Bonds of Earth (20 page)

The thought of it left him hollow and cold.

“When do you plan to leave?”

Michael pushed away the image of Sarah, her expression disillusioned and yet resigned. “Quite soon, if I can manage it.”

“That’s unfortunate,” Castleton pouted. “A friend of mine is hosting an art show next week. I would have liked to have shown you off a little.”

Michael smiled in spite of himself. “Ex-lover?”

Castleton raised an eyebrow. “How did you guess?”

But Michael had already latched on to the important information. “An art show, you say? Your friend owns a gallery?”

Castleton made a derisive noise. “He’s a dilettante who dabbles in the arts.”

Michael bit his lip to hold back the obvious retort about pots and kettles. “But he puts together art shows?”

Castleton blinked, finally picking up on Michael’s uncharacteristic enthusiasm. “Yes. Why?”

“Because I might have a painter he should meet. Will you tell me how to get in touch with him?”

Castleton yawned and stretched. “For you, my darling, I will arrange it personally. Let me know what you need done and he’ll do it.” At Michael’s surprised look, Castleton smiled evilly. “Let’s just say he owes me a favor and leave it at that.”

“I’ll give you the details of his address,” Michael said, the plan forming as he spoke. “Give me a couple of weeks to be on my way and then get in touch with him. Make up a story as to how you found out about him; it doesn’t matter. Just leave my name out of it.”

Castleton’s smile turned wry. “Well, well,” he said breathily, “someone’s excited. I wonder why?”

Michael’s heart slammed against his ribs. “Don’t fuck with me,” he growled. “Just tell me if you can do it.”

Castleton blinked at him, all traces of humor disappearing, then calmly said, “I told you I would arrange whatever you wanted.”

Michael reined in his stampeding emotions, took a deep breath and let it out. “Yes. You did. I’m sorry.”

Castleton frowned at him in curiosity rather than disapproval. “You’re a strange bird, aren’t you?”

Michael reached up and fisted his hand in the blond hair. Castleton jerked in his grasp, eyes widening in surprise. “Thought I was a carnivore,” he growled, pulling him down.

“Oh, God,” Castleton breathed, eyelids drooping again as Michael maneuvered him where he wished, and then he mercifully said no more for a good while. Castleton truly did have a talented mouth when he employed it in pursuits that did not involve talking, and that excused a good deal in Michael’s mind. Unfortunately, his mind was also given to wandering tonight, and when next he looked down the length of his body, it was to a vision of Seward’s mouth engulfing him, welcoming him home over and over again. He screwed his eyes shut to dispel the seductive image, but it remained to torment him. Seward, he imagined, would not be nearly as experienced as Castleton, but he would be rough where Castleton was smooth and unyielding and stubborn where Castleton was pliant and agreeable, and his hair would be soft and his hands would be wide and endearingly unsure
—

Michael arched his back and came without warning, groaning as though he were dying. He heard Castleton cough and felt him withdraw abruptly, and murmured a halfhearted apology before flipping him over onto his stomach and proceeding to make it up to him. Within a few minutes Castleton was begging to come as Michael slid his tongue around his hole. When Michael penetrated him with three greased fingers, he screamed his approval and came all over his expensive sheets.

Seward, Michael imagined, would be nearly silent. Michael would try every trick he knew to break through that well-bred veneer, and he would count every small sound as a victory—

Christ,
he thought, withdrawing his now-trembling hands from Castleton’s spent body,
what am I going to do now?

Castleton, as always, was centered on his own pleasure. “Michael, I do believe you broke me in the best possible way,” he sighed happily.

“Glad I could oblige,” Michael murmured, gratefully allowing physical exhaustion to silence his questions for a few hours.

12

D
ESPITE
his determination to quit his job and bid farewell to Paddy’s enslavement as soon as possible, Michael was not eager to broach the subject of his departure with Abbott. The old man seemed to have suffered no ill effects from his strenuous day last week, and he was looking happier than Michael had ever seen him. In fact, all the members of the household—with the notable exception of himself—seemed rejuvenated after their outing, and he was loath to do anything to upset that new balance.

On the other hand, he couldn’t continue this way for much longer. Every day he stayed brought him a little closer to imagining a situation that was so patently absurd he should have laughed aloud at the thought. But each time he caught Seward watching him with that fathomless green gaze, with an unsettling mixture of hope and anticipation, he was drawn another few inches toward a dream that would never have a basis in reality. Did he truly think that the lord of the manor would sweep him off his feet and make an honest man of him? Even more ridiculously, did he believe that he knew a damned thing about happy endings?

No. Better to leave as soon as he could and strike out on his own for new territory that was free of associations and memories. He only needed to watch for the right opportunity.

On the Saturday after his disastrous trip to New York, the weather was so hot that he was drenched in sweat by the time he was halfway through the mowing, and Seward was close to heat stroke after two laps of the house. After being thoroughly scolded by Mary, they found themselves packing Sarah and a generous picnic lunch into the car, with strict instructions to enjoy the rest of the day.

They ended up on a stretch of the Hudson just outside of Stuyvesant, on land owned by one of the many branches of the Seward family. Luckily, these Sewards were on an extended tour of Europe, so after a brief exchange of greetings with the caretaker, there was no further need to socialize.

Sarah had brought her model ship, and Seward helped her affix a length of rope to it so that she could sail it on the river without worrying about losing it to the current. The faint breeze puffed out the sails as she sat on the bank admiring its form and speed and conjuring all sorts of grand adventures for her make-believe crew. Michael and Seward flanked her, their feet dangling in the cool water, as she wove her tales around them all, and for the first time Michael found himself humbled by the limitless expanse of a child’s fanciful imagination. His youthful dreams had always been of the much more mundane kind, relating to a full belly and a vague, half-formed desire for a freedom he hadn’t yet begun to understand.

