A Private Gentleman (38 page)
Read A Private Gentleman Online
Authors: Heidi Cullinan
is n-not for you that I must f-face him.” He placed Michael’s hand over his own
heart. “For m-me. For m-my own injured little boy.” His fingers tangled with
Michael’s, and he looked up at him hesitantly, almost questioningly. “D-does th-
that d-d-disap-point you?”
Michael could only shake his head as he bent forward to kiss him softly on
the lips. “No.”
This made Albert smile and turn his head to kiss Michael’s hand. “I should
have l-liked to have known you when I was a b-boy. We could have h-hidden
and r-read together. You could h-have fit in my h-hideaways with me.”
“And I would have gone with you to school,” Michael vowed. “I would have
kicked the bullies and given them a scathing put-down. Then I would have put
mud in their shoes and snails in their beds. Were Rodger there as well, he would
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have organized a gang to steal all their pocket money, and we could have
picnicked together on a hillside, dining on fine things and drinking wine as
Rodger plotted to take over the headmaster’s quarters and we read books of
faraway places.”
Albert smiled up at him. “I love you.”
It caught at Michael’s heart every time—
I love you
. Clear and bold, no
hesitation.
Let there never be hesitation between us again.
He threaded his fingers in Albert’s. “I want to help you with your father.”
When Albert looked uneasy and opened his mouth to object, Michael overrode
him. “I will admit, I’m still nervous to face him. But I could do it for you, if it
came to it. Which it may not. More than anything else, I want to help you. I want
you to be as free as I feel.” He tightened his grip on Albert’s hand. “And then I
want to be with you. Wherever you go, for the rest of our lives.”
Albert hesitated a moment, then said, very carefully, “W-will y-you still w-
work for R-Rodger?”
Michael went still. “Does it matter?”
More quiet. “Yes. B-but I will l-learn to l-live with it.”
Oh, the pleasure, the deep, rich pleasure Michael took in smiling down at
Albert. “In point of fact, I am done with whoring.” He slid his body against
Albert’s sensuously. “Though I would not mind reprising the role on occasion
for you.”
Albert drew him down for a hard kiss, and they did not speak again for
some time.
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Wes approached Penny in hopes she could help think of a way for him to
face his father. He told her the entire story, with Michael’s help. She was not
encouraging. Even more depressing was the fact that Rodger wasn’t either.
“Going up against gentry is never simple, but going against Daventry is
suicide,” Rodger said bluntly. His jaw set briefly before he added, “If it weren’t,
I’d have done so years ago.”
Penny had tried to soften the blow. “What is it, Wes, that you chiefly want?
Revenge? Justice? It isn’t that I don’t think you’re entitled to either, but the truth, and even the practicality is, both will be difficult to come by against a man like
your father. Even if he had been caught at the time, a nobleman dallying for
sport with a whore’s son, willing or not, wouldn’t cost him much in society’s
eye.” She glanced apologetically at Michael. “Casting no aspersions on you or
your mother—I mean only to state facts.”
Michael waved this aside. “Cast aspersions on my mother all you like, but I
agree with you.” He returned his focus to Wes. “I consider their concern
warranted, love. What is it, precisely, you wish to achieve? That would likely
make a better start in finding how to face him.”
Wes considered carefully, framing his thoughts before voicing them. “Self-
respect,” he said at last, feeling a deep satisfaction in not hesitating. “I w-wish to stand before my father, call him out for his actions and n-not back down. I d-do
not wish to publicly shame him—” He paused. “I do, but I understand that I
cannot likely have this.” He ran a hand through his hair. “What I desire is to be f-
free. F-free of my shame I c-cast on myself.”
Michael took his hand, stroking the back of his knuckles with his thumb.
“You do understand,” Penny said gently, “that your father will not likely
cower before you? That he will brush you off?” She sighed. “I don’t wish to
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discourage you, but I cannot be convinced this goal, however noble, is not best
achieved simply within yourself.”
Wes took his time with his reply, wanting very much to be clear and
understood. “I n-n-need to know I have this strength.”
Penny held up her hands. “Men. Men and their tests of bravery. Do you not
understand that bravery is not inherent—it is made? Not by circumstance, but by
believing you possess it? Do you not understand how brave you are even to
consider this? How brave Michael is for enduring what he did—and carrying
on?” She shook her head. “You do not require your father’s pound of flesh for
courage—in fact, it may taint it. Let him answer to God for what he has done.”
“God damns men like Albert and me,” Michael pointed out.
Penny snorted. “Does He? I have often wondered that. Everyone seems so
quick to insist God damns ones they dislike but carves out exceptions for those
who they like and for themselves. If God is, as Jesus said, nothing but love, and if
our only task is to love—how is the love between the two of you wrong?” She
gestured vaguely at the air. “Men like your father, Wes, will one day reap their
own reward. Perhaps we will see it, and perhaps we will not. And perhaps they
won’t. Perhaps there truly is no justice of any kind. But how much of your life
are you willing to give him? What does this gain you, when you could simply
walk away and enjoy the happiness you have found with Michael?”
Wes didn’t like this conversation, largely because Penny seemed to make
such a valid point. He didn’t know why he had to do this, only that he knew he
did.
But did he really? He was beginning not to even know that any longer.
Penny held his hand. “Don’t act just yet. Not until you have calmed down. I
don’t want to see them put you away, which is what they will do to you. Declare
you mad, and then where will you be? Your father will have won again. Have
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patience. A moment will come, or something else will arise, and you’ll know
what to do. Just don’t act rashly.”
Wes didn’t like this, and he was so upset that later when he tried to discuss it
with Michael in bed, it tangled his tongue all over again.
