Free Muffled Drum by Erastes Page B

was short and bitter. “Oh God, Rudolph. Your wife? I’ve always known about her. This doesn’t touch her.”
    Mathias reached a hand forward as if to demonstrate his point. In a second he would reach Rudolph’s thigh, and Rudolph knew he couldn’t resist another advance on his weakened and swiftly dissolving defenses.
    “Not…my wife. I didn’t know you were—I thought, hoped, I could confide in you, but wasn’t sure. But—there is a…” Rudolph found it difficult to describe, becoming tangled up in what he was trying to say. “That is, I have…someone. A man. In Berlin. He’s been waiting for me, you see, since the last time I was there.”
    Mathias’s hand dropped back to his side, as if he’d touched something that had severed every finger. His eyes widened, and even in the guttering candlelight Rudolph could see the shock making his skin pale. “What? I don’t believe you. Are you sure…?”
    Rudolph’s anger breached his control, a blessed relief from the confusion of the past half hour. “Of course I’m fucking sure,” he growled. “Why is everything I say suspect because of one blow to the head? It’s a relief to tell you, in fact.”
    But Mathias had turned away. “I’m sorry, Rudolph. I didn’t know.”
    “How could you have done—although if we are friends…” He screwed his forehead and rubbed at his eyes. They’d been friends a long time, and yet he’d never once mentioned Ernst to him? “I should be the one to apologize. I started this.”
    “Think nothing of it, Rudolph. I must look ridiculous. I certainly feel it.”
    There was ice in Mathias’s voice, and Rudolph hardly blamed him for his tone. What he had done was unforgivable. Unforgivable.
    “I was sure I would have told you of him,” he said. “If we were such good friends, as you say.”
    “Perhaps we weren’t as close as I thought.” The chill in Mathias’s voice was hard to hear.
    “I’m happy to tell you—” But the second the words were out of his mouth, he realized he’d pushed Mathias one step too far.
    “God, no,” Mathias said, with a look of disgust. “You must think little of me, indeed. I’ll see you in the morning.”
    “Don’t go.” It felt somehow important for Mathias to stay, although he didn’t know why.
    “What is there to stay for? I think we’ve made fools enough of ourselves, and I’m not a man who appreciates being taken for a fool. Once is quite enough, thank you.” And he was gone without another word.

Chapter Seven
    Mathias didn’t sleep. The shock of hearing of Rudolph’s “man in Berlin” had shaken him and made any rest impossible. He had not suspected it, not for one moment. The fact that they’d never discussed his wife had seemed perfectly natural. Mathias considered himself as a mistress, in a way, and perhaps some mistresses did discuss a man’s wife, but Mathias had never wished to and was thankful Rudolph rarely mentioned her. That Rudolph did not, Mathias assumed, was for the same reasons of sensibility—something he thought they had shared. It was a shock—another shock upon shocks—to find that perhaps Rudolph simply shut parts of himself away and concentrated on the present.
    All this time? Could he really have had another man in Berlin all this time? It seemed almost unbelievable, because Rudolph had gone to and from Berlin many times in the months they’d been together, and Mathias had assumed—in fact Rudolph had implicitly said —he went for family and business reasons. To think he left the Regiment for those brief forays, slid into bed with another man and returned, all smiles and passion, to Mathias’s side was almost more than he could bear.
    But it must be true. If Rudolph’s memory had lost these last two years, then this man must have been there all this time. Did this man know Rudolph kept another man in his regiment? How much did Rudolph change when he was with him —this shadowy rival—and did they laugh about the