Rite of Summer: Treading the Boards, Book 1 (22 page)

“You meant them enough at the time.”

“And you have never said things that you later had cause to regret?” Evander said, something hot and mean sparking in him.

He closed his eyes, and when he opened them again, the rage was gone. He caressed the inside of Stephen’s elbow with his thumb, a crawling, clammy thing. Had Evander’s hands always been so cold?

“Come, sit with me,” he asked, rather than ordered, drawing Stephen toward the settee.

It was barely large enough for the two of them, and they ended up sitting one at each end, legs touching. It was a sensation so familiar and so instinctive that Stephen almost put his hand on Evander’s knee before he remembered that they were not in front of their fireplace at home, and that he was still angry. (Though it was growing harder and harder to hang on to that spark of fury, with Evander sitting there, his head bowed, taking both of Stephen’s hands in his.)

There were a dozen things he could say now—accusations, demands to know how many others there had been.

He could beg, plead to be returned to Evander’s good graces.

Or he could walk away and leave Evander to his dramatics in peace.

In the end he did none of those, and Evander was the first to speak. His hands warmed as he clasped Stephen’s, and now he brought them to his mouth to press a gentle kiss along the red-scabbed broken skin on Stephen’s fingertips. “I get hasty with my words, and I’ve hurt you. I am so sorry.”

The words fell like diamonds from his lips, crystal clear and so precious. Was that not what Stephen had been waiting to hear?

Somehow the victory rang hollow. “You don’t need to—” he began, but Evander laid a finger over his lips.

“I do, I think,” he said, soft and tender, and his eyes were blue as the summer sky. “I
have
hurt you, and I didn’t realize how badly until now.” He couldn’t be anything
but
sincere, searching Stephen’s face for something, his smile so tentative and gentle. “I swear to you, it will not happen again. I am nothing without you, and from now on, a changed man.”

Stephen should back away, say that his mind was made up, and yet… Evander had promised things before and not delivered, but he had also made many of their shared dreams come true.

“When you say you will change, what do you mean? Will you give up your pursuit of Lady Charlotte?”
Let us get right to the heart of this.

Something flickered in Evander’s eyes, but he nodded without more than a moment’s hesitation. “Instantly,” he vowed. He stroked his thumbs across the backs of Stephen’s hands in a rhythmic caress. “I only wanted to do right by you, don’t you see? My plan was to make sure we would both be taken care of. But I should have told you beforehand. I simply wasn’t sure it would work,” he admitted sheepishly, ducking his head so that his hair tumbled boyishly over his brow. “And I would have been doubly embarrassed if you had seen my failure. I hate to fail you. You have always been my—”

“Don’t say ‘muse’,” Stephen interrupted him, his voice sharper than it should have been.

Evander looked stung, then seemed to shake it off. “My particular friend, then,” he said instead. “My confidant, the one who knows all the secrets of my heart. It kills me that you thought I would ever willingly betray you.” He sighed, shaking his head. “I thought—”

But he stopped there. Whatever Evander thought, it would not come out now. “Never mind,” he declared instead. “It is all over with now.”

So Evander had decided, and so it was fact—one bad habit of his that didn’t seem nearly so dire as the rest. But where did that leave them?

Joshua’s offer tempted him, not because he had always had the urge to move to Belgium or France—God forbid—but because he had been wounded to the core. And now Evander was saying all the things Stephen needed to hear, his eloquence wrapping Stephen in indecision.

“This is not only about trust,” he said after a moment. The right words could never come when he needed them most. “Though, if you promise not to lie to me again, I will be satisfied.” Evander nodded and spread his hands, looking vaguely scornful at the smallness of his request. “But we must talk about our work as well.”

That got more of a reaction, Evander’s body stiffening. Something about the way the light hit him brought back a rush of memories.

Sitting on the fence alongside the pasture, Evander hanging over it with his pants muddy and stockings torn. Sprawled on the sheets in their first lodgings, a rat-infested room barely large enough to unroll a straw mattress. The warm summer night with the stars dotting the sky overhead, no voices yet calling their names, no signs they had been missed and the road stretching on forever in front of their feet. He had taken Evander’s hand then, begun to run, laughing with the sheer giddy joy of freedom.

“What do you mean?” Evander said.

