A Proper Lover (Ganymede Quartet Book 2) (34 page)

“That won’t work,” Henry said firmly. “Sure, I’ll get good grades on my homework, but then I’ll fail the tests like always. I don’t understand Latin and I never will, so why pretend?”

“Delegating tasks is a skill, too,” Martin insisted. “If you have an employee who’s better at something than you are, do you assign them the work, or do you insist on doing it yourself?”

“You’re not an employee,” Henry pointed out.

“You’re right. I’m not an independent person in that way; I’m practically a part of you. I’m meant to do work on your behalf, Henry. You understand that most of your classmates don’t do any schoolwork on their own. Mr. Lovejoy doesn’t do any work himself, and he’s top of your class.”

“Gordon is actually smart, though,” Henry pointed out. “Gordon understands Latin. He just doesn’t want to do it. You know that’s not my situation.”

Martin tried another tack: guilt. “Your father wants you to get a C in Latin, Henry. It could be a C-minus, even. If I help you with homework, it won’t matter so much if you flunk the tests, and I’m sure you’ll be able to achieve a C. Your father has tasked me with helping you improve your grades, but if your grades
don’t
improve, he’ll blame me, don’t you think?”

Henry did not want Martin to be blamed for Henry’s stupidity. “But it just seems like cheating,” Henry insisted. “If I knew how to do it myself and was just being lazy, it would be different; it wouldn’t seem like cheating to me then.”

Martin frowned and shook his head. “You’re splitting hairs, and making no sense, Henry. You’re saying that it’s only okay to get help if you don’t need it?”

“I’m saying it’s embarrassing to hand in a paper to Dr. Foster when he knows and I know that I didn’t do the work, but I’m going to take credit for it anyway.”

“Please, Henry, let me help you. It’s the way things are properly done. It’s only what all your friends are doing, and what your teachers expect. I’ll write down the answers and then you’ll just copy them in your own handwriting.”

Ultimately, Henry didn’t want Martin to get in trouble, and that was the only reason he agreed to accept Martin’s help. Feeling quite humiliated, he allowed Martin to give him the answers for his Latin homework and copied them out in his own hand. While doing so, he did attempt to learn from Martin’s work, though he did not expect much from himself in this regard. At least this way both he and Martin were being obedient, and hopefully that obedience would be a mitigating factor when Henry disappointed his father yet again in the next round of grading.

Once again, Martin had had the idea to spend time with Cora. She’d been brought to the family hour Friday night and while she was chatting at Father, trying to interest him in her paper dolls, Martin bent over and suggested, “Sir, why don’t we take her to the park tomorrow? Don’t you think it would be fun?” and Henry had supposed it might be. Nurse had had reservations, citing the cold, but agreed she might make her final decision in the morning.

Now, following a breakfast of coddled eggs, bacon, sausage patties, fried potatoes, oatmeal with raisins, a blueberry muffin and a cheese scone, along with his usual milky coffee, Henry got up from the table feeling somewhat heavy, and, with a very quiet burp, turned to Martin and asked, “Elevator or stairs?”

Martin smiled. “I don’t think we’ve ever been in the elevator together, have we, Sir?”

Henry thought on this a moment. “No, I don’t think we have.”

“Then the elevator, Sir. Just for the novelty.”

They had to wait for the car to come down from the third floor. It was an ornate brass cage with a sliding grille and it was someone’s job to keep it polished and free of fingerprints. Henry slid the door open and ushered Martin inside. As soon as the cage had lifted off the ground, Henry reached for Martin and pulled him close, kissing him as they passed by the innards of their cavernous house.

They got out on the third floor, breathless and a little aroused

“We shouldn’t have risked it, Sir,” Martin said in a low voice. “Someone might have seen.”

“No one did, though,” Henry pointed out. “Admit it, it was a little exciting.”

“It
was
fun, Sir.” Martin nudged Henry with his shoulder and smiled. “Much more fun than the stairs.”

Nurse opened the door to Martin’s knock, and Cora could be heard shouting, “They’re here! They’re here!” in giddy delight.

