Alec sat in the Earl of Hartington’s drawing-room, knees pressed together, carefully holding his teacup. The clock ticked. He felt unwell.

“What...” George’s lips moved as though he were trying out phrases, or his brain wasn’t quite connecting to his mouth. “What do you mean you’ve written to Father?”

Alec felt a stab of guilt. George looked so worn. His cuffs had clearly been turned, his furniture was faded, his wife was swelling with her third child and obviously not enjoying the process any more than the first two because she looked pallid and drawn. Alec had made a vow not to add to George’s burdens and had prided himself on achieving financial independence, about which his brother had been vocally disapproving and privately relieved. He didn’t want to make things worse now. He wished Melissa and Annabel weren’t here.

“Written to say what?” Annabel demanded. She was looking well in a dress that wasn’t too obviously last season’s and was decidedly fresher than Melissa’s voluminous garment, reused from her previous interesting condition. “What do you mean, Alec?”

Alec exhaled. “I wrote to ask him for a rapprochement. To get back into his good books. That’s all.”

“You wrote? To him? After Cara? After everything, you actually wrote—” Annabel’s voice was rising rapidly up the scale.

“You cannot be serious,” George said. “Does the gross insult he offered our sister mean nothing? Do you propose to call that woman mother? Have you run mad?”

“No, I haven’t. The fact is, I need rather more money than I can earn. That’s all there is to it.”

“You said you were doing well. You said you didn’t need my help.”

“I’m doing perfectly well,” Alec returned without thinking. He’d made that assurance so often. “That is, I have been, but I have encountered some unexpected expenses and I’m tired of scrimping and saving and struggling to keep my head above water.”

“Don’t you think we all are?” Annabel struck in. “Haven’t we been for years? Do you think I enjoy appearing at the minimum possible of parties in a dress that’s been refurbished for the fifth time—”

“Then maybe you should follow your brother’s example if George can’t keep you to your liking,” Melissa said furiously. “Considering he supports you as well as his own children, all of whom go without for your adornment—”

“I wasn’t complaining!” Annabel cried, going scarlet. George shut his eyes.

Alec said, loudly, “But that’s the point, isn’t it? That we’re not keeping our heads above water. We’re not managing.”

“But you were,” George said. “You told me you were.”

“Well, I’m not,” Alec snapped. “Or not enough. I’ve got some bills I can’t pay and—”

“Then give them to me.” George sounded exhausted. “You know very well I never wanted to turn you into a tradesman.”

“Hartington,” Melissa said, shooting Alec a look of startling viciousness. “May I remind you your son is to start at Eton next year, and your second son will also require an education.”

“I will support my family. All of it.” George spoke with determination that was as heartfelt as it was threadbare.

“How?” Melissa almost shouted. “You’re already stretching every penny until it snaps! Will we turn off the cook next, or should you like me to black the grates myself to save the housemaid’s wages?”

“Alec has never asked me for a penny before now and if he needs help this once—”

“It’s not a case of this once and Melissa is quite right,” Alec said. “There’s no reason you should be responsible for my gambling debts.”

There was a tiny silence, then George, Melissa, and Annabel all said, “Your what?” in a discordant chorus of fury. Alec’s nausea rose; he could hardly have felt more guilty if he had indeed run up bills at baccarat. Be Lord Alexander, he told himself. Play the part.

“How can you gamble when you know damned well you can’t pay?” George thundered over the two women. “What sort of irresponsible, stupid, dishonourable way to behave—?”

“Do you have any idea how hard George works?” Melissa was demanding. “Do you have any idea how much he already has to do for your family as well as his own?”

“How could you?” Annabel cried. “Haven’t we been made enough of a disgrace already? Alec, how could you?”

Alec let his shoulders rise into a defensive hunch and adopted a petulant tone to match. “I’m Lord Alexander Pyne-ffoulkes. As George says, I oughtn’t be a tradesman.”

“You said you enjoyed it!” George protested.

“You promised you wouldn’t ask George to pay your bills,” Melissa added over him.

“Well, I’m not, and I don’t see why you’re all shouting at me as though I am. I don’t have any intention of hanging off George’s sleeve. I simply want to live according to my station, and I’m tired of this endless fighting with Father. Where did it get Cara?”

George’s mouth dropped open. Annabel said, “Alec!”

