Kit and Harry Page 7

  “I thought we could at least have—if you wanted, if I wanted, if we both—” Harry stopped. The sparkles had vanished. Tiredness, abruptly, in his face. In the dwindling of arousal. In the darting down of his eyes. “No. You’re right, of course. I wasn’t thinking. There’s no chance of anything properly real, and so we shouldn’t even try for…anything, I expect. The walk shouldn’t be much further; we should get on with the reason you’re here.”

  Kit should have wanted to agree. Should have felt triumphant, virtuous, vindicated. He was right, and he knew he was. They might’ve managed a hurried fuck in a library or a bedroom or here under the open—and damned cold—sky, but it wouldn’t mean anything.

  Kit Thompson, London constable, would just be a diversion and an excitement for someone like that, someone with money and class and a smile that would draw the world closer. And Harry wasn’t anything Kit needed, either. Not a part of his life.

  Nevertheless, slogging through snow at Harry’s side, he felt an odd loss of balance, as if he’d taken a step onto what should’ve been solid ground and instead plummeted into a ravine. He, Kit, thought that way. Harry Arden didn’t, and the words—there’s no chance of anything real, so we should simply not try—didn’t sit right on those lips.

  Kit didn’t like that. Uncomfortable. Not the way the universe ought to be. And he’d done that.

  He glanced at Harry. Harry’s gaze was resolutely turned away.

  The path was disappearing fast, conquered by deadly white heaps. Kit stretched out senses, searching, feeling.

  Ice swallowed his magic. Ate up empathy, any hint of warmth, any vitality. Drank down life and possibilities and emotion, and turned them all to frozen rigid crystalline structures. The earth where the ice elemental lay had become barren as arctic seas; the elemental itself dreamed, curled up in a hollow, of green growing things and summer and delicious feasts. It was not by nature cruel; it was only acting the way it knew. And these lands, bursting with rich fields and running streams and happy inhabitants, everything ripe and radiant and always put to rights, had been so tempting…

  Something about that kicked Kit’s investigative brain, but he couldn’t place it. Pieces that almost lined up. An explanation that would’ve made sense if he could frame it the right way.

  The ice elemental stirred, half-waking, sensing an intruder. Kit drew back tendrils of power, and curled fingers inside his gloves. “Over that rise, and left, by the lake.”

  Harry did not tease him about not calling it an ocean, this time. Only looked out at the ice-locked expanse, treacherous and flat.

  They began to walk again.

  And the storm began in earnest.

  The elemental was awake now, and angry. Heat drained away. Winds howled in.

  Flurries whipped at their coats, their faces. Hailstones thudded across the ground, and Kit’s shoulder. Harry, rubbing his own arm, shouted, “Should we go back?”

  “We’re so close—” Kit could hardly hear his own voice. “Harry—”

  They were close. But they were also too close to the lake and ice and treacherous footing. And Kit did not know the land, even if Harry did.

  Abruptly he couldn’t see. A wall of white. A blinding sheet of white. Stinging searing scratching flakes of white like vicious diamonds.

  Moving became difficult, then near-impossible; his limbs ached with cold, and the drifts piled higher and higher, and when he turned back toward the main house he could see nothing, and he could hear nothing…

  Kit, alone in the featureless stumbling blizzard, was more afraid all at once than he’d ever been.

  No anchors. Nothing to cling to. Nothing familiar. Nothing nothing nothing.

  And, gods of tree and leaf, old gods and new, he hated Yorkshire and weather and elementals—he should’ve never left London, should’ve never said yes to this assignment—he was going to die—

  He would’ve never met Harry Arden. Someone who had looked at him and said, I think you’re awfully beautiful and I don’t want never to have asked.

  Harry, he thought, was the brave one. Of the two of them.

  He was aware that his thoughts were slowing, fuzzy, numbed by cold. He was on his feet, but only barely.

  He tried to take a step, staggered, couldn’t remember how to walk when limbs had become icicles, and uncoordinated icicles at that. He put a hand out, blindly.

  And another hand closed over his wrist. Big. Strong. Harry’s hand. Harry’s voice, shouting, “I’ve got you, come on!”

