That could spell trouble. Presumably the men accompanying Court had reported back to his father.
A knock at the office door heralded Darius’s entrance. Andrew’s heart leaped at the sight of Darius, even more when Darius closed the door and came over to kiss him.
“I can’t stay away,” he murmured against Andrew’s lips.
Neither could he. Andrew would treasure the memory of their night together in Dover forever, and the two they had spent lingering on the road on the way home. How could anyone condemn such sweet loving? But they did. Their love was as forbidden as ever, as condemned as it always would be. They could be hanged for what they did.
Even that did not cool his ardor. Nothing ever would.
He returned Darius’s embrace with enthusiasm before he stepped back to ring the bell. Darius stayed his hand. “We are summoned to General Court’s.” He glanced down. “I see you have his note. I think we should go now. I have signed statements from Ivan, Smith, and Bull in my pocket. We will tell the truth.”
That relieved Andrew mightily. “Thank you.” He stole another kiss. If anyone had told him he would take quite so much pleasure from feeling a man’s hard lips against his own he’d have called him deluded. He had never kissed another man before Darius.
To him, the act of sexual congress had been mere relief to a mind and body under strain. Get it done. Get it over with. That notion had dissipated into thin air. They had come back to London in better heart, Darius insisting that Andrew take Ivan’s mount while his cousin languished in the carriage.
“I want you comfortable on a horse. When I invite you and Elizabeth to our country home, you should be easy enough to ride around the estate.” He’d only laughed when Andrew expressed doubts. “Haxby is a large establishment with plenty of spare bedrooms. Some of them are close to mine.” He’d waggled his brows suggestively, pulling a reluctant laugh from Andrew.
He still doubted he would ever see the place. Surely a visit there would appear too particular.
Although he had let Darius into his life, they had to keep their affair clandestine. He could see no other way. He had claimed some happiness for himself. That had to be enough.
Darius stepped back, taking in Andrew’s appearance in a comprehensive visual sweep. As always, Andrew had dressed with neatness and propriety. Next to Darius’s expensive, understated luxury, he would pass well enough. He did not want to appear as something he was not. “General Court will take me as I am,” he said.
“You look marvelous,” Darius said softly. “You’re my marvel, at any rate.”
Unaccountably, tears pricked at Andrew’s eyes. He was not a man given to weeping. Hastily he turned away, pretending to shuffle papers on his desk. “We should go.”
“I’ve brought the carriage.”
“Are we traveling in state, then?”
Darius laughed. “Oh, yes.”
The berlin that had taken Andrew to Dover waited outside, but this time liveried footmen waited for them. A team of high-steppers stamped impatiently. The golden crest of the Shaw family was on full display. As they left Andrew’s modest house, a footman opened the door and let the steps down to reveal the luxurious interior.
Andrew took his seat. “Whitehall is not far away.”
Darius swung into the one next to him. “The nobility has a position to uphold. We are not summoned, ever. We arrive of our own free will, graciously answering a request from the general.”
Andrew grinned. “And I am to expect this in the future?”
Darius smiled. “Only when necessary. The berlin has not seen such activity for a month, since we arrived in London. It will take my family to Haxby in time for Christmas.”
“And you?” Of course Darius would go to his family’s house for Christmas. He might not return to London until the beginning of the season, after Easter. While they were lovers, they still had their own lives to pursue. A cloud surrounded Andrew’s heart at the thought.
“That depends entirely on you,” Darius said. “I want you there, too.”
“Darius—”
He broke off when Darius lifted a finger of admonition.
“We will discuss the matter later, if you please. We need to bend our thoughts to the meeting ahead. You proposed we keep to the truth, so we will do that.”
He was right. They did not have much time before the meeting. “Yes.” Andrew frowned. “The general will know how matters went forth. The two men who escaped the scene will have told him what they saw. We will tell the events as they unfolded. I shot the general’s son. He will be grieved, probably looking for someone to blame.”
“Do you blame yourself?”
Andrew shook his head slowly. “I waited for guilt to come, but it did not. My conscience is clear. He would have shot me had I not acted faster than he did. I intended to break away, assuming he would shoot anyway, whether I resisted or not.” He touched his finger to his lips. “Do we know if the general colluded in this illicit release of information? Is he a traitor too?”
“Ah.” Darius lost his easy smile. “If he is, we will cut the meeting short and go directly to my father. If we even suspect it, we should do that. But my father has researched, as much as he can without arousing suspicion, and I have similarly looked into the matter. While he does not like the general, my father doesn’t believe he is a traitor. The secret the general is in possession of, one far more explosive than a list of spies, has never been divulged to anyone.”
“I don’t think he is either. And like your father, I do not believe it either.” Andrew folded his hands, tightening them into a tightly clenched ball. “I feel for him. However inadequate Court was, he was his son.”
Darius covered Andrew’s hands. His warmth seeped through Andrew, and memories of their night together returned, as vivid as ever. His shaft stirred in his breeches, but he didn’t fight it. He would always feel this way when Darius was near. The seductive emotion warmed him, made him want more. “We know what we’re doing, don’t we?”
