered her mouth to stop them from being discovered. But he was in midfuck and didn’t notice he’d covered her mouth and nose too long. That was what he’d said, and I believed him.”
He gave a low, unpleasant laugh. “I should have run back to the house and awakened the household. I should have told her parents what had happened. If I’d known, if only I’d been thinking. But I loved Edward, you see. He was the jolly big brother. Everyone loved him because he was a man of charm, intelligence. Edward was always good-humored. He accepted me as I was. I’d thought of him as a sweet blessing in my life. Our mother was all of that without the warmth, you see. I understood I had to protect him.” He shook his head, and his hair sighed against the pillow.
“I helped him with her body that morning. And then I pretended to help with the search for Miss Thornton that began hours later, after her maid and mother discovered her missing.” He fell silent.
Jonah moved closer and rested his head on Rafe’s chest. He wrapped an arm around Rafe protectively, but he wasn’t going to let the story end there, because he could feel the stiff tension of the body under his arm and head. “That isn’t the worst, is it,” Jonah said.
“No, it isn’t,” Rafe agreed. For a brief moment he laid a hand on the side of Jonah’s head, a gentle weight. “Over the next several days the hunt went on, and I watched my brother. His good humor never abated. He was as easy and charming as ever. Even when we were alone, if I should try to speak, he would hold up a hand and tell me ‘It’s over, Rafe. Nothing to be done, eh? Bad, sad affair, but over.’ I grew to understand something I’d probably known but had refused to admit to myself. The brother I loved—worshipped even—was a captivating, witty shell of a man. He had no soul. He hid his condition better than our mother did, but they were two of a kind.”
His breath grew faster, as if he was forcing himself to keep talking. “Watching Miss Thornton’s grieving, confused family, listening to the ugly rumors that she’d fled her parents to meet a mysterious lover, I couldn’t stand it any longer. I couldn’t stay silent. I knew Edward had told my mother, and so I insisted on meeting with them both two days after that…that time at the lake. I told them we had to somehow let her family know where her body lay. Yes, there’d be a scandal because she’d obviously been hidden. I swore I wouldn’t reveal what I’d seen the early morning hours after the party; I’d stay silent about what my brother had done. Hell, I’d helped him, so I was guilty too.”
He gave a tiny, wordless grunt. Jonah shifted, and by the dim light of the moon, he could see Rafe had squeezed his eyes shut. Trying to remember or block the memories? In a minute Rafe continued. “My mother cried as I tried to convince them, but it wasn’t over the death of an innocent girl. She thought of Miss Thornton as nothing more than a nuisance. Her tears were anger because she thought I was the worst sort of turncoat, a betrayer of the family name. The three of us quarreled. I left the family estate. I said I’d never return, and my brother and mother agreed that would be best.”
He fell quiet, though his breathing was ragged. Jonah asked, “Did you ever tell the authorities?”
“Yes, about where they might find her. I wrote a letter before I fled to America. At the same time I sent a letter to my brother warning him that I’d written an anonymous note to the local magistrate about where Miss Thornton might be found.”
“Did you tell the magistrate it was your brother who killed her? Wait, no.” Jonah touched Rafe’s lips to stop him from answering and to feel the breath warm his fingertips. “I shouldn’t have asked. You’d promised your mother you wouldn’t reveal your brother’s role.”
“Yes.”
“I’ll bet you don’t make many promises, and the ones you make, you keep.” Usually.
“I didn’t tell anyone about Edward. You’re the first.”
Under his pain for Rafe, Jonah felt a glow of satisfaction.
Rafe said, “In fact, I’d supposed everyone would think I was the guilty party. The woman dies, the younger son flees. But no one was implicated. Somehow my family managed to cover up the fact of murder, and even more astonishingly, the way my brother hid the body.”
Jonah frowned. “How could he manage that?”
“I think he himself dived into the lake, dragged her out, and got rid of the evidence. He is—was a strong man, Edward. And perhaps he paid off anyone who might have noticed unusual marks on her wrists, legs, or neck. I don’t know how he managed it. My family has never been afraid to use its considerable resources to protect itself.” The scorn in his voice was even stronger than his obvious pain. “At any rate, the cause of her death was deemed an accident. The story was that Miss Thornton had been imbibing champagne and wasn’t used to the stuff. A late night walk, a stumble into the lake. That sort of rot.”
“I’m so sorry,” Jonah said and wished he could think of something else—something useful—to say.
Rafe didn’t appear to notice he’d spoken. “Once that verdict of accidental death was delivered, my mother tracked me down and begged me to return home. The unpleasantness—she blamed me for that, told me it had started with that note to the police—was over and all was forgiven.” He laughed again. “I couldn’t return. I never intended to go back. But now I must.”
“Do you ever regret leaving?”
“No. I do have some regrets, though. In New York a few years back, I happened across an article in a British paper about the dangers of horses. It mentioned a housemaid found dead, apparently from a horse’s kick. She was killed in our stables. Was it a horse or my brother? I’ll never be sure, but I knew I should have said more.” He drew in a shuddering sigh. “I should have told someone in England the whole story—our family lawyer, perhaps—so a watch could be kept on Edward. But here is the rest of it, the rest of the unpleasant truth. When that man in the Stetson appeared and told me my brother was dead, do you know what my strongest response was?”
Jonah shook his head.
“I was struck with grief. You’d think that with all I knew about him, I’d be relieved to know he was gone. But hell, no; I missed him. That sad excuse of a man, a murderer, and I missed him. It is pathetic, eh?”
He shook. It took Jonah, stupefied by drink and the story, almost a minute to understand that Rafe was sobbing. He wrapped his arms even tighter around Rafe and murmured comforting words, nonsensical phrases about how love was never wrong, about how there could be no right answer in such a terrible situation, about how God understood.
