The Valet and the Stable Groom: M/M Regency Romance (9 page)

The entire day had escaped him yet again. He hardly remembered what had occupied his time, other than running up and down with tasks for Jane’s party and Hildebert’s workshop. It was late evening, some time past sunset, when he reached the stables. Late, again, and he might very well be intruding.

Hugo had insisted that he wasn’t, although if Clement were being a bother to him, Hugo would certainly not be so discourteous as to say so.

He opened the door to the stables. The same light was on upstairs.

Clement chewed at his lip in a fit of uncertainty. From upstairs he heard a soft hiss like the shifting of embers in the fire.

“Hugo?”

A chair scraped across the floor, there were footsteps, and then there was Hugo at the top of the stairs.

His hair, Clement thought, was overgrown, and in a style unacquainted with the current fashions. If it were to be trimmed and styled fashionably, his appearance might transcend the ordinary and become handsome. He would never be striking, but there was a certain appeal to his features which could easily be enhanced.

“Clement,” Hugo said. “Will you come up?”

“I am sorry to bother you again,” Clement said, climbing the steps.

“You have never bothered me,” Hugo said, and smiled at him.

Clement stopped on the top step, caught by the sincerity of that smile. He wished that he could always be the recipient of it, though he thought it just as likely that Hugo turned his patient smile upon everyone who crossed his path. Hildebert had benefited from it multiple times over the course of the day.

“Is there anything that bothers you?” Clement asked.

He realised that he was standing too close to Hugo. It was not a polite distance. It was a friendly distance, almost intimate. Closer than he would stand with Letty, though not so close as he might stand to Hildebert while brushing lint from his coat. Clement tensed, not certain which way he could step in order to give Hugo more space without seeming to retreat from him.

Hugo’s smile widened a little further at the question. “Geese,” he answered.

And then he turned and led the way down the short hallway into his parlour.

“Geese?” Clement repeated.

“What, have you never been harrowed by geese?”

“Not significantly, no. They’re rather like fat, long-necked ducks, as far as I can make out.”

“Quite the contrary,” Hugo said. “Geese are winged devils. They’re not quite as bad as swans, but they are fearsome and fiendish.”

“Geese,” Clement said again.

Hugo knelt by the fire to check on a piece of bread with cheese that was being neatly toasted above the flames.

“I’ve interrupted your supper,” Clement realised.

“It isn’t any trouble,” Hugo said. “Have you supped?”

Clement opened his mouth to reassure Hugo that he was in no need of sustenance, but right then his stomach chose to produce a very undignified growl. Clement shut his mouth, nostrils flaring with embarrassment.

Hugo laughed, placed the toasted bread upon a plate, and held it out to him. “Please. Eat.”

“Your supper!” Clement exclaimed. “Certainly not.”

“I’ll make another for myself. I realise that it isn’t much. There will likely be better provender in the servants’ kitchen, as you’re accustomed.”

“It is yours,” Clement insisted, loathe to take food from Hugo’s mouth.

“And there is plenty of it,” Hugo said. “Mrs. Ledford stocks a generous kitchen. She will not have her people going hungry, and she accounts for what I take. Neither she nor I would begrudge you a bit of bread, though I will understand if it is too simple for you.”

“It isn’t that,” Clement said.

“Sit,” Hugo said, nodding his head toward the table.

There were two chairs, now. They were mismatched, but they flanked the table neatly, with one place for Hugo and one for a guest.

“You got another chair,” Clement said.

“I hoped you’d come back.”

“Did you?” Clement said. “I… well, I did promise to fix your lost button.”

“You made no such promise.” Hugo set the bread upon the table and cut it into two pieces.

“Oh,” said Clement. “Well, I supposed that I ought.”

Hugo’s eyes sparkled. He took a bite, then gestured to the other half of the bread. “Please. Eat.”

It would be impolite to continue to refuse. Clement picked up the bread.

The cheese was very good. He was familiar with it from the servants’ kitchen, and knew that it was made locally in the village. He had not known until now that it was even better toasted.

Hot grease from the cheese flooded his mouth, and Clement made a sound of pleasure and surprise, realising too late that he had taken a larger bite than he had intended.

