A Gentleman Revealed

by Cooper Davis

  Alistair glanced about the hallway at the gathered throng, hoping the sly insult hadn’t been overheard. He gave a neat, restrained bow. “Mr. Dryden, I presume you are well?”

  “Better off than you, I see.” Dryden scraped a gaze down the front of Alistair’s form, his examination pointedly derisive.

  Alistair touched his midriff self-consciously. “Explain yourself,” he managed through gritted teeth.

  “I doubt you’d like to hear my opinion with so many of society’s finest hovering about,” Dryden answered coolly. “Perhaps an empty card room might better suit this discussion?”

  Alistair blinked down at him for several unsettled moments before mustering a reply. He thrust his shoulders back, tilting his chin upward. “Let us make haste, then, Mr. Dryden.”

  Alistair swept out of the vestibule, seeking a small den he knew would likely be empty, if past fetes at this home were any indication. Once he reached that room’s closed door, he gave a sharp knock, and, when it went unanswered, let them both in. Dryden moved past him toward the cold hearth, helped himself to a matchbox, and lit a taper on the mantle.

  The solicitor turned to Alistair as light filled the room. “All the better to see you with.” The fellow’s tone became haughty, cruel. “You’ve become precisely what King Norman feared you’d be. What your sire knew you’d eventually become. Dissolute, corpulent, and grossly rotund.”

  Corpulent? Grossly rotund? Those were words reserved for doddering old lords, fellows who’d spent decades overindulging and were far stouter than he. Weren’t they?

  “C-corpulent?” Alistair felt the blood drain from his face, as the barrister grazed him with a smug, assessing look.

  Alistair couldn’t help self-consciously fiddling with the front of his frock coat, wanting to vanish beneath the folds of fabric, which suddenly seemed not nearly expansive enough. He pressed a palm to his middle, drawing in a tight breath, which did nothing to diminish his enormity. “I’m n-not . . . not nearly so overlarge as that.”

  The elder man took one forceful step forward. “Are you quite certain?”

  Alistair flushed painfully, heat cresting to his hairline and flooding beneath his collar. His fingertips rushed to his frock coat buttons again; he fumbled to fasten the fucking thing, but only managed to secure two buttons. He’d worn the garment open, as it had been too snug otherwise.

  Dryden’s thin lips curled upward in a vicious, triumphant smile. “Take an honest gander at yourself in the mirror whenever you next may dare. I wager you’ll be surprised at what you finally choose to see there.”

  The man’s attention blatantly settled on Alistair’s champagne flute. “Interesting that you only took exception to my assessment of your profound form, not your dissolute, indulgent character. Although perhaps no mirror is required to glimpse that bald truth.”

  Alistair lacked any retort whatsoever. He was dissolute. And as portly as he’d ever been, without any doubt.

  “I know who I am.” Alistair lifted the flute to his lips, barely managing a gulp without sloshing the liquid upon his waistcoat. Yet he could not face this man, nor his own disreputable past. Not without more drink.

  The solicitor stared at Alistair’s shaking hand, then at the damning stain on the front of his silk waistcoat. “Look at you, even now, so thoroughly foxed you can barely conceal your addiction. You’re drunken whenever, and however, I encounter you about town.”

  “I’ve not crossed your path in nearly a twelve-month.” Alistair frowned at the malicious man, feeling monstrously big and like a true whore’s son. “When my sire charged you with my inheritance and its oversight, surely he never intended you to dress me down and insult me at every turn.”

  “He appointed me to keep you in check. To make you toe the line you never could adequately manage whilst he lived.” The man shook his gray head and made a tsk-tsk sound. “I told King Norman it was a pointless endeavor. But he held a slim hope—pardon my irony—that you might come to scratch in time. Prove yourself a man if given a decent share of responsibility and stipends to support yourself.” The man gave him a dour look. “What a waste you’ve proved to be.”

