Page 55 of The Missing Page
“Then you’ll treat it that way, if I have anything to say about it. If you’re worried about what people will think, we’ve already put it about that you’re my lodger. So, now you’re my unemployed lodger. How is that any different? Nobody’s going to jump to the conclusion that you’re my…my kept man, or whatever it is you’re afraid of.”
That, at least, made Leo laugh a little. “I have some money saved. Precious few opportunities to spend much these past few years. Besides, I’m not nearly pretty enough to be anyone’s kept man.”
“Don’t sell yourself short,” James said.
“I don’t want to take anything from you. It’s too unfair if in addition to putting up with me, you’re also housing me. And don’t say you aren’t putting up with me. Who and what I am requires a certain amount of moral contortionism for you. When you look at me on the pillow next to yours, you must realize that.”
James smoothed the hair off Leo’s forehead and looked him in the eye. “Yes,” he said, fighting the urge to brush aside Leo’s worry. Everything Leo said was true, although not as dramatic as Leo made it out to be. “If you’ll excuse the tautology, if you weren’t who and what you are, then your head wouldn’t be on that pillow next to mine.”
“But—”
“No, let me finish. You keep saying things like ‘who you are’ and ‘what you do,’ as if I don’t want to be reminded of the truth. So let’s stop speaking in euphemisms. You lied and cheated and hurt and killed for a long time, generally for a good cause, but perhaps not always. And maybe it doesn’t matter how good the cause is, maybe those things are always wrong. I don’t know. What I do know is that I love you, every last dangerous and dishonest inch of you, and I wouldn’t have it any other way.” Leo shook his head and looked ready to argue, so James kissed him, and then kissed him some more. “I promise to keep telling you that,” James whispered. “Let me do that, all right?”
“Yeah,” Leo said, speaking the words into the wool of James’s jumper. “I still feel like I’m a bad bargain.”
“Leo. I feel like I’m a bad bargain too. I think that’s just how love works. Well, for neurotic people, at least. Sometimes you look at me like I’m marvelous and I think you must not have realized I’m a ball of nerves, and that’s on a good day.”
And now Leo was kissing him, backing him up hard against the sink and digging his fingers into James’s back.
“We should drink our tea before it steeps too long,” James said, being very sensible, he thought. Leo responded by raising an eyebrow and dropping to his knees.
“Go ahead and drink your tea,” Leo said, his words muffled by the fabric of James’s trousers. “I’m busy.”
And, well, James couldn’t really argue with that. He tangled his fingers in Leo’s hair.
CHAPTER THIRTY-THREE
Leo wondered when James’s mattress became the standard against which all other mattresses were to be judged. Objectively, it was a bit lumpy and sagged in the middle, but it felt correct in a way that rendered other mattresses unpleasantly alien.
Long ago, Leo had become used to waking up in strange places. But now when he woke up anywhere that wasn’t James’s bed, he was aware of disappointment before he was even awake enough to form coherent thought.
He was going to stay, this time for good. Eventually this mattress would be his mattress too, and maybe he’d stop feeling vaguely fraudulent when thinking of this house as home.
“I have to go to London,” he groaned.
“Good morning to you, too,” James said from beside him. “Do you have to go right this minute?”
It was Monday morning. He really ought to go today. The powers that be were not going to be pleased that he had bunked on his debrief. “Tomorrow. To give notice.”
“Do spies give notice? How very ordinary.”
“I suppose we’re about to find out.”
“There’s something that’s been bothering me,” James said. “I understand why Camilla adopted Lilah—she and Martha had just lost someone and might not want to see the baby go to strangers. But why did Sir Anthony agree to raise Lilah as his own? He doesn’t strike me as the sort of man to do that.”
Leo rolled over onto his side to face James. “I wonder if he thought he was buying Camilla’s silence. Or maybe he just felt guilty. I think he did care about Camilla, at least at first.”
“Should we have told Lilah what we learned?”
“You’re askingmean ethical question?”
“Why shouldn’t I?”
Leo gave James a look that he hoped conveyed exactly what he thought of that sentiment. “In that case, I think it depends on whether you want anything more to do with them. If you don’t, then it’s not your business. You can leave them to sort out their own secrets. But if you plan to have a relationship with any of them, especially Lilah, I don’t think you can keep that from her.”
“I like Lilah,” James said. “It might be nice to have one blood relation I keep in touch with.”
“Not Camilla and Martha?”
