The Lawrence Browne Affair

by Cat Sebastian

  “It’s a meal, Lawrence. Not a ritual sacrifice. Just sit there and bear it. There will be one footman present. If you play your cards right, the only people you’ll have to see all day are your son and one or two servants, both of whom will be instructed not to be alarmed if you act like a perfect savage.”

  Lawrence shut his eyes and drew in a breath. He did not want to be forced out of his sanctuary; he did not want to sit at a long table and endure the stares of servants. He couldn’t conceive of a single sane thing he could say to Simon, and the very idea of seeing the child he had last held as an infant threatened to short circuit his brain. “And you,” he said.

  “Pardon?”

  “I will also see you.”

  Georgie looked startled, which was to say that his usual mask of cool composure slipped for the merest instant. “I thought you didn’t mind me. Not two hours ago it was ‘I need you, Georgie,’ unless you only said those things to be gallant?”

  Lawrence was so astonished by this image of himself being gallant that he let out a crack of laughter. And then he saw the answering smile on Georgie’s face, lighting it up like a candle.

  “You caught me out,” he said, trying for a light tone, “telling falsehoods to flatter everyone around me.”

  Something shifted in Georgie’s expression. “No, I daresay falsehood and flattery are not your abiding sins.” He returned his attention to the felt.

  There was an emphasis on the your that made Lawrence want to say that it was all right, that Georgie’s secrets didn’t matter, whatever they were. But he still didn’t know the exact nature of the man’s secrets, and he was afraid that by asking he would ruin everything between them, so he said nothing. Instead he came up behind Georgie, resting a hand on his shoulder.

  “I’m glad you’re doing the right thing,” Georgie said, putting his hand over Lawrence’s. “That’s all.” Suddenly, he pivoted, and his arms were around Lawrence’s neck, his lips against Lawrence’s cheek. Lawrence was too startled to do anything but put a steadying hand to Georgie’s hip.

  “What was that for?” Lawrence asked, his mouth almost touching the secretary’s ear.

  “A kiss for luck.”

  “Only for luck?” Lawrence asked, bringing his other hand to Georgie’s face. The man looked weary. He had dark smudges under his eyes. Lawrence bent his head to kiss one, then the other. As Georgie’s eyes fluttered closed, a puff of air escaped his lips. “You’re done for the day. Go to bed. That’s an order.”

  “I can’t,” Georgie protested, sinking against Lawrence’s chest. “My bed is covered in bolts and bolts of fabric. It was the only place I could think where they wouldn’t get dusty. And none of the other bedchambers are clean yet.” He glanced up at Lawrence in a way that seemed to ask a question.

  “I have a perfectly good bed. Right over there, in fact.” He gestured with his chin towards his bedchamber while tugging Georgie closer with both hands. “Big, too.” It was large enough for them to sleep without even touching, if that was what Georgie had in mind. But even now Georgie was unbuttoning Lawrence’s coat, so it looked like that was not what he wanted after all. Lawrence took hold of Georgie’s hands, pulling them away from his coat.

  “You don’t want to . . . ” Georgie’s voice trailed off in some confusion as Lawrence spun him so he was leaning against a wall.

  “Oh, I want to, all right.” He went to his knees, watching Georgie’s eyes darken.

  Lawrence kissed the length of him through his breeches. Ever since he had felt Georgie’s mouth on him the other night, his filthier imaginings had been focused on the need to bring Georgie pleasure, to watch and feel him come unraveled under Lawrence’s hands and mouth.

  “By all means, then,” Georgie said, sounding a trifle hoarse. “I certainly shan’t stop you.”

  Georgie watched Lawrence flick open his trouser buttons with more deftness than he might have expected from someone with such large hands. But he had seen those thick, calloused fingers build batteries and telegraphs and other things he hadn’t even known existed a month ago, and now they were working with the same deliberate precision on Georgie’s trousers. Lawrence’s gaze was similarly focused, as if Georgie’s cock were as worthy of study as a stack of electrodes or a tangle of wires. The intensity of his expression was something Georgie could almost feel on his flesh.

  The last button was undone, and Lawrence raised his eyes to Georgie’s face, as if asking permission.

