“I am exceeding flattered,” Grey said politely, and took Percy’s arm, squeezing until his fingers sank past cloth and flesh and touched bone. “Shall we go?”

Percy caught breath, but nodded, and they went out, walking in a silence of unshared thoughts down High Holbourn Street. They had planned to see Mecklin’s performance as Shylock in The Merchant of Veniceand have supper at the Beefsteak; Grey was anticipating the evening—and the night to come thereafter—but Percy’s thoughts were evidently still focused on their conversation.

“Do you think it true,” he said suddenly, in a low voice, “that we are damned?”

Grey was not of a theosophical turn of mind, nor yet much concerned about the stated tenets of religion. He had many times heard his father’s uncensored opinions of an earlier sovereign, Henry, and the effects of that worthy’s sexual itch and dynastic ambitions upon the Church of Rome.

Yet Percy’s eyes were deep and troubled; Grey would ease that trouble, if he could.

“I do not,” he said, as lightly as possible. “Men are made in God’s image, or so I am told. Likewise that we differ from the animals in having reason. Reason, therefore, must plainly be a characteristic of the Almighty, quod erat demonstrandum.Is it reasonable, then, to create men whose very nature—clearly constructed and defined by yourself—is inimical to your own laws and must lead inevitably to destruction? Whatever would be the point of that? Does it not strike you as a most capricious notion—to say nothing of being wasteful?”

Plainly, the notion of a reasonable God—let alone a thrifty one—had not struck Percy before. He laughed, his face lightening, and they spoke no more of the matter then.

Percy did return to the matter a few days later, though. No doubt it was a matter of Percy’s own upbringing in a religious milieu, Grey reflected. Or perhaps it was only that Percy had never been with a man willing to discuss philosophy in bed. Grey hadn’t, himself, but found the novelty mildly diverting.

They had left the barracks separately and met in Percy’s rooms for a few stolen hours. Where, after the initial delights of the flesh had been tasted, Grey found himself with his head pillowed on Percy’s stomach, being read to from a collection of legal opinions, published a year or two previous.

“If any crime deserve to be punished in a more exemplary manner, this does. Other crimes are prejudicial to society; but this strikes at the being thereof: it being seldom known that a person who has been guilty of abusing his generative faculty so unnaturally has afterwards a proper regard for women. For that indifference to women, so remarkable in men of this depraved appetite, it may fairly be concluded that they are cursed with insensibility to the most ecstatic pleasure which human nature is in the present state capable of enjoying. It seems a very just punishment that such wretches should be deprived of all tastes for an enjoyment upon which they did not set a proper value; and the continuation of an impious disposition, which then might have been transmitted to their children, if they had any, may be thereby prevented.”

“So,” Grey remarked, “we must be exterminated, because our pleasures are insufficiently ecstatic?”

Percy’s brow relaxed a bit, and he closed the book.

“And lest we pass on this deplorable lack to our children—which we are hardly likely to have, under the circumstances.”

“Well, as to that—I know more than one gentleman who seeks no pleasure in his wife’s bed, but goes there in the course of duty nonetheless.”

“Yes, that’s true.” Percy still frowned, though with thoughtfulness, rather than unease. “Do you think it’s actually different? Between a man and a woman? Not merely in mechanical terms, I mean, but in terms of feeling?”

Grey had seen enough of marriages arranged among the nobility and the wealthy as to know that the emotions and mutual attraction of the persons involved were usually considered irrelevant, if indeed they were considered at all. Whereas such ongoing relations as he had from time to time contracted himself involved nothing else, being quite free of the requirements of society. Still, he considered the matter, enjoying the peaceful rise and fall of Percy’s breathing beneath his cheek.

“I think a gentleman conducts his affairs with kindness and with honor,” he said, at last. “That being so, if the recipient is a woman or a man—does it matter so much?”

Percy gave a short laugh.

“Kindness and honor? That’s all well—but what of love?”

Grey valued love—and feared it—too greatly to make idle protestations.

“You cannot compel love,” he said finally, “nor summon it at will. Still less,” he added ruefully, “can you dismiss it.” He sat up then, and looked at Percy, who was looking down, tracing patterns on the counterpane with a fingertip. “I think you are not in love with me, though, are you?”

Percy smiled a little, not looking up. Not disagreeing, either. “Cannot dismiss it,” he echoed. “Who was he? Or is he?”

“Is.” Grey felt a sudden jolt of the heart at the speaking of that single word. Something at once joyful and terrible; the admission was irrevocable.

Percy was looking up at him now, brown eyes bright with interest.

“It is—I mean, he—you need not worry. There is no possibility of anything between us,” Grey blurted, and bit his tongue to keep back the sudden impulse to tell everything, only for the momentary ecstasy of speaking of Jamie Fraser. He was wiser than that, though, and kept the words bottled tight in his throat.

“Oh. He’s not…?” Percy’s gaze flicked momentarily over Grey’s nakedness, then returned to his face.

“No.”

It was late in the day; light skimmed across the room from the high attic windows, striking the dark burnished mass of Percy’s curling hair, painting the lines of his face in chiaroscuro, but leaving his body in the dimness of shadow.

“Is friendship and sincere liking not enough for you?” Grey was careful to avoid any tone of pettishness or accusation, making the question merely one of honest inquiry. Percy heard this, and smiled, lopsidedly, but with answering honesty.

“No.” He stretched out a hand and ran it up Grey’s bare arm, over the curve of his shoulder, and down the slope of his breast, where he spread his palm flat over the nipple—and took a sudden grip of the flesh there, fingers digging into the muscle.

“Add that,though…” he said softly, “and I think it will suffice.”

They saw little of each other during the days, Grey being busy with the increasingly frantic preparations for departure, and Percy consumed by the rigors of his own training and the needs of the four companies under his command. Still, in the evenings, they could go about quite openly together in public, as any two men who happened to be particular friends might do—to supper, to a play, or a gaming club. And if they left such venues together, as well, it caused no comment.

No one at Jermyn Street would question Grey’s occasional absence at night, for he often slept in the barracks or at the Beefsteak, if he had been kept late on regimental business or out with friends. Still, to be gone every night would cause notice, and so the nights they spent together in Percy’s rooms were doubly precious—for their scarcity, and for the realization that they were coming to an end.

“We must be circumspect in the extreme,” Grey said. “On campaign. There is very little privacy.”