Chapter Fourteen
“I’M SIMPLY INTERESTED in the contents of the chest,” Lyndon insisted.
On twiggy legs, Duchamps-Avery had danced over to the battered wooden chest and propped the lid open before Lyndon could fabricate a more credible defence.
Furious at being caught, Lyndon couldn’t decide which was the more exquisite torture, the view of those spindly legs stretched out on his window seat, trying not to imagine what treasure lay at the meeting of them, or the shapely back view, as Duchamps-Avery bent low at the waist, rummaging.
“Ahoy, Cap’n! Hoist the mainsail!”
The boy straightened and twirled around, brandishing a large wooden sword.
Jammed on his head was Lyndon’s old leather three-cornered hat.
A yellow silk sash swirled at his neck, lighting up his joyful grin like the sunrise lit up the seven seas.
A deep ache in Lyndon’s ballocks, vaguely present since Duchamps-Avery had arranged himself on the window seat, intensified.
Conflicting urges to demand he stop at once and to bend him like a willow twig over the toy chest surged in equal measure. Hell and damnation. What had Will said? Be braver with your life. Not all treasure was silver and gold.
Nonetheless, not even Lyndon would stoop to seduce a man dressed up as a pirate.
“You are absurd,” he chuntered, which only made the pup grin even more. “And you’re not even wearing that hat properly. It’s crooked. The pointy bit goes at the front.”
“What, I should wear it like this you mean?”
Before Lyndon could flap him away, Duchamps-Avery plucked the hat from his own fair head, reached up, and plonked it upon Lyndon’s.
His pale eyes sparkled as he admired his handiwork, close enough that Lyndon could stoop and kiss him if he were truly that way inclined.
Or at least shove him aside. He did neither, simply glared instead.
“Gadzooks, yes! Piratical indeed, especially with that snarl.” Duchamps-Avery pushed the sword into Lyndon’s hand then spun back to the chest. “A hat made for your head and your head alone! I’d wager swaggering, fearsome Captain Fitzsimmons steered the good ship Goule across the globe on many a happy occasion.
Leaving a lovelorn damsel in every port! ”
Another sword appeared from the depths of the toy chest, lighter than the first. Duchamps-Avery examined it briefly. “This isn’t the weapon of a fearsome sea captain.” He tossed it to one side. “The trinket belonging to a mere landlubber, perhaps. Too small by far.”
He threw Lyndon a quick sunbeam over his shoulder, pointing to the first sword that he’d handed him. Obligingly, Lyndon gave it a little flourish.
“Yes. I believe this one did belong to me,” he admitted, hefting it in his hand.
“The weapon of a wicked pirate king,” Duchamps-Avery declared. “As soon as I laid eyes on it, I knew it was yours. Why am I not surprised that you wielded the largest, most impressive of swords, my lord?”
Defeated by Duchamps-Avery’s ebullient humour, Lyndon sank into the nearest armchair, his grumbles about peace and quiet and solitude and childishness landing on deaf ears.
The way the boy bandied around sword, making no attempt to sound anything but vulgar was, well, having an effect on Lyndon’s personal, private sword that did not bear thinking about.
A pair of colourful pantaloons joined the second, smaller sword on the floor, along with the epauletted, long-skirted coat of a French infantry soldier and a bejewelled reticule once owned by Lyndon’s grandmother.
He hoped the baubles were made from paste but, from the lustre, had a dreadful feeling they weren’t.
“Ah!” The boy pounced on another long bolt of heavy material, heaving it out and sending a cloud of dust spiralling into the air. “What do we have here, my hearties?”
Lyndon covered his mouth and nose as Duchamps-Avery vigorously coughed, bringing tears to his eyes.
Flapping one of his silly, dainty hands in front of his face, he shook out the ruby silk garment, awash with a bold yellow floral brocade as if a meadow of dandelions were growing out from the fabric.
“Even the moths daren’t attack this.” Duchamps-Avery flattened it against himself, clearing dust from his throat and counting the layers. “Good lord, how many petticoats does one dress need? And look at all this puffery! I could lose both my arms forever down one of these sleeves!”
“My grandmother was a robust lady,” Lyndon observed. “And you are not.”
He expected a witty retort, but none was forthcoming because Duchamps-Avery was too busy fiddling at the fall of his trousers and—
“What in heavens name are you doing, boy?” Lyndon spluttered. “This isn’t a bath house!”
“Trying the thing on, of course!” Duchamps-Avery flung his trousers aside, caring not where they landed. On the wooden horse, as it happened. “One can’t play pirates and damsels without a proper costume, can one? And I’m under no illusion you’ll be content to take the role of damsel.”