  “What—where—how did you—”

  “I’m good at finding things!” Harry was a blurry dark shape amid vertiginous white. “Don’t let go!”

  “Where are we—”

  “Hunting lodge!” Harry shouted, looming over him.

  “What?”

  “Father’s hunting lodge—I think I can get us there—”

  They ran, lurching and fumbling in the blizzard’s grip.

  Kit would forever after recall that run as the second worst experience of his life. He could see nothing but white; he could feel nothing but white, white and sharpness and bitter wind. He was shivering and shaking, as his legs gave way, as Harry grabbed his hand and hauled him on.

  They tripped over wind and elemental anger. They somehow got upright and forged onward. Harry’s hand in his felt oddly warm; keeping them warm, Kit thought deliriously, keeping him warm, an anchor and a beacon in the raging tempest—

  He did not know where they were going. Harry seemed to, but that shouldn’t be possible, even someone born and bred on these lands couldn’t find their way in this, couldn’t be finding any sense of direction or sure destination—

  A new shape reared up. A building of some sort, low but large. Kit blinked, unable to focus, eyes dazzled.

  Harry muttered something under his breath, shoved out a hand, slammed it against the building. Pushed.

  A door swung open. They tumbled in.

  Kit tumbled, anyway; caught balance, bent over, rested hands on knees. Panted. Harry had let go of his hand. “What—where’re we—” He breathed snowflakes, coughed, tried again. “Where—”

  “Father’s hunting lodge.” Harry’s voice sounded strange. Wrong. Unfocused.

  Kit tried to stand upright, to turn. Harry finished, managing to be cheerful even through strain, “I did tell you.”

  Harry was leaning on the door. Whiter than the snow. Muscles sliding to the floor.

  Kit dove that way. Couldn’t catch him. Could only ease their mutual fall. “Harry!”

  “I’m fine—only dizzy—” Harry shut those wide eyes, though. “Give me a second or two, I’ll be right as—rain—oh, that’s a dreadful metaphor, isn’t it…”

  “Harry?”

  Harry, abruptly dead weight in Kit’s arms, did not answer.

  Kit shook him. Hard. The wind screamed at the door behind them. The actual worst moment of Kit’s life happened, then: sunshine and kindness, everything Kit did not believe in, gone unconscious and unresponsive and utterly still, having saved them both.

  And he could do nothing. Could only hold onto Harry and search for visible injuries, think of blankets and warmth, try to summon up basic medical field training—

  He did not know when he’d begun to care so much. He did, though, furiously and desperately, without wanting to. Harry was ridiculous and naïve and far too forgiving, needing someone to watch out for all that optimism—Harry needed someone right now, because all that brightness shouldn’t be broken or lost; no, it should be safeguarded, rare and foolish and valuable—

  He couldn’t let Harry guide him through a snowstorm and then fade away in his arms. He couldn’t let Harry fade away ever. He couldn’t lose Harry.

  Who, as if hearing this plea, opened both eyes. Murmured, “Well, that was harder than I thought, I think…”

  “What? Look at me, sit up, come on—”

  Empathy. Opening himself up. He might be able to feel something. To know what had happened. To take some of that pa
in, whatever it was.

  He had to. He had to try.

  Harry’s exhaustion hit like multiple hammers. Kit caught breath, physically shook off the blows, demanded, “You used your healing?”

  “It’s not healing exactly,” Harry protested weakly. “I tried to explain…”

  “Fixing, then! Repairing! Whatever you do to the world. Tell me again why calling it healing’s wrong. Tell me I’ve been wrong about everything. Stay awake. Talk to me.” He threw a glance around the space. Unanticipated opulence met his desperation and suggested options. That sofa took up quite a lot of room. As did the fireplace. And the doors leading away from this central great room. And the army of luxurious fabrics and carpets. “This isn’t exactly a hunting lodge, is it?”

  If Harry could talk, then Harry would stay awake. Logical. Perfect plan. Except not working.

  He risked reaching out again. More sledgehammers. Bruising and brutal. Under that, though, an odd starburst of heat. Sweetness, gratitude—no, not gratitude, or not only that—and a sense of safety and surety and raw unabashed desire for this, for Kit’s touch and care and protectiveness—

  He pulled away. Shocked. Scalded: not by the fact of the desire but by the understanding that it hadn’t come from him.

