A Wager of Love: M/M Historical Romance (7 page)

A tangle of emotions locked itself in Laurie’s throat, and he swallowed thickly. He felt uncertain as to his own motivations. He wanted to prove to Gilbert that love was true and to see him happily enamoured and married, but something about the prospect of Gilbert in love—or, worse, the dread that he would not be able to make his proof and Gilbert would never know love—made his heart ache.  

They sat the rest of the journey in silence, disembarking once they arrived.

“Come with me to the country,” Laurie said, as Gilbert held the front door for him.

“The country?”

“You must. It will be miserable in London once the full summer heat sets in, and I have in mind some proof which I might provide. My parents have a house in Somersetshire. Come with me.”

In the light of the single lamp lit in the front hall, Gilbert smiled at him, warm and genuine. “I would like that. When shall we?”

“When can you? I have few enough affairs in London—they might be settled within a day.”

“Wednesday, then,” Gilbert suggested. He stepped forward briefly, hand lifting in Laurie’s direction as if to clasp his arm, but then he stopped and put his hands behind his back. “Will you stay the night again?”

Laurie smiled, glad for the warmth of the friendship between them, especially after the disconcerting evening. “If your hospitality can be imposed upon.”

“Gladly, for you.” Gilbert’s grin turned a little more impish, and he nodded up the stairs. “Your room awaits you, as ever.”

T
hey took Gilbert’s carriage
, which was far more comfortable than the stagecoach would have been. Gilbert brought along a stack of books, including the
Symposium
, and resumed his reading aloud to Laurie along the journey.

The air cleared as they left the smog and stench of London for the long and sloping farms and meadows of the countryside. Windows open for the warm air, the two of them relaxed drowsily in the carriage, with plenty of road yet to travel. Boots off, Gilbert put his feet up on the seat next to Laurie, stretching out comfortably as he read, so Laurie mimicked the movement and stretched out his legs as well. His were longer, having an inch or two on Gilbert in height, though Gilbert was broader in the chest.

The
Symposium
went on to suppose, in Aristophanes’ speech, that the world had once been made up of people of two halves, which the gods in their wrath had split. Some were halves of men and men, some of women and women, and some had one part of each, and their souls went about through life and eternity in search of their other half.

“Do you believe it?” Laurie asked.

“No,” Gilbert said. “Or rather, I hope not. If it were so, I fear that the gods in their wrath would have placed my half on the other side of the world.”

“But the theory does allow for the possibility that it isn’t one specific soul we’re seeking, but rather a type—that each has a nature, like to our once-dual bodies, which is drawn accordingly to either men or women.”

“Why not both?” Gilbert asked.

Laurie blinked, perplexed. “It’s outside of the scope of the myth.”

“Much of the world is outside of the scope of any myth. Why not both?”

“I suppose I don’t know.”

“Or, indeed, neither. I’m much in support of the spinster movement. A woman—or a man—should never be pressed into marriage if they do not so desire.”

“Well then,” Laurie said, “within the scope of the myth, are you the sort of man whose other half is a man, or a woman?”

Gilbert’s brows lifted and his mouth opened, then shut again. He flushed, which was really very attractive across his high cheekbones, and cleared his throat. “That is not a fair question.”

Laughing at the response, Laurie rested his chin on his fist. “Isn’t it?”

“Which are you?”

Sighing as he considered it, Laurie leaned back in his seat. “I always rather thought that I was made as every man was made, that it was simply a man’s nature to take a wife, but now I have learned that there are other natures in the world. It is true that I have never longed for any woman.”

“Have you ever longed for any man?”

Laurie frowned with thought, gazing up at the ceiling of the carriage. The image of Gilbert’s impish smile came unbidden into his mind. “No,” he answered. “Or if I did—I don’t know, can a thing deserve the name of love or even longing if one does not recognise it as such?”

“I feel like even you would notice such a thing.”

Laurie snorted. “Then no.”

“What do you suppose,” Gilbert said, shutting the book and setting it back on the pile with the others. The pile had fallen over and was making its way across the floor of the carriage, but while both of them had their feet up and the floor wasn’t muddy, neither of them much cared about the disarray of the books.

“Hm?” Laurie prompted, since Gilbert had trailed off.

