A Gentleman's Position (Society of Gentlemen) (15 page)

Richard put the precious note into his pocket. “David. Thank you for coming.”

“I had no choice.”

Richard couldn’t stifle a leap of hope. “Because…?”

“Silas and Mr. Norreys strong-armed me into the coach.”

“Oh. I meant them to request your attendance. To persuade you, not press-gang you. David, I need your help. Will you sit?”

“I’ve been sitting all day.” David walked to the fire, a few feet away from Richard. “What do you want of me, your lordship?”

“Your help. We are in hell’s own tangle, and I have no idea what to do. I hoped you might.”

“You want me to work for you again.” David’s voice was neutral, his face blank, nothing given away. Guarded. Richard did not want to see him guarded.

He set his shoulders. “I need your assistance quite desperately. I would not have called on you otherwise. You have every reason not to work for me, and this is not how I wanted to meet you again or what I should have wished to discuss. I should have far preferred to come to you for your sake alone, certainly not to make demands, but there is too much at stake. I must put Ash’s and Mason’s lives before my—our—affairs, and I hope to God you will find yourself able to do the same.”

David still wasn’t moving, his silence unnerving. Richard sighed. “I am well aware I have no right to expect your help, but you cannot solve all of my problems for years and then expect me not to run to you in a crisis.”

“I was run to you,” David pointed out. “I don’t work for you, your lordship, and you are asking a very great deal of me, and we did not part on good terms. You told Mr. Norreys to offer me anything.”

“I did.”

“Anything,” David repeated. “What does that mean? Money from your overflowing coffers? Yet another position in your household? To have my way in your bed?” His voice had plenty of feeling in it now, the imperturbable mask cracking at last. “What are you proposing to pay me with this time?”

“Hell and the devil. I did not mean—”

“And yet, you did,” David said. “Again. I will not be bought, I will not be bribed, and I
will not
return to serve where my service is despised.”

“I did not offer to buy you. I offered to
pay
you. What in hell’s name should I have done? I could hardly ask your help as a friend given the way we parted, still less as a lover. You are insulted that I offered a price, but would you have been less so if I had assumed your time was at my command? For God’s sake, I didn’t know if you would even listen to my message. Of course I threw all my worldly goods at your feet. I hoped that might convey how much I need you!”

“You need me
to
work
for you,” David said with cold precision. “As you have said, we would both do well to remember our places. I am very aware of mine, your lordship.”

He was not a forgiving man. And Richard knew damned well he had an apology to make. “I have said a number of damn fool things recently. That was one, if not the worst. But as to despising your service—David, I swear to you on my father’s name, it is not true. I did not ever consider your work in that light.”

“Really.”

“In truth? I barely considered it at all.” That got David looking at him, a startled glance. “I took everything you did for me for granted, as my due. All the comforts and the little perfections and the way you made the whole world work for me, and I don’t think I ever quite noticed. You are so good at going unnoticed, you see. And of course our places are different. I am a lord, I should not care to be a servant, and I will not pretend otherwise. I expect I should be an execrable servant, whereas if you were a lord, you would probably be prime minister already. And whatever your station, you would never be fool enough to insult your best and most loyal friend by letting him believe you did not value his work. By
not
valuing it. I’m sorry, David.”

David was watching him. His face was still and drawn tight with tension.

“I would like to beg your forgiveness,” Richard went on. “I should like to persuade you that I have thought about your words and come to understand them. I should very much like to talk about things again and this time listen to what you tell me. But I don’t think I can afford to do that now, because my friends and I are in bad trouble, worse than any I have known, and the foundations are crumbling under our feet. Will you help, David? Tell me your terms, whatever they may be. Tell me what I must do to have you back at my side, because I have never needed you here more.”

David did not move. “What, precisely, do you want me to do?”

“Make this go away. I assume Julius explained the situation? Retrieve the damned letter, and lift the threat from Ash and Mason.”

“But that won’t be enough,” David said. “Even if you get the letter back, Lord Maltravers will still
know.
He can still make accusations against Lord Gabriel, and if that spreads, and people start to look…”

That, somehow, had not quite dawned on Richard before. He had been focused on the letter, not the knowledge it held, but of course, David was right. “God rot it. Oh, hell and the devil. We must at the least get the accursed letter back to remove the threat from Mason and Harry, but—my poor Ash. Is there nothing to be done?”