Once he would have known every thought in Stephen’s head. Once, Stephen would have spilled his heart without worry or fear. What had happened to those hopeful boys?

“I mean that I live in your shadow, and until recently I have been content to do so,” Stephen began. Joshua had berated him, and had been more right than Stephen had wanted to think about. Now that Evander was being reasonable, his artifice stripped away, it might be his only chance to make him understand. “But I too have skills and should like the chance to develop them.”

Evander sat silent, and Stephen pressed on. “There is a sonata I have been practicing, the Kreutzer. It is quite long, but perhaps the third movement only, when we play next. The piano line is not difficult—”

“But of course!” Evander straightened. He crooked an eyebrow at Stephen, lit up with an idea. “Coventry has requested a concert, you know, before we go. You choose the program, we shall play your sonata,” he offered grandiosely. “That gives us today and tomorrow to rehearse.” He clasped Stephen’s hand again and brought it to his chest, all earnest and bright. “Then you will see how devoted I am to you and your success.”

He wanted to stay angry, should stand firm in his resolve to leave. But how could he be so cruel now, when Evander gazed at him with hope and adoration, Stephen’s hand pressed over Evander’s beating heart? He had complained about their inequality, now Evander was repairing that. He had been hurt by Evander’s foolish attentions to Charlotte, now he swore that dalliance was over. What more right did Stephen have to complain?

Had he not done worse, by running to Joshua’s side when Evander was righteously angry?

Stephen’s mind swirled, thoughts coming at him in disjointed fragments. Joshua’s arms, his kisses, his laughter and his quiet conversation, the peace that suffused Stephen’s soul when they were in the same room.

Then, Evander’s wildness, his charm, the way the company revolved around him, pulled into his wake and trapped there, the fire in his touch, and the past they shared.

“Say you will stay with me,” Evander said quietly and firmly. “And you will not abandon me to go play with the
simpletons
at the opera house. They would not know syncopation from
alla breve
if you inscribed it on their eyelids, and are universally drunkards, to boot. Your talents would be utterly wasted.”

Evander looked so upset at the prospect, his brow furrowed in consternation, that Stephen couldn’t help laughing. He shook his head to signal his no, and Evander relaxed.

“That I can swear with easy conscience,” Stephen promised. “All I want is for us to be equal partners in this venture of ours. Remember how things used to be?”

“Very well indeed.” He turned Stephen’s hand over and traced his fingertips, examined the cuts and bruises on his fingertips with a dispassionate eye. “We are bound together, you and I,” he said after a moment, all trace of humor gone. “We have been all our lives. Promise me you will not fight with me again. I couldn’t bear it.”

“I cannot promise that,” Stephen replied lightly, and he took his hand back. “You know how we are. But I can promise that I will try to fight only about ridiculous things. Such as which of us ate the last of the jam, and whose turn it is to go to the butcher’s.”

“Always thinking with your stomach,” Evander teased him. He stood, pressed a kiss to Stephen’s forehead. Stephen flinched without thinking, and Evander pulled away. He looked Stephen over and frowned. “You’ll end up too fat for your good suits if you’re not careful.”

Stephen stretched, leaning back on the settee, having it in his mind to look as casual and unaffected as possible. “That’s your fault for convincing me to come to a house party with a very well-stocked larder,” he jibed back, and Evander chuckled. The laugh didn’t reach his eyes.

“Point well taken,” he said, and straightened his waistcoat. He took off his cravat and began to retie it, his fingers moving confidently over and around the fine linen. “I will see you at dinner tonight?” he asked pointedly.

Stephen nodded. “You will.” And then the thought of
that
—of facing Charlotte and Joshua at the same table, all four of them knowing some of the undercurrents, but not all of them, and the rest of the guests oblivious—

Joshua.
Only, inside his head, he must still be “Beaufort” when spoken of aloud, in case of discovery.

Joshua would not be pleased. He disliked Evander, more so now than before.

The thought of Evander touching Joshua, kissing him, fucking him the way Stephen had just fucked him—it all turned his stomach into knots in unpleasant ways and left a painful lump in his chest.

