Chapter Thirteen
LANDO’S HEART SUSTAINED a wild and erratic beating long after his guests had departed. Trepidation and excitement were replaced by a surge of strength now vying with nervous exhaustion. A strained drumming pounded at his temples; he felt as if he wanted to both run around and crash into a dreamless sleep. And yet, he’d never felt more revitalised. The naked audacity! The cheek, the sheer nerve, the gall! The gumption! He blew out a long breath as if blowing away all the tension that, up until now, had held his spine rigid and his mind so focussed.
Tommy Squire had played his part well—too well if Angel’s smouldering possessive silence was any marker. Cobham and Sir Richard, too, though unwittingly, of course. Embroiling his upstanding cousin, Sir Richard, in his scheming gave Lando a pang of guilt, but already his nimble mind had an idea forming as to how he would make it up to him after this thing had been put to bed. Though of a reticent disposition, Richard’s shrewdness was known and celebrated throughout the ton . Less well known was that an unpleasant young oik by the name of Ambrose Gartside had bullied him mercilessly at Eton, accounting for his crippling stutter and lifelong inability to communicate with the fairer sex. Returning to his comfortable bachelor lodgings at the Albany, Lando knew he’d mull the scheme well into the dawn. If he couldn’t discern cracks in it, then there weren’t any to be found.
In his turn, Gartside had watched Sir Richard like prey, his dull eyes flitting between Cobham and Lando’s clever cousin. He’d hung on their every question, and there had been so many of them, one after another, like keen archers firing arrow after arrow at Lando’s armour. Only his wealth, status, and unimpeachable pedigree blinded them to his scheming and the sham it was.
Dear Charles would have been so very proud of him.
Leaning against the drawing room escritoire, Lando rubbed at his weary eyes, still restless but fit for nothing more than his bed.
When he opened them again, Angel stood before him, an amused smile playing at his lips.
“I don’t know whether to be awestruck or terrified, my lord,” he murmured. “But I sincerely hope Lord Cobham didn’t drink your port supplies totally dry. I’m in dire need of some to quell my nerves.”
Lando huffed a laugh. “Help yourself.”
Angel divested himself of his coat, and Lando watched while the other man unstopped the decanter and poured two generous inches. The satin of his tight-fitting waistcoat moved with him, closely enough to show the contours of his broad back. White linen billowed from his shoulders, and a few locks of his spirally dark curls had escaped the ribbon. His breeches fit snugly across his thighs.
Lando’s thirsty eyes drank him in.
“This land,” said Angel when he returned to where Lando hadn’t budged from the desk. “It doesn’t exist, does it?” He swirled the tawny liquid around his glass before taking a swallow. “I have to confess, my lord. I haven’t quite grasped what you’re up to.”
“You hid it well.” A smile pulled at Lando’s lips. “And on the contrary, the land does exist. Though I have no intention of constructing mills on it. Rather, I’m of a mind to build myself a hunting lodge. It isn’t quite as close to the mill as I led you all to believe. There is a thick copse protecting it from busybodies in every direction, and the views over the moors at sunrise are truly breathtaking.”
Angel’s hazel eyes crinkled at the corners. “Does His Majesty’s most senior Custodian of the River, the North, and the Holy Grail approve of this wholesome plan?”
Lando chuckled softly and, unable to hold back any longer, stroked the tips of his fingers along Angel’s pristine white sleeve. Plucking the fine linen between a finger and thumb, he tugged him a little closer.
“I might have to offer him a lure.” Lando gave a peculiar smile. “One should never underestimate the power of simple enticements. Especially if they hint at the possibility of great fortune.”
Angel studied him. “You’re talking of something else, aren’t you? The plan to hook Gartside.”
Lando inclined his head a fraction. “Keep going.” Again, he ran his fingers along the length of the white sleeve, grazing over the angle of Angel’s elbow and up to the smooth swell of his bicep. “Engage that keen mind of yours.”
“I’m trying to, but it’s damned difficult when you’re doing that.” Angel’s lips pressed into a thin line as he frowned. “You’re promising them great riches in exchange for investing money up front. In land that exists but isn’t for sale.”
“I am,” Lando breathed. His hand curled around Angel’s bicep. He revelled in the firm heft of it.
“You’re dangling untold wealth under the nose of Lord Cobham, a…an ageing baron with a hatred for Ambrose Gartside.”
“Go on,” Lando encouraged.
“And tempting Sir Richard, another wealthy baronet and of high social standing. Reeling in Gartside himself, a spendthrift and a rake, desperate to hold on to his fortunes.”
