Chapter 18

He had to. He relied upon that control. Always competent, always prepared, always able to correct the course of the world—

Could he correct this?

He exhaled. Looked at Robert: a portrait of anguish with slumped shoulders and bent head. Even his hair got flatter, red-gold dulled by misery.

Anthony’s feet moved without permission. He found himself beside Robert’s pillar of pain, aching with the need to make it right.

Nothing he could do? He could think of something.

He did not know how Robert would take the suggestion. But it was asuggestion, it would solve at least two prongs of the problem, and he thought that Robert might say yes.

The idea was terrifying, and tantalizing, and delicious, and daring. A challenge to class and convention—not without some precedent, but highly unusual—and to Anthony’s own aforementioned self-control.