Doone raised a brow. “All under control, is it?”
“I try to anticipate his lordship’s wishes.”
“Aye, well, I’ll be glad if you anticipate him out of here as quick as you can.” Doone drained his ale. “I’ll go see to the tits. Don’t think much of the stables here, I can tell you.”
David went upstairs with a candlestick through the empty, echoing house rather than sitting alone in the kitchen. Really, he should have waited until he was summoned, but he knew he would feel better for doing something.
Lord Richard was in the bedroom David had made ready, on a spindly chair that was quite inadequate for his large frame, staring at the wall.
“My lord?”
No answer. David moved around tweaking things, finding excuses to stay, because something was wrong, badly wrong, well beyond their too-late arrival and a forgotten woman’s death. He could feel it, and it was making him nervous.
“My lord,” he said again and was not answered. “My lord, what’s wrong? May I help?”
“Just leave me, Cyprian. Please go.”
“No,” David said.
That got Lord Richard’s attention. “What did you say?”
“My lord, please. What is it? What’s happened?”
Lord Richard stared at him, poised for an endless second between anger and misery, and then his face convulsed. “She had my letters,” he said thickly. “All of them. The ink was worn away on some of them where she had held them. The paper was rubbed almost through. She must have read them again and again. Every one.”
David dropped to his knees by the chair without thought, grabbing for Lord Richard’s hand. “Oh no. Oh, my lord.”
“If I had just come. If I had not stewed in my stupid offended pride…Oh God, all those years she was here alone, reading my letters, and I never came. If I had not waited for her to ask. And then, when she did, I was too late.”
“You tried,” David said, wanting it to be true. “You did your best.”
“No, I didn’t. I was hurt, and it never occurred to me that she was too. She left a letter—to Philip and me—I cannot speak of that. God almighty, Cyprian, how have I failed so badly?”
“Please, stop. You ask too much of yourself.”
“She didn’t get the last one, the note,” Lord Richard said. “That arrived only this morning. She died without knowing I was coming.”
“She knew.” David spoke with all the certainty at his command. “With all your letters? She will have known. Of course she knew.”
“Oh, Cyprian.” Lord Richard’s fingers tightened on his. “Don’t go.”
David managed to smile. “You couldn’t make me.”
“You—” Lord Richard’s free hand came up, skimming David’s face with a touch so light it was scarcely there. Impossible that such a big man could be so gentle. His fingers caught in the strands of David’s hair, and David, barely believing, lifted his hand to the face he’d shaved so often. He had Lord Richard’s skin under his fingers every day. But not like this.
Lord Richard was very still. Then he leaned in, just a fraction, and David did too, and they were kissing.
It was hesitant, absurdly so. Virginal, even with Lord Richard’s lips barely moving on David’s, his fingers still on David’s cheek. David moved in a fraction, terrified that his master might pull away altogether, and felt the quiet gasp in Lord Richard’s throat as much as heard it. There was a second when Lord Richard was quite still, and then he pulled David’s head forward, and his lips on David’s were still careful but no longer hesitant. There were hands in David’s hair, over his face, his master’s mouth increasingly urgent on his. Kissing his lord in a darkened room, feeling his hunger.
I’m here. I won’t ever go.
They both had hands in the other’s hair now, Lord Richard’s big hands working in David’s long straight locks as though he’d have liked to seize handfuls; David feeling the familiar loose curls as though he’d never touched them before. Lord Richard’s lips were open to his in wide, greedy kisses, tongues tangling, so pleasurable it hurt.
David made an urgent noise. Lord Richard came forward, sliding off the chair or pushing it backward so he was kneeling as well, bringing them face to face, one of his hands skimming David’s back. David dared run his own fingers over Lord Richard’s jawline, then took a firmer grip, and Lord Richard’s lips were hard on his, his hands commanding. Christ, he was strong, leaning over David now and pushing him back in his need, bodies pressed together—
There was a knock at the door.
Lord Richard recoiled from him, snatching his hands away so that David half-fell back on the rug. Their eyes locked for a single appalling, frozen second, and then David shoved both hands through his hair to smooth it, wiped the wet from his lips, and went to the door, making his face blank. He didn’t open the door fully. There was only so much of his body he could control.
It was the housekeeper with some domestic query of such triviality David could barely keep civil. It was a long time since he had worked in a house where every decision was brought to the master or mistress; taking care of domestic matters was what fucking housekeepers were supposed to do. He dealt with the question courteously because shouting would have taken longer, shut the door, and turned.
Lord Richard was sitting on the bed hunched over, face in his hands.
“Uh…my lord?”
Lord Richard looked up. The expression on his face was dreadful.
David’s stomach plunged. “My lord?” he asked again, and wanted to say, Richard? but did not dare.
“Cyprian. I…” Lord Richard shut his eyes. “I’m sorry.”
Oh God, no. David went to the bed, dropping to his knees to bring their faces to the same level. “No. Don’t say that.”
“I should not have—” Lord Richard lifted a hand toward David’s face, pulled it away before touching. “That was wrong of me. My fault. You are not to blame.”
