by Emily Larkin
The post-chaise slowed still further, and rattled to a halt in front of Pendarve.
They climbed out. The salt tang of the ocean filled Lucas’s mouth and nose, invigorating and fresh. God, he’d missed this smell. He inhaled deeply and watched Tom stretch his legs and examine their surroundings. Did he like the sea-smell? The gentle slap-slap-slap of the waves? What did he think of the house?
He tried to see the manor through Tom’s eyes: the red and gray stone, the slate roof. Pendarve didn’t have Whiteoaks’ size, or its symmetry and crisp lines. He thought it looked rugged and comfortable, peaceful in its solitude—but perhaps Tom thought it looked bleak and isolated and small?
“What do you think?” Had Tom been expecting a mansion? “It’s about a hundred times smaller than Whiteoaks.”
“And I like it a hundred times more than Whiteoaks.” Tom turned on his heel and looked out at the glinting silver-blue sea, the curve of coast with its pale shingle beaches and rocky reefs and windswept trees. “Look at that view.”
“You like it?” Lucas said eagerly.
Tom gave him a look that said Of course, I like it. I’d have to be insane not to.
“Come inside,” Lucas said. He turned and found Smollet standing at his elbow, and behind Smollet, the Teagues. “Oh, hello, Smollet. Good to see you.”
“Good afternoon, Master Lucas, Master Tom.” Smollet was as close to beaming as Lucas had ever seen him, his eyes crinkling, his mouth tucked up at the corners.
“Uh, this is Mrs. Teague, my housekeeper-cook,” Lucas told Tom. “And Mr. Teague, who has charge of the stables and grounds. Smollet, can you pay off the postilions, please?”
“Of course, sir.”
“Come inside,” Lucas said again, taking Tom’s arm.
“Sir?”
“Yes, Smollet?”
“I know you asked me to make the Green Room ready for Master Tom, but I took the liberty of preparing the Rose Room instead. It gets more sun.”
Lucas glanced sharply at his manservant.
Smollet returned his gaze with utmost blandness.
“Er . . . thank you,” Lucas said, and revised his assessment of Smollet, putting the man in the same category as Tish and Reid: He definitely knew—and he wasn’t disturbed by it. Or maybe Smollet deserved a category of his own. If he’d prepared the Rose Room, with its adjoining door to Lucas’s bedchamber, Smollet was actively encouraging them to spend their nights together.
Lucas ushered Tom inside, more than a little disconcerted.
By the time he’d shown Tom around the ground floor—tiny compared to Whiteoaks, but with a good library—his disconcertment had fallen away and he felt hopeful. Anxiously, eagerly, nervously hopeful. “Come upstairs.”
He showed Tom the sewing room first. “My godfather’s wife used this for embroidery.” Wouldn’t it make a good studio? Look at all the light. He held his breath, and watched as Tom crossed to the windows and looked out.
“Nice.”
Lucas hugged that word to himself. He took Tom past the Green Room without opening the door, past his own bedchamber, and halted.
His nervousness grew even greater. “Um, this is your room.”
He opened the door and let Tom step inside.
The room had belonged to his godfather’s long-dead wife. It was decorated in rose-pink and cream.
“What do you think? There’s a view straight out to sea. I usually sleep with my windows open a bit—even in winter. You can hear each wave. Um, my bedroom’s through that door. This was my godfather’s wife’s room—Mrs. Warboys, her name was—that’s why the door’s there.” He forced himself to stop gabbling, to take a breath. “Do you like it?” It’s yours, if you want it. Forever.
Tom nodded.
“I’ll have it redecorated. Your choice of color.”
Tom looked at him, and lifted his eyebrows slightly. “My choice?”
Lucas nodded—and knew the moment had come. Now was the time to tell Tom and here was the place. And just as he’d known when and where, he knew how to tell him, too.
He’d show Tom. Show him in such a way that Tom could have no doubt he meant it.
Lucas stepped closer to Tom. His chest was tight. Deeds speak more strongly than words, he told himself.
