Lessons in Love by Charlie Cochrane
Jonathan Stewart, Jonty for the intimate friends, and Orlando Coppersmith are both young professors in one of the Cambridge's college at the beginning of the twenty century. They are at opposite in work and behavior, Stewart a literature professor and Coppersmith a mathematics, Stewart open and friendly, both with students than colleagues, Coppersmith aloof and always lost in his mind. They also had very different family, Coppersmith now orphan and with two very cold and distant parents, Stewart still surrounded by a loving family.
But they are both rather young and so they click together. Jonty has no problem to admit that he has also a personal interest in Orlando, being him not new to feel a maybe not appropriate moving for another man. Instead Orlando is more hesitant, but not since he judges inappropriate that feelings, but since he never before has felt something similar for a man or a woman. Orlando was taught to avoid any personal emotion, to suppress any physical urges, so soon and so strong in his youth that he never allowed himself to disobey that teachings.
When Jonty tentatively tries to introduce Orlando to such physical contacts, Orlando believes that kissing and cuddling is the greatest extent of what two men can do together, not having any knowledge of what happens in bed between man and woman let alone between two men. But Jonty, even if in love with Orlando, can't be satisfied with simple being a little more than a dear friend for Orlando, and gently pushes for something more.
Just when Orlando is letting go a bit, a string of murders targets the students, and all the victims are men who were known to prefer the company of men. To Orlando's inhibitions is now added also the fear of what it could happen to Jonty if someone should know of their "particular" friendship.
The story is a good mix of romance and plot; the relationship between Orlando and Jonty has the lion share on the plot, leaving the investigation on the killing in second line, never interfering with the development of Orlando and Jonty's exploration of love. Even if the relationship reaches and deepens to a sex level, it's never in graphic details, always maintaining a sweet romance grade.
The setting is the same of the previous tale by Charlie Cochrane, the Old University buildings of Cambridge, with its all male atmosphere where women are only seen as intruders.
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