“Yes, you are, but why are you more of a fool today than others?”
“Shut up and climb, Jamie,” Toby said.
Since he’d been plunged into the brutal hell that was Blackwood Hall in his youth, Toby had done whatever he could to outrun his demons. Like the two friends he’d met there, they did what theyneeded to stay sane and shut out the darkness. Jamie chose exercise. He walked, ran, and rode everywhere as fast as he could. Toby often wondered if one day he’d hear his friend had died due to the extreme lengths he went to in pursuit of good health.
“You can go faster than that, Lord Corbyn.”
“I’m trying, Professor Voelker,” Toby said to the man instructing him. Gritting his teeth, he climbed as the muscles in his arms begged for mercy. “That man is evil.”
He’d allowed his friend to drag him from his bed this morning, and to an open-air gymnasium he’d been a member of since its inception a few years ago. There was a fence around a grassed area, inside which had masts and ladders for climbing, mats for wrestling, and plenty of other evil forms of exercise. Jamie had got him at a weak moment, and now Toby was suffering. It would not be happening again.
“Why did I agree to this?”
“Because you are lazy, and wish to have a physique like me,” Jamie said, reaching the top of the mast before him.
“My physique is equivalent, if not better than yours,” Toby gritted out. “My arms are certainly stronger.”
“Perhaps then, if I may suggest you try harder to keep up with Lord Stafford, Lord Corbyn,” Professor Voelker said from below.
“You think I’m not trying to?”
The man showed no emotion at Toby’s attempt at levity. He was relentless and drove those who were foolish enough to enter this hell hole mercilessly.
“What surprises me is that you actually came today,” Jamie said, sitting on the wooden pole above him now.
Toby had come because he’d been unable to sleep and woken foggy. He’d felt forcing thoughts of Liberty out of his head with exercise was an excellent idea… until it wasn’t.
Reaching the top, he gulped in air and then descended behind his friend.
“Next you will climb the ladders,” Professor Voelker said when Toby landed back on the ground.
“Excellent,” he rasped, bent at the waist. “I can’t believe you would willingly choose to do th-this, Jamie.”
“I like to stay strong and healthy. It keeps my mind clear. I don’t want to pickle myself nightly with alcohol.”
“I don’t pickle myself nightly,” Toby protested, glaring at his friend, who was not even breathing hard.
The Marquess of Stafford was tall, with dark hair and piercing green eyes. Women loved him, and he tolerated them back, but like his two friends he didn’t let any close. Correction, that had changed for one of them, Anthony, who had married the love of his life recently. The first of them to fall, he’d said, to which Jamie and Toby had replied, the only one to fall.
“I can’t work out if you two are idiots, or to be commended for what you are doing.”
These drawled words came from his right. Straightening while attempting to force air back into his lungs, Toby found a man leaning on the fence, watching.
“Anthony, have you come to join us?” Jamie asked.
“Absolutely not,” he replied with a wide smile.
“Get away, you lovelorn fool,” Toby muttered. The man never used to smile.
“Jealousy is an ugly trait in a gentleman,” Anthony added.
Ignoring him, Toby gripped the ladder.
Tall like he and Jamie, the Earl of Hamilton was dark haired with amber eyes, and had lost the savage air he’d once carried. As if marrying the woman he loved deeply had cleansed him of his demons. Toby had to say he almost hated him for that.
“Up those ladders now!” Professor Voelker barked.
“Yes, do get up those ladders,” Anthony goaded them safely from the other side of the fence, where he and a handful of spectators watched. “I could do with a laugh.”
