Rite of Summer: Treading the Boards, Book 1 (10 page)

Joshua licked a stripe of wetness up the center of his own palm. He wrapped his hand around Ashbrook’s prick and pressed his thumb up and over the head.

Ashbrook groaned and cursed, arching his neck so that Joshua could kiss and bite at it, Ashbrook’s prick sliding slick and sweet through the mess of Joshua’s saliva and his own hot precome.

Cade finished with a muffled grunt and a full-body shudder, pulling himself free moments later.

Ashbrook moaned and sighed, rolling down into Joshua’s grip. Joshua twisted his hand, rolled his palm and tightened his fist, stroking his thumb across the slit, pressing down on the spot beneath. Ashbrook jammed his knuckle into his own mouth to muffle his cries and came silently, spilling white and hot across Joshua’s fingers.

Joshua stroked him through his tremors, pulling gently at his cock as it spurted once, twice more, then slowly began to soften.

Cade waited until his shaking stopped, then rolled off the bed with no words of explanation.

Ashbrook’s arms trembled from the strain of holding himself up.

Joshua wiped the mess off on the sheet without a thought, then stroked his hands up and over Ashbrook’s shoulders. “Settle,” he murmured softly, and Ashbrook collapsed gently on top of him.

His hair clung to his face in sweaty ringlets, and Joshua brushed them back, tangled his fingers in Ashbrook’s hair as he pillowed his head on Joshua’s chest. His arms came about Joshua in what felt like exhaustion and reflex rather than affection, but it was an intimacy that Joshua had not enjoyed in far too long. How could he deny himself this? He passed his hands over Ashbrook’s skin instead, tangled in the curls at the base of his neck, traced the bow of his lips.

“You were so good,” he murmured quietly, an endearment for Ashbrook alone, and squeezed the hand that still laced tightly with his. “So good to me.”

Ashbrook buried his face in Joshua’s side and said nothing, but his heartbeat slowed a little against Joshua’s chest and the tension ebbed from his shoulders.

Joshua dared to lean in to steal a kiss, and tasted his own sour musk on Ashbrook’s lips. “You are beautiful,” Joshua dared to whisper and that got a response, Ashbrook lifting his head to stare at Joshua with wide eyes.

“You’re blind,” he murmured back, a smile playing on his lips. “Or mad.”

Cade returned then, with wet cloths and towels in hand, that they might clean themselves and restore the modicum of dignity allowed three naked men in one bed.

Ashbrook let go of Joshua’s hand and sat, tidied himself in quiet. When Joshua rose to find his clothes—for the invitation had most certainly not extended to being discovered there in the morning—Ashbrook had his nightshirt on and a jovial smile back upon his face.

Joshua liked the just-fucked look much better on him, for the openness in his eyes that drove away the brittleness lurking just beneath.

“I thank you, gentlemen both,” he said finally, though his smile was for Ashbrook alone. “It has been a most entertaining evening. I hope…” and here his veneer cracked a bit, though if he was lucky, Ashbrook would be the only one to notice, “…that we might reconvene at a later date to further our discussions.”

“I think that can be arranged,” Cade replied, smoothing a wet towel across his perfect face. “There are subjects yet untapped, after all,” he added with an indelicate waggle of his eyebrows, and Ashbrook laughed, seeming to get his feet back beneath him.

“Indeed there are,” he said and nodded to Joshua. “A pleasure, sir.”

Joshua nodded back—was he unwilling or utterly unable to meet Ashbrook’s eyes now, lest he see the vulnerability lurking there? “Until next time, then.” He drew his coat about him like a shield or suit of armor and let himself out.

Chapter Nine

Warmth. Everything around Stephen was warm and soft, an arm looped around his waist, Evander’s chin tucked into Stephen’s shoulder. It was endearing and unusual, in a heavy kind of way. Stephen lay there for a few minutes, feeling the even rise and fall of Evander’s breathing, before rolling out from underneath him. Evander muttered something under his breath and jammed his head beneath the pillow, while Stephen padded softly into the main room of their suite. They would need to tidy up and unlock the doors to let the servants in shortly, and it would have to at least appear as though someone had spent the night in Evander’s bed.

