by J. A. Rock
She squeezed his hands. “I rather think that’s up to you. But you might start by trusting how fond you are of him and how little you want to hurt him.”
He sighed and gently drew his hands away. “He said wed, Mother.”
“He did.”
“Why would he say such a thing?”
“I'm no investigator, but perhaps because he wishes to wed you.”
“Don’t be silly. It was only a joke. Wasn’t it?”
“My dear, he cares for you deeply. He will not ask you to do anything you don’t want. There is no rush to marry. It does not mean you love each other any less.”
Gale rubbed a hand over his face and nodded, not entirely convinced. “He will want marriage, but I don’t want that. He will think it means I am not fully committed, and then he will not trust me, and—”
“Don’t assume, Christmas. You must actually talk to him.”
“That is very difficult.”
“Is it really?” she asked gently.
He hesitated, then shook his head.
“Society knows you two now as investigative partners. I dare say there is much you can get away with under the guise of such a partnership. But if any of your ‘business talks’ should get out of hand and should Society grow wise to you, you can always do what your father and I did and have a rather spontaneous wedding that ends up being such a splendid celebration people forget they were ever suspicious about the suddenness of it.”
“I am both horrified you’re telling me this and oddly reassured.”
“You are hardly the first person in history, or even in this family, to talk business before marriage.”
“Please let us end this heart-to-heart while I still stand a chance of getting these images out of my head sometime in the next decade.”
“Oh, it’s far too late for that, my dear.”
“Yes, I am realising that more with each passing second.”
She brushed some invisible speck of something from his shirt. “Do not dwell too much on how it can all go wrong. That way lies madness. Besides, there is only one scandal that everybody is talking about right now. You and Ben could take off all your clothes and race through Hyde Park, and Society would only have eyes for Loftus Rivingdon and Morgan Notley.”
“I could not possibly care less what those two fops are up to.”
His mother shrugged, biting her lip mischievously. “I must say, it is jolly entertainment.”
“Jolly is hardly my area of interest.”
“Talk to him,” she repeated. “It will all work out. You’ll see.”
“All right. But I will come complaining to you when I have broken his heart with the news that I do not wish to wed right away… or possibly ever.”
“Oh, Christmas. Would you like to place bets?”
Later, when he and Chant were properly dressed and ready to go in to dinner, Gale stopped him outside the dining room. “You look…” That was as far as Gale’s brain got.
“You also look—” Chant leaned in and kissed him.
Gale kissed back with a ferocity that rather contradicted the protests he made against Chant’s lips. “Chant! My family is just through that door.”
Chant pulled back and regarded him with that quietly amused expression. “And just how am I supposed to help myself?” he inquired.
Gale pulled him in for another fierce kiss, then released him and addressed the matter at hand.
“If I tell you I am unsure about marriage, you will doubt my love for you, and your resentment will fester between us, and I will hate myself for knowing that if we carry on as we are while remaining unwed, I put you at risk of a scandal. There is no way for us to avoid this calamity.”
Chant simply stared. His lips were delightfully reddened, a bit puffy where Gale had nipped at him. “What the hell are you talking about?”
“If you are in love with me, as you say you are, then you will wish to wed. And I love you in return, but I don't know whether marriage is a good decision for me.”
Chant looked as if he were fighting a smile. “Gale, we have known each other less than a week. I think we could stand to wait at least another before discussing marriage.”
Gale hesitated, surprised. “But you will want it eventually, won’t you?”
“I cannot say just yet. I do not doubt your love for me. And I certainly hope you do not doubt mine for you. Marriage is no more proof of devotion than attending church is proof of one’s inherent virtue.” That sparkle in Chant’s eyes was damnably reassuring. As was the way he ran a hand down Gale’s arm and tugged lightly on his hand before letting it go. “Come. I told you hours ago you were hungry. You will think more clearly after a good meal.”
Gale remained in place. Why did his mother always have to be right?
“Come on,” Chant urged again. “Afterward, perhaps we can go back to your place—or mine—and I shall show you just how committed I can be even without a ring on my finger. In fact, for what I have in mind it is probably best I am not wearing a ring.”
