Mr Winterbourne's Christmas

by Joanna Chambers

  Lysander’s whole life was here, at Edgeley Park. The same was not true for Adam. He spent a good portion of his time away. He met other people and did things that Lysander knew nothing about. He had friends like Jonny who came to stay from time to time. Friends he obviously knew well and who were almost always like them—men who preferred other men.

  He had made no declarations or promises to Lysander.

  None whatsoever.

  Yes, they had a connection. Yes, the time they spent together was wonderful. But was it more than that for Adam? More than a close friendship with bed sport thrown in for good measure?

  Or, was it more likely that Adam still had that harem? That when he went away, he saw other men. Shared equally wonderful times with them. Or perhaps less wonderful, less companionable times, that nevertheless ended up with them enjoying each other’s bodies.

  Was it just that Lysander was the current favourite?

  That thought made him feel sick and miserable.

  “Did I say something wrong?” Jonny said into the silence. Lysander met his gaze—Jonny’s hazel eyes were soft with concern. “I only meant to—”

  “No, of course not,” Lysander interrupted, offering a quick smile. He glanced at the longcase clock. “Oh heavens, is that the time? I really do have to be going.”

  He forced himself not to rush away, eating the rest of the breakfast he no longer wanted and drinking his tea. Then he stood unhurriedly and bid Jonny a good morning.

  But Jonny still looked faintly troubled as he took his leave, and Lysander knew he’d not really convinced him he hadn’t misspoken.

  Chapter 3 - Adam

  When Adam entered the breakfast room, it was to find Jonny poking unenthusiastically at some coddled eggs.

  “Has Lysander been and gone?” he asked, trying to keep his tone light.

  Jonny looked up from his reading. He was still in that preposterous dressing gown.

  “Yes,” he said. “Good Lord, that boy can eat! I suppose it’s all that hideous exercise he does. Days on end in the saddle.” He shuddered.

  “Hmm.” Adam helped himself to a kipper and toast and sat down. A silver coffeepot waited at his place. His small staff knew his preferences well. A good pot of coffee in the morning and privacy to eat without footmen hanging all over him at mealtimes.

  “Must have thighs like iron,” Jonny went on in a dreamy tone.

  “Pardon?” Adam said.

  “Lysander,” Jonny said, biting his lip dramatically. “With all that riding.”

  Adam couldn’t help but laugh at that. Jonny was incorrigible. “He is...rather beautifully formed,” he agreed with a grin.

  “Darling he’s sublime. I can see why you’re smitten.” He paused. “You are smitten, aren’t you?”

  Adam stared at his kipper for a long moment, then he glanced up. “Yes. Completely.”

  Jonny beamed and clapped his hands together. “I knew it!”

  Adam sighed. “I’m not sure he feels the same way.”

  “Don’t be absurd,” Jonny waved a careless hand at Adam. “It’s obvious he adores you. You’ve only to see the way he looks at you. It’s nauseating, frankly.”

  Adam snorted, though a pathetic little part of him wanted to dig deeper. Wanted to say, how does he look at me? He resisted the urge.

  “It makes sense of course,” Jonny mused. “Lysander. The liberator.”

  “What?”

  “From λυσις and ανδρος.”

  Adam rolled his eyes. Jonny was obsessed with the ancients. Kept talking about travelling to Greece of all places. Jonny who couldn’t manage half a day in a carriage without throwing up.

  Adam tried to remember his schoolboy Greek. “I know ανδρος means man, but I don’t recognise λυσις.”

  Jonny grinned. “It means release,” he said. “Don’t you think it apt?”

  Adam rolled his eyes.

  “In all seriousness though,” Jonny said. “I do believe he has unlocked that careful heart of yours. You’ve always kept it so scrupulously safe, and really, it only makes one shrivel up.”

  Adam smiled sadly at his friend. “We are not all as brave as you, my dear. Men like us need to be careful.”

  Jonny’s throat bobbed with emotion, and he averted his gaze, plainly trying to suppress his emotions. He’d come to Edgeley Park a fortnight ago, fresh from his latest heartbreak.

