“The fact remains,” said Barklay, “we’ll have to cover Jarrow’s teaching load ourselves for the remainder of term. And probably for the next term as well.”
“Small price to pay,” Ahrens murmured.
“And will we even notice the difference?” agreed Cameron, in an undervoice.
“Speir will, I expect,” Stevens said.
“Did you have something for us, Lieutenant Stevens?” Stevens hadn’t lowered his voice enough: Barklay was looking at him expectantly.
“No, sir. We’re ready to do whatever’s necessary, sir,” Stevens assured him, and the other rota captains nodded.
They had been included in this senior staff council meeting because of their high-responsibility workload, and had clustered together along the wall, along with the senior officers who had not arrived in time to claim seats at the conference table. Douglas had taken his place with them quietly; so far, he had evaded direct attention.
“Is there anyone we can promote out of the junior cadre?” someone at the table asked.
“Well,” Marag said, “there’s Ellis, but—” before Ellis himself could object, “although he’s largely finished his course of study, he has a commission waiting for him at the requisitions office at Central.”
“That doesn’t start until winter’s end, though, does it?”
“Ellis?” Barklay threw it to him.
“I only have a few papers left to write,” Ellis said slowly. “I could help carry a teaching load if needed. But I’m not a cartographer. I’m supply management.”
“We could shift someone from my department who has experience in the field,” Marag suggested. “Oisel, you did that stint in the weather corps at Amity.”
From his stance behind Beathas’s chair, Oisel spread his hands. “I could make shift to supervise the standard curriculum. I wouldn’t call it a permanent solution, but it could be done.”
“But that still leaves a gap once Ellis leaves for his commission,” another of Marag’s subordinates pointed out. “We can’t cover that without some additional support.”
“No,” Barklay mused, “we’d need to promote or rotate in someone to replace Oisel, either in supply management or cartography.” He looked up, his gaze seeking; Douglas submerged a flinch, but Barklay’s eyes lit on Stevens instead. “Stevens…your major study is in supply management, isn’t it?”
“Yes, sir.” Stevens flushed a little.
“And you’re already helping to administrate the training modules. Not to mention your skills as a liaison at Ryswyck farm.”
“That’s so, sir,” Stevens said.
Barklay looked at Stevens thoughtfully for a moment. “Well, it’s early to say,” he said finally. “You might like to have your first commission at Ryswyck as teaching staff, or you might wind up with something more appropriate still. But I’m sure it will be resolved satisfactorily by winter’s end.” Everyone including Stevens relaxed; no one, Douglas thought, would like being asked to consider a commission on the spot in front of a roomful of interested parties. “In any case, I think we can safely promote Ellis to the staff temporarily, if he is willing.”
Ellis said promptly, “Certainly I will, General Barklay, sir.”
“We’ll want to fill his spot among the rota captains, then,” said Marag.
“Yes,” Barklay mused. “Any suggestions?”
There was a short silence, and then Beathas cleared her throat. “Lieutenant Speir had been helping Commander Jarrow administer the cartography curriculum, hadn’t she?”
Barklay looked extremely gratified, but before he could speak, Oisel said: “In that case, why not promote her instead?”
“Because she’s only halfway through her course of study,” Marag said. “Speaking of which, we’ll need to set up independent study plans for Speir and the cartography students coming up immediately behind her. Commodore, could you assist me with that?”
“Certainly, Captain,” Beathas said.
“Thank you. I would gladly recommend Speir for the position, General Barklay. She’s a diligent worker and a natural leader.”
“It would be nice to have another woman on the team,” Cameron said wistfully; several heard her and looked in their direction, drawing Barklay’s notice.
“What do you think, Lieutenants?” he said.
“Yes, absolutely,” Stevens, Ahrens, and Ellis were all nodding. Cameron looked askance at Douglas’s unexpected silence, just as Barklay said: “She serves in your rota, Lieutenant Douglas. What is your assessment?”
His reluctance to speak was starting to look churlish. Douglas exerted himself to respond. “She does, sir. And I would be very sorry to lose her from A Rota. Which is its own recommendation, and only the beginning. Speir would make an excellent rota captain, sir.”
