Chapter 4
Andrew toyed with his pen, the quill sliding through his fingers. Much though he tried to prevent it, his thoughts kept returning to the handsome, arrogant aristocrat he’d found in Newgate Gaol that morning. The intimacies of the encounter forced their way back into his brain every time he pushed them out. He could taste the other man, feel the hard body against his and the arms holding him firmly. Everything about the embrace was so different from a woman’s soft caresses. Except for the silky softness of Shaw’s lips, a startling contrast to his inert strength.
Andrew would not lie to himself. He loved it, loved the way Shaw felt under his hands, loved the masculine, spicy scent pushing its way past the stink of the cell. He had suppressed those feelings for so long he had persuaded himself they didn’t exist anymore. Now he could not.
He should not dream. He had work to do. Gazing down, he saw the lines of neatly scribed words, the black ink against creamy white paper. What did it matter? Lord Frobisher was pursuing a claim for five miles of marshland from his neighbor. Who cared about marshland? Lord Frobisher brought a case every few months, and he was one of Andrew’s best clients. But what was the point?
Not when Andrew had rediscovered the passions of his youth. He had put such concerns aside at Oxford. Working for his law degree had left him precious little free time. He was one of the students who’d worked and left university with a degree mainly because he needed it. Without it, he’d have had to stay in the family business. Now he was independent, wealthy by many people’s standards, including his family’s, and respectable.
Most of all respectable. He could not consider Darius Shaw as anything but a temporary inconvenience, a man who might help him out of his predicament with General Court. Nothing else. After they had cleared up that matter, they would never meet again.
A ludicrous sense of loss filled him with dismay. He had barely met the man. Shaw probably kissed Andrew out of a sense of devilry, daring him to do something about it. He seemed like a man dancing on a tightrope, or at the edge of a cliff, seemingly unaware of the chasm below him, but miraculously escaping his doom. One day he would meet his end, and the results would not be clean.
Lord Shaw was likely to end his life abroad. If he was lucky. The authorities here clamped down on activities like the ones at Mother Fleming’s, once it was put under their noses.
Giving up on work, he picked up his penknife and set to sharpening his quill. Once he had the nib finely carved, he started on the next one, which he’d sharpened only yesterday. But it gave him something to do, and the repetitive task would settle his mind.
Unfortunately most of his caseload was of the repetitive, tedious kind. But it paid well. Such cases funded this house and his office in chambers. Modest by the standards of the Shaw family and their noble relatives, but grander than anything Andrew had known before. What was more, he’d earned every penny of its price.
That had to mean something.
The doorbell clanged, the slightly off-key note making him wince, as it always did. He should buy another, but he doubted he would find one that suited him any better, and the seller would most likely think he was running mad. Nobody wanted a doorbell that chimed a precise pitch, surely.
A gentle tap on his door heralded the entrance of his manservant. He carried a card, the left corner turned down. Andrew did not need to know who waited for him. The man’s presence filled his house. “Show him in.”
As he spoke, the clock chimed the half-hour. He’d changed when he got back from Newgate and ordered his clothes fumigated, as he always did. He kept a special suit of clothes for the times he was forced to visit prisoners, which admittedly did not happen often. Fastidiously, he refused to allow the prison stink to permeate the house, and changed in a small room off the kitchen downstairs. The maid would clean it. Even the court stank. Because of that care, he had never contracted gaol fever, nor had he brought it home for anyone else to suffer.
A swish of expensive fabric told him Lord Darius had entered the room. Taking his time, Andrew got to his feet and lifted his head to meet his guest’s eyes. Familiarity had not accustomed him to the startling blue, nor to the intensity of expression he found in the cerulean depths.
He did not bow. “Welcome, my lord.”
“Darius,” the man said. “My name is Darius. I prefer that my friends use it.”
“Andrew,” he responded numbly, wondering if he’d somehow been manipulated. Did Darius mean what he said, or was he trying to bring them closer together? He had no way of knowing, but he could not afford to allow the man too close.
Too late now. He’d allowed the intimacy of using first names.
Darius acknowledged the word with a brief nod.
Andrew came around the desk. “Please come upstairs. I let time run away with me, I’m afraid, or I would have been waiting for you in the drawing room.”
Darius glanced around. “I like it here. It reminds me of my father’s study.” He turned to follow Andrew out of the room. “He chooses the smallest most unobtrusive room he can find and makes it his own. At home in the country he has his study close to the library, but if you did not know it was there, you would walk straight past it.”
