Held Close to My Heart

By Ellie Thomas

Since their mid-teens, Luke has been deeply in love with his childhood friend and neighbour Jem, who spends most of the year at the decadent court of King Charles II in London. In the intervening years at home on Twelvetrees Farm in Oxfordshire, Luke has been occupied by helping his disabled father run their small estate, taking on the burden of work to support his family. Meanwhile, Jem has enjoyed all the worldly pleasures available to him at court.

When they are both twenty-one, Jem returns to Westlecot Manor to spend the summer, and Luke’s feelings for him reach boiling point. Luke can no longer cling to the belief he is important to Jem. He is overwhelmed by jealousy at the prospect of Jem's dalliances with any visitors to the manor house, while aware Jem is bewildered by his outbursts of disapproval.

Will Luke allow his jealousy to get the better of him? Might he dare to speak his deepest feelings? Or would that destroy their lifelong bond forever?

• Language: English
• Publisher: JMS Books LLC
• Release date: Jun 4, 2022
• ISBN: 9781685501426

Book preview

Chapter 1

Twelvetrees Farm, Oxfordshire, June 1676

Luke

Wrapped in his embrace, those long months apart dissolved in moments. Overwhelming tenderness filled my very soul. I could have stayed there forever, luxuriating in him being at the center of my world.

Moving away slightly, holding me at arm’s length, he looked at me with gladness and said, Luke, it is so good to see you again. And then, with a final squeeze, he let me go, and greeted my mother with equal enthusiasm. Released from the sheltering warmth of his body, I shivered, suddenly alone, bereft, and laughable. Why do I fool myself every time?

Jeremy Carteret, known to us all as Jem, my closest friend in the world, the love of my life, moved away from my mother before embracing my father in the same exuberant way. It’s enough, I told myself sternly. To retain some of his affection is sufficient. It has to be.

Jem clasped my father by the elbow on his sound side, the one that didn’t rely on his walking stick for support, and they walked slowly together into the ancient farmhouse, as though Jem belonged there, which informally speaking, he did. As a small child, while his father, a widowed baronet, was in exile during the rule of Oliver Cromwell, the Protector of England, Jem had stayed with us at our farm near the country town of Banbury.

I’d known Jem for as long as I could remember, so having him as a constant presence made no difference to me. As we grew from infants, we rambled over the gardens and fields, with bold, fearless Jem the leader on our expeditions, and then, when we were of age for school, we took our lessons together.

In the classroom, it was my turn to shine, helping Jem with the studies he struggled over, golden curls tamed, blue eyes downcast, his brow wrinkled, pink tongue clamped between his teeth as he painstakingly copied my work to spare him yet another thrashing from the schoolmaster. We’d always been regarded as a duo, of the same age, our contrasting natures fitting together to make a whole, Jem’s liveliness tempered by my more thoughtful ways.

At some point during our shared childhood, Jem’s father and older brothers had eventually returned from the continent as part of the new king’s retinue, settling back in the nearby estate my father had carefully conserved as best he could. Jem and I had been born during those troubled times of civil war that tore not just districts, but even families apart, due to strongly-held contrasting opinions.

But my father and Sir Harry Carteret remained allies, probably because they represented two sides of a moderate view. When I was old enough to understand such matters, my father would talk to me about the waste of war, the bloodshed in battles fought nearby, the widespread starvation and cruelty, of petty scores, viciously settled under the guise of wider politics.

The senseless destruction sickened him, and he was only glad to see his neighbor safely tending to his lands and people. It did not occur to him that, in turn, Sir Harry would speak up for him under the new regime to ensure he did not incur any penalties for being, at least cursorily, on the eventual losing side.

It was only when I was beyond boyhood that I started to see Jem differently. Until then, he was almost a part of me, taken for granted, where one of us ended,