The Gilded Scarab (12 page)

Mr. Pearse shook his head. He closed his notebook and tied it with tape before slipping it onto some shelf or other under the counter. “I don’t hold with the Houses.”

“The thing is, my House doesn’t hold with me. I didn’t think I was in good enough standing with the senior members of the family to merit an invitation. In fact, I didn’t think I had any standing with them at all.”

“I know that feeling,” said Mr. Pearse.

I went to the counter for a refill. Mr. Pearse and I were on excellent terms after more than a month’s acquaintance, and I could be honest. “What’s more, that state of affairs suited me down to the ground. It’s safer being unnoticed by the House. I like being beyond the pale.” I waved the invitation at him. “This is a surprise. I didn’t think any of them would want to see me, even to salve their Christian consciences at Christmas.”

Much less via a personal note from the Stravaigor himself. What the devil was that about?

The invitation card was heavily embossed and printed with gold ink. Mr. Pearse examined it, his mouth turned down. “It looks formal.”

“Very formal.” I pulled off my spectacles and rubbed my eyes, trying to rub away the headache piling up behind them. Good Lord. Stravaigor House at the festive season. Could anything be more likely to make a man embrace Mr. Dickens’s Scrooge as a brother?

“Will you go?”

I shrugged. I liked my independence. At the same time, to cut myself off entirely from the huge extended family that was my House was a bold step. “I’m not very close to them, and I’ve been happy keeping my distance.”

“But.” Mr. Pearse’s acid delivery was admirable.

“But I’m not as free of them as I would like.”

“The Houses are pernicious things,” agreed Mr. Pearse.

“Yes. And I know how foolish it is to turn them down completely. I suppose I’d better go and see what they want. My old evening clothes won’t do for something as grand as a Stravaigor Christmas, though. I’ll need a new set and there’s barely time to get one. Dammit.”

“A waste of good money,” grunted Mr. Pearse. His mouth twisted into a grimace, like a man with toothache. “I really don’t hold with the Houses, Captain Lancaster.”

“I’m not fond of them myself. You’re a House member, though, aren’t you? I mean, you’re an educated man.”

“House Jongleur. At least, I was. I don’t bother with such nonsense now.” His mouth twisted again. “I owe allegiance to no man because a House princeps says I must. I do not follow my profession because a House princeps says I must. I do nothing that a House princeps says I must. I don’t acknowledge their authority.”

“I’m not quite so independent. I merely keep out of their way.”

Mr. Pearse shook his head and flourished the invitation. “Not well enough, judging by this. The sooner we get rid of the Houses, the better.”

Well that was laughable. It was hard to get a good laugh going, though. “Don’t hold your breath. It would take a revolution.”

Mr. Pearse nodded. His right hand reached under the counter, but came up again empty. His mouth tightened. “I’ll be there to man the barricades.”

W
HAT
A
damn nuisance, having to pay for expensive evening clothes from limited funds!

Most of my old military companions would stare to see a Rafe Lancaster who was careful with his money. But I eked it out as best I could, determined not to touch either the small income I had from the property my father left me or the gratuity money until I found somewhere sound to invest it, some venture I could buy into to give myself a career. I would have to find something soon. Living on my pension was not feasible. Body and soul might be together, living on that pension, but only very loosely associated.

All things considered, I eschewed the tailor I’d patronized when still on full pay and who’d made my old suit—the tailoring firm of Schultz had catered to military gentlemen for well over a century, and their prices reflected this venerable tradition—and went instead to a local tailor with a workshop in a Bloomsbury Square attic, recommended by Mr. Pearse. Despite the relative cheapness, the resulting evening coat and trousers were plainly made and fitted me beautifully, and were delivered to my room by the tailor’s apprentice three days before Christmas. The tailor had sold me a new evening cloak with a fur-lined collar, a top hat, and a white silk scarf to complete the ensemble, all for a very reasonable twenty guineas.

I tried on the new finery and viewed the result in the looking glass. Well, now. That was a cheering sight. If I say so myself, I made a tasty morsel, and not even the gold spectacles had the power to take the heart out of me. I hadn’t felt so well dressed in a long time.

Far too well dressed, in fact, to waste its brand-new glory on the Stravaigor’s probably dismal Christmas dinner, where I’d be below the salt and lucky if what I got from the festive goose was a scrap of skin and the parson’s nose. No rejoicing and fatted calf for this prodigal. Such a dreary prospect didn’t deserve the first public appearance of the well-dressed man about town, Rafe Lancaster.

