A Seditious Affair(99)

“Julius sends his regards,” Lord Richard added. “He asked me to convey that he’d like to steal you from my service and offered a fabulous sum.”

“It’s very kind of him, my lord,” David murmured, bringing the coat over Lord Richard’s hands. Such big, powerful hands, beautifully kept because David kept them, every nail polished and perfectly shaped.

“It’s damned impertinence,” Lord Richard said as David took the coat to hang up. “I asked him, if I were married, would you have me convey your messages to my wife?”

David shut his eyes. He didn’t need to see to go about his work, in any case; he could care for Lord Richard’s clothes in the dark, and identify each coat by touch. He smoothed out the heavy cloth carefully, lovingly, taking his time.

“More to the point,” Lord Richard added, “I met Peter Ruthven and he says that dashed awkward business of his is resolved. Thank you. I trust it wasn’t too inconvenient?”

“No trouble at all, my lord.” Mr. Ruthven, a lawyer and one of the Ricardians, had been careless in his cups and revealed a client’s secrets to a Grub Street scandalmonger. David had tracked down the fellow and persuaded him that it would be in his interest to forget what he’d heard. “Mason was very helpful,” he added. “He knows Grub Street well.”

“He’s earning his keep, certainly.” Lord Richard pulled at his cravat. David came closer, putting up his hands for the cloth, and Lord Richard dropped his own hands to give him access. Such a big man, so strong, yet he stood there passively while David worked over his body. He gently loosened the complex folds, painfully aware how close his fingers were to the skin of Lord Richard’s throat.

“And I’m very glad you could help Peter,” Lord Richard went on, “although he seems to be convinced it was all my doing. You are giving me an undeserved reputation for omnipotence.”

They’d discussed this before. “Take the credit, my lord. It’s easier for me to work if gentlemen don’t notice me. And I do it all on your orders, so…” He carefully pulled the length of cloth from around Lord Richard’s neck.

“Indeed. The things I ask you to do, or that you know I wish you to do, or that you do without telling me because you know very well I should refuse.” He gave David a pointed look. David adopted an expression of such exceptional blankness that Lord Richard laughed aloud.

He had not been happy at David’s solution to Mr. Frey’s problem. He would have far preferred to see Silas packed off to the Americas than take the radical into his household. But it had undeniably saved Silas’s skin and repaired Lord Richard’s friendship with Mr. Frey, and after a somewhat stormy few days, Lord Richard had accepted the wisdom of his course.

A course that put Silas Mason in front of Lord Richard’s face every day as a reminder that the lost love of his life had found happiness elsewhere and that it was time for Lord Richard to do the same.

It seemed their thoughts were running along similar lines, because Lord Richard said, “Dominic was there tonight.”

“Well, I hope?”

“Very well. I have not seen him so content in a long time. I wish to God I could understand why.” Lord Richard sighed. “Not that it matters. I am not required to understand, merely to accept.”

“I like Mason, my lord. He’s an interesting man.”

“So I’m told.” Lord Richard tugged off his signet ring and handed it over. “I trust he’s not trying to convert you to radical causes?”

“I’m not political. Which I think he finds rather trying,” David added demurely.

“God bless you, Cyprian. Oh well, he makes Dominic happy. For now, at least.” David shot him a questioning look at that. Lord Richard turned up his hands in answer. “It can hardly last, can it? Dominic is a gentleman of good family, and Mason is the sweepings of the street. I cannot think it possible. In the end the divide is surely too great.”

David stared down at the box where Lord Richard’s golden fobs and rings glinted at him, a fortune in trinkets casually bought and rarely used. His extremely generous annual salary would have purchased three or four of the smaller items. “There is a divide, my lord. But I think Mr. Frey knows what is right for himself.”

“I would like to believe that. I wish I could.”

“Well, but why not? Mr. Frey is happy and safe. Mason is doing useful work rather than fomenting sedition. The Vane libraries are in good hands. Surely all that counts for more than concerns of place.”

“Ah, you are a Benthamite.” Lord Richard smiled at him in the mirror; not his society smile but that rare, sweet, open look that stopped David’s breath every time. “The greatest happiness of the greatest number.”