Rite of Summer: Treading the Boards, Book 1 (23 page)

And, once again, Stephen flatly refused to
listen
. “Maybe I misunderstood,” he ventured, scraping his hand back through his hair. Joshua’s scornful look in response was enough to stop him from carrying on down that path of excuses again. “I could have chosen something that did not require so much rehearsal.”

“There is no excusing bad behavior,” Joshua said. “Cade intended to hurt you, and he has. The only question that remains is, what do you intend to do about it?”

“It’s not that simple,” Stephen said once again, and Joshua utterly despaired of him. “Though it was the news from the Swan that shook him and began all of this nonsense with Lady Charlotte.”

“He has been capricious before.” Joshua felt compelled to correct him, though he may as well not have spoken.

“What if we all went abroad,” Stephen suggested halfheartedly. “Your invitation to travel with you—”

“No,” Joshua said instantly, gripping the stem of the glass so tightly that he half feared it might snap in his hand. “My invitation was for you and you alone, not for you to bring the man who belittles, torments and publicly humiliates you. And even if you are so attached to him that you are willing to accept that treatment, know that I most certainly am
not
.”

Stephen nodded, laid his empty hand on the mantelpiece and stared into the fire, his head low.

Joshua sat on the couch and watched him, cataloguing the lines of his body, the way his shoulders sagged, the defeat in the lines on his face. Joshua closed his eyes and tried to bring back the vision of his dream cottage: Stephen curled beneath a blanket before the fire, chopping wood in the back lot in nothing but his shirtsleeves and buckskins, lovemaking and tasting wine off of his lips in their own small bed beneath a thatched roof.

Stephen, watching restlessly out of the window in rainy days. Getting a letter from Cade and ripping it open with joy in his eyes. Walking out of the door with everything he owned in a bag on his shoulder, leaving Joshua alone again, with nothing but faint memories of a time he was almost loved.

“And if I said I would come?” Stephen finally said, bringing his glass to his mouth once more.

“No,” Beaufort said slowly, and his first dreamscape shattered and vanished before the second version faded. “No, I think not. How do I know that you will not turn tail and run from me as well? How do I know that, the next time he calls for you, you will not drop everything and fly to his side?”

He picked up speed and force as he spoke, the pent-up flood of words spilling from him, as water over a crumbling dam. “Now that I’ve seen you disregard your own pain moments after a wound, how can I trust you to remember it once months or years have passed?”

“I will not!” Stephen said angrily. “Once I make a commitment, it is made. What you think of as passion for Evander is only this—loyalty to the man I thought I loved. A reminder that I
did
love, even though he’s broken my faith, and I his.”

“Why do you feel guilty, when he is the one who betrayed you?”

Stephen balled his fist but did not strike out, laying the side of his hand against the marble of the mantelpiece. “Because he was right, in a way. We never made any promises. I was the one at fault for overreacting.”

Joshua rolled his legs out from under him and stood, pacing the couple of steps across the room. “You know as well as I do that that’s a foul lie. And I’ll tell you another thing…” he pointed at Stephen’s chest, not allowing himself to get distracted by the pink pout of his bottom lip or the way Stephen’s stubble was growing in along his jaw, “…I’ll tell you why you feel guilty, and it’s not because of
anything
you and I did.

“It’s because when he threw you to the wolves—not once now, but twice?—you felt a tiny flicker of relief both times. That,
finally
, it would all be over. That you wouldn’t have to be the one to make the choice to leave.”

Stephen backed up, putting space between him and Joshua’s accusatory finger. “You don’t know what you’re talking about.”

“On the contrary!” Joshua shook his head. “I see it all very clearly.”

It all spread itself out for him in easy-to-dissect pieces, the bricks and mortar of a man’s life laid bare. He spoke quietly as the enormity of it impressed itself upon him. Stephen’s brown eyes bore the pain of a thousand ancient and fresh-made scars, crying out for understanding, patience, love—all the things Joshua desperately wanted to lay at his feet, but could not.

