Never a Road Without a Turning (24 page)

Pip groaned aloud to his empty room and drew his blankets over his head, snuggling down into the warmth and darkness. He was tired, tired of hurting, tired of wanting, tired of thinking and agonizing over matters he had no answers for. And he blamed Ash entirely. Ash had done this to him and then left him to manage the wreckage on his own.

Bloody bastard
.

B
Y
THE
end of his second week home, little had changed. He hadn’t been able to bring himself to write the letter to Ash as yet. Instead, he concentrated on settling back in on the farm. He packed away the gifts Ash had given him at the bottom of a chest in his room. He put on a brave face for Maud and for his masters. He did whatever needed to be done around the farm while Maud and everyone else got used to the idea that he intended to stay this time.

Playing with the children and eating his meals amid the family Maud had created helped. But beneath it all, his heart was still broken, and his confidence remained damaged. He rarely flirted at all anymore. Maud accepted his newfound solemnity reluctantly, but she watched him and fussed over him constantly… and Pip loved her all the more for it, even if it rankled a bit.

The nights grew even colder as Christmas approached, and Pip took to filling them with trips to one or more of the overabundance of pubs in Penrith, rather than sitting under Maud’s watchful eye by the kitchen fire. He would walk or ride into town and drink with Turner or Myers, Mr. Carruthers’s master shepherd… or with any of the other men who haunted the pubs at night and would welcome his company at their table. The ale flowed freely and the rooms were noisy and warm, full of life and distractions that kept him from dwelling on his sorrows.

One of those nights Pip returned to a house gone dark and quiet, warm to his bones on good ale, despite the frigid walk. He crept through the kitchen to his room, careful to keep quiet so he wouldn’t wake anyone. But before he could open the door and disappear inside his bedchamber, Stubbs appeared at the end of the hall, carrying a single candle.

“Oi, lad, we’ve been waitin’ for ye. Ye have a visitor.”

Pip swung around a little unsteadily and frowned at him. The ale was making his mind a bit slow, but he was sure he couldn’t have heard the man right.

“A visitor?”

“Aye. ’e come just after dark. Major Astley McNulty,” Stubbs ground out the name carefully, as if it didn’t sit well in his mouth. “’E were ghastly pale, and the masters decided to put ’im in a guestroom upstairs afore he fell over dead.”

Pip barely heard anything after Stubbs said the name. Ash was here, now. The pleasant and sleepy haze he’d been laboring under disappeared with the pounding of his heart.

“Where?” It was the only word he could manage.

“Upstairs,” Stubbs replied unhelpfully, and Pip growled. Stubbs’s craggy face quivered a bit in the candlelight before the corner of his mouth lifted a tiny fraction. He was enjoying Pip’s agitation. “Last room on the right.”

It wasn’t the largest of the four guest rooms, but it would be the easiest to keep warm and, perhaps not incidentally, the farthest from the masters’ bedchamber. Pip nodded, but he remained rooted to the spot, unable to think of what to do next.

Eventually Stubbs grunted, closed the distance between them, handed over his candle, and stumped back the way he’d come without another word. The sound of a door closing finally shook Pip out of his stupor, and he rushed to the stairs and took them as quickly and quietly as he could. He was down the hall and through the bedchamber door before any second thoughts could stop him.

Once inside, his candle cast wavering shadows across the room and at first, he thought it a trick of the light when the midnight velvet bed curtains moved, but then a tired voice confirmed he was not imagining it.

“Phillip?”

Ash was the only one who ever called him that, and hearing his name in that beloved voice sent a stab of joy and pain through his chest.

“I’m here.”

Ash pushed the thick bed curtains aside and swung his legs to the floor. He was still in his trousers and boots, and the room felt inexcusably cold. Pip stepped away from the door and hurried to the grate. He set his candle on the mantel and stirred up the coals before pouring another shovelful on, embarrassed and angry that Ash hadn’t been properly seen to. “Did no one come t’ take care of ye?”