Tom watched him. A little wary. Not saying anything.
“I want you to choose the color,” Lucas said, and his voice was low and nervous and not quite steady. He took a deep breath, and reached out and took Tom by his waistband and pulled him closer. “Because I want this to be your room.” Your room, next to mine. Forever.
He held Tom’s gaze while he fumbled with the buttons of Tom’s breeches, the buttons of his drawers. He held Tom’s gaze while he wrapped his fingers around Tom’s cock and stroked him. He held Tom’s gaze while he knelt—and then he stopped concentrating on Tom’s eyes and just concentrated on what it felt like to have the Corinthian in his mouth.
Intimate. It felt intimate. Each breath he took smelled of Tom. Tom’s saltiness filled his mouth—his tongue rang with it, each taste bud reverberating. It felt profound. Not dirty or shameful, but wondrous. How could Tom’s colonel have called this smoking a cheroot? This wasn’t smoking a cheroot or playing a pipe or any of those stupid names people called it. This was telling a man that you loved him. With my body I thee worship.
After a moment, Tom’s hands came to rest on his hair. Not gripping tightly, just a light touch, a second connection between them: Tom’s cock in his mouth, Tom’s hands gently cradling his skull.
Lucas caressed that helmet-like head with his tongue, learning its shape, its taste, its sleekness, and when he’d learned those things he started sucking in earnest, urging Tom towards ecstasy the way Tom had urged him so many times—and he knew exactly what it felt like to Tom—the wet heat of a mouth, the soft velvet tongue, the suction, the rhythm, the building pressure, the feeling that soon he’d burst with pleasure—and when Tom climaxed, Lucas swallowed his mettle without hesitation—tangy and hot—because it was Tom’s and he loved Tom. All of him. Every part of him.
And then he stood and refastened Tom’s clothing—tucking him into his drawers, buttoning his breeches—and put his arms around him and hugged him tightly. “I love you.”
Tom stood quite still for several long seconds—and then he let out a sigh, and a deep core of tension seemed to dissolve in him. He bowed his head. “I never thought I’d hear you say that,” he whispered into Lucas’s shoulder.
“I’ll say it every day from now on, if you wish.”
Tom gave a shaky half-laugh. “Every second day will suffice.”
Lucas tightened his embrace. “I’ve been in love with you since I was fourteen.”
Tom was silent for a moment, and then he said, “It was sixteen, for me.”
They stood leaning into each other for several minutes, not talking, just enjoying the closeness, and then Lucas pulled back, and looked at Tom. “This is your bedroom. Forever. You choose the color.”
Tom gave a lopsided smile. There were tears in his eyes. “Blue,” he said.
Afterwards
April 10th, 1810
Lincombe Park, Devonshire
Afternoon sunlight shone into the nursery, laying golden rectangles on the floor. A nursemaid sat in a rocking chair, quietly knitting, and alongside her were two cots. Lucas followed Tish across the room. He found himself tiptoeing.
Click click click, went the nursemaid’s needles.
Lucas held his breath and stared down at the babies. Tish’s twins. Tiny and pink and fast asleep. Julia and I looked like this once. He felt a pang of sadness, and waited for the feeling of having lost a limb, but it didn’t come. Instead, he caught a fleeting scent of bergamot, as if Julia stood alongside him.
“Icarus says it’s his fault. His grandfather was a twin, and his father.”
Lucas nodded, and peered more closely at the babies. Which was the girl? Which the boy?
Tish turned to the nursemaid, middle-a
ged and comfortably plump. “Agnes, could you give us a few minutes’ privacy, please?”
“Of course, ma’am.”
The girl was the one on the right, Lucas decided, because her nose was a fraction tinier than her brother’s.
“Lucas?”
He turned his head and looked at Tish. Motherhood suited her. She’d lost some of her angularity, acquired some curves, and she had a warm, soft, happy glow.
“Icarus and I have been discussing names. We’d like to call them Lucia and Julius. But only if you’re happy with it.”
