Home From The Sea (11 page)

Jim was about to scoff and say he would be the judge of that himself, but Toby stepped out before he could speak. “Bugger,” he said to the empty room. “I hate a mystery.”

He heard the creak of the stairs and the rake of fire irons in the hearth directly below, and smiled. He knew exactly where Toby was, even before he heard him talking to the dogs. The front door opened, Boxer and Bess ran out; and then Toby was laughing, and Jim could not stay in bed any longer, no matter the offer of coffee.

Hastily dressed, still tucking in his shirt tails, he was at the bottom of the stairs when he heard Toby saying, “Zachariah
Pickworth
, you’re green right up to the ears. If you’re going to empty your belly, get
outside
before you do it!”

Zachariah was one of the pair of rummies who had been face-down and snoring in the back of the taproom last night. His mate, Henry
Bincombe
, was not even awake yet – and Toby was right. Zachariah was four shades of green, from pea to pond, wearing a cold sweat and a hangdog expression. He was a widower, so there was no harangue waiting for him at home, but last night’s grog would have its way with him before he was fifty yards closer to the shack he called his ‘doss.’

The rummy stumbled off into the morning while Toby was still attending to the hearth. He was on one knee before it, teasing sticks of kindling into the last embers, blowing on them to coax life into them. Jim dropped his hands onto the broad back, wanting just to
touch
for the simple pleasure of it, and Toby looked up at him with a faint, almost shy smile.

“Good morning,” Jim said huskily.

“It
is
a fair morning,” Toby agreed, “though the decent weather won’t last long. The
sky’ll
be dark by noon. If I was going to be on my way, this would be the
moment,
else Bess and I will get a good soaking before we find another roof.”

“But you’re not leaving,” Jim said softly. “Are you?”

The fire had caught alight, and Toby stood. “If I’m welcome…”

“You know you are.”

“I’ll stay awhile.” Toby gestured at the mandolin in the corner. “They seem to like my songs and stories.”

“And they don’t get the better part of you.” Jim’s palms settled on the planes of Toby’s breast. “I do.”

“You haven’t had the
best
part,” Toby ventured. “Not yet.”

“All the more reason for you to stay.”
Jim looked him over in the morning light, seeing the faint blond stubble on his cheeks, the tousle of his hair, and the inexplicable little quirk in his brows. “What?”

“Nothing,” Toby said evasively.

“
Fibbing’s
a sin,” Jim informed him.

For some reason, the observation made Toby laugh aloud but he said only, “I promised you coffee and pie.”

“Go on, then.” Jim gestured him to the kitchen. “I’ll get this fire going properly. Mrs. Clitheroe won’t get in for hours yet, and you won’t see a customer before noon. We have the place to ourselves.”

“Except for Henry
Bincombe
.”
Toby gestured at the heap in the corner. “Ye gods, he drank his fill last night!”

“Henry always does.” Jim watched Toby make his way back to the kitchen. “He inherited a hundred guineas when some old uncle died, and he’s drinking it all away.”

“Which is good for Master Fairley’s business,” Toby called through from the kitchen hearth, where he was raking over the coals now, breathing life into still glowing embers.

“But not as good as the balladsinger’s going to be,” Jim called back. “I’ve never seen such a crowd at midweek! If you know enough songs and stories to bring them back on Saturday night –”

“I know a lot more than that,” Toby promised. “I told you, I’ve been collecting them for years.”

“Since you lost your situation,” Jim guessed. The fire was strengthening and the kindling was dry enough to crackle right into flames. Satisfied, he stood and worked the leg to and fro to limber it.

Toby’s voice surprised him, so
close,
he could hear the breath carrying the words. “What situation would that be?”

“Oh, the employment that let you
get
to thirty years of age and more, and still have hands like these.” Jim reached for them, picked them up and turned them over. “These aren’t a
laborer’s
hands. I
know
laborers’ hands.”

“I’m a balladsinger,” Toby said pointedly.