“It sounds perfect.” Andrew would love a place to hide away like that. An office where he could be sure nobody would disturb him.
“You sighed.”
Andrew opened the door and bowed Darius through. He raised a brow, smiling, and accepted the courtesy. “I did,” he said, closing the door carefully. “I am constantly in danger of interruption. That is all.”
“I imagine your life is full.”
“You could say that.” He had certainly done his best to fill it. That way he didn’t think about matters he should not. He found closing the shutters on his thoughts easier. Except when this man was close to him. Why should an arrogant lord touch him more than any other man had for years? Remind him of what he’d turned his back on so long ago?
He moved away from the enclosed space before the door into the wider area beyond. “I work downstairs and receive many of my visitors here. But I have been called to the Bar, and for that I have chambers in the Inns of Court.”
Footsteps behind him told Andrew his guest was following him across the black-and-white tiled hall. “You don’t seem to work as a barrister as often.”
Planting his foot on the bottom step, Andrew paused. “No, I do not. I was young and idealistic when I worked to take silk. To be truthful, my lord, there is little money to be made at the Bar. I wished to make a difference, or so I thought, and to take a hand in affecting the laws of our country. Precedence and case study are made at the Bar, for the most part. However,” he continued briskly, “I soon discovered the more lucrative practice of acting as a solicitor.”
They had reached the top of the stairs. Andrew led the way into the dining room.
The maids had already set the table. It appeared very fine to his critical eye, with silver cutlery and shining crystal glasses. Aware his guest would probably take such displays for granted and be faced with far more lavish displays, Andrew nevertheless refused to apologize. “We may start in the drawing room if you wish, but dinner is nearly ready and we are alone tonight.” He had considered inviting someone else, if only to break the tense atmosphere, but that could not happen, with the topics they needed to discuss.
“Good,” Darius responded tersely.
Was he feeling it too? Andrew thought not. He suspected the kiss at the brothel had been to provoke rather than arouse. Or to distract. If he thought of the event that way, he would not go further than he should. Not be tempted. “I have asked the maids to serve us then leave us alone. We have much of a delicate nature to discuss. The fewer people who know of our meeting, the better.”
Too late, he recalled the other meaning. A private meeting, clandestinely held, could mean more than conversation. “I trust my servants,” he added. “The clerk has gone home, and I have the cook, a manservant, and three maidservants on the premises.”
“My goodness.” Darius paused in the act of drawing back a chair. “You do live in a cozy manner.”
Andrew shrugged. “We need no more.”
“My mother has two maids merely devoted to her clothes and presenting her creditably. I am not precisely sure how many servants we have on the premises, but the hall always contains at least two manservants, including a liveried footman.” His mouth tilted in a grin that lit his eyes from the inside. “The hall boy is there at night, of course. My brother and I frequently played tricks on the poor individual. It was not fair of us, but young men with more money than sense will kick up their heels.”
“I wouldn’t know.” Andrew took his own seat. He had ordered the table set with places opposite one another. Too late he discovered his mistake. Meeting Darius’s eyes was inevitable, creating an intimacy he desperately did not want.
“Of course not.” Darius shook out his napkin as a maid tapped at the door, and brought in two dishes. Another followed, and then his footman. One course, six removes. Andrew rarely bothered with a formal serving when on his own, but he would call this a neat dinner. He would not apologize for his inadequacies.
The maids placed the dishes on the table with only slight tremors revealing their nervousness. Andrew dismissed them with a smile and a word of thanks. “We will serve ourselves.” After the servants left, he turned to Darius. “If you cannot serve yourself, I will of course help you.”
Darius burst into laughter, a little high-pitched, Andrew thought. “Do you think I am so incapable?”
“I have known it to happen. A certain duke, for instance, on a London Guildhall dinner, did not appear to know how to pick up his knife and fork until his servant placed them in his hands.”
Darius grinned. “I can guess who that was. My brother’s father-in-law. He knows perfectly well how to serve himself, but he believes the task below his dignity.”
“Goodness!” Andrew hadn’t considered that possibility. “The event was the talk of the City for weeks. It did not improve our opinions of the people who live in Mayfair.”
“I would imagine not.” Darius lifted the lid of the dish nearest to him and inhaled deeply. “That is a beautiful joint of beef.”
