PART III

England, 1778

Funerals were ghastly affairs, as far as Arthur was concerned. The very idea of a public ceremony of grief seemed oxymoronic. What was more private than one's feeling of loss? Those who spoke at a funeral had to be careful not to let their emotions overwhelm them. A woman couldn't be blamed for becoming teary-eyed, but a man was expected to have only a solemn tone of voice, nothing beyond that. Thusly, Arthur declined the responsibility of giving his father's eulogy, instead letting a fellow nobleman do it. They had known each other longer than Arthur had known his father, so at least it made sense. Still, Arthur felt ashamed that he was sitting between his wife and his mother while another man spoke so fondly and respectfully of his deceased father. His mother dabbed at her eyes with a handkerchief, and—seated on her other side—Owen took her free hand in his, a gesture of support. He was the youngest son; there were three other brothers between him and Arthur, but they were all abroad, too far to reach the news of the funeral in a timely manner. The last thing Arthur wanted to do was postpone the terrible thing just for his brothers' sake. Besides, two of them had decided to get drafted, and had been shipped off to America. Arthur couldn't bear to think of the lives being wasted across the ocean. He wished Amelia was here, but if she was, Alistair would be too, and Arthur did not want to see Alistair.

I wish things were simple, he caught himself thinking. Life was easy once, where has that gone?

Nothing would be simple now. His worries would be multiplied tenfold. He was a lord, now. Lord Arthur Kirkland. People would address him as sir. The maids and the butler of the mansion would call him milord. He would be in charge of whether other people had homes or not. What if people couldn't afford to pay the taxes he charged? And what if he was called to give an important opinion on a serious matter? What if he was the difference between a criminal being gaoled or hanged? What if . . . ?

Marianne gave him a smile. It was forced, as all of her smiles toward him were these days, but there was some genuine sympathy in her eyes. She wasn't cold enough to shrug off the death of her father-in-law, or, at least, not cold enough to pretend it didn't hurt Arthur. This was the first (and last, as it would end up being) time he had seen her in black. The mourning gown brought out the golden waves of her hair, the sky-blue of her irises, the deep pink of her lips. She was still beautiful, that was the most bothersome part of it. He loved her—of course he did, she was his wife—but it would but so much easier to hate her if she was ugly.

He couldn't recall what had started their feud. Some petty disagreement, he suspected. An argument that was dropped one day and just had to be brought up again the next. Friction turned to bitterness, they began to fight over the fact that they were still fighting, a self-fulfilling prophecy. One thing was certain—he was absolutely not in the wrong. The woman didn't care about anything that mattered; she was forever accusing him of blowing things out of proportion. Their priorities were always at opposition. They hadn't shared a kiss or a loving touch in months. They hadn't made love since Peter was conceived, and even that was a travesty. (He'd breathed wine fumes over her neck. Would you like to have another child, my dearest? She'd just sighed and turned her face away. Just get it over with.) People claimed that the French were the most romantic of any nationality. Well, Arthur had proof that was not the case, and her name was Marianne.

After the burial and the endless Englishmen and ladies floating over to give their condolences, Arthur was approached by his fellow nobles—members of parliament, men who sat in the House of Lords, men who had just enough power over the country to make nearby flowers wilt slightly—who said nothing, but they didn't need to. Their dark, stately, imperious gazes were all he needed to know: the time had come. Arthur turned to his family, this haphazard gathering of a French woman, Spanish and Prussian men, and two of his children, none of whom looked affected by this turn of events. Arthur wondered if they—or anyone, for that matter—would care if he were to die. They would go to his funeral, of course. Wouldn't they?

"I've work to do," he told them. "Matters to attend. You shall have to return home without me until we can find a home for ourselves in London."

Marianne's eyes blazed, and a despicable, dreadful fury rose in Arthur. Not here, you stupid woman. Of all places to challenge me, not here. Do not dare. She seemed to sense this in him, because her voice was soft as she replied, "We will talk about it later. But we will go home. Not to the mansion."

He would not make the other lords wait. He gave her a sharp nod, a look of disapproval made impressive by his thick eyebrows, and did his best to snuff the flames inside him as he joined his pack of aristocrats.

