by Emily Larkin
Of course, Dex was a sex stallion now, so maybe the nickname wouldn’t bother him?
They turned onto a slightly more populated path. Octavius waited for a suitable audience to approach, which it soon did: Misters Feltham and Wardell, both of whom had been to school with Dex.
“You’re my favorite of all my beaus,” Octavius confided loudly as they passed. “Dex Stallyon, my sex stallion. You let me ride you all night long.” He uttered a beatific sigh, and watched with satisfaction as Dex flushed bright red.
Feltham and Wardell laughed. Dex laughed, too, uncomfortably, and hustled Octavius away, and then pinched him hard on his plump, dimpled arm.
“Ouch,” Octavius said, rubbing his arm. “That hurt.”
“Serves you bloody right,” Dex hissed. “I can’t believe you said I let you ride me!”
Now that was interesting: it was the reference to being ridden that Dex objected to, not the nickname.
Octavius resolved to make good use of that little fact.
He talked loudly about riding Dex when they passed Lord Belchamber and his cronies, and again when they encountered the Hogarth brothers.
Both times, Dex dished out more of those sharp, admonitory pinches, but Octavius was undeterred; he was enjoying himself again. It was fun ribbing Dex within earshot of men they both knew and watching his cousin go red at the gills.
He held his silence as two courting couples strolled past, and then swallowed a grin when he spied a trio of fellows sauntering towards them. All three of them were members of the same gentleman’s club that Dex frequented.
Dex spied them, too, and changed direction abruptly, hauling Octavius into a dimly lit walkway to avoid them.
Octavius tried to turn his laugh into a cough, and failed.
“You’re a damned swine,” Dex said. It sounded as if he was gritting his teeth.
“I think you mean bitch,” Octavius said.
Dex made a noise remarkably like a growl. He set off at a fast pace, his hand clamped around Octavius’s wrist.
Ordinarily, Octavius would have had no difficulty keeping up with Dex—he was an inch taller than his cousin—but right now he was a whole foot shorter, plus he was hampered by his dress. He couldn’t stride unless he hiked the wretched thing up to his knees, which he wasn’t going to do; he was already showing far too much of his person. “Slow down,” he said. “I’ve got short legs.”
Dex made the growling sound again, but he did slow down and ease his grip on Octavius’s wrist.
Along came a gentleman whom Octavius didn’t recognize, one of the nouveau riche judging from his brashly expensive garb. The man ogled Octavius overtly and even went so far as to blow him a kiss. Instead of ignoring that overture, Octavius fluttered his eyelashes and gave a little giggle. “Another time, dear sir. I have my favorite beau with me tonight.” He patted Dex’s arm. “I call him my sex stallion because he lets me ride him all night long.”
Dex pinched him again, hard, and dragged him away from the admiring gentleman so fast that Octavius almost tripped over his hem.
“Stop telling everyone that you ride me!” Dex said, once they were out of earshot.
“Don’t you like it?” Octavius asked ingenuously. “Why not? Does it not sound virile enough?”
Dex ignored those questions. He made the growling sound again. “I swear to God, Otto, if you say that one more time, I’m abandoning you.”
Which meant that Octavius had won. He opened the brisé fan and hid a triumphant smile behind it.
Dex released his wrist. Octavius refrained from rubbing it; he didn’t want to give Dex the satisfaction of knowing that it hurt. Instead, he walked in demure silence alongside his cousin, savoring his victory . . . and then lo, who should he see coming towards them but that old lecher, Baron Rumpole.
“I warn you, Otto,” Dex said, as Rumpole approached. “Don’t you dare.”
Rumpole all but stripped Octavius with his gaze, and then he had the vulgarity to say aloud to Dex, “I see someone’s getting lucky tonight.”
The opening was too perfect to resist. Warning or not, Octavius didn’t hesitate. “That would be me getting lucky,” he said, with a coy giggle. “He’s my favorite beau because he lets me ride—”
“You want her? She’s yours.” Dex shoved Octavius at the baron and strode off.
Octavius almost laughed out loud—it wasn’t often that he managed to get the better of Dex—but then Rumpole stepped towards him and the urge to laugh snuffed out.
