A Seditious Affair

by K. J. Charles

  That he was. David’s dream. David’s nightmare.

  The room was ready, naturally. He moved around it anyway, making sure not a stray hair or spot of dust sullied Lord Richard’s private space. Everything perfect for his lordship, always. That was what David did. It was what he was for.

  The bed was made, counterpane perfectly flat. He tweaked it anyway.

  It wouldn’t creak under the weight of two men. Lord Richard disliked furniture that complained of his size, and he was far too wealthy to tolerate anything that he disliked. Lord Richard could have anything he chose.

  He could have David.

  He didn’t choose to.

  They were always in the bedroom, morning and night, David and his master. He brought tea and hot water. Dressed his lordship, groomed him, shaved him, made him the image of a fine gentleman in the morning then took it all apart again at night, and always with that bed lurking at the corner of David’s eye. Every morning, Lord Richard could reach out a hand for him, pull him onto the bed. Every night, he could push David just a few steps back from the mirror and the marble-topped dressing table, and put him flat on his back on that bed. David had never presumed to lie on Lord Richard’s bed, but he knew how the counterpane would feel, cool and smooth against his bare skin, just as he knew how the bed would dip when Lord Richard’s seventeen stone came down over his own slim frame. He could feel the weight on his chest, his master’s mouth on his, those big, smooth hands cupping his arse…

  Another bell. His lordship was coming up.

  “Good evening, my lord,” David said as his master entered. “I hope Lord Gabriel has had an enjoyable birthday?”

  “He has, and is continuing to do so, with enthusiasm.” Lord Richard was not a heavy drinker, but he’d had a few glasses; David could smell it on him and see red pigment on his lips, like paint. His mouth would taste of wine.

  He moved behind Lord Richard, reaching up to remove his coat. David stood six inches shorter, and was much more slender, a whippet to his master’s mastiff. In the mirror, as Lord Richard looked at himself, David would be invisible. He always was.

  “You’re early back, my lord.” David eased the superbly cut coat off those broad, strong shoulders, feeling the muscles move as Lord Richard dropped them to make his task easier.

  “Mmm. Ash and Harry were in full celebratory mood. It made me feel rather old.”

  David clicked his tongue reprovingly. His master was thirty-seven years old, the prime of life, and his dark brown hair was only just beginning to shade silver over his ears.

  “Julius sends his regards,” Lord Richard added. “He asked me to convey that he’d like to steal you from my service and offered a fabulous sum.”

  “It’s very kind of him, my lord,” David murmured, bringing the coat over Lord Richard’s hands. Such big, powerful hands, beautifully kept because David kept them, every nail polished and perfectly shaped.

  “It’s damned impertinence,” Lord Richard said as David took the coat to hang up. “I asked him, if I were married, would you have me convey your messages to my wife?”

  David shut his eyes. He didn’t need to see to go about his work, in any case; he could care for Lord Richard’s clothes in the dark, and identify each coat by touch. He smoothed out the heavy cloth carefully, lovingly, taking his time.

  “More to the point,” Lord Richard added, “I met Peter Ruthven and he says that dashed awkward business of his is resolved. Thank you. I trust it wasn’t too inconvenient?”

  “No trouble at all, my lord.” Mr. Ruthven, a lawyer and one of the Ricardians, had been careless in his cups and revealed a client’s secrets to a Grub Street scandalmonger. David had tracked down the fellow and persuaded him that it would be in his interest to forget what he’d heard. “Mason was very helpful,” he added. “He knows Grub Street well.”

  “He’s earning his keep, certainly.” Lord Richard pulled at his cravat. David came closer, putting up his hands for the cloth, and Lord Richard dropped his own hands to give him access. Such a big man, so strong, yet he stood there passively while David worked over his body. He gently loosened the complex folds, painfully aware how close his fingers were to the skin of Lord Richard’s throat.

  “And I’m very glad you could help Peter,” Lord Richard went on, “although he seems to be convinced it was all my doing. You are giving me an undeserved reputation for omnipotence.”

  They’d discussed this before. “Take the credit, my lord. It’s easier for me to work if gentlemen don’t notice me. And I do it all on your orders, so…” He carefully pulled the length of cloth from around Lord Richard’s neck.

  “Indeed. The things I ask you to do, or that you know I wish you to do, or that you do without telling me because you know very well I should refuse.” He gave David a pointed look. David adopted an expression of such exceptional blankness that Lord Richard laughed aloud.

