Lessons in Power
The ghosts of the past will shape your future. Unless you fight them.
Cambridge Fellows Mysteries, Book 4
Cambridge, 1907
After settling in their new home, Cambridge dons Orlando Coppersmith and Jonty Stewart are looking
forward to nothing more exciting than teaching their students and playing rugby. Their plans change when a friend asks their help to clear an old flame who stands accused of murder.
Doing the right thing means Jonty and Orlando must leave the sheltering walls of St. Bride’s to enter a labyrinth of suspects and suspicions, lies and anguish.
Their investigation raises ghosts from Jonty’s past when the murder victim turns out to be one of the men who sexually abused him at school. The trauma forces Jonty to withdraw behind a wall of painful
memories. And Orlando fears he may forever lose the intimacy of his best friend and lover.
When another one of Jonty’s abusers is found dead, police suspicion falls on the Cambridge fellows
themselves. Finding this murderer becomes a race to solve the crime…before it destroys Jonty’s fragile state of mind.
Warning: Contains sensual m/m lovemaking and hot men playing rugby.
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Samhain Publishing, Ltd.
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Lessons in Power
Copyright © 2009 by Charlie Cochrane
ISBN: 978-1-60504-750-8
Edited by Deborah Nemeth
Cover by Scott Carpenter
All Rights Are Reserved. No part of this book may be used or reproduced in any manner whatsoever without written permission, except in the case of brief quotations embodied in critical articles and reviews.
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t Samhain Publishing, Ltd.
electronic publication: September 2009
Lessons in Power
A Cambridge Fellows Mystery
Charlie Cochrane
Dedication
For my family, who view my writing with a sort of patronising indulgence, and all the friends who’ve made this series of books a reality.
Chapter One
Cambridge, February 1907
“I’ve been reading a book.”
“I remember you saying that once before. We were both stark naked in front of a fire just like this one and by rights should have been making a first consummation of our passion.”
Orlando Coppersmith swatted at his friend’s head with the first thing that came to hand, which luckily for Jonty Stewart wasn’t one of the fire dogs but a bread roll. “It’s a constant amazement to me that you’ve ever shut up long enough for a consummation to take place.
Blether, blether
, if they made it an Olympic event you’d be so certain to be champion that no one else would turn up to oppose you.”
“And the point of this conversation was?” Jonty flicked some toast crumbs from his cuff.
“This book concerned the meaning of names and it struck me how apt yours was. Well, it struck me at
the time—after the latest bit of tomfoolery I’m not so sure.” Orlando, once a potential Olympic frowning champion, smiled happily.
“Handsome, lovely, is that what it means? Statuesque? Desirable?” Jonty chirped away like a little
bird, full of the joys of a day which suggested that spring might be just around the corner, if the light filtering into the dining room was any indication.
Orlando grabbed his friend’s hands. “Stop it. I’m in deadly earnest. It means ‘God has given’. Now if that’s not an apt description of you for me then I’ve no idea what is.”
Jonty had the grace to blush. “You’ll have to tell Mama. She alleges the choice of Jonathan was all
Papa’s.
She
wanted to call me James.”
“I think I’ll start calling you
Godgiven
or some such thing when you’re at your most annoying. It might get you to calm down.” Orlando buttered his toast with great energy, as if it were his friend’s bottom that was getting a whack.
Jonty poked out his tongue, although his lover couldn’t be sure whether he was thinking or being
insulting. “And what does Orlando mean? Irritating? Insatiable?”
“It’s from Roland.”
“Well, I’m none the wiser with that.”
“Neither was the book, to tell the truth, although it’s supposed to be something to do with a famous
land. I suspect it means ‘he who gains fame throughout the country’.”
Lessons in Power
Jonty turned up his nose. “More likely ‘he who spends hours in the bathroom’. Luckily we have two
in this place or I’d never be ready in the morning.”
In fact there were three bathrooms in their house, but the one in the self-contained annexe—which
itself contained Mrs. Ward, their housekeeper—never got taken into the reckoning as they never got to go near it. It was part of the “servant’s quarters”, as the house agent had referred to them when they’d first enquired about the property, only connected with the rest of the building via a rickety flight of stairs which led to the kitchen.
Not that Mrs. Ward ever complained. Her suite of rooms had been decorated and kitted out
beautifully, along with all the rest of the house, prior to the men taking occupation. A sailor’s widow in her mid-forties, and with her only son now himself at sea, she’d been recommended to them as a lady who
relished the prospect of something to set her abilities to. As the recommendation had come from Ariadne Peters, sister to the Master of St. Bride’s college, Jonty and Orlando had paid close attention to it. They didn’t want their jobs at the college proving surplus to requirements overnight. Mrs. Ward had a big heart, an open mind and a light touch with pastry, which were the best possible qualifications, and in the fortnight they’d been in residence, the men had no complaints.