Watching them go, Marianne could barely tell one from the other, and it did not surprise her in the least that her husband blended in with them almost instantly, set apart only by his small size and golden hair. Walking with them, he took on their posture: shoulders back, stiff-legged, nose in the air. He became the man she had been forced to court so long ago, but somehow worse. He wasn't at all like a member of her family. But he never was, she thought to herself, taking Mathieu's hand in her left and Peter's in her right. We were never alike. We could never have come together. Fire and water, that's what we are.

When a carriage passed by suddenly, splashing muddy water from a hole in the cobbles, it was Antonio who stepped in front to save her from the splash. She smiled generously at him. "Thank you, Toni, but this dress couldn't get any worse."

Antonio shrugged in his good-natured way, smiling back at her. This had happened before, and now that he was back, it was happening again: they would catch each other's eye and be unable to look away. The Spaniard's eyes were such a different green than Arthur's, infinitely softer, and almost a bit hazel, as if through his impeccable breeding Arthur had managed to get perfect emeralds of eyes and Antonio's had flaws, imperfections. Who would ever prefer perfection over something unique?

"I would have done the chivalrous guard against mud, too," Gilbert remarked to Mathieu, "but I thought it would be best to let him do it, since he's already brown."

No one knew why Arthur Kirkland's family were vulgar enough to laugh outside of a funeral home, but no amount of pointed frowns in their direction could interrupt their merriment, and when the group left London—with Gilbert goading the horses into a gait that bounced the carriage along the somber streets—there was not a single Briton who didn't feel the tiniest sense of relief.

. . .

When they finally got home, Mathieu took Gilbert on a tour of the estate, showing him the little details of their world, from the shaded patch of grass that always grew little brown mushrooms (Arthur said it was a place for fairies to dance, an oddly fanciful notion on his part), to the trail they had made into the woods that led to a fallen log. The tree had been massive; it was as wide across as Gilbert's shoulders. It had been rough when they first found it months ago, but they had picked off the harder outer bark to reveal the pale inner wood, like skin off a bone. Gilbert and Mathieu sat down together on the log, a few inches of space between them. Mathieu had never been so aware of the air around himself. Gilbert didn't seem bothered by it at all, or aware of anything between them. Naturally, because there wasn't anything between them. Mathieu was just being silly, he knew. I'm just looking for a father, he told himself. I lost my grandfather and I don't know my father as well as most do. I'm just trying to solve that problem with Gilbert. It seemed a bit selfish, using someone like this. Mathieu would have left him alone, if not for two things: one, Gilbert had held him while he cried, and two, Gilbert was the funniest person Mathieu had ever met.

Why is your hair so grey?

I saw a spirit.

Really?

No, I just dreamed I did one night.

A dream changed your hair?

No, when I woke up from the dream, I saw myself in a looking-glass.

And why did that make your hair grey?

If you saw what I look like before dawn, you would lose your color, too.

Currently, he was telling a story about his last visit—years ago, before Mathieu was born—to the fine country of England.

". . . So of course I fought the idiot. He was twice as drunk as I was, and he seemed to think I wouldn't stand a chance against him because I have, as he called it, sodomish hair." For the last two words, he put on an incredibly nasal and exaggerated West End accent, making Mathieu cover his mouth to stifle his giggles. Gilbert rolled his eyes. "Oh ja, Englishmen are very polite, especially when they're full of their watery beer. Anyway, I fought him, put him down, and I would have fought his friend, too, if Antonio didn't think it was time to leave. He's an old woman, always ruining the fun. He knows I could take down a whole—what do you call them, pubs? I could take a whole mob of Englisch if I wanted to, sober or otherwise."

Mathieu believed him. The Prussian was louder than life; he seemed downright alien compared to the people Mathieu had grown up with. "That's a pretty rude thing to call someone, even if it is just their hair. You must have come across a bad group of people. I've only heard it once, and it was my uncle Alistair saying it. Grandmother got angry at him for it."

Gilbert nodded. "Unsurprising. Do you know what it means?"

"Well . . ." Mathieu had to shake his head. "Not exactly. I guess . . . it's a word for when men . . ." He couldn't help but blush, trying to think of a chaste way to phrase it. "Men who . . . take other men into their bedrooms."

Gilbert watched him with an intensity he hadn't had a moment ago. "That's right. Do you know any men like that?"

