Chapter Thirty-One
Benedict refilled his glass before staring back at the fire in his gloomy London bedroom. It was the night before his wedding, and he despised everything about the room, including himself. He focused instead on his drink.
Brandy was not his libation of choice, especially tonight. It was too rarified a thing when what he wanted was something coarse and cruel. The swill they’d consumed in the peninsula came to mind, as did the men who’d been with him.
Gabriel.
The man was everything Benedict wished he could be—capable, intelligent, and ruthless if the situation called for it.
It was ridiculous that because of a quirk of parentage, Benedict was considered the better man.
Gabriel had taught him everything, from how to start a fire to how laundry was managed.
And while Benedict could see battle strategy in landscapes and the formation of men, Gabriel had taught him about morale and the way food and medicine got from one place to the next.
A battle was not a chess game. It was people and provisions in weather and terrain. Gabriel had taught him that, and Benedict would have failed without him.
He let his head drop against the side of his wingback chair.
How odd that he missed the rough living of those days, especially the mornings.
How many times had he been awake to see the dawn?
He loved watching the men rouse with rough grumbles and crude talk.
Gabriel especially would stand outside in nothing but his breeches as he shaved his face.
Such a simple thing, but Benedict had been mesmerized by the fluid motion of his fingers, the flex of his chest, and the shifting planes of his face.
He’d always thought Gabriel had a gentleman’s hands despite the blunt tips and broken nails.
His writing was precise, his fingers capable of tenderness as well as wicked thrust. He wasn’t greatly skilled with a rapier, though he had the finesse to manage it.
His best talent was with a knife. Penknife, dagger, dirk, or stiletto, Gabriel had mastered them all.
And Benedict had spent many nights dreaming of Gabriel using his skills in ways that were best left unexamined.
Fever dreams, he called them, when there was no fever except in his very unnatural mind.
A knock sounded at his door. Two clipped raps that always shivered a thrill through Benedict’s body. Normally he contained it. Tonight, after almost a bottle of brandy, he let the feel of it slide through his soul before he spoke.
“Come in, Gabe.”
“Gabe, is it?” the man said as he stepped through the room. “You only call me that when you’re foxed.”
“Don’t insult that divine creature. I’m stinking drunk.” He gestured languidly at the chair facing him. “Join me. Finish this off before it kills me.”
Gabriel tensed. It was a subtle movement, but one that never failed to depress Benedict.
Gabriel was his closest friend and would be the best man at his wedding.
That his natural instinct was to flinch away when invited to a cozy drink in Benedict’s bedroom said clearly that Gabriel understood far too much of what had never been spoken between them.
Thankfully, the man covered well and settled easily into the opposite chair. He poured himself a glass—a large enough measure to finish the bottle—then sipped it slowly as Benedict had taught him.
“Ah,” Gabriel said, pleasure infusing his tone. “That’s a fine brew. Where’d you get it?”
“Wedding gift from Castlereagh.”
“Good man.”
He agreed in silence, sipping his drink in long, slow pauses while he let his gaze rove over his best friend.
Gabriel returned the look and his expression deepened into a frown. “You’re going to have a sore head for your wedding.”
He knew it.
“Ben, I’ve had to do something I didn’t want to.”
A distraction. Excellent. “I’m listening.”
“I manage a whorehouse now.”
Not at all what he’d expected to hear. “Your mother’s?”
“Yes.”
“Is this some kind of filial duty?”
“A bargain I was required to make.”
Gabe’s mother had always been a manipulative bitch. It stood to reason that she would find a way to trap her son.
He looked down at his hands. “It means I must resign.”
“What? Why?”
Gabriel didn’t answer. He simply waited for Benedict’s sloshed brain to catch up.
“Well, I suppose you can’t work at the Foreign Office, exactly. But you know, it could make some things much easier with men like LeFauvre.”
Gabe shuddered, a distinct movement that might have spilled his drink if he hadn’t had the steadiest hand with knife or drink.
“Good God, you hate the very idea, don’t you?”
“Yes.”
“Do you want to talk about how it happened?”
“No.”
“But you’re going through with it.”
Silence, then a clear and definite response. “Yes.”
Very well. Actually, that fit quite well into his plans. “Don’t worry,” he said as he drained the rest of his glass. “It will all work out all right.”
“Benedict?”
He didn’t answer except to wave a negligent hand. If Gabriel wouldn’t share details, then why should he?
“Benny, what are you planning?”
His gaze slid back to the fire. Gabe knew he was always thinking something, seeing months and years into the future. Except tonight, his thoughts always slid back to the morrow. “I want to go back to the castle tomorrow, right after the wedding breakfast. We’ll spend the next month in Cornwall.”
“What?”
Benedict slumped in his chair and let his head tilt toward the ceiling.
He always preferred looking up there when he lied.
“I can’t stay here in London. You know how it is.
I’ll be called upon by every dignitary and conman in London, offering congratulations in one second and trying to pick at me in the next. I won’t do it.”
Gabriel frowned. “But the house is set up for her. There are flowers in the bedroom, her housekeeper is already installed. You want to transfer all of them to Cornwall by tomorrow evening?”
He shuddered. “Heavens, no. I can’t have them dashing about Cornwall. Good lord, someone will break their neck.” His gaze slid languidly over to Gabriel. “Just you and her. There’s staff there—”
“There’s no one but an ancient groundskeeper.”
And an elderly couple who served as caretakers plus tenants, none of whom went to the castle except when explicitly invited. It was heaven.