“Oh, of course,” David said with unconscious assurance that took Richard’s breath. “But it would mean pulling Lord Maltravers’s fangs altogether and Mr. Skelton’s with them. That is a large task.”

Richard almost laughed. “How could you? Maltravers is a duke’s heir with a fortune. He is all fangs.”

David raised one shoulder, a half shrug. “I don’t know about that. Have you ever wondered why he is so badly dressed?”

“What?”

“Nothing. For now.” He pressed his lips together, thinking. “If I do this, your lordship, I will need free rein to use any means necessary.”

“You have it. My purse is at your disposal without limit.”

“I don’t mean money. Or not just money. This will not be conducted in a gentlemanly way. I will need to lie and cheat and steal, as I have done before, and I am not going to hide that any longer. I want you to know what I do for you.”

Richard had only an inkling of what David did. It had always seemed better not to ask. “Like pigs,” he said.

David blinked. “I beg your pardon?”

“Pigs. When a pig must be killed, you cut its throat, sear the hair from its hide, gut it, clean off the filth, chop it apart. Have you ever seen a pig killed? It’s messy. It stinks. And then, at last, with the blood and shit and squealing left behind, a carefully cured and cooked ham sits on a gentleman’s table, and he will take a few mouthfuls and praise the delicate taste.”

“I see. Yes, very like pigs.”

“My father made us spend time on the land, understand where our wealth comes from. He was, at least, honest. I cannot say I like the sound of lying or stealing, but I never liked the sound of a pig’s death squeal either, and it has not stopped me eating bacon. Or appreciating the butcher’s skill,” he added.

“But you would not do the slaughtering.”

“I lied at your direction just a few months ago,” Richard countered. “I did it for Dominic then, and I will do it now, or anything else you require, rather than see innocent men hang.”

“I wasn’t aware they were innocent.”

“No,” Richard was forced to admit. “No, they are not innocent at all; that is quite true, but I don’t think either Ash or Mason deserves hanging. And in any case, if I am forced to choose between what is right in law and the people I care for, I think I must choose the people. I listened to rightness when I should have listened to you, and I wish to God I had not.”

They stared at each other. “You asked me for my terms, my lord,” David said at last.

“Go on.”

“There are none. I don’t work for you. I am not in your service. If I help you, it is my choice.” He lifted his chin a fraction. “A kindness from a friend and not to be repaid.”

Other men might have made Richard pay through the nose. David was graciously conferring a benefit on him for which Richard would be indebted forever, a grateful dependent.

He had known the price would be high one way or another, but he had not imagined this.

He had to force the words out over his bone-deep reluctance. “If you will do me that kindness, then I will count myself lucky in your friendship. I am very much obliged to you,” he made himself add.

“It stings, doesn’t it? Very well. The election is under way, and Mr. Norreys tells me the Cato Street trial is due to start in less than a fortnight. Lord Maltravers will want Silas readied for the dock as soon as possible. There is not much time in hand.”

“I know. I dare say I have asked the impossible.”

“It may be to our advantage. Lord Maltravers will be impatient, and impatient men make mistakes.”

“Have you any ideas?” Richard asked. “Do you think this is possible?”

“Most things are possible, if you look at them the right way.” David caught his lower lip in his sharp teeth, a little unconscious movement Richard had seen so many times. It said,
I’m thinking,
and he felt an absurd relief at the sight. A sense of comfort and certainty, as if he were a man on a precipice who had finally stepped to solid ground.

“Well, I’m in your hands, and I cannot tell you how glad I am for that. You will tell me what you need? And—do you have somewhere to stay?”

“Here. Quex and Shakespeare are my friends. I can come and go easily, and so can you. I should not be seen in your company, I think.”

“No. Is this where you came when I drove you away?”

David stilled, watching his face. “Yes.”

“I wish I had known; I should have come after you. And I wish I had not made you go. Perhaps you had to go, but I wish it had not been because of my obtuseness.”

David swallowed, the movement making the pale column of his throat work. “My lord—”

“You said a kindness from a friend. My friends call me Richard.”

“Yes, I know,” David said. “I am still angry, my lord. I am still hurt. I believe you are sincere in what you have told me, but I am not going to fall back into your arms. You were right in one thing: I am vulnerable to you. I didn’t quite understand how vulnerable before. So I accept your apology, and we need not discuss that further, but I will decide on what terms I am prepared to be with you from now on, and you have no say in that.”

Richard exhaled. This was fast becoming the most humiliating conversation of his life, and he had to remind himself that he had earned it. But at least David was here, straight-backed, sharp-eyed, and thinking on Richard’s behalf. “Very well. As you wish. What now?”

