Just a few hours ago he’d fucked this imperturbable, unreadable man till he begged and babbled. They had kissed and conspired and climaxed together, and just as David had said, nobody in the room would ever know. Richard had to bite back a sudden wild urge to laugh.
They were going to win this, because he had David on his side and that meant he could not lose.
“Good heavens,” Julius was saying. “What on earth happened to him? Footpads?”
“No,” Richard said. “Lord Maltravers attacked him.”
There was a flurry of shock. A man might well throw a boot at an ordinary valet, but this was the great Cyprian.
“He is my valet. I may chastise my own servant,” Maltravers snapped.
“I dare say, my lord,” Philip said. “In my household, chastisement is done with a word of rebuke, not a blow to the face.”
“The doctor suspected a cracked rib from a kick,” Richard went on. “Fortunately, he fled Ashleigh House before Lord Maltravers could continue his assault with a club.”
“It was a stick!” Maltravers protested.
“A stick, then. You don’t deny you used a weapon.” David had suggested that trap; Richard felt a deep satisfaction in springing it.
“Good God, sir,” Lord Alvanley said. “What did the fellow do?”
“I don’t care. He is an artist, and you, Lord Maltravers, are a barbarian,” Julius said. “A Vandal.”
“This is a—a—a misrepresentation!” Maltravers was scarlet now. “The man was insolent and deceitful. I had every right—”
“Cyprian, why don’t you tell us why Lord Maltravers hit you?” Richard asked. David had sown the seed; he should be the one to wield the scythe now.
“Excuse me?” Francis snapped. “Richard, I have been insulted. I will not stand and wait on the chatter of your valet while my name is besmeared by this overstuffed brawn!”
“Kindly do,” Richard said. “You will find it relevant, I promise you.”
“This is not about a damned valet!” Maltravers put in at some volume. “You are attempting to distract attention from a monstrous crime against nature!”
“We will hear the valet,” Philip said. “No, Lord Maltravers, you may not expect to go unchallenged. Richard says this is relevant. If so”—he nodded at David—“proceed.”
David bowed, wincing with the movement. “I applied for a post with Lord Maltravers, my lord. He seemed urgent to employ me. He wrote several letters to demand my presence, and when I arrived, he dismissed his valet for no fault and drew up a contract on the spot, more than doubling the salary he had originally offered me—”
“Be quiet,” several men said over Maltravers’s outraged bellow.
“But this is not what happened!” Maltravers exclaimed.
David’s mouth tightened. “I have the contract his lordship signed and the letters he sent me. The valet can confirm my account, as can his lordship’s man of business. I am not a liar, my lord.”
“These are all easily tested claims,” Richard observed. “Do you deny them?”
“No, of course not, but—he told me to do all that!” Maltravers protested, and there was a roar of scornful laughter from the gentlemen around them. “I mean—”
“Be quiet,” Philip ordered the entire room. “Silence. This is no matter for jesting. You admit the valet tells the truth, Lord Maltravers?”
“The facts are true, but he wished me to employ him!”
“As servants do. I cannot understand your objection. Continue, Cyprian, and you must know that any deviation from the truth will be harshly treated.”
“There is no need to tell me that, Lord Cirencester.” David spoke with perfect, quiet dignity. Philip inclined his head; David went on. “Lord Maltravers began pressing questions on me. He asked me about Lord Gabriel and Mr. Webster, if I had seen signs of—uh—improper affection. I said, again and again, I had not. Then—” He glanced at Richard. “My lord, I don’t wish to say this.”
“Go on,” Alvanley and Philip said together.
“He began to make implications about Lord Richard. Fantasies, my lord, lurid imaginings, leading questions. He wanted me to—to invent a reason why I left his service, which— It was not true. It is not true.” David’s dignified manner was cracking now, showing distress. The crowd was deathly silent. Maltravers’s mouth worked soundlessly.
“I would not say it,” David went on, his voice thin and tense. “I refused. He shouted, he said that was why he had taken me on, and he hit me then, in the face, in the ribs. I was terrified, my lord. He went to get a weapon, uttering threats, and I fled the house. And I returned to beg shelter of Lord Richard because…” The men around him strained forward to hear as his words dropped to a whisper. “Because I was afraid for my life.”