David collapsed over him, shoulders heaving, and Richard held him as though he wept.
Chapter 14
David stared at the mirror wondering whether to powder his hair.
“Why?” Jon asked. “It makes a mess everywhere, and it feels like chalk. You don’t like it, do you?”
“Hate it. But then, most masters hate red hair.”
Richard didn’t hate it. Richard said it was beautiful; he’d kissed David’s hair in handfuls, whispering praise.
Richard was not his master.
David hadn’t seen him since that glorious fuck; he’d been too damned busy for the last two days and nights. He would see him that evening, and it was enraging how much he wanted to report a success.
“They can’t hate it that much,” Jon said. “I mean, I don’t want to see it, and I still fucked you.”
“Yes, but you’ve no standards at all. Just look at Will.”
“Twat,” Will said without heat.
“I was turned away on sight three times when I started service.” David adopted a foppish tone. “Oh, Lord, sirrah, I can hardly be expected to contemplate that dreadful hue. Give me my smelling salts. Take it away.”
“Sodding gentry,” Will said. “Sack of arseholes. You think Maltravers will care?”
“In the circumstances? I could probably get the place with green hair.” His lordship had sent three notes now, each more insistent than the last, demanding David should arrive for an interview at once. Lord Gabriel had done sterling work in dropping hints about the untouchable leader of the Ricardians; Lord Maltravers was desperate to get his hands on Lord Richard’s erstwhile valet. “But…no, I’ll have to, I think. I need to look as though I want the post.” He reached for the powder box.
“You can sweep up, then,” Will said. “How’s it all going?”
“Well enough. Mr. Harry’s had two people already tell him they were present when Lord Maltravers made his remarks about Lady Beaufort.”
Will grinned unpleasantly. “You’re a bit of a bastard, aren’t you, Foxy?”
“All of one. How’s the word in the clubs?”
“Getting round,” Jon assured him. “And Zoë’s doing a fine job with the buttocking shops. She says that thing of Silas’s is spreading like the clap.”
Silas had written a particularly scurrilous pamphlet on the sexual peccadilloes of various gentlemen of the ton. He had good connections among the Grub Street scribblers and scandalmongers, a turn of phrase that was vivid to the point of being legally actionable, and a biting if unsubtle wit, so David had been confident the sheet would circulate quickly. They’d made sure there was a certain amount of truth in there, bits of gossip that David had been keeping for a rainy day; a few flagrant inventions, including one of Silas’s that David suspected would come back to haunt them; and plenty on Lord Maltravers. It began, We hear Lord M— of the duchy of W— has a thirst for Vanbutchell’s Nostrum, then renamed him Lord Dropmember, and went on to list cures for impotence and a hint about his temper. Some readers would take the inference David intended.
Word was spreading about his lordship’s manner too. Mr. Norreys reported that the appalling gossip Lord Bunbury was busy assuring everyone he met that he could not give any credence to the reports about his lordship. Why, have you not heard? Well…He would not be the only one, and to David’s immense satisfaction, many of the reported remarks were either other people’s invention or, far better, things Lord Maltravers had actually said.
Will and Jon had talked to the staff in the clubs and gambling hells. David had spent two days and nights circulating among servants, meeting valets and ladies’ maids, butlers and grooms, murmuring scandal to be repeated in dressing rooms and boudoirs and carried to drawing rooms and clubs. By the time Lord Maltravers accused Lord Gabriel of anything, so many people would have repeated his extraordinary comments about some of the most blameless people in society that it wouldn’t matter they hadn’t actually heard him make them. Nobody would believe a word he said.
That was, of course, if David could retrieve the damned letter. While Lord Maltravers held that, all the rest of David’s work was worthless.
The letter. Lord Gabriel had twice asked his brother to show it to him, and twice Lord Maltravers had refused. It is not on the premises, he’d told Lord Gabriel the second time, in case you’re hoping to get your hands on it.
David stared at himself in the mirror. White hair, black coat, pale face. He looked like a servant’s ghost, and he felt no enthusiasm at all for what he was about to do.