Rite of Summer: Treading the Boards, Book 1 (25 page)

See? That’s what being impulsive gets you.

It was early yet for dining and the pub was not nearly as full as it would be later on. Joshua claimed a table off to one side, the sturdy oak furniture worn down with years of use, but cleaned and polished until it gleamed.

A slab of bread and cheese, hot pigeon pie and a pint of good beer later, he felt almost—though not entirely—human once more.

There was little interesting in the paper. Parliament would argue about the same things in the same order from now until kingdom come and nothing there would change. That the king was unwell again was unpleasant, but he had an heir and so there would be few disruptions should he pass away.

Life continued as it must, despite the travails of a handful of men who had been trapped together at a house party. There was comfort to be found in that.

Bursts of laughter from another table broke into his reading. Two men sat over a cribbage board, cards in their hands. He couldn’t catch all their conversation, but their rapid gesticulations back and forth and the way one of them was deliberately shaking out his sleeves as he laughed suggested enough for him to understand. The one accused of cheating had dark hair, worn long, that curled around his collar, and the golden afternoon light coming in from the windows cast shadows over his face that looked too familiar.

That could have been them, had the world been different, sharing a bird and a bottle at a pub. Joshua had a decent hand for cards, but Stephen would be too distracting to let him keep his mind on the game. His smile alone would be enough to throw Joshua off, to let him slide cards under the deck and play perfect hands, to bluff and not be called on it, to win cheerfully, and Joshua would let him, just to see that smile turned upon him again…

(He would exact his revenge later, binding Stephen’s wrists with his own cravat,
“to stop you from cheating this time”
. Stephen would be pliant underneath him, gasping and writhing as Joshua sucked his half-hard member into his mouth, licked down between the cleft of his buttocks to tease the sensitive skin there, bite at the firm flesh of his thigh.)

Dark Hair turned out his pockets—empty—to prove his innocence, his opponent pointing out other options and laughing at the spectacle all the while.

There was no reason for his breath to come in short, painful bursts or for his gut to knot around the hard lump of his dinner. Read the news, think about war and parliament, about import taxes and the colonies. Anything but sitting across a table from Stephen, their boots barely touching beneath it, his finger catching the edge of Joshua’s newspaper and dragging it down to force him to make eye contact.

“What will induce you out from behind there?”
he might ask.
“Shall I play something for you? Or, better yet, you read to me while I rehair my bow. The chore goes faster that way.”

He was torturing himself, and to what purpose? Stephen Ashbrook was gone from his life, and Joshua was the one who had sent him away. Whether it had been the right thing or not seemed moot. The look he had worn at the end, a wounded animal trying to gnaw off its own limb, had been answer enough. Looked at to be a savior in a lifetime filled with hurt, Joshua had only caused him more pain.

They were better off apart.

If God or the stars or whatever mad forces ruled the universe wanted them to meet again, there would be some sign of it, instead of two long months of silence.

“Government this morning received dispatches from Lord Wellington, at Alverca…”

“Here you go, sir.” A rustle disturbed his paper, but the voice behind it was boyish and high.

Joshua lowered the pages and frowned at the schoolboy and his stack of handbills, before noticing the one he had already laid on the table.

“What’s this, then?” he asked, more out of surprised politeness than any real interest.

The landlady noticed and was gathering up her skirts to approach on a rescue mission.

“Concert, sir, at the Hanover. It’s not a subscription event, tickets at the door, sir. Supposed to be right good, if you like that sort of thing, sir.”

“Out of here, you rapscallion!” The landlady descended on the poor boy like a harpy from the trees of myth, making sweeping motions with no broom in her hand, as though to shoo him out the door. “Don’t you be bothering customers with your papers.”

“As you like, missus—I’m paid my shilling either way!” The boy ducked out of the way and dropped a handful of his printed bills onto the table with the cribbage players, before scooting under her waving arm and making for the door.

The landlady sighed her long-suffering sigh, shaking her head as she tidied up. The card players paid her no mind, but she frowned in apology in Joshua’s direction. “In here every blasted week, he is, leaving papers everywhere, cluttering up the tables. Why they can’t take space out in the paper like anyone else, that’s what I want to know. Soon there’ll be nothing but bills posted everywhere and paper instead of stones lining the streets!”

