Chapter 6
He found a gap in the crowd beside a window and a large potted fern. He tried to breathe in, to breathe out. His head throbbed.
The fern offered leafy green condolences, but couldn’t do anything much more practical. Robert tugged at his cravat.
He wanted to peel off his stifling jacket and waistcoat. He wanted to run. He wanted to see the world, to touch the waters of the Mediterranean, to see the sands of Africa, to walk through the ruins of Greece—he wanted to find everyplace he’d only read about in books, a world full of life and color and vibrancy—
He wanted everything he could not have, and would never have. Because he would be married to a boy barely of age, a pretty young man who’d never known any of those things either, and who looked at him as if Robert might devour him whole, while Robert’s skin remembered the brush of Anthony’s fingers—