“I dare say I shall find out when a lady makes it necessary for me to do so.”
“Good heavens, Richard. You are sentimental.”
“I, sentimental? You are the most devoted husband alive.”
Philip flushed. “Nonsense.”
“Yes, you are, and with reason. If I had the good fortune to find a helpmeet like Eustacia, I should secure her at once. If I could,” Richard added, to make it less of a lie.
“Of course you could. Don’t be absurd. And Eustacia and I met only once before our engagement and no more than a dozen times before the wedding,” Philip pointed out. “Neither of us had more than a tolerable liking for each other at the time of our marriage. You cannot expect affection and loyalty to arise from nowhere; that is youthful fancy. They develop.”
“Not in our parents.”
Philip’s brows drew together. Richard turned up his palms. “It’s the truth. Your marriage would be a matter of envy to me were I not so happy for you. Our parents’ marriage…But both sprang from the same beginnings, a practical arrangement.”
“Eustacia thought you would say that.” Philip sounded grave. “She fears that you will deprive yourself of the chance of companionship and family because you will not risk a mistake.”
“A bad marriage is more than a mistake. And I may not be married, but I don’t lack companionship.” Philip’s brows shot up, and Richard grinned at him. “Not that sort. I have good friends; I have you and Eustacia and a number of children to indulge. I count myself a very fortunate man. On the topic of your children,” he went on before Philip could reply, “I have a paper of sweetmeats to smuggle up in the teeth of Nanny’s disapproval and a wish to see my namesake. May I pay a visit?”
“I see you’re determined to change the subject. As you wish, but if you would consider it, brother? We are only concerned for your happiness.”
Philip’s words nagged at Richard as he headed up the stairs, pausing to examine a new portrait of his eldest nephew and give himself a moment’s respite. He had spoken the truth to Philip, more or less, with the trifling exception of gender. If Richard had such a partner as his brother had, that loving, unflinching ally, he would count himself the happiest of men.
Once, he had. He remembered Philip’s wedding day. Richard had been just twenty-one years old and so overwhelmingly in love with Dominic that he could imagine no other state. He had stood with his remote, solitary older brother as he married a horse-faced woman he barely knew and looked down the great church to where his dearest friend and lover sat smiling at him, and he had pitied Philip with all his heart.
Fourteen months later, as Eustacia and Philip were glowing with passionate joy over their first son, Dominic had left him because Richard had refused to inflict abuse in the guise of love.
Or so he had thought. So he had felt for years, with a raw humiliation that he had mattered so little that Dominic could turn from him to seek degradation in back alleys. Until he had been forced to see the situation from another perspective and had not liked what he saw of himself.
Dominic had been lost, confused, frightened by his own desires, and as devastated by the gap growing between them as Richard had been. Dominic had been in desperate need of friendship, and instead Richard had spent years condemning him, holding on to his own shame and pain without considering how much it added to his best friend’s burden. Their love affair had been doomed, without question, but if he had just accepted Dominic as he was all those years ago…
Richard had failed his dearest friend cruelly and repeatedly and then been forced to watch a penniless Ludgate radical make him content in his own skin for the first time in fifteen years.
It hurt. Painful, ulcerating shame, a wound rubbed more raw every time Richard set eyes on Mason, and he deserved the hurt. He had put his own wants first with Dominic, his longing for their lost happiness, and his friend had suffered for it.
He would not be so damned selfish again.
He stopped outside the nursery door, took a long, deep breath, and requested admittance. One good thing about a gaggle of children shrieking “Uncle Rich!” and demanding largesse was that there was no time for self-indulgent thoughts.
After a lengthy period of handing out smuggled sweets and being a horse for four-year-old Lady Abigail—Cyprian would raise an eyebrow at the state of Richard’s pantaloons—he settled down with his namesake to read. Young Lord Richard, Dickie to his intimates, was a sturdy seven-year-old with bright eyes and a taste for terror, and the book he handed his uncle looked quite bloodcurdling. Richard shot a plaintive look at the nurse, who returned a disapproving one, even as he read out the tale of Lady Mary visiting the sinister Mr. Fox.