“It’s no bother,” Joshua said with faint sympathy. The handbill lay on the table, half-hidden beneath his paper, and with a gentle press of a finger he stopped her from clearing it away. Idle curiosity, nothing more.

Once she was gone, he turned it over, the cream paper inscribed with swirling lines of ink that were more elegant than the printed bills he had seen posted on empty walls and in alleyways between his lodgings and here.

Three Quartetts, for Two Violins, Tenor & Violoncello, Compofed by Guiseppe Haydn, and Performd at Mr. Salomon’s Concert, the Festino Rooms, Hanover Square. With solo Performances by Mr. Robert Phillips, Violin, and Mr. Stephen Ashbrook, Violin.

The stab through the walls of his chest was coincidence only. The clenching ache there was indigestion brought on by eating too quickly, and at an odd time of day.

The boy was in here with his handbills every week, she had said.

This was not a sign.

And yet. Cade’s name appeared nowhere on the bill. Could it be that Stephen had listened, taken Joshua’s words to heart? Could it be that he was free of the man, finally, after all these years?

Elation, then, swift and rising, a hot-air balloon inside, filling him with something he had been denying himself for so very, very long.

Hope.

But if he is free, why did he not write?

The answer was as obvious as it was swift and brutal.

Because he neither needs nor wants you anymore.

He crumpled the handbill in his fist, the crunch of the paper gratifying in visceral ways. It only made sense. Joshua was the one who had walked away, and he had said harsh and unforgivable things, fought with him not once but twice. Stephen must despise him, and rightfully so. Whether he had been correct or not, it didn’t matter. He had not been kind.

Damn him, anyway.

Joshua had been fooled once—he would not be so eager to fling himself headlong into danger again. He had sunk himself in false hope over Mr. Ashbrook already and been burned for it.

No more.

He rose, leaving money on his table to pay for his meal and some more besides. The handbill he tossed into the fire, the soft pop and crackle it made as it lit drowned out by his footsteps as he walked away.

Chapter Nineteen

“They sold
how
many tickets?”

“It’ll be a wonder if they can all fit in the rooms to listen.”

“Well, that’s hardly our problem, is it?”

“It is if they have to move chairs up closer to the music stands. Do you remember how they crowded us last time?”

Stephen slumped back on his bed and banged his head against the wall, his writing slope sliding off his legs. Wren and Pembrey’s footsteps rattled past the door, their voices loud in the shared lodgings, and Stephen stuck his thumbs in his ears. It didn’t help.

A glance in the chipped looking glass hanging on the wall showed him the image of a petulant child, and he rolled his eyes at himself. He had to laugh, despite the small garret room—scarcely large enough to be called a room rather than, say, a large wardrobe—and the very unfashionable area where he now parked his boots. Despite the endless chatter from his newer roommates and the October wind that was currently invading in the form of a draft around his knees, Stephen had to admit that he looked happier than he had done in a long while.

More relaxed as well. Less like he was going to vibrate out of his own skin, given the right incentive. Or have himself a palpitation if someone shouted his name too loudly.

If only he could get this letter drafted, if only he could make words come the way music came to him. Then, perhaps, he could fix the wrongs he had done. It was a worse gamble than some of the horses at Newmarket, with far less chance of success, but he could not let things lie as they were.

He had imagined, when he left, that it would be Evander’s face haunting his nights. For the first week or so, ensconced in Meredeth’s spare room, it had been. But those dreams had been filled with flames and blood, with shouting and fists, and all the words still left unsaid. He woke in a hot sweat every time, his palms clammy and shirt damp. No one in the house ever admitted to hearing him shout in the night, but he woke with a raw throat and had to wonder.

The night terrors faded, slowly, as he set himself to finding steadier work, as Evander kept himself away. More doors had opened to him than he had imagined possible. A few closed, oh yes, and doubtless remained open to Evander, but the penalty Stephen had imagined—the world knowing his dark and private business—never came. Evander too concerned for his own skin, most likely, or too embarrassed.