No, this was far too good to waste. Besides, it would amuse me to turn up at Stravaigor House in an evening suit that had been used for a little sinful pleasure before the austerity of a Stravaigor Christmas.

An evening out, that’s what I needed. I’d been sensible and economizing for too long. Margrethe’s beckoned. Oh yes, Margrethe’s beckoned. Perhaps it wasn’t likely I’d meet Edward Fairfax there, but I could certainly inquire about him, and the Lancaster luck might have brought him back from wherever it was he had gone. Even if he were still away, Margrethe’s would have something to offer, surely. Another visit there would be just the thing to give my evening clothes a christening and raise more than my spirits.

I made a quick trip to New Oxford Street. James Smith and Co. had been making canes and umbrellas in a small shop there for the last seventy years. I found a sword stick, a beautiful, smooth malacca cane with a silver knob, and released the thin rapier with a twist of the wrist. Very nice indeed. And suitable, if I were being dragged into House matters again. A man never knew when he’d need the protection of a good blade, and fond as I was of the old service pistol in its box under my bed, it was not the sort of weapon I could carry about in the pocket of my dress coat.

A sword stick was quite unexceptional. I bought it on the spot.

I
DIDN
’
T
dawdle in Covent Garden that night. It was a cold night to begin with, too cold for even a Stravaigor vagabond to enjoy wandering, and I wasn’t as early as I had been on my first visit back in November. If I wanted to find a nice dinner and dessert companion, then I really had no time to waste.

Ambrose, the maître d’ at Margrethe’s, was good at his job and pretended to remember who I was. He greeted me pleasantly, and the long, slow look he gave me, sweeping from head to foot, and his small smile afterward, left me with the pleasing consciousness I was really very well dressed that night. He did, though, look a little surprised when I asked about Edward Fairfax.

“I’m afraid that”—and there was the slightest hesitation—“Mr. Fairfax hasn’t been in for some weeks, sir. Indeed, I don’t expect him again until Easter.”

Oh.

Well, that was a blow. I hadn’t realized he would be gone quite so long, although of course he had been vague about his plans. But wasn’t the little hesitation interesting? Ambrose remembered Fairfax when by Fairfax’s own account his return to Margrethe’s had been very recent. Despite this, Fairfax’s comings and goings were so well known to the management that Ambrose was positive about when Fairfax was expected again. But most of all, that hesitation told me the maître d’ quite possibly knew him by some other name. Well, well.

I said it was a shame, but doubtless I’d catch up with Fairfax when he returned, and what did Ambrose recommend for dinner? I wandered off into the Praecipias Lounge, and if I were the teensiest bit disconsolate that Easter was still three months off, no one knew it but me.

The lounge was crowded that evening. The pre-Christmas rush, I assumed, when gentlemen made merry before being clasped to the bosom of their families when they would infinitely prefer the bosom of the handsome waiter at their club. I didn’t begrudge the festive cheer, but had to push my way through to the bar. Really. In any well-ordered universe, the crowd would have noticed me and my fine clothes at the door and parted to make way for me, like the Red Sea.

A scotch and soda did a great deal to restore my equanimity. Indeed, I grew a trifle beatific, since all I’d had to eat since breakfast had been some of Will Somers’s pastries, and the scotch didn’t have a lot of insulation to work on. I wasn’t festive, you realize, merely a little mellow. So when the tall man in natty evening dress bumped shoulders with me, I merely moved to get out of range rather than apostrophize him as the clumsiest oaf in Christendom.

“I beg your pardon!” He glanced at me and then again, more slowly the second time. He looked me up and down and smiled. “It’s an unholy crush in here tonight.”

He was older than me. A good ten years at least, but his brown hair, brushed back from his brow in true aesthete style, was untouched by gray. His eyes were the bright mauvish-blue of flax flowers, framed by eyelashes of extraordinary length and thickness. I suspected him of some sort of artifice there. Those eyelashes didn’t strike me as quite natural. But everything else appeared to be the genuine article, and if he were indeed in his early forties, as he appeared, he had worn well. He wore his daisy on the left of his lapel and perhaps his acquaintanceship would be worth cultivating.

I smiled. “I should have remembered everyone comes here at Christmas. I think it’s to immunize themselves against the shock of festive family life.”