Their house, a cottage dating to Tudor times but adorned with later extensions and amendments, had
previously belonged to an old lady who’d died. Jonty had spied the property out before Christmas and
fallen in love with it. He’d whisked Orlando up there the very evening he agreed to buying a house and the cottage had weaved its magic on him too. They’d bought it before anyone else could, then set to with plans for improvements.
Or, to be accurate, Helena Stewart, Jonty’s mother, had descended on her broomstick and taken all the plans for enhancements in hand, as “her lads” were so busy with university business. Soon the Madingley Road was alive with decoration, renovations, plumbing and installation of proper central heating, all without losing an ounce of the property’s charm. It was only a matter of weeks before it was habitable and on February the first they took possession.
“Should I carry you over the threshold?” Jonty had been barely able to restrain the bliss in his voice when they’d taken possession. “Or you me? We could even go in, then come back out so we both get a
go…” His words had been stopped in the most effective way, by a single, protracted kiss—allowable only as no one else was within a half a mile’s sight.
Now it felt as if they’d lived in this house forever. Orlando, whose home for many years had consisted of a set of rooms in St. Bride’s in which no one but his students and the Master were allowed—and a chair in the Senior Common Room which no one cared to sit next to—was amazed that his horizons had
expanded so far. He kept a room back in college for supervisions, as did Jonty, and their chairs still stood side by side in the SCR, inviolate, but now Orlando had a cottage which he shared in joint names with his
7
Charlie Cochrane
lover. He also had second, third, call-them-what-you-would homes in both Sussex and London with the rest of the Stewarts, for whom he was a cross between a fourth son and a favourite son-in-law.
Forsythia Cottage was spacious, affording them each a study to fill with their books, pictures and
general clutter. It was well appointed with bedrooms for household and guests, although only one of
their
beds ever seemed to be slept in on any given night. They always took breakfast together, Mrs. Ward
serving up ridiculous quantities of bacon and eggs or—as this morning, when talk turned to names—
kedgeree, which was spicy and succulent.
“Shall we have Matthew Ainslie up to Bride’s for High Table?” Jonty’s little nose rose above the
newspaper, making him look even more like a small inquisitive mammal than usual.
“Why?” Orlando had managed to avoid having the man visit them through the Michaelmas term, and
didn’t want things to change now.
“Because we’re meeting him at the rugby on Wednesday. It would be terribly rude to just shake his
hand after the match, say ‘Sorry the university slaughtered Blackheath’, and then just leave him there.”
It was true; Orlando had to admit that would be shoddy treatment. Even for someone who had once
made a pass at him up in the woods. He no longer hated Matthew for past indiscretions
,
nor wanted to kick him in the seat of his pants, but he was sometimes jealous of the affection Jonty felt for a man they’d only met on holiday. “I suppose so. We can let Miss Peters get her teeth into him if he gets out of hand.”
“I’d pay money to see that happen.” Jonty drained his cup and poured another. The late Mr. Ward had
tasted the excellent coffee supplied in foreign parts and had taught his wife how to make a good brew.
“I suppose in that case we should see about accommodation for him?”
“No need. He’s been talking about staying at the University Arms, which seems a better idea than
having him here. Then he won’t have to listen to your snoring.”
“For the one-hundred-and-ninety-third time, I don’t snore.”
“Don’t you?” Jonty stood up and reached over the table for the marmalade, which his lover had
appropriated. “Well, some bloke comes in my bed of a night and reverberates. Perhaps it’s a farmer driving his pigs to market. Ow!”
Orlando had taken advantage of Jonty’s position and landed a hearty slap on his backside. “You’ll get another one of those every time you accuse me of snoring.”
“Seems a positive incentive to keep on doing it then.” Jonty sat down gingerly, although he didn’t
mind being whacked by his lover—it often led on to something much more pleasant. “I’ll ring Matthew at lunchtime, then.”
8
Lessons in Power
“Coppersmith! Orlando Coppersmith!” A chap the size of the great north wall of the Eiger came into
view, cutting a lane through the throng of people along the touchline. He grabbed Orlando’s hand and
pumped it up and down until all the blood flow seemed to cease.
“Morgan.” Orlando was pleased to have remembered the name. “I thought you’d have been playing.”
He jabbed a finger at the pitch, a field as muddy as only Cambridge could produce in early spring.
“Dodgy leg.” The man mountain grimaced. “Come to cheer the team on.” He offered his hand to
Jonty.
“This is Dr. Stewart.” Orlando made the introduction with pride. “He played here in about 1876.”
“Turn of the century, thank you. I think I may have played against you at some point, Mr. Morgan.”
Jonty eyed the man’s broken nose and had the vaguest memory that he might just have been responsible.
“You beat us then, but I hope we’ll make amends today. Ah, please excuse us…”
A hubbub broke out pitchside, which seemed to consist of repeated sayings along the lines of
“Matthew, you old dog” or “Jonty Stewart, when are you going to get a decent haircut?” Together with muttered harrumphs from Orlando, which might or might not have been welcoming, this was all