“ ‘Over the door of a chamber, she saw the words, BE BOLD, BE BOLD, BUT NOT TOO BOLD, LEST THAT YOUR HEART’S BLOOD SHOULD RUN COLD! She opened it; it was full of skeletons and tubs of blood.’ Good heavens, Dickie.”
“Go on, Uncle Rich!”
“ ‘She left the room in haste and, coming downstairs, saw from a window Mr. Fox coming towards the house, dragging along a young lady by her hair. Lady Mary hid herself under the stairs. As Mr. Fox dragged his victim upstairs, she caught hold of one of the banisters with her hand, on which was a golden bracelet. Mr. Fox cut her hand off with his sword. Snick! The hand with its bracelet fell into Lady Mary’s lap—’ I hope you know that if you have nightmares, your mother will blame me.”
Dickie gave Richard a look calculated to cow any uncle into obedience. Richard sighed and went on with the tale. Lady Mary left Mr. Fox’s hall with what seemed to him a reprehensibly casual attitude toward the other young lady’s well-being and held her peace until the next time Mr. Fox came to dinner, at which time she began to tell of a terrible dream she had had of a visit to his house.
“ ‘She described the room full of skeletons, and Mr. Fox said, “It is not so, nor it was not so, and God forbid it should be so!” which he continued to repeat at every turn of the tale till she came to his cutting off the young lady’s hand. Then Mr. Fox said again, “It is not so, nor it was not so, and God forbid it should be so.” But Lady Mary retorted, “But it is so, and it was so, and here the hand I have to show!,” at the same moment producing the hand and bracelet from her lap. Whereupon the guests all drew their swords, and—’ ”
“Richard Vane,” Eustacia said from the doorway. “Both Richard Vanes. Put that book down at once.”
—
They took tea in Eustacia’s drawing room. She doubtless had a roster of engagements, but she always had time for her family.
Lady Cirencester was not a beautiful woman, or even an attractive one, in an age where women’s beauty was all-important, nor was she charming. Like Philip, she presented a face of aristocratic pride and haughty reserve to the world. Richard was one of the very few privileged to see behind the façade, and that had taken time. Even as Eustacia and Philip had been turning their dynastic marriage into society’s least-known love affair, she had not been prepared to trust her husband’s younger brother with her private self, and he, puppy that he was, had seen only the plain-faced woman his father had inflicted on his solitary brother.
Until he had noticed that she was always, somehow, there when people tried to make Philip read anything. She would interpose herself with a look down her beaky nose that suggested it was an imposition to expect the marquess to do such menial activity, a repellent gesture of worldly self-consequence that made her few friends and diverted all attention her way. And Richard, who had tried so often to protect Philip from the shame of his illiteracy, had felt his heart lurch in his chest.
The day he had stood godfather to the howling red-faced scrap called Lord Richard Godfrey Nevile Vane and seen his brother as happy with his sixth child as with his first remained one of Richard’s dearest memories, and it was all because of Eustacia. He would, therefore, put up with almost anything she chose to hand to him, but there were limits.
“Philip did speak to me on the subject, yes,” he s
aid now. “Don’t feel obliged to add your voice.”
Eustacia gave a very small sigh. “I wish you would consider marriage, Richard. Philip worries for you.”
“Philip worries for everyone.”
“Yes, he does. There is a streak of melancholy in the Vane family that I cannot like.” She must have observed something on his face, because she went on quite deliberately. “I do not scruple to tell you, Richard, that my parents felt a little concern in making the marriage. There is a certain instability in the Vanes. And your mother—”
“We may be grateful you did not heed those concerns.” She was more devoted to the family interests than he was, Richard reminded himself.
