“You know, I’ll learn. Sparrow plucking, cheese rolling.” Edward smiled. “Or perhaps it’s the other way around. How does one pluck a cheese?”
“Thinking about it, there is one thing we have to do. The new tenants will be moving into Ginger’s old cottage.” Gabriel sighed. “We should go and oversee the work.”
“Hmm.” Edward pulled him closer, kissing him. “Later.”
Chapter Fifty-Three
Some weeks later, a sunny day arrived. Birds sang, flowers gave up the best of their scent, and the ash-streaked remains of what had once been Hardcote House acquired a stark, sun-touched beauty. If anyone had cared to stray beyond the imposing gates and make their way along the tree-lined drive, they would have seen an uncommon number of carriages outside such an ostensibly empty ruin.
Inside, however, was a different story. A different story, but a happy one, on a day that everyone agreed was really quite perfect for a party.
* * *
Gabriel studied himself intently in the new mirror. He still wasn’t used to seeing himself in the stark surroundings of the gamekeeper’s cottage; Caroline had insisted on bringing a small looking glass for the purposes of party preparation. Extensively gilded, it seemed very out of place amongst his own simple objects.
Gabriel sighed, attempting to smooth back his hair. Truth be told, he looked as out of place as the mirror did. How strange full evening dress looked on him, complete with stockings. He felt so buttoned and starched and stuffed that he could barely move.
But Edward would like it, wouldn’t he? He wanted to look his best, today of all days. The first party—possibly the only party—that he would ever attend as Edward’s official consort. Opportunities like this did not exist in any other circles, and had to be taken advantage of.
“Gabriel, where are my—Oh!” Caroline walked into the room, her best black crepe pooling around her feet. “My goodness. Look at you.”
“What?” Gabriel turned, arms outstretched. “Do I look elegant? Dashing?”
“Well, yes...” Caroline looked at him, a small crease of concern appearing on her forehead. “But you don’t look happy. Quite the opposite, in fact.”
“I am happy.” Gabriel turned back to the mirror with an irritated grunt. “I’d be happier if my collar weren’t strangling me.”
“Not that anyone should take the ramblings of an ancient widow into consideration, of course.” Caroline turned to the dressing table, wiping away a small speck of dust. “But I rather think all Edward wants is your presence. Not a particular style of dress, or manner.”
“You know, I think you’re right.” Gabriel shook his head, smiling at his own idiocy. “He seems to be quite comfortable with me as I am.”
“Try not to sound too thunderstruck by it. Or by the fact that I was right about something.” With a tentative jerk of the wrist, Caroline adjusted his cravat, loosening a little. “Why don’t you leave without me? You’re on the point of being late.”
Gabriel looked at her, confused. “Why would I wish to arrive alone?”
* * *
Inside Hardcote House, there was a general air of rushed preparation.
“Well?” Edward turned to Bryce, Frakes and Maurice, trying to control his alarm. “Is he coming? Is he?”
“The Duke of Caddonfell nervous, twice in one lifetime?” Bryce smiled, leaning casually against one blackened wall of the library. “Now I’ve seen everything. He’ll come. Don’t worry.”
Edward took in the room, the decorations, his own excessively formal clothes. “This is a stupid idea. Colossally stupid.”
“And that’s all it is at the moment. An idea.” Frakes reached into his pockets and pulled out a cigarillo. “If he doesn’t understand, or doesn’t seem ready, we can all pretend this is just a party.” He chuckled. “A somewhat confusing party.”
“I should have told him. I should have asked him.” Edward began to bite his thumb. “He’s going to think I’m completely bloody mad. I mean, we have talked about it generally, but there’s been no planning on his part, I really think he doesn’t—”
“For Christ’s sake, Edward, go to him.” Maurice raised an eyebrow from the corner of the room and drained his glass of wine. “You’ve made me drag myself from my sickbed. I want to know if I can crawl back into it.”
“He’s right.” Bryce gently pushed Edward towards the door. “Go on. Go.”
Edward nodded gratefully. First walking, then breaking into a run, he headed for the door.
* * *
“Gabriel? I think I left my favourite bracelet on the dressing table. Perhaps I should go back and get it?”
“Caroline, this is the third time you’ve mysteriously mislaid something.” Gabriel turned to his sister with an irritated huff, his shoes dampening on the lawn. “Is something the matter?”
Caroline sighed, rolling her eyes. “Are you really so blind to others’ motivations? You need to arrive alone, Gabriel. Perhaps there’s something special waiting for you.”
Gabriel turned to look at Hardcote House, suddenly wishing he’d remained in his elegant clothes. He looked down at his simple linen shirt, his breeches, and silently cursed. “What? Why am I meant to arrive alone? And why didn’t you simply stay in the cottage?”
“You rather roped me into leaving with you, dear brother.” Caroline smiled. “And others would have been far more interested in what’s waiting at Hardcote House, you know.”
A single, wild note of something close to hope filled Gabriel’s heart. “What is it?”
