Convincing Leopold (3 page)

“So stop at your apartments in the morning.”

“But there’s a contract I still need to review for an appointment, and I left it on the dining table. I need to familiarize myself with it tonight.”

“Read it when you get into the office.”

“There are other matters that require my attention in the morning.” He could reorganize his schedule and free up enough time before the appointment, but if he remained with Thorn, he knew he would not be sleeping alone, nor would it involve much sleep.

And damnation, he needed a decent night’s rest. Something more than the small handful of hours he’d been subsisting on for the past couple of weeks.

With a light touch, he combed Thorn’s dark forelock from his brow. “It’s not that I don’t enjoy staying with you. I do. But another night.”

Gray eyes searched his own. Then Thorn nodded. He took a step back, fingers slipping from Arthur’s coat. “I’ll call for my carriage to take you home,” Thorn said, as casual as could be, without a trace of the frown that had creased his brow a moment ago.

Arthur did his best to hide his relief. “You needn’t bother.”

Thorn slanted him a dry look. “It’s not a bother, I assure you. Requires little effort on my part to convey the request to a servant.”

“Thank you, but I prefer to walk.” He walked most everywhere he went in Town. More than that, though, he wasn’t comfortable taking Thorn’s carriage home. Logically, he knew gentlemen often lent their equipage to guests. But he was Thorn’s very frequent guest who tended to spend quite a bit of time with him behind the locked door of the study, never mind the frequency of his overnight stays. Those stays were easily explained—his office was significantly closer to Thorn’s town house than his own bachelor apartments. Still, borrowing the man’s carriage somehow crossed the line into the realm of blatantly obvious.

“If you insist,” Thorn replied, as if the notion of walking when a carriage could be had was beyond absurd. To him, a man who had grown up with an army of servants to see to his every need and who had an overindulgent and extremely wealthy viscount for a father, it likely was.

Arthur followed him to the study door. The
click
of the lock sliding open echoed in the room. Before Thorn could turn the knob, Arthur placed a hand over his. Thorn looked to him, a question in his eyes.

“It was good to see you tonight.” Arthur leaned forward, brushed his lips across Thorn’s, needing that good-night kiss. If he could trust Thorn not to press for more, he would have readily agreed to stay. As it was, though…

He kept the frustrated sigh from expanding his chest and pulled his hand from Thorn’s.

Thorn tipped his head, then opened the door. They made their way down the grand staircase and to the white-marble-floored entrance hall. Jones, Thorn’s middle-aged and ever efficient footman, materialized with Arthur’s coat.

After donning his greatcoat and gloves, he thanked Thorn again for the meal and stepped out the front door of the elegant town house and into the chill February night.

He did not even make it to the street corner before he gave in to the exhaustion and hailed a passing hackney. After giving the driver the direction, he stepped inside and settled on the leather bench. A snap of leather lines and the hackney lurched forward.

The golden rays from the streetlamps he passed seeped through the window, keeping the interior from pitch darkness. The rhythmic jangle of harness and the clop of hooves formed a soothing lull that begged his eyes to just surrender to the lethargy and drift closed. He gave his head a swift shake and focused on the passing buildings as the hackney wound its way out of Mayfair.

Damn, his eyelids felt heavy; it was a struggle simply to keep them open. Perhaps he
should
rearrange his schedule and push off the contract waiting for him on the dining table until the morning. The idea of taking himself straight to bed, of seven full hours of uninterrupted sleep…

Now that would be bliss.

Bliss
? Rolling his eyes at himself, he dragged a hand across the back of his neck. When had sleep become such a precious commodity? More precious than the prospect of spending time with Thorn, never mind buggering him?

The worry that had been nudging the back of his mind, the one that had refused to be fully pacified even with Thorn’s reassurance that they would be all right, began to prod with considerable force.

When it came down to it, did they simply not suit one another?

What felt like an iron band squeezed around his chest. A wince crossed his brow.

No, no.

He wanted to be with Thorn. It went beyond a fear of being alone and encompassed so much more than mere lust. He truly wanted their relationship to work. If he had not believed there was more than a thin thread of hope for them, he would have stepped into his carriage on that fateful morning in Yorkshire and not turned back for Thorn.

Thorn obviously wanted to be with him too, for he had proved true to his word. To Arthur’s knowledge, Thorn had stopped drinking to excess, had stopped spending his nights in various gaming hells or in houses of ill repute, and his name was no longer on the tongue of every gossip in London. And above all, Thorn loved him.

The memory of those whispered words washed over him, tugging on his heart anew. Yet…

That sense of hesitation rushed over him. Things had been near perfect for a short while, yet lately… Was their relationship beginning to run its course? Were their differences too much for will alone to overcome? Or was it something else altogether?

The hackney jerked to a stop outside the tidy brick building that held his bachelor apartments. He scrubbed his hands over his face and pushed the questions aside. Now was not the time to contemplate his relationship with Thorn, not when his mind was near frayed by a lack of sleep. He would only end up with no answers and a spectacular headache.

He willed his beyond-tired limbs into action and exited the hackney. He handed the driver the necessary coins, then made his way inside the building and up to the third floor.

He shrugged the coat from his shoulders and lit a candle upon entering his apartments. His gaze skipped over his parlor and to the dining room just beyond, landing on the stack of papers on the corner of the mahogany table. He should read them tonight. Wouldn’t do not to be prepared, and he had brought them home for a reason. In any case, Fenton would likely need assistance with something in the morning, taking what little time he could allot to review the contract.

