Chapter Eight

This time, he woke up with Cassian not just in his arms, but between his legs.

Daizell had to take a moment. Cassian's nightshirt had ridden up, and Daizell was wrapped around him, arm over his chest, face in his shoulder, thigh over his hip, and prick – with a serious case of morning wood – pressed against his bare arse. At least the thin cloth of Daizell's nightgown was between them. He'd fucked people less intimately than this.

They hadn't, had they? He rapidly checked his memory but no: they had not drunk to excess, they had gone to bed in a perfectly decorous manner, and apparently they'd woken up spooning like lovers. Or, at least, Daizell was spooning, and Daizell had woken. Cassian was breathing lightly. If he was still asleep, Daizell might be able to peel himself off without the man feeling like he'd been violated in the night.

Daizell didn't know what the devil he was doing in his sleep these days. He knew himself to be tiresomely mobile and very prone to outflung arms, because he'd had plenty of complaints, but he'd never woken up in this sort of tangle with a bedmate of convenience, as evidenced by the fact that he still had all his teeth. He needed to do something about this. Unfortunately, he had a very good idea why his sleeping body wanted to wrap itself around Cassian, and a lowering suspicion that he'd need the co-operation of a waking body to mend matters.

This was not the time to consider that. He needed to extricate himself without disturbing Cassian, and he needed to do it prick first because nobody wanted to wake up to someone else's unsolicited erection. If he could somehow inch his hips back and away, this wouldn't be quite so disastrous.

He took a second to listen to Cassian's breathing, so that he could judge his movements. It was soft, shallow and even. Just like the other night. When they'd talked.

Oh Christ, he was awake.

Daizell's stomach plunged. What could he do now? Simply apologise? Treat it as a joke? Behave as though he thought Cassian was asleep, and they could pretend this hadn't happened? Pretend he'd just woken up himself, with a lot of yawning?

No, wait. If Cassian was awake, why was he just lying there? Was he panicking? He didn't feel as though he was panicking, and Daizell could feel a lot of him at this moment, much of it bare skin. He couldn't possibly—

Daizell called upon every bit of nerve he had. ‘Cass?'

Silence. Then, quietly, ‘Yes.'

‘I, uh. I seem to be—'

‘I know.'

‘Would you like me to move?'

Another silence. Then, almost inaudibly, ‘No.'

Daizell stared at the back of his neck, the curve where it met a slim shoulder. Cassian was warm and delightfully solid, and the word ‘yielding' was in his mind now. ‘Um. To be clear, do you want me not to move, as in "don't move away", or not to move as in "don't make any further advances"? Not that this was an advance, as such, I just woke up like this, but for the sake of clarity and also decency, or at least good behaviour – I'm going to stop talking, but which was it?'

‘I think I've forgotten the question,' Cassian said, and there was a tremor in his voice that might have been nerves or laughter or both, and which was extremely emboldening, much like the very comfortable way Daizell's prick was fitting against his neat, firm arse.

‘I could stay still,' Daizell said. ‘Or I could get away from you. Or I could . . . neither stay still nor get away.'

‘Don't get away.' Cassian's voice was a whisper, a charm. ‘But if you don't want to stay still, I shouldn't want to make you.' He shifted back a touch as he spoke, pressing into Daizell, who took a moment to pray he wasn't dreaming. Cassian, in his arms, rubbing against him, sleepy and perfect. ‘You do move around a lot.'

‘I'm restive.' Daizell slid his leg along Cassian's thigh, just to see, and almost choked at the light touch of exploring fingers meeting his skin, moving delicately up. ‘Oh God. Cass. Is this—?'

‘This is perfect,' Cassian murmured. ‘Just like this. Or . . .' He reached backwards and tugged at Daizell's nightshirt.

Daizell yanked it up, bunching the fabric above his waist, then shifted forward. That put them skin to skin, his prick explosively hard now. Cassian inhaled sharply, and breathed out with unmistakable relish. Daizell let his own hand drift downwards, across smooth chest and soft stomach, down to coarse curls, and then his questing fingers found what they sought, and he wrapped his hand around Cassian's stand with a pulse of intense satisfaction.