“I am.” She smiled unconsciously, as she sometimes did with the children. If there was a painter capable of capturing those smiles, her portrait would be a sensation. “But Philip fears that you will either go the way of your cousin Alexander and plunge into some unsuitable affair—”
“Really, Eustacia—”
“—or of your father and contract a marriage for worldly reasons that cannot lead to happiness.”
“That I shall not. He had the line to consider. He needed to marry; I do not.”
“But men do.” Eustacia looked just slightly pink. “I am aware of masculine…needs.” That was almost impossible to imagine, but her seven children were far-from-silent testimony. “And more than that, to have a partner, someone at your side. Philip—”
“I do understand.” She didn’t need to spell it out. Philip would have shrunk into a miserable, isolated parody of a man without Eustacia.
“And you are more like him than you think,” Eustacia went on. “You have a gift for friendship, of course, which he does not, but you need a…an ally as much as he does. What is it?”
“Nothing.” She gave him a look. “Or merely that someone else has made that observation to me.”
You want an ally. I prefer a challenge. Dominic had told him that, and it was true, curse it. He wanted what Philip had in Eustacia. Someone by his side, working with him, someone who knew him, a partner in every sense.
Richard knew exactly who he wanted, and he could not have him.
“May we help you, then?” Eustacia asked. “I don’t suppose you would have any great difficulty in securing a lady’s hand if you chose.” That was an understatement; Richard knew himself to be one of the more desirable properties on the marriage mart. “I have made a list—”
“No. Really, sister, no.”
She sighed again. “It troubles Philip that you are alone, and it is impossible to see you with the children without thinking that you ought to set up your own nursery. I may add that you would be an excellent husband, and I can think of at least five ladies who would make you a very suitable wife. If you would but try. I don’t understand why you will not try.”
Richard looked into the delicate china cup. “I have considered it.” It was the truth. Marriage might be quite satisfactory, if only he could believe it was fair to the lady. “I don’t feel I can make a suitable marriage, Eustacia, even on Philip’s command. But if I change my mind, I will gladly consult your list.” He smiled to support his words.
She didn’t return it. “I am sorry to hear that. Oh, Richard.”
“Is something wrong?”
“You must be wondering why we have spoken to you about this. It is because we both wish you had someone with you now.”
The note in her voice sent the hair prickling up his spine. “What is it? Is Philip unwell? Not the children?”
“No, nothing like that. Philip did not wish to tell you this, and I was not sure we should, but I think we must. Richard, we have had a letter.”
—
He sat in his book room, reading the letter a few lines at a time. That seemed to be all he could manage before he had to break off and look around. It was lighter in here, somehow, more alive. The shelves were filled with his own books, but over the years they had become furniture. Mason had been working through them, rearranging them, and it had given them the feeling of things that he wanted to read once more.
He’d need to choose a few for the journey.
He reached for the bell, stopped himself. He’d already ordered that Cyprian should come to him as soon as the valet returned to the house; repeating himself would be as fruitless as making querulous demands as to where the man had gone.
Cyprian would be about his work. Buying whatever he required for his secret recipe for blacking, or arranging matters with his cronies in gambling hells and assignation houses to ensure that Richard’s friends could find comfort in safety, or exchanging news with fellow servants in a coffee house to ensure he knew more about Richard’s world than Richard did himself.
His ally, his helpmeet. His valet.
Richard stared at the letter, looking through rather than at the spiky handwriting. He tried not to think about Cyprian, ever, but the choices of what he could think about now were both limited and unpleasant.
He should not have touched Cyprian the previous night. Should never touch him. Other men might give in to temptation or self-indulgence; Richard owed his valet far too much to do that. He owed himself a duty, come to that. But the sensation of those buttons coming undone one by one, the feel of those sure fingers approaching the opening of his shirt, where the skin of his chest had felt so naked…
He’d stopped Cyprian’s hand to stop himself, and he’d seen the look on his valet’s face as he did it.
