A Fashionable Indulgence (Society of Gentlemen #1) (16 page)

“I don’t want to celebrate,” Julius sounded raw. “I miss Marcus appallingly. Mother and Father lost a son, Lucia lost a fiancé, but I lost
us.
”

Harry clutched him tighter. Julius resisted for a moment longer, then collapsed against him, burying his face in the crook of Harry’s neck, shuddering. Harry held him, kissing his hair, pulling him as close as he could, digging his fingers into Julius’s skin with the fierce urge to protect his unassailable, vulnerable, helpless lover.

At last Julius took a deep breath and sat up. His eyes were red, and he was rather flushed. “I beg your pardon, Harry.”

“Don’t be absurd.”

“It is hardly fair on one’s conversational partner to indulge—”

“I’m not your conversational partner,” Harry snapped. “I’m naked in your bed. I had your arse last night.
Conversational partner,
my God. I’m your lover.”

Julius took a deep breath. “Until when?”

“I don’t know. I missed you like the very devil this past month. I’m not going to marry Verona or anyone while I love you. I can’t.”

“And when that comes to an end?”

“When I stop loving you?” Harry wanted to make promises, but it would only be words. He couldn’t say a glib
I’ll never leave
to a man who had been so brutally bereft, particularly when his own future was so unclear. “Or when you tire of me? I don’t know. But I tried the idea of marrying for money and leaving you behind, and I didn’t like it.”

“Christ, Harry, I am not fit for you. I’ve half a heart, and that’s been dried up through lack of use. I don’t want to lose you to the stews any more than to a good marriage. Don’t ruin your future for me and my damned histrionics.”

“
Future.
Hah. Whatever way I turn I’ll lose something. You, the money, the rest of my life to a miserable marriage, my soul.”

“Oh, nonsense.”

“It’s not. I have principles, Julius. I didn’t think I did, but it turns out I can’t forget them. I can’t sit in drawing rooms listening to rich men talk about the bravery of cavalry trampling unarmed women underfoot in order to keep Manchester from having a member of Parliament. It makes me sick.”

“I don’t think that’s quite how Dominic would frame those events,” Julius said dryly. “Although, as a cavalryman myself, my gorge also rises. Oh, damnation. I should have done better by you there. I should know that ghosts are not so easily dismissed.”

“Gideon’s money will cost me my ability to think well of myself,” Harry said. “And any happiness I might have had in life if I end up wedded to a miserable shrew.”

“If Miss Vane has another suitor in mind—”

“Then perhaps Gideon might find me another wife,” Harry agreed. “Maybe I could father children on her and fuck you behind her back. Would you like that?”

“Not greatly.” Julius made a face. “It is possible to have a mutually honest arrangement, you know, with a woman who has her own fish to fry.”

“Someone who would be happy for me to bed another man while she went off and did the same? And I could exchange false vows with her in order to get my hands on my grandfather’s money.” Harry shook his head. “Silas is right, you know. We’re despicable.”

“Speak for yourself.” Julius sounded stung.

“Silas is a better man than anyone I’ve met in St. James’s,” Harry said. “He’d tell my grandfather to go to the devil and take his money with him.”

“And will you do the same?”

“Not in so many words. He terrifies me. But I’m not prepared to accept his price.”

There was a silence. Finally Julius said, “If you’re expecting me to join you in the stews and become a radical agitator, you will be sorely disappointed. Look, dear boy, will you allow me to mull over this? There may be a middle ground between capitulation and renunciation.”

“You do talk wonderfully.”

“Be quiet. I am going to find out a little more, smooth out the effects of that display last night, and speak to Richard. It is possible things aren’t as bleak as you fear.”

Harry had to squash the absurd hope that rose in his chest. He’d been so determined last night, so sure his only course would be to abandon this life of luxury for a truer, better, and poorer existence. The idea that he might not have to was profoundly appealing. “I’m not sure.”

“You’re not sure about much. Be sure of this: I shall not see you starve or suffer.” Julius reached over for a kiss, wincing as he moved.

“Are you sore?” Harry ran his fingers through the fine gilt hair.

“A little.”

“Worth it?”

“Tolerable.” Julius raised a brow. “I might permit you to do it again.”

