The Vicar and the Rake (Society of Beasts)

by Annabelle Greene

  With excruciating slowness, Gabriel’s forehead rested against his own. Edward lay prostrate, helpless, his arms full of a man whose warm, strong body practically shook with exquisite tension.

  He felt Gabriel’s hardness; a delicious shock. Nothing but a thin layer of cotton separated them now, but he couldn’t move. Not an inch.

  He knew he had to wait. Wait for Gabriel, who’d been waiting for something like this for far longer than he ever had.

  “I’m not afraid now.” Gabriel’s whisper seemed less of a confession, and more of a promise. “I know you’re not. I’m not, either. If anything, I’m afraid that I’m not afraid.”

  A thousand retorts hung on Edward’s lips. I’m afraid. I’m afraid of being here, with you. I’m afraid of you, because I’m afraid of how much I want you.

  I’m afraid of you because you think that deep down, I’m a good man...and I’m not.

  But none of these things, none of them at all, had the same weight as Gabriel in his arms.

  “Do you want me to show you what you did?” Edward knew Gabriel’s lips were close to his own; frustratingly, tantalisingly close. “When you were sick?”

  Gabriel’s answer came in a single ecstatic rush. “Yes.”

  Chapter Twenty-One

  There was no need for haste, for hunger, but Edward felt both. Every wasted second was torture. Leaving years of experience by the wayside, he blindly pulled Gabriel’s lips to his own.

  Gabriel’s muffled groan of pleasure melted through him, soft, low, perfect. All Edward could do was respond to it, breathlessly murmuring wordless sounds of encouragement as he took possession of the man’s mouth. Hands played tentatively with his hair, Gabriel’s fingers tangling as he pulled oh-so-gently at the roots. Edward moaned, thrilled; as if touching something precious, he took Gabriel’s face in his hands.

  This was a first kiss, a tender, trembling thing—not the desperate outpouring of lust that the last one had been. But Edward could sense it in Gabriel still, the hunger, the need. What a sweet thrill it was to coax it out again, to have the man shaking with pleasure under his lips and tongue. He teased, played, skilfully bringing Gabriel to a fever pitch, barely noticing the bliss unfolding in his own body.

  When Gabriel broke away, panting, Edward felt a sudden sense of loss. “Is something wrong?”

  “No.” Gabriel’s voice was strained, clipped. “I—Let me touch you. Please.” Edward gasped with surprised pleasure as Gabriel’s hands ran down his neck, his shoulders, coming to rest where their hips met. “I don’t know how. But let me.”

  “You do know how. Believe me.” Edward laughed shakily. The feel of Gabriel’s hands on his body was dangerously good. “Do what you want. Whatever you want.”

  He braced himself for clumsy if eager attentions, the usual first step of a man exploring previously hidden pleasures. What he hadn’t been expecting—what had him bucking, and shivering, and biting his lip—were Gabriel’s teeth gently grazing against his neck, his tongue finding hollows of pure sensation that Edward hadn’t even been aware of.

  “Like this?” Gabriel’s whisper pulled away the last vestige of Edward’s self-control. He lay there, trembling, a pool of liquid feeling as Gabriel’s mouth explored his neck. His own lips whispered a mantra, “Yes, yes, yes. Don’t stop. Please, don’t stop.”

  He urged his hips upward against Gabriel’s, shameless, sighing with joy as Gabriel’s body thrust involuntarily towards his. A hand crept under the thin linen of his nightshirt, searingly hot against his skin, gently moving over him with clear, delicious intent—

  My God, you’re worthless. You need to be corrected, damn you.

  If Gabriel’s hand kept moving along his chest, around to his back, he would feel the scars. He would want to know about the scars.

  Not now. This was why men didn’t stay the night in his Mayfair house, why he slept resolutely alone, apart from Bryce in the next room. The night was treacherous; vulnerability was opening a door to the demons, who wouldn’t wait politely to be called.

  “Edward?” Oh, how good his name sounded in Gabriel’s mouth. “Is something wrong?”