Darius slid his hand away, but his warm expression didn’t disappear. “Yes, we do.”
“We cannot be anything other than what we are now.”
“That’s true.” But Darius meant more, not less. The glow in his eyes said that.
Andrew tried again. “We have separate lives, and we cannot bring them together. We have to snatch our happiness while we can.”
This time Darius’s smile did melt away. “We’re here. We will speak of this again, Andrew. While you’ve been attending to your business, so have I.”
Before the footman arrived, Andrew had a bare few seconds to try to make him understand. “You are what you are, Darius, the son of a powerful man, a member of a powerful family. You are protected. I am not. I have my living to make and a daughter to rear the best way I can. If you took me under your wing, I would be forever your pet, your creature.”
When Darius opened his mouth to speak, Andrew held up his hand.
“I will not do that. I have more pride than that, and I will not subject my daughter to that kind of opprobrium. But I am man enough to admit that I cannot deny you. I cannot deny the way I feel about you.”
Darius turned around, effectively blocking the footman’s view inside the carriage. “How do you feel about me?”
“I love you.” Once said, it could not be taken back. Andrew didn’t want to.
An answering warmth that had nothing to do with physical attraction entered Darius’s eyes. “I love you too. I’ve never been in love before, and it overwhelms me. I’m thinking properly now. I know what to do. Trust me.”
He turned abruptly as the footman opened the door and leaned in to pull down the steps. Did Darius’s words mean he had accepted what Andrew had told him?
At least he’d heard the words he’d been longing to hear. Afraid of telling him before then because he didn’t know
how, he discovered that simply telling him was the right thing. Relief surged through him. Where they would go next he had no idea, but they would do it together. That made the inevitable trials ahead worth every drop of blood. The stairs to the imposing offices greeted him. Built in the baroque style, the columns framing the front door as grand as the gilded and marbled interior. He climbed the stairs and waited while Darius bowled past the man at the door and took the stairs. All Andrew could do was follow in his wake.
General Court’s office was situated on the second floor. The building had been designed to impress, with high ceilings and wide marble stairs. Both men scaled the heights with little effort, taking little notice of the imposing surroundings. Both reached the office without losing their breath. Or their determination, as Andrew saw when he exchanged a glance with Darius.
The man inside, sitting behind an elegant but imposing desk, glanced up at them, his face a picture of indifference. After Darius presented his card, he appeared more interested, and after bowing to Andrew’s noble companion, took the card inside the office.
He came back outside. “General Court will be with you shortly.”
After five minutes, Darius got on his feet. “We have no more time. Pray give the general our deepest condolences on the death of his son.”
“Wait!”
Andrew, also on his feet, watched the little play with amusement.
“I am sure the general will see you. Please, wait.”
“Tell him if he does not see us now, he will not see us at all,” Andrew said, taking his part in the little game.
Court intended to keep them waiting, a power game to show who was in charge here. He could not outrank Darius, but he could keep him waiting.
As they expected, the man emerged once more, and with his lips pursed, showed them into the general’s office.
General Court wore black, completely unrelieved black, down to his neckcloth. Privately Andrew considered his mourning wear somewhat aggressive, forcing awareness on anyone he met. He kept his face carefully neutral as he made his bow and received a perfunctory nod in return.
“We are sorry for the sad loss of your son,” Andrew said.
“That, from his murderer?” General Court thrust a shaking finger at Andrew. “You killed my son. I will have you arrested for it. I’ll lay charges.”
Fumbling behind him, he dragged a sword from its scabbard and thrust it at Andrew.
Darius pushed Andrew back and drew his own, the sickening slide of metal the only sound in the room. The men faced each other, only their breathing disturbing the tense hush. The general’s army saber easily outclassed Darius’s smaller weapon, but the men wielding them made up for that. Darius was in the pink of health, as Andrew had reason to know. The general was panting heavily already, his face flushed.
“You will not have me arrested,” Andrew said, dropping his voice into the silence. “Put your weapons away. General, you should know what happened. You sent me to Mother Fleming’s to find your son that day, did you not?”
The general spared him a glance. “I sent you to find the traitor. My son must have discovered him first. That was why he was there. That was why he went to Dover. Instead, you had the list which you intended to sell to the Italian. You are the traitor, sir.”
His plan had merit, but he was forgetting one thing. “When your son died, Lord Darius was present. So was his cousin Lord Ivan Rowley and two of Lord Darius’s footmen. They will attest that your son drew the weapon first, that in fact he held a pistol to my head and ordered me to give him the list. He clearly said he would kill me if I did not give it up. That was after he had killed Bartolini, claiming he had done it in self defense. He did not. Bartolini did not draw a weapon.”
The general sagged. Andrew could have spouted the plain facts until he was blue in the face, but he suspected they would not have had any effect. Not without Darius and Ivan’s presence at the scene. But without it, he would be lost.
“You are telling me you shot my son because he threatened you?”
