Page 2 of Ravishing Among the Roses
“My aunt gets overwhelmed by crowds or too much noise. You reminded me of her, and she needs a quiet space to recover.”
“Thank you.” And thank you to this man’s aunt who ... He gasped. “There are other people like me?”
“None of us are truly unique.”
“What do you mean?” Edmund had never thought to apply patterns to people. Why hadn’t he? Patterns made roses make sense, maybe they could make people make sense too.
“I think there are things that connect us together and make us similar and it is the combination of each of those things that makes a person unique.”
Edmund stared. “Who are you?”
“Gabriel Yeung.” Naturally the man would have the name of an angel. He certainly had the appearance of one, and he’d swooped in like an angel to rescue Edmund from an overwhelming situation. How could he express his gratitude?
Chapter 2
Gabby didn’t need praise for helping. “I work here, as an entertainer.”
The man nodded slowly. He had an earthy ruggedness about him, something that screamed country boy, which was so different to the city folk who inhabited The King’s Book Club.
“I’ve just had a promotion to help with organising events,” Gabby was rambling to fill the silence. He’d known to wait while the man composed himself, having seen his aunt through this many times, and now the man looked him with such big brown grateful eyes that he started to babble.
“Lord Bennington is upset with me.” He really shouldn’t have said that, and he clamped his mouth closed to stop any more words from flowing.
“With you? How could anyone be upset with you?”
Gabby smiled. “That’s very kind of you, but I’m kind of failing at my job.”
The man raised one eyebrow. “I don’t understand.”
“Having a job or being bad at it?” Gabby had been so pleased to get the promotion, to become more than a dancer, which had been a step up from his last job. This way he got all the perks of his last job and had his choice of clientele, unlike before when he’d done anyone for a bit of coin.
“How could you be bad at anything?”
Gabby frowned. “I don’t know what I’ve done to inspire such confidence in you.” A stranger who thought the best of him. He breathed out slowly, it’d been too long since that had happened. The intensity of the man’s focus reminded him of his aunt Mei.
“You rescued me. I wouldn’t put much faith in what Bennington says about you. He told me this was a book club and I’d enjoy it.”
“It’s not a book club. It’s The King’s Book Club, a meeting place for those who don’t conform to society’s rigid rules. And it’s why I’m failing at my job.” He’d been working here, as an entertainer, since just before last Christmas and he’d wanted this promotion to run more events. It was just that he was bad at it.
“Why?”
“I...” He gasped. He couldn’t tell a stranger that he wasn’t organised enough to run events, that the first one he’d done last month had nearly been a complete disaster. He had no clue on how to budget, he kept getting distracted and even with all the lists in the world, he couldn’t stay organised. He didn’t want to go back to his old work; that’d been fine when he was young and horny and no good at anything else, but he’d outgrown all of that. “I have to plan the Christmas spectacular, and Bennington hates all my ideas.” It wasn’t precisely a lie, but it didn’t go anywhere near the whole truth.
“What ideas did you have?”
Nothing useful. “Last year we held a boxing match and it raised money for charities that Bennington likes to support.” He wasn’t sure why Bennington couldn’t just toss some of his own money that way, but maybe he already did, and their events forced their rest of their clientele to cough up for a good cause.
“People pay good money to see the best fighters.” The man nodded, as if to himself.
“Yes. And this year... I was promoted only a month ago and Bennington hates all my ideas. I have only two weeks to come up with something good.”
“All?”
“I was going to do a play, but Bennington said it would take too long to do rehearsals and a month wasn’t enough time so we will do one next Christmas, and then I said I could perform, but he said people already see me perform most nights here andhe wanted something different, and so I said what about getting all the Lords to paint a picture and selling those. Who wouldn’t want an original from a Lord and wouldn’t it be funny if they were bad, and Bennington didn’t like that idea either.”
Laughter filled the room. “You didn’t say that?”
“Which part?”