Lando gave a low amused laugh. “Don’t forget that dreadful American fellow.”
“Most dreadful,” agreed Angel. He chewed his lip thoughtfully.
“You want Gartside to bid for the project and outbid the others, don’t you?”
Lando inclined his head graciously. “He needs to be ruined somehow,” he agreed. “Which means he needs to be persuaded to part with what money he has left. And soon, before he spends it all.”
“Yes,” said Angel urgently. “That’s it.” Excitedly, he ran a hand through his thick dark locks. Lando could almost see the pieces of the puzzle falling into place. Lando’s far-reaching proposal, the light in sensible Sir Richard’s eyes. Cobham spotting it too. Tommy, playing that awful American perfectly, barely holding back his amusement. Purse-pinched Gartside’s naked greed. And Angel in the middle, supposedly a government intermediary, an unknown, but trustworthy by virtue of his position. I might have to offer him a lure.
“So, Gartside will bid for a project that isn’t for sale,” Angel continued. “That’s it, isn’t it? To build mills that will never exist and expand a trade route not open for expansion.”
Lando smoothed a path along Angel’s collar bone with his fingers. “You’re getting warmer.”
“But he doesn’t have the funds. Or he does, perhaps, but using them will take everything he has. And yet, by taking this chance, he can restore his fortunes. So he needs the deal desperately, far more than the others. At all costs, Gartside needs to win.”
“Very warm,” purred Lando.
Angel’s chest was very warm, too, the heat of his skin a delicious distraction Lando planned to deal with very shortly if only Angel could join the dots… I might have to offer him a lure…
“You want him to bribe me, don’t you?” Angel finished triumphantly. “You want Gartside to grease me in the fist. To break the law by offering money to an entrusted senior government official, a great deal of money in exchange for ensuring he wins the bid.”
“Bravo.” Lando smiled at the younger man’s eager excitement. “And then?”
“And then, when he’s won, he will need to sell his unentailed estate next to yours to fund the investment.”
Angel suddenly frowned. Lando could almost hear his mind whirring. “My lord, there’s a flaw. A rather glaring one. There is no investment . The whole thing is a ruse. There are no mills. You are not building on your land.”
“Correct.”
Roughly, Angel ran his hand through his hair. “But don’t you see? After he bribes me and he discovers that, he won’t sell the estate. Which means he’ll be in exactly the same position as he is now, except after our blood and demanding his bribe back.”
Lando drifted his fingers lightly from Angel’s chest, only to travel as far as one of the delicately embroidered buttons securing his single-breasted waistcoat. Not used to unfastening his own attire without assistance, Lando was pleasantly surprised how competently he succeeded in unfastening Angel’s.
“Let me teach you something about a certain type of gentleman, Mr Angel,” Lando began. “Knowledge gained from a lifetime observing them at close quarter.”
A second button fell apart under his ministrations. There were only nine in total. In contrast, Lando’s own waistcoat, lilac silk and double-breasted, boasted twenty-eight. A third button popped undone, revealing a mouth-watering crescent of snowy white linen. The fourth fell open easily too; he didn’t understand why Pritchard made such a fuss.
“Some spoiled idlers,” he continued, “are never satisfied with what they have or what they don’t have. Whether they crave a finer stable of racehorses or a pair of double-barrelled Purdeys, a crested phaeton or a titled young bride, there is always someone with something better. Unless, perhaps, you are the king. But then, King Ferdinand of Spain may have even more. Who knows?”
Another button unfastened to the sound of Angel’s breath catching in his throat.
“So, you must trust me when I assure you Ambrose Gartside will want to secure that business deal with every single fibre of his being. And nothing would give him more satisfaction than snatching it from the likes of Sir Richard so he, too, can be held in such high esteem.”
Lando toyed with the next button. “You must appreciate that the good opinion of others is terribly important to a man as high in the instep as Gartside. Losing position in society, for a rake as odious as him, is akin to losing everything.” Tipping his head back, he flicked his gaze up to meet Angel’s.
“And that, my dear, will be the path leading to his ruination. With a gentle push in the right direction, Gartside will destroy himself. We’re simply handing him the tools.”
Two buttons and a stud remained at the top of his shirt. But to reach those, Lando had to untie the knot of Angel’s cravat, a manoeuvre requiring him to sweep his fingertips along the length of the other man’s angular jaw to reach it. In fact, he needed to perform the manoeuvre several times until the knot loosened. On the second occasion, the tips of his fingers had to linger awhile and fondle the marvellous golden hoop at Angel’s ear.