“Well,” Barklay said briskly, “unless I hear any objections or additions, it sounds as though we’ve got the situation squared for now. I’ll file the changes with Central and speak with Lieutenant Speir. Thank you all.”
Dismissed, the senior officers rose from their chairs, and there was a general exodus. Douglas submersed himself in the largest shoal of leavers, and made it as far as the door before Barklay said, “Lieutenant Douglas—a word, please.”
“Yes, sir.” Douglas resigned himself and returned to the room to wait for Barklay to finish giving his last instructions to Marag.
Jarrow was gone, of course: there were no more obstacles to Barklay calling for a private interlude between them. Douglas felt little indulgence, and even less appetite, for it. He thought he could probably make shift to oblige Barklay, but he did not want to be obliged himself. Nor did he want to talk to Barklay about it, even to answer the questions that still troubled him.
When they were alone, Barklay gave Douglas a narrow look and relaxed back against the table. “How do you fare?” he asked, quietly.
Douglas shrugged. “I’m all right, sir.”
“Do you need anything?” Barklay’s glance was keen.
No, Douglas thought, but you do. “Thank you, sir. I have what I need.”
Barklay was obviously struggling to be content with that answer. It felt unkind, cruel even, to deny Barklay any portion in his thoughts, but Douglas couldn’t help it. Barklay wanted to reassure himself by gaining the chance to comfort him, and even though it was playing right into Jarrow’s hands, Douglas simply couldn’t do it. Couldn’t acquiesce in the story Barklay wanted to tell. He stood and let Barklay meet his eyes, and did not even brace himself in intransigence.
Presently Barklay took in a long breath and let it out again. “All right,” he said, and straightened to his feet. “Thank you, Douglas. That’s all, then.” He passed Douglas on his way out of the room, briefly clasping his arm as he went. The touch was not unwelcome to Douglas, but in its wake grief rose from deep within him, and instead of lingering Douglas turned and went out himself.
The bells had not yet rung for the change of classes, which was why, when Douglas entered the cloister, he found Cameron and Ahrens lingering there, talking in low voices. They saw him before he even registered the impulse to duck back out; so he continued toward them, unhurried.
Ahrens came right to the point. “So what did happen with Jarrow?” he asked Douglas.
Douglas shrugged. “Lord Commander Selkirk recalled him. I don’t know more than that.”
“You were quiet all day yesterday,” Cameron said, “and you’ve been quiet all day today. Even more than usual. I think you know something.”
Douglas just looked at her. “But you’re not telling,” she guessed.
“There’s nothing I could tell that would make it make sense,” Douglas said with a sigh.
“But what do you think it means?” said Ahrens impatiently. “Is Selkirk about to move against Ryswyck?”
“I don’t know that either,” Douglas said. “I suspect Lord Selkirk didn’t get the results he wanted by sending Jarrow here, but I can’t even be sure of that.”
Just as Douglas had not let Barklay in on his thoughts, Barklay hadn’t told Douglas anything of what had happened after he and Speir left Barklay’s office the day before. He hadn’t told Speir, either; Douglas had given her what little news he had when he saw her at dinner, and she had only nodded thoughtfully, still possessed by that strange calm. It would be one thing if she were quietly traumatized; but that wasn’t what Douglas sensed in her. It was more something like reassurance, if not outright relief. Which made a sort of sense, but Douglas couldn’t bring himself to ask her to confirm or debunk his perceptions. Whatever response her soul had made to those terrible revelations, it was removed enough from his that he felt doubly bereft.
Cameron was looking at him steadily, as if she could tell that it was Douglas who was quietly traumatized. What would she do—what would Ahrens do—if they came to know that it wasn’t about defending Ryswyck from people who chose to misunderstand; that Ryswyck’s whole context was darker and more complicated than any of its students guessed?
“I was just telling Ahrens,” she said, “that if all were well I would have expected Barklay to be glad to see the back of Jarrow. But he doesn’t look glad. He looks…well, I don’t know. But it makes me uneasy.”
“He was still hoping to win Jarrow over, may be,” Ahrens said.
“That was never going to happen,” Cameron scoffed.
