Chapter 9
Andrew had not known what true loneliness felt like, but he did now. How could he miss someone so much after half a day? But he did. Every time he paused from his work, he thought of Darius. Little things reminded him of the brief time they’d spent together.
Perhaps he was just melancholy. He probably needed a change. He closed the folder he was working on, left his office, locked it, and paid a visit to his daughter, who was busy with her nurse. The rainy day made their usual visit to the park impossible, so they were drawing.
A little soothed by his visit, Darius donned his hat, overcoat, and gloves, and left his house for his office in chambers. Glancing up, he spared a thought for Darius, wondering if he was on horseback or in a carriage.
Water dripped down the back of his neck, and Andrew turned up the broad collar of his coat. The weather suited his mood. A wet October in London—what could be better?
But he wished he lived closer to the Inns of Court. His house was near Lloyd’s Coffee House in an area he’d grown up in and felt comfortable with. The Inns were farther west, centered around green spaces. Perhaps he should move his offices to the Inns of Chancery, where many solicitors were situated. Then he could buy one of the new houses being erected nearby. It was definitely time for a change. He had kept his distance when he had taken the property work, deciding he must work for his family more than following his inclinations.
Restlessness infused him as he strode toward the Inns of Court. When the rain changed, surging into a vituperative downpour, he gave up and took shelter under the heavy overhanging sign of a printmaker. This one specialized in political caricatures, so he peered into the window, joining other people taking shelter and peering at the offerings within.
While the prints were cruel, he had always considered the subjects fair game. The artists generally chose current topics, and they could produce their caricatures remarkably quickly. Parliament would open soon, and the citizens of London and farther abroad could look forward to some particularly scurrilous examples.
He liked the one that showed the Prince of Wales, now nineteen, clinging to the apron strings of Lord Bute, his erstwhile tutor and, some said, his mother’s lover. Bute was not popular, so any caricature with him as its subject would sell well.
He moved on, glancing into the sky. Someone looked at him and then returned to look again. Andrew followed the man’s attention to the brightly colored prints in the window.
His heart lurched. There he was, in the middle of the display. Kissing Darius. Young men surrounded them, some in female dress, their bodices askew. Others wore the garb of dandies. All but Andrew, depicted in his usual sober, dark, unremarkable clothes. Because of that, he was the focus of the picture. Just in case the viewer hadn’t understood the point, a judge stood behind him. His full-bottomed wig was comically askew with the effort he was making hammering his gavel on the bench.
Andrew closed his eyes, but it didn’t help. The picture was still there when he opened them again.
The rain was better than this. With the image burning its way into his brain, he put his head down, more because he didn’t want to be recognized than against the downpour. His mind in turmoil, he strode to his chambers in Lincoln’s Inn Fields. Sparing a nod to the clerk, he went past and unlocked the door to his office.
He retained a small room here, all he needed, enough to keep his barrister work separate from his main business. But the folders and cases didn’t hold his interest any more than the work at home had. Especially after the shock of seeing himself depicted in the printshop window.
He could still see the thing in his mind’s eye. He and Darius were cruelly depicted, Andrew’s own sharp features and pale face a contrast to Darius’s handsomeness.
After a tap on the door, his Head of Chambers came in. Famed for his large, imposing, and terrifying presence in court, today Edward Jeffries smiled, although grimly. Twenty years older than Andrew, Jeffries held the respect of everyone in the legal business. What he didn’t know about criminal law wasn’t worth knowing.
He slammed a piece of paper in front of Andrew. “You’ve seen this?” he demanded without preamble.
Andrew stared at the sheet. Jeffries had folded it down the middle, so now a deep crease separated him from Darius. It seemed appropriate. “They spelled my name wrong,” he said dully. They’d called him Andrew Gram.
“It prevents them being sued.” Without being asked, Jeffries hauled the chair Andrew usually used for clients and plumped down in it. The sturdy Windsor chair creaked alarmingly. Andrew was fond of that chair, but its imminent destruction was the least of his concerns right now. “They tweak the names a little.”
