A Fashionable Indulgence (Society of Gentlemen #1) (9 page)

I knew he would. I knew it.

He was in deep now. Julius’s mouth working around him, tight and hot and wet. Those smooth hands gripping, sliding. Julius’s breath coming hard and fast through his nostrils, his pale skin flushed, his hair tumbled by Harry’s clenching hands.

“You’re beautiful,” Harry gasped, dizzy and drunk and helpless with pleasure. “So perfect. Oh God, I’m going to spend. Not yet, not yet.” Julius made a noise that vibrated through his prick. Harry moaned. “Sweet Jesus. I want you in my mouth—”

Julius jerked his head back, leaving Harry’s glistening wet cock standing proud. Harry mouthed helpless curses as Julius stood, fumbling at his own buttons, then grabbed Harry’s thighs and tugged. Harry, already sprawling on the chair, slid half to the floor, yelped a protest, and found himself with his knees on the floor, back on the chair seat. Julius leaned over him, hands braced on the chair arms for support, ramrod prick bobbing over Harry’s face.

Harry gulped for it, clamping his mouth down. Julius gave a choke of startled laughter that turned into a groan. “Dear boy. My God, you’re good.” His whispers tailed off. Harry pushed those tiresomely tight pantaloons down as far as possible, got a grip on his tight-muscled arse, bucked his own hips in pleasurable frustration. He wanted Julius to touch him, but Julius was lost to sensation, resting his head against the chair back, thrusting into Harry’s mouth, his face slack. He was close, the astringent tang in Harry’s mouth told him that. He grabbed for his own cock, pulling himself off with tight jerks as Julius helplessly fucked his mouth, his own lips moving without sound. Harry kneaded the tight buttock he held, in time with the fierce tugs he gave his own cock, and it was the little startled sound Julius made as he spilled into Harry’s mouth that sent him over with inebriated, giddy release.

They were still for a few seconds. Harry half off the chair, Julius bent over him, then Julius flopped forward as though his arms had given way. Harry slid all the way down to the floor, laughing, and Julius followed, sprawling over him.

“God,” Harry groaned. Julius’s face was close to his, flushed and slack and human, and without thinking, Harry kissed him.

Julius’s eyes widened, as if startled. He didn’t pull away, as such, but he didn’t return the kiss either, giving Harry a slightly studied smile instead. “Was that sufficiently celebratory?”

“Oh yes. And for you?”

“Indubitably.” The dry note was back, Julius regaining control. “Highly satisfactory, dear boy. And a highly satisfactory evening in general. That said…” He twisted round to look at the clock on the mantel, in a way that meant he shook off Harry’s arm. “It’s a quarter to three. Will your grandfather welcome your return at this time?”

“Oh.” Harry hadn’t even considered his return. Now he did. He’d have to go back to the house, hammer at the doorknocker, rouse the staff, and if that weren’t enough, he was decidedly foxed, and had his own sticky spendings all over his linen, soaking the cloth to translucency. “Oh my God.”

“The rooms here are for this very purpose,” Julius said. “Stay.”

“Will you stay too?”

The words hung in the air. It had been a simple question, a matter of practical arrangement—and yes, perhaps a little desire not to have the evening end yet—but as Julius hesitated, Harry felt as embarrassed as though he’d begged to be held in his arms all night. “I didn’t mean…”

“Harry.” Julius pushed himself to his knees, tucking himself away. “We’re in London now, and your grandfather intends you to take a wife. I don’t want our association to stand in your way.”

Oh no, not this. Not yet. Harry scrabbled for words. “I do have to marry, he says—”

“And he holds your future in his hand.”

“I don’t mind marrying. I like women. I’ll be quite happy to marry. Well, what else can we do? Aren’t you going to marry one day?”

“No,” Julius said. “But I am a peculiarly cold-hearted individual, with an independent income.”

“Well, I have to, but that doesn’t mean we shouldn’t be with each other now. I can’t help the future, but I haven’t even met any ladies yet, for goodness’ sake.” He reached for Julius’s hand, and was relieved when the slim fingers met his own. “Just a bit longer, while we can?”

Julius sighed. “As long as it doesn’t stand in your way. I have put a great deal too much effort into your future to jeopardize it. And I do not relish entanglements. When you give your heart to a lady—or, at least, announce an engagement to one—we will return to friendship and nothing more, yes?” His fingers tightened. “I hope we will remain friends?”

