Page 123 of Enemies with an Earl
“Sam has been granted a royal pardon.”
“What?”Felix screeched, and Felicity flinched, covering her ear closest to him.
“Ouch.” She shot him an accusatory glare, but Felix didn’t care about her bloody ears. He glared right back, and she chuckled.
“His brother, the latest earl, petitioned for one. It was… Well, it was heartbreaking, Fifi. The letter he wrote Sam, the journal entries he wrote about it all, two decades of guilt and self-loathing. He never wanted that fate for Sam, and while I cannot help but still hate him because he was willing to let his own brother hang without a single bloody word, at least he gave Sam this.”
Felix blinked dazedly. He couldn’t imagine how Sam felt receiving this news. And Felix hadn’t been with Sam, to be there for him through it. It was gutting. Was it better that his brother cared for him, that his entire family didn’t want him dead? Or was it worse that his brother stood there silently and did nothing to save him?
“He’s doing all right,” Felicity murmured. “It’s been a lot to process, but Ash is with him. This is a huge boon for us, Fifi.”
Tears pricked at Felix’s eyes, and a knot lodged itself in his throat. He tried to blink the emotion away, but apparently, he couldn’t. His eyes, which had been so bloody dry all day, now all of a sudden wouldn’t stop leaking. This was a formidable obstacle overcome. With the royal pardon secured, they could begin to chart their way forward.
All this was, was a game of positioning and perception.
And Felix had played it all his life.
61
Sam
Trenton Abbey
Hampshire, England.
Sam stood in the doorway of his family’s drawing room, the one used for entertaining. And there it was, the pianoforte. He could play it now. There was no father to berate him.
Pianoforte is a genteel pursuit, Sampson,Father would say, voice laced with distaste.For women and effeminate men. You’d do better to remember what is expected of a man.
In other words, Sam should ride, hunt, ready himself for a commission when he came of age. Sometimes Sam wondered if his father had always suspected Sam’s inclinations, or if the man truly was that much of an arse. Father had been especially relentless in pushing Sam toward his ideal of a proper gentleman.
He could only imagine what his father would think if he saw Sam now. There wasn’t a trace of effeminacy in Sam.
Jest is on you, Father. I’m as manly as they come. But I still like to fuck men.
A throat cleared behind him, and he turned to see his butler, Moore. The man was another of Sam’s brother’s replacements. Sam wasn’t sure how he felt about Moore, but butlers seemed to be a breed of their own, always impossible to read.
“You have a visitor. I have settled him in the front drawing room for now. Would you like to receive him there or in your study?”
Sam’s stomach tightened. Ash was already here with Sam at Trenton Abbey. Any other visitor… All Sam could think was that someone had discovered his past. That they were here to take him away. Even as he knew with the pardon, he was safe. Nearly five-and-twenty years hiding as a fugitive was a hard mindset to break.
“Send him to my study.”
With one last glance at the pianoforte, he made his way toward his study.
He was just lowering himself into his chair when Moore appeared in the doorway. “The Earl of Bentley to see you, my lord.”
Sam’s mind went blank, sound whirring around him like the roar of a storm. He must have misheard.
But no. His heart rate spiked. There he was.Fee. Amber curls swept back, freckle-dusted high cheekbones, imperious stride eating up the ground of Sam’s study. Sam couldn’t do anything more than stare dumbly.
Felix halted before Sam’s desk, a folio tucked under his arm.
Sam struggled to swallow. “Fe—”
“Dalreoch,” Felix cut him off, the word formal, hard. He winged a brow meaningfully.
Sam’s heart rate plummeted. He glanced at his doorway, where his butler was no longer standing. But that didn’t mean they wouldn’t be overheard. Eyes and ears were everywhere in a lord’s manor. And Sam didn’t have the loyal staff that Felix had. Not yet.