“Hah. I knew you’d like it.” Harry grinned at his mock glower. “I love you.”

“So you tell me. And…I am glad to know it. Now get up before we startle my valet.”

I love you.

Julius had had a toy as a child, if one could call it that. A gnarled piece of wood he’d picked up and idly stripped the bark from, and discovered that its bumps and indentations had fitted pleasingly to his hand. He’d polished it smooth, kept it in his pocket, and taken it out often for the sheer pleasure of feeling his fingers curl around it as though it had been made only for him. He’d never let Marcus hold it in case his fingers fitted too. It had felt right, and it was for Julius alone.

The toy was long gone, doubtless thrown away when his hands became too large for it, but Julius felt Harry’s words fit to his mind like the wood to his palm.

I love you.

He’d never heard it from a lover. It was a long time since he’d heard it from anyone at all. He wasn’t sure he’d ever said it.

Oh, Marcus. What would you say?

Marcus had known Julius was a man unlike others. Not that they’d spoken of it, but then they had barely spoken of so many important things. But they’d always been shoulder to shoulder. They hadn’t been the largest or strongest boys at Eton, but nobody had dared touch them because it was well known that to lay a finger on one of the Norreys twins was to have the other one at your throat.

Marcus had been there every day of his life until they’d joined the Army. There had been a shell around the two of them, an enclosure that kept the rest of the world outside. Then Marcus had invited Lucia in, and Julius had been ready to let her come because his twin loved her. But Marcus had died, and Lucia had grieved for him, and loved again, and married, and Julius had been left in the shell alone.

Marcus would have let Harry in.

I like that man,
he imagined Marcus saying.
Delightful fellow. But really, that coat!

He bought it to annoy me, Marco.
I distressed him.

Then stop distressing him, for God’s sake. I’m turning in my grave.

Julius took a deep breath, shaking off the sentiment. It was hardly surprising that he should be thinking of Marcus. Their birthday, that last appalling visit to the house he’d grown up in, where grief had long hardened, unbreakably, into resentment and blame. But more, it was Harry. It was the sense that at last someone was at his shoulder again, on the inside.

Literally that. He, who did not kiss because flesh and blood and bodies meant nothing but horror, who hadn’t had anything but his own hand in months, had let Harry bugger him and taken it with the enthusiasm of…God, of a normal man.

I haven’t forgotten, Marco,
he said mentally.
I won’t forget.

Addlepate,
his brother would have replied, with effortless scorn. If Marcus had seen him pining for four years, hiding behind his tailor, he’d have shaken Julius till his teeth rattled and told him to live for the pair of them.

It was probably time he did.

He wouldn’t set his heart on this lasting, no matter that Harry loved him.
Loved him.
He felt the shape of the words and smiled. But he knew their world. To be together meant a lifetime of risk, and the strain of concealment preyed on everyone’s nerves. Nevertheless, Julius was not going to see his Harry thrown back to the gutters at the whim of some damned revolutionary in Ludgate, any more than of an old vulture in St. James’s. He fully intended to deal with this, and his first step was to speak to Richard.

Julius was shown into Richard’s study, where he found him at his desk.

“Ah. Julius. Do shut the door,” he added ironically, since Julius had already done so. “I take it we have matters of discretion to discuss.”

“You’ve heard about last night, then.”

“I think everybody has by now. Do you feel that a public squabble was wise?”

“No.” Julius took a chair. “I was provoked into indiscretion and lost my temper. I apologize. However, since you are partly responsible—”

“I beg your pardon?”

Julius crossed his legs. “Dear fellow, why did you tell me that Miss Verona Vane had given her affections to Harry along with her hand?”

Richard’s brows drew together. “I cannot see that Verona’s affections are your concern.”

“I do not ask lightly. Matters may be a little more complicated than they appear. I need to know why you believe this to be a love match on her side and, indeed, how you knew this private engagement was a match at all.”

“Gideon told me,” Richard said. “I met him for tea at Mrs. Martindale’s, along with Bunbury and Cirencester. He did add that it was a private matter until Verona was out of mourning, and asked us not to discuss it widely.”

“He asked Lord Bunbury and Mrs. Martindale not to spread gossip.” Julius raised a sardonic brow. “Really?”

