Rite of Summer: Treading the Boards, Book 1 (7 page)

The thought was chilling, far out of proportion to the man who had inspired it.

His sons took after their mother, apparently. And with the three men, along with their retinues, the house would be full and the party would truly begin.

Finally able to make his escape once the ladies retired to dress for dinner, Joshua closed and locked his bedroom door behind him. A few minutes’ peace was all he needed—no Sophie barging in to learn his gossip or William hovering about to fuss over his clothes. He kicked off his shoes and flung himself backwards onto the bed, sinking into the bedclothes. There was no one to see; he could be allowed his moment of dramatic excess.

His life was not an exciting one. Things were simpler that way, and he was reasonably content with his lot. The absolute last thing he needed was a flirtation with a handsome rake like Stephen Ashbrook, and all the complications he carried with him.

He would
not
fuss over his clothing for dinner. It hardly mattered what he wore, as long as he was presentable enough for her ladyship’s honor. He was not here to woo, and there was no one whom he was trying to impress. He could easily lie there another quarter of an hour and still rise in plenty of time to dress neatly and serviceably, in whatever William had laid out for him.

Half an hour, four attempts at tying his cravat, and two hissed and insulting conversations with his mirror later, Joshua tugged his best waistcoat down to straighten an imagined wrinkle at the lapel, and left.

He found himself back in the gallery a few minutes later, the candles from the hallway casting their faint light only so far into the long chamber. Some of the paintings there were old friends, others altogether new and deserving of a little attention, even if they were examples of the stilted styles of previous generations.

“I can’t
find
it!” Lady Amelia complained to her mother as they passed down the hall. “I know I left them on my dressing table.”

“Really, child, you mustn’t be so careless. Those earrings were your grandmother’s!”

“Perhaps one of the maids…”

The silence that fell after they passed didn’t last nearly as long as it might. It was no conversation that caught his attention this time, but a discreet cough and a shadow that blocked out some of the already faint light. Joshua turned, and his heart most certainly did
not
contract at the sight of the young man in the doorway.

Ashbrook stood casually, his hair caught back in a velvet ribbon, his cravat high and hiding the marble column of his throat. He smiled, distant and playful.

Damn that formal cravat, anyway.

“This is becoming habit,” Ashbrook said, and Joshua drew himself up tall in response.

He nodded politely, because that was the safest thing to do.

What was
not
safe was flirting again, not after what he had seen. There was too much heartache there, too much lonely desire, all of it blended together in the teasing invitations of a man who would not be his.

“A thing needs to happen more than twice for it to be called a habit,” Joshua replied, a little more sharply than perhaps he meant to.

Ashbrook did not blink at the rebuke, only grinned and,
damn
him, because all Joshua could see now was the way his eyes had widened at the end of his lovemaking, the little astonished gasp that had escaped him as he spent himself.

“Shall we reconvene here tomorrow and see what becomes of it?” Ashbrook asked, and Joshua forced those memories back to where they belonged.

He had been allowed to watch, once, for whatever private reason of Ashbrook’s, but it could go no further. “You presume a great deal.”

“How so?”

He wished to play games—fine. Joshua would play games as well. “I may have other plans for tomorrow. A meeting could be utterly impossible.”

Ashbrook stood with his back to the light and it was all but impossible to read the expression in his eyes. His mouth, though, quirked up at the corners and Joshua hated the spark within him that responded.

“Would you not find the time for me?”

They treaded dangerous waters. As much as Joshua longed to take his face in his hands, to kiss and press him, all of this chatter could still be explained away if regrets took hold. None of it yet
meant
anything.

“Please, do not toy with me like this. Return to your partner and leave me to my own devices.” So much for his promises of self-control, of keeping back, holding his desires private. He clamped his lips and tightened his teeth on his tongue to prevent himself from saying anything else unfortunate.
Double damn!

Ashbrook tensed, his eyes still on Joshua. “I’ve offended you, but I cannot guess how.”

In for a penny…

Impulse drove him, even as the gong sounded downstairs to call them all to table. “Can you not?”

That won him a frown and a squint, as though Ashbrook was trying to divine some deeper meaning behind his words. They had been born purely of the moment, though, no greater thought behind them than thwarted selfishness.