  There was nothing careful about Jonny Mainwaring. Nothing prudent. Sometimes Adam worried about him terribly. They’d been friends since they were boys. Adam had been sent to a school at which every pupil had sneered at him for being the son of a mill owner—everyone apart from Jonny, that was. Adam’s father had taken him out of Leaholme House after a year, when he’d confessed his misery, yet his friendship with Jonny had persisted. By then his admiration of the other boy had been boundless, this fey creature, who lisped and minced and somehow had the heart of a lion. Jonny was the bravest boy Adam had ever met. Brave enough to stand up to all the other boys at school despite his physical slightness. Brave enough to befriend the filthy cit.

  “It’s good to see you allowing yourself to care for someone,” Jonny said now.

  “I’m not a complete boor,” Adam said gruffly. “I care for you, you know.”

  “Oh, darling.” Jonny’s smile was crooked. “That’s terribly sweet, but I’m not talking about that sort of caring. I’m talking about falling in love, which I believe you have finally done with your Mr. Winterbourne and honestly I couldn’t be happier about it.”

  He was positively misty-eyed now, so Adam pulled out his handkerchief and handed it over, watching silently as Jonny dabbed at his eyes.

  “All right,” he said when Jonny was done. “I admit it. I’m in love with Lysander. And, I might add, it’s just as ridiculous a state as I imagined it would be.”

  “Ridiculous how?” Jonny demanded, sounding almost offended.

  Adam sighed. “He...takes up my thoughts. It’s exceedingly distracting.”

  Jonny hooted. “Good heavens, is it interfering with your daily routine of making enormous pots of money?”

  “It rather is,” Adam said dryly, and Jonny hooted again.

  Just then, there was a discreet knock at the door.

  “Enter,” Adam called. It was Fletcher, with the morning post, a sheaf of correspondence, mostly business-related by the look of it.

  Adam quickly sorted through the letters, dividing them into piles. He paused at one, though, recognising the crest stamped into the red wax seal.

  The Winterbourne seal.

  He took up his letter knife, slicing through the hard wax and quickly scanned the few lines inside. The letter was from Lord Winterbourne himself—Lysander’s father. A man Adam hadn’t spoken to for over a year, since his brother Simon’s wedding to Lysander’s sister, Althea.

  It was an invitation to Winterbourne Abbey. For Christmas.

  Lysander was already going, his mother having made it plain to him in a letter some weeks’ ago that he was, once again, expected to make an appearance over the festive season. Adam had been disappointed that they would be apart, for the second Christmas since they’d met. He’d been hoping Lysander would stay with him at Edgeley Park this year. Had been looking forward to revisiting some of the traditions of his childhood with him—hunting out greenery and decorating his private sitting room with it, lighting the yule log, exchanging small gifts—but had reasoned that they could still enjoy at least some of these things before Lysander left.

  But now, it seemed, they could be together after all. Not here, at home, but still together.

  “Good news?”

  Adam raised his gaze from the letter. Jonny’s expression was quizzical.

  “Yes,” he said slowly, folding the letter back up. “I rather think so.”

  “MY FATHER INVITED YOU for Christmas?” Lysander said later.

  Wordlessly, Adam handed him the letter, watching Lysander’s downbent golden head as he read. When he glanced
up again, his blue eyes were wide with surprise.

  “Well,” he said. “That’s...unexpected.”

  It was unexpected. Despite the fact that Adam had saved the earl from almost certain bankruptcy by paying off the man’s debts when Simon married Althea, the earl despised Adam. A typical aristocrat, he was convinced of his superiority to men like Adam, who made their money instead of inheriting it. As for Adam, he’d been equally unable to hide his dislike for the earl, leaving the man in no doubt as to his opinion of the man’s profligacy and fecklessness.

  The tension between the two men had worsened when Adam had given Lysander what he most desired and the very thing his father had refused him—the stewardship of an estate. The earl had been apoplectic with fury, demanding that Lysander return to Winterbourne Abbey, but Lysander had refused to go, insisting on taking the position as Adam’s steward and becoming—at least in the earl’s eyes—the servant of a man the earl loathed.

