Christopher seemed nonplussed. “You’re hardly late,” he said. “It’s only just past midnight.”
“But you said to come at nine.”
“I said to come any time after nine.” Christopher cocked a brow at him. “We’re open till four o’clock, so it’s still quite early by my standards.”
Christopher led him back into the room where he’d been talking with Corbett. Henry saw that they were attracting some interest. Numerous gentlemen were glancing at them surreptitiously, then murmuring to their companions. He wondered if there was anyone here who recognised him. There was no sign of Corbett now—he must have gone to one of the other rooms.
Christopher guided Henry over to a quiet corner, pausing on the way to ask one of his staff to fetch more champagne for them both.
“This is where I like to stand,” he told Henry. “I can see everything that’s going on from here.” And it was indeed a good vantage point from which to view the room, especially for Christopher, who was a sight shorter than Henry.
Henry leaned against the wall beside Christopher, reducing the height difference between them a good bit. When Christopher turned his head to look at him, Henry was struck by the strongest sense of familiarity—this was something he used to do in the old days, when they were standing together. Henry had performed the familiar choreography quite unconsciously.
In the soft candlelight Christopher looked younger, and that provocative touch of red on his lips stirred Henry. He used to love the small feminine decorations Christopher employed to enhance his beauty. For Henry, it had never been because it made Christopher seem more feminine—almost the opposite in fact. Something about these decorative little adornments underlined his masculinity in a way that heated Henry’s blood and made him impossibly hard.
He stared at Christopher, and Christopher returned his gaze, his own touched with curiosity—it felt almost as though no time had passed at all, as though Henry had somehow imagined all the years between then and now.
“This feels so familiar,” Henry murmured.
“Yes,” Christopher said. “The memory is a strange thing.”
Henry tried to read what he saw in Christopher’s eyes. An edge of bleakness perhaps, but something determined too. He wasn’t sure what to make of it, how to read him. When he had first seen Christopher this afternoon, the man had been palpably angry. Henry had half expected to see the same fury in his gaze tonight, but Christopher seemed more wary than anything else.
“Ah,” Christopher said then, his gaze moving over Henry’s shoulder. “Here’s our champagne.”
Two servants approached, one carrying glasses and champagne on a silver tray, while a second carried a tall stand on which the tray was set. The servant with the champagne removed the cork without fuss and filled both glasses.
“You can leave the bottle,” Christopher said, and they withdrew.
Christopher touched the rim of his glass to Henry’s with a tiny clink. “What shall we drink to?” he asked lightly.
“Your success?” Henry suggested. “This place is very impressive.”
Christopher sipped his champagne and smiled. “What were you expecting? Somewhere like the Golden Lily?”
Henry laughed. “I suppose I was. This is a deal more… restrained.”
“Do you remember the first time you were at the Lily? Mabel was having a Roman orgy night and I was wearing this ridiculous garb—” Christopher broke off with a peal of laughter.
Henry did remember that—only too well. Except the memory wasn’t having quite the same effect on him. His cock was filling at the mental picture of Christopher’s lean, beautiful body, decorated with a few floaty wisps of transparent fabric held together with golden clasps, a pair of golden sandals on his feet, a golden laurel wreath on his head… and very little else.
Somehow Christopher had got even closer—or Henry had—their faces were only inches apart now.
Christopher stopped laughing. He swallowed, then said something too softly for Henry to hear over the babble of conversation in the room.
“What was that?” Henry asked, dropping his head a little lower and offering his ear.
“I looked very silly,” Christopher whispered, his warm breath gusting pleasurably over Henry’s ear, making him shiver.
He turned his head back, moving his lips towards Christopher’s ear to respond—to deny that statement—but as soon as he started to speak, Christopher whipped his head around and their lips grazed, shocking Henry into open-mouthed silence.
Henry’s first thought was that Kit had intended to kiss him. But the immediate warm glow of pleasure he felt at that thought died when Christopher jerked back, his cheeks flushing.
“Sorry,” he said hastily. “It’s just that I—I can’t hear in that ear.”
Henry stared at him, frowning. “I beg your pardon?”
“I can’t—I’m—I’m deaf in that ear. I… had an accident.”
His gaze slid away as he was saying the words, and Henry read in the gesture old hurt, old humiliation.
Without thinking he blurted, “Did Skelton do that to you?”
Christopher’s shocked expression told him he’d inadvertently hit on the truth.
“He did, didn’t he?” Henry said. “I learned today that he was your—” He broke off. Swallowed. “And it seems he beat you so badly, you lost your hearing.”
For a moment, Christopher stared at him, stricken, then he tore his gaze away and lifted his champagne to his lips, draining his glass.
“It was a long time ago,” he said tightly. “As you can see, I recovered.”
But he hadn’t. Not fully. He was deaf in one ear.
“God, you must hate me,” Henry said thickly. “It was my fault. If I had taken more care—”
Christopher’s gaze was impossible to read. There was a hint of the anger from earlier there now, but other things too. Resentment in the thrust of his jaw and, when his green gaze flicked to Henry, a kind of impatient pity.
“Like I said,” he said tightly, “it was over a long time ago. I’m not—” He broke off, frowning to himself.
“What?”
Christopher sighed. “I don’t know what I was thinking this afternoon, asking you to come here.”
Henry’s heart sank. Suddenly the thought of being ordered to his knees in front of everyone didn’t seem like the worst thing that might happen tonight.
“I thought,” he said carefully, slowly, “that you wanted me to make amends to you.”
“What I suggested wouldn’t be you making amends,” Christopher said wearily. “It would be punishment, pure and simple.”
Henry stared at him—he didn’t know what to say. Relief and disappointment warred in him. He could see that Christopher was working up to letting him off the hook.
“Perhaps,” he said slowly, “I want to take my punishment. Perhaps I need to.”
Christopher met his gaze. He looked like he was thinking.
After a while, Christopher said, “You don’t have the slightest idea what it would be like, you know. You probably think, because you’ve been to brothels and bought whores and performed acts in front of other people that you wanted to perform, that you know what this will feel like. But you don’t.”