“So, as I understand it,” clarified Angel, still sounding uncertain and deliciously distracted, “Gartside is going to bribe me, and then you’re going to expose him. What then?”
“Greasing the palms of government officials is a terribly serious crime.” Lando tutted. “Even a baronet such as Gartside would be pressed to wriggle out of that. If you were a true official, who knows how the magistrates might disgrace him.”
“But I’m not,” pointed out Angel.
“No. But Ambrose Gartside doesn’t know that. And he’s never going to find out. Nor are the others. Because when he discovers that you have informed myself and Cobham and Sir Richard of his underhanded and unsporting behaviour, he’ll face a far worse punishment than supping on gruel in Newgate.”
“Will he?” Angel shivered as Lando slipped his hands inside his shirt, one of them exploring his bare chest.
“Yes, very much so. Because as well as forever checking over his shoulder and listening out for the heavy tread of the law, he’ll be facing shame, ignominy, and loss of face. Cobham is an inveterate gossip, and neither Sir Richard nor myself are above whispering malice in a few well-placed ears. I assure you that, within a week, not a single drawing room in the ton will be open to him.”
“That doesn’t sound a terrible punishment at all.”
“That’s because you don’t give two figs what the ton thinks of you,” Lando answered. Lando didn’t care much either. If he did, he wouldn’t be rubbing the pad of his thumb across one of Angel’s nipples.
“When the rumours begin to circulate,” Lando continued, “his creditors will cease with their ever-so-polite reminders and bash down his door instead, demanding debts be settled. White’s will quietly withdraw his membership. Invitations will dry up. His staff will leave when he can no longer pay them. The bank will foreclose on his London townhouse.”
He stroked a finger into the notch between Angel’s collarbones, following the path with his lips.
“Ye gods,” muttered Angel.
“Precisely,” Lando murmured against satiny skin. “And so it will go on until he retires to his cold and draughty entailed estate in Scotland with his tail between his legs to beg pity from his sister and brother-in-law. Never to be seen again.”
Lando tipped his head up at the same moment as Angel’s cravat unravelled in a stream of snowy-white silk. “And at that point, my dearest Angel, I plan to step in and kindly ease some of his dreadful burden by offering to take a debt-ridden, unentailed estate off his hands.”
He hovered with an eyebrow raised. “Which won’t come for free, of course. And is in a dreadful mess. But he’ll sell it for a song and, fortunately for me, I’ll have recently acquired a ready source of blunt with which to put to good use in restoring it to its former state.”
“Gartside’s own money!” Angel ran his hands up Lando’s arms, a wondrous grin of delight splitting his face. “My lord, you are…you are…” He shook his head. “Something else.”
“I know. And, in case it has escaped your notice, desperate to be kissed.”
Angel fell on him, crushing Lando’s lips against his own. His hands tangled in Lando’s hair as Lando wrapped his arms around his neck, pulling him down. As the heat of Angel’s firm body pressed against him, Lando moaned with pleasure, pressing his own hardness back against Angel in return.
“Something is telling me the Chief Inspector of the River is not going to prove terribly difficult to corrupt,” he gasped.
Angel’s mouth widened with mirth around Lando’s, and then he broke off. “Call me Kit, please,” he panted. “Everyone else who knows me does, and our friendship has sailed well beyond pleasantries and polite terms of address; I hope you agree.”
Mr Ange— Kit’s determined fingers brushed against Lando’s swollen prick as they picked at the buttons on the front fall of his breeches. Never mind pleasantries; Lando had sailed beyond rational thought.
“Tell me how I should address you, my lord,” breathed Kit, licking and sucking on Lando’s parted lips. “‘Your lordship’ is so terribly formal, is it not?” He paused in his lapping to shoot Lando a wicked grin. “Especially when my hand rests here.”
A cool palm curled around Lando’s member, startling a gasp from his throat.
“Lando,” he sighed, pushing up into Kit’s touch. “Address me as Lando. Almost no one else does.”
At first, Kit did nothing but hold him, feeling the heft, while his scalding lips discovered new places to tease. Such as Lando’s earlobe and the sensitive, shallow depression behind it. He paid a visit to the ribbon of flesh above Lando’s high collar, too, before forging a new path along the blade of Lando’s jaw. As if sampling every needy inch of him. “Lando.” He breathed the wonderful sound of it against Lando’s neck, drawing it out. “Much better. Henry Orlando Fitzwilliam Albert Duchamps-Avery is such a mouthful, is it not?” Sharp teeth nibbled tender skin as Lando let out a giggle. “When there are so many other things that I could be filling my mouth with?”
