A Proper Lover (Ganymede Quartet Book 2) (2 page)

“Good boy, Nick.” He turned to Henry and smiled. “I’m Ronald Hastings, by the way, and this crybaby is Nick.”

“Henry Blackwell. This is Martin.”

“Oh,
Blackwell
! Are you
that
Blackwell?”

“Well, my father is.” Henry felt his cheeks grow hot. It had been awhile since Henry had met someone new, someone who would be impressed with his family connections.

“Blackwell. Wow. Someday we’ll all be working for
you
, then, eh?” Ronald winked at Henry and Henry smiled back weakly. The idea that he’d one day be in a position of responsibility, and that he’d exult in it, was so foreign to his actual experience that it was hard to be good-natured about such joking.

“I’m surprised you don’t have a bodyguard or something,” Ronald said, craning his neck to look behind Henry, as if a bodyguard might suddenly materialize.

Henry felt his cheeks grow hot. “No one knows who I am,” he insisted, “so it’s fine.”

“Doesn’t your dad worry about you getting kidnapped or something?”

Henry shrugged and looked away. “Like I said, no one knows who I am.”

Ronald looked doubtful. “You stand out, anyway, I think.”

Nick’s announcement put a halt to this unsettling line of conversation. “It’s out, Sir! I think it’s out.” Nick lifted his head and looked at his master with red-rimmed eyes, very blue. “At least, I can’t feel it anymore, Sir.”

“Good!” Ronald slapped his own thigh for emphasis. “Are you ready to go on, then?” He turned to Henry. “Want to ride with us?”

Henry didn’t want to, actually, but he couldn’t think of any good way to say no. “Okay. Sure.” All four set their horses walking along the path.

“My father’s in manufacturing,” Ronald offered after an awkward silence, and Henry realized he probably should have asked. “Much smaller scale than your dad, of course.” He laughed, expecting Henry to laugh with him, and looked confused when Henry just gave him a pained smile.

“I don’t pay much attention to my father’s businesses,” Henry admitted. “I know he has a lot of interests, but he doesn’t talk to me about them.” Henry knew there was a railroad, and there were mines and smelting, and possibly some sort of rolling mills, but he truly didn’t know anything about the running of these businesses.

“But isn’t he grooming you to take over one day?” Ronald seemed genuinely baffled. “You’re the only son, right? Who’s going to take over if not you?”

“I don’t know,” Henry said irritably. “Someone who knows what’s going on, I suppose.” He also had a fleeting thought of his father’s bastard, little Calvin Murdock, lying in wait to take Henry’s place.

“
I’ll
be taking over from my father one day,” Ronald said confidently. “It’ll be an even bigger company with me in charge, I’ll bet!”

Henry didn’t know anything about the Hastings business, of course, nor did he know anything of Ronald’s abilities. For all he knew, Ronald was a mastermind, a business genius. “Maybe so,” he offered without enthusiasm.

With Henry not forthcoming on the subject of business, Ronald turned his attention elsewhere. “What school do you go to?”

“Algonquin,” Henry told him. “Eleventh year.”

“So you just got him—” here he made a gesture toward Martin with a jerk of his chin “—this year?”

“Yes.” Henry dared to turn and smile at Martin, who beamed back at him.

“I go to Harper-Stotts,” Ronald told him, naming a much larger and more academically-rigorous uptown school. “I’m twelfth year, so Nick and I are old friends by now. I got him from Endymion. Where’s yours from?”

“Martin’s from Ganymede.”

“Everyone says Ganymede’s best,” Ronald mused, “though I’m very happy with Nicky anyway. My father always buys from Endymion, see?”

“Mine always buys from Ganymede. We didn’t even look anywhere else,” Henry admitted. Then he hurried to add, for Martin’s benefit, “Not that we needed to. I definitely got the best one.”

Ronald did not miss that Henry had been reassuring Martin and laughed. “That’s rare,” he noted, “for a master to actually prefer his own.” When Henry looked confused, he said, “Well, at least at my school it is.”

Henry realized that Ronald thought he was comparing Martin to other slaves that he had personal experience of, and that he still preferred Martin. Did he really want to explain to this talkative stranger that he didn’t share? He’d rather not get into it unless Ronald actually asked for a swap.

