Chapter Seventeen
KIT WOKE TO a man in his bedchamber. The wrong man, unfortunately. He’d bid farewell to the right one after taking him by the hand and escorting him to the bedchamber adjacent. An exquisite torture, but one which even now, as Jasper clattered the washbasin, hurled coals onto the fire, and yanked back the drapes, made his belly flip.
“I don’t think you could make any more noise if you tried,” Kit observed blandly.
“Probably not,” agreed Jasper. “His lordship requests your presence in the breakfast room. Sir .”
Kit almost replied that he requested the earl’s presence in his bed, but somehow, he didn’t feel his temporary valet would find that amusing. Jasper plonked a tray on the bedside table, sending coffee spilling down the side of the coffee pot.
“Would sir like me to shave him?”
“Ye gods, no. I prefer to keep my blood contained inside my body not spurting down my neck.”
Sir wanted Jasper to bugger off so he might ablute in peace and mull over his wonderful encounter with Lando in the ballroom. Not carting him off to bed had felt right, as much as his aching cockstand had demanded otherwise. Trust me. Lando had a plan, that much was clear, from how he’d held him close. From how those pale eyes had beseeched him, had promised he’d come to no harm. From how he had clung to Kit as if losing him would destroy him.
Whatever had passed between them was more than a prelude to a simple tupping. And whatever Lando thought was wrong about men speaking words of love to one another was misinformed. He would show the man that Mr Christopher Angel was more than a damned passing pleasure vessel. And by the time he’d finished, the earl would never have eyes for anyone else.
*
ON KIT’S ARRIVAL in the breakfast room, Lando dismissed his footman. His fine features bore an expression Kit couldn’t interpret. Was Lando now regretting his candour?
“Is something wrong?”
“Far from it.” As the door closed quietly behind the servant, Lando rose from his seat and greeted Kit by reaching up and delivering a kiss.
“I’ve wanted to do that since I woke.” His eyes roamed Kit’s face. “But kissing you in front of Johnson, who has known me since I was a babe, would feel akin to kissing you with my father occupying the other end of this table, frowning behind his newspaper.”
Lacing his fingers with Kit’s, who still reeled with the idea of kissing Lando in front of anyone, let alone a parent, Lando led him to the laden sideboard. “So, we’ll have to serve ourselves, I’m afraid.”
Kit chuckled. “I expect I’ll manage. But in exchange for only one kiss?” He plucked at the loose sleeve of Lando’s silk banyan, the dove-grey one. “Wholly inadequate. Especially now I’ve finally got my hands on this.”
A white linen nightgown peeked out from beneath the banyan; Lando’s imaginary row of gossipy mamas must be clutching their pearls in horror. Unmarried gentleman did not parade in their nightgowns outside the bedchamber. Kit was learning by the hour that Lando’s household was a little different.
Unhurriedly, he availed himself of Lando’s upturned mouth, marvelling again at how the man yielded to him and how, in the space of seconds, breakfast had become his favourite meal of the day. His lover’s shape under the banyan was everything the flimsy garment promised, his body hard and lean, wrought iron under soft, soft flesh. One part of Kit became very hard indeed, making his belly tighten with want. He deepened the kiss as his tongue sought out the corners of Lando’s inviting open mouth. He bit at Lando’s plump lower lip and then licked at the sweet taste of him. When they finally parted, they were both gasping.
“Will we be disturbed?” Kit asked. Kissing another (barely dressed) man in broad daylight with servants milling around was possibly the most daring thing he had ever done, far more daring than picking pockets or scheming to bring down a ghastly baronet.
“No.” Lando shook his fair head, breathlessly amused. “They know not to enter.”
Under Kit’s fingers, the silk clasps of the gown fell away. “So I may do this, then.” He drifted his hands lower towards the hem of the pristine linen.
“Yes. You will find that I am quite naked underneath.”
A low grunt of pleasure escaped Kit’s throat. What that fey, fluttery voice did to him. Bunching up the fine fabric, his fingertips encountered the backs of Lando’s sleek thighs. His hands explored higher, roaming over Lando’s firm buttocks and the twin dimples above them. Their kissing turned hungrier; arching into him, Lando circled Kit’s neck with his arms, crushing their mouths as one. Kit glided his palm across a sharp hip bone, then travelled lower again between Lando’s parted thighs this time, then up once more…to the treasure of Lando’s long and slim prick, curving towards his navel from a nest of neat pale curls. Lando shuddered as Kit circled a thumb around the tip, dipping into the wetness.