“I must sleep. I was up betimes, and it was a tedious journey.”

That was his dismissal. Another novelty from this damned uncomfortable evening. “Of course. Good night.” Richard headed for the door with a certain sense of relief.

“You’re mistaken in one thing, I think, my lord,” David said from behind as Richard grasped the handle. “You would have made an excellent butler.”

“Ah…why is that?”

“You’re very tall, and you don’t drink much.”

Richard stared at the woodwork in front of him. “Thank you,” he said, keeping his voice steady. “I shall bear that in mind should I lose my fortune.”

“You’re welcome,” David said, and Richard left him, cherishing the almost imperceptible quiver of amusement in his voice like a precious thing.

David woke at the chime of five o’clock as he always did, because years of habit could not be discarded like a worn-out garment. Habit such as doing what Lord Richard wanted.

This was a hellish tangle. The war with Lord Maltravers would have to be fought openly and viciously, and if David failed, Richard’s name and protection would be worth nothing. Lord Maltravers was a powerful, vengeful man and a brutal one. There would be no room for gentlemanly feelings.

David didn’t think Richard would indulge them. Richard had summoned him in the teeth of his own best interests and David’s pride because it had to be done for his friends. He would not hold back now.

Some people would see that as self-sacrifice or kindness. David knew damned well what it was. When Richard decreed something should be so, it had to be made so, and anything in the way of that would be put aside. Richard wanted David to solve his problem, and here David was. He could decide as firmly as he liked that his lord’s troubles were not his own; he had been quite adamant that he would put his glorious, destructive dream behind him at last; but the minute he had seen Silas and Mr. Norreys standing on Mr. Fleming’s threshold, David had known he would be going with them. Richard whistled, and David came.

If Richard decided that David would return to his bed, he did not delude himself that he would resist for long. He’d had to lock his knees as it was the previous evening, feeling his anger vanish like dew under the sunrise of Richard’s sincerity, and it was a struggle to make himself stay angry.

He had to, because he knew all too well that Richard was his Achilles’ heel, his worst vulnerability, the one that would destroy him if he let it. He wanted Richard, and the wanting made him weak.

But if Richard was truly going to listen…

They could change the rules of the game, if they both played differently. They might find a way if they both sought one.

And while they were seeking, David had to take on a duke’s heir and the law and the Home Office and Bow Street, and win, so he ought to give that business the attention it needed. He stared up at the cracked ceiling and turned the situation around in his mind, looking for his advantage.

His first step was to write a letter to Lord Maltravers requesting an appointment. Maltravers had sent a missive of immense condescension a few months back advising David that he should be grateful for the opportunity to serve a future duke and offering a generous salary of a hundred and twenty pounds a year.

It had not been tempting. Richard, far the better man to dress, had paid David four hundred, and Lord Maltravers’s bullying temperament was notorious. David had declined the offer with elaborate courtesy, hinting that he was bound by contract and that otherwise he would have seized the opportunity. He always declined in those terms; if life in a brothel taught one anything, it was never to offend a powerful man’s amour propre, never to make him feel vulnerable or rejected or at fault. Men did not like to be made to think less of themselves, and they were prone to restore their dented pride at someone else’s expense. David was quite sure that Lord Maltravers would react very badly indeed if his self-love were assaulted.

Advantage.

He next went to find Zoë, Jon Shakespeare’s sister, who had done her time on her back in Belle Millay’s service and now ran an assignation house where gentlemen met one another or occasional paid partners. She was still in bed at noon, and it was a foolhardy man who woke Zoë before she was ready, but David had no time to lose, and a basket of expensive sweet pastries with ten guineas discreetly tucked in one corner went some way to improving her morning mood.

“So what’s going on?” Zoë asked. They sat across a table from each other drinking coffee, she swathed in a flannel gown, her tight-curled hair scrunched up into a gravity-defying bun on her head. “Because I heard from a certain pretty Tory that you’d resigned Lord Richard’s service, and if that’s so, you can go bugger yourself, you interfering slyboots ginger bastard.”

“I did. And now I’m back.”

“In that case, it’s a pleasure to see you, sir.”

“You too,” David said. “How was Frey as a flashman in my absence?”

“Oh, he’s got a gift for it.” Zoë fluttered her eyelashes. She was noisily fond of Dominic Frey, mostly because it irritated Silas, but David knew her well enough to suspect she actually liked the man.

