Connor returned inside ninety seconds with a guitar case in one hand. He set the case down on the rug in front of the sofa, flipped the catches, and lifted the lid.
Inside was a honey-coloured acoustic with a dark mark on the scratch plate where someone’s thumbnail had scratched against it as they coaxed music out of this instrument. Connor lifted it out of the velvet lining with a careful two-handed grip, and held it out towards Beauchamp across the coffee table.
“Here you are, Major. Have a go on this. Got it from one of my pawn shops.” He pushed the guitar another inch across the table at Beauchamp. “Go on.”
Beauchamp took it. The way his hands closed around the neck and the lower bout was the first thing Vidal noticed, the ease of it.
He adjusted the tuning with a quick twist of one peg and then another, his head bent slightly to listen. Connor had gone quiet in the armchair. Vidal, who had meant to say something arch and encouraging, stayed silent, watching him.
Beauchamp ran his thumb once across the strings to test them. Then he began to play.
The first bar was hesitant, and Vidal, who had sat in the front row of the world’s great concert halls since he was old enough to reliably sit still, felt his stomach tighten on Beauchamp’s behalf. The second bar was less hesitant. By the third, Beauchamp played on with unshowy competence.
His right hand moved in intricate and unhurried patterns across the strings, his fingertips picking out a line while histhumb held down a steady pattern underneath. Then he opened his mouth and began to sing, very quietly, on the second pass through.
His voice was untrained. Low, and a little rough at the edges. It was, to Vidal’s ear, exactly the right voice forPlaisir d’amour, which was an old, and wanting song.
Vidal forgot about his wine. He forgot about Mercè, who had lifted her head off his thigh to stare at Beauchamp. He forgot about Connor in the armchair. What he focused on, helplessly, was Beauchamp’s hands. He drew a breath in through his nose, and found that the breath was not as steady as he had intended it to be.
The song ended on a soft, unhurried resolution, Beauchamp’s thumb stilling against the strings to catch the last of the sound before it could ring on into the quiet.
Vidal came back to himself a beat behind the final note and began to clap alongside Connor. “Beauchamp.Beauchamp!” Vidal pressed one hand to his chest as though to keep his heart inside it. “That wasmagnífic! “
“Mate, I’m not joking.” Connor was leaning forward in the armchair with his forearms on his knees. “The last time I saw Vidal get this excited about a performance was when Mercè let out a stream in the garden so long I thought she was going to float off down the flagstones on the back of it.”
Beauchamp let out a startled crack of laughter.
“Sorry, Mercè, love.” Connor turned his face towards the sofa and offered her a rueful bow of the head. “You were magnificent that day, and I’ll carry the memory with me. But I’ve got to be honest with you, darling, I think I prefer the Major’s performance.”
Mercè, who had not moved her eyes from Beauchamp since the second bar, didn’t deign to reply. Vidal gathered her up off his thigh and pressed his mouth to the crown of her baldhead, murmuring into the warm skin there in rapid Catalan, reassuring her that she remained the love of his life, the axis of his existence, and that no Englishman with a borrowed guitar could displace her from the throne she occupied in his heart.
“You are being cruel to her, Connor. She is a sensitive soul and she has been usurped on her own sofa.”
“I stand by what I just said.”
Beauchamp had already set the guitar down across his knees and was rising. “I’ll leave the three of you to it.” Beauchamp laid the guitar back into the velvet lining of the case. “Good evening sir. Connor. Mercè.” He inclined his head an exact half-inch to each of them in turn, and then he was across the drawing room and down the corridor.
Vidal watched the empty doorway for a moment. Then he turned back to Connor with Mercè still cradled against his ribs.
“He’s good value, that one.” Connor had picked up his glass again and was rolling the stem between his thumb and forefinger. “Didn’t expect it. Thought he was going to be all salutes and sir-yes-sir.”
“Yes.” Vidal set Mercè down in the warm dent she had left in the cushion and reached for his own glass. “I am surrounded by good men at present, Connor. It is a wonderful position to be in. Not one I am accustomed to, but one I am learning to appreciate.”
Connor’s mouth curved around the rim of his glass. “Good men, eh.”
“Do not fish for compliments. It is unbecoming in a man of your size.” Vidal set his glass down, rose from the sofa in one loose unhurried movement, and held out his hand across the coffee table. “Come. I have had a day, and I require the specific kind of consolation that only a very bad man who is pretending to be a good one can provide.”
Connor drained the last of his wine in one long swallow, set the glass down on the side table with a decisive tap, and took Vidal’s hand. “Lead the way, Your Serene Highness.”
Vidal led him down the corridor, keeping his fingers loose around Connor’s. The second his own bedroom door shut behind them with a quiet click, Connor was already on him.
Connor’s mouth took his as though he were collecting on a promise, and his hand came up and closed around the side of Vidal’s throat, his thumb pressed just under the hinge of his jaw. Vidal made a pleased noise into his mouth and let his head tip back against the door, giving Connor all the access he wanted.
“Been thinking about this since breakfast,” Connor muttered against the corner of his mouth.
Connor’s other hand dropped to the tie of Vidal’s linen trousers and tugged it loose with a single pull. The fabric slid down Vidal’s hips and puddled at his ankles. Connor’s gaze dropped and travelled down the length of him with open appraisal, lingering at the crucifix at his throat and the half-hard line of his cock against his thigh.
“Christ, you’re a piece of work.”
