by Merry Farmer
They said their goodbyes and Lord Fairport strode off, leaving Niall and Blake to make their way into the auditorium at a slower pace.
“He’s a friend of my father’s,” Blake explained. “They went to university together. Which is encouraging, really.”
“Oh?” Niall glanced to him, both for an answer to whatever thought Blake had started and to try, once again, to judge his character.
“I like the idea that lifelong friendships can be formed at university,” Blake said, his smile widening as he met Niall’s eyes. That softness and brightness were back in his expression, as though nothing made him happier than being in Niall’s presence. “Don’t you?”
The man was going to be the death of him, that much was certain. He was just too charming, too perfect. And Niall couldn’t make heads or tails of him.
“Come on.” Blake touched his hand lightly once they’d handed their tickets over to the man at the door and made their way down the aisle between chairs that had been set up facing a piano at the front of the room. “I bought us excellent seats.”
There wasn’t a chance in Hades that Niall would be able to pay attention to a single note of the concert. The brush of Blake’s fingers against his hand was one thing, but the fact that he’d spoken as if he’d intended all along for Niall to accompany him to the concert was enough to keep his spirits soaring for weeks to come. Us. He’d bought us excellent seats.
Which was a preposterous idea, considering they’d only met that afternoon. Then again, Niall remembered and admired Blake from a previous concert, and Blake had apparently known and admired him for over a year. The whole thing was a blissful dream. Not to mention the way Blake’s gaze seemed to linger on him when they spoke.
But as the concert continued, Blake watched Miss Righetti sing with the same sort of absorption. Not only that, he seemed highly appreciative of the unknown young lady Miss Righetti asked to sing with her. Niall supposed it was possible Blake shared the same appreciation of both men and women, but he had yet to truly establish whether Blake had any interest at all in men—or rather, in him—to begin with.
His roiling discomfort and confusion over the issue only got worse when the concert was over.
“That was fantastic,” he said, leaning close to Niall and seeming to guide him through the crush of people, all leaving the auditorium at once. He rested his hand on Niall’s back again with a familiarity that usually came after years of friendship. “Miss Righetti has such a command of her higher register, don’t you think?”
“She was certainly singing through the notes instead of into them,” Niall said. It was probably a stupid observation, but Blake seemed to be impressed by the technical comment as they reached the lobby.
But before Blake could comment, he was distracted by a call of, “Lord Stanley. That was you I saw sitting in the front.”
Blake’s hand remained on Niall’s back for a moment as they both turned to see a tall, middle-aged gentleman waving to Blake from the center of a small cluster of elegant people.
“Sir Richard.” Blake burst into a smile and waved to the man, then tugged Niall’s sleeve to pull him toward the crowd. “Fancy seeing you here this evening.”
“I have to entertain my guests somehow,” Sir Richard replied jovially. “Allow me to introduce Mr. Douglas Cannon from New York, his lovely wife, Abigail, and his charming daughter, Annamarie. And you know my son, Edward, of course.”
“Good to see you again, Edward.” Blake shook Edward’s hand, then proceeded through a round of introductions to the Americans.
Niall felt completely and utterly out of his depth. Although he did know Edward Archibald, at least on sight. The unassuming young man was a classmate, though Edward was apparently bound for a political career, whereas Niall’s course of study was geared toward his future on the stage.
He blinked as a few pieces fell together. Archibald. Ian Archibald had auditioned for him that afternoon. And he’d mentioned the Cannons of New York. As soon as the connection was made, Niall had to hide a grin. Ian had been uncommonly proud of himself for knowing the wealthy Americans, and now Niall could see why. They were every bit the New World aristocracy that nobs in England were falling all over themselves to become acquainted with.
“Thank you for the invitation, sir, but I already have plans for the evening,” Blake said, drawing Niall’s attention back to the conversation he’d drifted away from. Apparently, there had been an invitation to supper that Niall had nearly missed.
“Some other time, then,” Mr. Cannon said. “It’s not every day that a railroad worker like me gets to meet a future duke.”
Everyone involved in the conversation laughed, but Niall failed to see the joke. He didn’t like the way Mrs. Cannon casually fanned herself as she studied Blake either, as if he were a piece of meat or a pawn on a chessboard.
“Enjoy your evening, then,” Blake said, gallantly extracting himself, and Niall, from the conversation. “I’m sure my father will be in touch with you soon.”
They turned to make their way out of the lobby.
“You could have gone with them, you know,” Niall said as quietly as he could and still be heard over the chattering crowd lingering in the lobby and just outside on the steps.
“I already said I’d take you to supper.” Blake shrugged. “And I’d much rather wile away the evening in a cozy pub than sit around some over-decorated table in a stuffy old townhouse.”
“I seriously doubt that,” Niall laughed. “Those were important people.” He glanced over his shoulder in time to see the Archibalds and the Cannons stepping out into the spring evening.
“I’m with an important person,” Blake argued, nudging Niall’s arm as they picked up their pace.
Niall’s heart fluttered into a confused mess. He thanked the growing dark for hiding the blush he could feel coming to his face. “I’m not that important.”
