“You’re fucking daft,” Courtenay said, and only after he had spoke them did he realize that this insult and obscenity might be the last words he ever spoke to the man he loved. “I’m furious with you,” he added, as if that were better.
“I ruin everything,” Julian said. “I’m not good at people.”
“Were you under the impression that letting me believe I killed you would improve things?” Courtenay knew he only felt guilty because he was tired, too tired to separate the strands of death and guilt and shame that became so easily knotted in his mind. He hadn’t made Julian write that godforsaken book. He had been entirely within his rights to end their friendship because of it. But if that was what had made Julian venture out when he should have been in bed, and then he died, how could Courtenay not feel responsible?
“I’m not dying, you pillock,” Julian croaked. “Haven’t died of this yet.”
“It looks like you’re trying your damnedest to make an exception.” The door was shut and Standish was trustworthy, so Courtenay squeezed Julian’s hand.
Standish cleared his throat. “He’s always been damned healthy, despite the malaria.”
“He looks the picture of blooming health,” Courtenay said dryly.
Julian laughed, and it sounded like a death rattle.
“In India he suffered from recurrences several times a year, each much worse than this. Eleanor wanted him to go to England on the chance that a different climate would make him less vulnerable, and she seems to have been right. It’s a very good sign that he’s so coherent.”
There was a soft tapping at the door and Standish rose to answer it, returning a moment later with a goblet filled with dark liquid. This, Courtenay gathered, was the tincture.
“If you’ll make sure he takes that, I’ll have somebody set up a bed for the valet when he arrives.” Standish slipped from the room, closing the door behind him.
Julian’s eyes were closed again, but Courtenay wasn’t letting him fall back asleep before taking his medicine. He slipped a hand behind Julian’s sweat-damp head and lifted him to a half-sitting position. Julian winced.
“I’m sorry,” Courtenay said, bringing the cup to Julian’s lips. “Take this and I’ll let you be.”
Julian drank the tincture. It must have tasted terrible, because his entire body was wracked with a shudder as he swallowed.
“I’m sorry,” Courtenay repeated as Julian collapsed onto the pillow. “So sorry.”
Julian drifted in and out of alertness. He couldn’t manage to properly sleep, not when his head was filled with jagged rocks and his body was on fire. But whenever he opened his eyes, Courtenay was there. Sometimes Eleanor was in the room too, poking and prodding him as she always did during these episodes.
“I’m reminding myself that you mean well,” Julian croaked. His mouth was dry and it was taking all his effort to speak. He couldn’t quite be sure—his mind wasn’t right—but he thought this was the first time he and Eleanor had seen one another since that awful garden party. “But please stop touching me.”
She wrote something in that damned book. “You’re not as sick as you were the last time. At least not the last time I heard about.” She was annoyed, which was probably a sign that she didn’t think Julian would die. At least not this time.
After she left, Julian painfully turned his head to see Courtenay. He was leaning against the wall near the empty grate.
“Your valet arrived,” Courtenay said. “I can leave...”
Julian felt the gears of his mind turning despite the illness and the pain. Courtenay could have left hours ago. Either he was here because he wanted to be, which was good, or because he felt guilty, which was intolerable.
“None of this is your fault. I know you find it convenient to wallow in guilt and self-recrimination.” He took a deep breath and tried to keep his voice normal, tried not to fall back into the non-sleep of delirium. “It’s impossible for you to imagine that you aren’t responsible for the misfortunes of anyone...” He grasped for a word that wouldn’t imply more than Courtenay might feel. “Of anyone in emotional proximity to you. But my illness has nothing to do with you, and I didn’t go to that blasted ball just to show you up. I wanted to go because my fevered brain wasn’t working right.”
Courtenay said something, but Julian couldn’t follow. He closed his eyes, and when he opened them again, Courtenay was sitting by the bed, holding another glass of that god-awful tincture. Julian reached out but his hands were still too shaky. The shivers had started. He couldn’t even force his body to sit up. Courtenay brought the glass to his mouth and Julian drank, only wincing slightly from the taste. This experience was nightmarishly familiar: the ache in his head, the fire on his skin, the bone-deep sense of wrongness in his body. Even the taste of the tincture was something that had been with him for almost his entire life. The only unfamiliar element was Courtenay.
“You can leave if you want,” Julian said as Courtenay plumped the pillow under Julian’s head.
“I don’t know what I want,” Courtenay said after a while.
Julian shut his eyes when the edges of his vision dissolved into emptiness.
When he woke he felt a warmth on his arm. He opened his eyes and saw a jet-black kitten curled in the bend of his elbow.
“I tried to get rid of them,” Courtenay said. He was still sitting by the bed, still wearing evening clothes despite the faint light coming in through the open windows. “But every time I shut the door another kitten crawls out from under a cushion.”
“That’s how kittens work.” Julian’s mouth was dry. He was dreadfully thirsty and didn’t complain when Courtenay held the cup of tincture to his lips. This time Julian was able to half sit up, and Courtenay put a hand to the back of his head to steady him. The touch was startlingly intimate, but not the embarrassing bodily intimacy he usually associated with the sickroom. He sipped from the glass, and was surprised to find that the tincture tasted different, the bitterness of the root slightly masked not only by the usual wine but by something sweet. “Oh,” he said. “That’s not bad.”
“Cook added treacle.” He took the empty glass and eased his hand away from Julian’s head. “I remembered you had a sweet tooth and suggested that she do something...”