“You are even more fine here than my hand remembered,” he whispered, and Lando groaned into his mouth.
Kit began a slow steady glide, his own cockstand painfully throbbing against Lando’s bare thigh. Lando desperately clung to him, panting wetly against the skin of Kit’s neck, lost to Kit’s hand on his shaft. Kit had bestowed this simple pleasure on plenty of men over the years and received the same in return, but with Lando, each breathy sigh and urgent moan felt like a treasure to be savoured.
Even as Lando spent in his hand, quietly and efficiently, his cool long fingers tugged at the fall of Kit’s breeches while his mouth ran like silk over his jaw and neck.
“My turn,” he whispered, his lips returning to Kit’s for a long, liquid kiss. When Kit’s prick sprang free, Lando allowed him one last delicious taste, then gracefully lowered himself to the floor.
Ye gods, was there a more glorious sight in all of His Majesty’s great kingdom? Nay, the world? Swathed in dazzling white, Lando knelt at Kit’s feet, his nose and mouth—God, his damned perfect mouth—not an inch from Kit’s needy cock. Clasping his hands behind his back, he threw Kit a last lingering look up, then bowed his fair head.
Plush lips, as warm as sun-baked cherries, pressed tender kisses down his length. Teasing licks and nibbles peppered his lower belly. An undignified sound spilled from Kit’s throat; roughly, he pushed his breeches lower in time for Lando’s tongue to paint a stripe along the warm crease of his thigh. Ignoring Kit’s heavy cock screaming for attention, Lando nuzzled into his balls.
Stringing together an entire stream of curses, Kit looked down again. Then wished he hadn’t. Lando planted another teasing row of kisses along his shaft before lifting his gaze for an instant, eyes wide innocent pools of blue. Then, as if in prayer, his pale lashes lowered, and in one slick move, he swallowed Kit down.
“My God,” Kit gasped, nearly spilling right then and there. “If you continue like that, I fear I shall not delay our breakfast much longer.”
With a sound very much like a muffled snort, Lando withdrew to the tip, only to circle the slit with his tongue before sheathing him once more inside the velvet glove of his throat. “My God,” Kit repeated, grasping blindly for the sideboard. “Now you are simply showing off.”
Lando’s cheeks hollowed around him as he lathed Kit’s cock with a punishing rhythm worthy of the devil himself. Kit’s eyes shuttered tight. If he dared look again, he’d spend. But he needed to block off his ears, too, because Lando’s tiny whimpers and moans as he sucked forth Kit’s soul were more intoxicating than the finest French claret. Already, a tight tingling had started up in his spine, spreading to his groin. Stuffed in Lando’s mouth, Kit swore his prick was thickening more than it had ever done before. As his breaths came in short, fractured bursts, Kit clutched at Lando’s blond head, fighting his every desire to thrust deeper and harder.
“I’m…Lando…I’m…” This wasn’t the first cock sucking of Kit’s life, of course not, but never so expertly or so…ravenously. As his crisis swelled, he tried to push Lando’s head away; one drank coffee at breakfast, not another man’s cloying release. But it was too late. In a rush, his seed spilled from him to pour down Lando’s throat.
“Lando, I’m sorry.” Panting, Kit hauled Lando to his feet. “You are…”
His words fizzled out. On legs like jelly, Kit crushed the slighter man in his arms. Their hearts thudded against each other, and it was unclear who was supporting whom. All that mattered to Kit, as his blood returned to his brain and his mouth relearned how to form words, was that this precious, extraordinary, fragile soul knew how much he was loved.
“You…yes,” Kit managed, his breath finally recovered, then stuttered to a halt again. Loved ? Was that what this was? He pushed the thought aside. Only madness led that way. “You…your skills make a man feel quite lacking in control.”
“One is only as accomplished as the tools one works with.” Lando gave a lascivious glance down to where Kit’s half-flaccid member was tucked away again within his breeches. “Though I accept the compliment, a measure of its veracity is whether breakfast is still warm.” His reddened mouth broke into a smile, and he reached up to seal it with Kit’s. Kit tasted himself on the other man’s lips.
