Chapter Twelve

I returned to our suite, where I found Alex sitting up in bed, eating a late breakfast and looking suddenly like his old self again.

“So where’ve you been hiding?” he laughed. “Have you been having adventures while I’ve been lost at sea?”

Images of Sandy, the boys in the hidden dance hall and Max Von Mars with his cock ready for action raced across my mind as I said: “Don’t be daft my darling. It’s been very dull and very quiet without you. Most of the ship’s been suffering with you.”

I sat on the bed, pulled him towards me and we kissed for the first time in days, lips hard against each other as I unfastened his pyjama jacket, wriggled out of my own clothes with the assistance of his eager hands and clambered into bed where we enjoyed one of those feverish, passionate fucks where all that mattered was giving instant pleasure to each other.

We stayed in bed for the rest of the day, naked in each other’s arms, occasionally kissing and stroking before enjoying more sexual pleasure, both of us marveling at our ability to continue producing such prodigious quantities of spunk.

And then we slept, the long deep sleep that precedes the start of a great new adventure.

At dawn we rose together and went out onto the deck to watch as the ship glided from the Atlantic and into the Hudson River.

To our left was the Stature of Liberty welcoming travellers to the New World and ahead lay the high rise buildings of New York, standing proud, erect and, dare one say, almost phallic against the early morning sky.

With nobody to see us, we stood for a few moments hand in hand and then we kissed, gently and tenderly.

“Here’s to our future,” Alex whispered. “I know we will be happy here.

“And whatever happens next you know that I will always love you and we will always be together.”

There it was, the sudden pang I had felt when Eddie had been about to betray me so many years before.

“What do you mean?” I tried to sound as casual as I could, despite the slight air of unease that was starting to consume me. “What do you mean when you say whatever happens?”

“Well, you know,” he said. “I suppose I have to go back having achieved what the parents have sent me to achieve, even though it will only be an exercise in saving face for the family and providing for the future.”

“And what do they want you to achieve Alex?” Again, I was trying to sound calm.

“Well, they can tell that there are no girls interest me back home and I suspect that mother in particular may even have guessed the reason why.

“But the official line from father is that there isn’t an English beauty worthy of the family name who’s not already spoken for so I’m here to find an American heiress.

“It will make no difference to us Bertie. All I have to do is marry one, produce an heir and then, if she understands what’s good for her, the wife enjoys the luxury of the English aristocratic life while we travel together, Alex and Bertie, friends and lovers, not master and servant.”

So this was how it was going to be if we lived Alex’s dream, a life of lies, of me pretending to sleep on a camp bed in the study, evenings of him visiting his wife’s quarters in the West Wing to conceive an heir for the Great Hall, before returning to the East Wing to fuck me and forget his troubles.

On the deck below us I could see the bulky figure of Max Von Mars - imposing in an elegantly tailored pinstripe suit and heavy, expensive over coat, a big cigar clamped between strong jaws - enjoying the same view of New York and no doubt also thinking of the months ahead.

His card was in my waistcoat pocket. Would I call the number? Would my future lie in Hollywood or with my beautiful young aristocrat?

I fingered the rectangle of card as I looked at Alex’s elegant, handsome profile, the flawless face and the gorgeous golden body it now seemed I would be having to share with an American bride, both of us part of a transaction conducted for Alex’s happiness and the future security of his family.

I’d travelled a long way since that first morning at the Great Hall, though, a young boy embarking on a great adventure and I was no longer so sure that I was prepared to settle for being the other man, the spare, the best kept secret, the future Duke’s devoted valet and furtive little secret.

Looking at the outline of Manhattan growing larger before me, I realized that my adventure wasn’t over yet... I simply had to decide where the road ahead would take me.