sat quietly, but Kit could feel the man watching him, waiting.
When he felt he had himself back under control, Kit said, “Last week, after you left, I couldn’t stop thinking about what happened all those years ago.”
“Me either,” Henry said softly.
“I want you to know,” Kit said slowly, “that I forgive you, Henry, For not coming to see me before you left town. For sending Parkinson instead.”
Henry looked anguished. “But I shouldn’t have trusted him. I should have—”
“You saying that is like me calling myself naive,” Kit interrupted. “You trusted a man you had no reason to be suspicious of—you are not to blame for his betrayal, Henry.”
“I should have come anyway,” Henry said. “I should have told you myself.”
Their gazes locked. It felt as though all the years they’d been apart had melted away. Kit was suddenly very conscious that he hadn’t looked at another person so deeply, so intensely, since Henry had left him. This was more intimate than being naked, more intimate than being spread open on a bed for a punter to play with. Kit was gazing into Henry’s soul, and Henry was gazing into his. He had no idea what his own eyes betrayed, but Henry’s showed old pain and bitter regret.
Kit said, “What did you say in the letter? The one that Parkinson was supposed to give me?”
Henry was silent for several moments. Then he said, slowly, “I said things I’d never expressed to you in person. I told you… how very much I cared for you. How painful it was to leave you.”
Kit’s heart began to race very fast.
For a moment Henry seemed to wrestle with whether to go on. Then he said, “I asked you to write back to me. To send me word if you would be willing to see me again, once I had fulfilled my promises to Caroline.”
Kit’s stomach dropped. “And you never heard back,” he whispered, stricken.
“No. At first I hoped you just needed time, to come terms with what I’d done. Eventually I came to the conclusion I’d simply been deluded in thinking you had any fondness for me.” He gave a soft, humourless laugh. “Naive.”
That word again.
Kit shook his head, a sharp denial, but he couldn’t find words. And now he was remembering the long years of loneliness Henry had just described.
“The more I denied myself, the more tormented I became.”
Would things have been any easier for Henry if he’d had word back from Kit? If he’d known Kit was waiting for him?
And would Kit have agreed to wait for him?
Yes, probably. He'd loved Henry with all his heart. But Kit hadn’t seen the letter. He hadn’t responded, or waited. And in the long years since, their lives had diverged down two very different paths.
“… you were kind and decent and generous…”
Kit wasn’t that boy anymore. He’d become harder, more suspicious and protective. The man he was now was well suited to running a scandalous club—not so much to being on the other side of someone’s fireplace.
“Kit?” Henry prompted, and when Kit looked at him again, his grey gaze was vulnerable and uncertain.
“I cared for you too, Henry,” he said hoarsely. “When you left me, it felt as though my whole world had broken in two.” He shook his head. “But that was a lifetime ago, and we have very different lives now.” He sighed and turned away, rising from the bed and reaching for his drawers. “Speaking of which, I should get dressed and get back to the club. I’ve neglected my duties too long.”
“Kit?” Henry’s voice was hoarse.
Kit stared at the linen clutched between his hands. He couldn’t look at the other man. Didn’t want Henry to see how raw he felt.
“Yes?”
“May I come back?”
Kit squeezed his eyes closed.
“Please,” Henry said into the silence. “I don’t want this to be the end, Kit.”
And when he put it like that, neither did Kit. There was something unfinished between them. Something to be settled before he could close the door on his ill-fated affair with Henry Asquith, once and for all.
“All right,” he said. “You can come back next week.”
18
Henry
A few days later, Simon Reid called upon Henry while he was having breakfast.
“Do you have some news for me?” Henry asked, once Reid was settled at the table with some tea.
“I do,” Reid said. “I’ve looked into the situation with the solicitors in Lambeth. The rent’s been collected regularly since Parkinson’s death—I expect it’ll turn out to be an associate of Parkinson’s, perhaps a family member