Day Two

"Of course I'll come," Danny assured his friend, "But what's wrong?"

"I just found out that Grandmère is trying to marry me off," Valerien relaxed against the back of the couch, visibly relieved but still agitated, "This whole house party is a setup, and she wants to be able to announce my engagement by next Saturday."

"But you've always said you planned to marry," Danny reasoned, not sure why his friend was so upset by the news that his grandmother was meddling... it's what grandmothers do, after all, "You told me you were going to marry to continue your family line and tradition, rather than for love; what could be more traditional than an arranged marriage? Certainly easier than having to look around on your own."

"Yes, but I don't like having the whole thing sprung on me, like a trap. Three women are invited to this party, and I will be expected to choose one of them."

"Why do you need me?" Danny wondered, poking Valerien playfully, "You want me to protect you from them? Sleep at the foot of your bed and growl if one of them tries to sneak in and seduce you?"

"To help me choose one, of course," Valerien looked at him sharply, "I trust your judgement, and you know me so well, you'll know if we're compatible. I don't think I'm obliged to marry one of these particular women, and I certainly won't if I don't like them; but from what my secretary just told me, and he weaseled it out of Grandmère's secretary this morning, these are probably the three most suitable women in the whole world. Grandmère has been planning this for ages, studying genealogies and cultivating acquaintances to lead to the proper introductions, and I know she wouldn't try to marry me off to a toad or a nobody. These three will be the crème de la crème of beauty and breeding."

"Well, this is a new one for me," Danny laughed, leaning against Valerien and draping an arm around his shoulders, "Helping my ex-boyfriend choose a future wife."

"I don't care for the 'ex-' appellation," Valerien frowned, resting his head against Danny's chest, "It's not as if we broke up. Our relationship simply evolved from a romance to a friendship."

"Nobody has yet coined a catch-all word for such a thing," Danny reached up and stroked Valerien's gleaming pale hair, silky-soft as a baby's and worn foppishly long to curl around his jaw and the nape of his neck, "But I won't use it anymore if you don't like it."

"You spoil me," Valerien sighed with a smile, laying his hand on Danny's thigh and giving it a squeeze.

"Now look what you did," Danny growled seductively, indicating the sudden erection tented painfully in his tight pants, "You're not going to leave me like this, are you?"

"I'm afraid I'll have to," Valerien gently stroked Danny's cock through the fabric, then abruptly pulled away and stood up, "I have a meeting at the bank in twenty minutes, some sort of diplomat who wants us to invest in some tiny African country nobody ever heard of. I have to rush, or I'll be late."

"Lucky diplomat," Danny sighed and stood as well, taking a moment to adjust his hard-on so that it lay more comfortably against his groin, "Shall I drive myself to the Château tomorrow, or will you pick me up?"

"I'll pick you up at noon," Valerien paused at the mirror beside the front door to check his perfectly-knotted mauve silk tie and tuck a stray lock of hair behind his ear, "The van will pick up your luggage around ten. We can have lunch before we drive up, and get there in time for tea. We'll be doing white tie twice, and a masquerade ball as well, so pack heavy."

"Sure thing. Tell the African diplomat I said 'Hi,'" Danny pulled Valerien into a warm embrace and kissed the top of his head.

"Thank you, thank you, thank you, I don't know what I'd do without you," Valerien breathed into Danny's neck, making his cock lurch violently.

"You'd better go before I rape you," Danny pushed his friend to arm's length and opened the front door for him.

"Can't rape the willing," Valerien smirked, stepping through the door and heading down the stairs to the Rolls-Royce limousine double-parked outside, "But this obscure little nation-ette looks like a really special opportunity. À bientôt, mon cher!"

Danny shook his head at the young Baron's little quirks of personality, amazed as always by the "can't be bothered" schtick that he used to distance himself from the money-grubbing aspects of his family business: the Seguemonts own and operate the Fiducies Française, a private investment-banking firm that manages their own vast fortune as well as the fortunes of other carefully selected vieux-riche families, with reliably profitable results.

Though the old Comte de Seguemont, Valerien's grandfather, was the presiding genius behind many of the firm's most spectacular financial coups, in society he floats about bonelessly, speaking softly of trifles as if he hadn't a thought in his head, shrugging off the bourgeois mantle of commerce and describing himself as "merely a country gentleman, pottering about with my vineyards."

He neglects to mention that his brilliantly managed winery is almost as profitable as his bank, and Château de Seguemont is considered one of the top five champagnes in the world (though it isn't technically champagne, since it's made in California; but the barrels, machines, vats, the very vines and even the soil itself were brought over from the original Seguemont lands in Champagne), and is produced is such small quantities that it is a costly luxury few have even heard of, much less sampled.

And now twenty-eight-year-old Valerien is following in his grandfather's footsteps, having taken the old man's place as head of the San Francisco offices of the firm (though he remains in constant contact with the elderly Comte, who is still the president of the company), and spends every weekday assiduously husbanding the billions of dollars in his care, hunting out investment opportunities all over the world, and riding herd over an exceptionally brilliant staff of brokers and bankers, financial advisers and trust-fund administrators.

