Never a Road Without a Turning (27 page)

Pip frowned petulantly at the man, but when Ash settled back into the pillows with his arms outstretched toward Pip and his pale eyes contrite, Pip cautiously resumed his earlier position, perched on Ash’s chest, chin propped on his arm.

When Pip was settled, Ash closed his eyes and returned his hand to the back of Pip’s neck, toying with the curls at his nape, as he seemed to gather his thoughts. “You asked me once why I was mad enough to walk away from becoming a physician, only to ship myself off to war as a surgeon instead. I didn’t want to answer because I didn’t walk away. I ran. My brother arranged the whole thing to avoid a scandal at the hospital. I fell in love with one of the patients, you see. A young man of questionable birth and—I found out only later—questionable morals as well. I was young, and Tom was handsome and charming. Our affair only lasted a few weeks before he tried to blackmail me… or I should say, he succeeded. My brother paid him off, and I was sent away so the whispers in the hospital would eventually die down. That was my first love.”

Ash’s voice held nothing but self-ridicule, and even as Pip cringed inwardly about the “questionable birth,” he hurt for the youth Ash must have been, risking his heart for the first time only to have it trod upon. Pip leaned forward and brushed his lips across Ash’s in a gentle kiss. “I’m sorry, Ash.”

Ash opened his eyes and shook his head. “It was long ago. A lifetime. Besides, it set in motion a chain of events, at least some of which I’m not sorry for. After all, I went off on my grand adventure after that. First to Belgium to rout old Boney… not single-handedly of course, but people are
always
impressed when they hear I was there.” His tone had taken on a mocking edge, but Pip wasn’t sure if Ash was making fun of himself or everyone else.

“Ash,” Pip gently chided.

“What?”

“I don’t want ye t’ tell me what ye would anybody else. I want the truth,
your
truth.”

“The truth?” He laughed bitterly. “It was the first time I had ever seen a battle in my life. It was chaos, and I was petrified. I was only a surgeon’s assistant. I’d had training before I left but not enough. We started in tents on the field before we were ordered to fall back to Mont-Saint-Jean. It was all a blur of blood and screams and canon fire. We were overwhelmed in the makeshift hospitals. So many died that should have lived. I worked until I collapsed those first horrible days. But I learned quickly, and my mentors were impressed with my knowledge and abilities by the end, even if the whole time I was wondering why the hell I was there.” He shook his head ruefully. “I was never truly cut out to be a military man. But when the battle was over, and the wounded either sent home or to their graves, I wasn’t ready to go home again either. I had seen too much. I was changed. I’d like to blame my obviously damaged state of mind for what happened next, but I don’t think my conscience will allow it. You see, amidst all that horror, I was idiotic enough to fall in love again, a soldier this time, my second disastrous affair of the heart, and the one that nearly ended me.”

“Colin?” Pip whispered, remembering the name Ash had called him their last night together before he left.

Ash stiffened beneath him, and the fingers at his nape clenched. “How do you know that name?” he demanded suspiciously.

“Ye said it in yer sleep.”

“Last night?”

“No, before, at the cottage. Ye were ’aving a nightmare an’ ye kept calling ’is name.”

Pip couldn’t look at Ash as he said it, but his tone must have betrayed something, because Ash’s fingers relaxed their grip on his neck, and the suspicion in his voice melted into concern. “Did something else happen that night, Phillip?”

Pip suddenly felt cold to his bones. He shivered and reached for the blankets, drawing them the rest of the way up to his chin. When that wasn’t enough, he pressed his cheek to Ash’s breast and breathed in the man’s scent. That combined with the steady beat of Ash’s heart soothed him.

“Please, Phillip. If I did something, I need to know. I… I have spells sometimes, spaces I don’t remember, when the nightmares take me.”

Or when ye’r foxed off yer arse.

Pip swallowed and forced himself to meet Ash’s distraught gaze. “Don’t fret. It weren’t nothin’ really. I stayed with ye that night because I were worried. You were fretful and yer skin so cold. I lay with ye just to warm ye up, but ye started thrashing about and callin’ ’is name… and then ye climbed on top o’ me and tried to hold me down. I don’t remember much after that, because I panicked, like the first time ye kissed me, an’ I ran away. I knew it were a nightmare, Ash. I knew ye didn’t mean it, but I couldn’t….” Pip shivered again, and Ash pulled him up, wrapped his arms around Pip’s shoulders, and pressed a kiss to Pip’s temple.