  “Please,” Georgie whispered, hearing a neediness in his voice that he wished weren’t there. But that ship had sailed around the time Lawrence had fished him out of a muddy ditch, if not even earlier.

  Lawrence’s hands went to Georgie’s hips, tugging the trousers down a few inches, just enough for his cock to spring free. He was already hard, had been almost from the minute Lawrence had knelt. And now Lawrence’s hands were on the bare flesh of Georgie’s hips, his fingers splayed, his thumbs resting on the crease where belly met leg. He was staring at Georgie’s cock as if it were a puzzle that needed solving. Georgie could feel the heat of Lawrence’s breath on his sensitive flesh.

  Lawrence licked his lips, and Georgie let out a choked noise.

  “Never done this before,” Lawrence muttered.

  “I’m sure you’ll muddle through, somehow,” Georgie managed. “Cocksucking, you know—it’s right there in the name.” He knew he was babbling, but he was desperate and didn’t care.

  Then, finally, finally, Lawrence leaned forward and kissed the head of Georgie’s prick. Just a soft kiss, but lingering. Georgie hissed when he felt the tentative touch of a tongue. He spread his palms on the wall behind him, wishing there were something to grab, but needing to stop himself from taking hold of Lawrence’s hair and pushing into his mouth.

  Lawrence traced a line of open-mouthed kisses down to the base of Georgie’s cock, each kiss soft and wet and maddening. Then he slid his hands back, so they were cupping Georgie’s arse, and kissed the places where his hands had been—the bones of his hips and all the ridges and furrows around them. Georgie had never thought of those places as being in the least sensitive, but the feel of Lawrence’s lips, the tip of his tongue, the scratch of his beard, all combined to make him feel like he was being turned inside out.

  And that was all before Lawrence paid any serious attention to his prick. The instant Lawrence’s mouth closed over that aching tip, Georgie swore. He felt Lawrence give an experimental pull, a gentle suck, one hand wrapped around the base of Georgie’s cock and the other clamped firmly to his arse.

  Georgie groaned. “More. Please. Take more of it.” And Lawrence did, tentatively at first, then sucking him nearly all the way down. Lost to all reason, Georgie threaded his fingers in Lawrence’s hair, gave a little tug, a little push. And Lawrence, far from being put off by this small aggression, actually moaned, a contented hum, around Georgie’s cock.

  Georgie couldn’t take his eyes off Lawrence as those soft lips encircled his cock, moving up and down in a rhythm they were both figuring out as they went. But when Lawrence cast his gaze up at Georgie, his misty blue eyes dark with lust, Georgie couldn’t take it anymore.

  “Stop. Please.”

  Lawrence stopped. Of course he did. Georgie knew at that moment that he could have asked Lawrence for a thousand pounds or a specially commissioned incendiary device or permission to host a gathering of circus performers at Penkellis, and Lawrence would agree. Georgie was not the only one who was utterly lost.

  “I want you in my mouth,” Georgie said, tugging Lawrence to his feet and steering him backwards to the sofa. “I need to taste you.” When the backs of Lawrence’s legs hit the seat, he collapsed, sprawled out on the sofa, legs spread. Georgie dropped to his knees, unfastened his lover’s breeches, and had the head of Lawrence’s cock at the back of his throat in a heartbeat.

  Christ, how long had he wanted this? Since Lawrence had pressed him up against the wall that first day, probably. Maybe longer, somehow. Maybe Georgie h
ad always wanted to kneel before a man he adored with every mote of his being, maybe he had always wanted to love a man with his mouth and his tongue and all the rest of him, and he had just never admitted it to himself.

  Calloused fingertips caressed his ear; a rough baritone murmured absolute nonsense. Georgie took his own straining prick in his hand and gave it a few tugs. Lawrence must have seen, because he growled, “Yes, do that. Do it for me.”

  Georgie nearly whimpered. He stroked himself, he sucked Lawrence, and any composure or reserve he had ever possessed was quite gone. He was lost; he was as helpless as a ship tossed by the waves. When he felt Lawrence’s cock harden by another impossible degree, when he heard something that sounded like a garbled, obscenity-laced warning, that pushed him over the edge too, and he was spilling his desire into his hand at the same time Lawrence came in his mouth.

