Chapter 2
Two
Guillame was dead. Yves still couldn’t believe it.
The letter from his twin sister, Yvette, had come with the morning post and caught him in the middle of his daily work on behalf of the club.
It wasn’t unusual for Yvette to send him letters weekly, sometimes daily.
Ever since he’d taken refuge in The Chameleon Club three years before, his whereabouts had been a carefully kept secret, but Yvette had always known.
But now Guillame was dead. Their brother, who would have been the Marquis de Fontenay, had the title not been declared illegal when their grandparents had fled from Normandy to England during the Reign of Terror, the man who had made Yves’ life a living hell from the time they were boys, the man who had caught him in bed with another man and threatened to have him arrested and killed, was no more.
He could go home now if he wanted to. If he dared to. He could leave The Chameleon Club, where he’d been hiding for so long and return to the bosom of his family.
Or could he?
Howard Bradford had caught him in the middle of his conflicted thoughts, as he tried to scribble his way through sums and figures to stop his spinning mind and his racing heart.
He knew Bradford, of course. Not personally, but he knew the man by reputation.
He’d watched from the corners of the club’s ballroom every time Bradford had returned to London, like a conquering hero, to celebrate life and passion with his friends.
He'd watched Bradford single out any number of young men at the club over the years, always wondering what they did when they disappeared upstairs for the night, or even just for a few hours.
Those men had always come back looking dazed and happy, their faces pink and their gaits just a little off.
Yves had watched and wondered if he would ever be the man Bradford chose for the night, or perhaps a bit longer?
And now the moment had come. It had happened. Howard Bradford had singled him out for seduction.
It was far more terrifying than Yves could ever have imagined.
“Do you have a burr in your saddle?” Bradford asked as he led Yves across the ballroom to the table that had been made into the hub of the club members’ decorating efforts.
It was piled with branches and garlands, brought in fresh from the country that morning, ribbons donated by Mr. Wilkes, and various other trinkets and things that club members had donated to make The Chameleon Club glow with Christmas cheer.
“Hmm?” Yves blinked from the table of greenery and glanced up at Bradford, heart racing. “Oh. I am not a horse,” he said, then immediately felt ridiculous for pointing out something so obvious. “That is,” he rushed on as Bradford chuckled, “I do not know what you mean, sir.”
Bradford growled slightly as he reached for a spool of red ribbon on the table. “I like it when you call me ‘Sir’,” he said, pulling a length of ribbon from the spool and wrapping it around his hand, like he intended to use it to restrain Yves somehow.
Yves caught his breath and shivered on the inside. Not with fear, though he was not particularly inclined toward any of the rougher ways a man might be with another man, but because he was so deeply, hopelessly tempted.
Bradford laughed unexpectedly and rested a hand on Yves’ back. “Steady now,” he said. “I do not intend to hurt you. You are far too tense, my friend.”
“Am I?” Yves asked, though he knew full well he was. He’d been jumping at his own shadow for so long he did not remember what it felt like to touch the ground.
“Come,” Bradford said instead of answering. “Let us help the decorating efforts and enjoy ourselves. The Chameleon Club is supposed to be a place of respite, where we leave our troubles on the doorstep.”
Yves huffed a small laugh before he could stop himself. Bradford had no idea how true that was.
It was nice to be taken out of himself for a moment, however. It was easy enough to lose himself in the cares and calculations of other men’s business, but that was not as fully an escape as he could have wished for.
Howard selected a few of the longer garlands of pine, consulting Wilkes, who was the chief architect of the design at hand, about where they should be hung.
Yves stood by, patiently and obediently, ready to assist where he was needed.
He allowed Bradford to pile his arms full of pine.
It smelled gloriously of the outdoors, filling Yves’ heart with a sudden pang to see the countryside again. It had been three long years.
“Surely, hanging these garlands should not be so much of a challenge,” Bradford told him once his arms, too, were filled with pine. Bradford led him across the room to the window nearest the piano, where the young dreamer, Lord Bolingbroke was playing. “One merely needs to nail them, correct?”
