A Fashionable Indulgence (Society of Gentlemen #1) (7 page)

His fingers were cramping when Harry at last released them to tug at his shirt. The fine linen whispered against his skin, raising hairs, as Harry pulled it up and over his head, then discarded his own shirt and sat back on his heels.

Julius stared at him. Sturdy torso, dark hair trailing down his chest to his navel and delving below the waistband of his breeches. Lips and eyes shining with desire. That smile, full of joy and hope and wonder, lighting his face.

“You are glorious,” he said, at the same moment as Harry said, “You are beautiful.”

They both laughed, ridiculously. Such a foolish thing to make the heart lift and the blood sing. So far from everything to which Julius was accustomed. So easy.

Harry pushed him gently back to lie across the bed, and Julius obeyed. He lay there and felt hands running over his belly and tugging at his breeches, heard Harry’s breathless worshipful murmurs, shut his eyes as Harry’s mouth closed over his prick, and just then, for that night, the gaping wound of absence that ran through his heart like a vein of ice was gone.

The next morning, Julius was putting the finishing touches to his cravat when the knock came.

“Come in,” he called, and saw in the mirror his host entering the room. “Good heavens, Richard, to what do I owe this extremely early distinction?”

“A moment of your time, please.” Richard looked very serious.

Julius waved Frampling out of the room and, as the valet softly closed the door, gave Richard a questioning look in the mirror. “What’s the matter?”

Richard exhaled hard. “Harry read the newspapers this morning.”

“The
newspapers
? What is in the newspapers?”

“It appears that there was a political meeting in Manchester. The yeomanry were called to control the crowd. It seems that a number of protestors were killed.”

Julius had imagined some scandal sheet, ruining Harry before he began with coy
on-dits.
We hear that Mr. H—V—is the son of a noted seditionist…
A mere riot was a relief. “Very dreadful, but what has this to do with Harry?”

“I don’t know, but he went white as a ghost. Distraught, speaking intemperately, and talking about returning to London—”

“Returning?” That made Julius’s skin prickle. Harry was to go to London,
his
London, as a new place. Not “return.” “Where is he?”

“I took him to the library.”

“I’ll see to it.”

Julius turned to the door and Richard put out a hand to stop him. “Just a moment. You seem…fond of Harry.”

What a hell-born morning this was turning out to be. “I am, yes.”

Richard raised a brow. Julius inclined his head in answer. Words were an unnecessary risk when the house was awake.

“Very fond?” Richard asked.

Julius had never been
very fond
of anybody, not as Richard meant. He had lost that capacity before he’d had time to use it. But Harry…“I like him a great deal.”

“My dear fellow, you know I should be glad to see you form a lasting friendship, but Harry’s grandfather is extremely keen for him to marry, and he holds the purse strings. Harry will have to take a wife to secure his future, probably sooner than later.” Richard made an apologetic face. “You know my feelings.”

In a world where adultery was as routine as the common cold, Richard took the moral line, disapproving profoundly of infidelity with men or women. It had made life for the Ricardians uncomfortable more than once. Julius felt that this was Richard’s concern, but he had his own pride. “I don’t intend to stand in the way of his future. More to the point, I am no man’s mistress, nor ever will be. Now, if you will excuse me.” Richard stepped sideways, and Julius strode out, heading for the library.

Harry was seated at the bureau, sheets of newsprint spread before him, head in hands. He didn’t look up as Julius came in.

“Harry?”

“This.” His voice was thick as he held out a sheet of newspaper,
The Times,
without looking up. Julius thought he might have been crying. “Just read it.”

Horrid Massacres at Manchester,
Julius saw, scanning the tiny print. There had been a meeting in support of Parliamentary reform, the largest such assembly ever seen. Fifty thousand people, at least, gathered in St. Peter’s Field to hear the radical Henry Hunt speak. A peaceful meeting, by this account, but the magistrates, alarmed by the numbers, had decided that the assembly put Manchester in danger, and had ordered the yeomanry to arrest Orator Hunt. And the mounted men, wielding sabres on horseback, had charged the crowd.

“Eleven dead and six hundred wounded?” he said aloud, incredulous. “Eleven. Good God.”

