It Takes Two to Tumble (Seducing the Sedgwicks, #1)

by Cat Sebastian

This fellow had wheat-colored hair that needed a cut and freckles all over his face. He was nothing like the chaplain. Unacceptable. “Oh damn,” the vicar said. Phillip gritted his teeth. Swearing was another thing the chaplain had never done. “I mean drat,” the man said, his freckled face going pink.

“Oh, they won’t come down,” Sedgwick said cheerfully. “Not a chance.” “Excuse me?” “I wouldn’t even bother calling them. They’ll stay up there until the sun sets or until the spirit moves them otherwise.” He seemed utterly undisturbed by this. His eyes were actually sparkling, for God’s sake.

It made no sense. Ben liked jovial, mild-mannered sorts. He had no use for unpleasant people. You could think of a couple interesting uses for the captain, though, whispered the part of his brain that he always tried to ignore.

Vicars definitely weren’t supposed to smoke cigarillos. A pipe by the fireside, perhaps. But not a cigarillo and not out of doors. But vicars also weren’t supposed to look at other gentlemen the way he had caught Sedgwick looking at him over the breakfast table, so perhaps Sedgwick was simply a terrible vicar.

Sedgwick put a hand solidly on Phillip’s shoulder, and for a mad moment Phillip thought he was about to be kissed. The room, the whole world, was reeling crazily around except for that one point of contact where Sedgwick touched him, and there it burned.

“You’ll spoil them,” Phillip said nonsensically. Sedgwick looked up, and he smiled as if he were happy to see Phillip, and it was the first time anyone had even pretended to be glad to lay eyes on him since he had returned. That smile was so honest and warm it was somehow shocking. Phillip nearly caught himself smiling back, the corners of his mouth twitching up involuntarily. He couldn’t remember the last time he had smiled.

For heaven’s sake, pretend not to speak French. He folded it into a compact square and slid his hand along the table until his hand touched the captain’s, tucking the note under the other man’s palm.

At the slight touch of their hands, the captain went very still. Which was to say, even more stonily rigid than he had been before. But then, noticing the tightly folded square of paper beneath his hand, he did the stupidest thing imaginable. He tucked it into his breast pocket without even bothering to unfold it, let alone read it. Dolt. Ben gritted his teeth. It was a miracle England had defeated Napoleon if men with so little sense of strategy were in charge of the navy. That idiocy quelled Ben’s improper thoughts, however.

The vicar’s face had turned grave. Gravity didn’t sit well on his cheerful features. His mouth belonged in a smile. And if that wasn’t a harebrained notion, Phillip didn’t know what was.

He laced his fingers into Sedgwick’s and was startled to find that it felt right, as if he had always wanted to hold hands with a madcap vicar at his dining table, and only realized it now.

He wouldn’t do the people of Kirkby Barton any good by thinking about bacon or wanking, so he didn’t think about either and had to imagine neither did God.

The vicar seemed to have his own personal ray of sunshine following him about, casting light in his path and drawing people to him, while Phillip was ever under a storm cloud.

I think you’re an atheist. And, what’s a good deal more concerning to me at this moment, a coward who’s afraid of some cold water.”

If there was a way to resist this man, he hadn’t found it.

“We’d better have a couple layers of fabric between us at all times, vicar.”

all he could think was that it had all been so easy, so right, and that it would have been a good deal simpler if that hadn’t been the case.

Twelve hours ago he at least thought himself an honest man. Now, though. Now he was ruined. Now he knew what it was to truly want something, to truly want someone, and he had to figure out how to live with that knowledge.

or he needed to find a way to confess to her the truth of what their marriage would be. Because now he knew what it wouldn’t be—it wouldn’t be breathless, desperate, heated touches. It wouldn’t be the mad rush to get hands inside clothes, to get lips onto skin.

For two days—forty-eight bloody hours, damn it—he dogged Phillip like a shadow, like a rash, like a bloody plague. Every time Phillip opened his eyes, there was the vicar, all freckles and smiles, as if they hadn’t had their hands inside one another’s clothes, as if they hadn’t kissed one another like their lives depended on it.

“You’re so good,” Phillip murmured. “So good.” He pushed a lock of hair off Sedgwick’s forehead, wanting to see his entire face, needing to watch for any signs of hesitation or distaste. Nothing.

But that was just the trouble—the more he thought, the clearer it was that he didn’t want a life that didn’t include soft kisses and steady hands, whispered praise and shared touches.

“I want you in my mouth,” Phillip whispered. “I want to suck you.” He had never said those words, never thought he would. “Will you let me?” A shudder of a breath. “Yes, yes, please.”

But then Ben turned his head, and when he saw Phillip, his face broke unhesitatingly into a smile. Phillip smiled back despite himself. How could he not? He couldn’t even muster up any icy reserve. This man was the antidote to chilliness. He was a counterweight to Phillip’s natural inclination to aloofness.

They were treating him as if he did belong here, not on a ship a thousand miles away, but on a picnic blanket, basking in the sunshine. As if he belonged to these children and they to him, as if he were at all worthy of that. And somehow, this country vicar belonged there, too, with them.

He was angry at life, and wasn’t that a stupid thing. He was angry that there was no way for him to have what he wanted, what he needed, what surely was any man’s dream—a home, a family, a place of his own in the world—without a wife, and he didn’t know how to have a wife without deceiving or misleading her on a matter that she must find of the utmost importance.

He hadn’t realized that this other kind of love, the kind he felt for Phillip, had so much in common with falling off a cliff. He couldn’t stop loving Phillip any more than he could stop gravity.

“Is that what we did? Join our souls?” Phillip was slightly startled. Ben propped himself up on his elbow so he was looking down at Phillip. “I think we’ve been doing that for weeks.”

“Benedict. God. I don’t want to let you down. You deserve so much better—” Ben silenced him with a lazy kiss. “Don’t you dare tell me I don’t deserve this. Don’t you dare.”