Bone Idol (11 page)

He wanted to tell him of the discovery he had made among his father’s papers, but the thought of it made his spine crawl with guilt and shame. He thought of Henry on the train, defending his decision to expose his father’s mistake with
Streptosaurus boundrii
. He thought of him saying, “I had no choice.”

Then Henry reached out and touched the curve of Albert’s cheek with a crooked forefinger. It was a featherlight touch, the gesture so tender that it made Albert catch his breath and close his eyes.

“What is it, Albert? Why do you want to make me the villain of the piece? Do you think so ill of me, after all we’ve shared?”

And it all came tumbling out. His father’s strange behaviour—odd, wild exuberance, followed by self-doubt and sudden accusations of plots against him. His strange words after the explosion—‘What have I done?’ The way he had been so secretive about his papers, when previously he had always been so keen to share his work with his son. And the papers Albert www.total-e-bound.com

had found, about specimens put together from odd bones; old discoveries made to look new and revolutionary.

Henry nodded gravely as Albert spoke, taking his hand and squeezing it reassuringly when he came to his suspicions—unspoken, only half formed until now—that his father had planted a fake discovery at the dig site. That he had manufactured a discovery from whole cloth in order to bolster the reputation he feared lost.

Henry sighed. “I knew I had hurt your father. I knew I had shaken his confidence in himself—though you must believe that was not my intention.”

“I know! Henry, I’m so sorry…”

Tears started in Albert’s eyes, but Henry shushed him and gave him a smile that almost calmed his fears—Henry’s eyes looked so steady and so calm.

“I did not, I confess, understand how badly shaken he was by the experience, nor how desperate he had become to regain his reputation.”

“And now it is lost for good—quite lost!”

“Hush, Albert.” Henry squeezed Albert’s hand again. “Your father’s reputation is safe, if you just hold your peace. The only people who know about this are you, your father and myself. And the evidence is gone—blown to smithereens.”

“But how?” Who had blown up his father’s specimen? Albert’s voice rose and cracked as he continued. “It could not have been Gideon—you saw him, his clothes were immaculate.

Maude”—he shook his head—“she’s funding the dig—why would she sabotage it? And the men have no reason to destroy their very livelihood. So whom should I have suspected?

Who…?”

They both whirled as the tent flap was pushed aside, letting in the sharp, acrid smell of the exhausted fire.

“Me,” said the Reverend Arthur Boundry. “It was me.”

The reverend looked exhausted and frail. He had donned his cracked glasses again and his fine hair was slicked to his head with sweat. But his expression was resolute.

“I wondered,” Henry muttered softly.

The reverend burst into tears.

Albert rushed at once to his side, thinking of nothing but his father’s distress. He held the old man’s head against his shoulder and stroked his back, soothing him, shushing him as though he was a child.

Henry, capable and practical, poured water into a glass, saying nothing, standing solemnly by until the old man’s sobs turned to hiccoughs and then faded away entirely.

He raised his head from Albert’s shoulder, now wet with snot and tears. His eyes were red-rimmed and swollen, but that stubborn, resolute expression was back on his face and he straightened his spine and pulled his shoulders back, looking Henry directly in the eye.

“I don’t know what Dawlish has to gain by lying,” he said. “I don’t know whether he means to hurt me, or to hurt you. But I know he is lying, and I know he can’t be trusted. I know you didn’t sabotage the dig site, my boy…because
I
did. I was the saboteur.”

Henry nodded. He didn’t seem surprised. “You regretted your decision to plant the false specimen,” he said. His voice was low and calm, with no hint of censure.

“I’m getting old,” the reverend said.

Albert opened his mouth to protest, but his father shook his head, silencing him.

“I’m getting old, and old men get frightened. I owe you an apology, Elkington.” He paused, then corrected himself. “Henry.”

“You thought I meant to ruin your reputation.” Henry’s voice remained steady.

“I misjudged you.”

“And you hoped to rebuild it with a new discovery—a fake.”

The reverend shrugged helplessly. “At first it seemed like such a simple solution. But the more I came to know you, the more I realised how clear-eyed you were. How brilliant.

And I began to realise that you would see through my sham of a discovery.