“Armed cavalry charging an unarmed crowd. British citizens!” Harry’s voice rose. “So-called subjects of our so-called king, mown down on magistrates’ orders! It’s murder!”

“It’s the magistrates’ duty—”

Harry propelled himself from his seat. His face had an odd, patchy look, pale and red. “Look. Look at the report. Women among the injured, a hundred of them. Three women dead. They rode down a two-year-old baby. Men on horseback going into an unarmed crowd to capture their banners as if they were the, the cavalry at Waterloo—”

“When was this?”

“The sixteenth. Four days ago. The Manchester magistrates put the newsman from
The Times
in gaol to stop him spreading the word. And Orator Hunt too, he was beaten and imprisoned. Kill the protestors, arrest the leaders, gaol the journalists. It’s what they do. It’s what tyrants do.” Harry dashed a trembling hand across his lips, as though wiping away the taste of something. His face was pale.

“Are you afraid?” Julius asked.

“Of course I’m afraid. I’ve been at protest meetings. My mother’s family were from Manchester. I could have been one of them. And people will be writing about this now—Silas—oh, Christ. And then the magistrates’ men will come for them, and I could have been there too, at the bookshop. God, you have no idea, do you? You don’t know how it is to have soldiers at the door for what you say. To flee the country huddled under sacking because the alternative is to be flogged or hanged—”

“Stop,” Julius commanded, closing the distance with two swift strides and grabbing Harry’s shoulders. “Stop it
now.
Don’t say those things. For God’s sake, you are no longer that person. You don’t risk arrest—”

“My friends do!”

“They are no longer your friends,” Julius said bluntly. “You are no longer sweating in some sordid pit of sedition. You are a gentleman, and I will trouble you to remember that. This is not your business.”

“How can it not be?” Harry demanded. “English blood spilled to defend the privilege of mill owners? It should be every man’s business!”

“It can’t be yours. Listen to me. There are people who will remember the old scandal of your father, you know that. If your behavior is gentlemanly, they may not revive it, and if they do, it can’t hurt you.” So Julius hoped. “But if you rant like this, if you declare your sympathies, you might as well proclaim yourself a radical and go back to your damned seditionary bookshop now, do you hear?”

“Are you saying that the
ton
will support this murder?”

“Killings. By the lawful yeomanry of Manchester.
Not
murder. And I expect many people will regard it with disgust and outrage, and say so loudly, but you cannot be of their number. Do you want to return to the stews?”

Harry stared down at the rich carpet underfoot. After a moment he muttered, “No.”

“Then be silent. You told me you wanted nothing to do with politics: Well, then,
have
nothing to do with it.”

“But it’s not right.” Harry’s shoulders sagged under Julius’s hands. “It’s not right.”

“It may not be.” Julius changed his grip, tugging Harry just a little closer. He wanted to pull him in and bear his weight, but the door was unlocked and anyone might enter. “But you have no power to remedy it, or to help, or to do anything but destroy your own prospects, for which we have worked so hard.” The
we
was deliberate. He would use guilt or reproach or whatever manipulation he could if it would prevent Harry from ruining himself.

“Yes.” Harry sounded defeated. “I see. I’m sorry. You’ve done so much—”

“Be damned to me,” Julius snapped. “I’m worried about you.”

“You shouldn’t have to be. I should have learned better.”

Julius sighed. “Pygmalion had an easier task than I. His Galatea was carved from stone. She had no memories, and no past to be cut away.”

“I’m not stone. I can’t stop remembering, or feeling.”

“I—”
I don’t want you to
battled with
I wish you would.
“Perhaps you can’t, but you can help what you say, and that we must all do. Come.” He gave Harry a little shake. “Show your face. Smile. Bid farewell to our fellow guests. And then let us discuss your entry to the
ton,
dear boy. We have your future to secure.”

It was almost time.

Harry stared at himself in the mirror. He wanted to twitch the points of his collar, which rose so high around his neck that it impeded the turning of his head. He wanted to strip off his cravat and retie it completely different, in an orientale or Primo Tempo, the styles he was used to. The pile of crumpled linen on the bed was a rebuke to that urge, hours of work for a laundry maid to get the squares of cloth pristine once more. He was more held back by Julius’s voice in his head.

