Page 4 of The Ruin of a Rake
Everything about Medlock seemed calculatedly bland: neither handsome nor ugly, neither tall nor short, neither dark nor fair. His hair fell in the sad territory between brown and blond, his shrewd eyes were an unremarkable gray brown. His features were sharp, except for his mouth, which had a hint of incongruous softness when it wasn’t twisted into a grimace of irritation.
Courtenay followed him, expecting to find Eleanor within. But the room was empty. “Alone at last,” he murmured suggestively, because it was amusing to watch Medlock get flustered and annoyed. He leaned in close and raised an insinuating eyebrow. “Be sure to turn the key in the—”
“Save your breath. I’ll pretend you’re saying the foulest things imaginable and you can rest assured that I’m revolted,” Medlock said. “We’ll save ourselves a good deal of trouble.”
Courtenay had no intention of doing that. He much preferred to keep Medlock in a lather. Otherwise the plumpness of those lips might give him ideas, and Julian Medlock—straitlaced, officious, and Eleanor’s brother—was the last human on earth about whom he wished to have ideas. “Anything else you’d like to fantasize about with me, Mr. Medlock?” Really, it was too easy. What the fellow needed was a good hard rogering. Courtenay would lay four to one odds on that being precisely the sort of thing Medlock fancied, not that Courtenay was going to do a damned thing about it. At least not in England. Being pilloried would do nothing to help his present state. There were plenty of law-abiding ways for him to slake his lust, thank God.
“Eleanor wants me to take you about,” Medlock said in a rush, the words all bleeding into one another.
“Pardon?”
“My sister has asked me to bring you about with me.” He spoke the words as if they tasted bad. “Go riding in the park, that sort of thing.”
Courtenay took a full step backwards, as if Medlock were ill with some contagion. “Why the devil would I want to do a thing like that?”
Medlock—no hint of softness in his mouth now, thank God—answered from behind gritted teeth. “She is under the impression, misguided though it may be, that if I lend you my countenance, you could achieve a small margin of respectability.”
His countenance? Had Courtenay ever heard anything so pompous? “Good God. Am I supposed to want that?” He scanned the room for the brandy bottle and found it on the mantelpiece. His hand had closed around its neck before he had quite made up his mind to have a drink.
“Yes. Because,” Medlock went on, in the exasperated manner of one speaking to a foreigner or a child, “Lord Radnor might grant you permission to see your nephew if you weren’t entirely a social pariah.”
At the mention of his nephew, Courtenay released his grip on the bottle. It had been months since he had seen Simon. When he had first arrived in England, things had looked promising enough—he had taken Simon to Astley’s, then to Tattersall’s. It had almost been like old times. But then Simon had returned with Radnor to the arse end of Cornwall and that blasted book had come out. Radnor’s secretary sent Courtenay an infuriatingly proper letter suggesting that Courtenay take himself as far away from Simon as humanly possible until the scandal died down. It was heavily implied that the scandal would die down at some point coincidental with Courtenay’s death.
Courtenay had no recourse, either legal or moral. He had given up the matter as a lost cause and tried not to think about Simon—with the predictable result that any towheaded child he caught a glimpse of reminded him of his nephew. Now that Medlock was presenting him with an actual plan to bring Simon back into his life, Courtenay was ready to agree to nearly anything.
“And you think that spending time with you would rehabilitate my reputation. Because everyone is so fond of you. Everyone likes you so very much.”
Courtenay was simply trying to follow Eleanor’s logic. She was the genius, he a mere acolyte. It would have been helpful if she had kept him apprised of her intentions, however brilliant and convoluted, before involving her self-righteous brother. But for whatever reason, Medlock took offense. His spine visibly stiffened and his chin tilted up.
“It doesn’t matter in the least bit whether anybody likes me,” Medlock said, in about as sniffy a voice as Courtenay had ever heard from a grown man. “What matters is that they respect me.”
Courtenay was about to tell Medlock where he could shove his respectability when a kitten tumbled off a nearby table and onto Medlock’s boot.
Medlock made a noise somewhere in between a squeak and a cough. “Don’t scratch that boot. Naughty!” Medlock was wriggling in a way that Courtenay might have found highly interesting under other circumstances. “Oh dear, and there’s another one under the settee.”
“There are six,” Courtenay said blandly.
“Six!” Medlock looked scandalized. Courtenay had no idea there was a limit to the number of cats a decent person could acquire. But Medlock seemed like the type of person who would have up-to-date information about this sort of thing, so Courtenay was prepared to defer to his greater knowledge.
“This is Eleanor’s cat room.”
Medlock blinked. “Her—oh, never mind.” He looked like he dearly wished to express himself on the topic of cat rooms. “Where in heaven’s name have they all come from?” he asked, finally grabbing the kitten by the scruff of its neck and holding it aloft.
“Well,” Courtenay said, glad to have the chance to reclaim the upper hand, “they do come about in the usual way. A mother cat and a—”
“Stop!” Medlock looked both mortified and furious. Evidently even allusions to feline fornication were enough to discompose him. Courtenay would keep that in mind.
Courtenay reached for the kitten that Medlock was presently dangling from his fingertips. “They don’t mean any harm by it,” he went on, as if oblivious to Medlock’s consternation. “It’s just in their nature.” As he took hold of the animal, his fingers brushed Medlock’s, and he knew he didn’t imagine the frisson of awareness that passed over Medlock’s face.
“They... what? Oh, never mind.” Medlock seemed to recover himself. “Meet me tomorrow night at the opera.”
He left before Courtenay could object to these plans.
All Courtenay knew was that if he were going to spend time with Medlock, he’d need to do his best to keep the man cranky and irritated. Otherwise he might start getting ideas, and once Courtenay started getting ideas, it was only a matter of time before he acted on them. And from there, everything would go to hell, because that’s what it tended to do. He’d lose the only real friend he had in this blasted country and throw away his last remaining chance to see Simon. No, he really needed to keep Julian Medlock at arm’s length.
Chapter Three
“You’ve heard about my sister, I suppose?” Julian took a nonchalant sip of tea while keeping his gaze fixed on Lady Montbray’s face.
