by Bliss Bennet
“Yes, thank you.”
Benedict smiled in bemusement as a surprisingly adept Clair readied his tea.
“And what, sir, do you find so amusing?” Clair asked as he handed the saucer to Benedict.
He waved a hand towards the teapot. “Your unexpected domesticity. It’s almost as if we were back at school—”
“But with the roles reversed,” Clair interrupted, reading his mind. With a flourish, he set a plate of toast beside Benedict’s saucer. “You the master, and I the dutiful fag, bringing you your morning fare.”
Benedict chuckled. “High and mighty Viscount Dulcie, reduced to servile running and fetching? Impossible!”
“Ah, but I was not always a high and mighty sixth former! Remember, I was sent away to school at a far younger age than you. And I served my turn as fag, just as you did, and to fellows far less genial than myself, I assure you.”
Benedict’s cup rattled in the saucer. He’d never even imagined—
“Did they bully you?” he asked, hands fisting on the table. “Force you to do things you did not wish to?”
Clair shrugged as he readied his own cup. “What son of a nobleman wishes to black boots, or dig melted wax out of candlesticks? Silly, tedious work, most of it. But adolescent boys do enjoy lording it over one another, especially if they realize that in future, the situation is likely to be reversed.”
His concern must have been evident on his face, because Clair reached out and squeezed his arm. “No, I was never bullied. It takes more than a few unkind words to intimidate me.”
Benedict’s pounding heart gradually slowed. No, even as a child, Viscount Dulcie would never have tolerated such treatment.
If only he himself as a schoolboy had had a fraction of the self-assurance Clair took for granted—
Shaking off his melancholy, Benedict shoved a bite of toast in his mouth. He was supposed to be drawing Clair out, not wallowing in his own hurt feelings.
Still, he needed a few moments to gather himself again. He sat, eating in silence, as Clair entertained them with gossip from the morning’s newspaper. Usually, he preferred a quiet breakfast, but today, Clair’s prattle washed over him as comforting as water warmed for the bath.
Clair set the tray outside the door, then returned, rubbing his hands together in expectation. “Now we are ready to get started. Where do you want me?”
“First you need to tell me what size portrait you wish. Full-length? Kit-Cat? A bust only?”
Clair shook his head, golden curls flying in vehemence. “Come now, Benedict. You know this is not to be one of those society portraits made only to demonstrate my rank and position. It is to be a work of art, and as such, not only its composition and style, but also its size, is to be entirely at the discretion of the artist.”
“Well, then. A few standing poses to start. There, over by the window.”
Benedict typically preferred not to talk while he sketched, but today, his companion would only fill the silence if he remained mute. And besides, he’d never coax Clair into revealing more of himself if he made no effort.
He took a deep breath. “Did Sir Peregrine take it very ill, your leaving Lincolnshire so abruptly? He is always the polite brother-in-law to me, but I can well imagine him reading you the riot act for your abandonment.”
Clair shook his head. “With the Nortons no longer bent on contesting the election, Per should have no difficulties winning the electors to his side. And when I told him Saybrook had something difficult to confess to him and his lady wife about his finances, something he’d be far more comfortable discussing without my presence in the house, he could protest my leaving no longer.”
“Sinclair Milne, considering the feelings of others. How unexpected,” he teased.
“As if I would ever let another’s feelings take precedence over my own,” Clair said with a exaggerated shudder. “I simply wished to avoid playing witness to the vulgar display of sentiment that was likely to ensue upon your brother’s confession. You did say you spoke with him before we left, and that he would keep his promise to tell Sibilla?”
Benedict nodded.
“No need, then, for me to witness your sister’s dressing-down of your brother, Saybrook’s abject apologizing, Miss Atherton’s rushing in to defend him and to take the blame all on herself, all inevitably followed by tears and forgiveness all round. Not to mention the weeping when Saybrook finally announces his betrothal to Miss Atherton. More tears of happiness than of chagrin, then, I warrant. Still, I take pains to avoid such scenes at all cost.”