“You pretend at being an adult, but you’re terrified of standing on your own. You won’t leave him until he destroys you or abandons you of his own volition, just so that you will be the blameless one.

“I’ll not be your fallback, Mr. Ashbrook.” Joshua drained his glass and set it on the side table for a servant to clear later. “Stand on your own two feet.”

And if he was being a coward as well, so be it. He was used to surviving on his own. One brief affair changed nothing. Not if he did not allow it to.

“Are you done?” Stephen challenged him, his raw and bleeding heart so evident in the sound of his voice.

“I believe I am,” Joshua said, and without another word, he left the room.

Chapter Seventeen

Leaving Belmont House without saying farewell to Joshua was easily one of the most difficult things Stephen had ever done.

Trying to convince Armand to take a message had been no help at all. She had slammed the trunk lid down, narrowly missing his fingers, and pointed toward the sitting room door.

“Out.”

“You helped us at the stables,” he pleaded, not too proud to make this his stand. “Why will you not do so again?”

“I helped
him
,” she corrected him sharply. “You were a side effect and nothing more. Get yourself gone, Mr. Ashbrook. And if you want what’s best for Mr. Beaufort, you’ll stay away from him as well.”

He had no illusions, following that exchange, that Joshua had received any message.

So be it, then. In his uncertainty, he had burned a bridge that had once promised him salvation. Fighting back tears on the journey home had been more difficult than ever, a desperate ache consuming his organs one by one and leaving him a hollow shell of a man. The last, long look of disgust in Joshua’s eyes floated in the black every time he tried to rest.

“I’ll not be your fallback.”

And he had tried to use him that way, hadn’t he? Taken something as perfectly precious as Joshua’s affection for him (he dare not be so arrogant as to think of it as love—the word had never once been spoken) and turning it into a safe place to fall. Joshua deserved so much better than that.

“You won’t leave him until he destroys you.”

That wasn’t true, though! It hadn’t been an exaggeration to call things complicated. How did one untangle half a lifetime and begin again? He should have said yes when Joshua first made his offer. He should have told Evander to go hang, come home alone, packed his belongings and left. Then he would have Joshua in his arms even now, and he would deserve to call himself a man.

Then maybe it wouldn’t hurt every time he breathed.

Evander said little, passing the time writing letters when the road was smooth and reading a book when it was rough. Hours bled into each other, and the countryside sped by them, all clothed in shades of gray.

Light and color returned when the carriage rumbled through the streets of London, the familiar scents and sounds of the city rising up around him as he half dozed on the uncomfortable seat.

Evander slept, his arms folded across his chest, seemingly untouched by their return to the world of the living. His chest rose and fell evenly, his face unmarked by the traumas of the past six weeks.

There were fewer familiar faces as they progressed through St. James, but Stephen looked for them anyway. Tattered and mud-splattered newssheets proclaiming the local disgrace burned into his eyes at every lamppost, the “Vere Street Coterie” to be tried and condemned all together.

The Swan was gone, the building empty, and men crossed the street to avoid being seen walking near it. Another few weeks and then the papers would be full once more with names and dates, columns thick with damning testimony. Riots would fill the streets again.

A cold chill settled down Stephen’s spine, one that not even the sultry summer heat could touch.

Stumbling up the stairs to the sounds of Annie’s welcoming catcalls did help a little. The familiar old walls and the rise of the wooden steps under his feet grounded him in something real and solid, better than the disconnected self-loathing in which he was floating.

Evander moved through their rooms like a whirlwind, unfastening the shutters and throwing them wide, letting in air and light.

Stephen flinched away from him as he brushed past, even the faint contact setting off something dark and uncomfortable in the pit of his stomach. Easier to drag his belongings into his bedroom, plead exhaustion and sickness from the carriage ride, and close the door.

He flung himself on his bed, the mattress hard and low, compared to the luxury at Belmont House. But the linens smelled faintly like Annie’s homemade soap, the dents were in the shape of his own bones, and he could put the pillow over his head and block out the rest of the world long enough for his turning gut to settle and his aching head to begin to clear.

