And I Am Happy

by Cooper, R.

  Will had stared more than he’d meant to. Even now it shamed him to think of it. He didn’t wait for a reply this time but went to the bathroom to run the water and lay out a towel, wondering if he would be permitted to shave his gentleman as well today. There was something especially exciting about being allowed to shave his master, much like the day once a month when Will would trim his hair. He was already flushed and it had nothing to do with the steam filling the room.

  He nearly fainted when he swept back into the bedroom and found his master standing, his pajamas loose on his body, the trousers low. Despite his exertions during the night he was every inch a man this morning. His jaw was set, which meant he not only was going to ignore his morning’s arousal, but he was embarrassed and wanted to make it to the bathroom on his own. Will stood aside. He twitched at the forced stillness, concerned but calming when Charlie did not stumble.

  The bathroom was the one room in the house that had been fully modernized. His master’s doctor, a Frenchmen, had insisted on hot, running water and the largest bathing tub Will had ever seen. Two men could easily have fit inside it, a fact Will was fully conscious of whenever he stepped into the room. He did not think he was the only one.

  “If you have errands you do not need to attend on me.” Charlie freed Will from the duties Will would have found a pleasure. Will followed him into the bathroom despite the implied dismissal, needing to be certain Charlie would be all right on his own. His master looked up when he realized he wasn’t alone and caught Will’s hurt frown in the looking-glass.

  Will quickly schooled his expression into something else. He grinned. “Don’t be a mule. Am I not paid to see to your every need?”

  Will’s hair felt damp though he had done nothing to make him perspire. His restless night would have left him pale, with shadowed eyes. He had no doubt he looked awful, a far cry from the honey-haired Ganymede he’d once been. Will got propositions and offers from other employers but among the other servants he saw at the public house he was something of a joke. He was a pretty boy with only one real use and he wasn’t even used for that anymore. They’d thought at first it was because his master was a cripple, assuming his master ruined for physical congress, but when Will had fiercely and foolishly disabused them of that notion they had realized the truth; Will simply wasn’t wanted.

  That fact stung like a thousand bees and left him sleepless. But it was not the sole cause of the sorrowful ache in his belly or the hunger that made him spiteful one minute and giddy the next. Rejection Will could live with as long as he got moments like these, secret minutes of testing the temperature of the water and pulling the clothes from his master’s body with all of his master’s lean, hot strength against him in order to stand, his hands allowed to roam over skin as he lowered his gentlemen into the tub. There were indeed traces of passion on his master’s lower stomach. His cock was still morning-stiff, a flushed, satisfying length and width. If Will looked up he might catch the man in a blush but he kept his eyes low and saved the memory for a private moment.

  Charlie sighed his gratitude the moment he relaxed into the heat of the water. He was trembling. He had developed more muscle in his chest as well as in his whole arm and leg since he had begun to regularly wear his heavy prosthetics, but the effort of crossing the room and climbing into the deep bath without assistance had no doubt taxed him. Will’s own tremors had a different cause. He could still feel Charlie’s skin against the palms of his hands as he moved away. He turned while Charlie soaped himself clean. The glass was fogged but Will saw enough to make him pull at his collar.

  “I don’t mean to imply that you cannot do your job,” Charlie offered, bringing Will’s eyes up in the mirror where he found he was being watched in return. He was grateful there was already colour in his cheeks from the steam. He could see his eyes wide and green in the glass, his lips bitten and pink, his hair softly curling in the heat. He was slender, not quite little. He was still a most attractive man, to some.

  His master’s eyes dipped away. “It’s only that I want you to be happy here, and I…”

  The sinking feeling in Will’s stomach filled in the rest of the words when his gentleman trailed off. His master did not want Will to be upset that he did not want him for the same purpose his other gentlemen had. There had been a time when Will had been younger when Will could not have imagined wanting more either. Or less, he supposed, as now he was happy to make tea and draw baths with nothing to show for it but steady pay and a warm gaze. There was much he would do to keep his master’s fond, approving gaze on him.