"No! Of course not. It's illegal. And—sinful."

A weariness entered the Prussian's eyes, and he simply repeated dully, "That's right."

The conversation lulled into silence. Rather hesitant, Mathieu asked, "Do you know any, er, sodomites?" He said the word tentatively; it had never passed his tongue before. It tasted like soot. He didn't plan to say it ever again (and, as a matter of fact, he never did).

Gilbert stretched his legs out in front of him. Not avoiding the boy's gaze, but not making an effort to meet it, either. "Yes, I do."

This man just got more and more exotic. Next he would be saying he knew pirates! "Where do they live? Aren't they afraid of getting found out?"

"Kid." Gilbert's eyes had darkened. His humor had run out. "I thought you were clever."

Inwardly, Mathieu bristled at being called a child. He was fifteen, what fifteen-year-old was still called kid? How condescending. But he didn't say that. He just narrowed his eyes slightly. Gilbert wanted him to think before he spoke, so he would. The way the Prussian spoke, something was obvious. But what. . . .

His eyes widened, lips parted, in realization. "Oh."

Gilbert crossed his arms over his chest, giving Mathieu a sidelong glare. This posturing was not from anger, however; it was simply a raising of hackles, a baring of teeth, a defensive display to a potential threat. Something about it made the man seem heartbreakingly vulnerable; it made him seem so much younger than he was. Mathieu, laying a gentle hand on the man's sleeve, had the sense that their ages were swapped. For a moment, the roles of wise elder and self-conscious youth were traded.

Red eyes met violet. A young aura, an old soul. Though neither noticed, the birdsong around them fell silent.

"Your secret," Mathieu whispered, "is safe with me."

For what seemed like an eternity, Gilbert remained motionless. Then, suddenly, his strong hands were cupping Mathieu's face, calloused fingers gently framing the boy's soft cheeks. Gilbert's gaze searched Mathieu's face so fiercely his breath caught in his throat. He had never felt such deep longing before, such a thrilling excitement in his chest, like a jar full of butterflies, iridescent wings flapping to a cascading overflow. His fate stood on a cliff edge, ready to tip over to the terrible, terrific, terrifying unknown. If only—if only. . . .

Gilbert abruptly stood up. The loss of his touch was like the coldest winter, so chilling it felt hot. He kept his back to Mathieu as he muttered, "I'm thirty-eight, and you're fifteen. Think about that, before you let me . . . do anything. You're the clever one, Mäuschen. Don't let me ruin your life."

And with that, he walked away, leaving Mathieu to droop in his absence, his spine seeing no reason to hold himself upright. He had thought Gilbert and Antonio had come to solve the Kirklands' problems, but now was the first time he considered how easily it would be for them to make more. After all, the Kirkland home was a bed of warm coals; all it would take was the tiniest breeze to send the whole thing up in flames.

. . .

Inside the house, Antonio and Marianne shared a glass of wine in the kitchen. This had become the one place she felt comfortable under Arthur Kirkland's roof. It was her domain, hers alone. Only the maid and, occasionally, one of the children—but never more than one at a time, for some reason—entered into her territory. Not once in their united seventeen years had Arthur once step foot in the kitchen. Even when they were fighting, Marianne gave him no reason to come in; if he wanted wine or a snack from the pantry, she insisted on getting it. It was her private space, just as his office was his space. Two forces could not be at war without a base of operations. He needed a place to think; she needed a place to cry.

"So," Antonio said. "Marriage."

"Marriage," she agreed grimly, tipping back her glass. She'd considered turning to drink a few times in the past, but she couldn't bring herself to do it, not with children. All of her possible methods of escape—the drink, a blade, fleeing into the night—were thwarted by the children. She could not leave them behind. People compared marriage to shackles, but the true chains were those that connected parents to their children. Bound by blood. And love, she added mentally. Always love.

"I can't let him treat you like this." He looked, as he so often did, helpless to the passion inside him. No man was led by their heart more than Antonio Carriedo.

Marianne felt tears prick the corners of her eyes. "It is his right. He is a man, he can do what he wants." Her voice hardened, but it was brittle, and cracked. "He is the master."