Whatever the reason, he had escaped, and with Robert Phillips’s invitation to take up the empty room in
his
shared lodgings in return for a small portion of the already paltry rent, well. That was shelter and company provided for. They were four young men, musicians all, and between them made enough to cover a pleasant, if not extravagant, existence. He had a place to stow his coat and music books, food to fill his belly and companions to while away the lengthening evening hours in practice and conversation.

The general agreement not to bring mistresses or whores back to the lodgings helped immensely. Whether they thought him temperate in spirit or too consumed by work to join them when they went carousing, he paid it little mind. He had no interest in skirt chasing now.

Not when this all still lay unresolved, the paper in front of him blank but for a name.

Mr. Beaufort,

He scratched it out.

Joshua,
he began again, then scratched that out as well.

Stephen set his pen down and linked his hands behind his head. Assuming he could decide upon a salutation, what then would he write? Had he even improved himself enough yet to be worthy of reaching out?

Was the fact that he was even asking that question to begin with a sign that he still yearned for Joshua’s approval?

“Stand on your own two feet.”

He had done it.

Joshua had told him to grow up, to become his own man, to learn what he wanted for himself. To stop trying to please others. But he was a musician, a performer by trade—his
life
was devoted to pleasing others. So there was a limit to how far he could follow that command.

Surely there was a balance to be struck, somewhere between chasing his own desires and abandoning everything in favor of another’s wishes.

He was closer to finding it, but maybe Joshua would not think so.

“Oy, Ashbrook!” Wren stuck his head in the door, his wavy hair in a permanent state of disarray. It was that nondescript sort of color that hovered between brown and blond, not helped by the faintly insipid brown of his eyes or the cheap suits he wore. But his smile lit up a room, women flocked to him (though whether to feed him or pet him, it seemed they could never decide) and the violoncello sang in his hands. “Are you ill?”

“Only of seeing your face.” Stephen took up his quill and waved it at Wren as demonstration of his task. “Finishing some correspondence.”
I barely know where to begin.

“I hate letters,” Wren answered, with what he imagined was sympathy over a mutually loathed task, and barreled on without a second glance, “Phillips is talking about going over to Bath for a few weeks, doing some concerts there for new faces. It would break up the slow pace before the winter really starts. What say you?”

Bath. Unbidden, the thought rang through him.
Bracknell is between here and Bath.
He skimmed his fingers over the paper, barely aware that he was doing it.
I could do this in person instead.
“It’s worth a thought,” he replied as casually as he could with his heart suddenly racing faster than before. “Is Pembrey interested?”

“Pembrey wants Scotland,” Wren said with thick and utter distaste, and the tall, dark-skinned man passing behind him in the hallway slapped him casually on the back of his head in reply.

“Scotland in the winter? He’s gone utterly mad,” Stephen called out, loud enough for Pembrey to hear them before he got too far.

“It comes of living with you daffocks,” came the call back before Pembrey’s door opened and then shut again.

“You’d miss us if we were gone!” Wren turned his head, his hands still resting easily on Stephen’s doorframe, to holler back down the corridor at his oldest and closest friend among them all.

“Come on, you shit sacks.” Pembrey reappeared in his field of view, casting a look over Stephen, cross-legged on the bed. “We’ll be late for rehearsal, and I have no wish to have my ancestry threatened in brutalized Italian.”

Wren let go of the doorframe and fell into conversation with Pembrey, everything about the pair of them relaxed and easy. “Oh, but having it insulted in German would be fine?”

“Don’t play the fool with me; you know what I meant.” Pembrey took the teasing with the good grace of familiarity, before dragging his attention away. “Coming, Ashbrook?”

Stephen nodded, and that mollified them both. “In a moment,” he promised.

Bath. Joshua.

It was something he hadn’t considered, not sure of his welcome if he turned up on the doorstep unannounced. He would have an excuse, this way.
Just passing through, happened to be in the neighborhood…

But then, Joshua had also shouted at him for making excuses, for looking for a reason to leave Evander that was not solely about his own selfishness.

Whatever he chose, somehow, it would be wrong.

He crumpled the paper and threw it petulantly into the corner, where a small pile of similar paper balls now rested. He would go plead his case to Joshua as a changed man, not a half-formed boy with his voice still breaking.

Give it more time, just a little more time.
Then he would be even better situated to make his case.

And maybe convince Joshua to come home.