Free The Valet and the Stable Groom: M/M Regency Romance by Katherine Marlowe Page B

the quiet kitchen. “It is late.”
    Hugo got to his feet. He paused, holding his bowl, and looked down at it unseeing.
    Clement rose also, quickly. He felt that he ought to say something, but did not know what.
    “Good evening,” said Hugo, “Mr. Adair.”
    “Clement,” he said, before he’d had a chance to think about what he was saying.
    Hugo looked up and smiled. “Clement.”
    Clement’s tongue felt thick and heavy in his mouth. He swallowed. “Good evening.”
    Hugo tidied away his bowl, and left.
    Clement’s own bowl was still in his hands as he stared after Hugo. He felt that he had gained something, and lost an opportunity, but he could not make sense of either.

Chapter 6
    “ C lement !”
    Hildebert brightened as Clement entered the room, getting up from his reading and coming over to greet his valet.
    Confused by this, Clement blinked.
    “There you are,” Hildebert said. “I have been bereft of your company all evening! We had to play cards without you.”
    Clement’s confusion took a swift dive into guilt. “You might have sent for me.”
    It was now Hildebert’s turn to look confused. “Ah. Yes. I suppose I might have.”
    Mired in guilty confusion, Clement realised that Hildebert had grown to assume that Clement would always appear when he was wanted simply because he always had . He had never, in the year and a half of his employment, been away from Hildebert’s side for more than a couple of hours at a time unless Hildebert had specifically sent him on a lengthy errand.
    “I beg your pardon,” Clement said, stepping close and beginning to unbutton Hildebert’s coat for him.
    “Have I told you about the de Rivaz engine, Clement?”
    Taking the coat from Hildebert’s shoulders, Clement went to the wardrobe to put it away. “The de Rivaz engine?”
    There was a note of interest, perhaps excitement, in Hildebert’s voice. “It is a French invention, you see.”
    “Is it?” Clement replied, laying out Hildebert’s night clothes. He himself had relatively little interest in French inventions, but he was very glad for the possibility of Hildebert taking an interest in some new hobby.
    “Well, it is of Valais, and I cannot keep track of where the borders are with French wars and politics.”
    Clement also had little interest in international politics. He made a noncommittal sound.
    “It is a mechanism,” Hildebert explained, as Clement went on undressing him and getting him ready for bed, “by which one might propel a carriage. An engine, you see, which is driven by very small explosions in the hydrogen fuel.”
    Clement stopped. “Very small explosions?”
    “Yes,” Hildebert said, cheerful. “Controlled explosions within an internal chamber…”
    “Which is attached to a carriage ?” Clement asked, horrified.
    “Isn’t it ingenious?”
    Clement was tempted to declare an ultimatum that under no circumstances would anyone in this household be strapping small explosions to any carriages, but he remembered just in time that he was a mere valet, and thus ought to limit himself to respectful dissuasions. “That sounds dangerously reckless. Do we really need to resort to propelling carriages with small explosions? You have a stable full of excellent horses.”
    “Oh, horses,” Hildebert said, waving his hand dismissively. “Only very dull people care about horses.”
    Clenching his jaw, Clement restrained himself from expressing the opinion that sensible people with healthy levels of self-preservation did not strap small explosions to carriages. He wasn’t at all sure that Hildebert had obtained the right idea of this peculiar French mechanism, and thought that his employer might have mentally embroidered upon a newspaper report which had foregone accuracy for sensationalism.

    B y the next morning , Clement had forgotten entirely about the exploding French engine, and thought nothing of it when Hildebert shut himself up in his study to work.
    Making certain that Hildebert