“Dawlish was whispering in my ear all the time, telling me of your ambition, of your desire to succeed even at the expense of your brothers in the science—”

Albert opened his mouth to protest, but Henry laid a steadying hand on his arm.

“I should never have listened to him, not when he was slandering your character. I should have seen that his lies were feeding my paranoia. That he was poisoning my mind against you. But he was right about one thing—you would have seen through my own lies, my feeble attempt at deception. And so I realised there was nothing to do but destroy the specimen; to hope that my folly would never be uncovered.”

Henry just nodded once, his expression grave and unsurprised. “But when Dawlish accused me, your honour would not allow an innocent man to be blamed,” he said. “That does you credit.”

Albert looked from his father to his lover, and realisation dawned. “You knew,” he said.

“I suspected, certainly. When your father seemed reluctant to allow us to visit the dig site on our arrival at the camp. And when you told me what you had found among his papers…”

“Henry, why didn’t you tell me? Why didn’t you say anything?”

Henry gazed at him, and Albert could see the love in his face, could see the smile in his eyes.

“Because,” he said, his mouth turning up ever so slightly at one corner, “I didn’t think it would be
kind
.”

They had walked with the reverend back to his tent and seen him settled. He had been almost asleep on his feet, apparently exhausted after his confession and full of warm, avuncular sentiment towards Henry, whom, Albert could see, under his habitual restraint, was embarrassed but pleased.

Although it was only the middle of the day, everyone in the camp had been up all night and now, when the sun was at its hottest, they had retired to their tents to sleep, to catch up on their lost rest and to escape the pitiless heat.

The camp was empty and hushed, and Henry and Albert, greatly daring, walked through it hand in hand towards Henry’s tent, out at the edge of the encampment.

“I don’t understand,” Albert said. “What my father did was terrible. Much worse than a genuine mistake like
Streptosaurus boundrii
. Why are you willing to keep quiet about it now, when you weren’t then?” For a moment, his foolish heart wished that Henry would say it was for him—that he was willing to protect his father because of his love for
him
.

“There is nothing to be gained by revealing what he has done. The specimen is gone—

blown to smithereens. There will be no false paper to lead other bone hunters down a blind alley. Exposing an old man to censure will achieve nothing. Besides, I like your father and respect him. He has much to offer the science.”

Albert squeezed Henry’s hand. “But he perpetrated a fraud. And he blew up the dig site.”

Henry stopped walking and drew Albert closer to him, so that they were almost, but not quite, touching. Gently, he stroked Albert’s cheek, once, with the back of his forefinger.

He smiled that lopsided smile, rare but radiant, which dimpled one cheek. “Do you think he’ll make a habit of it? Go on a spree, perhaps?”

Albert laughed and shook his head, tickled into joyful surprise by Henry’s uncharacteristic joke. “No,” he replied.

Henry took Albert’s hand and they began walking again.

“No,” he agreed. “Now that your father knows who his friends are, I think desperate schemes will be a thing of the past.”

Albert didn’t know if his father truly appreciated what a good friend he had in Henry—

what a good man he was—but
he
did. What he had to say next was not going to be easy.

“Henry, I’m so sorry…”

“That you suspected me? Don’t be. I admit I was hurt”—Henry pushed back the canvas flap of the tent and drew Albert inside—“but I realise you only wanted to protect your father.”

“And all along you were protecting him…” Albert’s eyes filled with tears.

Henry drew him closer, wiping the tears tenderly away with the ball of his thumb. “So we both had good intentions.” He smiled that charming, lopsided smile again and lowered his voice to a confidential murmur. “And now I have very
bad
intentions.” He leant forward and placed a soft, tender kiss on Albert’s mouth, sucking gently on his lower lip as he pulled away.

“Oh?”

Henry’s eyes dilated, the pupils blossoming like ink in water, and he gently ran his hands up Albert’s shirt front to finger his lapels.

“Yes,” said Henry. “
Wicked
intentions.” And he fell to his knees.

Albert’s cock was already erect, eager, and Henry unbuttoned his fly and released it, watching with greedy eyes as it bobbed and jerked. He ran his hand down the shaft, briefly closing his eyes and revelling in the sensation of the hot, silky flesh under his fingers. Then he yanked Albert’s trousers down, quickly moving his hands to the tender crease between buttock and thigh to steady him as he rocked on his feet.

