Ink and Steel

“Ungentle? I thought to reference your Dido… ”. And not painted boys un trussing in doorways? I suppose that’s all right.”

“I beg your pardon,” Will picked up his cup and gulped more liquor, liking the second swallow better. “I intended no offense.”

“Naive, Will.” Kit dismissed it with a tilt of his hand. “She’s a marvelous character. Any man with the wit to choose a resolute wench would die for such a maid.” And then hastily, as if afeared: “Is that how thou seest me, Will?”

“How I … Damn.” How does he always manage to weasel me into the honesty I don’t want to give?The liquor gave Will courage, and he wondered if Kit had intended it so. “Perhaps how I would see thee, if I could.”

That beautiful, ruined face turned toward him, and Kit set down his cup on a relief-carved trunk and closed the distance a few hesitant steps. His forehead shone pale, candlelight burnishing a thin gloss of sweat. Will swallowed.

Kit’s careful, measured voice coiled his limbs like the tendrils of a fog, cat-amused. “And were I a woman, a maid, what wouldst will of me?”

Will grinned and stepped back, far enough that he could breathe again. The closer Kit came, the vaster grew the tightness in Will’s throat. He tossed back what was in his glass; it seemed easier to swallow, and a pleasant looseness imbued his muscles.

“Wouldst measure thy will gainst mine? I’d say a maid at thine age hadn’t been striving for another state.”

“I’d be inclined to agree. Dost wish more drink?”

“Wine, an thou hast it.” His throat was dry; wine would comfort it.

“By all means, put me to use.” Kit busied himself at the sideboard; Will watched how his curls snagged and slid on the velvet across his shoulders. He would have made a lovely girl. To use? Pouring and fetching?

Kit checked as if Will had flicked his nose for overcuriosity. “Pity mine impertinence. Tis queer to see oneself given a woman’s body. And, in my situation, a rare pleasure to be remembered.”

Bitterness on that last word, and Will flinched from it as Kit returned his cup.

Will drank, and Kit drank too. The silence lasted until they’d drained the wine. Will set his cup on the window ledge with a soft click and twisted his heavy new earring in his ear before he spoke. The words that came were not the words he’d intended.

“Kit, why would any man permit …” He swallowed, stuffed his traitor right hand into the pocket of the borrowed sunflower doublet. “Isn’t it agonizing?”

Kit cleared his throat, looking away, dispossessing himself of his cup as well. “Rather thou shouldst say, exquisite.”

“I find it difficult to comprehend.”

“I,” Kit paused, still looking down, face suddenly pale around a flush that marked consumptive circles on his cheeks, bright enough to show by candlelight, “could show thee.”

“Ah.” Will’s mouth that had been so dry was full of juice now. He swallowed it.

“Thou…”

Kit was trembling. Like a leaf, like a girl, like a rose petal twisting in the breeze, about to be lifted from the stem.

“Do not I possess mine own body, to pray God as I wish, to speak as I wish, to love with as I wish?”

Which was heresy again, and sedition, and half a dozen other things. To which Will had no answer.

Kit smelled of sweet wine and herbs, and that fiery taint of uisge. Soft boots silent on red-and-gold carpet, in one endless moment, he came the few short steps to Will diffidently, like a man wooing a maid. Gaze on gaze, as if watching for the instant when Will might startle, he raised spread fingers and slid them up Will’s cheeks, brushed his ears, combed his curls with them. Then took Will’s face tenderly between his hands and, tugging him down, nibbled Will’s lips until they parted. “William, my love.” A kiss at first as hesitant as a maiden’s, but then deepening as Will softened into it; and yet unlike kissing a maid, for all Kit’s lush mouth and pouting lip, because that mouth and tongue were knowing. There was the aggression of it, the light control exerted by Kit’s hands in his hair, the yielding lips fronting a seeking tongue, the brush of beard against beard, the hardness of a man’s muscled body in his arms. Literally in his arms; Will blinked to realize he’d pulled Kit close, dust-colored curls between his fingers, leaning into the forbidden, erotic kiss that drained blood from a suddenly light head to warm and throb in his loins.

A swarm of moths beat hungry wings toward the candle flaring in his breast, he jerked free. A string of saliva stretched between their mouths, glistening. “Pity,” Kit said, and broke it with a fingertip, stepping away. “More wine before we sleep?”

“No,” Will said. “I think I’ve had too much already. Art ready, for sleep?”

“Aye,” Kit answered, unbuttoning his doublet’s collar. “To sleep.”