“You absolutely are,” Blake argued, his smile accented by the colors of evening. “You’re a future famous playwright. Someday, I’ll be telling everyone I meet that the two of us are friends.”
“But we’ve only just met,” Niall said, stilted, yet hopeful.
“It doesn’t feel like we’ve just met,” Blake said, pointing across Niall to indicate that he should turn down a side road. Niall knew there to be several pubs along that particular street, but more importantly, the gesture forced them much closer together. “It feels like we’ve been friends for ages.”
“Yes, it does.” Niall had to agree. Though if they’d known each other for ages, he might have a far clearer picture of where the night and their friendship was headed.
Blake picked one of the smaller pubs for their supper, one that was hundreds of years old and contained numerous quiet alcoves with low ceilings and beams that concealed them from plain sight. The barmaid seemed to know him—a detail that had Niall’s heart momentarily sinking again—and brought them tankards of good beer as soon as they were seated at a particularly cramped and cozy table. So cramped, in fact, that their knees were squashed against each other under the table, no matter how they sat—something that had Niall soaring with possibility again.
“So how did you become involved in theater?” Blake asked once they had thick meat pies in front of them. He shifted slightly forward as he ate, which forced their knees together even more intimately.
Niall could hardly taste the food he put in his mouth. “I can’t remember a time when I wasn’t involved in some sort of theatrical production,” he replied, pretending not to be so excited his cock was straining against his trousers. “Apparently, my first role was that of our infant Lord in a Christmas tableaux the local rector organized when I was only a few months old.”
Blake laughed, everything about him inviting and open. “Somehow, I’m not surprised.”
“That my introduction to theater happened when I was a baby?”
“That you are God,” Blake answered with a flicker of one dark eyebrow. “Aren’t all playwrig
hts?”
Niall’s heart beat in double-time. “Good heavens, Lord Stanley, that’s sacrilege.”
“Is it?” Blake’s expression grew more mischievous. “Really?”
“Just don’t let the rector hear you say it,” Niall flirted in return. Actually flirted. He must have been out of his mind.
But then Blake said, “There are plenty of things that I would never tell the rector,” with a look of such heated teasing that Niall was in serious danger of unmanning himself right there at the table.
Niall had to take a long swig of beer to steady himself. So Blake was game after all…wasn’t he? He could have meant something else by his comment. There wasn’t a single thing in the man’s way of carrying himself or speaking that hinted he was anything but straight. In Niall’s experience, men like him always had a tell of some sort.
He gulped his beer, then put the tankard down with an awkward clunk and asked, “When did you start playing the piano?”
He was certain the question came out sounding too confrontational, but Blake shrugged and looked deliciously bashful for a moment before answering, “I can’t remember. Like you, I was a child prodigy.”
“I bet you were.”
Niall wanted to slap a hand over his mouth at the way the words came out. Flirting was one thing, but he was in serious danger of getting the both of them into a world of trouble. Especially when Blake grinned as if Niall had implied a thousand inappropriate things.
“Piano lessons were part of my early education,” Blake said, using his fork to toy with the crust of his pie. “I should count myself fortunate that Mama read something about the importance of a musical education when she was young. My brother, Montague, and I were given lessons in every instrument you can imagine, as well as singing, from a young age. Montague never took to any of it, mind you. He claims to detest the sound of music. I suppose I got his share of a love for music along with my own.”
“So you love it, then?” Niall put down his fork—his stomach was too filled with butterflies to eat much anyhow—and leaned his elbow on the table, propping his head in his hand as he watched the interplay of lamplight on Blake’s angelic face.
“More than anything,” Blake sighed with feeling. “I don’t just play the piano, you know. I sing, of course, and I play the violin as well, and the cello, guitar, lute, and clarinet. And I compose.”
The man could have slowly unbuttoned his jacket and waistcoat and peeled off his shirt and Niall wouldn’t have been as aroused as he was by that list and those words.
No, that was a blatant lie. Blake undressing in front of him would have been the very height of arousal. And to think that the perfect man composed his own music as well.
“Niall?”
Niall sucked in a breath and jerked straight. He’d been staring and lusting, and Blake had caught him at it.
“I thought I’d lost you there for a moment,” Blake went on, his grin knowing and teasing.
“You’ll never lose me,” Niall blurted before he could think better of it.
Blake’s grin grew, and his eyes flashed with something heated beyond words. “I’ll hold you to that, you know,” he said.
You can hold anything to me, particularly your delicious body.
Niall cleared his throat and sat straighter. “I have to cast the rest of the play,” he said, blinking his way back to business. “I have your part and my part settled, but I told everyone else I’d have the cast list posted tomorrow morning.”
“I could help you, if you’d like,” Blake said, sitting straighter himself. The shift in position meant that their knees slipped even more intimately together and their legs entwined.
“I’d like that,” Niall said, surprised he was able to form thoughts at all. “A second opinion is always a good one.”
“Agreed.” Blake turned to wave to the barmaid, who was just visible from their cozy alcove. “Two more beers for my brilliant friend and I,” he said, then glanced to Niall. “I think we’re in for a long night.”