Joshua left the gallery by the other door and descended the staircase toward the light and sounds of the party assembling for dinner.

Chapter Seven

Beaufort was an utterly impossible man to read. Stephen spent too much time through dinner puzzling over the man’s implacable expression, so much so that he had to be nudged under the table twice before remembering to offer some of the capon to Miss Talbot. He ran between extremes, flirtatious and inviting one moment, and then cold as hoarfrost the next. Stephen had thought, surely, after last night, he would have been induced to say
something
. The way he had looked at them from the doorway, the naked lust in his eyes—and there could be no doubt
now
about the nature and form of Stephen and Evander’s desires.

So why did he resolutely refuse to meet Stephen’s eyes? The jellied meats were certainly not that interesting. Embarrassment at being caught out? There were some who did not enjoy watching or being watched. For an artist, though, that seemed a bit preposterous.

“Don’t you agree, Mr. Ashbrook?” Miss Talbot asked from his elbow, all wide eyes and firm breasts cresting over the low neckline of her dinner gown. Pearls gleamed cream and white around her throat and in her ears.

“Oh yes, certainly,” he tossed off diffidently, and she flashed a smile of triumph at Coventry. Now, what had the question been? His mind had been running in circles and he had missed the conversation.

“Now how do you expect any man to say otherwise when asked by so charming a young person?” Coventry chortled affably from his seat at the head of the table, and Miss Talbot colored prettily while Lady Charlotte looked affronted.

The conversation moved on—the advantages of returning to town post-hunting season had apparently been the topic of choice—and it became apparent that Stephen’s lapse had gone mostly unnoticed. By all, that was, except Evander, who arched an eyebrow at him over the rim of his crystal goblet and drank his wine in silence.

Stephen cringed inwardly, putting on a charming smile to hide the curl of dread in the pit of his stomach. He would be in for a lecture later; there was no getting around it. Stephen gripped his own glass around the stem and tossed back the last mouthful inelegantly. He grimaced as it went down, the warmth of the alcohol spiraling out in tendrils to stroke the edges of his prickling nerves. Candlelight danced on the silver and crystal laid out on the table, white faces gleaming hollow and expressionless in the reflections in the dining room windows.

Lady Amelia laughed at something, Lady Charlotte leaned over to murmur a comment in Evander’s ear that made him turn and smile, and the matrons clucked at each other like gossiping geese in a farmyard.

Suddenly and acutely, he missed the tavern back home, the rough wooden tables and the faintly sticky feeling of the wooden floor, the honest laughter of his friends, the smells of ale and pipe smoke thick in the air.

Down at the far end of the table, Beaufort didn’t look his way. Not once.

Evander, miraculously enough, said nothing as dinner was cleared and the women decamped to the parlor. He was in fine form by the time the port had been passed around and they had rejoined the ladies, though, every comment and passing observation a little barb or another aimed directly at Stephen.

Which, he supposed, he deserved. He had come close to embarrassing Evander tonight with his inattention at dinner. Of course he would be cross. “And the noise when he first picked up the music—he set cats in the alley to crying back at him in better harmony.”

“Not all of us can be geniuses on our first attempts,” Stephen replied, as mildly as possible. He felt brittle behind the smile; how many of the others could see it? He laughed with them. “We cannot all be you, Cade.”

Evander chuckled and Coventry tipped his glass in recognition of Stephen’s willingness to take the joke. Beaufort looked away, his jaw clenched.

“Do play for us,” Lady Chalcroft requested from her comfortable seat on the sofa, her book left aside on the small table.

Her daughter had joined the whist game across the room, and she had been casting her eyes about the room looking for some other diversion since.

“And you needn’t even go looking for your violin. There is a lovely pianoforte here. Amelia played so pleasantly on it when we visited in the spring. Don’t you agree?” Lady Chalcroft smiled winningly at Coventry.

Miss Talbot dropped her cards.

Stephen schooled himself not to look at anyone else, for fear he would laugh aloud. Subtle, the mothers were not. But, then, they had only a few years to get their poor girls turned out of the house and into someone else’s before they were stuck with them forever, so subtlety must take backseat to expedience.

