The Lawrence Browne Affair

by Cat Sebastian

  “Fuck,” Lawrence ground out.

  Turner let out a breathy laugh that Lawrence felt against his neck.

  Lawrence pulled Turner away from the door, intending to steer him towards the bed. But without the door to hold them up, they both sank to their knees. Turner pushed him down to the ground and kissed him, hard and sweet.

  The bare floor bit into Lawrence’s shoulder blades as Turner’s fingers dug into his biceps. Lawrence felt a hot mouth press a line of kisses from his jaw to his neck to his chest, and then—

  “Holy God!” He arched off the floor when he felt the light press of teeth on his nipple.

  “Good or bad?” Turner murmured, looking up at Lawrence with dark, dark eyes.

  Good hardly seemed adequate, so inadequate as to almost be dishonest. He took hold of one of Turner’s hands and dragged it to the bulge in Lawrence’s breeches.

  Turner grasped Lawrence’s cock through the fabric. Lawrence bit back a curse.

  “Radnor,” Turner said, and to Lawrence it sounded like a plea.

  “No,” Lawrence said abruptly. Hearing his title—his father’s and Percy’s title—from a man whose hand was wrapped around his cock was altogether wrong. “Call me Lawrence.” He watched as a look of surprise flitted across the other man’s face, as if he hadn’t expected the intimacy. “Or don’t . . . ”

  “Lawrence,” the secretary agreed. “You’ll call me Georgie?” Without waiting for an answer, he began unfastening Lawrence’s breeches and tugging them off. At the first touch of fingers—fingers that were not his own, after so long—curling around him, Lawrence’s eyes flung open. This he had to see. Georgie was kneeling over him, black hair tumbled over his forehead. With his thumb he spread moisture over the head of Lawrence’s throbbing prick. And with his other hand, he—God help him—he was unfastening his own trousers. When Georgie bent his head and flicked his tongue over the tip of Lawrence’s cock, Lawrence thought his heart might actually stop.

  “I want . . . ” Lawrence started, before realizing he couldn’t reach the right words. “Come here,” he tried, pulling Georgie up and then reaching for the fall of the other man’s trousers, where he could just see the head of the other man’s cock. “Give it to me,” he managed, his voice hoarse. The man’s cock, when Lawrence touched it, was silky and hard and already wet at the tip. Experimentally, he stroked it the way he would stroke himself, long leisurely pulls, rubbing his thumb along the slit.

  The noise Georgie made, a desperate and shuddering sigh, made Lawrence’s cock jump. Then Georgie bent over him, taking one of Lawrence’s nipples in his mouth, and Lawrence groaned. It was too much, too good. He was feeling too many things at once, but he still wanted more.

  He twined his fingers in Georgie’s still-damp hair, pulling him up, seeking out the relative familiarity of Georgie’s mouth. Georgie kissed him back, hard and urgent. When Georgie took both their erections in one hand and began stroking them together, Lawrence bit him on the lip. He was ready to apologize, but Georgie moaned into his mouth and kept kissing him even harder, so he figured he hadn’t gone too terribly amiss.

  Georgie’s back was smooth and warm under Lawrence’s hands, his arse taut with thrusting. “I need to . . . ” Georgie said, his voice thick and needy.

  “I want to watch,” Lawrence rasped out. “Show me.”

  Georgie knelt back and Lawrence watched him, both cocks held tight in Georgie’s fine-boned hand. And then Georgie was shuddering, his seed spilling over Lawrence’s belly.

  The sight of Georgie’s face as he spent was all it took to push Lawrence over the edge. His climax felt torn out of him, wretched and blissful and confused all at once, simple pleasure a mere fraction of the experience.

  Georgie collapsed onto Lawrence’s chest, seed and sweat mingling, Georgie’s hair falling all over Lawrence’s neck. They lay together for a few breaths before Georgie rose, graceful as always. With economical movements he made use of the towel and bathwater to clean himself off. His lean muscles glowed in the firelight.

  Lawrence sat up, meaning to do as Georgie did and tidy himself. But Georgie came to kneel beside him and wiped Lawrence’s belly with a wet cloth. He felt the muscles in his abdomen clench at the unexpected cold, at the strangeness of being touched by somebody else, the even more foreign sensation of being looked after by somebody else.