Ahrens shrugged. “If courtesy were easy, we wouldn’t need a Ryswyck.”
Cameron was silent a moment, her brows down in thought.
“What do you think, Douglas?” Ahrens asked.
There was a miserable ache under Douglas’s breastbone. He heard himself say: “I think Barklay always knew it was going to be a heavy lift. Excuse me.” He touched closed hand to heart and went on to the far door, feeling their eyes on his back the whole way.
He had an hour free—a little less now that he’d loitered after the meeting. If he spent it in his quarters someone would inevitably come looking for him to ask more questions. He could go to the farm—the long walk appealed to him—but Stevens would likely find him there. Same with the tower. He needed to think.
After a moment’s labored decision, he went out into the arena quad and headed for the chapel. If Speir was there, he could be near her without speaking; and in any case it would buy him a moment’s respite.
There was no one in the chapel. Douglas took off his shoes in the vestibule and crept into the little hall. A few lights, not many, flickered in the niches of the rock frieze; hesitantly, Douglas went up and lit one for himself, with an obscure feeling that he ought to propitiate wisdom for borrowing sacred space to hide out in. He retreated to the back of the room, out of sightline from the vestibule, and sat on the floor with his knees tucked up.
His memory caught on threads of images, taking him back and back, and even knowing it was futile, he tried to inhabit them again, to feel again his breath and blood rising in joy.
With his university certificate and his high scores in army basic training, Douglas could have gone straight to the capital and trained to be an officer there; but he had chosen instead to take the arduous entrance examination for Ryswyck Academy. Ryswyckian officers were said to be the elite, and Douglas, who had loaded himself with knowledge and had nowhere to apply it, wanted that intense velocity of skill. He had been attracted, too, by the idea of direct combat in the old tradition as a means of honing one’s mental and moral edge.
But he had not been prepared for the sheer astonishment of his encounter with Ryswyck’s living rule of courtesy. In his first weeks as a cadet, his soul turned over and opened wide, a process of moments like the fanned leaves of a book, and yet all one in experience: like falling in love, though his feet stayed firm on the ground; like drinking from a cup of light, though the light was everywhere.
And Barklay had been at the center of it: the warm, insouciant dynamism that made the school thrum with energy, the gracious cupbearer who met each of his students soul to soul. Douglas had admired, even adulated, his chief commander; but in this he was no different from many of his peers, and he had regarded his own feelings about Barklay as part of the landscape, a commonplace pleasure. Until one day, a little less than a year ago and shortly after his promotion to the junior cadre, when his awareness took on new and sudden dimension.
He could not now remember exactly what the occasion had been. He had just come off a bout in the arena, he remembered, because Barklay had complimented him on the grace with which he had taken his loss. He remembered they had been in a classroom corridor, that Douglas had told Barklay something about his week’s duties, and that he had said something about parsing his match in sparring court that shook Barklay into laughter. And then, taking his leave, Barklay had given him a full bow, a jest and a kindness, and for an instant Douglas’s gaze had tangled with Barklay’s direct blue eyes.
Oh.
Barklay had continued down the corridor, seemingly unwitting of the cataclysm unfolding throughout Douglas’s senses. A subverbal thought took hold in him and lasted even after the shock had rippled away and gone: So this is who I am to love.
The thought had never left him since.
Douglas had quickly risen in the leadership of the junior officers, and not long after he had been named as captain of A Rota, Barklay began to ask his advice, to consult with him privately about this situation or that. He liked to hear Douglas’s assessments and treated them as valuable gifts of wisdom, and Douglas did not mind closing the office door to speak to Barklay alone. He knew that Barklay was said to have developed casual understandings with junior officers from time to time, but he never gave preferential treatment to anyone, and so his dealings with Barklay did not seem strange to him. Even the day when, standing next to Barklay at his desk, he had found himself looking down into Barklay’s face naked with longing, his pulse had quickened but he had not been terribly shocked.
Barklay had touched Douglas then; stroked his flanks and then unbuttoned him, and unstrung Douglas where he stood braced against the desk, with gentle hands and a thorough tongue. But he had put away Douglas’s own hands when he tried to caress him in return; and Douglas had gone away from Barklay’s office with shaking knees, his head and heart in a whirl of confusion.