After lunch they all changed into their swimming gear—Michael in a suit borrowed from one of the trunks in the attic—and splashed about in the shallow cove near the boathouse. He noted with some dismay that Seward was looking tanned and fit, his build now leaning toward athletically slim rather than gaunt. Long muscles Michael had coaxed back to life played under his golden skin as he chased a giggling Sarah around in circles.

As for Michael, he stayed near the shore, watching them warily as they swam and dived in increasingly deeper water. He’d never learned to swim himself. Paddy and his aunt had never encouraged him to visit the public baths as a child, and when he grew older he’d discovered other pursuits to occupy his time.

“Can you hold your breath underwater?” Sarah asked Michael, her small face dotted with sparkling droplets. “I can!”

“Oh, wait—” Michael began, but before he could finish, she had disappeared entirely without a trace. He strode toward her, feet slipping on the slick rocks as he tried to reach her.

“She’ll be all right,” Seward told him. “She’s a champion swimmer, Mary tells me.”

“Well, I’m not,” Michael gritted, watching the surface of the water with increasing anxiety, “and if she gets into trouble, I won’t be able to help her.”

He felt a hand touch his arm and jumped; he hadn’t realized Seward was so close. Turning, he caught Seward’s gently amused expression.

“The water is four feet deep,” Seward murmured, hand warm on Michael’s bicep. “She’ll be fine. And if there’s any trouble, I can manage it.”

Michael’s jaw clenched. “I know I’m being foolish,” he snapped.

The hand on his arm tightened, and Michael looked up to meet Seward’s unexpectedly open gaze. “You’re not being anything of the kind,” he said with surprising vehemence. “Don’t ever apologize for giving a damn.”

Michael’s mouth thinned. “It’s been a while,” he murmured. “I’m not sure I remember how.”

“You do,” Seward told him firmly. “I know that you do, because you’ve helped me to remember.”

Michael found himself trapped by that gaze, drawn inexorably closer by its warmth. He tried to speak, but his voice had deserted him.

And then Seward’s free hand was wrapping around the back of Michael’s neck as he leaned in, and Michael could only stare at him, fascinated by the water clinging to his long eyelashes and glistening on his upper lip. He wondered suddenly whether Seward’s mouth would be cool from the river—

The sound of a loud splash a couple of dozen feet away threw Michael out of his reverie, and the two of them broke apart as though they’d been caught groping in the bushes in Central Park.

“How long was that? How long did I hold my breath?” Sarah squealed, popping up out of the water.

“Oh, that was—” Seward cleared his throat before continuing, “—that was easily forty-five seconds. Very impressive.”

“I’m going to try again!” Sarah exclaimed, and dove under once more.

Michael stared at the place she’d been for a few moments, feeling his pulse pounding in his throat. He looked up just as Seward sank a hand in his hair and crushed their mouths together.

Michael fought for all of half a second before his own hands were cupping Seward’s face and he was returning the kiss, licking and biting in his eagerness, the desire he’d spent weeks suppressing flooding to the surface of his skin and drowning him.

“Christ,” Michael swore when they broke away and pressed their cheeks together, panting for breath, “this is—”

“We have less than twenty seconds before she pops up again,” Seward growled in his ear, the vibration making Michael shudder. “Let me enjoy it.” His arm slid around Michael’s shoulders, surprising strength meeting Michael’s own and mastering it briefly as he claimed one last, bruising kiss.

Right on cue, Sarah emerged triumphantly from the river fifteen seconds later to the applause and cheers of both men. She giggled and bowed to them, then initiated a splashing water fight that soon had them all drenched and laughing.

It was only hours later, when he was driving back with Seward cradling an exhausted but happy Sarah in the backseat of the car, that Michael wondered when the hell his entire life had turned itself inside-out.

T
HE
next few days were a tangle of emotion and mental confusion as knotted and impossible to clear from Michael’s mind as barbed wire entanglement in No Man’s Land. Luckily, since Seward was becoming more and more independent and the garden was now requiring correspondingly greater time for maintenance, the times in which he was alone with Seward were few and far between. Sarah was their companion during their afternoon sessions in the gymnasium, and Michael shifted his massages to an earlier time when the Abbotts were more likely to be prowling the upstairs halls engaged in one of their many duties. If Seward noticed the change in schedule, he said nothing, and so the incident between them at the river was not repeated.

And then Seward decided to push himself beyond his limits once more, undertaking a hike through the woods that lasted two hours beyond his estimate. The Abbotts were watching the setting sun with apprehension and Michael was considering the best route to take for a search when Seward emerged from the forest, exhausted, arms and legs bloodied by a score of mosquito bites and encounters with hostile flora.

Mary handed Michael the bottle of calamine lotion and sent him off with orders to tend to Seward.

“I don’t need to be reminded of my job,” Michael snapped. Mary frowned at him but said nothing. When her too-knowing gaze turned speculative, Michael turned and fled.

He trudged up the stairs, thinking he would find Seward barely out of his shirt by now, but he’d apparently underestimated Seward’s speed, because when Michael walked in, he was stark naked and inspecting himself in the full-length mirror. He looked up and met Michael’s gaze in the glass when he entered.

With a great effort of will, Michael kept his eyes straight and level. “Why do you do this to yourself?” he ground out, fists clenching in frustration. “You’re progressing well, but you’re not fully recovered, not by a long shot. You’re going to suffer a setback if you keep going to extremes like this.”

Seward dabbed at a bite on his forearm with a damp handkerchief. “I know it.”

“Then why?” Michael demanded.

Seward shrugged. “I suppose the best explanation is that, like Sarah, I don’t believe I deserve to be happy.”