Mr. Brummell advised us to dress as best we could and then give no further thought to our appearance. Don’t pick at yourself.

Harry very much wanted to see Julius before this evening went any further.

There had been little chance for privacy in the last few days at Arrandene. They had packed, and Julius and Richard had discussed where and when they should meet, and finally they had set off in Richard’s own superbly sprung carriage, laden with bags and boxes. Julius had returned to his rooms on Great Ryder Street, Richard to his Albemarle Street townhouse, and Harry to New Burlington Street and Gideon’s empty, echoing halls, where he had been consumed by the final preparations for his launch into society.

Tonight.

He took a deep breath and gave the handsome gentleman in the mirror a decisive nod.

“Very good, Mr. Vane.” His new valet, Ballard, spoke courteously, but Harry felt sure there was a deeper level of support there. Gideon had engaged the man specifically. Ballard doubtless knew that Harry hadn’t been brought up in the circles he was about to join, and Ballard’s tone of gentle advice was welcome. “And the coat, sir?”

“Oh. Yes.” Harry had been wondering about that all day. The royal blue tailcoat with gilt buttons, perfectly unexceptionable in a crowd, a coat like the coats all the other men would wear? Or the pale blue with the ivory buttons he and Julius had selected at Mr. Hawkes’s shop, proclaiming himself different from the rest on his first appearance?

Julius would choose the ivory buttons, but he was always different. Harry wasn’t sure he wanted to be different. Not his first time. When people knew him, when he was sure, then he could spread his wings. Don’t run before you can walk, that was what they said. Today, he didn’t want anyone to look at him at all.

Julius thought gilt buttons were tedious. Harry had seen the fractional droop of his eyelids, and mentally equated it to a cuff around the head. Julius would prefer him to wear the ivory buttons. Julius liked them.

He
liked them, dammit. Every time he touched them he could feel Julius’s grip on his shoulder, breath hot on his ear, his own desire. God, he’d been so hard for Julius, felt him so unattainable.

He hadn’t been unattainable at Arrandene. He’d been gasping and desperate and oddly passive too, allowing Harry to take the lead in a way that was entirely foreign to their relations otherwise. If it hadn’t been Julius, Harry might have worried he was seducing a virgin that first time, at least until those slim fingers had taken a vicious grip on Harry’s arse. He’d left bruises, three faint blue fingermarks that Harry had examined with some satisfaction the next day.

Maybe they might have an opportunity tonight, Harry thought, and was abruptly reminded of what tonight held, which was enough to subdue his hardening prick without trouble.

It was his first entrance into society. Would he dress like everyone else, or stand with Julius?

Ballard caught his eye as he hesitated between the coats, fingers moving toward the ivory buttons. “Would you be wishful of my thoughts, sir?”

“Absolutely,” Harry said warmly. Julius had told him he could make a friend of his valet, and Ballard was his only ally in this gloomy barrack of a house. “Please do advise me.”

“Well, sir, I would observe that Lord Gideon asked to see you before you leave, sir, and he is a most conventional gentleman.”

“Yes, that’s true.” Harry pulled his hand away from the coat he had almost taken up. “The gilt buttons, please.”

“Certainly, sir,” Ballard said with just a little satisfaction in his voice. “If I may say so, sir, that will be quite the thing.”

“You look well,” Gideon grunted, when Harry presented himself. “Gentlemanly. You look…” He mumbled a little under his breath. “You look like your father.”

“Oh.” Harry remembered his father worn by hardship, face hollow, hair unkempt, clothes the poor garments they all wore. He hadn’t imagined him as a prosperous, carefree young gentleman, and the thought was oddly moving. “Do you think so, sir?”

“More’s the pity. Oh, he looked a gentleman all right, before he disgraced himself and the family, and me. The damned fool. Turning his back on his birth for that—” Harry twitched, couldn’t help himself, and Gideon’s faded eyes latched onto his face. “Don’t like that? Or is it you don’t want to be reminded your mother was a slattern from the gutter?”

She’d been a weaver’s daughter, and educated with it. Harry dug his nails into his palm.

“Nothing to say?” Gideon demanded roughly.