Arm in arm, Kit allowed Lando to lead him to the sideboard. He perused the lavish offerings and poked at a dish of crisp bacon rashers and plump sausages. “Toasty warm,” Kit declared. “I am vindicated.”
He piled his plate high with bacon and helped himself to sausages, suddenly starving. “There are so many jokes I could be tempted to make, but now that I’m an earl’s lover and a man with his own valet, I shall refrain from doing so.”
“Then allow me to do it for you.” Lando smiled broadly as Kit took his seat. “Cook’s sausages are a little on the small side this morning, don’t you think?”
“And this chair at the foot of the table feels too large,” responded Kit, patting his knee. “Care to share?”
He wondered what Johnson, the footman, would think if he could see his lordship now, daintily perched in Kit’s lap and nibbling on delicate slivers of kipper, having already put away a coddled egg. If sucking Kit’s prick was what it took to get the man to eat properly, then Kit would present himself as a willing volunteer every morning.
“Lord Cobham has sent a note,” Lando announced. “Johnson intercepted it. He requests a meeting with us both at White’s later today. For dinner at four. Sir Richard and Gartside will be joining too. Cobham has asked that Mr Hamilton refrain from attending in order that he may talk more freely.” He grinned wickedly. “Which is just as well as the matinee performance of Dick Turpin doesn’t finish until five.”
Kit smiled, too, but it was a timely reminder of the reason Kit was there in the first place. What with all the dancing and the kissing and other forms of amusement at the breakfast table, it had almost slipped his mind.
“So this isn’t breakfast at all, but a last supper,” he replied and rested his palm along the length of Lando’s lean thigh, hoping it wouldn’t be for the last time.
“Of course it isn’t,” insisted Lando. “You are very well prepared. You have read every government document front to back and back to front pertaining to that shipping canal, and if you forget any detail regarding my land, then I’ll cover for you. Having spent a month at the site after the purchase, I am well acquainted with it. And before you start, I’ll do whatever it takes for you to walk away from this cleanly.” He wrapped an arm around Kit’s neck. “Now that I’ve found you, I have no intention of relinquishing you.”
Kit wasn’t ready to let go of their current playful mood. “Is that why you’re sitting on my lap? Pinning me down?”
“No.” With a naughty look, Lando wriggled his skinny backside up against Kit’s tender parts. “I’m sitting here because it’s by far the most comfortable seat around this table.”
It was on the tip of Kit’s tongue to confess that even if he did manage to walk away from the scheme unscathed, another obstacle blocked his path in the form of a tenacious Bow Street runner. But admitting to that would spoil this delightful breakfast and practically guarantee no more would be forthcoming. Kit despised his cowardice. He hated that he held his silence whilst Lando, proud and lonely Lando, had exposed his vulnerabilities to Kit so plainly and with such honesty. Harbouring this secret shamed him, yet he continued, nonetheless. Perhaps because the secret was shaming in itself.
“What if one of them has also visited the site?” he asked instead.
Lando seemed unperturbed. “Firstly, there has not been sufficient time. But even if they have sent an agent there, he will merely confirm that the Earl of Rossingley is indeed the owner of a busy mill next to a busy shipping route. If interviewed, my man in charge up there would truthfully report that I also own the vast swathe of land surrounding it. And, as I explained to our potential business partners, our venture is not widely known, so it would come as no surprise if my man claimed no knowledge of it.”
“What about your relationship with Hamilton? And the plantation? What if they enquire about that at the mill, and your workers admit they don’t know of him?”
“Documents pertaining to my relationship with the Hamilton’s South Carolina cotton plantation are already in Cobham, Gartside, and Sir Richard’s hands. They are an exact copy of the real ones I have with an entirely different cotton plantation in Savannah, owned by a man named Hamilton. Except, the fake ones are elaborated on to include the new proposals.”
None of this was news to Kit, but hearing it again was reassuring. “What if someone at White’s asks me if I’m acquainted with Mr so-and-so from the ministry? And plenty of the chaps there will know the Foreign Secretary. He may even be a member himself.”
“They won’t,” said Lando swiftly. “Cobham has secured one of the private dining rooms. We shall not be disturbed.” He gave a quick smile. “It will all seem terribly secretive and important to the regulars. Which will impress Gartside all the more. And with a bit of luck, after the favourable impression you made on him at Lady Chalfont’s, he may not be far from making his move.”
