Kindred Hearts (20 page)

“I am quite warm enough,” Tristan choked out.

The fingers stroked the skin of his forearm again. “Aye, sir,” the man murmured. “I can feel it. So warm. A fire in you. Like to ’eat myself at that fire, I would.”

“How would you do that?” Tristan whispered unwillingly, his voice hoarse.

“Well, that’s a question, innit?” A flash of teeth in the shadows and a low rumble of laughter. Tristan shuddered as the blood left his head to pool somewhere south. He shifted awkwardly.

The man noticed and his grin widened. “Like me to tell you, would you, then?”

Tristan swallowed, then whispered, “Yes….”

“First thing I’d do, is I’d climb up into that ’ack with you,” the man said, lowering his voice so that the jarvey couldn’t hear and stepping close to Tristan’s fingers. Tris could feel his breath through the kid; it curled in gilded mist in the dim flickering light. “I’d open up that lovely greatcoat of yours and snuggle in close. When me fingers was warm enough, I’d start on the buttons of your trousers—so many buttons, might take me a long time. Then I’d put my ’ands in there, under the buttons. Nice warm ’ands, nice warm fingers. But you—ah, you’d be ’ot, then, wouldn’tcha? Thick, ’ard, ’ot. But my mouf? It’s ’otter, I swan.” He met Tristan’s dazed eyes and licked his lips. They shone wet. “I’d show you,” the man went on. “Put my mouf on that ’ot prick of yours, take you down while my nice warm fingers was warmin’ up your stones.”

Tristan had thought it was freezing outside, but in the hack it was anything but cold. Sweat beaded on Tristan’s forehead, and he fumbled with his free hand at his cravat to loosen it. His trousers were suddenly too tight, his legs trembling, his breath sharp and quick.

The demon at the door smiled wickedly and kept talking, telling Tristan all the evil, delicious things he would do. Although he touched nothing but the back of Tristan’s wrist, it was as if he were in the carriage, running his hands over Tristan’s body, touching him intimately. Tristan closed his eyes.

That was worse. With his eyes closed, he imagined that Charles was there, sitting beside him, doing all the things that wicked Cockney voice was saying.

“And then when we was both all toasty, then I’d do me own buttons,” the wicked voice said, soft and irresistible. “Slide me trousers down to me knees and lean over that facin’ seat, and guide that ’ot prick right in. You’d like that, wouldn’tcha, guv? I’m tighter than any woman. ’Otter, too. And stronger—you can fuck me just as ’ard as you like, and never worry. I likes a good ’ard fuck, I do.”

Tristan’s arse tightened at his words, and a fresh rush of arousal flushed his cheeks and neck. He didn’t want to fuck this stranger. He didn’t want to fuck anyone. He wanted—oh,
God
, what he wanted… Charles. “No,” he said involuntarily, and the stranger grinned again.

“Oh, so’s like that, then?” he said in that wicked, husky-smooth voice.

“No!” Tristan jerked his hand away from the window. He fumbled in his greatcoat pocket and pulled out a crown, thrusting it at the man outside. “For your time,” he gasped, then he pounded on the roof of the hack with his cane. “Drive on!” he shouted, flinging himself back against the battered squabs. He was panting wildly, as if he’d been running. Behind him he heard the man laughing as the hack trundled away.

The roof trap flipped open. “Where to, guv’nor?” the jarvey asked.

“Hyde Park,” Tristan said, giving him the first destination his tumbled thoughts came up with.

“Aye, sir,” the jarvey said, and flipped the trap door closed, leaving Tristan alone. He curled up over his aching cock, half-terrified, half-mad with lust, not for the stranger that had just been speaking to him, but for the man he knew he couldn’t have. “God,” he whispered, and the stranger’s last words came back to him: “
Oh, so’s like that, then….
”

Yes. Exactly like that. Charles’s hands, Charles’s mouth, Charles’s prick, Charles holding him down on the opposite seat, his own trousers down around his knees, Charles holding him, thrusting into him, Charles’s weight on him, holding him down.

Involuntarily his hand closed over his trousers, over the hard, aching ridge of his erection; closed, squeezed, his movements frantic, blind and desperate. He jerked back against the filthy cushions, crying out as he spent, still buttoned up. “Charles,” he wept. “Charles.”

By the time the hack had rattled through the dark streets to Hyde Park, Tristan was mopping the tears from his face with his woolen scarf and struggling to put his mind equally at rights. Finally, he rapped again at the roof and asked to be set down at Piccadilly and Park Lane. The jarvey obliged and Tristan paid his shot, careful to keep the scarf around his face so that the jarvey wouldn’t be able to identify him later.

Shame. It wasn’t a feeling he was used to. All the mischief he’d got up to before and since his marriage had been marked by anger or boredom, not shame, and this time he hadn’t even
done
anything—nothing except spend, and God knew he’d done plenty of that in the past, and at least this time he’d been alone and how bad was that, coming like a schoolboy in his first pair of long trousers?—and he’d never felt shame like this, for what had just happened. Because in the end, it was Charles, and he didn’t deserve this, didn’t deserve to be thought of in the same sentence as that, that whore who’d just been speaking to him, but God was he any better, thinking of Charles taking him that way, just the way that man had described. Was he any better?