  Deviant. Sodomite. And now Gabriel’s voice joined the bitter, ghostly chorus. You play with people, you use them...

  He’d learned to drown out his father’s voice with drink, with dancing, with something. Learned not to think about his scars, safely hidden from sight. But Gabriel’s words, even though they had been spoken in anger, carried a ring of truth that buried him in ice.

  He was playing. He was using. However much he wanted to be with Gabriel, right now, in this moment, it was just another way of running away.

  He hastily disentangled himself from Gabriel, moving back until he felt the wall against his shoulders. Struggling to control his breathing, wrapping his linen shirt more tightly around his torso, he attempted to recover the arrogant drawl he affected in daylight. “No. Nothing wrong. But this isn’t the time, or the place.”

  “Did I do something wrong?” The naked vulnerability in Gabriel’s voice cut as cruelly as his father’s words. “I did. I did something wrong.”

  “I just told you. You did nothing wrong.” He could hear himself, remote, arrogant, and wanted to curl up and die. “But when I decide to have someone, I don’t complete the act in circumstances such as these. A dark corridor, with a gang of mercenaries out for my blood.”

  “I see.” Gabriel slowly sat up, adjusting his clothes. His next words throbbed with pain. “But a stable in the middle of a ball. Those circumstances are conducive to a rake.”

  “So you are angry about London.” He hated himself as he pounced on Gabriel’s weakness, knowing that it would protect him. “Almost as if you have a claim.”

  He heard Gabriel take a long, slow breath. It was almost comforting, waiting for the shower of insults that would no doubt rain down upon his head.

  Instead, Gabriel spoke in a quiet, near-conversational tone. “Caddonfell. Edward. You can tell me I’m wrong, or foolish, with what I’m about to say. But...if you’re afraid, truly afraid, of what’s happening around you, and all you need is a friend... I can be that friend. That is why I am here—why I chose to stay here. We do not have to do...this. If you need to confide in someone, that is who I can be for you. In the absence of—of your London friends.”

  Edward almost laughed. His London friends, the founding members of the Society of Beasts, sustained him in many ways. But none of them knew of his past, of his memories...and he’d always been so resolutely proud, so airily careless when speaking of his childhood, that none of them had ever asked.

  Gabriel could never understand the gravity of the gift he was offering. The significance. How fortunate, then, that he would never know.

  He was already beyond redemption. He couldn’t let Gabriel be tainted by it.

  “I consider friendship a side effect of more pleasurable activities.” He stood, needing the height difference even in the dark. “Activities which I won’t pursue now, Winters.” It felt good, denying the man his Christian name. He felt safer. “But believe me, I’ll find the moment. And you will come when called.”

  “I already told you. I’m not an animal, or a plaything.” The quiet disappointment in Gabriel’s voice was infinitely worse than his anger. “And I think you’re lying, about being afraid. But I’m too tired to question you further.”

  “Then go to sleep. You’re going to need it.”

  Edward began feeling his way down the corridor, closing his ears to Gabriel’s soft, sad sigh.

  Chapter Twenty-Two

  Gabriel felt the first rays of sun tapping at his eyelids, coaxing him into awakening. Morning came gently to Hardcote House, shining over the splendidly kept gardens with flushed, rosy tenderness.

  The previous night’s memories made him wince. He spent a moment trying to collect himself, weaving together disparat
e pieces of knowledge to form something resembling a whole.

  Like most of his daily thoughts, it took the form of a list. A slightly more urgent list than usual, but a list all the same.

  Medicine deliveries/finishing roofing/farm fair? Carstairs today, but tomorrow??

  Mercenaries out for Edward’s blood. House defence? Maurice?

  Avoid Edward. Must? Yes.

  No.

  Yes.

  He sighed. He was used to shaping his days, his weeks—his destiny. Now he was being tossed about on the winds of fortune, with nothing to do except hold on.

  Holding onto Edward...if only. But the man had pushed him away, like the slippery changeling he’d always been.

  Was it wrong that the chase, the hunger, excited him? Definitely. But the knowledge didn’t take the excitement away.

