David had time for a single pulse of bewildered, horrified loss before he registered the knock at the door. “Damn.”
“This is my life,” Richard growled. “Constant blasted interruption. Yes, thank you very much. Carry on,” he told the footman with his usual courtesy as the servant came in with David’s dinner. “What was I saying, Cyprian? Agreeing with you, I feel quite sure.”
David made some sort of reply and stood rigid until the man had placed the dishes at one end of the table and left. As the door closed behind him, Richard extended his hand again. David didn’t take it. “Richard—”
Richard took a step closer, running his finger under David’s chin to tilt it up. “Tell me again.”
David set his jaw. “I love you. I have always loved you. But as you have said yourself, that does not change anything.” He saw the confusion darkening Richard’s eyes and wanted to take it away, but this had to be said. “I still don’t know what to do. I had not intended to come back to London for some time. I needed time to think, to see my path well ahead, and I have not had that. And I won’t fall back into your life without thinking just because I want to.”
“I don’t want you to do that either,” Richard said. “I was going to write to you.”
His hand was so warm, running through David’s hair, sending delicious shivers through his scalp. “Were you?”
“Mmm. I intended to leave a few days for you to calm down, make my apologies—again—and ask that you would see me, talk to me, before you took another post. I hoped you would grant me that much.”
“I dare say I would have. It is not easy for me to refuse you.”
“Old habit?” Richard asked, managing a smile that dropped away at whatever he saw in David’s face.
“You whistle, and I come running.” David looked away. This was not pleasant to say. “Silas didn’t strong-arm me to bring me here. I took down my coat the moment I saw him, and I feel quite sure you know that. I would find it very easy to do as you wish, to come back to you whenever you hold out a hand, no matter what you had done to drive me away, because you have been my master a very long time. And if I do that, it will sooner or later bring us back where we started, and I will not let that happen. I must not.” His voice was raw.
Richard’s hand had stilled. He gently withdrew it, leaving David’s scalp feeling cold. “I see. I’m sorry. Would you prefer me not to speak of this?”
“Of course not.” David’s mouth twisted. “You reaching for me? It’s everything I ever wanted, except for the parts I can’t bear.”
Richard nodded. “I don’t know what to say, David, except this: I don’t want you to come back to me for any reason but your own wish. Certainly not at my order, or even my plea. And I am well aware that puts the onus on you, again, but I have no idea what I can do about that except wait for you. That I can and will do, for as long as you need. I am not the master here, and anything between us is and will forever be your choice.” He gave David a smile that looked as though it hurt. “I know I earned your distrust. I will do what I must to earn your trust again. I promise you, I don’t expect it.”
David couldn’t find a response. Richard pushed a hand through his own hair, his expression a little rueful. “I may add that I have been more thoroughly talked at in the last weeks than in the total of my life before, and no doubt I shall make many more mistakes, but I intend to avoid repeating the same ones. We both have lessons to learn. You must learn to refuse me, and I must learn not to make it necessary so damned often.” He gave a sudden smile that made David’s heart lurch. “Or, alternatively, I might become even more unreasonable, so that you can rehearse your refusals at leisure. Shall I order a puce coat like that one of Harry’s?”
David narrowed his eyes. “If you wish to destroy a sartorial reputation on which I slaved for years.”
“In that case, I could ask Julius where he has his waistcoats made. What would you say to coquelicot and jonquil stripes? Horizontal, of course. I shall set a new fashion.”
David found himself grinning now, as Richard had clearly intended. “Don’t you dare.”
“You see? You are refusing me to the manner born, and I am quite sure you can do so whenever you like. You’ve walked away from me twice, after all. Will you kiss me now?”
David’s mouth opened. He shut his eyes. “No.”
“Very well done,” Richard said. “I should like to kiss you, David. I should like to taste my way from your lips all the way down your neck—”
“No.” David felt rather strangled.
Richard sounded short of breath himself. “Shall I kneel to you, David? Get my hands on your skin and my mouth on your prick?”
“No.”
“Then—are you fucked ever?”
“Yes,” David said breathlessly. “And no.”
“You said you liked my size. Believe me, you’d feel it if I fucked you. Right here, since you like floors so much, on your hands and knees so I can see your hair, your skin, until my weight bears you down to the carpet and I can hear you cry out under me—”
“I hate you,” David said with strong feeling. He was leaning against the table, gripping its edge with both hands to prevent himself from lying back on it.
“I hate myself.” Richard took a deep breath. “And yet you are not on your knees now, and I am quite sure that you will go about your business tonight and make short work of anyone who stands in your way. You have the strongest will I have ever encountered.”
“You shake it.”
“I know,” Richard said. “I don’t think many others do?”
That could have sounded like a vanity. David knew it was the opposite. “Nobody,” he said softly. “Nobody else.”
Richard’s throat worked. “Nobody else. Just as nobody has brought me to my knees as you do. And I should like to be there begging you to come back to me now, but that’s not the issue, is it?”
“No.”
“No. I wish it were.” Richard sighed. “When you come back to me, my fox, you will do so of your own will. I depend on that.”
“When,” David repeated.
