Page 11 of Once a Gentleman
Kit started, grasped his coat about him, and jerked his gaze from Turner’s lover’s mouth. He probably looked like a maiden aunt, pinched and disapproving and prudish.
His dignity. Standing upon it. Kit had a plan, and he was man enough to admit he must execute it swiftly, before arousal and mortification melted him into the floor. Kit gathered it around him like the coat. If he already resembled a maiden aunt, then by God he’d throw himself into the role.
“I will be tomorrow, if sleep proves impossible,” he said with some asperity. Perhaps too much for a man addressing his employer, but did Turner not deserve it, for carrying on like this? In full view of any servants who might pass by, opposite Kit’sbedchamber door, by all that was holy. “There are quite six bedchambers on this floor, Mr. Turner. Have they all proven unsuitable?”
A slow grin bloomed across Turner’s face, all predatory teeth. His eyes gleamed with something Kit couldn’t possibly name. “We haven’t tried yours as yet.”
“Oh,” said the other man, and peeked out from behind Turner’s shoulder. He looked Kit up and down, licking his very pink lips in a way Kit tried most valiantly to find repellant. “I wouldn’t mind.”
Kit stood speechless for a long moment, as vivid, disjointed images of the three of them in his bed swirled through his brain. He had never even imagined such a thing, but to this fellow, and apparently to Turner—who was smirking, not at all nonplussed—it was not only possible, but commonplace. One prick brushing over his lips, another…elsewhere.
He shook his buzzing head and took a step back, desperately needing to escape, to be alone, to have a sturdy door between him and temptation. No, not that, not temptation—this disgusting display. It was disgusting, and shameless, and nothing Kit could want.
His stirring cock be damned, he didnotwant anything to do with this.
It was high time for Kit to find his backbone. If it ended in his being ejected from the house in the morning, then so be it, although Turner would need to be confident to the point of recklessness in Kit’s discretion to toss him out after what he’d seen tonight.
He favored them both with the same sort of slow survey he’d just received, from their mussed hair to their stockinged feet. Turner’s hair looked as if one could simply run one’s hands through it, and the firm lines of his back and thighs…Kit grimaced, not for the reason he would want them to think, but it would do.
“I do believe a sound night’s sleep would serve me better,” Kit said, as disdainfully as he could manage. “I thank you, but the offer lacks appeal.”
With that, he spun on his heel and stepped through his bedroom door. A faint, indignant, “Oh!” floated after him, followed by a low chuckle and a murmured, “I think we’ve just been snubbed.”
Kit shoved the door shut, turned the key with a very audible click, cast his coat to the floor, and leapt under the covers. He pulled a pillow over his head to drown out the sounds of Turner and his companion stumbling down the corridor, and resolutely ignored anything his body chose to do below the waist.
His eyes refused to shut. The night promised to be a long one.
Andrew shut the back garden gate and latched it as soon as Jeremy—Jeremy? Jerome? It hardly mattered—had slipped out of sight around the corner of the wall. A young man in evening clothes strolling home in the hour before dawn was hardly an unusual sight in this more fashionable neighborhood of Southsea, and Andrew had slipped a few crowns into his coat pocket, more than enough to pay for a hired carriage once he’d reached a busier street.
What was left over wasn’t payment, precisely. Andrew certainly preferred not to think of it that way.
When he was alone at last, he slumped back against the garden wall, the bricks chilled and rough through the linen of his shirt. He scrubbed his hands over his face and dug his thumbs into his aching temples. Stars shone down from a mostly clear sky, for once, with only a few clouds hanging overhead, their curves silvered by the setting half-moon. The fresh, green scent of the garden’s overgrown grass and the sharpness of rosemary filled his lungs as he drew in a full breath for what felt like the first time in hours.
Better, certainly, than the miasma of spend and sweat and brandy that filled the bedchamber—not his own, that was a quiet sanctuary for himself alone—in which he’d spent the better part of the night.
After Hewlett had appeared from his, and scolded Andrew and Jeremy like a governess with a pair of naughty children.The offer lacks appeal. Andrew put the heels of his hands against his eyes, pressing down as if he could squeeze out the headache looming behind them. A laugh escaped instead, and Andrew shook with it, his shoulders bumping the wall.
Bugger it, but that had been one of the funniest things he’d experienced in years: Hewlett’s indignant face, eyes wide pools of shock; Jeremy’s ready willingness to add Hewlett to their plans for the night; Hewlett’s retreat, coat flapping, his well-formed calves on tantalizing display and his pert nose in the air as if something rotten were held beneath it.
To be fair, Andrew and Jeremy had probably smelled of wine and smoke and sex rather pungently. Andrew turned his head and sniffed, and pulled a face. Not probably, certainly.
Andrew hadn’t thought before he’d suggested Hewlett’s own bedchamber as their destination—his impulses were the very devil. It had been wrong to tease his secretary that way, at best improper in the extreme.
And if Hewlett were the sort to be overawed by a wealthy employer, Andrew would be wallowing in guilt over it rather than laughing.
He hadn’t been so thoroughly set down in years. And now, rather than grudgingly tolerating Hewlett as an experienced, intelligent man of business, Andrew was intrigued. There was apparently more to him than a head for figures and the organization of correspondence; he was absurdly self-possessed even when mortified and shocked, and he seemed to have been hiding a dry wit beneath his dry exterior.
And since the constables hadn’t yet knocked down the door, he was also, quite obviously, a man of principle. Not as society would have it; a man ofthatkind of principle would have run for the nearest magistrate. No, a man of the kind of honor that would lead him to set his personal obligations, his duties of loyalty and discretion, above an abstract ideal. That sort of honor demanded Andrew’s respect.
Hewlett was, in short, the sort of man who made Andrew regret very much that one type of honor frequently came along with other, duller varieties, such as a respectable reluctance to tumble headlong into Andrew’s bed.
Although that reluctance didn’t stem entirely from principle. The night’s adventure had proven once and for all that Hewlett shared Andrew’s desires. That had been the outline of an erection beneath Hewlett’s nightshirt, a flush of arousal on his face and parted lips; Andrew would have sworn to it.
Hewlett hadn’t only felt disgust, seeing Andrew with another man. He’d been tempted. He hadwanted, with a bone-deep longing that could only be born of self-denial.
A self-denial Andrew greatly wished to see crack, break, rush away on a tide of desire.
Of course, Hewlett’s pride and obvious contempt for Andrew’s way of life meant that Andrew would be the last man in the world to accomplish that. Hewlett might very well give in to his desires, but not with him.
Andrew laughed again, shaking his head. Good God, but the idea of Hewlett’s desires or lack of them had grown in his mind until it occupied and unhealthy and inconvenient amount of space. Andrew didn’t lack for willing partners, and he wouldn’t force Hewlett into anything even if he could.
But on the other hand…hecouldshow Hewlett precisely what he was missing. What he had seen earlier that night would be only a mere taste of it.
And if nothing else, teasing his prudish secretary would offer rather more entertainment than the same endless round of brandy and fucking and cards.
Andrew smiled, stretched his aching limbs, and sauntered toward the house. Life had been far too boring of late.
