A Wager of Love: M/M Historical Romance (4 page)

“There are two left, sir,” Judith told him, her own hand at last filled with a pasty that she had not yet begun to eat.

“That’s good,” Gilbert said, “since I believe I brought thirty.” He smiled kindly at Judith. “Distribute them as you see fit, Judith. I trust your honesty and good sense.”

“Thank you, sir.”

“I get much of my own staff from the workhouse,” Gilbert said, still seated on the floor and dandling a baby gently in his lap since the child had climbed there. “The pasties were baked by a young woman who grew up in this very house, but I only have space and funds for so many servants, and there are so very many hungry children in the world.”

“I had not thought you such a charitable person,” Laurie admitted.

“Cynics and skeptics are not made because we are callous,” Gilbert told him, gently setting the child aside and getting to his feet. “Cynics are bitter because they have seen the cruelty of the world, and they know that no effort of theirs can ever make any lasting difference to ameliorate that cruelty. Optimists are ignorant or blinded to the truth of the world.”

“But you must indeed have love in your heart,” Laurie insisted. “For you do truly show it toward these children, more than most ever would.”

Gilbert patted Judith’s hair one last time as he went past, leading Laurie back down the steps and through the crowd of wide-eyed children. He paused along the way several times as the children sought his attention or spoke to him of some small matter, but most of them stayed silent, shoulders slightly hunched like animals who lived in constant fear of a beating.

Only once they were once again in the carriage did Gilbert answer. “I don’t believe that’s love, Laurie. I show pity and sympathy to them. Nothing more. If I did indeed love them, my heart would break a hundred times over every year.”

“They knew you. And Mrs. Bertram respected you.”

“She must,” Gilbert said, looking off out the window and keeping his face cold and closed. “I inherited my place on the board from my father. I do not think Mrs. Bertram much likes my habit of arriving unannounced, but she does understand that she might be replaced upon my slightest whim, and the health and cleanliness of the children has improved considerably since I took up the habit of making unpredictable visits to her house.”

“I don’t believe I’m convinced at all of your argument,” Laurie said to him, though this got no reaction. “It seems to me that there may indeed be more love in your heart than in any man I’ve ever met.”

“My dear Laurie,” Gilbert said, his tone unusually icy. “I am very fond of you, but I do believe that you are an
utter
fool.”

T
hey returned afterward
to Gilbert’s home, making their way upstairs to the library in order to continue their conversation. Like the rest of the house, the library was too large for Gilbert alone. He seemed dwarfed in the grand, opulent room. It had two storeys worth of shelves filled entirely, with tall tinted glass windows lining one wall and a twisting iron stair to the balcony level.

“Do you live here quite alone, Gilbert?” Laurie asked, trailing his fingertips along the spines of a shelf of books while Gilbert laid out a chess set.

“Yes,” Gilbert answered. “I have my servants, of course, so the house is not entirely abandoned, but as I have mentioned, my family consists merely of my aunt Agatha, her husband, and my cousin Ralph. Aunt Agatha in particular makes great effort to invite me to social events so that I might not fall entirely to depravity and despair.”

Laurie laughed at Gilbert’s blithe attitude toward depravity and despair, and came over to take his seat at the game table. “Are you so inclined to fall?”

“I am,” Gilbert said, with a reckless grin. “
Farewel happy Fields
,” he said, voice rumbling low with theatrical recitation. “
Where Joy for ever dwells: Hail horrours, hail Infernal world, and thou profoundest Hell receive thy new Possessor: One who brings a mind not to be chang'd by Place or Time. The mind is its own place, and in it self can make a Heav'n of Hell, a Hell of Heav'n. What matter where, if I be still the same, and what I should be, all but less then he whom Thunder hath made greater? Here at least we shall be free; … Better to reign in Hell, then serve in Heav’n.
”

Gilbert’s dark eyes sparkled with intensity and passion as he spoke, giving himself over entirely to the recitation and the character of Lucifer.