“You weren’t when you were fifteen or twenty.” Jim pressed a kiss into the right palm. “Not before you had
a grand
stock-in-trade of songs and stories, and it takes years to find them, learn them. So … you had a patron, did you?” He wound both arms over Toby’s shoulders. “You’ve no need to guard your secrets so jealously. I won’t tell.”

“A patron.”
Toby seemed to mull over the wording. “I suppose you could use the term.” His eyes were bright with rueful, self-mocking
humor
. “But it’s not what you’re thinking.”

“And what am I thinking?” Jim wound his fingers into the soft fair hair, teasing it at Toby’s nape.

“You’re thinking,” Toby speculated, “I followed my nose to Italy, where I was seduced by a count and sat on silk cushions till my arse grew calluses, playing the mandolin and warming the count’s sheets by night, like as not.”

Jim laughed delightedly. “It would’ve been the sweet life. True?”

“Oh, absolutely,” Toby said in fatuous tones. “I still have the calluses on my backside from all those cushions. You didn’t notice them?”

“I never got close enough to your bare arse to make its acquaintance,” Jim told him. “I’ll pay closer attention tonight.” His fingers spanned Toby’s skull, massaging gently, which made him groan in simple pleasure. The fingertips slipped down, and down again, and inside his shirt collar. And there they paused, for Jim felt another roughness, a scar he thought at first was part of the flogging – but scourgers had a code, he knew. They would ‘flog a man fair,’ never laying the whip on his kidneys or his neck, and this scar was at Toby’s nape. “What…?”

“Just a mark.”
Toby shrugged. “You know by now, I’m covered in them.”

“Another scar.”
Jim fingered it, and swore softly.
“Exactly where a chain would lie, if you wore one.”

“A chain?”
Toby’s eyes darkened by shades and he bent his head, laid his mouth on Jim’s to silence him.

The kiss was hard, searching, and again Jim took everything Toby would give him. Men seldom kissed. All those sailors he had known, from the
westcountry
back to the docks of London itself, wanted to wrestle in the dark, grapple with young limbs, get on top and push and shove. Tenderness and familiarity were the least of it. It had been
fucking
– Jim entertained no doubts about what it was, what he had done, and had done to him. Affection had nothing to do with it.

This – this was a world different, as Toby kissed him long, deep and hard, until he must have known every part of Jim’s mouth as well as he knew his own. At last he lifted his head away, drew back. His lips were swollen. His Adam’s apple bobbed as he swallowed and said in a rough voice, “Coffee.”

With that he vanished back into the kitchen, and it was several moments before Jim remembered the mark on his neck. It felt like exactly the kind of gall a man would develop when he wore a chain around his neck; the kind of chain, Jim thought, on which a big, heavy cross would hang. The kind of thing a priest or monk would wear.

Fascination prickled through him and he followed Toby into the kitchen, watched him spooning coarse coffee grounds and sugar into a pan of boiling water. His eyes were drawn to the slender musician’s hands which had never done enough hard
labor
to show the wear and tear, and a dozen questions hovered on his tongue, demanding to be asked. He hunted for the right words as Toby slopped the coffee into a pair of battered mugs, but they were elusive as foxes in the snow and in the end he said thickly,

“You’re a puzzle, Master Trelane.”

“I am indeed.” Toby offered him a mug.

Jim took it. “You’re not going to tell me, are you?”

The fair head shook slowly. “They’re my secrets. I’ve the right to own them, and keep them.”

“Even though you’re sleeping in my bed?”

“Even though.
Just as you’ve the right to secrets of your own.” He laid a finger on Jim’s mouth. “Don’t ask, for I won’t tell.”

“Damn.” Jim’s lips parted, and he sucked the tip of the finger for a moment. “I’ve no right to press you, I suppose.”

“No right at all.” But Toby was smiling again.

“And if I do, you’ll leave.”

“I … might. And I don’t want to. Not yet.” He glanced around the kitchen and out into the taproom before he nodded in the direction of the bedroom, above. “I like all this. I’d be happy to stay here for a very long time, if only…”

“If only I keep my nose out of your business and let you be,” Jim finished. He muttered a curse, fended Toby off and tried the coffee. “You brew a good mug.”

