“If you ask me,” put in Ada, “he needs a wife. Someone to love him and look after him. Make him happy like he is today. Why, I hardly recognise him.”
The sky flooded iron, sweeping the room with sudden shadows. From the deep-grey distance came the sonorous crackle of thunder. Everyone scrambled to turn up the lamps and light the candles.
Micha was glad for the activity that surrounded him. He felt cold and floaty, as though poppy-drowned, as though he wasn’t really there.
“I say.” Laura banged her spoon against her teacup. “We’d jolly well better start this thing, before we get flooded out like Noah.”
Those who had not already done so took their places. A couple of copies ofThe Woman in Whitewere produced and passed round. Laura and Fred-Violet Mouseworthy sat side by side, sharing the book between them, their heads close as they leaned over the pages together.
Thomas was prevailed upon to read first. As the familiar rise and fall of his voice washed over the room, Micha remembered, in sudden, lightning-bright flashes, fragments of his fever. Isidore twisted round him like a serpent, naked skin and promises. And a stranger, reading to him through the long night, like a candle left to light his way back home.
Once again, the words flowed unheeded past him.
Instead, he thought,He loves me.
He corrected himself.He believes he loves me.
But, somehow, it reverted anyway.He loves me.
Everyone else was lost in the unfolding narrative and Thomas’s attention was focused on the page, so Micha was at liberty simply to look at him. He watched the slightest movements of his lips. The ripple of his throat. The shift of his eyes beneath his lashes. Like a thief, wild with desperation, Micha stuffed his pockets with forbidden glances. And knew it was fairy gold. Nothing but sand. The lamplight was not kind to Thomas. It cast jagged shadows across his cheeks, sharpening all his angles and emphasising the lack of symmetry to his features. Sternjaw. Leonine nose. Deep-set eyes. Heavy brow. Wide lips. He had never looked less lovely. And Micha had never wanted him more.
The evening slipped away convivially. Even Micha was—at some point—drawn into the story. He took his turn with the book and acquitted himself creditably, winning not only laughter but applause for his wearily drawling Mr. Fairlie. Outside, the darkness deepened, the thunder rolled, and the wind howled, but nobody paid any heed at all. It was well past a civilised bedtime when the party, finally, began to break up. The reading itself had ceased nearly an hour ago, but the attendees had fallen on what was left of the cakes and let themselves be drawn into fervent speculation. Who was the woman in white? Was Mr. Hartright absolutely devoid of any mental acuity? What was Glyde’s dastardly scheme? And would the author compare any other of his characters to vegetables?
But, eventually, they managed to extricate themselves, and Micha was filled with a terrible, shameful gladness to be alone again with Thomas and the secrets they shared. They were ten minutes down the road from the big house when the storm hit them. The world sheeted white, and then the sky broke open like a bowl, lightning cracking over the clouds. The downpour was immediate and merciless. They were soaked within seconds.
“Good grief.” The wind ripped Thomas’s words from his lips as though they were discarded rags.
Micha turned his face to the rain. It landed on his skin as cold and hard as thrown stones. He didn’t know why but he laughed.
“We should run,” cried Thomas, over the thunder and the deluge. “The last thing you need is another chill.”
He caught for Micha’s hand and pulled him down the hill, which was already well on the way to becoming a quagmire. Thomas lost his footing as the ground levelled off and skidded gracelessly forward in a flail of limbs and flying garments. Micha clutched for him, and they both nearly went over. They steadied—just—entangled and breathless, staring at each other through a haze of rain.
“Bloody hell ... I mean ... oh dear.” Thomas’s eyelashes were clumped together with moisture.
The thought came from nowhere, but Micha uttered it nevertheless: “The world rains curses.”
“The world rains rain,” said Thomas firmly. “Come.”
But Micha shook his head. He put a hand—as soggy as the rest of him and trembling with, he hoped, cold—to Thomas’s face, and Thomas stilled almost instantly.
“Micha?”
The weather raged around them, a forgotten creature in the grip of its own tantrum.
And, suddenly, Micha slanted his mouth hard over Thomas’s, his fingers twisting into the other man’s hair to hold him there. Thomas tasted of the rain and innocent things. Tea and lemon cake. But there was nothing innocent in the sound he made or the way he pressed himself into Micha. His lips were icy, but the interior of his mouth was impossibly warm. His tongue was a serpentine flame. Water fell from the curling tips of Micha’s hair, trickling between the scant spaces of their kisses.
“Fuck,” he gasped. “Oh fuck.”
This was probably how it felt to be martyred. He was freezing and burning and dying all at once. He wanted it to end. He wanted it to begin. He wanted. Hewanted. And he had forgotten how to take. How to ask.
He caught Thomas’s hands by the wrists. His thumbs left brutal shadows over the pulse points, but Thomas did not pull away. In the gloom, his eyes—slightly wide—were nothing but pupil and the faintest edge of golden-brown iris.
“Touch me,” Micha muttered. “For fuck’s sake, touch me. Make me feel something.”
His grip slackened, and, tentatively, one of Thomas’s smooth gentleman’s hands trembled at Micha’s jaw. Followed the line of stubble down his chin into the rain-slick hollow at the base of his throat.
“I said make me feel,” Micha snarled.
