Late to the Party

Wages of Vice, Part 7

Sat, 18 Jul 2009 21:18:02 GMT

See Author's Note and header
Part 1
Part 2
Part 3
Part 4
Part 5
Part 6

Avon was, for him, conciliatory, and agreed that it was necessary to follow the Marquis and Miss Challoner as fast as might be. "For which reason," he said almost gently, "I offer my own services. My son travels always as on his race from London to Newmarket. Do you make your way to Paris, my dear Sir Giles, and—" he flicked a glance at Hugh, then seemed to change what he had meant to say— "and I will pursue them. I have, I am told, some gift in such matters."

"Gad, Vidal must look to his back," Hugh said, and Sir Giles' mouth curved slightly.

"You may spread the news in Paris that your granddaughter is living in seclusion; it is certain to be true, and she shall do so under your roof as soon as I may bring her. And then—" Avon's expression hardened; Hugh did not envy Vidal when his father found him— "then Vidal shall marry her in the greatest pomp we can arrange. I give you my word on that, Challoner." Then he recovered his usual manner and said, "I swear—what shall I swear upon, indeed?—ah—upon my reputation. Yes, beloveds, by the name of Satanas, which you know I hold dear, I swear it."

Hugh felt he had been exceedingly useless. Still, Sir Giles had wanted him there, and Avon had looked, for a moment, surprised and glad to see him, before the news had turned his expression grim.

Back in London, Hugh had begun to feel he would never hear the end of the story, when one day, Alastair punctiliously sent up his card.

"Bring him up, indeed," he told Haines. And soon Hugh was leaning forward, eager for the words that Alastair so languidly let fall ... but the reception of which he so closely observed.

He broke off mid-tale, during an anecdote about the coach's near front wheel becoming immersed in mud and then bashed against a stone, on a small side road near to Pont-de-Moine. "Hugh, my dear friend, how much I have missed the way your mouth hangs open while you listen to me speak."

Hugh laughed a little, closed his mouth, and sat back. "You were ever an engrossing narrator, i'faith, Justin. Do go on."

Laughter shook him again, from time to time, as the duke told some parts of his story: how, in the end, he had not needed to seek out his son because Miss Challoner providentially arrived in flight from that same son to the same inn in the same tiny town where Avon was staying until his carriage-wheel had a few spokes and its iron rim replaced; how Miss Challoner had explained Vidal's character to Avon, not knowing to whom she spoke (though, in truth, Hugh more than half agreed with her assessment that Vidal was more spoiled than vicious); how Miss Challoner had blurted out that she had been forced to shoot Vidal in the arm to protect her virtue ("And yet she seems to hold him in affection, Hugh, in spite of such a lack of finesse...."); how Miss Challoner had described the Duke of Avon as an unscrupulous and sinister person, nearly omniscient, and with a habit of succeeding in all his endeavours. "What a comfort to know that one's efforts to establish oneself in the public mind have not been entirely in vain," said Alastair placidly, and Hugh laughed even as his heart felt lightly struck.

"Indeed, you deserve it should be so, for you have certainly missed no opportunity to impress the world with your ... reputation."

"My moralist," said Avon, and raised the glass of wine to his lips, his eyes warm over the rim.

Hugh rose from his chair and went to the window. He looked down at the street, where the mass of London went about its varied business. "A singularly useless rôle, I fear."

Behind him, he heard the click of glass against the table. "Far from it," said Alastair. "You have long provided a necessary balance to me. Do you not remember, my dear, I said as much—" and then, strangely, the ever-collected Duke of Avon paused, as if uncertain or embarrassed.

"Just before we went to Rome," Hugh completed the sentence and leaned his forehead against the glass window pane, which felt cold and smooth and hard. "I remember." A little bark of laughter, and then he could not help but say, "There is nothing about that time that I can forget." His voice grew suddenly rough at the end of the sentence, so he held back all the other things he might have said: how those days haunted him, how he had never been so happy since .... all such useless things. He needs must be grateful that his throat would not open for such words.

"I think—" and the strangely tentative voice was nearer now, too near, "—I have never apologised—"

"Do not," Hugh interrupted, "do not, I pray you, Justin!" He moved one hand as if to push the apology away, and Justin caught it.

When Hugh turned, Justin was staring down at the hand he held. "You have never married," he said without looking up.

"No."

"Sometimes," and Justin turned their joined hands a little to one side, and then to the other, as if searching Hugh's skin for some flaw, "I feel I do not understand you."

Hugh took back his hand. "I think you might, an' you would. But it is ever easier to know the rôle than the man."

Justin moved away, took up his hat and gloves and cane. "For that I have been grateful, many a time," he said, "not least with you."

Hugh shook his head. If Justin still meant to paint himself too black to be known, how could Hugh argue? Certainly there was much of Justin Alastair that was never visible to friend or to foe. Nor did Hugh know how he might say or demonstrate more clearly than he had, what he himself was, what he felt.

Justin took his leave, friendly but cool; they did not spend any time alone together again until after Léonie's funeral.

* * *

While Hugh had been remembering, the fire had dropped low. Alastair, earlier, had sat down on a settee, and then had leaned back into it, and now had positively fallen asleep there. How out of character that was, Hugh thought, and yet how self-possessed he looked even in sleep. The satin upholstery was honey-gold and the trim a gold braid, which in younger days would have set off Justin's looks to perfection; they were shades he had often worn. Now he looked as black and white as a woodcut against the warm colour. Yes, the years had ravaged him.

Hugh was changed as well, of course. He was past sixty-five now, and though cosmetics had not raddled his face, it was lined. He could not walk so far nor ride so hard as he once had, and when he tried, he found himself puffing with a sound that reminded him far too much of old Sir Giles, or even of Armand Saint-Vire.

From Armand his mind turned back to Bertrand, and he wondered idly if that lissom youth would take on flesh as his father had. Some sons resembled their fathers so ... as Vidal did Avon, in some ways, though obviously the restraint of strong emotion was not one. As Paul did, physically, though his gestures were so different—and though he was so straightlaced in his ideas. Someday Paul would have this fine-drawn age, this skin like gauze, these still-deep hazel eyes—

Like the ones looking at him even now. "Justin," he said, startled. "You're awake."

"Evidently." Alastair sat up straighter, away from the settee's back. "Have you been guarding my rest, my dear?"

"Thinking, merely."

"Well. I believe I shall take that excellent advice you have so nobly restrained yourself from reiterating, and go to bed." He rose, his movements a little stiff. This too was the work of age—and of grief.

Hugh got up too, using both arms of the chair. They left the library and walked in companionable silence to the foot of the great stairs, rising shallowly between wide mahogany railings upheld by glimmering white spindles; at the landing the staircase split and lifted like embracing arms to the floor above; it was very beautiful. And very formidable to two tired elderly men.

"Hugh, my dear, may I ask you to give me your arm?"

It was bent and held out almost before Alastair had finished speaking; Hugh welcomed the hard grip just below his elbow. Alastair's other hand was on the railing. They went up step by step.

"I suspect," Hugh said, "that this is why you waited until all the rest were gone up."

"How well you know," Justin paused for breath, "and how ruthlessly you expose, all my little vanities. Beloved. Such—" another quick breath— "such has been my fate."

"What?" They were nearly at the landing. Then they were upon it, and by tacit consent, rested. "What has been your fate?"

"To have those I loved best puncture my ... veils. See through the rôles I play. You and L-"

Hugh hugged the gripping hand close to his body, but Alastair went on. It was the first time all day that Hugh had heard him speak his wife's name.

"—Léonie, could always see what I would hide from the world."

The sense of what Alastair was saying sank into Hugh's mind. Those I loved best. "Justin," he began with no idea how he would go on.

"Let us not remain here all night long, my dear Hugh."

They turned, Alastair on the inside, and began the next ascent. His verbal momentum checked, Hugh could think of nothing to say, and Alastair did not speak either. They reached the top and paused again. Hugh did not want to step away, to lose the touch of his friend's hand on his arm, but what was there to say or do? Alastair needed his rest.

"Have you forgotten? My chamber is this way."

Hugh's arm was still held tightly, and he was tugged willy-nilly down the hallway a few steps before he recovered and caught up. "I believe I never knew where your bedchamber at Avon was, my dear Justin."

"Ah." A flashing glance sideways, like so many Justin had cast him over the years. "My apologies for the oversight."

They went into the chamber, which had a fire lit and candles as well, but was empty. "Where is Gaston?" Hugh asked.

"In his bed, I should suppose. He knows better than to venture here unless he has some task or unless I ring for him. Which, tonight, I feel I shall not do."

"What? Justin, you could hardly get up the stairs. How are you to undress? You'll drive yourself to an apoplexy, a heart attack, some such—"

"Hugh." Justin stopped him, then paused and just regarded him for a few moments, a small smile on his lips. "You know, beloved, you still resemble an agitated sheep when you become excited."

Hugh relaxed involuntarily. "And I have always wondered what exactly distinguishes the expression of an agitated sheep from that of a placid one. You must have made quite a study of them, Justin. Now why was that?"

Justin laughed outright, though briefly. "Ah, Hugh! How long have you wanted to say that?"

"I don't know. But really, Justin—"

"Really, Hugh. I can manage to disrobe, I think, especially if you do not leave me utterly to my own feeble devices. I—" he looked aside— "er—I suppose no one can have failed to notice who has seen the man in my presence as often as have you, my good Hugh, that Gaston endures my service—and me—with a degree of inner scorn which sometimes supports me, but which tonight—" he took a breath— "tonight, Hugh, I believe I can dispense with."

This was nearly as vulnerable as Hugh had ever seen Justin, so he could not possibly refuse. "Of course, Justin. I'm sorry. I'll stay."

Neither was enough of a valet to put the clothes in their proper places, but that, Justin said dryly, Gaston was welcome to do on the morrow. Hugh made some effort to fold them and stacked them on the seat of a chair, if only to have something to do while Justin's body was slowly bared. It had been long and long since Hugh had seen a man undress, especially this man, but even observing what time had done to the body he had loved was little guard against the terrible pull of nostalgia and longing. Skin on Justin's upper arms hung loose and swung a little as he moved; he had a little belly where before had been only muscle; his flanks were lean and his ribs starkly visible; his feet were bony. Hugh's hands ached, he wanted so to touch. Feeling his mouth pull taut, he tried but could not relax it. He brought Justin the nightshirt that had been laid out upon the bed. Justin lifted his arms, and stopped halfway; Hugh took the cloth back and held it high enough for Justin's head to come through the neck, and guided his arms into the sleeves as he had done years ago, for Paul.

"You are too good, Hugh." Justin did not meet his eyes.

The humility that age had brought proud Satanas broke Hugh's restraint, and he caught the long body to his own, wrapped both arms round it, pressed his face in he hardly knew where. Shoulder, by the boney feel of it. Justin's arms closed around Hugh in return, and they held long, tightly. Hugh stroked the back and waist under his hands, fearing to do more but unable to force himself to do less. He dared not speak.

Justin sighed deeply, blowing past Hugh's ear into his collar. After a while, one hand lifted to Hugh's face, petting in short strokes back to the edge of his wig; Hugh lifted his head and one hand just long enough to push the wig off completely, and then hugged tight once more. If he was to go another twenty years before he held Justin again, it would not be he who ended their embrace. Justin stroked his hair in silence. Hugh could not measure the time that passed.

"Hugh—" the name as softly spoken as a sigh— "I am so tired."

It was a Justin Alastair completely without affectation that Hugh saw when he stepped back. The eyes were of a sudden old—Hugh wondered why and then realised that they glistened with moisture which outlined them more ruthlessly than kohl. The mouth was set a little loosely, in a downward curve, and every line of the body agreed with the words he had spoken. Justin allowed himself to be helped into bed; he also allowed the touch that Hugh could not resist, smoothing the gauze-soft cheek as Justin had petted Hugh's.

"Sleep, then, Justin."

But Justin's eyes would not close. He touched, then cupped, the back of Hugh's hand. "I have been no good friend to you, have I?" he asked hopelessly, hoarsely. "Hugh?"

Struck through the heart, Hugh dropped to his knees, looking straight into Justin's eyes. "How can you say so?" he asked. "Justin—" and perhaps his position, the ache of his bones from his precipitous descent, brought out the words, "—I would serve you on my knees if it would bring you any comfort."

"I know it ... my Hugh, I do know it."

Hugh buried his face in the featherbed.

"But—" the faint voice persisted, "there is no comfort for this. Not for her death. Not for your lost years." Then, after a long pause while Hugh tried not to weep, Justin said, "Or for my own."

* * *

The funeral guests departed, many still wondering at His Grace's composure. A bereaved husband ought not to parade his emotion, perhaps, but he ought at least to indicate that there was emotion that he might have paraded. Still, he was visibly aged, which was some satisfaction to those who searched out material for on-dits.

Lady Vidal pulled Hugh Davenant aside after luncheon, while guests were preparing to leave, and begged him to stay on for as long as he liked. He had been invaluable all morning, chatting and soothing and making sure everyone had what they needed, if possible without bothering the family or even the head servants; with her own stress lightened by putting the funeral service behind her, Mary realised that he had been doing just such little services for days, ever since he had arrived. She did not know what she was to do if his support was suddenly withdrawn, and she told him so.

He smiled. "Avon has already asked me to stay for a time," he said with that gentleness she so admired in him. "I'm glad you agree that I may be of use."

"Indeed you may," she said, and then was struck with compunction. "But I do hope—that is, I don't want you to think—"

"No, 'pon rep, don't agitate yourself." He patted her hand. "Truly, I am glad to stay. The estate is beautiful, and it has been long since I was last a guest here. 'Tis a rest merely to get out of the city, for I was bred a country boy, you know."

She had not known. "Do stay," she said again. "Indeed, if you can help me accustom myself to country life, pray live here forever." And then she felt herself colour, for she had not meant to say so much, or to reveal that she still felt a stranger at Avon though her baby had been born here and was now four years old.

But he only smiled again, and she thought that he must have been quite an attractive man at some time. When he was young—when the duke was young—so very long ago she could scarce imagine it. "Forever is no very long time at my age," he said, as if he read her thought. "Gad, it may be forever."

"I wish it may," said Avon, coming up behind her as he so often, and so disconcertingly, did.

Davenant lifted his chin; she saw that he swallowed before he spoke, and his grey eyes were suddenly full of light. "Then it will, Justin. You had only to ask. As ever."

"Yes, my dear, I know that too." A melancholy smile touched the Duke's lips.

"Omniscient Satanas," said Davenant.

Mary left them together, shaking her head at the reference to Avon's nickname, which she had always found in poor taste. But the two friends were smiling, moving to adjacent chairs to rest their elderly bones, and she thought that there were far worse follies than such nicknames. And little wisdom better than to find and keep such friends.

* * *

Wages of Vice, Part 6

Sat, 18 Jul 2009 21:06:50 GMT

See Author's Note and header
Part 1
Part 2
Part 3
Part 4
Part 5

When Dominic Alastair was four years old, the Duchess took herself to London while her husband went to visit March. Hugh visited Léonie, finding her glad enough to be excused from the Queensberry house party, yet vaguely unhappy and fidgety. Lady Fanny was pregnant with her second child and, though still in town, disinclined to attend routs, balls, or other recreations; this, unfortunately, was exactly what Léonie had come to town to do. Hugh readily offered to be the Duchess' escort, and she brightened.