Cassian whimpered. ‘Oh, yes. Daize. Could you—' He shifted a bit, up the bed, so that Daizell's stand was at the juncture of his thighs. That seemed an excellent idea. Daizell nudged his way in, prick trapped between Cassian's legs, hand around Cassian's cock, leg over all so that he had his bedmate cradled and held, and he could feel Cassian panting soundlessly. It was a remarkably motionless way to go about things, he vaguely thought, but on the other hand he was about three thrusts from exploding, and when he rubbed his thumb over the tip of Cassian's prick he could feel the viscous wetness of arousal.

Small movements, then. Just gentle pushes between those firm thighs, and pushing back with his fist as he did it, so he was stroking Cassian in time to his own thrusts, and Cassian was simply letting him, with nothing but those stuttering, whimpering breaths to signal his desires. Tiny pleading noises, his body in Daizell's hands, just as Daizell had wanted. Perfect.

‘Cassian,' he whispered. ‘Cass. God, you're lovely.'

Cassian's breath caught audibly and he gave a little moan. Daizell tightened the grip of both hand and leg, by instinct, holding him closer, and Cassian moaned again, in such a hopelessly wanton way that Daizell was doomed. He moved faster, no choice at all, frigging Cassian and using him to frig himself, the pair of them a mass of harsh breath and shuddering pleasure, and then Cassian gave a little cry like pain, and he was bucking in Daizell's grasp, spilling over his fist. Daizell thrust twice more between his legs, and spent in a quivering, sticky, joyful mess.

He slumped forward, face in Cassian's lovely shoulder. They lay together for a moment, breathing, Cassian nestled in Daizell's hold.

‘I'm so glad you did that,' Cassian said eventually.

‘Which part?'

‘All of it, really, but did something . I didn't have the nerve.'

‘ I didn't have the nerve: I just woke up like this. Sorry about that,' he added.

‘Why? It was a very nice way to wake up.'

‘Eventually, yes, but I don't suppose you wanted to find me all over you when you were fast asleep.'

Cassian made a noncommittal noise. Daizell brushed a very light kiss to his neck, since it was within reach. ‘Is this – just so I know – is this something we did once, or something we might do again?'

‘Oh. Um. Is again a possibility?'

Daizell kissed his neck again, harder this time. ‘I'd call it a likelihood. Left to myself, it would be a certainty.'

‘ Oh .' Cassian squirmed around at that, wriggling round to face him, rainswept eyes warm with sleep and pleasure, and Daizell kissed him.

He couldn't have helped it if he tried. Cassian looked so lovely, aroused and dishevelled and wanton and willing, and Daizell had wanted to kiss him for days, to find out if that expressive mouth worked as well by touch. He wanted Cassian as close as he could be, because when he was close the world was a warm, soothing, easy place. He wanted to show his enchanting but oddly uncertain bard that he was entirely enchanted.

There was a tiny moment as their lips met, a tiny stillness, long enough for Daizell to wonder if that hadn't been welcome after all, and then Cassian's arms snaked around him, gripping his head, pulling him in. His lips were hungry, and his mouth was unexpectedly fierce, and everything, just for now, was perfect.

The day was bright and sunny, which was nice. Daizell would have been just as happy in torrential rain, or a blizzard. He didn't care about weather: he cared about that slow, blissful coupling, and the long, languorous kissing that followed it, and then the second fuck, which had been a great deal more energetic than the first. Exceedingly energetic in fact: frantic rutting against one another, lips locked and hands on cocks, groping at hair and skin, gasping into one another's mouths so as not to be indiscreet.

They'd washed and dressed and breakfasted in a post-coital glow, and then they'd set off to see the sights of Stratford-upon-Avon.

It was at this point that Daizell would normally have protested. He had been obliged to watch a Shakespeare play once, for reasons he could not now remember, and it had been three or four, or subjectively eighteen, of the longest hours of his life. If he wanted to see people shout incomprehensibly at one another he'd go to the Continent, and the thought of being in the company of someone who talked about ‘the Bard' or, even worse, ‘the Swan of Avon' chilled his blood.

Luckily, Cassian showed no signs of doing that. Nor did he declaim swathes of poetry that didn't rhyme. He did however take Daizell to Holy Trinity church, where he'd already been to have the banns declared, only this time he was supposed to look at it.

