A Gentleman's Position (Society of Gentlemen) (18 page)

“Is that so? Well.” David looked around the bedroom. “Do you want to show me round or leave me to it?”

“Whatever you like.” Standish propped himself against the bedpost and continued complaining about Lord Maltravers. David took another cursory look around, thinking furiously, and was relieved to be summoned downstairs before he had to waste time learning about a bedroom where he had no intention of serving from a valet he wouldn’t have let near Richard’s third-best riding boots.

The contract was ready, ink still wet on one copy. David read it over, taking his time; Lord Maltravers did not bother to conceal his impatience. The document specified the terms of employment, which were not generous and obliged David to give three months’ notice. Failure to do so would render him liable to an action at law.

David stared at the paper. Now that it was time to sign, he felt rather sick. He knew what hell a bad master could wreak on his servants, and Lord Maltravers was as bad as they came. The thought of signing himself into servitude with this man should have been terrifying. The only thing more terrifying was the discovery that he
wasn’t
afraid.

Because Richard would deal with it. Where David’s cleverness hit a brick wall, Richard’s power and wealth could smash through it and would. He felt it as an absolute, unquestioned certainty. Richard would throw money and lawyers at it, buy him out at any cost of time or trouble. No matter how things went, with his schemes or between them, if he never touched the man again and refused every offer of lovemaking, employment, or anything else, he knew in his soul that Richard would not let him down.

Perhaps he came running at Richard’s whistle, but David could whistle too.

“Well?” Lord Maltravers said impatiently.

David signed both copies. Lord Maltravers applied his seal, and David folded the paper he was given and pocketed it.

“Very well.” Lord Maltravers rubbed his hands together. “You work for me now, Cyprian. And I’ve some questions for you.”

Richard felt as though he’d done nothing but pace and fret all day. He’d put in several hours at Angelo’s fencing academy on Bond Street with Julius, which had at least been a distraction. Julius was a vicious opponent; one could not afford to think about anything else in a bout with him. By the time they were both exhausted, Richard had a number of small, painful bruises testifying to his failure to concentrate.

“Is there any progress on Ash’s business?” Julius asked as they headed to Quex’s for a restoring drink.

“I don’t know. I haven’t seen him in two days, and I’ve no idea what he’s up to. I should see him tonight.”

“By ‘he,’ you mean Cyprian?”

“Who else should I mean?”

Julius raised his hands. “My dear chap, you are preoccupied to the point of absentmindedness. I’ve been wondering if this could be all Ash’s trouble.”

“Isn’t that enough?”

Julius shot him a glance. “Yes, I suppose it is. I like that man, you know.”

“I beg your pardon?”

“Cyprian.” Julius twirled his cane, looking the picture of an unconcerned exquisite. “Intelligent. Shrewd. Quite as ruthless as you but not encumbered by
noblesse oblige.
”

“I don’t know why you say that,” Richard said stiffly.

“My dear fellow, it is not a criticism. Every Elizabeth needs a Walsingham to effect the tasks beneath her dignity. The monarch in state and the spymaster behind the scenes.”

“I understand you mean to be offensive,” Richard said. “I’m not sure why.”

“For once, I don’t. I simply observe that you and Cyprian are—how may I put this?—a unity. A chimera? A being in two parts anyway.”

“That can hardly be the case since he no longer works for me.”

“True, except in the small detail that he is working round the clock for you now.”

“That’s different.”

“People always say that, you know,” Julius observed. “And yet, somehow, it never is. Here we are.”

They walked together up to the door of Quex’s. It was held open by a liveried footman, who gave a deep bow. “Begging your pardon, Lord Richard, but Mr. Shakespeare requests a moment of your time.”

Richard exchanged a glance with Julius and nodded. By the time the footman had relieved them of coats, canes, and hats, Shakespeare was in the hall.

The majordomo of Quex’s was a serious-looking man, well built, with the air of quiet dignity that marked the best servants; if he had not been the darkest-skinned black man Richard had ever met, he could have been a butler in an excellent house by now. Then again, according to David, Shakespeare and his partner Quex thrived on the house they ran for Richard’s benefit. It was a club, the deepest of gambling hells for men who chose to play as Francis did, and a place the Ricardians’ secrets could be kept. Richard had indicated what he wanted; David had found Quex and Shakespeare to create it. Yet another of those tasks beneath Richard’s dignity.

He pushed that thought away. “Shakespeare.”

“My lord. May I ask you to accompany me to the private rooms?”

Shakespeare led the way. He gave a single rap on the door and pushed it open.

A man was sitting by the fire. He looked around as they came in, and Richard felt a sudden lurch of eerie, unsettled half familiarity, as though he had lived through this before. In fact, he had. Six months ago, he had walked into this room to find Dominic sitting in that chair with the first stages of a spectacular black eye. Now the bruised man in the chair was David.