Chapter 4
Niall had never been so eager to get to a rehearsal in his life. Only two days had passed since his supper with Blake, but Niall felt as though it had been a lifetime since he last talked to him, since he last feasted on the sight of his kissable lips and sparkling eyes. They’d sat for hours at the pub, casting the play and discussing details of the script and the songs. Blake had read through all of the scenes Niall provided prior to auditions, but he didn’t know the whole story, so Niall told it to him.
By the end of the evening, Niall was left with the feeling that he knew bits and pieces of Blake well, just like the sides he’d handed out to those auditioning for the show, but he didn’t know the whole story. He was certain Blake had been flirting with him…right up until Blake winked at the barmaid, making her blush, as he paid for their meal. Niall had gone home replaying every word that had been spoken between the two of them. He’d examined every look and every smile in his mind, attempting to decipher them. And then he’d beat himself off while imagining what it would feel like to have more than his knees entwined with Blake’s.
He still blushed when he thought about how good it had felt to do that as he approached the door leading backstage in the auditorium, where the play would be staged and where rehearsals were being held. There was absolutely nothing out of the ordinary about frigging oneself during university. Everyone did it. But it was somehow intimate and dangerous to envision a particular object of affection, someone who was now an integral part of his life, while doing so. Whether Blake would be horrified or flattered to be the subject of his fantasies was another story.
The debate raging in his head and his groin was halted as soon as he opened the backstage door and heard the strains of a haunting and unfamiliar piano melody. It was rich with emotion and went straight to Niall’s heart. So much so that he closed the stage door quietly behind him and crept as softly as he could past the heavy, black curtains in the wings and out to where the piano stood on the far downstage corner.
Unsurprisingly, Blake was the one playing the passionate song. Niall’s breath caught in his throat as he watched Blake’s slightly bent head, took in the pinch of emotion in Blake’s expression as he played. It had to be an original composition. Niall had never heard anything like it before. The style was entirely new. It was the most beautiful thing he’d ever heard.
When one of the floorboards creaked under Niall’s foot as he crossed the stage, Blake fumbled his song and jerked straight. His eyes went wide, as though he’d been caught doing what Niall had done to himself the night before, but when he saw it was only Niall who spied on him, he let out a heavy breath and relaxed.
“I thought I’d been caught,” he said, standing quickly from the piano bench and skirting his way toward center stage.
Niall shook his head and shrugged. “Why would it matter if you were caught playing what I assume is an original composition?”
Blake sent him a guilty look and rubbed the back of his neck where his curling hair brushed his collar. “My father doesn’t know that I was cast in this play,” he said. “He doesn’t really approve of my musical interests either.”
Prickles broke out along Niall’s back. He pretended to be casual as he crossed to the narrow set of stairs leading from the stage to the house, where a table had been set up for him for the rehearsal. Though nothing in Blake’s manner or expression said as much overtly, Niall had the distinct feeling that Blake’s father wouldn’t approve of his attraction to other men either. If, indeed, Blake was attracted to men. Niall still couldn’t figure that out.
“Were you planning to invite your family to the performance?” Niall asked as he removed his school satchel from his shoulder and put it on the table. A second, worse thought hit him, and he pivoted to face Blake, eyes wider. “Would he pull you out of the production at the last minute if he discovered you were in it?”
“He wouldn’t approve, but he wouldn’t force me to quit,” Blake said, following him t
o the table. “So you don’t have to worry about that.”
“Oh, I’ll worry about that,” Niall said, opening his satchel and taking out his copy of the script. It already had copious notes scribbled all over it in pencil—everything from blocking to how he wanted certain lines delivered. “I will worry about everything having to do with this play and its performers until the final curtain call is finished.”
“You don’t have anything to worry about.”
Blake’s deep voice came from only a foot or so behind Niall. He’d approached so close while Niall was busy at the table that when Niall turned around, they were almost in each other’s arms. It was a bloody shame that Niall had his script clenched in his hands, almost like a shield between the two of them. That was the last thing he wanted to convey to Blake, especially when he could smell the scent of the man’s shaving soap. Blake had missed a spot on his jaw, close to his ear, proving that his beard probably grew in with lightning speed if he didn’t shave every day. Niall caught himself wondering what a day’s worth of stubble would feel like against his chest or his inner thigh.
Hard on the heels of those thoughts, the door at the back of the auditorium opened, and a group of underclassmen who had been cast in the chorus burst into the room. Blake stepped back from Niall so fast that Niall thought he would stumble over the chairs. Blake cleared his throat and waved to his new castmates as a few more entered the room.
“Stanley,” one of them, Morton, called out as soon as he entered the room. “Fancy seeing you here. Brilliant goal yesterday, by the way. That goalie didn’t stand a chance.”
In an instant, whatever spell had been cast between Niall and Blake vanished. Niall remembered the football game he’d heard about the day before and assumed that was what Morton was talking about. Of course Blake would be enough of a bloke to score a winning football goal. The way he walked over to the particularly rough and tumble men Niall had cast to play the swordsmen in his show, thumping them on the back and being congratulated in kind was as obvious a sign as anything that Blake wasn’t like him.