  He kept up his sucking and stroking until he felt strong hands on his arms, pulling him up, so that he was sitting on Lawrence’s lap, being kissed fervently. Reverently, even.

  Georgie knew then that he would go back to London, or wherever the next part of his life took him, and this man, this thing that was growing between them, would be the standard by which he’d judge the rest of his days. And it would all come up short, because this was the best and happiest and safest a man like him could ever possibly feel. And if he were half as clever as he thought he was, he’d run like hell.

  He didn’t, though. Instead he kissed Lawrence back, searching kisses that weren’t about pleasure so much as contact. They were sweet and slow, the sort of kisses that weren’t supposed to be for men like Georgie, men who were crooked and wrong to the very core.

  And then Lawrence took him to bed and peeled off his clothes with a care that brought tears to Georgie’s eyes, and held him until he fell asleep.

  CHAPTER FIFTEEN

  The carriage arrived without any warning while Georgie was fussing over the arrangement of knickknacks on the chimneypiece and Janet was still sweeping out the great hall. At the sound of wheels on the freshly graveled drive, they exchanged a wide-eyed look.

  “Run to get his lordship,” Georgie told Janet. “You”—he gestured to one of the new footmen—“go outside and hand the boy down from his carriage and attend to his luggage.” He fished coins out of his pocket and handed them to the footman. “And pay the driver.”

  Georgie heard voices coming from outside, but Lawrence had still not come down. Finally there came the sound of footsteps from the direction of the tower, too light and fast to belong to the earl.

  Janet entered the hall, breathless and flustered. “He sent me away,” she panted.

  “He’s not coming?” Georgie asked, more to himself than to Janet. Bewildered, he looked searchingly around the hall, as if he could lay his eyes on something that would make this scenario better. “You told him the carriage arrived?”

  Janet squeezed his arm. “Never you mind him. We’ll get the little lad set up with some tea and cakes, and his lordship will come around.”

  Or he won’t, Georgie thought. Or he’ll hide in that tower for the next fortnight. God knew he was capable of it, damn him.

  “Quite right,” Georgie said, more for Janet’s benefit than because it was true.

  The door swung open without so much as a squeak, since Georgie had the workers rehang it and oil the hinges. As if all the well-oiled hinges in Cornwall could make up for an absent father. John the footman entered, holding the door open for an impossibly small child. He was eight years old, Georgie knew, but he was so thin and little he could have been much younger. Perhaps young gentlemen at pricey schools didn’t have a much better time of it than the apprentices and pickpockets he had been comparing them to the other day.

  Simon was pale, a washed-out, porridgey shade that spoke of illness or exhaustion or both. His hair was a colorless hue that reminded Georgie of nothing so much as used bathwater. This unprepossessing specimen was Radnor’s heir, the person for whom Georgie had spent the last ten days working his fingers to the bone. This scrap of a child was listed on the pages of Debrett’s as “Simon Browne, Viscount Sheffield.” For all his confused parentage, he had a courtesy title that was rightly his, and Georgie had instructed the servants to call the child Lord Sheffield, as was his due.

  Georgie had envisioned a strapping, hearty lordling. The sort of fellow who would, in a couple of years, pinch housemaids in stairwells and carouse drunkenly in London. It was a type he knew all too well.

  As Georgie watched the boy shift awkwardly from foot to foot, he felt a rush of affection sweep over him.

  “Lord Sheffield,” he said, the title sounding preposterously overblown for such a wisp of a boy. “I’m George Turner, your father’s secretary. Would you like some cakes?” Georgie had planned to have a footman serve the child and his father tea in the parlor, but he couldn’t very well put the boy into the parlor by his lonesome; besides, Simon looked like he would vanish into the vastness of that grand room.

  The child nodded, glancing timidly up at Georgie. “I like cakes,” he said in a thin, overbred accent.

