“Easier to fill them both here than have the servants lug water down the hall,” said Jack.
“Toss you for the big one,” said Alan. “Though you’ll have to lend me the penny.” He looked around warily for the approach of Oliver. “Will I be attacked by valets again?”
“Contrary to popular belief,” said Jack, who was already unbuttoning his shirt, “the aristocracy are capable of lifting a sponge to wash their own limbs. And I thought you might have an apoplexy if I offered you a bath attendant.”
Alan made a rude gesture and began to work on his own clothes. He might not have cared if half of Mayfair trooped into this bathroom. Not just a hip bath but a full tub, with water that was actually hot? He wanted to sink into it and never come out.
It occurred to Alan, as he peeled off his sweaty, dust-covered shirt, that he and Jack had fucked twice and not yet seen each other unclothed. Cocks and arses had been uncovered just enough for business to take place. And now they were on their way to fully naked, and there was no real frisson in the air; no, Alan had squelched all chance of that with his earlier stupidity. Instead there was something stranger. Ease.
Which didn’t mean Alan wasn’t going to look.
Unclothed, Jack’s size became the musculature of a man who stayed active, softened by the solidity of one who’d never gone hungry. A light carpet of dark hair coated his chest and the centre of his stomach, thickening further on his arms and legs. His body was irregular, in a strange way, like a sculptor had reached the final sanding and polishing but wandered away before they could be done. That broken nose, very obvious in profile—the heaviness of the thighs and shoulders—everything in proportion, and not precisely rough-hewn, but compellingly unfinished.
And with one obvious asymmetry.
Alan paused, distracted from his own undressing. “When you said a war wound, I assumed—I don’t know. Something that left only a surface scar.”
“The damage is mostly aesthetic.”
“Aesthetic.” Alan kept looking, as Jack didn’t seem to care. The tangle of skin was like a landscape, forming sharp gullies over the large, uneven chunk of missing calf.
“It’s a dull story by wartime standards. The muscle was mangled and got infected, and a hero of a surgeon went in and scooped out the rot.”
“Ouch.”
“I was deep in fever, so I can’t remember much. But I was told later that if he hadn’t been willing to maim me, I might not have lived.” Jack stepped out of his drawers—eh, nothing new there, Alan had already seen that—and into the tub. The larger one, of course.
“You don’t move like someone with that much damage.” Alan turned back to his own trousers. “And you don’t use that stick of yours often.”
“I worked damned hard to recover.” Jack tipped his head back against the tub, arms stretched along its sides. “I resurrected my singlestick practice from Oxford. Good for balance and staying nimble. I won’t be running any long-distance races, but I can walk steadily most days.”
“Well. Thank fuck it wasn’t your pretty face.”
Jack’s hand went to his broken nose. Alan crowed with laughter, which echoed in the tiled room. “Oh fuckin’ell, you’re vain about the nose!”
“We can’t all be oil paintings.” Jack watched with unashamedly intent regard as Alan stepped out of his trousers. “When I first saw you, on the ship…”
“Yes?” Alan was expecting sarcasm. Something to hurt. Jack was very good at that, and Alan had just poked him in a piece of vulnerable history.
But Jack said, almost roughly, “I thought you were one of the loveliest things I’d ever seen. And that you’d stolen my best cufflinks.”
Alan didn’t know what to say to that. And didn’t know how, without a quiet room and a pen, to put flattering words around the hard and greedy and incoherent want that had been his own reaction to seeing Lord Hawthorn for the first time.
He went to kneel beside the obscenely large tub, took Jack’s face between his hands, and kissed him.
It wasn’t a kiss of passion. It was a kiss of gratitude, for anything, for everything—for saving Alan’s life. For believing in Alan’s character when Alan had done little enough to prove it. For understanding why. For writing a sincere letter to a desperate boy selling smut to survive.
For finding him lovely, and being prepared to say so.
It lasted a few aching moments of Jack’s lips moving carefully under his, and the stubble of Jack’s jaw rough under his palms. Alan’s chest squeezed. He thirsted to open his mouth and take in tenderness by the gallon. He made himself pull back instead. Jack had that snakes-and-sapphires look again, and Alan wanted to steal it for himself and keep it forever.
“You said…”
“I know what I said,” said Alan.
“Hm. I wondered why you made it a rule to begin with. The way you write kisses, they’re—” Jack waved a hand. Drops of water fell from it. “Devastating. Obliterating.”
“That’s right. No real man can kiss like that,” said Alan. “Better to keep the potential alive than risk disappointment.”
He recognised that he was laying a challenge, and that it was a terrible idea. Sure enough, Jack leaned in again, his hand going to Alan’s nape to hold him in place.
Alan said, “Stop, Jack,” mostly for the pleasure of knowing that Jack would. His face felt warm with steam and silly contentment. He grinned and twisted himself until Jack’s grip loosened and Alan could stand up.
“You’re a natural tormenter, Cesare.” Jack tossed a handful of water at him. “Clean off and go home.”
Alan went to the smaller tub, finished undressing, and climbed in. His toes tingled hotly, but the water wasn’t overwarm, and he could relax into its arms right away. He settled back and closed his eyes, fumbling lazily for the washcloth. Tonight he would be with his family again, and know he’d kept them safe. Tonight George Bastoke believed that Alan had no memory of magic, and therefore no reason to vow his own revenge; or maybe even believed Alan was lying dead in the ruins of the Barrel.
Tomorrow would be … more complicated.
But tonight, Alan ducked his head beneath the fragrant water and let it wash away the last residue of his shame, his grime, his secrets.
17
“Of course I told Spinet not to trust him anymore!” Violet practically shouted. “We’re under siege here again, Hawthorn, and he handed us over to Bastoke and the Coopers, and for all we knew he was going to be leading them right down this tunnel and then past the wards because he’s a perker—perber—oh, fuck.”
And she burst, quite suddenly, into tears.
It had never occurred to Jack that Violet would be the sort of person to cry, unless it was artfully and to a purpose. He had the urge to retreat all the way back down the hidden tunnel that ran between Bayswater station and Spinet House.
He and Alan hovered now at the end of that tunnel, before the open door. Jack could have pushed his way through; Spinet’s wards still welcomed him. Alan had paused on the threshold and muttered that he did feel something now, and it felt bloody rude to try to shove through it, considering the circumstances.