Blue Steel Chain (Trowchester Blues Book 3) Read online

  Aidan settled on the sofa with a long sigh, and James perched beside him, turned towards him, their knees touching.

  Very little fooled Finn. He raised his eyebrows at this, and James remembered as if for the first time that he hadn’t mentioned his problems with Dave to his friends. Perhaps he was being inappropriately protective of Aidan, hovering over him as if he was precious.

  But he was precious. James thought of the sculpture of the bull-leaper, waiting to be fired, waiting for Aidan to choose whether or not to paint and glaze it. It had taken his breath away—the terror of the bull, its power and its rage, and the joy of the man who turned somersaults over it, untouched. Aidan was a true artist and a gentle soul. A man who had pleaded, “Don’t hurt him,” for his abuser, even as he barely got out with his life.

  That kind of strength of character, the kind of love that could take so much wrong and still keep caring? It deserved a better reward.

  “I’ll go and make tea, shall I? Hot sweet tea is, I believe, the traditional beverage for occasions such as these.” Finn left for the kitchen.

  Michael stood in the doorway for a long moment, watching James and Aidan with a small smile of his own. The silence drew out too long. Now it was awkward, transitional, as they tried to shift from facing emergencies together to social small talk. “I’ll go and help.” Michael ducked into the kitchen too, fleeing.

  James gave in to the urge to slide closer and put his arms around Aidan’s shoulders. Aidan turned into him, gingerly placing his bruised face into the curve of James’s neck. He felt smooth skin and beard bristle and tears against his throat as Aidan wound his own arms around James’s waist and pulled him in tight.

  Oh, that was nice. The man smelled of sweat and fear, his shirt cold and drenched, but the thick muscles of his back were yielding and glorious beneath James’s hands as he allowed himself to really appreciate them for the first time, to feel the brush of that trim waist against his belly, the sturdy thigh pressing against his own.

  His mouth went dry on the sudden urge to scramble up, sit in Aidan’s lap, and capture his generous lips under his own. He leaned in for a kiss . . . and Aidan flinched.

  Not a big movement, but a definite one, a little frown, a slight turn of the head. Aidan’s eyes closed, as though there was something in James’s expression he didn’t want to see. James drew back at once, mortified. “I’m sorry. I’m sorry. I shouldn’t have. Not when you’re hurt and you’ve got so much else to worry about and . . . I’m so sorry. Obviously it must be the last thing on your mind.”

  That served him right, probably, for thinking he was some kind of hero who was going to get the girl. It didn’t work like that and it shouldn’t be expected to. Good God! Fine friend he was, making Aidan think he was somehow obliged to . . . just because James had rescued him. The thought was abhorrent.

  Instinctively, he had put himself a good foot away from Aidan, and was looking at the door to the stairs without actually seeing it. Should he get up and go right now? Or did Aidan still want him to stay?

  Aidan reached out and took his hand, derailing his building panic. “It’s all right,” Aidan said, slowly but clearly. “I’m the one who’s sorry. It just took me by surprise. You could try again. I’m prepared now.”

  That was odd. As far as encouragement went, it was rather more tepid than James preferred. Yet it wasn’t discouragement either. Some of his guilt eased in favour of confusion as Aidan shuffled closer until they were touching all down one side again.

  “Well, I think what we really need to do is get you warm and safe. We’ll have a cup of tea, and then I’ll take you to my house and you can have a shower, change into some clean clothes.”

  “Tea, I can do.” Finn returned with a teapot on a tray and one of Idris’s chocolate and walnut cakes, which he passed to James to cut—Finn’s lack of mathematical ability meant he couldn’t even cut a cake into quarters without every quarter being a different size.

  Michael followed him in, his hand wrapped around a mug of coffee. “We’ve talked about this, and we think you should stay.”

  “What?” James’s assumptions took another direct hit. “Why would we stay? You’ve done more than enough already.”

  On the opposite wall from the sofa a radiator hung in a pierced wooden frame, like a Moroccan box. Michael settled on a stool in front of it, his back pressed to the warmth. He sighed, looking more than usually heavy. “I wanted to apprehend the bastard and hand him over to the police, but you wouldn’t let me. Right?”