His friend glanced over, sprawling comfortably sideways across the well-padded seat. “What, to you specifically, is the most beautiful sight in all the world?”

“To me? I don’t know. I suppose… a sunrise.”

“A sunrise? That’s a bland answer. Does a sunrise truly fill your heart with more awe and joy than any other sight on the black earth?”

“Depends on the sunrise.”

“So, then, tell me about the one that does.”

“Huh.” Laurie drew his teeth across his lower lip in thought. “I don’t know if you’ve ever spent much time in the country. But there is such a feeling, when you are walking back home along a stretch of road in Somersetshire after a wedding celebration that ran late into the night and your parents already left earlier with the carriage, as you gaze across the mist that hangs in the fields in the pre-dawn light, while all the world is still asleep and you yourself may still be half-drunk from the celebration, and as the sun begins to rise, turning the sky from midnight blue to dawn yellow, to pigeon-blue and then at last to purple and rose and orange across all the world and upon the lingering mist, and it seems that there can be no doubt that God created the world in love, and that whatever sorrows and cruelties, whatever suffering or greed leads us astray, there is still, in the dawn light, such beauty in the world that it must surely have been intended as a gift, from a god that wishes us to be happy.”

Gilbert smiled, his eyes alight with fondness and pleasure in a way that Laurie had never quite seen from him before. “Laurie, I think that is the most eloquently convincing argument you have yet made in the course of our wager. Although my
favourite
is still when you told me I was so handsome I must have been fashioned specially by the devil in order to tempt the hearts of the world.”

Laurie flushed at the reminder of that. “Have I half-convinced you, then, with my argument?”

“Not of God, I assure you, for I simply will not believe in a god who is omnipotent and yet allows the destitution and suffering of innocents. No matter the religious reasoning or theory, nothing can be excuse enough for that allowance, and if there is indeed a God and Lucifer, I should prefer obedience to the latter, who encourages freedom and the guidance of one’s heart, to the former whose rules are strict and harsh as to how one must perform devotion and love. It seems to me that God, however loving, is the sort of father who beats his children roughly, and I will none of him.”

Mouth falling open at the vehemence and heresy of his friend, Laurie shut his mouth again and looked off out the carriage. He thought indeed that he should always believe, and Gilbert should always doubt, and found that he did not mind so very much, since the disagreement had in no way impacted their friendship.

“But,” Gilbert continued, “you may indeed have half-convinced me that there is such a thing as love in the world, if only for the love
you
feel toward the world and its beauty.”

“Have I then?” Laurie asked, grinning and sitting up straight. “Do you concede?”

“I most certainly do not.” Gilbert snorted indignantly, but he was grinning. “Half-convinced. And verily, just the other day I had
you
half-convinced that love is a falsity, yet you did not concede.”

“Because you begged that I should not,” Laurie reminded him, “on account of how eagerly you wish for me to win.”

“Unfair,” Gilbert said, grumbling and colouring.

“And to you?” Laurie asked. “Since you began this questioning. What, to you, is the most beautiful sight in all the world?”

“It would be indecorous of me to answer that.”

“You took me to a
brothel
to watch a pair of women at tribades—” Laurie retorted.

Gilbert blinked in surprise. “I didn’t think you knew that term.”

“What, then, could you find indecorous to say in my presence?”

“Οἰ μὲν ἰππήων στρότον οἰ δὲ πέσδων,” Gilbert said.

Laurie’s mouth fell open again in surprise, and his brain struggled to make sense of it. Greek, though it flowed more smoothly from Gilbert’s tongue than it ever had from those of Laurie’s professors at Oxford.

“Oἰ δὲ νάων φαῖσ᾽ ἐπὶ γᾶν μέλαιναν ἔμμεναι κάλλιστον ἔγω δὲ κῆν᾽ ὄττω τὶσ ἔπαται.”

“What?” Laurie asked, quite effectively sidetracked.

“Some say an army of horse,” Gilbert translated. There was a wicked, playful smile on his lips, pleased as ever to be showing off. Laurie couldn’t say he much minded Gilbert’s tendency to show off. He would listen to poetic recitations all day in Gilbert’s honeyed voice and with Gilbert’s impishly glinting eyes. “And others say an army of foot soldiers, while others say that a fleet is the most beautiful thing on the black earth. But I say it is what you love.”

