As was occasionally the case, Thomas wasn’t sure if Micha was joking or not. But perhaps it didn’t matter. The idea settled over him like starlight—insubstantial when he reached for it too hard but present, nonetheless. It was not, however, something for now. He was already too exhausted fromthe day’s unsought revelations and wanted only to be safe and selfishly happy in Micha’s arms.
It was enough and, for a while, he slept. But then he awoke, agitated and anxious, in the bleak indigo hours after midnight and could not find his peace again. Rather than stare at the dark, he crawled out of bed, lit a candle, and tried to draft a letter to the bishop. But the words wouldn’t come. He hadn’t lost his faith. He’d found it. And the truth proved simply inexpressible.
I have fallen in love. It is a love I hold dearer than my love for my God. It is a love I put above my duties. It is a love that makes me careless of the love of others. It is a love that makes me selfish. It is a love that saved me.
Before long, papers scattered the floor at his feet like the pale wings of fallen butterflies.
Eventually Micha stirred, rolled into the empty space Thomas had left, and sat up with a start. “Thomas?”
“Sorry. I’m here.”
The shadow of Micha pushed a fall of sleep-tumbled curls out of his eyes. “Thinking about Edward?”
“No. Maybe I should be, but I’m not. I’m thinking about myself.”
“What’s the matter?”
“I’m trying to, I suppose, resign.” Thomas sighed. “Except you can’t really resign from the church. A defrocked priest is still a kind of priest.”
“You’re also a man, with the same rights as any other.”
“I’m not sure the two are extricable.”
Micha threw back the covers and padded naked across the room, the scents of sleep and sex clinging to his body. His hands came down warmly on either side of Thomas’s neck. “You don’t have to worry about this now.”
“I know, but it’s important.”
“Come back to bed.” Micha’s thumbs kneaded a knot from just under the wing of Thomas’s shoulder blade, his voice deepening to a husky purr. “I can take your mind off it.”
“I ... I’m sure you can.”
He went to extinguish the candle, but Micha prevented him, a hand upon his wrist. And Thomas—unwritten letter already as good as forgotten—turned, just to look at him, this man who was his, illuminated in gold. He was so beautiful. So exquisitely, so undeniably male. Those austere curves, his legs with their rough dark hair, and that strong, lean back, all dips and planes and the groove of his spine, where the shadows gathered like ink.
Idolatry,thought Thomas, with a wry smile.And licentiousness.For his admiration of Micha was as carnal as it was loving, and his gaze was wont to linger in wicked places, like the dimples at the top of his buttocks and the dark crease between them. Thomas knew well the tenderness of the secrets within. All the ways Micha could yield.
Releasing Thomas, he returned to bed, sprawling out, still naked, his body arched and spread and brazen. His eyes were full of dark promises, his mouth a kiss waiting to be taken.
They had barely touched, and Thomas’s desire was already an inferno. The truth was, Micha had his tricks. He knew how to inhabit his skin, how to seduce and inflame with nothing more than a look or a gesture, how to present his loveliness as a chef might a dish to be sampled and devoured. Thomas had always taken it for granted that it was natural to him. This shamelessness. This sensuality. Now he knew it was learned.
Part of him wanted to say,You need not do this for me. I only want you.But he feared such a truth might hurt Micha past the point of recovery. So he let himself be plied and beguiled and chose to see not the blandishments of a whore, but the gifts of a lover.
Chapter 23
Micha was starting to resent Sundays. Thomas was busy most of the time—so much for that old joke about a clergyman’s working hours—but there was no escaping the fact that on Sundays he belonged to his parishioners, to his God, to everyone but Micha. It was absurd to be jealous—could one even be jealous of something so abstract?—but Micha had no other word for the ugly feeling. It was a little bit like loneliness and a little bit like loss, and it made him scratchy and desperate, like a feral cat, locked out in the cold.
Of course, he need not have stayed away. He could have attended any of the services, joined the gossip in the churchyard after, gone along to lunch, or tea or dinner, and been welcomed as lavishly as any biblical prodigal. The residents of Nettlefield were too polite to mention such things, except to make the occasional joke about Micha’s wild and heathen ways, but he knew his godlessness troubled them. Depending on his mood, he found it some combination of officious and strangely charming that there were people who cared about him enough to extend that concern to the state of his soul after death. As if all that was standing between him and eternal glory at his divine Father’s side was his poor church attendance.
Probably they consoled themselves with the thought that he was young, and the Lord was infinitely forgiving, but the truth was, Micha simply did not like God. He could not believe in Him the way Thomas could: with unshakeable trust in his goodness, His understanding. The truth was, Thomas had been changing. Was changing still. Not inessentials but in small ways that nevertheless accumulated, each a blade of grass. And, one day, Micha would open his eyes and see a whole new landscape.
Though he was as grave and softly spoken as ever, Thomas’s newfound certainties shone like polished glass. Very little trace remained of the painfully dutiful servant who had first brought Micha to Nettlefield. And Micha rejoiced for him, was entranced by him, and did his best to lock away his bitterness. For he was the one to show Thomas passion, and yet it seemed God had claimed that too.
They had never discussed it, but Thomas seemed to have made some pact, come to some arrangement with his other beloved, that the seventh day was His alone, and he would not touch Micha at all. Sometimes he would barely even look at him. Micha had accepted it with good grace, then bad grace, and finally rebelled. He told himself he would have been satisfied with the smallest acknowledgement—a kiss, a touch, a loving look, anything to remind him he had a place in the heart of this suddenly uncomfortable stranger. But Thomas was marble, cold and shining and splendid. So now it was open warfare, a battle of flesh and spirit, God and man, that Micha was losing. Even so, it was somehow easier to have his seductions ignored, and physically rejected, than to hear Thomas say he didn’t want him. And easier still to make this an external struggle than one rooted in Thomas’s own conscience.
Sundays were nothing, however—mere inconvenience—compared to Thomas’s occasional summons to the Episcopal Palace. It was a world to which Micha had no access and in which he had no place, and Thomas always returned to him, restless and subdued, and then it would be Sunday for days, sometimes weeks. And Micha could not even bring himself to be righteously indignant because Thomas was so unhappy. Eventually he would find his peace again, and crawl into bed with Micha, and he would be too relieved, too joyous, to do anything but welcome him.
And then, one winter evening, Thomas came back from dinner at the palace, and, instead of creeping about like a penitent ghost, he shedhis clothes with something close to violence and flung himself straight into Micha’s arms. It should have made Micha happy—and it did, it did—but he had resigned himself to the pattern of their lives, with its peaks and troughs of closeness, and this change was too sudden. It was everything he would have wished for, but Micha did not believe in miracles.
Thomas kissed him, the faintest tang of salt and brandy on his breath, his naked body sleek, and warm, and familiar against Micha’s. More than familiar, intimately known, all its little imperfections and hidden beauties, the texture of the skin of otherwise untouched places. He loved the trembling softness of Thomas’s belly, the chalice of his armpit, the pearly smoothness of his inner thighs, everywhere he was precious and open and vulnerable. But he also loved more carnal things: strong legs wrapped around him, a hard cock driving into him, hands that could—and did, when he willed it—pin him down, leave their bruises, like promises upon his flesh.