“My lord…” David had no idea what he could say to be heard. What he wanted to say was It wasn’t wrong, but they both knew that legally, morally, socially, in the eyes of God and man and his master’s elevated world, it was wrong as hell. “There is nothing you could ask of me I would not give you willingly. Nothing.”
Lord Richard’s eyes widened. David stared into them, heart thudding with a dull, dead feeling, like a muffled drum.
“You should not say that,” Lord Richard said at last. “You should not think it. I cannot— You cannot—” He stopped himself. “Enough. Go to bed. I will see to myself tonight.”
“No. Not now.”
“Yes, now. My God, will you let me keep some decency in this house?” Lord Richard demanded. His eyes were needy, desperate. “Is it all not bad enough without—without—I am not going to tumble you to take my mind off my mother!”
“That was not what we were doing,” David said, voice rising in shock. “It was not.”
“It doesn’t matter. Stop, in God’s name, before this becomes irrevocable.”
“Stop and what?” David demanded. “Stop, and forget that you kissed me? Stop, and feign ignorance of what we both know, as we have since February?”
Lord Richard’s jaw hardened. “What you know, or think you know, is irrelevant. You have your place, and I mine, and we will both do well to remember that. I want you to go.”
David could feel the blood rushing to his face. He was abruptly aware that he was kneeling on the damned floor like a supplicant. He was a supplicant, and he had been refused. “You’re dismissing me.” His lips felt stiff. “After—”
“You told me I could ask anything of you,” Lord Richard said. “I am asking you to leave me now. Don’t make me order it.”
David wanted to make him order it. Look me in the eyes, with my kiss on your mouth, and say that. He wanted to push it, to force a response, to make his master face what had happened.
With Lord Richard’s mother lying dead in the next room.
David shut his eyes for
a long moment, then stood. “Very well. Good night, my lord.”
He left the room without waiting for a response.
—
Lord Richard did not meet David’s eyes the next day as he dressed for the funeral service. David had packed blacks since it was his task to think of everything. His lordship took the coach to the little church, though it was less than a mile away, to add to the ceremony of Lady Cirencester’s farewell. It was still raining.
He hadn’t given orders as to what they would do after the funeral, so David anticipated, or decided, for him and packed the luggage as his master paid his respects to the mother who hadn’t wanted him.
David could still feel Lord Richard’s mouth on his.
It was, he knew, impossible. He was well aware of that, had told himself so often enough, had gone to some lengths to find other people to fuck instead. Lord Richard, who didn’t even bed whores for relief, would never violate his place and his principles so far as to tup a servant, and David had to make himself believe that, because the alternative was destruction.
He was proud of his place. He’d worked for it. He’d gone from the lowest possible birth to his own spacious room in an Albemarle Street townhouse and a position at Lord Richard Vane’s side. Silas’s claptrap about the rights of men be damned: David had clawed his way to prosperity, security, and respect through service to a lord. The prestige, the clothing, the luxury of Lord Richard’s station were all at just one remove, bathing David in reflected glory. He should have had nothing more to ask from life.
But he did want more. He wanted Lord Richard and could not have him, and for the first time since he’d entered service at ten years old, David felt himself ashamed. Ashamed of his standing, ashamed of taking orders he did not want, and aware of a bright flame of resentment beginning to flicker at the edges of his mind.
Lord Richard’s obligations took up the whole morning and much of the afternoon. A service, some awkward funeral meats, Lord Richard doubtless giving words of thanks to those who had been his mother’s friends or acquaintances over the last two decades, who probably knew all about her cruel treatment at the hands of the Vane family and her estrangement from her thankless sons.
When his lordship returned to Arncliffe House, past four, David took one look at his face and said, without so much as a greeting, “If we depart in the next half hour, there is a room kept for you at the inn at Thirsk.”
“I should—” Lord Richard began and then said, “Yes. Thank you.”
That meant a scramble for departure and a coach ride in the gathering twilight, but it was worth it to get Lord Richard away from this bloody place. There was no leisure at the inn either, where the innkeeper had taken a lackadaisical attitude to preparing a room and dinner for a guest who probably wouldn’t arrive. David clarified the innkeeper’s obligations for him in strong terms, and the work of making all acceptable for his lordship went some way toward filling up the gaping silence between them in the night.
He couldn’t avoid it the next day, sitting together with Lord Richard as the coach bowled south along the post road toward London.
David was good at silence. That was one of his greatest assets as a valet, since gentlemen wanted servants who were invisible and inaudible except when needed. He’d never felt less invisible than now. Lord Richard was staring out of the window, but David could feel his master’s awareness of him so that he was painfully conscious of every little shift or stretch, and crossing his ankles seemed like an act of aggression.
They had to talk about it, however dreadful that conversation might be. Anything would be better than this awful refusal to look at him. David thought that and said nothing, and endured a luncheon stop in more silence. They got back in the damned coach for another five hours’ jolting along the roads, and David couldn’t stand it any longer.
“My lord.”
