One Night in London: Robert and Anthony

Prologue-1

PrologueLondon, April 1818

In his brother’s study, gazing blankly at the window and the bustle of city street below, Robert Thorne decided that he did not want to get married.

He said it aloud: “I don’t want to get married.” The serene greyness of London shrugged back at him from the other side of thick glass; he winced from implacability and turned away. “I know I have to. I know. Don’t say it.”

Over at the side of the room, Anthony stopped examining book-spines to swing that discerning gaze Robert’s direction. “I said nothing. Perhaps you’re feeling guilty.” As usual, his eyes raked across Robert’s outpouring of emotion with no discernible reaction, too dark to easily read; also as usual, his posture remained flawless, thick black hair neatly brushed back, every tidy inch of him a reproof to Robert’s flailing.

“I could fire you,” Robert said, not seriously; he’d made the threat before. He wouldn’t carry it out, which he assumed Anthony knew.

Anthony Price had been his secretary for over a year now, and they were friends, of a sort. For a certain definition of friends. Anthony hadn’t been his choice, but his brother’s; James tended to believe that the viscount’s title gave him the right to manage not only the estate but everyone else’s lives as well. Robert, on the other hand, tended to believe that James had no right to interfere with the pursuit of pleasure.

The thought, as usual, made him feel guilty. James might be stern and officious and prone to ordering the world around; but James was also his brother. And had been through enough, a widower with two small children and an estate that never had recovered from generations of overspending and hapless mismanagement before that. James tried to control the world because anything else meant chaos; Robert understood as much.

He simply wished James hadn’t extended that philosophy to him.

A problem, he thought. Something else to be solved. To be managed. With an advantageous marriage, a requirement for family dinners, and a secretary to organize daily life. James had hired Anthony Price and Anthony’s miracle-worker reputation; James approved of Anthony’s tidiness. James did not approve of Robert.

Here, in his brother’s small but well-appointed study, in the once-fashionable but aging family townhouse, Robert considered scotch, longingly; he considered Anthony, also longingly. Pleasures, and forbidden. Not an option. Not now, and not ever; Anthony worked for the family, and that was that. Despite luscious lips and stern features and competent hands that caught every single one of Robert’s interests.

He’d meant the comment about firing Anthony as a joke. Unserious. Like himself. He’d never recall appointments or find his left boot without those dark eyes directing him. He knew.

Anthony kept Robert’s correspondence with everyone from boot-makers to booksellers to lovers in flawless order, handled their finances without comment, and always seemed to know where Robert had set down a flamboyantly entertaining Gothic novel or how to hire a new footman or when to quietly pour a glass of the good whiskey. Anthony had come with excellent recommendations and the ever-present ache of a cautionary tale; everyone knew the Price family had once had a fortune.

And now Anthony stood here. In Robert’s brother’s study, preparing to attend Robert’s own engagement ball, because Robert had asked. Because Robert needed at least one person on his side.

Because he wanted that person to be Anthony. He’d wanted that ever since the first day they’d met. Since Anthony Price had shaken his hand, firm as the core of the earth, and looked at him as if seeing right through him, and Robert’s pulse had jumped and danced under the press of those fingers.

Anthony’s expression had now gone even more immobile than usual. Not a good sign. “You could indeed request my dismissal. Technically I am employed by your brother, not you. But if you were unhappy with my work—”

“Oh, for—” He waved an arm in exasperation. “You know I didn’t mean that.”

“I know nothing of the sort.” Anthony touched the books again, evidently just because: gaze and fingertips trailing over leather, calfskin, gilt etching. “You could be rid of me tonight. If you desired.”

“I wouldn’t.” Robert took a step over his direction. “I was making a joke.”

Anthony just looked at him. Robert wanted to reach out, wanted to touch him; wanted to stick a hand down his own throat and pull out the boot that was so plainly lodged there; wanted to lurch back in time and take back his own words. He knew Anthony’s income depended on him. He did know.

And he felt about two feet tall. Emotions before words, as always. Not thinking. Unaware of consequence. Everything his brother thought he was, and worse.

Standing next to Anthony, he couldn’t’ve felt more the opposite of all that calm shadow-brown capability. Broad shoulders, big muscles from boxing lessons—Lord Westhaven had enjoyed the sport, and as they’d been lovers at the time, Robert had enjoyed it as well—and hair more gold than red and resolutely unruly, eyes more blue than green but sometimes both, shifting with moods and the light: he knew perfectly well how much he tended to overflow. Into space, into a room, into Society gossip. Messy and dramatic. Twenty-eight years old, and beside Anthony he ended up fourteen again and clumsy as hell.

He said, “Don’t worry, I won’t fire you. Even if you despise me.”

“I don’t despise you.”

“You dislike me.”

“I don’t.”

“You despair of me.”

Anthony’s mouth tugged itself into the faintest upward hint. “That one might be true.”

“There,” Robert said, with satisfaction. “You do smile.” He wanted to provoke more. He’d wanted that for nearly a year. And every time he tried—every time he thought he might be about to catch a glimpse behind that unshakable façade—

Those doors kept swinging shut. He thought Anthony liked him. He wanted Anthony to like him. He was afraid Anthony didn’t, and he wasn’t used to that. Disconcerting, not being liked. Not being liked by Anthony Price in particular.

