His Heart's Obsession by Alex Beecroft Page A

sneer of contempt. “I find the whole subject distasteful.” Pushing back his chair, he folded his napkin with an aura of repressed violence and shot to his feet. “I have quite lost my appetite. Wish you good night, sir. Hughes.” He sketched a mocking bow and escaped.
    Hamilton rose too, and so perforce did Robert. “Forgive me, sir,” he said, before Hamilton had a chance to go away and think about what had just happened, “for raising such an unsuitable topic at the table. Since this acquaintance of mine spoke, it has weighed on my mind. He is a remarkable person, otherwise.”
    “Can any number of virtues make up for such a vice?” Hamilton put on his hat as if jamming on the helmet of salvation, but he offered a fleeting, unconvincing smile nevertheless. “Morgan is right, you know. You’re a good man, Hughes, but you have some strange ideas. Whatever unnatural theories they debated in your college, do try and remember that you are not at Oxford anymore.”
    “I will, sir.” Careful to look on the funny side of this patronising kindness, Robert managed to grin. He had hoped for poison, after all, deliberately tipping it into Hal’s cup, so that he might come after and provide the purge. There was no sense in regretting the success of the manoeuvre now. “I do apologise for ruining a good meal.”
    Hamilton’s smile strengthened, and the relaxation extended to his hands, which unclenched and rested lightly on the back of his chair. “Think nothing of it,” he said. “Though you may have your work cut out in soothing Morgan’s ruffled feathers. I understand you’re sharing?”
    “Yes, sir. There isn’t a single room to be had for love nor money, but for yours.”
    “There’s another reason. Imagine, if one had a sod for a shipmate, one might be forced by circumstances to share a bed with him. It doesn’t bear thinking about.”
    “You could sleep on the floor, sir. Or rather, you could make him sleep on the floor.”
    Hamilton laughed, and Robert wondered, for one suicidal instant, what would happen if he said, “Would it alter your opinion if I told you that you had served with two of us for the past five years?” But even he would not bet on such odds. So he wished his captain good-night, put his plate down for the waiting dog, and lingered over buying a bottle of rum. Then, biting the inside of his cheek, he nerved himself to go up and face the firing squad.

Chapter Eight
    If Robert had found the door locked against him and his portmanteau thrown into the corridor, he would have taken it for a good sign, picked up his clothes and found a random stranger willing to share for sixpence. But the door swung open at his touch.
    He edged forward gingerly, expecting the chamber pot to be thrown in his face or to confront the business end of a cocked pistol. Instead he found Hal sitting on the bed, a coatless shoulder wedged into the far corner of the room.
    Cheek pressed against the wall, Hal gazed out of the small dormer window over the rooftops of the town, his legs drawn in tight, arms around his knees. He turned his head no more than an inch to look at Robert and say softly, heavily, “You bastard.”
    Nerved up to meet anger, Robert shivered at the tone of despair. Had he pushed the knife in too far? “I’m sorry,” he said, “but you needed to know.”
    “I needed to be publicly humiliated? I needed…I needed my heart broken? Yes, of course I did. How altruistic of you. For I’m sure you did it entirely for my good, and not for your own. Is that rum?”
    Robert looked at the forgotten bottle, startled to find it dangling from his fingers. “Yes. Here,” he said, and passed it over.
    Hal downed half of it in one draught, drinking it like water. He turned back to face the window, dismissing Robert from his notice. A strained and desolate silence filled the small room. Pulling off his own coat with movements that sounded excruciatingly loud, Robert wondered if he dared try to ask for