Laurienodded.He wanted to lie here forever, seeing nothing but Sasha’sglowing eyes and the treetops in the distance, filled now withstars.Something occurred to him, something he had been meaning toask.“What does that mean?”
“Ves’tacha?”A flush stole into Sasha’s face, just visible toLaurie in the near dark.“It means…it means ‘beloved.’So you neednot have been worried about freaking me out by what you told MamaLuna a while ago.”
“Because you’ve been calling me that—almost since wemet.”
“Yes.”Sasha swallowed audibly.“It didn’t take me long toknow.”
Lauriereached up for him.He pulled Sasha down to lie beside him, thenbeneath him, covering his face and hair with kisses, reaching forthe coat to shield him as best he could from the cold.“Can we stayhere forever?”he whispered.“I know what you meant now, when yousaid it made it worse for you—to have known something different andto have to go back.”
“Yes.Because our worlds were bad.My world is better now, andI’ll help you change yours too, beloved.I swear.”
Timepassed.Belatedly Laurie noticed that, in spite of his bestefforts, Sasha was growing chilly in his arms, and he sat up,stripping off his own sweater.“Here.Put that straight on, whileit’s still warm from me.And keep it, all right?You won’t getbeaten up for it here.”
Sashanodded, shuddering in pleasure at the touch of the flesh-warmedcashmere.“No.It’s a good place.Safe.Can you come back with mefor a while?We’ll get warmed up, and Friday’s a festival night.Mama Luna will have some good food on the go for everyone.”Hehelped Laurie up, and they both stood unsteadily, helping oneanother rearrange clothing and button up coats.“Come on.”He putan arm around Laurie’s waist.“Look.All the way over there, acrossthe heath.I can see the fires.”
Chapter Seven
Lauriespent that weekend sleepwalking, locked in an open-eyed dream.Thewalls of the Mayfair house rose around him just as they always had,but they felt transparent to him—or as if he was, as if he hadslipped between dimensions and could, if he wished, just walkthrough them.He came down to family breakfasts on Saturday andSunday, went through as much of his weekend routine as would keephim under the radar—corrections from the week’s tutorials, thecinema with Clara—and other than that, retreated to his aerie toturn over memories and be alone with his own alteredstate.
He didnot just have a lover.When Laurie had thought about it at all, hehad assumed there would be some kind of routine—a girlfriend, andthen after maybe a couple of years, he would feel so unimaginablydifferent that he would want to marry.This was what he hadobserved from the young men of his acquaintance.He had notenvisaged finding someone he was fairly sure he loved before he’dlaid a hand on him and now, after a couple of weeks, could not bearthe thought of living without.
The oddthing was that, for all these large dramatic truths, he was calm.He’d spent the past two weeks in a blaze of anxiety, afraid thatSasha would never come back, that every time he saw him out thestairwell door would be the last.He wasn’t sure what was sodifferent now.The encampment could move on and vanish; Sasha couldbe swept up in a raid, deported overnight.The difference wasLaurie’s new conviction that they would find one another, no matterwhat happened.They had stumbled back across the heath, exhausted,arms wrapped around each other’s waists.Just outside theencampment, Sasha had stopped him and kissed him so yearningly thatLaurie could still feel the burning impress of his mouth.Lauriefelt as if he’d know now if anything became of Sasha, as if hewould be able to walk to him, like a fire in the dark, from anydistance.
Two long shifts at the car wash would keep Sasha busy allweekend, and anyway, they had agreed it was best not to try to seeone another outside their established routine, at least untilLaurie found his way out of his father’s labyrinth.That wasSasha’s benign way of putting the thumbscrews on him.The lastthing he had said to him, as they had parted at the bus stop.“Get out of there, and we can betogether.”It ought to be the bestincentive in the world.Their carefully staged meetings inSanderson’s tutorial group would hardly allow for any more of theexchanges they had made on the twilight heath, and unless Lauriemade a special effort, he could think of little else than that.Heburned for the chance to do it again—not clumsily this time, butpowerfully, slowly, showing Sasha what a good lover he could be.Imagined having a place where they could lie together undisturbed,their own door locked behind them.
So what was holding him back?Clara, came the usual answer.Mymother.But these old safety belts were getting worn and useless tohim.Sasha was right—he was doing no real job of protecting them bylurking here.Laurie had even gone so far as to look at the advertsfor staff in theStage.But even the lowliest of these seemed to require years moreexperience than he had, and the salaries were tiny.
Laurie,if he allowed himself to admit it, was for the first time thinkingabout who he was—or who he would be, once the old man was gone.SirWilliam was way too young and hale, and his wealth too much asource of discomfort as well as support to Laurie, for his son everto have seriously considered what he would inherit.Now, though,despairingly weighing up his skills against the realities ofindependent life, Laurie found himself indulging the odd fantasy.He’d sell this old house—his mother had never liked it—and he’d sether and Clara up in a seaside château in the Languedoc, where herfamily came from.It would be warm and sunny all day long, and heand Sasha would visit them—Sasha, well fed and strong, livingsafely with him in their beautiful Bloomsbury penthouse; Sasha,whom poverty could never touch again.Maybe everything would be allright anyway.Sir William was not the monster he could seem to be.Laurie remembered when he had been a kind father.Perhaps he couldtalk to him.Perhaps when he saw Laurie was in love, that nothingcould change him, he would relent.