“Why don’t you let me languish here for a moment, you irritating man, and go and find out?”
* * *
Gabriel let his sister languish. He walked as quickly as possible, his mind supplying an infinite number of possibilities and summarily rejecting them, until he reached the front door of Hardcote House—and met Edward, impeccably dressed, a mysteriously harried look on his face.
“Oh.” He looked at Gabriel, wide-eyed. “You are precisely on time.”
“Of course I am. I always am.” Gabriel moved closer, concerned. “Are you quite all right? I know I am not dressed appropriately, but—”
“Nonsense. You look perfect.” Edward’s hand vanished quickly into his waistcoat; Gabriel watched, puzzled, as it came out empty. “It’s just—I have something to tell you.”
“Can’t you tell me at the party?”
“Well...” Edward’s expression was completely unreadable.
Gabriel, rolling his eyes, brushed past him into the blackened hallway. “Tell me on the way.” He began walking along the corridor, noting the lit candles that bordered the smoke-blighted wallpaper. “I’m impatient for a little merriment.”
“That doesn’t sound like you. That sounds like me.” Edward laughed awkwardly. “Well, I—I apologise if I am overdressed.”
“You’re always overdressed. It is one of the many things I love about you.”
“And Hartley won’t come. He won’t even reply to my letters.”
“Understandable.” Gabriel sighed. “It will take time, Edward. He will need a long, long time to forgive you, let alone your brother. Is this what you need to tell me?”
“No.” Edward’s footsteps hastened as Gabriel sped up; he could see light coming from the library, and hear voices. “Did—did Lady Ploverdale mention anything?”
“No, but she’s being most odd, much like you.” Gabriel paused, his hand hovering at the library door. “Edward...is something wrong?”
“I... I don’t know. Not yet.” Edward bit his lip. “I believe I’ll have to wait and see.”
Looking quizzically at the man he loved, wondering why on earth both he and Caroline were behaving so strangely, Gabriel opened the door to the library. He looked about him...and stopped.
In the absence of clear information, his thoughts took the form of a lis
t.
Christening?
Funeral?
The party Edward had described was...well, it was not a party. Only Frakes, Maurice and Bryce were there, dressed in extreme formality, looking at him with a sort of wary excitement. There was champagne, but no one was drinking it—and there were flowers, flowers from what looked to be every corner of the Hardcote gardens, filling the air with scent.
Buttons was lounging idly on one of the windowsills. His blue ribbon collar had been replaced with a white one. There was also a fire-blackened lectern in the centre of the room, with a battered Book of Common Prayer sitting on it.
A faint, barely discernible word was added to Gabriel’s list.
“I’m sorry. I should have asked you more clearly—we should have spoken properly about it.” Edward’s voice came from behind him, low, panicked. “It doesn’t have to be—oh, Lord, I suppose I should at least show you.”
A small creak from the door made Gabriel look up. Caroline slid silently into the room, a smile on her face.
The word on Gabriel’s list grew a little bolder, with a question mark added to it.
“You might even think it’s blasphemous. I don’t think it is, and I doubt you do, but who knows. I was an idiot.” Edward put his hand into his waistcoat; when he withdrew it, Gabriel saw he was holding something small. “But...tell me.”
He opened his palm.
Gabriel looked at the rings. They were small and thin, of well-beaten gold...and a tiny, whisper-thin gap in each bright circle.
“Broken.” Edward’s voice trembled. “Broken, but whole.”
In Gabriel’s head, the question mark vanished.
Wedding.
“You have to say the words, Reverend. You’re the only one ordained, if we’re keeping to any formalities at all here.” Frakes’s boisterous voice broke through the portentous atmosphere. “I was meant to mark the page, but I’m buggered if I could find—”
“It’s quite all right.” Gabriel swallowed. “I know them by heart.”
With one trembling hand, he led Edward to the lectern. As Maurice, Frakes, Bryce and Caroline gathered around, the daylight mingling with the candlelight on their faces, Gabriel looked into Edward’s eyes.
He was weeping. Gabriel knew he was weeping too. But Edward was smiling too, smiling ecstatically, and Gabriel felt a wide, impossible grin spreading across his face.
Happiness. It was his, and Edward’s, and theirs together.
“Dearly beloved.” He looked at the face of the man he loved, his heart racing. “We are gathered together here, in the sight of God...”
* * *
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Acknowledgments
Many thanks to Deborah, my editor, whose thorough and patient work made this book the best it could possibly be.
About the Author
Annabelle Greene writes hot, heartwarming historical romances with plenty of humour.
When she isn’t crafting the perfect HEA, she’s making pasta or walking along Italy’s beautiful Adriatic coast.
To get in touch (and see lots of pasta and cat pictures), check out her Twitter and Instagram.
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Keep reading for a sneak peek at The Soldier and the Spy, the next book in Annabelle Greene’s Society of Beasts series...
London, 1819
If the dark-haired young man in the corner of the pub kept looking at him, there was going to be trouble. Captain Benjamin Frakes, discreet but definite lover of men both in battle and in bed, wondered what sort of trouble it would be.