“He may be in trouble. Mr. Frey, Silas, the pack of them. It’s to be hoped not you, but I don’t know how far this could spread if I don’t deal with it.”

Zoë’s eyes narrowed. “What’s going on?”

“Lord Maltravers.”

She turned in her chair, hawked, and spat, quite deliberately, on her own floor.

“Like that, is it?”

“Great bullying brawn,” Zoë said. “I remember that one from Seymour Street back in the day. If he can’t get a cock-stand, that’s the whore’s fault. You know the sort. Slapped a girl who laughed at him so hard, she couldn’t do anyone but sailors for a week because nobody wants to look at bruises.
And
he was tight as a gnat’s arse about it. Other gentlemen pay for damage done, or some of ’em do anyway.” She made a face. “Fucking gentlemen and their pleasures, and their tantrums when they’re thwarted. It’s why I picked the assignation house when old Belle was dividing up the empire, you know. Give me sods and mollies any day.”

“Why, because they’re gentler souls?” David asked with some sarcasm. “Like Silas and your Mr. Frey?”

“They’re not hurting the girls. Fuck my eye if I care what they do to each other. I’d stay away from Lord Maltravers if I was you. He’s a nasty piece of work, and if you cross him, he’ll come back at you till he’s got his stick up.”

“Yes, I know,” David said. “Unfortunately, he’s after Silas again, and after Lord Richard’s set as well. I’m going to have to cross him. And as Belle used to say, ‘If you’re obliged to cross a man at all—’ ”

“ ‘Nail him to one while you’re at it,’ ” Zoë finished. “You going to nail Lord Maltravers?”

“By the balls. Want to help?”

“You know me, Foxy. I’ll do anything for our beloved gentlemen. Here to serve, that’s me.” Zoë grinned at him. “How much?”

They spent a fair part of the afternoon in brothels. David hadn’t kept up his acquaintance with game women after his mother had left Millay’s, and had not needed to visit those types of houses in his work for Lord Richard, so the women who ran the various establishments would have no reason to trust him. Zoë was widely known in the business and widely liked; she could vouch for him. It took trips to a fair few houses and a certain investment of Lord Richard’s money in gin, but at last, they found the place Maltravers frequented.

“His lordship comes here, yes,” agreed the aged bawd who ran this particular temple of hymen under the name Mother Knab. “Domine do-little.”

“Impotent?” David said hopefully.

“Oh, not a gelding, but no stallion either. I dessay he’d be very well with a bit of patience, but my lord the duke’s brat doesn’t have to be patient, does he? Drinks any amount of quack’s potions. Dr. Vanbutchell’s Nostrum and whatnot. And he likes the old…” She put a hand to her scrawny neck, stuck out her tongue sideways, and crossed her eyes.

“The what now, Mother?” David asked.

“Self-strangling,” Zoë said. “What, you never heard of that? You put a rope round a fellow’s neck and it brings his ramrod up like nobody’s business.”

“I did know that. Wasn’t there a fellow killed that way, a foreign musician?”

“Thirty years ago, that was,” Mother Knab muttered. “And the poll who did it was acquitted too, so don’t you go saying it’s dangerous. If it gets fellows to the point, where’s the harm?”

David toyed with the idea of having Lord Maltravers “accidentally” throttled, but discarded it. The last thing they needed was for Lord Gabriel’s letter to be found among a dead man’s papers.

They tried a few more places before Zoë had to go to work. David gave assurances of his mother’s health to the few who remembered her, smiled at a dozen jests about his hair, and didn’t get anything else useful on Maltravers.

He could have done some good with a really filthy bit of scandal, something to disgrace his lordship and make his word worth nothing. But there was nothing shameful in using whores, and the gentry would scarcely care if his lordship was rough with them. Impotence was no use either. It was an easy slur against a man but no more.

Aphrodisiacs, though. He’d heard a lot about those, growing up. Gentlemen who couldn’t do their business often sought desperate remedies, and heaven knew what was in those potions, but some of them did damage. All the whores knew men with slurred speech and snarling tempers.
Mad as a hatter,
they’d tell each other.
Stay away.

Vanbutchell’s Nostrum was no more than a harmless concoction, but if Lord Maltravers had that habit…

Advantage,
David thought, and went back to Quex’s.