“God, I’m so sorry, Phillip.”

Forcing the ugliness away, Pip cupped Ash’s jaw and kissed the man hard, all thrusting tongue and punishing lips, until Ash opened to his assault, surrendering to it. Eventually whatever Pip was really fighting receded from his mind, and his kisses gentled. He soothed Ash’s swollen lips with soft licks and featherlight pecks.

The man’s cheeks were flushed, and his eyelids heavy when Pip finally pulled away, but his face turned grave again as he said, “I promised you from the start that I wouldn’t try to force you to do anything you didn’t want. I’m sorry I broke my word, but I hope you can believe I never intended to.” He took a deep breath and let it out in a long sigh. “I think you deserve an explanation of what might’ve happened there. I… things between Colin and I were never what I would call salutary. I followed him halfway across the world, to the East Indies and then to the Cape, almost ten years. I thought I loved him, and I believed he loved me, in his own way. But Colin had a great many demons inside him. I suppose we both did. And no matter how hard I tried to make myself who he wanted me to be, it was never enough. The bed games he liked to play didn’t come naturally to me. He… he liked to be forced, held down and made to—well, at any rate, it didn’t matter how many times I pleaded with him, he wouldn’t be satisfied unless we did things his way.”

“Ye were angry that night,” Pip offered.

The smile Ash gave him was both bitter and sad. “I was often angry with him… and myself. He was never faithful. We shared no tenderness, no real affection unless I threatened to leave him and never come back again. Then he would become quite solicitous for a time. But it never lasted, and still I didn’t leave. Toward the end, I think I may have begun to realize I couldn’t go on like that forever, but fate stepped in and took the decision from me.”

Ash’s hand moved beneath the blankets and began rubbing his injured thigh, as if the memory were enough to cause him physical pain. When he spoke again, his voice was emotionless, as if he was recounting something from a history book. “That January, two years ago, Colin went with the expeditionary force Sir Charles MacCarthy led against the Asante Empire, while I remained behind at the Cape. I had taken ill just before they left, and it was thought I would be of more use in the small hospital there than stumbling through the wild…. Colin never came back from Nsamankow.”

Pip didn’t recognize the place names, but he understood enough that he wouldn’t ruin the moment by asking stupid questions. He had only one question he truly needed answered. “If ye were left be’ind, then ’ow…?” Pip swept his arm to indicate Ash’s leg.

The grimace that twisted Ash’s face was filled with mortification rather than the pain Pip expected. “I stayed at the Cape after the battle to fulfill my obligation, but I fully intended to sell my commission as soon as possible after. Six months before I was scheduled to leave is when it happened. A bloody supply cart. Ten years, numerous battles and skirmishes, storms at sea, and various epidemics of fever, and I’m cut down by a ruddy supply cart.” He chuckled, but it held no mirth. “The wheel cracked. The cart overturned. I wasn’t paying close enough attention, and my horse reared and fell on me. My leg was crushed and some of my ribs were broken. But given the conditions of the surgery, I was lucky to survive—although I didn’t feel particularly lucky. By the time I returned home to England, all I saw was a path leading inexorably to my pathetic end.” The faraway look in Ash’s eyes receded as he focused his gaze on Pip again, and his smile turned truly happy. “Until I met you. Come back with me, Phillip. Don’t ever leave me again. Even if I try to send you away, don’t go.”

Pip desperately wanted to say yes, anything so Ash would keep looking at him like that. But his doubts from the morning came flooding back, and the mere thought of going back to that cottage again left him cold. His throat closed, choking off the promises he would have made, and as the silence stretched between them, Ash’s smile began to fade. “What is it? What’s wrong?”

Pip could only shake his head. He had to clench his jaw to fight back the wave of conflicting emotions threatening to break him, and he couldn’t meet Ash’s gaze.

In the silence that followed, Ash’s body stiffened beneath him. “Phillip, I have swallowed what little pride I have left and travelled all the way here to beg your forgiveness, to tell you how much I need you. I have done what you asked of me and shared my pathetic and humiliating tale. I am
trying
, just as you insisted. And now… what? Are you telling me it was all for naught? Was last night and this morning a fond farewell? An apology? Pity?”

“No!”

“Then what?”

“I don’t know.”