“Of course you do. And living with your parents and your sister when you are in town, rather than taking rooms, of course allows you to avoid family scenes of your own. Because everyone knows that Lord and Lady Milne are as devoid of feeling as a doorknob.”
Even Clair could not keep a straight face at the thought of his voluble father and sentimental mother being labeled unfeeling. Yes, amusement shading into affection, if he might just capture that expression—
“Hold that, Clair,” he ordered as his hand moved rapidly over the page. “Do you always reside at Milne House when in town?”
“Yes, and not because of lack of funds, which is what some gossips enjoy implying.” Clair blew at a wayward curl that had fallen over his forehead. Again Benedict scrambled to capture the fleeting expression on paper.
“If I’ve blunt enough to purchase fine artwork, I certainly have enough to rent a set of rooms,” Clair continued. “Or even to purchase a town house of my own. But unlike so many young men of fashion these days, I am inordinately fond of my parents. And since I am the only son, my father prefers to keep me close to hand.”
“But you did take rooms once, did you not? When you set up Sally Goodman as mistress?” he asked, striving to keep voice from betraying his own strong feelings at the memory. “Move to the left, please. And turn your torso to the side, your arms extended.”
Clair obliged, but then glanced over his shoulder with an exaggerated scowl. “Please, do not remind me of that embarrassing episode. ‘Lord Sin,’ she liked to call me, as if I debauched her at every opportunity.”
“You did not?”
Clair snorted with an elegance one rarely associated with the act. “Even the most pious of parsons could not have taken exception to the tepid embraces in which we two engaged.”
His eyes suddenly narrowed, as if he just realized Benedict’s words were meant to draw him out. “But what of you? Have you ever lain with a woman?” he asked, attempting to turn the conversation away from himself.
Benedict paused before raising his eyes to Clair’s. “Yes. I have.”
“And did you enjoy the experience?”
He could see Clair wished him to say no. But he wouldn’t lie.
“Yes. Yes, I did.”
Although not nearly as much as when he’d shared his bed with a man. Not that he need confide that detail to Clair. Not just yet.
Benedict’s words silenced Clair for a moment. “Lucky man,” he said at last, then shrugged, half sheepishness, half pride. “I, for one, never have.”
“Never? Then why did you do it? Set Sal up as your mistress?”
Clair snorted again. “Thought it would please my father. Or at least distract him from other, more salacious gossip that I had not yet learned to avoid. But it was simply too embarrassing. I’m far more careful now than I was when I first came up to town.”
A sympathetic shudder raced over Benedict’s frame. He’d always taken care to keep word of his unconventional appetites from reaching his family, especially his father. Viscount Saybrook already looked him askance for his devotion to art and his lack of interest in politics; what would he have said if he discovered his middle son committing the sin of Sodom? He hadn’t ever really taken a male lover until he’d gone to the Continent. But Clair, despite his cosmopolitan interests, had never left England.
“Turn to the right, please, and reach towards the ceiling with your left hand. Now, tip your head
back towards me.”
Benedict set down his pencil, exchanging it for a stick of charcoal. “Is that why you’ve never married? Because of your antipathy to the fairer sex?” He kept his eyes carefully fixed on his sketch.
“Oh, I enjoy the company of females, do not mistake me. I’ve simply never been able to maintain a cock-stand in the face of an amorous one. Makes the prospect of siring an heir rather unlikely, does it not? For all my father wishes to see me wed?”
Benedict’s eyes jerked up in time to see Clair’s lips twist in wry amusement. But he couldn’t bring himself to laugh. Even though he had no real objections to bedding a woman, he’d always prayed hard for Theo’s good health and safety, not wishing the obligation of carrying forth the family line to fall to him. Shouldering such a burden when one was a family’s sole male heir, and was entirely unaroused by the sight of a woman’s body—no, he could not laugh at Clair, not for that.
“But does not living with your family make it difficult for you to conduct your, ah— your, affaires de coeur?” Benedict asked to divert the conversation away from the difficult topic.
