love. He had a wife. A woman to whom he was—in his own words—devoted. Four children whom he adored. They were his life.
Kit was just the beautiful boy Henry fucked twice a week.
And if Kit had been foolish enough to lose his heart to the man—to his client for God’s sake—that was his own damned fault.
2
Henry
As usual, Henry left just before dawn.
Christopher was still sleeping when he climbed out of bed, and for a minute, Henry just stood there, staring at Christopher’s comely face, relaxed and peaceful in sleep.
Henry’s chest ached.
He set the heel of his hand against his breastbone and rubbed there, but it did nothing to ease him.
These last months, his feelings for Christopher had started to alarm him. The young man haunted his thoughts ceaselessly, and Henry’s growing fondness and protectiveness towards him had begun to feel like something far more profound than the light affection he’d decided would be acceptable in an arrangement of this nature.
This was not how it was supposed to be.
He did not want these feelings. He did not need them. He had entered into this arrangement to deal with other needs—physical needs he had denied too long. He had expected it to be uncomplicated. Christopher was lusty and willing, a hedonist as well as a beauty, and Henry wanted to slake his desires upon the man’s body. That was all it was ever meant to be. All it could be.
Henry sighed and turned away to fetch his clothes, noting that Christopher had neatly hung them up for him last night when he was so tired it was all he could do to take them off before he fell into bed.
Moving quietly, Henry took his clothes into the neighbouring dressing room so he wouldn’t disturb Christopher as he dressed.
Once he was ready, he briefly considered going back into the bedchamber to wake his lover to say goodbye, before reminding himself that he needed start exercising some discipline over his unruly feelings. Instead, he left the dressing room by the door that gave onto the corridor outside, and briskly descended the stairs.
He rang the bell in hallway and soon enough, Hodge appeared to unlock the front door and let Henry out, quietly closing it behind him, and shutting him out of Christopher’s life for another few days.
Outside, dawn was not so much breaking as creeping, the greyish sky gradually lightening by degrees.
Henry set off for home on foot. His coachman had dropped him off the night before. Henry never asked him to wait—it was little more than two miles back to the townhouse, and he didn’t mind the walk. It gave him time to assume once again his ducal persona and the weight of the everyday obligations associated with his real life.
But as he walked home this morning, it was not the life he was returning to that he thought of. It was the man he had left sleeping in the little house in Paddington Green, and the fact that it would be three long days before he saw him again.
Henry had decided at the outset of his arrangement with Christopher that he would allow himself to visit the man twice each week. That would meet his physical needs while ensuring that his other responsibilities were not affected. He had not expected to spend the days in between each visit longing to see the man, his concentration ruined by speculation over what Christopher was doing while Henry was away. Worse than that, each time they were reunited was too intensely joyful.
It wasn’t supposed to be like that.
Lustful, yes. Passionate, yes. But this?
He wasn’t supposed to be watching the boy sleep with his damned heart in his throat.
Had his father not warned him about this? Precisely this?
“Take lovers by all means—but don’t lose your head over them, Henry.”
Was he losing his head over Christopher?
Perhaps it was because this was the first taste of freedom he’d had in years, and Christopher made him feel young and carefree. Not that Henry was so very old—only nine-and-twenty—but when he’d been Christopher's age, six years ago now, he’d been married with a child of his own and a second on the way. He’d already held the ducal title for three years, following his father's sudden death. At three-and-twenty, Henry’s life had been full of responsibilities.
It wasn’t all responsibilities though. In Caroline, Henry had found his dearest friend, and the children were the light of his life. The love he felt for his young family was calm and pure and