Rite of Summer: Treading the Boards, Book 1 (12 page)

“You quote the Bible at me? Fine, then.” These verses he knew, as Evander knew them. As Evander mumbled them in his nightmares, those that ended with tears, cries for mercy and Evander calling out his father’s name. “Man shall not lie with man as with a woman, it is an abomination.”

Beaufort flinched and Stephen felt a perverse rush of satisfaction at the crack in his cool exterior. Then he felt nothing but guilt.

Beaufort shook his head, his eyes as gray and stormy as the sea. “Our bodies may be sinful things, but we are also human. Our hearts were built to love and be loved in return.” He spoke quietly and reverently, as though he really believed it. It was a good belief, a thought that lifted instead of terrified, made something small and cold in the middle of his chest unfurl, just a little, and begin to sing. “Falling from grace cannot change that.”

Stephen moistened his lips, made as though to reply, but words would not come. He nodded once, then again with more finality. When he found the air, he only said, “You
would
have made an excellent clergyman, Father Beaufort. Will you come to bed tonight?”

“Of course.”

A shriek and a splash came from back over the embankment, around the other side of the pond, ending the conversation. Beaufort jogged up the slope to see what happened, Stephen following behind.

Miss Talbot had already been fished out of the pond by the time they caught up to the rest of the party, her dress splattered with mud and sodden curls of hair hanging limply about her shoulders. She sputtered and sulked until a blanket was found for her shoulders, and she was settled in the sun in the best of all seats to dry, her mother fluttering around her like the broodiest of all hens and Lady Amelia conspicuously distant.

Never a dull moment.

Again and again, Beaufort came to their bed. Not every night, for there were evenings when the parlor games ran long and the wine flowed freely and sleep was all any man craved. But some nights, when the wind blew outside or the house retired early, and no force alive seemed able to induce others from their beds, Stephen would murmur an invitation and a soft knock would come at their door.

This too fell into a pattern, of sorts, though between them they could come up with an infinite number of variations. More often than not it happened like so—Evander would draw them together, touching and stroking his fill, his hands roaming and sating himself with hot, hard flesh.

Stephen would find himself on his knees, taking one or the other or both into his mouth and hands, sucking and stroking until his entire world was nothing but this excess of skin and sweat and burning want. Pricks slipped against his cheeks, between the cleft of his arse, come splattering hot against his chest, his lips, across the small of his back. Marking him, claiming him, both of them together.

Evander would fuck him then, with Beaufort watching or touching. Sometimes Stephen would get to suck Beaufort while Evander fucked him, the ring first cool, then hot, on his tongue. Or Evander would finish in Stephen’s mouth and watch the rest, stroking himself leisurely as the other two amused themselves.

That was best, for he had both of them then, the taste of Evander lingering on his tongue while Beaufort opened him up, first with his fingers and then with his cock. The gold ring stroked deeply through him, pressing rough against a cluster of coals inside.

It had intimidated him the first time, not knowing how it would work. The ring seemed so much larger and more dangerous to Stephen’s tenderest flesh as Beaufort slicked his red and eager cock with oil.

“It should not hurt you,” Beaufort said, laying Stephen down on his stomach. “But if I do, you must tell me, and we shall stop.”

He pressed against Stephen’s back, his cock sliding thick and easy between the cleft of Stephen’s buttocks, and Stephen’s hips jerked up. More—he needed more than just that slide and gentle pressure, the slick pass of hard flesh over his hole. He was empty and needed to be filled up, hungry and desperate to be fed.

Beaufort ran his hands down along Stephen’s outstretched arms, warm and still slippery with oil, and laced his fingers through Stephen’s without another word. They lay there just like that for a moment, Beaufort’s hips undulating and his cock rubbing hard and hot against Stephen’s lower back, their panting breaths echoing in his ears.

He needed, he wanted. He was so empty, with Beaufort’s fingers gone from inside him, and the promise of his cock right
there
.

“Do it,” Stephen groaned. He rocked his hips up to make absolutely no mistake about his request. A gasp that sounded like Evander’s came from the chair beside the bed, accompanied by the slick sound of skin on skin. Stephen’s cock ached—heavy, full and untouched—and he thrust against the bedclothes with a whimper. “Do it now. Someone needs to fuck me now, else I die.”

“We can’t have that,” Beaufort laughed softly.

He pressed his mouth against the back of Stephen’s neck, then scraped his teeth across that same spot, stinging and salving the skin in one. He moved, the heat and pressure were gone from Stephen’s back, and Stephen whimpered.