“Allow me to hope for when,” Richard said. “I don’t like if. And the thought of not is unbearable.”
“Richard?” David beckoned. Richard came a step closer, and David took hold of his lapels, pulling him forward so their faces were just a few inches apart, and Richard’s lips parted in anticipation of a kiss that David didn’t grant.
“David?”
“You owe me that fuck. At some point, I shall claim it.” He waited for those deep blue eyes to widen and then hauled hard, pulling Richard toward him and going deliberately backward as their mouths met. They were kissing frantically as David’s back hit the table and Richard’s weight came down on his chest.
“Jesus!” David yelped. “Fuck!”
Richard shoved himself up onto his arms, taking his weight off. “What the— Are you all right?”
“It’s just bruises,” David muttered, adding a vengeful mark to his tally against Lord Maltravers for the stabbing pain that had exploded across his chest. “He hit me in the ribs. I didn’t think.”
Richard’s brows drew together. “How badly?”
“Nothing broken. It’s all right. It just hurt a little.” It hurt miserably, and if Richard offered an apology for David’s own damned idiocy, he thought he might scream.
“With my weight? I’m not surprised.” Richard dipped his head, kissed him gently, and rubbed the lightest hand over David’s ribs. “Come, your food is cooling, and you need to eat if you are to embark on burglary, or your stomach’s complaints will betray you to the entire house. Up.” He gave David his hand, not heaving him to his feet but simply letting David pull against him. All the support that was needed and no more than was asked.
“I love you,” David said again, his smile so wide it pulled at the cut on his cheek, and Richard smiled back.
—
House-breaking proved a great deal less dramatic than
Richard had probably expected.
They strolled to Mr. Skelton’s lodgings together. Richard carried a heavy stick. He had not said that part of his determination to accompany David had to do with the dangers of London’s streets at night, but David drew his own conclusions.
“How do you intend to break in?” Richard asked as they walked. He sounded curious rather than disapproving. “I didn’t know you had the skills of a burglar as well as everything else.”
“I don’t,” David admitted. “I put Mr. Skelton’s lodgings keeper’s charwoman on the payroll months ago.”
“You— I beg your pardon?”
“I bribe a lot of people with your money. To keep informed, to keep people quiet, to get access. It’s a fair part of the running costs.” Richard had never queried the “running costs” before, so David had never explained. “I tend to grease people who might come in useful.”
Richard digested that. “How many people do we bribe, in the regular way of things?”
David smiled in the darkness at we. “About sixty, on and off. We don’t pay most of them very much, of course. Mostly just retainers in case of need.”
“Of course. And this one?”
“Has told me which Skelton’s room is and, I hope, left the back door unbolted.”
“Could she identify you?”
“With luck, there will be nothing to identify me for,” David said. “And people don’t like to admit that they took bribes to betray their office. My guess is that even if things go ill, she will be silent. In any case, it must be done.”
“You know your business. Who else do we pay?”
“Aside from the people at Millay’s and Quex’s? Housemaids and footmen. Grooms are useful. I had a footman in Lord Maltravers’s employ for a while, but he was very little use and got turned off in March for drinking.” He clicked his tongue. “Lord Maltravers is a terrible master.”
“What is the significance of that?” Richard demanded. “And of his poor state of dress? You mentioned that before, and I cannot see how it helps in the least.”
“It tells me that Lord Maltravers thinks he knows best. He will not be advised by his valet or his tailor. He doesn’t think other people are worth listening to. He has not put himself in Mr. Skelton’s hands; he is keeping matters from him. He does not consider the outcome. That may do very well for a duke’s heir in the general way of things. It is not advisable for anyone dabbling in politics, or blackmail.”
“I have found it to be ill judged in friendships,” Richard said. “Is this your utilitarian philosophy again?”
“I don’t have a philosophy. I decide what I want to achieve, and I do what I can to make it come about. Lord Maltravers lets his aims be blotted out by his self-love. He would like to be well dressed, but he overrules his tailor and abuses his valet rather than be obliged to a lesser man, and thus he fails. Do you see?”
“I think so, yes.” Richard paced on. “It is a common habit for men in high positions, I suspect. One must consider one’s manner, live up to certain standards, keep at an elevation. My father…” He trailed off. “Uh, you don’t have anyone in my brother’s household, do you?”
“No. I thought you’d prefer it if I didn’t.”
Richard’s hand brushed his. “Thank you. David, will you tell me something honestly?”
“Probably,” David said with caution.
Richard snorted. “Well, then: I know that I offended you with my offer. Was that my clumsiness, or would you truly not wish to change your role given the right opportunity? Would it not be more comfortable for you? I am not pressing you, not at all, but I should like to understand.”
“I like my work,” David said. “It’s second nature now, I can think while I do it, and the results please me. Putting things to rights. Besides, being a valet gives—gave—me freedom to do the other things for you too. People might be wary of a secretary in a way they are not of a valet. And…” He grimaced in the dark, but he had to be able to tell Richard the truth, and Richard had to be able to hear it. “The fact is, I don’t know if I should be a very good secretary. I read and write adequately, but no more than that. I have never worked with a pen in my life. And I like to be very good, and I should not wish to hold a post for any reason other than that I was very good. I’m an excellent valet.”
