A King Awakened
Page 12
“What the blazes kept you for so long?” he hissed, seizing Julian’s forearm. “Bloody hell! I’ve been pacing about like a madman.” He knew his voice was too sharpish, but he’d been so very worried about Julian and his wellbeing.
Julian blinked at him in surprise, closing the door behind him softly. Once it clicked shut, the shelving slid back into place, securing them inside the apartments. “I had to be cautious,” Jules said, forehead wrinkling. “Was it truly that overlong?”
Arend took the man by the shoulders, sliding palms down both of Julian’s arms, needing to feel for himself that he was all right. “I worried, ’twas all,” Arend said, voice rough still. “I didn’t mean to bark at you. Not so . . . much.”
And then, drawing Julian closer, he smoothed his hands down the man’s shirtsleeves even more gently. “I hated what Lord Vincent did to you. How he treated you. I’ve been churning in my powerlessness, all these minutes. Hating that I didn’t simply deliver a nice, sound punch to that little biscuit’s nose when I had the chance.”
Julian gave him a wavy smile; it didn’t reach his eyes. “What good would that have done you? Rumors needn’t swirl about you throwing punches on behalf of someone else’s lover. Don’t forget, I’m meant to be Finley’s beau, even if Lord Vincent doesn’t believe, my lord.”
“Arend,” he corrected. “I’m not ‘my lord’ in here. We are far more intimate when it is only us, darling.”
At the endearment, the smile that had been tremulous on Julian’s lips a moment before, turned a bit brighter. “Yes, Arend, my darling. I am wholly yours in this room. And”—Julian reached a fingertip to Arend’s jaw and traced the line of it—“and in my heart.”
“I should have done more, with Blaine.” Arend covered Julian’s hand against his own cheek. The bristle of Arend’s evening beard stubbled his fingertips, beneath their splayed hands. “I should have stepped up with more strength. More fully defended your honor.”
Julian laughed, blinking in surprise. “You did thrust that wispy little lord against the gallery wall like you meant to thrash him, Arend.” Julian shook his head. “If the duke hadn’t come upon us, you might well have put Lord Vincent through selfsame wall. You protected me far more gallantly than anyone else ever has.” Sadness filled Julian’s light eyes, darkening the usual brightness there.
“What is it?” Arend asked before he meant to. He planted palms squarely on Julian’s shoulders and studied him. The downward glance he was given in turn sped Arend’s pulse harder.
“You did more than . . . ” Jules shook his head, trying to paste on a smile but clearly failing. “It matters not. Thank you. I’m so very grateful that you didn’t hesitate to come to my aid, Arend. It has not always been so, in my life.”
Arend’s breath caught. What was Julian intimating about his past? Then he recalled their conversation much earlier in the day, when Arend had been jealous of Lord Vincent’s absurd flirtation with Julian. He touched his concubine’s cheek, urging him to meet Arend’s cautious gaze.
When Jules did lift his chin, Arend quietly asked, “Today, during the croquet, you mentioned that men took liberties with you, that it was to be expected, such attention. But—has someone ever legitimately harmed you? Or forced themselves upon you, love?”
Love. The endearment spilled from Arend’s lips effortlessly. Because it was the truth of what he felt for this man before him.
I do love you, Julian. He wanted to blurt it, but he was trembling and terrified, even as he was trying so very hard to hear what Julian was telling him. What his concubine clearly needed to say, in answer to such a difficult question.
“You can tell me anything, even this,” Arend promised softly, trailing thumbs on both sides of Julian’s jaw, until his head tipped back, and they stared at each other. They were physically close, very close, and Arend felt the fanning of warm, quick exhalations against his own face.
Until Julian’s breath left him with a stuttering whoosh. His eyes flew open and he stepped back from Arend’s touch. “Yes, it’s happened before. You saw it firsthand tonight!” Julian cried out, his voice breaking like cut crystal. The delicate edge, so often there, sharpened by the outburst. He was quivering—again—as he’d done during the row with Lord Vincent.
