set Martin before the hearth, then climbed a ladder to a loft that Martin hadn’t noticed before. A few minutes later a tin tub came clattering to the floor. Martin, his eyes occasionally drifting shut because of sleepiness and cold, watched Will fill pots and basins with water, then heat them over the fire. He couldn’t have said how long it took before the tub was filled, but eventually Will wiped his hands on his trousers and said, “Come on, now. If you don’t get in, then I’m using the water for my own bath.”
The thought of having to watch Will strip and bathe was enough to make Martin spring into action. He was already naked except for the blanket, his small clothes having been discarded outside. He didn’t drop the blanket until just before stepping into the tub. He was well aware that he wasn’t much to look at these days—not that he wanted Will to be looking, not that he cared, but he knew that he was a sorry sight. He was naturally broad shouldered and large boned, and skinniness didn’t sit well on him. As he stepped into the tub, he saw Will deliberate between turning his back out of decency or coming to his aid out of innate mother hennishness. Decency won, because it always did with Will, the bastard.
“Oh God,” Martin groaned when he sank into the tub, his irritation draining away as soon as he touched the hot water. “This is lovely.” He hadn’t had a proper bath since he left his aunt’s house in the autumn. The warmth and the sense of purification both seeped into his bones. Will had set a flannel, a cake of soap, and a cup next to the tub, and Martin set about scrubbing himself clean. “Thank you,” he said, moved to goodwill by the soap bubbles.
“I should have thought of it sooner,” Will said. He still had his back to the bath, and was busily arranging a stack of books. “I forgot what a finicky little shit you can be.”
“Where did those books come from?” Martin asked. He was certain they hadn’t been there earlier. For the past month they had been rereading the same books Will had read aloud when Martin had been too feverish to pay attention.
“Hartley brought them.”
“Hartley was here?”
“He comes every week or two. I met him at the inn this afternoon.”
“Does he know I’m here?”
Will turned around at that, a quizzical expression on his face. “Yes. He’s the only one who does, though.”
“But you didn’t bring him here? To the cottage?”
“I didn’t think you’d want that.”
Indeed, Martin wouldn’t have wanted to see Hartley, but he resented Will’s assumption. He and Hartley and Will had once been the best of friends, in the way that boys of the same age who live in reasonable proximity will simply fall in among one another. They had traipsed about the hills and gone swimming during Martin’s periods of good health. And during Martin’s periods of poor health, the Sedgwick brothers had gone to great lengths to sneak into his rooms and pass him messages.
That had all gone to hell in the span of a summer. First, Martin’s father had discovered Will in Martin’s bed after one of those nights he had sneaked in. It had all been innocent, but Martin’s father had the sort of mind that saw prurience everywhere, probably because Sir Humphrey was rather devoted to prurience himself, but Martin hadn’t known that at the time.
Soon after this, Hartley started avoiding Martin. Martin assumed this was because Hartley, too, thought Martin was debauching Will, and Martin was too insulted to bother with olive branches. Soon after that, Martin’s father arranged for Will to get a place in the royal navy as an officer’s servant, which would put him on a path to becoming an officer. It was more than Will could have hoped for without Sir Humphrey’s intervention, but at the time it had been blindingly obvious to Martin that this was an effort to separate Will from Martin. Martin supposed that Hartley came to the same conclusion, because once Will left, Hartley had never uttered another friendly word to Martin.
Around the same time, Martin’s father began pouring money into the Sedgwick household. He paid the oldest brother’s university fees and sent the younger boys to a proper school. He took Hartley about with him to house parties and hunts, to London for the season, to all the events Martin had been excluded from.