  The strangeness started to spread over his body, a seeping sense of unbelonging. He did not know what to do, what to say, where to go. Not now. He cursed whatever forces made his chest feel as if it were constricted by iron bands, his lungs unable to take in nearly enough air.

  But Georgie took care of that with the same matter-of-fact nonchalance he always adopted when ordering Lawrence about. “I’m for bed,” he said, extending a hand to Lawrence.

  Lawrence grasped Georgie’s hand and rose. “Bed,” he agreed, and gathered that he was meant to leave. He could do that. He dropped Georgie’s hand, gathered up his clothes, and headed for the door.

  His progress was checked by a hand on his elbow. “This bed, Radnor. Lawrence,” he corrected.

  Lawrence turned and saw Georgie looking up at him hopefully, maybe even a little embarrassed. His usually sleek hair was tousled and disordered, his cheeks red from where they had rubbed against Lawrence’s beard.

  Lawrence nodded.

  The bed was scarcely big enough for one person, let alone two, one of whom was fourteen stone. But it turned out not to matter, because Georgie pushed Lawrence down onto the bed and climbed nearly on top of him, resting his head on Lawrence’s shoulder. Lawrence shut his eyes, and nothing existed beyond the scent of clean hair and the feel of sinewy limbs tangled with his own. They fit in the bed like this, Georgie molded to Lawrence’s side, hardly taking up more space than Lawrence alone. It was an alien sensation, being this close to another person, unfamiliar but not unpleasant, something Lawrence could imagine finding agreeable, given enough time.

  “Are you all right?” Georgie asked, as if following Lawrence’s thoughts.

  “I am,” Lawrence answered, and it was almost the truth.

  CHAPTER TWELVE

  Georgie hadn’t meant to fall asleep, but his eyes shut almost as soon as he settled in the crook of Radnor’s arm. When he opened them again, the first fingers of light had already appeared in the sky outside his sooty bedroom window. Carefully, he tipped his head to look at the man sleeping beside him. Radnor radiated heat, and at some point during the night one of his arms had landed heavily across Georgie’s middle. It was like sleeping against a wall of hot muscle, which ought to have been uncomfortable but was, in fact, the first time Georgie had been properly warm since arriving at Penkellis.

  With a sigh of resignation, Georgie slid carefully out from under Radnor’s arm into the cold and made his way towards the north tower. He couldn’t stay here another day, that much was all too clear. It was a terrible nuisance, having a conscience. A year ago he would have cheerfully filled his valise with Penkellis treasures, stolen the earl’s secrets, and spared Radnor nary a thought on his way back to London.

  But now, after so many years of working and scheming, with no purpose but to ensure that he would never have to face the grinding, dirty poverty of his youth, he was prepared to leave Penkellis empty-handed and with nowhere better to go. And all because of a heap of fine, useless feelings.

  He was fairly disgusted with himself, but no matter how he turned the matter over in his mind, he couldn’t let Radnor—Lawrence, he thought with a rush of warmth—be a part of any swindle. He felt nauseated to think how close he had come to actually stealing the telegraph plans. And worse—he might have put Lawrence in harm’s way by exposing him to Brewster.

  When Georgie pushed open the door to the study, he found the room cold and dark. He set about lighting the fire and a candle to work by. He took his time cutting a nib, refilling the inkwell, and arranging the paper so it was precisely aligned with the edges of the blotter. This was not a letter he wished to write, but
after a lifetime of disappearing like so much smoke, he found that he couldn’t leave Radnor without a word.

  But there were no words to convey what he felt, likely because he didn’t want to put a name to it. Any word he could come up with felt like stolen property, something that rightly belonged to a decent person, not Georgie Turner.

  Instead, he set about the task of cataloging the earl’s notes. Over the past few weeks he had become familiar with Lawrence’s bold, scrawling hand and with the abbreviations and symbols he employed. Georgie took each stained, ripped, dog-eared sheet of paper and wrote a short synopsis of the experiment in his own much more legible hand. It was satisfying, this process of sifting through the products of Lawrence’s brilliant mind, and translating them into understandable prose.

