bowl the other night. He wrote about visiting his mother’s grave in the parish churchyard. It was one page, front and back, filled with mostly trifling concerns, and containing not even the faintest suggestion of anything that could get either of them into trouble, but when he signed his name he knew he had written a love letter.
And when Will wrote back—a letter filled with slightly less trifling material than Martin’s, but with words underscored and scratched out and ink blotted in a manner befitting a twelve-year-old—that was a love letter too. He had closed with a simple “Yours, W.S.,” but the yours was underscored by the tail of the Y, and the postscript simply read “Soon.”
There was no undoing the fact that they loved one another. Even if they never touched one another again, even if they never saw one another again, even if they never spoke or wrote the words—the truth was still there. At some point, the fundamental material of their friendship had undergone a sea change and it couldn’t be reversed. Martin had already known that he would go through the rest of his days in love with Will, but now he had to face the possibility that Will might do the same. When Martin reread Will’s letter, the stubbornness was there in every pen stroke, in every turn of phrase, and Martin feared Will was going to hold on to this. It was a stupid thing to do, and Will was going to do it anyway, and Martin was an idiot for not having seen it earlier. What was worst of all was that this knowledge made Martin love him even more.
Well, Will was a stubborn fool. That was hardly news. What mattered now was what Martin did about it. Clearly Martin was going to have to do the thinking for both of them.
“You haven’t seen Martin in days,” Hartley said.
Will looked up from under the table where he was tightening screws. “I didn’t realize you were keeping an eye on me.”
Hartley shrugged, not bothering to deny it. “I’m trying not to act completely insane about it, but I’m worried you’re going to get your heart broken and repair to the nearest opium den.”
Will sighed and got to his feet. “That’s not going to happen.”
“Which one? Getting your heart broken or going to an opium den.”
“The opium den.” Every time Will left the Fox, some old and unsettled part of his brain reminded him how close he was to his old haunts, but he wasn’t going to visit one, even though not doing so required more of an effort than he might have preferred.
“Just—tell me if you’re going to, though. That way I’m not imagining you dead.”
Will was ready to protest that he was fine and Hartley’s concerns were unnecessary, but Hartley had every right to be worried, he supposed. The thing about losing one’s mind once was that everybody expected it to happen again. He sighed. “All right. I promise.”
Hartley ran a finger along the glossy wood of the bar top, then took a rag out of his pocket to polish away a probably imaginary blot. It was early, and the Fox was still empty. “I thought for certain Martin would be loitering around here all hours of the night and day.”
“I had hoped he would,” Will admitted, turning his attention to fixing a wobbly chair leg. “We parted under less than ideal terms in Sussex, and even worse the other day.”
“I gathered as much.”
“He means to marry. He says it’s the only way he can be sure to have a roof over his head and food in his belly. His other option, I suppose, would be to rely on me, and while I’d be more than happy to let him, it’s not like I have much to offer.”
“It sounds like you support his decision to marry,” Hartley said. He spoke in the measured tones of a man trying his best to bite his tongue.
“I don’t like it. But I want the best for him. I can’t be with him if he’s married, though.”
“Why not?” Hartley looked up from the tap he was polishing.
“It’s dishonest.”
Hartley tapped his finger. “It’s not ideal. But I’m not certain it’s dishonest either. He wouldn’t be making a love match. It wouldn’t be unusual for both parties to have liaisons. Unless you were tremendously indiscreet, his wife would have no cause to be jealous. You’d be her husband’s friend, not a rival.”