Rite of Summer: Treading the Boards, Book 1 (28 page)

Chapter Twenty-Four

Rain drove down in sheets outside, and Joshua scowled at the shutters. The weather had him stranded, the coaches to London staying put for fear of flooding, and he was here until the morning. Thank goodness he had booked passage on a ship that would not leave until the following evening or he would miss his chance altogether.

At least the coaching inn was not terrible, as far as these things went. The Holly was certainly the best choice of the options available in the area, and he’d secured a small but private room. The furnishings were no great luxury, but the sheets were clean, and if he went downstairs, he could find some stew and a crust of decent bread to fortify himself against the damp.

Voices rising from below stopped him dead at the top of the stairs. One was the landlord, the other familiar. Too familiar,
dreadfully
familiar, and the nausea rose high in his throat.
No. Not him, not now, it cannot be.

One look, to prove I am mistaken, and then onward for supper.

He crept forward on the landing, every inch the ridiculous boy, and peered over the railing.

“Will you take a message, then? I need to speak with him urgently.”

It was Stephen indeed, resembling nothing so much as a cat that someone had tried to drown in the Thames. His hair stuck to the side of his neck, his coat hung on him, a wrinkled mess, and water stains ran up both his boots where mud had no doubt been half dried on and then scraped away.

Joshua’s heart stopped within his chest, a lump the size of an apple grew in his throat, and he struggled for breath.
Here. He is here, he is here.

In almost four months, Stephen had not changed. Even as much a mess as he was, battered by the storm, his beauty still shone, still eclipsed everyone else in the room, in the country, possibly even in the world. He was luminous, and Joshua…

Joshua adored him still.

What do I do now?

“And who shall I tell him is here?” the landlord asked, mirroring Stephen’s posture and endlessly amused by the figure of despair before him.

“Tell him…” Stephen paused, and his head hung low.

A new ache set up residence in Joshua’s heart at the sight.
I did this. I did this to him.

“Tell him Miss Armand sent me,” Stephen said, his head jerking up as though he’d had a flash of inspiration.

Joshua grinned, and, oh, how must that conversation have gone? He could barely picture it, but could not imagine that Sophie had treated him with any degree of kindness.

He should be kind now, should reveal himself in the shadows on the stairs and give Stephen a reprieve from his troubles. But then they would have to talk, and who knew what he had come to say?

No, Joshua would take this moment for himself, selfishly, absorbing everything he had tried to forget about Stephen’s voice, his lips, his eyes, the way his hands gestured in the air as he spoke.

“Ohhhh, there’s a ‘Miss Armand’, is there? You her brother come to drag him to church?”

“Nothing so dire, I promise. But he will want to hear me out.”

Stephen leaned over the desk, and perhaps he was about to do something desperate?

Joshua stepped down a few treads, emerging into the light. He cleared his throat, and both Stephen and the landlord paused in their negotiations to look up. Stephen’s face went pale, paler than before, white as the grave.

He had lost weight where he did not have much before to lose, his cheekbones sharper and his jaw more perfectly defined. Was he eating? Did he have a home? Did he still live with Cade?

“I’m here,” Joshua said, once he found his voice again. He could not move, could not force his feet to the step below or draw any closer. What should he say? How? What questions could he ask?

Stephen made the move for him, bounding up the stairs two at a time until they stood face-to-face on the small landing. Joshua had been entirely mistaken—Stephen had not lost weight. His shoulders were still firm and strong, his arms and slender waist the same as they had always been. His face was the thing that had changed, all the last, lingering remnants of puppy fat or boyish softness carved away, until only the man remained. Now he burned with fierce determination and a new kind of fire, all of it directed at Joshua.

He pulled in a soft breath, and that seemed to break the dam penning in his thoughts. After months of yearning, on the eve of his escape Stephen stood there, so close that Joshua had but to reach out with a single finger and touch him to bring it all back.

“Why are you here?” he asked instead, in the vain hope of regaining some distance. “We have said everything that needed to be said.”

