Page 8 of To Save a Scoundrel’s Soul

“London cock.” Beauregard chuckled huskily. “How proud it stands. Like your fine Tower.” His other hand pressed Mickey’s palm against his own member. French cock seemed awfully pleased with itself too. “We look after each other, non?”

Mickey weighed the heft of the other man’s prick. It was broader than his own, longer too. For a moment, he imagined Beauregard inside him, and his arsehole twitched at the thought. And twitched again when, after licking his hand, Beauregard began pleasuring Mickey more purposefully.

As so often was the case with these things, especially when playing by the rules of furtive, opportunistic encounters, they raced to the finish. Encased in his fist, the wet heat of Beauregard’s swollen cock spurred Mickey towards his spend. The Frenchman’s voice alone might have done it. Even his soft, knowing chuckle might have been enough. Mickey reached for his pocket square, clamping his mouth shut so as not to cry out. His breath whistled heavily through his nose as the other man’s exhales licked hot on his neck. At Beauregard’s moment of crisis, Mickey shoved him back, catching his own spend and dribbles of the other man’s, too, in the scrap of starched cotton. Heaven forbid he mark his only evening coat. For a few seconds after, they warily regarded each other, catching their breaths.

“My favourite dance of the night,” Beauregard murmured at last, tucking himself away. “Thank you, Michael Maurice.”

He was still breathing heavily; they both were. “Let me assist you,” Beauregard offered as Mickey wrestled with his dress shirt. Mickey caught a brief glint of white teeth. “You are…how do you English say it? Askew.”

One advantage of being such a very unremarkable chap, Mickey acknowledged, as he permitted Beauregard to straighten his cravat and pull his coat more evenly across his shoulders, was that others assumed one’s wit to be on a par with one’s very average outwards appearance. Far more remarkable chaps, such as the fine-looking specimen currently stuffing Mickey’s soiled pocket square back inside the top pocket of his evening coat, were especially prone to this error of judgement.

Which meant that when Mickey snapped his supple fingers around Beauregard’s wrist, Beauregard—millimetres away from snaffling Mickey’s coin purse—let out a gasp of shock.

“I didn’t know French vicomtes extracted payment for turning tricks.”

Mickey tightened his grip, his tone betraying every inch of his lowly roots. Tommy would kill him for getting into anything physical without Sidney’s reassuring presence, but it was too late to back out now, so he pressed on. “Forgive me, Monsieur le Vicomte, for not establishing terms beforehand. And here was I thinking Lady Butterworth’s garden was a high-class establishment.”

As his coin purse dropped back into his pocket, Mickey loosened his grip, expecting the other to squirm at being caught red-handed. Beauregard merely laughed.

“My sincere apologies. Having observed you all evening, I should have known better.” Smoothing down his coat, Beauregard stepped back. “Is it stealing though, plain Mr Maurice, if one takes from another thief?”

“You’re making some dangerous assumptions about me, monsieur. I watch people; I don’t rob them.”

Beauregard laughed again. “Perhaps. But you have a blade concealed in the left lower lining of your coat and a faint crescent scar on your chin, which I fancy is neither the result of a distracted valet’s close shave nor a feud with a fencing sword. You danced the simplest routines only, you can barely stomach ratafia, and you handle another man’s cock with a dexterity rarely executed outside of a molly house.”

Whatever fleeting hold Mickey had on the upper hand slithered from his grasp as the truth of the barb hit home. He was glad Sidney wasn’t around to hear how this Frenchman had bested him.

“Touché, monsieur,” he managed eventually. “Your only erroneous presumption was that hobnobbing with the ton has made me soft.”

“That is not a mistake I shall commit twice.”

“No.” Mickey patted his coin purse. “And now I know for sure what you are. And why people’s belongings are going missing. At White’s, for instance.”

He sensed Beauregard examining him from behind the mask.

“Seems we both possess a secret or two,” the Frenchman said coolly. “And it would serve neither of us well to expose the other.” He stepped back, his fine features dissolving into shadow. “Having reached that accord, London, I shall bid you goodnight.”

And he was gone.

Chapter Three

THE FIRST TIME Mickey drove Tommy to the Duke of Ashington’s town house, he brought the horses to a standstill in the quiet mews around the back, assuming they would enter via the kitchens. For days afterwards, Tommy ragged him silly. Mickey had been invited several times since, yet still felt like a fraud tripping up the front steps. Handing his hat to the snooty butler, Hawkins, was odder still. As he led them into Ashington’s private sanctum, the second study, dislike leaked from the old butler’s every pore.

“Mr Thomas Squire and Mr Michael Maurice, Your Grace,” Hawkins declared grandly, and left them to it.

Rossingley and Kit Angel were already seated at the card table, listlessly thrashing the young twins at paired whist. Never far from Rollo, Fitzsimmons skulked in a leather armchair. None was especially cheerful-looking. Even Willoughby and Rollo’s greeting seemed unusually subdued. The duke’s jaw clenched hard enough to splinter bone, whilst his brother’s face was a dark storm cloud, his fiery eyes two seething, churning coals.

“I sense there’s a problem, Benedict,” said Tommy, addressing the duke. He lay a hand on his lover’s arm, full of concern. “Are you ill? Is there some bad news?”

“I’m quite well.” Briefly, Ashington placed his own hand over Tommy’s and squeezed. “It’s…it’s that chit,” he began without preamble. “The American, whose curvaceous side dear Willoughby was glued to last night. Miss Amelia Chesterton. She was…” He stepped away, his fingers curled into two tight fists as if desperate to punch something. Mickey couldn’t recall ever seeing him so distressed. Ashington clutched at Tommy’s hand again. “She was…she was wearing the Ashington parure.”

“The what?” Tommy wrinkled his nose in puzzlement. Mickey was equally bemused.

“The Ashington parure!” The duke’s voice rose. “Around her neck! And in her bloody ears!”

“I know what a parure is, my love,” Tommy answered calmly. “I was merely unaware of the existence of an Ashington parure.”

The duke strode to the window. “That’s because it vanished.” He shot his brother an opaque look. “Funnily enough, at that damned shooting party we were only discussing the other day. Thirty years ago, give or take. Isn’t that right, Lyndon?”