Read Lessons in Power for Free Online

they’d stayed at home—not so much because he hated these revelations, it was
    simple regret they’d not been divulged on the sofa, where he could have held Jonty, petted him and tried to make it better.
    “I can’t go on getting so wound up over it and now I’m sure about what I have to do. Once we’ve
    investigated this case, we’re going to find those other two bastards and I’m going to confront them. I have no idea what I’m going to say or do but I have to trust that He and you will be there to help me.” Jonty smiled, looking quite beatific.
    It struck Orlando how much worry had been weighing on his lover, how strained and drawn he’d been
    looking these last two days. This face, relieved of some of the anxiety, was more like his old self.
    “Whatever you feel you must do, I’ll be there at your side. Even if we both end up in the dock.”
    Orlando grinned—they both began to laugh, slapping each other’s backs in as clear a gesture of love and mutual support as they could risk out on the open road on a Sunday afternoon.
    “Do you know, I’m such an idiot. I keep forgetting how lucky I am to have met you and for you to
    have been daft enough to fall in love with me. We’re bound together, Dr. Coppersmith, as surely as if we had taken vows. There should be no secrets any more. I’ve been a fool not to tell you all.”
    “If there’s more you want to say, Dr. Stewart, might I suggest that we take ourselves home and
    discuss it at the fireside over a full pot of tea? We’ll tell Mrs. Ward to shun the silver service for once.”
    Mrs. Ward wasn’t happy to use Orlando’s old brown teapot on a Sunday afternoon, but she
    succumbed when they agreed to sample her latest batch of butterfly cakes. They snuggled onto the sofa, discarding their shoes and wedging their cold feet under each others’ bottoms.
    Orlando let the tea and cakes work their magic on his lover’s reservations. If he was quiet and
    sensible, then Jonty would at last pour out all the facts about the days of torment at school. Orlando wanted the names of both perpetrators and the housemaster who had egged them on, so that at the very least he could curse them, swearing at their memory.
    “Christopher Jardine was too fond of power and the exercise of it,” Jonty began quite unexpectedly,
    “and Mr. Rhodes—I really don’t know his first name, Orlando—saw him as just the sort of arrogant bastard who’d serve his purposes. I suspect that I was just one of a string of boys in St. Vincent house who’d suffered under the auspices of our ‘beloved’ housemaster. I’m not sure he could have gone without his kicks for too long. Whoever went before me, I don’t know, although there was a story that two years after Rhodes came to the school a young lad in St. Vincent’s had died in a tragic accident, which someone
    muttered had been suicide. That was before my time and I’ve often wondered whether he was another
    victim. I’m certain there must have been others afterwards, as well, but who those poor souls might be…”
    24
    www.samhainpublishing.com

    Lessons in Power
    Orlando winced. He’d always assumed, despite one or two hints that Jonty had let drop, that his lover had been the only one to suffer. Now he suspected there were a whole string of young men who needed to heal. He patted Jonty’s leg, unable to think of anything constructive to say.
    “Anyhow, he goaded Jardine and his pal Timothy Taylor—the Honourable Timothy Taylor, mind
    you—into performing their nasty little deeds on me, while he watched and got whatever pleasure he could from it.”
    “How do you know?”
    “Because of what they said. They made it perfectly clear to me that someone was watching the show and it didn’t take long to establish who the peeping Tom was. I think I heard him once, no doubt standing with his hands down his pants giving himself a special thrill every time I pleaded for them not to do it.”
    Jonty studied his waistcoat.