The future of wealth and comfort that his parents had denied him. What could he not tolerate for that? “No, sir,” Harry managed.

Gideon grunted. “You’ve more sense than he did. Now, listen to me.” His interlocked, twisted fingers tightened over the knob of his cane. “Disgrace my name as your father did and I shall cut you off as I did him, without a word or a penny. Understand?”

“Sir,” Harry forced out.

“But if you can do a good job, show you’ve my blood in your veins…well. You look like a gentleman. Be one. Make me proud to have a grandson again.” Gideon pressed his lips together for a second. “Can you do that?”

“Yes, sir.”

“Good.” Gideon thumped his stick against the floor. “Then go on, my boy. Show you’re worth what I’ve spent on you. And be sure you respect your elders.” That almost startled a protest out of Harry, whose back teeth were set in an effort to respect his elder. Gideon must have detected this forced restraint, because he continued, “I grant you’ve a courteous tongue in your head. Keep it so. I’ve no truck with rag-mannered dandy-merchants.”

“No, sir,” Harry said obediently, wishing that Julius were there with his elegantly phrased insolence.

Gideon nodded. “You may do. I’ve plans for you, but…” The door knocker sounded in the hall. “Later, when you’ve settled in, established yourself. Well, go on then. Make your entrance.”

His entrance. It was happening, right now. He, the agitators’ son, the radical pamphleteer’s assistant, was going to mix with some of the men he’d spent his twenty-three years learning to despise, in the heart of the
ton,
and he was so desperate for their good opinion he thought he might be sick.

Thoughts of asking for another night’s—or week’s—grace flitted frantically through his mind, but then Ash was marching in, a broad grin on his handsome features, with Francis a severe, silent presence behind him.

“Harry, dear fellow!” Ash beamed at him. “You look delightful. We’re to join Richard and Julius at Alcide’s for a spot to eat. Get your hat. I say, that’s dashing. Francis, look at Harry’s hat.”

It was a hat of the Turf style, wide brim acutely curved up at the sides. Harry glanced nervously at Francis, impeccably sober as ever, and felt very glad that he had decided on the gilt buttons.

“It is indeed a hat,” Francis agreed. “I’m sure it will sit on his head most effectively. Shall we go?”

Ash took Harry’s arm and they strolled toward Piccadilly, toward society. The nerves roiled in his stomach. He squashed it all down—the fear, Gideon’s words, his mother’s imagined anger—as he had learned so many years before. When he’d been a small and frightened boy, he had pictured Silas standing between him and the threatening forces of the outside world. Now he imagined Julius, who had none of the thick muscle, but whose untouchability surrounded him like a shield. That brought to mind once more Julius’s odd, vulnerable hesitancy in their last, near-chaste kiss, and the memory distracted him enough that his shoulders had lost some of their painful tension as he entered the restaurant.

Alcide’s was an eating house that offered French food, French waiters, and a proprietor whose accent made him almost comically difficult to understand as he bowed them to a table to await the remaining guests. Harry wondered whether to speak to the fellow in French, make his life a little easier. Or would that infringe some unspoken rule? He was chewing on that as the others walked in.

Richard came first, his impressive height and breadth drawing eyes as he made his way toward them. He didn’t use his size to intimidate, but he never tried to make himself smaller either. Richard walked through the world in sublime confidence that it would fit him, and it did. Harry had just time to wonder if he might ever learn to walk like that before Richard stepped around a table and he saw Julius.

Harry’s breath caught. He’d become so used to Julius at Arrandene, wearing what he defined as country clothing. The exquisite Mr. Norreys entering a London restaurant, however, was a spectacle.

He was wearing light shades that emphasized his fairness: the new gray satin waistcoat with the onyx buttons Harry had selected and the pale blue coat. In a room of men in dark blues and greens and browns, he looked like a pastel drawing among oil paintings, a shimmering ghost. He moved gracefully through the room, saying something to Richard’s back, as he looked over and noted Harry. His gaze flicked over Harry’s costume, then he gave a civil nod.

I should have worn the other coat.

