“R—my lord…”
“Just go. You are dismissed,” he added, as though formal words would somehow restore the order of things.
Cyprian hauled himself upright. His mouth moved in the shape of Yes, my lord, and he left the room.
Richard waited until the door was shut, until he heard the footsteps hurry away, and then he slid to the floor, put his fist to his mouth, and bit down hard to stop himself crying out.
—
David grabbed for his clothes, hands shaking. Shirt—he should fold that, but his fingers seemed to have forgotten the movements that ought to have been second nature. A coat, black. Not the green. Never again Lord Richard’s green.
What had he done, what had he done…
He wasn’t even sure what to take. He could pack Lord Richard’s extensive wardrobe for all occasions by instinct; his own few possessions now seemed to be a sprawling mess. He couldn’t take everything. He’d need to send for it all, need a trunk, and time, and will to act.
He wasn’t sure where he was going, even. This was his home, had been for four and a half years, until he’d burned his life down with one stupid, uncontrolled, unplanned, stupid act.
The outrage in Lord Richard’s eyes. The anger. David curled over himself, shirt crumpled in his hands, chest airless with despair.
There was a repetitive tapping noise. It had been going on for some time. David hadn’t cared, and he didn’t care when he heard the door open behind him.
“Foxy—” Silas began, and then, “David? What’s wrong?”
“Get me out.” David needed, urgently, to be away from the catastrophe he’d created and the self-inflicted humiliation. “Get me out of here.”
“Right. You sit down, I’ll pack your bag. Saying goodbye to anyone? Want anyone to know where you’ve gone? Doing a flit, fair enough.” Silas stuffed clothes into the bag in a way that should have made David wince. “Got somewhere to go?”
He didn’t. He lived here, in Lord Richard’s house and in Lord Richard’s light. His acquaintances were fellow valets, who would have just one response to the news his position was now free, and the men and women he used to order Lord Richard’s life, which he wouldn’t be doing any longer because he couldn’t go back.
His entire existence had been woven around Lord Richard, and with him ripped away, it was a mess of torn and dangling threads.
“Jesus wept,” Silas muttered. “Right, you, up. I’ll get you somewhere and we’ll sort the rest of it out tomorrow.”
He hauled David up with a powerful hand on his arm and set him moving with a push between the shoulder blades. David walked, automaton-like, through the corridors of the house he’d ruled by proxy, and Silas followed at his shoulder. They had to pass through the servants’ quarters, the kitchen, heads turning as they went. A footman began, “Mr. Cyprian—?” and recoiled at Silas’s snarl.
Then they were outside, into the mews behind Lord Richard’s house, past a footman in his shirtsleeves giggling with a housemaid in the dark. They both stiffened with guilt as David passed. Silas shoved him again, hand in the small of his back where he’d hit the table, and he gave a gasp of pain.
Across Piccadilly, and right, and through the dark service ways behind the big houses, a route David had walked a thousand times, but still he took in where they were heading only when they were at the back door of the gambling hell and club where the Ricardians met. Quex’s.
“I—no,” David began, not sure what his objection was except that this was Lord Richard’s domain. Silas ignored him, rapping on the door. A kitchen maid pulled it open, began a cheeky remark, and jolted as she set eyes on David. “Yessir.”
“Less of it, Mary,” Silas told her. “Go get Will or Jon or both of ’em, there’s a good girl, and let us in somewhere I can get this one sat down.”
David was slumped on a chair in the study, shaking hands clasping a tumbler of gin he didn’t want, when Will Quex and Jon Shakespeare came in. They were both wearing Lord Richard’s green, of course.
“Foxy?” Jon demanded. “What’s happened? Is he all right?”
“No idea,” Silas said. “Found him like this, can’t get any sense out of him.”
Will snatched the tumbler from David’s hand. “Oh, for God’s sake, not gin. Get someone to make some tea, with lots of sugar. Look at him, he’s shaking. David?” He crouched to snap his fingers in front of David’s face. “Oi. Wake up.”
“What’s the bag for?” Jon asked. “Why’s he here with a bag?”