Lord Richard had his head back, eyes shut. He seemed not to hear at first, then opened his eyes. “She left a letter. I think I told you that?” He held a hand up, as if to forestall a protest that David hoped his face hadn’t shown. “It was addressed to Philip and me. She said she owed us an explanation.”
“An explanation,” David repeated.
“She talked of her marriage. Called my father despotic, tyrannical. He beat her, you know.” He gave a tiny flinch, a twitch of shame. “He was a powerful man even in his seventies, and he had a temper. She said that the contempt was worse. That he belittled her when she spoke until she did not wish to speak at all. I remember the silence well. And she says her marital duties were…unwelcome attentions. It seems she had a number of miscarriages and two stillbirths between Philip’s birth and mine. I didn’t know that. The way she writes…” There was a muscle jumping in his neck. “My father was a stern man, a strict master, but he was my father, and I had to love him, because I was not allowed to love her—” He stopped, looking startled at his own words.
“Not allowed?” David repeated.
“That is nonsense. I meant— Naturally Father did not wish us to cling to her skirts, even if she had wished us to do so. He never forgave her for straying in the early days of their marriage, you see. He believed in duty, and I always had a sense that she was in disgrace. But my mother’s account—the revulsion— She hated being with child. She says, ‘He made me have children, but he could not make me love them. That I could refuse.’ ”
“My lord, throw it away,” David said. “Don’t read it again.”
“My father was a good man,” Lord Richard insisted, as though someone were arguing it. “He married to secure the line, and she made that bargain. He had a right to congress with his wife, a right to expect children, a right to rule his household. And yet…”
And yet, indeed. David had been brought up in a house full of women whose role was to be fucked, and he recalled quite enough of births and bleeding and cursing at the unwanted fruit of treacherous wombs to have an inkling of how the Marchioness of Cirencester must have felt about her lord’s rights and his rule.
“I’m very sorry, my lord,” he said, because there wasn’t much else to say.
“Yes. So am I.” Lord Richard’s jaw tightened. “And I could have done something. If I had just come to see her, knocked on her door…”
“She was a grown woman, my lord, responsible for herself. And your father is long dead. She had been free of him for fifteen years.”
“I don’t think she ever was,” Lord Richard said. “The letter did not read like one written by a free woman.”
The coach bowled onward.
“My mother suffered,” David said after a while.
“At your father’s hands?”
“N-no, but she had other troubles. Hard ones, and nobody could have blamed her for not wanting the added burden of a child. But she has always said that there is not a great deal of joy to be had in life, so we should snatch it when we can.”
“Your mother is wise. I don’t know if my parents were capable of joy. Certainly not together.”
“Then that was their choice, my lord. They were the Marquess and Marchioness of Cirencester. They were not hampered by the need to scrabble for food or find coals in the winter. They could have lived as they chose.”
“They could not. The position carries immense responsibilities. People depend on our stewardship. We have a duty to our family’s past and our future. My parents had obligations.”
“Philip, Lord Cirencester does not ignore his duty,” David countered, “and you have frequently told me that he is most contented.”
“Philip made the right marriage,” Lord Richard said. “Eustacia is a woman of extraordinary kindness, strength, and intelligence, and she is the daughter of a duke, brought up to occupy a high place. And that is it, Cyprian, that is the point. My mother was a very young, flawed, ordinary woman, aside from her beauty. She did not have the wealth or birth or character to match my father’s, and you see the result of that inequality.”
“Your father could have been k
inder.”
“Or my mother wiser. But they were not, and it led to destruction. We should speak of last night.”
The carriage seemed suddenly rather darker. “Yes.”
“I was deeply wrong in—what I did. It was my fault entirely, and I shall not repeat that mistake. I hope you will forgive me.”
“It was not your fault, or mine. It was not a mistake. I wanted—”
Lord Richard raised his hand, a jerky movement. “Don’t say any more. What you said last night—”
“I meant it.” David was on the edge of his seat, muscles tight. “Every word.”
“Stop.” Lord Richard sounded strangled. “Stop, for both our sakes. Damn it, man.” His voice, always deep, was lower than David had ever heard it. “If things were otherwise, if you and I were on a level— But we are not, and that means it is wrong.”
“It cannot be wrong if we both choose it. How could it be?”
“Because my mother chose her marriage!” Lord Richard shouted. “Because you may choose all you like, but the question is, what happens afterwards? Dominic and I chose each other, and when he left me, it damned near cost him my friendship. What would he have done if his livelihood and his home had been at stake? If my touch becomes repellent to you, if you have needs that I cannot meet, or I have wants that you find abhorrent, yet I pay your salary, what will you do? What when I lose my temper with you, and you may not hit back?”
“I know you’re right.” David’s nails were sunk into his palm. “I know that happens, it can happen, but it does not have to happen. You cannot start every liaison in the belief that it will fail.”
“I must,” Lord Richard said. “Responsibility is the price of my position. I know damned well how much I could hurt you, and I will not. I will not.”
“You would not.”
“Easily said. And what if tonight you come to my bed?” David felt his mouth drop open. “Suppose you and I—and you find you were mistaken. In me, in your wants, in the wisdom of accepting your master’s touch. You have made a mistake. What do you do?”
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