The memory came and went in half a second, and then Richard was over by the fire. He would have dropped to his knees by the chair, but David rose too quickly.

“What the devil happened?” Richard demanded instead, and heard his voice ring off the walls.

David put a hand up to his own face without touching it. His skin was paler than usual and marred by an ugly red mark and a nasty split over the cheekbone. “Lord Maltravers hit me.”

Richard wasn’t sure what he said to that. He felt nothing but the urgent need to get Maltravers’s throat in his hands, followed, some uncertain time later, by the awareness that Julius and Shakespeare were both hanging on to his arms.

“My lord!” David had darted around and was in front of Richard, hands out. “It doesn’t matter.”

“Yes, it does!” Richard wrenched his arm out of Julius’s hold, since Shakespeare was not to be dislodged. “God rot it, David, I did not ask you to endure this indignity! What the
devil
—”

“Let him tell us,” Julius suggested. “Cyprian, I have spent years being offensive to Lord Maltravers without effect. I should dearly love to provoke him to strike me. Do share your methods.”

“It’s easy, Mr. Norreys,” David said. “Just be unable to hit back.”

There was a very slight shake to his voice. Richard wanted more than anything to hold him, to wrap his slim frame in warmth and tell him Lord Maltravers would not touch him again. He clenched his fists.

“Yes, I see.” Julius sounded rather detached, in the way he did when he was very angry. “Of course it is. I beg your pardon.”

Richard extended a hand toward David’s darkening skin and pulled it back before he could touch. “Has someone cleaned that?”

“Will did. He’s very handy.”

“Are you all right?”

“Yes, truly. It wasn’t—pleasant but no harm done.” David put his hand to his face and winced. His slim, work-hardened fingers were trembling.

He was a valet, not a ruffian or a gentleman with the leisure to spar at Cribb’s or fence at Angelo’s, and the anger fizzed in Richard’s blood. “This is a damned outrage. What the devil was he about?”

David gave a rueful smile. “I provoked him.”

“That is not an excuse—” Richard began, and then saw the look in David’s eyes. “Do you mean on purpose? You
wanted
him to hit you?”

“I underestimated how hard he’d do it. My mistake. It may be to the good anyway.”

“I want to know what you’ve been up to,” Richard said firmly. “In detail.”

“I’ll tell you when Mr. Frey and Lord Gabriel arrive. It’s a long story.”

Dominic and Ash came in a few minutes later. They took their seats with startled glances at David’s appearance. Richard stood by the fire watching. He could almost see the patches on the rug where they had fucked that night, where David had claimed him and marked the room forever. He couldn’t believe the others didn’t know it simply by being there.

“Thank you for coming, gentlemen,” David said. “I went today to secure the post of valet to Lord Maltravers.”

“What?” Richard said explosively.

“I made him believe that I was your disaffected servant. He wanted to hear secrets about your lordship’s household and friends, something that would help him in his attack on Lord Gabriel and Silas. He engaged me on the spot—”

“
What?
Engaged?”

David winced. “I signed a contract.”

“Oh God, no, don’t do that,” Ash said urgently. “He’s a brute. Well, you found that out.”

“You contracted yourself to Lord Maltravers?” Richard asked. “Under law?”

“I needed to be plausible, my lord. I could not approach him for a post and then disappear, especially if a letter was to go missing. He could destroy my professional reputation if he accused me of being a thief.”

Richard opened his mouth to assure David he would never lack for employment but caught himself in time. “No, I see that would not do. But you cannot mean to work for the damned fellow. And why did he hit you?”

“I allowed him to think that I would give him incriminating gossip on Silas, and Lord Gabriel, and you,” David said. “I refused to answer questions until I was engaged with a contract. I made him increase the offered salary two and a half times as well.”

“My God,” Ash said. “That’s
not
a good idea. Mal hates being bargained with.”

“Yes, Lord Gabriel. I was trying to make him angry.” The cut on his cheek had opened again while he spoke. Richard pulled out his handkerchief and handed it over. David took it, glancing at the fine linen with a tiny twitch of a brow. Richard felt a sudden guilt at the thought that David would be getting the blood out of the cloth himself, then remembered that of course he would not.

“He had the contract of employment drawn up there and then,” David went on. “As soon as I signed, he began to interrogate me about what I knew.”

“Dare we ask what you told him?” Julius murmured.

“That Lord Gabriel—I beg your lordship’s pardon—had made a nuisance of himself with a maidservant who had feared she was with child, but wasn’t. That Mr. Webster is considered to gamble unwisely. Also, that Mr. Mason used to be a radical and Mr. Harry had worked with him in a political bookshop. He did not appear to feel any of that information was worth the salary.”

“I’m not surprised.” Dominic was grinning broadly. “That should teach him to buy a pig in a poke.”

“His lordship was not pleased,” David agreed.

“I bet,” Ash said. “What happened?”

