The Gentle Art of Fortune Hunting

by KJ Charles

  Robin would want that. Surely he would. He liked Hart, he’d said so, and he needed help, and Hart could give it. The conclusion was obvious.

  He was all but pacing the floor when nine o’clock finally arrived, and brought Robin with it.

  “Good evening. How was your day?”

  Robin smiled brilliantly. “Tolerable. Did you have a good meeting with your friend?”

  “I did, thank you. We are agreed we will set up a joint venture together, a new brewery. I shall have a great deal of work to do.” Before Robin, he would have been thoroughly satisfied with his new prospect and nothing but excited at the work. Now he couldn’t help a tiny sense of a task that would need to be fitted into his life. “And you? Has Tachbrook declared himself yet?”

  “Not so far. His mother has graciously indicated her conditional approval, so now it is a matter of him making a decision.”

  “But you feel confident?”

  Robin gave him a quizzical look. “I didn’t realise you were so interested in Marianne’s machinations.”

  “I wish her all success in her ambitions,” Hart said with entire truth. “Here is to the future Lady Tachbrook.” He handed Robin a glass of wine.

  “To her happiness.” Robin tapped the glass to his. “Are you all right? You look preoccupied.”

  “I have had a great deal to think about. And there is something I should like to talk about, but perhaps later.”

  Robin looked up through his lashes. “Later than what?”

  “Than this, for a start.”

  Hart extended an arm. Robin came willingly, curving his body to Hart’s, kissing him with a waft of wine on his breath, the two of them perching against the desk. They kissed, tongues tangling, and Hart got rid of his glass and stroked Robin’s back and the curve of his arse until his lover was breathing fast and magnificently pliant.

  “I have a demand,” Hart said in his ear.

  “At your disposal.”

  “I want to make you spend. Just that, several times. I want you naked in my bed, lying back while I take charge of you.”

  Robin’s eyes widened and his perfect lips curved. “Well, now. If you insist.”

  “I do.” Hart took his free hand. “The bedroom is this way.” He wasn’t in any way as certain as his performance suggested, but he felt a need to prove something, to Robin or himself. He didn’t need his hand holding any longer. He could take control.

  Robin was soon sprawled naked across his bed, looking like some Greek deity in a painting lacking only cherubs, fruit, and a tactfully placed urn. Hart knelt over him, caressing his member to full strength, then he crouched down, and took it in his mouth.

  “Oh,” Robin said. “Well.”

  Hart had not yet done this, though he’d wanted to for some time. He indulged himself now, caressed Robin’s cods, let his hands roam freely over his firm thighs, took his time experimenting with teeth and tongue. It helped that he’d handled Robin enough to know his rhythms and sounds, so he could feel confident in his work. He stroked him and sucked him, and felt a ludicrous sense of achievement when Robin cried out and spent in his mouth.

  “Hart,” he said hoarsely. “Oh Christ, that was good. God.”

  Hart sat back, and took a hasty gulp of wine to wash the taste down. Robin was watching him with something in his eyes that gave him a stab of sudden, inexplicable pain. “That was a pleasure. Thank you. May I reciprocate?” He nodded at Hart’s own very solid stand.

  “You may not. I told you what was going to happen. What did I say?”

  Robin lowered his eyes mock-submissively. “That you will take charge of me.”

  “Then you will lie there and be fucked.”

  Robin stretched luxuriously. “Yes, Sir John.”

  Hart felt he had something to live up to now. He used a well-oiled finger to probe Robin’s arse for the sweet spot, and tormented him while they kissed, until Robin was hard again and whimpering for release, and Hart’s own arousal was near-intolerable. Out of both malice aforethought and also necessity, he stopped and withdrew his hand. Robin gave a strangled moan.

  “Quiet,” Hart said, kneeling over him and moving his hand to his own prick. “And stay there. Don’t touch yourself. Learn some self-control.” It was more than he could do; he was painfully desperate. He worked himself as Robin watched, eyes bright, lips wet and parted, and brought himself off in a few frantic jerks, spending in ropes over Robin’s chest.