After a moment, Julian pinned him with a stark gaze. “You need to be wiser than this. Not risk everything on a man like me. You won’t ever be able to protect me from all the Lord Vincents of this world. How can you not understand?”
Arend gaped. His body overheated as if struck by flame, and then his blood ran shockingly cold. “No. I do not understand, Julian,” he replied carefully. “Thus, explain it to me, or I’ll go personally thrash that pompous lord with my own royal hands. I will barge into his room and yank him from his bed as he sleeps.”
Jules seized Arend by the jacket lapels, pulling him sharply closer. “That man means you ill, Arend. He’s a danger to you. You witnessed how he behaved with me. Somehow, he knows what I am to you, that I am—”
“Important to me,” Arend finished. “Very, very important to me. That is what he apparently knows.”
“He knows what I am, Arend. He mentioned Sapphor. By name.” Julian backed up, until his shoulders pressed into the bookshelf behind him. “He’s known my true identity since before he even arrived, I am sure of it.”
“I know. And he’s using you to get at me.” Arend growled, planting a palm flat against the shelf beside Julian’s ear. He leaned all the way in, until his warm breath fanned a loose tendril of golden-honey hair. Julian kept trembling, there against the shelf, and his breathing grew even more staggered as Arend moved in on him.
For one long moment they stared at each other, heat flaring. Protectiveness as alive in Arend as his own heart. “I won’t let him hurt you, Julian. Not any more than he already has.”
Julian’s eyes drifted shut and he shook his head. “I . . . I have dealt with men like him before. I can handle myself. That softer aspect of mine? The one you claimed to abhor—”
“I was lying! I have admitted as much.”
“Even so, my nature invites untoward advances. A man like Blaine, unmarried and used to having anything he wants, expects to easily get a leg over me. He imagines I’ll spread for him willingly, like some soiled dove of a maiden.”
“You’ve dealt with these men before, with your popping knuckles and your . . . ” The reference to their joke the day at the temple died on Arend’s lips. The cornered, bright-eyed look in his lover’s eyes told him that it had never—not really—been a joke. It brought him back to his original question. “What happened? Before? Did someone . . . someone mishandle you, Julian? Is that what you’re saying—what you’ve been trying to tell me, nearly all day?”
Julian stared at his boots. “It doesn’t signify.” The beautiful voice was flat and hollow.
“It signifies to me,” he whispered, and moved away from his position framing Julian. Instead, he took up the place beside his concubine, leaning there in as unthreatening a manner as possible. As if they were two university mates, meant to share a cheroot betwixt them and gripe about their dons.
But Jules said nothing more. He simply sagged and released an aching sigh that hit Arend hard in his own chest. What had happened to his concubine in the years gone by? Ten years at the temple, with how many previews? Where he’d been paraded in the nude occasionally, and where even, perhaps, more intimate examinations had occurred in the temple handler’s private office.
“Was it someone at your temple?” he whispered. “A visiting nobleman?”
Jules shook his head and shoved off the bookshelf. “I shan’t talk of it. Not with you. Not ever.”
Arend watched Julian with a mixture of dread and disbelief as the man walked to the sideboard. There, he silently filled a highball with whiskey, hands visibly shaking. Uncharacteristically, Julian tilted the glass back and drained it dry with one gulp.
Staring at his young lover, Arend asked, “You don’t mean to confi
de in me?”
Julian gave him a bittersweet smile. “I have a new life. With you, for this twelve-month. That is what I wish to dwell on.” They both knew the full tenure of their concubinage to be unlikely—even more so if mutinous schemers like Lord Vincent had their way. It was fantasy, even now, to say that they could dwell on this idyllic new life they supposedly shared.
Arend shook his head vociferously. “No. No, that’s not good enough for me.”
“Well, darling, we both know you are, on occasion, a boorishly overbearing king.” Jules laughed, but the humor never reached his eyes.
Arend ate up the distance between them in three strides. He put a fist down on the sideboard, rattling the decanters. “I wish to know you, Julian. Not just some surface fantasy crafted by Temple Sapphor. Nor some notion of what a fucking king should want. I want to know you. All of you.”
