Page 2 of Vanquished by a Viscount (Tales from the Brotherhood #3)

“Stay quiet and don’t give us away,” he whispered as he started for the bedroom door.

“Charlie,” Gray appealed to him. “You fuss like an old woman. What’s the harm in letting everyone know?”

The fact that Gray did not have a ready, realistic answer to his own question struck fear into Charlie’s heart.

“Broxbourne!” Comstock continued to pound on the door.

“Not a peep,” Charlie whispered to Gray, then left the bedroom, shutting the door firmly behind him.

He shook his head and pressed a hand to his queasy stomach as he rushed to answer the door.

As soon as he cracked it open enough to see Comstock, but not so much as to be an invitation for Comstock to come in, he hissed, “Quiet down, man! You woke me from a sound sleep, and you’ll wake the rest of the house too, if you’re not careful. ”

Comstock merely laughed at him. “You’ve got a tart in there, I know it,” he said, looking entirely too pleased with himself. “Come on, then. Give us a look.”

Comstock tried to push into the room, but Charlie held his ground in the doorway. “Why are you here so early?” he asked with a frown.

Comstock continued trying to look into the room for a few more seconds before giving up. “I know you’re not the saint you make out to everyone that you are, but I know you don’t have a lightstocking in there either.”

“I do not,” Charlie snapped.

“More like you have some comely catamite to suck your cock and offer his bum,” Comstock said with an entirely different sort of knowing grin.

Charlie prayed his face didn’t flush as red as he feared it did. Gray wasn’t exactly a boy, but he did have a boyishness about him.

“I do not know what you mean,” he said curtly. Then, before Comstock could continue with his insinuations, he went on with, “Why are you here, Comstock?”

Whether he was relenting on the basis of not wishing to expose Charlie or whether he had some other reason, Comstock gave up his teasing and produced a letter from the pocket of his jacket. “This was misdelivered to the dormitory for you on Friday.”

Charlie recognized Barbara’s handwriting on the letter’s address at once and snatched it from Comstock’s hand. “It was delivered on Friday, but you’re only bringing it to me now? At this hour?”

Comstock shrugged. “We’ve all had quite a bit occupying us, what with the end of term and all.”

Charlie huffed and glanced down at the letter.

Barbara’s handwriting had the slight spikiness that it sometimes had when she wrote to him while particularly distressed.

“Thank you,” he told Comstock, then backed into the room, shutting the door behind him.

Rude though it was, he locked it for good measure.

“I see how it is,” Comstock muttered from the hall. His footsteps retreated toward the stairs.

Charlie moved away from the door, tearing into the letter. It began with his sister’s usual, fond greetings, then launched straight into a story of their cousin’s neighbors slighting her by failing to invite her to a dance.

Relief flooded Charlie to the point where he moved to lean against the table near the window of his front room.

Barbara frequently wrote to him of all the great tragedies she endured as a girl of fourteen at the mercy of their cousins.

In truth, she had a good life and was surrounded by people who cared for her and saw to her welfare.

Reading between the lines of her letter, Charlie was able to determine the reason she had not been invited to the ball was because of her tender age and nothing more.

Once the letter was finished, Charlie lowered it and stared into his room with a sigh. He cared for Barbara more than anyone in his life. He would have turned the world upside down to make her happy.

The trouble was, if the world discovered his true nature, it would likely turn everything upside down for Barbara.

His sister’s chances of a happy marriage to a man of title and fortune who would give her everything she deserved, not to mention her chances of finding a place in society, would vanish if it became known her brother preferred to bury his cock in the arse of a comely lad and that he would rather pass his title to his cousin Michael than find himself between a woman’s legs.

Some men of his inclination could do it, could marry a woman and do what was necessary to produce an heir, but not him.

If someone like Comstock, or Gray himself, spilled the truth and if he became the subject of London gossip, Barbara would suffer twice as much as he would.

He was pulled from his troubled thoughts by Gray throwing open the bedroom door and walking out stark naked and still erect.

“Has the bad man gone away?” Gray asked cheekily, his expression beguiling and his blue eyes flashing with lust.

“As you can see,” Charlie said tightly, nodding to the door.

“Good,” Gray said, moving to stand in front of him at the table, trapping Charlie in place. “Because I was in the middle of something.”

He leaned in, clasping Charlie’s face and slanting his mouth over Charlie’s.

Charlie caught his breath, desire and longing shooting through his body like lightning in his veins.

He wanted to reach for Gray and tug him close.

He wanted to wrap his hand around Grayson’s beautiful cock and work it until Gray spilled.

The sight of Gray coming was breathtaking, since the man threw himself into everything with such abandon.

It wasn’t just sex, though. Charlie had never loved anyone so much in his life, except Barbara.

He and Gray didn’t just share their bodies, they shared their aristocratic backgrounds, their fascination with locomotion and modern transportation, and their desire to achieve more with their lives than was expected of them.

Grayson Hawthorne was the only person Charlie could imagine spending the rest of his life with, but to do so would almost certainly spell Barbara’s ruin someday.

“Now, where were we?” Gray asked as he ended their kiss, wickedness shining from him.