  Four pages in, he came across a paper that did not belong. It was a letter, still folded and sealed and addressed in shaky writing nearly as illegible as the earl’s. Georgie tore it open and read it, as he did all the earl’s correspondence.

  And then he stared.

  “Radnor?”

  Lawrence heard his name being called, sound traveling through bedcovers and the fog of deep slumber. He ignored it and tried to fall back asleep.

  “Radnor!” The voice was closer now, harder to ignore. A moment later, and it was accompanied by hands roughly shaking his shoulders.

  Lawrence woke with a jolt. He was in a strange bed, a strange room, everything out of place. The mattress hit his back in all the wrong spots, the faint sunlight came in at a disconcertingly unexpected angle, and the fire was on the opposite side of his head from where it ought to be. Barnabus, who habitually slept behind Lawrence’s knees in an apparent effort to make as much a nuisance of himself as possible, was absent.

  When he recalled that he was in Turner’s room, Turner’s bed, not a stitch of clothing on his body, he did not feel relieved.

  It was Turner who had been calling him, shaking him. It could hardly have been anyone else. Lawrence’s skin still felt alive with Turner’s touch, and his head still swam with the strange wonder of last night. He rubbed his eyes and propped himself up on his elbows, trying to resist the urge to cover his chest with the sheet.

  Turner was waving a piece of paper in Lawrence’s face. “You have received a letter from your son,” he said, making it sound like an accusation. Turner was usually so equable, too languidly decorous to make a fuss. Lawrence felt himself greatly out of his depths. “And such a letter, my lord.”

  “Why?” Simon never wrote. His aunt had insisted on caring for the child after Isabella’s death. “He’s at Harrow.”

  “Quite! For the next week, at least. Then he’s coming here for his holiday.”

  “Impossible.” Lawrence got to his feet and pulled on his trousers. “He stays with his mother’s family during his holidays.”

  “Well. He writes that”—Turner glanced at the paper—“Cousin Albert and Cousin Genevieve have the measles, so he humbly requests to visit you. To visit you.” He poked Lawrence’s bare chest with a single finger. “Radnor, I was under the impression the child had died with his mother, or lived on the Continent, or . . . ” His face wore an expression of blank confusion. “I don’t know why I assumed any of those things. But you never speak of him.”

  Lawrence disregarded everything but the essential fact he knew to be true. “He cannot come here. Write to the school and explain that he will board through the holiday, until next term.”

  “I bloody well will not.” Turner looked so furious as to be hot to the touch. His hands were clenched by his sides, one of them clutching Simon’s letter.

  “I fail to understand—”

  “You fail to understand so damned many things, Radnor, but I will explain as clearly as I can that you must not refuse to let your child visit you. Visit, for God’s sweet sake.”

  “Of course I can.” He pulled his dressing gown tightly around him. “The last time Isabella’s daft sister refused to take him, he went to stay with a schoolmate.”

  Turner’s eyes were bright, his cheeks flushed. “Refuse . . . take . . . ” He shook his head. “This child is your heir. This is his house. You are his father. Radnor—hear me now—he signs his letter ‘Your Simon.’ ”

  “My Simon,” Lawrence repeated, and it felt like the floor was evaporating under his feet. “Mine. Good God. He should be glad he is not.”

  “Whatever nonsense you have in your head, get rid of it,” Turner spat. “He’s yours, he’s coming, and we have at most ten days to get this house into some semblance of habitability. Do you not understand? He has been with his aunt. He has been with his schoolmate. He will know how things are done and how they are not done, and the way we live at Penkellis is decidedly not how things are done.” He poked Radnor’s chest on each of those words, brandishing the letter like a weapon.

  Lawrence grabbed Turner’s wrist, stopping the assault. “I’ve made myself clear. He is not to come here. This house is no place for a child. I’m no company for a child.”

  “Company? This is no question of company, my lord.” He twisted his hand free but didn’t step back. “You are his father.”

  “No, I am not.”

  Turner opened his mouth as if to protest but snapped it shut again.

