Kindred Hearts by Rowan Speedwell Page A

gone away, popping up at inopportune moments, when he was lost in sexual excitement. Was that a clue? Was that his body telling him something he had never wanted to admit to himself?
     
    He ached to unbutton his trousers and take himself in hand, but to do that was to cave in, to admit—what? That he was damned. That he desired another man—not only another man, but his bloody brother-in-law. Adultery was one thing; he knew he was damned for that, but even that was forgivable. This—sodomitical tendency—was not. Could not be. It wasn’t him. He’d never….
     
    But he had. He knew he had. Not only in the firelit inn, but other times. Watching a mill, caught up in the excitement, the press of warm male bodies, the scent of sweat and blood and gin.
     
    At Angelo’s, watching supple forms dance in their deadly minuet.
     
    At Jackson’s, half-naked in the company of other half-naked men, relishing the contact of blows on muscled flesh.
     
    His blood had heated, his body hardened. He’d tossed it off as purely physical excitement. It had meant nothing. But it had. He’d lied to himself, but it had meant something. Something that needed to be slaked in a woman’s willing body.
     
    Slaked, but never satisfied.
     
    Shaken, he found himself weeping, as if he’d lost his soul.
     
    Sleep came after tears, but a sleep shattered by dreams: of that scene in the inn room, but with the golden head turning to face him where he stood in the doorway; Major Mountjoy’s face looking at him, smiling that warm smile, inviting him to join them, or worse, smiling, but not inviting him, laughing as he stood there watching, forever shut out of that warm embrace, that heated, firelit fucking….
     
    When he awoke, it was to Reston laying out his clothes for dinner. He rose, nodded at Reston’s greeting, then washed up. His head still ached, but he was determined not to show his despair and went down to dinner composed, if not content.
     

     

     
    “Oh, dear,” Charlotte said placidly. “I hope he is not unwell.”
     
    Charles stared at the door. So that was Tristan Northwood.
     
    He was thinner than Charles had expected; he had had an image of the typical bluff and hearty squire of the drinks-too-much, eats-too-much variety, but Tristan was tall and lean and there were hollows beneath those cool pewter eyes. God, what eyes—like stormclouds lit from beneath by a setting sun. The rest of him was equally striking: the dark wing of eyebrow, the long, chiseled nose, the curved, sensuous lips—the mouth of a hedonist, of a small, spoiled boy, and yet, when he smiled, there was something sweet and innocent in his face that hit Charles like a brick. “I trust,” he said, then he paused, cleared his throat, and went on, “I trust I said nothing to distress him?”
     
    “Oh, probably not. Tristan sometimes gets these headaches—I don’t think he sleeps particularly well, at least according to his valet. He insists there’s nothing wrong, and refuses to see a physician. Perhaps you might have more influence on him. He doesn’t like me to worry.”
     
    “He does care for you, then.” Strange—he’d got the impression that he had disturbed Tristan fully as much as Tristan had affected him. But if Tristan loved Lottie…?
     
    “Oh, we are quite good friends,” Lottie said.
     
    “I meant ,” he said patiently, “that he loves you.”
     
    Lottie considered this a moment. “I think he does, but not in a romantic sort of way,” she said meditatively. “He is a very romantic sort of person, but I don’t think he feels romantic about people . I think he just expects people to disappoint and so doesn’t have very high expectations of them.”
     
    “Do you disappoint him?” Charles asked curiously.
     
    “I don’t think so.” Lottie thought a moment. “I think, probably, because I never promised him anything. He doesn’t expect anything of me, nor I of him, and so we can be quite comfortable.” She patted