not thought he was permitted to leave? Did he think he was as much a prisoner here as he had been in his father’s house? Will steadied himself with a hand to the door frame, trying to make sense of what was happening.
“How long do you need to pack your things?” Lady Bermondsey asked.
“Martin, may I speak to you indoors, please?” Will cut in, and stepped through the still-open cottage door, Martin directly on his heels. “You do know I wouldn’t have stopped you from leaving, don’t you?” he asked as soon as the door shut behind them. “If you want to go, then by all means go. I would never try to stop you.”
Will expected Martin to be relieved, but instead his jaw tightened and he refused to meet Will’s eye. “Of course you wouldn’t,” he said.
“Why didn’t you tell me, though?”
“I didn’t know she was going to come and get me,” Martin said, his gazed fixed somewhere over Will’s shoulder. “I thought she’d give me a draft on her bank for the coach faire, and then I’d go up to town a day or two ahead of you.”
Will furrowed his brow. “Why wouldn’t you have just gone up with me?”
“I wanted to part here, rather than at Charing Cross.”
“Part?” Will repeated.
“It’s time for me to stay with my aunt. What we talked about the other day, we both know it’s going to only get worse if we keep doing this. Let’s cut our losses.”
Will pressed his lips together so he didn’t say anything he’d want to take back. He knew that by our losses, Martin meant Will’s losses. It had been Will’s inane crisis the other day that prompted Martin to write to his aunt. He was trying to spare Will future pain. He was trying to make a sacrifice for Will, not to hurt Will. “Were you going to tell me beforehand?” he asked, as gently as he could.
“Honestly, I was hoping that after we got to London you’d be distracted.”
Will tipped his head back on the closed door. This was all so typical of Martin. Evasive, passive, intent on stepping sideways around his meaning. He was used to his desires being treated with scorn at best and punishment at worse, so he had learned to appease. And now he was treating Will as a person who needed to be appeased, someone who might turn on him. That, more than anything, came close to breaking his heart.
Will took Martin’s hands in his own. “I’m not going to be distracted from how I feel about you, you know. But if you want to end things now, if you want to go with your aunt, then I’m not going to stop you.” He wanted to try to persuade Martin that he was wrong, that they didn’t need to do this, but he was afraid that Martin would see that as Will trying to pressure or manipulate him. He told himself that this was what Martin needed, and tried to ignore the sensation that felt suspiciously like his heart splitting in two.
Now Martin looked at Will almost as if he expected Will to say more. “You’re telling me to go,” Martin said when Will remained silent.
“I’ll be in town next week and we can see one another then,” Will said, trying to sound happy about it.
“Will,” Martin said, and it sounded like a protest, but Will couldn’t understand what Martin was protesting.
“It’ll be fine,” Will said. “We’ll still be friends. Just like before. It’ll be easy, you’ll see. We’ve been through worse than this, right?” And then, because he had to, he had to do it one last time, he took Martin’s face in his hands and kissed him. “I’ll see you in a week,” Will said, pushing aside the jealousy and sorrow and reminding himself he was doing the right thing.
Chapter Fourteen
Martin supposed he shouldn’t have been surprised when his aunt refused to have the carriage stop at Bermondsey House until Martin had visited the tailor. “All your things are still in your room,” she said. “Including your clothes. But I daresay nothing will fit you anymore, so we may as well buy new.”
Martin, having been cast out of the cottage and sent packing to London, found that he didn’t much care where he was, and let his aunt and the tailor hold lengths of fabric in front of his person as if he were a sofa in need of reupholstering.
“Six pairs of pantaloons, I should think, and another