Yet, like his grandfather, he cultivates the elaborate pose of a careless dilettante, referring to the venerable and internationally respected Fiducies Française as "the bank" and dismissing his important work there as a simple sinecure that is meant to keep the noble family present as the public face of the company.

With his understanding of Valerien built over the course of their romance, Danny could see right through the "some kind of diplomat" and "obscure little nation-ette" insouciance: he was sure Valerien not only knew the name of the country but also more about its political history and natural resources than its own rulers did, and had probably even learned a smattering of its language; he most likely had a similar wealth of information on the diplomat he was meeting, including a list of the man's vices and virtues for use as leverage in any future negotiations. It gave Danny pleasure to know that the only reason he and Valerien weren't in bed right then was for the benefit of an emerging nation and its millions of most-likely-impoverished citizens.

Returning to his dressing room, Danny kicked off the shoes, peeled out of pants and socks, then unlatched the safety clasps of his diamond necklace and deposited it on the dressing-table so he'd remember to put it back in the safe; once naked, he shuffled into the adjacent bathroom to shower and masturbate so he could think about something besides his cock.

As he carefully unpacked the half-trunk back into his closets, he mused over how stark a contrast Valerien's family offered to his own: where the Seguemonts were hard workers pretending to be useless fops, the Vanderveres liked to pretend that they were integral to the running of the Royal Vandervere paper mill and its subsidiary industries; but in fact it was their employees who did all the work, more often than not under direction of the administrators of the vast and complicated Vandervere Trust, which actually owned the mills and the million acres of forest that fed them, as well as the houses they lived in and the great piles of money amassed by their ancestors, administering the lavish allowances on which the entire Vandervere clan depended completely.

But then, the Vanderveres were American to the core, descended from Dutch merchants and financiers who'd been in New York since it was New Amsterdam, who had migrated to California in the 19th Century after being granted a a vast tract of the new state by a grateful collection of well-buttered Whig politicians; the Protestant ethos of hard work and austere living was the mask they felt compelled to wear.

The Seguemonts, on the other hand, were still decidedly French--and feudal aristocrats at that, tracing their title and estates in an unbroken male line all the way back to the Capetian kings. And even though the current Comte's father had moved the family and its wealth out of France just prior to the outbreak of World War II, stripping their ancient chateau and their Paris hôtel and transplanting their treasures into a new-built Napa Valley castle and a Presidio Heights mansion, the family still retained their French citizenship as well as their French titles, lands, and most importantly, traditions. Valerien was legally an alien in the country where he lived and grew up, carrying a French passport and liable to French military service.

Laughing to himself at the thought of Valerien in the French Army with their drab uniforms and drumlike caps, Danny returned the empty half-trunk to the top of a closet and went to the hall closet to pull out the huge full-sized steamer trunk he'd need for a week's worth of four-changes-a-day living at the Château de Seguemont.

While he was in the front of the house, he sat down at his computer and started messaging his friends, arranging to give away his party tickets and hotel room so they wouldn't go to waste; he also called to inform the airline that he wouldn't be using his first-class ticket to Palm Springs and didn't mind that he'd have to settle for a partial credit instead of a full refund. Knowing Valerien, a much-too-large lump of cash would be electronically transferred to Danny's checking account before the end of the day; the lost plane fare money, which never was much of an object to him in the first place, held no interest whatever.

Though it once stung his pride, Danny had become accustomed to Valerien's largesse. After all, though he'd inherited a few million from his Great Aunt Mathilda (an inveterate gambler who'd parlayed her Trust allowance into a fortune at the tables in Reno, then invested her winnings in empty land on the outskirts of town and simply waiting for urban sprawl to reach it, selling out at a staggering profit and hiding the money under a false identity so the Trust couldn't claim it), Danny invested the whole legacy in his apartment building and his antiques, and had little more to live on than his Trust allowance... a sum which, for most people, would be considered extravagant, but which was unequal to the extravagance of Danny's tastes.

Valerien, however, had twenty or so million in his own right from his late mother, as well as the hundreds of millions he stood to inherit from the Comte, and he could access dizzying sums whenever he wished. It seemed only natural that he would take the role of protector and supporter to his merely-well-off friend.

Though Valerien was probably the most prodigiously generous of his friends, he was not the only generous and wealthy friend Danny had. He'd spent the year and a half after graduating from Stanford and before meeting Valerien cultivating a dozen or so sugar-daddies who fed him at his favorite four-star restaurants, escorted him to choice seats at the opera and symphony and ballet, and bestowed on him all those little luxuries, like platinum wristwatches and lynx-lined ostrich jackets, that were beyond his own means.

Danny didn't like to think of himself as a whore, but he had rather fancied himself something of a modern-day courtesan. His relationships with wealthy men weren't really about sex (though sex was almost always involved), as sex is a fairly cheap commodity and the market is glutted with pretty boys and big dicks; instead, it was Danny's carefully cultivated charm, his unfailingly sweet nature, his surprising intelligence, and his comprehensive understanding of the arts and culture that had the men clamoring for his attention and showering him with Bulgari cufflinks and Brioni suits.

