Rite of Summer: Treading the Boards, Book 1 (2 page)

The Ailsfords were known for their “little parties” which invariably involved half of high society. To appear on his own merits, to have the opportunity to play a program of his own design, rather than worry about whether his choices would be found wanting—

“Cancel it,” Evander ordered blithely, and he refolded the letter along the original crease lines. Stephen stopped stroking over the arches and balls of Evander’s feet. “Or have Wren take your place. The earl has commanded a performance, and I cannot find anyone else in time who knows my music half as well as you.”

“But…” Stephen began to object, though everything Evander had said was true, “…we will be isolated, away from all our friends, with only Coventry and his set for company.”

“Come now,” Evander wheedled. “The Season is all but over; Lady Ailsford will have an empty house this time of the summer. An opportunity like this comes along but once in a lifetime, and we must make the most of it. Who knows who else he will have in attendance—earls, marquesses, perhaps dukes! We will find ourselves in greater company than ever before.”

“I would prefer not.”

Evander’s pale-blue eyes flashed dangerously and an edge crept into his voice. His legs were heavy in Stephen’s lap, his muscles tensed as if for battle. “I would do it for you. Do you not care about me?”

And there was the challenge. Accept the invitation and maintain all as it was, keeping Evander’s affections as well as Coventry’s, or refuse. He’d find himself on the outs with both that way, and with a cold bed until Evander’s temper could be placated. For an offense this grave, it could take months.

“Fine,” Stephen conceded, and he forced away the sigh of discontent that rose up inside. Trusting Evander had gotten him this far; it was only stubbornness and his vague dislike for Coventry that were giving him qualms about it now. “I will write and beg a postponement. If it means so much to you, we shall both go.”

Evander’s face brightened again, the sun restored to the world. “You will not regret this,” he promised, all tension gone from his jaw. He set the letter aside, and with a gleam of mischief in his eyes, tucked one foot down in Stephen’s lap. He dragged his toes slowly along the soft bulge of Stephen’s prick.

What was he—
Oh.

Evander grinned. “It is a massive house, you know,” Evander began, as though delivering a confidence. “With galleries and gardens that extend for miles. Coventry described it to me once. We will have
hours
of uninterrupted leisure.”

He dug his foot down farther and pressed it, firm and strong, against the front of Stephen’s trousers. “We’ll kiss and we’ll swive,” Evander sang, putting lyrics to the tune he had been humming before, his eyes alight and his smile infectiously lascivious. He was utterly ridiculous and delightful, and Stephen could not help but laugh as his body began to respond to Evander’s excitement. “Behind we will drive, and we will contrive, new ways for lechery…” Evander finished his bawdy chorus by tangling one hand in Stephen’s hair and using it to pull his head back.

Stephen’s breath caught with the spike of desire, his throat exposed to the press of Evander’s lips. “All right!” Stephen laughed breathlessly. “I’ve agreed already, I need no bribe to convince me further.”

“Oh, but you do,” Evander said, letting go of his hair and slinking his hand down to replace the press of his foot. “We shall make a game of it, defiling his house in as many ways and places as please us. Think of the thrill!”

Stephen’s prick was thinking of little else, rising under Evander’s touch, as it always did. The man was insane, the suggestion as distractingly tempting as almost all of his ideas were. If one servant saw them, though, in the wrong place, at the wrong time—Evander’s social climbing would end rather abruptly. As would their necks.

“Think of the risk,” he pointed out, one last-ditch effort to talk some sense into the man before he too was carried away by the contagion of his delight.

“There is no risk,” Evander shook his head before detangling himself and crawling across Stephen’s body to straddle his lap. “We are Coventry’s favorites; no one can touch us now.”

His kiss was one of triumph—full, wet and dirty.

Stephen kissed him back, ran his hands up the firm muscles of his thighs and buttocks, cupped the round swells of Evander’s arse tightly in his hands.