He didn’t even know whether Anthony was interested in men. These days that sort of desire was, if not precisely the usual, certainly allowable, and even more so if such alliances came with some sort of advantage: money, property, a title. If one’s family already had an heir, then marriage between two men might be welcomed, under the right circumstances; it was not the most common, but not shameful. Robert, who liked to think he himself appreciated beauty in all forms, had enjoyed both men and women as lovers, though not as many as Society seemed to think. He would never have had the time, and also…

And also, he thought. That other reason. The reason he stood in his brother’s house, about to formally proclaim himself an engaged man, and begin preparations for the wedding.

His brother, of course, believed all the rumors. All the gossip. Every story about decadent orgies and naked rides through Hyde Park at dawn, even when that particular tale had begun as an offhanded joke told at a picnic. But then James always did believe the worst of him.

And James had given orders, in that no-nonsense head of the family tone, that Robert would indeed attend this ball, honor his engagement, and give young Mr. Dalton Irving his hand.

He said now, in the quiet book-lined space of his brother’s study, exactly where he’d run to hide, “What if I don’t?”

Anthony lifted eyebrows. “If you don’t…smile? Unusual for you, certainly, but hardly enough to end your betrothal.”

“You know what I mean.” He paced a step, swung arms, found himself trapped by a desk and unyielding evening-dress attire. He put up a hand to yank at his cravat, recalled too late that he did not have time to fix it, cringed at what he’d done. “What if I don’t get married?”

“What if you don’t?” Anthony put a slim volume of old-fashioned poetry back and came over. Skillful hands took over Robert’s cravat, swift and practiced. The heat of them brushed Robert’s throat, and somehow spread all the way through his body. To his toes. Other places. “Hold still.”

Robert did, though parts of him wished rather desperately for those hands to drift elsewhere. “I am holding still.”

“You’re not. Try harder.”

Robert nearly whimpered, at that. He did widen his eyes and give his secretary his best please say that again look, shameless about it.

“Don’t waste it on me,” Anthony said, more dry than fabled deserts in Robert’s favorite books of far-off travels. “Besides, isn’t Isabella Carissini awaiting you in your bedroom later?”

“I’ve sworn off opera singers,” Robert grumbled, deflated. “I’m getting married. Being responsible.” He wanted to yank at his cravat again. Couldn’t. Anthony’d fixed it for him. “We ended it on good terms last week. She’s amused by the whole idea of me settling down.”

Anthony’s hand hovered for just a second over Robert’s shoulder. “She doesn’t know you as well as you deserve, then.”

“What? What does that mean?” He pleaded, as Anthony took a step away, “Tell me. Or I’ll…what would I do? Make you polish the silver? Send you out to buy too many books to carry?”

“You do,” Anthony observed, “employ footmen. My lord…”

“No,” Robert said, more sharply than he’d meant to. But the world was coming apart, he was getting married, Anthony was being cryptic at him, and he couldn’t handle polite civility. “No. Robert, I said. Use my name. Please.”

“Robert.” In that voice, low and warm and smooth as cleanly poured chocolate, his name became a jewel, a steady anchor, a precious cargo. “I really shouldn’t. But…”

“But I’m asking,” Robert said. “And I can make you smile.”

“Robert…” Anthony shook his head this time, and the smile returned: not large, but wryly beckoning. “I meant that if she’s amused by the idea of you settling down…she can’t be seeing the you I know.”

“The what?” He looked himself up and down, half for effect. Still him: adored and adorable, teetering on the lower rungs of London’s gentry, vaguely and hopefully attractively rumpled even when theoretically polished. “What do you know about me? Is it good?”

Anthony sighed, but the sigh came laced with fondness. Robert hoped it did, anyway. “The Robert Thorne I know buys secondhand melodramatic sensation novels and loves memoirs about travel to places he’s never been. The Robert Thorne I know will sit and read stories to his niece and nephew for hours if they ask. And the Robert Thorne I know would never go back on his word regarding an engagement, not when it matters so much to the families involved. Because the Robert Thorne I know is a good man.”

Their eyes met across air, blue-green and midnight-dark. Robert, caught up in sudden coal-hot intensity, forgot to breathe.

Anthony added, softly, “And he’ll go down and greet his guests, tonight. Without an opera singer waiting in the wings, because you don’t want to hurt anyone.”

“I don’t,” Robert blurted out. “I don’t—but I don’t want to—I don’t even know him—”

“From everything I’ve been able to discover, young Mr. Irving is also a good man.” Anthony drew a breath, kept smiling. Something about the smile seemed different, though Robert couldn’t figure out why. “He’s been very sheltered and he’s very inexperienced, but he’s clever and kindhearted, from all reports. And of course there’s the fortune.”

The fortune. That damnable fortune. That awful necessary fortune.

The rattle and shout of carriages, of horse-hoofs, of street-sounds, threw a specter of the future into the night. Downstairs the guests would be waiting. Robert and Anthony would be late. They already were.

And James would be scowling. Mr. and Mrs. Irving would be tense, awaiting the formal presentation and announcement on behalf of their son—their only son, Robert recalled all over again, even more guiltily. Dalton Irving was the younger son, or had been. William Irving had been the older brother. Lost to scarlet fever a few years back. Terrible, of course.

The Thornes weren’t outright impoverished—and he looked at Anthony and felt the thought like an arrow-bite, cold and cruel—but they weren’t wealthy, either: enough to remain welcome in Society, but barely more than comfortable. And money mattered; it always did. He had to look away from Anthony this time.