Thank all that was holy that the boy had taken up the vulgar fashion of wearing silken drawers.
Lyndon had no intention of adopting modern ways; he was perfectly content wrapping his undercarriage in his shirttails, thank you very much.
But then he also had no desire to strip down to his unmentionables in the bloody nursery.
Blood heated his veins as Duchamps-Avery’s shapely, milky, bare calves danced before his eyes.
Calves sculpted by Satan himself for the singular purpose of wrapping around Lyndon’s back.
“We’re not playing damsels and pirates! I’m attempting to paint that bloody chapel roof, and you’re supposed to be reading a disreputable work of literature. Quietly.”
Lyndon might as well have been speaking to the damned three-cornered hat still wedged on his head. “And…what the blazes? For heaven’s sake. Leave your undershirt on! Where’s your sense of decorum, boy?”
“Oh, I don’t know, hiding out there somewhere—” Duchamps-Avery flung a hand in the direction of the window.
“—having kidnapped your sense of adventure and scarpered with it.” By now, he was hopping about on one leg, the other caught up in the petticoats.
“One can’t wear a shirt under a dress like this.
” He laughed again. “For a start, it will spoil my decolletage!”
Never mind that, it was rapidly spoiling Lyndon’s resolve to keep his hands to himself. To pretend he had a grip on things was an insult to grips and things. Briefly, he closed his eyes. Then prised them open again.
Hell and damnation. Those deft, delicate fingers had half the shirt already unfastened. And then the thing was off the pup’s shoulders altogether. Not many seconds after that, time took on its own dimensions.
Lyndon stared. He couldn’t help himself. Sometimes, beauty crept into your bones unnoticed in the warmth of a gaze, the generosity of a soul, the subtle swell of a breast. It seduced gradually with a sly glance here and a curvy hip swing there, until hooking one to be left dangling like a fish.
And then there was that other rare beauty. A beauty that screamed its name so loudly it made the hairs on one’s arms stand up, such as when Duchamps-Avery stood near naked in the nursery, his modesty covered only by a flimsy pair of cream bloody silk drawers.
Mesmerised, Lyndon licked his lips. The portion of beauty allotted this man was undeserving—a beauty already tunnelling into Lyndon’s core, into his very marrow, and stealing it away.
And the devil was Duchamps-Avery bloody knew it.
It was plain for Lyndon to see in the tips of his long fingers, idly smoothing a path along his flat belly, in the languorous, idle way he contemplated the dusty dress, in no hurry to cover himself with it.
“What ails you, Lord Lyndon?” The change in Duchamps-Avery’s voice was unmissable, too, huskier, suggestive. “Have you never seen a man undress down to his drawers before? You have brothers, do you not? Surely you have boxed with other gentlemen at Jack’s?”
Lyndon’s blood burned. He wanted this youth like he wanted his next breath. Will’s words floated back to him through the sun’s rays. Courage, my old friend.
“None…none like you,” he whispered. “None so fair.”
Duchamps-Avery dropped his gaze, looking down at himself as if through Lyndon’s carnal gaze.
His long fingers teased at the ties of his drawers, and the corner of his soft mouth curved into a smile.
“Why, thank you, my lord. Pretty looks aren’t everything.
But I like to think I have them anyway, just in case. ”
“Put on the damned dress,” Lyndon barked. And then, because he could hide his desire no longer and knew that damned Duchamps-Avery had spied it, squeezed his cockstand through his breeches. “Before I am undone, damn you.”
Even the most revered of French courtesans never made such a spectacle of covering themselves.
Lyndon was torn between losing the miles of bare marbled flesh and yet gaining the most coquettish vixen he’d ever imagined existed.
Having arranged his ruby decolletage to his liking, Duchamps-Avery sashayed towards him, picking up the small sword along the way.
Flowing around his legs, the silk skirts whispered like a cool breeze.
“Now for the sword play, my lord.” He trapped Lyndon in his glittery gaze. “Tell me, Fitz, when you played with your friend alone up here, did he ever wear this dress? Did he pretend to be a damsel in need of your strong, protective embrace?”
“Yes,” Lyndon croaked. “Though never as well as you.”
“You were of an age for swordplay?”
“He had eighteen years to my seventeen.”
Duchamps-Avery nodded, fondling his wooden sword before encasing the blunted blade in the tunnel of his fist, performing a lewd action that could not be mistaken for anything else. That wicked smile played at his lips again.
“Did you chase your damsel first, as dastardly pirates are wont?”
“Yes,” Lyndon breathed.
“And did you catch him?”