Chapter Nine
“THAT FANCY FRENCH fella’s here to see you.”
Sidney pronounced French in the way one might introduce a dose of the clap into a conversation. “Do yer want him in here or in your”—he threw Mickey a wolfish look—“rooms, like last time?”
Mickey felt his face turning crimson and his pulse flutter even as he scowled. “Are there no secrets in this blasted place?”
“Yer loud, Mickey lad. My bedchamber lies directly below yours.”
Oh, capital. Now Tommy and Sidney would tease him mercilessly.
He cleared his throat and gave a brisk nod. “Here, obviously. It’s the middle of the day. I can’t afford the time for social calls when I’m running my cousin’s business.”
Sidney winked. “Not sure he’s here on Tommy’s business, lad. Not unless Tommy’s branching out into burials. He’s brought flowers.”
“Flowers,” Mickey repeated.
“Yep. Like he’s going a-courting. Smells like a fancy flower himself too.”
Mickey shook his head despairingly. If Rollo and Willoughby got wind of this, he’d never hear the end of it. “Send him in.”
When Valentin strolled into Mickey’s cramped office, darkly handsome in his smartly tailored topcoat, the air grew three degrees warmer. The Frenchman was a walking hazard to cravats, corsets, and common sense.
“Greetings, London.” His green eyes sparkled as if, already, he’d got away with something that morning. Mickey suspected he had.
“Monsieur le—Valentin. This is…unexpected.”
Both hands held behind his back, Valentin approached Mickey’s desk. He proffered the right one, and a small round object dropped into Mickey’s palm.
“It gave me an excuse to visit,” Valentin declared, not the slightest bit sheepish.
Mickey examined one of his own plain waistcoat buttons.
“From last night,” Valentin added needlessly. “I stole it whilst you were…uh…otherwise occupied.”
He bestowed upon Mickey his most artfully rueful gaze, of a sort typically reserved for dying dogs or tragic poetry. “And I bought you flowers.”
Violas, a modest posy of violets and creams, tied with a fraying ribbon.
“Bought or stole?”
“Repurposed.”
Mickey didn’t want to know. “Is this something Frenchmen of leisure do?” He studied the delicate heart-shaped leaves, then tentatively brought them to his nose. The scent bore a soft, powdery sweetness. “Gift other gentlemen flowers? Do you not simply fuck and be done with it?”
“I cannot speak for the entirety of my countrymen, but I do not. Not since I caught sight of you at that masked ball.” Settling his arse cheek on Mickey’s desk, Valentin leaned across it to plant his pliant lips so very close to the corner of Mickey’s startled ones.
“You have acquired a French lover.” His mouth slipped along Mickey’s jaw.
“And a Frenchman’s heart. We take our responsibilities in those arenas very, very seriously. ”
Lover? Heart? He took uttering drivel seriously, and Mickey wouldn’t argue with that.
Goodness, how he wanted to allow himself to believe the man, but how many hands had Valentin’s heart danced through before Mickey’s?
Surely, he must have an ulterior motive.
His fascination with Ashington, perhaps.
Or to finagle into Tommy’s business empire.
But, heavens, it was becoming devilishly difficult to think straight when Valentin’s lips were making love to his neck.
It felt as though Mickey’s trousers were shrinking.
“You’re certainly…um…persistent.”
Valentin’s teeth nibbled Mickey’s earlobe, sending a shiver down his spine. “I prefer ardent. Do you not believe in love at first sight?”
“What?” Words failed him. Five minutes ago, Mickey was cross referencing bootleg brandy prices.
Now, he had an incipient cockstand, a hand that was not his own caressing the nape of his neck, and a bunch of violas in need of a pot of water.
And an enthusiastic Frenchman bandying about words like love.
Valentin Beauregard was a first-rate menace.
Mickey would sooner trust a fox in a henhouse.
“No. I do not,” Mickey gasped. “Unless vast inheritances and titles are involved. And I am in possession of neither, as you well know.”
“Then I shall convert you.”
Mickey had never taken a lover. Not for more than a ten-minute spell anyhow.
After finally crawling out of Valentin’s set at Albany the night before, Mickey had convinced himself he didn’t believe a word of the romantic nonsense Valentin spouted.
And yet, here the man was again, spouting more. His capacity for it was unmatched.
No blushing wealthy ingenue, Mickey refused to make a fool of himself. Reluctantly, he pushed Valentin away.