He turned toward the dining room.
“Chant?” Gale whispered harshly. “What do you have in mind?”
Chant called over his shoulder, “You’re the investigator, Lord Christmas. You figure it out.”
From inside the dining room, Gale heard his mother’s laughter and Anne-Marie telling off Flum for trying to grab food from the table. He could imagine Elise sitting at the table, one of the family, this girl who had lost so much but who still believed in good people and good things to come. And Chant, taking his seat among them all.
He supposed he could spend hours, weeks, a lifetime, wondering how this had happened. How a heart locked as tight as his own had been opened with the easy, effortless amusement that sparkled in a pair of deep blue eyes. He could wonder if he deserved such love, if it would last, if he would have to fight for it in ways for which he was unprepared.
Or he could simply have it. Because Chant gave it freely. He could have it, and cherish it, and return it. He could live in the light of Chant’s kindness. And he could do everything in his power to let Chant know he was there. That he would not disappear.
Moments later, Gale entered the dining room, thinking it would surely be best to go back to Russell Street tonight rather than Mayfair. After all, it was the only place they could go without some great damned hairy dog watching as Gale rendered Benjamin Chant completely and utterly senseless.
And Gale intended to do that at least twice, possibly three times, before dawn.
Afterword
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Keep reading for a an excerpt from A Rival for Rivingdon, the next book in the series.
An Excerpt from A Rival for Rivingdon
March 22, 1818. Two weeks until the Season begins.
Lord Loftus Rivingdon, third and youngest son of Baron Rivingdon, stood before the mirror in Monsieur Verreau’s tailoring shop and slowly lifted an ivory silk hat, trimmed with apple-green ribbon, in both hands. He placed it carefully atop his head and studied himself.
Behind him in the mirror, his mother, Lady Emmeline Rivingdon, watched, her hands clasped in anticipation. “Oh Loftus—” she began in a breathless whisper.
“I hate it,” Loftus declared loudly.
Lady Rivingdon gasped. “Loftus! But you look simply stunning.”
“This ribbon does not match my eyes!” Loftus whirled to face his mama. “I was promised a ribbon that would match my eyes!”
Monsieur Verreau, the tailor, placed his hands on his hips. “That is the closest colour I could find.” He spoke with a light French accent, and did not appear at all fazed by this crisis, which angere
d Loftus further. He wanted the fellow thoroughly fazed.
Loftus ripped the hat from his head and hurled it to the floor, then turned to the mirror once again. “I look terrible.” He tugged his waistcoat. “I have no waistline—look at this! Mother, these stays are not doing their job.”
“You are thin as a spindle,” M. Verreau said. “I do not know what you are worried about.”
“Tighten them,” Rivingdon ordered, hastily unbuttoning his silver waistcoat and tossing it to join the burgundy jacket he had removed earlier. He yanked the tails of his shirt from his trousers, then raised the shirt to reveal the short stays around his waist.
“Loftus!” His mother tittered and said, unconvincingly, “Manners.” She glanced at Verreau. “My apologies. He’s been a bit highly-strung of late, anticipating the start of the Season.”
“Yes, I recall from his fitting,” the tailor said flatly. “Mr. Rivingdon, your stays are already tied more tightly than is good for the laces.”
Rivingdon shot the man a glare as his mother began untying his stays. “Here now, my Loftus,” she said, pulling the laces as tight as she could. She grunted with the effort, and Loftus hissed in a breath, bracing himself against the wall as she tugged and yanked.
“Tighter, Mother,” he insisted through gritted teeth.
“You need a smaller size,” Verreau said, not even raising his voice to be heard over the groaning and hissing. “As there are few gentlemen seeking stays, I am not sure I have a smaller size. But I can have something made. It will take roughly two weeks.”
Loftus opened his mouth to denounce the fellow and his entire business. Two weeks was unacceptable! Two weeks from now was Lord Balfour’s ball—the opening event of the Season. He could hardly attend the event looking bloated as a cow!