“I was well taken care of. Your masters Carey and Carruthers were very generous with their hospitality. The housekeeper, Maud, offered any service I required, but I told her I could manage on my own. I simply hadn’t expected to sleep as long as I did. I must have been more tired than I thought.”

Stubborn bastard.

Silence fell as the coals began to warm the room, and Pip drank in the sight of his former master. Ash still looked pale and careworn. He also appeared thinner than when Pip had left him, and the tightness around his eyes and mouth betrayed his suffering. Pip wanted to go to him, to wrap his arms around him and soothe away his hurts, kiss him until Ash forgot his pain. But he stayed where he was, hurt and fear of rejection keeping him frozen to the spot.

“Why ’ave ye come?” he asked, hope creeping in despite all that.

Ash made to rise but seemed to think better of it. He dropped his hands to the mattress by his thighs and sighed. “I had much to say to you, and none of it could be put in a letter.”

Pip swallowed and took a steadying breath, fighting the urge to run to the man again. Crossing his arms over his chest, he feigned an air of patience and unconcern he did not feel.

Into the silence that fell between them, Ash chuckled ruefully. “I suppose that is only partly the truth. But I think it is where I should start, even if I may wish some of it had remained unsaid by the time I am finished.”

He spoke so quietly that Pip began to think he was speaking more to himself than for Pip’s benefit. “I don’t understand.”

“I know, and for that I must apologize along with all the other injustices I must redress.” Ash blew out a long breath before continuing. “I have done you great wrong, Phillip. I have thought ill of you when I was given no cause. I have made assumptions I should not. And I have not once taken the pains to understand you, as I should.”

Pip growled. “Speak plainly, man. Ye know I’m only a simple—”

“But you aren’t,” Ash interrupted earnestly, straightening his spine and leaning toward Pip, as if to compel him to understand. “I knew you weren’t. I
knew
there was so much more to you, and yet I still….” He slumped back and dropped his head into his hands. “From the very first, I believed you were only toying with me, Phillip. I thought you might prove the ruin of me, once and for all. But I didn’t care. A quick end was almost preferable to the slow one I had planned for myself, as long as I had a few bright moments with you before it happened.”

When Ash gazed up at him again, Pip’s stomach twisted at the resignation in the man’s eyes. Ash must have seen when his words finally sunk in, because he nodded and smiled sadly. “Yes. When I purchased the cottage, I fully intended to die there. Oh, nothing so dramatic as a pistol or a length of rope, but I believed I’d waste away quietly with my books and my drink, no trouble to anyone. But then I met you. The first time I saw you, I looked at your face, and I thought I had never seen a more beautiful man.”

Pip snorted loudly and began to pace in front of the grate, unable to keep still any longer. “Ye weren’t lookin’ at me face that first time,” he said tartly, eager to dispel the heaviness in the room before it crushed him.

Ash barked out a surprised laugh, and some color actually returned to his cheeks. “No. I suppose I wasn’t.” He shook his head and turned his face away. “At any rate, I saw you and the tiniest of flames sparked to life where I thought all was dead and gone. I decided then I needed more of you, even when I believed nothing could happen between us. And when the miracle happened and you did let me have you, I couldn’t allow myself to believe you could want me for myself alone. I was a wreck, a ruin. What on earth could you possible see in me if not my money or some other means of advancement?”

Pip clenched his jaw and wrapped his arms tighter around himself. Again, he’d known by the way the man treated him that Ash thought little of him, but he hadn’t realized it was as bad as this. He felt like even more of a fool now than he did before he’d left, but he couldn’t help but ask, “If that’s what ye thought, then why are ye ’ere now?”

“Because I found this,” Ash answered, drawing a book from under the pillows and opening it to the page marked by a torn bit of paper.

