Page 30 of The Missing Page
James felt his cheeks heat despite the cold. “I know we never talked about it.”
Leo snorted. “Did we have to? I rather thought the latchkey to your house meant—”
“It did.” They had never talked about this—about what they were doing together, about what this meant. James didn’t have the words for it; he hardly had the emotions for it. All he knew was that when he thought about the future, he wanted it to be with Leo. And now they had just—James was pretty sure they had just promised one another fidelity, and the thought made him feel almost lightheaded with some combination of relief and fear.
“In any event, you don’t have to worry about it. As I said, it’s not an issue that arises anymore. And even if it did, I have other means at my disposal.”
“The flirting, though,” James said, and immediately wanted to hide behind his muffler.
“Are you jealous?” asked Leo, with obvious interest.
James took a moment to consider. “Just a little.” He paused and adjusted his own muffler, then turned to tighten Leo’s. “But it doesn’t exactly bother me.” Some primitive part of him wanted to lay claim to Leo, wanted to snarl at anyone who got too close to him. That was a mortifying thought; besides, Leo was a flirt by nature and James didn’t want him to change. “Leo, I—” He was aware of Leo’s gaze on him and knew that whatever he said next had to matter. “I know what we are to one another,” he said, and then immediately regretted it when Leo didn’t respond. “I mean,” he went on, “I know you like me best. Which makes me sound like a petulant child, and I do wish you’d say something or that perhaps a tree would fall on my head to shut me up because—”
Leo pulled him behind a high garden wall and took his face between cold, dry hands. “To say that I like you best may be understating the case.” The sun was now low in the sky; they were sheltered from view by the wall and given privacy by the fact that few people would choose to take a stroll on a February evening that was getting progressively colder. “I like you so much that I feel certain you shouldn’t allow it. Somebody, at least, ought to stop me.”
“That,” James said, before brushing his lips across Leo’s, “is one of the stupidest things you’ve ever said.”
“I say a lot of stupid things.” Leo wrapped his arms around James’s neck. “You’re just blinded by affection.”
There was a question lurking behind Leo’s words, but James didn’t know what it was. Throughout this whole conversation there had been a current running beneath everything Leo said, some secret meaning that James wasn’t subtle enough to grasp or brave enough to ask about. “Am not,” he said, speaking the words against Leo’s skin, his lips barely touching the corner of Leo’s mouth.
Leo leaned closer, trapping James between the stone wall and Leo’s chest. The wall was cold and rough but Leo was warm, his heart thudding reassuringly against James’s own. He gave James the sort of kiss that was right at home in shadowy secrecy and against rough stone walls—hard and deep and a little filthier than James was expecting. Leo was rather horrifyingly good at this sort of kiss.
“Where are you spending the night?” James asked. “And why can’t it be in my bed?”
“Tomorrow we’ll be—we’ll be back in Wychcomb St. Mary,” Leo said, and James had the distinct impression that he had been about to sayhome. He hadn’t realized how much he wanted to hear Leo say that word until now. “I don’t care if ten uncles leave you cryptic bequests and I don’t care if twenty cousins disappear into thin air. I’ll cart you away from here even if I have to chloroform you,” Leo went on, his voice rough and his breath warm against James’s cheek.
Their lips met again, only hungrier. James decided it was a good thing that he was too old and too prudent—not to mention too cold—to take things much further. He slowed the kiss down, letting some of the hunger dissipate, letting the heat become replaced with something less urgent.
“I should go soon,” Leo said. “My car is ready. Come up with an excuse to invite me in for supper, though? Mrs. Carrow is making beef stew and I won’t stop thinking about it until I’ve had some.”
“I also need to show you the photographs I found,” James said. “And we need to talk to Madame—or Gladys, rather,” James said.
“Immediately,” Leo agreed, but gave James another kiss before heading back to the house.
CHAPTER NINETEEN
It turned out that they couldn’t talk to Gladys right away because when they walked through the door, Martha intercepted them.
“You’ll need to stay for dinner, if you please, Mr. Page,” she said briskly. “The table is already set for eight. Odd numbers are so unpleasant, don’t you think, with the people on one side always more squashed than the other?”
“Good heavens,” James said after Martha disappeared around a corner in the direction of the kitchen. “That’s the Cousin Martha I remember. Rather like being visited by a ghost.”
Leo was all too aware that he hadn’t yet told James his suspicions about Martha’s particular reasons for being secretive about the events of summer 1927. But James was presently looking warm and pleased, his hair rumpled from the wind and Leo’s fingers, and Leo just didn’t have it in him to pierce his air of cheerful well-being.
“Who was she going to have occupy the eighth chair if I hadn’t come in just then?” Leo asked, hanging his coat and hat and then James’s.
“Hostesses have a list of single gentlemen they can call upon at the last minute to make up their numbers,” James said.
“Do they really? I mean, in 1948 and not an Anthony Trollope novel?”
“Some still do. I can rely on one good dinner a month from such an emergency,” he added, grinning sheepishly. “Things are much more casual now than they used to be, and nobody worries too much about seating two women next to one another, but old-fashioned ladies do worry about it if they fancy themselves good hostesses.”
“And is your cousin a good hostess?” Leo asked, genuinely curious. From what he had seen, Martha Dauntsey was vague, scatter-brained, and distracted. If she had once cared about hospitality, something must have happened to change that. Could the loss of her cousin be enough to explain such a shift?
“She certainly was,” James said. “And before you say that a child isn’t likely to notice how well a house is kept, I’ll remind you that a growing boy certainly notices when there isn’t enough food or when dinner is late. And I remember nothing of the sort. There’s an entire third story of guest rooms that must be quite uninhabitable in winter but which used to be filled with guests every summer. She kept everything going. Picnics and garden parties and both girls’ debuts.” He paused at the base of the stairs. “I’m going to put our coats upstairs and get changed,” he said, reaching out his hand for Leo’s coat.
Before James disappeared up the stairs, he paused for a moment, looking at Leo. He often did this before taking his leave, in that fleeting space of time when a man might kiss a girlfriend or his wife. Leo had grown to look forward to those tiny moments, when somehow James managed to convey in a single glance the easy affection that a kiss on the cheek might do. Nothing passed between them except eye contact—not a touch, not so much as a move to bridge the gap between them. But Leo still felt held close. He felt—God help him—dear and precious, sensations that were so new after only a few months that they felt peculiar, as if he were wearing a new style of hat and wasn’t quite sure it suited him.
