Chapter 5

No reply magically immediately manifested itself. Blake tried not to stare at the clock. Time for the note to reach Cam, time for Cam to decide whether to come, or not…

The hands of time crept mouse-slow, as if scrutinized by cats. Big cats. With fangs and claws.

Ashley woke coughing, tired, flushed from fever. He managed to focus on Blake, after a fraction too long; his voice scratched out, "You should rest."

"I'm fine," Blake said, "I survived a shipwreck and a fall on a glacier and an insatiable widow who wanted to chain me to a bed, or marry me, or both, in Paris. Tea? Fresh pot?"

"Taking such good care of me…"

"What I'm here for, isn't it?"

Ashley appeared to be giving this question more examination than it deserved. "You show up and tell me scandalous stories about your investigations of a ruined castle or your seduction of a willing countess in some Roman baths."

"Maybe I'm not the best at taking care of you, I'll admit."

"No, I mean…" Ash shut his eyes. His face was white, where it wasn't fever-red. He lay against the pillows as if he couldn't recall how to sit up. "That's what you do. You make me smile. You make me see things that…that I never would, without your stories…you offer to check my accounts, if I'm not sure about the numbers…you stay away and I miss you and you come home as soon as I tell you that I miss you…I know you did, you know, the timing…"

"I told you, anything you need."

"Blake…" Ash's voice was small, ragged, worn small. But his eyes were determined. "You never did want to get married. Any of those women…"

"Quite a lot of them were married already."

"That's avoiding the question." Ash gazed at him, steady. "Any of the widows, the eligible wealthy countesses…they would have, you just said…but you never wanted to. Why not?"

Too close, too impossible; if Ash kept asking Blake would tell him, because lies wouldn't be possible…but, Christ, he couldn't tell the truth; he'd lose Ash forever, admitting that. There'd be no going back.

He picked out, treading among the ruins of his heart, "I never felt that way about them. Any of them."

"Is it…" Ash hesitated, coughed, hard enough to shake his entire slim frame. Blake supported him, held him, tried to comfort him. Ash whispered, after, "I'm sorry, this isn't what I wanted…how I pictured you coming home…" and made a sound almost like a sob, hand tightening weakly on Blake's arm. "I wanted to try to make you smile, for once…I wanted to tell you…but I can't breathe and you're taking care of everything, again…"

"You don't have to tell me anything." Blake stroked his hair, sweat-damp, back from his face. "It can wait. I'm not going anywhere, neither are you, you can tell me then." He guessed, the guess a lead weight in his gut, that Ash had figured out at least a piece of the secret. Not all of it—not the part about who, exactly, Blake wanted—but perhaps enough to know that men, as well as women, were part of those adventures. Ash no doubt wanted to reassure him: it was all right, they could still be friends, that did not matter. As a lover of the classical Greeks and Romans, Ash probably even meant it.

"I do have to, though…I have to say it, in case…"

"In case of what ," Blake snapped, "you're going to be fine," and even shook him slightly, which might be inadvisable for a feverish patient, but what was one more black mark in the darkness column? "Lie still."

"Blake," Ash whispered, a thread over a chasm; but then noise echoed from the hall, drowning any confession. Footsteps clamored, approaching. The bedroom door swung open fast, a cavalry-charge of opening, an opera of arrival.

Thick red hair and lightning-green eyes and broad shoulders filled up the room. A swoop of greatcoat rustled, heavy and dark. Cam's boots were loud and his trousers were practical and he had small lines at the corners of his mouth, laughter, maybe, or grief, or some other emotion; Blake had been drawn to those lines, the stories hidden there, the textures. He was again, in that moment: seeing, remembering, body alive with it.

Cam crossed the room and went right to Ash, while glancing briefly at Blake; the edge of his mouth crooked for an instant, but he was a doctor with a patient, and he said, "You're Blake's friend, are you?" in that familiar amber warmth like Scottish hills, and he did not seem to notice that he'd used Blake's first name, unconsciously intimate as a revelation.