  If “apprehend” was a euphemism for “beat to a pulp,” this seemed accurate enough. James nodded.

  “Which means he’s still out there. He knows where you live. He’s armed, he’s dangerous, he’s probably killed before.” Michael nodded, convincing himself at least. “So you’re not going home until we’ve heard from the police that he’s in custody.”

  It had seemed easy, uncomplicated, when he’d left his office. He would go get Aidan and that would be that. After which, he could go on with his life as per normal. James took a large bite of cake and watched with pleasure as Aidan drank sugary tea and swallowed frosting as though eating was a complicated matter that required concentration. “How long will that take?”

  “I don’t know.” Michael raised his eyebrows slightly as Aidan’s hand crept out and took James’s again. All closed up again as he usually was in public, Michael had returned to being reserved and shy and stoic. But James still felt judged. “Couple of days?” Michael said. “It’s probably best to warn Dave to stay away too, until it’s resolved.”

  “It’s got nothing to do with Dave.”

  “No? Not even if he comes home for a surprise visit and finds himself the target of a man who wants to take your lover away, like you did to him?”

  Honestly, Michael was paranoid. People didn’t work like that—all melodrama and revenge. It was ridiculous. “Things don’t—”

  Michael laughed. “I like the way you can’t even remember bodies unless they’re over a century old. You forgotten him already? That guy with his throat slit, left sitting in the dark?”

  Actually, yes, he had. He closed his eyes at the reminder and saw it again: cut marks on white bone and the stains of decay. Long overdue terror crawled up the back of his throat and made him want to scream.

  “Dave and I are— I think we’re over. I really don’t think he’s likely to ever darken my doorstep again.”

  Michael looked faintly impressed but not convinced. “He’s not going to turn up with roses begging to be taken back? Or with a van to get his stuff?”

  James couldn’t see it, but he supposed he shouldn’t take that risk. Dutifully, he dialled the number. Dave picked up after seventeen rings. “Yeah, what is it?” And James felt only a kind of weary disgust at the voice.

  “It’s James. I’ve got a bit of an emergency here.”

  “Well, you fucking deal with it.”

  Dave rang off, leaving James staring at the black reflective surface of his phone with an expression even he could see was one of stony shock. Aidan’s hand curled around the back of his neck and warmed him back into life.

  He looked up, feeling gut-punched, lost. He’d really thought Dave might have been feeling something about the breakup. That wishful-thinking part of himself that said people didn’t murder was clearly also working hard on his belief that people didn’t just dump him without a second thought.

  Aidan’s gaze was on him, whiskey-coloured eyes concerned, warm and safe as sweet tea. All the weirdness of that nonkiss apart, he saw affection, maybe love. It braced him right back up. “We’re not . . . speaking, at the moment. I’ll tell his manager to warn him.” Michael hadn’t seemed to have heard this the first time, so he said it again, more definitely. “We may not be together anymore, he and I.”

  “You sure about that?” Michael fixed him with a sceptical stare, as though he couldn’t believe how vague James was being. “Is Dave sure?”

  James huffed. He hadn’t ac
tually signed up for an interrogation. “Ninety-five percent sure, at least. I really don’t think he could have mistaken my walking out on him like that. And every day makes it more certain he’s not coming back with apologies.”

  Michael shrugged, not like he didn’t care, but as if he didn’t know how to express his sympathy without sounding insincere. “Not much of a loss, to be honest.”

  “The man was a terrible thief of the traditional music.” Finn leaned back against the kitchen door and grinned. “And incapable of loving anything that wasn’t a mirror. You’re better off without him.”

  “So I keep telling myself,” James said, the energy finally running out of him like water from a water clock. He crammed a bite of nuts and chocolate frosting in his mouth because something subconscious was suddenly telling him he was starving. “And I’m sorry about this. I really didn’t mean to involve you in anything so . . .”