“A month or more in the country, surrounded by the rich and the powerful.” Evander spoke between kisses, his hands braced on either side of Stephen’s head. “This will be a grand adventure, Stephen. It could change our lives.”

Perhaps. Stephen allowed himself to be swept up in Evander’s enthusiasm, in the heat of his mouth and the solid surety of their bodies entwined. But could life truly get much better than this?

“And what do you think?” Mr. Meredeth, owner and proprietor of Meredeth’s Music, as his father had been before him, leaned over the counter between them to watch as Stephen flipped the pages on the new sonata.

“Mad,” Stephen declared, “and brilliant. It shall take me a month at least to learn this properly.” He passed over far too many of the coins he had been carefully saving for just this moment.

The coins fell into Meredeth’s hand with gentle clinks. He counted them calmly, stowing the fee away with a smile. He could only have ten years or so on Stephen, fifteen at the most, and yet there were already threads of gray in his short brown hair. It was thinner on the top as well, but he was a man of the sort who never seemed to run to fat, no matter what other indignities age tried to inflict.

“Is the missus not feeding you well enough?” Stephen joked while Meredeth wrapped his packet for him. “I could span your wrist with my finger and thumb, man.”

“The missus is as good a cook as you’ll find anywhere.” Meredeth puffed up proudly. “But running after customers all day and children all night, ah! There’s no way to eat enough to keep up.” He patted his stomach, hollow as it was, with a wink and a grin. “You’ll find out, when you’ve got little ones of your own.”

And that was easily the most unlikely prediction for Stephen’s future that he’d ever heard, but he laughed nevertheless. “I’d have to be able to afford a wife first,” he answered as though delivering a confidence, a pat reply that would lead to no further questions.

Meredeth set his own elbow on the counter and leaned in just as conspiratorially. When he spoke, though, he pitched his voice loud enough to be heard through the open door to the small shop’s back room. “I’ll tell you a secret—work them hard enough and they pay back their overhead quickly.” And he winked.

“John Meredeth, you stop with your foolishness!”

“And here she comes.” Meredeth straightened and turned to face his wife, whose lack of height and equally slim figure did nothing to reduce the impression of her ferocity.

“Morning, Mrs. M.”

She ignored Stephen at first, swiping at Meredeth with a sodden dish towel.

“And to you, Mr. Ashbrook.” She curtsied prettily, then smacked Meredeth’s hand as he tried to slip it about her waist. “You see what I put up with?” she asked him rhetorically.

“Should’ve married me, then,” Stephen teased. “I’d treat you like the queen among women that you are.”

“Well now!” Meredeth pretended to object to the banter. “And in front of me, yet.”

Mrs. Meredeth laughed at her husband and exchanged a look with him of such infinite fondness that it seemed even more of an intrusion to watch than had Stephen come upon them kissing. She leaned across the counter and patted Stephen on the cheek. “You’re far too young and far too pretty, my dear boy. We’d never have gotten on. You’d be better use to some calm and lovely creature with a taste for tunes.” She slung her dish towel over her shoulder again and headed back through the door to the living space behind. “Ask him about the lessons!”

“I am to ask you about lessons,” Meredeth said dutifully. His solemn nod was enough to make Stephen grin again. “Our Susannah’s old enough now—we were wondering if we could engage you for it. Despite all this…” he waved at the shelves of sheet music, the instruments that lined the walls, the once bare panel by the door now pasted thick with bills advertising concerts and entertainments from around the county, “…I never did learn pianoforte, and Mrs. M. simply doesn’t have the time to sit with her.”

The middle child of the Meredeth brood was a quiet and serious little girl, her mother’s big brown eyes peeking out from her father’s slim face. Even if she turned out not to have the knack for music, she wouldn’t be difficult to manage for half an hour at a time.