Richard acknowledged that with a lift of his hand. “Granted, but he would not have seen any harm in it, if it was a matter of honest affection.”

“It is neither. Cards on the table: Harry assures me that Miss Vane’s sentiments to him are marked by repulsion, disgust, and insult. If she, or Gideon, insists that it’s a love match, then someone is telling untruths.”

Richard’s face darkened with anger. “You are offensive,” he said in a low voice.

“And I am offended. You told me that I was interfering in a love affair when its protagonists don’t even seem to like each other.”

Richard’s jaw was set. “Gideon assured me that Verona is most taken with Harry.”

“Harry assures me that she despises him and misses no opportunity to show it. He is of the opinion that she is provoking him to cry off.”

“I don’t like your imputations about my cousin.”

“Which one?” Julius asked. “Because there is no way around it, my friend, one of them is lying.”

Richard leaned back in his chair. After a moment, he said, “Do I understand that you and Harry have resolved your differences?”

“You do.”

“Based on this story that he is not sentimentally attached to Verona.”

“Yes,” Julius said. “It is possible that Harry has slandered the name of his future wife in order to dip his wick with me a few more times before he marries. Do you think that likely?”

Richard exhaled. “Not really. Explain the alternative to me.”

“Let us say that Miss Vane’s distaste for Harry leads him to cry off, even though she has assured Gideon of her willingness to marry. What then?”

“I should imagine he would be furious. Very likely cut Harry off.”

“Leaving Miss Vane free of a fiancé to whom she is indifferent, and a rich man’s sole heir.”

“No,” Richard said. “She is a wealthy woman in her own right, or will be. More to the point, she is neither malicious nor scheming. She is, if anything, open-hearted to a fault. I do not believe her to be duplicitous.”

“No,” Julius considered. “What did you mean, she
will
be wealthy?”

“Her father’s will left her everything, but put her fortune entirely in the hands of her guardian—Gideon—until she was either thirty or married with his consent.”

“Good God, how medieval. Why?” He saw Richard hesitate. “In confidence.”

Richard sighed. “There was some scandal. An unsuitable attachment. I believe her father was concerned about her becoming the victim of a fortune hunter.”

“And I don’t imagine he expected her to inherit her brother’s portion along with her own. She will be a sought-after woman when her mourning is over. Why would Lord Gideon want her married off to Harry now when, with birth and wealth and some beauty, she has every chance of making a far better match?”

Richard frowned. “If he believed them to have a sincere attachment—”

“I don’t think he can believe that.”

“Then, blood,” Richard said reluctantly. “Harry’s marriage to Verona would allow him to feel that he’d secured his family line once more.”

“Would he force a marriage on Miss Vane for that reason?” Richard didn’t answer immediately. Julius pressed the attack. “What would happen if she cried off?”

“Gideon controls her inheritance. If he took umbrage…She would without doubt be a less attractive marriage prospect if she were penniless to the age of thirty. And he is not a good man to displease.” Richard drummed his fingers on the desk. “You disturb me. I had not thought of this.”

“I intend to disturb you further. What was the name of the unsuitable suitor?”

“Verona’s? Good God, I have no idea.”

“Can you find out? It’s quite important.”

Richard contemplated him a moment, then rang the bell. “Very well, I will satisfy your curiosity as far as I am able. Now satisfy mine. What is going on?”

Julius sighed. “Harry was speaking wildly last night. He intended to refuse this cousin-marriage and return to the stews. Yes, I know, I told him not to. But he is in a state of some distress and unhappiness. I believe him about Miss Vane, and I won’t see him forced into this match or blamed for its failure.”

“And what about another marriage?”

There was a discreet knock and the door opened behind him. “Cyprian, please,” Richard ordered, and the servant left, shutting the door in silence. “Go on.”

“I want to see him happy. You know what I’m like, none better. I’ve barely stood another man’s touch or tolerated company in years. But I told him about Marcus. I had a public argument with him—
public
—over a coat. I am, in fact, smitten.” He tried to say it lightly. He failed.

“Oh, the devil,” Richard said. “My poor Julius.”

“God damn it. What should I do?”

The words were out without his volition, but of course that was what he’d really come here to ask, no matter what he’d thought. One brought one’s problems to Richard.