“I believe in living well.” Now he could afford it. “Time was that joint would have lasted me a week.”
Darius paused in the act of neatly transferring a couple of slices of beef to his plate. “I know very little about you, Andrew. I would love to know more.”
“Because you want the advantage in our discussions?”
“Because I like you.”
The words, spoken softly, pierced Andrew with the intensity of a penny whistle blasted next to his ear. Startled, he looked up and met Darius’s eyes.
He saw more than like in the blue depths. Emotions he dared not broach, dared not even mention. “That is good to know.” He prided himself on his ability to hide his emotions. This time, so close, with the man he couldn’t put out of his mind in his home, he could not conceal them immediately.
“And you like me,” Darius said.
“I wouldn’t go that far.” He tried to make his comment into a light joke, but he feared he’d failed. In a desperate effort to change the tenor of the conversation, he went back to Darius’s question. “I was not born into wealth. My father was a draper and a member of a Guild. My uncles still run the business, but it is not as lucrative as people imagine. The Drapers’ Guild is a wealthy one, but that is mainly because of the plethora of businesses in it rather than a few powerful individuals.”
“You have always lived in London, then?”
Andrew talked while he helped himself to some beef, and then the carrots and peas that lay temptingly in another dish. That way he didn’t have to look at the man and torture himself further. “I rarely travel beyond its walls. I have ventured into the country to visit a client from time to time, but that is rarely necessary. This city is my home.” He glanced up. “I was born here. I’m the son of a draper.”
If that didn’t put off the son of a marquess, nothing would. They kept their lines pure, occasionally injecting some hybrid vigor. Darius would not to want to associate with Andrew any more than was necessary now he knew his humble origins.
“Why did your brother come to me to defend him?” he asked abruptly.
“It wasn’t my brother who located you,” Darius said softly. “It was our cousin Julius who recommended you. I don’t know why.”
Andrew recollected the sight of a sharp-featured man with piercing sapphire eyes. “Ah, yes. I did him a small service in a purchase of land. But why did he think me suitable for such a serious case?”
Darius shrugged. “Julius is a law unto himself. He rarely allows convention to affect his opinion. He must have seen something in you.”
“The case was not particularly difficult,” Andrew pointed out.
“But the stakes were high. The consequences if we lost were unthinkable.”
Andrew nodded. “They always are in murder cases.” Darius’s behavior had certainly cooled, which was, after all, what he wanted. He should feel easier, but he did not. This man disturbed him.
“The family is grateful to you.”
He didn’t want them grateful to him, least of all Darius. “I did a job I was well paid for.”
“And you did it so well,” Darius murmured. He forked up a helping of food.
“I’m gratified they think so.”
Darius swallowed and took a sip of wine before he continued. “It would do you no harm to appear in society.”
Andrew coughed, the shock of the calm statement jolting him out of what complacency he had left. Darius rose and came around to his side of the table, placing a hand on Andrew’s back, which did not help one bit. “Are you all right?”
He swallowed and regained his breath. “Fine,” he said, but his eyes were streaming, and he was forced to use his napkin to dry the tears of laughter. “I must have heard you wrong.”
“Which part?”
“The part about my moving in society. Do you really think they would welcome the son of a draper?”
Instead of returning to his side of the table, Darius leaned against it. He folded his arms, wrecking the line of his expensive dark red ribbed silk coat. This close, Andrew smelled the fresh soap used to clean it, together with the aroma he’d tried not to notice before—the spicy, musky scent that was unique to Darius.
If he backed away now, Darius would sense his vulnerability, like an animal scenting its prey. “Why not? As long as you don’t rub your origins in their faces. Don’t deny it, either. People have fallen on that hurdle more often than you would think. But enter as yourself, and you will be welcomed. Society is avid for a new member, a novelty, if you will. It would bring more cases your way. Better cases, too.”
Andrew tipped his head back, Darius’s words adding a shot of anger to stiffen his spine. “I doubt I would enjoy being a novelty. I have never regarded my life as an amusement for others.” He paused, working out what he could say to this madman. “My family was not rich. They are still not rich. I live comfortably, but I earn everything I live on. I have no inherited wealth. There are no dukes in my ancestry.”
