“Jeffers is not here, my lord,” the young man murmured, low and husky. “His mother took to her sickbed, and the reports from the doctors were dire. Jeffers traveled to Cornwall for the last week, my lord.”
A week? His heart jerked a few times. “You’ve been tending me for a week?”
The young man swallowed. “For the last few days, milord. I…we were introduced, my lord, but you were reading a book, and you did not even lift your gaze from the pages.”
The tone was almost accusatory. Bloody hell! How had he not noticed? Almost a damn week? “Who hired you?”
His valet edged toward the door, eyeing him warily. Wentworth gathered he was startling him with his gruff questions.
“The housekeeper, Mrs. Dawson, milord.”
That was his housekeeper in Town.
“Mrs. Dawson sent me down with a letter which I presented to the butler of Norbrook Manor.”
Wentworth frowned. “What is your name?”
“Julian…Pryce, Sir.”
The boy was nervous, for he worked his bottom lip, and Wentworth noticed their sensual lushness. That tingle low in his belly became more pronounced. What in God’s name was this? He took a steady breath and slowly released it. “How old are you, boy?”
A small rounded chin, absence of any hair lifted. “Four and twenty, milord. I’ll be five and twenty in a few weeks.”
That surely must be a fib. The lad looked no more than sixteen years of age. He was very slim, his clothes, while fitted, still gave the impression that they swallowed his frame. The only thing that seemed…a handful was the boy’s arse. It had been high and well-rounded and would overflow even in his large hands. Wentworth closed his eyes briefly, gritting his teeth in disgust. To be lusting after a servant in his household was reprehensible. “You’re fired. I’ll have the butler provide you with a month’s wage.”
Pryce jolted as if he’d been punched, and his eyes widened, clear panic setting in those lovely depths. “My lord! If I have done something wrong, please, my lord, I most sincerely apologize. But I need this post, my lord.”
The panic in those words tugged at Wentworth’s conscience, and he mentally cursed. It was not the boy’s fault that his master’s body had been unruly and very ill-disciplined. It was Wentworth’s responsibility to ensure nothing untoward happened under his roof with any of his servants.
He still recalled the distaste he’d felt upon encountering his friend, Simon Drake, Viscount Clayton, dallying with his housekeeper. The man had been unapologetic and unconcerned that he took advantage of someone in his employ who, with all probability, feared refusing his advances. It was a common enough practice in society, where men of consequence and rank saw nothing wrong with dallying with a maid or footman if they were pretty enough. Not Wentworth. He had never been a libertine, and he was not about to start now.
“Leave my rooms,” he clipped. “I am well able to finish my nightly routine. Have someone send up a basin with warm water, and the fire needs to be stoked.”
His valet hesitated. “Am I…am I still fired, my lord?”
This Julian Pryce had tended him for a few days now, and there hadn’t been an issue. His skills must have been in the similarly remarkable realm of Jeffers who previously tended to all of Wentworth’s needs diligently and meticulously while being invisible.
He hadn’t found any fault with his clothes these few days, not that Wentworth was a man who noticed these things to his Aunt Millicent’s great distress, considering she often lamented that he was a man of poor fashion. Wentworth hardly required a valet to assist him in dressing unless he attended a formal event. And he hardly needed his assistance to bathe, simply because he would languish in the large copper tub for an hour with a book in his hand.
“You remain hired.”
The ‘for now’ remained unspoken, but it lingered in the air.
His valet hesitated, a raw but unidentifiable emotion flashing across his face. His stance…was one of anger or perhaps frustration or defiance. As if he wanted to say more, much more but held himself in check. Unexpectedly a warning kissed over Wentworth’s spine, and his suspicions stirred.
“Are you waiting for something, Mr. Pryce?” he asked with cool civility.
The lad bowed. “I bid you good evening, my lord. And thank you for the opportunity to serve you. I’ll not disappoint you.”
Then he opened the door and slipped away. Wentworth unbuttoned his shirt and stared at the door for quite a long time. His senses were sharp and well-honed, and they had never led him astray. He was simply used to directing them to his studies and whatever problematic question plagued his brain. Yet now they were telling him that something was decidedly odd about his new valet.
Why had he been hired? Wentworth did not concern himself with staffing beyond hiring a competent housekeeper and a butler at his various estates, and where required, a steward. And even then, his Aunt Millicent saw to those household duties on his behalf.
“There is something odd about him,” he said in the dark, testing his concern aloud.
What? He couldn’t say, for nothing except his very inappropriate reaction to a well-rounded arse had made itself evident. With a shrug, he dismissed the lad from his thoughts. Almost an hour later, Wentworth closed A Treatise on Plane and Spherical Trigonometry. It was pointless to try and keep reading. It was frustrating and embarrassing that his mind kept drifting to Julian Pryce. With a jolting sense of alarm, Wentworth realized for the first time since he became fascinated with mathematics and science, something else had the power to tease at his brain, infuriating and intriguing him in equal measure.
As he lay in the dark, staring up at his ceiling, he acknowledged the question beating at him, why had he been so singularly attracted to his valet? What did it mean? Was this a one-time occurrence? And what was he going to do about it, should it continue?
Bloody hell!
He pushed to his feet with a silent snarl, removed his nightshirt, and pulled on his trousers and simple linen shirt. Wentworth made his way from his room and down the winding stairs to the lower floors. A light shone from beneath the library door, and he frowned. Wentworth opened the door and faltered. He scrubbed a hand over his face, then lowered his hand slowly. His valet was still there curled onto the chaise longue by the fire.
Wentworth wasn’t certain if he should be amused or outraged.
“You’ve availed yourself of my library, I see.”
The lad squealed and jerked to his feet, his expression one of comical dismay.
“My Lord!”
Wentworth entered the library and closed the door behind him. He noted the nervous swallow of his valet and filed away the reaction.
“I did not mean to intrude—” the man begun.
“No need to proffer an apology, Julian. I admire those who wish to edify the mind through reading. You may make use of the library when not at work.”
“Thank you, my lord,” he said with a quick bow, bending to pick up the book that had slipped from his nerveless fingers.
It still astonished Wentworth he had not noticed the lad before. He vaguely recalled Mrs. Dunn, Norbrook Manor’s housekeeper of twenty years, informing him of his new valet’s arrival. Everything else after that was a blur, for he had been enraptured by the latest papers printed in the British Association for the Advancement of Science.