Page 89 of Thief Taker

“I know,” Kit said, and kissed him again. “I wish too.”

Reaching for a towel, Kit dried him off with brisk efficiency. Elias straightened, turning around to take the towel and rub it over his chest and face.

“Your turn,” he said, nudging the dressing gown from Kit’s shoulders and dipping the flannel back into the water.

The intimacy was painful, standing there naked together as if there were no secrets between them. Knowing that there were, and that the barriers were insurmountable.

Carefully, Elias washed and dried him, then let his hands run over Kit’s chest. “What’s this?” he said after a moment.

“Hmm?”

“The ink.”

Kit glanced down. “Ah. It’s a long story.”

“I ain’t in a hurry.” Elias’s fingers moved across the tattoo, tracing the letters. “Who is it?”

“It’s someone I was…close to.”

“Someone you cared for?”

“Yes.” The sensation of Elias’s fingers stroking his skin was exquisite, even though the memory was painful. “Francis Gale. He was…revelatory.”

“You knew him in the West Indies?”

“Mmm…” Kit let his eyes drift shut, enjoying the caress. “No, not there. In New York.”

Elias stilled, his hand pausing against Kit’s chest. “New York?”

“Yes,” Kit said. “I was stationed there from ’79, when I was with the Queen’s Rangers. Francis was a lawyer in the city, and I thought…” He sighed, rested his hand over Elias’s atop the tattoo. “I thought I could live a new life there. But then Charlotte wrote, and I had to come home. You know the rest.”

Or, at least, most of it.

Elias still hadn’t moved. “Elias?”

He blinked, as if lost in thought. “Sorry,” he said, giving his head a little shake. “I was—I hadn’t realised you’d been in America, that’s all. Were you there long?”

“Not as long as I’d have liked…” He left it there; he didn’t want to think about it anymore tonight. “Come on, let’s eat.”

Elias’s shirt was beyond redemption, so Kit gave him one of his to wear and they put the tray between them on the bed and shared a supper of cold game pie.

“Will you go back there?” Elias said after a while, toying with a piece of uneaten piecrust. “If your family is ruined here, will you go back to America? Can you, with the war and all?”

Kit let out a breath. “I’ve thought about it,” he said, noting how Elias frowned. “But I wouldn’t—” He reached out and touched his hand. “Elias, would you? Have you ever thought of making a life away from here? Somewhere you can be true to yourself?”

“In America? That ain’t what I heard about the place. Full of puritans, I heard.”

Kit laughed. “In some places, perhaps, but…” He drew in a breath. It was difficult to explain, sitting here in a candle-lit room in a city hemmed in by fog, but he wanted Elias to understand. “There’s so much land,” he said, “so much space. A man could live as he pleased there, if he was careful. I did, for a while.”

“You and Francis?”

He tightened his fingers on Elias’s hand. “Yes.”

“And he’s there still? In New York.”

“I imagine so. He—” Kit smiled, the memory still painful yet less sharp with Elias’s hand in his own. “Francis wasn’t all he seemed, and there was an ulterior motive to his friendship. I was an officer in a Loyalist regiment, and it transpired that he was a rebel spy. I’m not sure anything that happened between us was real for him. I understand he married shortly after I…discovered the truth and he fled to the enemy line.”

Elias’s expression froze. “Bloody hell, Kit. That’s a harsh betrayal.”