“That isn’t important, even to my peers. They put an emphasis on family, but even that is false. Most of us are the result of nefarious activity and sheer luck. Being in the right place at the right time, and conversely, avoiding the wrong places. Half the dukes of England are the result of Charles the Second’s many liaisons. He sprinkled titles around like a Catholic priest dispenses holy water. My ancestors on my father’s side include City merchants. We are not so different, Andrew.”
That was the last thing Andrew wanted to hear. He needed to put distance between them, not bring them closer. In this position he could not push back his chair and leave. That would be to admit weakness. “We are very different, sir.”
Darius shook his head slowly. “Not so much.”
Andrew’s heart beat a little faster. He couldn’t speak.
“We are the same in many ways that matter. The only way that matters.” His expression hardened, deepened. “Do you think I didn’t notice your response to my kiss? You welcomed it.” Warmth entered the cold blue of Darius’s eyes, adding animation to the handsome features that could seem so expressionless. “You opened to me in a way I rarely know.”
“Not from your reputation.” It was a weak response, but Andrew was lost in a wash of emotions. To hear that forbidden embrace articulated added a new dimension to it, an open admission of what they had done and how he had felt.
“My reputation?” Darius’s face twisted with emotion, as unlike the proud, arrogant lord as Andrew could imagine. Shoving back his chair, Andrew sprang from the table and strode about the room, staring out of the window at the rain-drenched garden. When had it rained? He hadn’t noticed. The change in the weather reflected his mood.
The rain echoed Darius’s mood too, it seemed, when Andrew caught sight of his expression when he turned around.
Darius spoke bitterly. “For years my brother Valentinian behaved outrageously, merely to mask what I was doing. Do you think I was proud of that? He nearly missed his chance at happiness because of me.”
Andrew knew something about that. He’d seen Lord Valentinian Shaw and his bride together. They were devoted to one another, but they’d had an unconscionably long engagement before they finally got to the altar. The match had been arranged in an attempt to make his rackety lordship respectable. Events had turned out very differently.
He had not known Valentinian’s outrageous behavior had begun in an effort to mask his brother’s habits. Now that he thought about it, the theory made sense. He had not known Darius’s anguish, for anguish it must be from the expression on his face.
Striding up and down, his feet striking the polished boards, his coat swinging, Darius appeared as nothing so much as a warrior facing battle. Andrew watched him in silence, dumbfounded. “Do you think I chose this, to be the way I am?” He gestured to himself and outside. “People believe I did. One of my aunts told my mother I was only doing it for attention. Do you know how that feels?” He didn’t wait for an answer. “I count myself lucky in my family. So many would reject me outright. Men in my position have been locked away in asylums ‘for their own good.’”
He said the last with a disdainful curl of his lip, but Andrew, used to observing people closely, saw something else. He saw fear. “Did anyone threaten to do that to you?”
Darius bit his lip, returning to his place next to Andrew, leaning against the table. It was fortunate the piece of furniture was a solid oak example rather than the spindly mahogany or walnut favored by the fashionable world. “Yes.” He folded his arms, meeting Andrew’s gaze.
What Andrew saw astonished him.
Darius was hiding nothing. His eyes gleamed brightly, as if tears lurked there, but he allowed none to fall. His mouth was a straight, hard line and his strong jaw tense. He heaved a sigh. “My grandfather, the Duke of Kirkburton, suggested it. He is long gone, but before he died he planted that idea in my mother’s head. I showed no interest in women, even when my brother was charging around London rutting with every woman who said yes. He started early, and there were many. In every fashionable ballroom, Val has had at least a third of the females there. But I was the person the old duke reprimanded. I needed only to look at a man, and he started to drop his poison into my parents’ ears. I know my mother talked to my father about it. He would have none of it. He said he did not think I had a mental disease or that I wanted to be as I am. He was right. I tried, Andrew. But every effort ended in failure. Every single one.” He shook his head. “I come from one of the wealthiest, most influential families in the country. Women would hurl themselves at me. I’ve had them faint at me, cry at me, offer themselves openly to me. Ladies of fortune and family. Not one stirred more than disgust or amusement or pity.”
He swallowed. “I took a mistress once. After the first night I gave her the house I’d bought and sent her on her way.” He gave a grim smile. “She wanted more, threatened to spread stories about me. I told her to do it. She did. My family responded to the hate and the accusations until I told them not to. Until I told them plainly what I was.”
Andrew felt deep in his bones that Darius had never related his story to anyone before, not like this. Why Darius had dropped his carefully cultivated shell for him, Andrew did not know. He had no similar confession. He had never given way to the impulses that even now shamed him.
