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Why couldn’t people just make an effort to get along? Wasn’t life hard enough without going out of your way to cast stones into other people’s paths? Why did some people have to be so disagreeable?
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.
But this was the vicar. Phillip hadn’t planned on lusting after the vicar. The vicar, of all people.
He tended to think that when the Bible condemned something practically everyone did, whether it be tossing oneself off or eating pork, there was likely some nuance that had been lost either to history or to translation.
And then he didn’t think about it anymore. 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.
Ben sighed. The hayloft incident had been a source of extreme mortification, mainly because his father had taken it as an opportunity to tell sixteen-year-old Ben about the Greeks. Ben had wanted to sink into the earth, not have his private matters become the subject of his father’s vague musings.
Dacre surfaced beside him, dark hair slicked back from his forehead. They could both stand at this depth, but just barely. “Fuck shit bollocks,” he ground out. “Bugger.” “A bit chilly?” Ben strove for a level of insouciance that wasn’t possible when your teeth were rattling in your head. “F-fuck yourself.”
The fact that he was finally understanding his father’s poetry was not, he thought, a good sign.
“You look like you stepped on something suspicious.” Dacre’s voice pulled him out of his reverie. “Wait, did you?” Ben felt his mouth twitch upward in the beginnings of a wry smile. “If I told you I was thinking of the Bible, would you believe me?”
Alice always told him he had the aesthetic sensibilities of an infant: he liked summer, and baby animals, and fruit tarts.
God commanded him to love, and he did it with his heart and with his actions.
Then Phillip pulled away. “Roll over,” he ordered in that commanding but gentle tone of voice Ben loved so much. “Yes, Captain,”