“Good morning, Sir. Good morning, Martin.” Nurse smiled at them both and welcomed them inside.

The big room was cluttered with toys. Nurse’s and Cora’s neatly-made beds were along the left wall, and Henry’s old bed was on the right-hand side by the fireplace. It was still made up with sheets and blankets as if Henry might climb in, but it was heaped with so many dolls and stuffed animals that it was utterly inaccessible. Besides the beds, the room was furnished with a white-painted wardrobe and matching dresser left over from Henry’s childhood, as well as a low table with child-sized chairs where Henry had taken his meals as a small boy. The walls were lined with deep shelves holding books and toys and neatly-folded clothes. All of the other furniture in the room was small, made for dolls. There was a rather grand cabinet house sitting in the good light from the large windows overlooking the side yard. A group of dolls were arranged in a dramatic, nativity-like tableau with the slatternly Baby Ann as centerpiece in the floor space beside the cabinet house.

Cora gave a shriek of joy and launched herself across the floor at Martin, hitting him with the full force of her affection, throwing her arms around his thighs. “Martin!”

“Little Miss.” Martin took hold of her wrists and gently prised her hands off his legs before crouching down to her level. “I’m so glad to see you.”

Cora seemed content to hold Martin’s hands and gaze into his eyes without need for other entertainment, but Henry could take only so much of her mooning and, besides, she needed to give him his due as her big brother.

“Do I get a hello, Cora?”

“Oh! Hello, Henry!” With a regretful glance backward, she left Martin and came to give Henry a hug that was extremely fond but nowhere near as impassioned as the one she’d given Martin. Although this was a little disappointing, he could certainly understand his sister’s preference. However, he’d never anticipated that there’d ever be a challenger for the role of favorite brother, and he was ill-prepared to compete for the title.

“We opened a window to check, Sir,” Nurse said, “and I think it’s not too cold. Are we taking Little Miss to the park?”

“I think it’d be fun,” Henry said, as if it had been his own idea. “We can go to the menagerie, and if we’re up to it, we can walk a little afterward.”

“Little Miss is ready to go when you are, Sir,” Nurse told him. “It’ll just take a minute to get her bundled up in her coat.”

While Nurse girded Cora for the outdoors, she chattered to Martin about her dolls. “Do you remember Baby Ann, Martin?”

“Of course I do, Miss.”

“Well, she has taken a turn for the
worse
!” Cora said, sounding ghoulishly excited about this. “She lost a piece of her nose right off her face!” She held onto the cuffs of her dress sleeves and jammed her arms backward into the coat that Nurse held ready for her.

“Oh, well, that’s certainly bad luck, isn’t it, Miss? It’s good she has you and all her friends to bolster her spirits.”

Nurse wound a scarf around Cora’s neck. It rose up and covered her chin and lower lip and she pushed it down impatiently, tossing her hair with a jerk of her chin. “It
is
good,” Cora agreed. “My bad doll—do you remember her, too, Martin? Her name’s Minnow—tried to tell the others that Baby Ann got what was coming to her because she was bad, but everyone
loves
Baby Ann and didn’t believe her.”

“Baby Ann must be a very good friend, Miss, for everyone to stick up for her like that.”

“See where Minnow is?” Cora flung out her arm and pointed at a doll with brown curls, a blue dress and one shoe that sat in the far corner facing the wall. “She has to stay there until she apologizes for being a liar.”

“That seems fair enough, Miss,” Martin told her.

“She’s lucky she’s not being
punished
,” Cora said in a loud whisper, and Henry wondered what Cora knew about punishment, and hoped it wasn’t much. If the slaves were uncomfortable with Cora throwing around this threat so casually, they didn’t show it. Nurse tugged a tam o’shanter down over Cora’s curls and laid her hand alongside Cora’s cheek for just a moment, smiling.

With Cora sufficiently insulated, the four of them made their way downstairs. Randolph got their coats and scarves and Martin helped Henry get ready, wrapping and tying his scarf in a manner that Henry thought seemed very stylish. While Henry pulled on his gloves, Martin quickly put on his own outerwear and Randolph opened the door to let them out.