“Well, it’s true.” The words came with surprising ease now, almost as though part of him believed them. “If Cara had given up fighting with Father she might be alive today, because she’d have been living by the sea instead of coughing her lungs up in London. She’s dead, and we couldn’t even send her off with flowers, and for what? It’s not as though she persuaded anyone outside this room to take her part, or as though Father suffered in the slightest by her stand. It’s all a stupid waste of time. I’ve only got one life and one chance to enjoy it and I’m going to take it.”

“How can you?” Annabel whispered. “You know what he did.”

“I know I’m a duke’s son and I’ve spent eight years scraping a living where my peers are enjoying their youth,” Alec said. “I know I’m twenty-eight and I don’t have any prospect of more than a single room and drudging at the draughting table for the next thirty years and I’m embarrassed by my wardrobe when I mix with gentlemen. And I know that we’ll never get the victory Cara wanted. Well, I don’t propose to keep fighting a war I can’t win for no gain at all. I’m sorry if you don’t like it, but I don’t much like living this way either.”

Annabel had gone white. George was going red. Melissa looked between them, and at Alec, and he prayed with everything in him, Don’t agree with me, please, please don’t agree...

“You can’t mean it,” Annabel said. “You made a promise. Have you—have you been waiting for Cara to die so you can go back on your word?”

It was a dagger-stab, and Alec flinched. Play the part, he told himself fiercely. “Well, I do mean it, and I don’t see that a promise is binding when the person one made it to is dead, and the fact it, it wasn’t a fair promise in the first place. We only had Cara’s word for the whole thing.”

Annabel gasped shrilly. George rose. “Leave,” he said, and the harried household manager sounded like a peer of the realm then. “Get out of my house, Alec. I hope you will think again but don’t come back until you do. Cara—your promise— Get out. Get out of my sight.”

“There’s no need to be like that,” Alec said, through lips that hurt, and that was when George started shouting.

***

ALEC WAS STILL STIFF with misery the next day, filled with it so that every thought he had floated on a dark churning sea of unhappiness. He dressed for the evening with automatic movements and felt like an observer of the whole proceeding, as if he were watching himself on the stage. The Second Villain, weak and vile, cast out by his family.

He hadn’t even heard back from his father. He’d cast every relationship that mattered into hazard, bet it all on a single card that wouldn’t be turned over for God knew how long. If Father had his secretary write back to signal his lack of interest in his second son...

He did not want to go out with Crozier now. He wanted nothing less than to pretend friendship with the vicious devil who was escorting him down a path he should have rejected out of hand the moment it was proposed. But he was the one who’d started this, he’d thrown away the love and respect of his siblings by his own choice, and he might as well carry it through. So he dressed with no enthusiasm at all, and dragged himself wearily to the Cafe Royal.

Crozier was waiting at a table. He rose to greet Alec with a smile that turned to a look of concern in which Alec didn’t believe for a minute. “I say, old fellow, are you all right?”

“Not marvellous,” Alec said, sitting. “I’ve done that business of which we spoke when we last met. Wrote my letter. Spoke to my brother and sister."

“Have you had a reply to the letter?”

“No. It was entirely as you’d have wished,” he added bitterly. “I crawled on my belly with all the unctuous phrasing at my disposal.”

Crozier’s brows rose. “You look like you need a drink. Waiter!” He lifted a finger. “We’re in urgent need of a bottle of champagne here. Lord Alexander requires a hair of the dog that bit him before his respected father does the same. Talking of whom, is the Duke of Ilvar expected in tonight? Find out, will you?”

The waiter bowed and removed himself. Alec blinked. Crozier had suddenly become the epitome of the affable, confident, very nearly vulgar man about town, the character shift total and somewhat unnerving. “Are you serious? Is my father coming here?”

“I doubt it. I just want your presence noted. So, an unpleasant conversation with your siblings. What did you tell them?”

“That I’d decided to give in because I had gambling debts and I was tired of fighting.”

Crozier nodded. “Well done.”

“Is that all you have to say?” Alec demanded. He wasn’t even sure what he thought Crozier should say; he simply wanted to hit back at someone in this miserable mess he’d created. “I’ve alienated my brother and sister, and for what?”

“In the larger sense, don’t ask me,” Crozier said. “From my point of view, you’ve taken a temporary loss to play for a very substantial gain.”