“I’d be a goose to trust a fraction of the things you say. You offer your heart so freely, as…as though it is a trinket you might steal back at any moment.” Between his fingers, Mickey rolled his stolen waistcoat button. “And without compunction.”
Valentin seemed not the slightest put out. Rather, as he came around to Mickey’s side of the desk, he appeared terribly sincere. “Stand up, London.”
He tugged Mickey to his feet, then settled in Mickey’s chair himself, patting his knee.
His gaze didn’t ask, it commanded, thus Mickey complied.
He’d never sat in another man’s lap, and none were finer than the one being offered.
Valentin draped himself over Mickey’s ordinary office chair as though it were furniture designed solely for seduction.
“I’ve told you,” Valentin crooned, petting Mickey’s hair once their cockstands had greeted each other and Mickey was arranged to Valentin’s liking.
“Taking you as my lover is the cure for my thieving.” He threw his arm wide in a manner only foreigners made convincing.
“Why would I thieve when I have already found the ultimate prize?”
“Tosh,” Mickey retorted. The damned man was in London to carry out one of the biggest thefts of his life! “And you speak of us being lovers as though it were an established fact. I have not yet agreed to the terms.”
“Terms?” Valentin tutted. His hands slipped under Mickey’s arse to give both cheeks a squeeze. “Terms are for business transactions.” His gaze roamed Mickey’s face as if he was contemplating which bit to eat first. “My affections for you are far more meaningful than that.”
“How do I know? Forgive my mistrust, but how do I know all your whispered words are not absent of…ambition? You arrived in London barely a month ago. Rumours abound. How do I know it is not my connections you seek?”
Valentin sighed. “You do not. And it is true; we have hardly begun. But I have said it before, and I’ll say it again—you make me want you.
Everywhere. I recognised it from the moment I saw you in the shadows, observing the ton at play.
Is it foolish? Possibly. Inconvenient? Certainly.
But we do not quite fit the frame, you and me.
The world does not know where to position us.
And yet, in your presence, I feel that my… misfitting was made to match yours.”
“Please don’t flatter.”
“It is not flattery. It is a confession. I have desired many things, most of them made from silver and gold. But nothing as dazzling as you.”
Mickey groaned. The lap was divine, the man’s voice was divine, and the nonsense he spouted was equally divine, if Mickey allowed it. He buried his face in the other’s neck—also divine—inhaling his skin. “If you were less poetic, I might believe you more.”
“Perhaps I shall have to show you instead.” Valentin squeezed him tight. “By returning to you day after day. Using what little time we have together to persuade you to one day travel with me to some of the wonderful cities and lands I have seen, and of which you dream.”
Mickey closed his eyes, giving himself brief permission to wander to places where the fruit was so ripe that juices dripped down his wrist and strange languages tinkled like wind chimes. And waking with Valentin alongside him. He shook himself.
“Not Venice.”
“No. Not Venice. I would not put you through it.”
That damned treacherous smile. Those damned treacherous eyes. Mickey inhaled deeply.
“Do you believe in…in love at first sight?” he asked in barely a whisper.
“Yes, London.” Something in Valentin’s unhesitating voice, if only for a breath, spoke a truth. “I do. Very much. You have my word.”
*
AFTER HE SHOOED Valentin away, Mickey stared listlessly out of the window. Tommy sauntered in, bearing a small jug of water, and Mickey braced for a teasing. Instead, Tommy stopped at the desk, arranging the violas a damned sight more artfully than Mickey would have.
“It’s strange, is it not, having a suitor and being wanted?” Tommy observed. “For wary men such as ourselves?”
Turning, Mickey threw him a fond smile. “Wary of affection, you mean?”
“Of everything.” He laughed humourlessly. “Circumspection, which has stood us in good stead.”
Mickey agreed with a grunt. “Beauregard sees things in me that aren’t there,” he grumbled, “if his flummery is to be believed.”
Now, Tommy laughed properly. “Oh, they’re there, believe me. The only person who doesn’t see them is you.”
Mickey shrugged. More flattery, and from an unlikely source. “He doesn’t see me scheming to steal the same jewels as himself though.”
“No, and he must not get a whiff of it.”
“He won’t,” Mickey assured. “Though, again, if his declarations for me are to be believed, then my deceit is not a pleasant trait.”
Tommy didn’t have much of an answer to that.