“Yes.” Harry didn’t want to remain friends. He wanted Julius, wanted to tumble him until the icy shell shattered forever, wanted urgently to know if he’d submit to the damned good ride that Harry was becoming desperate to give him before they had to part. “Friends.”

“Good.” Julius got to his feet and extended a hand to pull Harry up. “Now, we’d best let the staff know that you will be staying, and have your shirt cleaned. We can’t send you back to your grandfather’s like that.”

“I wish I didn’t have to go back at all,” Harry blurted out. “God help me, it’s like the Paris Morgue in that house.”

“But, at least without Frenchmen,” Julius consoled him. “I shall give the matter some consideration. For now, you should retire—chastely—to bed.”

Generally speaking, the early morning was Julius’s preferred time of day, because one didn’t meet people.

He was not commonly known to be an early riser. The popular idea of an exquisite was a man who stayed in bed until roused by hot chocolate and the tender ministrations of a valet at midday and then spent three hours selecting his coat. Julius was very happy to be considered an exquisite, and had no wish to cultivate an eccentric air, but he rarely slept more than four or five hours a night, and lying alone with his thoughts was dull. He rose, therefore, and he rode. Hard riding, urging his neat bay mare Claribel across Hyde Park so that her hooves thundered on the turf, in a way that would be quite shocking to the
ton,
if anyone of importance had been out to see.

If he lived in the countryside he could ride like this for hours. All day if he chose. Alone on horseback, galloping away from everything, nothing but the powerful bunching muscles of the horse under him, the equine smell, the wind and the sweat.

He’d done that, of course, four years ago. He had retired to his parents’ country home with every intention of riding out the pain, but it had been appalling. His mother’s dull-eyed grief, his father’s rage, the silent rebuke of the dead everywhere he looked, the ghost in the mirror. He had stood it for a week and fled back to London, where at least he could be alone in company.

He rode a fifth circuit of the park, Claribel flying under him, and wondered if Harry would join him one day. He was shaping up to be an adequate rider, and the practice would do him good. It had been a week since that memorable night of his debut, and, as Julius had predicted, he was a success among those who had returned to Town. Handsome enough, likable, modest, or at least not putting himself forward in company, which amounted to much the same. The younger men found him a good sort, sporting without being tiresome, dashingly dressed without excesses of dandyism; the older types liked his courtesy and deference.

All things to all men, that was Harry. Gambling with the gamblers, dancing with the dancers, gently flirting with ladies who were open to amusement, a rather more risqué tone for the dashing sorts like Lady Beaufort. Harry made himself likable, and by God he had made Julius like him too.

Julius clapped his heels into Claribel’s sweaty sides, urging her on, trying to outpace his thoughts.

He’d spoken to Richard about Harry’s lodgings in London. God knew what that old vulture of a grandfather was like to live with, but Julius had seen Harry’s unguarded face when he thought of it. So he’d asked for help, and Harry had just moved into Richard’s London home. Far more suitable for a young man. And, of course, that meant he’d be able to spend the nights as he wished. At Quex’s or even in Julius’s own rooms…

If he could have Harry for a whole night, he might sleep. The thought came out of nowhere, and he shook his head, driving it away.

Stupid. Harry wanted and needed the marriage his damned grandfather planned. He would be penniless without his grandfather’s blessing; he could not afford to throw that away. And if he could, if he didn’t marry, then what?
Affaires
came and went, and the best one could hope was that they should end with civility, because one still had to see the man for the rest of one’s life. Richard’s exclusive society of gentlemen gave them a safe place and a degree of private freedom, but sometimes, as their limited company turned in on one another, it felt as though they’d agreed to share a cage.

Harry was free. Harry was honest, not trapped in mutual courtesy for the sake of survival. Harry was
vulgar:
vulgar and raw and real. Not in the likable smiling face that reflected back on whomever he spoke to, granted, but in their private time together he was all hot skin and open pleasure. There was none of Richard’s airy ideals of a meeting of souls for Harry, still less whatever dark need drove Dominic to his bruising assignations. Just simple, earthy pleasure in a good fuck that briefly dissolved Julius’s paralyzing consciousness of his own flesh and set him free as well.

And that was what had him galloping wide, unsettled circuits of the park now. Because Harry was disappearing behind the counterfeit gentleman that Julius had forged and set in circulation, and a long-silent voice deep within was protesting at the thought.