They went together to the Opera, to hear a few plays, and attended a few balls and card-parties. Léonie seemed still discontented, however, and one evening as they came back from a dinner—Léonie, on being informed that the daughter of the house was going to play her harp after the meal, had suddenly been stricken with a headache which appeared to go off the moment they got into the carriage—she cast a sideways glance at Hugh and said, "Cher M'sieur Davenant, I have a gr-reat fancy to go to a masquerade! Pray escort me!"

"No," said Hugh automatically.

"But why?" Léonie's sapphire eyes opened wide and round.

"Where is the party, my dear Duchess?" Hugh asked, hedging. Perhaps, if a private masquerade were at a respectable enough house ....

"But no," she said, "I know of no party. I mean the public masquerades, that on dit are so very amusants. There is one at Haymarket Theatre, is there not? Where we heard a play—peste, which one was it?"

Hugh didn't recall either; in any case, that was hardly the point. "Léonie, you cannot possibly go to a public masquerade. It is not fit for you. Especially not for you, Duchess of Avon, but i'faith, 'tis not fit for any lady, and I wish those who do go would refrain."

"I? I have been to le Maison Chourval, 'sieur Davenant, pray remember it."

"No, indeed you have not. Léon the page went there, and that was bad enough, by Gad! But you have no notion of the scandal it would cause an' you were recognised at ... Haymarket ... or anywhere of the sort! Truly, Léonie, you must not."

She coaxed further, but Hugh would not be cozened. Avon's 'babe who must be cherished and guarded' should not come to harm, bodily or socially, through Hugh's connivance—on that he would stake his soul.

He still went to masquerades himself, of course.

Hugh's new man Soames had come recommended by John Cooper, and was a middle-aged man whom Hugh found personally unattractive. Still, Soames knew all about Lady Danae and proved as deft a lady's maid as he was a valet. Hugh had even, by this time, bought proper ladies' shoes for himself, and Soames had re-dressed the wig more than once and refurbished the dress before it became too unfashionable. The masquerade things were always convenient when wanted and invisible the rest of the time; Hugh could not ask for more.

One evening, Lady Danae stepped out in the Centre Cross Walk at Vauxhall. In general this was not so good a place to pick up a companion as the Lover's Walk, or the even more remote areas of the gardens, but it was prettier, with the trees less ruthlessly cut back than the ones nearer the Orchestra, which looked to Hugh rather like huge feather-dusters. Here branches were allowed to trail more romantically, the arched stonework at one end resembled an aqueduct, and under those archways were many opportunities for those who did not fear pickpockets. Nearer, too, was a pretty little half-fence, and beyond it some wild-looking undergrowth, including flowers. In the spring there were daffodils and bluebells; now there were lilies and some other sweet-smelling things. Hugh trailed one gloved hand along the top rail of the fence and looked at his fellow guests here.

Some were in character as monks and knights, medieval princesses and milkmaids; others in the finest dress they owned, smothered in dominoes or wearing flimsy masks. Hugh had chosen only a mask tonight; in fact, he was wearing the carnival mask Alastair had sent him from Venice years ago. The air was warm; Hugh's bodice and wig were hot; his legs under the skirt felt free and light, after being smothered in knee-breeches all day long. Arranging his skirts carefully behind and to either side, Hugh perched on the rail and plied his fan, the breeze welcome on his lower face and neck.

Past him went a pair both in tradesman's suits, and whether they were absorbed in each other or merely hunting in tandem, Hugh could not tell. Then, one after another, three prostitutes, a gentleman of fashion dressed as a courtier of Henry VIII, two young ladies followed by a watchful footman, and a young man and woman whispering together—country sweethearts, or Hugh was not country-bred himself. Soft voices and laughter wafted with the notes of the orchestra; nearer, a couple were engaged in pleasant sport somewhere out of sight, sighing and moaning low.

Rested, Hugh rose again and made his way toward the arched stonework. Suddenly a slim figure burst out of the shadows, half-running, and Hugh put out a steadying hand in time to save them from a collision. The suit this newcomer wore was old-fashioned in cut and a rather rusty black; over the forehead and eyes was bound a dark cloth mask, more like a footpad's than a masquerader's.

"Oh!" said a breathless voice, and perhaps it was the sound—or the figure—or even the suit, which Hugh had probably seen before—but he hauled the creature under the nearest lamp by main force. The light glistened and danced in a riot of copper-coloured curls, spilling from the tie that could not hold them at the nape of the white neck.

"Léon—!" Hugh barely stopped himself from speaking the full name, and was far too surprised to disguise his own voice. And then the Duchess of Avon pulled off her makeshift mask and stared hard.

"H-Hé!" She swallowed, then grinned. "Hélas, Madame Davenant, how do you?"

Hugh shook the thin shoulder he still held. "You—you—"

"I? I?"

Hugh put one gloved hand across Léonie's mouth, bent forward until his eyes were only inches from the blazing blue ones before him. "If you tell me again of the Maison Chourval, I shall ... I shall leave you to the mercies of whoever chased you out of the archway."

The rage drained from those expressive eyes; when it was gone, Hugh let her loose.

"Who did affright you?" he asked.

"Mais non, bien sûr," she said. "I was not frightened. 'Deed, we ought to find the man again," twinkling wickedly, "Maman, for I doubt he was more what you are looking for than I."

Of course, Léonie had been privy to Hugh's relations with Lewis, and there was no reason she should have forgotten it. "I'll find my own gallants, thank you, kind sir," Hugh said, snapping the fan open and curtseying.

"'Pon rep!" Léonie exclaimed. "But you do that so much more finely than I!"

"Nonsense," but Hugh was absurdly pleased.

"Now, Hu—ah, what shall I call you?"

"Not 'Maman,'" Hugh warned.

"As you wish," and Léonie bowed neatly, as she had always done when she had played the page.

"I, er, I am called Lady Danae."

"Bien! Let us walk then, cher Milady." Léonie crooked an arm and Hugh, shaking his head, took it and suffered her to lead him back toward the Grand Walk. The little Duchess threw herself into her rôle, strutting like a courtier at his grandest, one hand outstretched in the absence of cane or stick. She even bowed slightly to one of the prostitutes Hugh had seen earlier, who simpered at them both.

"You need a quizzing glass," Hugh said.

"I need a grander dress altogether, du vrai," she responded.

Hugh sighed. "You need to be at home in your chamber, minx."

Léonie sighed in her turn, but smiled too, shaking her head. "Ah, but it is so long since I was 'minx' or 'imp' or 'babe'! J'en ai manqué."

Feeling he understood this prank better now, Hugh squeezed the arm he held, a little, but asked only, "And how did you get here? Surely not in Lady Fanny's carriage?"

"No, no, I took a hired chair. I was discreet, me," and she gave that old sideways glance through her dark lashes.

"Oh, yes, circumspect, I am sure," Hugh said in Lady Danae's voice. "La!"

Léonie laughed. "Milady, pray grant me a dance."

So they danced a quadrille, a country dance, and a minuet, one after another, and Hugh enjoyed it more than he would have thought possible. They made a ridiculous couple, he was sure, for even when Léonie wore a high head and heels and he a modest wig and a flat shoe, he was considerably the taller; as a woman he—or Lady Danae—was quite enormous, while Léon still looked a boy. Moreover, even though the blue dress was no longer new, still it was far grander than the page's black suit, and Léonie had lost the hat as well. They were only as acquainted with the figures as one could be from the other side, and both kept turning the wrong direction or holding out one hand, only to pull back and offer the other. Hugh took off his mask to see better, but he was not sure it had any effect on their dancing. At least they never actually ran into anyone. Still, the couples near them looked on in dismay.

After the minuet, Hugh dragged Léonie out of the set, panting in the restrictive stays while she giggled. He leaned against a tree and Léonie collapsed onto the ground, dragging her fingers through her curls to try to order them.

"The services of a lady's maid would certainly be in order," said an extremely dry, deep voice, "but I am at a loss to decide who needs them more."

Léonie gasped audibly; Hugh froze. Avon sauntered closer, then used his stick to prod Léonie's thigh. "Get up, my page," he said. "An' you dress so, you must act the part."

She scrambled to her feet and bowed, said "Mon-Monseigneur," but he cut her off.

"Be silent."

And she was. It might have been five years ago, but for Hugh's skirts.

"My carriage is at the gate," Avon said, voice still cold. "Go there. Find it. Get into it."

"M-must I go alone, Monseigneur?"

"Did you come here in company?" Avon put one hand to his ear as if she might whisper, but she just shook her head. "Then you may depart in similar solitude."

She left with dragging step, looking over her shoulder, but she did go, and Avon kept silent until she had.

"'Pon rep, you're casual with her!" Hugh blurted.

"I am casual!" Avon took one step closer, then another—Hugh should have moved away from the tree but felt all but bound in place. The hazel eyes blazed, as he had seen them seldom before. The walking stick thudded against the side of the tree-trunk, and Hugh jumped. "Had I my horsewhip with me, you'd discover the limits of my casual behaviour!"

He did have his sword; he always did. Hugh waited to hear the scrape of the draw.

But Avon simply stared, his nostrils dilated as he panted with fury. "I ought at least to send my friends to yours," he said at last.

"For dancing with your wife," Hugh answered evenly. "For finding her here, unprotected and alone, and staying with her afterward."

"Fine protection, in that!" The stick poked into his skirt, jabbing his leg through the cloth.

"We are not arguing about Léonie," Hugh said. The conviction was so clear in his mind that it never occurred to him that Justin might still be too angry to admit anything of the sort. "You are not so enraged as this about her dressing up one last time in her breeches and coat, walking in the gardens and dancing rather awkwardly amongst bourgeois who will never connect her with the august Duchess of Avon."

"Are you to tell me now for what cause I may be angry?"

Hugh shut his eyes, tilting his head back against the trunk. He was crushing the back of his wig but did not care. He was exposed to the rage and scorn of a man he still, in defiance of all sense and hope, loved, and he could scarce find energy suddenly even to care for that.

When the Duke spoke again, it was closer, lower, but the rage still simmered in his voice: "I do not know you. You are a stranger to me. A woman no better than she should be, encountered in the lawless night. And what should Satanas do, enraged with a woman who means nothing to him?"

Hugh stared into the eyes so near his. "Have your will of me, then," he said. "Throw me to the ground, here. And after, call the constables an' you will, and give me up for sodomitical practices. For I—" his voice broke unaccountably— "oh, Justin, I weary so of this." Biting his lip, he turned his face away ... not that he could hide. He felt more naked than Justin had ever seen him. If the other had not been so close, Hugh thought he might have slid to his knees.

Time inched past, enough that the tear Hugh tried to keep back, stretching his eyelids open wide, fell anyway onto his painted cheek. Defeated, he let the lids drop shut and the other tear slip out.

"Gad, must you still look so!" Cruel hands seized Hugh at the jawline, close enough to the neck on each side that the grasp was still more than half threat. Hugh's head was forced back and Justin took his mouth so fiercely that he must be drawing blood where his teeth cut; the long body crushed Hugh's against the tree. There was nothing to do but surrender, even had Hugh had any will to resist.

Instead he moved his feet apart, letting Justin in as far as the skirts would allow. He put both hands into Justin's coat, resting them against the embroidered waistcoat and remembering how the skin of the waist felt when this body was bare, eager, moist with sweat, moving over him. Hugh groaned into the biting mouth, positively sobbed when the kiss broke, before he could clamp his jaw shut against just that sound.

But then he found himself pulled forward, wrapped in Justin's arms, his face pressing against collar and stock and neck. They shuddered together while the orchestra played, Hugh could not tell how long, and they did not speak at all. Justin's hand clenched and released at the nape of Hugh's neck.

At last, Hugh was struck with compunction to think of poor Léonie waiting in the carriage, and he kissed the artery under his lips and stepped back. Justin let go at once. Hugh's nose was full. Justin pulled a kerchief from his pocket.

"Persons in skirts never seem to have one of these."

And why was his voice rough?

Hugh blew his nose, then got out rather slowly, "Persons in coats with pockets do not know how difficult it is to carry one."

"I shall take your word for it."

"And I," Hugh brandished the handkerchief, "shall send this back when it has been laundered."

Justin caught at the waving hand. "I could come to your rooms for it," he said.

But Hugh shook his head. "Better not."

He bent, then put one hand on the tree and crouched, in order to pick up his wig and mask where they had fallen to the grass. He examined both for damage and found nothing that Soames could not fix. When he stood up again, Avon had gone.

* * *

Once the Peace of Paris had been signed, it was again possible for an Englishman to travel on the Continent without the dangers of wartime, if not wholly without residual inconveniences. Hugh sought out small villages to loiter in, Alps to scale and even to ski, rivers to boat ... and in general managed to avoid the mass of travelling English and well-born French alike. He had letters of introduction, which Justin and others had insisted on giving him, but he did not use them. He read a great deal, wrote letters from time to time—mostly to Paul, now a printer's apprentice—and enjoyed acquainting himself with a parade of people of all stations, for a week here, a month there. No deep friendships, no expectations, no disappointments.

No one to ask him about the Duke of Avon or to look sidelong at him, wondering if they were really estranged and if Hugh would descend to gossip about it. That was the greatest relief.

One day, Hugh lounged in a chair, looking on while Soames packed bags in readiness to leave Frankfurt. The light came in through a generous casement, making yellow patches on the floor and up the counterpane; Soames moved in and out of the square light that leaped up to meet him. As he closed the wardrobe door, the inset mirror flashed like a signal, and Hugh thought suddenly of long-gone nursery days, when it was Mrs Flagg who moved back and forth setting things to rights for him.

He smiled. Soames, looking over, allowed a crease to settle in his cheek in response. "Near time for the coach, sir," he said.

"Yes," Hugh said, and seemed to feel a shadow lift from his eyes, a weight from his shoulders. Why it should be so just now, he did not understand, and yet it was too welcome a sensation to question. "Let us go to Vienna, Soames," he said. "There is good music there, and good pastry too."

"So one hears," the man said imperturbably.

"A fine place to spend a merry Christmas, I should think."

"If one is to spend it from home, sir."

Hugh looked at his valet, thinking. "Have you family in London, Soames?"

"No, sir—a brother in a monastery in Kent. My parents are both dead."

A monkish brother—it seemed Hugh had more in common with Soames than he had thought.

"There are famous entertainments for gentlemen and ladies in Vienna, sir, I believe. Balls, concerts, parties of all sorts ... masquerades."

"Indeed," said Hugh. "Well, if it is that amusing, we shall remain for a time."

* * *

Having completed his apprenticeship, Paul wrote that he wanted to move to London on the grounds that more interesting publishing was being done there. Certainly more books and newspapers and broadsides were available than in Harrogate, so Hugh felt this was a reasonable request. Though he was not actually needed—Paul was now twenty-one, a man—Hugh did come back to London in order to welcome his ward and to be available should Paul want him.

Paul sent a note asking to see Hugh, so soon after the coach from Harrogate would have arrived that Hugh almost expected to see the dust of the journey still upon him. But Paul was dressed formally, neatly, and the clothes he wore were obviously new. He bowed, holding his hat in fingers that pressed bone-white against the felt, and Hugh told him to sit down with all the gentleness at his command.

"How can I serve you, Paul?"

"I—I must ask you," Paul began, and Hugh was distracted for a moment by the northern burr in his speech, to think what Miss Chattermole's anxious gentility would have made of it. Admonishing himself, he listened again: " ... not a child any longer—'tis my right to know if you be my father or no."

"Paul," Hugh answered, "I have always told you the truth of it. You are not my son."

"How can that be so? How can I credit that you'd take oop another man's son, pay for m'board and breeding, educate and prentice me—for sake o' charity?"