“I saw it on the way here.” Andrew decided to put a brave face on it. Having regained his composure, he looked up and met the head’s gaze from under hooded eyes. “It’s nonsense, of course.”
“Naturally,” Jeffries said. “But it does put rather a dark light on us here at chambers. You understand that, I take it?”
“I do. It will pass.”
Jeffries flashed a sudden smile. “Is it your first time?”
“What?” Considering the nature of the picture, Andrew blinked, taken aback. “Is what my first time?”
Jeffries waved a hand, vaguely indicating the vile thing. “That you’ve been caricatured.”
“As far as I know.”
“I’ve had a few, but none with accusations like this. Usually they’re protesting something I said in court. I have taken care to preserve my private life. I have a wife and children, and I live a few miles outside the city. Do you see what I mean here?”
Discretion. Andrew breathed a sigh of relief. He had half-expected Jeffries to demand his immediate removal. He didn’t depend on the barrister work for his living, but he’d miss it terribly. Another chambers wouldn’t take him if he left this one in disgrace. “I assure you, sir, that nothing…nothing happened.” Bar a few kisses. Kisses he would treasure the memory of for the rest of his life.
“Don’t do that.”
“What?”
“Don’t deny it directly. That forces you into defending your position. What if you can’t? And from the expression you tried to hide a moment ago, you’re skating lightly on the truth here.” Jeffries stood up, the chair creaking mightily. “I’m forced to give you a warning. Be careful, Graham. If you are caught, you will become a criminal, and you will lose everything. If you wish to become the friend of a known sodomite, gather your defenses around you.”
Andrew could say something about that evening. “Miss Angela Childers invited me to her house for the ball the night before last. She wished to ask a favor of me, and I assume, see how I coped in exalted society.”
Jeffries snorted. “And did you?” He leaned back. The chair creaked some more.
“Well enough, I think. But she invited Lord Darius and me to a private room and spoke to us on a matter I’m not free to discuss yet.”
“Is it about Lord Valentinian Shaw?”
“No.” Of course he would think that. “Not directly, although she said the case brought me to her notice. Sufficient to say that she would bring a great deal of business to chambers if our arrangement comes to pass.”
A gleam lit Jeffries’s pale eyes. Andrew could never decide if they were gray or green. Today, with the bleak weather and the cold light filtering through the single window, gray predominated. “Indeed? If that happens, we will welcome the business. Until then, I must ask you to leave until the scandal has died down. I’ll get the clerk to redistribute your cases. And Lord Darius? Will you see him again?”
“I doubt it,” Andrew said, suppressing his sorrow. “I will no doubt come across him in the course of business.”
“That’s a good thing.” Jeffries got to his feet with a scrape of wood and left the room.
Andrew sat there, his hands steepled, the fingertips touching the underside of his chin. That message was plain enough. If he did not redeem himself, if he failed to bring Miss Childers’s business here, he was finished in chambers. No doubt someone else wanted his place here. Competition for these rooms waged as fiercely as war.
He wouldn’t put it past one of the contenders to have paid for this cartoon to be circulated. Private citizens with a grudge would often do so.
Since he had nothing else to do with his day, he would put that theory to the test. He would fight this slur with knowledge. In the way of snowballs rolling down a hill, the picture could lead to his downfall. He would not accept that. But he had no antecedents in the law, no powerful patron to protect him from calumny.
Fleetingly, he thought of Miss Childers but dismissed the notion. He did not know her well enough yet, and he could destroy any relationship he might build with her if he went to her cap in hand now. She had made it clear that beggars and charlatans beat a path to her door on a regular basis. He would not be one of them.
Andrew walked back past the clerk, who did not raise his head, and out of his Chambers into the drizzling misery of a rainy day in London.
Surely he could not get much wetter.