After a few minutes, the parlour door opened and Henry stepped inside. His neckcloth looked rather limp, but otherwise he was back to being the elegant, soberly dressed duke. The devastated expression that had shredded Kit’s heart was gone, thank God, though Kit could not quite decipher the one that had replaced it. There was something about it that was diffident and determined and uncertain all at once.
When Henry made no move to sit, Kit rose from his chair, uncomfortable to be the only one seated. Immediately, though, he felt the disadvantage of being naked under his dressing gown while Henry was fully dressed.
He was swithering over whether to ask Henry to sit, when Henry said, “I feel that our conversation just now went rather awry.”
“Awry?”
Henry cleared his throat. “I was trying to tell you something, but then we began to talk of other things—important things, but still…” He trailed off, frowning.
Kit’s heart began to pound in a way it hadn’t in a very long time. “What were you trying to tell me?”
Henry rubbed a hand over his face. “I was… trying to apologise.”
This again.
Stiffly, Kit said, “Henry, I accept it was your servant who cheated me, not you. You don’t need to apologise again.”
Even as he said the words—even as he believed the truth of them—they rang hollow in his own ears, and he wasn't even sure why that should be.
Henry said, “I wasn’t apologising for that—although I do feel utterly wretched about it.” He swallowed visibly, then added, “I was talking about my cowardice in sending Parkinson with a letter instead of going to see you myself.”
Kit stared at him, his heart twisting painfully.
“There was barely any time to do anything before we left for Wiltshire,” Henry continued, his gaze anguished, “but I should have made time. You weren’t so very far away from Curzon Street, and if I’m honest”—he broke off, taking a deep breath before he continued—“perhaps I used our hasty departure as an excuse to avoid doing the right thing. The difficult thing.” He shook his head.
“Only perhaps?” Kit asked, and he was shocked by how clipped and angry his own voice sounded. He had no right to feel so aggrieved by this—he’d just been Henry’s whore for God’s sake.
But he did feel aggrieved, he realised. He felt aggrieved and hurt and angry.
“I don’t honestly know,” Henry said, and he sounded frustrated. “It was so long ago, I can’t remember how I reasoned it out to myself. I don’t think I deliberately avoided you, but perhaps I allowed the events of that day to sweep me along in that direction because seeing you—telling you I had to end our contract early—would have been so painful.”
Kit’s heart ached. Henry would have found that painful? He wanted to demand to know why, but instead he just stood there, with his heart in his mouth, watching Henry.
“I can’t stop thinking that if I’d just taken the time—an hour—to go and see you myself, Parkinson would never have been able to do what he did.” Henry shook his head. “I’m so sorry,” he whispered, and he sounded utterly lost. “I wouldn’t blame you if never forgave me for that. I’m not sure I’ll ever forgive myself.”
Kit didn’t know what to say. Would Henry even believe him if he said he forgave him now?
And would it be true?
He realised that he didn’t know the answer to that question. Today had already been far too eventful and Kit needed to let everything just… settle.
“It’s been a strange day, for both of us,” he said tiredly. “Full of revelations that I’ve scarcely taken in yet.”
Henry nodded.
“Go home, Henry,” Kit said gently. He paused, weighing his next words carefully before he uttered them. “We can talk again, if you like. I’m here most evenings.”
Henry said tentatively, “Could I return tomorrow evening?”
Kit was taken aback by that—both the request and his own desire to agree to it.
Slowly, he shook his head. “I don’t think that’s a good idea. I need to reflect on all of this—and so do you.” He paused. “Give it a week.”
“Next Friday then?” Henry pressed, his gaze hopeful.
Kit’s heart was racing now. He suspected this was not a wise course of action. That even a week from now was too soon.
But he did not voice any of those concerns.
“Very well,” he said. “Next Friday.”
16
Henry
Henry slept better the night after he visited Redford’s than he had in a long while.
Perhaps it was being intimate with someone again. The physical release he had experienced had been powerful. But no, it wasn’t just that. He wasn’t celibate—he had regular assignations with likeminded men—but none of them ever made him feel like this. Echoes of the deep sense of wellbeing that had suffused him as he and Christopher came together still pulsed through him.
That wellbeing was a feeling he had forgotten, one that came not just from finding release, but from holding someone very dear to you, and touching that person freely. Henry hadn’t realised how much he had missed that. How wonderful it was.
The whole of the next week seemed to drag interminably, and all Henry could think of was Christopher.
To distract himself from his thoughts, Henry immersed himself in duty, attending to the pile of outstanding correspondence that had accumulated since he’d come to town and paying a number of long-overdue calls.
Finally, though, it was Friday again.
Henry took his breakfast in his room that morning, then called for a bath, taking a long time over his ablutions. He scrubbed himself till his skin was pink, already anticipating the evening ahead. Of undressing in front of Christopher.
Kit.