Hugh stood, crossed to the fireplace, which had a mirror above the mantel. "Come here, Paul. Yes—" as the younger man hesitated— "here beside me." Paul came at last, stood docile enough under Hugh's hand on his shoulder—which was higher than Hugh's own, as Justin's was. "I see your father so strongly in you," Hugh said, looking at the reflected amber eyes under drooping lids, the brown hair, the jaw and brows and set of chin when Paul looked stubborn, as now. "But look, boy. Do you not remember your mother?"

"But little."

"Her eyes were grey, as mine are. How would yours be this hazel? Her hair was even lighter than mine—whence comes this dark head? And your hands—" Hugh moved to take one of them, but Paul set it on the mantel and they both regarded it—lean, long-fingered, pale, graceful—and Hugh's, beside it, fair and strong enough, but never so finely made. Hugh put it on the boy's shoulder again, patted there. "I am fond of you, proud of you, very happy that I could be of service to you ... but i'faith I am none of your blood. You must believe it."

"Then why?" Paul's eyes in the mirror had the same bottomless sadness as the day he'd first sat in Mrs Flagg's lap. Hugh rubbed the rough cloth across his shoulders, trying to take that lost look away.

"Your father was my dearest and best friend," and putting it into words made him feel a little lost himself. "There was ... little I could do to serve him, but I could help you."

"My father's dead then?" That lift of Paul's chin, the young skin so taut with emotion, took Hugh forcibly back to times he rarely allowed himself to remember: dusk in St. James's, afternoon on a Roman hillside, morning, noon, midnight in the chambers on the Spanish Steps ....

He spoke out of that grief: "The friend I loved is dead."

He wanted to embrace Paul, as he would have held him against sorrow when he was a child; wanted, so fiercely that it was like wildfire bursting through every limb, to touch Justin Alastair just once more. How fragile were the dams Hugh built against this feeling, always, always.

But it was Paul who reached out, touched Hugh's cheek. "How much you loved him, love him still, and he gone all this time," said the young, rough voice that was so unlike Justin's, frank and serious, and now compassionate.

How much the man you are, Hugh meant to say, but could not command his voice.

"The faithfulness of you! And you know, do you not, that I could never love a father more than you, dear Mr Davenant." Paul stepped back and took Hugh's hand, kissing it before Hugh could pull it away, and then gripping still.

"I think you could," Hugh said, "but I am glad for your affection." He held the young hand in his. "You'll make many friends here, I believe, but I hope I shall always be one."

"Indeed, indeed you shall."

So for a lie Paul had loved Hugh first, the lie Mrs Flagg had told her foster-child or he had imagined for himself, and for another lie he loved Hugh now, believing his father dead and buried these fifteen years or more. Yet Hugh would not disabuse him.

They met frequently; indeed, they had hardly spent so much time in one another's company since Lyons and the trip thence to Harrogate, of which Paul retained barely the ghost of a memory. They went to each other's rooms; they ate together in the older man's club and the younger man's favourite coffee house. They took walks. Paul spoke a good deal of the printing jobs he was given responsibility for, mostly broadsides. He was impatient to work more on books or journals, but Hugh's unvoiced complaint was that the broadsides so often concerned those tried or condemned for various offences, including sodomy. The woodcuts and verses on these were grim objects to contemplate, though he tried to look at Paul's workmanship rather than the matter of them.

One day in the park, Hugh had just given back a paper and was wiping his glove as much to remove the fancied stain of vituperation as the visible one of newsprint, when Paul looked up and the sound of hooves, instead of passing by them, stopped. Hugh turned and saw, gazing down from a black gelding shining with good condition, Justin Alastair.

Of course, Hugh reflected, this had been bound to happen. Any of his London acquaintance might have stopped to speak to him; add Alastair's undeniable aptitude for turning up where he was least looked for, and Hugh ought to have been marking off the days on his calendar in expectation.

Avon bent slightly, a gracious bow given his position on horseback, and Hugh made a formal leg, followed by Paul. "My dear Davenant," said the languid voice, "shall I say I now know what has kept you in seclusion? My sister is yonder, wishing to speak to you, but I came first to assure myself that such a greeting would not be ... unwelcome."

Hugh could smile at this. It was so seldom that Justin really mistook a situation. "Your Grace of Avon, I beg to present to you Mr Paul Bernard." He paused, letting Alastair take in this information. The ducal aspect changed—a little amused, perhaps relieved.

"Indeed? I am rejoiced to renew your acquaintance, young sir."

Paul, a little flushed, said, "I ... I am honoured, indeed, your Grace. Have I, er, previously had the honour of your Grace's—of being presented to your Grace?"

Justin's brows had drawn a little together, possibly unpleased by Paul's agitation; Paul's were similarly knit. Hugh looked back and forth.

"Oh," said Alastair, "this age past. I doubt you will not remember, for you were quite a baby. It was in Lyons."

"Oh, Lyons! No, your Grace, I only know I did live there for that people have told me so."

Avon nodded, then said, "Hugh, what shall I tell Fanny?"

"Why, that I am on my way. Did you think I would cut her? Really, Justin, such drama."

Paul stared to hear such familiar talk, but Avon smiled. "You do not change, my dear."

"No," Hugh said, sobering, "I never do."

After a moment, Avon nodded, and turned his horse.

Hugh turned back to Paul and told him, "It is Lady Fanny Marling over there .... Do you wish to be presented?"

"Mr Davenant, this is all too grand for the likes o'me. Pray hold me excused. We can—if you wish, sir, we can meet tomorrow, or later—"

Hugh put a hand on Paul's shoulder. "My dear boy—" but that sounded like Alastair, and he shook his head. What made the man so ... influential, that Hugh had only to exchange a dozen words with him to fall into his very turn of speech? "I don't mean to disappear, only to have a few words with a rather silly society woman. I shall meet you at the Rose as we planned, shall I?"

Paul smiled, the lightening of his expression so like Avon's just this moment past that Hugh took a sharp breath. Thank goodness the boy had not wanted to meet Lady Fanny, who might be silly but was never blind.

As it was, Lady Fanny's nose fairly quivered with curiosity. Hugh was still exchanging greetings with her son John, beside her in the open carriage, when she said, "Who, pray, was that with you on the walk? He looked such a commoner, Hugh."

"A young man I've befriended," Hugh said, striving for nonchalance. "A printer. So, yes, Fanny, I'm sure you would call him quite a commoner."

"But Hugh, why?" Fanny almost wailed. "When you scarce show your face in Society! It's so odd and monkish of you. Pray tell me you are not become a Methodist!"

"Mother, please," said John, who was even duller than his father had been.

"Oh, John, you know well that the Methodists are nothing but propriety and preaching. Dear Hugh must not go to them!"

Hugh was laughing now. "I assure you, I have not." But she shook her head still, so he went on, "I've known ... this young man since he was a child. He's a protégé of mine, merely."

"You knew his mother, I seem to recall," said Avon silkily.

"Not well," Hugh said.

Fanny pokered up immediately, misunderstanding. "Oh." She spoke faster, her only sign of embarrassment, but Hugh knew her too well to miss it. "Well, I daresay he's a fine enough young man, and it's good of you, Hugh, but really, you mustn't be a stranger on such an account."

Hugh frowned at Avon, who was gazing thoughtfully at his nephew, but then cast a look at Hugh, an ironic curve to his mouth. John must be Paul's age, almost to a day. In fact, he had a look of his secret cousin, perhaps ... or perhaps Hugh was simply seeing shadows of Justin everywhere.

"I gather the Long Vac is upon us already," Hugh said to John, to change the conversation.

"Why, yes." Unfortunately John was not so quick on the uptake as his father had, for the most part, been. "I wonder you don't know that, sir."

"It has been a good many years since I had much reason to know it," Hugh said mildly. "And is Dominic up from Eton as well, Alastair?"

"Vidal is at Avon," Alastair said. "In disgrace, I fear."

"And you see how monstrous calm he is about it," Fanny said, plying her fan with energy. "That boy will be the death of all of us, not that Justin cares a whit. Vidal put fish in his housemaster's teapot, Hugh!"

And that made Hugh laugh once more.

"There was no tea there at the time," Avon explained, patting her hand, which she snatched away. "He was very careful to tell us so. Because, he said, he did not wish to hurt the animals, and the tea was too nasty not to do them harm."

"As if that makes it any better," Fanny sniffed.

"Oh," said Hugh, "that is Léonie's child indeed."

"Say you so?" Justin's eyes glinted. "Now I think he has a little of me in him."

"Why, then Fanny must be right," Hugh said, getting a little of his own back. "The world must tremble."

Avon shrugged. "The world has time to steel itself."

* * *

The world—their social world, at any rate—did not steel itself to Dominic Alastair, Marquis Vidal, with any notable success. He seemed to attract gossip as a magnet would iron filings.

Vidal was wild, of course. When he left Eton, he moved straight into petticoat dealings; handsome with both the Alastair grace and the Saint-Vire flame, he drew women like moths to light, and seemed himself nearly as incapable of refusing their advances as they were of refraining from making them. He made friends enough, and enemies as well, with his father's sarcastic tongue and his mother's quick temper.

Even Paul knew of the scandals attached to Vidal, for he was now setting type for a daily newspaper which contained a hinting column full of "Lady K—n" and such names ... and a great deal about "the noble M. of V—l": his visits to gaming hells, his deep drinking, pranks such as interfering with the Watch or shooting out all the candles on a candelabra in the upper room of an inn, "the Privy Parlour of which was more used to other Sports." Paul showed that one to Hugh, a disapproving look cramping the long Alastair mouth.

"'Tis a trifling thing to print as news," Hugh said.

"I vow he didna go there to shoot pistols," Paul replied; his accent was always stronger when he was upset.

Realising this, Hugh looked more closely at his ward than at the paper. "What is it to you, Paul, what Vidal chooses to do?"

"Ah, naught! But he's the Duke's son, and he your friend ...."

"Vidal is Alastair's son, as you say. He may seem to bear a light rein, but I am certain he could pull the boy up should he wish." He tapped the back of Paul's ink-stained hand with one finger. "And it's no concern of either of ours."

How the passage of time had altered Hugh's perspective! For Vidal behaved as Avon had, in those wild years that Hugh had, in the end, not been able to watch. Vidal's debaucheries ought to have been worse, as he was younger; a twig so bent would make a gnarled tree indeed. Yet, somehow, Vidal seemed merely playing at vice. The nickname the ton gave him, Devil's Cub, seemed just, for he seemed unformed, waiting only for some experience to lick him into shape.

And Paul, ironically, for all his Alastair blood, was as moralistic as ever Hugh himself had been. "I've seen that cub of the Duke's again," Paul said one day.

"Yes? Have you been following him about?" Hugh stirred milk into his tea and tried to stir his brain to find another topic of conversation.

"Nay, Mr Davenant, you know it. I was in Kensington Gardens with a friend of mine—"

Hugh lifted his head; this was a place the mollies frequented, though likely Paul and his friend too had simply passed by any mollies without ever noticing them.

Evidently thinking Hugh meant to inquire about the friend, Paul explained, "Joshua Simpkins. He's son of a merchant. Henry Simpkins—we print his advertisements. He's a big man in the City, though he started small enough in a draper's shop, but now he deals in wigs, tailoring, all such things, and some imports ... never mind that, indeed."

"Indeed." Hugh bent to his tea once more.

Paul grinned in that engaging way that was all his own, not a whit of Alastair in it. Hugh had grown fond of the expression. "Any road, we and his crony Dick Burnley were a-walking, and they come to talk of the girls they're courting, for they're sisters, and neither will have a thing to do with them."

"You're growing a trifle involved, Paul. Who is it who will have naught to do with whom?"

"Mr Burnley wants to marry a girl name o' Miss Sophia Challoner, pretty as a picture but a dreadful flirt, and I doubt she simply looks too high for the likes o' him. And Joshua is set on her sister, Miss Challoner, and she was educated amongst swells, so she spurns him too."

"If she's so proud, he's well out of it," Hugh murmured idly. "What does all this have to do with Vidal?"

"Why, the ladies were walking too, and we saw them from afar. Joshua and Mr Burnley would come up with them, and I was nothing loath, but before we got near a mighty fine gentleman overtook them, playing off his airs to Miss Sophia."

"Ah," Hugh said, "now that would be Vidal."

"Aye. And away they went, with her hand that he'd kissed, on his arm, and poor Mr Burnley all bereft."

Hugh shrugged, sipping. "But, my boy, it's hardly over-rakish to walk in the park. And if the girl be virtuous ...."

Paul's long mouth twisted again. Hugh sighed, thinking that it was strange how Paul seemed almost to know that Vidal had advantages that could easily have been his own; to resent the other's riches and rakeries as if his own hard-working life was diminished by them. Or perhaps it was nothing so complicated, Hugh reminded himself. Perhaps Paul simply could get no more attention from pretty Miss Sophia than Mr Burnley did, whilst the fascinating Marquis was by.

"Come, forget Vidal. Will you give me a game of piquet? Or would you rather chess?"

"Chess, an' you please."

A careful player, Paul leaned long over the board before making each move. Hugh hoped he was not growing near-sighted, and for the first time wondered if Avon employed his quizzing glass for more than just its social advantages. Hugh supposed he would find out as they both aged. And that reminded him of a mutual friend whose ageing had been harsher already than their own. "Paul, I wonder if you would do me the honour of accompanying me to visit a friend of mine," he said as the younger man finally consented to move a bishop two weightily-considered spaces.

The hazel eyes flashed up, then flicked down again, and Paul touched the tip of the bishop's mitre. "Not His Grace of Avon," he said so neutrally that Hugh hardly knew whether it meant that Paul would prefer not to meet Avon again or that he assumed Hugh meant a different friend.

"No, another. A general; Sir Giles Challoner. He enjoys chess, and the society of young people, when he can get it. He is subject to gout, and often cannot leave his house."

"Challoner!" Paul exclaimed.

"Oh, 'tis a coincidence, surely," Hugh said. "Challoner is not so rare a name, after all."

* * *

Hugh was mistaken, as he eventually found when his servant Haines opened the door of Hugh's sitting room to General Sir Giles Challoner, puffing and blowing, his face red from the effort of coming up the narrow staircase.

"My dear sir!" Hugh leapt from his chair. Reaching the doorway, he took the General's arm in both hands, and could feel as well as see the violence with which he breathed. "My dear sir! Why did you not send to me if you wished to see me? Do sit down!"

"Thank y'," the general gasped. "'Pologies ..."

"Never mind that. A drink for Sir Giles, Haines. Water, sir? Or brandy?"

Collapsing into the armchair Hugh had just been sitting in, Challoner said weakly, "Water, 'f'y' please."

Hugh gestured without looking, and Haines went. Challoner grasped Hugh's cuff and held on tightly. "Stairs—did me in—"

"I know it," Hugh said ruefully.

"—But had to come. Need your help." Hugh waited, but when Challoner spoke again it was to complain, "Why d'y'have to live in such a crow's nest?"

"Giles."

"Oh, yes, come to it soon enough. I must find out where Avon's got to."

"Newmarket." He had asked Hugh, who had refused. The thought of the trip, of sharing a room or even, heaven forfend, an inn bed, while Justin thought of Léonie and Hugh pined for Justin .... well, he did know where Alastair was staying, at any rate.

Challoner nodded. "Ah. Went to his house, uppish man turned me off, looked at my card as if he didn't believe it." Challoner snorted, laughter this time. "As if a pigeon-plucker would have hoaxing cards printed as General Sir Giles Challoner!"

"No," Hugh smiled too, "you are too well known. Except to Avon's butler, it seems. Well, Giles, let me go, and I shall write the direction down for you." The clutching fingers relaxed; Hugh stood, and crossed the room to his desk.