As time went on, he, and Ryswyck with him, grew used to this state of affairs and accepted it; it did not trouble them; only Douglas, in the secrecy of his heart, had been troubled. As far as he could tell Barklay had not broken courtesy to him; he had not made any benefits contingent on Douglas’s sexual willingness; he had attuned himself to Douglas’s moods and needs and did not ask too much of him at the wrong moment; he had not singled Douglas out for notice among his peers; he had not violated the general military code; he had done nothing in cruelty; he had not failed, by word or deed, to obtain Douglas’s consent to command the entire initiative between them. It was a trespass, and it made Douglas unhappy, but it was not an offense. Barklay was not capable of offense.
Not capable of offense: yet Barklay had stripped men naked and tied them in positions designed for unbearable discomfort; he had laughed as they were insulted and smeared with filth and subjected to prying pains and kept from sleep for days and terrorized with the threat of imminent death; he had bent his gift of contagious zest to sway young soldiers to obey their darkest instincts; he had taken pleasure in dehumanizing his enemies; he had knowingly, gloatingly cast souls to the ground and trampled on them; he had done these things for two years before that chance encounter called him back from the brink.
Alone in the chapel, Douglas found he could not weep. His soul was bruised in a place that would not draw tears. He could only hug his knees and cry out silently: Oh, Barklay.
Be careful of the maps you use, Jarrow had said.
It was Barklay who had done these horrifying things. But it was Jarrow who had leveraged them to break Douglas’s heart if he could. Whatever Selkirk might choose to do to Jarrow for this security breach, Douglas felt little sympathy. The only thing Douglas feared was that Selkirk might widen his inquiry to harm Speir, but he couldn’t speak of that fear to her; she would only be annoyed at Douglas for worrying over her. Speir didn’t believe in being careful of herself; she had never lost her balance, and such a worry was opaque to her. Yet if anything could disturb her balance, this ought to; and she was still steady. Douglas called off his thoughts about that before he could upset himself further. His time was almost up.
Would Barklay have learned to be more careful, after this? Probably not, Douglas thought. One thing had been made clear by Jarrow’s revelations: far from seeing his behavior to Douglas as reckless, Barklay thought he was exercising restraint. But Douglas couldn’t, for the life of him, think of a way to bring that home to Barklay, not without provoking an even worse scandal. And his own impulse was to start planning for his exit from Ryswyck, into the soonest suitable commission. Even as he thought it, he was rising to his feet as if to start preparing to leave that very moment. But in his absence, Barklay would only turn to someone else to commit the same trespass. Eventually. There was nothing Douglas could see to do about that, either. Douglas donned his shoes and re-emerged into the light of the arena quad, familiar and yet depressingly different.
He would just have to set a guard and keep watch.
~*~
At breakfast the next morning, Speir received the buffets of congratulations from her peers with a hesitating smile. Barklay and Marag had explained to her the previous evening that she was to head up B Rota in Ellis’s absence, and her pleasure at undertaking the responsibility was alloyed by awareness of the reason for her promotion. Ellis would not have vacated his place if Jarrow had not gone. Speir sighed to herself.
She had seen Jarrow at a distance, heading to the shuttle on the airfield in the escort of an adjutant from Central, and had recognized the beleaguered set of his shoulders. He had caught sight of her, and his steps faltered briefly; he shot her a look of troubled resentment, but they were not near enough for speech, and his escort had prodded him on. Speir knew she should not pity him, but she did, even though she could not fathom his self-destructive malice.
She was almost glad when she found a post-message to go and see Barklay after she had taken over Ellis’s schedule and settled her rota in their duties. She went to Barklay’s office and knocked on his doorframe.
“Ah, Lieutenant Speir. Come in. And shut the door, would you please? Come round here. I wanted to speak with you.”
Speir obeyed readily and came to stand at Barklay’s side where he sat at his desk. He looked up at her silently for a moment.
“How do you fare?” he asked her quietly.
“Well enough, sir,” Speir said. “It’s…better to know things than not to know them. If you know what I mean.”
“Yes. All the same, I am sorry.”
“Yes, sir. Sir…?”