But all that came out was a whimper as his lower ribs nearly cracked with his mother’s efforts.
Just then, the bell on the door tinkled, and Loftus watched through the mirror as two intruders imposed on the shop’s solitude. A short, impossibly slim man stood by the door. He had thick, glossy brown hair and large, dark eyes that—if he’d had any idea how to use them to proper effect, which he clearly didn’t—might have looked doelike and alluringly vulnerable. As it was, his face appeared shrewd, calculating. Loftus felt a surge of furious jealousy all the same, studying the reflection of his own deep-set eyes—no wonder the tailor had not noted their proper colour! They ought to be larger, their lashes darker. His lashes were practically white, and his silver-blond hair suddenly looked lank. Would he look better with thick, dark hair, like this stranger’s? Of course not, he reassured himself. You are a diamond of the first water. The society pages have said so.
The stranger was accompanied by a woman who looked to be his older sister. She wore a dress of palest yellow and a matching shawl beaded in pink, and was topped off with a satin hat sprouting ostrich feathers. Her hair was as dark as her brother’s, but in worn tight, shiny ringlets. She carried a glittering reticule, and poking out of it was the head of the smallest dog Loftus had ever seen, a little black-and-tan thing with the hair at the top of its head tied in a bow that matched the woman’s dress. All of them—woman, man, and dog—stared at Loftus as his mother knotted the laces. “There!” Lady Rivingdon said in satisfaction, tugging Loftus’s shirt down over the stays. “Is that better?”
Loftus could make no answer. He could also draw no breath. He turned slowly toward the front of the shop, his ribs grinding as he did. It was humiliating to have been seen by strangers in a state of half dress and with his mother lacing his stays. But he made no move to grab his waistcoat or jacket. M. Verreau stepped away and greeted the new customers, and Lady Rivingdon seemed to realise that they were no longer alone in the shop. “Oh my!” Her voice, normally high-pitched and with a slightly scratchy quality, reached a note that only the dog in the reticule could properly hear on “my.”
The new fellow wore a waistcoat of the deepest, most brilliant blue Loftus had ever seen. His coat was dark grey, the buttons ivory. His hat was satin and trimmed with a series of small, curled ribbons, his cream coloured cravat starched so that it looked rather like a plaster of paris cast put around a broken bone. He carried a silver-handled cane. His face was small and smooth as a child’s, but he carried himself like a gentleman.
Loftus loathed him at once.
“Mama,” the man said, turning his head slightly toward the woman—not his sister, then!—while keeping his huge eyes on Loftus. “I thought we were to have the shop to ourselves?” His voice was soft, low, and a bit raspy, caution in it as though he were trying not to startle wild animals. “You know I do not want anyone to see the styles I am choosing and copy them.”
Oh-ho! Did this little weasel truly think himself such a paragon that anyone in the world would wish to copy his style? How pathetic!
“Apologies,” the tailor said to them. “My previous appointment has gone over the allotted time.”
Loftus clenched his jaw, yanking his shirt straight. “Mother, do you hear this? Is Monsieur Verreau suggesting that we are less important than—”
“I am suggesting,” Verreau said firmly, “that you made an appointment that was to finish at noon. And we are well past that.”
Loftus’s mother swelled up. She spoke to the dark-haired woman, her high voice measured. “Lady Notley.”
“Lady Rivingdon,” Lady Notley replied, her nostrils flaring.
“I don’t believe you know my youngest son, Mr. Loftus Rivingdon. Loftus, this is Lady Cornelia Notley.”
“How lovely to meet you, Mr. Rivingdon.” The woman dipped her head toward Loftus. Her voice was nearly the same low, soft rasp as her son’s. “This is my younger son, Mr. Morgan Notley.”
Lady Rivingdon assured the Notleys that she and Loftus were just preparing to leave in search of a tailor who knew what he was about. “Get dressed, Loftus dear,” she said, her cold eyes still on Lady Notley. Loftus turned, seething, to locate his waistcoat.
