His Heart's Obsession (6 page)

Chapter Eight

If Robert had found the door locked against him and his portmanteau thrown into the corridor, he would have taken it for a good sign, picked up his clothes and found a random stranger willing to share for sixpence. But the door swung open at his touch.

He edged forward gingerly, expecting the chamber pot to be thrown in his face or to confront the business end of a cocked pistol. Instead he found Hal sitting on the bed, a coatless shoulder wedged into the far corner of the room.

Cheek pressed against the wall, Hal gazed out of the small dormer window over the rooftops of the town, his legs drawn in tight, arms around his knees. He turned his head no more than an inch to look at Robert and say softly, heavily, “You bastard.”

Nerved up to meet anger, Robert shivered at the tone of despair. Had he pushed the knife in too far? “I’m sorry,” he said, “but you needed to know.”

“I needed to be publicly humiliated? I needed…I needed my heart broken? Yes, of course I did. How altruistic of you. For I’m sure you did it entirely for my good, and not for your own. Is that rum?”

Robert looked at the forgotten bottle, startled to find it dangling from his fingers. “Yes. Here,” he said, and passed it over.

Hal downed half of it in one draught, drinking it like water. He turned back to face the window, dismissing Robert from his notice. A strained and desolate silence filled the small room. Pulling off his own coat with movements that sounded excruciatingly loud, Robert wondered if he dared try to ask for the bottle back, decided he did not.

He untied the bow of his cravat with a scratchy, hissing noise and unwound it. The leather soles of his shoes squeaked when he shifted his weight to take them off. They landed beside the washstand with matching raps loud as gunfire. While he struggled with the breeches’ buckles—who would have thought that they too squeaked like little mice?—the humour of the situation struck him unexpectedly.

I spoke though I might have done better to refrain.
Little point in coyness now.

So he sighed, stripped off his breeches and stockings, leaving them in a heap that he kicked into the dust under the bed. Flicking the faded yellow coverlet down, he was pleased to find clean sheets and a scent of hay from a mattress newly filled for market day. When he wriggled in, he thought he detected a slight movement of Hal’s head, as if Hal watched him, brooding. At the thought, Robert grew acutely aware of where the other man sat—the shape of his weight on the mattress. Would he sit there all night, fully clothed, honing his resentment and getting more and more murderously drunk?

“Morgan,” he murmured, reaching out and touching one unresponsive ankle. “I did do it for you. You heard what Hamilton said. He will never love you. I do. But even if you won’t have me, you deserve someone who will make you happy. And it’ll never be him.”

“Shut up, Hughes.”

“It could be me.”

“Just shut the fuck up.”

* * *

Robert was drifting, in languorous warmth, in the twilight state between waking and sleep when the bed dipped and a blast of cooler air hit his overheated back. A body insinuated itself into his solitary darkness. In the borderlands of dream, he turned to meet it with confident welcome. His outstretched hand touched Hal’s chest, feeling thin linen and warm skin beneath it. After that, nothing would have stopped him from drawing closer.

Dream and reality tangled. But this improved on dreams. He had never imagined the texture of that shirt, the smooth resilient feel of Hal’s skin against his palm, the hollow of his throat, the scent of him, the movement of his Adam’s apple when he swallowed against Robert’s lips.

Full of accepting delight, he murmured “Hal…”

This was no dream. The moon shone bright in the window like sudden hope. Hal, his eyes closed, sought Robert’s mouth with the desperation of a newborn child seeking out his mother’s milk. Oh, God, the taste of him! The soft, needy, broken noises he gave when Robert pulled his shirt over his head and laid him out, arms trapped in the sleeves, pinioned and primed and begging for touch.

“He doesn’t love you,” Robert whispered, ripping his own shirt off between kisses. “He doesn’t love you. I love you.”

Hal whimpered at the words, kissing him to keep him silent. Wriggling his arms out of his shirt, Hal grabbed Robert’s shoulders and twisted until they lay together belly to belly.

The thrust of that big body against his, the feel of muscle and bone and hard prick against his prick, burned the twilight of Robert’s dreams away, left him gasping. Moonlight sifted over them both, and Hal’s pale skin glowed. The golden hair of his arms and chest gleamed like a haze of fire over him. Robert wanted to burn to death in that flame, be lifted out of himself and consumed. He filled his mouth with Hal’s shoulder, bit down hard and groaned aloud at the answering surge of power.

He worked his way back to Hal’s mouth, kissing, licking. The words tumbled out of him like an erotic litany—foul, dirty, arousing words. “He doesn’t love you. He can’t give you this. He’s just a dream. I can give you reality.”

