One Indulgence (8 page)

“Where were you going?” Richard said when Henry hesitated.

“He said he had found a storage room in the cellar that was never used and could be locked from the inside. I could tell he was very nervous because it was the first direct move either of us had made. There couldn’t be much confusion about why he wanted me to go to that room with him, but he had no way to be sure of me. It had all been just glances and…” Henry sighed. “He was taking an extraordinary risk.”

“Yes,” Richard agreed somberly.

“He was so happy when I took his hand and went with him.” Henry smiled at the memory, perhaps the only pleasant part of it. He could still see those shining green eyes and that joyous smile, both of which had drawn him from the start. Both would look so different in the end.

“What happened, Henry?” Richard’s voice softened. “You’re frowning.”

“I went with him, and it wasn’t out of pity or anything like that. I wanted to go. He made me happy, and I didn’t have to hide myself with him. He already had an oil lamp in the room, you know.” Henry chuckled ruefully. “He was a little embarrassed about that, actually, as if he had been presumptuous by preparing.”

“He trusted you,” Richard offered.

Henry’s face fell. “I know, and that made everything that happened next so much worse. He locked the door and came to me. Lord! He looked
so happy
. He started touching my hair and my cheeks and telling me all about how much he liked me,
cared
about me, for God’s sake. I cared about him too, and I thought everything was fine until he kissed me. I don’t know what happened. It was a little thing, hardly a kiss at all, but I…I overreacted.” He lifted his eyes to Richard, knowing and yet not caring that they were glistening. “In that second I believe I saw how impossible it all was. Every filthy joke I had ever heard and every word the vicar had ever said about sins of the flesh and abominations just crashed down on me. I didn’t want to be
that
. I didn’t want to—I’m sorry—I didn’t want to go to hell.”

Richard released a pent-up breath. “Good Lord. I’m sorry.”

“I shoved him away. Actually pushed him! He stumbled and almost fell over, but I didn’t want to care. I was so scared about what he knew and what I thought had almost happened, I just wanted it to go away. So I yelled at him. I demanded to know what he thought he was doing. I told him he was sick, and I called him a pervert.”

Richard watched over the steeple of his hands, which he had come to press against his lips. He said nothing. The crease between his eyes told enough.

“Can you imagine that?” Henry said in earnest. “You were angry because you had been lied to, but I was the liar. I puffed myself up and didn’t stop until he was in tears. I called him everything I was terrified of being, and then I stormed out and left him there. He never said one word. He looked broken.”

There was a long silence, far longer than that which had followed Richard’s woeful tale. It was long enough for Richard to rise from his chair and retrieve a glass of brandy from the sideboard. He pressed it into Henry’s cold hands and stayed to warm them under his own. It felt good, and Henry was shocked to find that he was not embarrassed as he should have been. Here he was practically on the verge of tears in front of another man. Men were not supposed to cry. Everyone knew that.

“You weren’t the first, you know, to behave like that,” Richard said. “And I doubt you will be the last. You were young and afraid. Rightfully so, I might add. Tell me, what happened when you saw him later?”

“I didn’t.” Henry snorted bitterly. “I ran, like the coward I was. I feigned an illness straightaway so I could hide in the infirmary. Then I wrote a letter to my father, telling him everything that would guarantee I was sent home. I told him he was right. School wasn’t for me. I was a fool to leave my tutors. I even fed into his moralizing by claiming that I thought the other boys were bad and the school had lax discipline.” He snorted again. “My father was actually proud of me when he came to take me home.”

“And that is where you stayed,” Richard added. “Forgive me. You did say this was your first visit to London in quite some time, yes?”

Henry nodded. “Yes, but please don’t think I stayed away from town because of that. I may have been cowardly enough to hide then, but I certainly would not have imprisoned myself in the country for years over it.” He shrugged, and some of his good humor returned. “My father never cared much for London or fast society.”

“Fast society.” Richard waggled his eyebrows. “Would I be considered fast society?”

“The fastest,” Henry replied, grinning.

