THE GRUDGING CONSORT

twelve

They were half a mile from the house before either of them spoke, partly from lack of breath — their headlong run had lasted all the way to the end of the garden and then some way along the footpath — and partly from the lack of anything to say that the other might wish to hear. No one had followed them, as Arthur was half afraid they might have done; the only impediment to their flight had been the housemaid, who had cried out indignantly as they ran through the kitchen. “It’s all right, Martha,” Owen had called back over his shoulder. “But you should really go out to do the marketing, quickly!” Arthur had felt a burst of fondness for his young husband at that. Despite the gods-awful morning they’d just endured, Owen had still spared a moment to think of the maid, when Arthur would never have taken the trouble. Owen, who now walked beside him with his bare head shining golden in the sunlight and his hands fisted at his sides. His profile was cast in shadow, since the sun shone from the other side of the path, but what Arthur could see of it was pale and set in lines of deep unhappiness. The house was only another half a mile away, a matter of ten minutes’ walk, but Arthur couldn’t allow another second to pass without trying, at least, to comfort him. “Are you quite all right?” It wasn’t the most inspired opening, but Have your parents taken leave of their senses? seemed less than suitable, and Arthur couldn’t think of anything better. “No,” Owen said, with a sound halfway between a laugh and a sob. “I can’t believe — goddess. I can’t believe she would speak to you that way. I’m sorry. I’m so sorry, Arthur, I’m so terribly —” Arthur did the only thing he could think of to end that pitiful litany of apologies, apologies that were neither really needed nor coming from the person to blame. He stopped, wrapped his hands around Owen’s upper arms, pulled him against his chest, and kissed him. Owen’s lips were as yielding and as utterly delicious as the night before; Arthur lost himself for far too long in exploring their sweetness and reveling in the way Owen opened his mouth and gave himself over to Arthur without reservation. He had meant only to distract Owen, to soothe his unhappy turmoil. When they surfaced at last, Arthur’s breath came in great heaves, and his c**k was half-hard; Owen’s eyes, when they fluttered open, were glazed and dark. “I don’t want to hear any apologies,” Arthur said. A slow smile overtook Owen’s face. “You made that clear enough, I think.” Arthur could only answer that with another kiss — that smile was meant to be kissed. He trailed more kisses down the line of Owen’s jaw and nuzzled the tender skin of his throat above his cravat. He had his arms firmly around Owen’s body, now, and let his hands drift down, seeking the soft curve of Owen’s arse. Belatedly, he remembered he had some other purpose than seduction, and lifted his head. “You did nothing wrong,” he said softly. “You tried to defend me against — I’m not sure what, to be honest. But I was grateful for it all the same.” Owen dropped his head against Arthur’s chest, forehead resting on his clavicle. He sucked in a deep breath and sighed it out. Arthur could feel his heart pounding. “I made matters worse,” he muttered into Arthur’s cravat. “I’m not sure there was a way to make matters better.” He stroked a hand up and down Owen’s back, again and again, and felt Owen relax against him, just a trifle. “I know they didn’t want you to marry me. I suppose they thought as a goddess-blessed, you could do better?” Arthur didn’t really suppose any such thing. In fact, he was quite in the dark. But he had observed Owen enough to know that when the potential answers were likely to be upsetting, direct, open-ended questions were more likely to fluster and distress him. Fishing for tidbits of information, though slower, would yield more results in the end. Owen was silent for long enough that Arthur thought he might not get any answer at all. “It’s not that,” he said at last. He sounded drained, quite hopeless. Arthur hadn’t really gotten angry at the Honeyfields in the moment — indignation had overcome him briefly, but they loved their son. However misguided their suspicions might be, they clearly thought Owen wasn’t safe with him, and Arthur could hardly blame them for their desire to protect him, particularly not when Arthur felt the same. Now, a flash of fury ignited in his breast. Owen was his to care for, now, his to guard and cherish. He had sworn as much the day before; he had meant every word, but it was just now dawning on him what that entailed. Even Owen’s parents could not be allowed to hurt him. Before the wedding, that relationship had been one in which Arthur ought not to interfere. Now, like everything else affecting Owen, it was his affair and his responsibility. They had no right to make Arthur’s husband unhappy. They were perhaps the only people in the world whose noses Arthur wouldn’t be willing to break when they did, but even so. Arthur couldn’t tolerate it. “Tell me why, then. Before we were married I didn’t ask, even though it was clear they didn’t approve. But now I have a right to ask and to expect an answer.” Owen just shook his head against Arthur’s chest. Arthur lifted one hand away from his back and stroked it through Owen’s hair instead. It was like strands of silk, fine enough to catch on Arthur’s fingers, callused from years of riding and fencing. He petted Owen’s head for a moment, and then said, more gently, “I need to know if I am to help you resolve whatever their reservations might be. I am your husband. Owen. I don’t ask because of any authority I mean to exert over you, but because I want to help you. Tell me, and let me help.” A sniffle from somewhere in the folds of his cravat was the only answer, followed by a sigh. Arthur kept up his caresses. Finally Owen lifted his head. His nose was very pink, and his eyes a little watery. For no reason Arthur could think of he was more beautiful than ever. Owen took a deep breath, and to Arthur’s resounding disappointment, stepped back and out of Arthur’s arms. “They were — they