“If it happens.”

“Granted, but this is how you’ll make it happen. It’s a long game. I told you that.”

The waiter reappeared with a bottle, which he uncorked with a loud pop, adding a bow to Alec and a murmured regret that His Grace of Ilvar was not in fact expected. Crozier thanked him, and slipped him a generous tip once the glasses were filled.

“Your health.”

Alec made himself raise his own glass. “I’ve no desire to get drunk again.”

“Very wise. But I’d rather you didn’t look like a man on the way to his own execution. Can you cheer up, do you think?”

“I doubt it, since I’ve alienated the people I most care for,” Alec said, low and savage. “You told me you weren’t sorry for anything you’ve done. I’d like to know how you manage that.”

“Practice helps. So does enjoying the fruits of your actions, which you won’t do for a while. So, also, does reminding yourself that shame is merely society’s weapon, used to keep us obedient.”

“Sorry?” Alec said. “I wasn’t expecting political philosophy.”

“It’s not complicated. I’m sure you’ve done things of which you’d be utterly ashamed if they were made public, while feeling perfectly content with the actions themselves. Therefore, shame isn’t about what you do, just what gets found out.”

“Rubbish,” Alec said. “Of course we ought to be ashamed of things we do. I am.”

“And will you withdraw your letter and tell Hartington and Lady Annabel you’ve changed your mind? Go back on yourself with nothing achieved?”

Alec snorted. “You sound like Macbeth. ‘I am in blood stepped in so far that, should I wade no more, returning were as tedious as go o’er.’ Nobody would ever repent based on that argument.”

“People repent when they fail,” Crozier said. “‘But screw your courage to the sticking-place and we’ll not fail.’”

“You know your Shakespeare. So you must know that attitude didn’t go well for Macbeth.”

“He was infirm of purpose. Are you?”

“I’m disgusted with myself.” Alec tossed back his champagne in a gulp. Crozier reached across with the bottle to top up his glass. “If you’re interested in how I feel, that’s how. I feel dirtied and degraded in my own eyes—”

“I told you to create a part and act it.”

“I did. But it’s no good saying that my grovelling to Father was false if my brother’s anger and my sister’s disgust are real.”

“But they aren’t,” Crozier said. “Or, at least, they aren’t based in reality. They’ve formed a mistaken impression of you, admittedly because you’ve deliberately given them that wrong impression, but it’s still wrong.”

“And they still won’t want to speak to me.”

“How fortunate that you’ll be preoccupied.” Crozier’s brows angled invitingly. “You’ve a lot of ground to make up with the Duke in a short time. I’ve got things in hand but you, my friend, will need a smile on your face. Tell me, what would put one there? You didn’t seem a particular aficionado of the music hall. The opera? The theatre? Sporting events? No? Then what?”

As though Alec gave a damn for fashionable entertainments. “I don’t care. Whatever you want.”

Crozier picked up his glass and took a deliberate sip. “You’re not listening. I want you looking significantly less doom-laden, so we’re going to talk about things you enjoy. What are those?”

“Oh, I don’t know. I like the theatre but I haven’t seen anything recently, so I can hardly make conversation about that.”

“Then I shall procure tickets for something. Melodrama or the nobler heights of Shakespeare?”

“Whatever you choose.”

Crozier exhaled audibly. Alec hunched a shoulder. “You want to exhibit me in public as part of your ‘long game’. Forgive me if I don’t find that an enjoyable prospect.”

Crozier’s facial expression didn’t change, but his eyes did. They hardened, or chilled, so that he looked quite suddenly like a man who broke the law for a living, and Alec felt a pulse of sudden alarm. He knew damned well he was behaving like a sulky boy over a fate he had brought on himself, and it seemed as though Crozier’s patience with that had come to an end.

Crozier leaned forward over the table, wearing a pleasant smile that didn’t touch his eyes. Alec knew an impulse to blurt an apology, if it would only head off whatever was coming.

“Lord Alexander,” Crozier murmured in a confiding tone. “Apparently I need to make myself clear. The purpose of this excursion is to establish that you’re charmed and delighted by your new best friend, so you will be charmed and delighted or I will fucking make you. I suggest you fix your thoughts on eleven thousand pounds’ worth of shiny stones, and the chance to stick it to the Duke in a way he won’t forget.” He smiled with a clubman’s practised warmth. “And if you still want to wallow in self-disgust and degradation, I will happily take you into a back alley and give you something to be really ashamed of. Anything to cheer you up.”