  “I am quite content, sir,” Will assured him, waiting with a knot in his middle until Charlie’s brown eyes came back to him.

  “Then I am content.” There was a frown on his master’s face despite the words and his breath did not come any easier, not even when Will offered a shave. His master stayed in the bath for that, his head back, his eyes closed, only the small furrow in his brow and his careful hold on the side of the tub indicating that he was anything other than relaxed.

  Will spent more time than he should have attempting to soothe him, running his fingers over the tense muscles of his master’s shoulders and scenting his shaving lotion with sandalwood.

  Charlie’s eyes opened again when Will dragged his fingers through his hair in order to ease his head back. “My sisters for tea.” His master seemed breathless, almost grasping for conversation. Will focused on the blade, refusing to make a mistake or to give away the state of his arousal at the rough note in his master’s voice. “I had tea with them not two days ago.”

  “I suppose they are up to something,” Will suggested without any shame at all. He was often overly familiar. His master was often amused by it. Charlie curled his lips in a hint of a smile but did not object or protest the point. Will longed to kiss the curved line of his mouth despite the unappealing taste of the shaving lather. “Perhaps,” Will dared after a long moment when it was kiss his darling gentleman or continue to talk, “perhaps they wish to know how your evening went.”

  “You did not tell me about the last operetta you saw, or was it a play?” Charlie’s words were so unexpected that Will had to pause. Then he huffed a laugh, amused and frustrated in equal measure. It was difficult to believe the determined crusader of the House could not find a more subtle way to redirect the conversation.

  Will splashed him with a bit of bathwater. Charlie’s eyes opened wide.

  “It was a comedic operetta,” Will told him seriously, “I enjoyed it. You should see it. Perhaps take your lady friend.”

  “I do not have a lady friend.” It was even more difficult to believe that a man of his master’s class was arguing childishly with his valet. Eaten alive with jealousy he might be, but Will felt his smile return. His gentleman had a very nice jaw, and when he was feeling stubborn, which was much of the time, he tended to clench it. It was very clenched at the moment.

  “Liar,” Will scoffed, as bold as ever and wishing to be punished for it, “you could have the town at your feet if you wanted.”

  Instead of smiling at the mild flirtation his master looked away and said nothing. Feeling foolish, Will wiped up what was left of the shaving soap and held back an apology which might make the situation worse.

  He had drained the bathwater and dried Charlie and dressed him before the tense frown finally left his master’s face. “I am sorry,” the man exhaled, startling Will with his low, sincere words, “but sometimes I do not understand your meanings.”

  Will shook his head. His meanings could not have been more plain. “You are a most handsome man, sir,” Will told him, shaking with need and fury. Whoever had convinced his master that scars and metal limbs made him ugly had done a good job of it. Perhaps obvious and direct was necessary.

  His gentleman’s smile returned, though it was less flattered and more fond.

