Well… The Major was, as Vidal had long suspected behind the carapace of those well-cut charcoal suits, built rather well. Beauchamp’s body was not toned through excessive hours in a gym; it had been put together by fifteen years of unglamorouswork in unglamorous places and kept up by a morning routine that would have driven a lesser man to drink.
His gaze travelled over Beauchamp without hurry, taking in shoulders that were broader than the suits had let on and a chest that rose and fell in the even rhythm of genuine sleep. A scattering of dark hair tracked down his flat stomach to a waist cut neatly by the low band of a pair of navy cotton boxers, which were, true to form, extremely functional.
Vidal allowed himself a leisurely appraisal that he enjoyed very much. His eyes lingered on Beauchamp’s hip where it met the mattress, then rolled down to his muscular thigh, lying half out from under the duvet.
Mercè, who had followed him down the corridor without being invited, chose to sit down on his foot. The warm weight of her brought him back to himself. Vidal drew in a slow breath through his nose, stepped backwards over her, and eased the door shut behind him.
He could not bear for Beauchamp to know he had been seen like this, asleep and unguarded. Vidal had a very clear feeling that being caught out would land on the Major like a private catastrophe. So he stood in the corridor and composed his features into the expression of a man who had not, in the past ninety seconds, seen anything at all that had piqued his interest.
He lifted his fist and hammered on the door with the enthusiasm of a bailiff.
“Major!Major Beauchamp, I require you to rouse yourself! I am adhering with tremendous discipline to paragraph two point three of yourexcellentdocument, and I am knocking, as you can plainly hear. I shall continue to knock until I am acknowledged!”
“Your Serene Highness…”
“I have been raised, Beauchamp, to respect the written word in all its forms, and you have produced a work of such exquisite precision this morning that I simply cannot — ”
“Sir.Come in.”
Vidal opened the door.
Beauchamp was sitting on the edge of the bed with his feet on the floor and a dressing gown pulled hastily across his shoulders. His hair was standing up on one side and his eyes were not entirely open. The dressing gown was the single most depressing garment Vidal had encountered in his adult life, and there’d been occasions where he’d had to put on hospital gowns.
“Beauchamp.” Vidal laid his free hand against the doorframe and looked upon the flannel with sorrow. “My dear Major. Where did you find this?”
“Find what, sir.”
“This — ” he gestured at the robe with the document. “This garment. This joyless sack of a hot-water-bottle covering. Beauchamp, it isflannel. It is the fabric of men who have looked at pleasure and said,no thank you, I shall be having a Horlicks instead. Where did you buy it? I must know, so that I can avoid the establishment for the rest of my natural life.”
Beauchamp dragged a hand down his face and held it there. When he took it away, one of his eyes had consented to open the rest of the way.
“Thank you, sir.”
“For what, Beauchamp?”
“For knocking. I appreciate it.”
His voice came out low and furred at the edges, the consonants softer than Vidal had ever heard them. He filed the sound away in the private archive he kept of things he was not supposed to notice, and pressed on.
“Ah. Yes. The document.” Vidal held up the five pages. “We must discuss it.”
“Sir, if there’s a clause you’d like to amend, we can — ”
“A clause I would like to amend.” Vidal took one step into the room and flung the pages into the air above Beauchamp’s headwith both hands, so that they fanned outwards and began to settle across the duvet, the carpet, and one of Beauchamp’s bare knees. “No, no, no, Major. We will not be amending a clause. We will be amending your entire approach to the question of cohabitation, because your document, beautiful as it is, isunacceptable.”
Beauchamp looked down at the sheet of paper that had landed on his knee. He picked it up, set it on the bed beside him, and turned his unimpressed face back up to Vidal.
“It will make me uncomfortable, Beauchamp. That is the long and the short of it. To know that you are locked away in this room, or creeping down the corridor in stockinged feet to avoid disturbing me. No. I cannot abide it. I shall feel like the worst principal in the history of principals. I shall feel like acolonial administrator. I would spend my days wondering whether you have had anything to eat, and my nights wondering whether you are warm, and I cannot afford this emotional labour on top of everything else I am already carrying.”
“Sir, the protocols are designed — ”
“The protocols are designed to make you invisible, Beauchamp, and I will not have it.” He crossed the room in two steps and pressed his own hand flat against the centre of his chest, where the silk robe was loosely tied. “Mi casa es su casa.This is not a phrase I use lightly. I have used it perhaps three times in my adult life. I am telling you it now.”
He lifted the hand from his own chest and brought it down, without hurry, to rest on Beauchamp’s.
The flannel was warm through his palm. Underneath it was the steady thumping of Beauchamp’s heart that picked up when his hand landed.
“Sir — ”
