Page 13 of An Earl's Bet
“What if I want it too much?”What if he tried to change things and bad things happened?Like they always had when he was a child.
“It’s not a weakness to want.Who taught you that?”
Hugo blinked.“To want?”
“Who taught you that you shouldn’t want?Who crushed you?Yearning for a better life is what drives humanity forward.”
He shouldn’t argue with a poet.The drama was too much.“Earnest.Please don’t.”
Earnest leaped up and threw his arms around Hugo’s neck.“What is the matter?”
Hugo shivered as Earnest stood behind his chair and held him.No one had ever cared for him like this, and he’d been trained to not need it, except it felt so good to have someone hold him.
“Why are you so tense?”Earnest kissed the top of Hugo’s head, then slowly massaged his shoulders, fingers digging into his muscles.It hurt.Earnest increased the pressure, his thumbs sliding over the tension.“So many tight knots in your muscles.”
“I’m always like this.”He winced as Earnest rolled the ball of his hand over one spot.He’d never experienced anything like this, with someone paying attention to him without wanting something in return.Everything as the Earl was a transaction; his servants worked for money, his peers negotiated for favours in parliament.No one did anything for no reason at all.
“It’s not good, Lord Horden.You can’t live your life being so tense all the time.”He did something that stretched out the tendon between Hugo’s neck and his shoulder and ...
“Argh, what are you doing?”Pain speared through the spot where Earnest was pressing but it stopped as soon as he moved his hand.
“Lord Horden.I’m helping you.”It didn’t feel like it except that after Earnest had finished, it did feel better.Looser.
Hugo sighed.“Call me Hugo.We’ve already been—” He stared at the door again, unable to finish the sentence.He couldn’t help it.
“Intimate, Hugo.We’ve been intimate.”Earnest dragged his fingers along Hugo’s neck and threaded them into his hair at the base of his skull, and then he pressed on a couple of spots that made him crumple.The intimacy of it, combined with the sharp pain that Earnest applied, made him flinch.He automatically glanced at the door, because if someone saw this, they’d know all about last night.Instinct and years of worry couldn’t stop him from checking.
“Who are you worried about?And don’t say your guests, because I know for a fact that you know the Duke of Edenwick wouldn’t give a flying damn about this.”
Hugo breathed a few times—to hide his surprise that the Duke of Edenwick wouldn’t care if he saw Earnest touching him so intimately in the breakfast room—his breath burning his lungs as he tried to slow down his racing pulse.“Please come to my office.”He pushed away Earnest’s hands and stood up.“No one will interrupt us there.”
He marched out of the breakfast room, not towards the main office that his father had used—he hadn’t entered that room since he’d inherited—but towards the room he’d chosen as his own office.It overlooked the kitchen gardens and was located in the rear wing.It’d been a storage room when he’d been a child.
“This is an unusual location for an office.”
“The Earls have always used the larger office on the first floor situated over the entrance hall.”
“And you don’t?Aren’t you the Earl?”
He swallowed.“I am unable to enter that room.”It was the closest he’d ever come to admitting the truth; that he was terrified of that room where he’d been beaten regularly by his father.
“Why?Is there something wrong with it?”
“Yes.”If it wasn’t the centre of the house, he’d burn it to the ground.Instead, he kept it locked.
“Then get it fixed.You are an Earl.Are you short on funds?”
“I am not short on funds.”Hugo let out a trembling breath and turned away.“This room was always my sanctuary as a child, and I like being here.”He’d been safe here, hiding among the unused furniture, where no one could find him.He’d stashed books among the old objects stored here, and made a little nest to exist in.
“I think I’m missing something important.”Earnest ran his hand down Hugo’s arm, a reassuring touch, the type of touch a mother or a nanny might give a child, or just how someone would show that they cared.He’d never had that.His father had always employed vicious nannies who didn’t like children, especially grubby boys who needed discipline.
“I want you to know why I can’t change the rules.”He wished he could believe Earnest when he said there are bad laws.Objectively, he understood that, and he knew that the law was a flexible thing because he sat in Lords and watched the laws get changed in every session, but in his experience, if he asked to change the rules, bad things happened.If you just did as you were told, I wouldn’t have to do this to you.
“Isn’t changing the rules exactly what you Lords do in Parliament?”Earnest asked the most obvious question, the one he’d just been contemplating.
“Technically, yes.I have a ...”Was he really going to talk about this with Earnest?“I have a problem with rules.”
Earnest laughed.“Oh, so do I.Rules are so boring, you know.I try to break as many as I can every day.Were you a complete terror as a child?I bet you put jam in your nanny’s socks and slid down the banisters every day.”