He shifted his weight to reach a further shard, and the movement put his arse in profile. It was smooth, and tanned. A perfect handful. Beauchamp’s gaze caught on the curve of it, and it didn’t take long at all for his body to betray him.
The tug came low in his groin, insistent and entirely unwelcome. His cock, which had spent the last eleven months since Julian left behaving like an animal that had just learned about hurt, had decided that the sight of a naked Cardonan prince crouching in a pool of Tuscan olive oil was the precise set of circumstances under which it was prepared to return to active service.
Oh, Christ, Beauchamp thought.No. Absolutely not. Stand down.
His cock refused to stand down.
He fixed his eyes on a point somewhere above Vidal’s left shoulder and ran the arithmetic: the number of paces to thekitchen door, viability of a court-martial defence based on the involuntary physiological response of a Household Division officer to a head of state’s naked houseguest.
On the sofa, James made a sound that seemed suspiciously like a smothered laugh. “Vidal, darling, come here.”
“Un moment, James—”
“Now, please. Leave the glass. I have to go, and you know how Mercè gets with goodbyes.”
Vidal rose in one fluid motion. When he drew close enough, James caught the towel at Vidal’s neck, and dragged it down over his shoulders and his hips, tucking it closed.
“There. Now you’re decent. Come and take your dog. I have to meet the Bishop of London at four and I can’t turn up to that with Chinese Crested hair on my jumper. It sends the wrong message about the Church of England.”
Vidal went to him, still talking, clutching the towel at his waist. James’s eyes stayed on him and didn’t flick over to Beauchamp once.
Beauchamp took his cue.
“Your Majesty. Sir. I’ll — the oil. I’ll fetch a cloth.”
“Take your time, Major.”
Beauchamp turned on his heel, crossed the hall, and let himself out through the service door at the back of the kitchen into the stairwell. He made it as far as the first landing before he had to stop, brace one hand flat against the wall, and press his forehead to the cold plaster beside it.
For eleven months, he’d lived like a monk, with no energy to even look at another man. His body had held the line, and now it was going to mutiny in his second week of a posting with an exiled prince.
Somewhere above him, muffled through a closed door and three floors of Georgian plasterwork, he could hear Vidalstarting up again in Catalan, and the low rumble of his King laughing.
Beauchamp pushed himself off the wall, checked the front of his trousers, and started down the next flight of stairs towards the garden, desperate to get some fresh air away from Vidal.
Chapter Four
Beauchamplet himself into the flat at twenty-eight minutes past seven. Vidal knew this because he’d been watching the hands of the absurd ormolu clock on the mantelpiece crawl through the early morning.
“Beauchamp!” he called, without turning round from the hob, where he presided over a pan of Toulouse sausages. “You are late, and you are being sneaky. Come in here at once and explain yourself.” He turned the sausages over with a flick of the wrist that sent fat hissing across the pan, and waited.
Beauchamp appeared in the kitchen doorway with the bearing of a prisoner being marched to the dock. His eyes went, with great determination, to a point on the skirting board by Vidal’s hip, and stayed there.
“Good morning, Your Serene Highness.” Beauchamp bowed. “I’m not late, sir. My duty start is oh-eight-hundred. I’m thirty minutes early.”
“You are not looking at me, Beauchamp.”
“Sir.”
“This is a curious thing, because I am wearing a robe of truly exceptional beauty, and most people, on encountering it for the first time, take a moment to admire it. Do you like my robe, Beauchamp?” Vidal turned a slow half-circle on the kitchen tiles, the silk lifting and settling around his calves in a soft pomegranate sweep. Beauchamp’s eyes didn’t move from the skirting board. They were, if anything, more committed to it than they had been thirty seconds ago.
“No, sir.”
Vidal looked over his shoulder at him. “Explain.”
“The fabric’s too shiny, sir.”
“Oh, good Lord.” Vidal turned back to the pan, delighted. “You are more British than the King himself. But James, at least, understands the need for spectacle and swans about in robes when the occasion suits.” Vidal slid the sausages onto a warmed plate alongside a glistening heap of buttered eggs and a slab of the bread elevated by the application of olive oil and a hot pan. “Sit down.”