  “I have done my duty and seen it through as befits my station. Those were my sire’s exact words—his charge to me upon his death—and I have proved myself adequate to my tasks.” Alistair took another gulp of champagne, needing not to feel this moment so potently. “I have stood at King Arend’s side, served him, and honored him. It is my greatest achievement, that diligence.”

  A bony finger jabbed into Alistair’s thick chest. “Diligence? You curtsied and smiled and urged King Arend to marry another male. When he should have been settled into a suitable second marriage with a lady of quality years ago.”

  “He married Queen Cordelia, produced an heir, and honored his regal obligations. He had every right to finally know true happiness with a husband.”

  “One heir does not shore up a lineage! You did nothing to stop this recent union. You do nothing but skulk about that palace, little better than a simpering sycophant. Masquerading as an upright, formal man publicly—when you’re nothing but a dissipated sensualist.” Dryden made a sound of disgust. “If I could find legal basis to strip you of your inheritance, I’d see it done posthaste. And mark my words”—the man waved a bony finger—“if you persist in this dalliance with Lord Marcus, his father will positively scour your background. You shan’t emerge unscathed.”

  Alistair couldn’t tamp down the surge of panic he felt, realizing that Dryden had already observed his association with Marcus. Carefully, he argued, “The duke knows me as foster brother to the king, an upright gentleman of society.”

  “Even so, he shall pry and investigate, as he will need to ensure his son marries well. And that his dukedom suffers no taint.” The elder man sniffed. “And taint you would be! I’m sure he’ll have enough doubts just from the looks of you. But when he begins to search your provenance, your fate will be sealed. You’ll be forced to publicly acknowledge what and who you are—and in doing so, you shall violate the conditions of your inheritance. When that day inevitably arrives, I’ll thrill to see you a pauper. And Lord Marcus out of your life.”

  Alistair couldn’t breathe. His chest had gone tight, his heart hammering so loudly he heard the blood pulse in his ears. He cast a desperate look toward the hall, the direction where he’d left Marcus. “Leave Lord Marcus out of all this,” was the best he could choke out.

  “I won’t murmur a word to the Avenleighs. I won’t need to. You’ll be your own undoing, for you possess neither self-control nor a whit of discipline. You couldn’t even keep to the violin despite King Norman willing you that heirloom. No, you’re ever on to the next pleasure, then the next, growing in heft with every passing month. I’m grateful your sire didn’t live to witness your devolution.”

  “You do not know me.” Alistair glanced toward the hallway, grateful not to see Marcus there. “My own father didn’t know me, nor did he bother trying. But I am invaluable to His Majesty, King Arend,” Alistair continued. “You’ve no basis for impugning my service to the crown.”

  “Service? You’re naught but a by-blow, a peasant importunely sired upon a farmer’s whore of a daughter.” The barrister gave Alistair one last withering look. “Don’t break it off. Hardly matters to me. I’d love to see you ruined and evicted from King Arend’s orbit.”

  Alistair came back to himself and lunged forward, his champagne sloshing onto his cuff. “You’ve no reason to despise me thusly. Nor to resent me as you clearly do.”

  Dryden blinked at him, and for the briefest moment, blanched.

  “There’s something here.” Alistair leaned into the man, leveraging his height and size. “You’re not merely acting as my sire’s executor. Tell me the truth.” Alistair stopped just shy of grabbing the aged man’s lapels and shaking him. He was inebriated enough that he was losing control of himself
and his temper.

  “I must oversee your inheritance, but there’s no requirement that I must approve of you or the man you’ve become.”

  Dryden made to leave, but Alistair caught his elbow, spinning him back. “My father trusted you. You had his ear. Why did he despise me this much—enough to make you despise me as well?”

  The man moved in on Alistair and lowered his voice. “Your sire was unfaithful. And you were the miserable result, your very existence a lifelong reminder of his infidelity and the pain it wrought. Evidence that confronted the queen every day of her too-short life. He should have turned you out as a babe. It’s only my loyalty to King Norman and his memory that prevents me from exposing you posthaste.”