  He shut his eyes, gripping his prick as the tide subsided and, as ever, climax was followed by a sudden doubt as to whether proceedings had been a good idea, or ridiculous and undignified.

  A hand touched his thigh, a sliding caress. “That was the most arousing thing I have ever seen,” Robin said softly. “If your aim is to torture me, be assured I will tell you anything.”

  He was smiling into Hart’s eyes, a reassurance without words, and Hart felt his chest contract. He wanted to blurt out incautious things, to hold Robin and weep for the glory of being known and understood.

  He didn’t. He resettled himself so they could kiss, and went back to work, more comfortable now he could take his time. He did so, using only his fingers inside Robin until his lover was thrashing wildly and all but speaking in tongues, and it took no more than two strokes to bring him off. And he didn’t stop there, despite the now-late hour, but set about business again, telling Robin to beg for a fucking now because of how much that aroused them both, and took him splayed across the bed, slow and steady, holding back until he could wring a third climax out of him. His fantasy lover, his incubus, his Robin.

  They fell asleep together, entangled in sheets and sweat and spunk, and one another.

  Chapter Seventeen

  Hart woke first. Robin was still there, warm and golden in bed. In his bed.

  He hadn’t really intended that. He’d just wanted to do things in the way he might if Robin was truly his lover, and if he wasn’t afraid.

  “Morning,” Robin murmured. “Do you want me to go?”

  “No.”

  “Ought I go anyway?”

  “No.” Creeping out early would look more suspicious. “Say you drank too much and slept on the settle.” He would throw a blanket on it, perhaps empty a second bottle of wine. He wondered about the state of his sheets.

  Robin nodded, shifted on his side, and flung an arm over Hart’s chest. “Mph.”

  “You’re still half asleep.” His hair was dark gold in the shafts of light through the shutters, his eyes shadowed. Hart wanted to kiss his eyelashes, his nose.

  “You wore me out.”

  “Sorry.”

  “Not at all.” He shifted forward so he was lying closer against Hart. It was possible the word was ‘snuggled’. Robin, snuggled against him. Hart put his own arm over the warm shoulders and tried to ignore the feeling that gave him.

  “Hart?”

  “Mmm?”

  “Thank you.”

  “For what?”

  “Last night. Sleeping with me. That thing with your finger, that was marvellous.”

  “My pleasure.”

  “Really mine.”

  “Both,” Hart said. He’d felt a joyous power working Robin’s body, making him respond, thinking I brought you to this. “I liked it when you told me how much you needed my prick.”

  “I tell you that a lot.”

  “You do. Is it good? Being buggered, I mean?”

  “Well, I enjoy it,” Robin said. “Each to his own. Ever tried?”

  “No.”

  “Would you like to?”

  Hart gazed up at the ceiling. “Yes.”

  “That sounded heartfelt.” Robin gave the words a touch of a question.

  “I am a big, intimidating man with a scowl. Nobody has ever suggested—and I have never known how to ask for it, still less how to do it.”

  “And you didn’t feel you could ask a paid boy to deflower your virgin arse?”

  “Good heavens, you have a turn of phrase.”

&nbs
p; “It’s a gift. I will fuck you all you please, my Hart. I suppose now would be indiscreet.”

  It was the morning. People were about in the house. “Probably.”

  “Then next time, or whenever you care to. And I can’t promise you’ll like it, but if you don’t, it won’t be for lack of trying.”

  “You make it so easy,” Hart whispered, because his throat was closing. “How is all this so easy for you?”

  “I think I have a different idea of what makes life hard.”

  Hart couldn’t find a response to that. After a moment Robin said, “Sorry. That didn’t come out quite as I intended.”

  “Happens to me all the time.”

  “But it was stupid. Something difficult for you isn’t less difficult because other people have different problems.”

  “More serious ones.”

  “It’s your life. You decide what constitutes a problem in it.”

  “And you don’t feel I have any, because I am a baronet and a wealthy man.”

