Hidden Lover (Regency Men in Love 1) Read online

  Contents

  Copyright

  Dedication

  Chapter 1

  Chapter 2

  Chapter 3

  Chapter 4

  Chapter 5

  Chapter 6

  Chapter 7

  Chapter 8

  Chapter 9

  Chapter 10

  Chapter 11

  Chapter 12

  Chapter 13

  Chapter 14

  Newsletter and Social Media Links

  About the Author

  Other books by Carole Mortimer

  Copyright

  Copyright © 2019 Carole Mortimer

  Cover Copyright © Glass Slipper WebDesign

  Editor: Linda Ingmanson

  Formatter: Glass Slipper WebDesign

  ISBN: 978-1-910597-78-1

  * * *

  This is a work of fiction. Names, characters, places, and incidents either are the product of the author’s imagination or are used fictitiously, and any resemblance to actual persons, living or dead, businesses, companies, events, or locales is entirely coincidental.

  * * *

  All Rights Reserved.

  Dedication

  My husband, Peter

  Chapter One

  Bishop House, London,

  Summer, 1816

  “Daniel, I cannot in good conscience accept the responsibility of becoming your son’s guardian,” Lucius Cranfield, the Duke of Sheffield, stated with more vehemence than he might have wished, but only out of the deep necessity he felt to get his point across.

  “Already done, old chap.” The man in the bed was deathly pale and almost skeletal in appearance. “My will clearly states that is what you will become the moment I am dead.”

  “You cannot do this, Daniel,” Lucius protested again. “To your son or to me.”

  Green eyes glittered up at him from the gauntness of the other man’s face. “If I had known you at the time, I would have asked you to be Toby’s godfather, and this would be a perfectly natural course of events.”

  Lucius bit back his frustration. “But you did not, and so it is not.”

  “I love my son dearly, and I want the best for him. You are the best man I have ever known, Lucius, and I shall accept my death more happily knowing Toby will be safe with you.”

  “Safe?” That seemed a strange choice of word to Lucius.

  Especially in the circumstances. Circumstances Daniel could not be fully conversant with, or he would never have chosen Lucius as guardian to his no doubt impressionable young son. “As you are fully aware, I have never married. Nor has there ever been a reason for me to be around young children.”

  “Toby is twenty in a few days’ time, Lucius, hardly a child.”

  Fuck. Really? The last time Lucius recalled seeing Tobias Bishop, he had been a golden-haired cherub approaching his thirteenth birthday. Where had all those years gone? “I know absolutely nothing about taking care of an almost twenty-year-old boy either.”

  “Toby does not consider himself a boy, and I do not consider him to be one either.” Daniel’s smile was affectionate. “His presence has been invaluable to me these past few months.”

  “Where is he today? I did not see him when I arrived.” Lucius knew he would have noticed the golden-haired cherub.

  Daniel shrugged. “I sent him out on an errand.”

  Lucius eyed the other man with suspicion. “Why?”

  “My son has an old head on young shoulders, but still, I do not wish to burden him with the details of my will before I need to.” Daniel’s gaze avoided meeting his.

  “In other words, you know he will be no happier to learn of this arrangement than I am.”

  “Damn it, Lucius, it is not as if he is a child in need of being fed and coddled. I was already a married man at his age.”

  “And you have spent the past twenty years mourning the loss of your wife while your son was still too young to remember her.”

  Daniel smiled. “But at least, for those two years of our marriage, I knew what it was to love and to be loved in return.”

  Something Lucius had long ago accepted he would never be lucky enough to find and know for himself.

  “You are my best friend, Lucius,” Daniel cajoled. “Strong, confident, well-respected in Society, and the perfect example of all that a man can and should be.”

  And if Society knew the real Lucius Cranfield beneath his veneer of bored sophistication and manly pursuits, then he would be ridiculed and shunned, and never allowed to darken any of their doorsteps again.

  Because Lucius was a lover of other men.

  A crime for which, if discovered, he would either be hanged or face being locked away in an asylum so that he could not inflict what Society believed to be his deviant nature upon others.

  Lucius breathed out his continuing frustration with the situation Daniel seemed determined to create for him. “You do not understand. I am not the right man… I cannot… Toby needs to be with a family, or at the very least, a couple. Your sister and her husband, for example…?”

  “No,” Daniel rasped. “Under no circumstances is Toby to become their ward, financially or in any other way. We both know my sister’s husband is a brute, a bully, and an opinionated prick. Everything that Toby is not. And Sondra is so lily-livered, she does whatever the man says she should.” He gave a firm shake of his head. “Toby had necessarily to stay with them sometimes during school holidays, when the two of us were away fighting. The last time he did so, he ran away, and I returned to find him living alone at Bishop House with the servants.”

  “How old was he then?”

  “Fourteen. He has consistently refused to talk about why he ran away but just as stubbornly refused to stay with my sister and her husband ever again. I believe Barford may have used his fists on him for some imagined misdemeanor or other. But Toby remained closed-lipped when I questioned him on the matter, and Barford denied all knowledge of why Toby should have worried his aunt by running away.”