“My affaires, as you so delicately put it, rarely involve mon coeur,” Clair proclaimed, as if he were proud of the fact.
“Your affaires du corps, then, if there are only bodies, and no hearts, involved.”
“A private room at the back of a discreet tavern, or even a dark path in a park, does admirably for such things. Or if I take on a protégé, as I sometimes do, I will hire a room for the month or two we are together. But I never spend much time there.”
“An expeditious lover, are you? But speed, I find, is not always to be admired. Some of my happiest hours have been spent lingering in bed, taking my time in bringing pleasure to a partner, and receiving my own pleasure in turn.”
Clair’s eyes darkened. “If I ever found myself in your bed, Pen, I assure you, expediency would be the last thing on my mind.”
“A pity, then, you’re not likely to wind up there.” He closed his sketchbook with a snap, willing his blush to recede. “Shall we move to the park before the light fades? And perhaps bring your horse? I’d like to try a few sketches of you astride.” A quick ride would be a much needed physical outlet for all the feelings they’d edged up against during this morning’s conversation.
“There’s something—someone—else I’d rather be astride than Eligius, noble steed that he may be,” Clair said with a suggestive smile.
But Benedict only raised his eyebrows.
“As you will,” Clair said with a gusty sigh of disappointment.
Benedict smiled and gestured to the door.
“Did you know that Eligius of Noyon is the patron saint of horses?” Clair asked as he followed Benedict down the staircase. “Seems he willed his prancer to a fellow priest after his death, but the new bishop stole it for himself. The poor beast sickened, though, and only recovered when it was returned to its rightful owner. Some also say the saint removed a horse’s leg to shoe it, then magically attached it without harm, although I’m disinclined to give much credence to that particular yarn.”
Benedict allowed Clair to slip back into the safety of his prattling without interruption. Let the fellow lull himself into thinking himself master of the situation. Benedict knew better. Sitting for one’s portrait often led to an unusual intimacy between subject and painter, an intimacy of which Benedict was prepared to take due advantage in the coming days.
He would show Clair how the pleasures of companionship, of fondness and affection, could be just as fine as those of sexual congress. Better, even, if one were willing to share those feelings Benedict knew were bubbling just under Clair’s surface.
Only then would he accept Clair’s invitation into his bed.
CHAPTER THIRTEEN
“Hells bells, man! Can that be you, Dulcie?”
The city streets had been largely empty this rainy summer morning as Dulcie and Benedict made their way across Mayfair to Soho Square, to the shop of one J. Newman, colourman to artists. Oil paint, apparently, did not keep for long, and Benedict required fresh tints before he could embark upon his new, experimental portrait. At the first sign of rain, Dulcie had hidden away all the spare umbrellas from Pennington House’s cloakroom, so that during their walk, he and Benedict would have to huddle close together under a single silk mushroom. And Dulcie had been quite enjoying the experience, his own arm snugging tight against Benedict’s back, Benedict’s fingers cupping the ball of his shoulder. Who was that rude fellow, calling out his name and interrupting such a pleasant, if damp, outing?
Ducking his head, Dulcie pushed Benedict along the pavement. But the splash of boots in puddles behind them warned him that the interruption to their companionable solitude was not to be avoided.
Benedict’s arm dropped from his shoulder, and his hip nudged Dulcie further away. Dulcie let his own arm fall between them.
Ridiculous, to feel so bereft at the loss.
“Dulcie, it is you! And Pennington, good day to you both!”
John Melheux, a fellow member of the British Institution, jogged up to their side, panting. He bent over for a moment and huffed to catch his breath, then added, “Good heavens, man, what are you still doing in town? Why, the Glorious Twelfth has already come and gone! You’ll miss the best of the grouse.”
“The Twelfth? Already? Impossible!”
Dulcie looked to Benedict for confirmation, but his companion only raised an eyebrow. “Yes, it’s Tuesday, the twentieth. We’ve been in town for more than a fortnight.”