That favourable impression had almost blown Kit’s cover. The man was a braggart and a drunk. As they’d played a few hands of loo, Gartside had tossed coins around like cheap enamel buttons, all the while boasting to Kit about someone else’s daughter he’d taken a fancy to. Kit had had to smile and laugh in all the right places while digging his nails into his thighs and grinding his teeth. Cheating Gartside out of a handful of pennies and a gilt snuffbox had been small comfort.
“The sooner it comes, the better,” he groused. “Every fresh occasion we meet brings me closer to wiping that smug expression from his hoggish, inbred, lubberly face.”
With a snort, Lando wrapped his fingers around Kit’s clenched fist. “I’m not sure His Majesty’s Chief Customs Officer of the North would be quite so vulgar about a distinguished baronet.”
“I bet he would if he had a sister or a daughter and spent five minutes with that bastard.”
Bringing their joined hands to his mouth, Lando trailed his tongue across Kit’s knuckles and gazed at him through his long, pale lashes. “You’re awfully masterful when you’re in a stew. I should endeavour to rile you up into one more often.”
Kit’s prick stirred, and he gave Lando a pinch. “Let a man have a good breakfast first.”
It was hard to believe now that the playful man curled in his lap was the same grim nobleman who’d looked down his nose at him from astride that walloping great horse. Kit had heard of melancholia, of course, and was in no doubt Lando suffered from it. But whatever ailment afflicted him seemed like the blue devils and then something more added to it. It was almost as if he switched and became a different character altogether. Sometimes he was the distinguished earl and at other precious times, like now, simply Lando, a dear man in desperate need of affection and wanting nothing more than to bask in the warm touch of another.
Kit was willing to oblige with that too. In fact, he was beginning to wonder if there was anything he wouldn’t do for this man.
He affected not to notice when Lando reached for a second bread roll.
As he slathered it in honey, Lando said, “You will be pleased to hear that when we meet later today, I intend to give the gentlemen a deadline of one week to place their bids.”
“Good. My heart can’t take the stress much longer.”
And then what ? Would Lando disappear back to Rossingley? And Kit back to his lodgings? Presuming, of course, he made it out of this hare-brained scheme without being arrested. And if Kit achieved that feat of survival, then he still had the problem of Clark chasing his tail.
But one thing was certain. If Kit did succeed in escaping with his head and shoulders intact, then he’d need to find new lodgings. Which meant one more trip back to Sindell Street to collect what few belongings remained and plan his future in pastures new. Perhaps Lando would help him find another secretarial post with a country gentleman as quietly amenable as Sir Brandon. One who wouldn’t ask too many questions.
*
LANDO SUSPECTED THAT visiting the famously exclusive White’s as a guest of the eleventh Earl of Rossingley would be daunting if Kit hadn’t already experienced the opulence of Lando’s Grosvenor Street residence and the unrivalled magnificence of the Rossingley estate. As it was, even alongside Lando, he seemed trepidatious. For the wealthy gentlemen of the ton such as himself, whose families had been members since it opened its doors over a century earlier, climbing the steps of the glamorous bow-fronted club on St James was much akin to paying a visit to a neighbouring nobleman and finding all one’s old school chums already there.
As a member of staff fawned over Lando whilst divesting them of their coats and hats, he noticed Kit trying not to stare. The place was a maze of plush drawing rooms draped in fine upholstery, flocked wallpaper, and well-heeled gentlemen. The cheery clatter of dining came from one direction, the low hum of dice and card games from another. Two or three patrons stopped to exchange words with Lando, hopefully giving Kit the impression he’d been well-liked before his self-imposed exile. Aware of the scrutiny of curious stares, he was glad of Kit’s excursion to his tailor, even if it did mean the poor man endured a daily tussle with Jasper to get the tight coat across his broad shoulders.
They were the last of the party to arrive, and Lando had a suspicion the other gentlemen might have engineered it so, as already, they were seated with drinks. From Gartside’s ruddy complexion, it was not his first.
After despatching greetings, Lord Cobham, accompanied by his solemn man of business, lost no time getting the meeting underway.
“We have questions, Rossingley,” he barked rudely. At a snap of Cobham’s fingers, his man handed over some papers. “Quite a few of them. Sir Richard and I have collated ours. Gartside here”—he cast him a disdainful look—“I daresay may have a few of his own too.”
