Rite of Summer: Treading the Boards, Book 1 (30 page)

“And you shall have music wherever we go.”

“I don’t think that’s how it goes.”

“Really? Hm.” Stephen hummed against Joshua’s Adam’s apple, nuzzling up beneath his chin.

Joshua slipped his arms around Stephen’s shoulders, traced the bumps of his spine, the gorgeous curved arcs of his shoulder blades, memorized the triad of moles that spotted the back of his right arm.

The candle end guttered out and died, leaving the room to settle into darkness. Joshua tipped his chin and found Stephen’s mouth with his own, their lips moving sleepily against each other’s. His prick stirred faintly, but gave up before making its presence too well known to ignore. Stephen traded kisses back with him, soft and tender, their mutual lust momentarily abated.

Curled into each other, hearts and hands pressed together and the blankets drawn snugly over them both, Joshua drifted into a content and dreamless sleep.

Birdsong woke him the next morning, announcing the beginning to a bright, new day. Joshua floated into consciousness more slowly than usual, everything around him conspiring to keep him snuggled deep in the bed.

The blankets drawn up to his ears were warm, in contrast to the sharp chill of the morning air. He was without his nightshirt, but the body pressed up closely against his back, knees fitted tightly against the back of Joshua’s knees and arm draped over his hip, went a long way toward explaining that.

He’s still here.

The press of something long and half-hard against Joshua’s arse suggested that Stephen was subject to the same sort of usual morning affliction as he, a sweet possibility that suggested so many future pleasures. This morning, though, he was not quite tempted enough to spoil the perfect beauty of this single moment.

Joshua lay there for a while, time passing as the sky lightened outside the shuttered window. How long could he hold on to this before something ruined it, brought him crashing down to the prosaic reality of the world?

Stephen woke between breaths, one moment his body soft and pliable, curved against Joshua’s back as a second skin, the next suffused with faint tension, like someone filling a wineskin and stretching the surface taut. Joshua held his breath and did not move.

Lips brushed softly against the nape of Joshua’s neck, and he let out the breath he was holding. Stephen’s mouth lingered on his skin, and his hand flattened out over the plane of Joshua’s stomach. He expected something to follow that, a drift southward, to take up where they had left off the night before. It didn’t come.

Stephen simply lay there, his nose buried in Joshua’s hair, his cock semihard against the curve of Joshua’s arse, and the pressure of his hand warm and solid.

Getting out of bed could wait.

Later, when Joshua woke again and they were pulling on clothes for the day, Stephen looked up from where he sat on the edge of the bed, trying to fit himself into a pair of Joshua’s spare trousers. “When do we sail?” he asked, the first real logistical question he had put forth about the whole venture.

“At four this afternoon.” Joshua glanced at his watch and frowned. Three hours to get themselves to London, then four more to settle accounts and get themselves to the ship. It would be tight, but possible.

Stephen managed to get the trousers buttoned, the muscles of his legs enough to haunt every one of Joshua’s most fervent dreams. “Time enough for me to gather my clothes, then, and settle with my lodgings,” he said blithely, either not aware of, or entirely ignoring, Joshua’s distracted scrutiny. “Will you come with me, or shall we meet again at the ship once we’ve completed our business?”

“At the ship, I think.” Joshua knelt to finish repacking, but could not hide the worried frown that crossed his face. “I’ll be there,” he said. “Will you?”

Stephen nodded. He took Joshua’s face in his hands, and their kiss was the sort that could lead to a couple of men missing their coach and having to rebook passage entirely.

“See that you are, this time,” Stephen murmured against his lips. They rested their foreheads together, and his warmth was everything Joshua had needed. “I’ve done enough riding cross-country to find you. I don’t intend to lose you again.”

“Never,” Joshua promised, and kissed him again.

The coach would not wait, but they would be on it, and then onward to the tides and the Channel, the sea that promised to give him back his life, and the wide world that called to them beyond.

Together.

Epilogue

Mud squished up around Stephen’s boots again, the spring thaw turning the usually firm path up to the little cottage into a black and sucking mess. It would be better by tomorrow, one more day of sunshine to warm and dry the earth, but that didn’t help him much tonight. The air was warmer, at the very least. No more need for scarves and muffs to protect him from the elements.