He took a step back, away from the baron, but Rumpole crowded closer. He might be in his late fifties, but he was a bull-like man, thickset and bulky—and considerably larger and stronger than Octavius currently was.
Octavius tried to go around him to the left, but Rumpole blocked him.
He tried to go around him to the right. Rumpole blocked him again.
Dex was long gone, swallowed up by the shadows.
“Let me past,” Octavius demanded.
“I will, for a kiss.”
Octavius didn’t deign to reply to this. He picked up his skirts and tried to push past Rumpole, but the man’s hand shot out, catching his upper arm, and if he’d thought Dex’s grip was punishingly tight, then the baron’s was twice as bad. Octavius uttered a grunt of pain and tried to jerk free.
Rumpole’s fingers dug in, almost to the bone. “No, you don’t. I want my kiss first.” He hauled Octavius towards him and bent his head.
Octavius punched him.
If he’d been in his own shape, the punch would have laid Rumpole out on the ground. As it was, the baron rocked slightly on his feet and released Octavius’s arm.
Octavius shoved the man aside. He marched down the path, his steps fast and angry. How dare Rumpole try to force a kiss on him!
Behind him, Rumpole uttered an oath. Footsteps crunched in the gravel. The baron was giving chase.
Octavius was tempted to stand his ground and fight, but common sense asserted itself. If he were a man right now he’d crush Rumpole, but he wasn’t a man and Rumpole outweighed him by at least a hundred pounds. Retreat was called for.
Octavius picked up his skirts and ran, even though what he really wanted to do was pummel the baron to the ground. Fury gave his feet wings. He rounded a bend in the path. The shadows drew back and he saw a glowing lamp and two people.
The baron stopped running. Octavius didn’t, not until he reached the lamp casting its safe, golden luminescence.
He’d lost his fan somewhere. He was panting. And while rage was his predominant emotion, underneath the rage was a prickle of uneasiness—and that made him even angrier. Was he, Octavius Pryor, afraid of Baron Rumpole?
“The devil I am,” he muttered under his breath.
He glanced over his shoulder. Rumpole had halted a dozen yards back, glowering. He looked even more bull-like, head lowered and nostrils flaring.
The prickle of unease became a little stronger. Discretion is the better part of valor, Octavius reminded himself. He picked up his skirts again and strode towards the people he’d spied, whose dark shapes resolved into two young sprigs with the nipped-in waists, padded shoulders, and high shirt-points of dandies. “Could you escort me to the pavilion, kind sirs? I’m afraid I’ve lost my way.”
The sprigs looked him up and down, their gazes lingering on the lush expanse of his breasts.
Octavius gritted his teeth and smiled at them. “Please? I’m all alone and this darkness makes me a little nervous.”
“Of course, darling,” one of the sprigs said, and then he had the audacity to put his arm around Octavius’s waist and give him a squeeze.
Octavius managed not to utter an indignant squawk. He ground his teeth together and submitted to that squeeze, because a squeeze from a sprig was a thousand times better than a kiss from Baron Rumpole. “The pavilion,” he said again. “Please?”
The man released his waist. “Impatient little thing, aren’t you?” he said with a laugh. He offered Octavius his arm and
began walking in the direction of the pavilion. The second sprig stepped close on Octavius’s other side, too close, but Octavius set his jaw and endured it. The pavilion was only five minutes’ walk. He could suffer these men for five minutes. They were, after all, rescuing him.
Except that the first sprig was now turning left, drawing Octavius down one of the darker paths . . .
Octavius balked, but the second sprig had an arm around his waist and was urging him along that shadowy path. “I don’t like the dark,” Octavius protested.
Both men laughed. “We’ll be with you, my dear,” one of them said, and now, in addition to an arm around Octavius’s waist, there was a sly hand sidling towards his breasts.
Octavius wrenched himself free. Outrage heated his face. His hands were clenched into fists. He wanted nothing more than to mill both men down, but he was outweighed and outnumbered and the chances of him winning this fight were slim. “I shall walk by myself,” he declared haughtily, turning his back on the sprigs and heading for the lamplight.