“Oh, Mama,” Mr. Morgan Notley said. “Look at that hat on the floor, there. I should like that one.”
“Anything you wish, dear,” his mother replied.
Loftus burned with rage. He whirled back to face Morgan. “You may not have it,” he snapped. “I was just about to purchase it!”
Morgan’s cupid’s bow of a mouth made a tiny O. “That is your hat? Forgive me, sir.” He could not have sounded less sincere, and Loftus wanted very much to pummel him with his own silver-handled cane and then say, “Forgive me, sir,” in that same unctuous tone.
Morgan went on, “It is only that…its colour seems like it would draw out the yellow in your complexion in an unflattering way. And its ribbon does not even complement your eyes.”
Loftus bit down on a furious retort. When in the hell had Mr. Morgan Notley had occasion to note the colour of his eyes?
“It looked well on me, I’ll have you know.” Loftus was aware that his voice was taking on the pitch of his mother’s. “But this pitiful excuse for a tailor said that was the closest colour he could find for the ribbon. And it is much too light!”
“Loftus,” Lady Rivingdon urged nervously. To Lady Notley she said, “My son has been rather excitable of late. He is to make his debut this Season, and we expect a great many suitors. What with The Morning Chronicle praising him so extensively.”
“Ah, my son is debuting as well. And I rather think he has even more cause to be excitable than yours, as the Prince Regent himself has already said he looks forward to seeing Morgan at Lord Balfour’s ball.”
“Yes, with the amount of attention Loftus has already received, I would not be surprised if he has married a title by the time the Season is even underway.”
Lady Notley’s dog barked.
“Let’s go, Mother,” Loftus muttered, buttoning his jacket and then yanking it straight.
“So you do wish to purchase the hat?” Mr. Verreau asked.
“No!” Loftus snapped. “I never wish to see such a hideou
s hat again.” He was going to find another tailor, and buy a hat with trimmings that matched his eyes perfectly, and when Mr. Morgan Notley saw him at Lord Balfour’s ball, Notley would be the one sick with envy. “I do not.”
“Well, I should say you wouldn’t purchase it.” Morgan Notley strode forward with a confidence that hardly matched his small frame and soft voice. “Let me see.” His face was suddenly inches from Loftus’s, and Loftus froze with the shock of their proximity. Morgan’s skin was truly as smooth as a babe’s, so pale that Loftus could see small blue veins at his temples. And the lashes on those huge eyes seemed to brush his cheeks when he blinked. His eyes searched Loftus’s with such intensity and concentration that Loftus was momentarily confused. Until Morgan announced, “It is not simply that the shade is too light. It is the wrong hue altogether. You need something deeper, with more blue in it.”
He stepped back, and Loftus realised he had not breathed the entire time Morgan had been studying his eyes. He let out his breath, and for a moment, he and Morgan stared at each other without speaking. A strange sensation twisted Loftus’s stomach. Then he clenched his jaw again. “Worry about your own hats, and please, spare me your misguided opinions,” he said tightly. “You clearly know nothing of fashion. Your buttons are garish.” He brushed past the Notleys, heading for the door.
Before he could reach it, it opened, and in walked the most beautiful gentleman Loftus had ever seen. He was tall and lovely, with a figure so well-made that Loftus imagined the proportions of a Greek statue underneath his clothing. Well, perhaps not all his proportions, as Loftus’s studies or both himself and, furtively, his brothers and schoolmates, had made him believe that the sculptors of antiquity hadn’t been very generous when it came to certain parts of the anatomy. But he was sure that this gentleman had the chest and shoulders and thighs of a Greek statue. He certainly had the visage: heavily-lidded eyes, a noble nose, a strong jawline, and lips that looked both plush and enticing. His dark curls, when he took off his hat, were brushed forward onto his forehead in quite the epitome of fashion, and his clothes—tall boots made of shiny, supple leather, impeccable trousers, a cravat that bloomed perfectly from the collar of his Prussian blue tailcoat, and a visible sliver of a dove-grey waistcoat underneath—fit him perfectly.