Chapter 5
Dinner was a terse affair. Neither man ate much or said much.
The smell of his usual club fare of boiled fowl with oyster sauce had churned his gut, when he normally would scoff the lot.
Well, at least he hadn’t been shot on sight.
Virtue tossed his crumpled napkin on to the table, giving up the pretence he could get through the meal.
He leaned his elbow on the table and grumpily waited for his uncommunicative dining partner to finish his pudding.
Exeter’s face was a study in blankness. All night he’d smiled blandly at Virtue’s stilted attempts at conversation. He’d inclined his head to acknowledge those who greeted him. But behind his eyes, he might as well have been in Calais.
All avenues of conversation that either had attempted deftly avoided Miss Maria Douglas and the tailor shop.
It was proving damned hard to talk around the one thing that he very much wanted to talk about.
At one point, in desperation, he’d even broached the topic of meat-free diets.
Exeter had looked faintly nonplussed, eyes widening as each of Virtue’s non sequiturs were more boring than the last.
It reminded him of dinners as a child. Helpless in his desire to perform for his father, to be seen as a young man of sense and learning, but knowing with each scathing rejoinder his father sent his way, he would never be anything more than ‘a dolt’.
The memory was so fresh, he half expected Exeter to scold him too.
‘If only you’d listened to your school master as much you do the farrier. ’
But he’d found his audience in Exeter. Exeter always enjoyed his prattle.
Or he had.
He startled as Exeter’s hand clasped his knee under the table.
“Huh?” was the only excellence his tongue managed to muster.
He looked up. First meeting Exeter’s concerned expression, and then the obvious cause of his concern. Sir Vincent and Toby Le Stedman had arrived, flanked by a couple of clubland ne’er-do-wells. He smirked when Virtue noticed him. Exeter’s hand withdrew as he turned to look over his shoulder.
Sir Vincent crossed the room to them. “So, come on then, fellows? Who is it?” he boomed. “Which of you has the biggest pipe down their trousers?”
Virtue shuttered his eyes in frustration. What on earth had possessed them to put the bet in White’s Club’s betting book.
“Me.” Exeter was all smiles and ease around the other men. “Not much in it though. Same length so we had to go by girth in the end. And, no doubt, we’re both much bigger than yours.”
“Ah poor Virtue, my dear fellow.” Le Stedman steadied himself against the arm on Virtue’s chair as he stopped by on his way to the card tables. “Smaller than Exeter? That must make you very small indeed,” He pulled an ‘alas!’ face and wandered off. Arse.
Sir Vincent, also slightly worse for wear, was still ploughing on talking to Exeter, “Good job you’re not the Lord of Perth or the papers would be calling you the Lord of Girth from now on.”
“They could call me that as it is. I don’t mind it being announced. Rather damned useful not to have to explain to a lady, that it is rather large. Puts them off somewhat. If you came to collect on the result, Mr Dibden, the tailor, left the measurements at the desk.”
Out of sight, Virtue’s hand fisted in the tablecloth.
Exeter had been thinking of a woman after all.
But he couldn’t see how Exeter’s thickness could put anyone off.
Not him. The thought of it inside him, stretching him.
He’d do anything to experience that. He was brave enough.
A sensation he’d never felt before but had read about and imagined.
An ache that he wanted filled by his best friend and knew would never happen.
Exeter blandly met his eyes and then looked past him. Anxiety threatened to ruin Virtue right there at the table.
He knows about me. He knows.
“You’re looking rather glum over there, Virtue. What’s the matter? The old Lord of Girth covering up for you, is he, ey? Nothing but a minnow in your trousers?”
“You can take Dibden’s word for it or you can feel it if you like,’ he offered back colourlessly.
Virtue knew how to deal with bullies, throw it back to them and be brazen.
Virtue lounged back in his chair, widening his legs in a louche invitation.
Albeit, he wasn’t in buckskin breeches, but the length of his cock as it pressed against the taut fabric was clear to anyone that cared to measure his worth.
He hoped it wiped the grin from that arse of a man.
Sir Vincent merely cackled. “Only if my Lord insists. But one really ought to check in case someone’s valet rolled a stocking up and shoved it down there.”
“Sounds like you’d know more about that than I— Christ!
