A Gentleman's Position (Society of Gentlemen) (9 page)

“What the— How do you know that?”

“I thought about what I knew of his friends and acquaintances and asked them, much as you might have.”

“Yes,” Richard said, mortified. “I see.”

“At least you thought to ask me. She lives in a village some few miles from Cirencester. The town Cirencester, I mean. I couldn’t find out which, but I understand she’s married to the parson there, so it should not be too hard for you to discover her. Good luck, dear fellow, and now kindly take yourself off. I’m going back to bed.”

“So you’re Mrs. Fleming’s lad?”

David smiled at the butcher as he handed over his money. “It’s the eyes, isn’t it? Striking resemblance.”

The butcher gave a full-throated roar of laughter. “Aye, that’s it. Hear that, Samuel? It’s the eyes!” His apprentice joined in, chortling, and they exchanged a few more pleasantries along with the bacon before David left the shop.

He couldn’t resent the comments: his mother’s once-vibrant red hair was shot with sandy silver now, but it was still bright enough to attract attention. In any case, he had detected no scorn in the butcher’s voice, just the usual heavy-handed jollity. David’s mother had lived in the little village of Cricklade for ten years, and she made friends easily. The redheaded son of her first marriage was very welcome.

Such an easy thing, to be liked. All you had to do was make sure people didn’t know you.

David walked back through the grounds of St. Sampson’s, the ancient stone church standing foursquare in the dappled light, and around to the rectory on Church Lane. It was, he reminded himself, perfectly acceptable to use the front door. This was his mother’s home now.

“Good afternoon. I have the bacon,” he called, hanging up his coat without looking.

“David?” His stepfather’s voice came from the drawing room, sounding rather careful. “Could you come in here?”

Mother.
It didn’t matter that he’d seen her at breakfast; the fear was always there. He dropped the parcel on the hall table, hurried into the comfortable little room, and stopped in his tracks, because it was full of noblemen.

Mr. Fleming, in clerical black, was perched on the edge of his usual chair, back stiff with respectfulness. His wife, with her red plaits looped around her head, was rigid too, but not with respect. David could feel her quivering tension.

Lord Richard sat on a chair too small for him, with one of the best bone china teacups looking ludicrously fragile in his hand. He seemed to David to take up half the room and most of the air.

“Your lordship,” David managed through stiff lips.

“Cyprian.” Lord Richard smiled, a society smile. “Mr. and Mrs. Fleming have been very hospitable to me while I waited for you.”

David had been out for hours, walking the Cotswold fields, inhaling clean air, trying to breathe out his anger and resentment. How long had Lord Richard been imposing his bulk and authority here in David’s mother’s home?

His mother was also wearing a company smile, but David could see the vixen look in her eyes, and so, quite evidently, could Mr. Fleming. He shot her a nervous glance. “I, uh, assume this is on your business, David, so, my dear, perhaps we should…If you will excuse us, my lord?”

Ellie Fleming did not look at all inclined to leave them to it, but David gave her the faintest nod of confirmation. She rose. “Of course. With your permission, my lord. I’m quite sure you have much to discuss with my son.” She gave Lord Richard a sharp smile with the last words. He blinked.

David shut the door behind his parents, held on to the handle, and rested his forehead against the wood, gathering his strength. “What do you want, your lordship?”

“Your mother is a very beautiful woman,” Lord Richard said, ignoring the question. “The resemblance is striking.”

David turned at that. Lord Richard had stood. He looked a trifle travel stained, his coat and boots needed brushing, and his deep blue gaze was locked on David.

“How did you find me?” David asked.

“You had a day off to visit your mother when we were at Tarlton March two years ago. I did not know her name, but she was discoverable with a little effort.”

A little effort.
“What do you want?”

It would have occurred to all the Ricardians how much David knew about them. He was braced for a threat, a bribe, even an offer of his job back, and he had thought long and hard about some of the things he would say to any of that. He readied himself to say them now.

“I want to beg your pardon,” Lord Richard said, and knocked David’s breath out of him. “To offer my regrets. And, if you will, to talk.”

“My pardon. For what?” The tension was squirming in his stomach.

Lord Richard glanced at the door. “Could we, perhaps, take a walk?”