  He had not been happy at David’s solution to Mr. Frey’s problem. He would have far preferred to see Silas packed off to the Americas than take the radical into his household. But it had undeniably saved Silas’s skin and repaired Lord Richard’s friendship with Mr. Frey, and after a somewhat stormy few days, Lord Richard had accepted the wisdom of his course.

  A course that put Silas Mason in front of Lord Richard’s face every day as a reminder that the lost love of his life had found happiness elsewhere and that it was time for Lord Richard to do the same.

  It seemed their thoughts were running along similar lines, because Lord Richard said, “Dominic was there tonight.”

  “Well, I hope?”

  “Very well. I have not seen him so content in a long time. I wish to God I could understand why.” Lord Richard sighed. “Not that it matters. I am not required to understand, merely to accept.”

  “I like Mason, my lord. He’s an interesting man.”

  “So I’m told.” Lord Richard tugged off his signet ring and handed it over. “I trust he’s not trying to convert you to radical causes?”

  “I’m not political. Which I think he finds rather trying,” David added demurely.

  “God bless you, Cyprian. Oh well, he makes Dominic happy. For now, at least.” David shot him a questioning look at that. Lord Richard turned up his hands in answer. “It can hardly last, can it? Dominic is a gentleman of good family, and Mason is the sweepings of the street. I cannot think it possible. In the end the divide is surely too great.”

  David stared down at the box where Lord Richard’s golden fobs and rings glinted at him, a fortune in trinkets casually bought and rarely used. His extremely generous annual salary would have purchased three or four of the smaller items. “There is a divide, my lord. But I think Mr. Frey knows what is right for himself.”

  “I would like to believe that. I wish I could.”

  “Well, but why not? Mr. Frey is happy and safe. Mason is doing useful work rather than fomenting sedition. The Vane libraries are in good hands. Surely all that counts for more than concerns of place.”

  “Ah, you are a Benthamite.” Lord Richard smiled at him in the mirror; not his society smile but that rare, sweet, open look that stopped David’s breath every time. “The greatest happiness of the greatest number.”

  David had no more interest in philosophy than politics, and the greatest number could go hang themselves for all he cared. There were perhaps five people in the world for whose happiness he gave a damn, and the chief of those was smiling at him now in a way that hurt his heart.

  He moved to unbutton the waistcoat. It was just on the cusp between perfectly fitted and a little tight; Lord Richard had put on a couple of pounds over the winter. David eased a gilt button smoothly through its slit. “Merely a practical thinker, my lord. If it is right for the people involved, then I cannot see why it should be wrong for anyone else.”

  “There we differ,” Lord Richard said. “One cannot disregard worldly concerns, or moral ones. Nevertheless, I wish I had been more practical with Dominic a long time ago, and I wish you
had been with me then. I feel quite sure you could have advised me better.”

  “My lord, you did what you could. Mr. Frey is responsible for himself.” Another button slipped free under his fingers. It was such a temptation to take longer over this, each undoing a little blissful torture. “And whatever has passed between you, things are better now. There is no need for regrets.”

  “I disagree there. Do you not have regrets?” Lord Richard asked.

  “I can’t see the point. There’s nothing one can do about them, after all. My mother says the sole point of the past is to ensure you don’t fall into the same traps in the future.”

  “That is certainly a tempting philosophy.” Lord Richard sighed. “And has some truth to it. You are ever a comfort, my Cyprian.”

  David stared at the embroidery in front of him, giving himself a self-indulgent second to absorb the words. Your Cyprian. All yours, if you just ask. “I hope to give you satisfaction, my lord.”

  “You do.”

  “Whatever you need,” David said on a breath, and felt Lord Richard jolt under his hands. He moved his fingers to the next button of the waistcoat, the top one, close to the opening of the fine lawn shirt, and Lord Richard’s hand came down over his. Skin against skin, trapping David’s fingers against his chest.

  He might as well have grabbed David by the balls.

  David looked up, into Lord Richard’s face, his deep blue eyes indigo in the candlelight and a little wide, as if he was startled by his own act. They stood, inches apart, in silence, Lord Richard’s heart beating under David’s hand, and David felt his hard-fought poise crumble like sand walls under the tide.

  Lord Richard’s big hand was over his own, engulfing it, and either his fingers were trembling or David’s were, or perhaps both. David flattened his fingers against Lord Richard’s chest and felt Lord Richard’s fingers tense over them.

  Please. Please.