“Gladly,” he replied, and would have said more but for the thunder of hooves outside and the rattling of a coach pulling up outside the door of the shop. Those would be Coventry’s horses and his driver, but how could he have found Stephen
there
, unless—

“Come on, then!” Evander leaned out of the coach door and waved to catch Stephen’s attention. “We’ll be late starting!”

“And that would be me, off,” Stephen apologized, tucking his parcel under his arm. “We’ll be gone about six weeks. Shall I call on you to make arrangements for lessons once I return?”

“Do so. Six weeks in the country, such a hardship!” Meredeth laughed at him and his disgruntled expression, and waved him off merrily. “Come home with a sweet farm-fed bride!” he called out, the end of his words muffling as the door swung shut behind Stephen.

He swung himself up and into the coach, tucking the precious package out of the way, beside the seat. The driver had them moving within moments, Evander already sprawled easily across the seat opposite.

“I don’t know why you still go in there,” he said, a frown on his face. “The selection’s much better at Bland’s, or even Clementi’s.” He toyed idly with his pocketknife, carving slivers out of an apple and eating them off the blade. “The other customers are better situated as well.” It was hard not to watch his tongue and lips as he ate, and Evander caught Stephen’s eye with a knowing smirk.

How to describe the feeling that kept pulling him back to Meredeth’s? The warm smiles of those who knew him, the cozy, familiar sense of a well-loved space, the knowledge that, even though all money had been firmly settled between them, there were some debts that could never be fully repaid. Evander would not understand.

“They’re able to order what I need,” Stephen said, shrugging. “And they were so kind to us when we first came to London. Extending credit on account to a pair of starving boys is hardly what you’d call a smart business move.”

Evander did
not
understand. “And they continue to reap the rewards of it from your patronage, so it was hardly an ill-conceived one,” he pointed out, gesturing with a piece of apple stuck to the end of his knife. He must have seen something cross Stephen’s face, for he softened his smile a moment later. “You’re a sentimentalist, dear Stephen,” he said fondly. “That will be your undoing one day.”

“Perhaps I am,” Stephen replied, stealing the apple slice and popping it into his mouth. The juice splashed tart and cool across his tongue. “Better that than unfeeling.”

Evander’s cheerful disdain aside, it did not seem like such a terrible thing to be. It had a much lower likelihood of getting them in trouble than, say, Evander’s hedonism. And now, to be moving among powerful strangers for a month and a half, their relationship of the sort that could never be discovered—it could prove a problem.

Two artists from humble origins, sharing lodgings, was common enough, mind you, that even the most respectable of society matrons would not blink. Stephen could think of a handful of men of equal stature who lived exactly as they did, but for whom pursuit of cunt, not prick, was their favorite pastime. So there was little to give them away in
that
.

The raids, at least, would not be a problem for them while they were away. There were a handful of common houses in the back streets of London where, at least until recently, men of a certain inclination could go to drink and flirt and remain unmolested by either women or the law. For years they had slipped by, disregarded, but lately the magistrates had found them a useful target.

It had only been seven months since sweet Dr. Taylor had swung for buggery, his body hanging for the ravens at Portsmouth. He had possessed surgeon’s hands, a tribute to his profession, and Evander had exclaimed in delight over his lush and eager mouth. Less than a year ago, the three of them had spent the better part of a night at play in an upstairs room at the Kit and Barrel. Now those precise and clever fingers fed the worms.

Life would be easier if he could summon up some passion for a girl, enough to marry her and take her to bed with frequency enough to keep her content. It was hardly an uncommon thing, though mightily unfair to the bride. But he had yet to meet a girl, however pretty, who could compete with the curve of Evander’s arse or the strong cut of his jaw.

They would need to be far more careful.

Chapter Two

12 June 1810

Dear Sir,

I am writing to you

I have been reliably informed

Please forgive any impertinence that you may sense in my initiative. I take up pen to write because I have been informed that you have interest in the services of a painter.