“Yes,” Richard said slowly. “I beg your pardon. I should have thought of that. I assumed that you could do anything you wished.”
“My mother gave me the best education she could,” David said, feeling a little defensive. “But I always wanted to be working—we needed the money—so it never seemed the most important thing to do, and I never acquired the habit.”
“Philip can barely read,” Richard said. “Not for lack of effort or education, but he has no capacity. And he is the best man I know. There is no shame in it.”
David had known that, since he had made it his business to know about Richard’s life, but Richard had never spoken of it before. He knew damned well there was shame in it, and what it meant for Richard to give him that truth, and his heart clenched in his chest.
“It never bothered me before,” he said. “But Silas reads all the time. Have you read this? Have you read that? I had no idea anyone read so much. All the things he knows, and talks about, and I can’t remember the last time I read a book.”
“Dominic is a great reader too. I suppose that’s what they talk about.”
“Yes.” David knew that all too well. Mr. Frey and Silas had come together to fuck, but what joined them was a passion for an abstract world of ideas and stories and words that David knew to be far out of his own reach, and well within Richard’s. “Is that something you’d want?” He stared at the vague shapes of his feet as they walked. “To be able to talk about—books, and Latin, and scholarly things?”
“On the contrary. I cannot tell you how often I have begged Dominic to speak of something else. I like to read, granted, but I can find literary conversation very easily. Whereas your point of view is unique.”
There was such affection in Richard’s voice. David bit the inside of his lips, but he couldn’t stop the smile from growing. “I, uh, think we’re here.”
They had passed St. Giles church and were on the wide thoroughfare of Broad Street. Skelton lived just a short way from Bow Street, on Plumbtree Street. Its dark opening yawned ahead.
David glanced up at Richard as they crossed the silent road, seeing his face as a pale oval in the darkness. “I had better go alone from here. Wait for me?”
“Good fortune, my fox. If you need me—”
“Stay here, and bail me out if I get caught.” If he were caught, there would be a terrible hullabaloo, and he was quite positive Richard would come running. He would do well not to be caught then, at anything.
On the other hand…it was black night, well past one in the morning. There was not a soul on the streets, nobody to see. He reached up for Richard’s shoulders and at the same moment felt hands closing on his hips.
“For luck,” Richard whispered. His lips met David’s, and then they were kissing in fierce, passionate silence, freed by darkness, in the open street without fear or shame until David almost forgot he had a burglary to commit.
Chapter 16
Richard went to see Lord Maltravers the next morning.
He had never liked the man. Maltravers was a fleshy, red-faced brute a couple of years Richard’s junior but so puffed up in his own consequence he might have been twice the age. His tailoring was expensive but poorly commanded; his coats were overtight in the wrong places; and that day there was a spot of gravy on his cravat. David would never have permitted Richard to be seen in such a state.
Philip sat by the Duke of Warminster in the House of Lords, and it was impossible to avoid Maltravers in society, so Richard had always felt obliged to maintain a civil manner with him. Maltravers rarely bothered to reciprocate. As the eldest son and heir of a duke, he outranked Richard and liked to show it.
“Well
,” he said as Richard took his seat. “You wanted to see me.”
“Yes, I did. You engaged my former valet yesterday.”
“Is that what this is about?”
“What else? He was a good servant to me for some years, and since I understand you were not pleased with him, I wonder if you will cancel the contract. It is clear he will not suit you.”
“Your former valet is a damned insolent sneak,” Maltravers said. “He shall come back to this house, as engaged, and I shall teach him some manners.”
“How thoughtful of you. When I do not care for a servant’s manner, I simply dismiss him. You have made your dissatisfaction quite clear, my lord, so it seems reasonable that you should end the agreement.”
“He signed a contract,” Maltravers said obstinately. “I shall damned well hold the fellow to it.”
Richard leaned back in his chair. “My lord Maltravers, are you quite well?”
“What was that?”
“It is not my habit to deal with my former servants’ affairs. But Cyprian fled to my household for shelter after you assaulted him. The doctor feared that you might have cracked a rib, so brutally did you attack the man. And he tells me—I can scarcely comprehend this—that you did so because he would not swear to a series of extraordinary allegations against your own brother. My lord, your actions are disturbed.”
Maltravers went a satisfying shade of purple. “Disturbed? It is not I who is disturbed. My accursed brother—”
“Ash is a good friend of mine.”
“I know that. And I know he has told you about this.”
“About what?”
“About his vile acts and what you must do!”
“I am not aware I must do anything, and Ash has told me nothing at all,” Richard said. “I have no idea what you’re talking about.”
Maltravers’s mouth dropped open as he visibly worked that out. He would have to assume that Ash had been stalling him, wasting time. The blackmail had failed; the hoped-for political coup was slipping through his fingers. Richard could see his face darkening. “I told Gabriel to tell you that I intend to prosecute your man Mason, Harry Vane’s accomplice, for high treason, and you must not stand in my way. You had better speak to Gabriel at once, Lord Richard, or your cousin will face his just deserts.”
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