  Robin gave a small shrug. “I don’t know what your problems are. Money and birth would have solved most of mine, but for all I know I’d have a different set to worry about in their place.”

  “Well, that is probably true. For example—” He stopped.

  “What?”

  “Nothing. It doesn’t matter.”

  “This isn’t a contest,” Robin said gently. “If it hurts, it hurts.”

  “For example,” Hart said again. “I think I told you my father died when I was a boy?”

  “Yes.”

  “And you had no father at all, which is surely worse.”

  “It doubtless depends on the father.”

  “Mine was decent enough,” Hart said. “He always seemed busy. He married my mother when she was seventeen. She was twenty-five when I was born, thirty-six when Father died and she decided that she was free from his penny-pinching ways.”

  “Was he miserly?”

  “Perhaps. I don’t remember it. It’s possible he was merely doing his best to restrain her. Because when he died, she spent everything. She had the house refurbished with satins and silks. She bought clothes by the trunkful. Vases, trinkets, pictures, perfumes. My trustee was her brother and he did nothing at all to stop her draining the lands and amassing debts. Edwina tried, but she had never liked Edwina. She never liked either of us. We were such Hartleburys, such repulsive things with our great ugly features, and she couldn’t bear it.”

  Robin sat up. “Wait. Your mother said that? I thought—”

  “She was a very beautiful woman,” Hart said, voice sounding remote even to himself. “I was brought home from school because she couldn’t, or didn’t, pay the fees. She sold land that had been in the family since the fourteenth century. When the bailiffs came, I went to a solicitor, and hired him with a five-pound note I had found in her bureau. I was only fifteen, but I had heard they were men who did things for one, so I walked into his office and asked him to act for me, and he didn’t laugh and send me home. Good God, I have been fortunate in my friends. With his help I told my uncle I would sue him for failure to do his duty as trustee, and my mother that I would repudiate her bills.”

  “That cannot have been pleasant.”

  “No. She called me a variety of names. Told me what a disappointment Edwina and I were to her, that she was simply trying to have some beauty in her life.”

  “Jesus, Hart.”

  “The solicitor was a tower of strength. I still use his firm, though he’s retired from practice. I slowly got control of the finances, wrested back the management of the land, and learned what to do, but God, it was hard. Humiliating. I had to take out advertisements, first telling local traders not to give her credit, and then in the London papers to stop her sending orders. Every day she was in the house it felt like disaster waiting to strike. She wouldn’t stop, and I couldn’t let it go on.” He sounded in his own ears as though he was pleading for understanding. “That was why Edwina accepted Fenwick: her portion was not protected and it had all been spent. Of course the marriage was for the best, very much, but at the time it didn’t seem so. Our mother said she was debasing herself, as if she had left Edwina any choice. That was when Tachbrook stuck his nose in.”

  “Tachbrook? What did he have to do with it?”

  “My mother is his cousin. There was naturally a scandal about the advertisements I placed, and then a fuss about Edwina’s marriage, and he came to see us while on a visit to Lord Aylesbury. He told me I was shaming his family and disgracing mine, that I was disrespectful to my mother and uncle, and a great deal more. He spoke as if the money were trivial, called me a young muckworm—he was perhaps thirty then and spoke to me as though I were a child—and complained that Edwina’s marriage stained his family. But I was no child any more. I was sixteen, and I had had quite enough, and I lost my temper as badly as I ever have in my life. It almost came to blows, but he would not lower himself so far, or possibly didn’t dare. He left in high dudgeon, and cuts me to this day.”

  “That would be why you are not concerned for his family line?”

  “I hope Marianne spends every penny he has.”

  “She will,” Robin said confidently. “So what happened to your mother?”

  “She married again, thank God. Another baronet, Sir Roger Asperton, a very wealthy man from up Birmingham way. Or he was. Perhaps she has spent all his money by now.”

  “Do you see her often?”

  “I have not seen or heard from her since she left the house to marry him. We were not invited to attend the wedding.”

  “Oof,” Robin said. “She just forgot about you?”