Richard sat back in his chair, frowning. “If Gideon cut him off tomorrow…”

“I’d help. If he’d take it. I expect he would, but…how would I do it?” He had a satisfactory income, but spent every penny on his manner of living, mostly on his wardrobe. It was one of the reasons he rarely gambled: He couldn’t afford losses. He was no Francis, dripping with wealth, to fund a lover’s luxuries.

He could live differently, of course. But that way was fraught with entanglement, terrifying and irrevocable. What if the sight of Harry began to disgust him as all the others had, in weeks or months? What if Harry needed someone with more capacity for joy than his own? “Would Cirencester take Harry on if Gideon doesn’t?”

“I doubt it,” Richard said. “He has plenty of pensioners and four daughters to dower in due course. There is no reason in the world Cirencester should pay for either Harry or Verona when their grandfather is so well larded and, in truth, he doesn’t want to be involved if there is to be yet another disowning. He remembers the last one without fondness.”

That probably went for Richard too. He was a wealthy man, but Julius well knew that Richard overstaffed his houses in these times of low employment, pensioned the veterans who had gone to war from his lands, and maintained the whole delicate mechanism that allowed the Ricardians their precarious freedom. He would doubtless find a hundred a year to keep Harry comfortable, warm, and fed. But it was not the life that Gideon had dangled in front of him like a glittering bauble. Not the life Julius lived.

“If they, Miss Vane and Harry, should agree to tell the old man they won’t suit, will you support them?”

“Of course, but I doubt it would make much difference. Come in,” Richard called, in response to a knock.

Cyprian padded to the desk. He wore Richard’s dark green livery, and his hair was powdered white in the old-fashioned style. Julius wondered again why Richard dressed the fellow like a footman, when most valets adopted a severe black to indicate their higher standing. It seemed unappreciative.

Richard leaned forward. “Tell me, Cyprian. Miss Verona Vane had an unsuitable attachment some time ago. Do you happen to know about that?”

“Yes, my lord,” Cyprian said calmly.

Of course he did. Julius threw the dice. “Was the suitor in question one Edward Rawling?”

The valet didn’t blink. “That’s correct, Mr. Norreys.”

“How the devil— Well, go on,” Richard said. “Enlighten us.”

“Miss Vane formed the attachment as a child, my lord. Mr. Rawling lived near the family’s country home. Not a man of family or wealth, and some years older, but it was considered a harmless childhood friendship, until Miss Vane expressed her fixed intention to marry him at the age of fifteen.”

“I don’t recall there was any suggestion of impropriety?” Richard suggested, his tone a slight warning.

“None in the world, my lord. Mr. Rawling was generally considered to be a decent young man, but of the yeomanry rather than the gentry, and in no way an acceptable match for a Vane. Mr. Paul had him…encouraged to leave the village. He joined the Army and held the rank of sergeant in, I believe, the First Foot regiment.” He gave Julius a little bow of acknowledgement.

“My God,” Julius said. “Is there anything you don’t know?”

“If there is, sir, I will endeavor to discover it on request.”

Julius snorted. “Find this out, then: Is Miss Vane still attached to the sergeant?”

“No,” said Richard. “That is not a matter for our interference.”

“Yes it is,” Julius assured him. “Rawling assaulted Harry last night. Specifically, he threatened to break his neck if he didn’t stay away from Miss Vane.”

“What?”

Julius was contemplating Cyprian. “That doesn’t surprise you.”

Cyprian didn’t shrug—a servant of his calibre would never do such a thing—but his entire demeanor implied a shrug. “Miss Vane’s maidservant of long standing was turned off for assisting in clandestine correspondence. I infer a continuing attachment.”

Richard frowned. “Is it your opinion that Miss Verona intends to wed Mr. Harry?”

“The odds in the servants’ hall against it coming off stand at eleven to four, my lord. I think that’s optimistic.”

“I see,” Julius said. “Out of interest, Cyprian, how much information do you have on me?”

Cyprian gave the faintest of smiles. “What would you like to know?”

“That will do,” Richard said. “Unless you have anything more for us? Thank you.”

Cyprian bowed, and departed as silently as he had come. Julius stared after him. “Tell me, Richard, why do you have that man as your valet?”