Sittingback from his desk in the attic room, Laurie grinned.Okay, thatwas a wilder fantasy than the Languedoc château.But he still didnot despair of finding some escape route between that and theplunge into the dark he’d have to take alone.No, the old man wasnot a monster.Not—what was the word Mama Luna had used?Not mulo.Not, for God’s sake, death.
The oldservant’s bell over the bedroom door pinged faintly.Laurie got up,stretching.That was a summons Mrs.Gibson sometimes shyly availedherself of when Laurie was wanted downstairs and she was too busyto run up and find him.She hadn’t liked the sense of rolereversal, but Laurie had told her to go ahead whenever it wasconvenient.Usually it meant dinner was ready, or someone had cometo call for him.Laurie sighed.He was far from in the mood for theformal and lugubrious Sunday evening meal that Sir William insistedon, but until he got himself a job as a minimum-wage props handleror runner, there was no help for it.Anyway, tomorrow was Monday,and Sasha would be here; Laurie thought he could get through almostany amount of overcooked vegetables with that light on hishorizon.
He tookthe stairs down from the attic four at a time, warmed by memories.God, they had been a hard lot to crack, that Romani mob around MamaLuna’s fire.They’d looked at him as if he had just crawled fromunder a rock with an immigration officer’s badge in his hand.Laurie had supposed being admitted to the camp was one thing, butthe old woman’s invitation to join in their spiced-broth supper hadraised some hackles.He’d been allowed to eat in relative peace,cross-legged on the ground at Sasha’s side, but then, out of thetense silence that had followed, a missile had suddenly flown athim, striking his upper arm.
Aleather juggler’s ball.
Lauriehad plucked the second one out of the air without even looking.Sasha had started to his feet, growling an imprecation in Roma, butLaurie knew there was only one way to return such fire, and hadtossed the second ball high in the air, retrieved the first onefrom the ground before it could fall, and added an empty bean tininto the equation.He’d casually thrown all three in a tall arcabove his audience’s head.Plenty of call for juggler’s tricks inhis seasonal pantomime stint, and a good way of amusing himselfduring long waits backstage.He’d chucked out a few good ones andthen fired both balls back into the darkness, in the exactdirection from which they’d come.A yelp, and a rasping cackle fromthe old woman, and after that they had left him alone.Later one ofthem had struck up a song, rocking himself and patting his knee intime, in a language Laurie did not think was Romani, sounding morelike Irish Gaelic with odd scraps of reversed-sounding Englishthrown in.Anyway, by the second verse, he’d caught the sounds ifnot the meaning, and Sasha had turned to him smiling as he’d joinedin with the others at the chorus.
He could hear the strange, chanting melody yet.Lost in histhoughts, Laurie crossed the great hallway, trying to recall thewords.Shelta, ithad been, Sash told him afterward, a language of wanderers, ofRomani blown as far afield as America.
Thedining room was brightly lit, but there were no signs of supper.The table’s polished surface was blank.Around it, sitting boltupright in the uncomfortable chairs, were arrayed an unexpectedgroup of people.His mother, out of her usual place of dignity atthe far end, huddled in a seat she seemed to have chosen at random,with Clara on her lap.Hannah beside her, looking terrified.In themaster’s seat at the top, his father—with, incongruously, the tutorSanderson sitting at his right hand.
For onesecond Laurie allowed himself the fantasy that his father haddecided to relax the habits of a lifetime and invite the staff todinner.Then he came to a halt.“Hello, Sandy,” he said levelly.“Are we making you work Sundays now?”
Sanderson, already the yellow of curdling milk, went a shadepaler.He was pressed so far back in his chair that Laurie wonderedif the old man was holding a gun on him underneath the table.Notthat it was necessary.The dead-eyed look, the huge passive bulk,would do.“L-Laurence,” he stammered.“You’ll have to forgive me.I…”
“I do,” Laurie interrupted him, smiling.“I shouldn’t haveasked you to keep a secret.It was my fault.”
“No!”It was a desperate, high-pitched wail.Laurie, spinningaround, saw Clara scrambling off her mother’s lap.Her face was amask of grief.“No, it was my fault!I told about the gypsy prince.I just forgot!”
Laurietook three strides toward her.He put down his arms and scooped herup, feeling her scrabble like a monkey to get hold of him.“Listen,” he said to her, calmly as he could across her sobs.“Nothing that happens here is your fault.Okay?Can you put that inyour head and keep it there?Nothing.”
Helooked about him.So far the old man had neither spoken norstirred.Well, that storm would break soon—and before it did,Laurie had some damage control to perform.From a long way out, hewondered why he wasn’t afraid.Shock, he supposed.His heart wasthudding steadily under his left collarbone.He could see itsvibrations faintly shaking Clara’s hair.He also knew he hadn’treally come back to earth since his encounter with Sasha on theheath.He was still out there, if he closed his eyes for one secondand let this questionable reality slide.
“Hannah,” he said, surprised by the calm of his own voice.“Come here.Take Clara.”
“You stay where you are, you little bitch.”
