Ryan laughed loudly up at the sky and continued to walk back toward the house. He was walking away, but clearly their frank little conversation had brought them closer together. Now all Art needed to do was convince Ryan that Graeme was actually one of them, and that he, too, would be up for a laugh that summer.
FIVE
What startedas a job of desperation and a last-chance bid to keep his gardening business from going under quickly turned into the most interesting job Graeme had ever had. Hawthorne House was a wealth of history, and even in the present day, the stories he uncovered around every turn were fascinating.
“We absolutely hated each other at first,” Jake, Rafe Hawthorne’s partner, in glassblowing and in life, explained to him as the three of them enjoyed a mid-afternoon break in the shade of some of the estate’s trees one afternoon.
“Jake was a complete arse when we first met in America,” Rafe explained.
“I was not, I was just competitive,” Jake defended himself with a laugh.
“You were an obnoxious git,” Rafe snorted, deep affection in his eyes. “He lied about who he was and stole apprenticeships and placements from people to get ahead.”
“I have talent,” Jake said, pretending offense. “You get all your ideas from me these days.”
“See? A total liar,” Rafe said, elbowing Jake.
Graeme glanced back and forth between the two of them like he was watching a ping-pong match, a wide smile on his dirt-smeared face. He loved watching the two of them together. He loved watching all of the Hawthorne pairings together. His whole life, he’d been raised to believe being gay was a grievous sin and that nothing but misery followed anyone who didn’t fight with everything they had to resist their wicked impulses. Misery and disaster had certainly kicked him around when he’d finally done something about his.
But watching the Hawthornes was like having some sort of precious treasure revealed and like having someone hug him and say, “See? It’s going to be alright”. They were proof that things in reality weren’t what his conservative family had always said they were.
As wonderful as it was to be surrounded by healthy, complex, beautiful queer relationships, as the days wore on, it left Graeme feeling hollow and yearning, like he’d missed the most important boat of his life and was stuck where he was now.
Nothing drove that point home more than watching and listening to Ryan helping Art with the excavation of the gamekeeper’s cottage.
“Why do you have to sweep away at everything like this is some sort of dinosaur dig?” Ryan asked late in the morning, nearly two weeks after the excavation had started.
“It doesn’t matter if it’s a dinosaur or a teacup,” Art answered. “The point is to disturb the original site as little as possible while uncovering its mysteries.”
“Yeah, we all know how you like disturbing things,” Ryan replied in a dry, teasing voice.
“I beg your pardon?” Art answered him with mock indignation.
“You’ve been begging me for a lot of things lately.”
“Cheeky!”
Graeme tried not to sigh and feel left out. He had finished planting the kitchen garden and had moved on to the rose garden, which was also adjacent to the lawn where the gamekeeper’s cottage had once stood. There was work to do all over the garden, transplanting the roses that could still be saved and digging up the ones that hadn’t been properly cared for so that he could transport them to the greenhouse for rehabilitation, but he’d set himself up working in the corner closest to where Ryan and Art were digging and brushing away so he could listen to them flirt.
“According to the diaries Mum found, the fifth Countess of Felcourt used to spend time sulking in this gamekeeper’s cottage when her husband was being a pill,” Ryan said. “At this rate, I want it rebuilt so I can slam the door on you and sulk myself.”
Graeme tried not to stop and stare at the two men over the waist-high rose bushes at the edge of the garden. It wasn’t like working in the kitchen garden, where he had a whole brick wall to hide his spying from the pair.
“So are you saying I’m the husband?” Art asked, straightening from where he knelt in the dirt. Ryan stood nearby, his arms crossed.
“No, of course not,” Ryan teased him. “You’re the one on your knees, after all.”
“And wouldn’t you love it if I showed you what I could do from down here,” Art sassed, his gorgeous eyes glittering with lust and mirth.
Graeme sighed too loudly, startling himself. He covered his inadvertent burst of emotion by slashing at the bush in front of him with his pruning knife a little too hard. Whatever Ryan and Art got up to on their own was none of his business. They obviously liked each other. A lot.
That shouldn’t have made him so unhappy. It wasn’t like anything had really happened between him and Ryan anyhow.Sure, they’d become fast friends right from the start. They had far more things in common than Graeme ever would have guessed. The design connection was a strong one, but it went deeper than that.
Ryan was the sort of man Graeme would have wanted to be with, if he could have let himself be with a man at all after Damien. He was tall and graceful and sophisticated. He wasn’t overly fey, like he had been raised to think all gay men were. In fact, if he didn’t know with absolute certainty that Ryan was gay, he never would have guessed. He was masculine and confident and everything Graeme wasn’t.
But it wasn’t just Ryan, it was Art, too. Art was the complete opposite of Ryan in a lot of ways. He was outgoing and flirty. He could snap in and out of camp whenever it suited him. From everything Graeme had learned in the last week and a half, Art actually did fit the stereotype his family had believed in that gay men were whores. Art flirted and fawned mercilessly. The difference was that none of it felt predatory, only fun. And Graeme liked it.
He liked it a lot. Art terrified him in so many ways because he brought out a side that Graeme had always been taught to tamp down. Art touched and winked. He whispered naughty suggestions, and he made Graeme want to take the bait and find out what could happen if he just let go. Art was exactly what?—