Pretending to ignore the observant stranger, he looked down at the pile of wrinkled papers scattered in front of him. The background noise of hoarse, beer-soaked voices in the King’s Head continued, a steady, weary murmur.
More Beast business. For a club so very secret and exclusive, the Society of Beasts generated enough paperwork to wallpaper Almack’s, White’s, Brooks’s and Boodle’s in page after page of administrative comings and goings. Properties acquired and sold, servants hired and bribed to keep silent, investments shifting in an endless tide that went to widows, orphans, hospitals, churches, nunneries—no. Not a tide. A flood.
Benjamin stared at the figures dancing in front of his eyes. Breathing in the fug of stale beer and smoke that clung to every fixture in the battered old pub, he sighed.
Edward, Duke of Caddonfell, the original Beast, had always delegated the lion’s share of the paperwork. Benjamin, all too aware of how close the Society had come to ruin during a bout of nightmarish business with the late Duke of Sussex, preferred to keep the most sensitive materials under his own eyes. Even if it meant that he, for all intents and purposes, was now the sole head of the largest molly club in England.
There had been no ceremony and no formal discussions of what his duties would be. There certainly hadn’t been a warning about paperwork. Caddonfell had been far too smugly content with his new living situation, ensconced in his childhood home with his lover, Gabriel Winters, to tell Benjamin anything about the soul-crushing amount of documentation even the simplest decisions would entail.
Benjamin found himself wishing for cold steel and a sea battle. Something exhausting, painful, and with all accounting done by little men in dark rooms he didn’t have to think about.
The man in the corner was still staring. A young man, if Benjamin was any judge, not more than twenty-five, or close to it. Young, and apparently lacking the ability to blink.
Scowling, Benjamin turned back to the dancing numbers.
A gentleman’s club for men of their proclivities had seemed like such a merry idea. The lion, the bear, the sable, the wolf—Benjamin had enjoyed being the bear, boisterous and laughing, surrounded by his closest comrades after the horrors of war. But with Caddonfell the lion now living in the country, more lamb than lion, and Hartley the sable in parts unknown, furious with all of them, and Lambert the wolf...well, the Society of Beasts had lost a surprising amount of its appeal.
Beasts. Caddonfell had chosen the name as a deliberate provocation, a way of thumbing his nose at the people who called men of their persuasion animals. Benjamin, sighing as he looked through the accounts, couldn’t think of any animal that conducted itself in such a thoroughly dull fashion.
Limpets, perhaps. The Society of Limpets, although accurate, lacked a certain style—and limpets, dull as they were, didn’t have nearly as many investments that required steady, careful checking. The alternative was finding an accountant who was not only capable of taking the Society of Beasts by its financial scruff, but one who could be trusted not to extort, reveal or otherwise inconvenience its members.
Not for the first time, Benjamin wondered if it wouldn’t be simpler to run a good, old-fashioned molly-house.
As Benjamin took a large swig of beer, the man in the corner was still looking at him. Molly-houses were amusing. There was no denying that—although he hadn’t visited one in years. They were also rather simple to run; they were pubs with added frills, or brothels with an extensive selection of drinks. The hierarchy was complex, yes, but all hierarchies were. The real problem with molly-houses was that there were already too many of them.
Once there had been no club, no moneyed space, for gentlemen who loved gentlemen. No elegant halls where men could sit in repose, speaking and acting as they chose to, free of society’s chains that kept them so tightly bound in other ar
istocratic spaces. There had been no confessional, no space of succour, no legal and financial help for those suspected of illegal acts, or worse, accused of them, but now there existed a society capable of doing all that, and more.
Gentlemen from far and wide wrote letters begging to join, desperate for the protection and comfort such an environment could give. Benjamin, responsible for the stringent entry requirements, had to write dozens of refusals every month; not many men were rich enough, and hardly any of them met the requirement of valour in the absence of funds.
Only those who saved a Society member from certain death gained automatic entry. Benjamin, who enjoyed risking his life in war, never risked it in peacetime—especially not in the company of other people. Neither did most of the Society members, who preferred a quiet if bureaucratic life.
He took another slow look around the pub. Yes, the man was still looking at him—and unless Benjamin was very much mistaken, he was smiling.
No one approached Benjamin in the King’s Head. No one looked at him in the King’s Head, which is why he came so often, and why he brought Society work with him. Half of the men in the place couldn’t read, and none of them cared what he liked, or what he didn’t, or who he loved, or who he didn’t.
The man in the corner looked...interested. Interested in the sight of Benjamin sitting here, hunched over his papers; interested in the legend, or the man, or both. Benjamin, trying to study the man out of the corner of his eye, couldn’t remember the last time he’d been stared at in such a knowing, brazen manner.
Be careful. He had to protect himself; there were many men with unscrupulous hearts in need of coin, ready to speak to any writer of gossip rags. But this man lacked the hungry look of those who’d tried in the past.
The Vicar and the Rake (Society of Beasts) Page 27