Antonio's thumb brushed her chin. "You are not a slave. You deserve to be treated like a—"

"A princess?" she asked, a scornful smile on her lips, made half-hearted by the sorrow in her eyes.

He shook his head, voice lowering until it rasped in his chest, reminding her again that he was a man, a sensually handsome man whose gaze bathed her in the awed admiration of the devoted worshipper to . . . "A goddess."

She closed her eyes. Not since that night nineteen years previously, when the Spanish sailor finally found the courage (or the stupidity) to take the French captain's daughter to a small seaside shack and lose himself in the waves of her hair, had she felt such a force inside her. She trembled with it. Want and need, nostalgia and desire.

"I can't," she whispered, because even if it wasn't true, it had to be said. The truth, or a version of it, was that she shouldn't. Adultery was a sin. She didn't know how it was punished in England. Was it against the law? She didn't think so. But it might as well have been. Especially for a woman. A lady, overcome by erotic cravings? Unthinkable.

Antonio breathed a long sigh against her hair. "Do you remember what you said, that morning, before I left?"

She could see him, in the black space behind her eyelids, still a bit gangly for nineteen, his hair unkempt as always, backlit in the bleak morning light. There was the most terrible storm that night, the sky mirroring her anguish at being abandoned, punishing all sailors for the crime of one, pelting the world with rain and wind. She prayed that Antonio and Gilbert would make it through safely. (They had, obviously, but she had no way of knowing. She'd learned long ago that it was best to accustom herself to the possible death of any of the sailors she knew. They could go at any time, and it hurt more when it was allowed to shock.)

"Oui," she replied under her breath. "I told you to take me with you."

The Spaniard's hand warmed the small of her back. The regret in his words was pungent, like gunmetal. "I should have listened."

She wrapped her arms around him, and he kissed the tears from her cheeks.

She said, "We cannot do this where the children can see."

An emphatic nod.

"And Gilbert can't know, either. Not yet. It must be our secret."

Antonio looked a bit reluctant to hide something this important from his comrade, but he nodded again.

"Good, then," Marianne said shortly, stepping out of his embrace to refill their glasses with wine. Mon Dieu, I sound like Arthur. He had a way of ending even the most heartfelt conversation—not that they had a surplus of those—with a right, jolly good, thank you indeed as if he was about to shake hands with someone over a successful business meeting. It made everything he said before seem artificial. "He did love me once," she heard herself murmur. "Maybe he still does. But I don't belong with him."

"He does a poor job of loving you," Antonio remarked, then quickly sipped some wine as if that would absolve him from speaking out against the owner of the home in which he was staying. For a pirate, he had exquisite manners. When he was sober.

Marianne looked up at him, both of them hearing the unsaid: I would do better.

"Come to my bedroom tonight," she said.

The fear and power and anticipation she felt was reflected in his eyes, and they both smiled as he replied, "Sí, Señora."

She shook her head. "Tonight, I am a señorita again."

And Antonio's face lit up with such affectionate delight at hearing his language on her tongue that she didn't even feel guilty about how easy it was, pretending she wasn't married to His Lordship Arthur Kirkland.

. . .

And so it went, over the following week.

They shared meals together, with green eyes meeting blue, and red eyes meeting violet. It was the first time in the collective memory that dinner was punctuated with bouts of laughter, and anyone—children included—was welcome to speak their mind. Even when Peter told an excruciatingly long-winded tale that had lost all humor by the end, everyone still smiled, for the atmosphere was welcoming and open. There were no disapproving eyebrows at the head of the table. No one felt the need to conform or compete or present themselves in a certain way. It, at last, felt like home.

Through the days, it felt much the same. Gilbert and Antonio shared (family-friendly) sailing stories, and taught Peter how to tie knots like a sailor would. The boy quickly became devoted to the pair of them, following them around and trying to imitate their accents (he was terrible at both, and Gilbert told him as much, though in a kind way, with a chuck under the chin that made Peter giggle).

Mathieu had few private interactions with Antonio, but the man was so kind and warm that Mathieu quickly had the sense that they had known each other longer than they had. The Spaniard had initiated several conversations about the romances Mathieu was reading, speaking with friendly interest even though the boy suspected correctly that Antonio had never read a book in his life. It was refreshing to meet someone who was polite not as a ruse to get anything or because of obligation, but just to make a friend.