  The gentleman pushed past him without another word, leaving Alistair raw and disgraced. He drained his champagne glass and moved out into the hallway; waving down a passing footman, he retrieved another drink. In but two gulps, Alistair drained that flute, as well. Moving toward the ballroom, he spied Marcus across the way, chatting with his brother.

  This would be for the best. Leaving now, making a break now.

  He refused to allow Wilfred Dryden to harm or threaten Marcus—he would not give the solicitor so much as a fleeting motivation to approach his beloved.

  Nor could Alistair risk staining Marcus by further association. Everything Dryden had just pronounced of him was assuredly true. He was a rotund, disgraceful by-blow who had failed everyone he’d ever cared about or held in esteem.

  Without even a backward glance in Marcus’s direction, Alistair moved toward the vestibule in search of his greatcoat. He would call for his coach and be away before Marcus was truly the wiser. There were libations aplenty at the royal offices, only half a mile away, closer than his town house, and much closer than the palace.

  * * *

  * * *

  Marcus had searched the card rooms, the alcoves, the nooks and crannies behind ferns. But his beau had vanished like a virginal miss at midnight. Had Marcus been too forward for the retiring man? No, Alistair had seized hold of Marcus and kissed him soundly in return. Fondled, kissed, and folded him in his strong arms. Perhaps palace business had pulled him away unexpectedly.

  A trill of unease settled behind his breastbone. Perhaps . . . perhaps Marcus had pressed too hard for that waltz. Finley had become unnerved whilst discussing his youth, and his refusal of dancing instruction. But would Alistair have abandoned him over one sensitive topic, given everything?

  Ethan found Marcus where he stood, on the side of the ballroom floor. “No sign of your gentleman yet?” Marcus shook his head; he’d been waiting in this same spot, searching the throng for any sign of a raven-haired head moving slightly taller than the rest of the crowd.

  Ethan took up watch beside him, his own gaze moving over the crowd. “He wasn’t by the punchbowl when I got this.” Ethan lifted a cup, sipping from it. “I’m becoming a tad incensed for you, brother. No proper gentleman abandons his beau like this.”

  “But he’s one of the most proper gentlemen I’ve met. You know how buttoned-up he is.” Marcus shook his head, confounded. “Perhaps it was something with the crown.”

  Ethan clapped him on the shoulder. “That’s quite likely what has happened. Come to think of it, I did see him conversing with a gray-haired gentleman a bit ago, just before he vanished on you.”

  Marcus swept the ballroom with his gaze. “Hmm,” was all he managed, as he distractedly searched through his memory. “I didn’t see a gentleman like that when I visited the royal offices.” He blotted his brow with a shaky hand. “I simply do not understand.”

  “Brother, Finley’s utterly smitten. He was fawning all over you whilst we stood together.” Ethan patted Marcus’s arm. “Why not check the card rooms?”

  “He doesn’t favor cards,” Marcus replied anxiously. “And he’d be here, in the ballroom, near me.”

  “Not if he’s pitched headfirst into a rosebush from over-consumption of champagne.”

  Marcus ignored the unkind jest, certain Alistair had been happy. Truly set upon unreservedly courting Marcus after tonight.

  I am exultant.

  Surely a gentleman wouldn’t say such a thing—and after a very first kiss—if he planned to abandon his suitor.

  Something was awry, and although Marcus knew not what that thing might be, he feared it might prove the undoing of their new love affair.

  * * *

  * * *

  Alistair clicked the door shut behind him and sagged against the heavy mahogany entrance of the royal offices. The hall was dark, of course, and the only sounds were the solid tick-tock of the grandfather clock at the corridor’s far end and his own heavy breathing. He’d fled here, no other word for it.

  He was still trembling with rage and humiliation, heartsick that his affair with Marcus was ending before it had even had the chance to truly blossom. It had to be done, lest Dryden find a way to ruin not only Alistair but possibly Marcus, as well. With Marcus’s questionable reputation, he wouldn’t bear up beneath any further scandal—the sort that would prove inevitable should word spread that Marcus was attached to a royal by-blow.