Julian’s eyes widened and grew much brighter. Arend refilled the man’s highball, never taking his gaze off him. “There. Drink up.”
Julian nodded, and lifted the glass to his lips, drawing from it eagerly. Again, the glass was emptied and, again, Julian dropped it to the sideboard with a thud.
Arend lifted the decanter questioningly, his gaze locked on his concubine. “We can refill as much as necessary until you’re calmed. Until you understand me.”
Julian blinked rapidly back at him, saying nothing. Arend continued, “You asked how I couldn’t understand, earlier. But how can you not understand this? What I feel for you?” Arend clasped his chest. “That it’s real and true.”
“Because you’ve not told me.” Julian fingered his highball thoughtfully.
“I love you.” The words were out before Arend could stop them. “How could I possibly feel otherwise? You are . . . you.”
Julian’s eyes flew open; he gasped, his hand closing crushingly around the highball. The man stood there, speechless, blinking back at Arend with wide, beautiful eyes.
After a moment where Julian stood, clearly stunned, he whispered, “You . . . you are not one for half measures.”
“Least of all—it would seem—with you.” He tore his gaze away from Julian, sloshing a glassful of whiskey for himself. Swiftly, he drained the bloody highball dry.
“You . . . you love me.” Julian was staring at him as if Arend had grown horns.
He nodded brusquely. “That is what I said.”
Only then did it occur to Arend that his lover was not rushing to confess similar feelings—nor even smiling. Jules was, in fact, not reacting with any sort of positivity at all.
“Isn’t it what you want?” Arend demanded, licking his too-dry lips.
“For you to love me?” Julian gave his head a strange, drunken little shake.
“Yes. You want me to surrender. Here it is.” Arend slid a hand to the back of Julian’s nape and forced the man to look at him. “I love you.”
“You . . . you cannot!” Julian cried, tears suddenly welling in his eyes. “You mustn’t. Forget what I’ve asked or said. You must not feel these things, not for me. And certainly not speak of them!”
“Why the devil not?” Arend exclaimed, wondering why in hell his gutsy and, surely unexpected, declaration of just how much he cared . . . was going so poorly.
“Because I am this man! This one before you now.” Julian spread his arms dramatically wide. “The one who . . . who—must I fucking say it?” he cried, his accent almost indecipherably thick.
“Probably for the best,” Arend said with forced calm, “as I’m feeling unmoored at present.”
Jules moved much nearer. “Arend, I have the power to destroy your reign. Was it not obvious earlier, in the hallway with that wicked Lord Vincent? He knows what I am to you and means to take that knowledge and wield it against you. Only a dangerous man would make such unsought advances against the king’s own paramour.”
Arend scowled back at Jules, still caught on the fact that his lover had not confessed his own affections. Had Arend been so off-point in his declaration of love? “Oh, because some other bastard once grasped at you, now you think—”
And Julian slapped him. Like a whip, that elegant palm swung out and connected with Arend’s cheek, just that fast. Hard. “Don’t you dare make light of my past. My pain.” The tears in his lover’s eyes spilled. “It was bad enough to have lived it.”
Arend cringed, not even trying to reach for Jules. “Oh, God. Julian, no. I didn’t . . . I’m such a wreck. Can’t you see?” Arend rubbed at his smarting cheek, wishing Jules had actually slugged him, blackened his eye—because he surely deserved the punishment. “I’m even making a total hash of telling you what you bloody well mean to me,” Arend said miserably. “I am sorry, Jules darling. I know whatever happened in your past—”
“He was to have been my opera patron.” Julian lowered his gaze to the highball, tracing the cut crystal with one fingertip. “Francois Deneau was his name. A very powerful nobleman in Agadir, he was.” Without realizing it, Jules began murmuring in Agadir. Arend translated the softly muttered phrase: He was to have crowned me in my own realm.
Then Jules fell silent; Arend waited him out, trying to slow his fast-racing heart.
“Francois Deneau was not just powerful,” Jules resumed. “His patronage was responsible for more than two decades’ worth of talents at the Grand Opera. And I was his latest discovery.”