Alec felt his mouth drop open. Crozier lifted his glass and tilted it as though making a toast. “I don’t care how you approach your role, Lord Alexander. Willing or not, you’re going to do what I want, so you might as well take it with grace. As it were.”

Alec could feel, physically feel, the blood rushing to his cheeks. “That’s—that’s—”

“Entirely up to you,” Crozier completed for him. “Notwithstanding, you seem to be struggling with all sorts of moral complexities and remorse and self-doubt, none of which I find troublesome. I could take charge of this, Lord Alexander.”

“Take charge,” Alec repeated.

“Make the decisions. Tell you what to say, and write, and do. I will make sure you come out of this job clean; you have my word as a dishonest man on that. Do as I tell you, and it will all be taken care of. Might it not be easier, and more pleasant, simply to do as you’re told?”

Alec’s toes curled in his shoes. His heart was pounding with a mixture of humiliation, anger, and desperation. I’ll fucking make you still rang in his ears. “And how far does doing as I’m told extend?”

“Smile,” Crozier said. “The waiter is coming. We’re having a pleasant chat. Smile, now.”

Alec forced his mouth into the required shape. “I’m not hungry.”

“But you’re going to eat. Ah, marvellous,” he added to the waiter with an instant smile. “Tell me, is Monsieur Francois offering his sweetbreads tonight? For both of us then, and a half bottle of Pouligny-Montrachet, I think. One hates to rush a good wine, but Lord Alexander has an engagement. Thank you.”

“Do I have an engagement?” Alec asked when the waiter had gone.

Crozier divided the last of the champagne between their glasses. “Do you want one?”

“I don’t know what you’re asking.” Alec felt a little flown by drink, very tired, exceedingly on edge. “I don’t understand any of this. I don’t know what to do. I had the most awful row with George and Annabel and I’m terrified my father won’t write back and it will all have been in vain. I don’t know what you want from me, and I’m tired of trying to make decisions when I’m not even sure I should be doing this at all.”

“Then let me make them. It seems to me you’ve enough to do being Alec Pyne, illustrator. Why don’t you put Lord Alexander under my direction?”

Alec could have wept. It was a momentary impulse, but so strong he had to shut his eyes briefly to regain control. He moistened his lips. Crozier’s eyes flicked to his mouth as he did it, and he saw one brow tilt. “As long as—as long as you understand the difference.”

“Well, I think I do,” Crozier said. “Do you? It seems to me that Alec is a courageous, talented, dedicated artist making a success of himself on his own terms, with admirable determination for one brought up to be an idle waste of air.”

“Oh.” Alec felt himself going pink with shock and, undeniably, a twinge of pride.

“Whereas,” Crozier continued, “and do correct me if I’m wrong, Lord Alexander might be that very idle waste of air. Lacking in all determination, all too ready to bend to the whim of a stronger will. Positively wanting to be given orders—or even not to be given a choice?—in a way that Alec’s pride couldn’t possibly condone.”

“You make me sound like Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde.”

“Dr. Jekyll’s hidden urges were monstrous ones, if I recall. Selfish cruelties and callousness. I think your secret vices are an entirely different matter.”

“What about you?” Alec demanded. “Do you have a Mr. Hyde, or am I talking to him now?”

Crozier threw his head back and laughed. “Ha! No, the good doctor’s potion wouldn’t do much for me. I fear there’s no virtuous do-gooder lurking within.”

“You don’t have a secret life as a vicar?”

“No, I’m straightforwardly disgraceful.” Crozier grinned at him. “And you’re changing the subject.”

“So would you, if you were me.”

“My friend, if I were you, I’d have gone out and taken what I wanted years ago. Or, rather, given it. May I make a proposal?”

“What?” Alex said, with some trepidation.

“We’ll eat. Discuss work and theatre and light subjects. And then we’ll go somewhere private and you will tell me, quite honestly, what, let us say, Lord Alexander wants, without shame or prevarication or fear of being overheard. The truth. Have you ever told anyone the truth?”

“More often than you, I’d bet!”