Lucas took a breath—and found himself unable to speak.
He looked back at the sleeping twins. Tears filled his eyes. He blinked them away.
Lucia and Julius.
The faint scent of bergamot came again and he knew that Julia liked the names.
“And we’d like you and Tom to be their godfathers.”
Godfathers. It was such a simple word, and yet it had such weight. Almost as much weight as father.
“Would you like that?”
Lucas nodded, and fumbled in his pocket for his handkerchief. “Yes,” he managed to say.
“The christening is next month. Merry and Charlotte will be the godmothers.”
Lucas nodded, and mopped his eyes and blew his nose. He gazed down at the babies. Tom’s and my godchildren. “Will they have the same knack as you? With the lies?”
“Lucia will have one, but we won’t know what it is until she’s an adult.”
Lucas stared at the two tiny faces. It was impossible to imagine them as adults. He had a strange, dizzying sense of possibilities opening out in all directions, and it took his breath away, rendered him speechless with wonder. All he could do was gaze down at them, Julius and Lucia, barely a month old, with their whole lives ahead of them.
* * *
That evening, while he was tying his neckcloth, he heard a familiar tap-tap on the door. “Come in.”
He watched in the mirror as Tom entered, dressed for dinner. Tom strolled over to the window. He didn’t detour for a kiss, because Smollet was in the room. Smollet knew they were lovers—and they knew he knew—and Smollet knew they knew—but nothing had ever been said between them. It was a secret the three of them shared—a tacit collusion, an unspoken agreement. And part of keeping it secret was what they did now: behaving as nothing more than good friends in front of Smollet. The touches, the kisses, the endearments, were for when they were absolutely, utterly, unequivocally alone.
Tom sat on the broad windowsill and looked out at the gathering dusk and the distant glimmer of the ocean. He swung one foot idly. “I swear Tish’s dog is even bigger than the last time we were here. If it wasn’t as gentle as a milk-cow, I might have to be afraid of it.”
Lucas finished with the neckcloth. Smollet helped him into his tailcoat.
“Done?” Tom asked.
“Done.”
Smollet picked up Lucas’s discarded clothes, laying them carefully over his arm. “Will there be anything else, Master Lucas?”
“No. Thank you, Smollet.”
Tom stopped swinging his foot. He waited until Smollet had left the room, and then said, “Reid says they’d like to name the twins Julius and Lucia.”
Lucas nodded.
“You all right with that?”
Lucas nodded again.
“He says they want us to be godfathers.”
“Yes. Tish told me.” And—damn it—he was teary-eyed for the second time that day.
Tom pushed away from the windowsill and hooked an arm around Lucas’s neck and hugged him. Lucas hugged him back. He thought about Julia and felt the old sadness, and then he thought about Julius and Lucia. Who would they be? Not he and Julia, that was certain. They’d be their own unique selves. And he and Tom would watch over them. They’d hold the children’s hands while they learned to walk, and pick them up when they fell, and carry them when they got tired. “It’ll be almost like being parents.”
“It will,” Tom said. “And it’ll be fun. We’ll be the best godfathers ever!”
“We will.” Lucas gave an unsteady laugh, and drew back from Tom’s embrace. He wiped his eyes and checked his neckcloth in the mirror—slightly crooked—and then turned and looked Tom over.
He tweaked Tom’s collar-points and straightened his neckcloth. Tom stood still and let him, a half-smile on his face.
Lucas smoothed Tom’s lapels over his chest. There was a small, slim, hard rectangular shape over Tom’s heart: a sketchbook. Lucas laid his hand on it, and thought of thin sheets of paper stopping musket balls. Each day that I have with him is a gift.
“I love you,” he said quietly, even though he’d already told Tom that once today.
Tom’s half-smile became a whole smile.
Lucas laughed with the sheer pleasure of being alive. He kissed Tom—quick and tender—and took Tom’s wrist and tugged him towards the door. “Come on, we’ll be late for dinner.”