  At this precise moment, though, the earl’s reasons for inviting Adam were not at the forefront of his mind. He was more concerned by Lysander’s apparent lack of delight at the news.

  “You don’t seem very pleased,” he observed, watching Lysander carefully.

  “What?” Lysander’s gaze had drifted back to his father’s letter but now it snapped up again, a little furrow of puzzlement between those perfect dark blond brows.

  Christ. Lysander was so beautiful, sometimes it actually hurt Adam to look at him. He wanted to smooth that little frown away with his thumb and kiss that serious mouth till it smiled beneath his own. Instead, he cleared his throat and said, “I thought you’d be pleased. You said you were sorry we couldn’t be together at Christmas.”

  “I am sorry,” Lysander said, then quickly added, “I mean, I was. And of course I’m pleased you’re coming. Only it won’t be the same as spending Christmas here with you. We’ll be in separate rooms, and there will be so many people. My whole family probably.”

  Adam’s heart plummeted. Was Lysander ashamed of him? Nobody need know what they were to each other, but would Lysander privately cringe at seeing Adam with his family?

  It was an unworthy thought, and one Adam quickly dismissed—he knew that, if anything, Lysander was more likely to be ashamed of his family than of Adam—yet the unsettled feeling lingered.

  “If you’d rather I refuse the invitation...” he began, his tone careful.

  “No, no, of course not,” Lysander said, but he sounded distracted somehow, and again his gaze went to the letter, as though he might find some clue there as to why this invitation had been issued.

  “You talk of your family home so fondly that I must admit to being curious to see it.”

  Lysander smiled, but Adam couldn’t help but feel there was something reserved about the smile. Something careful. All at once, he felt as though there were miles between them. An unbreachable gap that had opened up quite suddenly and unexpectedly.

  He realised he was afraid.

  He stepped forward, plucking the letter out of Lysander’s hand and tossing it aside. Lifting his hand, he cupped the side of Lysander’s face and gazed into his eyes. He wanted to say something extravagant—I love you passionately; I don’t want to be parted from you ever—but he was not an extravagant man. Not with words at least. Actions were his currency. And so, instead of uttering the words branded on his heart, he pressed his mouth to Lysander’s, groaning with pleasure and gratitude when Lysander opened to him with a moan of his own.

  The kiss was lusty, yet strangely sweet too, hardening Adam’s cock even as it made his heart swell and ache. It had been like this with Lysander from the first. Different than with anyone else. Physically, he desired the young man fiercely but alongside the immediate animal attraction that had gripped Adam from their first meeting, there had been an equally striking emotional connection that had discomposed him beyond anything. His heart had been engaged from their very first time together, and still it astonished him, a year and a half later.

  Astonished—and frightened him.

  Yes, he was afraid. Afraid to give words to that feeling. Afraid of scaring Lysander away with the depth of his attachment. And perhaps, most of all, afraid of surrendering fully to his own feelings. Of allowing himself to believe that Lysander loved him as fully and deeply as Adam loved Lysander.

  Of allowing himself to believe that, only for Lysander to leave him one day.

  Lysander pulled back from the kiss and Adam opened his eyes. Lysander was searching his face, his own expression puzzled.

  “What’s wrong?” Lysander murmured.

  “Nothing,” Adam said. “Why do you ask?”

  “You seem—distracted.”

  Adam forced himself to smile. “You distract me, Mr. Winterbourne.”

  When Lysander looked doubtful, Adam took his hand, guiding it to his breeches and the stiff cock inside, hissing with pleasure when Lysander’s fingertips brushed his shaft.

  Lysander’s eyes gleamed then, and he muscled in closer, his lips tickling Adam’s ear as he whispered, “Ah, you must be desperate after this morning. You were just about to fuck me when Jonny interrupted us, weren’t you?”

  He stroked Adam’s cock more firmly, shaping the length with his fingers and Adam moaned.

  “I want you to fuck me now,” Lysander murmured, sending shivers down Adam’s neck and shoulder. “I want you to fuck me hard and deep and—”

  With a deep groan, Adam turned his head and captured Lysander’s mouth with his own in a lusty kiss.