"You don't ask why," said Challoner.

Hugh didn't look up from his writing. "Tell me if you wish. It is urgent, that much I can guess."

"It's my granddaughter."

"Indeed? I'faith, I never knew you had one."

"Cut m'son Charles when he married a damned Cit's daughter. But when his widow applied to me I said I'd have their elder girl educated. Quiet girl, but sharp. Reminded me of my own daughter, y'know, Pamela ...."

Hugh nodded. He did remember Pamela, a comely, quiet young woman who had died in childbirth, much mourned by her father.

"So I had little Mary to stay in Buckinghamshire, few times. She wouldn't leave her mother, though, and that woman is as vulgar as she can stare—can't have her in the house. What Charles ever saw ... and the younger girl's just like her, prettier, but otherwise ... and now Mary's been ... Hugh, it's ...."

Hugh shook the paper to dry it as he re-crossed the room. "Giles, truly, tell me only what you like. I need know nothing. Here, here's the name of the inn where Avon is; he'll have hired the whole place." Hugh smiled a little. "Playing off his consequence."

"Wonder he hasn't bought a house there." Challoner looked at the paper in his hand, thoughtfully.

"Aye, that's next, I'm sure."

"Come with me, Hugh."

It was exactly the same thing Avon had said, even blurted in much the same way, like a much younger man, too like the Justin Hugh had known .... he'd had to refuse. Or kiss Alastair where he stood.

Giles Challoner, however, was a man Hugh had never been in the least tempted to kiss. "Why on earth should I come with you?" he asked.

"To help me talk to Avon." Challoner was a little flushed, embarrassed. "Damn' proud, that man. Not that he hasn't reason, family older than the Prophets, but the matter's, it's delicate, Hugh, and I'd like the help."

"'Pon rep, it's yours for the asking. Though I'm afraid you must tell me what it's all about in that case."

When Challoner did, Hugh wholly understood his qualms. It wasn't every day one had to tell a friend that his wild son had abducted one's granddaughter. And there was always the story of Jennifer Merivale to make Challoner doubt that Avon would even think such an error worth amending.

They set out that afternoon in Challoner's own travelling coach, with pillows to cushion his gouty foot, though it was not so bad today as it sometimes was. They broke their journey at Harlow (where indeed they shared an inn-chamber and a bed, and Sir Giles was a restless sleeper), set off before ten o'clock the next day, to reach Newmarket in mid-afternoon, for Sir Giles was no racer. Hugh told him, in an unguarded moment, that Vidal had made the journey from London in three hours and forty-four minutes, to win a wager, not four days ago. Giles only snorted. "Damn' young dog," he said.

Hugh looked out the coach window, the tassel on the shade swaying out, then back to hit the glass, then out again, until he took it into his hand to still it. He thought of that night, when Avon had turned up unexpectedly at Hugh's rooms to invite him to White's, as in days long past. They had gambled there separately and together for most of the night, Hugh interrupted by a score of acquaintances who greeted him and asked where he had been hiding himself. After midnight they went down to eat, speaking of this or that on-dit, of Hugh's recent visit to his brother, of Paul's promotion to newspaper work. It was as the dishes were being cleared in their private parlour that Avon had begun to speak of his plans to go to Newmarket. He had pulled a chair away from the table while the servants worked; Hugh stood nearby and looked down at the negligent grace of the duke, neither slouching nor stiff, speaking evenly and gesturing with one hand. A few horses of Avon's own breeding—or, at any rate, his stable-master's—were running in this meet, one a colt as yet untried.

The servants left; Hugh moved back toward the gleaming table where decanters and candles were reflected alike in the polished wood; Avon rose and touched his arm. Hugh looked over his shoulder. And then Justin had said it: "Come with me, Hugh."

His fingertips burned through the cloth of coat and shirt—an illusion, surely. His eyes were so clear, like looking into a polished gem, deep, and Hugh could nearly taste olive oil and garlic, hear the cicadas. Three score years old, and Hugh could still find himself half that age for a moment. It was laughable. It was tragic.

It was impossible. Léonie was Justin's wife, whom he loved, and if he had a fugitive longing to relive his bachelorhood for only a few days, it would have to be with someone else than Hugh, little though Hugh wanted to think of that.

"Justin—" the name in his mouth, even that, was sweet—oh, what a foolish old man he was growing— "I cannot."

"Ah." The hand fell away from his arm; Justin walked gracefully back to the head of the table, seated himself with a flourish of his coat-skirts, picked up the nearer decanter. "Far be it from me to keep you from your social engagements," said the polished social voice of the Duke of Avon, "but surely you have none just at this moment? Sit, Hugh, and have some port."

After that, they went back to the card rooms, and Alastair played pharaoh until dawn. Rising from the table, he said, "I have a fancy to visit that new hell of Vidal's patronage. Would you accompany me thither, my dear? A short enough journey."

"Certainly. I own to some curiosity as well."

They walked down St. James's Street, its width all streaked pink and yellow with the dawn. Avon indicated a side-street by a wave of his cane, and they stepped through shadows to a modest green door. A man pacing up and down, trying to look like a mere stroller but obviously an orderly-man, gave Hugh a sharp look and Avon an indulgent one. They went up a few steep stairs and knocked, to be admitted by a man clad in unrelieved black like an undertaker's mute; Alastair raised an eyebrow but said, "My name is Avon. Your master Timothy knows me, I believe."

"Oh, yes indeed, sir! Your Grace! Come right through, Your Grace, right this way!"

The staircase was modest, too narrow to be lit on the slope, but sconces on the landing did a fair job, and as they neared the gaming rooms, the light blazed from every surface where there was no active play, as well as from candelabras at the centres of the tables; so many people were there and so many candles that Hugh felt the heat increase as they took each step. The room was rather narrow, the tables small, and what looked like several separate games seemed to have been rudely interrupted, for the cards lay scattered and abandoned as men stood staring through an archway to another room. A waiter rushed out, grabbed wildly at his confrère, and whispered; they both fled the room as if it were afire. Avon drew out of their way, looked at Hugh, and then they advanced through the archway.

Amidst the crowd of fashionable men was a cleared space. Nearest to them stood a stout man clad in black like the waiter and the porter. His stock was white as fresh snow, and so was his face; he wrung his hands. A man in officer's red was shouting for a surgeon; Lord Rupert Alastair, sweaty and dishevelled, was pushing his wig with one hand in an unavailing attempt to straighten it; a younger man, soberly dressed, knelt on the floor pressing a bloodied cloth to a redhead who looked, at this present, like Henri Saint-Vire in a drunken stupor, save that his stupor was too obviously not solely drunken.

A small sound at his side made Hugh look at Alastair; he had taken his quizzing glass from his coat and flicked it open. Raising it to his eyes, he directed it up, down, and slowly around the room, while silence fell.

Avon lowered his glass. In a shockingly normal voice, he said, "I was informed, my dear Hugh, that Timothy's was unlike other hells. And I perceive—" with another glance round— "that it is indeed something beyond the common." He raised the quizzing-glass again, pointing it this time at his younger brother. "I suppose I need not ask where is my son."

"Gone," said Rupert, voice as rough as a rasp on wood.

The man ministering to the redhead raised his eyes to Avon, and Hugh recognised him as the Mr Comyn that Lady Fanny had pointed out to him at a recent ball as being a prétendant for her daughter's hand. "I apprehend, sir, that his lordship is by now upon the road to Newmarket."

"Indeed," said Alastair, turning the glass on this new speaker, who gazed calmly back. "I fear my son has untidy habits. This gentleman—" with a gesture toward the fallen one— "this gentleman, I think unknown to me, is no doubt his latest victim?"

"As to that, sir, the late affair was in a sort forced upon his lordship." Comyn spoke as collectedly as Avon. Most of the others—Hugh looked around the room himself—were obviously drunk, including Rupert, who gulped and nodded, the sweat still beading on his face. Comyn, however, was just as he had been at the ball. "I believe, sir," he went on, "no man could swallow what was said, though I am bound to confess that neither of the principals was sober."

"So I should think," Alastair agreed. "Still, I make Vidal's apologies, for what they are worth. Timothy, come away and speak with me for a moment. Hugh, my dear, if you will, assist this young gentleman in his admirable command of this—er—situation."

"I shall be happy to," Hugh said. Avon and the stout man retreated; the others began to murmur amongst themselves, and Hugh raised his voice. "If I may suggest, there are surely other rooms to which you gentlemen may retire, to allow Mr—"

"Quarles," said Comyn.

Distracted, Hugh looked down. "Surely not. Quarrels?"

"Quarles," Comyn repeated, and Hugh pulled himself together.

"—Mr Quarles—to rest until the surgeon arrives."

The crowd disbursed, except for the military gentleman, Hugh, and Comyn. And Quarles, of course.

Hugh said, following, "I shall get you some more cloths, Comyn, and I think some water and spirits for when the surgeon arrives."

"Aptly thought of, sir."

"Thank you," Hugh said dryly.

Naturally, by the time Hugh and Avon left Timothy's, the hour was considerably advanced, and neither had done any gaming. "Whew," said Hugh, looking up at the sunlight that had now edged its way into this cross-street. "May it never be said, Justin, that an evening spent in your company was ever less than ... stimulating."

Alastair laughed. "Or a night," he said. "Indeed, my dear. My coachman must think me expired or set upon by footpads."

"If he has any such apprehension, he'll be halfway to Dover by now."

But, Hugh thought as he sat in the coach with Sir Giles, it had been Vidal who was halfway to Dover ... or, on second thought, no, Vidal had been still on his way to Newmarket then. It was the following night that he went to Dover, abducting Miss Challoner on the way. He certainly led an active life.

By the time Vidal was sixty ... Hugh shuddered to think.

* * *

Part 7

Wages of Vice, Part 5

Sat, 18 Jul 2009 21:02:37 GMT

See Author's Note and header
Part 1
Part 2
Part 3
Part 4

Avon wrote that he had bought a house in Paris and called it Hôtel Avon. His butler was, amusingly, an Englishman named Walker. Mutual friends had asked after Hugh; Avon extended an invitation "to return that Hospitality of Yours, for which I never Express'd sufficient Gratitude." The charms of Paris, he wrote, would be immeasurably increased by Hugh's presence.

So Hugh went. He could go anywhere now, for Lewis came with him; he could lay eyes on Justin Alastair and see only the friend in his letters.

If he did have a twinge of feeling from time to time, found himself occasionally wistful, he also greatly enjoyed reacquainting himself with the French nobility and gentry whom he had known and who had been quite kind to him. De Salmy, Château-Mornay, de Châtelet, D'Anvau—they all seemed glad to see him. Hugh thought it was not just his friendship with Alastair that made him more popular here in Paris than he had been in London. Perhaps he was different here.

Before his arrival, Alastair had begun a liaison with Henriette Louise de Verchoureux, a woman of tempestuous passions and opulent charms. Her husband was rarely in Paris, yet rumour said she rarely slept alone. Certainly His Grace of Avon honoured her with many visits, though these grew fewer once Hugh settled in, and they spent evenings in the library of the Hôtel Avon, talking and playing chess or cards, as well as out in the Polite World.

One night, however, Justin was gone to la Verchoureux, and Hugh sat reading Catullus, partly to remind himself how ugly a thing was jealous spleen. He had been reading the libels of Gellius, which accused him of incest and of literally bursting the testicles of a man whom he sucked. Hugh's mouth twisted and he paged back randomly in the volume; his eye fell on the opening line of a far earlier poem: "Miser Catulle, desinas ineptire..." and settled to read this poem which began with the poet telling himself not to be a fool. Had not the sun once shone on his perfect love? But now she did not want him, so "uale, puella. iam Catullus obdurat—" oh, no, Hugh thought, it is not so easy as that—say goodbye, and be cured—but then, the questions at the end of the poem gave the lie to the indifference of the middle. Who would invite Catullus' former love? Who would praise her beauty? Who would bite her lips in kisses?

Hugh was distracted by memory, of Lewis nibbling on his mouth as if it were pastry, and of himself laughing and kissing back, the sensation both silly and pleasurable as they writhed together. He was smiling at the book as the door opened, and raised his head to direct the smile at Avon. "Well, Justin?" Then he saw, a half-pace behind his friend in the shadows, a shorter, much dingier figure, smudged face bent a little and a crumpled hat in its pale hands. "Faith, what have we here?"

"You may well ask." Avon came to the fireplace, put one hand on the mantel and one foot above the guard as if to warm it. "A whim. That dirty and starved scrap of humanity is mine."

"Yours?" Hugh looked again, and it was a child, in torn hose and shabby trousers, a stuff coat swallowing the small frame, hair every which way, yet gleaming copper-red even in the dim light. "What mean you, Alastair? Surely—you cannot mean—your son?"

"Oh, no!" Justin's teeth glinted. "Not this time, my dear Hugh. I bought this little rat for the sum of one diamond."

"But—" Hugh swallowed—"but why, in heaven's name?"

Justin answered in his lightest, most mocking voice. "I have no idea." He beckoned, languidly. The rare, lavender-tinged pearl on his hand caught the light as his smile had, a moment past. "Come here, rat."

Though he had spoken in English, the child came, and as Justin took the narrow face in one hand, Hugh had his first glimpse of Léonie Bonnard, then masquerading as the boy Léon.

His first response was that the child was older than he had thought; in fact, scarcely a child. The second was that the boy—for Hugh did not guess Léonie's secret for some time—looked hungry and tired, the droop of the mouth and smudges below the eyes betraying more than one lost meal and broken night. He took the small hand, which lay quiescent in his own, and led Léon to sit where the duke's supper had been laid ready. The youngster was as tractable as if both body and soul had indeed been given up to the new master's bidding. That phrase "body and soul" was repeated until it made Hugh deeply uneasy, but however often he asked, Justin would only evade. Satanas seemed intent on painting himself as black as might be, and yet grew irritable when Hugh reacted within his moralistic rôle. When it came to a suggestion that Hugh's friendship was due to Justin's wealth, Hugh first flushed with anger and then had to laugh. "Oh, go to bed, Justin! You are quite impossible!"

"So you have often told me."

So he had often felt, but he could not remember voicing the sentiment before.

Justin said, "Good night, my dear," but was not all the way through the door before he turned back for one last word: "A propos, Hugh, I have got a soul," though he had denied having one not five minutes past. "It has just had a bath, and is now asleep."

"God help it," Hugh said. Had Avon sent Léon to bed as he would have sent Paul to a ducal nursery? Or as he would have housed Vittorio for the duration of his desire?

"I am not sure of my cue. Do I say amen, or retire cursing?" The door shut. Alastair had gone.

Hugh shook his head and picked up his book. Perhaps the next day, Justin would give more of his reasoning. Or Hugh, watching, would deduce it. He would not let his friend do harm to that child, as much for Justin's own sake as for the boy's. Léon's.

* * *

Despite several scares, as when Avon insisted on taking his page to the Maison Chourval, Hugh gradually realised that no harm would come to the child.

And he also saw that the boy was ... not a boy.

Oddly, he made the discovery only after Léon saw something of Hugh's own secret. One morning, Hugh saw as Lewis was leaving the bedchamber that the back of his collar was turned unevenly, certainly not as it had been when he entered. Thinking there was no one in the hallway, for there never had been at this hour of the day, Hugh grasped a shoulder and murmured into his valet's ear, the other hand on the rumpled collar—and Léon walked into his line of sight, then froze. For a moment they all stared at one another.

Hugh let go and straightened. "Come in for a moment, child," he said shortly.

