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“Look,” said Thomas, “whatever it is you feel, Math, I want to help you. I want to understand. But above all else, you must preserve your friendship with James. Or repair it, or whatever is necessary. You are parabatai, and that is so much more than I can ever understand. If you lose each other, you will be losing something you can never replace.”
“?‘Entreat me not to leave thee,’?” Matthew said, his voice weary. “Tom, I’m not angry at James.” He reached out and scratched Oscar’s head for a moment. “I am in love with Cordelia. I have been for some time. And I believed—truly, I believed, and I think you did as well—that her marriage to James was a sham, and that James’s love was only and ever for Grace Blackthorn.”
“Well, yes,” said Thomas. “Isn’t that the case?”
Matthew gave a dry laugh. “Cordelia came to me to say she was done with it all, that she could no longer stand the pretense, that it had grown unbearable. And I thought—” He choked out a sarcastic chuckle. “I thought perhaps this was a chance for us to be happy. For all of us to be happy. James could be with Grace as he’d always wanted, and Cordelia and I would go to Paris, where we would be happy. But then James came to Paris,” Matthew went on, “and as per usual, it seems, I was wrong about everything. He does not love Grace, he says. He never did. He loves Cordelia. He does not want to give her up.”
“That’s what he said?” asked Thomas. He kept his voice calm, although inside he was reeling. It was astounding what people could hide from one another, even from their closest friends. “Did Cordelia know any of that?”
“She doesn’t seem to have,” said Matthew. “She seemed as astonished as I was. When James arrived, we were—”
“I’m not sure I want to know,” said Thomas.
“We kissed,” said Matthew. “That is all. But it was like alchemy, but with misery changed to happiness, instead of lead to gold.”
Thomas thought that he knew exactly what Matthew meant, and also that he could not possibly say so.
“I know Cordelia well enough,” he said, “to know she would not have kissed you if she did not want to. It seems to me, if you both love her—”
“We have agreed to abide by any decision she makes,” said Matthew dully. “At the moment, her decision is that she doesn’t wish to see either of us.” He set down the bottle and looked at his hand. It was shaking visibly. Emotion and drink, Thomas thought with a terrible sympathy. He himself would have tamped down his passions, but Matthew had never been able to do that. Feelings spilled from him like blood from a cut. “I have ruined everything,” he said. “I truly thought James did not love her. I truly thought my decision was the best for all of us, but I have only hurt them both. Cordelia’s face when she saw him in the hotel room—” He winced. “How could I have gotten it all so wrong?”
Thomas slid over to Matthew so that their shoulders were touching. “We are all wrong sometimes,” he said. “We all make mistakes.”
“I seem to make especially terrible ones.”
“It seems to me,” Thomas said, “that you and James have been hiding parts of yourselves from one another for some time now. Both of you. And more even than the matter of Cordelia, that is what you need to discuss.”
Matthew fumbled for the wine bottle, but Oscar whined loudly, and he drew his hand back. “It’s just hard to know, when you have a secret… will telling it bring healing? Or just more hurt? Isn’t it selfish, to unburden myself just to relieve my own conscience?”
Thomas was about to protest, No, of course not, but he hesitated. After all, he himself had a secret that he had kept from Matthew and James and Christopher. If he unburdened himself of his secret to Matthew, would it make things better? Or would Matthew think of the hurt that Alastair had caused him, had caused his friends, and think Thomas indifferent to it?
Then again, how could he exhort Matthew to tell the truth, if he wasn’t going to tell it himself?
“Math,” he said. “I have something I want to tell you.”
Matthew looked over at him. As did Oscar, who seemed equally curious. “Yes?”
“I don’t like girls,” Thomas said. “Well, I like them. They’re lovely people, and Cordelia and Lucie and Anna are excellent friends—”
“Thomas,” said Matthew.
“I am attracted to men,” said Thomas. “But not like you. Just men.”
Matthew smiled at that. “I rather guessed,” he said. “I wasn’t sure. You could have told me earlier, Tom. Why would I ever have minded? It isn’t as if I was sitting about, waiting for you to write a handbook entitled How to Seduce Women.”
“Because,” Thomas said, rather wretchedly, “the first boy I ever—the one I still—” He took a deep breath. “I’m in love with Alastair. Alastair Carstairs.”
Oscar growled. It appeared he did not approve of the word “Alastair.”
“Ah.” Matthew closed his eyes. “You—” He hesitated, and Thomas could tell that Matthew was trying to think carefully through the fog of alcohol. Struggling not to react impulsively. “I cannot judge you,” he said at last. “The Angel knows, I’ve made enough mistakes, hurt enough people. I’m not sure I am fit to judge anyone. Even Alastair. But—does Alastair know how you feel?”
“He does,” Thomas said.
“And he has been kind to you about it?” Matthew’s eyes opened. “Is he—are you two—?”
“He won’t agree to be with me,” said Thomas quietly. “But not out of unkindness. He thinks he would be bad for me. I think… in some way… he believes he does not deserve to be happy. Or perhaps it is that he is unhappy, and he believes it is a sort of contagion that might spread.”
“I understand that,” Matthew said, a little wonderingly. “How much love people have denied themselves through the ages because they believed they did not deserve it. As if the waste of love is not the greater tragedy.” His eyes were a very dark green as he looked at Thomas. “You love him?”