“He asked me some leading questions, your lordship, about you and Mr. Webster, about Mr. Mason and the Cato Street raid, and then about Lord Richard.” David flicked a glance at Richard. “He demanded to know about your personal, uh, irregularities, my lord. He…speculated.”

Richard could feel the blood rising in his cheeks. He knew very well that Ash had laid that lure under David’s direction, but the knowledge did nothing to stem his sense of outrage.

“I made him spell out what he wanted me to say until he was quite furious,” David went on. “It lowered his opinion of himself, you see, to admit to what he wanted, and Lord Maltravers does not like to have a low opinion of himself. And once he was very angry indeed, I told him I would not say any of it, and that was when he hit me. Several times. And then he, uh, he reached for a stick, and I ran from the house.”

“I am going to kill him,” Richard said. “I will
kill
him.”

“Don’t hesitate on my account,” Ash said. “I am so sorry, Cyprian.”

“Let’s direct our indignation into whatever Cyprian’s next step is,” Julius suggested. “Since he is building a perfectly serviceable hell for his lordship already. What is our next move?”

“A moment,” Richard said. “Cyprian, you will oblige me by speaking to my lawyer about this contract with Maltravers. He is to be ready to deal with it as soon as you give the word. And if you go back to that man’s establishment, I shall break his neck with my own hands, and be damned to your plans. Understood? Then carry on.”

“Thank you, my lord.” David sounded very demure. “The next move is to retrieve the letter.”

“You know where it is?” Ash demanded, sitting bolt upright.

“I have an idea.” David took the bloodstained handkerchief from his face. “Lord Maltravers told you it was in safekeeping. I think that’s true. Certainly he was not concerned about allowing me unsupervised in his house. And, gentlemen, if you had a crucial letter that your opponent would be desperate to retrieve, would you leave it in Lord Maltravers’s possession?”

“Well, no,” Julius said. “I doubt Lord Maltravers would see it that way.”

“No, but Mr. Skelton might,” David said. He looked a little worn, but his lips were curving in that foxy smile. “Lord Maltravers’s valet told me that his lordship and Mr. Skelton had argued. Mr. Skelton had shouted that he would not be let down again.”

“Let down,” Dominic repeated. “You think Skelton doesn’t trust Maltravers to hold his course?”

“Precisely, Mr. Frey. Lord Maltravers did not come up with that demand against Mason on his own. I think he went to Skelton for advice on what to do with the letter, and I suspect that Mr. Skelton made it a condition of his involvement that he should hold it, because—”

“Lord Maltravers has pulled the rug from under him once already, over that business with Harry,” Dominic came in over him. “Skelton cannot afford another damp squib like that.”

“Wait.
Wait.
” Ash’s eyes were stricken. “You think Mal went to this fellow and said,
Look what my brother’s been up to; here’s the letter
? Mal did
that
?”

Richard put a hand on Ash’s shoulder. David shook his head. “I doubt it, Lord Gabriel. Mr. Skelton is not a highborn man, entitled to hear a noble family’s secrets. I suspect Lord Maltravers told him,
I have a hold over my brother
and not what it is.”

“Ash said Skelton spoke to him separately, that he did not mention the blackmail,” Dominic told David. “And he and Francis have not been followed. I feel quite sure that if Skelton knew what was going on, his first step would have been to get supporting evidence. It would certainly have been mine. I think you’re right, Mr. Cyprian. Skelton can’t know what’s in the letter. But you still think he has it?”

When Dominic applied his full attention, Richard well knew, it was an almost tangible thing. He was applying it to David now, focusing on him to the exclusion of all the others, and Richard could see the gleam in David’s eyes as the unspoken alliance took hold. The two loves of his life, plotting together. He felt a little breathless.

“I think there’s a good chance he holds it,” David said. “Perhaps his lordship may keep it at his bank or in a strongbox, of course. But what I see is a balance of mistrust. Lord Maltravers has power over Lord Gabriel, lacks the brains to use it without Skelton, but is too proud to take him into his confidence. And Skelton has been badly stung. Twice now he has made an attempt on Silas and Mr. Harry and been thwarted. I don’t think he would risk serving as Lord Maltravers’s weapon once more when he has misfired already
and
when he is being kept in the dark. Not without a safeguard.”

“The past incidents have done his career no good at all,” Dominic agreed. “A third failure—I think you’re right. If I were him, I should protect myself. And if he is doing that—”

“We can take him off the board altogether. How is that progressing, Mr. Frey?”

“All set up, Mr. Cyprian.” Dominic smiled, and David smiled back, and their expressions sent a shiver down Richard’s neck. “Name your time.”

David was exhausted by the time they had finished their discussions. His ribs hurt, and his face hurt, and he felt miserably shaky on his feet. He hadn’t been hit since he was a child, and the assault had been a more frightening, unmanning experience than he’d believed possible.