“We’ll manage,” he said. “We did in the Peninsula.”
“She’s a lady, not a soldier.”
Was there something in Gabe’s tone? Admiration perhaps? “You like her now.”
“I liked her before.”
“No, you didn’t.” He smiled. “You see her merit.”
Gabe stared into his drink, his expression maudlin. “She’s a worthy woman.”
High praise from his rigidly moral best man. “I can’t do it, Gabe,” he blurted. “Not in London with everyone staring.”
“What?”
“I can’t father a child here. I…” He shook his head. “Not in London.”
“It’s not done in London. It’s done in the dark in a bed. You could be in Antarctica, for all that you’ll know.”
“I’ll know.” He blew out a breath. “She should be Arthur’s wife.
He should be at the altar tomorrow. He’d have her tupped and brimming with child in an hour.
” Arthur had been his older brother, the man who should have become the earl.
The one who had lived to swive and would have populated his nursery with a dozen strapping boys to carry on the name.
“Maybe so, but you’re the better man. Miss Caddick will be better served by you.”
If he could manage to serve her at all. “I never wanted the earldom. I wanted to stay in the military.” But he’d been forced to sell out the minute he became the heir, no longer the spare. “Tomorrow should be Arthur’s day.”
Gabriel set down his glass—drained clean when he was usually a modest drinker—and dropped his elbows on his knees. “What’s this about, Benny? Is it really about Arthur?”
No. “I’ve been thinking about our campaigning days. About drinking swill and pretending we were in the royal palace giving the king what for.”
“Nah,” Gabe drawled. “I wanted to kick the general’s ass, not the king’s. And you were the one who played pretend.”
He did. He’d pretended so many things back then. Surrounded by men who lived on a razor’s edge, knowing they could be dead in the morning. There’d been times when they’d been so drunk that boundaries were crossed, needs were expressed, and…
And he’d had quarters all his own.
One man had remained close enough to touch, but far enough away to maintain discipline.
Gabriel was not steeped in self-loathing.
His only sin was being a bastard by birth.
In every other aspect, he was as regulated as a nun.
He didn’t pray morn and night, but he did keep himself in order.
And he kept everyone else—including Benedict—in order as well.
How he had dreamed of breaking Gabriel to his will. Of finally bending the man over or, more accurately, dropping to his knees in surrender to the dominant male.
Benedict closed his eyes, letting that fantasy wash over him. Tears sprang to his eyes, the maudlin whine of a drunk in his mind.
“This should be Arthur’s night. I should be drinking to his wedded bliss.”
“Benny, what can I do to help?”
Don’t ask that question. Don’t ever, ever ask that question. But it was too late. The words were in the air.
He opened his eyes and looked at his closest friend.
Gabriel had seen him through the war. He’d fought by his side in battle and again amidst the delicate manipulations of diplomacy.
He was his truest friend, most steadfast soul, and his one true love after Michael’s death.
Gabriel was the one who held him in his grief, who had nursed him when he was sick, and who now stood before him like a warrior angel of old.
Tonight, Benedict was drunk enough to say it. Not out loud, but in his mind, in his heart, and in the way his eyes burned when he looked across the room.
“Gabe,” he whispered. Then his gaze slid steadily, desperately, to his bed.
Need throbbed in his blood. Desire and dark fantasies thickened his groin. Shame washed through him, a self-loathing he could not release, and yet it didn’t stop the wish. How he wished.
Gabriel stood up, his movement hasty. “I’ll see everything changed for tomorrow,” he said. “I’ll make sure Miss Caddick is comfortable in your castle.”
Yes. Make sure his wife had everything she needed.
Benedict closed his eyes in defeat. “I had the east tower fixed up for you. Two rooms. One for your correspondence and one for your bed.” He’d taken special care with the bedroom.
It had every luxury that could be created in a crumbling castle turret.
And the bed was large enough to support two brawny souls, intimately and enthusiastically engaged.
Unfortunately, Gabriel’s interests had never tilted toward “brawny.”
Gabriel reached out, his fingers quick as he snatched Benedict’s glass straight out of his hand.
“You’ve had enough, my lord,” he said. His shoulders had gone back, his chin was lifted, and he was acting the servant, even as he disciplined the raw recruit.
Did he know how attractive that was? How handsome he appeared when he took charge?
Benedict looked back at the bed. “She’ll be a wonderful mother,” he said. Then he turned back to the fire, the sight of his bed now sickening him.
“You’ll have good sons, my lord.”
“If you ‘my lord’ me one more time, I will brain you with the nearest bottle.” There was force in his words. Well, some anyway. And bitter frustration. Whatever was in his tone, he knew it was the response Gabe had been looking for. His voice softened even as he backed toward the door.
“Get to bed, Benny,” he said. “I’ll come for you in the morning.”
Take me to bed, Gabriel, so I can face the morning.
He didn’t say the words out loud. He never said them out loud, for fear of ending their relationship forever.
So he said nothing as the man who knew him best backed out of the room and shut the door.
Gabe would be up for hours now, changing the plans, seeing to the logistics of moving everything to Cornwall.
It was a petty cruelty, a jab at Gabriel’s competence and his own utter wretchedness. Make the subordinate work through the night because he could not—would not—do what Benedict really wanted.
With a growl of fury, Benedict curled away from the bed, glared at the fire, then fumbled as he pulled out a silver flask. Forget brandy. He would drink what he wanted.
Rot gut, hot and cruel, slid down his throat.