He forced his feet to take him across the parlor, grabbing his leather bag from the cushion of an armchair as he went. He set the candle on the dining table and pulled a pencil from his bag. The scrape of the chair’s legs against the floorboards cut through the silence, masking his resigned sigh. Five or six hours of sleep were better than two or three, he told himself as he settled in the chair and turned his attention to the papers before him.

Leopold exited his carriage and gave his greatcoat a tug to straighten it. The door snapped shut behind him, courtesy of his footman, Jones.

“I’ll be a few minutes. You can wait down the street,” he instructed Jones.

The unseasonably bright early afternoon sun provided little warmth, the air cold and crisp with winter’s chill. Leopold shoved his gloved hands into his coat pockets and made his way to the now familiar red brick building on Clifford Street. Situated just off Bond Street, Arthur’s office was in a prime area to attract clients who could more than afford his services. Leopold’s own father employed him and had employed his uncle before him, hence how Leopold had initially befriended Arthur a decade ago.

For most of those ten years, Arthur had been involved with Randolph Amherst, a prominent banker in London, and Leopold had been… Well, he would not use the word
involved. Associated
held more meaning than the situation justified as well. Perhaps acquainted? Yes, he liked the sound of that. Didn’t make the drunken blur feel quite so sordid. For those ten years, he’d been acquainted with a fair number of the inhabitants of London, inhabitants who had unfortunately not included Arthur. But Arthur had finally come to his senses and left that damn heartless, lying, cuckolding prig. Determined not to repeat the biggest mistake of his life, Leopold had not wasted a moment in his effort to convince Arthur that he, Leopold, could be worthy of him.

A decidedly long, lonely decade but definitely worth the wait, for he could now call the man he loved his own. A fact that both thrilled his heart and brought its fair share of worries.

With Arthur occupied at his office, Leopold had found his days unsettlingly empty. Where before he’d spent the hours before dusk sleeping off the prior night’s overindulgence, now he had a clear head and not much to do with it. Occasional calls to his father and visits to his club took up some of his hours but nowhere near all of them. He avoided his elder brothers—they never bothered to hide their disapproval of him—and he hadn’t many acquaintances that Arthur would not frown upon. He had quickly found the empty afternoons provided ample fodder for his worries to build. Seeking to distract himself, he had taken to visiting Arthur at his office.

And after last night, he definitely needed a distraction. Or was it reassurance he sought?

He let out a huff of self-disgust.
You’re worse than a damn needy woman
. But he didn’t pause as he pulled open the pristine white door and entered the building. Perhaps he would try to pry Arthur from behind his desk to go to a nearby tavern for a bite to eat. Get the man away from the bloody paperwork that commanded his full attention.

He went up the stairs to the door with the small brass plaque that read
Mr. Arthur Barrington, Solicitor
. Without bothering to knock, he opened the door.

Wilson, one of Arthur’s secretaries—the one Leopold didn’t much mind—looked up from the open drawer of a cabinet along the wall of the anteroom of the office. He pulled out a sheaf of paper, then closed the drawer. “Good afternoon, Mr. Thornton. What can I do for you today?” he asked, a distinct eagerness to please in his friendly brown eyes.

Leopold pulled off his leather gloves. “Is Mr. Barrington available? There is a matter I wish to discuss with him.” The usual vague excuse, but it sufficed.

The slim man motioned to the open door a few paces from his desk. “He is in his office if you would like to see him now. Shall I take your coat?”

He shoved his gloves into a pocket and handed the greatcoat to Wilson. The sight of another man standing behind the large oak desk, sandy blond head bent toward Arthur’s chestnut brown one, stopped him just inside the door of Arthur’s office.

When Arthur had told him he’d hired another secretary, Leopold had initially been pleased, a sign Arthur was proving true to his word that he would make time for Leopold. Then he had discovered just who Arthur had hired.

Edward Fenton, the youngest son of a well-respected gentleman and just out of Cambridge. Though they did not travel in precisely the same social circles, Leopold had made his acquaintance on a couple of occasions at various functions over the years. He had never heard a soul speak anything but highly of him. Fenton was polite, studious, intelligent, and handsome. Broad of shoulder and with a masculine strength to his features. A younger version of Arthur.

And during his visits to Arthur’s office over the past few weeks, Leopold had also discovered that Fenton’s interest did not lie solely within the business of the law.

Could Arthur feel the force of Fenton’s gaze? Those blue eyes focused on Arthur’s profile as though soaking up every detail. He doubted the young man heard a word Arthur said as Arthur, his attention on the papers before him, explained some point or other. Did Arthur know it would take but a word from him for Fenton to bend over that desk and offer Arthur anything he wanted?

Arthur believes in fidelity
. Over and over, he repeated the words in his mind in an effort to shake off the insecurity that had draped over his shoulders like a damn cloak.

But try as he might, he could not ignore the fact that of late Arthur had been working more than his usual long hours. Could not ignore how Fenton always seemed to be standing right there, at Arthur’s shoulder, whenever Leopold stopped by the office. Hell, it hurt just to look at the two men together. So well matched, down to the similar plain, dark coats—they likely visited the same tailor—and the same neatly cropped short hair. The sight alone lodged the worry deep within Leopold. The worry that one evening, very soon, Arthur would pose that question to him once again.