by Cooper Davis
Alistair interrupted at last with a rumbling laugh, even as he couldn’t seem to bear to look up at Marcus. “Deuces! How the devil do you plan to procreate with another male?”
Marcus regarded him seriously—intently—for he was very serious about this business of finding a husband and making a life. “Mr. Finley, surely you of all people must appreciate the importance of good families, making homes for the orphans in our world.”
Finley swallowed, nodded. But said nothing. Marcus continued after a moment.
“Yes, well, my husband and I shall adopt, and build this life that I’ve described. Perhaps I’m spoilt; it’s quite true that I may be, but my mama and papa both led me to believe I could have all of those things. Love, family, and life with a good man.”
“I wish for just a small percentage of your abundant optimism, Lord Marcus. It charms me,” he said, and his expression and tone were not mocking. He regarded Marcus very somberly for one lasting, almost eternal moment. “So in this quest, have you brought many a male to this club of yours?” Finley asked, glancing about. “Or am I to believe I’m actually the first?” Finley suddenly stared down at his table placement. “Of course, I am not the first,” he said with a self-deprecating laugh. “I mean, after all, there was that pesky business of the Earl from the Garden.”
Marcus laughed uncomfortably. “The earl, he’s an obsession for you, isn’t he?” Marcus sighed, leaned back in his seat. “I don’t expect you to believe it, but I was endeavoring to protect my friend’s reputation, or rather, his pride. After all, he’d just been jilted. I’m quite fond of the fellow—and, no, not fond in any visceral sense,” he added, already seeing an unsettled expression form on Alistair’s face.
Marcus placed his palms open on the table between them. “The earl and I shared rooms at university, and he’s a friend who matters to me.” Marcus leaned closer, determined to settle the rumor once and for all. “Mr. Finley, have you never sought to protect someone you care about? A friend or family member? Of course you’ve done—your profession is safeguarding King Arend’s reputation and affairs.”
He gave a diffident shrug. “Apart from King Arend and a limited number of acquaintances, I have lived in a singular manner . . .”
“The king’s care for you is hardly a small thing.”
Finley stared into his glass. “True. But neither does it give me any real gauge of how friends in the non-royal world behave. My life . . . has been more solitary than you likely would imagine.”
“You,” he told Alistair, “are not as solitary as you perceive yourself to be.”
Alistair gave him a surprised glance. “I am wholly without attachments. Have never had any.”
“So you’ve mentioned. However, many within high society admire and respect you.”
“My own reputation and alliances are not my concern at present. Yours are.” Finley glanced about the exclusive club, his gaze traveling from gray-haired peers to younger, coltish fellows, before alighting on Marcus anew. “My point,” Finley said, “is that those rumors about Harcourt proliferated within our set.”
Very thoughtfully, Marcus endeavored to reply. “Mr. Finley—Alistair—have you heard any further murmurings about me, anything else untoward apart from that damned rumor about the equally damned garden?”
Finley sighed heavily. “I have never heard another word against you,” he said, tapping the table with long, elegant fingers. “Save one.”
Marcus’s heartbeat hammered in triple time. Oh, dear God. Not that one. Not . . .
“Lord Everett Farnsworth widely announced that he’d been tupping you with some frequency. And those rumors, once kindled with those about your earl, proved quite combustive.”
Marcus dropped his head. Every one of his worst fears was blossoming, right here at the table. “Lord Everett . . . did not respect me. We were lovers, ’tis true. But he made me out to be . . . out to be . . .”
“Insatiable,” Alistair finished.
Marcus raked a hand through his hair, cringing. “Yes,” he finally said softly. “I know.”
“Are . . . are you, Lord Marcus? Insatiable?” The question was quiet, stumbling in its utterance, and matched by equal stumbling when Alistair reached for his highball glass. He nearly knocked it over with his quick gesture.
Marcus, for his own part, felt his entire body heat, his groin throb. “You are asking me such an inappropriate question?”