“No, we have not,” Stephen insisted, keeping his voice low. “You do not know what has happened these past few months, what I have done and learned.”

“Yes, I do,” Joshua interrupted. “I have seen your playbills. Nothing for you has changed, and for me, everything has.”

Stephen shook his head and spread his hands wide. “I left,” he said simply. “I have been playing for myself, taken lodgings elsewhere. I have not seen Evander since the summer. The week after we returned from Belmont, I
left
.” There was so much more there, things he seemed to be holding back, but the words he had spoken aloud were enough to send Joshua’s heart racing.

Enough. Did you not say yourself that you have been hurt too many times? Cut this off now, before you are wounded so deeply that you cannot recover.

“Are you telling me the truth?” he asked, instead of sending Stephen away.

“Yes,” Stephen replied simply. He looked down into the room below them, the landlord hurriedly casting his gaze elsewhere. “Is there somewhere more private than the stairs?” A puddle was slowly forming below him, from the steady drip of rainwater coming off the hem of his coat, and yet he waited for Joshua’s invitation.

“I…that is…yes,” Joshua admitted in defeat. “Come with me, and you can borrow some of my clothes while yours dry.”

Oh, that’s precious. Finding an excuse to get him naked in your room already.
His inner voice sounded much like Sophie at that moment, and he could not hide the small smile.

Stephen said nothing until they were in the room and alone together, the door closed and latched firmly behind them. He took off his hat and held it in his hands, the damp felt squelching between his fingers as he turned the brim nervously.

“I am my own man,” Stephen began, and he lifted his chin to look at Joshua directly. There was no falsehood in his dark-brown eyes, no dissembling, just honest passion, laid so open and bare for Joshua that it felt as though they were already naked, already entwined, already forgiven.

“And I am neither broken nor lost, as he predicted,” Stephen continued, seemingly unaware of Joshua’s churning thoughts. “I am enough of a man, perhaps, to be a partner to you in truth.”

“After everything that has passed?” Joshua blurted out, the world shifting unsteadily beneath his feet. This, this was everything he had imagined, and so much like it that he could not be sure he was not dreaming now. He would wake to an empty bed once more, his heart sore from promises broken in the harsh light of morning. “I meant what I said at Belmont.”

I was cruel and cold.

Stephen nodded slowly. “And you were right. I have built a life for myself again these past four months. I have survived, and, more than that, I have thrived. I have friends and a home, albeit smaller than my previous one, but it is mine and my bed is my own, no longer subject to Cade’s whims and moods.”

He reached out, his hand hovering near to Joshua’s, but he dropped it again when Joshua could not, did not, yet reach out to meet him partway.

“What I have learned, most importantly, is that I can survive without you as well. And be as content as any man within the world has a right to expect.”

That, no—those were words he had not anticipated, and Joshua’s brow furrowed tightly as he tried to parse them out. The burgeoning excitement in his chest emptied and became a void, one more disappointment to add to the tally that made up the years of his life so far.

“This is what you rode through a storm to tell me? That you do not need me in your life? Better that you had not come at all, if that is your only message!” He could not help the anger in his voice, sharp and hot, but Stephen only bit at his bottom lip and shook his head.

“You don’t understand. I
can
survive without you, but I do not wish to.
Ever
again. I want you beside me, with me, always.” He reached out again and this time did grab Joshua’s hands, stroking his thumbs over the palms as though divining Joshua’s future.

“Look at us,” he pleaded, as if Joshua had any other choice in the matter!

Stephen’s hair stuck to his forehead, ragged and tousled curls plastered here and there in haphazard swirls, and he blinked water out of his eyes.

“Six weeks changed everything in my life. Not just because of you, but because of the potential you awoke in me. Think of how well we could grow together in twenty years, or forty!”

No, there were too many doubts, too many things left insubstantial. “What of Evander? You grew together—do you now say that you have left him utterly behind?”

“I have nothing more to say to him. I left and he did not pursue.”