“What is it, Lieutenant?”
“Do you—do you know why Commander Jarrow did what he did? Hasn’t he hurt himself more than he hurt you?”
Barklay sighed. His fingertips beat a small paradiddle on his desk. Then he said: “I suspect he wasn’t thinking quite as clearly as he thought he was. His cousin, it turns out, was the man who was punished for the incident at Solham Fray. Jarrow couldn’t find a good way to avenge him, so he chose a bad one instead, as I read it.”
“Oh.” Speir thought a moment. “Did Lord Commander Selkirk know they were related?”
Barklay’s mobile expression twitched sourly. “Evidently Selkirk thought he could make use of that without it backfiring.”
“So Lord Selkirk didn’t plan it with him.”
“No.”
“What’s going to happen to Jarrow, then?” Speir asked.
Barklay sighed again, a long breath. “I don’t know. I imagine Selkirk will try to discipline him as quietly as possible.”
Speir nodded. She found she was not afraid to look at Barklay anymore. In fact, looking him in the face now, she could read him better than she had before: that air of chastened recalcitrance, that grave smile like the sunset of a raging grief, the winsome hope of his eyes meeting hers. Speir’s compassion, dammed up and displaced from her long failure, won forth and began to carve a deep channel within her. She knew that Barklay had not set any guard on his own need: she would have to set it for him. It was going to be difficult.
He said: “I did have something else to speak to you about. As you know, Lieutenant Ellis had served as Ryswyck’s cantor while he was head of B Rota. Now that role is open as well. I was wondering if you would be willing to take it on.”
“I don’t know, sir,” Speir said, taken aback. “I had never thought of myself as having much of a voice.”
“You mean, you’ve never stood forth before now,” Barklay said shrewdly.
It was true.
“Are you afraid of the visibility?” he asked her.
Speir thought about it. “No, sir,” she said finally. “Should I be?”
“On the contrary.” There it was again, that little coup-smile of his: conspiratorial, even flirtatious. “Everyone else should be.”
Speir was amused. “That’s never been one of my ambitions, sir.”
“All the same, it would become you.”
Where was this coming from? Looking down at him, Speir began to realize what he was after. “Would it be of help to you to foster me, sir?” The words were unvarnished but she made her voice gentle.
He blinked, momentarily abashed. Then he gave her truth for truth. “It helps more that you see me clearly,” he said.
“I’m glad to oblige you, sir,” she said. “And I will serve as cantor if you like.”
Barklay relaxed and sat back in his chair. “Excellent. Then, unless you had something else for me, you may be dismissed.”
“Thank you, sir,” Speir said.
“The obligation is mine,” said Barklay.
~*~
After supper, Douglas tapped at Speir’s door. “Yes?” he heard her say.
“It’s me.”
“Come in.”
He opened the door and peered inside. “Does your new schedule still admit our study hour?” he asked her.
“It does now,” Speir said. “I made an adjustment.”
They smiled at one another and Douglas came in to arrange himself and his materials on her bench. “A Rota is going to miss you,” he said. “By the way, I’m to tell you there’s going to be a rota captains’ meeting in Barklay’s office tomorrow morning before breakfast. I had a note from Barklay in my post-box—the time’s changed and he said he’d forgotten to tell you.”
“I suppose it slipped his mind during our conference,” Speir said, turning a page in her book and picking up her stylus.
“You were in conference with him this morning?” Douglas had passed by Barklay’s office and seen the door shut.
She must have heard something in his voice, because she looked up. “Yes. He wanted to ask me if I would take over Ellis’s role as cantor.” He didn’t move, but he must have signaled his skepticism, because she added: “And, incidentally, to probe into how I was faring.”
Of course he had. Douglas sighed. Then asked her reluctantly: “How are you faring?”
“I was going to ask you that,” Speir said, calmly.
He made a moue at her. “I asked first.”
His face at her provoked her to a smile. “I’m well enough. It’s not good; but I’d rather know than not.”
“I suppose,” Douglas said.
“And you?”
He looked away. “I’ll be all right.”
“Can I do anything for you?” she asked softly.
