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“I’ve been thinking, lover,” Jonah said one night, curled close to Ben in their bed to ward off the chill January air, fingers tangling absently in the sparse hairs on Ben’s chest.
Ben was drifting, sated and warm all over after what those clever hands had recently been doing to him, but he smiled into the tousled black hair. “Should I be worried?”
Jonah pinched his side, making him jump. “I’m being serious. Pay attention.”
“I am,” Ben promised, and tugged him in closer. “What is it, then?”
“Bees.”
Ben wasn’t sure he’d heard properly, and he twisted, propping himself up on one elbow to look down at Jonah. He was all shadow in the darkness, but for the brightness of his eyes and teeth and the white streak glowing in his hair. “What?”
His lover sprawled onto his back, arms spread wide. “Bees! You know -- small flying things, buzz around from flower to flower, make honey--”
“I know what bees are, imp.” He couldn’t resist diving in for another kiss: Jonah was laughing at him, that generous mouth curved into a gleeful smile. Ben could see it in his mind’s eye, feel his lips curling up even as he kissed the smile off of him. He pulled back after a minute to catch his breath and smooth back Jonah’s hair. “Why were you thinking about bees, Jay?”
“Well,” Jonah started. He slid his hand up to catch Ben’s and tangled their fingers together. “I was thinking of what we could do for Dora now Bethy’ll be married and gone this summer. Aggie isn’t old enough to act as barmaid, so she’ll have to hire in one of the Prynne girls from the village, I expect, and wages will cut in on profit. And there’s the wedding to pay for and all, and Bethy’s portion to give out, and… you see?”
Ben didn’t exactly, but his heart was so soft at the moment that he smiled down at Jonah and brought their joined hands up to kiss his knuckles. There had been a time when he’d thought Jonah was a city boy through and through, that he was never made for a tiny village like Pellore. He couldn’t imagine, now, taking him away from the place he’d stopped running, the people he’d almost killed himself to save.
“All right,” he said. “And?”
“Well, I was talking to Hal about his honey mead.” At Ben’s blank look, Jonah clarified, “Hal Morgan? He’s next to Susie Trenowden, the baker’s wife, who makes those jam biscuits Aggie loves.”
Ben nodded along with him, on more solid ground now. John Trenowden was the best wing the Looe rugby team had, and his wife was the closest thing to a team nurse; she’d wrapped up his hand for him when he’d run foul of a jagged rock on the pitch weeks ago. “Right, Morgan the cooper. And...?”
Jonah pulled him down, wrapped him in his strong arms; Ben rested his cheek on his lover’s chest, nestling into the thick dark hair there. He smelled good, as he nearly always managed to, even when they’d been on the run for days and days; Ben thought it might be part of his magic, but Jonah had laughed when he’d said so and claimed he smelled the same as any man who had a passing acquaintance with soap.
“He keeps bees.” He could feel Jonah’s voice vibrating through his chest, lulling him down toward sleep. “He was telling me about it, and I really think we could try it too. There’s good money in honey to sell, he says, and the wax would do for candles for the tavern, and you could build the boxes, and I could tend them, and what do you think, Ben?”
“I think…” Ben yawned and nestled in. “I think you’re daft, and head-in-the-clouds, and impossibly lovely, and we’ll talk about it in the morning.”
Jonah was gone when he woke, but waking up alone didn’t put Ben’s heart in his throat anymore. Jonah had stayed when it mattered, after all. He got up, washed, pulled on his work clothes, and went downstairs to help Dora get breakfast for the girls.
There wasn’t any truly pressing work to be done, so he wasn’t unduly surprised when Agnes informed him that Jonah had promised to bring her back a real silk hair ribbon from town. He went often to Looe to pick up bits and bobs that were needed around the inn or the sweets Agnes loved, to greet acquaintances that were fast becoming old friends, to share Pellore gossip and come home with stories to tell. With his easy charm he was a favourite wherever he went, and Ben could never grudge him that.
After breakfast Ben walked Agnes out to the carter’s track for school, and waved her goodbye as the cart rattled off.
“No Jonah today?” Dora wanted to know when he came back, wiping her sudsy hands on her apron over the dishpan while Bethany dried. She tsked, shaking her head. “There’s upstairs windows that want battening before the storms come in next week, and I’d rather risk his neck on it than mine.”
“We’ll get it done,” Ben assured her. “What else?”
Dora’s list was never-ending, but Ben didn’t mind being busy. The kitchen stove wanted blacking; there was a draught around the front door; two tavern chairs had precarious seats and needed the better part of the morning to set right; then there was Agnes to fetch from school and set to feeding the pigs and mucking after the horse. It was late afternoon before he looked around and started to wonder that Jonah was still gone.
