like that?” Martin asked, breathless. “I’m not here to amuse you.” The asperity of his voice was rather undercut by the fact that he was arching up beneath Will as their erections rubbed together in the space between their bodies.
“Yes, but you amuse me anyway,” Will said, and Martin’s only response was to pinch his arse and then move his fingers rather daringly close to Will’s cleft. Jesus. Will knew Martin was a quick study, but this was— “God, yes, please keep doing that.”
Martin laughed, the complete tosser.
Later, after they cleaned up and ate breakfast and then returned to the bed once again, Martin traced a path on Will’s shoulder blade that Will knew was the tail end of one of his scars. “You know, you and Ben are the only people who never ask me about all that,” Will murmured. Martin had simply shown up at the address Will had mentioned in his last letter and set about making sure Will had food to eat and someone to drag him home from whatever hellish places where he had sought relief. There had been no tears, no hand wringing, no well-intentioned offers for Will to unburden his soul. Martin just did his damnedest to get Will to go home to Cumberland with him, and when Will refused, stayed by his side until Sir Humphrey died and Martin had to go north to sort out the estate.
Martin raised his eyebrows, but didn’t stop the path of his fingers. “Did you want me to ask?”
“No,” Will said at once.
“I’ve always supposed that if you wanted to talk about it, you would. And,” he added after a pause, “I thought you might have had your fill of talking at the court martial.”
That was such a wild understatement that Will actually cracked a smile, which was not something he had ever anticipated doing when talking about the Fotheringay, but he knew this wasn’t even the first time Martin had managed it. “My father wanted to write a poem about it.” He coughed out a little laugh, expecting Martin to find his father’s antics amusing, but Martin only narrowed his eyes and looked ready to commit murder. “Hartley bribed someone at the Admiralty to give him the transcript of the court martial. My younger brothers still don’t know what to say to me. They remember me one way and see me like this and it makes them uncomfortable. But you and Ben treat me like I’m still me.”
Martin looked away. “It’s not every day I’m put in the same category as the saintly Benedict Sedgwick.”
“Ben is good to everyone. You’re good to me.”
“You really shouldn’t make that sound like a compliment.”
There was no point in arguing with such arrant foolishness, so Will leaned in and kissed him.
Martin hadn’t expected an epiphany to arrive in the form of an escaped pig. But piglets, it turned out, were very slippery and wished for nothing so much as anarchy. Whenever presented with a dull moment, they began devising new and horrible ways to get out of their pen. Martin, unwilling to let Will’s new project escape into the wilderness, had spent the hours since the piglets’ arrival alternately scolding them for ingratitude and chasing them around the perimeter of the cottage.
“I’m really not sure you can expect gratitude from an animal we intend to sell to the butcher,” Will said, leaning against the plane tree and watching Martin’s efforts with a badly concealed air of amusement.
“There you are,” Martin said, cornering one of the escapees against the woodshed. “Finally. William, are you going to help me retrieve these creatures or are you— Ha!” he exclaimed, lunging as the piglet approached, and finally meeting with success as his fingers closed around its midsection. “Why are they so heavy? And so naughty? None of this can be normal.”
Will took the animal from Martin’s arms and shoved it back into its pen. “You stand guard and shout if they try to make a break for it, and I’ll wedge some stones beneath the bottom rail,” he said. “When they’re a bit bigger they’ll just try to knock the entire fence down.”
“Why do you sound impressed?” Martin called. “This is disorderly behavior. Reprehensible.” He watched as Will took flat stones from an old, crumbled wall and began wedging them around the perimeter of the pen.
“Good work catching that pig,” Will said. “I didn’t think baronets could do that sort of thing.”
“Oh, fuck off,” Martin said happily, preening at Will’s praise.