Behind him, he heard the sprigs laughing.
Octavius gritted his teeth. A plague on all men!
He reached the slightly wider walkway, with its lamp, and glanced around. Fortunately, he didn’t see Baron Rumpole. Unfortunately, he couldn’t see anyone. He wished he’d not steered Dex towards these out-of-the-way paths, wished they’d kept to the busier promenades, wished there were people around. He picked up his skirts and headed briskly for the pavilion, but the path didn’t feel as safe as it once had. The lamplight didn’t extend far and soon he was in shadows again. He heard the distant sound of music, and closer, the soft crunch of footsteps.
They weren’t his footsteps.
He glanced around. Baron Rumpole was following him.
Octavius began to walk more rapidly.
The footsteps crunched faster behind him.
Octavius abandoned any pretense of walking and began to run, but his skirts restricted his strides and the baron caught him within half a dozen paces, grabbing his arm and hauling him into the dark mouth of yet another pathway.
“Let go of me!” Octavius punched and kicked, but he was only five foot two and the blows had little effect.
“Think too highly of yourself, don’t you?” Rumpole said, dragging Octavius deeper into the dark shrubbery. Rough fingers groped his breasts. There was a ripping sound as his bodice gave way. Octavius opened his mouth to shout, but the baron clapped a hand over it.
Octavius bit that hand, punched Rumpole on the nose as hard as he could, and tried to knee the man in the groin. He was only partly successful, but Rumpole gave a grunt and released him.
Octavius ran back the way he’d come. There were wings on his feet again, but this time he wasn’t fueled solely by rage, there was a sting of fear in the mix, and damn it, he refused to be afraid of Rumpole.
The path was still too dark—but it wasn’t empty anymore. There, in the distance, was Sextus.
Sextus was frowning and looking about, as if searching for someone, then his head turned and he saw Octavius and came striding towards him.
Octavius headed for him, clutching the ripped bodice with one hand, holding up his skirts with the other. He heard fast, angry footsteps behind him and knew it was Rumpole.
The baron reached him first. He grabbed Octavius’s arm and tried to pull him towards a dark and shadowy nook.
Octavius dug his heels in. “No.”
“Stupid bitch,” Rumpole snarled, but Octavius was no longer paying him any attention. He was watching Sextus approach.
His cousin’s stride slowed to an arrogant, aristocratic stroll. His expression, as he covered the last few yards, was one that Sextus had perfected years ago: haughty, aloof, looking down his nose at the world. “Rumpole,” he drawled.
The baron swung to face him, his grip tight on Octavius’s arm. “Pryor.”
Sextus glanced at Octavius. He saw the torn bodice, but his expression didn’t alter by so much as a flicker of a muscle. “I must ask you to unhand the lady.”
Rumpole snorted. “She’s no lady. She’s a piece of mutton.”
“Always so crass, Rumpole. You never disappoint.” There was no heat in Sextus’s voice, just boredom. His tone, his words, were so perfectly insulting that Octavius almost crowed with laughter.
Beneath that instinctive laughter was an equally instinctive sense of shock. Had Sextus actually said that to a baron?
Rumpole flushed brick red. “She’s mine.”
“No,” Sextus corrected him coolly. “The lady is a guest of my brother tonight.”
“Lady?” The baron gave an ugly laugh. “This thing? She has no breeding at all.”
“Neither, it appears, do you.” Again, Sextus’s tone was perfect: the boredom, the hint of dismissive disdain.
Octavius’s admiration for his cousin rose. Damn, but Sextus had balls.
Rumpole’s flush deepened. He released Octavius. His hands clenched into fists.
“I believe that’s Miss Smith’s shawl you’re holding,” Sextus said, and indeed, Octavius’s shawl was dangling from one meaty fist, trailing in the dirt.
Rumpole cast the shawl aside, a violent movement, and took a step towards Sextus.
Sextus was the shortest of the Pryors, but that didn’t mean he was short. He stood six feet tall, eye to eye with Rumpole, but whereas the baron was beefy, Sextus was lean. He looked slender compared to Rumpole.