  “Isabella was with child when I married her. That is why I married her. She, for reasons you are well acquainted with, found me an unsatisfactory husband and Penkellis a highly unsatisfactory house. She took Simon and ran off with her lover. When she died, her family fetched the child from Italy and raised him.”

  Turner’s mouth set into a grim line. “And you have not seen him since?”

  “No.”

  As Lawrence watched, Turner composed himself, his brow smoothing, his mouth flattening into a firm line. Lawrence had the sensation that Turner was resuming a mask, only Lawrence had not realized there had been any mask in the first place.

  “Does he know?” All the usual cool polish had returned to Turner’s demeanor.

  “Know what?”

  “That he is not your natural child?”

  “I should damned well hope not.”

  “You prefer for him to believe that he has been abandoned by his own father, then. I see.” Turner’s voice was glacially cold.

  “I prefer for him not to have anything to do with this place, or with me. The best thing I could possibly do for him is to keep him away from Penkellis and its master.”

  Turner’s eyes opened wide. “No. You are wrong there. I have told you so many times that you are not mad. But what you have just said is the closest to madness you have ever come. You are . . . ” He gestured with his hands, as if physically grasping for a word. “You are a fine man. You will do admirably as a father.”

  Lawrence gaped at his secretary’s wrongheadedness. “You have no idea what you speak of.”

  “Do I not? I was raised by . . . not a good man, although I dare say he did his best, for what little that’s worth.” From the way Turner pressed his lips together, Lawrence inferred that it was worth very little indeed. “My mother died when I was an infant, and my brother and sister worked, so I was mainly left to my own devices. My father was always late with the rent, and once I came home to find our rooms empty and my father gone. It took me days to find him. He was drunk and penniless, but I was so relieved because I had nowhere else to go, and even if he were bedding down on the street, I could at least be with him.” He paused to take a deep breath, his eyes flashing darkly. “And you, with all your money and all your many rooms, will not do as much for a few weeks? A few weeks, Lawrence.”

  Maybe it was the sound of his name that made his resolve crumble. It had been so long since anyone had called him that, and it was patently absurd for anyone on earth to be speaking to him in such a way. Not because it was improper—which of course it was, but hardly the most improper aspect of this scenario, and Lawrence had given up on propriety years ago anyway—but because it implied an impossible level of intimacy. He didn’t have friend
s, for God’s sake. His mind was a thicket of thorns and weeds and nobody could get in far enough to achieve anything resembling friendship.

  “A few weeks,” he repeated.

  “Even if you were as mad as a hatter. Even if Penkellis were filled to the rafters with evil, a few weeks would not harm the child, and being sent away will harm him very much.” He spoke with such conviction, Lawrence could not dismiss him. Lawrence was unmoored and unhinged, sure of absolutely nothing, and here was his secretary, his lover, so utterly confident and sure. Lawrence wanted Turner’s confidence to be enough for both of them.

  He let out a sigh. “Fine.”

  Turner looked like he might sag with relief, but he simply nodded.

  Lawrence made to leave, to retreat to the safety of his study.

  “Wait,” Turner said. “I need your authority to make the necessary accommodations for the child. I’ll have to go to Falmouth to engage servants and tradesmen and purchase supplies. I’d hire local people but there isn’t enough time to win them over. I’ll return the day after tomorrow. Will you write to your bankers and give me that authority?”

  Lawrence nodded. “You’ll have whatever you require.” He might agree to anything as long as he did not have to look at the raw earnestness that had momentarily returned to Turner’s face.

  CHAPTER THIRTEEN

  Lawrence flung down his pen when the pounding started anew. It was impossible to string two coherent thoughts together in these conditions. There was a disturbingly arrhythmic banging that he could feel vibrating through the floors and walls as surely as he could hear it. It was a wonder the castle was still standing.

  Furious, he threw open the study door. “Stop that at once!” he bellowed, but there was no chance he had been heard. The noise, it seemed, was coming from downstairs. He descended the stairs two at a time and stalked towards the racket.

  There were no fewer than half a dozen men in the drawing room, all strangers. One was shouting something up the chimney. Two others were using crowbars to pull up a rotten piece of floorboard. Another pair sawed lumber.