Page 59 of Their Master

He wondered what she had been doing to fill her days. He had brought up the subject of all the free time she’d have the evening before he’d left, when they’d been lounging in bed.

It wasn’t only curiosity that had made him ask. Charles had become bored with too much time on his hands, and a bored Charles had been an unhappy Charles, which had meant a miserable Smith. Boredom was a good part of why their relationship had deteriorated so quickly.

Well, he admitted, boredomandSmith’s inability to commit to only one sexual partner.

In any case, Smith did not wish to lose Moira to boredom.

“I have always wanted to learn to draw and play the piano,” she’d admitted when he asked.

“At the same time?” Smith had teased, surprising a rare laugh out of her.

“I thought I’d try them singly, at first. Would you mind if I engaged music and drawing tutors?”

“I would be delighted if you did so.”

“I know you do not have a piano, but I understand people often go to the houses of their tutors.”

Smith hadn’t said anything at the time but had left word for his steward to procure a piano and have it delivered. The house had a music room, after all, but nobody had ever used it.

His boyhood home had been filled with music—his sisters and mother had all played the piano—and he would dearly love to have music in his house. Although he supposed it might be longer than a year before a student learned anything.

In any event, she now had her piano. He was interested to see if she’d made progress on finding tutors. If not, he’d ask Nora Fanshawe about painting masters, no doubt she’d be able to recommend somebody.

Smith didn’t want Moira to find living in his house lonely or tedious, as Charles had done. If Moira maintained interests and hobbies of her own, perhaps she would be content when the attraction between them began to cool, which it would. His amours always cooled, and then he moved on.

Maybe a day would come when he no longer followed his urges, but until then, he would take lovers if and when he wanted.

“You’re like a dog that is constantly in rut, Smith!”

Constantly seemed a bit of an exaggeration, but Charles had had a point.

When Charles had signed the contract, he’d insisted he was delighted with Smith’s rules and Smith had stupidly believed the other man. Or perhaps Smith hadwishfullybelieved him.

But Charles had become more agitated each time Smith had exercised his contractual rights. It was a vicious circle: the more Charles complained, the more Smith wanted to get away from him.

As furious as he’d been at Charles, he’d been even angrier at himself; he was old enough to know better.

The situation had deteriorated, until they’d not shared a bed for days and days. Their final weeks together had been unbearable.

“Why am I not enough for you? What do you want?” Charles had screamed before he’d given Smith an ultimatum that could only end one way.

“Prince Vladimir Zhukov has asked me to accompany him to Russia. If you can’t make the changes I need, I’m going to accept his offer—regardless of your damned contract.”

Smith had released him from their agreement on the spot.

Rather than be grateful, Charles had gone mad, throwing things, breaking things, asking over and over, “What will it take to make you contented—happy?”

It had been pointless to explain to Charles—yet again—that Smith had, before the incessant fighting, beenhappy living with him.

Yes, he’d shared his body with others, but his heart—for lack of a better word—he’d reserved for Charles, the only person who Smith had beenintimatewith. Without intimacy, sex meant nothing to him. The distinction was a critical one to him, but Charles had just dismissed it as self-serving.

Perhaps it was, but that made it no less true.

When Charles had snatched up a letter opener and attacked the portrait Nora had painted of the two of them, Smith had known that Charles had to leave.

The last he’d seen of the younger man was his forlorn, tear-streaked face when Smith had left him in a suite he’d paid for at the Clarendon, the same hotel where Prince Vladimir and his entourage had been staying.

Smith scowled at the unpleasant image and added a pair of five-pound weights to his ankles before he began the last of his sets, which was fifty lifts. He dried his hands on a towel and then jumped to catch the metal bar that hung several feet above his head.

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