“You can stay here if you don’t want to use the townhouse.”
“Thank you. I should return home as soon as I can, but I’d probably fall out the saddle.”
“Get a few hours’ sleep. Just don’t wake me when you leave.” George ran a finger round the rim of the decanter and licked it clean. “By the way, what happened to that mongrel of yours?”
“Micha? He’s still with me.”
George frowned. “I don’t trust the fellow. He’s using you, and I have no idea what game he’s playing.”
“I don’t think he is,” said Thomas quietly. “I think he’s a good man who has had a difficult life. He changes a little every day. And he makes me happy.”
“For a supposedly good man, he was quick enough to betray a friend.”
“Pardon?”
“Your housekeeping harlot. He sold her out to get me off his back.”
Thomas’s eyes widened. For Micha’s sake he wanted to dissemble—pretend he already knew—but he was under-practised in dissembling, despite his father’s best efforts. “What? Why would he do that? And how? I don’t believe they even know each other.”
“Something to think about, eh?” drawled George infuriatingly. “Good night.” He tipped an imaginary hat and staggered from the room, taking with him any hope Thomas had of sleeping.
Thomas fidgeted away a couple of hours on George’s sofa, as plagued by doubts and questions as he had been the night before and prepared to depart in the early hours of the morning. He cleaned himself up as best he could, considered taking the train, but, impatient to leave, he borrowed one of George’s horses and set out a little after dawn. It was another long, gruelling journey, made considerably worse by yesterday’s aches and his newly acquired collection of bruises. He didnot push his mount, stopped often to rest, and was already too weary to give much thought to anything beyond the man who waited for him at the rectory.
He arrived in Nettlefield close to midnight, saw to his horse, and let himself into his house. Thinking Micha would most likely be sleeping, he took care not to make too much noise, but then he heard the sound of footsteps upon the stairs, and there was Micha, half-drowned in shadows, clad only in his trousers and a very rumpled shirt.
“Thomas.” Micha rarely spoke his name, except in mockery, and now it was uttered not so much with something that was recognisable as gladness but something else, something deeper, something raw.
And Thomas forgot all of George’s cryptic warnings in the simple pleasure of homecoming, when home was no longer about a place, but a person. He opened his arms, and Micha rushed into them.
“How ridiculous,” he muttered into Thomas’s neck. “Two days and I turn moonstruck.”
Thomas clutched at him.
“And you should know you smell like a dead horse.” Micha pulled back a little. It was hard to see in the gloom, but his brows dipped into a frown. He caught Thomas by the chin. “Wait. What have you been doing? What happened?”
Thomas winced as one of Micha’s fingers brushed against the tender place on his lip. “Nothing, really.”
“‘Nothing, really’?”
“Well, George, but ... I hit him first.”
Micha made a sardonic gesture. “Oh well, that’s fine then.”
Thomas stifled his amusement, not entirely successfully.
“It’s no laughing matter.” Micha took Thomas by the hand and dragged him into the library, where he lit a lamp and then let out a low hiss at the sight of Thomas’s face.
“It looks worse than it is,” offered Thomas, awkwardly.
“It better,” growled Micha. “Or I’ll fucking kill him. Now sit down and let me clean it properly.”
Thomas was all too glad to cast off his sweat-stained coat and sink into the nearest chair. He must have dozed because, when next he opened his eyes, Micha was there with a cloth and a bowl full of water. He put them down, unceremoniously pushed Thomas’s legs apart, and dropped to his knees between them. It was strange, for Thomas had kissed this man’s lips, held his cock in his mouth, but this seemed an entirely different intimacy. It abashed him, somehow, even as it pleased him. “You don’t have to do this.”
Micha’s upturned face looked starkly beautiful in the lamplight. Lucifer before his fall. “I’m going to,” he snapped. And then, more kindly, “I want to.”
He took Thomas’s hands and spread the fingers. His touch was surprisingly gentle as he cleaned the scraped and swollen knuckles.
“An ill-advised right hook,” explained Thomas.