How odd. He usually spent the early weeks of August on his father’s estate, preparing for the autumn shooting season by reviewing his invitations to house parties, writing his acceptances or regrets, and ensuring his fowling pieces and his wardrobe were all in order. How had the Glorious Twelfth, the opening day of the bird hunting season, passed without his notice?
His rational brain supplied the surprising answer: he’d been taking such absorbing pleasure in the company of Benedict Pennington that nothing else had mattered. Even with the majority of the ton having decamped for the countryside, he and Benedict had found more than enough to occupy a fortnight’s stay in town. Posing and sketching, of course, each morning, while the light was best. Long walks, or riding about town on horseback each afternoon, Benedict taking him to visit sights in, and denizens of, the city he’d never before encountered. The Turf Coffeehouse, where a purported specimen of a mermaid was proudly displayed; an exhibition of military antiquities on Pall Mall, twenty five full suits of armor including the set worn in secret by Bonaparte under his vest (“just like our dandies and their stays!” Dulcie had exclaimed); and Astley’s Amphitheatre, where they cheered along with the lusty crowd at the reenactment of the battle of Waterloo, complete with cavalry advances, bugle calls, and cannon fire. He’d even enjoyed paying a call on Benedict’s sharp-tongued uncle, a former military officer, and charming the silly but kind great aunt who saw to the disabled man’s needs. And the several visits they’d paid to Benedict’s younger brother, the one all of society had decided to shun both for his radical political views and for his recent marriage to a deliciously outspoken Irishwoman—why, those had been out and out entertaining.
And the evenings—well, if the evenings had not yet yielded all the carnal delights of which his slumbering brain insisted on dreaming, they were still ripe with the promise of something tantalizing, something he could not help but pursue. Heavens knew he was always happy being the center of attention, but somehow Benedict’s attention seemed different, more focused, more intense, especially at night, when the dark shadows and flickering candlelight shrouded them in even more of an air of privacy than in Benedict’s studio. That attention wasn’t easily distracted, not even by Dulcie’s expert innuendos and flirts. Though each evening he set off to disarm his companion, it was he who most often found himself won over, giving serious answers to Benedict’s provocative questions, questions so unconventional that no other man would ever have
presumed to ask them, let alone expect a response. Would he rather there be no heaven, or no hell? Did he look forward to inheriting the earldom, or did the idea of his father’s death kill all pleasure in the prospect? Were the social ranks preordained by God, or a self-serving myth crafted by the privileged? What would he say if he ever met a ghost?
“Lord Dulcie?” Melheux’s voice interrupted his reverie. “Are you quite well?”
Damnation. Dulcie gave his head a rough shake. What had come over him, to allow a conversation to lag so uncivilly?
“The twentieth, indeed. Why, then, do you remain in town, Melheux?” he asked. Most gentleman of his acquaintance were more than happy to have the conversation turn to themselves and their own doings, easily giving over any line of questioning that Dulcie wished to evade. Indeed, only the ringing of the midday bells at St. George’s, which reminded Melheux of his own pending appointment with the gunmaker which had brought him temporarily back to town, stopped his self-absorbed chatter.
“I dare say we’ll see you at Devenport’s come September, eh, Dulcie? Perhaps with Miss Adler in tow? Wouldn’t want Leverett to get the best of you there, would you?” Melheux said with an exaggerated wink in Benedict’s direction. He tipped his hat. “Bid you good day, my lord. Pennington.”
“St. Cajetan help me,” Dulcie whispered under his breath as he watched Melheux dodge the raindrops. He’d all but forgotten that ridiculous bet with Lattimer Leverett.
“St. Cajetan?” Benedict asked as Dulcie grasped his arm and set a brisk pace towards Soho Square.
“The patron saint of gamblers.” And before Benedict could ask him why he had need of Cajetan’s intervention, Dulcie quickly added, “They say people asked him for favors, and bet him a rosary that he wouldn’t be able to fulfill them, which seems a bit unlikely for a pious fellow, don’t you think? More likely he just gave loans to men foolish enough to sell their souls to moneylenders and their usurious interest rates. They do say he came from a very wealthy family.”