Julian’s expression darkened, his eyes flicking back and forth as if watching the memories unspool before him. “I was gifted, you know.” Julian gave him a red-eyed look. “I should’ve gone somewhere with my talents.”
“You are still gifted,” Arend insisted, “if your singing tonight was even the barest indication.”
Julian shook that off. “I’m too old now, too unpracticed. It was only a decade ago, but a lifetime, too.” Julian grimaced. “And yet it feels like yesterday that Francois Deneau shoved me into a closet at his manor home, during the party that was to have anointed me in the opera world.”
Julian’s jaw tensed, then he continued. “He shoved me into that cramped, musty space and before I could even reason with him—he had my britches unfastened. And I started coughing. I could not stop, could not breathe. Just cough.” Julian shivered, hugging himself. “The coughing, no air. No air, just my lungs not working, and those smallclothes torn apart at the front—”
“Julian, you needn’t . . . I’m here. You’re not there,” Arend said, taking Jules by the shoulders. But his lover didn’t fold into his embrace; he cupped a protective palm over his trousers’ front, over his groin.
“I was no virgin, but just barely so,” Julian whispered, gaze downcast. “When my brother heard my protests, he opened that closet. And found me in my dishabille. Of course, Francois claimed I had taken uninvited liberties. Exposed my cock to him, tried to have my way with him. When the great Francois Deneau did not suffer male lusts!”
Julian shuddered. “The one thing we still had left by then was our family name. But even that was ruined that night. My brother hauled me off to Temple Sapphor’s representative in our realm—and sold me for a handful of coins. Blaming me, just like Francois had done.”
Julian straightened taller and poured yet one more whiskey. He swirled the liquid in the glass, staring at it. “So, tell me, Arend,” he asked in a flat tone. “Do you feel so much love for me now? Knowing how soiled I truly am? The shame I carry?”
“What?” Arend asked, almost sputtering in disbelief. “How can you even think—”
Julian lifted his bright eyes, shaking his head. “My own brother was revolted by me and my ‘male lusts’. He couldn’t sell me off fast enough.” Julian squeezed his eyes shut. “Didn’t you ever wonder how I came to be at Sapphor?”
Arend had indeed, but thus far, he’d gotten enough bits and pieces along this path to satisfy him, at least temporarily.
“It matters not how it came to be,” he said, stroking Julian’s cheek. “Only that you’re here with me now, at my side. And in my life, my love.”
“I know exactly who you are, Julian. And you are no illusion. You’re one of the most authentic people I’ve ever met. You’re like Alistair, in that regard.”
“Thank you, my lord,” Julian said, taking a sip from his highball. “But it changes nothing. I am too dangerous to your future, and I will not bring you any harm. We must both admit that a love between us is folly. Any notion of it, damning whimsy.”
“You didn’t think so yesterday.” Arend followed swiftly on the man’s heels, undaunted. “Or earlier today. Or last week. You believed enough for us both. You had faith in our future.”
“That was before I realized that my story will always end the same. And because I do love you, Arend—and oh, how I do—I can’t let your story end as tragically as mine.” Jules sank onto the overstuffed sofa, dropped down onto it like a heavy stone. He bowed his head, appearing utterly defeated.
But what his concubine did not know was that Arend—far from accepting defeat himself—was only getting started.
Chapter Thirteen
Because I do love you. And, oh how I do.
Arend had been standing there, frozen, but now he almost sprang forward. He dropped onto the sofa beside Jules, reaching for both the man’s large hands. “Jules, I am king of a whole bloody realm. Don’t you think we can sort our way out of this mess?” He dipped his head, trying to catch Julian’s lowered gaze. Finally, golden lashes lifted, and their gazes locked.
Arend gave a satisfied nod, then continued, “Nothing about you is an illusion. In fact, you are the realest thing I’ve ever known.” He dragged Julian into his embrace, murmuring against his cheek. “And nothing about your story need be tragic. Not in its full-telling. You once told me you believed in fairy tales and happy endings. Don’t give up on us this soon, not when I’ve only begun to fight for you.”