  Harry, not being privy to an empath’s senses and having spent too much energy making their path go right and true through a blizzard and then opening a locked door, couldn’t sit up without Kit’s help. Landed in a heap of dazed pale broken sunshine on the royal-purple extravagance of rug.

  “No,” Kit said, “no—” and dove back in to get arms around him. “I can’t carry you, you damn giant ox, you’ll have to stand up—”

  Harry blinked at him. Seemed to wake up more. “By hunting lodge I mean where Father used to take his mistresses, in fact, which is rather a different kind of hunting…”

  “Oh, that’s so much better, thank you!” He hauled Harry to unsteady feet. Got them both over to the global expanse of sofa. Grabbed one of the many useful blankets. “Don’t move, stay under this, I’ll get a fire lit! Are there candles?”

  The weather shrieked. The world beyond big hunting-lodge windows turned itself into a salt-shaker, a nightmare of crystals, an upheaval of crushing white.

  Harry, from the nest of blankets, assisted, “There’s extra wood in that bin, by the door…”

  “I’ve got it, thanks.” Fire leapt to life, garnet and amber and reassuring; Kit evaluated it. Fed it more logs. Harry needed to be kept warm. He stripped off snow-covered greatcoat and gloves. “Is there a stove? A kettle?”

  “Are you planning to make tea?”

  “Yes. Where would that no don’t get up be, do you think?”

  Harry subsided back onto the sofa. His face remained too pale. “The kitchen. Or the pantry. I don’t know how well-stocked it might be. Ned and I don’t come out here much, and we so rarely have visitors…oh, no, Ned’s going to absolutely have kittens when we don’t make it back…”

  “We’ll deal with that later. Stay awake. Stay warm. I’ll be quick.” He dropped one more blanket on Harry’s head, going. Harry emerged from tartan folds to blink quizzically after him, but stayed under the blanket. Kit counted this as a win.

  Chapter 7

  The kitchen proved to be on the same floor, down a short hallway. Kit, upon locating it, also found a kettle and what on inspection proved to be tea leaves, old and crumpled but usable. With the help of trained Bow Street investigative skills, he figured out the modern pipes and stove—the late Earl had clearly spared no expense involving his own comfort—and tried to make water heat faster by glaring at it. Harry needed hot tea.

  He rummaged through the pantry. Unearthed blackberry preserves, dried peas, and startlingly recent-looking bread and cheese. Kept an empathic ear open, listening in on the other room, the other presence.

  The blizzard howled and raged and battered the world. Kit’s clothes, soggy with melting snow, left puddles on the floor.

  Out in that other room, Harry was alone. Alone and in pain and cold. Because Harry had saved him. Had saved them both.

  And Kit had as much as told him that he wasn’t wanted. That he wasn’t worth touching, pleasuring, caring for, even if only for a single encounter, a night, a stolen dream.

  Kit had spent years thinking that dreams did not matter. Reality did.

  Harry Arden looked at the world and saw ways to make it better. Not only that wild magical talent. The choice to use it. To offer himself. To smile.

  Kit would have, a day ago, a lifetime ago, not believed that smile could be true. Hiding secrets. Concealment. Had to be. Didn’t it?

  He knew Harry Arden. Inexplicably, far too fast, bewilderingly so: but he did. Beyond doubt.

  The kettle whistled. Kit jumped.

  He grumbled at it, “That isn’t helpful, thank you,” and gathered everything up and went back down the hall. “Harry?”

  No reply.

  “Harry. Sommersby.”

  “I’m awake.” Harry pushed himself up on an elbow, slowly. He’d been lying flat on the sofa; firelight limned his hair, outlined his face. “Now you’re only using the title to bother me.”

  To keep you awake. To keep you here. Smiling at me. “It’s a persuasive technique. Bother criminals until they turn themselves in. Drink this.”

  “That does help. Thank you. Did you bring provisions?”

  “I think some of your staff may be using this place for covert assignations. Eat something.” Harry needed energy, too. “Are you warm enough?”