Crozier grinned crookedly. “On this specific subject. No, I didn’t think so, somehow.”

“Perhaps that’s because I don’t want to.”

“Don’t you?”

Alec shifted in his chair. He wanted to keep fighting, and he wanted to surrender. He felt an urge to toss Crozier’s presumption back in his face, and a stronger one to give in, to confess the shameful desires and longings and see what happened. He wondered if he’d feel this urge to confess after participating in a robbery. Only if the policeman is particularly handsome, he told himself, and took up his glass to stifle a nervous laugh.

The sweetbreads arrived. Alec had forgotten Crozier had ordered for him, and the thought gave him an internal squirm that was somewhere between uncomfortable and enticing. He’d never have chosen sweetbreads, left to himself. They were delicious.

“So, the Shakespeare book,” Crozier said. “Have you heard anything from the publisher yet?”

Alec made some reply, was drawn to explain the commissioning process for illustrators and the likely competitors for the role, and to his own astonishment became caught up in the conversation. It felt unreal to be discussing work, and a glass of Pouligny-Montrachet on top of the champagne added to that, but he rarely had the chance to talk shop except at the Sketch, and there he was always in competition with louder, more confident men who knew they belonged. Crozier wanted to listen to him, or was astonishingly good at pretending to, and Alec was startled to discover that his plate was clear.

Crozier summoned the waiter with a crook of his finger. Alec said, “Surely I—”

“Not at all. My pleasure. Shall we go?”

Alec followed him out. Neither had brought an overcoat; the evenings were getting warm, the air thick. Alec almost wished it was colder. He felt overheated and sweaty.

They walked in what any observer might have taken for companionable silence. Alec wondered if he’d find himself pushed down an alleyway. The tension throbbed in his wrists; he flexed his hands, trying to loosen fingers that felt clumsy.

If they went down an alleyway. If Crozier told him to go to his knees. If he could just forget, let go—

He hadn’t thought about his family situation in an hour. He realised that with a small shock and felt a dull throb of misery at the reminder, but Crozier was knocking on a discreet door of a very ordinary-looking house, and greeted the slab-faced man who admitted them with a murmured word. Alec followed him in, trying to look around without showing that he was doing so. The house seemed to be a hotel, with a certain amount of noise and tobacco smoke issuing from down the hall. Crozier led the way upstairs to a small room, and ushered Alec in.

He’d expected a bedroom. He’d honestly expected that, rather than a sitting room with a small card table, a chaise longue, a couple of armchairs by the empty fireplace.

Crozier gestured to one of the chairs, and locked the door, an act that didn’t make Alec feel any more secure. “There’s brandy in the decanter, although it’s bloody awful here.”

“I’ve had enough, I think.”

“You aren’t missing anything.” He seated himself in the opposite chair, steepling his fingers. “Well, then. We said you’d tell me what it is you want.”

“No, you said that. I don’t recall agreeing.”

Crozier’s lips curled. “And yet you’re here.”

That was undeniable. Alec stared at his own hands, ink-stained, the index finger dented by use of a pen. The faint noise of male carousing rose from downstairs.

“Tell me about Lord Alexander,” Crozier said softly. “You’ve drunk Dr. Jekyll’s potion. Alec Pyne goes in like the weatherman to his house, Lord Alexander comes out. What does he want?”

“Oh, not to be responsible,” Alec said. His voice was rather thin. “To have someone—someone like you—tell him what to do. Not to have to struggle for job after job, always hoping and worrying. Not to feel guilty he can’t support himself and his sisters while his brother feels guilty for not supporting him. Not to be constantly aware of—of things that are wrong. Not to care they’re wrong.”

“No. That’s you,” Crozier said. “Lord Alexander doesn’t care. Lord Alexander is the weaknesses you fight, the moments of indulgence, the truth you’d prefer wasn’t true. What does he want?”

Alec wanted to say that was nonsense. But it had been so easy to argue against his siblings, to reject Cara’s insistence, and the promise they’d made her, and the lifetime of miserable helpless anger. He’d felt the power of the words as he’d spoken them, because they were true to his feelings in a horrible shameful way that he’d been trying to run from.

He tried to run from so much.

“And what does it mean if I tell you? That all of it is real? That it’s what I am deep down?”

