Discreet Young Gentleman (16 page)

"Think about it." Uncle Silas turned back to his cooking. "Eastern exposure. Sun will wake you early."

"I want the haunted room," Rob said with amusement. "Do you really have a ghost?"

"It's an old house. Bound to be at least one. In our case, it's a phantom cat. She prowls all over the west wing, but is mostly seen in the one room. Sits in the window on stormy nights, and if things get really wild, she's said to jump onto the bed and curl up on your stomach for comfort. Her comfort, of course. Doesn't do much for the fella she lands on."

Rob laughed. "I like cats. I wouldn't mind."

"Ha. If you scream, don't expect me to come running. I'll be in the other wing and won't hear a thing."

Dean stood up. "I'll go make up the beds, Uncle Silas. Where?"

"West wing, first floor. Go right at the top of the stairs, it's the two connecting rooms on the north end." He nodded. "Right."

By the time he returned from his chore, Uncle Silas and Rob were laughing over something, Rob's handsome face lit up with merriment.

"Hi, Dean," he gasped. "I was telling your uncle about our fish."

"You can't have caught Old Nick and let him go?" Uncle Silas waved at the platter of ham and eggs on the table, and Dean slid into his chair and helped himself.

"I told you that fish had a name," he said. "We whittled the hook with a sharp rock and baited it with the first worm we found, too."

Uncle Silas shook his head. "I've been tying special flies to tempt that sly bastard for six years. Six years!"

Rob pushed his empty plate away and rose, stretching. "I'm done in. Do you mind if I go on up to bed?"

"Suit yourself," Dean said, through a mouthful of ham. He didn't look at the other man, but was acutely aware of him standing beside his chair, hesitating. "First floor west, weren't you listening? We've got the two rooms on the north end: I'll take the one facing east so the sun will wake me."

"Isn't that the haunted chamber?"

"I'd let you have it, but you wake up too hard."

"Right. I'll...I'll find it. Good night, then." Rob squared his shoulders, looking unaccountably lost.

"Lad?" Uncle Silas called to him before he could reach the door.

"Go that way to the stairs, then like this." He made a motion with his hand: up, right, left. Rob nodded and slipped quickly away.

"He could try to pay attention," Dean said, forking up more eggs. "That man can be very annoying at times." "Seems all right to me."

He concentrated on eating. "It'll be a blessing when this trip is over and done with."

Uncle Silas rose and fetched his tobacco pouch, making a business of filling and lighting his white clay pipe, whimsically molded in the shape of a man's head. "Have you got the Quarterly yet?"

Dean nodded. "Yes, it's with the coach. I haven't had the chance to read much of it, though. So far the big news is that Cousin Joseph's wife Cathy was safely delivered of another son. I'll send it on to you once I'm finished."

"No, now that you're at Carwick, it should go to Phineas next. Be a long while before I get it. Do something for me, will you?" The elderly man drew in a lungful of smoke and let it seep slowly from his nose. "Speaking of marriage, some years back I made Holly an honest woman."

"You did? Congratulations, Uncle." Dean rose and began collecting dirty plates.

"Why didn't you put it in the Quarterly?"

"I'm a damned fool, that's why. And it's been my little joke on the world, to let them think me worse than I am. Now, telling everyone myself would be a bit awkward."

"I suppose." Dean stacked the plates in the sink, fetched some hot water from the hearth. "I'll be happy to get the word out, if you're embarrassed. When were you married?"

"January 9, 1806. The marriage lines are there at St. Nicholas's in the village if anyone doubts it." He waved his pipe in the vague direction of Cherington, bottom lip sticking out belligerently.

Dean grinned. "Your word is proof enough for the family. I'll make sure all the details are in the next Quarterly."

"Thank you, my boy. In return, I'm going to offer you some advice." Uncle Silas drew on his pipe again. "Aberdeen, listen to me. It's the adventures you don't have that you end up regretting."

"Uncle?"

"Take my word on it."

Dean thought for a long moment before answering. Yes, there would always be a sense of something missing, something lost when he remembered Rob. It would be worse, though, to act on the attraction, and start something that could never be fully explored. Wouldn't he regret that much more in the end? "It's not that simple, Uncle Silas." "Sometimes, it is."

Dean finished the dishes and went up to bed.