“No, it’s the same at my school, too,” Henry assured him, based on nothing at all. Henry’s best friend Louis pointedly never talked to him about swaps, so had never expressed a preference for any other slave above his own Peter. It had never occurred to Henry that that could really happen, masters preferring someone else’s slave, but this Ronald was telling him it was endemic to an entire school, maybe an entire system. “I’m just different, I guess.”

“You’re lucky,” Ronald said with a shrug. “That’s pretty hair he has,” he said, again with the jerk of his chin in Martin’s direction. “I can see why you’ve kept it long. Nick had pretty hair, too, but my father made me get it cut the first week I had him.”

“What do you think fathers have against nice hair?” Henry asked. “So many of my friends had to get their slaves’ hair cut because of their fathers.”

Ronald shrugged. “My father said it made him look too girly and that it would give me the wrong idea about sex.”

Henry considered this a moment. Was it because the long hair made the slaves look like…women? Except it didn’t, not really. Martin was a beauty, but Henry felt like he definitely looked like a man. According to Louis’ older brother James, anyway, men’s and women’s bodies felt very different to fuck, and even the most beautiful hair wasn’t likely to change that perception.

“That doesn’t really make sense to me,” Henry admitted.

“Me, either,” Ronald agreed. “I think it makes them look too attractive to the
fathers
, and they’re reminded of how things were with their own slaves when they were young, and then they get uncomfortable.”

This theory was startling but certainly plausible. “My father wants me to have his hair cut, I know,” Henry said. “But so far he’s leaving the decision up to me.”

“You’re lucky,” Ronald said again. “Say, Henry, your horse…what color do you call that?”

“Buckskin,”

“I like it. It’s sort of Western, I guess. She’s what I imagine a cowboy would ride.”

Henry blushed, thinking of Captain Theo Drake’s buckskin horse, Theo’s adventures.

“A
rich
cowboy,” Ronald added, laughing heartily. Ronald and Nick were both riding rather ordinary bay geldings. “You’ve got Martin on a fancy horse, too.”

Was it so wrong to want nice things, to want what you wanted? Henry frowned, irritated with Ronald’s little pokes and jabs, even though he believed they were meant to be friendly. “They’re good horses,” he said with a shrug.

“Oh, I wasn’t saying they aren’t!” Ronald assured him. “They’re just a little showy compared to most horses, don’t you think?”

Henry had seen dozens of bay horses on the bridle path today alone, but he had not seen another buckskin, nor a blue roan, and he did not expect that he would. However, in his opinion, Marigold and Partita were special horses, not
showy
horses.

Ronald seemed to want to get to the bottom of the matter. “What sorts of horses do your friends ride? Does everyone at Algonquin ride a fancy horse?”

It had been quite some time since Henry had ridden with any of his friends. Only Charles Ross was very enthusiastic about riding, and he really only liked to jump. And Charles’ jumper was a big bay gelding. Henry thought a moment longer. Victor Spence had a white horse, he recalled.

“Well,” Henry said slowly, “one of my friends rides a white horse.”

“That’s pretty ordinary, though,” Ronald said. “I mean, your slave’s horse…what color do you call
that
?”

“Blue roan,” Henry admitted, irritated and embarrassed. He hadn’t realized what show-offs they were until now, parading their fancy horses along the bridle path and rubbing it in everyone’s faces how rich and special they were.

Ronald laughed. “See what I mean? You’ve got a
blue
horse there, Henry!”

“Well, she isn’t really blue,” Henry pointed out. “It’s just what the color’s called.”

“She’s a beauty, that’s certain,” Ronald said, both appreciative and envious. “Nick’s horse doesn’t look like much, of course, but he’s fast.”

Henry turned to look at Nick on his unremarkable bay gelding. “Good conformation,” Henry noted, though he didn’t even know if this was actually true, because he didn’t know enough to know anything. The horse looked like a generic concept of a horse. Partita was leagues better, obviously, and all of them knew it.

“We could race them,” Ronald proposed. “We could bet on it, even.”

Henry did not like this idea at all. Henry was uninterested in competition generally. Why should he care whose horse was faster? But when he turned to look at Martin, competitive Martin was eager and enthusiastic at the prospect. Martin leaned forward to pat Partita’s neck and whisper to her, practically bouncing in the saddle in his excitement.

“All right,” Henry agreed reluctantly. “What sort of bet are you proposing?”

“A dollar?” Ronald suggested. “Does that sound all right?”