“Was there something in particular that brought you here tonight?” Hugo asked.

Trying to chew despite the nearly scalding heat of the cheese, Clement felt utterly foolish at his own predicament. He could not speak around his mouthful, and yet it would be terribly impolite to leave the question unanswered.

“Mmnf,” said Clement.

Fishing the buttons from his pocket, Clement scattered them upon the tabletop.

Puzzled but intrigued, Hugo looked at the buttons and then up at Clement. “I only have the one waistcoat missing a button.”

Clement made a vague gesture to communicate that he had wanted to make sure he got the right button, and also that he was very sorry about his unforgivable rudeness of having taken too large a bite.

Hugo took another bite of his own and rose. He held up one finger, and smiled, making a shared joke of their temporary inability to talk.

Then he went off down the hallway. When he returned, he had a second slice of bread and cheese to go with it. He put these onto the toasting-rack above the fire, and sat again at the table.

“I brought my mending kit,” Clement said.

“It is very kind of you to go to the trouble,” Hugo said, reaching for his half of the bread. “I shall have a mended button fit for a lord.”

Clement picked up his bread, then paused. It would be impolite to cease eating, and it was very good, but he also wanted to be able to respond. He took a very small bite.

They finished off the rest of the slice of bread in silence.

Wiping his fingers upon his handkerchief, Clement opened his mending kit, and then realised that it might be too familiar to assume that Hugo would be comfortable around him in only his shirt sleeves.

Hugo likewise had paused, standing beside his chair with evident uncertainty. “I have only my Sunday coat, besides.”

“I am not troubled by shirt sleeves,” Clement told him, cheeks stretched with a fond smile. “If you will not feel uncomfortable.”

Nodding once, Hugo shed his coat, and then his waistcoat to follow. “Not at all. The room is warm, and I am sure you will forgive me the impropriety.”

Clement took up the waistcoat, comparing the buttons upon it to the selection he had brought in order to find the best match. There was already one button upon the waistcoat which did not match the rest. Clement forced himself to ignore it as he got to work replacing the missing button.

As Clement repaired the waistcoat, Hugo supervised the melting cheese.

The light from the fire shone through the worn linen of his shirt, showing off the outline of his torso. It was well formed, and strong, attesting to the amount of physical labour required of a stable groom.

Hugo looked back at him and smiled.

Clement quickly returned his attention to the buttons.

It was a task he’d done a thousand times, for Hildebert and the masters who had preceded him in Clement’s life.

The waistcoat was old and worn, with several stains upon the once-grand fabric. It was of good enough quality that it might have once belonged to the master of Gennerly House. Perhaps it had belonged to Hildebert himself when he’d lived in the estate as a newly-married man.

“Do you have family in the area?” Clement asked, remembering Letty’s advice regarding conversations.

“I do. My mother yet lives in the village. I had an older brother, but he moved to London and caught his death of an illness.”

He said it plainly, as a fact that could not be changed and which need no longer be mourned, but it made Clement’s head lift in concern.

“My condolences.”

Hugo smiled. It was a hard, regretful smile, full of pain and fond memories. “We weren’t close.”

“My sympathies, then,” Clement said.

“Thank you.”

“And you?”

“I’ve a large family,” Clement said, deftly affixing the button in its place. He used an iron nail to provide the proper spacing, which was the same iron nail he’d carried for years to just this purpose. “My father a tailor. My mother, in her youth, was an actress.”

“Have they your colour?” Hugo asked.

Surprised, Clement blinked at him. He did not like to be reminded of the dark colour of his skin, because most people commented on it only to give indirect insult upon his competence or character. Sometimes the insults were not so indirect. “Yes. Both.”

“Upon what stages did your mother perform? She must have been a great beauty.”

Clement pricked himself with the needle. A small spot of blood appeared. He put his finger into his mouth to clean the drop of blood away.

