A Private Gentleman (40 page)
Read A Private Gentleman Online
Authors: Heidi Cullinan
He motioned to Michael. “A journal.”
The room went quiet. Michael withdrew the book from inside his jacket.
Daventry, for the first time, seemed afraid.
His eyes met Michael’s, and though the book was in his hands, though he
was but a moment from exposing the monster, Michael was caught.
He was a boy again. He was in his mother’s house, and Daventry stood there
smiling, as he was now, and he was holding out his hand—
“Give that to me,” Daventry demanded.
Michael faltered.
No,
he tried to reply, but his throat would not work.
Vaughn stepped between them and took it from Michael’s hand. He closed it
in disgust. “It’s nonsense.”
“As I assured you,” Daventry drawled. “These men are frauds.” His gaze
sharpened on Michael. “I promise you, they will be dealt with.”
You’re such a good whore, young man. Such a very, very good whore.
“Code.”
The word burst out like a shot through the room, and it took Michael almost
a full minute to realize it was his own voice he heard.
“The journal is written in a code.” He looked at Daventry, so terrifying, still,
in the face of this, so confident, and he said, “I can read it to you.”
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And he did. He read with Vaughn holding the book open for him when
Michael’s hands began to shake, as the earl comprehended the code and read
along with him—then Michael held the book alone, reading as if from far away,
the voice not for himself, not for the boy within him, but the boy who was still in
this house, the boy—
“My lord! My lord!” The housekeeper burst into the room, her face white,
her cap askew. “My lord—Lord Vaughn, he has taken a knife! He has cut
himself—”
It all turned to madness then—people ran everywhere, Vaughn chief among
them, bolting up the stairs, shouting, “Edwin! Edwin!” The servants wept, the
women fainted or screamed. Some of the men slipped quietly out the front door.
Rodger stood still beside Michael, not touching him, but holding him up all the
same.
Daventry stared at him, his eyes burning with hatred. Did he recognize him,
Michael wondered? Did he know he was looking at another boy he had ruined,
or had he pushed him cleanly out of his mind? Would it matter?
Would he, as he appeared to suggest, find a way to destroy them, to use his
power he wielded so confidently, and simply continue on?
Daventry was moving. He walked toward Rodger and Michael, and Michael
tried to withdraw, but now Rodger grabbed his arm and held him. Inside, the
boy flinched; outside, Michael was wooden, trying desperately not to let him see
how frightened he was.
Daventry smiled a cold, terrible smile.
“I will ruin you,” he whispered. “I will throw you to the wolves, all of you,
and I will teach you what happens to those who dare oppose me.”
“No,” a voice said behind Michael—a voice quiet but strong and sure. “No.
You won’t.”
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Albert was there. He was rattled, battered and half held up by one of
Rodger’s men, but he was there.
He looked into his father’s face, his own full of fury.
He spat at his father.
Gasps from the far sides of the room made Michael turn away from the
scene, and he remembered they weren’t alone. He didn’t recognize the other
guests by name, but he knew they were all important. They were leaders of the
community. Peers of the realm.
And they were all looking at Daventry, uncertain.
Daventry saw them too. He had turned away from his son and back to his
crowd, ready to reassure them, but it was too late. They were already doubting.
“What is this?” he sneered. “You would believe my damaged son and his
whore over me?”
“Your undamaged son charges you too,” Roger pointed out. “And several
maids and scullery boys will attest to it.” He rocked back on his heels and smiled
at Daventry with savage glee. “I have kept tabs on you a long time, my lord.
You’ve dallied with a number of young men over the years, some of them from
very well-to-do families. How will you explain it away should
they
come
forward?”
“This is all lies,” the marquess hissed.
Rodger had to be making some bald guesses, for surely he hadn’t tracked the
marquess all this time. Though perhaps he had. Michael supposed it didn’t
matter, for once again, Rodger proved himself the master of manipulation—his
proof was immaterial. The marquess’s peers were watching him carefully,
watching him with new eyes.
Eyes full of concern—and doubt.
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The marquess saw it too. For a few minutes he seemed to be trying to think
of something to say. Finally, Daventry calmly wiped the spittle from his face,
turned and headed down the hall toward the kitchen.
The remaining guests, murmuring to each other, quietly filed out.
Michael moved. As the door shut behind the last of the marquess’s guests,
Michael ran to his love and, swallowing the sound of his cry, threw himself into
Albert’s arms.
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Chapter Eighteen
Vaughn and Wes sat together by Edwin’s bedside, not speaking. The boy’s
arm was bandaged, tucked beneath the blanket. On the mantle a clock ticked,
and hushed voices could be heard in the hall.
Outside, the wind rustled in the trees.
Inside, the brothers kept silent.
Eventually Vaughn said, in a hoarse voice, “Wes, what do I do?”
Wes didn’t answer, only reached out and stroked his nephew’s sweat-damp
forehead.
Vaughn stared at his son, looking hollow and beaten. “What do I do? How
do I help him? What—what do I tell him? How do I explain that I—that I—” He
broke off and buried his face in his hands, bent double over his knees.
Wes put a weary hand on his brother’s shoulder. “It’s n-not y-your fault,” he
whispered. “N-no more th-than it is Edwin’s.”
“It
is
my fault,” Vaughn insisted, despair tearing at his voice. “I am his
father. I should have protected him. I should have known—I should have
believed you when you—” He broke down again.
Wes sat with his brother for several minutes. Then he sent for Penny.
Wes didn’t know what she told Richard, but whatever it was seemed to ease
him, and he tried to hire her as a nurse on the spot. She politely refused, but she
gave him several names and promised to work with him.
