milk goat down from the top of the chicken coop. More than once it had occurred to him that Mrs. Tanner had been getting by for quite a while without anyone’s help but Daisy’s, and he wondered why she hadn’t years earlier come to an arrangement such as that she had with Will. But he remembered the way neighbors had steered clear of his mother—sickly, French, and openly living with a married man—and reckoned that there was no shortage of reasons a woman might find herself shunned by her neighbors.
Will put the ale and bread into his satchel and took his coat off the peg. They had arrived at the cottage in January with little more than the clothes on their backs. In the loft, Will had found a couple of shirts and a coat that was only slightly moth-eaten, and Hartley brought even more. By Will’s standards, they were pretty well set up, but whenever he saw Martin shrug into that tatty old coat he felt a pang of remorse that he couldn’t have done better by the man.
It was cold, but not windy, so not a terrible day for a walk, Will supposed. The skies were a shade of grayish blue that made Will think of the ocean. He shoved that thought aside and wrapped the coat more tightly around himself. He was fairly certain that Martin typically walked to the top of the nearest hill and then returned to the cottage, so that was the direction he headed. Sure enough, he found Martin sitting against a fence post.
“Checking up on me?” Martin asked, but not impatiently so much as almost indulgently. Sometimes he looked at Will with naked fondness, as if the usual prickliness had slid off his face and he forgot to put it back on. Will was so used to seeing the fondness through the mask of surliness, that seeing it plain and unadorned on Martin’s face took his breath away.
Will sat beside Martin on the cold, hard ground. “Got chucked out of the house by Mrs. Tanner and Daisy. Here.” He took the bread and ale out of his bag.
Martin tore off a chunk of the bread and ate it in a few quick bites. “I passed Mrs. Tanner on her way to the cottage and I think she recognized me. Or, rather, I think she noted the resemblance to my father.”
“You take after your mother,” Will said. It was a poor lie, and the incredulous look Martin cast him told him so. There was certainly a superficial resemblance between father and son, but Will could never see much of the florid, ill-tempered old man in Martin. Well, apart from the ill temper, he supposed. Will had only ever seen a portrait of Martin’s mother, but in that painting she had an expression he often saw on Martin’s face—a wry twist of the mouth, a knowing glint in the eyes.
Will turned his head and regarded Martin. The sight of him was so familiar that sometimes he forgot its component parts. His hair, which had been wheat blond during childhood, was now the dark ash blond of driftwood, and his eyes were the dangerous gray of the North Sea but sometimes, rarely, flecked with the shifting blues of sea glass. It seemed so strange that Will had only learned these things after traveling thousands of miles away from Martin, but now he couldn’t look at his friend without thinking of the ocean. It was as if his mind had taken the source of all his nightmares and mapped it onto the face of the person he loved best, as if to remind him that maybe the sea wasn’t all bad.
“What?” Martin asked, turning to face him fully, one eyebrow hitched in question. He had a crumb at the corner of his mouth, which rather undercut the archness of his expression.
“Just looking at you,” Will said, and when Martin flushed, he knew he had overstepped. He cleared his throat and looked away.
“In any event, I suppose I’m hardly the only person in this part of Sussex who bears a resemblance to my father,” Martin said grimly.
“What? Oh, right. I suppose not.” God only knew how many children Sir Humphrey had fathered over the years. He uncorked the jug of ale and took a long sip, then passed it to Martin. “Is it going to be a problem, do you think?”
“It’s a problem every time I look in the mirror,” Martin said. “Although I suppose I could