Yves flushed down to his toes. The way Bradford spoke implied a different sort of nailing entirely.
Much as he might want to, he could not afford to be a part of that game, whether Guillame was dead and the danger had passed or not.
“I am not certain whether anything needs to be nailed,” he said, trying not to play along with Bradford’s game of words.
Or perhaps he was playing, he couldn’t tell.
It was absurd that he did not know his own heart.
“We could simply lay them on the windowsills and place candles and other decorations around them.”
“Ah. I see,” Bradford said, a sparkle in his eyes as he dumped his armful of greenery onto the nearest windowsill. “You are more the sort for laying than nailing.” He winked.
Yves caught his breath. Yes, Bradford had most definitely singled him out as his companion of the hour.
Strangely, as intrigued as Yves had always been with Bradford, it was a disappointment to think that he would be merely one more man in a very long line.
Some men did not mind a quick and satisfying moment that was gone almost before it had begun.
There had been a time when Yves himself was as careless with his heart as he was with his body.
But David had changed all that, and then Guillame had blown everything to pieces.
“Oh dear,” Bradford said, pulling Yves out of his sinking thoughts.
Yves blinked, realizing he’d been pushing the garland of pine around the windowsill without much purpose or art to his supposed decoration. Worse still, he realized he had retreated into his own, sorry thoughts just as Bradford was attempting to draw him out of them.
“Apologies,” Yves said, putting on a smile that was likely too wide and hollow for the moment. “My thoughts took me somewhere else for a moment. It is unforgivable of me when you have deigned to give me your attention.”
His stilted answer only made Bradford study him harder, as if he were a particularly interesting specimen to be pinned and analyzed. “Deigned to give you my attention?” he asked when his studying did not, apparently, lead him to any conclusion.
Embarrassed heat flooded Yves’ cheeks. He’d said too much, and if he did not about-face, he would offend the man that so many admired. He laughed tightly and said, “I only meant that you are well known to be…a world-traveler.” He changed his mind about what he wished to say at the last moment.
Bradford arched one eyebrow at him as if he knew where Yves’ statement had intended to go when he’d begun. “World-traveler, yes,” he said.
Yves busied himself with the decorations so that he did not have to look directly at Bradford as he continued.
“Stories of your adventures, in England and abroad, are well-known,” he said, picking up one of the bows they’d brought over from the table and placing it just so in the center of the display he was creating.
“Italy, Spain, France. It seems you have been everywhere.”
“There are far more places than Italy, Spain, and France to visit,” Bradford said, taking up one of the other garlands and moving to the window one over from where Yves worked.
“Yes, but I have been given to understand that you have been more or less everywhere,” Yves said. “Is it true that as a younger man, you traveled to America, and also to India once?”
“That is true,” Bradford said with a broad smile. “I have crossed more than a few oceans in my time.”
He was dazzlingly handsome. Enough so that Yves was distracted from his work before he could so much as erect a candle in the center of his display.
It did not matter that Bradford was older.
His face was young despite the whiteness of his hair and beard.
His physique was still that of a younger man as well.
If the whispers he’d heard in the club when the others had imbibed too much and grown inclined to tell stories were to be believed, Bradford’s physical form was as impressive without clothing as it was dressed.
“I voyaged to New York when I was not much older than you are,” Bradford had gone on. “I was on business for my father, who owned a shipping firm. Father always said I was the most personable man he’d ever met and that I could sell woolen scarves to the islanders of the South Pacific.”
Yves laughed, marginally more relaxed as Bradford told his stories. It wasn’t just the man’s form that was pleasing, his voice, too, could sooth savage beasts.
Yves caught himself wondering what Bradford would sound like whispering words of encouragement in the throes of passion.
“The trip to India was slightly more recent,” Bradford went on, either not seeing Yves’ sudden jerk as his thoughts took a more heated turn or not mentioning it.
“In that particular situation, I had been sent by my late father’s successor, supposedly to gauge whether there was much trade to be done on the subcontinent.
Truthfully, I believe the man wished to be rid of me after rumors began to circulate throughout the trading company’s offices. ”