“There’s an art to coffee,” Toby informed him. “There’s also some pickled pork left over. I’ll fry it for breakfast, if you like, and then get busy with the thatch. Have you looked at the sky? I want to get finished before
that
gets here!” He gestured at the open kitchen door, where the sky was a pale, uncertain shade and a few dirty gray clouds had begun to stream.

In fact, Jim had not even looked at the sky since last evening. Toby’s remark sent him to The Raven’s front door, where he had a view across the sands and the bay beyond, and he swore again as he saw the horizon – or
failed
to see it. A sea mist had come up overnight and the sky was ripped by a wind, high up. Another storm was coming in on the coattails of the first. Any sailor could see it coming, and Toby had recognized the signs at a glance.

”Sweet Jesus,” he muttered, “it’s the mother of the bastard that came scampering through the other night.”

“I watched the first one from a stable door in Exmouth,” Toby called from the kitchen. “The taverner wouldn’t let Bess come inside, and sure to God, I wasn’t going to leave her, or any dog, out alone in it. Thunder and lightning frighten them.”

And he cared enough about a dumb creature to spend the night in the stable. Jim felt a little catch in his
throat,
and for several moments watched Toby Trelane rummaging among Mrs. Clitheroe’s pans till he found what he wanted. Damaged goods, was he? Flogged to tatters not once but several times; wearing a brand on his flank such as horses and slaves wore, and a gall on his nape which could only have been left by the kind of heavy chain worn by monks and priests –

Had he been transported? Jim ached to ask. Had Toby been convicted of a crime and sentenced to years, or even life, in the Carolinas? Had he escaped and made his way home? But Jim knew better than to ask, for Toby’s secrets seemed to pain him. The more daylight they were exposed to, the more they hurt – and with a start Jim realized that of all the things in the world he wanted, hurting Toby was the last of them.

So he clamped down on the wicked curiosity, ate the fried pork and eggs he was handed, and before eight o’clock chimed the two of them were working hard enough to raise a sweat.

It felt to Jim as if they were racing the clock. Every time he looked over his shoulder, the sky had darkened by another shade. They never saw the sun that day, and he counted more than thirty assorted ships and smaller vessels, all bolting for Exmouth, Falmouth, Portsmouth, ahead of the weather. They wanted to be unloaded, with the cargo under lock and key, and then be out again, well beyond the twenty fathom line and with a sea anchor set, before the storm hit. Jim had never been to sea, but he had spent long enough with sailors to know their wisdom.

The thatch was the hardest job, and because he could not manage ladders and roofing with any safety, Toby was on his own to finish what he had started in half the time he had reckoned on. The late morning was muggy with air so laden with moisture, sweat refused to dry. Jim threw off his shirt when he picked up the axe and set about cutting a pile of fuel and kindling for the kitchen. Toby had cut enough for the taproom hearth, but from long experience Jim knew how much fuel the kitchen would use.

He glared at the sky, wondering for the tenth time if the storm would go through in a night or if it would linger for a week-long downpour, till the lowlands turned into lakes and he was sweeping water out of the tavern. It had happened twice before and the locals only shrugged, as if it was to be expected.

“I’ll cut the wood,” Toby’s voice said from the roof, as Jim began.

“You keep on with what you’re doing,” Jim told him tersely. “I’d rather swing an axe than climb around up there!”

“You’ll make your leg ache,” Toby warned.

“So you can rub it for me.” Jim took a loose grip on the handle and sent the steel biting into the wood with vengeful force. He paused to look up and saw Toby outlined against the sky. “You know what you’re doing?”

“I’ve never thatched a roof, but I watched the thatchers do it.” Toby chuckled. “You’re afraid we’re going to leak like a sieve?”

“Afraid you’re going to fall and break your neck,” Jim corrected. “Then again, you look like you’ve been climbing around like a bloody monkey in the rigging, setting sails, half your life.”