They all three re-entered the bedchamber and Lewis closed the door. Hugh walked restlessly the length of the room, then turned back. The valet stood motionless with fear and the page looked on, curiosity on the piquant face.

"You have us both in your power, young Léon," Hugh admitted.

"M'sieur?" The youngster seemed sincerely puzzled.

If Léon did not know what the intimacy in the doorway implied, then it would—ironically—be Hugh who would harm that very innocence that he had wanted to protect. He rubbed his mouth, unsure how to proceed.

"M'sieur Davenant, what is it that you think? Would I tell ce Walker-la anything that was not absolument nécessaire?"

"Or any of the other servants?"

"It is nobody's business, I think. You—" The long lashes swept down, and up again. "You are kind to Lewis. He smiles," and Léon cast a sunny smile at Lewis, who returned it a little shakily. "I do not wish to make him sad."

Hugh began to feel relieved. "Where did you learn such radical notions, young Léon?"

"At—in that past Monseigneur tells me I must not mention. Among those who stayed at ... an inn ... there were men who came ... a few très gentil with their friends, but others—they were cochons! I do not want to remember them."

"They did you no harm, I hope. Léon, if any did—"

"But no, M'sieur, it was not I. They brought their menservants, or found boys in the streets. Jean would not let them touch me—but I say too much. Peste! I forget the orders of Monseigneur."

"That must not be," Hugh said soberly.

"Mais non, M'sieur."

Hugh dismissed Léon, but kept Lewis for a moment. The comment about cochons and their menservants had cut a bit too deep. "Lewis, do you ever—if you—ah, damme!" He cupped the younger man's cheek in his hand, and said, "You must know, if you ever should wish to stop—"

"No! No," Lewis said, covering Hugh's hand with his own, pulling it to his mouth to kiss it.

Hugh petted his cheek. "You are very young. I forget that sometimes. But do not you forget what I say: you are free, Lewis. I would not keep you an' you ever wished to go."

It was only after Lewis also left, collar straight and colour still high with emotion, that Hugh registered what his eyes had recorded during the scene just past. He stood at the window, looking down at a rather spindly tree and a portion of the garden wall, and saw again how Lewis and Léon had looked, side by side.

Lewis, Hugh knew, had turned twenty just before they had left London. Léon, according to Alastair, was nineteen. Hugh had never before seen the page near anyone of comparable age, and was struck now by the difference. Lewis was hardly brawny, but he was taller and broader in the shoulders than Léon; his hands were far larger, his legs thicker. Lewis had a prominent adam's apple and shaved a scraggly but persistent beard; his voice was not basso, but it was a man's. In comparison, Léon seemed far more delicate than even noble (if perhaps baseborn) blood could account for. Léon's voice was sweet and a little fluting, apparently still unbroken. The page's neck was swanlike and smooth, the white hands deft but small as a much younger boy's; above all, where Lewis carried a fine package even when flaccid, there seemed almost nothing between Léon's legs.

Once he had seen, it was amazing to Hugh that he could ever have been deceived. And could Avon's sharp observation have missed the clues? Hugh thought not but feared to bring the matter up for discussion. Alastair's record with women was far worse than with men, Vittorio notwithstanding.

* * *

The day after Alastair took his page to Versailles, Hugh received a letter, which he stuffed into his pocket as he left the breakfast table—in rather a hurry as he had dawdled too long with Lewis that morning—to ride with D'Anvau. By the time he had returned, Alastair had gone out, so Hugh settled in the library to read the letter. It took some puzzling out, and then he needed to speak to Justin before he could reply to it.

Fortunately, the duke returned shortly, and came into the library brushing his hands as though he had soiled them. "Ah, Hugh, about some good work, no doubt!" He sat in his accustomed chair beside the fire.

"Perhaps. Justin, I have a letter from Madame Bernard."

Avon looked blank.

"Daphne Chattermole," Hugh clarified, but Avon's face hardly changed.

"I trust you can make it out," was all he said.

"Gad, it's not easy. But the matter is more important than the manner. She has fallen ill."

"An ailment of the stomach, perhaps," Avon said with sarcastic solicitude. "Or spleen."

Hugh smiled, but said, "No, Alastair, she writes as though it were serious. Perhaps even consumption. Now of course it may be no such thing, but surely she'd not venture writing to me if she had anyone else from whom to seek recourse, and there's the boy to think of."

Avon shook his head. "My dear Hugh! She writes to you because you gave her money and did her service before. You are gullible, beloved."

"There's the boy," Hugh repeated. "'Pon rep, have you no concern for him? He is your son."

"He is hers," and the duke's voice held no kindness. "I would have played the father two years ago—"

"Less," said Hugh.

"—no matter." One white hand waved, languidly. "She declined. If she chooses to raise a milliner's son rather than a duke's—"

"A duke's bastard."

"Hugh, really. May I speak?" Justin frowned, and may have been truly irritated.

"My apologies."

"If she chooses to raise a bourgeois rather than a baseborn child, it is perhaps—" with a little bow that, even seated, was gracefully done— "not a poor choice, but now she has made it, I do not fathom how the child could again become my affair. And you should feel no need at all to become entangled in the matter."

"You have reason, Justin," Hugh admitted, "but I cannot let this go so easily. I saw the child—well, so did you, of course, but ... I cannot explain. I do not want him to suffer for his mother's foolishness, I suppose that is the beginning and end of it. I want at least to know that she has provided for him. If indeed she is so ill that it is necessary."

Justin was looking at him, an oddly gentle half-smile on his face. "What a good man you are, beloved."

The expression plucked at Hugh's heart, and the sensation was unwelcome, so he responded gruffly, "No more than you, taking in young Léon."

"You know my motives there."

"No, Justin, I do not, for you have not told me all of them."

"True." But he said no more.

After a few moments' silence, Hugh inhaled slowly, and said, "I suppose I must go to Lyons, then."

"Yes, I suppose so." Alastair stood, took a step or two forward, and stretched out his hand so that two fingertips just brushed Hugh's face, then fell away. "If she has the pox, pray take care. Your fresh country face too nearly matches your heart; I would hate to see it marred."

"Is this your blessing?" Hugh was a little breathless.

"My blessing? Say rather that it is my farewell."

"I don't go instantly. I shall write first. Perhaps a few direct questions will entice a fact or two out of her."

Avon nodded. "Pray remain as long as you wish, and return as soon as you may. You are always welcome."

"Thank you, Justin. That means a great deal to me, you must know."

Avon's powdered head inclined graciously.

But later the same day, Justin asked Hugh to assume Léon's care for a few days while the duke went onto the French countryside himself. It was in fact a week before he returned, and he did not say whither he had been bound or why his errand had kept him so long. He did admit to Hugh that he had fathomed his page's secret, and revealed a plan to restore her to her rightful sex and to make her his ward. Hugh was, at first, outraged, and expressed himself with all the force he could muster, remembering that what calm admonition never accomplished was sometimes at least furthered by sheer emotional excess. Justin, however, merely told him he looked like an agitated sheep.

For once, apparently, Satanas needed no guidance, a situation with which a friend ought to have been well pleased. And Hugh might be needed in Lyons, if he was not here.

* * *

Over a month later, Hugh sat rubbing his temples in the small sitting room of a rented house in Harrogate, while above him feet pounded back and forth and an occasional shout echoed down the stairs. Paul was an energetic child, and for all his small stature, his footfalls were heavy. Hugh supposed he ought to be glad that the little boy was able, even briefly, to forget the loss of the mother that he had loved, but the truth was that this headache that pounded in time with the boy's feet made it very hard for Hugh to feel any sympathy at the moment.

It had not been a pleasant journey from Lyons to Harrogate. And, of course, the previous days had been a great strain, as Madame Bernard coughed out her life and the child swung between bewilderment and grief.

On the way north, they broke their journey at an inn not five miles from the Davenant family estate. Hugh had not even tried to avail himself of his brother's hospitality on this occasion. He had tried to shield Paul as much as possible from Colehatch, but the older man had demanded to see the child he thought was his brother's by-blow, and so Paul's French nursemaid had brought the child into the private parlour where Hugh had been submitting to Colehatch's rage for at least twenty minutes already. Hugh was on edge the whole time, afraid that Paul's resemblance to Justin Alastair would be obvious to other eyes than his own, but Colehatch had not seemed to guess anything.

"I thought you were a better man than this, Hugh," was Colehatch's parting shot. "If you will not marry, for God's sake cease this whoring before you have a pack of brats such as this one to find lodging for."

Hugh wondered if this admonition would have made any impact on him if he had committed the sin Colehatch imagined, instead of pursuing the vice that he preferred. Still, Colehatch had given him the needed direction from the estate agent's files: their old nurse, now living with her widowed daughter in Harrogate. Hugh had known only the city and was glad to be spared the task of tracking down Mrs Flagg.

Harrogate, with its steep hills, ought to have been the perfect place to tire out the most active child. If all went well, perhaps he would be running up and down the walks soon, and Hugh would be ... he was not sure. Léon—no, Léonie—must now be at Avon. Alastair would probably spend most of his time in London when he was not personally overseeing his ward's education.

Perhaps Hugh would travel. He sat daydreaming of places more interesting than Lyons, knowing that in reality he would no doubt settle in London for the foreseeable future.

The sitting room door opened, and Lewis, looking tired and vaguely dishevelled, came in and bowed. Outside the bedchamber they were always master and servant, and in fact the past days had been without any carnal play between them.

"Yes?" Hugh asked.

"The child is in bed, sir, but he asks for you."

The thumping of Paul's feet had ceased without Hugh's even noticing it. "For me? Aye, very well, I shall come." He pulled himself out of the chair.

Paul looked shyly up at him from the bed, which was adult-sized; the expanse of linen made him look tiny, his face very rosy and his hair very dark. Hugh sat on the edge of the bed, for lack of a more conventional seat, and said, "Paul? What did you wish to say to me?" —which, he supposed, was a ridiculous inquiry to such a young child.

"Dites bon nuit," said Paul. He could speak some English, but Hugh had not heard him do so all day.

"Bon nuit, mon petit. Dors bien," he said obediently. He smoothed the curls that Paul must have from his mother. "Sweet dreams."

"Êtes—" the child hesitated, then yawned, then began again, "Est-ce que vous êtes mon papa?"

Hugh was surprised, though he had expected the question at some point. He planned to tell Mrs. Flagg some of the truth: that Paul was the son of a young gentlewoman to whom Hugh had been some help after another man had ruined her. It was quite probable, however, that she would not credit the story and would tell Paul the untruth that she believed, so he would grow up thinking himself Hugh's bastard no matter what Hugh said. Still, to lie to Justin's son was unthinkable, even now when the child was scarce breeched.

"Mais non, petit, mais je te protégerai." It was all the child needed to know now. No, Hugh was not his father; yes, Hugh would see him cared for.

Justin's eyes regarded him gravely from the small face. Then one of the little hands emerged from the covers and patted Hugh's own, in an odd reversal of rôles. "Dormez-vous bien aussi," the child said.

Hugh leaned over and kissed Paul's forehead.

But the child was not as easily settled in Harrogate as Hugh had originally supposed. Mrs Flagg had aged a great deal since Hugh had seen her, and although her daughter Mrs Josephs was hale and strong, she was also run off her feet caring for her mother, her daughter Norah, and the house, as well as taking in washing and sewing to supplement her inadequate means.

Hugh could relieve her of the necessity for the odd-jobbery; he could hire a maid to assist with the children; but he could not make the tiny house the Josephs family lived in large enough to accommodate two more people. It was necessary to negotiate with Mrs Josephs, to find another modest but larger house, to hire the maid and to set up the legal machinery to properly administer Paul's inheritance from his mother and the supplementary moneys from Hugh. The Josephs family also took some time to move. Meanwhile, Hugh made unavailing efforts to find a tradesman who would agree to apprentice Paul when he was old enough—all to do again in a few years.

When at last all seemed done, he made what was to be a farewell visit, and while Paul sat on Mrs Flagg's lap, Hugh stood beside her chair and talked to her of old times. The child reached out and took a handful of Hugh's coat-skirts, staring up at him.

Hugh said, "Yes, Paul?" but Mrs Flagg made a soft exclamation of dismay and took the thin little wrist in her hand to coax the boy to let go. Paul looked at his own hand in silence, uncurled his fingers one by one without further prompting, and then did not lift his head. Hugh stepped back, really meaning to go, but there was something in Paul's attitude ... something familiar and painful ... for the first time, Hugh saw himself in the child, empathised so intimately that the emotion left his own stomach in a knot. He crouched down and ducked his head until he met Paul's eyes.

"I shall come back tomorrow," he promised. "Now say goodbye, Paul."

"Au revoir, m'sieur," Paul murmured, still solemn. Hugh laid one hand on the boy's cheek, covering it, and the soft, infantine skin moved under his hand as Paul smiled.

Hugh, feeling gullible, went to extend his lease and to tell Lewis to unpack once more.

* * *

The notion that Léonie, resuming her girlhood, might gain yet more of Avon's affections was not a great novelty to Hugh by the time he joined the Duke, his relatives, and his ward in Paris. Nevertheless, the extent to which Justin revealed his feelings did surprise Hugh. As he told Marling the very night of his arrival, "When last I saw Léonie—Léon she was then—it was 'Yes, Monsiegneur' and 'No, Monseigneur.' Now it is 'Monseigneur, you must do this,' and 'Monseigneur, I want that!' She twists him round her little finger, and, by Gad, he likes it!"

If there lived a man with less imagination than Edward Marling, Hugh had yet to encounter him. Now Marling's brows rose and he said, "Oh, but there's naught of the lover in his manner, Hugh! You have heard him with her, scolding, correcting."

Hugh restrained himself from pointing out that not every woman was as spoilt and high-handed as Lady Fanny, nor every man attracted by such behaviour. How could Marling see that tender light in Justin's eyes and not recognise it? Hugh did, and remembered when an expression like it had been turned, momentarily, on him. Now perhaps he knew why those moments had been so brief; now he could admit the reason, to stolid Marling: "I would not give Justin a bride his own age. I'd give him this babe who must be cherished and guarded. And I'll swear he'd guard her well." When Marling protested that Léonie worshiped Justin, Hugh could only say, "Therein I see his salvation."

Brave words. Hugh knew he'd not be asked to give Justin any bride, even Léonie; if worship would have saved Justin, then why had his done so little?

In the end, no-one gave Léonie away; she left Paris thinking herself Henri Saint-Vire's by-blow and returned as his legitimate child and Avon's duchess. After a few days being swarmed by callers, they all retreated, exhausted, to England, where it was all to be done again. Avon married! And to someone completely unknown in England! It was far more than a nine-days' wonder.

Hugh could not get away to Harrogate without drawing attention to himself, and thus to Paul. He sent Lewis instead, on the grounds that Paul knew him from their trip and had liked him.

And two months later, Hugh did so again.

London was stifling. The drawing rooms felt small and hot, the ballrooms and parks hardly larger. Hugh felt he had told Léonie's story (in a somewhat expurgated version) thousands of times. He took restless walks, day after day, but the bustling streets did not comfort him; he rode to Hampstead Heath where he could gallop, the horse's sweat spattering back and mixing with his own, and still he felt idle, his body unused.

On the way back from one of these rides, he had seen a couple of children playing battledore and shuttlecock, and that reminded him that he had meant to buy Paul some remembrance. So he rode back through the streets looking for a shop where such things might be sold.

His search was not systematic, and he rode for a long while, turning here and there, looking where children clustered at the shop windows and finding several bakeries, dismounting where a matron led a group of no fewer than six children from a shop door, herding them rather like sheep. But when he looked in that window, set far back from the curb, it proved to be a butcher's shop. A man in a white apron looked up from the counter, hams and rabbits hanging on either side and a great side of beef behind. The cloth on the man's chest was smeared with blood; Hugh stood back.