Octavius found himself holding his breath, but Sextus gave no hint of fear. He returned the baron’s stare with all the slightly bored arrogance of a duke’s grandson.
For a moment the threat of violence hung in the air, then the baron muttered something under his breath that sounded like “Fucking Pryor,” turned on his heel, and stalked off.
Sextus picked up the shawl, shook it out, and put it around Octavius’s shoulders. “You all right, Otto?”
Octavius wrapped the shawl more tightly around himself, hiding the ripped bodice. “You were just like grandfather, then. All you needed was a quizzing glass to wither him through.”
Sextus ignored this comment. “Did he hurt you?”
Octavius shook his head, even though his arm ached as if a horse had kicked it. Damn Rumpole and his giant-like hands. “It’s a shame you’re not the heir. You’d make a damned good duke.”
“Heaven forbid,” Sextus said, which was exactly how Octavius felt about his own ducal prospects: heaven forbid that he should ever become a duke. It was little wonder Quintus was so stuffy, with that multitude of responsibilities hanging over him.
“Come on,” Sextus said. “Let’s get you home.” He took Octavius by the elbow, matching his stride to Octavius’s shorter legs.
They were almost at the Kennington gate when someone called out: “Sextus!” It was Dex. He reached them, out of breath. “You found him! He all right?”
“Rumpole practically ripped his dress off,” Sextus told him. “What the devil were you doing, leaving him like that?”
Dex looked shamefaced. “Sorry, I didn’t think.”
“That is patently clear,” Sextus said, a bite in his voice. “Tell the others I’m taking him home.”
Dex obeyed without argument, heading back towards the pavilion.
“It was my fault,” Octavius confessed, once they were through the gate and out in Kennington Lane. “I pushed Dex too far.”
Sextus glanced at him, but said nothing. He still looked angry, or rather, as angry as Sextus ever looked. He was damned good at hiding his emotions.
Several hackneys waited in the lane. Sextus handed Octavius up into one and gave the jarvey instructions.
“It was my fault,” Octavius said again, settling onto the squab seat.
“What? It’s your fault that Rumpole almost raped you?” A shaft of lamplight entered the carriage, illuminating Sextus’s face for an instant. Octavius was surprised by the anger he saw there.
“He didn’t almost rape me,” he said, as the carriage turned out of Ken
nington Lane and headed towards Westminster Bridge. “And honestly, it was as much my fault as Dex’s. Neither of us thought Rumpole was dangerous. I didn’t realize until too late just how puny I am.” He remembered the baron forcing him into the dark shrubbery and gave an involuntary shiver. And then he remembered Sextus facing Rumpole down. “I can’t believe you spoke to him like that. He’d have been within his rights to call you out.”
Sextus just shrugged.
The carriage rattled over Westminster Bridge. When they reached the other side, Octavius said, “When I was fourteen, Father and Grandfather had a talk with me about sex. Did your father . . . ?”
“We all had that lecture,” Sextus said.
Octavius was silent for several minutes, remembering that long-ago conversation. He’d given his word of honor to never force any woman into bestowing sexual favors, regardless of her station in life. “I’d wager Rumpole didn’t have a talk like that with his father.”
“No wager there,” Sextus said dryly.
They sat in silence while the carriage trundled through the streets. Octavius had given his word all those years ago—and kept it. He’d never forced women into his bed, but he had ogled the ladybirds, snatched kisses, playfully pinched a time or two. It had seemed harmless, flirtatious fun.
Harmless to him. But perhaps those women had disliked it as much as he’d disliked it tonight?
Octavius chewed on that thought while the carriage rattled its way towards Mayfair.
Chapter Two
Octavius and his brother and his cousins each had their own residences in London. Octavius had a neat set of rooms in Albemarle Street, Dex was in Clarges Street, Sextus in Halfmoon Street, and Ned had taken a set at the Albany. But Quintus, as heir to the Linwood dukedom, had not just rooms but an entire house in Curzon Street.
Curzon Street was where they tended to congregate, and Octavius headed there on the afternoon after his misadventure in Vauxhall Gardens.