He closed his mouth over the head of Albert’s cock, shuddering with lust as he tasted the slick saltiness of his essence. Albert moaned and writhed under his ministrations, and Henry fumbled urgently with his own fly as he began to suck Albert’s cock, taking him all the way to the back of his throat, hollowing his cheeks and sucking rhythmically. He withdrew, catching his breath, then flickered his tongue over the ridge of flesh underneath the head of his cock, laughing a little as Albert moaned and clutched his head. His laughter quickly turned into a muffled cry as he closed his lips over Albert’s erection again and felt him throb in his mouth.

“I’ll come,” Albert moaned, “I’ll spend…
oh
.”

Henry reached down and grasped his own cock, lavishing it with slow, firm strokes. He opened his mouth in a silent cry of arousal.

Albert pulled back, pulled out of his mouth, and tumbled Henry to the floor. It was inelegant, ungainly, and Henry’s head struck the packed dirt floor hard, but then Albert’s tongue was in his mouth, tasting his own sharp musk from Henry’s lips, his hips pushing urgently against Henry’s. Their cocks rubbed together and Henry reached down to stroke them both, the roughness of his hand and the feel of skin against skin almost too much to bear.

Albert twisted his body so he was riding Henry, suddenly dominant, defiant in his lust.

He pushed his cock between Henry’s thighs, thrusting urgently, causing a chafing, half-painful pleasure despite the sweat slicking their skin.

Henry pressed his thighs closer together, creating a tight channel for Albert’s cock, digging his fingers into his lover’s buttocks as he writhed and panted above him, his eyes squeezed tightly closed, his lips parted with panting breaths.

Henry’s cock was caught between their bodies, the sweet friction of Albert’s belly as he moved above him, making him moan and gasp and try to catch his breath, making it impossible to think.

He buried his face in Albert’s neck, moaning with desperate arousal, and ran a hand up to pinch and twist Albert’s nipple between shaking fingers. Albert faltered in his rhythm, stuttered, and came. His cry was hoarse and unrestrained, his hips jerking as he came between Henry’s legs, spending spurts of silky semen that made Henry’s thighs sticky and soaked into the packed red earth beneath them.

His lover’s broken cry of pleasure sent Henry over the edge, and he threw his head back, eyes closed and mouth open in an excess of passion as bursts of thick semen pumped from his body, coating their already sweat-slicked bellies.

Henry held the trembling Albert to him, stroking his back and gentling him, the boy’s head rising and falling on his chest with his own heaving breaths.

They were weary and spent. Sated. Some time later, Henry gently disengaged Albert and fetched a blanket from the cot, pulling it over them both. He woke to Albert gently bathing his face with his discarded shirt, wiping the brackish camp water over his face to remove the smuts and the red dirt. It was morning again, the sunlight lancing in at the edges of the tent flap promising another scorching day, even though, as yet, it was still quite cool.

Outside, he could hear the sounds of the camp beginning to stir. Everybody, it seemed, had www.total-e-bound.com

slept the clock around after the explosion, but now the camp was beginning to bustle, and they could not be caught together.

They were clean and respectable-looking and halfway through the camp when they ran into Gideon Dawlish.

Henry saw Albert tense, saw him open his mouth to say something—but there was nothing that could be said; nothing that could be said without ruining them all. He placed his hand gently on Albert’s arm and said, “Dawlish.”

His smirk was unbearable, and Henry felt a powerful urge to slap the smug expression off his face, but above all he needed to protect Albert, so he kept his temper.

“Well, if it isn’t the lovebirds,” Gideon drawled.

Slurred, really—Henry wondered if he was drunk, even at this early hour of the morning.

“Don’t think I don’t know what you do together, you filthy degenerates.”

Henry looked Gideon up and down with an expression of contempt. “I know what you are, Dawlish, and what you do. I’ve seen the bruises. If you start any rumours, I won’t hesitate to expose you for the monster you are.”

“You—” Albert began, but Henry laid his hand upon Albert’s arm again and said,