A pause. Robin’s hands shifted on the wheel of the car. “Are you and he . . .?”
Edwin morbidly considered flinging himself from the vehicle, but settled his nerves with the force of habit and will. So Robin wanted to talk about it after all. He shouldn’t have been surprised. And it wasn’t an unreasonable assumption for Robin to make. “No,” he said. And heard himself add, “Reggie doesn’t care for other men—that way.”
“You can’t always tell.”
“Sometimes you can tell,” Edwin said. “One way or another.”
“Can’t argue with that.” After another pause, more tentatively: “And Lord Hawthorn?”
Edwin closed his eyes. Oh, what did it matter? Hawthorn himself had gleefully freed this cat from its bag and given it a kick to speed it on its way. “Hawthorn is a thing unto himself. And—yes. For a little while. It would have been three—no, four years ago.”
Edwin had been fresh out of Oxford, Hawthorn two years out from the military service that had been his first attempt at violently ignoring the magical world. Edwin had thought that he wanted the old version of Jack Alston, thought that version was still there, and kept digging for him beneath the mockery; thought he could risk opening himself in turn. He’d been wrong. And who knew what Hawthorn himself wanted. It hadn’t been Edwin, that was certain.
Robin said, “It’s never been someone in particular, for me. I mean to say—at university, there were a few fellows. But all my encounters were, ah. Well. It was understood that there were limits.”
“Furtive and athletic.” Edwin opened his eyes and watched the fence poles and trees gliding past. “I can imagine.”
He could, unfortunately. Robin in a soaked rowing vest, shorts pulled to his ankles, leaning against a shed by the river. Handsome face twisted in pleasure, one large hand on the head of the fellow rower who knelt at his feet, working at Robin’s cock with hand and mouth— Edwin clenched his jaw and forced himself not to move. Not to cross his legs. Not to draw any attention at all.
“I’m wondering if I should be offended, but that does rather cover it,” said Robin, ruefully. “And the same since, I suppose. Bathhouses and the like. One has to be careful, but one makes do.”
Yes: one had to be careful. It was over a decade since Wilde’s trial, but one still had to face the possibility of being pulled up before a jury, and considering oneself lucky if the charge was merely gross indecency and not buggery.
If one weren’t someone like the Baron Hawthorn, with enough money and clout to make such problems go away, anyhow.
“You’ve never wanted a future with someone?” Edwin asked.
“I’ve never been a future sort of person.”
Edwin stared at him. He was wondering if he’d actually have to point out the irony; then Robin’s mouth convulsed helplessly, and then they were both laughing. Edwin leaned back in the seat, feeling the car’s motor thudding gently into his body in counterpoint with the laughter that shook his rib cage, and wondered at it. He hadn’t thought he’d missed this, out of all the things he missed in his weaker moments of remembering those months with Jack, but he had. It was refreshing to be able to talk about these things, in fellowship.
Edwin supposed his inclinations were an open secret among their level of magical society—he’d heard Miggsy say once that at least it wasn’t as though Edwin was ruining any girl’s hope of marrying into strong blood. But even if sometimes Edwin felt his skin seethe with a loud, desert-hot hunger, he knew himself. He knew his weaknesses, how easily he could let his walls down when offered something that he craved.
And oh, how firmly he was having to patrol those boundary walls these days. He could feel them blurring. Every time he was surprised by how easy it was to be softer and more open in Robin Blyth’s presence, his wariness flew up in equal measure, as though on the other end of a lever. Stop here, it shouted. No more. Be safe.
And it was. It was ten times safer, a hundred times simpler, to assume that Robin’s warmth was fellowship and nothing else.
They drove. The wind tossed leaves in handfuls, and the colours of autumn were muted under the grey sky. It wasn’t precisely quiet, what with the noise of the car, but something in Edwin that had loosened itself with the laughter remained loose.
“Shouldn’t be more than a few minutes away now,” Robin said. They turned onto what, according to Edwin’s map, was the lane leading directly to the Sutton Cottage grounds.
Edwin shifted in his seat. He was restless in the way he was when he’d missed something, when he’d skipped some essential step in constructing a spell, and his mind was trying to bring the fact to his attention.
“Perhaps this wasn’t a good idea,” he said.
“Why do you say that?”
“Why would some elderly relation have any idea what Reggie’s been up to?” A sluggish unease was alive in Edwin’s stomach now. “This is a waste of time. I could have skimmed through five more books. Turn the car, we’ll be back early enough not to have wasted the day.”
“I’m not turning the car.” Robin frowned. “We should find out what she knows. It’s not as though any of your books are going to say This Way to Reggie Gatling. At least Mrs. Sutton wrote to—”
“We have to stop,” Edwin said, close to panic. A rough line of elms was approaching and beyond it Edwin could see the crisp, rich green of well-tended hedges. “We shouldn’t be here.”
The car slowed as some of Edwin’s alarm finally conveyed itself to Robin. Edwin felt ill. “We shouldn’t have come. We have to turn around.” How could he make Robin understand? “There’s nothing here—”
The car inched past the tree line.
Edwin sagged back into his seat, his breath catching on a gasp. He felt like someone had thrown cold water over his brain.
“Robin,” he said. “That was a warding. Stop the car. We’ll keep going, but—I need you to stop.”
Robin stopped the car without another murmur. “What’s going on? A what?”
“A warding, and a strong one. Someone doesn’t want visitors.” Edwin climbed out of the car. “You didn’t feel it?”
Engine having puttered to a stop, Robin climbed out after him. “I heard you rabbiting on like you were trying to change your own mind. I didn’t feel anything.”
Edwin was already cradling a basic detection spell, but although he could feel a vague tug of his hands towards the tree line, it wasn’t likely to provide more information than that. He reached up to touch the yellow-splotched dangling leaves of the closest tree, and let the spell collapse, then tucked his string away. He was more interested in what would happen if he stepped back through the line.
“Come here,” he said. “Take my hand.”
Robin took Edwin’s outstretched hand in his own. Edwin ignored the flood of physical awareness that tried to clamour in his bones, the way his whole body wanted to turn towards Robin’s.
“If I try to pull away, don’t let me. If I start to run . . .”
“Wrestle you to the ground?” Robin suggested pleasantly. His thumb moved over Edwin’s. Edwin looked away.
“Yes. I’m presuming you included rugby in the list of sports you spent your time excelling at while your family was paying for the improvement of your mind.”
“Message received,” said Robin, amused. “Get on with it.”
Edwin stepped between two of the elms.
The feeling of violent wrongness flooded back at once. He knew he was in the wrong place. He should be anywhere but here.
Edwin held tight to Robin’s hand and managed to propel himself back onto the other side of the warding with a wrench of stumbling effort. He dropped Robin’s hand and turned to touch the trees again. “Fascinating.”
“I’m sure.”