Gray took a half step back and began to drop to his knees, but Charlie stopped him.

“We cannot,” he said, having to force out the words that he knew would cut them both to the quick.

Gray paused, confused for a moment, then slipped a hand between the folds of Charlie’s robe to grasp his cock. “Oh, I think we can,” he said with a wink.

Heart breaking, Charlie shifted to the side and away from Gray’s touch, then pushed off of the table. He strode across the room, only turning to Gray when he’d put enough distance between them, then said, “I think you should go.”

Gray was still smiling as he turned, like they were playing a game. “Go?” he asked. “I would rather come.”

“No, you must go at once,” Charlie said, hardly able to look at him. “And…and I think it best if you do not come back.”

Grayson started to move toward him but stopped. His impish expression began to crack. “What do you mean?” he asked, a new thread of tension in his voice.

Charlie forced himself to drag his eyes up to meet his lover’s. It would be better for all of them if he ended things quickly and definitively. “I think it would be best if we cut ties,” he said.

He couldn’t maintain eye contact with Gray.

“Cut ties?” Gray said, his voice suddenly thin and vulnerable and his expression turning young and hurt. He took a few, tentative steps toward Charlie and asked, “What did Comstock say to you?”

“Nothing,” Charlie insisted, dodging away from Gray and marching into the bedroom. “He came to deliver a letter that was misdirected to his dormitory.”

“A letter?” Gray followed him into the bedroom. “What did the letter contain?” The concern in Gray’s voice hurt Charlie even more.

“It was just a letter from my sister,” Charlie said, moving around the bed to take up Gray’s clothing from where it had been draped over a chair when it had been thrown off the night before. “You’d better dress and leave before people fill the streets, making their way to church.”

“And when should I come back?” Gray asked, brittle and stiff.

Charlie forced himself to meet his beloved’s eyes. “You…you cannot.”

“Charlie,” Gray said, falling swiftly into desperation. “You cannot be…you wouldn’t possibly…I refuse to believe that this is the end.”

Charlie swallowed sickly. “I’m afraid it is,” he said.

Panic pinched Gray’s face. “Why? What has happened? We were so happy just moments ago. It was something Comstock said, or…or something in Barbara’s letter.”

Gray reached for him, but Charlie dodged. “It was none of that,” he lied. He gulped, then latched onto the falsehood he knew would push Gray away and keep all of them, him, Barbara, and ultimately Gray as well, safe from the cruelty of society and from the law. “I am simply done with you.”

“You cannot mean that,” Gray said, rocking back, his face going pale. “I love you, Charlie, and you love me.”

“I do not love you,” Charlie lied. It was the most egregious lie of his life. “I…I never have. I merely pretended…I…because you were so eager…and…because…you were so willing.”

Gray jerked back. “You led me on for…carnal reasons?” he demanded, his voice tight and hoarse. “So that you could bed me?”

It killed Charlie to say it, but he nodded and whispered, “Yes. It was all a bit of fun. We’ve run our course now and…and now I’m tired of you.”

“Tired of me?”

Charlie had to turn away from the intensity of hurt on his beloved’s face.

“Do you want more from me?” Gray asked, surging back to him, arms outstretched. “Am I inadequate in some way? Are there…are there other things you want me to do? I can learn how to do them, I swear. I can do whatever you want me to do, no matter how debasing.”

“It’s not that,” Charlie said, avoiding him and putting the bed between them. “I’m just done with you is all. Please go now.”

For a few, painful seconds, Gray reached desperately for him, eyes glassy with tears. Then those tears burst, but with a rush of anger that Charlie didn’t expect.

“How could you?” Gray gasped. His expression turned to a snarl. “How dare you? I gave everything to you. I risked everything for you. I love you, Charlie.”

“Please go,” Charlie repeated in a whisper, unable to look at him.

“After all this time, this is how you end things?”

“I really cannot have you here another moment,” Charlie said.

“How can you be so cruel, so heartless?” Gray hissed, snatching up his clothing and dressing quickly. “I thought you were wonderful, but I was wrong. You are a heartless cad and a creature of stone.”

“Yes, I am,” Charlie said, keeping his back to Gray.

“I will never forgive you for this,” Gray continued to rage at him. “You could have at least talked to me about things before casting me out, like some cheap whore you thought to entertain for a night and rid yourself of in the morning.”

“If that is how you wish to style yourself,” Charlie said.

The silence that followed those words was worse than anything Gray had said. It lasted far too long before only the sound of Gray dressing followed.

Charlie finally turned around as Gray marched to the door. Their eyes met, and Gray spat, “I will never forgive you for this.”

He left, slamming the door behind him.

Charlie listened as Grayson crossed his front room, then slammed the second door leading to the hallway.

Once his beloved was well and truly gone, he sank to his bed and buried his face in his hands.

He’d been rash, hasty. Gray had reacted like an immature boy experiencing his first disappointment, which, of course, he was.

Charlie was merely a green boy fumbling his way through forbidden love as well.

They were too young for the attachment they’d formed, too immature to conduct themselves as men should.

Charlie told himself all those things to excuse what he’d just done, but he feared he’d just made the worst mistake of his life.