He could have Cyprian. He could pull him close, claim that clever mouth, lay him down on the bed that made itself so very obtrusive in the room whenever they were there. He knew, from nights of imagining, how Cyprian’s slender body would give way to his own bulk, how he’d clutch Richard’s shoulders, how Cyprian’s lips would welcome the invasion…
Or they might not, and in that case, there would be damn all that Cyprian could do about it, because Richard was his master. Richard remembered his cousin, outraged and bewildered at his fury because of course the housemaid whose breasts the man had fondled had made no objection to the master’s relative having his way. How could she, when she needed her place?
Richard was sure—almost sure, so close to sure—that Cyprian wanted him. That moment in the book room…Richard had not been able to move his hand, though every decent instinct, every self-protective part of his brain had screamed at him to do so. He had not been able to take his eyes off Cyprian’s face, so often expressionless, but at that moment giving away so much. Richard had wanted more than anything to reach out and pull him close, and he believed his valet would have welcomed it.
But Dominic had welcomed Richard’s touch once too. Men deceived themselves and one another. They made mistakes or simply changed. And what the devil would Cyprian do if that happened? To think of him forced to pretend enthusiasm or endure unwanted attentions…The very idea made Richard angry. That it could be his doing made him queasy.
Keep your hands off the staff. It was as simple as that. There could be no justice where one party had all the power and the other risked his livelihood with refusal. Therefore, one did not even ask, because one could never be sure that a “yes” didn’t mask “because I must.”
Richard had made too many mistakes in his life; this one would be unforgivable. He was damned if he would put his own selfish wants first with Cyprian.
Chapter 3
“Good afternoon, Mr. Cyprian. His lordship requests you in the book room at once.” Schooler coughed behind his hand, shooting a glance at David’s state of dress. “I believe it is urgent.”
David dropped his parcel on the kitchen table and shrugged off his topcoat. “Thank you, Mr. Schooler. Do you know what’s the matter?”
Lord Richard’s butler was an imposing man, as butlers usually were, and an intelligent one. Other men would have resented David’s peculiar preeminence in the household, where the butler should have reigned unchallenged. Schooler, no fool, had considered whether he was more dispensable than David, as well as Lord
Richard’s dislike of domestic brangling, and the two servants had settled into a relationship of weighty courtesy on both sides. Schooler doubtless relished seeing David go to Lord Richard’s presence improperly clad, but he would not say so. “I could not speculate, Mr. Cyprian. His lordship returned from Cirencester House over two hours ago and requested you should attend him at once.” Which you have signally failed to do, he did not add. The two footmen polishing silver didn’t comment either, but David saw the glance flash between them.
He could not expect to be popular. He was too close to the master, too intimate with him, too often the mouthpiece of Lord Richard’s wishes. He was not one with the other servants, and so they enjoyed his discomfiture.
“Thank you,” David said, and hurried through.
It took a little nerve for him to open the book room door. The first order that he had received in Lord Richard’s service was that he should keep his hair powdered. He couldn’t resent it, little as he liked the thick, dry coating; nobody wanted to see that garish red. He was also obliged to wear livery, which had been harder to swallow, but if Lord Richard’s whim was to have his valet clad like his footmen, it was not David’s place to object.
He was redheaded and black coated now, quite out of uniform, but “at once” was “at once,” and if Lord Richard needed him urgently after a visit to the marquess, something was up.
He slipped into the room. The light was poor, as evening was approaching, but no candles had been lit. Lord Richard sat in his comfortable reading chair with a letter in his hand and an untouched glass of wine on the table, staring into space.
“My lord?” Lord Richard looked around, and David saw the little jolt as his master noticed the glaring hair. “I beg pardon. You wanted me at once.”
“Cyprian. Where have you been? No, it doesn’t matter. Sit down. Bring that chair over.” He waved a hand toward the desk.
Sit? David carried the chair over, placed it opposite Lord Richard, waited. And waited some more, because Lord Richard was looking at the letter he held and did not seem quite able to speak.
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