  And after that, there was no more talking for a long, long while.

  Chapter 4 – Lysander

  Winterbourne Abbey, Derbyshire

  23rd December 1823

  The first glimpse Lysander had of Winterbourne Abbey, as he and Adam rode towards it, was of the pointed nave roof and its surrounding pinnacles, stark against the wintry grey sky.

  His heart squeezed at the familiar sight.

  And then, as he and Adam got closer, he caught sight of the square towers of the east and west wings and noted, with dismay, that the crenelated ramparts of the west one were still looking distinctly crumbly. Just as they had done a whole year ago when he’d last been here, for Simon and Althea’s wedding.

  The restoration works to the roof had not been done then. Not yet.

  Despite Adam having already paid for them.

  Lysander cringed inwardly.

  It wasn’t only the west turret roof. As they’d ridden through the village a few minutes earlier, Lysander had seen that the workers’ cottages that should have been repaired were quite as dilapidated as they had been on his last visit, and the new ones that were supposed to be built were nowhere to be seen.

  Shame drenched Lysander. This was his father’s doing, he knew it.

  Adam had never trusted Lysander’s father. In fact, he’d insisted, when they’d come to terms over Simon and Althea’s marriage, that he would not hand any funds over to the earl to fritter away. Instead he would clear the earl’s existing debts and give him a fresh start; a chance to begin to live within his means. He’d agreed, however, to make over an additional sum for certain necessary estate works. To protect the funds, they’d been passed to the earl’s steward, Mr. Holmes, to manage directly. Furthermore, they’d been advanced as a loan, albeit one that Adam meant to forgive in due course, explaining to Lysander that he wanted the formality of an obligation to hold over the earl’s head, should any difficulties arise.

  It seemed from what Lysander was seeing that either his father had taken control of the funds, or that Mr. Holmes had failed to act promptly in instituting the works. Whilst he hoped it was the latter, his instinct told him that was unlikely—Mr. Holmes was an excellent steward. It was difficult to believe he’d have taken no steps to progress matters in all this time.

  Adam said nothing as they rode, but of course he noticed. By the time they reached the Abbey, his brow was furrowed and his lips were pressed together with displeasure. Lysander could hardly be
ar to look at him, he felt so mortified.

  They rode their horses up to the entrance to the Abbey. This was the last remaining part of the original Augustinian monastery, with its pointed roof and flying buttresses. Behind the ancient façade stood a rather less remarkable Jacobean mansion, to which the east and west wings had been added some sixty years later.

  As Lysander and Adam dismounted, two grooms stepped forward to take the reins of their horses, and then the great oak doors of the Abbey were opening and a figure was emerging: Quincy, the earl’s butler.

  Quincy stood at the top of the small flight of steps that led up to the high-arched oak doors, his expression as lugubriously glum as ever.

  “Welcome home, sir,” Quincy said to Lysander, greeting him first with a deep bow before turning to Adam and offering a still deferential but shallower bow. “And Mr. Freeman. Welcome to Winterbourne Abbey, sir.” He stepped back, holding the heavy door open with his stooped frame to allow them to pass.

  “Thank you, Quincy.” Lysander stepped inside, crossing the portico that led to a second set of doors and the main house, Adam on his heels.

  “I presume your carriage is following, sir?” Quincy said behind him.

  “Indeed,” Adam said. “Mr. Winterbourne and I elected to ride ahead, but my coachman should be here very soon.”

  “Very good, sir,” Quincy said. “I will have your luggage brought to your rooms directly it arrives.”

  The next set of doors opened then, each one held by a richly clad footman. Lysander’s pace faltered at the sight of them, his stomach sinking as he took in the new royal-blue-and-silver livery they wore.

  The brief brush of Adam’s gloved hand at the small of his back had him moving forward again, moving into the spacious hallway where a maidservant waited to take his and Adam’s coats and hats.

  “Your usual rooms have been aired, sir,” Quincy told Lysander as he handed his hat to the maid. “And Lady Winterbourne has had the blue room in the east wing made ready for Mr. Freeman.”