Muffled Drum (14 page)
Authors: Erastes
Rudolph shook his head and tightened his arm around Mathias. “I’m sorry. God alone knows I wish it was otherwise. I remember this picture, and that’s all. As much as I may want and wish for it, I don’t have the memories of the past two years…our last two years. I had flashes, disorienting images that made me think I was going mad, but that’s all. They tell me there’s no guarantee I’ll ever get them back.”
Mathias placed a kiss on his chest. “It doesn’t matter. We can make all new memories, better than any of the old ones, and none of them will involve dead comrades, mud and lice. But…”
Rudolph went still, dreading what Mathias’s “but” would be.
“No more Ernsts.”
“No more Ernsts. How could I, when I…” Words failed him and he pulled Mathias close. The words
I love you
stuck in his throat. It seemed an odd thing to say to a soldier, and yet…he
did
love Mathias. Of that he had no doubt. He kissed Mathias again, this time with his eyes closed, as if daring the specter of Ernst to haunt him. But nothing came to confuse him this time. The only face and figure he could imagine was this one in his arms, this solid, muscled equal of a man. “You’re taking on a risk, with me,” he said, finally, his voice thick with emotion.
Mathias pushed him back and looked him straight in the eyes. “That was always the case,” he said. “I never doubted you.”
Rudolph smiled a little at that. But he wasn’t going to parade Mathias’s doubt now—or ever. “That’s not what I mean. My mind. My memory. Everything I’ve lost of you.”
“When we’re alone like this, I’ll tell you it all, in intimate detail,” Mathias said, moving down in the bed and kissing Rudolph’s chest. “And it will please me to tell it all. Every…thrust and every riposte.”
Rudolph felt himself hardening again at that teasing voice and the promise of many enticing bedtime stories. “You know what the doctor said, though. I may yet go mad.”
Mathias smiled widely. He pulled Rudolph to him and kissed him long and soundly, making it clear that whatever happened, they went on together. A glow of fierce pride swelled up in Rudolph and for a moment he felt ridiculously sentimental.
“How on earth,” Mathias said, after the kiss as he straightened Rudolph’s moustache, “would anyone be able to tell?” The remains of Mathias’s pomade left a greasy feel to Rudolph’s chest and he rubbed at it in distaste.
“Well,
you’ll
have to take me as you find me then,” Rudolph said. “With a memory full of holes and the responsibility of being Uncle Mathias to two children who may drive
you
insane. But that pomade will definitely have to go.”
When Mathias started to laugh, Rudolph wondered what on earth it was he’d said.
Erastes is the pen name of a female author of gay historical fiction. Having circumnavigated the globe in the ’80s with nothing more than a handful of dollars and a backpack, she’s lived and worked both sides of the equator, but other than Venice she’s found nowhere she loves to live as well as the Norfolk Broads, where she lives now—firmly under the paw of three demanding cats. Author of eight novels and more than twenty short stories, Erastes is a Lambda award finalist and a keen lover of history. She began writing full-time after leaving the legal profession, finding it stranger than any fiction.
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ISBN: 978-1-4268-9186-1
Copyright © 2011 by Erastes
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All characters in this book have no existence outside the imagination of the author and have no relation whatsoever to anyone bearing the same name or names. They are not even distantly inspired by any individual known or unknown to the author, and all incidents are pure invention.
This edition published by arrangement with Harlequin Books S.A.
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