1 Chapter 1
Seacliff Manor, 1770
Ellis had been watching waves through the bedroom’s storm-lashed windows when he heard the step, felt the presence behind him. He turned, a reflex. A year or two ago, ignoring those pirate’s instincts might’ve got him a quick dagger to the back. These days, and this day especially, he knew Thomas’s step.
Tom, as usual, blithely ignored whipcord muscles and danger and the very real possibility that Ellis could kill a man with a piece of rope or that painting to their left, and instead slipped arms around him. Ellis Eden, former pirate, had not often been held and comforted by anyone. Not until Thomas Winleigh, youngest son of that fabulously wealthy merchant family, published poet and literary sensation.
Tom leaned against him, short and messy-haired and shameless about affection, here in this house, their home. “Missing the sea?”
“You shouldn’t be up,” Ellis said, but folded a long arm around him anyway. “Let me take you back to bed.” It wasn’t even evasion; it was true. Tom in a dressing gown, barefoot and rumpled, was fantastical, fairylike, thin and beautiful and magical, the most perfect dream of art that a painter could wish for.
And Tom remained unsteady on his feet and easily exhausted since the fever of a month ago, the fever that’d left him and Ellis’s heart equally fragile.
They’d only been together a year. Just over a year, now: that anniversary had come while Tom lay ill and semi-lucid, dreaming, shivering. When he’d been awake he’d held Ellis’s hand.
Ellis Eden, who’d commanded a ship and plundered vessels and wielded a sword, couldn’t fight a fever. Couldn’t stab death or march grief off a plank. Couldn’t do anything to save the man he loved.
Tom said that wasn’t true. Tom said that he’d felt Ellis at his side, heard Ellis’s voice, felt that love like an anchor. Tom said that had mattered: someone real, someone to come back to, someone to fight for.
Tom, being a poet and an incurable romantic, said many things. Ellis had not ever believed in poetry, or romance, or true love conquering all. He’d only known he couldn’t give up.
The storm crashed and billowed beyond the old manor house windows, thundering over the lake, which thundered back: an answer, or a question, or a vow.
“I truly am on the mend, you know.” Tom leaned more weight against him. He most likely meant this as affection; Ellis worried about his ability to stand.
Surreptitiously, he held on a bit more tightly. Eyed the closest chair in their bedroom. Blue and gold, overly ornate, but Tom liked it; perhaps the chair wouldn’t mind taking some weight if necessary. And the bed was right there. The shortest route would involve kicking a pair of slippers out of the way. The slippers would move. He’d ensure that.
Tom went on, not privy to Ellis’s convictions about kicking footwear on his behalf, “It’s the middle of the afternoon, in any case, and I feel ridiculous taking naps all day. And I woke up to this…” One thin hand waved at the billowing sky, the pounding waves of the lake below, the crackle and life and lightning in the air. “I couldn’t go back to sleep. And you were up, anyway. And it wanted me to come and find you.”
“It.”
“The weather.” Tom threw a grin at him. Love lay behind the expression; Ellis had not thought much about the color of love, before, but he thought these days that it might be the exact shade of Tom’s eyes, the clear deep blue of the sky after a tempest. “The storm. Restless.”
“The weather’s…restless. Pleaselet me take you to bed. I’ll read to you. Jonathan Swift. Or Daniel Defoe. I know how much you enjoy improbably exaggerated tales of adventure. I won’t even laugh.”
“You will. You always do. But I rather like that, you know. My pirate.”
Ellis sighed, mostly for effect. That one was more or less a private joke, these days. “Privateer, thank you. Perfectly legal.” Dubious legality at best; still, it’d meant protection for his crew, and if not for the day he’d intercepted a merchant vessel full of brandy and silk, with the lovely twenty-three-year-old representative of the Winleigh merchant family on board, he would’ve never met the man who made him want to imagine a future.
They’d both been younger, then. Not so much in terms of time. But different people. Not having found this, this life, this joy.
But they were here now. And without his former life, that wouldn’t’ve happened. So he tried not to complain when Tom teased him about pillaging and capturing and plunder.
Tom rather appreciatedbeing plundered, in any case. Ellis knew this for an undeniable and very enjoyable fact, and was perfectly willing to indulge the stereotype, just for him.