“
Paradise Lost
,” Laurie said, dropping his gaze to the chess board before him. He felt his cheeks heat and a tightness form within his chest and throat. It was no doubt the influence of Gilbert’s passionate nature, which would do honour to any London stage, and could, Laurie thought, inspire emotion within the very stones. Laurie made his first move upon the board so that he had something to focus on other than the way the thunder in Gilbert’s voice still lingered in his ears. “I don’t believe that Milton intended for his readers to identify with Lucifer but rather to take his example as a lesson.”

“That was Milton’s folly, then,” Gilbert said, moving a pawn to the centre of the board, “for indeed I find that Lucifer is the only character in
Paradise Lost
worth sympathy, and I think that there are few nobler sentiments in the world than the preference for freedom, however wretched, over comfort in slavery.”

“And you should choose hell for it?”

“Indeed I should hope for it,” Gilbert replied. His earnestness disconcerted Laurie’s loyal Anglican heart.. “If Dante has the right of it, I should prefer eternity in the company of the poets and philosophers in the first circle of hell, or, if I am justly condemned to the second circle of lust, I shall gladly accept my fate amongst those who were driven to folly by their passions. I do not think I risk lower circles, being disinclined to any sins greater than lust.”

Laurie had never encountered such a sentiment before, and found himself entirely speechless at the prospect. He thought upon it as they played, himself concluding that he preferred indeed to seek the love and forgiveness of Christ and hope for such eternal reward.

“You have never loved?” Laurie asked at last, finding that he had to clear his throat midway through the question. “But you have felt lust?”

Gilbert looked up from the board, gray eyes lingering thoughtfully upon Laurie’s expression before he nodded once in confirmation. “I have. Though I have never acted upon my lusts, within my heart I have sinned often and gladly, and I will not repent my sins.”

Blinking in surprise at such
pride
in wickedness, Laurie stared at him open-mouthed. He had heard many times at the pulpit of such sinful creatures who gloried in their wickedness and sin, but he had never truly encountered one who took such conscious philosophical pride in deviltry.

It did certainly seem that if the devil were ever to create a man in the very form and function of temptation, it would be a man such as Gilbert, with his noble stature and satyr’s smile, his red lips full of mirth and sin and his sparkling eyes with their wit and temptation.

“I marvel,” Laurie said at last, “that you claim you have never indeed acted upon your lusts, for to be sure you have such a figure and visage as Lucifer himself might have crafted to lead men and women astray, and if, as you say, the devil is indeed your master, then you do him wrong by neglecting your duty.”

Gilbert’s mouth fell open in stunned surprise, and he could do nothing but stare at Laurie until he began to laugh, and nearly toppled out of his chair from it as he laughed until he was gasping for breath. Watching him in puzzlement, Laurie’s lips twitched, and he began to laugh at Gilbert’s laughter, the two of them giggling helplessly until they agreed to postpone the game and went down instead to luncheon.

“
W
hat is it
,” Gilbert asked, as they lingered over dessert and coffee, “that brings you to London, Laurie?”

“The need to be somewhere other than Somersetshire,” Laurie answered him, leaning lazily back in his chair and hooking his legs over one of the arms in one of the rakish bad habits that he had begun to fall into whenever he was alone with the perpetually irreverent Gilbert.

“Ah, I see,” Gilbert said, playing at grave seriousness. “You were run out?”

Laurie began laughing. “I was not run out! My parents are in Somersetshire, and I am indeed very fond of them, and of our home. Rather too fond, I fear, for it made me idle and content. The manor takes little in the way of oversight and my parents have it well in hand, so I am not needed to run the place. And as much as I enjoy the idle habits of being a gentleman scholar, I do not wish to remain one in perpetuity.”

“And so to London,” Gilbert said, lifting his brows. “In search of what?”

“A wife, perhaps.”

Gilbert choked on his coffee, and coughed in between laughter. “Of course. That explains why you’ve taken such pains to avoid any candidates.”

Flushing indignantly, Laurie scowled at him and fidgeted, but could not deny the statement. “It wasn’t
just
for a wife. A purpose; an employment; … I don’t know. Most often I found myself in clubs or cafes where I might find a drink and a spate of conversation. I’ve needed for neither since I met you, and here I am.”

Gilbert patted with his napkin at a drop of coffee which had fallen onto his fine plum jacket. “Have you tried your hand at traveling?”