“That it’s part of you,” Crozier said. “Why should it not be? Dr. Jekyll came up with his potion to separate out his worse impulses from his better precisely because he had worse impulses. Everyone does. His tragedy came about because he tried to eliminate them.”

“Whereas you think I should embrace them.”

“I think you should acknowledge they exist, and then spend less time making yourself miserable about the fact that you’re imperfect. Really, if you think you’re flawed, you ought to spend a day with Templeton.”

“But I don’t want those impulses to exist,” Alec said through his teeth. “That’s the point.”

“But they do. That’s the point. You can try to eliminate every trace of them like Dr Jekyll and tear yourself apart, though preferably not in such a Gothic manner. Or you can accept that your soul is as tarnished and mouse-nibbled as everyone else’s and consider what to do about it. You aren’t really going to give up your work and grovel to your father for income, are you? No matter how much easier and more pleasant it might make your life?”

“No.”

“Because?”

“Because it would be utterly shameful of me.”

“Why? Where does the shame lie? Who would it harm?”

“Me,” Alec said. “I’d be revolted by myself. It wouldn’t be more pleasant, it would be weak, and wrong. Utterly wrong.”

“Weak,” Crozier repeated, dwelling on the word. “Very well. In that intriguing conversation a couple of days ago, you told me that whether you like taking orders depends on the order. Do you remember that?”

“Yes.”

“Is that another of Lord Alexander’s foibles, to enjoy submission? Is that weak too?”

Crozier’s eyes were intent. Alec swallowed. He didn’t like this probing. It felt as though a scalpel were gently separating congested layers of thoughts that had become matted and tangled together, and it hurt to have them picked apart. He’d thought Crozier was simply going to fuck him. “I. Uh.”

“You aware that there is an entire industry of houses and whores that cater to such desires, because so many people share them?”

“Are you talking about flagellation and that sort of thing? Because I don’t want that. At all,” Alec added, to avoid doubt.

“Don’t want to want it, or actually don’t want it?”

“The latter. I’ve no idea why anyone would enjoy being whipped.”

“No accounting for taste,” Crozier said. “So what is your taste, Lord Alexander? What particular orders do you want to take? What is it you’d like to be made to do?”

Alec shut his eyes. He heard the soft sound of Crozier rising from his chair, sensed movement, felt a hand close gently on his chin.

“I asked you a question,” Crozier said. “Answer me. Do you want to be told what to do—in the right circumstances?”

Alec’s breathing rasped in his own ears. He wanted to say something, something clever or defiant, to push Crozier’s hand away and tell him he was entirely wrong. It would be so much easier if he was wrong.

“I think Lord Alexander is looking to surrender himself,” Crozier said softly. “That can go bad easily.” Alec wasn’t aware he’d reacted to that, but he felt Crozier’s fingers tighten slightly all the same. “And, I suspect, did. What are you thinking of?”

“There was a man.” Alec didn’t open his eyes. The room was warm; Crozier’s fingers were firm but not tight. He’d never told anyone this; there was nobody he could tell for the shame of it. Nobody except this stranger-friend, this openly dishonest man who demanded the truth, and now the words came with surprising ease. “I wanted—oh, just to have him do it. Up against a wall. I didn’t need him to care for what I wanted; I just wanted him to have his way, you see. And I said that, and when he was done he, uh, he pulled me round and spat in my face. So when you ask what I want—”

“I see,” Crozier said. “Christ. Good Lord, there are some cunts in this world.”

Alec’s eyes snapped open. Crozier released his face and propped his backside on the arm of the chair. “Do you know this fellow’s name?”

Alec shook his head. “He was just a man. Someone I met in a public house. I suppose I—”

“Don’t finish that sentence,” Crozier warned him. “Unless you were going to say ‘shouldn’t have kicked him in the balls till he passed out’, and even then I’d disagree. Well. That sounds a very discouraging experience.”

Alec attempted a smile. “You might say so.”

“Extraordinary. Here I am, entirely consumed by thoughts of pushing you up against a wall myself, biting your lovely neck and hearing you gasp as I have my way with that delectable arse, and you tell me about this mannerless tosspot. I’m offended.”

Alec stared up, speechless. Crozier brushed a strand of hair over his ear, a touch so gentle that Alec shivered. “If you want to be used, Lord Alexander, you have no idea how I should enjoy using you. And I don’t spoil my tools.”

