Page 29 of Once a Gentleman
Chapter Thirteen
The whore currently sprawled on top of him didn’t offer the distraction Andrew had hoped. The lad’s mouth was skilled enough, as he worked his way down Andrew’s neck, but his cock remained stubbornly at half-mast.
He had more than enough attention to spare for the raucous laughter of his guests, for the man with both a lightskirt and a pretty boy in his lap, one on each knee, in an armchair a few feet from the settee Andrew and his partner occupied, and for his aching desire for another brandy.
Bloody hell. Every time he closed his eyes, he saw Hewlett on his knees before him.
His cock stirred to life at last.
Bloody, bloody hell.
Andrew’s head spun. He tipped it back against the settee and let his eyes slide shut again, hoping he could at least pretend to himself that his erection was attributable to the giggling young man writhing against him, and not to a drunken memory of his secretary sucking his cock.
His secretary who avoided him assiduously, the more so since Andrew had flung himself wholeheartedly into dissipation once more.
More than dissipation; it was debauchery, and Andrew had made a point of bringing it home with him as much as possible and encouraging his guests to be as loud, as filthy, and as disreputable as possible. The past few days had been a riotous tempest of liquor and bare arses and women’s breasts, shrill laughter and the groans of pleasure, any restraint Andrew had imposed before thrown utterly to the four winds.
He might as well be hanged for a sheep as a lamb, after all, since Hewlett despised him regardless.
A throat cleared right above him, and Andrew’s eyes flew open.
Oh, fucking hell. Standing there looking as primly sardonic as ever was a man he hadn’t seen in ages—since he’d visited for a night shortly after Andrew inherited his fortune, in fact, while on his way to another friend’s estate—a school friend of sorts with whom Andrew had little in common besides their mutual proclivity for other men and a few years of close proximity. His blond head hadn’t a hair out of place, and his plain, practical, gentlemanly clothing couldn’t have beenmoreout of place in the midst of the orgy going on around him.
“Rowley!” he said, the name bursting out of him with the awkward force of an attempt at jocularity. Fuck. “What an unexpected…delight.”
Oh, bloody hell, the whore hadn’t stopped, even with Rowley standing there, his pretty face growing primmer and primmer as he watched. A whoop of laughter welled up at the other side of the room, with a counterpoint of shattering glass.
Andrew shoved at the lad on top of him, unceremoniously tossing him back against the other arm of the settee. He let out a grunt of surprise and a peevish, “What the devil?” Andrew slipped out from under his legs and staggered to his feet as smoothly as possible, though his brain still seemed to be dancing a jig inside his throbbing skull. He glanced down to find his abandoned companion staring up at him with a sulky dismay that might’ve been comical at another time.
“Stay where you are, there’s a good fellow.” He shrugged. “Or don’t.” He simply couldn’t bring himself to care one way or the other. It wasn’t as if he’d been taking much pleasure in the whore’s ministrations, anyway, curse it all.
He took Rowley by the arm and towed him firmly around the chaotic mess of the room, dodging a dice game and a giggling lightskirt, until he reached the study door. Hell, the key, the key…he found it at last and ushered Rowley through, shutting and locking the door firmly behind them.
A drink. He needed another drink, and quickly. What the devil did Rowley mean by turning up like this, out of nowhere? A glance at Rowley showed him eyeing Andrew warily, glancing between him and the locked door.
“Oh, don’t be such a nervous nelly,” Andrew said. “I’m not locking you in so that I can ravish your outraged virtue. That is, if you possess such, which I doubt. Brandy?” He crossed the study to the sideboard and took up a glass. Rowley shook his head. Good Lord. “Don’t tell me you’ve given up drink. You always were a bit of a dull stick, but that would be too much to believe.”
“A what?” Rowley sputtered, his eyes widening in offense. “I beg your pardon. I seem to recall thatyouwere the one too hen-hearted to steal through old Heath’s window and take a drink of his whisky.”
Oh, now, that was hitting below the belt. Andrew pulled an exaggerated grimace. “You can’t keep throwing that moment of caution in my face forever, Rowley,” he said. “Believe me, it’s not a fault in which I’ve indulged since leaving Eton.”
Andrew poured two glasses, and with a heavy hand. Rowley ought to have a drink. Everyone ought to have a bloody drink.
Perhaps ifHewletthad a damned bloody drink, as he had the night he’d…oh, blast and damn. Andrew set the decanter down with enough force to slosh some of the contents up and over his hand.
“No, really, I must keep my wits about me tonight. One of us should,” Rowley said, sounding rather dubious. As if a few brandies would impair Andrew’s faculties. What nonsense. And then the fellow had the nerve to wave his offered brandy away impatiently and continue with, “I can see for myself you’ve lost all caution. And what little sense you ever possessed. What the devil are you thinking with that…bacchanalia you have on tonight? Do youwantto hang?”
Didhe want to? Well, no, not precisely, but he suppressed a laugh all the same. He didn’t care much, honestly. The whole world could go hang for all he cared, with Rowley the first to mount the gallows.
“Not at all, my dear fellow,” he said smoothly, forcing the bitterness down like a pill that must be swallowed. “I simply find that when one covers one’s true vices with a sufficient number of others that society tends to shrug at, one can get away with nearly anything.” Andrew recalled, with sudden clarity, the way everyone had fawned over Rowley at school, earl’s son that he was, and took some triumphant satisfaction in adding, “And men with fifteen thousand a year don’t hang.”
Rowley’s utter lack of reaction to that was somewhat lowering. Bloody aristocrats.
Instead, Rowley pressed on with his absurd, overcautious prating. “So the women, and the gambling—that’s all what, smoke and mirrors? That might be rather clever, if you troubled to indulge in your ‘true vice,’ as you call it, in private, rather than flaunting your proclivities in front of your guests.”
This time the laugh escaped, though it sounded rather rusty. “They’re paying no attention to me, I assure you. And those fellows are hardly in a position to expose anyone else. Or to be believed should they make the attempt. I have hundreds of pounds of vowels from all of them.” Money he would never see, and which he considered an investment well-placed. What the devil did Hewl—Rowley, everyone, mean by always thinking him an addlepated fool? He took another deep draught of his brandy, though it settled rather uneasily in his gut, and dropped into the large leather armchair before the fire. “Anyway, I’m a better shot than any six of them, should it come to that.”
Rowley stared, shook his head, and burst into a startled-sounding laugh of his own. Andrew simply tipped his head back into the faintly-spinning embrace of his chair and gazed Rowley down, his eyelids slipping a bit. How much brandy had it been since dinner, anyway?
