A Gentleman's Position (Society of Gentlemen) (12 page)

“Thank you,” David said. “And yes, she has a reason. My lord, have you ever wondered about my surname?”

“What? No. It is unusual, I suppose.”

“That is putting it generously. You never asked yourself why my name means
whore
?”

Richard would have said
lady of pleasure
if he had said anything. “That is hard speaking.”

“No, it isn’t.”

Richard glanced at him. David was walking with his chin up, lips set. “David?”

“My mother’s employment as a governess came to a predictable end. Her employer did not choose to give her a reference; she had no family on whom to rely. You know how this works, my lord. She was in Belle Millay’s service by the age of twenty.”

“Millay’s, as in the assignation house.”

“That did not then exist. This was her first bawdy house, on Seymour Street. All the brats were given surnames that Belle found amusing, hence Cyprian, you see. I grew up in the brothel where my mother wenched. She thinks my father was a soldier of the Black Watch, because of the hair, but who can say?”

“Does—” Richard stopped himself.

“Does Mr. Fleming know? Of course. My mother is not fool enough to hide such a secret, and my stepfather is not the kind of Christian who throws stones at sinners or demands endless penitence. He loves her for who she is.”

“That is very admirable. Ah, her illness…?”

“Poxed, obviously. She had the first stage some years after my birth; the second is long past and no longer a risk. The third stage…may come, may not.”

The disease might come back at any time, might attack Mrs. Fleming’s eyes or mind, leave her drooling and incontinent. Or it might never come. There would be nothing to do but wait in its shadow and wonder if every little clumsiness, every forgetfulness or flash of temper, was a sign. Richard wished he could take David in his arms, offer some sort of comfort, but the odd, set expression David wore was as off-putting as the public place.

“Thank you for telling me that,” he said instead, feeling his way carefully. “For trusting me with it. I must feel appalled at your mother’s situation. I wish that things had been otherwise, for your sake and hers, and I am very glad to know she has found a happy home. But I’m damned if I can see why she wanted me to know this.”

“Because you offered me a gentleman’s position. Because you want a gentleman, and I am not one and never will be. If you want a gentleman in your bed, my lord, you will need to look a long way above brothel spawn.”

“Don’t say that!” Richard glared at him. “You are more than that, and it is damned disrespectful to your mother.”

“I know the respect I owe my mother,” David snapped. “She could have discarded me into the gutters; instead she kept me, educated me, didn’t let Belle put me on sale, though it meant she worked there for years more to pay for me. We all owe our mothers our lives, my lord, but I owe mine a great deal more than most. I was born a whore’s bastard, and thanks to her I have risen to become the most sought-after valet in London. I’m proud of that. We both are.”

“I am sure you are.”

“Are you?” David asked. “Are you really? Because it seems to me that you are ashamed of it.”

“What?”

“You think my profession is degrading, my work demeaning. You
said
so. You asked, how could your lover possibly black your boots? Well, I have blacked your boots for four and a half years. I worked so hard for you, and I was so proud to do it. I gave you everything, served you every way I could, and all the time you despised me for it?”

“David, no. I didn’t mean that—”

“Demeaning,”
David said savagely. “That’s what you said, grotesque and demeaning. Tell me, what do you find most contemptible, that I took such care with your linen or that I ensured your boots were the envy of every man in the
ton
?”

“Stop, please. You are a superb valet—”

“But that is not good enough for you,” David finished. “There is not the slightest real difference between my work and the post you offered me. A confidential secretary is no fitter for his master’s bed than a valet, and we wouldn’t be any the less hanged for it. In fact, it’s far worse for a lover, because your secretary does not spend hours in your bedroom, but you weren’t thinking of how to have time with me, were you? It’s another form of hair powder, a way to make me more acceptable in your eyes. You don’t want to fuck a servant, so I must be changed, and be damned to what I am or what I want.”

“That is not true!” Richard said, appalled. “That is twisting everything I meant. I wanted to offer you something better—”

“For whom? I would work—I
would have
worked for you and shared your bed and asked nothing more of life. I
like
my work, damn it. If you had asked me whether I would still be happy to black your boots, I should have told you yes in a heartbeat, but you never asked because you assumed I would find it as degrading as you do. Everything I have ever done for you—” His voice cracked.

“And if I asked you to come back as my valet, if I asked you to black my boots and share my bed, would you accept that with your mother’s example in front of you? Is that not what she was telling me, that your position is vulnerable beyond bearing? Can you not see that I was trying only to strengthen it?”