“Wait,” Henry said. “Let me check my pockets…” He searched and found two wrinkled dollars in his watch pocket. “All right. I’ve got a dollar.”

Ronald grinned at him. “This will be fun!”

Henry smiled weakly in return.

“You two stay here,” Ronald said. “We’ll go ahead and mark the finish line, and then I’ll whistle for you to start, all right?”

“Whistle for him now, Sir, so he knows what to listen for,” Nick suggested.

Ronald put his fingers in his mouth and gave a sharp, swooping whistle that curled Henry’s ears and would surely carry over a long distance. Partita danced sideways at the sound and Marigold backed away from Ronald on his gelding.

“Do you think you’ll hear that?” Ronald asked Martin.

Martin grinned at him, so excited. “I certainly do, Sir!”

“Tell you what…I’ll whistle twice: once to let you know we’re ready, and then again right afterward for the start. Got it?”

“Yes, Sir,” Nick and Martin said together.

Ronald wheeled around and set off up the path at a trot and Henry followed him, nudging Marigold to catch up. The path ahead was sparsely populated.

“We’ll go a half-mile or so, all right?” Ronald asked. “Not too far.”

Henry shrugged. “Sounds fine to me.”

“Be prepared to give up your dollar,” Ronald said, in cheerful high spirits. “Nicky almost always wins.”

Henry wanted Martin to win for Martin’s sake, since it seemed to matter to him, but Henry didn’t care one way or the other who came out ahead. He’d happily pay Ronald the dollar now just to skip the race entirely, but knew Martin would be disappointed if he did so.

They passed along a bend in the path and the slaves were out of sight. They rode in a silence that Henry, at least, found somewhat awkward.

Ronald cleared this throat. “So, do you have good parties at your school?”

Henry was taken aback. Did people really just talk about swapping like this? With strangers?

“Uh…well, I don’t really—”

Ronald didn’t wait to hear the rest of it. “Your school is pretty small, isn’t it? My school’s a lot bigger, which means there are a lot more slaves to choose from, so our parties are pretty amazing.”

“Oh, well, yeah, my class isn’t even twenty people—”

“Of course, yours is a really good-looking fellow,” Ronald mused, “so you must get invited to the absolute best shindigs.”

“I guess you really like parties,” Henry stated.

Ronald looked surprised. “Doesn’t everyone?”

“Well, actually—” Henry began, but Ronald interrupted him by reining his horse to a halt.

“Right about here, you think? For the finish line?” They’d passed just one gentleman and his slave on horseback in the short distance, and Henry thought it would be no trouble for Nick and Martin to avoid this pair.

“Sure.”

They positioned their horses directly across from one another on either side of the bridle path and Ronald whistled once, piercing and so very loud, making Henry flinch—and then he did it again.

“Have your dollar ready!” Ronald told him happily.

They sat waiting a few long seconds. Henry realized he was holding his breath and made himself stop. He thought for a moment that he could hear the thunder of hooves, told himself he was imagining things, and then realized that he could, in fact, hear hoofbeats. The horses came tearing around the curve in the path, riders hunched low on their backs. Someone—Henry couldn’t be sure if it was Martin or Nick—whooped with exhilaration. It was hard to tell who was ahead until they were quite close and it was obviously Martin, Martin in the lead. Martin passed over the invisible line between Ronald and Henry a generous length ahead of Nick with a gloating, triumphant cry. Both riders needed a good distance to slow down and Henry wheeled Marigold around to go after them, to congratulate Martin and be assured that he and Partita were all right following their exertions.

Ronald frowned and looked down at the path, obviously disappointed.

When Henry got to Martin’s side, he realized he could offer him no better congratulations than a handshake and a slap on the back, and so he did, holding Martin’s hand just fractionally too long, clapping him on the back with a little caress thrown in for good measure. Nick rode over and shook Martin’s hand, seeming in reasonably good spirits.

“It was close,” Martin said to him. “You’ve got a fast horse.”

“Not as fast as yours,” Nick noted. “I don’t think you’re any better a rider than I am, but you’ve certainly got a better horse!”

Ronald joined them and offered Martin congratulations but no handshake, of course.

“Have
you
ever raced him?” he asked Henry.

Henry blinked. It had never occurred to him to do any such thing. “No…” Henry said slowly. “We’ve galloped them together, but we haven’t actually raced.” He just wanted to ride
with
Martin; he didn’t want to beat him.