By the time he made his way downstairs, Marianne, Jeremy and Freddy had all gone out, and Henry found himself at something of a loss. For the first time in a long while, he was entirely free to do what he wanted. It felt both liberating, and at the same time, strangely empty. For the last number of years, his life had been shaped by the needs of his family and the rhythms of life in the country. He was used to the events of his day being shaped around those two pillars. But here, now, there were no estate matters to attend to and no family ones either.
There was only one thing he wanted to do—but it was too early to go to Redford’s.
He repaired to the library and tried to give his attention to the morning paper, but was unsuccessful—his thoughts continually returned to Christopher. To how it had been between them all those years ago, when Christopher had been unmistakably his. When he could have gone to the house at Paddington Green any time he chose. Could have spent the whole day in bed if he wanted.
He wished now he had allowed himself that occasionally, instead of religiously keeping to his twice-weekly visits. But at the time, he had been trying to contain what felt like a worryingly uncontrollable desire to spend all his time with the young man with whom he had been so infatuated.
With the benefit of hindsight, his self-denial had been idiotic—what would it have mattered if he’d let himself have a little more happiness? But back then he’d had some idea that, if he tried hard enough, he could control his essential nature. Hell, back then, he hadn't even thought of his desire for men as being part of his nature. He’d thought of it as a preference—or rather, a weakness. A self-indulgent weaknesses that he could set aside if he were only disciplined enough.
Later, he had come to understand how wrong he was. That his desires were part of him, deeply and intrinsically. That by denying them, he was denying his very self. But at the time, he had been unable to think of them as anything other than selfish cravings to be suppressed so far as possible.
Leaving Christopher and going back to Wiltshire with Caroline had been a turning point for Henry. His self-denial had become complete as he devoted himself to his family, ignoring his desires entirely and lashing himself with guilt whenever he so much as thought about them�
�because how could he be so selfish when his family needed him?
As for Christopher, when it became apparent that Henry was never going to receive a reply to his letter, he tried not to think of him at all if he could possibly help it.
But he could not control his dreams, or the idle thoughts that would sometimes catch him unawares.
The year after Caroline’s death had passed in a kind of blur—Henry couldn’t remember feeling much of anything at all except a grinding sort of grief—but as time wore on, his desires gradually came bubbling back to the surface, refusing to be suppressed.
Henry tried everything he could to distract himself—the children took up much of his time during the day, and he filled the rest with busy work he could have handed off to his steward. He began drinking late into the night after the children had gone to bed to avoid his dreams and numb his pain. Whatever he did, though, it made no difference. Despite being surrounded by people, he felt very alone. There was no one who knew him—the real, whole man.
After Alice died, his melancholy grew much worse. And on one long and sleepless night, he’d left the house and walked into the middle of the woods at the edge of the grounds. There was a deep pool there, where he and his brothers used to bathe when he was a boy.
He’d stood at the edge of that pool for God only knew how long, staring at the still, black water and thinking how peaceful it would be to slip under that glassy surface and simply… cease to be.
The one thing that had kept him standing on the bank was the thought of the three children back at the house who still badly needed him.
He could not leave them alone in the world.
At last, dawn had broken, and with it the worst of the dark spell that had held him there. He’d turned on his heel and begun a slow trudge back to the house. As he’d emerged from the edge of the woods, he’d looked up to see the sun rising over the turrets and belvederes of Avesbury House, flushing the sky delicately pink. And in that moment, he’d had a revelation: if he was to go on, he had to accept this was his nature and reconcile himself to it.
After that terrible night, somehow, slowly, Henry had managed to crawl out of the pit he had fallen into. It had not happened in one night or one week or one month. It had been a much slower and more painful journey, one that lasted years. But the revelation he’d had that morning had been the first step on a path to some sort of acceptance.
Much later, he’d begun to seek out other men who shared his nature, and who understood the need to be discreet and careful. But there was no one like Christopher. No one who was dear to him in that way. Henry made sure of that.
His encounters were infrequent and forgettable. That was all he wanted. Perhaps, it was all he could bear. There was a very big difference between the temporary physical companionship those encounters offered and what he’d had with Christopher.
Henry’s body may have finally accepted that it needed physical companionship, but his heart remained wary of love.
Even now, Henry's heart urged him to caution, whispering that perhaps he should resist the temptation to return to Redford’s tonight.
But there was another part of him—a long-dormant part—that had been wakened to tentative life a week ago.
Wakened by Christopher Redford.
Kit.
And God help him, but Henry wanted more.
Henry decided to while away the hours till evening by calling on Corbett. The man welcomed him warmly, and they spent a companionable day together. After an early dinner at his club, Corbett invited Henry to join him for a few hands of Faro.
“I can’t, I’m afraid,” Henry said, trying and failing to suppress a smile. “I’ve a previous engagement.”
“Oh? What’s this?” Corbett murmured, clearly sensing there was something more to the story. He arched one expressive brow. “Never say you met someone interesting at Redford’s last week?”
“Perhaps,” Henry said evasively. Part of him wanted to confide in his old friend about his breathtaking encounter with Christopher, but the more sensible side of him warned him to say nothing.