  “No, but it’s getting better.” Harry set down tea—no sugar; Kit had remembered—in order to rub his left temple. “The headache isn’t, but that’ll take time. I’m all right. You should sit down, too, and get warm.”

  “Tell me what else you need first,” Kit said, poised.

  “Nothing, I think.” Harry waved a hand at the sofa, swinging legs out of the way. “Come and join me.”

  That was a summons, from an Earl’s son and sibling; Kit’s heart did an odd twist inside his chest, fluttering and beating against its cage. Harry was, after all, a gentleman, and born to it, a young golden hero.

  He sat. Harry, being Harry, beamed at him and disentangled one of the blankets. “Here, you can have this. It’ll be nicer.”

  It was.

  Harry handed over bread, cheese, blackberry preserves. Gazed at the hunting lodge’s wide windows, at the wall of white obscurity hemming them in. “We won’t be able to get through that today. Likely not even tonight.”

  “Really?” He wouldn’t let Harry try, but he’d thought it’d be an argument.

  This earned a sigh and a grumble into the tea. “I wouldn’t get us lost, but I can’t do enough about physically blocked paths or exhaustion or frostbite, not quickly enough to keep up, anyway. Drat. Ned’s going to be scared for us, and then insufferable about being right and me not being careful, because he’s scared. I hope he has sense enough not to send out search parties.”

  “He worries about you.” Kit attempted to take the smallest amount of bread possible. Harry should have more. Replenishing strength. “As he should. If you’re giving yourself migraines attempting to fix the world.”

  “It’s not normally this bad. It’s just I was already tired from last night, and the storm was fighting back. I’m good at land-sense and directions.”

  “And opening locked doors.” The room, growing cozier, settled decadently furnished walls and firelight and paintings around them. The paintings displayed impressive amounts of flesh, and the bookshelf on the right contained a few titles Kit had last observed in the downstairs room of a very exclusive brothel. Definitely not the usual sort of hunting lodge, then. “How does it work?”

  “I don’t know,” Harry said. “I’ve never known. I can feel when something isn’t right, or when I’m trying to find something—a missing sheep, the Browns’ youngest son when he wandered off that time, a path if I’ve lost my way—or when I need to do something. I can sort of…put a
hand on whatever it is, and tell it to go right, the way it should be, and it generally does.”

  “You did that,” Kit said, “for me.”

  “A bit,” Harry said. “In the library. Not much really, you only looked like you might need an anchor. And you didn’t, in any case.”

  “I don’t know,” Kit said. “I think I did. There was…a lot of ice. And then you felt warm. Are you? Warm enough?”

  “You do keep asking.” Harry had lost greatcoat and coat and gloves and shoes, down to shirt and field-exploring sturdy trousers, snowmelt drying in patches. Under blankets, he might’ve been artwork himself: a young man painted in fireglow and undone clothing, hair rumpled into darker gold from the storm. “Are you? Is that why you’re asking, because you’re cold and you’re afraid I am?”

  “No,” Kit said. He wasn’t, though he wasn’t under as many blankets, and he was also still drying. He couldn’t be cold. Not when heat snuck down his spine, under his skin, at each glimpse of freckles along Harry’s throat. “I’m just asking. Drink your tea.”

  Harry did, apparently automatically, while eying the paintings. “Do you know, I’m starting to suspect my father quite liked naked women.”

  “Astonishing,” Kit said. “I never would have known.”

  “That one on the right seems to be enjoying herself, at least.” Harry paused. “I hope the women he brought here did. Enjoy it.”

  Kit, who had opinions about aristocrats and power and men who did not like to hear the word no, glanced at Harry’s sincere blue eyes. Said, “Your butler says he wasn’t a bad man, as far as being an Earl. Not kind to you, but fair to the tenants. So it’s possible he treated his women fairly too.”

  “But you doubt it.” Harry looked into the fire, at scampering flames. “You don’t think much of my family, do you? My father. Me. If you approve of any of us it’s probably Ned. Which is only fair. He’s the responsible one.”

  “No,” Kit said. “You’re wrong. Well, not about your father. I would happily throw him into one of the Bow Street cells for a year or ten. But…I think quite a lot of you, Harry.”