  “I wish she had forgotten. She complained bitterly about my unfilial cruelty, and took her grievance all over London while Tachbrook called me a violent savage. I came to London when I was eighteen or so—of course I could not attend university—to discover that I already had a reputation as a misanthropic, miserly, mannerless brute. I had not the grace or wit to win people to my side, and in any case, she was, is, my mother and to tell everyone what she had done to us—no. It was miserable. I was an awkward youth anyway, but the whispers and humiliation, the stares... I couldn't abide it. People talking about us, looking at me and laughing or sneering—I don’t know how you are so unsquashable by insult. It broke me.”

  “It did not. You are not broken.”

  “I am a damned awkward clumsy man because I never learned to fit as a boy. I dare say I would have been unsociable anyway, but it didn’t help to be mocked and ostracised.” He hadn’t quite meant to say all this. It had come spilling out, the pain and fear and crushing responsibility, and the deep scar carved by repeated rejection. He let out a long breath. “But I was fortunate, too. My solicitor was a hero. The Verneys didn’t turn their backs on us. Edwina had Fenwick, and when he died James Alphonso saw I was desperate for help, and extended his hand, for which I will be forever grateful. I made friends among Cits who had either never heard of my mother or had strong views on people living above their means. I righted the ship and restored the finances. It took years, but we, Edwina and Alice and I, were on an even keel once more.” He stared at the ceiling. “And then Edwina married Blaine, her second husband, and it all started again.”

  “What did?”

  “I suppose he’d picked Edwina as an easy target—a wealthy widow, not used to flattery. He was charming until they married and then it fast became apparent he was another spendthrift. A selfish greedy swine with no thought of anything but his own fleeting satisfaction, running up endless bills. This time he was draining the lifeblood of Edwina’s business rather than my lands, but it was still my family, my sister helplessly watching as her future was destroyed. It felt like being trapped in a nightmare. I couldn’t stop him spending her income; I had a great deal to do to prevent him ruining the brewery with his endless demands for funds. He seemed to believe it was his right to bankrupt them all. He even tried to make Edwina send Alice away, a slip of a girl who barely
ate, because he said she was a drain on the household while he ordered the best wines and new coats. I could have killed him. I could have throttled Edwina for bringing that on us. We had got back on our feet, and she opened the door and let him in.”

  “Is that entirely fair?” Robin asked carefully.

  “Of course not, but it’s how I felt. It seemed I would be working all my life to pay for other people’s self-indulgence.”

  “Was it your responsibility? In law, I mean.”

  “Oh, I had no rights at all except that she had given me a minority holding in the brewery.”

  “You could have retreated to your estate, and left your sister to deal with her own mistake. But naturally you could not. How did you make him listen to you?”

  “I shouted,” Hart said, with something of a snap. “He could rule a wife, or bully a child; he didn’t dare bully me. But when it came down to brass tacks, I could not stop him spending, because he had the right. It still makes me feel sick. Edwina was frantic. The desperation of being tied to someone who doesn’t care if they ruin you—”

  “Yes.” It was all Robin said, but the single word brought Hart up short.

  “Of course. You know.”

  “Lordship positively wanted us ruined by the end. He hated us because we were young, and not rotting away from pox, and not Toby. He wanted to put us on the town as a pair. We’d sell better that way. Brother and sister, pretty as a picture. That’s what he said.”

  “Dear God.”

  “It was only talk. He was a gin-soaked husk, nothing but fumes, but to hear him make those plans was the outside of enough. Anyway, you hadn’t finished. What happened to Blaine? He’s dead, yes?”

  “He bought himself a very expensive and nervy colt, which promptly threw him. He broke his hip, and died of it. The marriage only lasted two years, thank God.”

  “Good.” Robin’s shoulders heaved with a deep breath. “And then I came along to batten on Alice and her money, and you must have thought it was all starting again.”

  “You see why I wasn’t welcoming.”

  “I really wouldn’t have ruined her, I swear. I only ever wanted to be secure. I’m so sorry, Hart.”