Chapter Fourteen

Dean tugged at the buttons of his borrowed trousers, frowning down at the nightshirt on his pillow. Where had it come from? Surely Uncle Silas had never left the kitchen since they'd decided which rooms to take. He shrugged. Perhaps Rob had dug the garment up from somewhere. And bless him, he'd started a fire against the damp night, and left a razor and a bowl of water as well.

Dean took his time shaving, examining himself critically in the mirror while he performed the task. Apart from the despised freckles and too-transparent skin beneath them, he supposed he was passable. There was nothing wrong with the shape of his bones, nothing displeasing in the proportion of his features. But could someone like Rob really find him attractive? It was a difficult concept to wrap his mind around. All his life he'd been tormented for his looks, and when even one's mother thinks one is ugly, it's hard to accept that someone else might think differently. He mulled over Uncle Silas's words, and Rob's earlier.

"She had a bee in her bonnet about her looks..."

"The sun rose and set in you..."

"I shared my mother's greatest flaw.. .in the end, it would have brought you closer together."

He shook his head. Even Minerva had never pretended she found him handsome.

But the eyes that stared back at him from the mirror, it turned out, weren't an indistinct color that failed to be clear enough to be called green, yet weren't anything like a deep, rich brown. Hazel, Rob had called them, and admired their gold flecks.

That he could almost grasp. But the hated freckles, kisses from the sun? He tried it out in his mind: sun-kissed. Rob had given him a gift, to be able to see himself from a new angle.

Dean finished shaving, then undressed and slipped the undershirt over his head.

Such bliss, to be clean, dry and in order again. He looked at the connecting door between the bedchambers. Rob had been so thoughtful of him, the least he could do was check to see that his companion was comfortable, in return. Unless he was already asleep? He tiptoed over to the door and cracked it. Rob was curled up on his side, breathing deep and even. A smile twitched the corners of Dean's mouth. Rob was damned good at sleeping. He left the door ajar, obeying some instinct he was too tired to examine. Suppose Rob needed him. That was enough.

"Aaah!" The cry, waking him some time later, was faint, but the hissed words that followed were unmistakable. "Dean! Please!" No doubting, either, the fear distorting Rob's voice. He sounded as if he could barely squeeze sound from a clenched throat.

Dean was out of bed immediately, running before his feet hit the floor. Rain still lashed at the windows, and the fire in Rob's hearth had subsided to a few glowing embers. In their dim light he could see nothing wrong in the chamber, no menacing figure, nothing to incite the panic in Rob's voice. "What is it?"

"C-C-C..." He couldn't get the word out, and Dean approached closer, dropping to his knees beside Rob's bed and grasping the other man by the shoulders. They were bare, and stiff with fright.

"What's wrong? Are you ill? Should I fetch—?"

"Cat!" It was barely a squeak.

Dean stretched out one hand in the darkness, almost immediately poking his fingers into the side of a large furry object, which hissed and swiped a sharp-taloned paw at him. He burst out laughing, raising his scratched hand to his lips. The other, of its own volition, slid around Rob in a reassuring hug. "That's a real cat on your stomach, not a phantom. Damn you, Uncle Silas!"

"Real cat?" Rob leaned against Dean, his naked skin warm and smooth, and stroked a hand tentatively down the animal's back. He laughed, a breathy sound that gathered strength as it went. The cat, black as the pit of Hell, growled at the jostling this merriment produced. "Sorry, puss," Rob gasped, scratching behind one twitching ear. She stopped her feline grumbling, and deigned to resettle herself more comfortably on her abdominal perch. "Oh, my. Your uncle does have a peculiar sense of humor."

"And who's the one that said 'Oh, I like cats. I won't be afraid.'" Dean squeezed Rob's shoulder lightly, his voice teasing.

"I do like cats. And I never said I wouldn't be afraid." Rob snuggled against him, radiating heat in the cool night.

It was difficult to concentrate on the conversation. "Urn. Wasn't it supposed to be my room that's haunted?"

"All over the east wing, your uncle said." Rob's voice was husky with sleep, or something else.

Dean's breath was short in his chest. "West wing."

"Whichever. It was good of you to come to my rescue." Rob reached up a hand and stroked his finger along Dean's cheek. "My hero."

Dean felt his face grow hot at the touch, and the admiration in Rob's tone. If you're all right, I should go. He opened his mouth, but the words refused to be said. What was the harm of it? Just one more moment, here in the dark, with his arm around Rob, the cat's purr a soothing hum in the night. He reached his other hand to pet the smooth fur as well, his fingers brushing Rob's along the animal's back. The additional contact made him tingle, and he knew he'd best leave while he still could. He cleared his throat. Twice. "If.. .if you're all right.