“I’m glad to hear it,” answered Lando breezily, refraining from reminding the other of his more senior rank. “I’m nothing if not an open book.”
And so it began: a thorough grilling, beginning with the arrival of the pease soup, continuing through the haricot of mutton, and even disturbing Lando’s trifle, which was no trifling matter. Regardless, as the dinner dragged on, one aspect of the scheme became crystal clear. Lord Cobham and Sir Richard had both done their homework, whilst a half-sozzled Gartside clung to their coattails.
Having already reviewed the financial returns on Lando’s existing mill and declared them favourable, Sir Richard homed in on his relationship with the Hamilton plantation and the various options of expanding his enterprise to other plantations should the American harvest fail. Cobham and his man had scrutinised the potential for expansion of the Bridgewater Shipping Canal with a fine toothcomb, demonstrating their depth of knowledge with alarming tenacity.
Gadzooks, Lando thought, wondering whether a second helping of peach trifle might settle his discomforting anxiety. His elongated and slightly unusual breakfast with Kit had imbued him with renewed vigour and appetite. And, despite the precarious nature of their current situation, he’d become terribly conscious of an extraordinary desire to beam . Never more so than when Kit brazened out an especially knobbly set of questions from Cobham’s man by citing an ancient law, which Lando half suspected he might have conjured from thin air.
Regardless, Kit’s time in the library had not been wasted, nor had Lando’s. Where the younger man stuttered, Lando charmed, and when Lando’s charm failed to pierce through Sir Richard’s blinkered focus, Kit threw around a few complicated excise terms gleaned from God knows where, and all seemed well. And if Sir Richard’s and Cobham’s rows of facts and figures were designed to flummox and fluster and dampen Kit’s forehead in a cold sweat, then Gartside’s hulking presence served to remind them both of their true purpose. He’d been a gluttonish spectator for most of the meal, but as they passed around the brandy, he roused himself to participate.
“All well and good, Rossingley, but a man needs to know exactly how much blunt that peculiar American fellow is putting on the table.”
“Irrelevant, my dear chap,” soothed Lando. “He doesn’t know it, but he could offer me the entire state of South Carolina, and I’d likely refuse. Simply put, on English soil, I want an English business partner. Someone whom one can trust.” He smiled benignly. “Putting aside the slipperiness of foreigners, as Sir Richard’s excellent précis has demonstrated, the American harvest failed in 1805 and only scraped through in 1811. So it would be damned awkward to have Hamilton as a fellow in business and then cease using his plantation, wouldn’t it?”
“You’re being obtuse, Rossingley! Of course you want a damned English partner—and a gentleman—anyone with half a brain would. That was never the question. But how much is he offering?”
“If I may be so bold, my lord,” Kit intervened. “Sir Ambrose wishes to be sure that when he makes his offer, it is a winning one.”
“If he’d bothered to put in a damned bit of effort, he’d have worked out a credible amount for himself,” retorted Cobham.
“I h-have a calc-c-ulated f-f-figure in my h-head,” offered Sir Richard and with uncharacteristic boldness added, “but I’m n-not g-going to share it.”
“Couldn’t bloody tell it to me anyhow with that godawful stutter,” grumbled Gartside, giving Kit one more reason to despise the man.
With a little thrill of excitement, Lando pressed his foot very carefully down on Kit’s under the table. Surely, he must be feeling it too. Gartside’s question revealed everyone’s hand, namely, that Cobham and Sir Richard wanted in. Trusting their judgement, lazy Gartside was also throwing his hat into the ring, though he had no idea how to secure it. Which meant he would have to find an alternative, underhand way of making the deal his. Crossing all his fingers and toes and avoiding Kit’s gaze as Kit returned the steady press of Lando’s foot with one of his own, Lando upped the ante.
“Mr Angel, here, is keen to get this thing wrapped up and return to Manchester. As am I. No doubt, I’m not the only investor with cotton assets ripe for expansion. And, as Mr Angel has outlined to us all, the Bridgewater Canal is ripe for improvement.”
His penetrating gaze travelled around his companions, skewering each of them. Did it linger slightly longer on Gartside?
“I’d like that project to have my name at the top of it,” Lando continued, “next to one of yours. But time is not on our side, gentlemen. Thus, I am requesting all bids in by midday a week today. Then I suggest we meet here again at six to commiserate with the losers and toast my new business partner.”