Rollo nodded slowly.“I see.Then your reason for such disapproval must be because he shares the same tastes as myself.Or is it because he is one of the lower classes?Gamekeepers?Stable boys and the like?”He tutted.“I’m sorry, Fitz, would you prefer I stick to only pleasuring swells like you?”
“Damn your eyes!”Venting an angry roar, the lord grabbed Rollo by his cravat.His hot breath gusted against Rollo’s cheek, and Rollo’s nostrils filled with the sharp musk of brandy, cologne, and clean, solid man.“I mean leg-shackled men.Ralph Hart was born and bred in this village.He’s a wife and three brats at home.He’s a drunkard, a sodomite, and barely holds down bits and bobs of honest work as it is.Drives the mail coach once a day from Beccles to Norwich—rumour has it he thieves from it when opportune; mail certainly goes missing more often than not.He scrounges a bit of gavelling work at harvest, and not much else.The man’s the devil’s own trouble, but do you want his brats turfed out and in the workhouse?”His warning finger was inches away from Rollo’s face.“Because I’ll tell you this much, boy.That’s what will happen if Ralph Hart gets caught messing about with the likes of you.”
Pushing Rollo away from him, his lips twisted into a sneer.“Your prancing, frolicking ways might be all the rage in theton, or at your beloved Rossingley, where every last man and his bloody horse is a damned invert.But not here.Not here in Goule.The folks won’t stomach it from one of their own.They still have a quack healer in the village.Not fifteen years ago, a woman was stoned to death accused of being a damned witch.”
“He approached me,” cried Rollo.
“Ralph Hart can approach the King of bloody Siam if that’s what he wants!But if rumours get around that he’s a sodomite, then he’s out of a home and a wage.And over my dead body will the Fitzsimmons or any guests of the Fitzsimmons be a part of it.I’m not having his wife and brats on my conscience, and neither will you.And I’d wager all the tea in bloody Siam that your wonderful, damnedpapawould be of the same damned opinion.”
Rollo glowered at him even as hot tears pricked his eyelids.Ye gods and damnation but his lordship was right.He could almost hear his dear papa’s voice in his ear, whispering more or less the same words because God knew he’d never stoop to shouting.But of all the people to put Rollo in his place, did it have to be this bloody man?Had Rollo learned nothing from writing out endless lines?From being sent to this godforsaken backwater with his tail between his legs?
“Some bloody hellraiser you are!”he lobbed back, but it seemed to land on deaf ears.Lord Lyndon had already turned his broad shoulders away and now descended the slope at a brisk canter.Brushing at his eyes, Rollo scrabbled around for an insult, an accusation, mockery.Anything but an admittance the insufferable lord was right.Anything to pierce this man’s impenetrable armour.
And then, he recalled the heat in those smouldering, polished mahogany eyes as Rollo’s hand had lingered at the fall of his trousers.The something indefinable in that glance from the same playbook as the come-hither one Ralph Hart and Rollo had exchanged outside the barn, what seemed a lifetime ago now.Rollo selected the only weapon certain to wound.
“You can’t even summon the courage to admit what you really are, can you, Fitz?”Angrily, he brushed at his face, wet with self-pitying tears.God, he felt a long way from home.“I might be young, and foolish with it.But at least I have that.I’ll always have that.”
For a second, the lord’s pace faltered, then picked up even faster than before as if Rollo had never spoken.
Chapter Ten
My dearest Willoughby.I’ve made an absolute ass of myself.Not unusual per se, except that my poor form was called out by Lord bloody Lyndon of all people.The indignity of it.
Papa.The summer dance was truly an adventure!I’m still recovering!
A NEW DAWNdid not improve things.
Quill in hand, Rollo stared out at the never-changing view from his bedchamber.Another bleaching-hot day beckoned, suffocating and airless, the harsh sunlight throwing cruel shade on the tawdriness of the night before.What had he been thinking?He knew the rules.Wherever he travelled and in whatever company, Rollo represented his father and Rossingley.Whether he wanted to or not.And it took a man who had forgotten that vital lesson in relation to his own esteemed family’s honour to call him out.
Just as he was contemplating a stomp around the garden, and perhaps farther afield—Rollo’s need to escape Goule Hall for a few hours stronger than ever—a bleary-eyed Lucy appeared to tidy his bed clothes and do whatever else housemaids did in the mornings.
Rollo attempted a weary smile.“Not halfway to Gretna Green?”
Lucy blushed.“We had the last dance, then Jack saw me home safe and sound.We’re officially courting.”
“Are you now,” Rollo teased, though his heart wasn’t in it.“And does Cook approve of this courtship?”
Lucy rolled her eyes.“Her and Mr Berridge’s cart was two yards behind us all the way back.Never took her bleeding eyes off us.”
“It’s amazing what one can get up to under the cover of a lap blanket and darkness though,” Rollo observed.“Don’t you find?”
Lucy giggled.“You’ve a naughty mind, sir.”Opening the window and shaking her duster out of it, she carried on.
“There was a right rumpus late on.After you and his lordship left.Our Ralph, living over at Beccles, got himself a blooded nose from somewhere.Don’t know who gave it to him, but he was in a right temper about it.Started throwing things, swore this place was a shithole—’scuse my French—and that he was gonna leave the wife and bairns and clear off to Norwich.Ape-drunk, he was, and then he made the mistake of picking a fight with two of the big farmer lads from out on the Yarmouth Road.He’ll have himself a sore head and a matching shiner this morning.”
Rollo’s pulse raced.Thank God he’d not divulged his name, or Ralph Hart might have drunkenly bandied that about too.Nonetheless, Rollo felt a twinge of sympathy for him, even if he did stray from his wife when the opportunity arose.
“I don’t think I came across the gentleman,” he answered cautiously.“Do you think he’ll carry it out?”
“Nah,” Lucy prattled on.“That was the ale talking.He’s me da’s cousin; that lot are all talk and no trousers.He’s thick as a barn door too.Couldn’t find his way out of a privy without a candle, let alone the road out of Norwich.Got a mean streak in him though.I pity the man who bloodied his cork when he does track him down.They like their revenge, the Hart’s do.Even gabsters like our Ralph.”
Rollo relaxed a little.Mr Hart would come up against a brick wall taking on Lord Lyndon.Only a prize idiot would even try.One fell out with the local lord at one’s peril.
“He was probably too foxed to remember,” he suggested.“It was that sort of dance, wasn’t it?”
“Always is.Always some drama.”And with that, Lucy gabbled on about several folks with whom Rollo wasn’t acquainted, thus very little was required of him except for an occasional nod.
Chapter Eleven
