Chapter Twelve
Barnaby was in the morning room on the first floor of the Fitznorman-Bicester’s London house with his feet tucked beneath him on the sofa.
This was a liberty he only took when his mother wasn’t in residence.
Elizabeth, the Duchess of Chatham, had views about feet on upholstery that she’d communicated once, at volume, when Barnaby was eleven, and the memory still carried serious force behind it.
Florence was asleep on the rug in front of the unlit fireplace.
She’d been overjoyed when he’d walked through the door from Tokyo, delirious with the full-body wriggling that Irish Setters deployed when their person returned, and had spent the first twenty minutes trying to climb into his lap despite weighing thirty kilograms. Now she was flat on her side, one ear folded inside out, twitching as she chased something in her sleep.
The post had arrived at nine. Mrs Gregson had sorted it onto the hall table in the usual formation: bills to the left, correspondence to the right, junk in the bin before it could contaminate the Carrara marble.
Barnaby had carried his stack upstairs with a cup of tea and worked through it without much interest. There was a card from his aunt in Wiltshire congratulating him on the gold.
A reminder about the Chatham estate tenants’ luncheon.
An invitation to a charity auction that he would attend, bid on something his mother had pre-selected, and leave before the pudding course.
Then, at the bottom of the stack, the envelope.
It was cream, and of a thick paper stock. His name was written across the front in calligraphy so precise it looked like a printed font. He knew that it wasn’t; the Palace employed a full-time calligrapher who had been writing these things by hand since the reign of James’s grandfather.
The Lord Chamberlain is commanded by His Majesty The King to invite The Most Honourable The Marquess of Ashworth to a Reception at Buckingham Palace to celebrate the achievements of Great Britain’s Olympic and Paralympic athletes.
Barnaby set the invitation on the arm of the sofa and reached for the second item that had been inside the envelope. It was a photograph, printed on standard A4 paper, folded in thirds.
It was a screenshot of a meme.
The image was from the Team GB Media Day interview: Barnaby and Lex on the sofa, mid-conversation.
Lex was leaning forward with his elbows on his knees, grinning, one hand gesturing toward Barnaby.
Barnaby was sitting with his legs crossed and his hands folded, his expression caught in the precise moment between composure and a smile he was failing to suppress.
Someone in the wilds of the internet had captioned it in large white block letters:
THEY ARE IN LOVE AND I WILL NOT BE TAKING QUESTIONS
Beneath the meme, in a scrawl that Barnaby would have recognised anywhere, James had written:
Looking forward to seeing BLEX in action. Do not bring snacks; there will be canapés provided by the Palace kitchen.
The meme was bad enough. The scrawl beneath it was worse.
James had sat in whatever room in Kensington Palace he occupied at the time, printed out a screenshot of his best friend and a professional boxer captioned THEY ARE IN LOVE AND I WILL NOT BE TAKING QUESTIONS, referenced a portmanteau the internet had coined, and sealed the whole lot into a Buckingham Palace envelope with his own hand.
BLEX was everywhere, a fact Barnaby was aware of only because Vidal had sent him fourteen separate screenshots of BLEX fan edits set to Hozier songs, each one accompanied by crying-laughing emojis and no further commentary.
Barnaby picked up his mobile to begin composing the message that James richly deserved in response.
It was going to be several paragraphs long and open with a detailed inventory of every constitutional mechanism available to a hereditary peer wishing to formally censure his sovereign. Then his phone buzzed in his hand.
Lex.
The message was a photograph. Lex was standing in front of a full-length mirror in a bedroom with the expensive, characterless décor of his recently purchased flat in Canary Wharf.
He was wearing a three-piece suit in a shade of electric blue so vivid it bordered on neon.
The jacket had peaked lapels that were unnecessarily wide.
The waistcoat was buttoned too tight. A gold pocket watch chain dangled from the fob pocket in a loop thick enough to moor a dinghy.
Beneath the photo: palace reception look #1. thoughts?
Barnaby knew exactly what Lex was doing.
He knew it with the same certainty he brought to reading a horse’s stride three fences out.
Lex was goading him. This was a controlled provocation, designed to trigger the precise response that Barnaby was about to give, because Lex had learned, through weeks of proximity and the careful, systematic testing of Barnaby’s limits, that nothing made Barnaby engage faster than a sartorial offence.
He typed: You look like a children’s television presenter who’s been asked to leave the premises.
Three dots. Then a second photo.
This one was worse. Lex had changed into a burgundy velvet blazer over a black shirt unbuttoned to the sternum.
Two gold chains sat against his chest, one short, one long, the longer one terminating in a medallion that showed a roaring lion’s head.
His trousers were tapered and cropped at the ankle, exposing sockless feet in patent leather loafers.
palace reception look #2. going for more of a continental vibe
You look like a footballer who’s trying to look low key for his child support hearing.
The third photo arrived soon after.
This was the escalation he’d been expecting.
Lex had put on a tracksuit; it was cream velour, zipped halfway down, with a gold chain layered over the exposed V of his chest. He’d accessorised with aviator sunglasses pushed up on his forehead, and was holding a bottle of champagne in one hand, label facing the camera.
palace reception look #3. final answer
If you arrive at Buckingham Palace dressed like a cast member from a reality show about retired drug dealers, His Majesty will have you escorted from the premises by the Household Cavalry, and I will watch from the canapé table with a glass of champagne and not a shred of sympathy.
Barnaby set the phone down. He picked up his tea, took a sip, and found it had gone cold. Florence shifted on the rug, groaned and resettled.
His phone buzzed.
He should leave it. He should finish his tea, draft the scathing reply to James that his invitation required, and attend to the rest of his correspondence.
He should not pick up his mobile and look at whatever Lex Murphy had sent him, because each photograph was a hook, Barnaby was biting every time, and they both knew it.
He picked up his mobile.
In the fourth photo, Lex had his back to the mirror, twisting to catch the shot over his shoulder.
He was wearing jeans that sat obscenely low on his hips, the waistband folded down, exposing the twin dimples at the base of his spine, the upper swell of his arse, and a shadow of his crack.
No shirt. No chain. Just the broad, muscled expanse of his back tapering to a narrow waist, and those jeans, just barely clinging on.
There was no accompanying caption.
Barnaby stared at the photo for longer than was compatible with their emerging friendship.
The dimples were the problem. Two shallow indentations on either side of Lex’s spine, just above the waistband, where the muscle thinned and the skin drew close to bone.
Barnaby had put his thumbs there. He’d gripped those dimples while Lex was on top of him, and the sense-memory of it arrived: the heat of Lex’s skin, the stretch of his own body around Lex’s cock.
That dull, burning fullness that had crowded out every other sensation until pain and want were indistinguishable.
Barnaby typed out a response. His ears were warm.
Thursday. 11 a.m. Gieves & Hawkes, No. 1 Savile Row. You’re being fitted for the reception, and I’m choosing the suit. Bring nothing. Wear nothing memorable. If you arrive in any garment bearing a visible logo, I will send you home and we’ll never speak again.
The reply came in nine seconds.
yes sir marquess sir ??
Barnaby set his mobile face-down on the sofa cushion, pressed his palms flat against his thighs, and sat with the quiet of Chester Square settling around him.
Then he picked the phone back up and looked at the fourth photo one more time before locking it for good.