One thing occurred to him, though, that he wanted to talk to Corbett about. And somehow he found himself blurting it out before he could think better of it.
“Corbett, do you—that is, do you ever take the passive role?”
Corbett stared at him, wide-eyed, and Henry flushed hard.
“I’m sorry,” he muttered. “You don’t have to—”
“It’s all right,” Corbett said with a short laugh. “It’s just—I’m surprised. Especially coming from you.”
“What do you mean, ‘coming from me’?”
Corbett frowned, looking as if he was searching for the right words. At last he said, “You were never—” He broke off. Started again. “You were not one to speak frankly of such things. Oh, we’d go to the Lily together and pick up lads”—he gave Henry a half-grin—“you even let your boy suck you in front of me once or twice, but… mostly you were quite private. You never spoke of what you liked, or what you’d tried.”
Henry smiled. “You thought me very dull, did you not?”
Corbett rolled his eyes. “I didn’t mean that,” he replied. “Only that the rest of us would joke, and boast and—I suppose it was our way of finding out from one another what we preferred. But you never did that. And then you left town—I don’t suppose it’s as easy to find fellows like us when you’re living in the depths of the country?”
“No,” Henry agreed drily.
“That must have been difficult.”
Henry nodded. “And not just for the reasons you’re thinking about. I missed this.” He gestured between them. “The company of others like us.”
Corbett nodded. “Hence your question,” he said, “regarding my views on the ‘passive role.’”
Henry flushed and nodded.
Corbett chuckled, though not unkindly. “Do you know, Avesbury, you still blush like a schoolboy sometimes, and you’re forty if you’re a day!”
“Seven-and-forty,” Henry corrected.
Corbett made a rueful chuff at that. “Handsome devil,” he complained. Then he leaned forward in his seat and said quietly, “As it happens, the ‘passive role’ as you call it—though I would refute the accuracy of that particular description—is my preference.”
Henry stared at him. Corbett was, like Henry himself, a large man. Well-built with wide shoulders and a deep voice. To learn that he preferred to receive was surprising. And intriguing.
Henry realised that Corbett was also watching him closely.
“Have you never…?” Corbett began slowly, his eyes widening a little when Henry shook his head.
“No,” Henry said, a little defensively. “It’s not so unusual, is it?”
Corbett gave a short laugh. “Who is to say? No one has written an etiquette guide on the matter that I’m aware of.”
Henry couldn’t suppress a chuckle of his own at that, but his amusement warred with embarrassment over his own gaucheness. At his age, he should not need to ask such questions.
Corbett said, “Were you ever curious about it? Before now, I mean.”
“Yes, I suppose so, but I assumed—” He broke off.
Corbett raised a brow. “You assumed—what? That because you were bigger—or richer—that you would not be one taking it up the arse?”
Henry flushed at the crude words, his eyes darting around the room anxiously. Not that Corbett was talking loudly enough for anyone to overhear—the club dining room was full, but the tables were widely spaced and the low hum of constant conversation had a muting effect of its own.
Henry forced his gaze back to Corbett. “It sounds a little ridiculous when you say it aloud, but yes, I suppose that was part of it. People make assumptions all the time, and when you’re a green lad with no knowledge of anything, you just go along with it. Especially when you’re trying to seem like you know what you’re doing.”
The first time he’d visited a brothel with male pro
stitutes, he’d been a duke-in-waiting with enormous wealth and a pair of shoulders as wide as a barn door. Perhaps the assumptions everyone made about him were not so strange? And in fairness, it wasn’t as though he hadn’t enjoyed what had followed… He had enjoyed it very much. It all felt very new, and very wonderful.
But yes, Henry was curious now. Curious about possibilities that hadn’t occurred to him back then. Doubly curious after getting down on his knees for Christopher—for Kit.
“So,” Corbett said, quite as though he had just read Henry’s mind, “is the man you met at Redford’s the reason for this question?” He grinned slyly.
Henry’s laugh was awkward. “Perhaps,” he admitted.
Corbett laughed too then, but his gaze was kind, affectionate even. “Then I hope you enjoy satisfying your curiosity, Avesbury. Just make sure to use plenty of oil, eh?”
Henry flushed hotly but he grinned too. Pushing his chair back, he stood. “On that note, I think I’ll be on my way.”
Corbett’s sly grin widened. “Good luck,” he said softly, and his good-natured laughter followed Henry out of the club.
17
Kit
Kit had almost convinced himself that Henry would think better of his supposed wish to return to Redford’s, but shortly after nine o’clock the following Friday evening, Henry strolled into the main clubroom looking every inch the elegant and powerful duke. He stood in the middle of the room, searching for Kit, and when his gaze found him, standing with several other gentlemen, Henry’s smile was almost… sweet.
Kit could only guess what his own smile was like. It was immediate and helpless, spreading over his face too quickly for him to check it.
“Would you excuse me?” he murmured to his companions, before moving away.
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