Oh God. Alec’s throat was closing, and the blood was rushing away from his head. Crozier’s smile crooked at his silence. “I did say if.” He was so close Alec could feel his heat. They hadn’t kissed; they hadn’t even touched. “Explain it to me. The heart of it, the thing you need. Not to be hurt, I grasp that, and not to be treated with contempt. So what is it that’s making your breath short and your eyes so deliciously dark at this moment? What is it you want?”

“I don’t know. I can’t say.”

“Lord Alexander?” Crozier took his chin again, fingers a little harder this time. “I want you to explain. I don’t care how little you want to. You will tell me.”

Alec swallowed. The room felt unbearably hot and close. “Not to—not to have a choice, I suppose.”

Crozier gave a slow nod. “To say no and be overruled, powerless in a ravisher’s hands? Is that your pleasure?”

“No. No, that’s not—I don’t—”

“Spit it out,” Crozier said softly. “And don’t shut your eyes. Look at me.”

Alec clenched his hands, making himself get the words out. “It’s not that I want to be forced to anything. I just want someone else in charge. That’s all.”

“Ah.” It was a breath. “Not someone cruel, or careless. Just someone to take the burden of choice and responsibility and decision from you.”

“Yes. Yes, that’s it.” It sounded extraordinarily simple, put that way, or extraordinarily foolish. “I dare say that’s contemptible.”

“You say wrong,” Crozier told him. “A pliable, obedient young nobleman doing my bidding is the best idea I’ve heard in months. If you wanted to pant and beg and spend at my command, of course.”

“Oh God.”

Crozier’s fingers released Alec’s chin, skimmed down his throat. “You understand that I’m not a good man, don’t you?”

“Yes.”

“And yet you’d put yourself in my hands anyway.” It wasn’t exactly a question; it wasn’t quite a statement either.

“Yes,” Alec said anyway. It was what he wanted and Crozier had stripped it bare for them both.

“Entirely in my hands. Which is quite appropriate, since these hands steal jewels.” He ran his fingers up Alec’s neck, stroking the skin against the grain of stubble. “Such a pretty thing. Are you hard?”

Alec nodded. Crozier’s fingers tightened a fraction. “I like words, Lord Alexander. If I ask you a question, I expect an answer. Are you hard?”

“Yes.”

“Because?”

“You. You’re making me hard.”

Crozier rose, without letting go of Alec’s neck, manoeuvring himself round so he leaned over the back of the chair. “Unbutton yourself.”

Alec reached for his waistband. His fingers were shaking. Crozier said, “Slowly. No. Slower.”

One button. A second, a third. Alec had kept his evening dress for longer than a man of wealth would; he was glad that it wasn’t fashionably and tightly cut. He loosened his drawers, couldn’t help inhaling as his fingers bumped his own prick.

“Take it out,” Crozier said from over him. His hand encompassed Alec’s throat, pushing back slightly, just enough to be not quite comfortable. “And take hold of it. Don’t move.”

Alec swallowed, his throat working against Crozier’s fingers, his prick swollen against his own, throbbing for attention. Crozier gave a soft hiss. “Beautiful. You’ll do what I tell you.”

“Yes.”

“Let’s see you play with it. Slowly, now. Slide your fingers, up and down. Move your fingers round, I want to watch you.” Alec adjusted his grip, dreamlike. “You’re going to bring yourself off, very slowly, while I watch. I want to see you, and I want to hear you.”

Alec groaned low, the sound vibrating in his throat and against Crozier’s palm. He felt movement as Crozier leaned close.

“Rubbing yourself off in full evening dress, on the orders of a man whose face you can’t see. There’s a position to be in, Lord Alexander. Spread your legs wider. And slow down. I’m going to take my time.”

“Are you—” Alec began, and clamped his lips shut.

“I said I want to hear you. Do you want to know if I’m bringing myself off while I watch you?”

“Well. Yes.”

“No.” Crozier sounded amused. “Tempting though it is. No, I think, when I next spend, it will be with you splayed before me and crying my name.”

“Oh God.”

“If you prefer, but Jerry will do.”

Alec almost laughed, breath hiccupping. Crozier’s hand was moving now, an undulating pressure on his throat, pulsing in time with the strokes of his own hand. “Yes, I’m looking forward to making use of you. Pressing you up against a wall or pushing you down onto a bed. Both, possibly. You don’t like to talk when you fuck, do you?”

