Beauchamp looked at him.
“You can ring David in the morning if you still want to. I’ll not stand in the way of that. But you’re staying in this room until that one wakes up, because if he opens his eyes and you’re not the first thing he sees, I’m telling you now, he’ll do himself a worse injury than the car managed.”
Beauchamp’s mouth opened again, but Connor cut him off before whatever fresh act of self-removal he’d lined up could escape it.
“I’ve heard you, Beauchamp. I’ve heard every word. Now I need you to sit down.”
Beauchamp sat down. The chair caught him at the back of the knees and he went into it without grace. He looked at the side of Vidal’s face on the pillow, at the gauze taped over the graze, at the dark fan of his hair across the white cotton, and he didn’t look away.
Connor turned Beauchamp’s instructions for the care and feeding of Vidal over in his mind.
The garden crying. The lighting of the candle. The danger in Vidal’s silences.
Not one item on that list was the kind of thing you’d pick up from just doing your job. You picked it up from watching a man for the pleasure of watching him, and from keeping what you’d seen in a place inside yourself. Connor had been fucking Vidal for the better part of two months. He had been making him laugh in his kitchen, spooning him in bed, and driving him to Sunday lunch at his mother’s. He hadn’t noticed that Vidal went down to cry in the garden or developed soothing strategies for him in response.
The poor bastard was in love with Vidal. Had been for weeks, by the look of it. Possibly since the cupcakes for Adelina, which was the photograph that had stopped Connor cold the first time Vidal had shown it to him, though he couldn’t name why it had bothered him at the time.
Connor waited for the sense of competitiveness to arrive, but it never did. What came instead was a feeling of dismay on Beauchamp’s behalf. The poor fucker had no idea. He was going to walk himself out of Vidal’s flat, and out of his life, in the belief that he was doing the professional thing.
Connor settled back into his own chair on the other side of the bed and stretched his legs out. He folded his hands across his stomach and watched the slow rise and fall of Vidal’s chest under the blanket.
He’d come into this room thinking he had one man to mind tonight, when he actually had two. He’d sit with the pair of them until morning, then.
Chapter Twenty-Five
Thefamiliar smell of his mother drew him out of the darkness. It was the same blend she had been wearing since his birth, something done for her decades ago by an old man on Jermyn Street whose son now ran the shop. Iris and a green note like cut flower stems, with a powdery cleanness underneath that on anyone else would have come off as an old lady’s drawer, but on his mother sat exactly how it ought to.
She was kissing his temple the way she had done over his cot, his school sickbeds, and the time he had come home from Eton with his nose broken by a badly aimed football. Her thumb stroked once across his eyebrow.
“Mama.”
“There you are, my boy.”
He prised his eyes open, squinting against the strip light above the bed. His mother came into focus above him, her dark hair drawn back as it always was for travel, a single strand of pearls at her throat. She was holding his good hand in both of hers.
As much as her presence soothed him, his gaze didn’t stay on her. It went past her shoulder, scanning for the face he wanted.
Beauchamp was standing near the window in yesterday’s clothes. He’d not slept, by the look of him, and he’d clearly been standing in that exact spot since the moment the door had opened. The instant Vidal’s gaze settled on him, Beauchamp’s eyes skittered sideways and fixed on a point somewhere above the cannula stand. The bottom of Vidal’s stomach dropped out from under him because he knew this silent furious Beauchamp.
“Now,” his mother said, smoothing the blanket across his chest with the flat of her palm. “I want you to drink some water. There is a horrid little plastic cup here with a horrid little straw, and you are going to take three sips at minimum, because the nurse was very firm about keeping you hydrated after your anaesthetic, and I should like not to be reprimanded by her on top of everything else.”
“Mama —”
“Three sips, Vidal. Then we may discuss whatever you wish to discuss.” She held it to his mouth so he had no choice but to obey.
She set the cup down on the wheeled tray with an approving nod, then produced a folded handkerchief from somewhere about her person and applied it to a spot on his chin where some of the water had escaped. “Honestly, my darling, you’re an absolute state. We are going to have to do something about that hair.”
“Mama, please.” His voice came out hoarse and smaller than he had wanted it. He could feel her hand still warm on top of his, and he could see Beauchamp at the window holding himself in. “Please do not blame Beauchamp for this. I went out on my own, Mama. I did not tell him I was going. What happened afterwards is no one’s fault but mine. Beauchamp was —”
“Vidal.”
“He was asleep, Mama, he could not possibly have —”
“Vidal.” She gave a derisivehmph. “Of course I don’t blame the Major. I know perfectly well how hard-headed you are, and I assure you the Major has my full sympathies on the matter.”
“Good, because the Major has beenexemplary. I cannot stress to you enough how exemplary he has been. From the very first night, when Mercè piddled on his sleeve, he has comported himself with a dignity that I have rarely encountered in any man, of any nationality, in my entire life. He has — Mama, you must understand — he has been the very model of an excellentfriend, if I may be so bold as to use the word, although of course I would not presume on his time.”
“Vidal, my darling.” His mother’s hands closed around his face. She turned his head gently on the pillow until his eyes were forced to meet hers, and his mouth, which had been gathering itself for another outburst, fell quiet.