were very angry with — with him.” “Yes,” Arthur said slowly, “so was I. And so were you. At least I hope you were more angry than grieved. I can see why I might be tainted by association, but I’m hardly responsible for his behavior.” He kept his voice level by main force; even a hint of offense or hostility might be enough to close Owen down again completely. Owen crossed his arms and frowned a bit at that. “They do think you might be like him.” A long pause followed, and Arthur clasped his hands behind his back. It was either that or grasp Owen by the ankles, turn him upside down, and attempt to shake the words out. Patience with one’s husband, it seemed, was easier resolved upon than practiced. “They think you’ll tire of me, and divorce me, and take a m-mistress, and probably be cruel when I’m not what you want, and let your friends laugh at me for being a foolish little country v-virgin. And then — then divorce me. I think I already said that.” Owen spoke suddenly, and in such a rush that Arthur could hardly parse his meaning. When he did, and the full scope of his imagined future crimes became clear, the air rushed out of him just as it had the time he’d been punched full in the stomach during a drunken boxing match several years before. For a moment, he feared he’d cast up his accounts just as he had on that occasion, too. If it had just been the Honeyfields who entertained such absurd, outré speculations, he might have been able to laugh it off. But Owen clearly didn’t find it absurd — he thought it possible. Likely, even. He thought Arthur would — Arthur turned abruptly, forced into motion by — it had to be fury, it could not, could not be grief and betrayal — and walked away, his fists clenched. He spun and advanced on Owen, who stumbled back a step, eyes wide with fear, his whole posture that of a man poised to run. That stopped Arthur dead. He could halt the movement of his body, but the emotion searing his insides like magma must have an outlet. “They think I will do what, precisely?” he roared, unable to stop the words, even as Owen flinched away from him. “Neglect you? Abuse you? And then divorce you, after I’ve, what, had my fun? Tom might not have been any prize as a husband, but even he —” His chest heaved as he ran out of breath. It was just as well. Owen was panting too, as if he had been the one shouting. His pale, pinched expression tore at Arthur’s conscience, and abruptly, his rage evaporated, regret rushing in to fill the space it left behind. “Owen,” he said, helplessly, and held out a hand. “No,” Owen said, and stepped back. That hurt, a pain like Arthur’s chest cracking in two. They had been married only a day. Only one day, and already he had failed in every duty of a husband. Owen would leave him, annul the marriage, and the days to come would be — empty. He had not realized how much he had looked forward to days, weeks, years of coming to know Owen, to understand his every look and gesture, to explore his lovely body and the intricacies of his mind. Loss sat heavy on his shoulders, and he knew it was a weight he would bear for a long time, perhaps forever. “Owen, please,” and his voice broke a little. “I would never. I would never do anything like what you’ve described. Please.” He waited in silence, with his hand outstretched, for longer than he thought likely to be of use. Owen stood perfectly still, pale and miserable. At last his arm faltered and dropped back to his side, and as it did, Owen’s face crumpled, and he lunged forward and seized Arthur’s hand in both of his. He gazed up at Arthur, panicked and distraught. “I know you wouldn’t!” he cried. “I know you wouldn’t. I wouldn’t have married you. Don’t —” He faltered to a stop. Arthur wrapped his fingers around those slender hands, cold despite the warmth of the day, and pressed them. Without meaning to he found himself sliding his other through Owen’s hair to cup the back of his neck. He rubbed his thumb over Owen’s cheekbone and carefully tilted his head up, so that he could look at him. “Don’t do what?” He moved a little closer, drawn like an iron filing to a magnet. “You must hate me for thinking that of you. Any of it. But they were so very sure it would turn out badly. And I used up all of my — all of my strength, arguing with them. I didn’t have enough left to persuade myself that it was all nonsense.” He gazed up at Arthur, eyes huge, pleading for his understanding as much with that look as with words. Arthur had never been in love. If he had, he might have recognized the inevitability of his fall, have understood the signs in his own behavior. “Hate you?” Arthur laughed, then, at his own blindness, and at the essential absurdity of the position in which he now found himself. His husband, whom he now saw that he loved almost to distraction, was not quite convinced he was not a monster. “Not bloody likely,” he said. Another unpleasant thought struck him. “If you believed that of me, why did you…last night. Why?” In a heartbeat, Owen went from deathly pale to as pink as a hothouse peony. “I thought it wouldn’t matter much,” he said. “If you were going to divorce me, or something worse, then you would. And I — I wanted to,” he finished, almost in a whisper. Relief nearly took Arthur out at the knees. Relief — and something else, scalding through his veins and rousing his prick to full attention. He shifted closer still, drawing Owen in so that they were pressed together from chest to thigh. Arthur leaned down until his lips almost brushed one delicate ear. “Do you want to again? Now, possibly?” Owen went from pink to a fiery red Arthur had not known skin so naturally fair could be. Arthur had to strain to hear his reply: it was simply, “Yes.” Arthur looked wildly about him; there was no cover other than a few scraggly trees to one side of the path. Anyone could walk by at any moment, and besides, Owen deserved rather better than to be tumbled in a field, no matter how much Arthur thought it would suit him admirably. “Come on then,” he said, and tucked Owen’s hand through his arm. “We’ll be there in ten minutes.” And side by side, they walked swiftly toward home.