Stripping the covers down and moving the pillows around was simple enough, but absurd. How had Stephen come to the point, within a short week, where he was concerned about placating servants and hiding the evidence of his unnatural congresses? One more point in favor of returning to their cramped lodgings as quickly as possible, where they could lounge naked in each other’s arms all day if they so chose.

Regret cut through him sharply. They’d leave the country house at the end of the party to return, just the two of them, to London’s hectic streets. Their friends would be awaiting them with open arms, and the raw effervescence of the city would bring him back to himself again. But now, unexpectedly, there were some things he would miss.

Evander had never called him beautiful.

(Lovely, yes; inspiring, certainly; but never
beautiful
, or with such whispered reverence.)

Beaufort had worked his body over with his mouth and hands, then kissed him with tenderness. He’d held him close, whispering the sorts of endearments that sounded shabby and lukewarm in the daylight, but meant everything in the dark.

Unsettling, that was what it was. Glorious, and brilliant, and unsettling in a way that shifted the ground beneath his feet. What to do?

Evander had enjoyed himself, certainly. He adored having the attention of two, of someone watching while he fucked Stephen, of watching Stephen with someone else. He would be easily amenable to a repeat. So would Beaufort, if his reactions had been anything to go by.

It was hardly infidelity when your lover was the one who had proposed it in the first place. The knowledge that Beaufort found him amiable enough to return meant nothing more than that. It would be foolishness to read anything into it other than three like-minded men enjoying their youth and freedom.

There—it was decided. Stephen washed his face and hands a second time, and returned to his room to begin the process of cajoling Evander out of it.

With the ice now thoroughly broken between them, Beaufort proved excellent company. And, oddly, Beaufort seemed to prefer
his
company to Evander’s. That was disconcerting—Evander had always been the pivot upon which their triangles wheeled.

Stephen couldn’t find it within himself to complain.

Though Beaufort had not called him beautiful again. Not since that first night.

“So tell me,” Stephen asked aloud as they trailed along at the rear of the riding party, one of Coventry’s more docile mares flicking her tail angrily beneath him, “if you could have any life you wanted…” he ducked a branch that Beaufort easily avoided, Evander oblivious from his place nearer the front of the group, “…any path at all. What would it be?”

Beaufort chewed his lip in that gesture Stephen had come to recognize as honest consideration. His hat shaded his eyes so that Stephen couldn’t see them properly, even when he turned his head to answer.

“I like my profession as it is,” Beaufort began. He sat his horse easily, the bastard, and seemed no more discomfited by its size and strength than as if it were a small foal.

“You would change nothing?” Stephen raised an eyebrow at the suggestion. Surely he could not be entirely satisfied. There were times when Stephen caught him looking out at the sky, his mind a thousand miles away.

“I didn’t say that.” Beaufort’s horse shifted and he clucked quietly at it, bringing the creature back in line. “If I could have any life I liked, I should like to be successful enough to choose whom—or what—I paint. To either have the annuity or the clientele to know that, even if I chose to indulge only my own fancy, I could still sell enough canvas or draw on enough income to support myself. Lady Horlock has been more than generous,” he added quickly, glancing over his shoulder, but there was no one behind them to overhear, “but painting portraits to order is not the best way to keep one’s skills honed.”

“I imagine not,” Stephen replied. “But surely there are enough variations in sitters and in landscapes to keep it interesting. It is not at all the same as practicing the same piece twenty or thirty times in a row.”

“Apparently,” Beaufort’s reply came, dry and acerbic, “there are only five or six styles of drawing room considered fashionable these days, and three stylish cuts of gown. Why it should be so and not the reverse I cannot begin to decipher, but perhaps it is one of those things not meant for the male mind to comprehend. Once you have seen one matron in her day dress or fellow in his Sunday suit, you may as well paint the rest from rote and consider it a job well done.”

