was very young, when my mother and Ben and Hartley’s mother were around to make sure they got fed. To make sure all of us got fed, really.”
Sometimes when Martin thought about conditions at the Grange during Will’s childhood, he had to stop what he was doing and just seethe in anger for a little while. He pushed that thought aside for now. “So pigs in Cumberland live in stone-walled splendor. How will our Sussex pigs live?”
“In relative freedom. Rousseau might even approve. Except for the part where we’ll eat them. In any event, they’ll have three times the space as the Grange pigs, and Daisy and I—or Daisy and her beaux—will build a sort of portico at one end so they don’t get sunburned.”
“They’re not the only ones in danger of getting sunburned,” Martin said, and brushed his knuckles across Will’s cheekbone. It was barely April, but Will had been living almost entirely out of doors these past few weeks, and his freckles were proliferating. Now, under Martin’s touch, Will flushed, but he didn’t move away. In fact, he looked like he wanted to move closer. Maybe sharing a bed had gotten them used to being near one another. During the fortnight since that evening at the Blue Boar, Martin noticed that Will’s chair had inched closer to his own, and that Will had started doing things like adjusting Martin’s lapels and clapping a hand on his shoulder in greeting. They had been waking up with arms or legs touching, and sometimes even had conversations like that without bothering to put some distance between their bodies. At first, whenever he and Will touched, the heady rush from that contact overthrew all Martin’s other thoughts. Now, though, it felt almost normal. It felt safe.
Sometimes, they stood so close that Martin thought he could lean forward and brush their lips together. It might be easy. It might not be a disaster. A kiss, and whatever a kiss might lead to, might be just another kind of touch.
“Oi! Will Sedgwick!” called a voice from the lane.
Martin dropped his hand and Will spun toward the new arrival.
“Is that—good God, Jonathan, what brings you here?”
“I’m on my way to Brighton,” the stranger said. He was some years older than Will and Martin, and handsome in a bookish sort of way. Martin disliked him immediately.
“Daisy,” Will called. “You can be done for the day. Martin, this is Jonathan York.”
Before Martin could extend his hand, Will’s friend grabbed it.
“Is this the Martin I’ve heard so much about? Let me see if I can remember. Sir Martin Easterbrook? Lord’s sake, Will,” York said, lowering his voice, “how did you rope a baronet into shacking up with you in a cottage? Not even much of a cottage either, by the looks of it.”
“It’s perfectly comfortable,” Martin said stiffly.
“Oh, is it?” York said, somehow making the words sound like an insinuation. “Will talked about you constantly,” he went on. “Drove himself half mad. Were you missing? In hiding? In prison?”
“Let him get a word in edgewise,” Will said, but not unkindly. Martin rather wished it had been unkindly. He didn’t like this York person, with his cheerful waistcoat and broad smile. He didn’t like that Will had evidently talked about him to this man. He could only imagine what ghastly things Will might have said about him. “Tried to starve his tenants, absolute git, probably evil.” Even as he formed the thought, he knew Will would never breathe an ill word of him, but the presence of this Jonathan York made him unaccountably grumpy.
Now that Daisy and the others had cleared out, York leaned in and embraced Will, kissing both his cheeks and then holding him at arm’s length as if to inspect him. “You look well, I suppose, but when can we expect you back in London? I’m afraid everything’s dreadfully dull without you, and now with the news about your play, dare we hope that you’ll return for opening night?”
Martin couldn’t stand another minute of it. “I’ll leave you be,” he said to Will, then nodded coolly at York. He snatched his hat off the fence post where he had hung it, and made his way down the lane in a way he hoped didn’t look too much like storming off.
He was jealous; that was no surprise. He had been jealous of all Will’s friends since the earliest days of their acquaintance. When Will was at school, Martin silently seethed with jealousy of his schoolmates. He envied