Alec shook his head, a tiny movement.

“I’ll wager you moan, though. I’m quite sure you moan and whimper and writhe while a man has his way with you. Christ, I want to use your body till I’m sated and you’re sobbing. Faster, now. I want you to spend knowing I’m going to fuck you, and how hard, and to think about spreading your legs when I tell you to—”

“Jesus!” Alec said, and then he was coming, prick pulsing in his fingers, Crozier’s hand pushing brutally hard against his throat so that his head was held back as his hips jerked helplessly. Imprisoned, and coming for his gaoler. He gasped and spasmed, shuddering in relief, and Crozier’s grip relaxed.

“Christ,” he said, sounding almost a little shaky. “Well.”

Alec licked his lips. He’d managed not to spend on his black trousers, thank heavens, but his hand was sticky. Crozier’s arm came over the chair, holding out a handkerchief.

“Thanks,” Alec managed.

“My pleasure. In every possible sense. Did I gauge that correctly?”

Alec nodded, concentrating on cleaning himself up, not sure he could look round. “Yes. Very much.”

“Good. Excellent,” Crozier said. “In that case, I will see you in, shall we say two days?”

Alec jerked round in the chair. Crozier was still leaning on the high back. He wore his usual mildly amused expression, except that his pupils were wide, his lips reddened and slightly parted. “But—Aren’t you going to—”

Crozier extended one arm and touched his finger to Alec’s lips, as a nursemaid would a child who needed silencing. “Who gives the orders here, Lord Alexander?”

It sent a shudder through him. “You,” he said, against the pressure of the finger.

“If I want to fuck you, I’ll tell you so. Or I’ll just do it. Push you up against the wall without a word, shove your trousers down and have you in silence, without troubling to discuss the matter. I wonder if you’d come harder that way.”

“I don’t know,” Alec whispered, feeling the pressure against his lips. Please do that. Please.

Crozier held his gaze for a moment longer, then stepped away. “We may find out, sooner or later. So we both know where we stand, I’m not going to seek permission, but I will take refusal.” Alec nodded, but apparently that wasn’t enough, because Crozier’s eyes narrowed. “I’m not sure you’re listening, Lord Alexander. If something is not to your liking you will say so. I don’t take pleasure in inflicting unwanted suffering. Unlike wanted suffering, which I can do all day. Got it?”

“Yes. I’ll say.”

“Good. After all, I can be so much worse if I can push to the edges of your pleasures.”

Alec gave him a look. “Is that intended to be an inducement?”

Crozier grinned evilly. “You tell me. Very well. I shall seek theatre tickets.”

“You’ll what?”

“Theatre. We discussed it at dinner, remember? I’m tempted to suggest the touring production of Jekyll and Hyde. It’s well done, and seems somehow appropriate. I’d be happy to see that again.”

“I’ve heard it’s very good.” Apparently they really weren’t fucking any more. Alec got up, straightening his clothing, legs a little uncertain under him. “I’d like to see it.”

“You’ll receive instructions. If you haven’t heard from your father by then, we will consult on next steps.”

“Right. Yes.”

“You look blank.”

“I’m finding it quite hard to keep track,” Alec said, with some understatement. “You know, being Second Villain to a jewel thief, and trying to manage my family situation, and having you do, er, what you just did, and then back to jewel theft. It’s a bit confusing.”

“I see no reason the duties of Second Villain shouldn’t include being First Villain’s helpless sexual plaything. It would make the melodramas a great deal more entertaining. Follow my lead, do as directed, and leave the rest to me.”

Alec could almost feel the weight slipping from his shoulders. It was an appalling temptation. Crozier was a bad man; he’d made a point of that himself. Bad, highly competent, very evidently someone who liked to be in charge of every possible element. And all Alec had to do was give up and let him take over.

“Good Lord, you look exhausted,” Crozier said. “Let’s get you a growler.”

“I don’t have the funds. And you can’t keep paying for me.”

“Oh, the Duke of Ilvar will be paying eventually. Don’t worry about that. In fact, don’t worry at all about any of it.” He ran a finger gently down Alec’s face, slid it under his jaw. “Everything is entirely under control.”