He swept through the door just before supper, pink-cheeked and windblown, bearing a sack of presents over his shoulder. “Here’s Old Saint Nick!” Agnes cheered. She’d been enchanted the previous month when Jonah had wrapped himself in a red shawl and pranced down from the roof with presents for them all. But Dora took one look at his bright eyes and grin and shook her head.
“You are a bucca, you,” she said, clearly disapproving. “Prancing around on the wind hither and yon with no care for the work to be done at home, and serve you right if you drop right out of the sky and crack your thick skull.”
“That’s all very fair and you’re as right as always, Dora, but I also brought presents!” Jonah gave Ben a nudge and a squeeze of his shoulder as he passed, with a brilliant smile that was just for him and warmed Ben to the core. “Though I suppose I can always take them back if they’re not wanted.”
Agnes squealed in disappointment, but there was no danger of her losing her treat; not even Mrs. Linney could be dour for long in the face of Jonah’s charm. He sparkled as he passed out his spoils: soft white lace for Bethany, who spent every evening now fussing over her wedding trousseau; spun wool dyed deep blue for Dora; the promised silk ribbons for Agnes along with her usual bag of sweetmeats. To Ben he gave a wink and a slim package wrapped in brown paper. “Don’t open it now,” he said under cover of Aggie running circles around him waving the ribbons like a May dancer and whooping like a savage.
Ben stowed the package away obediently and leaned back against the doorframe, catching Dora’s sharp glance between the two of them and answering it with an innocent look.
“Look, Ma,” Bethany marveled, holding up the lace and calling all their attention. “Did you ever see anything so fine? It must be machine-made, that.”
Dora took the piece from her daughter and fingered it. “That never came from Looe,” she said, with an accusing look at Jonah.
“Well, I wasn’t in Looe, which is why,” he answered. “That lace came from a very persuasive old woman in St. Germans, Bethy, who swore it would make your wedding day the luckiest of the year.”
Bethany widened her eyes. “St. Germans? Why, that’s halfway to Plymouth. Whatever did you go all that way for?”
It was a distance of five miles or less; Ben hid his smile behind his hand.
“I had business there, sweet,” Jonah said blithely. “Very secret, so don’t ask, I’ll never tell.”
Dora hmphed. “If you’re quite finished with your dramatics, Mr. Shakespeare, there’s supper cold on the table and my tavern to open in half an hour. Put it away safe now, my girl,” she told Bethany, who was stroking the lace as if it were a kitten in her arms. “Wash hands, Aggie, unless you’re hankering to eat with the pigs. And you, Jonah Pastern, off with those boots afore my nice clean floor is all over dirt.”
The tavern was full that night, the cold wind outside and a blazing fire within drawing half the town into the Green Man for the evening. Jonah drew ale and took coin and laughed with the fishermen and farmers; Dora and Bethany worked their practiced dance around tables with mugs and platters of bread and cheese and stew; Ben did his stolid duty as potboy and doorman both; Aggie showed off the new ribbons on her braids to the children who gathered by the fire to roast chestnuts and drink their warm watered cider. George Tapley had brought his fiddle and there were plenty of willing voices to sing, and with music and ale the room was merry long into the night.
Later, alone in their room after the inn had emptied and Dora and her daughters gone to bed, Jonah was eager as a puppy. “Open it,” he urged, watching Ben’s face rather than his hands as he tore into the brown paper.
It was a slender book, a little worn and waterstained, bound in blue with a plain cover. Ben opened it, mystified, and Jonah slipped in beside him to point out the title on the first page. “Look, Ben. A, B, C,” he read out, tracing each letter.
His lover’s obvious pride at reading three letters gave Ben a rush of fierce joy, and he slipped an arm around his waist. “That’s exactly right, Jay. The ABC of Bee Culture, it says. Is this what you went all the way to St. Germans for?”
Jonah beamed at him. “Hal sent me with a note for his sister Jane, who’s married to a farmer there, and she lent it me. She has five hives outside town, and she said she can give us a queen in the spring to start us off. I thought we could read it at night, if you’re willing, and then by spring we’ll be ready.” He leaned up on his toes to press a kiss to Ben’s lips. “What do you think?”
Ben drew him in and kissed him again for answer, and five minutes later the book was forgotten on the nightstand. He had Jonah on his back, strong legs over his shoulders so he could watch his face and the bright joy there, and in the end Jonah cried out “Ben, my Ben,” and gripped his hand tight.
He lay sprawled over Jonah afterwards with all their blankets bundled over them, trading lazy kisses, until Jonah stopped him with a finger on his lips. He smiled up at Ben, mussed and fond. “Was that a yes about the bees?”
Ben bit his fingertip gently and brushed the stray lock of white hair out of his lover’s eyes. “No. That was an ‘I love you’.” He rolled off of him and sat up, reaching over for the book and pulling the candle in closer. “This is a yes about the bees.”