“I know you have been concerned for our safety,” Stephen said carefully. One wrong word could send a thousand things spinning out of control again in an instant. “Perhaps it would be better for us to continue to stay in our own rooms for the next few nights. Once we are home again and no longer in danger of discovery—”

“You are wise, as ever,” Evander agreed easily, too easily for Stephen’s ego. But no matter. Bruises to that healed easily, and he wouldn’t be put in a position to mediate between the two men. He could work with Evander, spend precious time with Joshua, and neither would have to deal with the other.

For at least a little while longer, he would not have to choose.

Chapter Sixteen

“I don’t think that it looks like me.” Lady Amelia pursed her lips and created some unattractive wrinkles around her mouth as she did so. Joshua barely resisted the urge to draw them in to his pencil sketch. “Do you think that looks like me?”

The girl hovered over his shoulder as he added a last few lines on the canvas to round out the fullness of her skirts. The sun was setting, their light going, and the sitting that had begun just after nuncheon was finally, interminably (after four
“but I don’t think that’s quite
right
, Mother”
trials and an agreement on a pose dragged out of them like a dentist with an aching tooth) complete.

“I think it looks very well, darling,” Lady Chalcroft pronounced with an eagle eye staring down at them both. “Now for colors—of course, you will use blues and greens primarily in the background? Amelia looks her best in darker shades.”

Amelia gave him a flat smile from within her cream-and-lavender muslin gown.

“I think,” Joshua said, biting his tongue,
that you two are pains in my—
“that we should reconvene at a later time. Tomorrow, perhaps? And we can discuss it further. Or, should you care not to miss the earl’s picnic, I can carry on based on my own judgment and you can give the yay or nay upon your return.”
Please choose that option.

“The picnic will be dull.” Amelia sighed, gathering her shawl about her shoulders and wandering away from Joshua to circle the drawing room and survey the paintings on the walls. “You know as well as I do, Mother. There is not much point now.”

“The Downe boys are going, and that will do just as nicely,” Lady Chalcroft answered with a face as pinched and sour as if she’d bitten into a lemon.

Joshua tuned them out as he tidied up his materials—no sense leaving the mess out for the servants to trip over or have to dust around. Too many projects and too much time spent thinking about other things when he should have been working, and the small space had suffered for it.

The door was still closed when he looked at it again. Stephen had not come to find him. He wasn’t likely to again. The reality settled hard around Joshua’s heart, a heavy millstone of disappointment around his gut. Still, the day was not over. Asking a man to uproot his entire life was not the kind of request that should be answered quickly, no matter how good it would have been to hear the words “yes, yes, I will run away with you” fall from his lips.

“Thank you, Mr. Beaufort,” Lady Chalcroft said, drawing his attention away from sorting the handful of preliminary sketches. “We shall see you on the morrow and resume. Will you have something for us to look at by then?”

And there went any hope of joining the others for anything approaching a leisurely dinner, or finding time afterward to speak with Stephen again.

“Yes, I think so,” Joshua said calmly, reordering his calendar in the back of his mind. Paying clients first, always, then personal projects, then personal life.

It was not as though Stephen could go too far. He would find him tomorrow, or the day after, and have a conversation then.

The meeting the next day turned into a longer consultation, and then a session to prepare his pigments and lay down his base colors. Joshua did not leave the studio until early afternoon, his neck in a crick and his hands spotted and smudged with paint.

He heard the music as he passed by the closed doors to the conservatory, a complicated piano-and-violin piece that stopped, started, stopped again. The wood of the door was cool beneath his fingertips, the brass handle cooler still. Should he go in? He had nothing at all to say to Cade, and nothing that could be said with Cade nearby.

They had obviously worked out some of their differences, which, he supposed, gave him the only answer he needed.

He let go of the door handle and kept on walking.

As tempting as it was to stay in his room and avoid the concert entirely, his absence would be far too conspicuous. Joshua dragged his feet on his way down to the drawing room, though. He was in no particular hurry to take his seat and listen to ten minutes of Horlock droning on about grouse or guns, before having his suspicions of a reconciliation confirmed. Imagining Sophie’s critique if she caught him hiding from his problems was the thing that finally had shifted him out of his chair before the hour grew too late.

He obviously had not been in hiding long enough. For there was Stephen, turning the corner in the hallway just ahead of him. He carried his violin case and his hair was tied back. He had dressed for the occasion, his suit of charcoal-gray wool cut to cleave to his back and shoulders, a dark-green waistcoat bringing out the thousand shades of brown of his eyes.