It was only a second before Beaufort’s hands were on him again, pulling his hips up to slide a pillow beneath them. Beaufort’s hand brushed Stephen’s cock and the little bit of foreign pressure sent a flare of pleasure spinning through him. He pushed down to chase the friction, but Beaufort pulled away too quickly.

“Bastard!” Stephen gasped, and rutted down into the pillow in desperation before Evander’s hands stilled his hips.

“Now, now,” Evander chided him. Stephen could see his cock from this angle, already most of the way back to hard. He nudged at it with his nose, all that he could reach, and Evander’s hips jerked. “Behave, or I’ll take care of him myself.”

Not that, never that! Stephen bit his lip as Beaufort’s fingers trailed down his inner thigh, a cool line of oil and sweat drying on his skin where they passed.

Evander ran his hands down Stephen’s back, held his buttocks open and ready, his fingers curling along the edges of Stephen’s hole.

He fucked back onto Beaufort’s fingers when he slid them inside again, curling and probing and driving him to the brink of madness. Four hands on him, three fingers inside, his nose and mouth full of the heady smell and taste of sex, full but nowhere near full enough—

Then, thank God and all the saints cursing him from heaven, Evander let go so Stephen’s hips could move freely. He pinned Stephen’s arms above his head instead, hands pressed flat against the mattress.

Beaufort’s weight settled between Stephen’s thighs, though with his face down he could see nothing. Then pressure, a hint of cold and a slow, agonizingly slow, slide inside.

Stephen was going to split in two. He ached and yearned, the sting of stretching fading, to be replaced by pressure as he was filled up entirely. Beaufort was too large; there was no way Stephen could take him all, and the ring—
Oh.
That
was what it was for!—as it bumped against the nut-sized spot on the inside that turned Stephen’s arms and knees to jelly.

Beaufort’s cock filled him up, pressed him open until there was no sensation in the world other than that, the pain of the stretch and the pressure against his insides, the slow drag of skin on skin and the way Beaufort’s hands smoothed, comfortingly, over his lower back.

Stephen sobbed once, and Beaufort stilled, his balls pressed up against the skin of Stephen’s buttocks. “I can stop,” he said quietly, his voice thick with strain.

Evander’s hands shifted on Stephen’s wrists, relaxed and released.

“If this is too much, I’ll stop.”

“No!” The sound burst out of Stephen, and Evander laughed. “If you stop now I will hunt you down, you and your children’s children,” Stephen threatened.

Beaufort rocked his hips, just once, as punishment. He stroked across that spot again and Stephen’s toes curled. He let out a low and trembling groan before he could stop himself. Beaufort lay down half atop him, rested his hips against Stephen’s buttocks, his arms on either side of Stephen’s head and laced his fingers through Stephen’s.

Evander settled into his chair again, still close enough to reach them should he choose to, his thick and angry cock in his own hand.

Beaufort kissed Stephen’s neck again, wet and sloppy this time, rocking his hips in and then out as they started to find their rhythm. Each stroke seemed to go deeper, set more sparks blazing in the base of Stephen’s spine.

He craned his neck to catch Beaufort’s mouth in a kiss, and they mashed their lips together, hot, slick and filthy wet. There was nothing elegant about it; Stephen pushed his hips up as their mouths collided, fucking himself back onto Beaufort’s cock.

Evander stroked himself in time with them, thrusting up into the circle of his fist. Stephen watched it, his eyes fixed on the red-purple head appearing and then vanishing down between Evander’s fingers.

Beaufort reached a hand beneath him, his fingers hot against the skin of Stephen’s hip, and he wrapped those long, elegant artist’s fingers around Stephen’s cock.

He stroked, and Stephen cried out, the sound ripping from his throat. The need to
push
and
thrust
and
take
burned through him and he shoved his hips forward, pressed into the tight grip of Beaufort’s fist.

Evander fucked his own fist, dipped the pad of his thumb into the slit and smeared a trail of precome across the skin. He held himself so Stephen could see every motion, see but not touch.

Beaufort changed his rhythm to match, fucking into Stephen with fast and shallow thrusts. The pool of fire in his spine coiled tighter and burned hotter with every tug, every slick slide of fingers over the head of his prick and push of thick cock into the core of his body.

His balls drew up tight, so tight, and in the distance he heard someone chanting “please, please, please more…” before realizing that it was him. He chased something, three steps behind, his skin on fire and his insides aching, throbbing, burning for it.

Beaufort picked up speed, hand and body alike.

There, there, oh
there
! Stephen exploded, shooting hot and sticky over Beaufort’s hand. He forced himself back onto Beaufort’s thick, beautiful cock to push the last of his release out of his shaking and exhausted body.

