Chapter Nineteen
Back then
Caroline found him at breakfast, her hand settling on his shoulder, her voice low enough that the footman by the urn couldn’t hear.
“You’re to make yourself scarce after dinner tonight, darling.
It’s nothing personal.” She helped herself to the corner of his toast. “Lex is proposing to Barnaby, and the whole weekend’s been built around it, so the rest of us are under strict orders to be precisely where we’re meant to be by ten. ”
Tristan put down his coffee. “He’s proposing.”
“Mm hm. There’s a foal involved, and it’s going to be quite a fuss. I think there’s a non-zero chance that Barnaby will cry, so I’ve got a thousand pounds riding on it.” She kissed the top of his head and darted off.
Tristan was thrilled for himself. After yesterday, an order to disappear for the evening was the best news he’d had all weekend.
Breakfast broke up soon after Caroline left, the others peeling off to change or to get their mornings started.
He caught the tail end of it in the hall.
Barnaby had changed into full riding gear, shiny leather knee boots and breeches tailored to the inch.
Lex came down behind him in the same kit, looking like he’d been poured into his breeches.
They looked obscene on him. Tristan got an eyeful of his cock lying heavy down one thigh and gave a portrait of some dead earl his full attention until the soon-to-be engaged couple had passed on their way out to the stables.
Good for Barnaby, though. That was going to keep him busy.
Near the staircase James peeled off, saying something about work he had to get through. Caroline went out the door towards a waiting Range Rover, heading out for a day of primping with Vidal, who towed Beauchamp along in his wake. Beauchamp threw a haunted look over his shoulder at Tristan.
Left to his own devices, Tristan retrieved his script for Better Half and carried it off in search of somewhere quiet. The library sat at the still end of the east wing, all polished oak and leather-bound books racked to the ceiling.
Tristan cracked open his script and began to pace as he ran episode three under his breath. He was halfway down the room when the door opened and James walked in wearing an old jumper. He stopped at the sight of Tristan and grinned.
“Sorry.” Tristan snapped his script shut, then instantly wished he hadn’t, because the open script could have hidden the flush on his cheeks as he remembered how solid James had felt on top of him. “I can clear out.”
“Don’t.” James shut the door behind him. “I’m here for the same reason you are. There’s about to be chaos tonight, and I wanted to wallow in the quiet beforehand.”
“This is a good room for it.”
“It’s my favourite in this entire house.” James moved a few steps further into the room. “I hope that Caroline made it clear that we don’t mean anything by asking you to excuse yourself from the grand event tonight.”
“James, it’s a family thing and an oldest friends thing.” Tristan lifted a shoulder. “I get it. I’ve known Barnaby and Lex for three-quarters of a day at this point.”
James crossed the room and eased the script out of his hands, his thumb grazing Tristan’s knuckles. He flicked through the pages.
“I heard congratulations were in order,” he said, not looking up from the script. “You’re to be in the BBC’s next great triumph.”
“Yeah.” Tristan watched his thumb move along the margin. “Looks that way. It’s…different from anything else I’ve ever been in.”
“Tell me about it.”
“It’s called Better Half.” Tristan dropped onto the arm of a reading chair.
“I play Ben. He and his husband show off their glossy little life online. He bakes their sourdough, and they run around in matching sweaters. They’ve got hundreds of thousands of people who tune in every week to watch them be the perfect couple living the trad values.
Basically being the kind of gay the far right can stomach, because Ben does the cooking and Jay is the clear ‘man’ in the relationship. ”
“Sounds like an interesting dynamic that I haven’t seen in any other shows,” James said, turning a page.
“Jay’s sliding into the manosphere one episode at a time, and Ben has to sit at the table looking pretty with the girls while around them Jay’s buddies talk about how the country’s gone soft.
Off camera the whole marriage runs on what Jay lets him do while Ben works on selling the dream and lives in his perfectly decorated cage.
It’s grim, and it’s going to be the best series I’ve ever done. ”
“Mm.” James had stopped on a page near the front, flagged with a red sticky tab that stood out against the cream of the paper. His eyebrow climbed as he scanned it. “Very interesting. You have sex with your husband while feeding him.”
“That’s a great scene.”
“I can see that. I’ll be sure to watch it.”
Tristan’s ears went hot as James went on flicking through the pages of the script. The red tabs kept coming, a little forest of them flaring along its edge.
James fanned the corner with his thumb so that the tabs blurred together into a bright stripe. “Are you going to spend any time clothed at all in this show?”
“Some.” Tristan kept his eyes on the bookshelves. “Ben gets bent over a lot. It’s a whole thing.”
“Have you done any of this with a man before?” James asked.
“No.” Tristan lifted his shoulders in a loose and easy shrug. “It’s just some kissing and writhing around. There’s nothing for me to work out, and it’ll be the same as it is with anyone.”
“So you think kissing Lex Murphy would feel the same as kissing Stephanie Jones?”
Tristan’s head reared up at the mention of his last public girlfriend. “Have you been googling me, James?”
James laughed. “Tristan, you’re dating my sister. Of course I had the intelligence services digging into you.” He thumbed back through the pages to a red tab near the middle and opened to it. He crossed the distance between them.
James found Jay’s first line and read it cold. “Stand still. You’ve done up your tie crooked.”
Tristan recognised the Katie interview scene instantly. Ben and Jay in the hall mirror twenty minutes out from a Fox anchor and her camera crew arriving at their perfectly staged home.
He reached up as though Tristan were wearing a tie to fix, his knuckles grazing Tristan’s chest. “There. Now listen to me. This woman has eleven million viewers and she’s going to be in our home.
You’re going to sit there and look beautiful.
You’ll smile, and you’ll laugh at everything I say, but you’ll stay quiet and you’ll let me take on anything that really matters.
If she does ask you something directly, and you have to think about an answer for longer than a second, then the better choice is for you to keep your mouth shut, and let me handle it. ”
Tristan came in on cue. “I know the talking points, Jay. I wrote half of them.”
“You did.” James leaned in closer until his face took up all of Tristan’s view. “And you’ll deliver them beautifully, because you always do. But I still need to hear it, Ben. Are you going to be a good boy for me?”
This was a test, another game from James.
So Tristan closed the gap that James had left between them, pressing himself flush against him, chest to chest. It was the move he’d watched Barnaby making, pouring himself into Lex and sinking boneless into all that bulk.
Tristan slid a hand up to rest flat over the King’s heart.
“Always, Jay,” he said, right up against James’s mouth, breath for breath. Then he held there and waited to see which of them would lose his nerve first.
James stayed put, close enough that his breath broke warm across Tristan’s mouth. Then he came in the last inch with his eyes on Tristan’s the whole way down.
James’s nose brushed his. Still Tristan didn’t move. He braced for the press of James’s mouth on his own, but instead the King kissed him dry and chaste on the cheek.
James drew back, looking insufferably pleased with himself. “Do you think I’m ready for a cameo on EastEnders?”
It took Tristan a half-beat longer than it should have to get his feet back under him. “EastEnders?” He made himself grin. “You’re not EastEnders level yet, James. Right now you’re more CBeebies Bedtime Story presenter tier.”
James laughed, bright and loud. He clapped Tristan on the shoulder hard enough to rock him. “I’ll take it.” He handed the script over. “You’ll be very good in this, you know.” Then he wandered over to the window, checking the sky, talking all the while about the plans for that evening.
Tristan stayed where he was and gave his heartbeat a minute to climb down out of his throat.