  There was an endless second, and then Lord Richard lifted his hand away. “Enough. I’ll do the rest myself. Go to bed.”

  David’s mouth opened. Lord Richard stepped back, not quite meeting his eyes. “It’s late. Go on.”

  It was just one in the morning. He had the rest of the evening’s duties. He didn’t want to go, not now, with his master’s touch hot on his hand. “My lord—”

  “Good night.”

  It was flat dismissal, not to be argued with. “Yes, my lord,” David said in his usual, neutral tone, and turned away.

  He had reached the door when Lord Richard spoke again. “You are—invaluable to me, Cyprian. I hope you know that.”

  “Thank you, my lord,” David managed, wondering how his own voice was so level. “Good night.”

  He shut the door without a sound and padded down the hall, face blank, manner correct. Nobody who saw him would see anything but a valet about his duties. Nobody ever did.

  Silas had gone when he reached his own room. David sat on the bed and put his face in his hands, breathing hard.

  It was weeks since that touch in the book room, the connection that couldn’t be explained away as valeting duties or accident or anything else. Weeks since Lord Richard had been forced to accept Mason in his own house, to acknowledge that the lost love of his life was happy elsewhere. Weeks of morning and night together in a bedchamber, of feeling Lord Richard trying not to respond to his touch, of knowing that he was right.

  Weeks in an increasing conviction that David wasn’t going to get what he wanted.

  His lordship might embrace the future, but he wouldn’t embrace a servant. That was all there was to it. He was the marquess’s son, holding his place with pride and duty. He did not stoop, and he didn’t abuse his position either. David recalled him dressing down a cousin who’d been a nuisance to a housemaid, his deep voice carrying through two sets of walls with unrestrained anger. He’d forced the scarlet young gentleman to make his near-tearful apologies to the wide-eyed girl, and then escorted him out of the house in a way that reminded David of his friend who threw drunks out of a club. Lord Richard protected his own. It was no wonder his servants adored him.

  His lordship carried his birth, responsibility, and principles very heavily indeed. Desire didn’t stand a chance against those serried ranks, and particularly not desire for a servant with hair of such a repulsive shade that he’d been ordered to wear it powdered at all times.

  He’d seen Lord Richard watching him. He’d felt his lord’s breathing coming harder sometimes as David’s fingers moved over him, felt his big body tense, maintaining control. Another master would have reached for him. David was no stranger to this game; he knew hungry eyes when he felt them on his skin. Lord Richard had wanted him a hundred times, and if he had extended a hand or spoken a word, David would have come willingly. But he had not; he never would.

  It only made it worse that they both knew. David had felt the crackle of attraction all those years back at his interview for the post, and it hadn’t gone away, any more than the sensation of that accidental, long-held touch on his fingers, which had felt so much like a door opening.

  But Lord Richard had shut it. He would not reach for David, no matter how much he wanted to. And for once in his life, David didn’t know what to do.

  He solved his master’s problems, and those of his friends. That was easy enough for an ingenious man unencumbered by principles and backed by Lord Richard’s money and influence. With Lord Richard behind him, he could do anything. With Lord Richard in flat opposition…

  Because, in the end, David was his valet. He could persuade, even disagree, since his master generously permitted disagreement. He could not argue or overrule. He could not defy or persist. He could manipulate, of course; he was fairly sure that he could overcome his master’s objections for a night. Lord Richard was only a man, and men could be led; it was what David did best. But a single night would not do, and anyway that wasn’t what David wanted. Not at all.

  It was easy to lie when one didn’t care for the truth, to play when it was just a game with living pieces. He couldn’t do that to Lord Richard, because Lord Richard’s truth mattered to David as none other. He did not want to get his way with tricks now, to be the invisible puppet master. He wanted Lord Richard to see him. He wanted him to choose.

  And that left David, whose weapons were manipulation and deception, quite hopelessly adrift. All he could do was offer, as blatantly as he might, but without saying anything that would force Lord Richard to a decision, because David was too afraid that the decision would be no.

  He was perhaps the best-paid valet in London and certainly one of the most envied. The great Cyprian, he was called by some, just as Brummell’s valet had been the great Robinson, and if he left Lord Richard’s service he would be able to name his next master and his salary too. That should be enough for any man in his position, and of his background. More than enough.

  But it wasn’t. Because if David Cyprian had been asked to define his own particular hell, it would be night after night in Lord Richard’s bedroom, night after night undressing him with murmured words and infinite care, and then walking away to an empty room again, alone.

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