One of Hal’s hands twisted in his hair. The other clamped around the curve of his ass, drunken-clumsy, holding on so hard it hurt. Every word and every kiss increased their mute ferocity. Hal kissed like a boy trying to swallow a hated taste, eyes scrunched tight, face contorted in dismay.

It was that, rather than the pain, that gave Robert pause. He liked a bit of rough play and did not expect gentleness from a man so sorely tried. His bruises throbbed deliciously, adding a dark counterpoint to the throb of his cock. His hips pushed forward instinctively. His mouth filled with of the iron taste of need. He wanted to be ridden hard, to be ruthlessly used to purge Hal’s anger and despair.

But the silence weighed on him. Hal’s look of desperate endurance weighed on him. He hadn’t done this to prove Hal right, to prove himself motivated by base lust. Not merely to gain a night of meaningless sex. Not to inflict more pain.

“Hal, look at me. Please.”

Hal’s body tensed, unresponsive under Robert’s hands. He turned his face away, grimacing. Robert took him by the chin and turned it back. “Please.”

Hal’s eyes opened and Robert saw a condemned man, taking what comfort he could, knowing he would despise himself for it in the morning. Drunk and despairing, punishing himself.

“Oh,” Robert whispered, gently, his arousal dying in the darkness of that gaze. “You don’t truly want this at all, do you?”

Letting go abruptly of his root-tearing grip on Robert’s hair, Hal turned over, radiating affront. “’M not gonna beg.”

Robert reached out, smoothed a hand along the curve of creamy shoulder. Despite everything he found himself smiling. “You’re such a moody brat, Morgan. I don’t know what I see in you.”

“Don’t know either,” Hal slurred into the pillow. An almost affectionate silence filled the room before Hal sighed, relaxed and plunged into sleep.

Robert put his shirt back on, rejected the temptation to snuggle, and lay down a careful foot away. Pulling the blanket up around his ears, he watched the last drop tremble on the lip of the discarded rum bottle, where it lay on the floor beside Hal’s breeches. Even after he had quietly taken care of his outstanding problem, sleep failed to arrive. If he slept, there would be a tomorrow, and he didn’t dare think about that.

Chapter Nine

Aboard
HMS Swiftsure
, off Martinique

Hal locked his hands together behind his back and paced as upright as he could beside Hamilton as the captain walked to and fro across the quarterdeck. On the horizon, the distant white speck that was a suspected French frigate had begun to enlarge. She was hull up, and separate sails could now be discerned through a spyglass, even from the deck.

Hal alternated between watching her grow slowly larger as the
Swiftsure
caught up with her, and watching Hamilton’s serene little smile. The captain was recounting an anecdote about whales to the midshipman of the watch, stopping only when he had to check the sails and murmur a casual order to trim.

The decks were swept bare fore and aft, and beside every cannon a thin stream of smoke rose into the air from the slow-match upright in its bucket. The marines were in the rigging, a rookery of red jackets bristling with rifles, and Hal had not yet lost the feeling of nausea he had woken up with on the morning after Hughes destroyed his last hope.

He should have his mind on the chase, he knew that, although the interminable story about whale-fish and ambergris and how one of the whalers had defrauded the others was doing nothing to help his concentration. He wished he did not still feel so sick. There was no reason for it—they had been at sea a fortnight now, hopping from one island to the next on patrol, hoping to find exactly this—a small and venturesome French vessel, acting the part of privateer or spy.

There should have been plenty of time for the hangover to wear off and his regret at his own actions to dull beneath the bracing discipline of shipboard life. But neither showed any signs of ever shifting again. It seemed he was a hypocrite after all.

He was no more virtuous than Hughes. Less so—God, what a rebuke that was! He would have given Hughes what he wanted, out of mere despair, and then—had the offer been taken up—gloated at the knowledge that Hughes really was the despicable wretch he’d thought. He would have lied and then hated Hughes for not seeing through the lies. So who was the shallow bastard, the monster here? Truthfully?

He searched the decks again for Hughes’s figure. Didn’t find it—as he’d known he would not, Hughes being below deck, in charge of the guns. It would have been a comfort to see him, and that thought was an extra twist in the seasickness of his mind. Hughes had been avoiding him lately, and Hal found he’d never wished for the man’s company more than he did now it had been withdrawn.

Oh, God, how he wanted to talk this over. Apologise first, of course, tell Hughes, “I concede. You could not have just wanted to take advantage of my misery, that first time, if—during the second—I tried to thrust myself on you, and you refused.”

But conceding such a thing would mean…it must mean admitting that Hughes really did love him. And he was…he was
scared
of that. This thing with William, it was noble, pure, sacrificial…it was
safe.
No risk of a return, no need to struggle with the messy realities of life in the flesh, of lust and intimacy and the day-to-day threat of exposure and disgrace. If he could have had something with Hughes, it would certainly not have been safe.