A Private Gentleman
Lord Daventry. For that was his brother, now. His father had gone up to his
study and put a bullet through the back of his head. There would be that to deal
with too, but their father could do no more damage now. Edwin needed them.
And Vaughn needed Wes, and his friends.
For Michael met with Vaughn—now Lord Daventry—too. Uncertain at first
and with Wes at his side, Michael told the new marquess what their father had
done to him. Calmly, succinctly, but he gave Wes’s brother the truth. Wes sat
beside him as he did so.
“Is that why—?” His brother turned to Wes. “Is that why you are the way
you are? Did he—to you—?” He paled.
Wes shook his head. “N-no.” He held out his hand. “I d-do not ask th-that y-
you accept us. Only that y-you do not p-p-persecute us. W-we will stay f-f-f-far
away—”
Daventry looked crestfallen. “Good God, man—you want me to tell his
mother on my own? Not about the two of you—she could never understand that,
and no, I won’t persecute you, for heaven’s sake. But—” He gestured upstairs to
the room where Edwin rested. “He adores you. Why would you leave him
now?”
Wes paused. “I th-th-thought—” He turned to Michael.
Michael took over for him. “You don’t think we would be a poor influence
on him?”
“What—for being sodomites?” Wes’s brother made a face, though at himself.
“God’s teeth, isn’t there a better word? For being lovers, then. Oh, yes, it’s
deuced odd, but—” His expression turned hollow. “I don’t know. I should say I
never thought Father could do such things, so I suppose…” He sank back in his
chair.
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Wes swallowed the bile in his throat. “I would n-never,” he whispered, “n-
never h-h-hurt Edwin.”
“Nor would I,” Michael said.
Daventry was a ship lost at sea. “The Brannigan woman said she thought
you could be a help, having gone through the same.” This was directed at
Michael. “And I would welcome it. Even with this—” He gestured at the two of
them. His eyes were damp. “I don’t know how he shall ever be normal again.
How he can ever be the heir I need him to be.”
“We will help,” Michael promised.
“Would you come with us to the country?” Daventry asked, glancing
between the two of them. “Both of you? Perhaps you could stay at Ballyglen. You
could have the run of the dower house, and I don’t care what people say. It’s
humble, but it’s not far from London. You could turn the gardens into whatever
you like, Wes.”
Wes smiled, wanting to laugh, his spirit felt so full. “Ballyglen—yes. I would
l-love to.” His smile went so wide it nearly broke his face as he turned to
Michael. “Would you st-stay with me there? In a ch-charming cottage just outs-
side of Oxford?”
Michael’s eyes danced, his face shining as bright as the sun. “Yes.”
Within a week they had retired to the family estate, Daventry and his wife
and Edwin at the main house, Michael and Wes in the dowager cottage. Rodger
had found them a small cache of servants who wouldn’t blink at two men
sharing a bed together, and that had been that.
Edwin, once the doctors Penny had sent him declared him well, was almost
always in their house. If he wasn’t reading with Michael, he was out in the
garden with Wes. The boy was still skittish, and he wasn’t exactly the same as he
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had been before, but his nightmares had stopped. And, as Penny had pointed
out, he was living his life.
“He isn’t hiding, and he isn’t dwelling on it.” They watched from a distance
as Edwin played with a paper boat in a pond.
Wes shook his head. “I h-hate that it had to happen at all.”
Penny shrugged. “We all have pain, Wes. It isn’t life without it. What matters
in life isn’t that we escape pain. What matters is that we overcome it.” She smiled
and took his hand. “Come. Let’s go help him with his boat.”
Wes rose to do so, but as Penny set out across the grass, he heard his name
echoing from back at the main house, and when he turned toward the sound he
saw Michael beckoning to him. He made his apologies to Penny and hurried his
strides across the lawn to his lover, who was beaming.
When he asked Michael what he wanted, all he did was smile, hold out his
hand, and say, “Come with me.”
Michael led him back toward their cottage, to the greenhouse in the back.
The stovehouse smelled of new wood, and a month past its introduction, it
was still a delight to Wes. It had more apparatus for heating and watering than
what he had at Regent’s Park, for as Penny no longer wanted for money for her
house by the docks, neither did the marquess ever let Wes want for a botanist’s
luxury. He hadn’t yet asked for exotic plants to be delivered, but he suspected
his brother wouldn’t hesitate to procure them.
It was August, and there were as many blooms around the house as there
were inside it, but the most exotic and precious plants still remained within.
“I just noticed it this morning,” Michael said, sounding very excited. “It must
have happened overnight.”
Michael led Wes around the corner past a great potted palm, behind four
exotic ferns, and there in the back where his orchids were, he saw it.
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The leafless orchid was blooming.
It was just a small bloom. The petals were thin and white and open against
the long green stem—it was the most amazing bloom Wes had ever seen. The top
part was like a star, each petal a thin and delicate arm, but the bottom produced
a lip that extended out like a slipper—and then from
that
, as if it had not done enough, two slender arms snaked from each side.
Pale, delicate and lovely—and healthy.
He didn’t know how long he sat there. Michael brought him his notebook
and pencil, and later a spot of tea, but eventually he took away both and led Wes
back out into the sunshine, declaring he’d been a botanist long enough.
“To celebrate the blooming,” Michael declared, linking their arms, “we will
take the train back to London and spend the night at Dove Street.” He ran his
hand seductively down Wes’s arm. “And you shall take me to the ballroom, and
we will go dancing.”
Wes had been smiling, his blood humming at the thought of all that they
would and could do in a room at Dove Street, but when he heard
dancing
, his