Chapter 9

The hardship lay in the love.

Robert embraced life with vast affection, from new waistcoats to athletic young aristocrats in his bed to improbable novels of swashbuckling and ghosts and adventure. Anthony could be content to simply watch him, to ensure that all that light remained undimmed, to smile in the wake of the sun, so unlike his own experience of the world. But that did not make it easy.

Hardships, he thought. When Robert came in from a ride all wind-blown and flushed with exertion, and began to remove layers of clothing—when Robert casually began to change shirts while listening to Anthony’s instructions about the night’s supper-party and time and place, and Anthony had to school his own expression into unreadability, even as Robert nodded and said yes, of course, to him, so earnest, so shirtless, ripples of boxer’s muscles exposed—

Oh, hardships. Yes. But he’d embrace them willingly.

Robert did not love him. He understood as much.