Gadzooks, the man was good. Lando let his head fall back, the line of his throat wide open to his new lover’s touch. Kit’s hand on his shaft closed more tightly, and he let out a whimper.
“Lando.” Kit repeated it as he pressed kisses into Lando’s quivering flesh before once more sealing his lips against Lando’s mouth. How gloriously intimate. And how gloriously Lando felt his constrained, rigid composure melt under Kit’s touch. As his breath quickened, Kit deepened the kiss. His member throbbed, hard as iron, against Lando’s thigh as the slide of his palm up and down the length of Lando’s satiny shaft intensified.
With an urgent whimper, Lando spread wider, arching into Kit’s touch, swelling impossibly more in Kit’s hand. Clutching at his behind, he drew Kit in further, hoisting his leg around his waist, as if by squeezing him close enough, he could climb inside.
Lando’s chest rose and fell. His breath grew ragged, his kisses open and panting. His spine tingled with pleasure.
“I’m…yes…oh gosh, yes.” With a cry smothered against Kit’s mouth, his hot spend flooded Kit’s hand.
“Kit. I’m…”
Whatever he was, Kit would never find out; the sentence remained unfinished. Limply, Lando dropped his head to his shoulder. Kit’s arms came around his back, and he cradled Lando, pressing his lips to his hair.
When Lando finally stirred, Kit lifted his chin, smiling into his eyes still blurred with lust. Heat flushed his cheeks, and he let out a shy laugh. “I’m…thank you,” he managed at last. “I ought to return the favour.”
“No favour. The pleasure was all mine.”
Kit planted a kiss at the end of Lando’s nose, which he wrinkled. His hands dropped to Lando’s behind and stayed there, stroking him. Kit kissed his nose again. “Lando,” he said again. Lando didn’t imagine he would ever tire of hearing it. “The name suits you.”
“Your uncle Charles was one of the few people who have ever used it,” Lando confessed. “Since our father passed, even my own sister addresses me as ‘Rossingley.’”
“Then I shall use it freely,” declared Kit, and he dropped a final kiss on Lando’s nose. “And Uncle Charles had excellent taste in men. You, Lando , were extraordinary this evening.”
“Only if Gartside plays along. Otherwise, all this will be to no end.”
“I’ll wager he will.”
Lando gave a rueful smile. “I’m of the same accord. Which means I’m going to thoroughly ruin him, aren’t I? Does that make me cruel?”
Kit shook his head. “He’s going to thoroughly ruin himself one way or another. Like you said, you are merely nudging him along so fewer innocent souls suffer along the way. He’s already devastated several other people’s lives, perhaps it’s time he tasted his own medicine. The only fly in the ointment is if your wealthy American friend persists in outbidding him or tries to bribe me too.”
Lando fondled Kit’s firm, high buttocks. “That…ah…won’t happen. Our American will do as he’s told.”
Kit huffed. “I wouldn’t be so sure. My, admittedly limited, impression of people from that nation is that they are a law unto themselves.”
Lando arched an amused brow. “Not this one.” He laughed softly. “I’ll let you into another secret. When Mr Arthur Hamilton of South Carolina isn’t imbibing my excellent port and winding Lord Cobham into a stew, he may be found treading the boards at Drury Lane and expanding his gambling hell empire. When he is not occupied with either of those, he is discreetly and expertly pleasuring rich widows in exchange for considerable sums of money, which he uses to fund the aforementioned expansion of his gambling empire.”
Kit’s jaw dropped. “Yet again, you have the capacity to astound me. Where on earth did you find him?”
Lando flushed. “Tommy Squire and I—for that is his true name—are old friends. I helped him out of a hole a long time ago, earning his undivided loyalty. And…and even in the depths of my mourning for your uncle Charles, I occasionally experienced some…base needs.” He threw Kit a defiant look. “I’m not a monk. And Tommy is steadfast and…trustworthy.”
“He’s in love with you, that’s what he is.” Annoyance coloured Kit’s tone. “Any fool can see that.” He paused a beat. “Any fool of our persuasion, anyhow. I doubt your other dinner guests picked up on it. Your Tommy Squire would like nothing more than to be standing where I am now.”
“He would,” conceded Lando. “But he isn’t. And although he has a deep affection for me, as I do for him, his heart most definitely lies elsewhere. Don’t be cross that he deceived you. He makes a very convincing liar, as many have discovered to their cost. He will be well remunerated for his time and efforts.”
“But not like this,” insisted Kit.
Lando slipped a hand under the waistband of Kit’s breeches. “No. I prefer my men one at a time.”