so Will doubted that was the problem. He supposed Martin might still find something wrong and shameful about it, but Will couldn’t detect a trace of judgment or disgust on Martin’s face. Which left—
Was Martin . . . jealous? Will had never caught Martin looking. When they woke in the morning, limbs tangled and sleep muddled, warm and snug under the quilt, Martin never let his hands stray. A few times Will wished he would, even thought about doing it himself, because it would be nice to have someone else’s hands on him. The only thing that stopped him was the suspicion that for Martin there was no such thing as a friendly grope, no such thing as a cheerful shag between friends. Anything more than that seemed like it existed on the other side of a locked door, and if Will had ever had a key, he feared that it had gone missing at some point during the ordeals of the past few years.
“Let’s go for a walk,” Will suggested.
“I just got in from a walk,” Martin responded, peeved.
“Let’s go outside and sit on a rock and you can be cross with me in daylight, then.”
Martin snorted, but followed Will out the door. Will gestured at the rock he had meant to sit on, but Martin waved a dismissive hand, and they kept walking into the woods.
The landscape of this part of Sussex consisted of both enclosed pasture and unenclosed heath and woodland, forming a peculiar patchwork more evident now in the spring than it had been when they arrived in winter. Raised in the country and possessing an adequate knowledge of what kind of living could be scraped from the land, Will doubted that the actual property belonging to Friars’ Gate would support so much as a small farmstead, nor was it meant to. Will suspected that the previous occupant of the gamekeeper’s cottage merely cleared the underbrush to make it easier for the gentlemen guests of Friars’ Gate to shoot pheasants. As far as Will could tell, everyone in the village viewed the land and streams around Friars’ Gate as fair game for poaching and fishing, just as much as if it had been unenclosed. And Will thought that was probably good for Martin—he saw the rabbit snares and heard the birdshot; this was a chance for him to be a good landowner, to see that he didn’t need to be like his father.
They easily fell into stride as they walked along the footpath that traversed the woods. They always did, as if their bodies remembered all the rambling they had done as children, as if it didn’t matter how much time had passed or where they were, or even what bad deeds they had done or had done to them.
“Oh,” Will said, more an indrawn breath than an actual sound. He found himself standing before a proper bluebell wood. “I had no idea this was here.” There was a bluebell wood near the Grange but he couldn’t remember the last time he had happened upon it at the exact time the flowers were blooming.
“I stumbled across it a few days ago and the flowers weren’t quite out yet,” Martin said. “Thought you might like to see it.”
“Thank you,” Will said.
“You would have come across it eventually,” Martin said. He was still doing his best to be prickly and fractious, but he stood so close to Will that their sleeves brushed. Lately, Martin was constantly placing himself within touching distance. Will wasn’t sure he even knew he was doing it.
“I’ve had a lot of lovers,” Will blurted out.
Martin turned toward him and blinked. “Congratulations,” he said dryly, but with a smile playing at the corner of his mouth.
“Usually women, actually.” Oh God, he was making this worse. His face was flaming and he didn’t dare look at Martin. “In case that matters.”
“Your father must rejoice that at least one of his sons might give him a grandchild,” Martin said, casually examining his fingernails.
“You’re impossible.”
“Mmm,” Martin hummed in agreement.
“My point,” Will said, striving to remember what had possessed him to discuss his prior love life, “is that Jon is a friend. We’ve gone to bed together a couple of times but it isn’t anything more than that.”
“He looked at you like he might want it to be.”
“Then surely I ought to run away with him immediately,” Will said, throwing up his hands. “Because that’s how these things work. Sit down, for heaven’s sake.” He gestured at a felled