And once again there was more there, much more, that he was not saying, but the core of it rang true. That, or he had learned how to lie to Joshua with his tongue as well as his eyes. If Joshua settled on that explanation, though, with everything in his heart screaming out against it, how could he believe in anything again?

What to do? How to be in any way sure that the decision he made now was the right one? He needed, he wanted, he feared, he
hurt
, and it all tangled up together in ways he thought he had long put behind him.

And in front of him, Stephen, his arms open.

Stephen pressed on when he said nothing, holding his hands tightly. “At the very least, please—if you will take nothing else that I offer, take my gratitude. I could not have done this without you.” He blinked fiercely, his eyes shining in the candlelight.

“I did nothing,” Joshua demurred. Stephen’s hands were cool against his, but solid. He wanted to close his hands, tangle their fingers together, hold on so tightly to this gift he had been given back. “Nothing but walk away.”

“You showed me I didn’t have to accept my fate. Beaufort—
Joshua.
”

He spoke Joshua’s name with such tenderness and longing that he was sunk, utterly and entirely sunk, before he could escape. Joshua’s hands tightened on Stephen’s, and Stephen brought them to his lips. He kissed Joshua’s knuckles fervently, and Joshua’s stomach tangled into a solid-iron knot.

“Listen to me now. Don’t accept loneliness and exile as yours.”

“What?” His mind was jumping too quickly for Joshua, stuck as he still was on the apology, on the firm pressure of Stephen’s lips against his hands, on the way his soul had settled back into his skin the moment Stephen had stepped into the room behind him.

I am meant for you—this is all just a formality.

“Be with me?” Stephen asked, neither begging nor pleading, his back straight and his eyes alight. “Take lodgings with me in London or allow me to come with you to the Continent, I no longer care. But do not run away because of what transpired between us. There is nothing, now, to drive you from England, if you will forgive me my trespasses. I have forgiven you everything. I miss you, and your particular affection.”

“I leave for Belgium tomorrow—I will not be persuaded otherwise,” Joshua cautioned, his head spinning.

Joshua owed him something…what? Some kind of excuse? He was not
running away
because of Stephen, that was ridiculous. Ridiculous and embarrassing and
wrong
.

“I have been on this path before, burned by love,” he tried to explain, searching for words. “Blisters on the soul take far too long to heal. I do not want to live it again.”

Stephen did not move. He stared at Joshua as though there had been some brilliant revelation there, and Joshua tried to think back over his words. What had he done?

“You said ‘love’,” Stephen said with such tremulous and disbelieving awe in his voice that it broke Joshua to pieces. “You love me?”

Yes.

He still had his pride, damn it all to hell and back! “I said no such thing.”

“You did and you do,” Stephen insisted, joy overtaking the wonder and surprise. “Look me in the eye and tell me that you do not.”

He looked. Stephen’s exhilaration shone from him, golden and silver beams of light, his hair starting to dry at the curled ends, wisps bending up around his temples, and so soft. He knew what it would be like to twine his finger in one of those curls, bury his hands in Stephen’s hair and claim his lips again, just kiss him and kiss him until there was no breath left in the world but the one they passed between them, lung to lung.

“Say something,” Stephen pleaded in the face of Joshua’s dumbness, that joy beginning to slip. And still, still he was tongue-tied, his throat tight and fear overriding all his sense and form.

“I’ll go down on bended knee if I must, only smile at me and tell me that you love me. I saw it in your eyes in Belmont but I would hear it in your own words.”

And he did it, right there in the inn room, falling to his knees in a parody of a proposal.

He was utterly ridiculous, kneeling on the floor, damp clothes and all, a faint whiff of steam rising from his side where the fire warmed him. He was no portrait now, but a floppy-eared, half-drowned spaniel, wide, plaintive eyes and all.

Joshua had to laugh, a short huff of breath that broke the spell. “I cannot dissemble.” He admitted defeat.

He stepped backward, claimed space between them and sank down into the chair behind him, rubbed the bridge of his nose as though the pressure and contact would give him the clarity of mind that he lacked. Stephen rose to his feet and took a tentative step toward him as Joshua found his words and began again.