” Virtue choked off as Sir Vincent shot out a meaty paw to grope him.
“At least call on my mother first. Let her know we’re courting.
But don’t be too surprised if she says her son could do better than a baronet; in plain truth she can be a frightful snob. ”
“No less than a Duke for our Virtue and his dear mama,” Exeter said dryly.
“Oh, I’d take a Lord.” He breathed in sharply as Sir Vincent got a little too free with his hands. “Careful now.”
Yes, he believed he would take a Lord or be taken by him.
Specifically, the tall broad-shouldered one with thighs like Goliath that was sitting opposite him.
His blood raced at the thought of taking Exeter; his friend’s thick weapon spearing him.
He could only hope to God that his prick hadn’t visibly twitched at the thought, too.
Although, there wasn’t much chance of that while he was being patted down by Sir Vincent.
The exasperated look he tossed at Exeter failed to meet its mark, as his friend was already preoccupied with staring at Sir Vincent, his brows drawn in a rather glowering manner.
“Have a care, sir, and remove your hand, or have you not fondled Virtue enough?” Exeter pressed the head of his caned stick to the man’s chest. The silver ram butted Sir Vincent twice in the sternum.
Sir Vincent waved the cane away as he drew back. “I’ll be damned, gentlemen,” he announced to the room at large, his voice carrying throughout the lounge bar. “Exhibit him at Tattersalls and you’d know no difference.”
“Then why did he lose?” Someone piped up from over by the billiards room.
“Because I’m as thick as a mutton leg,” Exeter exclaimed.
“You sure you don’t mean thick and mutton-headed?”
“Oh, I’m that too.” Exeter laughed and then leaned over to tap Virtue on the knee. “Are you walking back or shall we share a cab?”
They always shared a hackney back together, dropping Virtue off first on the absurdly short distance from the club to his bachelor rooms in Jermyn Street, while Exeter carried on his much longer journey to the slightly more respectable neighbourhood of Brook Street.
They had performed the same routine for the past four years after Exeter had insisted that Virtue didn’t walk as recompense for having rescued him from a sure death.
So why did he need to ask now? “Don’t you want to do what we always do?
” He said, standing to gather his things.
“An excellent question,” Exeter replied as they left White’s.
Blast.
Double Blast.
He had ruined their friendship. It had been too strange what happened in the tailor shop.
He was about to be given the congé by Exeter.
The sudden unfairness of it all rode over him, a crushing sadness that trampled his soul.
To lose something before it was gained, before he’d worked out what that ‘something’ even was.
He gnawed at the inside of his cheek. There was no doubt, he’d never felt this moved over a woman.
But to force his feelings over his friends?
No, he’d take his dismissal with dignity.
They’d both find themselves imminently busy with overseeing their estates and that would feasibly keep them out of each other’s way for a good six months if not more.
It was possible they could avoid each other’s notice until New Year…
and then… perhaps the peculiar magic of the male mind might occur, granting them the ability to ignore monumental events as if they were nothing.
Perhaps then, they might return to their friendship anew.
Up in the hackney, he sat on his hands and waited for the boot to fall on him.
They drove the short distance to the bottom of Jermyn Street in silence.
Virtue wished he lived somewhere else, miles away, Bloomsbury.
His dunderheaded self would have lived quite happily swimming out of his depth among people of learning as long as it would have made this final carriage just a bit bloody longer.
Exeter’s face was turned to the window. He lazily drummed the glass with the backs of his fingers seemingly lost to his thoughts. In his other hand, he toyed with an acorn, of all things, rubbing his thumb down its smooth contours.
When the carriage pulled up outside Virtue’s lodgings, Exeter flicked the latch up for him, before he could. With a benign smile he motioned him to step down.
I’m all but being bundled out, was his desolate thought, as he hopped down from the cab.
A set of feet landed behind him.
“I’ll come in with you.”
Virtue couldn’t bear to turn round and look at him, so continued to talk and walk up the path.
“Supper at the club not good enough? You barely ate.” Neither had he.
“I’m afraid my man of works isn’t around.
I don’t pay him for the nights I dine at the club, you see. Will port and cold luncheon meat do?”
“Not exactly what I had in mind.”