Then Iain looks away, embarrassed. ‘We should swim. Clean off.’ He starts to shimmy out of his shirt.
‘It’s cold,’ Harry warns.
‘Good,’ Iain says, sliding off the rock, still in his half-laced breeches, and splashing into the pond.
They both swim around in the water, playing tag and ducking each other, then haul themselves out to dry on the rock before setting home. The silence between them is strained thereafter, with an exquisitely painful consciousness of exactly how much space is between them at any given moment, how it’s both too much and not enough.
Then, Harry realises, they have to ride home. On one horse. With Iain’s taut, muscular arse swaying against his crotch on every step. With his hand on Iain’s stomach, his fingers rubbing against the waistband of Iain’s breeches. Occasionally, accidentally, dipping underneath.
He’s going to die.
Because he’s just had the single best orgasm of his life and rather than calming down the fire under his skin, it’s stirred it hotter. His body just wants to do it again, and more. And sure, helping your friend out when you’re both hard is probably fine, but reaching into his breeches and grabbing his dick and rutting yourself against him while riding down a lane where anyone could see you? No, that’s … definitely not acceptable.
God’s blood, but he can picture it. His nipples get so sensitive when he’s aroused, and he could rub them against Iain’s back, the rough linen of their shirts trapped between his chest and the lean, hard muscles of Iain’s shoulders, and he could bite Iain’s neck to stifle his own moans and—
He coughs. ‘Um, you want to try riding by yourself for a bit? See if you can manage?’ Harry says, digging his nails into the palms of his hand because he needs to stop thinking about this right now.
‘Yes,’ Iain says, his voice a little strained. ‘You’ll walk?’
‘Mm-hm,’ Harry grunts, untying Numbles’ reins.
When they return to Dartington, there’s a letter with a fancy wax seal for Harry, and a dozen servants milling excitedly, waiting for Harry to read it to them.
It’s from the King. Harry’s been invited to Windsor for the first two weeks of the court’s Advent celebrations. Counting up the travel time to the outskirts of London and back, he’d be gone a full month.
He nearly falls on his knees right there in the courtyard and thanks the Almighty.
Annie squeals when she hears the news. The entire household of Dartington flies into a panic to get Harry ready to depart. He has four days to prepare. It’s nowhere near enough. There’s everything to tie up around the manor, instructions to leave for Annie and the other senior staff, decisions about what and who to take, and through it all Annie panicking about what Harry can wear in front of potential future wives at court and, most importantly, the King. The King!
Harry has one good outfit.
There’s no time and, more importantly, no decent fabric, to make another.
Annie eventually relents upon strong pressure from Harry and surprisingly persuasive arguments from Iain that Harry translates. Tell her the King won’t care; he knows you are a country knight and he won’t be expecting you dressed up in fancy things. The only people who care are second-rate courtiers, because they have no confidence in their own status and find it only in putting others down. So wear your simple clothes, and be a country knight, and the people who are rude to you are people you don’t want to know. Plus, it’s near enough to Christmas that the King will lavish gifts on those in attendance on him. You’ll get a new set of clothes from him; if you’re lucky, a lot more.
Harry doesn’t ask Iain how he knows these things, just as he doesn’t ask Iain if he wants to come. Given the hints he's dropped about his background, Harry figures that taking him to the centre of English political machinations would be the worst of all possible choices. He explains this to Iain, not wanting the boy’s feelings to be hurt, and Iain nods in agreement.
It’s the first real conversation they've had since the afternoon at the pond, and it’s still a meagre thing, half-sentences and glancing looks as they sit side by side at supper. They’ve stopped touching each other, and Harry never realised how tactile their friendship was until it ceased. He misses it. Harry catches Iain watching him out of the corner of his eyes, though. It’s as if he’s waiting for Harry, but Harry has absolutely no clue what to do. He’s never thought about men that way. He’s barely even thought of women that way, not that he’s had much opportunity to be around any of his age and status. Now he can’t stop thinking about it, and he finds himself getting aroused by the most ridiculous things—
‘Will the Queen Mother be there?’ Iain asks.
Harry shakes his head, trying to clear it, and shoots Iain a confused glance.
‘At court,’ Iain says. ‘Do you think she’ll be there?’
‘Oh,’ Harry says. Then he shrugs. Isabella, King Edward’s French mother, leaves her small castle but rarely since her son wrested control of the crown from her and her lover six years ago. Harry heard rumours of a rapprochement in Berwick, but he knows nothing of the court’s current intrigues and he’d like to keep it that way. ‘I have no idea. I don’t even know if Rabbie will be there, or Baron Montagu, though I suspect they have more chance of being in attendance than Isabella.’
Iain gets a faraway look in his eyes and says, ‘If you meet her, tell me what she’s like.’
Harry promises, and gets back to packing. Peter will go with him, and Kit. And Harry realises as the day approaches that, while he’s worried about a lot of things, Iain isn’t one of them.
Harry looks at his friend as they go out for their now-daily morning ride (not to the