David led him along the high street. Most of its houses were small and squat, but they were Cotswold stone, and the street glowed gold in the sun. The pair of them earned some startled glances. Lord Richard’s size and sober magnificence attracted attention everywhere, and this was Vane country, with Cirencester not twenty miles distant. People knew him here.

David stopped on the stone bridge over the little stream, looking down at the trickling waters. “This is the Thames.”

“If you mean to startle me with that fact, you will be disappointed. Dominic and I used to ride to the Thames Head at Kemble when we were boys and imagine ourselves sailing to London. Are you from Cricklade? I don’t even know where you were brought up.”

“London.” David set off along the path toward the water meadows. There were a few workers and walkers around, nobody close enough to hear. “We may talk out here, I think. What do you want with me, your lordship?”

“As I said, I owe you an apology. I’m sorry, Cyprian. I am appalled you felt the need to flee my house, that I drove you to it. I should have talked to you, listened to you, and as for hurting you—I cannot say how much I regret that.”

Breathe in, breathe out.
“And kissing me. Do you regret
that
?”

“I damned well regret the consequences.”

“Good.”

They walked on a few paces.

“Is that to indicate you would prefer me to leave you?” Lord Richard asked. “Or are you willing to talk further?”

“I don’t see what there is to say.” David stopped and turned to face him. “My—Lord Richard, let us be frank. I allowed myself to feel sentiments that you cannot or will not return. I am to blame for that. I dreamed above my station and paid the price for it. But I am now awake, and I cannot return to working for you. It is not fair to myself.”

Lord Richard began to say something. David turned to walk onward and felt the bigger man pacing him, limiting his long stride.

“You were quite right, your lordship,” David went on. “Anything between us would be—would have been—an injustice. I did not believe it, but you proved it to me.”

“When I pushed you,” Lord Richard said low.

“When you gave me no choice. When you made the decision for both of us without thinking to consult me. When you assumed, my lord, that although I have been managing your life for four years and more, I am not fit to manage my own.”

There was a very long silence.

“I see,” Lord Richard said at last. “I have more to regret than I thought.”

“You were right, your lordship,” David repeated. “It is not possible that someone of your station could condescend to someone of mine. You could certainly not do it for very long. I allowed myself to believe that affection might outweigh pride, but that was foolish. I am grateful to your lordship for your wisdom in this.”

“My God. I preferred it when you were on my side.”

So had David. He walked on.

“You are right,” Lord Richard continued. “About everything, including my overbearing ways, and I think we have shown between us why a liaison would never work. But I feel your absence.”

“Hire a new valet.”

“I wish people would stop telling me that,” Lord Richard said testily. “I don’t want a new valet. I miss you, Cyprian. As a companion, as an invaluable ally, as…as a friend.”

David shut his eyes.
I miss you too,
he wanted to say, but this was the way of madness.

“Thank you, your lordship,” he managed. “And I am sorry too. I did wrong that night, and I know it, but all that granted, where does it leave us now? You will not enter into relations with your servant, so there is no more to be said. I would have taken that risk for you, but you would not for me.” He heard Lord Richard begin to speak and cut him off. “And I cannot work for you feeling as I do and knowing it is not returned.”

“You do not know that.” Lord Richard’s voice was so deep it seemed to resonate in David’s ears. “Believe me, Cyprian, you are not the only fool here.”

“That is even worse,” David said bitterly. “That is infinitely worse.”

“I know.”

David stared at the lush grass of the water meadow. It was bright with flowers, yellow ones that hung down and purple ones that went up. He had no idea what they were called. Lord Richard had never needed him to find out.

“Tell me something,” Lord Richard said after a while. “Why did your mother look at me as though she wanted to stab me with a cake fork?”

“Because she does.”

“What did you tell her?”

“Everything.” Lord Richard’s eyes widened in shock. “We’re close. I trust her absolutely, and I would destroy anyone,
anyone
who thought of harming her.”

“Is that a warning? You cannot suppose I would take out any resentment on an innocent party. Good God.”

David shrugged. It was a disrespectful, liberating movement. He put his hands in his pockets for good measure. “As you have said, you have all the power. I must protect myself.”

“I have attempted to protect you.”

“But you did not. You did the opposite.”