Cora wanted to walk between Henry and Martin, and she wanted to play the lift-and-swing game. After a few lifts and swings, it was like hefting a wiggling, shrieking ball of lead, and Henry had had enough of it. He definitely wasn’t going to win the award for best big brother, but he called an end to the hijinks.

“I can’t do it anymore, Cora. I’m too tired.”

“But Martin isn’t tired!”

Henry glanced at Martin and thought that Martin
was
tired; the difference was that Martin didn’t mind being tired, and Henry
did
. “Well, I am.”

“Listen to your brother, Miss,” Nurse said in a cautioning tone. “You know you don’t like being made to do things when you’re tired.”

“We’ll be at the menagerie soon anyway,” Henry said. “You’ll want to pay attention to the animals, won’t you? You aren’t going to want to play games anyway.”

Cora did not look convinced, but she made no further arguments. She did, however, let go of Henry’s hand so she could use both of her hands to cling to Martin’s, and Henry tried not to be hurt by this.

The winter park was all browns and greys, tree limbs black and stark against a pale blue sky. It was sunnier than Henry had anticipated, and he was actually a little over-warm with the scarf close around his neck. He could hear Cora chattering at his back with the occasional few words out of Martin, and was glad that Martin seemed to have the patience for Cora today that Henry decidedly lacked.

“Have you had a good year at school, Sir?”

“What? Oh, school. Same as always, I suppose. I still can’t do Latin, of course.”

“But Martin can help with that, can’t he, Sir? I imagine he’s a very good student.”

Henry blushed. “Well, yes. Father says I have to let him help me, and I’m afraid he’ll be in trouble if I don’t.”

“Why don’t you want his help, Sir? I’m sure he could make a world of difference for you.”

“If he helps, he’ll know how dumb I am,” Henry admitted, his face growing even hotter. “He didn’t realize until I got my grades for last term, but now he’s got an idea.” He lowered his voice and leaned closer to Nurse. “I don’t want him to look down on me.”

Nurse gave him a pitying look and put her hand on his arm. “Oh, Sir, he would never do that. I don’t know him as well as some of the others do, but I can see that Martin has too much affection for you to ever feel that way. I can’t imagine he’d be anything but compassionate in the face of your shortcomings, Sir.”

Nurse could get away with saying Henry had any shortcomings at all because she’d raised him and that sort of gave her the right. Henry did like the idea that Martin was so fond of him that it would be apparent to anyone.

“You’re probably right,” Henry conceded. “I’m just embarrassed.”

“You needn’t be embarrassed with a slave, Sir,” Nurse said gently. “He’s your companion, after all. He’s meant to know the best and worst of you.”

Henry’s worst seemed so shameful, though. He was lazy, impatient, selfish, stupid and undisciplined. He wasn’t sure that his good qualities were enough to cancel out the bad. ‘Good at sex’ was of limited value in the wider world, though of course it
was
quite important to Martin. Being sort of accidentally athletic was good, he supposed, and he
was
nicer to slaves than his friends were, but he felt like he should be more impressive somehow.
Martin
was impressive, and Henry only wanted to feel that he was good enough for Martin. He opened his mouth to say something of the kind to Nurse, but remembered himself and kept quiet, his cheeks growing hot.

“Excuse me, Sir,” Martin called, a few yards behind with Cora. “Sir? Little Miss says she has a question.”

Henry stopped on the path and turned to look at them. “What is it, Cora?”

“Henry?” Cora hurried up to meet him, quite breathless with excitement.

“Yes?”

“I want to ask you something. It’s important.”

“Yes, of course. Ask.”

“No, I need to ask you in private…” Cora beckoned him to crouch down and cupped her hands around his ear, knocking his hat sideways in the process. She put her mouth against her hands and in a very loud whisper asked, “Henry, do you
love
Martin?”

Henry drew back from her, startled and embarrassed, and he saw that both Nurse and Martin looked horrified, as well.