Page 17 of To Defend a Damaged Duke
The duke laughed, a hollow, broken sound.“A stubborn ass?I should slap you with my glove for that.”
“That would end badly for you,” Tommy warned.“Duke or no.”
The duke wore full evening dress under his heavy wool travelling coat, the pristine starched collar seemingly the only thing holding the man’s head up.Whether his tailcoat was also damp, Tommy couldn’t bring himself to enquire for fear of the answer and the man revealing even more of his well-shaped body.Tommy cursed under his breath as he poured the duke a second drink, trying to ignore the damp fabric stretched inconsiderately tight across the duke’s thighs.Unhappily, he failed.
Bloody Rossingley was right.Tommy sprinkled a few muttered curses in his direction too.Tart with a heart.How was Tommy supposed to pretend to himself, never mind anyone else, that he never wanted this man again?He might as well kid himself he could blow spots from bloody playing cards.
“There is a list,” said the duke weakly, nursing the balloon of strong liqueur between his palms, “of gentlemen known to have frequented the White Hart.Of gentlemen on the premises on the night of the raid of 1813.Someone has obtained it and threatens to announce it at one of the biggest society balls.”
Tommy’s soft heart stalled.“And you…your name appears on it?You have been blackmailed?”
“Not yet.”The duke threw him a watery smile.“But it is rumoured there is a gentleman of the hightonon the list.So, it is only a matter of time, is it not?”
The question and its inevitable, disastrous consequences for the duke and his good standing lingered between them.Of course, Ashington had put the blame squarely at Tommy’s door.Who else would have known he was there?After all, it was only in recent times that Tommy himself had learned his precious raven’s true identity.Molly houses didn’t keep neat ledgers.Gentlemen with their predilections didn’t exactly sign themselves in and leave calling cards.
Eventually, Tommy broke the silence.
“Revealing your name and exposing your nature would be of no benefit to me, Your Grace,” he said softly.“How could it?When I have much to lose also?I speak the truth when I swear to you that I am not the one behind this.”
The duke stared wanly at the fire, lost in the flickering flames.“I am…yes.I see that now.The youth I once knew would not behave in that way.”
“And nor would the man,” said Tommy.“Even if he was once a whore.”
The duke contemplated his drink as if he’d like to drown in it.“He was never that to me.I… Yet again, I find myself seeking your forgiveness.I should not have used that word in anger.”
“But perhaps neither of us should shy from the truth of it.If we had not been raided that day, if I had not been…trapped, no good would have come of our liaison.I would still have been a whore, and you would still have been…you.”
“And I would have still lov…cared for you.”
Tommy sneered, hating himself but unable to resist.“Like you cared for other pretty things you owned?Such as your racehorses and silk cravats?In time, I would have belonged to last season, too, when you grew tired of me.”
“I cannot say.”Shamed, the duke hung his head.“But that feckless youth was also raided that day.”He rested a palm against his heart.“In here.He was robbed of his joy, and believe me when I tell you, Tommy, he has never regained it.”
For a long moment, as each man contemplated the other, both lost in misery, Tommy wondered what the duke saw.A servant of sorts perhaps?One of the many faceless, nameless, inconsequential factotums orbiting his existence whose primary purpose was to oblige?Or did he still see the boy on his knees with his lips spread wide around his prick?
Tommy knew precisely what he was, what he’d become after that raid, even if his very existence puzzled theton: A grifter who’d beaten the odds to drag himself up by his bootstraps from the armpit of the underworld.Someone who had debased himself for every sou in order that he might sit in this fine study in his fine costume, sipping his excellent brandy, kidding himself for a few minutes he was just like them.
He never would be, of course.His veneer of respectability was as brittle as the spindly legs holding up the duke’s wooden chair.
“I accept you were not thinking straight,” acknowledged Tommy at last.“You have suffered a shock.”
“Yes, but you are too kind.If I weren’t a damned peer, you would have rung that bell and summoned your man in a trice, and he would have slung me out.Deservedly so.”
Raising himself from the chair looked painful now all traces of anger had gone.“I shall not intrude on your hospitality any longer.Forgive me for believing the worst of you.”
Heavy and dark, his wet greatcoat blanketed Tommy’s desk like a burial cloth.As Tommy handed it to him, the duke regarded it as if he’d never seen it in his life.
“It is a cruel night,” he said as he shouldered it on.His body shrank under the weight of it.The kidskin gloves were next, as pale as the fingers they hid.Tears bled from his eyes.
“I have stared at the past every day, Tommy.”The duke brushed at a teardrop before carrying on.“And every day, I have wished I could correct my dreadful mistake.To have carried you with me in my escape.To feel cherished once more, as I felt in your arms.Because, God knows, I have not felt it since.”
His distress leached into Tommy’s skin.It called to his very core, sapping every last bit of his strength not to weep himself and reach out for this man, to hold him, to comfort.How easy loving him again would be.But how easily his fragile, guarded heart broke.
“The past is a place to learn from, not to live, Your Grace,” Tommy uttered with as much conviction as he could muster.“There is only the here and forwards.”
“Thus now, more than ever, I wish I could go back.”
As the door snicked softly closed, Tommy counted the heavy tread of footsteps as they receded down the corridor.Only when his house fell silent, except for the dripping of the gutters, did Tommy curl up in his armchair and allow grief to come.