“
I
choose my position,” David said through his teeth. “If I let you choose it for me, then I would be weak indeed. And if you fear I would be vulnerable, the answer is not to elevate me to a secretary. It is to respect me as a valet. As a
man.
My mother’s employer did not have to treat her like dirt because she was a governess; he chose to. Mr. Fleming never asked her to become something else—”

“Then he is a kinder man than most. And this is all very grand until your position becomes a problem, until I see you flinch at a display of temper or mouth meaningless agreement because you fear the consequences—”

“You don’t trust me to stand up for myself,” David said furiously. “You don’t trust me to make my own choice. Well, I will not be given sops and trinkets like a child who needs direction. I am not your responsibility, my lord.”

“Not since you lost your job over this certainly. Have you forgotten that?”

“I’m hardly likely to. It reminded me exactly what I am to you. Servant to the master.”

“That is my
point.
” Richard clenched his fists in frustration. “That is what I have been trying to say. It is what I wanted to change—”

“I will not be changed!” David shouted, then dropped his voice to a low, vicious hiss. “I am a valet, and a whore’s get, and a redheaded bastard, and if that is not good enough for you, then you may go to the devil, because I
will
not be reshaped to fit your whim. I’m better than that. I am very well as I am, and if you cannot lower yourself to fuck the man who cleans your boots, you may not have me.”

He turned on his heel and headed back toward the town. Richard wanted to grab his arm, but there were, of course, people all around. “David, for God’s sake. I’m trying to protect you.”

“I never asked you to,” David said over his shoulder, and walked on.

Richard started back to London that evening. He usually made the journey over a full day, leaving early in the morning to avoid spending a night on the road, but even that seemed a far more attractive prospect now than the empty, echoing rooms of Tarlton March and the ghosts that crowded on him there. He did not want to remember his father’s autocratic pride or his mother’s bitter cold and what her withdrawal had hidden; Philip’s loneliness and his own bewildered boyhood craving for affection. He could not think of those things now.

It was a long, hard journey in a carriage with Tallant, who stared at his hands in silence the whole way, and with the memory of David’s hurt. Richard did not have solitude until he was back at Albemarle Street the next afternoon, where he went straight to the book room, shut the door on the world, and made himself confront what he had done.

David’s expression would not leave him, the white-faced agony of humiliation, shame, and, worst of all, betrayal. If Richard was anything at all, he was loyal. He supported and protected. He was the strong man on whom others leaned. He did not let his friends down.

Except David. Devoted, dedicated David, to whom Richard owed more than to any man alive, and to whom he’d brought nothing but misery.

He’d meant so well; that was the damned stupidity of it. David was capable of far more than his nominal role, and he deserved so much. He deserved ease and luxury and respect, all the things Richard had. He deserved better than a lifetime of blacking boots. How in the name of perdition could Richard have known that he was content to keep doing it?

No, not content—proud. Richard’s boots had been a matter of painful envy to half the men of the
ton
because of David’s pride. David had tackled everything from polish to perjury with the same passionate intensity for Richard’s sake, and Richard could have understood that if he’d just looked at his own feet. But he hadn’t. He’d thrown it all back in David’s face without even noticing what he was doing, returned contempt for love, and every scrap of the appalling unhappiness David must have felt at that moment was Richard’s own damned selfish thoughtless fault.

He was huddled on the floor by the desk, head in hands, when heavy footsteps came in, a brisk tramp that came to an abrupt stop.

“Your lordship?” Mason asked. “Are you all right?”

Richard didn’t have the strength for this. He shook his head without looking up.

“Are you ill?”

“No.”

“Do you want to get off the floor?”

“Would you please go away?” Richard said into his knees.

Mason exhaled heavily. “I’ll send for Dom, shall I?”

“No.”

“I’ll get a footman. You stay there,” Mason added with a touch of sarcasm. Richard considered getting up and bolting the door behind him as he departed, but couldn’t find the energy. He’d have to tell Dominic he’d broken his word at some point, after all; it might as well be now.

“Right, that’s a message gone to the Board of Taxes, so I dare say he’ll be along,” Mason said, returning. “Good thing too. He can stop thinking up new ways to take the working man’s money for a bit. Now I got work to do, so I’ll get on. Don’t mind me.”

Richard looked up to glare at him, but Mason had already moved to the shelves, the damned insolent democrat.

“You’re a radical,” Richard said abruptly. “You don’t believe in the social order. Would you find service…” He didn’t want to say it. “Uncomfortable? Beneath you? Demeaning?”

“Service. Like, for example, valeting?”

Richard set his teeth. “Like that, yes.”