The letter sat in front of Joshua on the sloped writing desk, his handwriting slanting across the page in stark-black contrast to the fine laid paper. He would have to recopy the whole thing once he had the wording down—one did not send a letter to a viscount filled with crossed-out half starts. Even if he
was
of French extraction. That he had escaped the oncoming hordes of Napoleon’s army and removed himself to Belgium was a mark in his favor, but that didn’t change a man’s innate nature.

Dubious ally or not, though, Sophie would browbeat him until he had it written, and her tongue could be sharp. He may as well get it done.

It was a good beginning, at least, the right notes of supplication and hints at informed connection. He dipped his pen in his inkwell again, tapped it idly on the rim and drew a clean sheet toward him to begin anew.

Sunlight filtered through the tall windows that lined one wall of his studio, the rays landing warm on his back. Motes of dust flickered in the sunbeams, a hint of a breeze setting them to dancing. A handful of stretched canvases sat along the wall, their untouched surfaces waiting to be transformed. The rest of the Earl of Horlock’s household puttered along in their routines beyond the double doors, but inside his sanctuary, all was calm.

He was placing the final stroke of his name on the bottom of the page when the back door opened, and a head crowned with a rich braid of dark mahogany peered around the jamb. Sophie Armand, the countess’s abigail, scanned the room and when she deemed it safe, entered. Sophie was a French refugee, supposedly; charming, also supposedly; and counted uncommonly beautiful by men who were far better equipped than he to appreciate such things.

“Are you writing it?” She crossed the room lightly, her simple calico dress swirling around her, and perched nymphlike on the edge of his table. “Have you finally made up your mind?”

“I’ve written,” he said, fighting the urge to curl his arm around the top of the page to prevent her from reading. “So you may leave off as soon as you please. But I’m undecided on whether to send it.” He leaned back in the finely carved wooden chair to show just how unconcerned he was about the entire business. “I don’t see why you’re so keen on expanding my clientele. I’m very well situated exactly where I am.” A vague gesture across the expanse of the studio illustrated his point.

“You’re boring where you are,” Sophie replied, and she slid the letter out from under his hand. She had lost the gentle lilt of the fashionable accent she affected when around anyone but him, her earthy, prosaic—and rather more English—roots betraying themselves. “And it’s making your pictures boring.”

“I paint portraits, Sophie,” he chided her. “I can hardly spice them up beyond reality. Would you have me add an attack by bears to Gosling’s commission? I daresay his three little sons would be very pleased by the change to their nursery.”

“Not a bear, but perhaps a wildcat? It would match their mother’s temper.” She gave as good as she got, and he chuckled softly in response. “I
mean
, you’re bored with people. There’s no life in their eyes when you paint them. Not anymore. You need to take a risk occasionally, find that spark again.”

“I take plenty of risks,” he objected, the treads of the familiar conversation reassuring. It was still disconcerting to have become the focus of Sophie’s latest improvement project, though it was easier on the nerves to consider it a pleasant affirmation of her friendship. Thanks be to God that she had decided to focus on expanding his professional aspirations instead of trying her hand at matchmaking.

“Then why are you still here with the old bat?” Sophie snorted and he stole the letter back from her to scan it for errors one last time. “If it’s only for the creature comforts, I shall be cross with you.”

“Careful,” he warned, his focus on the page. “That’s your employer you’re speaking of.”

“And your cousin’s great-aunt or whatnot. I know. That hardly changes the fact that she’s beastly,” Sophie proclaimed bitterly.

“Behave,” Joshua said mildly. She never did, of course, and their friendship had been partly forged on laughing at the foibles of others. But there was a token attempt that had to be made, and a smile played over his mouth regardless.

It was a generous mouth, he knew that from standing and staring at himself in the glass as he’d painted his self-portrait. Self-portraits were the fashion these days, after all, and one
must
remain fashionable. (That was the countess’s voice in the back of his mind, and he sighed to himself.)

