“Exactly,” Cunningham says. “Though, you’ll understand, Prince, why this bachelor party of yours is a bit of my last hurrah as well.”
“There’s no need for it to be a final hurrah,” Wristead says. “Mary Ann and I have an understanding.”
“You do?” James hears himself ask, shocked. All three men turn to look at him and he has half a mind to run away. “Pardon me,” he says, his voice tight. “I didn’t mean to—”
“Think nothing of it,” Wristead says. “I’m one of the lucky ones. Mary Ann knew right away I fancied more than women.”
“Terrible bluff, this one,” Prince agrees. “An attractive man within six meters and his eye is wandering.”
“What can I say, I have taste,” Wristead says, as if these types of conversations happen every day. “She confronted me about it rather early on. Felt like I owed it to her to be honest. I’m allowed my own life here in the city, and she asks only that it never come home to the country. I find it more than bearable. She is a most excellent whist player.”
James bobs his head, as if the arrangement makes perfect sense. But he can’t imagine asking his wife to share him that way. Asking her to accept being only half of his life, never mind his heart.
“Have you thought about—” Wristead asks, but Cunningham shakes his head. “You might—”
Cunningham’s face turns pinched. “Not all of us are so lucky as to marry a woman as open-minded as MissMary Ann.”
Prince glances behind him. “Oh, look, Cunningham, Mason just arrived. That’ll cheer you right up.”
James feels his whole body go rigid. Mason? He glances stiffly over his shoulder and sure enough, Bobby Mason is standing in the entryway in deep conversation with Thomas Parker.
Bobby Mason, who he was obsessed with at school, his cousin’s stepsister’s cousin—Bobby Mason ishere?
That means Bobby Mason is—
“Excuse me, I need the washroom,” James hears himself say, placing his glass too loudly down onto the bar before stumbling through the group, away from Bobby Mason.
He slams into the small washroom, his heart thundering in his chest. Bobby Mason likes men. Bobby Mason knows Thomas Parker. Bobby Mason is of his persuasion and here and couldseehim and oh, God—
James braces his hands against the closed door, forcing himself to take deep breaths before he faints dead away in the small lavatory closet. Which, even for a lavatory closet, smells wonderfully of lavender. There isn’t an inch of this place Thomas Parker hasn’t carefully curated.
But that brings him back to Thomas Parker, and Bobby Mason, and the other lords, and how the whole ton could see that he’s here, and talk, and it could get back to his stepfather, or, worse, to Lord Havenfort, and his aunt, and—
James slams a fist against the door and forces himself to stand upright. He will not be taken down by this fear again. Thomas Parker runs a tight ship. This is a safe place, Reginald promised.
Expose one man in anger, you risk exposing yourself and everyone else. It’s mutually assured secrecy. He is safe here. And if Bobby Mason is here, Bobby Mason will just have to keep his secret as well, just as James will keep Mason’s.
James takes a deep breath, and then another, the way Reginald taught him all those years ago. In through his nose, out through his mouth, until he can’t feel his pulse against his ears anymore.
This is what he wanted—a group of men who understood. Friends. Possibly more than that. He’s never going to find either hiding in the water closet.
So he pushes the door open, forcing himself to move before he’s formulated a plan about how he’s going to explain this to Bobby Mason. Or face him. Or not just turn bright scarlet now that he knows the boy he used to idolize is someone who thinks like him, could maybe even fancy him—though of course he wouldn’t. Someone like Bobby Mason could never fancyhim.
“Distracted, Viscount?”
James looks up just before he walks straight into Lord Raverson. Just as tall, strong-jawed, and strikingly handsome as he was at Oxford, Raverson looks down at James with a crooked smirk that makes James break out in gooseflesh.
“Raverson,” James manages.
Even with their school days far behind them, James finds that now, standing in the hallway to the water closet at Thomas Parker’s club, he feels no more a man or a sensible adult than he did at Oxford. Raverson’s grin still makes his stomach clench, and he’s immediately thrust back to the wretched week Raverson gave him up. It should have only been a relief to finally beout from under his thumb, but he spent that week weeping in his room, feeling worthless and pathetic.
How much has really changed?
“The title suits you,” Raverson says, his voice dripping honey. “As do the years. My, you’ve outgrown that adorable gangly frame, haven’t you?”
“Yes,” James says tightly, trying not to look like he feels as trapped as he is. Here in the narrow hall, he can only pass if Raverson deigns to allow it, unless he wants to start a brawl.
“And I look as good as ever, don’t I?”