It was a pleasant little mercantile street, however, and so Hugh left the horse where it stood and walked up and down. Baker, chandler, chemist, tailor, potter, silversmith—like a tiny slice of village—printer, stationer—what was that ahead? Something swinging inside the window, a wooden foot, and as he got closer he could see it was a jointed puppet hanging from the top of the window frame; below it sat a drum and two dolls; leaning against the side wall were a kite and a cricket bat. Hugh went inside.

He wandered for some time among the playthings, picking them up and thinking of his own nursery. Eventually, toy soldiers, a ball, and a kite lay on the counter to be packed, and still he hesitated. The bell over the door rang, and he glanced over; the man who had just come in nodded in a friendly way. Hugh bowed very slightly and stiffly, then turned back to the shelf.

"Are you a father, then, sir?" asked a voice he knew, close behind him. He jumped. Turning slowly, he looked again at the man who had followed him into the shop.

"Come, come," said Princess Seraphina, quietly, with a slight smile, head a little bent.

Hugh would not have recognised the princess by looks, did not even now, though he catalogued nose and chin and wide-open eyes, and all were exact. That was the mouth he had kissed, those the hands he had pressed into, spilled himself in. That was the waist he had clasped, as Seraphina sat in his lap. They looked so different clad in neat brown cloth—beige for the gloves, dark for the coat. Seraphina's hair, which Hugh had never seen unpowdered, was tied at the nape of the neck and was a light honey-brown, about the colour of Hugh's own.

"I—er—no, I am not a father. These are for ... a friend's child."

Seraphina looked over at the toys, raked another look up and down what could be seen of the attendant behind the counter, and then turned back to Hugh. "He'll be spoilt."

How was it that every word from those lips sounded amorous?

"Wrap them for me, please," Hugh said, barely glancing at the attendant.

He paid for the toys, picked up the package, and Seraphina said, "There is a coffee-house down yonder, or a pub a little further."

"I must get my horse."

This was so plainly not a refusal that Seraphina smiled, a dimple appearing in one cheek. "And I must tell the boy to keep the butcher's shop a while longer. Walk with me," with a flutter of eyelashes that Hugh remembered well.

He found himself back out on the street, and Seraphina's hand touched the inside of his elbow as if to take his arm, but then did not. "'Tis a long dreary while since I've seen you, Sukey-my-love."

"It is long," Hugh admitted. "I ... made some other friends, I am afraid."

"I don't reproach you," the butcher princess said. "How could I? Needs must when the devil drives, and I never knew just what devil drove you, my dear gentleman."

Hugh surprised himself by laughing, caught his breath, thought of Avon—Satanas—again and laughed the more, Seraphina's surprise only feeding the paroxysms that felt so cleansing, like a purge.

* * *

They talked long, and met again, and yet again, at the coffee-house and at the pub that was no molly-house, but the resort of tradesmen and workmen of the neighbourhood. Seraphina—called John Cooper here—seemed well liked. There was no offer to take Hugh to the butcher's home or to whatever molly-house the princess now frequented, and neither did Hugh offer more than their talks, drinks, and card-games.

Cooper was an enthusiastic but poor card-player. After yet another disastrous score, one afternoon, the beige gloves turned palm out in the air and the sultry voice said, "You've won near all my worldly goods! I must offer another forfeit," and the princess winked as plainly as if they were back at the Royal Oak.

Hugh smirked a little, shuffling the cards and thinking for a moment of Alastair in Vienna. Then he said, "Take me with you to the Vauxhall masquerade," rather surprising himself. He'd been listening with no more than half an ear to his opponent's eager talk of the upcoming festivity. Seraphina had ordered a new gown and meant to dress a head to go with it that would be the envy of all the gentlewomen who attended. Hugh had been to Vauxhall and found it insipid with the ton party in their supper boxes, but he would not at all mind seeing Seraphina in dress and domino.

"Ah, but if I go with a great strapping gentleman like yourself, I'll not be able to pick up another." And with a wicked grin, "Unless ... I'd make you a fine rival, my lady."

Hugh had to admit he had wondered what woman's clothes would be like to wear. "I doubt you would not be able to find cloth enough to cover me." He put the deck of cards down with a little snap.

"You're hardly Sweet May," said the other. "I can find something if you can find the ... conviction ... to wear it."

Hugh hesitated. The eyes he looked into were kind. Little wrinkles at their corners caught in the light that fell diagonally to their table from the many-paned window. "I do not know," he admitted.

"Then whom shall we ask to find out?" But Seraphina patted Hugh's arm, smiling. "Come to my rooms on the night, and if you dare we'll essay it. If you find you do not want to, well, then, we'll go to dinner before the masquerade and save a little of the money you won from me."

This assured that Hugh would in fact try. He wondered, afterward, if Seraphina had known as much.

On the night in question, he could hardly bear for Lewis to dress him. The valet had only recently returned from a journey to Harrogate, and Hugh had not told him where he had arranged to go. Lewis laid out ordinary evening dress, maroon and cream, and Hugh let him put it on in near-silence. At the last, touching the young, smooth cheek, Hugh said gently, "Do not wait for me tonight."

Lewis' eyes flicked up, then down. "Yes, sir."

John Cooper's rooms were small and low-ceilinged, but what would have been a second bed chamber was set up just for dressing in. The door was opened for Hugh by invisible agency; as it shut he turned to see his host only partly dressed. "Sukey, poppet, do you need me as valet?" asked a being half-butcher and half-princess, with a woman's stays and panniers above, long stockings and ribboned garters below, and his yard and bollocks hanging bare between. Hugh stared; Seraphina laughed. "I bethought me that you might be easier did you see me take each step before you. Now take your things off—everything but shoes must be a woman's. "

Hugh did. Despite the comment about valeting, the feeling of being laced into stays was not at all like anything Lewis did for him. The process took a long while, too, as the laces crossed a score of times down his spine. It tickled with an itchy sensuality when Seraphina's fingers tugged and adjusted, in and out of the edges of the corset, up and down, then smoothed the long lines of the stays on either side down his back. "Ye-e-es," and the voice tickled Hugh's spine even more than the fingers, "a good fit." Fingers brushed the top of his thighs, across his bare buttocks—and then Seraphina stepped away. "Turn around, poppet."

Hugh turned, feeling veritably like a doll, a marionette that Seraphina made move. His eyes fell to that turgid organ between the curving white petals at the bottom of the other's corset—it was heavier, fuller, and so was Hugh's own. "Stockings," Seraphina said, voice rough, and knelt to put them on, taking one bare foot onto stockinged knees, smoothing the thin knit fabric even more amorously than Lewis had, when the caressing fingers creeping up Hugh's calf had been his first intimation that his solitude could be over. But even now, Lewis would not lean forward and nip with his front teeth above the garter after he tied it, then kiss where he had nipped; nor would he have gone back to the second stocking as if nothing had happened. But then, after the second garter was tied, Seraphina knelt up, pressing against Hugh's leg and mouthing up the last inches of his inner thigh to the sac, and kissed there. Hugh gasped, reaching for the hard shoulder under the corset strap. He clutched the nape of Seraphina's neck as those clever fingers grasped Hugh's stiff member, massaged it, and Seraphina's forehead pressed into the whalebone, and the voluble mouth nibbled and sucked and kissed.

"Oh," Hugh said, pulling and kneading honey-coloured hair, "oh, Gad, use your mouth, I beg you—" but Seraphina would not take the organ inside, only sipping the skin here and there. Still the sensations were wild and surprising, wet soft touches combined with such a firm grip, and Hugh staggered as the lust spilled from him. Seraphina wrapped his hips in a strong embrace, laughing, and when Hugh found his balance the princess rose like a molly Aphrodite, foam still spattered on one cheek and on the pale throat. "Come here," said Hugh, and kissed the man's mouth soundly. Still kissing, Seraphina lifted both hands and reached into the low neck of the corset. Hugh thought it more love-play, murmured into the kiss, but felt instead a grasping, lifting motion. Seraphina stepped back again and looked hard at Hugh's torso, wiping absentmindedly at the smeared cheek.

"Yes, that will do well enough. Pity you aren't fatter."

Hugh stared down, where he had acquired something not totally unlike a bosom. Most of it was the curve of the whalebone, but his own flesh rested higher than usual within, and the pectorals were pushed up. "As well I'm not hairier."

"Oh, I would have shaved you." Then the princess swept off, the movement so regal it was hard to remember that there were no skirts as yet. "Petticoats."

A little splashing in the background, then a rustling of agitated fabric that went on for some time. At last, Hugh turned, to see a cloud of white settling, smoothed down from the waist, tugged into place on the panniers.

"Lace me?"

So Hugh did. The little ties were like strings in his hands, and his fingers felt large, clumsy. "Now who is valeting whom?"

The smile he got over Seraphina's shoulder was as bright as the clean cloth. "Turn and turn about."

And they did, getting on Hugh's petticoats, both their chemises, both their underdresses, both their overskirts. Seraphina bade him sit down while she placed the woman's wig on his head, arranged the curls down his neck and over one shoulder. It was the heaviest wig Hugh had worn this age—since his last visit to Versailles, he thought, and then it had been a long-tailed wig, not this topheavy object. "And yours?" he asked.

"Ah, mine! I must do mine. Go into the other room, Sukey, love, and have a glass of something." Seraphina was pulling on a dressing gown.

"Shall you be poudrée?"

"So I am always."

Hugh squeezed through the doorway, took a few awkward steps as what seemed miles of cloth swayed and dragged the very air round him. Eschewing the wine, he took turn after turn around the room, trying to move naturally, feeling confined, floating, the air draughty round his private parts and his ribs held tight and warm. Every step, every breath, was contradictory. He looked in the glass over the fireplace and saw his own familiar face framed by the tall wig and the deep-cut neckline. The overdress was sky blue, which changed the colour of his eyes until he could have sworn them blue as well, instead of grey. It was embroidered with little blossoms in darker blue; ribbons in the same forget-me-not colour decked the edges in front, against the white underdress. A white gauze fichu tucked into the neckline concealed how little flesh was there. His eyes slipped to the room reflected behind him—that must be his domino, draped over the back of a chair, likewise a purplish-blue. Seraphina's was the same red as the cloak Hugh had seen so long ago.

He wondered whether anyone would lay eyes upon him tonight without knowing his secret. But, he reminded himself, this was a masquerade he was going to. Of course everyone there had a secret identity.

Remembering Léon's boyhood, Hugh had wondered if he would feel like a woman once he wore a woman's clothing. Perhaps Léonie had felt herself a boy; Hugh had no notion how Seraphina felt; but as he shifted from one foot to the other and his cock swung against his thigh, he felt a centaur, a merman, some half-and-half creature ... unreal again ... but that unreality was what he had anticipated and wanted. He would be Seraphina's doll tonight.

And there she was, in the doorway, perfect as a picture. "Admiring yourself, poppet?" The lips that spoke were red, the cheeks nearly as rosy, a patch high on one cheek and another near the mouth on the other side. A white lacy fan snapped open, waved languidly back and forth. The head that Seraphina had bragged of was indeed wonderful, puffed high and curled at the sides as if a perruquier had spent a week upon its creation. The princess stepped forward and sank into a low curtsey, skirts spread, slow and graceful as thistledown descending, then wafting up again on a breath.

"You need a new maiden name," said the soft, low voice. "Sukey is too common. Come, we shall consider whilst I paint your face."

They went back into the dressing room, and Hugh sat where he was told. A haresfoot moved lightly over his skin, barely touching, like eyelashes fluttering, like hair draped and dragging. Hugh's eyes sagged closed and he simply felt, stroke after stroke.

"Narcissa," Seraphina suggested. "Queen Margaret. Aurora ... tush, should be a pink and amber dress for that. Bellissima."

"No Italian."

"As you wish." Seraphina did not react in the slightest to the curtness of Hugh's voice. The light caresses paused, but after a slight rustle returned, over one cheek and then the other, for the blush. Another pause, and then the same stroking over neck and upper chest. Hugh's lips parted and he breathed through them. "You look ..." Seraphina sighed, a quick intake of breath that had no guile in it. "Danae. Or Leda, an' you prefer."

Danae, whose tower room was flooded with gold ... "Lady Danae it is, then."

Scarcely had he spoken than the touch came to his lips, fingertips now, and the coloured salve slick upon them. "Keep your mouth ajar ... yes, like that ... what a pretty thing you are, indeed." From one corner of his mouth to the pillow of his lip, and again, and again; then the other side the same. He kissed gently at the fingers, and Seraphina chuckled. "Hold still, my dear."

Hugh's eyes flew open; his body stiffened. Seraphina froze too, and looked at him with concern. "What ails you?" Then the heel of one hand pressed Hugh's jaw, the knuckles of the other smoothed his brow. "Come, sweet lady, forget whate'er would distress you. There, there—" light kisses fell on Hugh's upper lip, still unpainted, and he relaxed under them. His eyelids sagged again, the dark behind them warm and safe. "There." And his upper lip was painted, Seraphina crooning all the while, "Sweetmeat, poppet, what a fine lady, what a darling dandle doll. Now, Lady Danae, now look at yourself."

Hugh did. He should have looked ridiculous, or at any rate not much different than he had in the other room, but he was amazed at the womanish face that stared back at him. The coating of grease upon his lips felt odd, and he found they were still a little parted, a little pouting, with the sticky feather-weight. The rose on his cheeks drew the eye away from his jaw, and painted pallor covered his normal skin tone. "I have just the patch for you, lovesome," and Seraphina placed it while Hugh looked into the mirror, a little heart up near his eye, and that too made him look unlike himself. Not himself. It was Lady Danae who regarded him.

Seraphina stepped back and Hugh rose. He wanted to curtsey but knew he had better not try, so he ducked his head a little, and Seraphina smirked and gave him a blue silk fan with tassels. He flicked it open as he remembered Avon had done, and that was easy, so he fluttered it and brought it up to his face, cutting his eyes over it at the princess, who laughed. "Aye, let us go. You are ready."

Not much happened that first night. Hugh danced but once, and found he had been right that he had no notion how to curtsey—his partner laughed and mocked at him, not very unkindly, but Hugh felt foolish. Lady Danae's skirts swept up and down the walks, and he saw ton people he knew in the supper boxes looking on, and dominoes aplenty that perhaps covered other acquaintances. He spoke but little. He lost sight of Seraphina, spotted the red domino again after his dance, followed it until it ducked into an alcove with another figure, and then retreated.

Save for one drunken man who clutched at the blue domino as Hugh passed, but fell to his knees when he tried to bow, Hugh was not approached for dalliance.

Yet he went again, not a month later, and returned at irregular intervals. He learned to curtsey and to speak in a voice which, while not high, sounded possible for a woman. He learned that Lady Danae liked ratafia and little sugar cakes, that the rouged lips made kisses moist and tacky, that if he flirted in the dark first and then under a light, the chances were that the man would guess Hugh's sex, and would either stammer and flee or kiss again, harder, and then if they found an alcove the absence of any confining cloth round his privates was a convenience.

Lewis was unwontedly quiet these days. Though Hugh washed the paint from his face—and swabbed at his privates too, after each visit to Vauxhall; he had rarely been so fastidiously cleanly in his habits—his valet seemed to suspect an indiscretion of which he was not told. While feeling that Lady Danae's adventures were wholly separate from his relations with Lewis, Hugh did feel enough guilt to effectively seal his lips.