“The pianoforte is not
your
forte, is it, Ashbrook?” Evander asked, all innocence and half in his cups. “Perhaps we would be better to allow the ladies to demonstrate how it should be done.”

“On the contrary,” Beaufort spoke up from his seat in the corner, where his head had been bent over his sketchbook.

Lady Charlotte looked at him in surprise.

He kept his voice mild and even, and Stephen stared. “I’ve had the honor of hearing Mr. Ashbrook play and he is quite the equal, if not better, to any I’ve heard before or since.”

Defense from a most unexpected quarter. As Evander shrugged and demurred, Stephen felt a small burst of hope and gratitude for it. “I cannot argue against a man’s personal taste, especially when it turns in my favor,” he replied with a smile that was impossible to hide behind any affectation. “Though perhaps the glamour of the concert hall and the beauty of the compositions affected your opinion too much in my direction,” he did add, more as a sop to Evander’s mood than to anything else.

Beaufort gave him a measuring gaze that was not the easy cheer he had hoped for, but was infinitely better than being ignored.

With that encouragement, Stephen sat himself at the pianoforte and flipped up the lid. The instrument was heavily decorated, meant more for showing off to guests than to hold a tune. The sound was not as rounded and clear as that of the piano in the conservatory, but it would do nicely enough. Lady Charlotte stationed herself at his shoulder and presented music for him to choose, but there was only one option, in this case. And he did not need reminders.

Stephen pressed his fingers to the ivory keys, and Evander’s “Nocturne” flowed from them, as perfect and as haunting as the first time he had heard it played. Conversation slowed and stopped, eyes turned to him and lifted him up, gave him the rush that surged through his veins, that magic that drove him to be
better
.

He glanced up, once, to take the measure of the room. Evander watched them intently, Lady Charlotte still standing behind his shoulder. And beyond Evander, in the corner of the room, Beaufort sat terribly still, like a statue of a man, his face rapt and his eyes fixed continually on Stephen.

The last few notes tailed off into silence, followed by applause. Stephen stood and redirected it. “The composer, Ladies and Gentlemen.” He gestured at Evander who clasped his hands behind his back and bowed, taking it all as his due.

Beaufort frowned, a little crease appearing between his eyes, and he sat his hands back in his lap.

Lady Charlotte took the stage after that and Stephen was pressed into service himself as a page-turner, then the other young ladies naturally had to prove their own worth, especially now that the party had filled out. Lord Downe’s sons were a pair of youngbloods of the swaggering sort, all bluster, finely trimmed coats and the unconscious arrogance carried by handsome, young men of means everywhere.

By the time music had been changed over for cards, Stephen was thoroughly done with the crosscurrents and careful stepping of society conversations. The smiling was beginning to leave him with a permanent case of dry teeth, and the need to measure every one of his words six or seven times, and then consider the likelihood of Evander’s disapproval on top of it, made his head ache right above his left eye.

Wide doors led out onto a terrace of sorts; Beaufort had stepped out not long ago to take some air. Stephen made his apologies to the older Mr. Downe, tugged his coat into place and followed.

Beaufort stood alone at the far end of the terrace, his hands clasped behind his back and his chin tipped up to gaze out at the vast field of stars above. He stiffened as Stephen approached, his shoulders drew up and his spine went straight, as though preparing himself for something unpleasant.

Stephen leaned on the railing in, for the moment, something that could pass for companionable silence.

Beaufort shifted beside him.

What to say that could take them back to the afternoon, or even the previous evening? It had been so much easier to talk to him then.

“Thank you,” he said after a moment. “For what you said, earlier. Cade has a sharp tongue at times, but means no harm.”

“I only spoke the truth,” Beaufort said simply, and his voice was warm again, like when they had been sitting together on the bank of the river. “It is unfair for him to call attention to what he thinks of as your shortcomings and leave you unable to defend yourself.”

“Oh,” Stephen said wryly, “but I have a great many shortcomings, and Cade works diligently at correcting them all. We come as a matched set and I must represent him well.”

“Now that I
had
noticed,” Beaufort said, his voice as dry as the desert sands of Arabia, and Stephen barked a laugh of surprise.