  Lucius liked the sound of that even less than he did the idea of becoming Toby’s guardian.

  “No doubt the fact that Toby is bookish and somewhat delicate in appearance,” Daniel continued, “would have been enough to set that bigoted bastard Barford off.”

  “So where did Toby go for the holidays after that?”

  “As he seemed quite happy with the arrangement the first time, I allowed him to stay at Bishop House with the servants. He was perfectly safe, I assure you.” Daniel smiled when Lucius frowned. “So you see why Toby would not thank me now for leaving his full-time guardianship to my sister and Barford after I am gone.” He gave a disgusted shake of his head. “Bad enough that Barford might have struck my child and caused Toby to run away, but the man’s liking for the bottle and the gaming tables makes me fear the Chelmsford fortune would not survive for very long under his stewardship either.”

  Lucius breathed heavily. “I doubt I have set eyes on Toby for more than a minute or two, nor he me, since he went off to boarding school.” The young boy Lucius remembered from that time had been so tongue-tied, he’d been unable to speak, let alone voice an opinion of his own on any subject.

  On top of that crippling shyness, Toby had been small of stature for his age, with golden curls, huge green eyes flecked with gold, and delicate features. In short, the boy was too pretty to be anything other than the perfect target for the school bullies Lucius remembered from his own schooldays.

  He understood why, at the time, Daniel had been given no choice about sending Toby away to school. The two men were both officers in Wellington’s army and had often been away from England for several months at a time. Boarding school ha
d been the best choice for Toby during his father’s absence.

  Although it seemed even then it had occasionally been necessary for the boy to reside during the school holidays with the uncle and aunt he apparently had no love for. Not much of a holiday for Toby, when Daniel had just now confirmed to Lucius that Lord Clifford Barford, youngest son of an impoverished duke, had become just as much of a bigoted bully to Toby as the schoolchildren he had no doubt hoped to escape from for a few weeks.

  Lucius fully intended to one day hear the full story of Barford’s treatment of Toby. He personally abhorred bullying in any shape or form. No doubt Barford would find confronting a man of his own size and stature less enjoyable.

  Even so… “I am too old and set in my ways to be guardian to a young gentleman on the cusp of manhood.”

  Daniel reached out to weakly grasp Lucius’s arm. “You are only eight and thirty. Nor is Toby like his peers. He goes out carousing with his friends occasionally, but still prefers to spend the majority of his time at home, reading, writing poetry, or working on his sketches. I know that you are also a great reader.”

  He was. Lucius also enjoyed the ballet and theater. But he also made a point of attending a boxing saloon one day a week, practicing with his sword three days a week, and was known for never turning down an invitation to attend a weekend of shooting or hunting. Toby Bishop’s stated pursuits were more suited to a woman than a robust young man.

  “He is like you in other ways, Lucius,” Daniel added evenly.

  Lucius tensed, and he eyed the other man warily. “Like me…?”

  Daniel nodded. “I fear Toby will need your protection as well as your guidance in the years to come. As you are well aware, Society and the law are rigid on such matters.” He gave a grimace of disgust. “Although quite what business it is of theirs what a consenting adult chooses to do in his or her own bedchamber, and with whom they choose to do it, is beyond me.”

  Lucius stared at Daniel as if his friend had suddenly grown two heads. “You know of my…my private life?”

  “I have always known,” the other man dismissed. “That knowledge has made no difference to our friendship, and why should it?” He focused his green gaze on Lucius. “Your sexual preferences are your own affair and do not prevent you from being the best man and friend I have ever known. I would be honored if, in my forced absence from this world, you would take care of my son and help guide him into being the man he was born to be. I want so much for him, Lucius,” he added with all the fervor his lack of strength allowed “Most of all, I want him to know the happiness of falling in love, of being loved in return, and to be cherished for the wonderful man that he is.”

  It took Lucius several minutes to gather his scattered wits after learning his closest friend had known all along of his sexual preference. “You know that men like Toby and myself are not allowed to have such things.”

  “Not openly, no,” his friend conceded. “But it is often managed anyway. I recall when you and I visited your father at his estate in Kent, not long before he died, that he had a tolerance for love in all guises.”

  “What do you mean?” Lucius questioned guardedly.

  Daniel gave him a knowing glance. “I distinctly remember that the butler lived in a cottage in the grounds with the head groom. And that a young man from the village also resided in the estate manager’s house with him.”

  Those relationships existed just as Daniel had described them. “Why have you never said anything to me about this before now?”

  “Because I do not judge, Lucius. Love is love. I also know you are as tolerant in these situations as your father, and I truly believe leaving you as Toby’s guardian is the only way that a loving future might be assured for my son.”

  How could Lucius possibly say no to such a heartfelt entreaty? He knew he could not, that he owed it to Daniel and their long friendship to ensure the other man’s death was as peaceful as it could be. And it seemed the only thing which would guarantee that was the assurance his young son would be cared for by Lucius.