Of course Harry should forget it all, his politics, his parenthood, his unlawful urges. Of course it was better to be the young heir to Lord Gideon Vane’s fortune than a half-starved unwilling revolutionary, let alone a sodomite in the pillory or on the gallows. Of course he should smile and speak courteously. Nothing he did was wrong. He was going to win Julius’s wager for him. It was a triumph.

But there were so many pleasant young gentlemen. Stupid, honest ones such as Ash, or the cleverer ones whom everybody liked because they made themselves so
very
pleasant, or the cleverest of all, the men who built up pleasantness around their secret selves, as an oyster concealed abrasive grit under the shimmering roundness of a pearl. The Richard Vanes, who had hidden themselves in the world for so long that their real selves were all but forgotten.

The Richard Vanes and the Julius Norreys, in fact. No wonder he and Richard had been quite so catastrophic in bed together. Neither had been willing to give a damn thing that cost. Richard was too busy being kind and generous, Julius being unassailable and unassailed. He wondered when either of them had last told an honest, open-hearted truth about himself.

He pulled the mare back to a walk, staring over her ears at the yellow morning sun, hazed by London smoke, then turned her for Rotten Row at a gentle pace.

He had no right to undermine Harry’s progress. No right, and no desire to. He had succeeded beyond hope in remaking him, and it was absurd to have this creeping, sneaking feeling that in some profoundly important respect he had failed.

Meanwhile, he’d stayed out too long, he realized, irritated by his own self-indulgence. There were people out even at this unfashionable hour. If he dawdled much more, he’d be riding home through greetings and salutations. He might have to
talk
to someone.

“Appalling,” he said aloud and urged Claribel back to a trot.

Harry, swathed in a silk banyan, contemplated his wardrobe with a scowl.

What he’d wanted to wear today was the coat with ivory buttons and a rather dashing new waistcoat that had been delivered from Mr. Hawkes just yesterday. It was a lovely morning—well, noon, but a fellow who had been playing at Quex’s till gone four could hardly be expected to rise earlier. It had taken him some weeks to break the habit of opening his eyes at the ungodly hours he’d been used to in Theobald’s Bookshop, but at last he could stay in bed with the best of them.

He was up now. It was a lovely day, and he intended to make the best of it after obeying Gideon’s summons, with a saunter down Bond Street in his new finery, followed by meeting Ash for a trip to his new snyder. He had only ever visited a tailor with Julius before and the prospect felt unnervingly like infidelity.

He was wasting his time, and Ballard’s. He offered the valet a rueful grin. “I know. I’m accompanying my grandfather to White’s.” Still, his hand hesitated over the new waistcoat.

“I do fear that Lord Gideon lacks a modern apprehension of sartorial matters, sir,” his valet murmured. “He is a most conservative gentleman. If I might take the liberty of suggesting…”

“I know, I know.” Harry held out a hand for the plain waistcoat Ballard had already selected. “You’re right, of course.”

“Old age has its crotchets, if I may say so, sir.”

“It certainly does. But it’s past time I saw him.”

It wasn’t just disinclination to face the old vulture again. Richard’s large and luxurious townhouse made Gideon’s echoing dark halls seem like hardship by comparison. He caught himself thinking of it as an uncomfortable barrack he didn’t want to set foot in, rather than the palace it had seemed just a few months ago. His old life was unthinkable in its dirt and privation—

I ought to visit Silas.

The thought had come and gone at intervals over the last blissful fortnight of trips to Astley’s and the Royal Saloon, Tattersall’s to look at horseflesh he couldn’t afford until he won Gideon’s blessing, and Vauxhall Gardens, where he had once crept as one of the gaping poor but now walked with the glittering rich. His life was a whirl of pleasure that very nearly drowned out the steady beat of reproach, but every now and then, in the least guarded moment, the thought came, and the guilt.

He
ought
to visit Silas. He ought to write to Silas. He ought to know if Silas was all right, because after Peterloo, the stubborn sod would be risking his neck worse than ever. He could have been arrested already.

One more reason for you not to go,
Julius would have told him.

Peterloo. That was what everyone called the massacre at St. Peter’s Fields, in ironic reference to Wellington’s heroic victory at Waterloo. Julius was right: Harry had to forget about politics and sedition and old friends if it was not all to be in vain. He had tried, and been more or less successful, but every so often he forgot to forget, and the thought stabbed.
Ingratitude, disloyalty, selfishness.