Author’s Note
The Battle of Vimeiro, in Portugal, ended in French defeat—but rather than pursue their advantage, the British generals signed an armistice (the Convention of Cintra) that leaned heavily in France’s favor. When news of this reached England, they were recalled for a court-martial.
The inquiry into the Convention of Cintra was held at the Royal College in Chelsea, London. General Wellesley, who had commanded the British troops to their victory at Vimeiro, arrived in England at the beginning of October. The inquiry began in November and was concluded in late December.
Wellesley, who signed the preliminary armistice under orders and had no part in negotiating the final convention, was completely cleared. He went on to command the British troops in Spain and Portugal—and ultimately to drive the French from the Iberian Peninsula.
Generals Dalrymple and Burrard, the authors of the convention, were also cleared, but never saw active service again.
The Fey Quartet novellas are the prequel to the Baleful Godmother historical romance series.
* * *
One widow ~ three daughters ~ four heroes
and some very dangerous Faeries
* * *
Get a free copy when you join my Readers’ Group. All you need to do is click the link below:
* * *
www.emilylarkin.com/free-tfq
Thank You
Thanks for reading this collection. I hope you enjoyed it!
If you’d like to be notified whenever I release a new book, please join my Readers’ Group.
I welcome all honest reviews. Reviews and word of mouth help other readers to find books, so please consider taking a few moments to leave a review at your e-bookstore or on Goodreads.
This volume comprises the first four books in the Baleful Godmother series. The next two books are Ruining Miss Wrotham and Discovering Miss Dalrymple, with more to follow. I hope you enjoy them all!
Those of you who like to start a series at its absolute beginning may wish to read the series prequel—The Fey Quartet—a quartet of novellas that tell the tales of a widow, her three daughters, and one baleful Faerie.
The Fey Quartet is available for free when you join my Readers’ Group. Here’s the link: www.emilylarkin.com/free-tfq.
If you’d like to read the first two chapters of Ruining Miss Wrotham, the novel that comes next in the Baleful Godmother series, please turn the page.
Ruining Miss Wrotham
Chapter One
July 15th, 1812
London
Nell Wrotham had two godmothers. One had given her a bible when she was christened and a copy of Fordyce’s Sermons for Young Women when she turned twelve. Her father had insisted that Nell read the sermons and she had dutifully obeyed.
Nell’s second godmother hadn’t given her a gift yet and Nell’s father hadn’t known about her, because that godmother was a Faerie and her existence was a deep, dark secret. Her name was Baletongue and she would only come once, on Nell’s twenty-third birthday, and when she
came she would grant Nell one wish.
Nell was wishing as the stagecoach she sat in rattled towards London. She was wishing that her twenty-third birthday had been yesterday, or perhaps today, or at the very latest, tomorrow. But it wasn’t. She still had a week to wait.
She sat on the lumpy seat, pressed close by a stout widow on one side and an even stouter attorney’s clerk on the other. Nell’s fingers were neatly folded over her reticule, her expression calm, her agitation hidden. A well-bred lady never shows her emotions—one of the many maxims drilled into her by her father. Her father, whose rigid, unforgiving righteousness was at the root of this disaster.
Nell clutched her reticule more tightly and wished for the thousandth time that her birthday was sooner—and prayed that when her Faerie godmother finally came it wouldn’t be too late.
* * *
Chapter Two
* * *
Mordecai Black reached London as the clocks were striking noon. The streets were dusty and the traffic sluggish. The air trapped between the buildings had a fetid undertone. He drew the curricle to a halt outside the Golden Cross Inn, thrust the reins at his groom, and jumped down.
The inn’s yard thronged with porters and passengers, all of them hot and sweaty and irritable, but Mordecai had no difficulty traversing the crowd. People looked at him and prudently stepped aside.
The taproom was busy, the coffee room slightly less so. “Your master?” he asked a serving-man.
Mordecai followed the man’s directions and found the innkeeper in a stuffy back office, bent over a ledger, tallying rows of numbers.