As far as private interactions with Gilbert went, Mathieu wasn't sure where they stood. One day they were as close as father and son, taking long walks through the wooded areas around the property, sometimes speaking companionably about things other people would never have thought to remark upon, and other times just enjoying nature and the other's company in silence. And then, the next day, they would be distant. As far as he could tell, it was nothing Mathieu was doing. Actually, he had begun to notice a pattern. After one of their long happy days, if Gilbert stared at Mathieu in that intense, almost hungry way, then the next day he would always seem to be busy when Mathieu wanted to speak with him. They had not spoken of the exchange on the fallen log, but Mathieu had never stopped thinking about it. As with most things that required coming to terms with, he went through stages. At first, he scorned the idea of the attraction. Just loneliness, longing for connection in any way. Just missing Father. Just wishing Gilbert was my father. But I'm not a sinner. I could never be that. But when he couldn't force the feelings inside him into a safe, acceptable excuse, he became cross about the whole thing. Why would I want that? Men can't have children, I wouldn't get to have a family! That isn't fair! Why is Gilbert doing this to me? What is wrong with me?!

He would have taken far longer to come to the final acceptance of it, but a conversation with his mother expediated the process significantly. He couldn't come right out and ask about sodomy—she'd probably faint, he thought, which just showed how Arthur's ideas of women had passed on to his male children—but he could do it in a roundabout way. Amelia was the loud, direct one of the family, after all. Mathieu was the quiet, clever one. So he went to Marianne and asked, "Maman?"

She turned to him from the pastries she was dusting with sugar, smiling fondly. "Oui?"

Peter was out with Gilbert and Antonio, chasing back and forth between them while they played catch with a ball, so no one would be eavesdropping, but Mathieu still spoke in a bit of an undertone. He also spoke in French, something he and his mother did only when Arthur was out of earshot, because it made him angry that he couldn't understand them, especially if he heard his name poke out of their strings of nonsensical sounds.

He considered which question to start with. "Do you think I'm handsome?"

She laughed, touching his cheek with sweet-smelling fingers. "Of course. You are the most handsome boy I've ever seen."

He smiled up at her—he was still a few inches shorter—and asked, "But am I handsome, or . . . pretty?"

Her brow furrowed, and she turned back to her pastries. Her response came after a fair amount of consideration. "Well. You are both."

So even his mother admitted that he was pretty. What man wanted to be called pretty? Pretty was what women were supposed to be. So what she was telling him was what he had already thought: he was a man-woman, a pretty creature who looked like a mixture of the fair and strong sexes.

"You are special," his mother went on. "You and Amelia are both unique. She is a handsome girl, and you are a pretty boy. I have always thought this. It is what makes you different from everyone else. Why would you want to be the same?"

Mathieu was heartened by this, but he had to say it: "Father would want us to be the same."

Marianne's shoulders stiffened, and she dropped her spoon into the basin with a sharp clang. "Arthur is not like any of us. He is different."

Mathieu marvelled at how his mother's tone could change from loving to bitter so fast. Hesitantly, he asked, in English, "Is Father pretty?"

She turned around again to face him, her expression too complicated to read. She crossed her arms over her stomach as if protecting herself from something, though Mathieu couldn't imagine what. "He is . . . effete," she said. "So you probably get it from him, if that is what you are asking."

That opened up a whole other field of questions, but he was too afraid to even consider them in his head, let alone think of ways to ask his mother about them. He posed one last question: "Would you ever stop loving me?"

Her face cleared in shock, and she leaned down until her forehead touched his, her hands cupping his face, at once softer and infinitely fiercer than Gilbert, for what was more powerful than a loving mother?

"Never," she replied. "Nothing could ever make me stop loving you, Mathieu." She pressed a kiss to his nose, then the top of his head as she embraced him tightly. He hugged her back, comforted by the scents of baking that always surrounded her. He remembered, out of nowhere, being a tiny baby, safe in his mother's arms, his tiny hand holding a strand of her flowing golden hair. It was so soft, he remembered, even though he knew there was no way he could recall something from so long ago in so much detail. It was in pieces, the memory, and Mathieu was correct—he did not remember the softness, his mind supplied it from the more recent memories he had of touching her hair. But he did remember the blue light of her eyes, shining down on him, so full of love. But he did not remember the green eyes watching him with just as much love from the doorway of the nursery, as they did every time Marianne was awoken by their children crying in the night; when she got up, though she never saw him, so did Arthur, and watched her feed them with a helpless appreciation, wishing in vain he could give life as she did so effortlessly.