And fear, of course, because Harry knew damned well what Silas would be up to, and if he visited the bookshop, his skin would be prickling every minute he spent there, waiting for the soldiers’ knock.

Stop it.

Ballard was waiting with a length of cloth for his cravat. It was not the usual starched length required to achieve an elaborate arrangement, but a sadly limp affair. He glanced at the valet, who gave him a sympathetic look.

“Lord Gideon is—”

“A most conservative gentleman. I know. How do
you
know?”

“I had the privilege of working in Lord Gideon’s household previously, sir.” Ballard watched with anxious care as Harry arranged his unfashionable neck-cloth. “I was valet to Mr. Matthew, your cousin, until the tragedy.”

The house fire that had killed his uncle and cousin. Gideon had given him his other grandson’s valet. Surely that was acceptance, in some small way, a little acknowledgement of Harry’s place. The thought gave him a tiny thrill of warmth.

“That was a terrible business. Thank heavens Verona wasn’t harmed.”

“Yes, sir. A most distressing affair. I believe it is Lord Gideon’s intention to see her safely settled with a good husband, to make up for what she has lost.”

“I’m sure.” Harry accepted the coat with the gilt buttons that Ballard proffered without asking. He might as well, if he were to appear the stamped-out gentleman that Gideon wanted.

“It is a matter of great concern to Lord Gideon.” Ballard helped Harry into the coat, though it was so loosely fitted that he might have shrugged himself into it without assistance. With luck, none of his friends would see him looking so countrified. “Lord Gideon is devoted to his family, sir. And you and Miss Verona are his heirs, of course.”

Harry stopped adjusting his coat and glanced up to meet Ballard’s gaze in the mirror. “What was that?”

“I shouldn’t wish to speak out of turn, Mr. Harry.”

“No, go on.” Harry watched the man’s face, curious. Ballard was slightly older, probably around thirty, dark hair beginning to recede at the temples. He had been quietly encouraging from the beginning but Harry hadn’t had him down as a gossip. “Feel free.”

“Well, sir, Lord Gideon would rather keep his fortune within the family. He is most concerned to see you secure your place in the family line, and he would deeply regret the extinction of Mr. Paul’s name.”

“Are you saying that Gideon wants me to marry Verona?”

“I couldn’t speak for his lordship, Mr. Harry.” Ballard glided over to tidy away a pair of discarded gloves. “But such a union would secure the family name and fortune to all parties’ satisfaction.”

“Yes, I suppose it would.” Harry frowned. The last time he’d met Verona she’d still been clad in the deepest and most funereal black. “When was the fire?”

“Mid-September last year, sir. Miss Verona’s year of mourning is all but over. An autumn marriage would be entirely proper, I believe.”

Out of a black dress and into a white. Still, a year in mourning would surely be enough for the most devoted daughter.

“Of course, this is mere hearsay, sir,” Ballard went on. “But I felt that you might wish to be prepared.”

“Absolutely.” Harry beamed at him. “Thank you, Ballard, you’re a very great help.”

“I hope to give satisfaction, sir. On which…” He gave a little cough. “In the course of attending to your belongings, sir, I came across a collection of literature in a drawer.”

Harry gave him a blank look—he’d barely picked up a book in weeks—then realized with abrupt horror what Ballard must mean. The telltale blood rushed to his face. “Ah…”

“I put the works in question into your nightstand, which has a key, sir,” Ballard went on calmly. “Lord Richard’s staff are most
attentive,
especially Mr. Cyprian.”

“Thank you.”

“Entirely at your service, Mr. Harry,” Ballard murmured. “If there is anything else?” Harry shook his head dumbly, Ballard departed, and Harry gave it at least five seconds before lunging for the nightstand and his illicit reading matter.

There they were, a small pile of inky papers.
The Republican,
which was the successor of
Sherwin’s Political Register,
closed down by the government after Peterloo.
The Peterloo Massacre: A Faithful Narrative of the Events.
The Tyrant’s Bloody Murder,
by Jack Cade, which might as well be subtitled
Send Me to Gaol,
Harry thought bitterly, since it demanded the overthrow of the government, the hanging of the Home Secretary, and the Prince Regent’s dethronement. He really ought not to have bought that one. The others were at least legitimate newspapers, or widely circulated; he had no right to bring Jack Cade’s dangerously seditious writing into Richard’s house. But he had anyway, and pored over the brutal, angry, futile words at night, as furtively as any pornographic story he’d read as a boy.