The Duke at Hazard (The Gentlemen of Uncertain Fortune #2)

by K.J. Charles

Vernon Fortescue Cassian George de Vere Crosse, the fourth Duke of Severn, the Earl of Harmsford, Baron Crosse of Wotton, and Baron Vere walked into an inn. They were all the same man.

Just for tonight, he would be with a man who was attracted by his person, who didn’t need to be paid to be there, who wanted the man, not the duke. He couldn’t wait.

‘Do you not think independence is a virtue?’ ‘Overrated,’ Daizell said. ‘One should be able to do things for oneself, but the world would surely be a better place if we did more for one another.’

Cassian definitely stripped to advantage: the candlelight hadn’t lied. Slim, but not willowy; not tall, not too much sinew and muscle. He was an elegant package, Daizell thought, a picture that repaid attention, with the water running rivulets down his skin in droplets that begged to be caught with a finger. A finger that Daizell might pop into his mouth, or even between Cassian’s parted, expressive lips

Kissing, open-mouthed and desperate and gleeful, under the night sky, while escaping kidnap. Cassian had never felt less like a duke, or more like himself.

His pie appeared to contain ham, apples, onions, and cheese. It tasted like being somebody else.

‘It’s not even that you aren’t exciting yourself, it’s just that you do it so quietly. You quietly calm a set of panicking horses, and quietly let yourself out when you’re kidnapped, and quietly scheme to bamboozle parsons. Good God, Cass, you’re like a cool drink on a hot day. Anyone who tells you otherwise isn’t paying attention.’

They saw the sights of Coventry, with Daizell discovering once again that a man who was interested in everything made everything interesting.

Cassian had taken Daizell’s request to heart, whispering those glorious endearments, telling Daizell he was so marvellous, so giving, such a very good boy, and Daizell was almost embarrassingly weak-kneed under the onslaught of lips and fingers and most of all those soft words in that bard’s voice.

‘My uncle likes to say, if the truth shames you, the fault lies with you, not with the truth.’

‘I can’t be thrown away again. I don’t know why people find it so easy to throw me away.’

‘I love you,’ Daizell remarked into his neck. ‘I love your kindness, and I love that you love me, and I particularly love that you want me to do that to you.’

love how you sparkle. Sparkle and shine. And I love that you make it so easy for me to be me. And I particularly love that you’re happy to do those things to me.’

‘It’s highly convenient we found each other, really.’ ‘Sometimes one can believe in a well-ordered universe,’ Cassian agreed, and snuggled back against him, sweaty, sticky, and entirely perfect.

Cassian made a mental note that polite, faint smiles were actually quite dislikeable, and therefore kept his own firmly in place.

‘Must you?’ Cassian said. He said it very gently, in the manner of his more dangerous aunts, and noted that Loxleigh’s eyes widened. Possibly he had aunts too.

‘No. I must decline to witness any such thing.’ Cassian gave it a couple of seconds, as Sir Francis and Sir James shot him looks of desperate hope, and concluded, ‘So let me leave the room before you start.’