head, and Martin found himself holding his breath, wondering how Will planned to finish that sentence. “I thought we were—I thought we were important to one another. And then it turned out I was wrong.”
“You think you aren’t important to me,” Martin said, his voice an embarrassing whisper. “You lackwit. You spent your childhood watching your mother die and I didn’t want you to spend your adulthood watching me die. Idiot,” he said fondly. Too fondly for someone standing so near. At this distance Will could look at him and see everything. “You know, I’ve had time to think about this,” Martin went on. “I’ve never been well. The consumption is relatively new,” he said, glossing over the details of precisely how new it was, “but the rest isn’t. I’ve had a long time to think about how I don’t want to be a burden.”
Will, damn him, somehow stepped even closer. Martin could almost feel Will’s breath against his cheek. “You aren’t—”
“I see that now. But do you think that maybe, after twenty years of my father treating me as a burden and an embarrassment I might be justified in making assumptions?”
Will nodded. One strand of his hair tumbled across his forehead and Martin thought about how easy it would be to lift his hand and tuck that strand behind his ear. Instead he shoved his hands in his pockets. “That bastard,” Will said.
“You’ll get no argument from me. In any event, I promise I’ll always answer your letters. It is—” he swallowed “—intolerable to me that you thought I didn’t care.” He was saying too much, but if faced with a decision between Will knowing Martin cared too much and suspecting him of caring too little, Martin knew what choice he’d always make.
“Oh,” Will said, and it was little more than a puff of air. Martin didn’t dare meet his eyes.
“Regarding the letters. In my defense, I was not in the most reliable frame of mind last year.”
Will let out a laugh and finally straightened up, putting some distance between them. “Christ, neither was I, for that matter. I don’t think either of us have had two consecutive days of sound thought between us since 1814.”
Martin snorted. It shouldn’t be funny. There was nothing funny about what happened to Will, and only in his darker moods did Martin find much humor in his own predicament. But still he was laughing, and when he looked over, saw that Will was smiling, one hand over his mouth. It felt like—he couldn’t think of anything less theatrical than miracle—that they were standing here, alive, relatively well in mind and body, and laughing about everything that had happened. Maybe that same thought struck Will, because for a moment it looked like he was going to embrace Martin. But then he stepped away awkwardly.
Feeling that far too much had been said and done between them for one afternoon, Martin turned and made his way back to the cottage, Will falling into step beside him.
“I saw your young gentleman up and about,” Mrs. Tanner said when she shouldered her way into the cottage, Daisy trailing sullenly behind her. “That’s a good sign, isn’t it?”
“Yes,” Will said, putting down his pen and sanding the topmost sheet of paper. “He’s recovered about as well as could be expected.” Since that first walk they had taken a few days earlier, Martin had made a habit of exploring the grounds every morning. Will didn’t quite like it—it was cold, and Martin wasn’t strong yet. But he also knew that arguing about it would only make Martin do something even more reckless, so he let it go, and tried not to look too anxious when Martin returned to the cottage, flushed and short of breath.
“Poor lad.” The older woman hung a pot from the hook near the fire, and Will caught the scent of herbs and meat. “Now. Be gone with you. There’s a jug of ale and some bread for your breakfast,” she said, pressing both items into his hands. “Take them and go. The cottage hasn’t been aired since old Jackson lived here and it could do with a thorough turning out. Daisy and I will do the wash and hang it to dry.”
“Thank you.”
“No need to thank me. Fair’s fair.”
In the past few months, Will had whitewashed the Tanners’ cottage, inside and out; he had mended bucket handles and windowsills and everything that could be fixed; he had rounded up sundry geese and ducks and coaxed the