  The urge to imbibe and mute his raging emotions was overpowering, which was why he’d scurried here, the quickest and most accessible refuge, after ignominiously fleeing the ball.

  Alistair exhaled against the interior of the office doors trying to calm himself in the solitary dark, grateful for its concealment. There were large mirrors along the hall—floor-to-ceiling, ornate. They’d once hung in the palace, back in his grand-sire’s day.

  His grand-sire. Alistair scraped a loose lock of hair away from his eyes. Had that king gazed arrogantly at his own visage, uncaring of his mammoth size and puffed-up mien? In every portrait, his ancestors were hefty and proud. Alistair resembled those men, yet with an even sturdier build. His was the flowering result of a union betwixt two competing stock: that of big-boned peasants and portly kings.

  He eyed those mirrors as he would a human foe.

  Take an honest gander at yourself in the mirror whenever you next may dare. I wager you’ll be surprised at what you finally choose to see there.

  And he knew, sure as those mirrors awaited him, that he’d do precisely as Dryden had bid. He would move through the darkness, taper in hand, and candidly inspect himself in the mirror. A frisson of dread chased down his spine, an answering trickle of sweat dampening the indention just above his buttocks. He carefully removed first one glove and then the other, slipping them into his greatcoat pocket. With a shuddering breath, he took the first step forward into the abyss.

  The truth was that Alistair’s girth had grown larger over the past months. He’d been imbibing more heavily, eating more indulgently, working more feverishly. In turn, his tailor had addressed that behavior, politely outfitting Alistair in bigger trousers, broader waistcoats, and generously cut smallclothes. Although those particular garments could not, truthfully, be deemed smallclothes. Drawers would be much more accurate in his case, as the term implied something broad and deep, and likewise practical.

  Until late, he’d worn his drawers made of simplest linen.

  Until just last week, in fact, when he’d paid a visit to a discreet modiste in the west end of the capital city. Although she generally catered to women, she did the odd personal fitting for a gentleman of means. Society fellows and peers who cared to indulge themselves—and perhaps their lovers—in a trousseau of sorts.

  He’d explained shyly that he was embarking upon an affair. That he wished his form displayed in the most flattering way, but also, if possible, in a daring fashion. The continental lady had been quite kind, showering him with compliments—too many, in fact, until he’d realized that were he handsome in truth, she’d have stopped at merely a few.

  Dryden’s taunts still ringing in his ears, he now felt a ridiculous oaf for acquiring such risqué undergarme
nts, much less having adorned his manhood with the most promising of the lot this evening. Men like Lord Marcus Avenleigh didn’t marry or love men like Alistair. Best to face reality, here and now, the truth of his own predicament, and without further delay.

  He sucked in a breath, moved across the dark hallway, and found a nub of candle in a sideboard drawer. He ignited it with a match and strode—no, lumbered, for that was how he always moved—toward the first looking glass along the wall.

  When he lifted the small candle, shadows expanded, light fell upon his form, and tears instantly burnt his eyes. He was positively enormous. Dryden had spoken true. Rotund was the only possible description for what he’d become, although he had continued to dismiss that blatant truth each time his valet turned him toward the mirror. Broad through the hip, immense across the belly, thick in the face, and even beefy in his bloody hands. At some undeniable moment, Alistair had moved past the gentle word portly and transformed into a corpulent beast.

  His vision swam and he swiped at his eyes. With one last look, he slowly turned away from his damning visage. He stepped into shadow, moving swiftly to the only possible destination to sop up his shame.

  His hidden whiskey decanters.

  Chapter Thirteen

  Marcus pressed his face against the glass doors of His Majesty’s offices, drawing the cape of his greatcoat up about his face. It was a frigid, intemperate morning, canopied by leaden skies that would soon release a furious showering of snow. He shivered, huddling beneath the portico of the regal townhome, his breath fogging the glass-paned front door.