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Nobbie hadn’t left Lloyd’s townhouse for over a week. At some point, he’d need to check his investments and talk to Adam about their next scheme, but none of that mattered yet. He’d spent most of the time in bed with Lloyd, or pottering about the house, talking about life and everything. Nobbie lay on a rug in front of a fiercely stoked fireplace, and glanced over at Lloyd who was sitting beside him on the rug, leaning back against the chaise lounge, reading an auction catalogue and sighing occasionally at the contents. Those little sighs were so lovely.

Oh goodness. He was rather fond of Lloyd. Fondness wasn’t something he’d experienced before, and his heart skipped a beat at the sudden realisation. Did he mind? No, actually, he quite liked this warmth that surrounded him when he was with Lloyd. He liked the way Lloyd was focused and strangely blunt and didn’t seem fussed about the usual things in life. Yes, Lloyd was able to be like that because he was a Lord who didn’t have to worry about money or his future; things that used to fill Nobbie’s cold heart with jealousy. He’d fought hard to have the same things as the toffs in the ton and it was hard to reconcile the way he felt about Lloyd who should’ve been everything Nobbie wanted to compete against and win for himself. Maybe it was the kissing that really made the difference to Nobbie’s heart. Before he’d met Lloyd, sex had been a transaction, and now it was better. Now he cared about Lloyd and wanted to spend more time with him. Especially like this.

“It’s odd to think that we are both orphans.” Lloyd had avoided the topic of Nobbie’s parents for the whole week. Instead, they’d talked about politics—agreeing on most things—and sport and horse racing and investments. They discussed the Peninsula War and the impacts of it and what Lloyd could do in parliament to help injured soldiers and their families.

And of course, they’d spent plenty of time talking about timepieces. Lloyd was obsessed, happily showing Nobbie his collections and projects, and how to pull a watch apart and put it back together. It had been nice relaxing by his side as Lloyd had worked on different clocks and other mechanisms.

“Are we?” Nobbie knew nothing much about Lloyd’s family which suddenly struck him as unfair since Lloyd knew Nobbie’s whole story of being left at the Duke Street Orphanage by a heart-broken mother, forced to give him up by her husband who’d newly returned from the dead.

“My parents died when I was fifteen.”

“Both of them?”

“Yes. Their ship was lost at sea.”

“Do you miss them?”

Lloyd’s brown eyes shimmered. “Yes. Very much, my mother especially.”

“Tell me about them.”

“There’s not much to tell about my father. He was a diplomat, so I didn’t see him much. It was normal for him to be away travelling for months at a time, leaving me with my mother, and when he returned, he spent all his time with her. A son was important for the future, but his true love was her.”

“A diplomat. Aren’t you lords?” Nobbie asked the easiest question, because it vaguely sounded like Lloyd’s father was a bit of fool for ignoring his son. Did Lloyd know that his father treated him like property? An heir, not a person? He’d seen it too many times in his dealings with the ton. He unclenched his fists; he couldn’t fight a dead man on Lloyd’s behalf, and he didn’t want to ruin Lloyd’s memories when nothing good could come of him pointing this out.

“Yes. My great-grandfather was a banker who negotiated some of the British East India Company contracts with the Crown and was made the 1st Baron of Lawndry for his efforts. My grandfather grew up in India and worked there too. He married my grandmother, Harleen Vastrakar, and he became the first Earl of Lawndry. My father followed the same path into diplomacy, and he probably expected to go to India since his mother taught him Hindi, but he was sent to Switzerland where he fell in love with my mother.”

“What number Earl does that make you?”

Lloyd grinned. “I thought you were good at numbers?”

“I am. But have you considered that I want to hear it from you?” Nobbie liked teasing Lloyd, especially when he had the baffled expression which made his nose wrinkle.

“Are you teasing me?”

“Yes.” Nobbie kissed him on the mouth, then lay back on the sheepskin rug.

“Obviously I am the third Earl of Lawndry, and maybe the final one too.”

His chest tightened. “Why?” He could guess—Lloyd might feel the same way he did—but he was a coward and he wanted to hear it from Lloyd.

“I suppose I could marry a woman and carry on the line, but it wouldn’t be fair to her.” It wasn’t like Lloyd to be so evasive, and it made Nobbie’s shoulders hitch closer to his neck.

“Why not?” Did he want to know? Yes. No. God. Fuck. He needed to know why.

“Because I think I’m falling in love with you.”

“Are you certain?” Nobbie couldn’t breathe.

