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‘More or less.’ Jem managed a smile.
Nicky was watching him, eyes steady, a little frown behind them. Jem shifted. ‘What?’
‘I don’t know. I thought you might have found some horny-handed son of toil, or perhaps a fellow arithmetician. Some quiet, comfortable chap to smoke a pipe with. You always seemed to yearn for a peaceful hearth.’
Jem shrugged awkwardly. He’d long ago given up thinking of more than a chilly rented room.
Nicky stepped forward, bringing his fingers very lightly to the side of Jem’s jaw, a brush rather than a touch. ‘Fastened in fetters your inmost thoughts—How much have you lost to this wretched, sordid business, Jem? How much of your life did it lay waste?’
‘All of it. I’m tired of this twilight existence, Nicky. Everyone keeps telling me the killer might want to keep me quiet, but I’ve been quiet for ten years and I’m sick of it. What the hell have I got to lose, Nicky? Tell me that. What have I to lose?’
Nicky stared down at him, brown eyes very dark and deep in the dim light. He leaned in, without speaking, and his mouth came down on Jem’s. Jem didn’t—couldn’t—move for a few seconds. Nicky’s mouth was extraordinarily alien and very familiar, his lips light but their effect overwhelming. Jem hadn’t been kissed since Nicky had bidden him farewell, that last time, and he’d forgotten what to do, he didn’t know what heoughtto do?—
Then Nicky drew away a little, with a questioning frown—Nicky who had locked the door and might be a murderer—and Jem reached up for his fine, soft hair and pulled his head back down.
Nicky’s bedroom was as filled with books and bare of personality as his study. There were no photographs or paintings, no records of his prizes and achievements, nothing that looked like him except for several foils in an umbrella stand.
Jem lay on his back, looking up at the ceiling, Nicky’s arm over his chest, skin to skin.
For all the urgency that had swept through him, and that he’d felt once again in Nicky’s almost painful grip, they hadn’t rushed things. They hadn’t talked about them either, both relying on touch and silence and a locked door to keep everything at bay. It had been tender and gentle, and it had felt at once utterly alien after so long of nothing but knees on cold floors and the hard hands of strangers, and as familiar as though they’d never stopped.
The chapel bell struck one, long and loud.
‘Send not to know for whom the bell tolls,’ Nicky muttered. ‘I’ve a tutorial at two. If I didn’t, I’d suggest a long and alcoholic lunch. How about dinner?’ He paused at Jem’s silence, and propped himself on an elbow to examine his face. ‘Is something wrong?’
Jem didn’t know if it was, and he didn’t know how to express any of it. ‘I wrote to everyone,’ he blurted out. ‘I told them all I was coming to see you. Aaron told me that someone should know where I was going and I didn’t know who I could trust, so I wrote to them all.’
‘Someone should know where you were going,’ Nicky repeated. ‘In case, as Toby’s murderer, I took the hump and stabbed you?’
‘In case of that, yes.’
‘Does your presence in my bed indicate that you have decided on my innocence?’
‘No. No, it doesn’t. Sorry,’ Jem added, and then realised quite how ludicrous that must sound.
‘I…see. Could I suggestnotgoing to bed with people you think might be homicidal maniacs?’
‘I don’t believe you’re that.’
They looked at each other. Nicky’s expression might have been called quizzical by someone who didn’t know him well enough to see the tiny lines of strain, the bleakness. Jem refused to drop his eyes.
‘Well,’ Nicky said at last. ‘That’s nice. Marvellous. Now what?’
‘I don’t know. I’m going for tea in the Master’s lodgings this afternoon.’
‘Do you propose to tell him your plans to make StAnselm’s the centre of national scandal once more? I only ask so that I can prepare my curriculum vitae in anticipation of having to find another position.’
‘Maybe we could do that together.’
Nicky smiled sourly. ‘Touché.’
‘I don’t know what I’ll tell him,’ Jem said. ‘But if he doesn’t like scandal, maybe he should ask Blackwell’s not to stock books about us.’
‘Try and stop them: they’ve made a fortune. I trust you haven’t—no, of course you’ve read them.’
‘I read the pamphlet.The StAnselm Murder.’
‘Ah, yes. Hugo’s father had lawyers all over that. I trust you liked the delicate hint at the end?’
