“In your house, on a Saturday. For no reason.”
“The reason is that we’ve always done it. It’s the last evening before everyone scatters back to the City, and my mother likes to mark it properly.”
Lex had thrown the ball again. Florence had launched herself after it at breakneck speed. “Right,” he’d said. “I’ll sort something out.”
Barnaby had spent the next forty-eight hours braced for catastrophe. He’d envisioned velvet, and a matching cummerbund. He’d envisioned Lex arriving at the dining table in a rented suit from Moss Bros with a clip-on bow tie and shoes that squeaked on the parquet.
But Lex had actually rung Harding.
Barnaby discovered this when Lex walked into the drawing room at seven o’clock in a midnight-blue dinner jacket that had been cut, unmistakably, by the same hands that had made his reception suit. The satin lapels caught the lamplight. The trousers sat clean and straight, breaking at a black patent Oxford that Barnaby had never seen before and that wasn’t pointed. He had on a white dress shirt with a marcella front. His black silk bow tie sat a fraction off-centre, but Barnaby could deal with that.
Barnaby looked at him from the doorway. Lex stood by the fireplace with a glass of champagne, talking to the Duke about pheasant management, and the jacket moved with him when he gestured, the fabric pulling across his shoulders and releasing without a crease. Harding had built the chest close, the way Barnaby had specified for the navy suit, and the taper to his waist was clean and sharp. He looked like he’d been wearing dinner jackets his entire life.
“You rang Harding,” Barnaby said, when Lex caught his eye across the room.
“Course I did.” Lex tugged his lapel. “You think I’m turning up to a black-tie dinner at a duke’s house in something off the rack? After what you put me through at Savile Row? I’ve got standards now, Barns. You’ve ruined me.”
The Duke, who had been listening to this exchange with open delight, raised his glass. “Hear, hear.”
Dinner was in the formal dining room. Mrs Farrow had laid the table with the good silver and the Chatham porcelain, whitewith a navy border and the family crest in gold at the centre of each plate. Candles ran the length of the table in a low arrangement of brass holders. The chandelier was lit, and the room smelled of beeswax polish and the lilies his mother had arranged that afternoon.
His mother was in a dark green dress that she’d worn for as long as Barnaby could remember, and that still fit her exactly as it had twenty years ago. His father was in a dinner jacket that predated Barnaby’s birth, with satin lapels that had gone slightly matte from decades of dry cleaning.
Lex sat opposite Barnaby, and he watched him handle the silverware without error, all of the three forks, two knives, a soup spoon, a dessert fork laid horizontally above the charger. Lex worked from the outside in. He broke his bread roll rather than cutting it. He didn’t put his elbows on the table, or reach across anyone for the salt.
He’d done the prep to be able to move through the formal service, reading the room the way he read an opponent. Barnaby’s chest ached with fondness. This man had walked into a world that he could have allowed to make him feel small, and instead he’d filled out the room.
Under the table, Lex’s foot found his ankle.
The touch was light, a slow press and retreat against the inside of Barnaby’s ankle that could have been accidental if it hadn’t happened again three seconds later. Barnaby kept his eyes on his father, who was telling an elaborate story about a pheasant shoot in 1989 that involved a retired bishop and a misfired beater’s flag. He pressed his foot back against Lex’s.
Lex’s toes traced up the inside of his calf. Barnaby took a sip of wine and kept his face perfectly neutral while Lex’s foot settled against his shin, warm and steady through the thin wool of his trousers.
They stayed like that through the cheese course. Barnaby contributed to the conversation at appropriate intervals, laughed at his father’s stories, fielded a question from James about Meridian’s dressage scores, and endured Perry’s attempt to explain what a “brand partnership activation” was, all while Lex’s foot rested against his leg under the table with the easy constancy of a hand held in the dark.
? ? ?
Hisbedroom was cool and dim when they reached it. Barnaby had left the bedside lamp on, and it cast a low amber circle across the pillow and the pale blue wallpaper. The rest of the room was in shadow. Florence was asleep in her basket by the radiator, having been banished from the bed, and she didn’t stir when the door clicked shut behind them.
Barnaby was warm from the wine and the candles and the long, easy hours of sitting across from Lex in a room full of people he loved. The evening had settled into him, softening the edges he kept sharpened by habit. He felt loose and content.
Lex was behind him, close enough that Barnaby could feel the heat of his chest through the layers of wool and cotton between them. Barnaby turned, put both hands on Lex’s lapels, and walked him backward until his knees hit the edge of the mattress.
“Sit down.”
Lex sat. He looked up at Barnaby, his dark eyes catching the lamplight, and his hands came to Barnaby’s hips by reflex. Barnaby pushed them off.
“I didn’t say you could touch me yet.”
Lex’s hands dropped to the duvet. His thighs fell open, and he waited, his jaw set with the effort of keeping still. Barnaby could see his pulse in his throat, the quick kick of it beneath the white collar.
Barnaby undid Lex’s bow tie. He pulled the silk free in a slow, deliberate drag, the fabric hissing against the marcella front, and draped it over the bedpost. Then he worked at the shirt studs, one at a time, each one popped from its hole and set on the bedside table with a small click. Lex’s chest appeared in increments: the dark hair at his sternum, the hard swell of his pectorals, the ridged plane of his stomach. Barnaby pushed the shirt off his shoulders and let it fall behind him onto the bed.
He unfastened Lex’s trousers. The button, the zip, and then he knelt to unlace his Oxfords, pulling each one free and setting them beneath the chair. He peeled the trousers down Lex’s thighs, over his knees, off his ankles. Lex lifted his hips when asked and did nothing else, his breath controlled, his hands flat on the mattress.
Barnaby straightened up. He looked at Lex sitting on the edge of his childhood bed in nothing but black boxer briefs, his erection already straining against the cotton, and felt the heat of that image settle low in his belly.
He undressed himself. Jacket off, hung on the back of the chair. Bow tie, shirt studs, shirt. He folded each item with care, because making Lex watch him take his time was its own kind of power.
