or thirty pounds would not even make a difference to me. Just assure me that you’ll come to me before you get to a desperate state. Meanwhile, what do you plan to do? For money, I mean, if you don’t mind my asking so crass a question.”
“My solicitor tells me I can likely get fifty pounds a year for Friars’ Gate if I let it on a repairing lease. That way I wouldn’t be responsible for its upkeep. I can live on fifty pounds.”
Lady Bermondsey blanched. Her gown almost certainly cost more than fifty pounds. “Where, darling?”
“Either the dower house at Lindley Priory or the cottage at Friars’ Gate. They both belong to me.” He had no intention of going back to Lindley Priory unless he absolutely had to, but he mentioned it because he thought the dower house would sound more appealing to his aunt than the tiny cottage she had had seen at Friars’ Gate. He was tense with the anticipation of her response. He knew that she couldn’t actually control him, couldn’t shove him in his bedroom and lock the door. But he still expected her to try to persuade him to do as she told him and he was braced to resist her arguments.
“I can’t say that would be what I’d choose myself, but I’ll assume you know your own needs, Martin,” she said. He waited for the rest, but all she did was take a sip of tea.
“Yes,” he said. “And I thank you for that, ma’am.”
It might have been the persistent rain, or it might have been the sunless sky, but Will was becoming nervous. For over half an hour he had huddled under his umbrella, waiting at the stage door for Martin’s arrival. He had long since concluded that Martin had either forgotten the appointed time, been waylaid by his aunt, or met with some horrible fate. The distance between the Fox and Bermondsey House in Mayfair was less than an hour on foot; the distance between the theater and Mayfair was even shorter. But when Martin was at one end of that span and he was at the other, even a couple of miles felt insurmountable, and Will couldn’t know any peace.
In the play, he had written a pair of young lovers who couldn’t bear to be apart. But he had modeled them on Romeo and Juliet, on Tristan and Isolde, thinking more of the concept of mutually pining lovers than on any actual experience of his own. He was vaguely appalled to discover that he was acting that way himself. It would have been even more mortifying if he hadn’t known that Martin was in the same state. And that, the thrill of knowing that Martin had feelings as soft and stupid as his own, only made Will miss him more.
They had parted the previous morning with lingering kisses and murmured promises to meet the following afternoon, Martin’s back against the door to keep it shut, Will’s mouth skimming over the invisible, pale stubble on Martin’s jaw. Will had wanted to haul Martin back upstairs and lock the door and never let Martin out of his sight.
Finally a carriage pulled up in front of the theater. It was not the same traveling chaise in which Lady Bermondsey arrived at the cottage, but rather a lighter and narrower conveyance, but it bore the same coat of arms on the door. Martin alighted, spotted Will, and made his way across the cobblestones to duck under Will’s umbrella.
“A sinkhole opened on Oxford Street,” Martin said. “Or, if not a sinkhole, something vast and muddy and very alarming to horses. It took ages to wend our way through the side streets.”
They were standing close, close enough that Will could smell Martin’s soap. It might have been the dreariness of the weather, but Martin looked paler than he had the previous day, washed out, a bit drawn. “You look tired,” Will said.
“Well, you’ll have to take me to bed as soon as we finish here,” Martin said, arching an eyebrow. “Unless you have other plans.” He spoke the words dispassionately, casually, and there was something about the coolness of the delivery that made Will want him even more. This act of putting a public face on their friendship somehow made the private reality that much more precious.
“Come in,” Will said. “They started the dress rehearsal, but you’re in time for the second act.” He folded his umbrella and shook it out, then held the door open