A Gentleman’s Position(7)

But Lord Richard had shut it. He would not reach for David no matter how much he wanted to. And for once in his life, David didn’t know what to do.

He solved his master’s problems and those of his master’s friends. That was easy enough for an ingenious man unencumbered by principles and backed by money and influence. With Lord Richard behind him, he could do anything. With Lord Richard in flat opposition…

In the end, David was only a valet. He could persuade, even disagree, since his master generously permitted disagreement. He could not argue or overrule, defy or persist. He could manipulate, of course; he was fairly sure that he could overcome his master’s objections for a night. Lord Richard was a man, and men could be led; it was what David did best. But a single night was not what David wanted. Not at all.

It was easy to lie when one didn’t care for the truth, to play when it was just a game with living pieces. He couldn’t do that to Lord Richard, because Lord Richard’s truth mattered to David as none other. He did not want to get his way with tricks now, to be the invisible puppet master. He wanted Lord Richard to see him. He wanted him to choose.

And that left David, whose weapons were manipulation and deception, quite hopelessly adrift. All he could do was offer, as blatantly as he might but without saying anything that would force Lord Richard to a decision, because he was too afraid that the decision would be no.

He was perhaps the best-paid valet in London and certainly one of the most envied. The great Cyprian, he was called by some, just as Brummell’s valet had been the great Robinson, and if David ever left Lord Richard’s service, he would be able to name his next master and his salary too. That should have been enough for any man in his position and of his background. More than enough.

But it wasn’t. Because if David Cyprian had been asked to define his own particular hell, it would be night after night in Lord Richard’s bedroom, night after night undressing him with murmured words and infinite care and then walking away to an empty room, again, alone.





Chapter 2


“Excellent, brother. A neat solution.” Philip, Marquess of Cirencester, scrawled his signature on the lawyer’s letter and sat back with a sigh of satisfaction. “Thank you, Richard. That has been a thorn in my side.”

“My pleasure.” Richard piled the papers together so that they were ready to pass to his brother’s man of business. “I think that’s all the outstanding matters dealt with. Have you anything else for me?”

Philip struggled with the written word as badly as any untaught rustic, and no amount of beating at Harrow had helped him acquire scholarship. He did not speak of it, but Richard knew it was a constant humiliation to him and a worry too, since a dishonest clerk might do much harm with an illiterate master. So Philip relied on his younger brother for the administration of the vast Vane estates, as he did his wife for personal communication, and Richard was happy to do it. He was the second son, and had become quite unnecessary when the first of Philip’s three boys was born, but as his brother’s aide-de-camp he was vital to the Vane interests, even if hardly anyone knew it.

Philip shook his head. “No, I think that is everything. Well. Not everything. Do you have a moment more?”

The tone of his voice was worrying. “Brother?”

“I, uh.” Philip interlaced his fingers. “Richard, when will you marry?”

“Marry? Good heavens, where is that sprung from?”

The Marquess of Cirencester was head of the sprawling Vane family and took that duty seriously. Richard preferred to count himself Philip’s ally rather than his responsibility, but if his brother chose to interest himself in Richard’s affairs, that was without question his right.

“You will be thirty-eight on your next birthday. It is not an unreasonable question,” Philip said. “I had five children by your age. Yet you remain resolutely single.”

“Some might say you have children enough for us both. Why do you ask?”

“You must know why.”

That was a cold draught down the back of Richard’s neck. He had always been discreet and had had very little to be discreet about recently, but his circle of friends included men who were not so. They had banded together some years ago, their little society of gentlemen with a taste for gentlemen, because the isolation had been intolerable, but he had come to feel that their mutual allegiance was a danger in itself. If one fell, they might all fall.

If the Marquess of Cirencester, high in the instep to a fault, had heard whispers about his brother, the whispers must have been loud indeed. But that was impossible: Cyprian would have warned him.