“Morgan?”

But how could he? How could he be such a terrible lover as to waver in his affections now, when he had given his whole life to William? And—the final nail in the coffin of his despair—even if he did waver, Hughes hadn’t looked at him twice since. Hughes had proved himself the better man, and in doing so, perhaps he had come to his senses. He had realised Hal was too much trouble, and the chance had gone before Hal had the wit to value it.

“Mr. Morgan?” The concerned question made it through his sleepless daze only when the captain was already leaning down from his patrician height—and Lord, but he was still so beautiful. Why was he still so beautiful? What kind of mocking fate was this?—to say firmly “Mr. Morgan? Are you well?”

What a question.
No, I think someone has cut out my lungs and replaced them with stones. No, I am in hell, and it’s your fault. No, don’t talk to me.
Hal shook himself, swallowed back bile and smiled. “Forgive me, Captain. I have not slept well recently, and I am very tired.”

Dear God, yes. I am so tired.

Hamilton’s smile raised only one corner of his mouth, but that was enough to shift the shadows over his eyes, make them look warm. Hal looked away, his teeth meeting in the inner flesh of his cheek.

If I’d met Hughes first… Maybe I hated him so immoderately because I saw in him something I could have wanted, had I not already set my heart on the impossible. I hated him so I could stay faithful, even in my mind, and now that looks less like virtue and more as though it was cowardice all along.

“A good fight will wipe all that away,” said the captain. “Nothing like it for purging all the dross of daily life, making you see the glory of life clear. Like a refiner’s fire, am I not right? I’m sure you will sleep better, after.”

Hal looked up again at the oncoming ship just as the white and gold arms of France broke out on her flagstaff. A distant rumble sounded as she ran out her guns, and something of relief did come over him then. He dropped his tensed shoulders, opened his hands and let go, for she could be the end to everything. She could be the answer he sought. He’d driven Robert away. William he’d never had at all. But if he could not have love, why not have death instead? Glorious, honourable death in battle.

Perhaps Hughes would understand it was a kind of apology? And Hamilton would mourn, at least. Say one or two pleasing things over his corpse and write a gracious letter back to his mother, telling her that they had been the best of friends, telling her that he would remember Hal with gratitude all the rest of his life.

That would be something, wouldn’t it? If he could not have earthly happiness, then a hero’s death would be something to hope for, and with it the end to all this pain.

Chapter Ten

At sea, off Martinique

Lantern in one hand, sword in the other, Robert sloshed his way through the stinking darkness of the French ship’s hold at the head of his boarding party. The
Swiftsure
’s cannon had hulled the
Victorieuse
beneath the waterline, causing her to list to one side.

Her ballast of gravel had shifted, and the long-dead corpses of her men, buried in it, now floated stinking and bloated amid the wreckage. Disgusted at this evidence of French perversity, Robert’s people looked grim. A liquefying hand brushed his submerged calf, and he thought that he did not blame them. How could any decent person bear to bury their respected comrades in this sewer, instead of giving them a resting place in the clean depths of the sea?

The lantern lit only a small circle about him. Brown dimness stretched out into utter dark. The faces of the dead glimmered in the flooded hold.

Behind him, a fleeting splash broke the hush. He spun, his sword making an arc of lemon light. He registered a thud, a cry, and recognised the beard and bright silk scarf of the Lascar Partho Sen, just in time to pull back the blow. Sen dropped the man he had just stabbed into the dirty water and grinned at him. “The sneaky bugger was lying under the water pretending to be dead, sir.”

“Thank you!” Robert grinned back, in the sharp-edged, almost hysterical amusement of fear. It was too quiet down here, too eerie—battle ardour faded in the silence, and both the split-second reflexes of war and its feeling of invulnerability seeped away into the vast darkness, the trickle of water, the underwater cold. “Let’s pick up the pace now—the sooner this is over, the sooner we can see to our mates.”

Finishing the search, he stationed two of his marines at the hatchway, ran up the ladder to find Midshipman Stilman—a boy of thirteen—doing the same on the lower gun deck. “All clear below,” he shouted. “What news?”

“Cor, it was carnage, sir!” replied the lad in over-bright enthusiasm. His face stood out stark white with horror and excitement against the rusty black of his uniform—the dark blue material bloody to the collar with gore. “Captain cut about the leg. Mr. Collins copped a ball in the cheek, surgeon says he’ll lose the eye for sure. They’re saying we might have to sink her, there not being enough men left to sail her and the
Swiftsure
both. Won’t that be a blow for Mr. Morgan, if he lives? Him hoping this’d be the one that brought him his step, like.”