  Edward was concealing something beneath the rakish exterior. Knowing that he could probably bring the truth to light, with nothing more than patience and kindness, was inextricably linked to the tightening in his breeches whenever he thought about the man.

  He dressed hurriedly, every glance around him giving rise to a new memory. Being trapped in this house was like being trapped in his childhood again, that strange golden time full of games and secrets. There had been a dark side, too—he couldn’t forget his parish visits with Mr. Welton. So much abject poverty, so many outstretched hands...needs that could never be assuaged, no matter how much food and medicine he and the vicar had brought.

  The late Duke of Caddonfell had been a neglectful landlord. Edward, despite his complete absence from Hardcote, had at least used his funds to keep his estate in good condition—even if money without a friendly face behind it made people suspicious rather than grateful. And however much money was given, it was never quite enough to serve everyone.

  Some sorrows, of course, could not be healed with any amount of money. Gabriel could still see the crying woman in one particular house. The details were lost to time, the family long gone from Hardcote by now, surely...but the damp, freshly sawn coffin was clear in his mind.

  Enough. He left the room, trying to let the moment fill him with the same immediacy that the past inspired. There would be much to do; he would need to write letters with Caroline to ensure the village ran smoothly in his absence, and there would be plans and preparations and enough damned intrigue to make him sick, thoroughly sick, of the aristocracy.

  He walked slowly along the corridor, the smell of the blooming gardens outside filling the air. He let himself linger by the window, needing light on his face.

  Something was moving on the drive. Gabriel ducked down, looking out of the window at the commotion below. He braced himself for shouts, for shots fired...but all he could hear was the rhythmic crunch of footsteps on gravel and the occasional jingle of a horse’s bridle.

  Two black coaches stood in melancholy splendour outside Hardcote House, surrounded by small groups of silent, shabbily dressed men. All of them had their arms full of boxes, boxes overflowing with papers of every colour and size. Working in swift, coordinated tandem, cigar smoke curling in the air, the men carried box after box through the open doors of the great hall.

  Gabriel, his eyes narrowed, added a footnote to his mental list.

  Boxes = intrigue. Maurice?

  Something else caught his attention. At the border of the drive, hidden in a clump of rhododendrons, was a small boy wearing a cap. His smudged, dirty face was fixed intently on the bustle of men and boxes, his stance that of a dog scenting prey.

  Gabriel added another footnote to his list.

  Spy?

  The face of the boy suddenly turned upward, as if he’d heard Gabriel’s thought. Gabriel ducked down below the window, wondering why that pinched, knowing expression was one he almost recognised.

  This was something that needed to be reported to Maurice. But who could think of the dark, scheming Stanhope brother without remembering his blond counterpart?

  He indulged himself in a thought of Edward just for a moment, the taste of him, the sound of his sighs. The man was hiding something, he knew it—something darker than a moment of bad judgement in a stable...

  The list flashed up in his mind. AVOID Edward. This time the writing was boldly written, and underlined in red.

  Maurice would have to be his first port of call. His stomach rumbled once, a brief, sad request, before settling down into grim silence.

  * * *

  After getting lost at least twice—and stopping to pet the kitten, who appeared to have taken up residence in the sunniest patch in the house—Gabriel opened the door to the morning room, choking on the fug of cigar smoke that lay within. He vaguely remembered the Hardcote morning room as a cheerful place, all frills and flourishes—but it appeared that Lord Maurice had a different decorating style in mind.

  Paper covered the walls. Paper covered the windows. Paper lay thick on the floor, so thick that the sheets rustled like autumn leaves underfoot, their faintly mildewed scent hovering under the smell of tobacco like an uninvited guest. A fire burned high in the grate; Gabriel tugged at his collar, sweat beginning to bead on his brow.

  Maurice sat glowering behind a large table, surrounded by stacks of correspondence. His usual ballroom-ready elegance had vanished, his dark hair tousled, his shirtsleeves carelessly rolled up, his normally blank expression overlaid with a furious concentration. Chomping on his cigar with barely concealed annoyance, angrily scribbling notes and discarding them at much the same rate, he reminded Gabriel of a lesser demon catching up on hell’s paperwork.