Ash pushed Pip away then and sat up. When he reached for his leg and made to fasten it on, Pip’s indecision and paralysis eased enough for him to throw his arms around Ash’s chest, preventing him from continuing. “Don’t, Ash. Wait. Please?”

“What am I waiting for? You tell me to stay, but you won’t tell what you’re thinking. You tell me it isn’t a farewell or pity, but you won’t say what it is. When I beg for your promise, you won’t give it. How can I understand when you won’t talk to me… if you won’t tell me
your
truth, as you so eloquently put it?”

Ash’s words stabbed at him, all the deeper for the truth they held. Once again, Ash was proving himself the better man. All of Pip’s doubts and fears, desires and wishes were suddenly overwhelming him, and he felt as if he might shake apart at the conflicting feelings inside him.

And that was when he must have taken leave of his senses, because he vaulted from the bed and began pacing the icy room in nothing but his skin, ranting like a madman and flailing his arms about without any consideration for his pride, his dignity, or his vanity. If Ash wanted the truth, Pip would give it to him in all its ugliness and utter madness.

“My truth? My truth is that I’m a bloody wreck! I ’ave been since the first day I met you, mooning about one minute like a blighted heroine in one o’ them wretched novels, and then the next happier than I’ve been in me entire cursed life!” Pip rounded on Ash as his fury mounted. “It’s all yer fault. I were doin’ fine afore I met ye. I could see me road stretching straight out in front of me, smooth and peaceful, even if I didn’t know quite where it were leadin’. Then
you
come along an’ turn everythin’ on its ear. I can’t think straight ’alf the time for wantin’ ye.” Pip stopped and took in a deep shuddering breath. “My truth is, I love ye, ye stubborn bastard! I want to be with ye more’n anythin’. But I can’t go back to that ’ouse, skulkin’ about in the shadows just to spend a few precious minutes with ye afore I have to go back to me empty bed alone, not able to talk to ye or laugh with ye… or even sit and read to ye without the ’ousekeeper lookin’ at me sideways! But, then, low as I am, I ’ave no right to ask any more of ye than that, do I?” Pip laughed mirthlessly. “And do ye know what the funniest part of that is? Ye don’t even know the worst of it yet!”

Pip’s breaths were huffing in and out of his lungs like a bellows now, and his hands were fisted at his sides so tight the knuckles cracked.

Ash’s initial shock at his outburst seemed to fade and his expression turned into real concern the longer Pip went on. Toward the end Pip’s tirade, Ash rose and stood beside the bed, naked as Pip, grasping the post to keep himself upright, his false leg forgotten on the floor. “Phillip, come here.” His voice was soft and cajoling. He beckoned with his free arm, nothing but heart-wrenching care in his eyes, and Pip rushed to him, pressed the lengths of their bodies together, wrapped his arms around Ash, and clung to him.

“You love me?” Ash asked in a whisper against Pip’s neck.

Of all the nonsense Pip had just spewed, of course the man would only listen to that part. “Aye,” Pip answered grudgingly.

Ash drew in as deep a breath as Pip’s viselike grip on his ribs would allow. His long exhale ruffled the curls behind Pip’s ear. “What is it that you want from me?”

Pip made a frustrated noise at the back of his throat and gave Ash a few shakes without letting the man go. “I want
you
. I want to sleep next to ye at night and be by yer side during the day. I want to eat with ye and drink with ye and talk with ye. I want what Master Carey and Master Carruthers ’ave. That’s what.”

“Do you think I don’t want that too? Of course I do. But you have to know how lucky those men are to have found such loyal and sympathetic servants. The rest of the world is not so forgiving, Phillip, and I couldn’t bear to risk your life by pretending it is.”

Pip let his head fall to Ash’s shoulder, feeling suddenly exhausted from his outburst and defeated as well. “I know.” Pip pulled away then and collapsed onto the edge of the bed. He propped his elbows on his knees and dropped his face into his hands as hopelessness swamped him. “It ain’t only that, Ash. At least Master Carey and Master Carruthers are closer in circumstance than you an’ me. We’re practically from different worlds, we are. Even if we could get so lucky with a ’ousekeeper like Maud, who would ever believe I ’ad the right t’ even set foot inside yer door, let alone spend me days with ye? Look at me. Coarse and common as I am, I’m not even fit t’ clean yer boots. Why should ye offer me more’n ye already ’ave?”