  Murder, manhunts? He felt guilty if he asked to borrow a book. This was . . . this was more than any friend should ask of another.

  “Oh, don’t fret about it.” Finn waved a dismissive hand. “I’d been afraid that the end of our life of crime—” he glanced at Michael “—fighting would mean we grew terribly boring. You’re enlivening our midlife crises, I assure you.”

  Aidan sat up, the little movement saying all sorts of things about how much stronger he was feeling. His look of alert curiosity made James want to cheer. No matter the complications, he had got Aidan out of there before it was too late. They had done a good thing, and here was the proof of it.

  “What guy left sitting in the dark?”

  He didn’t know. Of course he didn’t know, and James didn’t want to tell him, didn’t want to further rub in how close he had come to a grim fate. But Aidan had asked, and James did not believe in lying.

  “You know the tumulus at the end of your garden? The burial mound, I mean?”

  “Mm-hmm.” Aidan compressed himself, pressing his legs together, his forearms laid side by side on his knees as though he was cold.

  “It had been disturbed. Finn fell in, and we found a couple of skeletons inside. One was Bronze Age, but the other was . . . the other was very recent. Michael thinks it’s a murder victim. He thinks Piers killed someone and buried him there. After all, what other reason would there be for concealing a body?”

  Aidan smiled, a smile of, Oh, that’s absurd. You’ve got the wrong end of the stick. The affect was innocent and a little disconcerting under his bruises. “No. Piers told me about this. It was his mother, he said. She killed herself and his father buried her there because he was ashamed.”

  James had a brief moment of relief, interrupted by Michael hurling himself to his feet and striding out of the room. He wasn’t sure what that reaction was about, but judging from the look on Finn’s face, Finn knew and could handle it.

  “I’ll see if we have any clothes that will fit Aidan,” Finn said absently, his head turned and his attention shifted to wherever it was that Michael had gone. “James? Why don’t you show him where the bathroom is? Showers all around, clean clothes, and I’ll make dinner. We don’t need a more complicated plan than that.”

  Having covered his retreat with this believable excuse, Finn hurried after Michael, leaving James to figure out why Aidan’s explanation snagged at him like a cat’s claw. Why he could not believe it even though he wanted to. He brought that dark place out of his memory, the circle of the torch picking out the pelvic bones with their narrow sciatic notch, sweeping back up to the skull with its heavy brow. The angle of its jaw. Horror and revulsion yammered at him, trying to drown everything else out, and he shut them down because it was too important to tell the truth at this point, to be precise.

  “It wasn’t a woman’s skeleton, Aidan. I’m sorry, but there are lots of ways to tell, and this was a man, a youngish man.” The picture coalesced relentlessly in his mind, though he tried not to let it. “He was about the same age you are now, in my judgement. How old were you when you two started going out?”

  Aidan drew himself further together, pulling away from James’s embrace in the process. “Sixteen.”

  And it might not do to jump to conclusions, but certain conclusions came to you, levered up the latches on your mind, and insinuated themselves there whether you wanted them or not.

  “It’s . . . it’s a very ancient practice.” James could feel anger sitting at the back of his mind, but the academic rationalization meant it didn’t have space to take over. “The Greeks thought it was the most romantic thing in the world—the relationship between a boy and a man. But of course, what do you do when the boy grows up? When you look at him and no longer see a child grateful for your guidance, but a man with needs and opinions of his own?”

  His mouth set hard, Aidan turned his face away.

  “If you’re a good man . . .” James whispered, telling himself he was lancing a boil, he was hurting in order to heal. One needed to hear the truth because it was the truth and where else could you stand? “If you’re a good man, you rejoice that your eromenos has become mature, and you let him go. As far as the Greeks were concerned, sex of any kind was a fundamentally unequal thing, where one party acted and the other party simply accepted—and to accept was not manly. By which I mean that the redundancy was built in. Two men could not love one another as equals. When the boy grew up, it had to end.”

  “It’s stupid.” Aidan had closed his eyes, drawn his knees up, wasn’t looking at James. “What has love got to do with sex anyway?”

