“That can hardly be the case since he no longer works for me.”
“True, except in the small detail that he is working round the clock for you now.”
“That’s different.”
“People always say that, you know,” Julius observed. “And yet, somehow, it never is. Here we are.”
They walked together up to the door of Quex’s. It was held open by a liveried footman, who gave a deep bow. “Begging your pardon, Lord Richard, but Mr. Shakespeare requests a moment of your time.”
Richard exchanged a glance with Julius and nodded. By the time the footman had relieved them of coats, canes, and hats, Shakespeare was in the hall.
The majordomo of Quex’s was a serious-looking man, well built, with the air of quiet dignity that marked the best servants; if he had not been the darkest-skinned black man Richard had ever met, he could have been a butler in an excellent house by now. Then again, according to David, Shakespeare and his partner Quex thrived on the house they ran for Richard’s benefit. It was a club, the deepest of gambling hells for men who chose to play as Francis did, and a place the Ricardians’ secrets could be kept. Richard had indicated what he wanted; David had found Quex and Shakespeare to create it. Yet another of those tasks beneath Richard’s dignity.
He pushed that thought away. “Shakespeare.”
“My lord. May I ask you to accompany me to the private rooms?”
Shakespeare led the way. He gave a single rap on the door and pushed it open.
A man was sitting by the fire. He looked around as they came in, and Richard felt a sudden lurch of eerie, unsettled half familiarity, as though he had lived through this before. In fact, he had. Six months ago, he had walked into this room to find Dominic sitting in that chair with the first stages of a spectacular black eye. Now the bruised man in the chair was David.
The memory came and went in half a second, and then Richard was over by the fire. He would have dropped to his knees by the chair, but David rose too quickly.
“What the devil happened?” Richard demanded instead, and heard his voice ring off the walls.
David put a hand up to his own face without touching it. His skin was paler than usual and marred by an ugly red mark and a nasty split over the cheekbone. “Lord Maltravers hit me.”
Richard wasn’t sure what he said to that. He felt nothing but the urgent need to get Maltravers’s throat in his hands, followed, some uncertain time later, by the awareness that Julius and Shakespeare were both hanging on to his arms.
“My lord!” David had darted around and was in front of Richard, hands out. “It doesn’t matter.”
“Yes, it does!” Richard wrenched his arm out of Julius’s hold, since Shakespeare was not to be dislodged. “God rot it, David, I did not ask you to endure this indignity! What the devil—”
“Let him tell us,” Julius suggested. “Cyprian, I have spent years being offensive to Lord Maltravers without effect. I should dearly love to provoke him to strike me. Do share your methods.”
“It’s easy, Mr. Norreys,” David said. “Just be unable to hit back.”
There was a very slight shake to his voice. Richard wanted more than anything to hold him, to wrap his slim frame in warmth and tell him Lord Maltravers would not touch him again. He clenched his fists.
“Yes, I see.” Julius sounded rather detached, in the way he did when he was very angry. “Of course it is. I beg your pardon.”
Richard extended a hand toward David’s darkening skin and pulled it back before he could touch. “Has someone cleaned that?”
“Will did. He’s very handy.”
“Are you all right?”
“Yes, truly. It wasn’t—pleasant but no harm done.” David put his hand to his face and winced. His slim, work-hardened fingers were trembling.
He was a valet, not a ruffian or a gentleman with the leisure to spar at Cribb’s or fence at Angelo’s, and the anger fizzed in Richard’s blood. “This is a damned outrage. What the devil was he about?”
David gave a rueful smile. “I provoked him.”
“That is not an excuse—” Richard began, and then saw the look in David’s eyes. “Do you mean on purpose? You wanted him to hit you?”
“I underestimated how hard he’d do it. My mistake. It may be to the good anyway.”
“I want to know what you’ve been up to,” Richard said firmly. “In detail.”
“I’ll tell you when Mr. Frey and Lord Gabriel arrive. It’s a long story.”
Dominic and Ash came in a few minutes later. They took their seats with startled glances at David’s appearance. Richard stood by the fire watching. He could almost see the patches on the rug where they had fucked that night, where David had claimed him and marked the room forever. He couldn’t believe the others didn’t know it simply by being there.