“Yes, but it is lonelier still than London. Here, at least, I have my sister Elizabeth, who is more sociable than I and assures that I receive invitations to at least some of the society parties—poor company though I am, the hostesses of the Ton continue to have me on account of my being eligible and unmarried.”

“Ah, yes. I am similarly afflicted.”

“Why don’t you marry?” Laurie asked, sitting forward again.

Gilbert rather promptly turned his attention to his pudding, and Laurie thought he saw the hint of a blush on his friend’s cheeks.

“I would think it dishonest,” Gilbert said, “to marry where I did not love. And if there is no such thing love, I will never marry.”

“What, then, are marriages made of?”

“Convenience,” Gilbert proclaimed. “Or inconvenience, if the deed is already done.”

Laurie blushed and shot him a reprimanding glare for the coarse joke. “But if you
might
love, then you cannot find it if you do not try your hand at courting, and you cannot court if you keep on avoiding society and stealing gentlemen guests off to the library for philosophy.”

“I agree entirely,” Gilbert said, “but whenever I try my hand at courting a lady, I find no stirring of sentiment in my heart, and soon I find that either I have given offence by my evident disinterest, or that I must give worse offence because she has taken an interest while I have not, and the overall process is deeply discouraging on all counts. I wish to be in love, Laurie, but I do not believe that I can, or that the sentiments expressed in love poems are at all true reflections of human passion, and I am thoroughly weary of trying.”

“I will win this wager,” Laurie promised him, determined to rise to the challenge. “I swear I will not rest until I see you sick with love. Once I have proved it, we will find love for you. Or the other way around: easier to prove love once you are already sick with it.”

Lifting his gaze once more to Laurie’s, Gilbert grinned. “You sound quite determined.”

“I am. We are, after all, friends, and it is the duty of a friend to meddle affectionately in one’s romantic affairs.”

“Is it?”

“You yourself have said it.”

“Then it must be so. I surrender myself to your efforts.”

“Excellent.” Putting on a business face, Laurie took out his day-journal from his jacket pocket and opened it, preparing to take notes. “Have you any preference or requirement for your potential paramours?”

Grin widening at the game, Gilbert poured himself a second cup of coffee and made a show of thinking the question over as he added milk and sugar. “Handsome, I suppose, though love may indeed find beauty in any gargoyle’s face. Well-off, for I would prefer to marry an equal and have no concerns as to which of us might be financially dependent upon the other. Clever, for a certainty. Educated, as a requirement, for they must indeed be willing to put up with my Latin and Greek, and I’d prefer them to be able to converse as well in French and Italian.”

“Do you indeed converse in French and Italian?” Laurie asked, not actually writing any of this down.

“I do. Why, do you not?”

“I have poor French and worse German. My Italian might be sufficient to order breakfast.”

“Oh, do.” Gilbert said at once, his angel’s face grinning as impishly as ever.

“What?”

“Order breakfast.”

Laurie’s shoulders sank with dread and he grimaced. “Oh, no.”

“I promise that the next breakfast I serve you shall be provided to your order, and if you will not order it, in Italian, I will have to serve you dry bread and water.”

Scowling, Laurie peered at him in order to determine whether or not he would make good on such a threat.

Gilbert smiled back at him, both cherubic and mischievous.

Laurie took a deep breath and tried to sort out his limited knowledge of Italian. “Scuzi,” he said, “ethelo una cornetti y una caffe. Prego.”

Gilbert burst out laughing.

“
Gilbert
,” Laurie complained, blushing deeply in response to the mockery.

“That was entirely endearing. Especially the use of the Greek verb.”

“What?” Laurie groaned, which only renewed Gilbert’s laughter. Slumping in his chair, Laurie draped his napkin over his face to hide his shame.

“One day, I will take you to Italy,” Gilbert promised, his voice warm and fond even as he teased. “And in the meantime, I think we’d better do something about your Italian.”

“I don’t
need
Italian,” Laurie said, but he did at least take the napkin off his face.

“Of course you do. How else will you read Dante?”

“Ah, yes. I see the problem. I propose that I resolve it by
not
reading Dante.”