“Zeb, it hurts,” Gideon said, low. “I was happy a year ago, with you. Having you here makes me very aware I am not happy now. I don’t blame you for that—I’m well aware what happened was my fault too—but here we are, and it’s making us both miserable. I would go if I could, but I can’t. So I wish you would.”
“But I promised.” Zeb’s lips and tongue felt oddly stiff, unwieldy. “I promised Wynn I’d stay and I don’t want to break a promise. Not if I can help it.”
“You won’t break a promise to him,” Gideon said. “Fine. You wouldn’t evenmakeone to me, but you won’t—Whatever you choose. It’s up to you. Fine.”
Zeb wanted to cry out,I have to! Wynn is dying!, but he’d given his word to keep that to himself, and he couldn’t think of any way to explain without it. He stared at Gideon, silenced. Gideon looked as though he was going to say something else, then he simply turned and walked away.
Eight
Zeb returned to Lackaday House alone, with sodden feet.
He wasn’t sure if he was glad they’d talked. No, he was: more than anything, he didn’t want Gideon to hate him. All the same, he felt even worse than he had before at the realisation his stupidity was still causing so much pain a year later. Although maybe that shouldn’t have come as a surprise. Gideon’s absence had hurt Zeb on a daily basis for months.
But theyhadtalked, and resolved a misunderstanding. Maybe, if he stayed, they could talk about what had gone wrong. Maybe Zeb could explain—
Explain what?Remember when you asked me for forever, and I said ‘I dare say I could give you the evening’? And then the next day I pulled you into a stockroom at work, and we were caught and sacked for gross misconduct and damned lucky not to be gaoled? Well, about that…
He was a damned fool to think Gideon wanted explanationsa year too late, and a damneder one, if that was a word, to imagine that anything he could say would change matters. What did he think: that Gideon would say,Oh, well, now I understand, it was all perfectly reasonable? That he might give Zeb another chance?
The most likely outcome of all this wasn’t reunion, or even forgiveness: it was him ruining Gideon’s life by accident for a second time. He did not want to do that. Therefore he had to get a grip on the situation.
The walk had taken up much of the morning. (Two and a half days down, he found himself thinking,eleven and a half to go.) He took himself up to his room, changed his stockings and trousers, and wondered where best he could put his sodden shoes to dry, ending up propping them by the unlit fireplace. He had no other shoes except his dress shoes, but he’d brought slippers with him, being a man who lived in slippers, given the chance. They were a long-loved pair, tartan and extremely down-at-heel, and Bram would doubtless have plenty to say if he turned up for lunch in them, but there wasn’t much choice.
He should have some laundry done while he was here, or he’d be down to slippers and a nightgown. He glanced ruefully at his muddy trousers, which he’d slung over the back of a chair, and saw a stain on the grey fabric that he was sure hadn’t been there before. They’d been clean on three days ago, and he’d worn them yesterday, and…oh yes, he’d put his hand into a pool of something on the altar of the stone circle, wiped it on his trousers, and had been walking around with a stain on his arse eversince. For heaven’s sake.
He squinted at the stain. It was dark red, oddly hard to the touch where it had dried, and he remembered the liquid’s cold, viscous feel with a shudder. What the blazes had he put his hand into?
He donned his only pair of clean trousers with a vow to be more careful and went down to luncheon. There he found Dash, Jessamine, and Bram making stilted conversation, and Gideon sitting in silence over a spread of cold chicken, cheese, and bread that looked identical to yesterday’s cold chicken, cheese, and bread.
“What on earth have you on your feet?” Bram demanded.
“Slippers,” Zeb said. “Good day to you too.”
“Why are you—”
“Because my shoes are wet. Because I went for a walk,” he added, anticipating the next question.
“You have only one pair of shoes with you?” Bram demanded. “Really, your irresponsibility—”
“Where did you walk, Cousin Zeb?” Jessamine asked over him. Possibly she’d had her fill of Bram too.
“Round the grounds. I’m not sure how one walks anywhere else. Could we go into the moorland? I’d love to see a bit of Dartmoor. Who else would like a long walk?”
“Energetic fellow, aren’t you?” Dash said. “Hopping around the place like a squirrel. Perhaps tomorrow. I should like to put my feet up this afternoon.”
Apparently neither Bram nor Jessamine felt the urge to get out from under the encompassing walls either. Zeb helped himselfto chicken, cheese, and bread, feet twitching under the table. Jessamine offered to have his shoes brought down and properly dried. Dash said that in his view, the weather was liable to close in, and Dartmoor weather was not to be sneezed at. Gideon said nothing at all. Bram launched into an analysis of the paintings in the dining room, none of which seemed to Zeb to have any artistic merit, and his monologue was still going strong when the door banged open.
Hawley marched in, red-faced. “What the devil is happening in this house?”
“Just luncheon, Cousin Hawley,” Jessamine said, startled. “Would you care—”
“There is graffiti outside my room!”
“There’s what?” Zeb said.
“Graffiti,” Bram said in a very foreign-sounding sort of way. “A term from the Italian, referring to the common Roman practice of writing on walls—”
“The wall outside my room, you pompous arse!” Hawley spluttered. “Letters a foot high, and a damned offensive bit of spite with it. I want to know who did it, and I want it removed!”