Daizell had vaguely noticed the soaring arches and stained glass on his previous visit. Cassian wanted a great deal more detail than that. Luckily it turned out that ecclesiastical architecture was a deal more interesting when someone knew what he was looking at. Cassian showed him medieval tombs and explained what the animals and symbols meant and who the dead people were; he took him to a row of almost-seats where monks or choristers or whoever could rest their arses during mass, and they spent a highly entertaining twenty minutes examining the peculiar and sometimes bawdy carvings underneath and exchanging surreptitious remarks that left them both giggling like idiots. They had to see the Shakespeare family graves in front of the altar, of course, and a bust of the old fellow himself, looking like a pompous schoolteacher. Cassian contemplated it reverently and murmured something about dead shepherds which Daizell politely ignored, but redeemed himself by pointing out some strange carved faces with leaves instead of hair, high up where Daizell would never have noticed them, and identifying them as pagan images.

It was, in fact, the most interesting time he'd ever spent in a church, although the threshold for that was not high, and he said so as they strolled out through an avenue of trees.

‘I'm glad,' Cassian said. He was glowing, bright with pleasure. ‘I do love a good church. Thank you for coming with me.'

Daizell's tolerance for Shakespeare's birthplace was, perhaps, a little less, since it was a once-fine half-timbered house, now looking very mean. One half of it was an inn called the Swan and Maidenhead, for reasons he didn't want to ask, and it smelled like a brewery and a piggery at once. The half that remained a house was populated by aged dodderers who offered to show them Shakespeare's own chair, his cradle, his wife's cradle, his tragically lost son's cradle, his pipe, or whatever other tatty old rubbish they had to hand, and who were all ready to recount their great-grandfather's many stories from when he was the best of friends with the Bard. This was the sort of thing a gullible man, or an excessively polite one, could be caught in for hours.

Fortunately, though Cassian was exceedingly polite, he was clearly well versed in the darkest arts of courtesy, and slid through the grasping fingers of Shakespeare hawkers like a greased pig, leaving only smiles behind. He'd had a great deal of practice in deflecting the impertinent and importunate, Daizell thought, considering he was such an unassuming young man.

They also took a look at the New Place, which would have been the house where Shakespeare spent his last years and died, except that it wasn't there.

‘I read about this. The last owner cut down a mulberry tree planted by Shakespeare's own hands,' Cassian explained. ‘So the residents here threw stones at his windows and broke them. Then he sought the right to extend his garden, and that was refused and his taxes put up. Whereupon he felt so tired of Stratford and the Shakespeare industry that he demolished the house as an act of spite. That was just a few years ago. What a shame.'

Daizell whistled. ‘If they broke his windows over a tree, how did destroying the house go down?'

‘He was chased out of the town by irate locals.'

‘Oof. Still, good for him.'

‘It was an act of appalling vandalism and an insult to history. That said, I know what you mean,' Cassian admitted. ‘It's all rather much here, isn't it? I feel as if expressing a preference for the plays of Christopher Marlowe might get me strung up in the public street. And all the relics – it's like those Catholic churches, you know, where if one put together all the fragments of John the Baptist, there would probably be enough for half a dozen complete skeletons. Still, I suppose the town doesn't have a great deal else to recommend it to visitors. Have you reached your limit of seeing the sights?'

‘Not if there's anything else you want to see,' Daizell said, trying to make it sound convincing.

‘Well, there's Anne Hathaway's cottage, which is a mile from here, but I believe it's a farm and I don't suppose they appreciate visitors.'

‘I'd expect they welcome visitors with open arms, as long as they can sell you a clod of muck that Shakespeare trod on while he was writing Hamlet , price a mere five shillings.'

‘Also possible,' Cassian said. ‘Let's have something to eat instead.'

They made a light but pleasant luncheon. They strolled down to see the new canal, which offered the town a chance at Shakespeare-free prosperity that Daizell could only applaud, and walked along the River Avon, out into the surrounding countryside to enjoy the fresh air, shoulder to shoulder. Cassian talked about interesting churches he'd seen abroad and Daizell listened with fascination, because he'd listen with fascination to anything in that soft enchanter's voice.