This couldn’t be what had made Rafe determined to treat their affection as trivial, could it? It seemed absurd to Jonah to think that the burden of this fearful story kept Rafe from allowing anyone close, but perhaps that was the reason he had refused to love. Perhaps telling the tale would break the spell. For the first time, he murmured the words aloud. “I love you, Rafe.”
But the other’s response was to stiffen even more in his arms.
“No. You don’t understand,” Rafe said. “In my family, we-we don’t truly love. We can’t. There’s only selfishness.” He tried to push him off, but Jonah held on like a limpet and continued the soothing words. Now he didn’t speak of his own love, but told Rafe about what a good man he was, described his loyalty, his friendship. “You are a fine person, Rafe,” he said for the hundredth time, then stopped because Rafe spoke again.
His voice was indistinct because of the sobs racking him and because his head was pressed to Jonah’s shoulder. “We—my family… I love the glitter and show, but not real life. I can’t face real life.”
Jonah wanted to cry too and try to comfort him with another barrage of reassuring words. But Rafe’s tears still flowed, and his despair didn’t abate. Jonah thought of Mindy and realized she’d be the best person to imitate.
“Would you shut your yap?” Jonah said. “Grimstone—or whatever your name is—do you honestly think what happened here with us, with Sam, with even poor Lancelot, wasn’t real? You might have only been part of a carnival, but would you ever be moron enough to call Claudia an unreal woman? Hell no. Everything here is as real as pain or love, you ass.”
Rafe’s sobs under his shoulder became half laughter. “Oh Jonah, do you know that was a pitch-perfect imitation of Mindy? God, I don’t know what I will do without you.”
“Huh,” Jonah said, but supposed this moment wasn’t the time to point out that he didn’t have to do without him. He rolled off Rafe’s body when he understood the storm had ended. He tried to move away, but Rafe grunted and hauled him close. “No. Stay.”
Jonah didn’t remind him it was his bed.
He no longer felt drunk, but the giddiness remained. He stroked Rafe’s hair and listened to his breath grow slow and deep as he fell asleep. Once Rafe was snoring softly, he burrowed even closer. Never mind the heat of the late August night. He needed to feel and smell as much of Rafe as he could.
He’d been given a gift with that confession—evidence of Rafe’s complete trust. Though he’d stopped believing this newfound closeness meant they had a future together, he’d accept the gift gratefully. Tomorrow he could press for more. Should Rafe disappear from his life, certainly he’d curse him soundly. But he vowed he would never disparage tonight’s closeness, no matter how temporary, by calling it an illusion. That was Rafe’s flaw, not his.
Jonah sighed and wished he could wake Rafe. He wanted to do more than hold him. He longed for a kiss, and there were so many more questions. What sort of nobility was he? What would he do with his days—and nights—once he returned to England? Would he ever be part of a show again? Rafe was a showman to his core. Could he simply banish that part of himself?
Of course he could, but what a sad reflection on the world that he’d have to give up passion and love to go into that family of…influence.
Jonah felt sorry for himself at the moment, because chances were he’d soon never see Rafe again. But he felt sorrier for Rafe, who’d leave the life he loved and that suited him to return to the empty heart of his family. And worst of all, he seemed convinced that emptiness dwelled in his own heart. He hadn’t said the word “love” back to Jonah, but Jonah didn’t need it for now. He understood.
He didn’t remember falling asleep.
When he woke, his mouth and stomach felt as if he’d dug up and swallowed poor old Lancelot. His spirits dived lower because, even before he reached for Rafe, he knew he was gone. The wagon felt entirely abandoned, empty of life.
Jonah hauled himself up and went to the door. The sun pounded down mercilessly, but he could squint into it and see the horses grazing. Chaucer was gone.
A “Signortori” daughter was doing cartwheels across the clearing. Most children would throw themselves into it; she was slow, methodical, and beautiful. Jonah waited, not wanting to interrupt her practice session. Her older brother watched and corrected her mistakes.
“Excuse me, but have you seen Mr. Grimstone?” Jonah asked when she stopped for a minute and wiped her hands on her front, leaving a smear of dirt.
“He took off, my ma says.” Her voice was far too loud, and it slammed into Jonah’s head and ricocheted around in there.
He winced. “Thanks.”
“You look like crap, Mr. Talbot,” her brother said.
“Doesn’t your mother tell you not to use words like crap?”
The boy grinned. “Maybe. But at least I didn’t say you look like shit, did I?”
“There is that,” he said. He nodded, winced again, and gently closed the door.
He made his way around Sam’s wagon—he’d always think of it as Sam’s. No note, no sign that Rafe had even been there, holding him through the night. He looked down at his shoulder but saw no sign of Rafe’s tears. It would have been nice if there’d been something.
He sat down on the oversize chair and stared off into space. A future without Rafe. He hated the thought but forced himself to push through the panic and then the sorrow. A future without Rafe.
He wasn’t going to come through the other side of the burden of sorrow this morning, but he still would make plans. New York, he decided—once the season ended. Jonah wasn’t going to abandon the show.
But come October, he’d try his hand at real acting. He loved taking the speeches and making them his, letting his body and voice become someone or something else.
He closed his eyes and gave in to the misery of loss and the pounding headache for a minute, but not too long. He had to drink water, find coffee. There had to be ways to drive off the effects of the night before. Parinsky would know. There was work to be done. In the carnival, there was always work waiting.
He allowed himself a minute to think about his life and what he should do with it. New York. If he was good enough—if he could act in New York—well… They had theaters in England, didn’t they.
He pushed up from the chair and wobbled into the future.
A future without Rafe. The words mocked him again.