  Women had to find him rather compelling. The thought briefly alighted in Gabriel’s mind, before he shook it away. There was a coldness to Maurice, a sense of great darkness somewhere within him that turned the sparkling Stanhope blue of his eyes into something more troubling than attractive.

  Edward inspired fascination. Maurice, especially in this condition, could inspire only fear.

  “Close the door, Sir Gabriel.” Maurice’s usual arrogant drawl rang with irritation. “Light is unhelpful for work such as this.”

  “I thought light was helpful for most forms of work.” Gabriel moved to pick up a piece of paper, stopping as Maurice’s frown deepened. “Your eyes will suffer.”

  “I suffer more from interruptions than from darkness.” Maurice looked down at his notes, then crumpled them into a ball. “And as I said, this is shadow work. Ruining a man should never happen in daylight.”

  Gabriel squinted at the documents. From what he could tell, they appeared to be mundane writings—household inventories, account books, even shopping lists. “Are you ruining a man, or writing a compendium of household advice? The information required appears to be the same.”

  “The devil lies in the details, as he always has.” Maurice made another note, reaching for a piece of paper that lay on the edge of the desk. “Few men get caught out with a purloined love letter—and certainly not someone as careful as Sussex. But a sudden hole in the household accounts can look decidedly mistress-shaped, in the right light.” He smiled with a distinct lack of humour. “Or, as it were, in shadow.”

  “And are there any mistress-shaped holes?” Gabriel picked up a piece of paper, noting with a jolt of surprise that it was a letter addressed to Sussex himself. “How on earth did you acquire all of this information?”

  “The answer to your first question is no.” Maurice raised an eyebrow. “If he did keep a woman, he kept her on bread and water. And the answer to your question is so self-evident as to be foolish. I am Lord Maurice Stanhope. Every domestic worker in England answers to me before anyone else. A good number of politicians too.”

  Gabriel picked up another paper, an old copy of The Mayfair Nose. “And the writers of scandal sheets? They don’t appear to be under your control.”

  “I could bury the editors of every scandal sheet in under a week. Why do you thi
nk they never publish our names? At the moment, they’re still writing what I permit them to write.” Maurice took a drag of his cigar, expelling the smoke with a huff. “But if Sussex remains as unblemished as he appears...well, there may be unpleasantness. And I could lose what little leverage I currently possess.”

  Gabriel almost snorted. Maurice’s idea of “little leverage” would no doubt be enough to blight a man’s life. “So why are they here? I’ve never seen anything written about Sussex in a rag of this calibre.”

  “What you know about London’s societal scandals would barely fill a teaspoon.” Maurice let his pen drop onto the desk. “Why exactly are you here? Is my brother really so ashamed of himself that he must send lackeys to enquire as to my progress?”

  “I am no one’s lackey, sir.” Gabriel dropped the scandal sheet, suddenly afraid that lackey described him perfectly. Did Edward really consider him as such? “We must all stay here and do our part until you find a solution to this—this—”

  “This bloody mess. Call it what it is.” Maurice stubbed his cigar out on the corner of the desk, adding the smell of charred wood to the smoky air. His mouth twisted. “Apparently the state of your stainless, collared soul insists you stay. I have my doubts.”

  “Excuse me?” Gabriel heard the faint, knowing tone in Maurice’s voice, and felt his fists clench. “Are—are you insinuating something?”

  “No.” Maurice took another cigar from his case, lighting it with care. “Only informing you. I’ve seen almost no examples of true altruism down here, in the shadows, where uncomfortable work is done. Only incidences of what I would term...misplaced affection.” His eyes were a perfect storm of ice. No warmth, no light. “Affection like that can be dangerous.”

  Gabriel fought the sudden swoop of fear, of outrage, that made his heart still in his chest. Could he really be divined so easily? His secrets pulled into the open, like a future foretold in a pack of cards? “Be careful, Lord Maurice. Be very careful.”