So Mathieu's suspicions—or one of them at least—was put to rest. He was not like other men. And that meant, at long last, he knew what to say to Gilbert.

. . .

And, of course, the unmentioned and unnoticed. The temptation succumbed to. The old love reborn, mighty and burning and lush and breathtaking. The trysts that took place each night in the disgraced marital bed.

"Here?" Antonio had protested, the first time. "But Ar—"

"Don't," she had said, putting her finger to his lips. "Don't say his name. I don't want to hear it."

And she had straddled him, letting her clothing fall away, and he had seen her beautiful body, made only more beautiful with time, a fine wine in woman form. Her pregnancies had left her with more fat in her breasts and thighs than before, and a regular feeding of rich food had given a softness to the rest of her, but it was perfection to the Spaniard, who had seen his fill of sharp-boned women and had come to dislike how their hips jutted at their skin, how their ribs were so readily available. He did not want a skeleton. He did not want anyone, he knew that night and every night since, except Marianne.

He would have been content to simply touch her, everywhere, until dawn peeked through the curtains, but Marianne had other ideas. It had been so, so long since a man made love her. (She knew it was nothing wrong with her, and she had lain awake some nights, watching her husband sleep beside her, wondering what made it so difficult for him to enjoy intimacy these days without being drunk.)

Antonio had no trouble providing her with pleasure. He was extremely experienced with women; it was impossible to do so much travelling and be so handsome without attracting countless suitors, without even adding into the mix how charming he was. Making love with Arthur had always seemed in itself to be some sort of battle, as if she were an obstacle he was trying to conquer, a beast he strived to defeat. And, a detail Marianne made rather smug note of, his particular weapon of choice for this erotic battle was rather small compared to Antonio's.

They had to be silent, which proved harder than Marianne thought it would. She and Arthur rarely made noise during sex, aside from the rasping of skin against bedsheets or the choked gasp he always gave when he reached his peak. With Antonio, they both wound up pressing hands over the other's mouth in a desperate attempt to hush the cries from her throat and the groans in his chest. Often, with Arthur, she didn't climax, simply because he did not know how to touch her, or even that he was supposed to touch her, and it wasn't as if she could tell him (she had tried talking to him about kissing once, and she thought he might faint when she mentioned the word tongue). With Antonio, however, there was no such problem. In fact, one of their shared nights in the middle of the week when Gilbert had decided to make a tent and sleep outdoors with the boys, she was quite sure she tumbled over her body's sensual summit five times. Nothing could make her swoon more than Antonio rolling off of her, caressing her thighs until he had gotten his breath back, then returning his lips to her jaw as if that was their natural place and mumbling huskily, Again?

But it was not just sexual, obviously. Through the week of Arthur's absence, they spoke of all the things they had missed from each other over all those years apart. He told her how he had gotten the scars that riddled his bronze body (fights, imprisonment, more fights, one accident involving Gilbert and a silk blindflold). She told him how she was at once glad and saddened that none of her children had green eyes (no eyes to remind her of Arthur, but none to remind her of Antonio, either). He called her Mari. She called him Toni.

He called her mi diosa. She called him mon ange.

They both wanted the one thing they had agreed not to risk: waking up in each other's arms. No matter how late Antonio stayed, when Marianne's eyes opened, he was gone, with only a few stray brown hairs and the faint scent of his sweat betraying their night together.

But on the final night (not that they knew it was the final night at the time), Marianne looked up into Antonio's eyes and said what she had never said to him, what she should have said to him so long ago.

"Je t'aime."

And, despite what it meant in this country, in this house, in this bed, Antonio held her as close as he could, close enough that their breaths became one and their heartbeats danced with each other, and he told her what he had always thought, what he should have said to her so long ago.

"Te amo."

The next morning found them twined together beneath the sheets, like a dream come true, and Arthur Kirkland walking through the door, like a bloody living nightmare.