  Daniel’s smile, after Lucius gave him his word to care for Toby, was its own reward.

  * * *

  Which was possibly as well, because within hours of this conversation with his closest friend, Lucius found himself guardian of the handsome youth that was Lord Tobias Bishop, the new Earl of Chelmsford.

  Chapter Two

  “—until he reaches the age of one and twenty, I leave the guardianship of my son, Tobias Daniel James Bishop, the Earl of Chelmsford, to Lucius Percival Grenville Cranfield, the Duke of Sheffield.” The solicitor continued to drone on some more regarding small monetary bequests the late earl had left to members of his household staff.

  Toby heard none of it, any more than he paid heed to his Aunt Sondra’s gasp of outrage that she and her husband had not been named as his guardians or received any monetary bequest. Nor was he inclined to listen to the string of vitriol against his father that followed from the couple. Instead, Toby chose to block out his aunt’s protests and his uncle’s blustering to stare across the room at the bloody great bear of a man who was now his guardian.

  Lucius Percival Grenville Cranfield, the Duke of Sheffield, to be exact.

  Toby had attended his father’s funeral only that morning, and this afternoon was the reading of his will. To now learn that the duke was his guardian, a man he did not know and who did not know him, might possibly be the thing that snapped the last strands of Toby’s emotional control.

  Only a few years younger than Toby’s father, the duke was easily six and a half feet of bulging muscles even the obviously expert ability of his tailor could not disguise. Possibly from the hours Sheffield was known to spend in the boxing ring or, as he was considered one of the finest shots and blades in England, honing his skill with both sword and pistol. The duke was very much a man’s man, in fact.

  Although, considering how handsome the man was and the rumors of how the ladies flocked to his side whenever he appeared at Society events, he was obviously a ladies’ man too.

  The duke’s dark hair was fashionably overlong, with distinguished wings of silver at his temples. His eyes were a glacial gray in a face that looked as if it had been carved out of granite rather than flesh and bone. His long-fingered hands were so large, they looked as if they could crush a boulder or two before breakfast and the whole bloody mountain afterwards.

  He was also the most imposing and sternly handsome gentleman Toby had ever set eyes on. He could also admit, to himself, at least, that he’d had a futile crush on the older man since he was old enough to realize what those feelings were.

  A crush that apparently existed still, as the inappropriate engorging of Toby’s cock, just from looking at the man, now testified.

  What had his father been thinking of to leave his son’s guardianship to a gentleman who was so obviously Toby’s opposite in every way?

  Where the duke was six and a half feet tall, Toby had ceased to grow at a full foot shorter than that.

  Where the duke was muscular, Toby was slight of build, although he had started to attend a boxing ring twice a week, and that had added some musculature to his lithe frame.

  The duke’s appearance was as fastidious as it was fashionable. Toby might dress in the latest fashion, but his riotous blond curls refused to be tamed and always managed to give him the appearance of a naughty schoolboy playing dress-up in his father’s clothes. To attempt to cut those curls left him with a wild head of hair that stuck out in all directions.

  Sheffield enjoyed such manly pursuits as hunting, fishing, and shooting, along with the boxing and fencing, whereas Toby disliked all those things, except the recent boxing.

  Most significant of all was that reputation Sheffield had with the ladies, when Toby’s preferences lay in quite the opposite direction. Hence his cockstand from merely looking at the handsome and imposing duke.

  A cockstand that would, in all probability, earn Toby a severe beating from his new guardian if Sh
effield were ever to learn of it.

  “Tobias?”

  The authority in Sheffield’s voice was such that Toby did not for one moment think of ignoring it. Instead, he raised his head to see that the duke had crossed the room and was now standing in front of him. Effectively shutting out the other people gathered in the study at Bishop House for the reading of Toby’s father’s will. “Yes, sir—er—Your Grace?”

  The duke’s jaw tensed. “Sheffield will do. Your aunt, uncle, and I were discussing your future guardianship. I am of the opinion your father’s will is quite clear, and so there is no discussion to be had on the subject. But I would appreciate hearing your own thoughts on the matter, nonetheless.”

  Toby’s thoughts?

  As to whether or not he became Sheffield’s ward or his Aunt and Uncle Barford’s?

  In Toby’s mind, there was no question to answer. The duke might be big and manly but by leaving the guardianship of Toby to him, his father had shown that he trusted the other man implicitly.

  In contrast, Toby’s aunt was completely subject to her husband’s considerable will, and that uncle by marriage used his size and weight to behave much like the bullies Toby had known at school. Barford took great delight in verbally taunting Toby in public at every opportunity, usually by casting aspersions on his lack of height and making insulting remarks about the delicacy of his appearance.

  In public.

  Barford’s private opinion of Toby was even less acceptable, becoming more and more so the older Toby got, and the holidays Toby had necessarily to spend in his aunt and uncle’s home in the past had usually been dealt with by him rarely leaving the bedchamber assigned to him for that visit. Luckily, there had been a lock with a key in the door, which he might turn to keep his uncle out of his room.