"Stay. Please? Just for a little." Rob removed Dean's hand from the cat, placing it flat against his bare chest. "See? My heart's still galloping like a racehorse."

Dean couldn't breathe, feeling himself harden shamefully beneath his nightshirt at the simple touch. Nightshirt. Rob wasn't wearing one, was he? If his torso was bare, it followed that the rest of him was too, nude beneath cat, blanket and sheet. The thought broke him into a cold sweat. "Rob. I should go."

But he didn't want to go, and Rob didn't want him to. "Wait, please. Tell me just one thing." He turned and slid his arms around Dean, pulling him closer. Rob's heart was thumping wildly beneath Dean's palm, and his own thrashed against his ribs like a trout on a line. "Was that you, playing the piano at the Rose and Thistle while I was..

.last night?"

He licked his dry lips. "Yes."

"I thought maybe..." A hand slipped up the back of his neck, warm fingers cradled the back of his skull. "Dean. Were you playing for me?"

Dean nodded, wordlessly. And then Rob's mouth found his in the darkness, found and clung and opened in a hard, wet kiss.

Dean shuddered. The whores of his schooldays had never kissed him like this, at best they'd bestowed a few perfunctory caresses before getting down to work. Nothing like this urgent meeting of lip and tongue and even teeth, as Rob nibbled and sucked at his mouth like a starving gourmand at a feast. But unlike the trulls of his youth, Rob wanted him. Somehow, Rob wanted him.

But did he? Rob was a whore, too.

Dean pushed the thought away, but it nagged at him like a fishwife.

Rob was just better at it, wasn't he? More convincing. As if anyone could want him.

But the stable boy with the freckles. Surely that meant...

He shook himself. Now he was just being stupid. Rob had made it up. That was what he did.

Now unaccountably sure of it, Dean broke the kiss with a cry, rearing back so quickly he crashed onto his backside on the bedside rug.

"What? What is it?" The cat gave a mew of complaint as Rob threw the covers back and slid onto the floor next to him. Dean's eyes were fully adjusted now, and he raked them once over the other man's naked body before forcing himself to look away.

Rob's body. Rob's wares.

"This is what you do." Dean's words were low, and harsh. "This is your secret, isn't it? Why they come back to you. It's not so much the sex, or the way you look—it's this, isn't it? You make them feel wanted. Attractive."

"Not with you." Rob's hands reached for him, and he flinched backwards, scuttling on the floor like a crab.

"But that's why they come back to you," Dean repeated. "Isn't it? It's what you do.

Admit it."

Dark eyes flashed in the faint light of the dying fire. "Yes. It's what I do," he said flatly. "But not with you. How can you think that?"

Dean was already on his feet, halfway to the connecting door between their rooms.

"You lying whore."

"Dean!" For the first time since they'd met, Rob sounded really, truly, unmistakably furious. "Dean, listen!" Dean slammed the door on the words.

The breakfast table was bound to be rather awkward. But Rob didn't come down to eat, leaving Dean to grunt the occasional response to Uncle Silas's attempts at conversation. "Not with you," Rob had said. "How can you think that?" Because you're a liar, Rob. A liar and a whore, and captivating someone of Dean's position could only be lucrative in the end, despite Carwick's current financial straits.

Looking back, it was so easy to trace the lies, the careful web of enticement. I don't walk the streets, Rob had claimed from the start. Just a handful of loyal patrons, carefully fewer than the number of sexual partners Dean had admitted to first. Then how had he ended up before Magistrate Lewis in the first place? Appointments made clandestinely through referral or coded newspaper advertisements are not subject to the scrutiny of the law. And for someone who'd never traded his wares thus in the past, he'd certainly known what to do that night in the Rose and Thistle after they'd been robbed.

The history Rob had provided himself was equally suspect. Barely a dozen clients, conveniently of an age not to be too demanding. The sly suggestion of a good family background, in case Dean were snobbish enough to disdain touching a child of the streets, as Rob was far more likely to be in reality. How could he have accepted so easily that someone of good family could end up a common whore? And then there was the pretense, less and less convincing as time went on, that Rob had some mental deficiency that kept him from honest employment.