“Yes, because I was attempting not to make a mull of things, and I am very aware of my failure there.” Humiliation stained Lord Richard’s voice. “I don’t know what to offer you except my regret. I have no idea what I should have done better, how this damned tangle could have been prevented. I’m sorry. I have never fallen in love outside my station before.”

David stopped dead. “I beg your pardon,” he choked out when he could command his voice, “but what did you say?”

“I can’t tell you how much I miss you,” Lord Richard said softly. “Everything is so damned unsatisfactory in your absence. I wanted you so much for so long and told myself so often that I could not have you, and when you had the courage to say what we both knew, I lost my head. I am well aware you may not wish to hear this now, and God knows it changes nothing. But you were a great deal braver than I, and at the least, I owe you the truth.”

David remembered to breathe. “But…”

“It changes nothing,” Lord Richard repeated. “God knows I am tempted to declare all for love and the world well lost, but I cannot abandon my responsibilities, my brother. I have a household full of staff who know my every movement; if I set up a lover, it would be notorious within days. And I don’t want that anyway. I want you
there,
with me, so much that I have been unable to think without you. But the only way you and I can be together is with you as my servant, and no matter how much I tell myself that could be right, that we could
make
it right, I cannot believe it to be true. God damn it.”

David set his jaw. “Why are you here, your lordship? What are you asking me?”

“I’m not sure I’m asking anything. I don’t know what there is to ask for. I had to see you, that’s all.” He pulled a flower head from a high stalk and rolled it in his fingers. “Ah, Cyprian. Deal with this for me.”

He’d said that so often in the last few years, and every time, David had. The words caught at his breath like claws. He looked up, mouth open, and saw an expression in Lord Richard’s eyes that made it all so much worse.

“I don’t know what to do, my lord. If I did, I’d have done it already.”

“Yes, I dare say you would,” Lord Richard said. “We cannot have each other while you work for me, we cannot see each other if you do not, we cannot be as we were, and I cannot stand to be without you. I don’t know what that leaves.”

David steeled himself. “It leaves nothing while you feel as you do about me working for you. And perhaps you’re right to feel that. You feared that you would ride roughshod over me, and you did.”
You still are,
he did not add. If Lord Richard would simply ask him to come back as his valet—

Stupid. Stupid.

“Yes,” Lord Richard said. “That is what happens, you see, when one person has all the power and the other none. I don’t know what I thought I could achieve by coming here, and perhaps I should have left all this unsaid, but…” He made a hopeless gesture. “My house feels so damned empty now.”

David wanted to say,
I’m glad you came,
but he wasn’t sure it was true. “It hasn’t made things worse, at least. I’m grateful you made the effort.”

“I don’t want your gratitude.”

“There is nothing else I can give you.”

Lord Richard took his arm, tugging him to a stop and turning him so they faced each other. “I am not asking for anything. I have hurt you already, sent you fleeing from me, and even if I had not, there is no future in this. That is quite clear.” He gave a half smile. “I wish there were. I thought I missed you when you were gone, but it feels so much worse now I see you here. You as yourself with the sun on your hair.” He reached out to brush a loose red strand back from David’s forehead and tucked it behind his ear with care. David felt his lungs constrict. “Good God, you’re lovely. Your hair.”

“You hate my hair,” David pointed out, feeling that little resentment catch and burn.

“Your hair is the most beautiful thing in the world,” Lord Richard said simply, and David’s mouth dropped open.

“What?” His voice rose with incredulity. “I have been powdering it for years because you didn’t want to look at it!”

“Because I couldn’t trust myself to look at it,” Lord Richard said. “From the moment you walked in, the very first day, I couldn’t think for the sight of it. It’s stunning.”

Years of powder on his hair and coats and over everything he owned, and that was why? David found himself speechless, but Lord Richard was still talking.

“I want to look. To touch. I want to take handfuls of that hair for myself, to follow it all the way down and find out if you are red all over. It is irresistible.
You
are irresistible. Sweet God, Cyprian, will you give me tonight? Just one night together, not lords and valets, just you and me. Could we have that?”

There was sudden urgent need in Lord Richard’s voice, and it lit up David’s nerves like a blaze of candles, heat leaping out. He swallowed hard. “Is this wise?”