Were they to talk about this
now
? Here, in the dark, with the stars wheeling by overhead? The rapid beating of his heart was surely enough to alert everyone inside that Stephen’s mood had made a decided turn for the better.

He leaned on the balustrade and cocked his head to regard Beaufort more fully. His red-blond hair was shorter than Stephen generally preferred, but it would be soft to the touch, especially if he stroked it where it lay on the back of his neck.

“You have excellent eyesight, to see such things in the dark of night,” Stephen tried. Wordplay had worked with him before…

“Nighttime is often more revealing of character, I’ve found.” Beaufort didn’t fall into his opening, but neither was he walking away. Perhaps his transgression, whatever it had been, would be forgiven after all. “Of secrets, and the things people are willing to do when they think no one’s watching.”

“Or when they wish someone were,” Stephen countered, turning to stand with his back against the hip-high railing and fold his arms.

Beaufort’s suit cut across his chest in a perfect arc, leaving the hint of waistcoat and shirt visible below. What would he taste like if Stephen pulled his shirt free from his trousers and ran his tongue across that flat plane? Would he be ticklish and squirm away, or arch and beg for more?

“I prefer to think of night as freeing. Under cover of darkness we can act as we were made to do and absolve ourselves of the sins of lying and false witness.”

Beaufort was quiet, then, his breath catching as though he wished to say something. He did not. Finally, he glanced up at Stephen, his body perfectly still and under rigid control. God, he would be beautiful when taken apart, lying down on a bed and stroked until he begged—

“And what of the sin of covetousness?” he asked, and Stephen blinked. “Thou shalt not covet thy neighbor’s property.”

OH.
Pieces of a puzzle he hadn’t known he was constructing snapped more fully into place.

“That only applies to things that are owned.” There was no sense in obfuscating his intent much longer—he spoke as plainly as he knew how. “And as Parliament only recently confirmed, one cannot own men. God’s own Church has seen fit to ensure that we cannot make marriage vows to each other, so there are none to be broken.”

Come to my bed. Let us all feel whole together, at least for a little while.

“Are you suggesting—” But Stephen would not learn what Beaufort thought, because at that moment the doors swung open and a giggle of girls swished onto the terrace.

“You are avoiding us!” Lady Charlotte put her hands on her hips and tilted her chin imperiously, her eyes sparkling. “We need at least one more gentleman for the men’s team for charades, so you simply must come inside.”

Beaufort had gone quiet again, leaving it to Stephen to make the expected noises. “You say you need only one, but there are two gentlemen here,” he objected with an easy smile. “Which of us is to have the singular honor?”

Lady Amelia made a gesture with her head that suggested her exasperation. “Whichever does not run fast enough, of course,” she said, and was thoroughly shushed by Miss Talbot in response.

“We shall return presently,” Beaufort interrupted.

Stephen was pulled along with the group, despite that, and he cast a last glance back over his shoulder as he stepped once more into the light and the noise.

“Now, we shall have to pry Father away from his cards—”

“Will you speak to Mr. Downe, dear Amelia? He will listen to you, surely.”

Beaufort stood in shadow, a frown creasing his forehead, the light of the moon playing silver on his shoulders and his face. He was ethereal, pale and beautiful in his concern.

The door swung closed behind Stephen, and the image was gone.

The next day brought a mess of rain and thick black clouds blocking out the sun. All were trapped indoors, restless and ill at ease, and Stephen escaped to the conservatory at the earliest possible opportunity. The quiet was enough to soothe his spirits, despite the peals of thunder that made the glass panes in the conservatory rattle in their frames.

By the time he emerged to dress for dinner, Lady Charlotte was holding court on the parlor couches. Lady Chalcroft had a death grip on Lady Amelia’s arm as the redoubtable elder lady chattered away relentlessly to poor Coventry. The earl looked about ready to chew off his own arm in order to escape, nodding away with faint despair in his eyes. But where—

There. Beaufort was chatting with the Horlocks and Mrs. Talbot, his hand resting lightly on the back of the countess’s chair. He nodded and smiled briefly at Stephen. Relief then, followed by vague disappointment as Beaufort turned back to his conversation.