It had seemed a simple plan at the time. Pacify Evander, take his concessions for the peace offering they had seemed to be and not rock their already shaky boat any further. Wait until everything was calm again and only then broach the subject of leaving. Or once they returned home, simply pack and take his leave. He was an adult, and as long as he left money for his share of the rent, there was nothing that could hold him here by law.

Only it hadn’t worked the way he had intended. He had said the wrong things, waited when he should have given answers immediately, prioritized Evander’s moods over Joshua’s and generally made an enormous mess of things that should have been simple.

Unfit to call myself a man.

And what had been the end result? Back in the place he had left six weeks ago, a changed man and, yet, not changed enough. What choices did he have?

Only one. To keep on living, stay clear of the law and be sure he did not make the same mistake again. If he ever had another chance to be happy, to seize it and never let go.

Please let Joshua be well. Let him, at least, find peace.

Days passed in a blur, the first few after their return spent unpacking, putting out the word they had returned. More raids had followed the evening of terror on Vere Street, and even the boldest among London’s mollies had gone to ground. Rumors swirled, as they always did—another tavern, another place they could once again safely call home. It was too soon to go prowling the streets in search. It was too soon for a great many things.

Evander seemed less affected by the changes than he had in the country, contradictory creature that he was. He moved through his days in a haze of preoccupation, sitting at his writing desk and his pianoforte, with equal concentration.

The cuts on Stephen’s fingers healed, the thin, dark scabs becoming faint pink lines, all traces of Joshua’s gentle ministrations long gone from his body. He could not bring himself to wear the green waistcoat again.

Evander took it upon himself to retrieve the post from the table in Annie’s back hallway, though the first week saw little coming from anywhere. Stephen had hoped…he had hoped in vain, obviously, since not once did Evander return with a letter for him.

He could always take the initiative, write to Joshua and beg his forgiveness, pledge—what? What did he have to offer now that would be enough to make up for his offenses?

The clatter of the door drew Stephen out of his reverie. He set the violin under his chin and adjusted his hold on the bow. The notes on the sheets in front of him swam in his vision, spinning around each other until they became incomprehensible, and all he could draw out of the instrument was a low, dire-sounding cry of distress.

“You are sounding better and better all the time,” Evander teased him, his eyes showing more life than they had in a while.

He brandished an unfolded letter, as though the neat, cramped lines of handwriting could tell Stephen anything from that distance. The rich smell of stew and bread wafted through from the sitting room. Evander had brought dinner up from downstairs again.

“If you keep at it, you may be back to your first year’s lessons in no time.”

Scraping his bow across the strings to make them scream was more satisfying than it should have been, Evander wincing and making a face at him for his troubles. Stephen ran his scale one last time, just to enforce his point, and set Rosamund in her case.

“Your support spurs me onward to new heights,” he replied churlishly. “I have lost my music in all this business and cannot find it again.”

It lay in the pit of grief within his gut, chewed to pieces by the ravenous hunger of the black void.

“This will lift your spirits, then.” Evander dismissed his complaints with an airy wave. “I have repaired relations with Coventry. It required some doing, of course, after your little display, but he is a magnanimous man, and we shall not lose our living after all.”

“
My
display?” Stephen echoed in disbelief, but Evander only nodded as though he had agreed.

“All will be forgiven, in time,” he said in what was obviously meant to be a kindly voice that rang with condescension. “All you’ll need to do is apologize and we shall both be reinstated to his affections. We shall not need to set the hat out in the tavern again after all.”

Of course, it would always come down to Stephen apologizing, abasing himself, begging for a chance to repair the things that he had not been responsible for breaking. The dagger twisted deeper into his spine, and defeat pressed down on his shoulders, a thick fog coating the world in gray.

“Apparently not,” he said, for lack of anything else that would not begin another battle that he was fated to lose.

“Come and eat,” Evander said, apparently oblivious to Stephen’s turmoil. He folded the letter and tucked it into his pocket alongside another one of similar size. “Your food will get cold.”

Stephen rested his head back against the window frame and looked out. The world moved by outside as though the hand of the Creator had slowed them all to half time, figures drifting through the streets, slow as a draining vat of molasses.