“Good.” Richard clapped his hands together and smiled, clearly seeking to lighten the mood. “I would hate to be called a slow top.”

Henry finished his brandy, savoring the comfortable warmth it put in his chest. It brought on yet another heavy silence between the two of them, though it had already happened so many times that Henry struggled not to laugh at the absurdity of it. Eventually, he did.

“My sentiments exactly.” A moment later Richard stood and collected his trousers and shirt from the back of the sofa.

An unaccountable pang of disappointment hit Henry, but he shrugged it off. There was no reason to delay, and even less reason to feel maudlin over it. He reminded himself, again, that he did not know Richard. A few hours in another’s company, no matter how deliciously wonderful, was no reason to begin entertaining silly sentiments.

He repeated such notions to himself, trying to make them true.

They both dressed with efficiency, sharing awkward glances before Henry finally stood near the chair where he had spent much of the earlier evening waiting. His coat still lay over the back of it, and he frowned at the very thought of trying to get it on. It had taken his stout valet several minutes to snug him into the thing when he had left the house the previous evening.

“Allow me.” Richard chuckled. “Then I will expect you to return the favor.”

“Damned impossible to dress oneself these days,” Henry said.

Richard was strong and had obviously paid attention to what his valet did when dressing him. They had the task accomplished, and with Henry only pausing twice to savor Richard’s nearness and touch. He helped Richard likewise and then stood next to the chair with his arms uselessly at his sides. He wished he had kept his hat or cane rather than leaving them with the footman, just so he would have something for his hands.

“It might be best if you left first,” Richard suggested. “Then I will leave a bit later so, well…”

“So no one who might be in the lobby would see us,” Henry added. “Thank you.”

Richard nodded. There was something in his expression that Henry could not place. Reluctance? Uncertainty? Whatever it was, Richard seemed to push it aside and said, “Well…I will bid you farewell, Henry.”

“Yes, to you too. Richard,” he replied. Oh, this felt so strange! How did two people share such an evening and yet part as if they had just met at some inane social event? There really was no other way to part, was there? It was not as if their encounter had been exactly typical.

Henry cringed and headed toward the door. They had said good-bye, and that was that. He made it all the way to the door without realizing that Richard had matched his steps. Henry stopped only when he felt the warm grip of Richard’s hand in his. He halted and looked back, startled.

“We…” Richard hesitated and licked his lips. “We could meet again, you know. I had a wonderful evening. I think you did too.”

Henry wanted to kiss him. In his mind Henry saw himself grinning like a fool and wrapping his arms around Richard’s neck before suggesting times and places to meet. It was a fantasy of mere seconds, then gone. He looked down at Richard’s hand still holding his and shook his head.

“I can’t,” he whispered. “I’m sorry.”

Richard released Henry’s hand slowly and took a step back. A strained smile marred his features. “Of course,” he said. “I understand.”

Henry reached for the door again and stopped. “No. No, you don’t understand. I would…very much like to see you again, but I can’t. I promised myself just this one time, one night.”

Richard regarded him with confusion before his features fell and he closed his eyes almost sadly. “Ah. I see.”

“Yes,” Henry said. “I have responsibilities, people relying on me. I…I just can’t.”
I can’t pursue what I want. I can’t be what I am.

“It won’t work, you know.” Richard’s voice was low, almost a whisper, and his eyes intense. “I know men like us who have tried, and men who still do. Believe me. It won’t work.”

Henry swallowed hard. Oh, how he would like to cave in and believe that, but he could not. He was nothing compared to his title. The title, the family, the people who relied on him—they were everything. His father had always made certain he knew that.

“It has to,” he said. “I have no choice. Good-bye, Richard. And thank you. Truly.”

Henry reached for the door and this time did not stop. In the dimly lit hallway, he moved toward the stairs and away from Richard, chest tensing in some kind of silent protest, as if it already knew that the life that lay ahead was going to be like a lead weight on it forever.