  “You are unlike anyone I have ever met, William Stewart,” his gentleman told him, strangely out of breath, but then disappeared into his
study before Will could dare ask if that was a good or a bad thing.

  ~~~

  Will returned from his errands with a new brand of biscuits as well as six new cravats and a luncheon for Charlie from his club. He was in the kitchen some time later, staring in despair at the sandwiches intended for tea, when the doorbell rang. He had time to pull down his sleeves but not to smooth down his hair before he had to answer it.

  The Howard sisters—as they had been known before two of them had married, burst through the door as one. For a few moments they were a flurry of hats and bustles and coats dusted with street dirt from riding in an open air Aucourte Autowagon, pressing harried greetings at Will in loud, ringing voices. Melisande first, the oldest and first to marry, the one most willing to be led by her other two sisters, and the one Will found it easiest to deal with. She was a handsome woman, as striking as her brother but with soft curves.

  Katherine was next, the youngest, widowed at an early age and left with a daughter. The family townhouse was at her disposal but she shared it with her middle sister. The middle sister was another matter. As a group the sisters could be terrifying but taken singly Will had learned to manage them. All but one. Will sighed before facing her.

  “Miss Ann,” he addressed Ann, the unmarried sister, the one his master had once confessed to loving dearly after also confessing that there were days he wished to pretend to be out when she called. Will had offered to play along should the charade ever be necessary but Charlie had yet to deny his sister a visit, or anything else for that matter. He never did.

  “William.” Miss Ann stopped in the entranceway to look him over, making Will aware of his hair again. He resisted the urge to straighten up or duck his chin. Miss Ann might not approve of him but she had never had a negative word to say about his treatment of her brother. Will would not be soft-soaping the situation to say that he had, if nothing else, gotten Charles Howard to dress like the dashing figure he was, and he liked to think he had eased some of the nerves that had used to leave his master so tense. Will had affected him for the better and even the Howard sisters knew it.

  He thought disparaging things about Miss Ann’s unflattering choice of hat to bolster his strength of conviction. Feathers and ribbons made her look whimsical, he decided. Sadly there was nothing whimsical about her. She ought to wear a general’s uniform.

  “William, we’ve brought a guest to tea,” Miss Ann announced after another look at his hands and the butter smeared across his thumb. She had stopped calling Will, “Stewart,” after noticing that her brother called him by the even more familiar, “Will,” though she did not go that far.

  Will blinked at her announcement and watched in surprise as the sisters parted to reveal another woman, a woman about Ann’s age, which made her a few years younger than his master. She was not family. She didn’t have the Spanish influence that gave the Howards their dark eyes and hair. She was blond, with wide green eyes. Her figure was shown to advantage in her filmy, sea-foam dress.

  Her perfume, he noticed immediately, was Lily-of-the-Valley.

  She was not a fortune hunter, or at least not one of the common calibre of fortune hunters that his gentleman encountered from time to time. Her clothes were fine and subtle in the manner of those with family lines going back to before the Conquest. Many who chased after his master were after his money or connections. This woman did not seem to need either. Will fought his despair.

  Women, and men, had come after Charlie before, leaving Will puzzled as to which his master preferred or if he had a preference at all. His gentlemen slept alone. If he found physical satisfaction, it was far from his home and Will. For a man so handsome and only growing more distinguished with age, a man in a position of power who could have chosen from a field of lovers, Charlie Howard was free with his blushes and restrained in his needs.

  A man with a broken heart might act that way, as Will had first thought upon arriving to work in this house. It was a suspicion seemingly confirmed by how his master seemed to think of himself as a creature none could desire. Someone cruel had torn his master’s heart to pieces. Now Will was looking at the woman who sought to take up those pieces for herself and sew them into something whole. Unlike the many others who had tried, this one might succeed.

  Will flushed with bitter heat but nodded to acknowledge Mrs. Jeanine Douglass, widow of a Maj. Douglass. She was American and bold enough that Will decided he did not like her, even if he knew his master admired boldness and needed it on the days when smiles would not easily come to him.

  He took her coat as well the others’ light cloaks, directed the ladies to where they might refresh themselves. Then he went in to announce them.