  That was an odd and offbeat question. Of all the objections James had expected, this had not been the foremost by a long shot. His train of thought wobbled for a moment, but then he stabilized it. “I know it’s stupid, but it’s old, powerful. Ingrained, you might say. The fact that it’s been such a powerful idea for such a long time says something about human nature. About Piers.”

  Aidan closed both hands over his face, shook his head. “You’re saying the skeleton was the beloved companion.”

  “What?” James shifted closer to him, put a hand down in the centre of his back, and felt it shaking.

  “I found a picture in the desk,” Aidan explained. “It was a boy who looked just like me. I thought—” A strangled noise, half laugh, half sob. “I thought I was the love of his life. I thought, ‘He does this only because he loves me so much, because I’m so special to him.’ But I wasn’t even the original. I was nothing more than the copy. I looked like him, that’s all.” Aidan uncurled enough to watch James’s face with devastated eyes. “Piers wrote ‘beloved companion’ on the back of the photo.” His breathing fractured, growing rough and fast. James leaned in closer, pressed flush into his side, arms around his bruised ribs.

  “There wasn’t . . . I know he wouldn’t have let him go. Piers wouldn’t have let either of us go. We were his. But he didn’t even leave the man a name. Not even his name!”

  Aidan uncurled all at once in an explosive movement, snatched one of the cushions from the sofa and flung it onto the floor, shouting something James couldn’t quite parse. The shouts turned into screams, brutal noises that sounded as though he were trying to scour the inside of his throat. He grabbed books from the coffee table and flung them after the cushions, yelling, screaming out pain and disillusionment and fury.

  But he didn’t throw the plates, didn’t touch the cups or upend the furniture or anyone’s phone or Finn’s laptop that lay charging in the corner of the floor. He threw things that wouldn’t be damaged, careful even in the extremity of emotion. Even driven too far, past his conscious control, he didn’t want to do harm.

  James let him shout himself raw, and when the anger turned into tears he swooped in close and gathered him up, a slightly rank armful of misery, who looked up, startled, when one of James’s sympathetic tears fell on the tip of his ear.

  “It’s over now.” James sniffed with the kind of determination he felt should shape the universe around itself. “It’s all over. You’re safe.”

 
; Lapsing into shaken silence, Aidan rubbed his ear and nodded pitifully. “Thank you. I’m sorry . . . I’m sorry for . . .” He struggled to his feet and began to clear up the pile of spilled things, plumping up the cushions as he put them back. He waved a hand to indicate the minor damage and himself. “I’m sorry for all of this. I don’t want to be a problem.”

  “The pair of you are far too self-effacing.” Finn must have been hiding around the stairwell door while the storm raged. He came in now with an armful of clothes and towels. “Will you stop apologizing, both of you? Aidan, go have a shower. James, you can help me make the beds.”

  They made up two spare beds, one in a small bedroom, the other in Finn’s office. When that was done, James helped Finn cook chicken in mushroom sauce for dinner. Aidan came downstairs in a Motörhead T-shirt that fitted him well and a pair of pyjama trousers that came to midcalf. Pink from heat and with his blond-tipped beech-brown hair drying in fluffy curls, he looked renewed. Fragile still, but with all the pieces joined back together and waiting for the glue to set.

  After dinner, Michael went out to his workshop. Finn went upstairs to his office, leaving James and Aidan in possession of the TV and the couch. It was warm for the first time that year, the uncurtained back window cracked open to let in the scent of water and the willows just beginning to bud. James set his back to the corner of the sofa and stretched his legs along the length of it. It came to him with a shock of revelation that he had done something adventurous and heroic today, and he was still glowing with that thought when Aidan returned from the library—once a dining room—and settled himself between James’s legs.

  James’s arms went around Aidan automatically, and he relished the man’s weight resting against him, the teasing intimacy of Aidan’s thighs pressed against his. The swell of Aidan’s buttocks tucked into his crotch, resting firmly against his suddenly eager prick. Swallowing, James tipped his head forward so he could nose the side of Aidan’s neck.