Free One Indulgence by Lydia Gastrell

didn’t want to be that . I didn’t want to—I’m sorry—I didn’t want to go to hell.”
    Richard released a pent-up breath. “Good Lord. I’m sorry.”
    “I shoved him away. Actually pushed him! He stumbled and almost fell over, but I didn’t want to care. I was so scared about what he knew and what I thought had almost happened, I just wanted it to go away. So I yelled at him. I demanded to know what he thought he was doing. I told him he was sick, and I called him a pervert.”
    Richard watched over the steeple of his hands, which he had come to press against his lips. He said nothing. The crease between his eyes told enough.
    “Can you imagine that?” Henry said in earnest. “You were angry because you had been lied to, but I was the liar. I puffed myself up and didn’t stop until he was in tears. I called him everything I was terrified of being, and then I stormed out and left him there. He never said one word. He looked broken.”
    There was a long silence, far longer than that which had followed Richard’s woeful tale. It was long enough for Richard to rise from his chair and retrieve a glass of brandy from the sideboard. He pressed it into Henry’s cold hands and stayed to warm them under his own. It felt good, and Henry was shocked to find that he was not embarrassed as he should have been. Here he was practically on the verge of tears in front of another man. Men were not supposed to cry. Everyone knew that.
    “You weren’t the first, you know, to behave like that,” Richard said. “And I doubt you will be the last. You were young and afraid. Rightfully so, I might add. Tell me, what happened when you saw him later?”
    “I didn’t.” Henry snorted bitterly. “I ran, like the coward I was. I feigned an illness straightaway so I could hide in the infirmary. Then I wrote a letter to my father, telling him everything that would guarantee I was sent home. I told him he was right. School wasn’t for me. I was a fool to leave my tutors. I even fed into his moralizing by claiming that I thought the other boys were bad and the school had lax discipline.” He snorted again. “My father was actually proud of me when he came to take me home.”
    “And that is where you stayed,” Richard added. “Forgive me. You did say this was your first visit to London in quite some time, yes?”
    Henry nodded. “Yes, but please don’t think I stayed away from town because of that. I may have been cowardly enough to hide then, but I certainly would not have imprisoned myself in the country for years over it.” He shrugged, and some of his good humor returned. “My father never cared much for London or fast society.”
    “Fast society.” Richard waggled his eyebrows. “Would I be considered fast society?”
    “The fastest,” Henry replied, grinning.
    “Good.” Richard clapped his hands together and smiled, clearly seeking to lighten the mood. “I would hate to be called a slow top.”
    Henry finished his brandy, savoring the comfortable warmth it put in his chest. It brought on yet another heavy silence between the two of them, though it had already happened so many times that Henry struggled not to laugh at the absurdity of it. Eventually, he did.
    “My sentiments exactly.” A moment later Richard stood and collected his trousers and shirt from the back of the sofa.
    An unaccountable pang of disappointment hit Henry, but he shrugged it off. There was no reason to delay, and even less reason to feel maudlin over it. He reminded himself, again, that he did not know Richard. A few hours in another’s company, no matter how deliciously wonderful, was no reason to begin entertaining silly sentiments.
    He repeated such notions to himself, trying to make them true.
    They both dressed with efficiency, sharing awkward glances before Henry finally stood near the chair where he had spent much of the earlier evening waiting. His coat still lay over the back of it, and he frowned at the very thought of trying