Alistair trailed a fingertip around the rim of his highball. “I’m asking,” he said, “if that rumor was true.”
“I already told you it was not.” Marcus’s indignation began to churn, acid in his belly. He knew not whether to feel highly aroused or grossly insulted. “Whyever would you—Mr. Comportment and Etiquette—dare punt such a question my way?”
Finley’s face turned deepest russet. “I . . . was curious. I wanted—no, needed—to know if it were true.”
“In order to vouchsafe your own reputation,” Marcus blurted sourly. “Yes, I’m beginning to realize that your good name is your utmost priority.” He glanced around for the server, eager to order the pies and be done, even as his heart was shattering in his chest. He’d hoped, prayed, believed in every part of his soul that Lord Everett would not prove an obstacle. “I’ll simply help us order our food, and see us gone.”
Alistair caught his hand, covering it on the table. “Please forgive me if I have pressed too hard, or was rudely prying, but I find myself in a gentlemen’s club”—Finley glanced around, slowly smiling—“with a fine gentleman. A lovely redhead with an eye color so vivid, its only rival is the ocean along the palace’s shore in the morning.” He gave Marcus’s hand a squeeze, then slid his own away.
“My eyes like the ocean in the morning,” Marcus repeated numbly. Finley had wanted to know if Marcus was insatiable out of desire, not to shame him.
Alistair continued, “They’re a very particular shade. I see it sometimes from the upper balconies at the palace, when the sun is sparkling, and the colors . . . Well, your eyes are even lovelier, my lord.”
“And you deemed me a romantic?” Marcus pressed fingertips to his heated face, smiling, feeling his heart thump harder.
And as he regarded the sensual man across the table, Marcus’s prick began pushing against the front fall of his trousers. Both his rapidly tightening drawers and his rapidly restricting trouser buttons left him grateful for the cover of the tablecloth. For he would not wish anyone to know the primitive reaction he was having to the striking gentleman. A man regarding him with serious, intent interest. Marcus did not have a chance to consider the points further, for at once the server came to the table, providing each of them a small shot of whiskey.
* * *
* * *
“Something to warm you gentlemen on this very brisk day,” the majordomo advised them with a bow. Then, with a reluctant smile, turned to Marcus. “Lord Marcus, might you grace us with a short piece upon the violin?”
“The violin?” Alistair repeated, surprised that the club would disturb a peer with such a request.
“There is a gentleman across the way, an enthusiast of your playing. He recognizes you, heard you perform with the royal symphony. And, humblest apologies, but I made the mistake . . .” The majordomo laughed shakily. “I informed your enthusiast that, on occasion, you indulge us here at Abersall’s. That you’ve played quite beautifully on our house violins. Would you possibly consent to bless us with your talent today, my lord?” The man gave them a deep and grateful bow, and Alistair looked upon Marcus in shock.
Lord Marcus Avenleigh had played with the royal orchestra?
When Marcus had mentioned he was a violinist, it hadn’t occurred to Alistair that he might possess genuine ability. The nobility often dallied with such pastimes. But Marcus had played with their province’s most illustrious orchestra. Alistair decided never to underestimate Marcus’s talents a
nd potential ever again.
Marcus turned to him. “Would you mind too terribly, Mr. Finley? After all, you’re my guest here, and it wouldn’t be well done of me to abandon you.”
Alistair shook his head adamantly. “Quite the contrary, my lord. I would delight to hear you play. Please, by all means, indulge us. Me,” he added softly.
Marcus rose, bowing to Alistair in a very gentlemanly manner, and he felt guilty for having questioned the man’s reputation.
Alistair sat up, adjusted himself in the chair, and noticed the room seemed hushed in anticipation; as if everything was about to change from hearing Lord Marcus Avenleigh play that instrument he was taking in his hands. He hadn’t confided in Marcus during their carriage ride that he himself had once played violin; that he’d been an avid student of the instrument, and was seeking to master it whilst at Corrals. Until the day when his father’s solicitor, Wilfred Dryden, had come to his rooms at university, declaring his sire dead—and that his inheritance was to be entailed upon Alistair’s silence about his newly revealed parentage. But his sire had also bequeathed one family heirloom. The centuries-old, priceless violin that he’d occasionally been allowed to play as a lad. The letter Dryden read from his father simply said, “As you’ve some passable talent with the instrument, I see fit to leave you as inheritor of our family’s rare Valarius violin.”