He had no idea what they ate. It was good, without doubt, well prepared and expertly sauced, but it could have been the soused turnips that Silas had cooked in times of particularly low funds for all Harry cared. The other men talked idly of mutual acquaintances, sport, losses at the gaming table. Julius contributed mocking remarks rather than providing any news himself, and fended off Francis’s jibes about his waistcoat with easy wit, but his eyes were always on Harry, watching.

Richard made some inquiry as to how Harry found life at his grandfather’s house.

“Oh, very tolerable, cousin,” Harry answered.
Never grumble,
Julius had told him,
and be aware of a man’s allies before you speak ill of anyone.
“It is a rather large house for three.”

“Ghastly,” said Ash, who had evidently not had the same lessons. “I can’t imagine anything worse than being cooped up with my aging relatives. Thank God my grandfather’s dead.”

Harry choked on his wine. Francis raised his brows with a pained expression. “Really, Gabriel?”

“Everyone says my brother Maltravers is his spit.”

“Oh, then thank God indeed,” Francis agreed. “In fact, here’s to the extermination of your entire family.” He raised a glass. Richard protested, with force. Julius met Harry’s eyes, his own glimmering with amusement, and quite suddenly Harry was enjoying himself.

They went along to White’s, elevated by several bottles of wine, Ash arm in arm with Harry and noisily recounting a prizefight he’d attended while the other three dropped behind. It didn’t seem real as they clattered up the steps of the club, only Harry glancing at the famous bow window at which the great Mr. Brummell had so often sat. It was dreamlike as doormen moved to greet them, and Richard tossed out a casual, “My cousin, Mr. Harry Vane,” and he found himself in a great candlelit room. The place was half empty, with only a handful of men there, thank God, because they all turned to look as the Ricardians entered. There were cries around him—“Norreys! Where in the world have you been hiding yourself?”—and then Julius was steering him, a hand lightly on the small of his back, toward an immense, well-dressed man whose tight coat and high collar points did all they could to control his corpulence.

“Alvanley, my friend, Harry Vane. Richard’s cousin, you know. New to Town.”

“Glad to make your acquaintance, sir.” Lord Alvanley extended fat fingers for Harry to shake. He did so with the bow and murmured words that Julius had drummed into him. Lord Alvanley! The Prince Regent’s intimate! The man who bet three thousand pounds on which raindrop would reach the bottom of a window pane first!

Silas had had a lot to say about that, he recalled, as Alvanley gave him a pleasant nod and turned to jab an amused finger at Julius’s waistcoat. Bitter words on men who gambled gigantic sums while others starved. He’d called them bloated leeches, murderers by proxy, gargantuan bellies that consumed the country and shat it out. These were those men. This was a Tory club, where the men of conservative, traditional beliefs gathered, the people his parents and Silas had battled. They looked, to Harry’s wine-dazed eyes, like a set of jolly good fellows.

He was introduced to other men; it felt like dozens, although the room had seemed so empty. Ash’s great friend Freddy, who was very definitely not a Ricardian, shook his hand with enthusiasm. He sported a waistcoat of such a lurid hue that Harry couldn’t forbear a glance at Julius, and was almost undone by his expression. Lords and Sirs, old and young, most dressed elegantly, some with a lack of care that spoke of limitless confidence. There were even a few men sporting a rakish
déshabillé,
with carelessly tied cravats, the disarrangement of their hair as studied as Julius’s perfection.

“Byron should hang for his baleful influence on the young and stupid,” Julius said at his elbow. “Talking of whom, this is Joseph Higham.” He indicated a dramatically tousled man. “If you can tear yourself away from contemplation of your poetic soul for a moment—”

“Go to the devil, Norreys,” said Mr. Higham, without resentment.

“—I should like you to meet Harry Vane. Cirencester’s cousin.”

“Pleased to make your acquaintance, Vane. New to Town?”

“Very new,” Harry agreed.
Don’t volunteer information,
Julius had told him. Or was that Silas?

“And where do you hail from?” Mr. Higham’s eyes were bright and curious. Not hostile, not suspicious, not gathering information to lay against him. Just asking.

“Oh, the country, but I’ve spent a good deal of time on the Continent. Paris and Munich.” Julius had given him that form of words with a promise that he would sound like a young man eager to talk about his Grand Tour. That, Julius had assured him, would terrify anyone into dropping the subject.