Again.

Again.

He collapsed to the bed, and Beaufort let go, pulled
out
. The emptiness that followed was soul crushing, his body alone and abandoned.

Until hands flipped him over as he lay there panting.

Beaufort straddled him, pinning his hips down again as easily as he had before. He held his own cock in his hand, jutting, curved, toward the sky in blood-filled fury, and the grimace on his face betrayed his desperation. His hair stuck to his forehead and his cheeks, all askew and utterly unmade, his fair cheeks flushed red, his pupils blown so wide that the color of his eyes was impossible to see.

Stephen slid his hand between Beaufort’s legs to roll his balls in his palm, stroke and tug at them.

They drew up tight to Beaufort’s body and Beaufort bit his lip, hard. He stroked himself with a deft flick and twist of his wrist, once, twice, then he was gone, his head thrown back and body arching. His come splashed hot over Stephen’s stomach, pearled in the sparse dark hair on his chest.

“Dear God,” Beaufort said, his chest heaving with exertion and from orgasm, his hands clenching and unclenching in the bedclothes, his feet tucked beneath him and his weight resting on his knees on either side of Stephen’s hips. “Dear God.”

“God, I think,” Evander said lazily, sprawled with one leg over the arm of his chair, his cock softening slowly against his thigh and his stomach splattered white with his own come, “has very little to do with this.”

“Dear Gentlemen, then,” Beaufort replied, and the rise and fall of his chest began to return to a more normal pace, the bright-red flush of lust starting to fade from his cheeks. He stared down at Stephen, his eyes as fair and gray as the sky over the Channel.

“I am,” he said simply, catching his breath with a small, soft, bitter laugh, “utterly undone.”

Chapter Ten

The face that stared back at Joshua from the mirror was not his own. At least, it didn’t resemble the same old Joshua Beaufort. The bags were gone from beneath his eyes, his smile came easier, and somehow he looked…happy. Not simply content, but
happy
. And it was entirely Stephen Ashbrook’s fault.

He should have stopped it weeks ago. He would have been better off refusing the invitation to the house party in the first place. Then Ashbrook would have stayed an unattainable, distant fantasy, instead of a very real, very
human
man. Because a human man was easy to love.

Love
—the word was trouble. Better by far to keep thinking of these feelings as nothing more than infatuation, inspired by fornication and midsummer madness.

He could not stop thinking about it. About watching Ashbrook sink to his knees, or pressing tender kisses into the yielding firmness of his thighs; of course it was about that. But neither could he make himself forget the smile that creased the corners of Ashbrook’s eyes when he laughed, the way he hummed softly under his breath in quiet moments, the callouses on the fingertips of his left hand, the constant sense of motion that surrounded him. Each of those had, in such a short time, become something precious.

That itself was a perfect demonstration. Joshua sighed as he allowed William to help him into his coat, of why he was better off alone. He formed attachments too quickly, with too little provocation, and almost certainly with all the wrong people.

This could not end well.

And speaking of the wrong people—William slipped out to attend to his other duties, and Sophie caught the door before it closed. She stepped inside after a couple of quick and hushed words with the young valet.

Joshua stared at himself in the mirror rather than turn to face her, tugging at the edges of his cravat for something to do with his hands.

“Hullo, stranger,” Sophie teased him gently, batting away his hands and stepping into his line of view. “This will never do,” she tut-tutted, untying the length of linen and snapping it out with a flourish before wrapping it carefully around his neck again. Her hair smelled faintly of hay and sunshine, and coiled darkly around her head under the pale-white linen of her cap.

“Did you come in simply to correct my dress?” Joshua found his voice, smiling down at her.

She tilted her nose up pertly and wrinkled it at him, tugging his cravat into a perfect knot. “Someone has to do it.” She stepped back, seemingly satisfied, but her eye on him was critical.

“I don’t see much of you at all, these days,” Sophie said, trailing her finger across the top of his dressing table. She rubbed her fingers together to rid herself of a faint trace of dust, her brow furrowed. “It’s only to be expected, I suppose.”

What was she hinting at? “How so?” Joshua asked, honestly confused. “It is much the same as it was at home—you have your duties and I have mine. I can hardly be blamed for the distance between the servants’ and guests’ quarters in this house.”

“And when you are about…” she looked up at him with a sharp eye and a knowing smile, “…you are so engrossed in Mr. Ashbrook that I think I could dance naked on top of your trunk and never once be noticed.”

Had Joshua been in the midst of drinking or eating something at that moment, he surely would have choked. As it was, he winced, the only outward sign of his loss of composure, and shook his head. “Please…” he laughed, “…let us not resort to that.”