They roamed, and watched swans on the canal, and sat together under trees. At one point Cassian put his hand over Daizell's, just a touch, and Daizell crooked his fingers to turn the touch to a hold. They sat there like that, hand in hand, quiet and intimate, and Daizell felt peace settle over his soul. He didn't ever want this day to end.

It seemed that Cassian felt an equal desire to have the most time they could, because he didn't suggest going back either, but at length, Daizell heard a church clock chime.

‘Seven. Good Lord, how is it so late? We should go back.' Back to the inn, and the shared bed. If time insisted on passing, at least it meant that bed. ‘It'll be dusk soon.'

He stood. Above, a couple of birds cawed, and flapped slowly away, black shapes against the purpling sky.

‘Light thickens, and the crow makes wing to the rooky wood,' Cassian remarked.

‘I beg your pardon?'

‘ Macbeth . Good things of day begin to droop and drowse, while night's black agents to their preys do rouse,' he added in sinister tones.

‘At least it rhymes,' Daizell said, and they set off back.

They'd walked a reasonably long way out of the town, and it was well into twilight as they crossed the river. The bridge led towards a broad street with fine new buildings, more impressive than the street on which they were lodging, and the Warwick and Birmingham roads led off from around here. The area had been busy when they crossed it earlier in the day. Now, as the townsfolk retreated to their dinners and their pipes and their minding their own business, it was quite deserted, except for the group of three men who stood by the side of the road before it forked, talking. Two were facing the bridge, and they both glanced at Daizell and Cassian. The third didn't look round.

They were just standing there. With their coach. Not doing anything but standing and waiting.

‘Cass?'

‘Mmm?'

‘Keep an eye on those men. If they come towards us . . .' What he would like to say was, Leave them to me , or something equally brave and useful. What he had was, ‘Run for the town. Don't wait for me.'

‘What?'

Two of the men started walking, towards Daizell, mere shapes in the dim light. ‘Just go. Don't try to interfere.' Cassian clearly wasn't a brawler, and there would probably be sticks.

‘What's wrong? Do you mean them? Oh good God, you don't think it's Sir James's men?'

‘I expect so,' Daizell said grimly. ‘Pull your hat down, hide your face. We don't need them getting a look at you. And stay back now . . . Sir.' That was to the man approaching them. ‘Stand off. If you have something to say, you can say it from there.'

‘Mr Daizell Charnage?' It wasn't really a question.

‘Himself. Kindly state your business.'

The man was large, and now Daizell saw him close up, he was familiar despite the dusk. One of Vier's men, and he was carrying a stick – more a club, really – which he pointed at Daizell. ‘You've got in the master's way before. You won't do it again. Hand her over, and the wedding licence, and then piss off out of my sight or I'll break both your legs.'

At least he made himself clear. ‘If you mean Miss Beaumont, I don't have her to hand over,' Daizell said. ‘She left Stratford yesterday. I have no idea where she went.'

‘You think I'm stupid?' the lout demanded. ‘You going to lie to me like I'm a fool?'

‘She's long gone,' Daizell repeated. ‘You can ask at the inn where I'm staying: I'll happily take you there. No lady.'

The man shook his head, in sorrowful acknowledgement of human failings. Then he drove the butt of his stick into Daizell's stomach.

He didn't see it coming fast enough. The blow knocked the air out of him to sickening effect and he went over, down to the ground, knowing his head and neck and back were now horribly vulnerable to blows and kicks, but unable to do anything except gasp fruitlessly for breath. There was a flurry of violent motion above him, with a cry cut off, and then a boot landed hard in his side. Daizell curled round the pain, trying to brace himself against more.

It didn't come. There was more scuffling, but the sound was retreating. Daizell uncurled cautiously and saw the coach across the roadway, the driver standing waiting, two men dragging a third, oddly shaped figure with them. It took him a moment to realise the third had a blanket over his head.

‘Cass?' he croaked.

Vier's men started bundling Cassian into the coach. He wasn't making it easy, although he was muffled in cloth: he was kicking and struggling, but there were two of them and they were big. Daizell forced himself to his feet, side and belly aching, and made himself run. It was more of a stagger, with one arm round his painful side. ‘Hey!' he shouted.

The coach door slammed. The driver cracked his whip. The coach rattled off with Cassian inside, and Daizell stood staring uselessly after it.