Lloyd shook his head. “I am not certain. It remains a distinct possibility, however, and that would mean ... if you were receptive to the idea, that is ... well, it might mean that there will never be a fourth Earl of Lawndry.” Lloyd gave the most ‘Lloyd’ answer that was possible to say. It made complete sense that Lloyd would want to be as certain about love as he was about his watches.

“What happens to the title then?” As if that was the most important question. Fuck, he didn’t care about some pompous aristocratic thing, but it was easier to ask that than deal with the concept of love. Fondness and kisses weren’t love, were they? Earnest’s poems about love were always about great passions, not this gentle sense of belonging and homeliness. Nobbie had never had a home, not really, and now he’d had a week at Lloyd’s home, he was beginning to crave it. With Lloyd? Yes.

Lloyd growled under his breath. “Why did you ask that question? Now I have to think about how my mean Uncle Baldric will become the Earl if I die.”

“Then you’d best outlive him.” He joked, rather liking the idea of Lloyd living a long life. Together with him.

“I don’t have any other relatives. The Lawndry’s weren’t great breeders. Baldric has no children either, just a misery wife.”

Nobbie tilted his head curiously. He’d done enough work with Adam to know that it was rarely the woman’s fault, and bitterness often came after a woman understood how powerless she was in a marriage. Being someone’s property would do that to anyone.

“No children?”

“No. It doesn’t matter. The title can go into abeyance and the crown will gift it to some other worthy recipient one day. I’ll be dead, so it won’t matter to me.”

“I suppose that is technically true.” Nobbie sat up, pleased for the distraction from his own thoughts. A silence surrounded them both and it wasn’t entirely unpleasant. Nobbie was happy to wait while Lloyd figured out his thoughts. This week he’d noticed that it sometimes took Lloyd a while to think through what someone had said, and that he didn’t cope very well with sudden tangents or changes.

“I don’t want to think about being dead because it means thinking about how upset other people—” Lloyd stared at Nobbie, “—might be. It was the hardest thing about my mother dying.”

“What?”

“She wasn’t there anymore to talk to about anything. We shared a passion for horology, and I often find things, like your watch, that she would’ve loved to have heard all about. It’s been almost the same amount of time without her as I had with her, and I still turn around and want to say, Hey Mother, you’d love this.”

Nobbie’s chest ached. “The good thing about growing up in an orphanage since I was a baby is that I don’t have parents to miss.”

“You have them now.”

“But they are both dead, and I never knew them, so it’s basically impossible to be sad about that. Confused, maybe. Angry that they abandoned me, but that’s been with me my whole life.”

Lloyd nodded. “I think I understand why you’d be mad about that.”

Nobbie tried to think of something that might help Lloyd understand. “Imagine if I’d said No to you investigating my watch, and then I sent the watch on a ship to the antipodes, so you’d never be able to find it.”

Lloyd gasped. “You would never.”

“I might have. You were so insistent to me about it that I assumed you were trying to scam me.”

Lloyd dropped his book. “You ... what?”

Nobbie sighed. “Lloyd, why do you relax me so much that I say things like this?”

“This is my fault?”

He shook his head. “No. Of course not. I only meant that I’m better at controlling my tongue around other people.”

Lloyd’s eyes sparkled. “I like your tongue control.”

“Not like that.” Nobbie’s face bloomed with heat. “Growing up in an orphanage meant I learned my place in the world and I’ve had to work hard to find my own place that wasn’t what everyone else deemed appropriate for me.” He wasn’t sure why he was being so open about this.

“Wait a moment. I’m lost. How did we get here?”

Nobbie laughed. “You were the one who made a joke about tongues and took the discussion on a completely different tack. How illogical of you.”

Lloyd placed his hand over his chest. “Me? You were the one who leaped from being angry at your parents to accusing me of scamming you.”

“Thus proving that you weren’t really lost in the conversation at all.”

“No. I’m learning to follow your leaps in logic.”

Nobbie kissed Lloyd on the forehead. “As if you are the most logical person in the world. You have whole conversations in your head, then announce the conclusion and everyone else is supposed to follow along.”

“I do?”

“Yes.”

“I still don’t understand why you thought I was scamming you.”

“Lloyd, my darling.” He’d paused, surprised at his own fondness. “Ahh, you threw yourself at me over a watch, for God’s sake. Who does that? What was I supposed to think, but that it was an elaborate scam?”

“Are you always this cynical?”

“Yes. I hate to break this news to you, but yes. Life works out better when I assume that everyone is trying to get something from me. And you gave me such confusing glances.”

“This is my fault?” But this time, Lloyd was smiling. “It’s your fault.”

“How?” Nobbie leaned closer.