“So, what, you’re applying to be Maltravers’s valet?” Silas asked later that evening. David had whistled him up to Quex’s, and they were drinking gin and making plans before David went to give the Ricardians their instructions in the private rooms. There were some things the gentlemen didn’t need to know. “You don’t reckon he’ll think you’re there on Lord Richard’s bidding?”

“He might,” David acknowledged. “Then again, it’s known I fell out with my lord, and Lord Maltravers believes that his rank makes him a more desirable master. There is a chance he’ll take my approach at face value. It doesn’t necessarily matter.”

Silas gave him a look. “What are you brewing?”

David grinned. He knew it looked forced, because it was. He was not looking forward to this part of the play.

Silas clearly saw that in his face. “If you need me at your back—”

“I don’t, but I have a different sort of job for you. How do you feel about getting in the gutter again?”

“Born and bred there. Be a pleasure.” Silas cocked an eye at him. “How’s his lordship?”

“In the private rooms.”

“Aye, very good. I’d almost believe I said
where.
You coming back, Foxy?”

“We’ll see. It depends. On how this goes, for a start,” he added to forestall the obvious question.

“It had better go all right, then. I don’t want to go to France, and his lordship’s not doing so well without you.”

David was
not
going to ask for details. “I didn’t know you cared.”

Silas gave the snarling grin that had led Julius Norreys to name him “Dominic’s werewolf.” “Aye, and of course you don’t either. I just need someone to play backgammon with. The house is a tomb in the evenings now Harry’s moved out. What’s this job, then?”

Richard waited in the private rooms, watching the others. David had asked him to assemble a select group at nine of the clock: Dominic, Francis and Ash, Julius and Harry. Neither of the lawyers, since they would be going well beyond the law. All of them were on edge waiting to hear what, if anything, David could do.

“I damned well hope your valet has something useful to offer,” Francis muttered, stalking the length of the room for the fifteenth time. “Where is the man? He said nine.”

“It’s two minutes past,” Dominic said. “And he isn’t Richard’s valet, and I for one would be grateful if you would calm yourself. You’re setting my teeth on edge.”

“Forgive my lack of consideration,” Francis snapped. “I suppose you would approach this situation with sangfroid.”

“In fact, he did,” Julius said. “You may recall Mason came within a whisker of being arrested for high treason, and Dominic was as cool as a cucumber throughout.”

“And barely made it to the privy afterwards before I cast up my accounts,” Dominic added. “You have all my sympathy, Francis, I just wish you’d stop wearing holes in the carpet. Listen. There’s someone coming.”

David opened the door. “Good evening, my lords, gentlemen.”

Richard felt one kind of tension ease out of his shoulders, even as his gut tightened a little at the sight. “Good evening, Cyprian. Please come in.”

David walked to the fireplace, opposite Richard, gaze flicking from man to man. “Gentlemen, thank you. I’ll get to the meat of it: We have to retrieve this letter; we have to find out what Mr. Skelton knows and take him off the board one way or another; and we have to deal with Lord Maltravers. While he can accuse Lord Gabriel and Mr. Webster, even without the letter, he is a threat. And it seems to me likely that if the letter is stolen his response will be to make accusations. He will not take defeat well.”

“But he will always be able to accuse us,” Francis said. “He
knows,
damn it. What are you going to do, cut out his tongue?”

“In a way,” David said. “I wondered if we might silence him blackmail for blackmail, but I have found no weapon worth using for that. Unless anyone here knows otherwise, it seems that he has no sordid secrets or hidden crimes.”

“Unfortunately, those are all on our side,” Julius remarked.

“Indeed, Mr. Norreys. The next best option is to make sure that, when he speaks, he will not be believed. I need your help with that.”

The Ricardians exchanged looks. Harry spoke for them all when he asked, “How?”

David’s lips twitched in an echo of his mother’s razor-sharp smile, a warning of danger that made Richard’s skin prickle with the sudden understanding that his red fox was in his element.

“I will explain, but first there is something to establish. I intend to destroy Lord Maltravers’s character.” Ash’s eyes widened. “This is not going to be gentlemanly at all. It will be ruthless, unscrupulous, probably unlawful, and if anyone here cannot be part of it, please say so now.”

Every head turned to Richard.

“Dominic?” he said.

Dominic bit his lip. “Do what you must with Maltravers. He started this, and with Ash and Silas at stake, he can take the consequences. But what about Skelton?”

“What about him?” Francis demanded.

“He’s a professional man. I don’t like him, but he is doing his job.”

Francis and Julius both made explosive noises. “He accused Silas of murder!” Harry objected over them.