Page 8 of The Wrong Rake
“Standish!” Beaumont’s sharp tone shook him out of his fugue, and he tore his eyes away from his contemplation of the man’s round, firm arse and long, long legs. Fuck. Bloody double fuck. Beaumont had pursued Harry’ssister. “Are you well?”
It sounded very much as if that had not been the first time Beaumont tried to attract his attention. Both Beaumont and Potts were staring at him, Beaumont clearly incensed and Potts smirking as if he had noticed where Harry’s eyes, and mind, had wandered.
Damn it all.
“Perfectly well,” Harry said.
“I need to attend to this,” Beaumont replied impatiently. “We will need to discuss that matter of business another time.”
“Matter of business,” Potts muttered, his smirk growing to a full-on leer.
With a truly Herculean effort, Harry ignored him. “I’m not going anywhere,” he said. “If I do, you’ll hide in here and have the servants keep me out. I will not depart without some satisfaction, Beaumont.”
Potts said, “It appears to me as if you’ve already had a certain amount of—”
“Oh, good God, Caesar!” Beaumont cried. “This is not the moment for your humor, I beg of you!”
Harry had to bite his lip to keep in the laugh that rose up unbidden and unwelcome. Of all the moments to be entirely in accord with Beaumont—although his own sense of humor seemed more similar to Potts’s.
“We can call it a resolution, then,” he said, keeping his voice steady with an effort. “But I will not be fobbed off.”
Beaumont let out an explosive sigh and turned to him. “I do not have time for—fuck it. When did this event occur, the one you’ve reported to me?”
Harry opened his mouth to argue, to tell him that he would not on any account discuss his sister’s personal affairs in front of another gentleman, one whose discretion, not to mention his morals, he did not trust at all.
But Beaumont’s eyes were fixed on him steadily, without any deception lurking in their lovely black depths. And his phrasing…he had carefully avoided any mention of Amelia. He opened his mouth to answer the question, but Beaumont interrupted him.
“No, wait a moment, if you please. You will surely find some way to doubt my veracity, and my friend’s, if you feel we have been prepared to dissemble. Caesar, a question for you. What have my movements been, for the past few months? When did I leave town, for how long, and where did I go?”
Potts’s brows drew together, and he stared at Beaumont as if he’d grown a second head. “You never go anywhere! Not even when your brother proposed that jaunt to Bath. That I don’t blame you for in the slightest, by the by, since he likely only wanted your pocketbook to accompany him, but you could stand to breathe some fresh air now and then, you know.”
Potts’s affectionate exasperation had not only the sound of a well-worn argument, but also the ring of truth.
Beaumont’s idiot brother. And Amelia’s public embarrassment had occurred no more than a month gone. Harry felt as if the ground had been cut away from beneath his feet, and that he might tumble all the way down to the cellar.
He rather wished he could. Guilt washed down over him like a chill rain, making him shiver.
Bloody, bloody hell. He had wanted to put Beaumont in his place. He had nearly strangled the man.
“Well?” Beaumont said. “Standish, will you believe me at last?”
“Believe him or not,” Potts cut in, sounding more exasperated than affectionate now. “But I really do need Simon’s help downstairs.”
Beaumont sighed again, rubbing at his temples. “Standish, perhaps you’ll do me the favor of waiting for me here. I’ll return as soon as I’m able. Caesar, I need a moment to put myself to rights, and I’ll follow you down directly.”
And with that, he ushered Potts out, shot a look over his shoulder at Harry that he couldn’t interpret, and followed, shutting the door firmly behind him.
Leaving Harry alone with the vivid image of Beaumont on his knees, shame such as he had hardly ever experienced, and on top of that, the knowledge that he could not possibly have bungled this affair more entirely had he set out to do so.
If he had believed Beaumont from the start—but really, who in his right mind would have believed such a tale? Brothers posing as one another only happened in ridiculous stories. Or in Shakespeare, whose stories were occasionally entirely ridiculous but which were so enjoyable that one didn’t care so much.
Harry had managed to stumble upon a truly Shakespearean scenario, and then render it both unenjoyable—well, but for the unspeakable pleasure of Beaumont’s mouth, anyway—and not at all ridiculous. Tragic, rather.
Beaumont’s mouth. Harry spun on his heel with a curse, his fists clenching, longing to strike out at anything, anything at all…but he drew his hand back at the last moment, for he wouldn’t compound his dreadful behavior, his accusations and assault and his use of Beaumont’s body, with putting a hole in the fellow’s office wall.
He ought to have at least given Beaumont sufficient rope with which to hang himself. Demanded that he produce this blighted brother of his, provide proof of his not being in Bath. Anything. And such proof would, it seemed, have been forthcoming. Now, in the light of how very wrong he had been, the obvious was clearly illuminated: Beaumont owned a busy club, full of servants and patrons and friends. There would be so many witnesses to his movements that it would be impossible to induce them all to lie on his behalf, even if they were willing to do so.
Amelia had trusted him. Confided in him. Their father, utterly ineffectual and hardly even conscious of his daughter’s daily concerns, would do nothing. In fact, he probably didn’t know anything had occurred in the first place. And their mother was as distraught as Amelia, but had no recourse beyond bemoaning Mr. Beaumont’s unthinkable behavior with her cronies.