Chapter Four

Family Strains

Lord Richard Avery, the youngest son of the late Duke of Culfrey and younger brother to the current duke, ascended the grand white marble staircase of Avery House with a very familiar sense of gratitude. It was a strange, almost unconscious feeling, one that allowed him to appreciate the opulence and history around him while being forever relieved that it was not his. With the birth of his little nephew just two years before, the possibility of any of it ever being his had been further removed, blessedly.

Richard Avery was probably the only younger son in creation to be thankful that he would never inherit.

“My lord,” came a somber voice. It was Reynolds, the same butler who had appeared old to Richard when he was boy and who appeared equally old now. It was as if the man had been created in an image of dignified white hair and drooping eyes, then proceeded not to age another day.

Reynolds was holding the door to the study, his features as blank as those of any well-trained servant. Richard rolled his eyes under closed lids for but a moment before he walked in. Whatever it was that his brother wanted, he might as well get it over with quickly.

“There you are,” said Culfrey. He was standing behind his massive carved desk, his gaze skimming over an open letter in one hand. He lowered it just far enough to peer over the top. “A moment.”

Richard sighed quietly and held his hands behind his back.
So it begins.

The current Duke of Culfrey, or Tommy as he had been when they were boys, was a barrel-chested man of average height and average build. He dressed in an understated, almost plain manner and taxed the patience of his valet by rarely using any of the man’s fashionable skills for hairstyling or cravats. Culfrey, while being only four years older than Richard, was firmly entrenched in the less self-conscious manners of the previous century. He dressed for comfort rather than fashion, he attended the clubs he liked rather than those that were popular, and he cared not a whit for currying the favor of the Prince Regent.

These traits in any other man would have been endearing, perhaps even praiseworthy, but not in the Duke of Culfrey. For him they were but another signature of his arrogance, of his total assurance that his title and his blood placed him above damn near everyone in creation. Why should such a man need to follow fashion?

“Am I to know why I’ve been summoned, or merely watch you read your morning post?” Richard said finally.

Culfrey stared at him, then slowly folded the letter and placed it back on his desk. He looked across the room as he spoke. “As you know, Anne’s coming-out ball is this Thursday. Jane has seen to everything, and we have no doubt it will be a grand squeeze, although why people should consider being trampled to death a success is beyond me.”

Anne was their little sister, just turned eighteen. She was a bright-eyed, sweet-natured girl whom Richard doted on to no end. He had come to be especially fond of her in the past several years since the death of their mother, not to mention since the falling-out between him and his brother.

“Popularity, Thomas,” Richard said in the near sarcastic voice he always reserved for his brother. “If many people show up, it is generally assumed that many people
wanted
to be there. Hence, a success of popularity.”

Culfrey scoffed, his lip curling slightly. “Popularity is something I could not care less about, but since Anne must make her way in society, and
society
seems to give a damn, we need to make certain that this ball is a success. And since the ton finds you so”—he paused to laugh—“
charming
, I will expect you to lead her out in the opening dance.”

“Of course,” Richard snapped.

“Good,” he said and directed his gaze to another stack of papers. “I was concerned that you might not be able to overcome your aversion long enough to at least do your duty by our sister.”

It was all Richard could do not to send the contents of the desk hurtling to the floor, which surely would have happened if he had slammed his brother down on it as he would have liked. The bastard! Every time Richard was summoned, every time he visited, it was there—the veiled remarks, the snide comments, the general look of disgust in the eyes of the man who had once loved him as a brother.

“Damn you,
Your Grace
,” Richard hissed through his teeth. “That you could even suggest that I do not love Anne and would not do anything for her—”

“Except live a decent life,” Culfrey snapped. “Anything except marry, or at the very least stop indulging in your sinful perversions.”

Again. Always
. “Sinful, brother?” Richard snorted. “I find it interesting that the good Lord was able to find room in the commandments to prohibit adultery but could not spare another inch of stone to even mention
sodomy
.”

“How dare you!” Culfrey’s face reddened. “You do not dare utter that filthy word in this house!”