  “Of course you do. Janet—this is Janet, the head housemaid, and she’s been looking forward to your coming—will you run ahead and tell Mrs. Ferris that we’ll join her in the kitchens for some of her special cakes?” Janet, bless her, had the presence of mind to smile reassuringly at the lad before leaving. “And this is John, whose job is specially to look after you,” Georgie said with a pointed look at the nearest footman, who he hoped would understand that he had just been assigned a new duty. “Please bring Lord Sheffield’s valise up to the bedchamber across from mine, and make a bed for yourself in the adjoining room.” There was no way this child was going to be consigned to the lordly suite of rooms Georgie had readied. He might still have nightmares. God knew he looked like he did.

  Georgie kept up a stream of meaningless chatter as they made their way to the back of the house. He asked about the long journey from school and received single syllables in answer. Good God, how would this child and his father manage a conversation, if neither of them were inclined to actually speak? Georgie would send a note over to the vicar, begging for his company at dinner. Georgie too would take his dinner in the dining parlor, even though he supposed it wasn’t quite the thing for secretaries to dine with the family. Anything would be better than a painfully silent dinner; if nothing else, he and Halliday could blather to one another.

  What if Lawrence didn’t even come down for dinner? Georgie refused to consider the possibility. He had specifically told Lawrence that dinner was at six, and even Lawrence couldn’t imagine that it would be acceptable to miss the child’s first dinner at Penkellis. Not that Lawrence had ever given a damn about acceptability. But surely he had to understand the importance to Simon. To Georgie.

  No, he would not let his thoughts head down that path. He would not try to divine Radnor’s feelings towards him, not when his own feelings towards Radnor were disastrous enough.

  “Oh, I smell the cakes,” Georgie said unnecessarily as they approached the kitchens. “Mrs. Ferris has been baking for days.” And so she had. Equipped with two new maids, she had been every bit as busy as Georgie.

  The cook spun around when she heard footsteps in the doorway.

  “Oh my stars, you’re the spit of your mother.” She clapped a floury hand to her cheek. “She was a little bird. And to think, you’re only a few years younger than my Jamie, and him twice your size.”

  Georgie winced. This was not the line of conversation to pursue with a smallish young man. He knew this, having been a painfully skinny child himself. “Perhaps Lord Sheffield would like some cakes?” he suggested.

  The child nodded. “My aunt and cousins call me Simon,” he said, hardly audible. “And Uncle Courtenay calls me Simon in his letters. At school they call me Sheffield, but I . . . ” His voice trailed off, and a flash of something like pain crossed his face.

  “Well then, Simon, let’s sit here and eat these c
akes, and then we can explore.”

  At that last word, the child perked up for the first time since his arrival. Georgie had nearly said “get you settled,” but then remembered that even the quietest eight-year-old would dread the prospect of being settled. Besides, Penkellis was good for nothing if not exploration. There were corners that Georgie hadn’t even seen yet.

  “We’re near the sea,” the child said.

  “It’s less than a mile,” Mrs. Ferris interjected, setting plates of cakes and hot cups of tea before them.

  “I like the sea.”

  “Then we’ll walk over to the cliffs today,” Georgie said. “And if you like tall ships, we can take the carriage to Falmouth tomorrow.”

  Simon’s mouth curved into the beginnings of a thin smile. “Before Mama died, we lived with Uncle Courtenay in a villa in Italy. We could see the sea from Mama’s bedchamber window.” He seemed to be watching Georgie carefully, waiting for a reaction.

  Of course. The child was accustomed to the mention of his dead mother provoking scandal and censure. Georgie was no stranger to having parents whose names could only be mentioned in embarrassed whispers, even years after their death. But Simon’s mother had achieved notoriety on a grand scale by leaving her husband’s home to run off with some kind of artist or poet. The “Uncle Courtenay” Simon mentioned was his mother’s brother, a figure so depraved there had once been a ballad written about his exploits.

  “Eat the cakes before they get cold,” Mrs. Ferris admonished. “You could both do with fattening up.”

  The cakes were flat, like oatcakes, doused in butter and studded with raisins. There was also a slab of cheese, which Georgie had long since discovered that Mrs. Ferris considered a crucial component of every meal. When she brought over a dish teeming with biscuits, Georgie nearly asked her to desist, but then he noticed that Simon’s plate was empty. He had eaten his cheese and cakes and was cheerfully tucking in to the biscuits. The boy was plainly ravenous. What in God’s name was going on at that school if the child was half-starved?