“Aye, I would. Reason being, I don’t see that one man should have fancy clothes while a hundred wear rags, so valeting would be demeaning as all hell for me, because I’d be going against everything I believe. Whereas it’d be demeaning for you because you’re a lordship, and you think you’ve a right to have your boots shined.” Mason propped himself against the shelves, folding his arms. “David, now, he takes pride in his work, so demeaning for
him
would be valeting for some bugger who didn’t care what he looked like. Which is a long way to say we all got different opinions. I’d feel bloody demeaned if I had to be told how to put my trousers on, and I’ll wager you don’t.”

“That is not what—” Richard began, and stopped himself because he refused to get into such an absurd argument.

Mason tapped a book, considering. “You know how they say you need to put yourself in another man’s shoes?”

“To understand his position. Yes?”

“Aye, but that’s the thing. Put yourself in his shoes, and it’s still
yourself.
Your feet don’t fit my shoes, never will. You need to see things how the other fellow sees ’em, not put yourself in his place, because you’re not him. Not something I’m much good at,” Mason added. “I’d have been better in my work if I was. Tell you who’s good at other people: David.”

“Of course he is,” Richard said, his voice stifled.

“Saw that the other day when he asked my help with that problem. He sits there thinking:
What does the other man know? What does he believe? What does he want? What does he fear?
Works his way through what’s in the other fellow’s head and then uses it to get his own way. Or, I should say, your way.”

Richard stared at his hands, the hands David had cared for and kissed. Mason was right, damn him. Richard had considered himself, the marquess’s son, in a valet’s position and not liked it. He had considered everything from the perspective of a lord, thinking of his own duties and responsibilities. After all his regrets and promises to Dominic, he still had not
listened.

David had known the risks in the gulf that lay between them, and accepted them. But rather than seeing that, Richard had put his own oversized feet into David’s narrower shoes and ripped them apart at the seams.

His work had not been demeaning, until Richard had demeaned it to his face.

“Christ,” Richard said into his knees.
“Christ.”

“Aye, well, we all make a bad job of things now and again and you no less than the rest of us. I doused Dom’s glim for him, you might recall. Blacked his eye,” Mason translated, as though Richard had forgotten that incident.

That was true but not comforting. Dominic was a forgiving man; Richard suspected that David was not. He would certainly not make himself the victim of his position by taking a master or a lover who did not respect him. He would never have been so foolish. He would have looked after himself, if only Richard had not tried to do that for him.

“Hell’s teeth,” Richard said aloud. Mason didn’t reply, but he didn’t leave either, moving quietly around the room while doing, as far as Richard could see, very little, until at last there was a knock at the door.

“That’ll be Dom,” Mason said with evident relief. “Here.” A hand, extended down. “Get off the floor. Bloody ridiculous.”

Richard took his work-toughened hand. Mason was several inches shorter than Richard but solidly built, and he pulled hard so that Richard had to come to his feet or risk a dislocated arm. He stood but didn’t let go of the radical’s hand at once. “I…Thank you.”

“Aye, well,” Mason muttered. “I’ll get the door.”

Richard took his usual chair while Mason and Dominic exchanged a few words under their breath, and topped up the brandy glass he’d abandoned.

Dominic shut the door behind Mason, pulled over the other chair, and gave Richard a long look. “It didn’t go well, then. Care to talk?”

“Not really. There is nothing to say.”

“Nothing?”

“I caused more pain and distress in a few words than I ever have in my life, to the last man on earth I should have wished to hurt. Is that enough? I’m sorry, Dom. I tried to keep my word to you. I failed.”

“Good heavens. What on earth did you
do
?”

“Offered him a post as my confidential secretary at twice the salary.”

“That…isn’t clear to me,” Dominic said carefully. “Why was that bad?”

“Of course it is not bad. It is a better post. He would be more respected, more independent. Not a servant, still of my household—I thought it was perfect. Just as you and I would have been perfect if only you had not tiresomely been a quite different man to the one I assumed you were. I am such a bloody fool. And I am damned sorry that I did not try to understand, for your sake and because, if I had learned my lesson then, I might not have thrown David’s years of service back in his face and told him I thought they demeaned him.”

“Oh,” Dominic said. “Oh, Richard.”

“I thought he would want to stop being a servant.
I
would have wanted that, just as I would not want to do whatever it is that you do, but as I have been told more than once, it is not up to me to decide. Give Mason my thanks, incidentally. He was kinder to me than I deserved.”

“He has a great deal of compassion,” Dominic said. “With his own way of showing it, admittedly. So you told Cyprian that you wanted him but not as a valet—”

“And he informed me that if I could not bed a servant, I could not bed him.”