So, a wide mouth, perhaps too wide. His hair was still thick, but it was that unfortunate shade of strawberry blond that looked so well on a pretty girl and foolish on a man approaching twenty-five. He kept it short, for convenience more than anything else. Not for him the foppish stylings of the bon ton.

He could only pretend to be so many things that he was not. No matter how much Sophie attempted to “improve” him.

“I shall not.” Sophie laughed in response to his admonishment, and hopped lightly off his writing desk. “And you shall come to see the wisdom in it. You will go to the Continent and become the darling of the proper set, fêted at the courts of Europe.” She seized his hand, her small one all but vanishing in his palm. He abandoned his papers and let her do it.

“Those not currently embroiled in war,” he reminded her as she hauled him to his feet, stronger than she looked.

“Fie on you and your predictions of doom! Come—you shall have to know how to waltz if you are to make a proper impression.” She placed his hand on her hip and seized the other, humming as she led him backwards in lurching steps.

There was no choice but to play along, and soon enough she had him laughing as well, even as he stepped on her feet and tripped over his own.

“No, that will never do!” she said delightedly. “Three steps, like so. Da-
da-da
, da-
da-da
!”

He watched her feet, hands resting obediently where she had placed them, and attempted to lead as she demanded. “Watch your toes if you dance with me or your ‘one-two-threes’ will leave you crippled.”

“Turn me under your arm, and all will be forgiven.” Sophie moved with easy grace, and not for the first time he wondered at it. He turned her and she spun out, laughing.

“Now where did young Miss Armand learn to waltz, hmm?” He was not about to admit it, but the steps started to come a bit more easily as he watched her feet.

“‘Miss Armand’ learned at some fancy boarding school, no doubt.” Sophie tossed her head imperiously. “But
I
picked it up from a pretty Viennese girl in London. Her dancing was very much in demand, you know,” she replied archly, a much longer story behind those words. “You shall have to know it too if you are to make your grand impression!”

“You shock me more and more every day.” Joshua twirled her around his studio gallantly. “Now tell me, minx,” he said after they had stopped to catch their breath, Sophie tucked neatly under his arm. “Why should I leave all this?”

“Because we grow or we die, dear heart. And you are slowly dying.” Sophie stepped away from his brotherly embrace.

Joshua stayed where he was, folding his arms before him as he turned her words over and around in his mind. “What of you?” he asked, to have something else to consider.

Sophie shrugged, trailing her finger across the top of his writing desk. “I will forge on, as I have always done. William is fond of me and has good prospects for a serving man. If not there, then Mr. Glover in town has a ready hand with the compliments, and a staymaker’s wife would always be in fashion. We shall see what comes of things. Now…” she picked up the letter and put it into his hands, “…you must send it.”

She poked him in the ribs with one finger. It did not hurt, but he tilted away from her jab out of habit. “I have a letter to send to Evangeline as well, but you must pay postage for both together.”

“Now I see your scheme, minx.” He folded the letter into a neat packet, regardless.

“Fiddlesticks,” Sophie said, but she took the letter from his fingers and tucked it away in the bodice of her gown with a smile.

Joshua patted down his pockets without commentary, passing her a half sovereign. “Put that under the seal when you close it up. That should cover costs, if not a little more for the postman.”

“You’re a good man, Joshua Beaufort,” she teased gently. “And you should be painting kings on the Continent, not doddling about, sketching her ladyship’s terriers.”

A sharp voice carried in from the hall, and Sophie stopped to listen. “And speak of the devil. There’s
Madame
now, and my cue, m’sieur, to take my leave.” The accent came back in as easily as she had let it go in the first place. She slipped out the back door of his studio with a wink and a finger pressed to her lips. The door clicked closed behind her as the Countess of Horlock made her entrance through the front.