“I shall not,” she replied with a toss of her head. “But I shall persist in this: you have become close with Cade and Ashbrook.” And there was no question in her tone, only statement of fact.

He would not demean her by lying. “I have,” he replied, leaning around her to pick up his pocket watch and fob. “They are entertaining friends and closer to my station than Lord Downe’s sons. Does that disturb you, my having other acquaintances?” he asked kindly, making a game of it. “I cannot spend all my time downstairs among the maids.”

“And here I thought you cared little for them.” She was fishing, her eyes bright and mouth slightly parted. The early morning light fell across her fine features, highlighting their delicacy and giving her a kittenish air. “You were not so impressed back home.”

Joshua attached his watch, checked it and slid it into his waistcoat pocket. “Cade grows on me,” he admitted.

“And Ashbrook?”

He most emphatically did
not
blush, but looking her in the eye was impossible. “I like him well.” He pulled out his watch again and wound it instead.

Sophie stepped up behind him then, her hand on his arm and her eyes too old and too knowing to fit the rest of her face. “How well? As well as any man did like a maid?”

Joshua closed his eyes and swallowed hard against the anxious twist that sat in his throat. That Sophie suspected his preferences was nothing new. They had never spoken of it, but it rested there, an undercurrent of understanding between them.

There had been one night years ago, the true beginning of their unlikely friendship, when she had come to him—a new lady’s maid, and never as shy as she should have been—with a bottle of good wine in hand. They drank, talked, lay down chastely side by each, and she left in the early hours of the morning as good a maid as she had come to him. Something in that had proven him to her, and they had been as fast as siblings since.

Even so, there were some things one did not say aloud, not in company not similarly engaged.

“Those are dangerous suggestions, dear heart,” he said, his voice a hard whisper. “I suggest you keep them to yourself.”

She shrugged nonchalantly. “You don’t shock me, you know.” She looked at him with eyes so genuinely affectionate that the gut-churning burst of
fear-panic-run
began to fade. “I saw more than enough growing up in the stews. Unless you somehow involve dogs or cattle, there is little I can think of that would offend.”

“That, I can promise you, is well out of my sphere of interest,” Joshua grumbled darkly. He should have known. Sarah Harlow, once a penniless whore’s bastard, was a great deal more worldly than Sophie Armand, the delicate alter ego of a lady’s maid she had invented years ago. “If you must have me say it, then so be it. I am a buggerer and buggered alike. What do you want from me?”

“If you think I did not know years ago, you are a fool.” She leaned in and pressed a soft kiss to his cheek. He felt, rather than saw, her shake her head. “But attend to your danger,” she said, and he blinked. What now? She closed her fingers around his upper arm, her voice pitched soft and low. “The old bat has begun asking questions about the amount of time you have been spending with Ashbrook, and with Cade. You would be better served putting some distance between you.”

Damnation! He would almost rather lose a limb than sever his understanding with Ashbrook now! Three more weeks would be nowhere near enough time to explore all his desires, but it would have been a magnificent beginning.

“Thank you,” he said coolly, tugging his waistcoat and jacket into place. He nodded to the door and she made for it, her disappointment showing plainly on her face. She meant well, and he was treating her poorly.

Damn.

He forced his face into a look less severe, and Sophie let out a held breath. “Thank you,” he said again, far more kindly than before. “I shall take that under advisement.”

“See that you do.” Sophie ducked her head and slipped out of the room again. Lavender perfume lingering in the air and the disquiet settling deep into Joshua’s soul were the only signs that anyone had been there at all.

The house still lay in relative quiet as Joshua came down for breakfast. The ladies were outside; flashes of skirts and bright bonnets went by the window as he crossed the hall, the others slowly making their way to find themselves coffee, tea and toast.

So Lady Horlock suspected something. Was it possible that they had been discovered? He rather thought not.

Only once in his midnight wanderings had he come across another living creature in the halls. Silly Miss Talbot, she of the heaving bosom and fluttering eyelashes, trying to find her way back to her own room in the early hours of the morning. Lost, she’d said, after searching for a servant to bring her a drink of water. Escorting her back had only taken a moment. He had almost forgotten the exchange, lost in his own preoccupations.

She could hardly have mentioned his being out of bed without revealing how she knew, and getting into far more serious trouble herself.

There were always the servants, of course, and servants invariably gossiped. But if that were the case, then certainly Sophie would have intercepted and said something long before now.

No, Joshua decided, entering the dining room and bowing to the lords and ladies already there assembled, he had nothing at all to worry about.