“Ashbrook!” Joshua called out without thinking.

Forget the dozens of sketches already in his book—this was how he wanted to paint Stephen. He would hang this portrait in a drawing room with curtains the same deep-red velvet as the bow holding back his hair. He held himself differently, back straight and his head high. His color was up, a faint flush across the tops of his cheekbones, his eyes so alive that he all but crackled with anticipation. There he was—the seraph Joshua had seen at Vauxhall a lifetime ago.

At Vauxhall, and then a hint of it the previous night when Stephen had looked up at him, Joshua’s emissions still wet on his lips, his hair tangled and his eyes blown wide with desire. Joshua had never wished so hard to be sixteen again, capable of becoming aroused to full strength over and over in a single night. He would have taken his pleasure in Stephen’s arse, in his mouth, stroked himself to orgasm and splattered pearling drops of come across Stephen’s chest, his face, his hair.

He lost his words, his mouth dry.

Is this how you seem every time you play for an audience? Or is this somehow for me?

“Beaufort,” Stephen greeted him, glancing each way down the hallway as he said it, as though saying chaste hellos would somehow reveal them. “You are coming, are you not? I would be exceedingly pleased if you would, and then give me your critique after. It is not as grand as the concert halls in town, nor do we have a proper chamber group, but nevertheless!” He all but burbled, the words spilling out thick and fast. He bounced lightly on his toes, an excited boy trapped in a man’s body. Joshua could not help but smile, his excitement contagious.

But you have still had no answer.

No news may be good news.

“What have you done with the real Ashbrook?” Joshua teased him, letting his worries and resentment float away on the wind. What good would it do? “I let a morose and pondering soul out of my room two nights ago, and here before me is a man so buoyant he is at risk of floating away.”

Stephen smiled, and God himself would have wept for the beauty in it. “It is always like this,” he confessed sheepishly, “right before a concert. I feel bubbly inside, twisted and tight. Then when I play, I can fall into the music, and it falls out of me, and I disappear entirely. It is the greatest feeling in the world, Beaufort, and I cannot begin to explain it.”

“I think, perhaps, I can imagine,” Joshua said softly. He wasn’t thinking of his painting. “You and Cade, then—you’ve decided to play with him after all?”

Stephen nodded, some of that ebullience vanishing. He glanced down the hall at the closed parlor door. “We are still here as players at the earl’s invitation,” he said simply. “When he asks us to play at the party, we need to do so, regardless of what else may have transpired.” He didn’t seem nearly as angry or upset about it as perhaps Joshua might have expected. “We can act like adults, I think. It will be fine.”

Joshua barked out a short, sharp laugh. “You can. Possibly. Can he?”

“We have come to terms with some things,” Stephen said, obviously hedging around some less comfortable truth. “You worry too much.” He tugged his waistcoat into place and posed, hand over his stomach and one at the small of his back. “Tell me honestly.” The subject change came out of the blue. “Does this fit me properly? My coat is not too snug?”

It was akin to driving in a buggy with his brother, the frame sliding to a sudden stop before sending the horses galloping off in another direction entirely. “No,” Joshua said, trying to keep up. “It fits as it should, and you look very well in it. Is this some ploy to distract me?”

“No,” Stephen argued, but he dropped his arms and looked thoughtful. “No… Never mind. Things are changing,” he said and smiled, his eyes alight. “You will see. All will be well for us.”

“By ‘us’, do you mean you and Cade, or you and I?”

Stephen frowned, his brow furrowing. “You’re angry with me for speaking to him?”

“What?” Joshua asked. “No, of course not. You’re free to speak to whomever you please.” Was that not obvious? “I’m worried that you’re setting yourself up for another fall. Or have you forgotten how he deceived you?” he finished, concern thick in his mouth.

Stephen curled his fingers in, rubbing his thumb across the scabbed-over cuts on his fingertips. “He’s sworn to me that he’s done with her,” he said quietly, and Joshua’s heart sank. “He’s promised to make the changes I asked for. He is a good man at heart.”

“When it suits his own devices! Listen to yourself, Ashbrook. He has you so turned inside out that you would sooner accuse your own mother of treachery than admit he has done you wrong.”