Even in the dim light of the candle, Pip knew the volume, and as Ash began to recite the lines, Pip had to fight the lump in his throat and the sudden sting of tears in his eyes.

The fountains mingle with the river

And the rivers with the ocean,

The winds of heaven mix for ever

With a sweet emotion;

Nothing in the world is single;

All things by a law divine

In one spirit meet and mingle—

Why not I with thine?

See the mountains kiss high heaven

And the waves clasp one another;

No sister-flower would be forgiven

If it disdained its brother;

And the sunlight clasps the earth

And the moonbeams kiss the sea:

What is all this sweet work worth

If thou kiss not me?

By the time he finished speaking, Ash was standing only inches from Pip. He did not reach out or move any closer, but Pip could feel him on every inch of his body, as if they were already wrapped around one another.

“I will not lie to you, Phillip. I would have sent for you eventually, even if I hadn’t found it. After only a fortnight without you, knowing I might never see you again, I was almost ready to damn what little pride I had left and risk ruin and public disgrace to have you, even if only for a little while longer… to beg you to return, whatever your motives were. But when I found this,” he continued, holding out the torn slip of paper, “I realized how wrong I had been. I have no excuse for it. Simply because I’d been played for a fool before did not give me the right to paint you with the same brush. I sent for a carriage at once. I had to know….”

Pip took the slip of paper from Ash’s shaking hand and smoothed it out with his fingertips.

“All is ash.”

The words he’d scribbled in pencil, what felt like a lifetime ago, were blurred and smeared but still legible.

“How did ye find it?” he asked, because it was the only thing he could say.

“I went in search of the book not long after you left. I couldn’t bring myself to read it at first, knowing how well you loved it, but I kept it with me during those first terrible days. Every minute of every hour, I thought of you.”

Pip let the slip of paper fall to the floor. Then he closed his eyes and buried his face against Ash’s neck. “All I ever wanted was more time with ye. No blackmail, no presents, just you,” Pip whispered against his skin.

Ash’s breath sobbed from his chest a moment before he wrapped his arms around Pip and drew their bodies together. They stood like that, sharing one another’s warmth, until Pip felt Ash’s legs tremble. He drew back and took Ash’s hand and led him to the bed.

Without a word, Pip pushed him down onto the mattress and crouched to tug off his boot. When Ash began to object, Pip shoved at the man’s shoulders until Ash was flat on his back. Then Pip unfastened Ash’s trousers and yanked them off before setting to work on Ash’s false leg. The thigh beneath the lacings looked swollen and painful, the end rubbed raw, and Pip had to stifle a whimper of sympathy as he eased the contraption off and set it aside.

Pip then littered the floor with his boots and outer clothing before he climbed onto the mattress and shoved the two of them beneath the blankets. Pip reached for Ash then, drawing him near with a hand behind his neck. Their kiss was gentle. As desperately as Pip needed Ash’s touch, reassurance that he was solid and real, he knew he had to hold back. Ash still needed more time to recover from his journey.

“Phillip, I have missed you so. But I don’t know if I am able to—”

Pip shut him up with a long, intoxicating kiss. He sucked and nibbled on Ash’s firm lips and tongue. He teased and tormented until he was certain Ash had never been kissed so thoroughly in his entire life. And then, when Ash was panting and quivering in his arms, Pip whispered, kissing lightly over Ash’s cheeks and his eyes, “I know. You’ve come a long way. And you need to rest. Sleep. I’ll be here when you wake.”

Fatigue and Pip’s ministrations were obviously dragging him down, but Ash retained enough of his senses to frown and shake his head. “What if someone comes? You can’t be caught here.”

Pip smiled and kissed him again, until Ash’s mouth was chasing his, begging for more. “Don’t worry,” Pip whispered hotly against his lips. “We’re safe.” Ash looked as if he wanted to argue, but Pip said, “Trust me,” and Ash surrendered to exhaustion, relaxed back into the pillows, and closed his eyes.