And Alistair had never played another note. As he now watched Marcus take loving hold of a simple house violin, he wondered what it would be like to find himself caressed in such a reverential manner. Exposed to Marcus completely, made to come alive, and sing, and vibrate a song for only the other man to hear, when the two of them were alone and bared to each other.
He briefly imagined what it might be like to take a violin in his own hands again, after all these years, and sing with it for Lord Marcus . . . and then make Marcus sing as they rolled together, coupling as true lovers. Heart, soul, spirit bound together like the song of the finest violin ever crafted.
Oh, by God, Alistair wanted that kind of kinship and union, and he wanted it with the gorgeous redhead across the room, the one who glanced up sweetly, smiling at Alistair before picking up the bow. That glance set off a flame in Alistair’s loins, created a palpable ache and need. Make me come alive beneath your touch, as well, Lord Marcus. Make me hum and vibrate and respond to your fingertips upon me.
And Alistair thought that before the first notes awakened him, before Marcus’s love song unstrung him, caressing him in a private, sacred place that had nothing to do with lovemaking. And yet everything in the world to do with it, as well.
Make me sing for you, too, my lord. Make me cry beneath your bow and your fingertips.
* * *
* * *
Marcus rejoined Finley, after smiling and nodding graciously to the gentlemen who still beamed in his direction. But Finley did not smile, not like those enthusiasts, even as he rose and saw Marcus into his seat.
Marcus’s regard grew troubled. “Did my playing silence you? Do you wish I’d not—“
“No, my lord.” Alistair gave his head a firm shake. “What I wish is that I could touch you right now.” The words came out a possessive, rumbling claim.
Marcus’s lips parted in surprise. “Why?”
“You know why,” Alistair growled at him, eyes filled with longing. “Precisely why.”
Yes, Marcus did know precisely why Alistair now ached to touch him, for Marcus had enfolded Alistair within the music, like a velvet caress. He’d wanted to pleasure Alistair, from the top of his dark head, down to his robust body, until that erotic caress centered between his thighs.
Finley’s brows cranked down sharply. “I’ve never . . . never experienced anything like your talents. I’m more alive than before you picked up that bow. You had to know what it would do to me. Must have known.” Finley pressed forward, leaning into the table, his words soft but fiery. “I should never have spent two years across ballrooms from you, paralyzed with inaction and disbelief about your interest. I rue the wasted months, the years. What the devil kept me so restrained?”
Marcus gave the other man a tender look. “We weren’t ready for each other, Finley. Had we been, one of us would have moved sooner. In life, as in music, timing is everything.” Marcus slid a hand across the tablecloth, edging it forward, palm up and closer to Finley’s own. “You may touch me.”
But Alistair recoiled, pressing that hand against his midriff as if burned. “I daren’t take your hand in the midst of a genteel club.”
Marcus sighed, lifting his gaze to Finley’s fevered, conflicted one. “No, you daren’t hold my hand here, I suppose. Nor even just touch a light thumb to the back of my knuckles. The barest grazing touch can be so intimate. It would be with you. But, alas, you are correct, Mr. Finley.” Marcus released an exaggerated sigh. “You certainly daren’t.”
“You make me sound such a prig,” Finley harrumphed.
“Hardly. You’re the one who confessed that you wanted to touch my hand.” Marcus lowered his voice softly. “And that my playing had . . . aroused you.”
“Yes, it unmanned me, unraveled me . . .” Finley pressed fingertips to his brow. “It was as if your hands had been all over me. So, yes, damn it, my lord, I do indeed wish to touch you.” He sighed. “But I must guard your reputation from any further . . . I must protect it.”