Though he'd initially chafed at Valerien treating him like a courtesan when he wanted to be treated as a lover, an equal rather than a possession, he came to understand that Valerien took great pleasure in buying things for Danny, and was hurt when Danny refused anything or tried to pay him back in any way. It was the only way the young aristocrat knew to show his affection, and though he wanted to accommodate Danny's sense of independence, he simply didn't understand how. Being the more naturally accommodating of the two personalities, Danny gave in and let Valerien buy him things and pay for everything they did together.

And then there was Mark Willard-Wilkes, called Marquesa by his friends, the dazzlingly beautiful transvestite whom much of Society thought was a woman, though a charmed inner circle was privileged to know about the monstrous equine cock under the couture gowns. He was the son of a self-made Hollywood tycoon and an old-guard San Francisco heiress, who died young and left him to be raised by his mother's two batty Havishamesque great aunts; he grew up completely ignorant of his father's immense wealth, held for him in trust by an offshore bank, thinking himself dependent on his great-great-aunts and the paltry remnant of the former Willard fortune, a few blocks of rented houses in the Richmond District. Once apprised of his inheritance, though, instead of merely living off the fat of his father's work, he went about rebuilding the Willard empire and was now the third-largest property owner in the City, surpassed only by a Chinese cartel and the Federal government. He was also Valerien's best friend, and the man Danny loved with all his heart... painfully and without reciprocation.

Marquesa had adopted Danny as something of a pet, and then as a favorite fuck-buddy, spending lavishly on him when he was dating Valerien and even moreso since he wasn't. Marquesa was very fond of Danny, and physically infatuated with him, but his love belonged to someone else: Richard Allenwhite, the world's handsomest billionaire, who kept Marquesa like an old-fashioned mistress in a cavernous Art Deco penthouse and increased his wealth exponentially with gifts of diamonds, cars, and apartment buildings.

But since Richard was married and the father of four sons, with no intention of disturbing that relationship (he really did love his wife, exactly as much as his mistress), Marquesa was free to dabble about on his own without infringing on Richard's place in his heart... and he quite frequently dabbled with Danny, aware that the boy was more emotionally involved than he was, but not quite aware that Danny was so insanely besotted with love for him.

Though Danny would never have said so to Valerien, it was partly due to Marquesa's inevitable presence at the Château that he had so easily capitulated and given up a much-anticipated Palm Springs weekend of riotous sex and ecstatic dancing in order to spend a week in the country with three strange women and Valerien's grandparents.

Valerien and Marquesa had been best friends since the age of fourteen, and the orphaned Marquesa had long been enfolded into the Seguemont family; he spent pretty much every weekend at the Chateau, trading fashion gossip with the Comtesse, hunting deer and rabbit in the woods surrounding the vineyards, and riding the huge black Friesian stallion that was kept as a permanent guest in their stables.

Danny had been included in many of those weekends, but he always felt faintly uncomfortable with Marquesa and Valerien together, at least while he and Valerien were lovers: his unquenchable love for Marquesa made him feel disloyal to Valerien, whom he loved but with whom he was not in love. After they decided to just be friends, a lot of that pressure was relieved and his comfort with the two friends restored; but then he wasn't asked to the Château as frequently, so it didn't really matter.

Danny shook his head vigorously to clear his mind of these thoughts, which had a tendency to spiral out of control until he felt sorry for himself and angry with those he loved. He started singing to himself instead, a wordless tune loosely based on the waltz from Sleeping Beauty but ornamented here and there with a "hoo-hoo" or a "cha-cha-cha," diverting his mind from pointless and depressing circular thinking. Once his mind was cleared, he started organizing his wardrobe for the week.

The white tie was easy, as he kept his white-tie ensembles separate in their own bags, with shirts and waistcoats and ties all included; all he had to do was slide two of them into the wardrobe half of the trunk. The black-tie dinner suits he'd be expected to wear to dinner every night were a little harder, as he had rather more of them, and was conscious of the Comtesse's love of absolute correctness in all things: his dinner clothes had to be the best quality, but could not be too flashy, nor could they be too plain.

He assumed he would probably ride every day, so he filled a separate large suitcase with his custom-made English riding boots, several pairs of kidskin-padded riding breeches, three riding jackets (Harris tweed, black velvet, and hunting pink), white shirts with stocks, extra-long boot-socks, a top hat and a riding helmet, and a selection of antique crops.

He'd once been an equestrian athlete, winning a series of dressage trophies with his gorgeous dapple-gray Andalusian as a teenager, but he'd seldom had opportunities to ride since he left his family home in the far northern mountains to attend college, and then moved into San Francisco afterward. His father had sold his horse out of spite, anyway; and though Danny occasionally went riding at friends' country houses, or rented livery horses in the Park, he didn't think it worth the trouble to obtain and stable his own animal.
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