“Not always,” Oliver said. “Menominee legend has it that the creator made flowers to bring happiness and health with their scent and their beauty, and with their medicinal effects.”
“Why are European legends not more like that?”
“We have a penchant for doom and gloom, born of the bible and an abhorrent attitude to nature. We pillage…seek to put a price on everything, plundering and thieving wherever we go.”
“We are a terrible species,” Bram agreed. “To put a price on people.”
He hadn’t told Oliver what his father had been planning with Lord Vernon, but the man wasn’t stupid. He knew the deals men made for their daughters.
“I have another book,” Oliver began, trying to lighten the mood.
“Don’t bring me books, Oliver. They will only take them away and delight in doing so. Lord, but I’m trapped in so many ways, I fear I shall never escape. But when I’m with you, when you build me this library of adventures, I feel like I could go anywhere.”
“I shall make the stories sweeter, my love.”
“Your love.” Bram loved the sound of it, the feel of it burrowing into his chest like a flickering sun. “I love your stories as they are, but I shall dream other lives for those poor souls.” Just as I shall dream another life for myself. “What do you dream for yourself, Oliver?”
“That I shall love you forever”
Gentle fingers skimmed Bram’s throat. He swallowed, wide eyed as Oliver watched him, leaning into him. Their mouths met, and suddenly Bram was falling, his back hitting the hay.
“I had a dream.” Bram smiled up at Oliver’s handsome face. “You were Oberon, and you called to me in the night across a moonstruck lake. The moon had painted your face silver… and you wore orchids in your hair. I knew I would drown before I reached you, but I didn’t care. I waded into the lake, and when I woke, I was drowning.”
Oliver stroked his face, inciting shivers all over Bram’s skin. “I can take you away.”
“Nobody can take me away from what pains me, I promise you that.”
Oliver’s lips met his. “I wish I could.”
“Make love to me, Oliver. Love me as you know me. As the person I am inside.”
Oliver shook his head. “I cannot ruin you. Eventually, you will make a promise to another man.”
“I will not. I shall take no husband when my heart belongs to you.”
“Then take me as your husband. Marry me.”
“I cannot.”
“Say the word, and I will build a world for you,” Oliver promised.
“There is no world for me.” I can’t promise you a lie. “I’m not a fairy tale, Oliver. All I’m asking is for a little happiness.”
Oliver nodded, climbing to his knees to undress. The scant moonlight filtering through the rafters of the hayloft didn’t afford Bram much of a view as he removed his own clothes, laying the soft fabric on the scratchy hay. Oliver lay him down again, nestling between his legs. Heat pooled inside him as Oliver kissed his worries away… as he bucked against Oliver’s strong body. Oliver reached a hand between them, deft fingers massaging Bram between his legs until he was slick and shaking. He wrapped his legs around Oliver’s waist as he sank deep inside his body.
“I will always be here,” Oliver whispered, his languid movements causing Bram to gasp and moan. “Buried so deep inside you, just as you are buried inside me, cradling my heart for all eternity.”
5
The Caterpillar & the Butterfly
Bram did have some good hiding places. The loose board in the room above the disused stable at the end of the garden was spacious enough for the scrap leather bag the stable hand left behind when Lord Hallam sold the last of his horses. In it, Bram stored clothes which had once belonged to his deceased brothers, though they were moth-eaten now and quite out of fashion. Every so often, he would smuggle them to a lock box at Brown’s Hotel, where he would sometimes take a room.
On days such as this, when he was forced to spend time with Aunt Felicity, the dowager duchess, Bram wore trousers beneath his day dress, waited for his aunt to drink herself to sleep, then abandoned her in a hotel lounge.
From there, he would check in at Brown’s as a butterfly, and emerge as a caterpillar never seen without a hat and scarf. There was a freedom in wearing his brother’s clothes that went beyond the ease with which a man could navigate the streets, museums, and parks unhindered.
He had watched an outdoor performance of A Midsummer Night’s Dream—from where he got his new surname—when he had an epiphany. The actress playing Helena, having shed her character to flirt with Bram, leaving him flustered and unable to speak without stammering, said to him, “When one spends their life on the stage, one forgets what is real, but I never forget a genuine smile, and yours is a dazzler, handsome.”
The joy and freedom to be himself had given him a smile he’d never managed at any social event his parents had dragged him to. It had taken Bram two years of wearing his youngest brother’s shoes—after all, Sebastian’s feet were the smallest of his three brothers—to realise that Bram was not the part he played.
He was not the caterpillar. She was.
Bram was the butterfly.
The caterpillar was so well-worn, like a favourite nightgown. Yet, Bram was tired of playing the part, of dancing with a smile, of curtseying and playing coy, of feigning interest in men old enough to be his father.
Bram would not have to marry a man twice his age. He would not have to be chaperoned by a drunk aunt, nor plotted against by his own father, nor scorned by his own mother. Bram could be his own man. If it were possible.
Was it? Was such a life possible?
Thinking of his friend, Armando, and his stories of taking his ward to London Zoo, Bram found himself wandering towards Regent’s Park. And who should he stumble upon but Armando’s ward, Cecilia, and… Oh dear… Mr Hazard.
“Bram, Bram,” Cecilia called, waving erratically, then running towards him when he froze. “I didn’t know you would be here.”
Only Armando knew of the tight skin he sometimes wore.