She was not a tall woman, nor broad, though she took up an astounding amount of the air in a room with the force of her presence alone. The countess had accepted middle age with as much grace as anyone could hope, and the years had acted on her not as a sop, but as a whetstone. Her children were married off and about their own business, which left her a great many free hours for social activities and general meddling in the affairs of others.

At the moment she seemed in a pleasant-enough humor, a letter unfolded in her hand.

Joshua rose and bowed. “Lady Horlock,” he opened easily, swinging his hands to clasp them behind his back. “What brings you to me on this fine afternoon?”

Lady Horlock looked him over as though doing a survey of his component parts, taking in his ruffled and slightly breathless state. She all but shook herself, a slender gray goose settling her feathers. “We’ve been invited to a party—Horlock, myself and you. The Earl of Coventry invites us to stay at Belmont House for six weeks. He is having the men in to hunt and some women for civilization, no doubt.”

Invitations here were hardly unusual; Joshua’s inclusion in one, slightly more so. He raised an eyebrow at the description. “Then why me, Your Ladyship? Surely I am neither invited for the hunt, nor to improve his civility.”

Her lips pressed together but curled at the corners, despite her attempt not to smile, and she indicated his studio with a sweep of her hand that encompassed all. “He is a devotee of your art, my dear young cousin. Perhaps he is interested in a companion piece to that dreadfully indulgent self-portrait of yours that he bought last year. Apparently those have become all the rage.

“I cannot say that I understand everything about the ‘art world’…” and she pronounced it so that he could all but hear the marks about the words, setting them off, “…but he appreciates your talent, and that reflects well on this house.”

And on her patronage choices, naturally. “Do you know who else is expected to attend, madam?”

The countess tapped her gloves against her hand in consideration, a movement which drew his eye. “The Chalcrofts, I presume—their daughter is hardly to be separated from Lady Charlotte these days. The Talbots as well. They always have reached higher than their station. Lord Downe and his sons.” She levelled him with a steely eye, her glace flickering to the back door and then away. “I expect you to behave properly around the debutantes. I am not so blind as you think, cousin, and as long as nothing disrupts the fair running of my house, I will say nothing. But if you intend to go courting, especially among the ton, I will know about it first.”

Joshua seducing Sophie was about as likely as growing wings and flying himself to the moon. On the other hand, the more that she suspected him of one sort of misbehavior, the less she would be inclined to go sniffing for others.

“Oh what tangled webs”, and so forth and so on.

“Of course, Your Ladyship,” he replied, his lips twitching, and doing his utter best to look innocent.

She arched a fair eyebrow at him and patted his cheek indulgently, as though he were a boy caught stealing biscuits from the kitchen. “Other than that…” the countess continued, drifting about the edges of the room and flickering her eyes over some of the unfinished canvases and sketches, marking, noting and filing away for later examination, “…Coventry’s own family. As he is positing this as some sort of ‘artists’ retreat’—for the cachet, one supposes—his pair of catamites are certain to attend.”

The insult slipped from her mouth so casually and with so little venom that it would have been easy enough to mistake it for something of no importance. All his cheer dissolved away, bubbling down into a grim and familiar reminder for himself to keep the faint and noncommittal smile on his face.

“…honestly, it would be wiser not to be so closely associated with such a libertine, but Horlock will have his grouse, come hell or high water, and so there is nothing for it.”

He knew who she meant, of course, who did not? He had no particular proof that they were as she described—he had not frequented the taverns or the stroll in years. There would be a great many men moving in those circles now whom he did not know.

But he knew of Ashbrook and Cade.

Even if they were not lovers, they were a match designed for art. One dark and one fair, both slim, middlingly tall and with the vaguely transparent look that came from too much time indoors and not enough outside of the city.

Most of society had worked itself into a dither about the composer—slightly taller of the two, more classically handsome in that popular Grecian sort of way—who strutted about the halls and streets of London as though he himself had brought Euterpe down from Olympus to be his personal muse. But it was not Evander Cade whom Joshua could not forget.