Stephen laughed, and the sound echoed off the trees ahead.

Evander slowed to wait for them, but his attention was immediately redirected by Lady Charlotte on her dapple-gray.

They were left to themselves, and Stephen let out his held breath. “I think perhaps you would be happier, my dear Mr. Beaufort, to live without the oppressive presence of other people around you at all. Would you be content with your paint box, a cottage and an endless parade of different sunsets?”

Beaufort tipped his head back and forth as though considering it seriously, and one corner of his mouth curled up in a genuine smile. “Perfect solitude, I think, would become as endlessly dull as an eternity in society.” When he looked at Stephen next, his eyes were as warm and soft as his mouth. “But give me the company of one beloved friend,” he said quietly, Stephen’s pulse racing at the wistful look in his eyes, “and a village with a good tavern not too far away, and I would say you had described paradise.”

It was a lovely image, if far too provincial for Stephen’s usual tastes. Someday, though, Beaufort would find a friend for whom that too seemed to be perfection, and he would seal himself away in the country forever. A cloud passed across the sun above.

Some of the party ahead of them on the trail broke into a lively canter, the trees opening up into a lovely green field spotted with brilliant patches of wild flowers. Miss Talbot’s mare pranced prettily, her rider’s hands light on the reins, and Coventry applauded.

“Your turn, then,” Beaufort said, and Stephen snapped back to attention. “What would you change?” Beaufort kept his eyes facing forward, looking at the path and the field, and a small tic flickered at the edge of his jaw. He glanced at Stephen, his expression softening. “If anything,” he added.

“I have what I want,” Stephen said, the easy answer. “Though a more secure income would surely never go amiss.” It wasn’t true, of course—he could think of a great many things he would change if he had the power. Evander’s occasional cruelties, for one—replace them with the immense kindnesses of which he was also so perfectly capable. “I have my music.”

“That is all that you need?”

“Music and an audience to perform for,” Stephen amended. “Is that not enough?” He cocked his head to take in Beaufort’s response, but his horse decided to slow down her pace and crop mouthfuls of the grass from the side of the trail. He tried pulling her head up, but she did not obey.

Beaufort sidled up and took his reins for a moment, applying a gentle correction that had her moving again within a moment.

“Thank you. She is as stubborn as Cade.”

“And with hair almost as pretty,” Beaufort said quietly, his eyes sparkling with amusement, and Stephen chuckled. Beaufort handed back his reins, and their fingers brushed together, a tentative touch of skin on skin. Beaufort’s hand was rough where the scars and callouses of his work marked his long fingers. Neither said a word, but the warmth curling low in Stephen’s belly was comment enough.

“When I play,” he continued, “people
listen
. I can bring them to heights and depths of pure emotion, change their moods for the better or for the worse. I can make my audience feel what I wish them to feel.”

Beaufort’s smile slipped. “What Cade wishes them to feel, you mean. You play his feelings, recite his lines and not your own.”

“Why does that bother you?” Stephen asked in real confusion. “Many musicians also compose, but few particularly well. I am hardly the only player to make the music of others.”

“Because I have heard you play,” Beaufort answered, which was not an answer at all, “and listened to you at practice these past few weeks.”

That, Stephen had not known.

“Sound travels from that room, sometimes,” Beaufort added hastily, and the curve of his ear turned pink. “You have talent and skill. You understand music in ways not many do. You could be so much more than just his mouthpiece.”

His words struck so close to some of the things Stephen had secretly considered that for a moment it seemed as though Beaufort had developed the power to read men’s minds. To write his own music, choose his own programs, develop a patronage and a following as himself, not as “Cade’s player”—

But mind reading was as impossible as the dream itself. Evander would be hurt, so desperately hurt. And to even begin, Stephen would either need to deceive him—quite impossible—or strike out alone, with neither funds nor support.

“It is not so easy to begin again.” Who knew that better than he who had done it once already?

Beaufort flickered an eyebrow up, the only indication he had heard anything.