“You don’t know him…you didn’t hear him yesterday.”

“I don’t need to hear him to know what kind of nonsense he’s capable of making you believe.” Could he not see that he was being manipulated, that he was being played as skillfully as he played the violin in the case in his hand? Joshua could not fathom Cade’s endgame, but this he was sure of—the man was no innocent naïf.

“Ashbrook?” The parlor door opened and Cade stood framed in the space, his back tall and tailored black suit sitting just so. He looked from one to the other and arched a perfect golden eyebrow. “Are you coming?”

“Yes, of course,” Stephen answered. He met Joshua’s eyes for a moment, some nebulous and unasked question there. He turned away, violin case in hand, and he headed past Cade and into the parlor.

Cade watched Stephen as a hawk watched his prey, then turned the force of that speculative stare on Joshua. They locked gazes for a minute, maybe less, Cade’s steel-blue eyes cold as the grave. Then he followed Stephen into the room beyond.

A chill ran down Joshua’s spine, a reaction to the malevolence that had flashed there before Cade had stuffed it down again. Was he imagining things, or was there something vicious lurking below the surface?

The house assembled. Joshua found a seat on the far side of the audience, which left him staring at the back of Stephen’s shoulders and at Cade’s face above the pianoforte.

He knew the first two pieces that they played—naturally, both Cade’s work. But this was the first time Joshua had been this close to see Stephen perform, his eyes closed, his fingers dancing along the frets, his body leaning in to the bow so that it all became a part of him.

Applause rang out when they finished, genuine and pure. Stephen bowed, gestured to Cade, who rose and bowed as well. Charlotte leaned in, her face flushed and eyes bright, her applause louder than any of the others.

“Please…” Cade gestured and the audience fell silent, “…allow us to hold you here for one more piece. It is not one of my own composition,” he said as though in apology, pressing his hand to his breast when Charlotte made a soft sound of disappointment, “but one of Ashbrook’s favorites, and I am promised that you will like it just as well.”

Stephen chuckled and shook his head, but the whole introduction sounded somewhat hollow and false. Had this been Stephen’s price for forgiveness, playing something not of Cade’s making? Was his sense of self-preservation really so cheaply bought?

The piece began well. The light and exuberant joy in the music was as unlike Cade’s moody melancholy as it was possible to get on the same instruments, tripping through the rhythms and the melody like sun bursting through clouds in the spring.

Until it changed, and Stephen faltered, not missing a note but bowing furiously to keep up with Cade’s new tempo. And then again, Cade slowing, not by much, but enough to throw off the harmonies.

Stephen’s head came up, his shoulders tight, and Joshua could not see his expression. From the corner of his eye, though, he did catch the smug flicker of a smile that flashed across Cade’s face when he varied his tempo once more and Stephen could not follow.

Bastard!

The applause at the end was scattered and thin, nothing like the thunder of approval Cade’s compositions had received.

Joshua could not go up to them immediately, not until the room cleared, not with what he had seen and heard still thundering angrily through his mind.

Coventry got to them first. Stephen’s shoulders slumped as he listened to the hissed diatribe directed entirely at him, Cade looking ever more like the cat who had found his way into the larder, self-satisfied and ready to purr at his own cleverness.

“…when I pay for musicians, I expect decent music! Enough with this foolishness, Ashbrook,” Coventry said as Joshua drifted closer, trying to look innocuous. “You will play as Cade dictates. If you must pick other pieces, for God’s sake, practice them first!”

Stephen saw him coming and waved him off. Joshua stopped, because he could say something, intervene! Stephen shook his head, and Cade glared, and that was enough. Joshua turned away and against every ounce of his own better judgment, left them to their fate.

“Why would he do such a thing?” Stephen paced restlessly, the crackling frustration and bottled-up anger emanating from him in almost-visible waves. The wine sloshed in the crystal glass, splashing out over his hand as he gestured in the air. “I believe what you say you saw, but I cannot fathom it. Why would he sabotage his own concert and then lay the blame for it at my feet?”

“To control you.” No need for diplomacy or secrets here—they were utterly alone in the parlor and all others had long since gone to bed. “To make you unsteady and uncertain, as he has most definitely achieved. You stood your ground with him yesterday, and this is his revenge.”