“I’ll be there in a moment,” he agreed, and hated himself even for that.

Evander went out that night and left Stephen behind. Noise floated up the stairs from the tavern below, raucous voices rising and falling, their words indistinct, but the joy and camaraderie in them clear. He could go down, fit himself among them again, remember the man he used to be. Or he could sit here and stare daggers at his music stand, and accomplish absolutely nothing of any worth.

Sighing and kicking his feet back, Stephen rose and took up his violin again. If there was nothing else left to him, at least he could play without care for being overheard. Perhaps that might unblock the piece of his soul that he had lost.

Rosamund.
He drew her out and inspected her lines with a practiced eye. He had been thinking of her as a tool again, not the lady she was, and she deserved better. Oil, then, to keep her pegs turning smoothly, a new set of strings fresh from their paper packet to make her sing with a clear, bright voice. His old bow, frayed and tattered and long overdue for repair, he left in the case and drew rosin down along the clean, taut hair on the newer of the two.

When Rosamund gleamed again, her wood polished and strings tuned, he set her under his chin. His bow came to her strings like a caress, gentle and tremulous, and she squawked in protest, no virgin to be touched with uncertain hands.

Scales to begin, as he had every time since that first month of lessons, the movements coming back to his fingers as the breath came back to her song. Once he had run them all through, his fingers warm and the tips only aching a tiny bit, he changed, his eyes closed, not following any music except for that which bubbled up inside.

It began as the piece he had played in the conservatory the night he had stumbled upon Evander and Charlotte, a dirge that howled pain in a minor key, gathering up the darkness in a whirlwind and setting it spinning through his mind.

Joshua had found him then, cared for him and kissed him, taken him to bed and shown him what it meant to give his heart away, as well as his body. He hadn’t understood, then, what a gift it was. The longing flowed from him, pure and sweet, strains of a melody that still sang in his heart.

Blue-gray eyes, sleepy and sated. He had pressed his mouth to Joshua’s eyelids, so soft against his lips. His hands, stained with pigment and charcoal, limning out a sketch as deftly as a sailor played out line to a filling sail. His laugh, the curve of his neck, the fierce intellect behind his dry wit. The peace that surrounded him, restful and calm, a rock of strength around which all other points circled. His compassion in attempting to care for an idiot man who barely knew his own mind half the time.

Stephen played until his fingers cramped and callouses stung. No Joshua to bind his wounds this time, he had to take care of himself.

Opening his eyes, he set Rosamund down in her case, flexing his hands to ease the tightness in his bones. The strains of the solo curled around his thoughts, the melodic line clearer than ever.

He could write it down, he realized slowly, write it down and not lose it, maybe build something of his own on top of the melody, something he could play that was untainted by his roiling and conflicted emotions.

There would be paper in Evander’s desk—he had purchased a ream of it only the other day. He would never miss a handful of sheets, and Stephen was the one who had paid for the ink!

The mess on the desk spilled over onto the chair, nothing meticulous or organized about it. Old pages tumbled over in a loose stack beside his inkwell, scraps of notes fighting with a handful of farthings for surface space, a playbill from two years ago and an ink-stained handkerchief. A half-eaten apple rested inside his pewter mug, the beer long gone but for a sticky film around the edge.

The drawer was no better and he should not have expected it to be. Underneath a handful of old laundry lists, he found not the new paper he had been expecting, but a handful of letters—unfamiliar, the address written in a round and girlish hand.

Mr. Evander Cade
, the top one read.

Who? Not his mother—she had died some years ago. No sister that he still spoke to, and cousins would have no way of knowing where he was.

Stephen should not open the letter on the top of the pile. Curiosity never did anything but harm, and Evander had every right to his privacy.

He opened it anyway.

My dearest love
, the letter began, and Stephen’s stomach clenched.

You cannot imagine how thrilled I was to receive your letter yesterday.

He did not need to look at the date at the top to know what it would be—the day before, which meant Evander had written this week, in secret, and more besides.