He walked down Park Lane past his turning and kept going, walking several blocks out of his way before finally finding his way back to his own door. He stared up at it. There was a light in the library, Charles no doubt still sitting over his books, and he felt a deep, heartbreaking longing to go to him, to sit at his feet and let him pat his hair and then take him up, and kiss him, and love him.

Who was he fooling? Charles would
flatten
him if he had any inkling of the tenor of Tristan’s thoughts.

He went up the steps and the footman opened the door. Tris nodded at his “Good evening, sir,” and went straight up the stairs without even looking at the closed library door.

Charles
glanced up from his book at the sound of the footman’s voice and the subsequent closing of the front door. He waited a moment, expecting Tris to come into the library, but heard instead his footsteps on the stairs. He frowned, rose, and went to the library door. “George?” he said.

The footman glanced over at Charles. “Sir?”

“Was that Mr. Northwood?”

“Yes, sir.”

“Was he all right, George?”

“Well, sir.” George looked uncomfortable. “No, sir, not really. Looked like he’d had a shock. Pasty, like.”

“Yes. Thank you.” Charles nodded and closed the door again, leaning back against it and thinking. What had happened? Tristan usually at least glanced in if Charles was still up, and it was barely past midnight, hardly late by Tristan’s standards. He was torn between wanting to see what was wrong and wanting to abide by Tristan’s apparent wish to be alone—his concern battled with his courtesy.

Courtesy won out, keeping him in the library for another half hour, but he found it impossible to concentrate on his studies and closed up shop before the clock struck the half-hour. When he stopped at Tristan’s door, he heard nothing, but there were voices in the little sitting room at the end of the hall. He scratched gently on the door.

“Come in,” Charlotte’s voice called.

He obeyed. His sister and Ellen were playing cards. “You’re up late,” he observed.

“I wanted to get Tristan’s opinion on the dinner we’re hosting Tuesday next,” Charlotte said absently, discarding.

“Didn’t you hear him come up?” Charles asked curiously.

“Oh, yes, twenty minutes ago or so,” Lottie said. She waited until Ellen had drawn a new card, then said, “He wasn’t feeling well so he went to bed early.”

“I don’t think he’s at all well, Lottie.”

“No, I don’t think so either.” She studied her cards, then drew another. “Do you think he should see a physician? Other than you, I mean?”

Her casual dismissal of Tristan’s condition irked Charles. “Don’t you even care that your husband is ill, Charlotte?”

She glanced up in surprise. “Oh, I have angered you!” she said, startled.

“Yes, you have,” he retorted. “This is your husband we’re talking about! Don’t you care that he is unwell?”

“Well, of course,” she said. “But it’s rather late to be calling a physician, isn’t it? And I’m not at all sure he’s
physically
unwell, anyway, Charlie. It’s probably just another one of his headaches.”

“Now, Lottie, you know we discussed that perhaps his headaches have a physical cause,” Ellen said anxiously. “Charles is right to be concerned.”

“Well, it’s quite half-past twelve, if not later. I hardly think we should be sending George or whatever-his-name-is out for a physician at this hour. Perhaps your friend MacQuarrie would be willing to examine Tris in the morning. Assuming he permits it, which knowing Tris, I doubt.”

“I sometimes wonder how you can be my sister,” Charles said sharply.

She quirked an eyebrow. “You got all the sensibility, Charlie. You know that. Mama always said so.” She laid down her cards and hoisted herself to her feet to give him a hug. “Darling Charlie, of course I care about Tristan. He’s my husband, and my very good friend. I just don’t
worry
about him the way you do. I don’t see the point. He’s been suffering from some malaise or other the past six-month, but it never seems to be
serious
.” She studied Charles’s eyes frankly. “I think he’s just unhappy, Charlie. When he’s happy again, he’ll be fine. And I can’t help him with that.”

“You won’t even try,” Charles said bitterly.

“Charlie, Tris doesn’t want me to….”

“Of course he does. Did you ever think that if you had paid the least bit of attention to Tris, that he wouldn’t be this unhappy? Did you ever consider
his
feelings instead of your own?”

“Charles, that’s not fair.” Ellen began.

“No, Ellen,” Charlotte said calmly, “Charlie is right. I don’t pay Tris enough attention. But he doesn’t pay me any attention, either. He and I have little in common at the best of times, but we have worked out a comfortable compromise, I believe. At least, it always worked before. If I knew what it was that happened six months ago, I would be happy to help Tris resolve it. But he won’t talk to me about that. And I have asked him. He said it was nothing.” She tilted her head and gave Charles that birdlike look. “I hoped he would talk to you about it, but apparently he doesn’t feel comfortable enough with you to do so.”

That hurt. It was true, but it hurt. “I have tried to be a good friend to Tristan, Charlotte,” Charles said stiffly.

“I am not saying anything other,” Charlotte replied. “I know you have. But it’s rather up to Tristan, isn’t it?” She patted his chest gently. “Go to bed, Charlie. Go riding with Tristan in the morning and see if you can get him to talk to you. Then you’ll both feel better.”

Charles closed his eyes, letting his head sag. Then he sighed. “What am I to do, Lottie?”