Andrew was too old a hand to answer any kind of leading question. “I am saying that I believed your son when he said he would kill me if I did not give him the list. I believed him a traitor. Was I wrong?”
The general glared at Darius. “Would you prefer I asked you to name your friends?”
Darius made a little figure of eight with his sword. “If you call me out, I will meet you and kill you. Answer him.”
The fraught silence lasted an agonizing minute and then another. Nobody moved.
General Court closed his eyes, and his face seemed to fall in. Suddenly, the weight of his years fell on his shoulders. When he opened them again, his eyes appeared to have lost their brightness, and the lines on his face were graven deep. “No, you were not.”
He lowered his sword. Darius followed suit.
“You sent me to find the spy at Mother Fleming’s so you could put all the blame on his shoulders and protect your son from disclosure,” Andrew said. “Your son had purloined the list and offered it to the highest bidder. You knew that, did you not?”
The general turned around on the pretext of returning the sword to its elaborate sheath. He had the weapon propped against the wall, more a decoration than anything else, but he had demonstrated it was far from that. From the shallow dents in the sheath, Andrew suspected he’d carried it into battle. A memento of hard-won service to the Crown.
Although Andrew felt sorry for the man, he did not intend to allow him to push the blame on someone else, especially when that someone was him.
The younger Court’s threat to blame him could have worked. Andrew could have found himself in Newgate, taken to Tyburn, and hanged for the death of the general’s son, or worse, convicted of treason. Were it not for Darius’s friendship and the unspoken threat he held merely by being here, Andrew could have lost this encounter. He had no influence, no highborn relatives to pull him out of a hole, nor had he ever felt the need of any before now. It would have become Andrew’s word against the general’s, had there not been witnesses of note.
“I suspected,” the old man said softly, still with his back turned. “He visited me, asking me for more money, swearing he would never go to another gaming hell. I told him that if I did haul him out of the hole, he would go to the country until he learned better control.” He turned around, facing them like the old soldier he was. He seemed to have aged twenty years since Andrew had first seen him, his eyes sunken, the lines in his face graven deep. “He decided to defy me.”
“By stealing the list and selling it to the highest bidder.” Darius sheathed his sword. It slid into the sheath with a subdued hiss. “Then he decided to sell it again. If he killed the messenger and took it himself, he could meet Bartolini’s masters and set up a regular line of communication. He could get paid twice for that list and provide more.” He glanced at the mess of papers on the general’s desk. “I would suggest, sir, that paperwork is inimical to you.”
Staring at his desk as if it held all the answers he needed, General Court nodded. “I fear you are right. I have never enjoyed it. Perhaps I should retire.” His shoulders bowed as if bearing the weight of the world.
“I would strongly suggest it,” Darius said softly. “If you do that, we can preserve your honor. I see no benefit in dragging the scandal into the public gaze. We can say your son died in the attempt to capture a traitor. We may put the blame on Bartolini. After all, he was a self-confessed, unabashed spy.”
While Andrew could not agree with all Darius said, a sense of relief flooded him. They could put this matter away. The traitor was dead, and if the general survived, the security breach would be stopped.
The general heaved a sigh, still staring at the mess of papers on his best. “Yes. That would be best.”
Despite the fact that General Court had threatened to put the blame on him, Andrew felt profoundly
sorry for the man. Losing a son, and then discovering the man was a traitor, must weigh hard on him.
He bowed. “We will leave you to your reflections, sir. I take it the matter is now closed.”
“The list?” The general jerked his head up.
“Is no more,” Darius assured him. “Or will not be by sunset. I promise you that.”
“Very well.”
Darius glanced at Andrew and then left the room. Andrew closed it quietly behind him.
Darius paused to give the coachman instructions and then climbed into the carriage after Andrew. He crossed his legs and stared out of the window. Eventually he spoke. “I hate to see a good man destroyed. General Court will retire. If he refuses to go, my father will see to it he has little choice. I don’t think he needs any further punishment.”
“No. I owe you my life.”
“Oh, I wouldn’t put it quite so strongly.” Smiling, Darius regained some of his natural sangfroid.
“If you had not been there, the general could have accused me of treason. All he had to do was lie and say he had given his son permission to come after me and fetch the paper. Worse, as a traitor, everything I owned would have been forfeit to the Crown. I would have left Elizabeth nothing.”
Darius leaned his arm on the windowsill and propped his head on his hand. “You are forgetting that I intended to go. You took my place when we discovered more about Court. I don’t doubt he would have tried the same with me. My family can only protect me so far. If I had died with a list of our spies in my pocket, with my reputation I could well have been doomed. My two men and me, taken by surprise, might have lost.”
“That would mean Court had taken a copy of the list.”
Darius paused before answering. “He did. Ivan found it on his body. It has been burned. A wiser man would have left the list in a place of safety, but the younger Court was never wise.”
Andrew nodded, a dagger in his heart when he considered the possibility of losing his love that way. “I’ve seen it. Men set up to take the blame for other’s deeds, men I could do nothing to help.”
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