Light flickered in the windows ahead. Joshua had a fire set, then, and the sitting room would be cozy, a welcome respite from the chill still lingering in the early April air.

His ears still rang from the noise at the pub in the village, his head muzzy from drink, but there, there was the firelight bringing him home.

The wind blew him up the last of the path, and he slammed the door tightly closed behind him before throwing the latch to block out the night. Boots off in the hall, mud and all, or Joshua would gleefully murder him, and he padded through to the sitting room in his stocking feet.

The cottage was not what anyone could call large. The sitting room doubled as the dining room, parlor, dayroom and whatever other downstairs space one cared to name. A kitchen off to one side was adequate enough for them to sort out basic meals. Sausages, cheese and good bread bought in the village made up the bulk of the rest. They had two bedrooms but only used one for sleeping—the other a painting studio so much smaller than the one Joshua had at Bracknell that Stephen sometimes felt physical pain looking at the cramped space. But he professed to be happy, and so Stephen had to take him at his word.

There was the man himself, stretched full-length upon an old and battered chesterfield that had come with the cottage. He was in his shirtsleeves, a blanket cast over his legs and the golden glow of the fire playing over him. He sat up when Stephen entered, set his book aside on the end table and gifted him with a warm and beckoning smile.

“My weary traveler returns,” he said, and Stephen vaulted the arm of the chesterfield to sprawl across his warm body. “My
cold
and weary traveler,” Joshua corrected, tugging the blanket out from between them and draping it over them both. “How go matters in town?”

“Well enough, for a border town in an encroaching war zone.” Stephen shrugged. They were so far from the fighting that in reality there was nothing to concern themselves with. “A couple of letters. Those brushes you ordered came in.” He pressed up on his elbows and kissed Joshua soundly, his lips warm and pliable, soft and yielding.

“You taste like brandy” was all Joshua said when they broke away, and Stephen covered his mouth in a burst of shame.

“My apologies.” He started to sit up. “I can go clean my teeth—”

“I didn’t say I minded.” Joshua reached out to pull him back down and kissed him again, as though to prove a point.

Stephen sank in, Joshua’s legs spreading to fit him softly between. “Gustav’s wife is pregnant again,” he explained after a moment more in the drowsy heat. “He says she means to make him sleep in the attic from now on.”

Joshua snorted. “You should give him some pointers on how to avoid that. And a gift of a bottle of oil.”

“Hah! I doubt that would go over well.” He nuzzled in, Joshua’s arm about his shoulders, the two of them trading soft and slow kisses that warmed him through to his very center.

“Any news from London?” Joshua asked, and Stephen shifted to draw one of his letters from his coat pocket. Joshua’s hips hitched up against him when he moved, a slow and comfortable roll together that held sweet promises for later.

“A letter from home. Pembrey.” Stephen had left his address, made at least one of them promise to write, since Wren most certainly would not.

“My sweetheart has forgiven me,”
he had told Pembrey to his face, watched those full lips break into a broad white smile.
“And we leave for the Continent today. Wish me well.”
And he had. After insulting about four generations of Stephen’s family and calling him a ninnyhammer for leaving them in need of a new soloist for Bath.

“And Phillips sent a note inside.”

Joshua raised an eyebrow, tangling his fingers in the shorter hair at the nape of Stephen’s neck. He had put up a fuss originally when Stephen had decided to have it cut, but seemed to enjoy the new, more fashionable length.
“As long as I can still get a grip on you,”
he had said, and laughed.

“And what do they say?”

“Lady Charlotte is married,” Stephen reported, and felt no sting in the words whatsoever.

“Oh, is she now?” Joshua said, a ripple of sardonic amusement behind his words. “But not to Cade?”

“No.” And a small, satisfied smile flickered over Stephen’s lips. “I imagine there would be very little that Evander could do now to earn Coventry’s favor once again. Not after being caught in Charlotte’s London bedroom the way he was. No, she’s been married by special license to the elder Mr. Downe, who will be Viscount Downe eventually. It’s better than being the wife of a disenfranchised minstrel, and he’s not such a bad sort. Handsome enough to suit most girls, at any rate, and he has pleasant manners.”

