Micha laughed and withdrew his foot. Thomas gave him a wide-eyed, bewildered look. Pushing back his chair, Micha disappeared beneath the table. He pressed his mouth against the fabric that covered Thomas’s straining erection.
“Oh my,” came Thomas’s breathless voice from above. He made a convulsive movement, and Micha heard the rata-tat-tat of falling chess pieces. “I should lose more often.”
Thomas was labouring over his sermon when he heard the clatter of hooves on the path outside. He glanced up in time to catch a glimpse of Micha as he flew by on Bucephalus, his hair already tousled by the wind and his cheeks flushed by the chill. Thomas propped a chin on his hand, all thoughts that were not Micha dissolving like ice in sunlight. Isidore had taught him well. He had far more natural grace and ease in the saddle than Thomas had ever possessed, and he’d been riding since the age of eight.
At the top of the hill, where Laura was waiting for him, Micha wheeled suddenly round, Bucephalus’s mane and tail streaming behind him like banners. He was too far away for Thomas to be able to see much of his expression, but he performed an unmistakably knightly bow and then cantered into the distance.
After a moment, Thomas turned back to his sermon. But he was smiling now.
The floor of the library was awash in papers, books, and maps. Madame Defleur’s daughter’s daughter was sprawled out at the centre of it, her ankles swaying behind her in a manner no lady would have countenanced. Thomas sat cross-legged beside her, an absurd configuration of angles. They conversed in low, urgent voices, pausing occasionally to throw a book at each other or gesticulate at one of the maps.
“Uh,” said Micha, uncertain in the doorway. “I made tea.”
The girl had previously paid almost no attention to Micha. He was little more than a fly in her universe of elephants, sword fights, and Thomas. But now she turned her extraordinary eyes in his direction and did not dismiss him. “Thank you. This is thirsty work.”
Madame Defleur’s daughter looked up from her book. “They are planning an expedition to discover the source of the Nile.”
Once this cosy circle would have filled Micha with a bitter, burning envy. It was still not entirely easy for him to witness, for it was just alittle too close to a life Thomas could or should have had, one that held no place for Micha.
He put down the tray, still clinging close to the edges of the room. “I thought that was already found.”
“Yes, but not proven.” Hope braced herself on her elbows. “It is not enough,” she explained, “merely to believe a thing.”
“Hope, you heathen.” That was her mother.
“Sometimes it is enough.” Thomas. But his eyes were on Micha.
“There was to be a debate on the matter at the Royal Geographical Society,” Hope went on. “But Mr. Speke happened to die the day before it took place. I think that quite suspicious.”
“He’s dead?” Micha blinked. “I had no idea.”
“You were quite ill at the time,” said Thomas. “I did not realise you would be interested.”
Micha frowned, momentarily lost in the cracks between his fractured selves. “I wouldn’t have been, but ... once I think I might have. I don’t know.”
“Will you join us, Mr. Dashwood?” asked Hope. “It is a most perplexing problem. Mr. Speke claims to have solved it but leaves us little scientific evidence. And Mr. Burton talks an awful lot but has never even examined the lake or the falls that Mr. Speke discovered.”
“So, as you can see”—Thomas’s smile was for Micha, only for Micha—“it is up to us.”
Thomas woke to an empty space beside him. He wrapped himself in his dressing gown and found Micha huddled on the floor of the garden room, his nails gouging the skin of his bare, shivering arms. He looked up, his eyes red-rimmed and hollow.
“I’m sorry,” he said, “I’m sorry, I’m sorry.”
Thomas went to him, catching at his hands. Micha was freezing cold and clammy with drying sweat.
“I can’t sleep. I can’t think. Everything hurts.”
“It’s all right.” Thomas drew him into the garish folds of the dressing gown.
“It’s not all right. I want some fucking laudanum. I really do.” He pressed himself against Thomas, trembling. “I just wish I could sleep.”
“It takes time.”
“It’s the waiting. The night lasts forever. I hate it. Fuck.”
“Then,” said Thomas, smoothing the curls back from Micha’s brow, “we shall defy the night.”
“How?”