  “Your sisters, sir,” he drew out the warning as he approached his master’s great desk, making Charlie raise his head from a draft of a letter. The rueful grin he gave Will made Will want to shut the door to all visitors and offer himself instead, on the desk if necessary. He swallowed the words with a pained grimace and Charlie’s smile started to dim before his expression grew openly concerned. “And a guest,” Will added with reluctance, making his gentleman snap his head back. His reading glasses slipped down his nose as he did and Will reached out to push them into place without thinking. He jumped and withdrew his hand when someone cleared her throat from the doorway.

  The ladies were staring at him. Miss Ann was staring at him. As though he were a real valet, Will gave them the deepest nod imaginable and kept his hands at his side while he went to the kitchen to wait for them to ring for tea.

  They were laughing when he returned, even his gentleman. Will wished he had been listening at the door to see what Mrs. Douglass-of-the-Valley had said that was so amusing but their laughter calmed as he set the heavy tray on the low table by the sofa. Charlie glanced at him, that line appearing between his eyes that meant something in Will’s expression had worried him. Will smiled back helplessly then headed to the door. He wasn’t a butler or a footman. He wasn’t expected to serve their tea. No doubt Mrs. Douglass would offer to demonstrate her grace and charm and while she was doing that, Will could be listening at the door.

  “William,” Miss Ann called him back before he had crossed the threshold. Will stopped and restrained himself from heaving a sigh.

  “Will has work to do.” His master was a generous master and tried to rescue him. Will felt his mouth turn up and knew that Miss Ann noticed. Her eyes, the same shade as her brother’s, narrowed.

  “His work has much improved, that is what I wanted to tell him.” She smiled. It was not reassuring. If anything it made Will straighten further in alarm. Miss Ann spoke as though she didn’t notice. “It is admirably tidy in here, William.”

  “I knew you would visit today, Miss Ann, and I know how discerning you can be,” Will answered without thinking. Charlie coughed. So did Mrs. Douglass. Will almost glanced at her.

  “Shall I pour?” Mrs. Douglass offered into the silence while Will tried to keep his face clear of the mischief in his heart. Miss Ann was not fooled. Neither was his master. The other two Howard sisters quietly accepted their tea but their attitude was watchful. It was impossible to tell what they thought.

  “Will keeps persuading me to try new blends of tea. This one is particularly good.” His master’s tone was smooth and warm.

  Miss Ann took her gaze from Will. It was only a moment’s reprieve. “What lovely sandwiches, William,” she said, kind enough to make Will wonder if she was feeling well. The woman usually seemed to spend all of her time in her brother’s home expressing her disdain over Will’s skills and prodding him to be a better valet. She was either nosy or that concerned about her brother’s well-being, most likely both.

  Will considered his sandwiches. They were edible but they were not lovely. Despite how simple it ought to have been to cut the crust from sandwiches with a sharp knife, Will’s sandwiches had uneven edges and always would it seemed. A sad sigh slipped out of him despite his best efforts.

  “Just the thing. I
’m ravenous.” His master immediately leaned forward to take a sandwich. He was a true gentleman. Mrs. Douglass was equally astute and polite, as she also took a sandwich and popped it in her mouth. She did not seem to mind that it had too much butter. She hummed in appreciation as though she had the same sensibilities as his master.

  Will looked from her to his gentleman. His breath nearly left him completely when Mrs. Douglass then accepted the cup and saucer from his master’s metallic hand. She murmured something that he could not hear over the faint whirr and hum of its gears and though she did not touch the cool, shining steel, neither did she look away from it. It was a wonder that Charlie had hid most of it from her last night but did not do so now. Perhaps his gentleman was intent on slowly revealing himself to her. It was a thought Will could not bear.

  “If there’s nothing else,” he said at last, cold sinking low into his breast. The widow Douglass might wear too much Lily-of-the Valley but her spirits were warm. She was lively. She was bold and pretty. And she was a woman, which might be what his master preferred after all.

  “That operetta you saw, Will. Mrs. Douglass has seen it too.” This time his master stopped Will from leaving the room. He cleared his throat when Will turned incredulously back to face him. “Will loves the theatre,” Charlie explained to the others, with an expression on his face that seemed to beg Will to stay. “I do not get out much.”

  “Not as often as you should, sir,” Will forgot himself, again, in the space of only a few minutes. He risked a glance at the Howard sisters. He had their attention, which was not what he wished, not ever. If only his master would not look at him so, as if he needed Will’s presence more than he needed air. It was not fair.