I wove my fingers into his, unable to keep the grin off my face. “Of course.”
Petey kissed the back of my hand and let it go. He stood and turned away from me, plucking off his vest—the smooth alabaster skin of his back glowing in the candlelight. Slowly, he undid the knot of the sleeves of his boiler suit and let it gently slide to the floor, revealing tight cotton boxer briefs in a vivid royal blue. The way they cupped the rounds of his pert little buttocks could have steered ships onto rocks. I was gone. Completely gone.
“What are you doing?” I said, starting to shiver.
“Blow the candles out.”
“Petey, I…”
He turned to face me. His body was beautiful. Like a Pre-Raphaelite Narcissus.
“It’s OK. Nothing is going to happen that you don’t want to happen. Just… blow the candles out so we don’t burn everyone to death in their beds, because that would be a massive downer and I would like to avoid it, if at all possible.”
I did as instructed. Petey grabbed my hand in the dark and led me down the stairs.
“Where are we going?”
He didn’t answer, so I followed him in silence out the folly door, along the corridors and out of the house, down to the path by the Long Water.
“Is there any reason we’re in our jimmy-jams?” I said finally.
“William, I’ve almost never seen you in anything else. I’m following your lead. ‘When in Rome,’ you know?”
It was a beautiful, clear night—a blanket of stars twinkling in the sky overhead. The frogs had finished their chorus, and the evening was quiet. The air was cool against my skin, but my hand was sweating where it held on to Petey’s—where our bodies connected. I was still so high on adrenaline, I giggled as we picked our way barefoot along the path beside the lake.
“This feels so naughty,” I said.
Petey squeezed my hand. “Naughty would be pushing you in,” he said, with a cheeky grin.
I laughed. “I’d like to see you try.”
“Is that a dare?”
“Go on, try.” I let go of Petey’s hand, folded my arms, and sank my weight into the ground. “Give it a shot.”
He chuckled. “I would never.”
“Oh, you absolutely wou?—”
His palms slammed into my chest, but I didn’t move.
“You’re going to have to try harder than that,” I said.
He tried again, pushing my shoulder this time, and I pretended to wave like a scarecrow in the breeze. “Put your back into it.”
Petey’s eyes narrowed. He walked behind me, his leg slipping between mine, his arm wrapping around my neck like he planned to trip me up karate-style. There was a lot of grunting and swearing, but I wasn’t going anywhere. Then Petey’s foot slipped on the gravel, and he was swinging from me like a rope.
“Steady there, Tarzan,” I said, sweeping him up in one arm and depositing him back on two feet. “How about we stop before you hurt yourself?” I didn’t really want him to stop. I was enjoying the closeness, the feel of his bare skin against mine.
We ambled slowly along the path until we reached Lady Caroline’s Bridge.
“After you,” I said, letting Petey take the steps ahead of me. The stone was cold under my feet. The air smelt of earth and water, mown grass and cow parsley. The view back to Buckford Hall was breathtaking—the house reflected perfectly in the still water. Then Petey stopped. He stood right in front of me, facing me, his hand reaching out. I couldn’t see, hear, or feel anything but him. He was leaning against the pillar of the bridge. My eyes locked into his. But before I could move towards him, his face broke into a mischievous smile—and his foot splashed down into the lake, kicking water up and all over me.
“You didn’t.”
“I did.”
And he did it again. So I wrapped my arms around his shoulders and locked my wrists together. He giggled nervously and tried to wiggle free—but I held him tighter. My plan was to get him away from the water, to sit him down where we’d sat the previous night. But as I shifted my weight to budge him, his leg swept my own out from under me, and before I knew it, I was falling. Petey was falling with me. My body tensed in shock from the cold and the wet and the surprise. My mouth filled with lake water.