He nuzzled Joshua’s chest, and was rewarded by a soft and pleased rumble. “And the new Countess of Coventry—Miss Talbot that was—was safely delivered of a baby boy in February. A full two months premature, but hale and hearty as can be. Fancy that. A true miracle.”

“Gracious. A husband and a baby brother all within the span of a few months. Such a grand summer the new Mrs. Downe must have had. What a pity we missed all of the excitement.” Joshua’s voice was as dry as hardtack, but his eyes sparkled with barely concealed amusement.

Stephen said nothing, running his fingers over the edges of the folded papers, soaking in the warmth and the gentle caresses from Joshua’s hands.

“Do you have regrets?” Joshua ventured softly, his hands stilling.

Stephen shook his head. “No,” he said, and meant it. “Evander’s misfortunes are all of his own making, and I have what I have always wanted.”

“Your dream is a tiny cottage within spitting distance of a war zone?”

“Not for me an aristocrat’s house with all the problems that accompany such things.” Stephen sat up partway, drew Joshua into his arms and rested his chin upon that dear and familiar shoulder. Joshua leaned into him, fitting perfectly into the curves and angles of Stephen’s body.

The letter from Baron Terlinden burned hot inside his pocket, the promise of patronage and stipend memorized from tracing his fingers across the dark letters. Money for ink, new strings, time to compose a waltz to be played at the baron’s only daughter’s debut ball.

He would tell Joshua all, share the good news and trace the shapes of letters across his lips with fingers, wine and tongue, celebrate their success in the appropriate ways. But for now—

“I have you.”

And that itself was enough.

Author’s Note

History has been my passion for as long as I can remember. I devoured stories of knights and damsels, kings and queens, battles and victories across time periods and continents. As I grew, I started reading more about the lives of the regular folks, the you-and-me people whose lives tended to fade into the background in the grand sweeping epics.
Rite of Summer
grew out of that reading, with my earnest, somewhat emotionally constipated artists living and loving in the middle of turbulent times.

A quick note on Joshua’s dressing ring. While the popularity of that piercing in England has been attributed to Prince Albert in the mid-nineteenth century, that is most probably an apocryphal story. Men in India, however, where Joshua’s late lover Charlie was briefly stationed, have been performing apadravyas (vertical glans piercings), and men in the Philippines and Borneo have used ampallangs (horizontal glans piercings) since long before European contact. If you can forgive me the stretch and the potential anachronism, I’m sure we can all agree that it’s just plain
fun
to indulge in the fantasy!

I first began to write this story after stumbling across historian Rictor Norton’s essays and books on gay and lesbian history in Georgian England. His descriptions of illicit queer life under the noses of the London magistrates fired my imagination, and the sources he dug up brought everything to life. His work is the rich, dark garden where the seeds of this tale were planted, and in that, I owe him everything.

The Vere Street raid that so terrifies Joshua, Stephen and Evander took place in reality on July 8, 1810, when the White Swan, a secret gay bar, or “molly house”, in Marylebone was raided by the Bow Street police. Twenty-seven men were arrested for sodomy—nineteen released for lack of evidence, eight tried, six placed in the public pillories to be assaulted by the mob. Two regulars at the club, John Hepburn and Thomas White, were executed by hanging. And yet, despite the terror and risk of death that surrounded them, gay and bisexual men and women continued to search for romance, find true love and create secret ways to spend their lives together.

That message of hope in a seemingly hopeless time is magical to me, and a reminder that love can always, for every one of us, conquer all.

About the Author

Tess has been a fan of historical fiction since learning the Greek and Roman myths at her mother’s knee. Now let loose on a computer, she’s spinning her own tales of romance and passion in a slightly more modern setting. Years of obsession with the early modern era have provided the basis for her current novels, most especially with the performing arts communities of Georgian London. She has a Masters degree in History, which has proven very useful for things that would utterly dismay her professors.

Tess lives in the Canadian Maritimes with her partner of fifteen years and two cats who should have been named Writer’s Block and Get Off the Keyboard, Dammit.

Learn more about Tess and her projects at her website,
www.tessbowery.com
, or on social media at @tessbowery on Twitter, and
tessbowery.tumblr.com
.