do with the reminder that I have his blood in my veins.”
“You’re not him.”
“Aren’t I? You’re unconscionably biased where I’m concerned.”
Will stared. “You’re nothing like him. He went to bed with—” He stopped, not liking the euphemism. “He took advantage of people who were too young and too poor to say no.” That was what had happened to Hartley, and it stood to reason that Sir Humphrey hadn’t stopped there. “You would never.”
Martin drew his knees up to his chest and wrapped his arms around them, looking terribly small. “I took advantage of my tenants,” he said. “Not in the way you mean. But I did it anyway.”
“Your father ran his estate into the ground, leaving you with nothing but debts.”
“And I handled that beautifully, did I not,” Martin said, his lip curled in a sneer.
Martin spent a year raising rents, enclosing property, and in general trying to drain as much as he could from his Cumberland tenants to make the estate solvent. “No, you handled it like a horse’s arse, but you were one and twenty. And, I might add, you made things right in the end. Furthermore, your father hadn’t taught you how to manage an estate. He hadn’t taught you a damned thing.”
Martin bristled. “I’m not entirely ignorant.”
“That’s despite your father’s efforts, you know.” Martin spent his childhood with his nose in a book and learned as much as he could teach himself. But some things, like how to run a large and failing estate, couldn’t be learned within the pages of a book.
“Hmph.”
Will didn’t know why Martin refused to listen to reason when it came to his father. It was almost as if he wanted to blame himself entirely for his own predicament. Will had no trouble acknowledging the role both their fathers played in their sons’ present circumstances: poor, ill-equipped for any profession, and emotionally raw. He went to put his arm around Martin, then remembered that Martin didn’t want to be touched, and pulled his hand back.
“I read that manuscript you left on the table,” Martin said.
“You what?” Will sputtered.
“Was I not meant to? It was sitting right in the open. I wouldn’t have read it if I thought it was a secret. It was very good.”
“It wasn’t a secret.” Will’s cheeks were burning hot. “The good lines are all Hartley’s.”
“And the parts where I actually—” he gestured to the vicinity of his chest “—felt things, that was you, damn you.”
“Probably,” Will said, grinning despite himself.
“What do you plan to do with it?”
“We offered it to a theater manager who is a friend of a friend. I suppose we’ll hear back any day now.”
Martin made an appreciative noise. “Perhaps I’ll be well enough to return to London in time to see it staged.”
“Are you eager to get back?” Will asked cautiously.
“Eager,” Martin repeated. “William, you know better. I haven’t been eager for anything in ages,” he said, dry as dust. “I suppose I’m grimly resigned to returning to my aunt’s house at some point. I can’t very well stay here, living off your charity, can I?” Martin went on.
He sounded acutely miserable, and Will badly wanted to promise that Martin would never have to return to his aunt. But that was a promise Will couldn’t make. “I’m literally living in your house for free, so that’s a funny definition of charity,” he said instead.
“What about you?” Martin asked. “Are you eager to get back to town?”
The truth was that he wasn’t. He wanted to plant a few rows of carrots and be around when they were ready to harvest. He wanted to chop more firewood and know that he’d be the one to put it in the hearth next winter. He wanted—he wanted a lot of things, he was beginning to realize, and he wasn’t going to have any of them. “I miss my friends,” he said, because it was the truth, of a kind. “I’d say I miss Hartley but he hasn’t given me a chance to miss him.” For a moment he thought about telling Martin what he had already told Hartley, that being in the country made it easier to avoid temptation. After all, Martin already knew the worst. During those first months after Will had returned to England, Martin had been the one to drag Will out of opium dens and hells of every variety. But Martin looked fragile and young, and he was looking at Will with something like faith, and Will didn’t want to shatter it, however misguided.