“Slowly, love,” Michael urged him. “Slowly.” He kissed him, teasing his
tongue. “Shut your eyes if need be.”
Wes did. “I c-can’t let him get away with w-w-what he did. I c-c-can’t face
him. I c-can’t just let him go free. Not after this. Not n-now.”
Michael kissed his face. “I don’t want him to hurt you too.”
“You don’t think I’m strong enough?”
“That’s not what I mean at all. I think that Daventry is powerful, though, and
I don’t think your being his son will save you. Be strong with me, love. Stay with
me. We can forget him. I have lived all this time without retribution. I can live
the rest of my life as well.”
“But he haunts you.”
“Yes—and he will continue to do so even if he is dead and the whole world
knows what he did. It can’t help me. Only I can help me.” He kissed Wes’s nose.
“You help me, beloved.”
Wes settled in beside him with a frustrated sigh. “I want to f-fix it.”
“You already have,” Michael whispered. “You already have.” He ran his
hand along Wes’s leg. “Make love to me, darling. Now. Here. Let me show you
how fixed I am.”
Wes met his kiss, and stroked him, and pushed him into the bed and loved
him, all the night long.
Out of deference to Michael, to Penny, even to Rodger, Wes tried. He truly
tried to let it go, to do what Penny said and give himself his own worth. He
thought he’d at least gotten a handle on a corner of the concept too, when one
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morning when Michael was visiting, Rodger came storming through the front
door and into Penny’s salon.
“Thank God,” Rodger burst out at the sight of Wes, not bothering with a
greeting. He collapsed against a wall, catching his breath. “I was afraid you’d
hear before I got here and be gone already.”
Wes sat up in alarm, and Michael rose. “What’s going on, Rodger?” Michael
asked. Penny had appeared in the doorway, and she listened too.
Rodger held up a hand. “I wasn’t looking for anything. I swear. I’d only sent
Jane over when we first couldn’t find you to see if Daventry House would give
us any leads, and when we located you, I called her back. But she took it upon
herself to keep tabs on the boy Edwin, not wanting to come to me until she had
solid information.” His mouth flattened into a grim line before he continued.
“And now she has it. Goddamn the bastard.”
“What do you know?” Penny said, her voice a hard warning.
Somehow Wes knew before Rodger said the words. He couldn’t have, of
course—it was just that once he saw the expression on Rodger’s face he began to
try and imagine the worst, and once the thought was lodged there, it stuck. He
could only imagine one thing at Daventry House that would involve Edwin and
invoke such a look on Rodger’s face. He could only hope and pray that he was
wrong.
He wasn’t.
“Daventry,” Rodger said at last, looking sick and almost choking on the
words. “Daventry has been using him.”
Michael sat back down next to Albert, feeling cold.
He was dimly aware of the others. Penny had come fully into the room and
was ushering Rodger into a chair. Beside him on the sofa, Albert went very still.
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Despite their presence, Rodger’s declaration made him feel as if he were sitting
alone in a long, echoing hall, listening to the others discuss the situation at the
other end.
“He w-w-would not,” Albert said to Rodger. “Edwin is h-his heir.”
Rodger sagged into his chair and rubbed wearily at the side of his face.
“That’s what I told Jane. Said she had to be wrong. No way on earth would
Daventry harm his own heir like that. A second son, yes. A servant boy. A
stranger
’s heir. But his own? No. It would be like fucking himself.” His
expression turned grim. “But perhaps that was the thrill of it. Or perhaps he’s
gone mad. Or—bloody hell. I don’t know.” He shut his eyes and pinched the
bridge of his nose. “What I do know is that Jane hid herself beneath the boy’s bed
for a full night. Hid herself there, and waited, and then sure enough, the
marquess came to the lad. She said she heard the lad whimper, heard him say,
‘No, I don’t want to do it again’ but the marquess just laughed and told him he
wanted it, he knew he did. Told him—” Rodger looked like he might choke.
“Told him this was part of making him a man, since he was failing every other
way.”
Michael had no trouble imagining such a speech from Daventry. In point of
fact he could hear the marquess’s voice echoing around the words inside his
head, and he could smell the spice of his tobacco as he leaned in close to move
his hand around Michael’s waist, sliding the other down to his groin.
Michael pressed his hands against his stomach.
Rodger went on, his voice strained. “Jane says the marquess had the boy get
on his knees. Said he didn’t fuck him right off, that at first she thought it would
just be a spanking. But then the marquess asked if the boy wanted more
spankings or wanted something else. This went on until the boy, sobbing, said he
wanted ‘something else’. Which was when the marquess told him to—”
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Rodger stopped for several seconds before continuing.
“Jane said she cut her palms with her own fingernails wanting to go out from
under the bed and help the boy. If she’d thought for a moment she could get
away, she would have, but she figured, and rightly so, that Daventry would have
her killed. So she waited. And while she was there, she saw the box, up in the
springs. A box with a knife inside, razor sharp. And a journal. Written in some
sort of odd code.”
Michael had turned away, only half listening, but at this he returned his full
attention to Rodger. He had the journal with him, a small, beaten and bound
leather diary. Penelope looked at it, but she shook her head and passed it to
Albert. Michael glanced over his lover’s shoulder at the tremulously penned
passages and knew instantly what code the boy had used.
“Latin,” he whispered. “Inverted Latin. With some French tossed in, I
suspect to make it difficult to read. But it isn’t, not truly.”
“What does it say?” Rodger asked.
Michael took the journal from Albert and held it carefully in his hands. He
examined it for several minutes before speaking. When he did, his voice was