Meanwhile, The Duchess of Avon was seen to be expecting un petit paquet—and as she grew larger, Léonie grew more vocal about the inconveniences of her pregnancy and her skirts, until the Duke declared (though glowing with pride) that he must take her to Avon for the sake of the whole ton's peace of mind. Hugh wondered whether the Duchess wore trousers in the seclusion of her home, and whether she had to have them sewn specially for her, and altered as the weeks passed ... on her small frame, pregnancy loomed large.

Hugh himself went to Harrogate. He would be happy to see Paul, did not wish to hear people titter at Léonie's improprieties, and needed a rest from Lady Danae. Just the previous morning, Lewis had hesitated as he was shaving his master, bent his head to stare at the corner of Hugh's mouth, and then set his own jaw, scraping as carefully as ever with the naked blade of the razor, but in sudden, chill silence. Then he washed Hugh's whole face, scrubbing at the hairline and wiping all along the lips, regardless that there had been no shaving soap there. Hugh still did not explain.

The first night in Harrogate, however, Lewis grasped Hugh's hand at bedtime and kissed it, then again, grasping tight. Hugh pulled the man to his feet and kissed his mouth. They took off the nightshirt Hugh had just put on and made love, toying with each other's bodies for what seemed like hours, and yet they hardly spoke.

It was the next day that Lewis gave notice. He twisted his hands together, looking anguished, and explained, "When I was here before, when you sent me, I met ... a tradesman ... and we took drink together and, well ...."

"You need not tell me," Hugh said, gently. "I meant what I said, Lewis, that if you ever wanted to go, I would not seek to keep you."

"And you have a lover too, sir, do you not?" Lewis blurted.

"I?" And despite the sex he'd had, Hugh felt genuinely surprised. He had not had a lover; the men who tupped Lady Danae were not her lovers. Lewis, hearing the surprise, stared.

Such a guileless young face. Hugh cupped it in both hands. "My very dear, go in goodwill. I wish you happy. Indeed I wish you all good things."

"And I you. Oh, Hugh!" Thus at the end, Lewis used Hugh's name for the very first time—hugged him, as well, and shed tears into his neck. They held each other close a long while.

And then Hugh let go.

* * *

Part 6

Wages of Vice, Part 4

Sat, 18 Jul 2009 20:47:41 GMT

See Author's Note and header
Part 1
Part 2
Part 3

Now Rome was all transformed, drowned in honey, and the days they passed went by as unnumbered as those in Elysium. They visited up and down the Spanish Stairs in hotel parlours, strolled through galleries and studios, stood admiring the Pantheon—where Hugh faced the statue of Mars and shot surreptitious glances at Justin, who stared through his quizzing glass at Venus with a critical expression on his face. They walked the seven hills amid wildflowers trembling with the wings of the bees that ravished them. They traversed St. Peter's Square and looked upon the Trevi Fountain, throwing in their coins like skipping stones.

They even drew some sketches to have something to show for their expeditions. Justin had, when he pleased, a neat hand for drawing; he especially excelled at quick cartoons such as the one of the boy pulling the donkey up a narrow passage between buildings, or another page of the child's facial expressions. Hugh's favourite drawing, however, was a more leisurely study, a nude entitled 'Sleeping Adonis' drawn as a statue in the process of being restored. On a low pedestal, the body was stretched out, even to the penis which lay upon one carven thigh, and one arm was flung up across the face ... it was Hugh, whom Justin had apparently sketched as he lay in one of the hôtel beds. For the first several days after their al fresco lovemaking, they shared them: Justin's one night, Hugh's the next. Justin's valet Gaston and Hugh's man Topsell passed each other a dozen times in the hallway every morning, fetching what had been left in one chamber or the other.

The valets knew. The chambermaids must know, and the hôtelier most likely did. The donkey-boy knew.

His name, Hugh found, was Vittorio. He was fourteen years old, and had been guiding foreign ladies and gentlemen about Rome for two years already. He couldn't read, but he could remember what people told him about the places they wanted to see, and then—he said with naïve pride—he could tell those things to the next people. Someday he hoped to be a guide in one of the inside places, such as the Parthenon or the Sistine Chapel ... he wished he could have a red uniform as the men in the Holy City did, but he thought one might have to be a priest for that. He cast a flashing gaze at Hugh under outrageous lashes, and denied any calling to the priesthood.

Quite untempted, Hugh laughed. "'Pon rep, boy! The girls are scarcely born who would weep if you became a priest." Then he gave Vittorio a coin and dismissed him. It was a pretty child, certainly, but no more than a child still. And even were the idea of debauching one so young not revolting in itself, who would eat bonbons when one could have a whole feast? Pet a little dog when one could tumble and wrestle with a lion?

His lover Justin was still in many ways the Justin Alastair the world knew: wary as a wild animal, facetious, mannered, cynical, arrogant, and proud of his own vice. He still tended to begin each session of lovemaking as if amazed that Hugh could possibly allow it, much less enjoy it, and once or twice even apologised afterward; perhaps he was being sarcastic in some subtle Alastair way. From time to time he would vanish of an evening—he had not, in fact, given up playing cards. Hugh missed him absurdly but did not want to cling.

Justin acquired an odd habit of snubbing Hugh verbally, unexpectedly, both in public and when they were alone. At last, Hugh said indignantly, "You take me up for nothing, Avon!" and surprised a flash of something like satisfaction on Justin's face before he strode over and took Hugh's hand in his own.

"You do right to chide me, beloved." He bent to kiss Hugh's fingertips, one by one, as if they belonged to a fashionable lady or an expensive light-o'-love. That argument ended in bed, but at other times they merely snapped at each other for a time before the conversation wound down, starting again after a pause as if the other, harsher words had not been exchanged.

Still, that dreadful dark pit in Justin's eyes was quite gone, and that made Hugh happy whenever he felt any qualms. And the sex was glorious, a meeting of equals such as Hugh had dreamed of without ever hoping to find, so fierce and tender and passionate that Hugh told himself that what Justin did outside their bed mattered little: surely the truth of what he felt was in his lovemaking.

Then, one day when they had no plans to go out—for the weather was unusually grey and the ground still soggy from a night's rain—Hugh saw their little friend's donkey outside the hotel as he was returning from a morning call. He went into their rooms, saying, "Avon? Are you here? Say, Vittorio must have a commission in the hotel today, is that not amusing? Perhaps some lonely lady with matern—" but he got no further, for the door of Avon's bedchamber was ajar and he pushed it open only to find Vittorio there, kneeling naked before the duke with the man's cock stretching that tender young mouth. The dark eyes rolled toward Hugh, and it was impossible to tell whether the boy was in pain or fear or simply surprised, but he started violently, fell backward on his arse on the carpet, and sat there, silent, as Hugh turned toward ... Satanas.

Avon moved not a muscle to cover himself, his yard bare, still stiff, and gleaming wet. His shirt was on but his breeches off, and he sat with knees apart in a brocaded armchair. His fine hands held the carved wooden arms in a tight grip. His head tipped back; his eyes burned.

Hugh stood still too. He felt as though a blade had thrust clean through him, and when it was withdrawn the pain would come. His heart beat hard in his throat, twice, and then he took a breath. Without moving his eyes from Avon, he said, "Vittorio, put your clothes on," and wondered at how ordinary his voice sounded.

"And if I say—" Avon's voice was silky, contemptuous, the voice he used to kill pretension— "that the boy is here at my invitation and under my orders, and dare not do your bidding rather than mine?"

Vittorio, who had risen to his feet, froze.

"I am a duke, after all," Avon said, and he had never looked so kingly as he did then, half-naked in the chair.

"You—" Hugh caught himself. He would not rail like one of Avon's discarded mistresses. "Indeed, your Grace, you are a duke. You ... have rank on your side, but I believe in this instance ... I have ... "

"Virtue," sneered that deadly voice.

And it had come to this again. Hugh turned, snapping the invisible cord that had tethered him to Avon, rubbed his face in despair, held tight, squeezing his own mouth lest some uncontrolled sound should escape it. Had it only been this game all along, Justin playing with him as he had played with men and women over and over while Hugh had known him and before? They were all commoners alike to His Grace of Avon, all pawns.

But poor Vittorio was the most vulnerable pawn here, and whatever happened between the two older men must not harm this shining child. Hugh went to him, stood between him and Avon, put a gentle hand on the bare shoulder. Vittorio looked up shivering, but he seemed unhurt. His skin was unmarked. Hugh looked down at him, but spoke to Avon. "Will you let the child go, Justin? Since I ask it?"

It seemed a long while before Justin said, "Oh, very well. Dress yourself, boy, and you may have the money on the table, since—" the edge was in his voice again— "it is not your fault you did not earn it."

Vittorio moved like a mouse, darting, freezing, but he got into his smock and pants and grabbed the coins—they lay out of Hugh's sight, since he did not turn, but he heard the chink of them in the boy's hand—and then scurried out leaving the door open. Hugh went to shut it, then faced the Duke.

Justin had arranged his shirt tail over his genitals by now, and managed still to be as poised as if he were dressed for the Court. "Such ceremony, my dear!" he mocked.

"It was you who made such a great matter of your rank, just now." Hugh felt unutterably weary, wanted more than anything for this to be over—or, in fact, never begun. If only he had stayed longer at his call, he would never have known of this, and though he was ashamed he still wished it had been so. "If," he could not help but ask, foolish as he knew it was, "if you wanted to be sucked, Justin, why did you not tell me?"

"You?"

Something broke free then, and the words tumbled out: "I! Gad! Who but I? Have I ever said you nay, Justin, ever hesitated, ever been but joyful to touch you in any way you like? I'faith I would do anything for you, anything with you—how can you not know it?" Hugh managed at last to shut his mouth, on the verge of sheer pleading, so very near to saying how much he was in love.

And Avon said nothing. In the end, Hugh had to say, "Speak to me, Justin, I pray you."

"That you .... My friend, dear to me even when I seem to show you that you are not, that you are willing to debase yourself is no reason I should demand it."

Hugh looked away again, this time at the window where grey light still came in but no rain spattered the glass. "I shall never understand your ... principles."

"I must say yours are more than a little obscure to me as well."

After another pause, Hugh tried again. "What shall we do, Justin?"

Avon rose from the chair, walked over to where Hugh stood with measured steps. He touched Hugh's cheek, and was the man Hugh loved again, until he said, "I suspect we would do best to part."

Hugh closed his eyes. He felt a light, terrible kiss upon his forehead. So Judas must have kissed, he thought, that gently. "Did you whore that boy to bring us to this?" he asked. "Did you mean all along for me to find you?"

The fingertips on his cheek quivered slightly, but Avon made no verbal reply.

Even a moment such as this had to, at last, end. Hugh opened his eyes, and saw the nobleman he knew putting on his breeches with his customary aplomb. The lover was already gone.

* * *

Justin went to Vienna, and Hugh back to London. Fanny Marling invited him to parties, and he attended them; he resumed a fairly normal, though not terribly busy, social life amongst his peers, and felt little impulse to pursue sexual liaisons. The fire within him had burnt up so high, he told himself, that it was only natural it should fall to ash for a while. In time he would find ... someone. He might even marry, as he knew Justin would do if only to ensure the continuance of his name.

Over the holiday season, Hugh visited his family. He reflected that if Justin thought Hugh too moral, it would be better if he and Lord Colehatch never met more than was absolutely necessary. Colehatch deplored the travelling Hugh had done and his life in London, such as my lord knew it. And he knew so little. Hugh thanked his stars for my lord's dull young wife, who kept him in the country to tell her exactly how to go on in all contingencies.

Thus it was simple bad luck that brought Lord Colehatch and his lady to the metropolis just as Hugh became enmeshed in an Alastair family crisis.

Hugh's involvement began on an ordinary morning—save for the presence of his brother, who had arrived while Hugh was still eating breakfast to tell him all about the tasks Colehatch had come to town to do. Hugh was eating, drinking coffee, and making sounds of agreement, but not paying a great deal of attention. Then Hugh's man came in to give him a billet and to tell him that a lady wished to see him.

"A lady!" Colehatch exclaimed. "What lady would call upon a gentleman? Damme, send the female packing, my good man!"

Fenning bowed to Lord Colehatch but did not leave the room.

Hugh, meanwhile, had been attempting to read the billet, which was crossed as if a single sheet was all the writer could obtain though it was not enough to hold all that must be communicated. There seemed to be a good deal about Hugh's past good deeds, his aid to an unnamed person, but in the vertical lines a scrawling shape recurred that Hugh tried to make into another name, but was too evidently "Avon" to mistake.

"I'll see her," he told Fenning. "Please ask her to wait in the sitting room." Then, to his brother, "Thank you, Frederick, for your care for my reputation, but I suspect it is not my own actions that are come back to haunt me but—ah, another person's."

"Alastair's, I suppose. Stap me! Why you must always jump to his bidding I do not know, and he such a wild rake. What is it they call him? Devilus, something of that sort?"

"Something of the sort," Hugh agreed. "I shall give myself the treat of calling upon you and Lavinia later, if you will allow me. You do see that whatever, er, unpleasantness might be brewing, I don't want to see you mixed up in it."

"Most improper," Colehatch said.

"Probably," Hugh murmured.

In the sitting room, Hugh found a woman whose aspect was vaguely familiar. Her dress looked new but not fashionable, and was far too modestly cut to be worn by a nobleman's mistress. On seeing him enter, she rose from the settee and deftly scooped the small child who had been perched beside her to his feet. Hugh was no judge of children's ages, but this one was certainly very young, still in infants' skirts. Yet when the woman curtsied, the child bobbed a creditable bow, and raised eyes of a curious amber-hazel colour to look at Hugh.

Unmistakeably, he was Justin's son. Aside from the eyes, the curve of the brows was exact; moreover, Hugh well remembered the shade of brown hair hidden under Avon's wig, and the child's was the same.

"Mr. Davenant, I am that Madame Bernard whom you knew as Daphne Chattermole."

"I remember you perfectly, madam," said Hugh, who now did. She was the clergyman's daughter Avon had ruined and Hugh helped to find work in Lyons. "In what way may I serve you? I am afraid I had not the time to read your letter thoroughly."

"You were so kind, when we met, as to help me escape from His Grace the Duke of Avon," she said. "Now I am come to beg your help again on behalf of my son Paul."

Hugh would not, himself, have called her flight an escape from Avon, who had already lost interest by the time Hugh had first known about her. The suggestion that a child as young as this—and Justin's own son besides—needed to escape from the Duke was simply appalling. He hoped he had misunderstood; meanwhile, he turned to greet the child. "And you are Paul?"

Paul stared, holding his mother's hand.

Hugh tried again, "You have had a long journey, my child."

No reply. The woman who had assumed the name Bernard said, "He speaks seldom to strangers."

"That is as it should be, at his age. Pray be seated, madam." Hugh took a chair himself, and crossed his legs.

"I must tell you, sir, that the Duke's money and your kind offices have secured me a position as partner to Mrs. Jessaby, another expatriate Englishwoman in Lyons. The shop sells mantles, hats, parasols, and such ladies' things. It is seldom a gentleman comes in, but sometimes ... it is he who will pay, and therefore he wishes to see the things tried on, by the ... female under his protection."

Light was beginning, slowly, to dawn. "And his Grace accompanied a lady into your shop?"

"Not a lady, sir! But yes, he came in quite unexpectedly, one day, and recognised me as I served the young woman. He ... spoke to me, quite jokingly, but I did not like to be reminded, and the young woman did not like to see another noticed. It was quite unpleasant."

Hugh could imagine it. Avon must have been amused.