“‘If he lives?’” Robert blamed battle-madness for the way in which he reached out and lifted the boy from his feet, shaking him. “What d’you mean?”

“If you please, sir.” Stilman hung unresisting in the white-knuckled grip, his soaked jacket straining at the seams with his weight. “I saw him go down, just abaft the capstan. I were going to check the dead when Old Bum…that is, when Mr. Higginbotham told me to come down here and check with you that no Frogs was hiding below, sir. I don’t know no more’n that. Sorry, sir.”

Robert had no memory of how he got out into the open, up two companionways and over a dozen bodies. He might have flown. But he burst onto the slippery deck just in time to glimpse, through the reeking yellow clouds of smoke, Chips and Jemmy Ducks manhandling Hal’s limp form over the rail. He watched Hal’s lolling head hit the side and, for a moment, everything went white.

Dead! After I filled his final week of life with anguish. Dead! And I wasn’t even there—thought I’d give him a chance to cool off before I made time to apologise, so I didn’t say half the things I meant to say. Fine things, beautiful words—I’ve been keeping them back, afraid of scorn and mockery, and now I’ll never, never have the chance again and he’ll never know. Please, God, don’t let him be dead.

Robert wanted to scream “No!” Wanted to run up, seize the body and hold it to himself, weeping. Instead, his knees seemed to dissolve beneath him. He quaked, unable to move or to tear his eyes away, waiting for the drop and the splash, picturing the waves closing over Hal’s face.

But the men got a firmer grip on Hal’s limbs, passed him to waiting hands on the
Swiftsure,
who turned to take him below.

“Hoon, Sullivan!” Robert croaked, finding his voice after two attempts. “Is Mr. Morgan…?”

“Alive, sir. Dunno for how long. Getting him t’doctor now, if it please you.”

“By all means!”

Standing next to the rail, he wondered why he had always thought he would go first, simply because he was older. War didn’t spare the young, after all. He clasped his hands firmly together to still their shudder, leaned back against the rail for support.

His mind fluttered like a startled moth.
Hal…

He should do something. Help others down to the orlop deck where the doctor had his station.
But Hal…

There was water in the well. The pumps needed manning. Prisoners needed locking away, the logbook retrieving, the butcher’s bill making up. Shot holes needed plugging, torn ratlines needed splicing…he should do that. Hal would want him to do that. But, oh God, if he might not run straightaway to hold Hal down for surgery, he wanted very much instead to stop the inevitable flow of time until the doctor finished his grisly work. That or a very large drink.

“There you are, Mr. Hughes,” came Hamilton’s calm, unruffled voice. “Lower decks clear?”

“Aye, sir.”

Hamilton wiped his sword clean on the tail of a dead man’s shirt, sheathed it with satisfaction. His face glowed with the final embers of the exaltation of battle. “See to the prisoners, will you?”

“Yes, sir,” Robert said and, because he couldn’t bear it any longer, “Morgan…”

Hamilton sighed. A human expression came over his face, tentative and uncomfortable. “He’ll be fine, Hughes. He’s indomitable. Death himself would balk under the threat of facing Morgan’s temper.”

Robert looked at Hamilton’s square-jawed, martial face, the mild concern and annoyance in his eyes at dealing with this passing nuisance.
You don’t give a fig, do you?
Unfair though it was—for he knew Hamilton was fond of Hal in a mild, paternal way—Robert reeled back in revulsion at the thought.
You’d shed no more of a tear for him than for any man. Nothing near as much as he deserves.

Fury braced him, like a burnt feather waved beneath the nose. He straightened up, trying not to growl. “I’m sure you’re right, sir.” Turning on his heel, he stamped away, taking out fear and anger on the unresisting deck.

Later, he sat in the scrubbed and sun-drenched neatness of Hal’s cabin and watched the small rise and fall of Hal’s chest beneath the bandages. Mouth open, Robert breathed as softly as he could while he listened—in the post-battle stillness of the ship—for the faint whistle that would indicate the wound had opened, that air leaked from the pierced lung. Would Hal want to return to a world that offered him only second-rate comfort? Or would he relax into death gratefully, the way he had plummeted into sleep in Bridgetown?

Robert paced the tiny room from end to end. He watched the wound fever, from its first healthy blush to the sweats, shakes and garbled, terrified outcries of delirium. Drawing up a stool beside the cot, he administered cool cloths and small dribbles of water until Hal’s raving ceased. In the weary quiet afterward, he leaned close to whisper some of the things he should have been brave enough to say from the start. Poems, translated so that Hal could understand them, and all that nonsense about sunsets and sweethearts he’d let mere embarrassment silence and, in doing so, had convinced Hal he had no finer feelings at all.

Just…let it not be too late, Lord. Please let it not be too late.