Ach, Speir. That’s always the first thing you ask, isn’t it? “No need of that,” he said firmly, looking back at her. “But thank you.”
“All right,” she said. She always took him at his word, without offense. Even if, as he suspected, she did not believe his protestations. Oh, my dear friend. For the briefest of moments he entertained an image of throwing himself upon her compassion and weeping into her lap. Which would not do any good, and would be poor service to her besides. And if he didn’t show restraint, Barklay certainly wouldn’t.
They settled down to their work, Douglas relaxed on her bench, Speir in her desk chair with her sock feet propped against her bunk. But even as he worked, Douglas’s troubled thoughts continued their course in parallel. Speir was, of course, the natural choice for Barklay to turn to for solace. Barklay would try to resist trespassing upon her generosity, but in the end he would do it anyway. And she already bore great burdens upon her shoulders.
Douglas studied her covertly from under his brows. She had changed into training knits and her robe; the tail of its tie, half caught under her seat, dangled over the side of the chair cushion. Her hair was drying from the shower, fanning in dark-damp threads from where she’d pinned it loosely on top of her head. The summer-bleached ends were already dry, shining gold and white in the lamplight from her desk. She kept her hair long just to keep those touches of sun twisted among the warmer dark strands. It was Speir’s only vanity, and he held it in affection: it wasn’t that she consciously denied herself such personal pleasures, but her courtesy always shone outward in a radiant action, and she served herself only incidentally, when it occurred to her.
It wasn’t an infallible virtue. Speir’s strength carried the shadow of its own weakness: as his own did, he supposed: as Barklay’s did. Speir, he wanted to say, don’t let Barklay bewilder you.
And with the thought, it came to him with sudden clarity: that was exactly what had happened to him. It wasn’t confusion that had drawn him and Barklay together; Barklay had done it on purpose, had seen the opportunity in what must have been obvious devotion on Douglas’s part. Douglas had never been able to hide anything; he’d learned not to steal sweets from the kitchen as a child because he could never lie successfully; even his most obdurate silences gave everything away. And Barklay might think he was acting upon compulsion, but did compulsion hedge itself round with so many excusing safeguards?
Douglas had always known these things to be true. It was just that now they wrung his heart as much as they troubled his mind.
It was just that they were now impossible to ignore.
~*~
The nature of a rota captains’ meeting always changed when a new officer joined it. When Speir came into Barklay’s office, she brought with her the scent of cool autumn air from the arena quad, two tablets and a guardbook, and an indefinable sense of incipient velocity. “Good morning, sir—sir,” she said to Barklay and Marag. “Cameron.” Cameron had arrived first; she smiled at Speir with unaffected pleasure.
“Good morning, Lieutenant,” Barklay said. “There’s tea if you want it.”
“Thank you, sir.” Speir provided herself with tea and chose a place at the table.
The others arrived quickly, and Barklay called the meeting to order. The predawn light tinged the window drapes and began to compete with the conference table lamps: cool light and warm tempering one another. And the atmosphere of the meeting itself was much the same. Roused to wakefulness by Speir’s added ready attention, the rota captains disposed of their reports easily. Speir picked up the protocols quickly, asked useful questions, and Barklay noticed that with her in the room, postures were upright and hopeful. It was always good for one’s morale to show someone else how to go on, and Speir’s courtesy receiving the instruction was a fresh balm.
At the same time, Barklay took quiet note of the thoughtful pinch of Marag’s lips; Douglas’s dark-eyed silence; the glances cast between Cameron and Stevens and Ahrens. Speir did not query Douglas with any glances; Barklay suspected she did not have to wonder what in particular was on Douglas’s mind and had decided to let him deal with it on his own.
The meeting finished and broke up in pleasantries, and the junior officers drifted toward the door, chatting. Marag hadn’t missed the lance of Douglas’s look at Barklay and Barklay’s steady gaze back; he took his leave with gentle irony, and Barklay followed him to the door and shut it as he left.
“Well?” he said, turning to Douglas.
Douglas’s eyes were still hard: he was immovably angry. “So you’re holding private conferences with Speir now?” he said.
The affront took Barklay unawares. “Is that any of your concern?” he said, coolly.