“That’s not—that’s not Homeric Greek.”

“Aeolic.”

“What?”

Gilbert rolled his eyes. “It’s Sappho, Laurie. Did you never read Sappho?”

“I confess I did not.”

“I shall have to correct that error,” Gilbert said. “I regret I’ve brought none.”

“Recite it again for me,” Laurie asked, and Gilbert complied. Some of the words were familiar, while others were strangely formed.

Letting the words roll through his mind as he appreciated the sound and the form of them, Laurie found that Gilbert had never truly answered the question proposed inherently within the quote. “What, then, to you, is the most beautiful thing on the black earth?”

“That which I love,” Gilbert said, dodging the question through rhetoric and grinning as he did so.

“And do you, truly, love something?”

“I might,” Gilbert confessed, his smile turning wry and full of secrets.

“Lo, then you must concede the wager.”

“Not yet,” Gilbert said. “Not until I am certain.”

“Of your love?”

“Yes.”

“What, then? Or whom?”

“The most beautiful thing on all the black earth,” Gilbert answered.

Laurie threw a book at him.

T
hey stopped
for the night at an inn.

“Do you want your own room?” Gilbert asked, offering his hand to help Laurie down. “Or will you share with me and endure my late-night poetry?”

Smiling fondly at him, Laurie kept hold of his hand once he was down, pausing at the sight of Gilbert’s sparkling gray eyes. “I’ll risk the poetry.”

“As you please,” Gilbert said, and tugged him inside.

They spoke little over dinner, on account of their having spent the entire day in the carriage chatting on matters of love which might not be acceptable for discussion in a public space. Afterward, they retired up to the room together.

Laurie sat in the single chair as he removed his boots, gaze lingering upon his friend. His own breath and heart sounded thunderous in his ears as he watched Gilbert undress.

First the boots came off, as Gilbert sat on the edge of the bed. They were clean and polished, having suffered no mud between Gilbert’s carriage-house and the inn, and they fell askew as Gilbert dropped them by the side of the bed. Gilbert’s fine, deep-plum coat was folded once and then cast upon his traveling-case. The shirt-sleeves beneath were rumpled from their confinement, making Gilbert appear attractively disheveled as he removed his tie-pin and cravat.

He glanced over at that point and smiled, watching Laurie for a moment in return before standing and going to place cravat and pin with his coat.

Remaining there with his back to Laurie, Gilbert unfastened the buttons of his waistcoat, each of them crisping through the fabric with a just-audible rustle. The nankeen fabric of the breeches clung intimately to his buttocks and thighs, showing off the fine shapes of muscle beneath the cloth, and then Laurie’s gaze drew upwards as Gilbert shed the waistcoat and added it to the growing pile.

It seemed such a simple thing, that he’d never really gazed upon a man his age without coat or waistcoat. The rumpled cotton of the shirt hung in soft wrinkles against his back, hinting at the shape and form of skin beneath, and then the hem of it drew up, revealing the strong, smooth skin and muscle of Gilbert’s broad back, creased by the elegant curve of his spine.

Gilbert glanced back then, and his lips and eyes crinkled with fond mirth to find Laurie watching.

Flushing, Laurie swallowed and glanced away. Rising to his feet, he quickly divested himself of his own coat and waistcoat, setting them in a little pile on the chair.

He heard the bed creak and glanced over. Gilbert lounged upon it in nothing but his drawers, eyes turned to a slim volume in his hands, utterly calm and relaxed to be in such a state of undress beneath his companion’s eye.

Laurie untied his cravat and set it aside. “Read to me.”

Glancing up, Gilbert smiled upon him. He flipped through the book, choosing a different page, and settled back comfortably onto the pillow. “
Is it a sin to love thee?
” he asked, voice sinking into the low, soft rumble that he used for his recitations. “
Then my soul is deeply dyed,

For my lifeblood, as it gushes, takes its crimson from love's tide;

And I feel its wave roll o'er me and the blushes mount my brow

And my pulses quicken wildly, as the love dreams come and go;

I feel my spirit's weakness; I know my spirit's power;

I have felt my proud heart struggle in temptation's trying hour;

Yet, amid the din of conflict, bending o'er life's hallowed shrine,

Yielding all, my soul had murmured, I am thine, forever thine!