But, like Darius, he didn’t seem to be able to help himself.
Darius’s self-disparagement annoyed Andrew. “You are not a thing, Darius. You are a person, and as valuable as anyone else.”
The polish had not returned. At any other time Andrew felt sure Darius would have responded with a quip or a careless comment, but not now.
When Darius held out his hand, Andrew took it. He let Darius draw him to his feet.
“I felt like a thing, rather than a person. Honesty saved me,” Darius murmured, so close his warm breath swept over Andrew’s cheek. “I can never be honest with society, if only for my family’s sake. But I can be honest with myself. I know what I am and who I am. I have made peace with that.” A smile quirked the corner of his mouth, a wry one, but his expression gentled. “I’m telling you, my friend, because I like you. More than that, I confess. I desire you.”
Andrew forced himself to remain where he was and listen to what Darius had to say. Every instinct told him to move forward, to let himself go for once in his life. His strong sense of self-preservation and his responsibilities, as always, held him back.
Darius smiled. “I see in you what I was a few years ago. Of course, I did not have my living to make as you do, but my loyalties and my inner desires were tearing me apart. I have reached a kind of peace. I do not seek for a lifetime’s partner, as I yearned for once. I do not believe I will ever find that person, but I make the most of what I have, and I will not apologize for it.”
The men stared at one another for what seemed like a lifetime. Andrew had never been this close to another man, ever. The encounter fascinated him, his throat tightened with tension and nerves.
He could not abide to see Darius suffer like this. “I thought the struggle hard, but you have seen much worse.” To be a member of such a prominent family, to be pointed at, derided, despised. “How can you bear it?”
Before Darius could answer, Andrew cupped his cheek and drew closer. Darius’s eyes remained open, as did Andrew’s, as he brought their mouths together and kissed him.
This time he knew what he was doing. This was not pity, or defiance, or a taunt. This was affection and comfort, an assurance they were not alone.
Emotion surged as Andrew’s body responded to the proximity of the man who had fascinated him from the first time he’d set eyes on Darius last year.
He pressed closer when Darius responded, opening his mouth to explore and be explored in his turn. Andrew thrust his tongue into Darius’s mouth, forgetting everything in his need to taste and touch. He held Darius’s upper arm, gripping it tightly, feeling the hardness of muscle beneath, the sensation turning his mood into fiery need.
A low groan startled him until he realized he’d made the sound. He had never known such desire. Heat surged through him. When Darius circled him with his free arm, he went willingly, stepping between Darius’s open legs to bring their shafts into alignment. Darius was as hard as he, his cock pressing against his breeches. Desperate for release, Andrew pressed against him.
Then Darius moved, grinding his member against Andrew, and Andrew knew sheer delight. He had denied himself this for so long.
Until Darius pushed him away with a shove that nearly unbalanced him. Bewilderment and loss swept over Andrew. Darius’s rejection was too harsh, too sudden for Andrew to take in.
A sharp rap sounded on the door. Andrew spun around to face the window, urging his tumescence to subside. “Come!” His voice sounded too loud, too sharp, but it was the best he could do.
What had he been thinking? Any of the servants could have come in. While he had been lost in the kiss, the house could have fallen down around him and he wouldn’t have noticed. But the door was unlocked, and as far as his household knew, he was having a private business meeting, which was not unusual enough for note.
He’d been locked in a forbidden, passionate embrace with a man he desired more than any man or woman he’d known before. He’d been on the verge of coming. While he should feel shame, he felt nothing but exhilaration. Until the knock. They would never have broken apart in time, if Darius had not pushed him.
He glanced at his guest. Darius sat at the table as if he’d never left it, not a hair out of place, long legs sprawled underneath in an attitude of perfect repose. Andrew hadn’t reached his hair, which was still tied back in its tidy queue. Andrew had a strong suspicion his wig was askew and his neckcloth no longer tied in the neat knot he’d put it into before he’d gone down to his study.
But his embarrassment flew out of his head when he saw the distress on the face of the maid standing in the doorway. “Please, sir, it’s Miss Elizabeth.”
“What’s wrong?” He had reached the door before he remembered moving.
“She has a fever.”
“Send for the doctor.” He would not risk Elizabeth. He left the room without saying anything to his guest. Some things were far more important.