He hadn’t said it to hurt Douglas—had he?—but he saw the tiny flinch in Douglas’s eyes before his glare redoubled. “I think you should guard against trespassing on her generosity,” he said.
He had always wanted Douglas to keep an independent point of view—but his sudden hardness stung bitterly. “If I deserve rebuke,” he said, “I am sure Speir is capable of delivering it. Again I ask, is that—”
“She can,” Douglas said, “but it doesn’t mean she will. And it’s not her job only to guard the march, sir.”
“Douglas, what—where is this coming from? Do you think I would harm Speir on purpose?” A horrible conviction was taking hold: this could only be because of Solham Fray. “Do you think I would harm you?”
“No,” Douglas said, but the hurt was clearly visible in him now. “Not on purpose.”
By negligence, then? But Barklay didn’t want to know the answer to that. “I am not going to harm Speir, Douglas. Why would I want to do that? I like her. I admire her wisdom. I value her counsel.”
That’s what you said to me, Douglas didn’t say. His steady lowered look said it for him.
“No one is supplanting you in my affections, Douglas. If that’s what—”
“I wasn’t actually worried about that, sir,” Douglas said, with biting acerbity.
“What, then?” Barklay stepped closer, hesitating within reach. “I can’t mend it if you don’t tell me what it is.” He could see that Douglas would not be soothed: Douglas still belonged to himself, which Barklay wanted; but he hadn’t wanted to lose Douglas’s trust into the bargain. “What is it, Douglas?” he said, more softly.
Douglas was no more amenable to the touch of his voice than the touch of his hand. He bridled, struggling for a moment, and then blurted: “Why can’t we be proper bedfellows, sir? In the open. The way it ought to be.”
Before he could stop himself, Barklay winced away from the suggestion. Too late: Douglas would know that whatever he said next would be a mask for the true answer: I don’t want to.
“Wouldn’t that harm your standing?” he said, gently.
“My standing!” Douglas snapped upright, and held his voice down to quiet asperity. “You courted scandal the entire time Commander Jarrow was here, and now you’re worried about my standing.”
“But in the case of a scandal,” Barklay pointed out, “I could carry the full blame on my shoulders alone.”
“You know it doesn’t work like that, sir.” Douglas hadn’t stepped away from him, which was a relief. But he wasn’t making room for Barklay either. “And you can announce your intention to pay court to a subordinate any time you like. But you don’t want to do that.”
He didn’t. “Douglas, I don’t want you to be entangled with me,” Barklay pleaded. “I want you to be able to walk away clear.” John hadn’t been able to walk away clear. But maybe Barklay was wrong about where he’d gone wrong…no. He would never be able to do justice to Douglas’s love.
“In other words,” Douglas said quietly, “you don’t love me.”
He should have known Douglas would not remain satisfied with their arrangement as it was. Barklay got out with difficulty: “I don’t want to be a lover to you.”
“Not the same thing, Barklay.” Douglas’s eyes were dark and inexorable. “Do you love me?”
For an eternal instant Barklay couldn’t speak, couldn’t even breathe. Then: “No.”
Lie. It even sounded like a lie, hanging in the air between them like a fug of cowardice. He watched Douglas absorb the answer together with its obvious falsity. Crimson came into his face and then drained away again. Then he relaxed, and his dignity returned to him, miraculous and superb.
“In that case, sir,” he said gently, “I would rather you didn’t oblige me in the future. I will oblige you if you like; but not the other. Please.”
“Are you sure?” was all Barklay could say for a moment; then added lamely, “I like to see you at your pleasure.”
Douglas visibly chose not to address this. “I am asking, sir.”
“If that’s what you want,” Barklay said, feeling a wash of misery. “But it doesn’t sound very equitable.”
“It never was, sir.” He had never heard Douglas’s voice so gentle. “Water takes the lowest place.”
It was a rebuke so powerful in its simplicity that it seemed to nail Barklay’s soul to the floor. There was a long silence.
Then Douglas bent a glance toward the door. Barklay nodded, dismissing him. Douglas laid his closed hand to his heart—water takes the lowest place—bowed, and went past him to the door. Barklay didn’t move.
He heard Douglas close the door again softly behind him.