“Sodomites,” declared Lord Horlock, as Joshua took his seat, “deserve their fates for their offenses to the Almighty.”

He froze, half in and half out of his chair, utterly speechless. Had they—was that directed—? Good God, they were discovered, after all, and would have to flee. He kept his face absolutely still and lowered himself into his chair. “Good morning to you too, sir,” Joshua said politely, and Lord Downe guffawed.

“You’ve startled your good painter.” Lady Chalcroft tittered behind her cup of tea. “We discuss the news, Mr. Beaufort, nothing more. And such a miserable topic for over such a fine breakfast, wouldn’t you say, Lord Coventry?”

“Yes, indeed.” Coventry shook his head.

Cade and Ashbrook entered behind him, freshly washed and dressed, Ashbrook’s eyes lighting up when he set them on Joshua.

Joshua managed a confused smile in return.

“A grim topic indeed. For who among us…” Coventry gestured expansively with his fork, “…has not sinned somehow in mind and body, hmm? As long as they hurt no one, then I see no reason for all this business with arrests and executions.”

Joshua had always found the phrase “his blood ran cold” to be a dramatic exaggeration, a cliché favored by gothic writers who had little creativity of their own. In that moment, he discovered the truth of the sensation and was hard-pressed to find better words to suit.

“I fear,” he began, moistening a mouth gone very dry—Cade was taking his seat on the far side of Lady Chalcroft, Ashbrook across from him beyond Downe—but his eyes were fixed on them all, “that I have not seen a paper for some days. What news are we discussing?”

“Trials and tribulations,” Lady Horlock pronounced, the words rolling off her tongue with great satisfaction. “It turns out that this was an excellent time to remove from the city, for the entire thing has gone to Sodom and Gomorrah whilst we have been away. The magistrates have arrested more than thirty men for all sorts of sinful dealings, the likes of which I cannot
begin
to fathom or describe. They are all to stand trial for it.” She gestured, her cup tilting dangerously in her hand.

“I had heard it was only twenty-seven,” Lord Downe said, his mouth full of jam.

Cade and Ashbrook had gone very, very still. “Whereabouts was this?” Ashbrook asked, his tone a mastery of forced casual inquiry.

Lady Horlock looked at him with sharp eyes over the rims of her pince-nez, then at Joshua for a half beat too long.

“The White Swan, the paper said, up on Vere Street,” Downe answered again, and Joshua knew the place he meant.

There had been clubs and molly houses in that district for decades, long before he had first made his way down to the seamier districts of London. They would presumably remain there long after he was dead and buried. The streets around Lincoln’s Inn Fields boasted a number of establishments where a man could go in safety, could flirt and be flirted with, could drink and bed with friends or strangers and could forget for a few hours at a time that he was hated for it everywhere else.

And now this.
Thirty men arrested.
There would be trials next, their names and their families dragged through the quagmire, all honor stripped from them and secrets laid bare. Then would come executions, by hanging, or hours in the pillory to be beaten and cursed by finer, morally upstanding citizens.

“They harm their own immortal souls and drag the rest of us into perdition with their unnatural practices,” Lady Chalcroft said airily, “bawds and procurers alike. I say it is about time. There are too many dark corners about town that could use with a good cleansing. Let the magistrates tackle Covent Garden next, and those girls who drag poor men down into a life of blasphemy and lust.”

Lords Downe, Horlock and Coventry alike focused quite intently on their tea and cups of chocolate, Downe himself turning red about the ears. The conversation thankfully veered away entirely after that. By the time the girls joined them, Cade had almost found his tongue again, Ashbrook was still very quiet and Joshua’s appetite had entirely fled.

How many of them did he know?

He had been so far gone from such activities for long enough; his name would never come up in interrogations. Cade and Ashbrook, on the other hand, were frequenters of such establishments—the Swan among them. While the raids meant slightly more caution on Joshua’s part until the news blew over, for them it must have hit very close to home. The abstract distance he tried to keep was sickening him enough.

The few bites of bread he had managed to choke down curdled in his stomach, and Joshua excused himself as soon as he was able. Flagging down a footman was not difficult, and he pressed a coin into the young man’s hand. “A paper, if you please, the most recent one from London to be found in the area.” Off he went, leaving Joshua alone in the hallway with nothing but his worry to keep him company.

The paper came to Joshua quickly. He tucked it beneath his arm and hastened out-of-doors to read it in some privacy. His room had a lock but felt too confining now, too much like a prison cell. He needed the security of the breeze in his hair, the sun’s heat beating down upon his shoulders and—if he was lucky—the two men who would understand his agitation.