He threw back his head and laughed.
Mmmn
. It hadn’t been that amusing, but perhaps it passed for wit where this man normally existed.

“I could wish there were a vaccine for it,” he said, sounding heartfelt. “In lieu of it, I shall try to sate myself in a more satisfactory sort of life to build up my immunity.” He gestured to my glass. “May I refresh that?”

Did he think he might have the opportunity to sate himself in me, then? We’d see. “Scotch and soda, thank you…?” I allowed my voice to lift and trail away on an interrogative note.

“Daniel Meredith,” he supplied, half turning away to try and catch a waiter’s eye.

“Rafe Lancaster.” I held out my hand for him to shake. “I’m pleased to meet you, Meredith.”

He turned back to me and smiled, and suddenly it wasn’t merely a polite platitude to ease along society’s wheels. I
was
rather pleased to meet him. I could have done a lot worse.

I had done a lot worse, in the past. And if I banished the image of my first visit to Margrethe’s following my return to Londinium, I’d remember that a lot more easily.

S
EVERAL
TIMES
over dinner, Meredith reached openly across the table and took my hand in his, rubbing the palm or the thumb with suggestive fingers. There was no doubt in his mind, then, where the evening was going. And in truth, no doubt in mine, either.

I don’t remember now what we talked about. I was far more au fait with current affairs in Londinium, as well as up to date on society gossip as recounted by
The Times
in its most delicate mode. Between hand holding and eating, we talked about everything and nothing. Inanities. Small talk. Something to get us through dinner until we could, without indecent haste, go and talk to the concierge, Charles, and take a room so we wouldn’t have to talk at all.

Charles gave us Room 3 for the night. It was sumptuous and luxurious, the royal blue silk bed hangings lavishly embroidered with gold thread. Those curtains must have kept a dozen seamstresses busy for a month.

Meredith showed no hesitation. He had held my hand all the way up the stairs, and as soon as the door closed behind us, he raised my hand to his lips and mouthed at it, sucking my fingers and nibbling on them. He looked me over while he did it, those flax-shaded eyes narrowed and calculating. He had the look of a man assessing what he’d just acquired.

“Let me undress you,” he said.

Well, I’m not averse to letting someone else do the hard work, so long as they’re enjoying themselves as well. I am not completely selfish, despite appearances. Meredith had me stand still on the hearth rug while he undressed me. He was, thankfully, careful about it—I would have protested against any misuse of my new clothes, and he had the wit to see that, I suppose. He was clever, too, about sliding a garment from me and then removing his own, so we ended the race neck and neck. Certainly we ended it skin to skin, pressed up against each other. His cock, heavy and hard, pushed up against my thigh in a way that was, like the man, intent on taking all my attention.

He took my hands in his and stepped back, spreading out our arms so he could look at me. “Oh, very pretty!” He smiled, like a man facing a table of all his favorite dishes, before walking toward me and gently pushing me back to the bed. I felt as if I were being herded by one of my father’s sheepdogs.

Still, I let him do it. It was good to let someone else take charge for a while, and I didn’t mind at all when he kissed me, and pushed me back until I was splayed out on the bed, legs spread and my cock bobbing up merrily.

Meredith took it as a challenge. He had an odd smile on his face as he crouched over me. He looked at me and licked his lips in a suggestive and inviting manner, asking my opinion, I believe, on the next step. I had very decided opinions.

Oh yes. Yes, please. That would do nicely.

He swooped down on me, nosing his way to the base of my cock and licking up it, root to tip, in one long hot sweep of what promised to be a very talented tongue. My cock twitched, and the touch of his tongue on the crown made me clench every muscle in my body while lightning zigzagged its way through my veins.

I may have whimpered. A little.

He swirled his tongue around the crown. I laughed and reached for his head, carding my fingers through his hair and encouraging him down. He made no objection, but started out with rhythmic sucking and licking, closing his lips over me. He was actually rather good at it. He had a trick of changing the tempo, letting me get used to a brisk stroke as he bobbed his head up and down, working me so my hips thrust at the same rhythm. But without warning he would change to slow, lazy licks from tip to root, root to tip that had me faltering, lost, searching for the rhythm again and bucking and rotating my hips to get him in faster, hotter, harder. Best of all were the sharp little dabs with his tongue against the top slit with the half threatened, half longed for risk of teeth and a tiny pain, more pleasure than hurt.