“I think,” Marcus answered with a glance toward the courtly couple, “there is another pair of suitors across the way, just there, barely hiding their own desires.”
Alistair glanced sideways, and—almost as if choreographed for their benefit—those two men squeezed hands. They smiled at each other flirtatiously, whispering some word or another, threading their fingers together intimately. Their gazes were fixed upon each other, their electric attraction palpable even from across the room.
Finley slid a quizzical gaze to him. One black eyebrow shot upward. “Your club membership is often so . . . daring? ’Tis like Lady Elsevier’s ball, I daresay.” He laughed, eyeing the couple with a bit of undisguised envy.
“Mr. Finley, that’s merely the most polite courtship between two males of . . .” Marcus glanced at the other fellows again. “Those gentlemen must be in their thirties, no longer requiring some prudish chaperone. If they ever would have required one. Etiquette standards applied to male courtships have always been more lenient.”
“’Tis not fair to the feminine gender.”
“I concur. Although I’ve no sisters, I loved my mama so very much. It pains me that she was not granted the same freedoms as I am.”
“She is deceased?”
“She passed away three years ago. That’s why my family moved to the province, away from the north. At least for now. My father could not bear the many reminders of her about our estate home. I was already in town, but I moved here, to be near my father . . . after.”
“And that’s why you stopped playing in the symphony.” Alistair’s gaze became kind, filled with caring tenderness. “I am so very sorry. For all that you lost. I should not have waited for you to approach me, my lord. Not with the clear interest we each felt. Had I gathered even a modicum of nerve, I would have made the first move.”
“You are here now,” Marcus whispered softly.
“Aye.” But Finley’s almost black gaze remained troubled, and Marcus was certain the gentleman was holding himself to an unnecessarily harsh standard regarding his past conduct.
“Alistair, it’s all right that you never approached. I didn’t make myself known to you, either.”
“But you were grieving.”
“And ogling you, don’t forget.”
“Aye.” Alistair laughed anew, the warmth returning to his expression. “I was ogling you, as well.”
Marcus edged his palm forward. “Place your hand near mine.”
Tentatively Alistair complied, his hand both duskier and
bigger than Marcus’s own. “Now continue talking to me,” Marcus whispered, “and then gradually make your move.”
“You are tutoring me in so ordinary a thing?”
“Can doing something you crave this badly ever be ordinary?”
The faintest shake of his dark head and then Alistair said, “Your music enraptured me, Lord Marcus.” Finley leaned closer. “You caressed me. Publicly.”
Marcus beamed. “I did indeed.”
And just like that, a bold fingertip glanced across the top of Marcus’s hand, delivering an answering caress all its own. Finley’s gaze became hot as the fire roaring beside them. “You laid me bare.” The pad of Alistair’s thumb stroked across Marcus’s knuckles. “Quite intentionally, no doubt.”
“Aye. And ye liked it.”
Alistair swallowed hard, pulse racing. “I did.”
“And once a man is bare, is he not prepared to become lover to the one who undressed him?”
Alistair yanked his hand back, stared down at the whiskey, then seized the tumbler instead of Marcus’s hand. He tossed back the rest of the glass, visibly shaken, face aflame. “I believe we have ventured into the realm of the risqué.”
“You ventured there when you touched my bare hand in public,” Marcus said with exaggerated innocence. “I merely played the violin. Do you make a habit of corrupting younger men?”
Alistair’s lovely eyes slid closed. “For the love of heaven, let’s get another pair of whiskies and summon some potpies.”
Marcus laughed, and took a quick sip from his own whiskey glass, which—unlike Alistair’s already empty one—Marcus hadn’t touched at all.
Chapter Seven
They were almost to the office when Alistair—emboldened by enough libations to make any reticent bloke daring—slid sideways on the carriage’s bench seat. He pushed over as far as he could, stared at Marcus Avenleigh through lowered lashes, and patted the leather beside him invitingly. “Join me?”