Sneaking down the back stairs of the pub like a teenager. Bran would be appalled, Jory thought. His students in Edinburgh would be amazed.
When they emerged into bright sunlight, both of them were grinning. Mal put a finger to his lips and grabbed Jory’s arm, leading him not down the lane but over the fields and through a gap in the hedge to the road. Spiky branches clutched at Jory’s clothes, hair, and beard.
Once through, Mal turned to Jory and burst out laughing. “Seriously, mate, you look like a fucking mountain man. How come you’re all ripped, anyway? What did you used to teach up in Edinburgh—body-building and ’roid rage?”
Mal was exaggerating. Jory tried not to redden at the compliment, even as warmth flooded through him. “I got into climbing while I was at school. Upper body strength tends to be a bit of an advantage.” Especially for those whose genetics had blessed them with a larger-than-average frame that took more hauling about than most when it came to vertical rock faces. Although, to be fair, the reach was a distinct help too.
Building up a bit of muscle had come in handy in other ways too, but he wasn’t about to tell Mal any sob stories about being bullied as a young boy.
“Let me guess—your school was the sort that had its own climbing wall?”
Jory gave him a look. “And a fully equipped gym. Am I supposed to apologise for that?” he asked boldly, as they set off down the road.
Mal didn’t seem to take offence. “No, but you could try pretending to be a tiny bit sad that mine didn’t, yeah?”
“Would you have used it if they did?”
“Fuck, no. I’m a total wuss about heights.”
“Heights have never bothered me. It’s the depths that get you down.” Guilt twinged in Jory’s chest. If Bea or Bran heard him speaking of this sort of thing so lightly. . . But they hadn’t and wouldn’t.
Mal gave him a gentle dig in the ribs with his elbow, apparently far more at ease with casual physical contact than Jory. “Ever go caving? There’s a lot round here, aren’t there? Old smugglers’ haunts?”
Jory hesitated. “A little. But mostly I prefer being out in the open air. Less risk of drowning.”
“You got no romance in your soul.”
Jory gave Mal a slow, sidelong look. “If drowning is your idea of romance, I may have to seriously reconsider taking you out for a meal.” And then he held his breath because, damn it, he still didn’t have any idea if Mal saw him that way at all.
If Mal saw men that way, full stop.
Mal gave an airy shrug. “Hey, it worked for Leo DiCaprio and whatserface in Titanic, didn’t it? Nah, I meant, there’s legends and stuff about those caves, aren’t there? Might even find King Arthur down one of ’em, cuddling up to the Holy Grail while he waits for the second coming.”
“Or you could get eaten by a questing beast.” Great. Marvellous. Young men with a nonclassical education were always impressed by literary obscurity, weren’t they? He braced himself for a You what, mate?
Mal just grinned. “Nah, I’m safe. I ain’t slept with me sister, and cheers for making me think of that, by the way.”
Jory actually stopped dead in his tracks for a moment, and had to force himself to start walking again because, that must look incredibly patronising of him. “You know about the symbolism of the questing beast?” he couldn’t help asking. He tried to keep the surprise out of his voice but wasn’t sure he’d succeeded.
“Ain’t just a pretty face, am I? Course I know. I watched Merlin on the telly.”
“Oh. I hadn’t realised—”
“Nah, I’m yanking your chain. The TV show was on Saturday teatime, wasn’t it? So they totally glossed over the whole incest bit so’s not to put the kiddies off their fish fingers. I mean, it was all right, but they changed a shitload of stuff from what was in the Morte d’Arthur.”
Jory’s stomach somehow managed to clench and flip at one and the same time, as if his insides were auditioning for some kind of acrobatic act on Britain’s Got Talent. “You’ve read Thomas Malory?”
Mal shoved his hands in his jeans pockets—or at least, as far as they’d go, which was about halfway—and gazed off down the road. Was his face redder than before? Jory couldn’t be sure in the sunlight. “Yeah, well, Mum used to read me The Once and Future King when I was little—you know, the book Disney based Sword in the Stone on? Wait, what am I saying, course you know—and I wanted to know where it all came from, yeah? And then there’s the name thing.”
He was definitely red in the face now, and it was unbearably charming. “The name thing?” Jory almost forgot to ask.
“See, Mum was always into all that stuff. Arthurian legends and that. Then she got married to a bloke whose last name was Thomas and, well, Mal ain’t actually short for Malcolm.”
“Not . . .”
“Yep. Malory Thomas, esquire, at your service, sirrah.” Mal sketched a ridiculously overblown bow in the air. “Bet you can guess how that went down at school.”
Jory, who’d been laughing, stopped abruptly. “You were bullied?”
“Fuck yeah.” Mal put on a snide, mocking voice. “‘It’s a girl’s name, Mallorie, innit?’ And that was before they found out I got a sister called Morgan. Then it was all, ‘Go on, show us which one of you’s really the girl.’”
Ouch. Some parents . . . “They didn’t tease you about the literary associations, at least, then?”
Mal gave him a look of exaggerated disbelief. “You’re giving them gits way too much credit. Most of ’em thought a book was just a posh way of packaging bog roll.”
“Did—” Jory stopped, realising he didn’t actually want to change the subject right now, no matter how important the question was to him.
“What?”
Apparently there was no help for it. “Did