“She is yet a beauty,” he said, watching the light skin of his fingertip to see if more blood would appear. “Though she no longer works as an actress. Once she played as Juliet, and she was much lauded for the performance, though it did not run for many performances before she was replaced in the role. They gave her, instead, the part of Juliet’s nurse. I do not believe she has ever forgotten the indignity of being so reduced. Coloured men may, you see, play the part of Othello, from time to time, but there are no other leading parts, for either gender, for a coloured actor upon a London stage.”

Hugo did not respond, and Clement feared that he had been too forward.

Tying off the thread, Clement set the waistcoat upon a clear space on the table and began packing away his mending kit. “I’ve kept you too late,” he said.

“You haven’t. Do stay. The bread—it’s finished. I beg you, share it with me.”

Clement placed the extra buttons into the mending kit and secured the lid. “My lord will be needing me.”

Hugo was quiet. He turned away, fetching the bread from the fire and setting it upon the table. “If you must.”

“Good evening,” Clement said.

Hugo would not meet his eyes, looking instead down upon the piece of bread and cheese on the plate. “Good evening.”

O
ver the subsequent days
, Clement was displeased to find that their ursine foyer decoration was something of a marauder.

The first indication of this came with a shriek.

Clement had been engaged in pressing the creases from one of Hildebert’s suits, but household alarum took precedence.

The shriek, it seemed, had been Midgley’s. He had been going about his daily tasks, but when he entered the hall beside the foyer, the stuffed bear had been waiting for him.

“What is it doing here!” Midgley exclaimed.

“Someone must have moved it,” Clement said. He helped to pick up the cups and saucers that had dropped from Midgley’s tray. Only one of them was broken, although the hallway rug had been utterly soaked with tea. “Perhaps they were polishing the floor.”

“The floor,” Midgley huffed, “is to be polished on Fridays. I was quite clear. Even so, it is a very alarming thing to be put in the middle of a hallway. Certainly there might have been a better place to put it. This is unacceptable! It’s these country workers, I’m certain of it. They have no idea of how to properly run a civilised household.”

“Here you are, Mr. Midgley,” Clement said, pushing the tray into Midgley’s hands somewhat more firmly than may have been necessary. “I’ll see to the bear. Don’t trouble yourself about it. You had best go and fetch a fresh pot of tea.”

“To be sure,” Midgley agreed. He shot one last scowl at the bear and made his way back down the corridor.

The bear, Clement observed, had been placed directly in the centre of the hallway, positioned just around the corner from the kitchen. The entry foyer floor showed no recent signs of polish.

Wrapping his arms around the bear’s middle, Clement lifted it an inch off the ground and shuffled it back into the entry hall. It was heavy and awkward. Hugo had made carrying it look easy.

“Did you hear him shriek!” Letty said, appearing from a side room within moments of Midgley’s departure.

Clement set down the bear in the doorway to the foyer and scowled at her. “He dropped a tray and broke a cup. I suppose you have something to do with the bear’s displacement?”

“Me?” Letty said. “How could I move something so large? You can barely lift it.”

She did not sound innocent.

“You might help me with it,” Clement said, still trying to scoot the bear back into the foyer without knocking into anything or scuffing the wood floor.

Letty looked at the bear, and then at Clement. “You’re managing.”

“Letty,” Clement said, tightening his jaw.

“Don’t fuss. You must admit it was funny. What’s the harm in a bit of fun? Imagine being scared of this funny old thing!”

“It’s very large,” Clement said. “And snarling.”

“It looks like it’s sneezing,” Letty said.

Clement bit the inside of his lip to keep from smiling. “He broke a cup.”

“Oh, pooh. One cup.”

“He thinks it was the resident staff, and that they are incompetent.”

Letty rolled her eyes toward heaven. “It was a jest.”

“Don’t,” Clement said, “do it again.”

T
he next day
, the bear had moved to the sunroom, where it was taking tea with Jane, Hildebert, and Letty.

“Oh, no,” said Clement.

“Clement!” said Hildebert. “There you are. Do join us.”

Someone had hooked an empty tea cup on one of the bear’s claws.

“Sir, it isn’t proper,” Clement began. The tea cup was hanging very precariously from the tip of the bear’s claw. “You ought to be taking tea with members of your own class.”

“Here, now,” said Jane, “he might have been a bear of very noble birth.”