Dominic frowned. “Did you…?”

“Yes.”

“Good?”

“God, yes. And then I made this damn fool offer the next morning. I
have
to redress that, Dom. I have made an appalling mull of this, and I dare say he will not wish to be anything to me in the future, but at the very least, he must know that I wish I had cut out my tongue rather than say such a cursed ungrateful, stupid thing. I have to let him know I didn’t mean it.”

“You’re not thinking of going back now,” Dominic said, warning in his voice. “You must see it would attract a great deal of attention if you turned up twice in a few days.”

“That is the only reason I’m still here. If I had any sense, I would have stayed at Tarlton March so I could have spoken to him again today instead of fleeing back here, but I didn’t think of it then, and I couldn’t bear to be there.” Richard took a large mouthful of brandy. Dominic removed the bottle from the side table without comment. “Dear God. What my father would have said if he knew a fraction of this—”

“Cannot be helped,” Dominic interrupted. “He scarcely conducted his own affairs in a manner deserving of respect. Is it just that Cyprian is a valet? Can you truly not stomach that?”

“If I knew that was what he wanted—”
I should have told you yes in a heartbeat, but you never asked.
Richard flinched at the memory of David’s words. “But it is not just the duties that trouble me. I am afraid for how vulnerable he would be in his position. God knows I have done enough to him without the least ill intent. And I would not want him exposed to disrespect. You know what I mean.”

“That’s true,” Dominic said. “Although I’d sooner make advances on a crocodile. But yes, his position would be vulnerable.”

“Unacceptably so, and vulnerable to me as well as others. I hurt you so much, and I didn’t even notice. I’ve driven him away from me twice now. I don’t know how to get this right. And when I get it wrong, I know damned well I will not be the one to suffer the consequences, because I never am.”

“Yes, you look quite unaffected now,” Dominic agreed sardonically. “Merry as a grig. Dear fellow, we are all vulnerable. Every time we fall in love, we are nothing
but
vulnerable.” He circled one wrist with his fingers and rubbed the fading mark there, an absent movement. “Including you, little though you like the idea. May I suggest you leave Mr. Cyprian to manage his affairs himself and concentrate on your own conduct? You have amends to make. And if that goes well, you ought to consider doing what he has asked of you in plain English.”

“What do you mean?”

“Learn to bed a servant. Did he say ‘bed’?”

“He said ‘fuck.’ He said, precisely, that he is a valet and a redheaded bastard, and if I could not fuck the—the man who blacks my boots, then I could not have him.”

“I think I’m beginning to like Mr. Cyprian.
Do
you want to fuck him?”

“Good God, Dominic.”

“Then the conclusion is obvious. You know what he wants. Give it to him, or leave him alone.”

Richard stared at the wall. “I can’t go back in the near future. And to write honestly—”

“No.”

“I wish I could. I think I could get it right on paper, but of course, I may not even write a bloody letter for fear of discovery. Of course not.” Richard did not often repine at his situation under the law—it was how things were, and his wealth and David’s work had kept him safe enough—but the injustice grated viciously on his nerves now.

“You can write something,” Dominic said. “Express regrets. Ask for an opportunity to meet. It’s better than nothing. And in any case, you cannot do this on paper, and you know it. If you insult a man to his face, that is how you make your apology.”

“What if he doesn’t want to hear from me?”

“Then I dare say he will consign you to the devil. Why don’t you let him decide that?”

“If I write to ask him to wait, not to take another position before we have had a chance to speak again—that is fair, is it not?”

“Entirely. Whether he will is another matter, of course.”

Too true. He’d cut David down twice, and his valet was no dog that would return to a man who kicked him. Richard would need to regain David’s trust, and his first step had to be to give his own trust. God knew David managed matters better than he did.

“Thank you,” he said aloud. “Your patience is exemplary.”

“I need it, believe me. What I wonder—” Dominic broke off and looked around at the sound of a quiet, respectful knock.

A footman opened the door. “My apologies, my lord, but Lord Gabriel Ashleigh and Mr. Francis Webster have called on very urgent business and beg your lordship’s time.”

Richard waved permission, and Francis and Ash hurried in. Francis’s narrow face was tense with worry. At his heels, Ash looked frankly unwell.

“Your pardon for the interruption, but we have trouble,” Francis said. “Serious trouble.”

Richard glanced at Dominic, who opened his hands in bafflement. “What on earth is wrong?”

“It’s all my fault.” Ash sounded utterly miserable. “I’m so sorry.”