nodded, and allowed myself to be drawn back to the bed.
Chapter 10
Hal rested his head on his lover’s chest in an ambiguous state between vexation and hazy contentment, then raised it to gaze on the quiescent man beside him. The split on that full lower lip had broken open again with the ferocity of Hal’s onslaught, and that explained the odd taste in his mouth, he decided, rich and almost sweet, but with an underlying, unmistakable bitterness. He bent his head and licked the forming blood-drop, savoring the odd flavor once more. It was difficult to tear his eyes from that snowy skin; even the fading bruises that defaced it seemed beautiful. He had always shunned deformity, sickened by the scars that are shown as marks of valor, but now he wanted to hold that maimed face close, to kiss the blemished eyelid, and every purpled bruise. Robin owes me twenty nobles, he thought giddily, recalling the callous bet that the eye-patch was an affectation, which they had made when Essex had returned from one of his country sulks to find the insolent foreign prince usurping his place.
Hal’s lips brushed the scar, and Kit reached a lazy hand to tangle in those soft auburn curls, pulling the willing Hal into another deep kiss before releasing him and sitting up. As if summoned, Jehan appeared to scoop some of the tepid water from the bath, replacing it with boiling water from the can he carried, before leaving as silently as he had entered. There truly was not room enough for two in that tub, however friendly they might be, but Hal discovered what great pleasure it could be to stand thigh deep in hot water while your lover washed you, and then the possibly even greater pleasure of returning the attention.
Northumberland stood back and studied the new form of his old friend. Not bad, he decided. The cast-off clothing had been refitted into a quite passable wardrobe for an obscure scholar, and having his housemaids do the work had saved considerable expense. He spared a brief damning thought for Eden Bowen and her brothers. She had been truly gifted with her needle, and being beholden, worked for their keep in lieu of the wages her skill might otherwise have commanded. He brushed the distractions aside and returned to the examination of his guest. The patchy, moth-eaten beard had been shaved, the hair brushed and trimmed into tolerable order, and a cobbler had been called into make several pairs of specially fitted boots and shoes to accommodate the clubfoot. That had been the most galling expense, and served to add to the irrational grudge Percy nursed against Marlowe, a cobbler’s son. He nodded, satisfied. He would take the man with him to the Twelfth Night Masque at court.
One of the maids squeaked and scurried from the room, propelled by a vicious pinch from Montague, who had discovered certain compensations in the conformation of his new body. He had berated the earl for making him a cripple, brushing aside the explanation that, apart from the consideration that the beggar would never be missed, the very fact that he was a cripple made the spell more likely to succeed under the auspices of sympathetic magic, since Montague himself had been abnormally formed. A few days after the rite, stroking himself in the bath, a look of incredulous delight had spread over the ugly face as the body’s natural endowment revealed itself in all its outsized prominence. It had stopped the complaints from the restored man, but started a round of new ones from the servants, as Montague ploughed his way through the staff, sometimes by seduction, and sometimes by rape. If his knowledge was not so damned important he would turn him back out on the highway, Percy fumed, thinking of the money it was costing to outfit and keep the man, and to pay off the servants. He sighed, and turned to the matter of the Masque.
It was to be a black and white affair, but apart from color, there would be no restrictions on the costumes. Percy had met the night before with Essex, who had a wild scheme for using the masque to regain favor at court. The cause of Robin’s disgrace was keeping himself well to the shadows since the moonlight hunt, and short of a royal summons, would probably not appear. Not for the fear of Essex, as that vain fool thought, but for the fear of Robert Cecil.