“In any case,” Stephen said, “you don’t know that I could be anything more than what I am today. Society’s tastes are so capricious that what is popular and praiseworthy now will be out of fashion and unplayable tomorrow. For all we know, the winds of change will bring trumpets as the fashionable instrument next, and sculpture rather than paints, and both you and I shall be out of a trade.”

Beaufort’s look of irritation was well worth the price of his silence.

And Stephen had some things that bore thinking about.

Lady Amelia caught Beaufort at his drawings the next evening as Evander accompanied Stephen’s violin on the ornate pianoforte in the parlor. Beaufort’s perfectly shaded sketch of the two of them at their instruments made it all the way around the room, much commented on, before the poor man could finally get his hands back on the page.

Evander demurred, but Stephen, at least, ended up promising to sit for a proper sketch the next day.

It turned out to be far more entertaining to attempt his own watercolors than to sit still for Beaufort’s pencils. It was more amusing still to dab color on the brush and aim for Beaufort’s nose rather than the paper. If they ended up with paint on their shirtsleeves and wrinkles in their cravats, they were easily cleaned up before anyone could discover them behaving like fools.

“What in the world would you have done with yourself…” Stephen laughed, wielding his damp cloth to dab green paint from the hollow of Beaufort’s throat, “…if you could not have become a painter? Surely you’re fit for little else.” The room was empty but for them, the curtains drawn, and he risked it, pressing a kiss to the spot he had just cleaned. Beaufort lifted his chin to allow it, his laughter rumbling against Stephen’s lips and his pulse fluttering faster than butterfly wings.

“Schoolmaster, I suppose.” Beaufort returned to wiping his hands clean with the rag from his pocket. Stephen shivered, but Beaufort seemed not to notice. “A tutor. There are always families looking for art lessons for their daughters, and I can set figures if I need to.”

“That’s a hard life.” Stephen shook off the moment of memory, the bone-deep chill of fingers and toes that never quite warmed through. “Though, of either of us, I think you have the better temperament for it.”

“Perhaps,” Beaufort said easily, and stole a kiss from Stephen’s lips. His mouth was warm like sunshine, seeping into Stephen’s pores and warming him from the inside out. “What of you?” he asked, turning away to close his paint box, a smile lingering on his lips and in his eyes. “If you did not have your music?”

“If I did not have Cade, you mean,” Stephen answered honestly and without thinking it through.

Beaufort tensed, his shoulders tight and head bowed.

“My parents wanted me to go into the army. My father was a schoolmaster and not at all wealthy, and the army would have been something secure.” And he had done the opposite of their desires, had run away and abandoned his king and country, become a layabout and a coward.

“You?” Beaufort laughed incredulously, but it was not the condemnation for which Stephen braced himself, the damp and paint-spattered cloth clenched tightly in his hand. “You, so kindhearted that you cannot even bring yourself to hunt for the table? What did they expect you to do?” He was all kindness and good humor, reaching out to cup Stephen’s jaw and trace his lips with the pad of his thumb. “
Flatter
the enemy to death?”

Stephen snorted, could not help himself, and tipped his head forward so that their foreheads touched for a moment, trading soft breaths between them. “Hardly,” he said after pulling back and tucking the rag into Beaufort’s waistcoat pocket. “But as you can see, I did not go through with it.”

“No, apparently not.” Beaufort cocked his head and stared, then gestured impatiently for him to continue.

The best way through was to make light of it, however painful the sting of old thorns. “I ran away with the vicar’s son from the next town over. A schoolmate of mine, you see, who happened to have something of an ear for musical composition.”

“And so genius was born,” Beaufort murmured, a crooked smile on his face and a thoughtful expression in his eye. “You two have made quite the name for yourselves since.”

The writing desk looked sturdy enough and Stephen hopped up on it, bracing his hands on the edge. The wall was cool against his back, even through his waistcoat, a welcome change from the heat of the day. “We made a bargain, back then. Evander would write the best music in the world, I would play his compositions and we would be each other’s bulwarks against a cold and uncertain life.”