"I think he liked to see me made nervous. Perhaps he was punishing me for leaving him before. In any case, I saw him in the street when I was going home, and when I took Paul to play in the park, he was there. He was ... different with Paul, not so ... smiling ... like a shark, and I let him talk to the child. And then he writ me, sir, at my very home, demanding that I allow him to see Paul, to educate him, perhaps to adopt him in time. He wants my boy, Mr. Davenant. He wants to take my Paul away from me!" She raised a handkerchief to her face.

Now Hugh remembered that he had found Miss Chattermole extremely tiresome. "Did you tell him that you did not wish him to acknowledge Paul? That you preferred to raise the child yourself?"

She looked at him in horror. "Deny my lord of Avon what he demanded? My experience of him has not been such ... ah ... no, I could not. Could not face him. I thought only of flight, but sir, how shall I do now? All my capital is tied up in the shop, and poor dear Mrs. Jessaby, what will she do without me?" She used the handkerchief again; Hugh heard her sniff.

Evidently, Avon had truly put her in fear—which would please him, Hugh expected. "So you came directly to me?" he asked, wondering what had possessed her to do so.

"No," she said, "no, I tried ... I have been to see Lady Fanny as well." Indignation overwhelmed her, to judge from her flushed cheeks and flashing eyes. "She would do nothing to help! Nothing! She, she laughed at me!"

This was not the first time that Hugh felt the Alastairs deserved their fates. As did this excessively silly woman. The boy, though—he deserved to grow up in what peace he could find. Avon might tire of him. Hugh could not imagine Satanas as a father. Paul would be better without such generosity, and certainly Madame Bernard would be better off back in Lyons selling fichues to women of fashion than wandering the English landscape stirring up scandal-broth and dragging a child in short-coats after her.

"I shall see what I can do, madam. I have not Avon's direction, but when I have it, I will write to him on this head, and ask him to let you be. I doubt I have little influence, but I shall use what I have." He stood. "Pray give me your own direction in London, unless you plan to return to Lyons immediately?"

After getting rid of her, Hugh paid a call at the Marlings', at a wholly unfashionable hour. Lady Fanny scolded him for that more than for his involvement with the Bernards.

"Oh, that! The woman is a fool!"

"She is," Hugh conceded, "but she could do some damage for all that. Miss Chattermole had friends, family—"

"Fine friends, to let you busy yourself sending her to Lyons and never lift a hand themselves!" She nibbled the end of one finger, thoughtfully, a gesture which had been much admired before her marriage, and which Hugh hoped Edward Marling could persuade her to drop. "Lyons, Lud! What can Justin have been doing there?"

Hugh shrugged.

"Well, it was another woman, I suppose, and madam milliner more jealous than afeared, belike!" Fanny tittered, angrily.

"Fanny, need I remind you that Miss Chattermole is not the only woman Avon has been known to ruin? Or to attempt it? Yes, her story is not terribly dire; Justin seems to have teased her but meant nothing but good to the boy—"

Fanny interrupted again: "If he meant to oversee his education, 'tis near as much as he did for me, or Rupert either!"

Now who was jealous? But Hugh would not venture to touch such a sensitive subject. The younger Alastairs' sentiments for Justin were more tangled even than Hugh's own. "People will say," he said evenly and slowly, striving for patience, "that Madame Bernard is but another Jennifer Merivale. Would you have that scandal revived? Would you do Jennifer that disservice? I believe she is even increasing—would you have the ton look sideways at the baby?"

Flouncing, Fanny looked away and bit her lip, her colour heightened. It took a moral cudgel to get through to the Alastairs, but eventually the façade would crack. "I don't know what you think I have in my power to do," she said.

"Don't you know where Justin is now?"

"Still in Lyons for aught I know, or gone to somewhere even more obscure! Perhaps he means to make scandal in every city in Europe! Have you not heard what happened in Vienna?"

"Vienna?"

"Yes, he went there after Rome, I know that much, as, Lud! I am sure you do too, for it was you he stayed with in Rome, was it not? He had not a feather to fly with then, could not even have hired an hôtel. In Vienna he put up in a common inn, until he fell in with—bother, I have forgotten the sprig's name! 'Tis not a great one, thank goodness. Rich, but a new title, you know, and making the noise they all will make, carriages and new-built houses and oh! Everything one can imagine! He took up Justin—a dozen people writ me of it, and Justin himself as well. You know how his letters are. They were everywhere together for a time, and played so deep that strangers were warning me of it! I do not know what business it was of theirs! Or mine, forsooth! I had a deal of trouble to keep it from Edward, for what he would say an' he knew ...."

Her voice was well-trained, and flowed musically enough, and Hugh focussed on its fluid notes as he stared down at his own hands, one on the arm of the chair and the other in his lap. He wondered if the nameless sprig had found the days golden and sweet, if he had quoted poetry to Justin and felt the heat of that mobile mouth, the grip of those hands. Hugh's teeth clenched on bitterness; the juice burned his throat.

"...won his whole fortune, Hugh, the whole of it! The poor young man was so crushed, they say, he could scarce hold up his head as he left the hell, and what came to him—well, I've a dozen stories of that too, for every letter and whisper has it different. But this I do know, the boy's shot dead. By his own hand, or in a duel, or by accident, but he's dead and Justin is rich as Croesus again. Faith, one must believe his nickname, for he has the devil's own luck!"

"With cards," Hugh said, his voice a croak, but he cleared his throat then and Fanny seemed to take no notice.

While he was wrestling his emotion, however, Fanny had one of her moments of shrewdness. "Oh, Hugh," she said, "with all this money coming to the estate, the lawyers must be busy. You should go to them an' you want Justin's direction."

This was such plain good sense that it concluded their interview, or nearly. Hugh bent over Fanny's hand, taking his farewell, and she said with a little laugh more natural than any he had heard all morning, "It's kind of you, Hugh, but so strange. What do you care for the Alastairs?"

"Justin is my friend," he said, as he had answered Colehatch so often. But then, as he would not to his staid brother, he burst out, "But by Gad! Why must he do these things, Fanny?"

Her blue eyes opened wide, and she seemed genuinely astonished that he should ask. "Why? Why, Hugh, because he can."

* * *

Fortunately for Hugh's peace of mind, Avon did not advance any such excuse when he responded to the letter which had apparently reached him with some speed though in a circuitous manner. He said he was desolated that the effects of his indiscretion had troubled Hugh a second time, and authorised any reasonable promises Hugh cared to make to the former Miss Chattermole to put her mind at rest, "and you are ever Reasonable, my dear Friend, so Sure you will give her such assurances of my Indiff'rence as she seems to Need. But pray do not give her any further Moneys, for my Lawyers have been Busy about the Matter and Gain 'd the lady's Consent to an Allowance, her Apprehensions of Me notwithstanding."

Thus began a correspondence that Avon seemed to value—to Hugh it was invaluable—and that followed the duke's peripatetic travels over the next year. Avon went to Holland, where the fields of tulips fatigued him and all the women looked, he said, like milkmaids; then down the Rhine and through the Black Forest, "Picturesque as a snuff-box painting, tho' far less trouble, my Dear, to peer at it in one's Hand than to Lose oneself looking up and Thinking the Sky gone forever"; crossed the Alps "Wrapp'd in furs and yet Near Frozen, so that I agreed Far too Eagerly to be sledg'd down a Mountainside like so much Firewood and still near lost the Tips of my Ears to the Cold. Had they been Bobb'd, what a new Fashion I might have Establish'd!"—arriving at last in Venice where he won yet more money in the ridotti of various Venetian nobles and dallied with masqued ladies "and some who might have been Ladies had their Births suited them Better." Hugh puzzled over that last, wondering whether Avon had meant men dressed as women or merely women of little fortune or name.

These letters were like a distillation of the Justin Alastair whose friendship had made London festive, without the troubling physical magnetism. As he read, Hugh felt the sense of humour by which Justin mocked himself as well as the rest of the world, without seeing the sneer and lifted eyebrows that conveyed a contempt his words did not; his letters showed a sharp mind, observant eye, artistic spirit. The little sketches jotted into the margins of the letters were vivid, though Hugh did not, perhaps, appreciate them as they deserved. They reminded him too much of Justin's Roman sketchbook.

Avon himself appeared to have forgotten, or did not consider worth recalling, their carnal affections. He made those sketches, as if he had never made or had never shown Hugh the "Sleeping Adonis" drawing. He sent little gifts—a wooden box carved with flying bees, an amber-beaded mask, a copy of the poems of Catullus—each oddly reminiscent of their affaire but accompanied by notes that never mentioned it.

Hugh could not forget, but in time the memories ceased to give that pain which had kept him away from Avon. In time, as well, his own ardour began to return, and he looked with pleasure at the forms of those around him, storing up a particularly fine leg, hand, shoulder, hindquarters, or set of privates as he noticed them, to recall later as he handled himself. He remembered the men he had kept with fondness and lust, and began to consider hiring rooms for that purpose again.

Meanwhile, Hugh's valet Topsell gave his notice. The new man, Lewis, was far younger, so Hugh said plainly to him, "I hope you have no great ambitions, or in the long run we shall not suit: I do not follow the extravagances of fashion, will not study embroidered stockings, drape lace past my fingertips, or wear patches on half my face. I am no Puritan, but these are all the jewels I like to wear, all the heel I like to stand on, and if you try to coax me to dress more, I shall grow cross."

Lewis' eyes were wide, which made him look still younger; he bowed and promised faithfully that he did not dream of dressing the most fashionable gentleman of the haut ton.

At first, Hugh noticed Lewis no more than any other valet he'd ever employed. He stepped into the offered breeches and stockings, stood for the adjustments of his jacket, was powdered and brushed, had his shoes buffed, in the same all-but-somnolent state in which he had stood for such treatment since childhood. The figure moving round him to do these things was nearly invisible. Lewis was quiet, as Topsell had been, and Gage before him. He was neat-handed. Hugh's clothes and trinkets were always in order. These things he saw and praised, as he might have noticed a footman who was especially deft.

The footman, however, would have accepted with wooden composure anything Hugh chose to say to him, while Lewis was perceptibly pleased, even colouring and fumbling a little with whatever his hands were occupied with at the time. It dawned on Hugh gradually that his other valets had not straightened his coat across his shoulders and back with quite such close attention, smoothed his stockings as thoroughly, or lingered so long over cuffing them on his knees just so.

One morning he looked down at the neat brown head as Lewis knelt over those stockings, running his hands up Hugh's calf yet once more and tugging the cuff another fraction of an inch, the other hand cupped warmly on Hugh's ankle, and Hugh thought for the first time how those hands might feel elsewhere. "I shall want a bath this evening, Lewis," he said.

"Yes, sir," Lewis acknowledged. "The footmen will bring the water after supper, if you wish."

Hugh reached out and just touched the sturdy cloth on Lewis' shoulder. "You will bathe me," he said, though as a rule he bathed himself.

The curve of Lewis' mouth relaxed and curved a little, and he licked his lower lip as if nervous. "Certainly, sir." Hugh swallowed at the glimpse of pink tongue-tip.

He was no Earl of Castlehaven, whose debaucheries among servants and his own family were still notorious. Hugh could not force, and would not even overpersuade, for his own pleasure depended on the eagerness of his partner. Yet while the bath was being filled he had to turn away, stare sightlessly out the window, fiddle with the tassels on the drapes, for the ringing of water against the tin sides of the bath was making him so hard that he feared everyone in the room would know what he wanted.

Lewis' fingers brushed Hugh's neck as the wig lifted from his head. Hugh's coat and waistcoat were tenderly removed from behind. He looked up at the carving over the lintel while Lewis untied his neckcloth, unfastened his shirt, then knelt to take off shoes and stockings. There was no concealing Hugh's turgid yard now: Lewis rose, undid the waistband button, opened and skinned down the breeches, but Hugh said nothing and Lewis was as impersonal as if there were nothing unusual about his master's excitement. Perhaps there was not, Hugh thought with sudden compunction. There was no telling what any previous employers had required of the young man.

So Hugh held back. He did not touch Lewis even to steady himself as he lifted one foot, then the other, and was bare from the waist down. He pretended that there was no bobbing phallus between them. Lewis took off his shirt and put the clothes away. Hugh stepped into the tub. They had not spoken since the footmen left the room with the empty water cans. The dull sounds of Hugh's movements against the tin, the swish of the water, seemed louder than the cries and rattles in the street. He leaned against the back of the tub and closed his eyes. Breathing in the scents of the bath oil and the nearby fire, he tried not to think.

Soft sounds and movement next to the tub made him look. Lewis had taken off his own coat and rolled up his shirt sleeves, collected sponge, cloth, dipper, and soap. There was a can of clean hot water left for rinsing, and into this Lewis dipped the cloth, soaped and lifted it, dripping, to Hugh's shoulder. Hugh inhaled sharply at the first touch of wet heat on his skin, the slight roughness of the fabric as it dragged down onto his chest, leaving a cold trail. He stared at the man's hand and furred forearm. The candle was across the room, and the fire was behind Hugh. Lewis' arm moved in Hugh's shadow, the rolled fabric bluish against brown skin. Hugh watched the muscles move, the water run down Lewis' wrist, and jumped as Lewis' other hand touched him, pushing his back away from the tin.

Hugh raised his head, tilting it slowly back and letting his eyelids sag shut. He was held between the bare hand cupping his shoulderblade and the cloth rubbing his hardening nipple. The hand in back moved, stroked down nearly to the waterline. He opened his eyes again. Surely Lewis was redder than the firelight alone could make him? His lips were slightly parted, air puffing in faintly audible breaths. His lashes shaded his eyes. He washed Hugh's stomach over and over, hand moving into the water and out again, the back bumping Hugh's erection and the water swirling around it. Hugh's hands clamped on the edges of the tub, held hard.

The washcloth was withdrawn. Hugh heard its wet slap against the side of the water can as it was draped there. A voice that sounded young and strained said, "Sir?" and the hand that felt so assured settled on Hugh's wrist. Moved up to his elbow and down to the base of his fingers. He let go his death-grip on the tub and let his muscles soften under the touch. Lewis' mouth was trembling. He would not meet Hugh's eyes.

"Touch me," Hugh said, "only as you wish ... but in any way you wish."

"Oh," said Lewis, and immediately reached for Hugh's yard.

Hugh's hand followed Lewis', toyed with the fingers that gripped and fondled him. He held Lewis' wrist, smeared the oiled water up to the rolled edge of his sleeve, slid back down, gripped the bones of the wrist again. "Faith, I want this in bed, if I may have it. But I—I want you to wash me. Everywhere. I've thought of it all day long." His other hand, damp but not dripping, moved up to Lewis' face. The side of Hugh's thumb swept to the corner of Lewis' mouth and onto the rougher cheek, then back.

"Kiss me," Lewis whispered. "Please ... sir. This cannot be real."

"It is," Hugh said and leaned as far as he dared without upsetting the tub. Lewis met him halfway, however, and they kissed. He tasted as clean as fresh water, and Hugh stopped feeling at all like Castlehaven, under the passionate clutching of his valet's hands.

It was a very long time before the footmen were summoned to take the water and the bath away again. Hugh began to spend much longer getting dressed and undressed. Lewis bloomed, showing a happy sense of humour and acquiring a propensity to hum or even sing softly about his work.

"Do the other servants notice how different you are?" Hugh asked one day, watching him.

Lewis met Hugh's eyes in the mirror, then turned and kissed his cheek quickly. "With them I am no different," he said.

Hugh asked no more.

* * *

Part 5

Wages of Vice, Part 3

Sat, 18 Jul 2009 15:52:28 GMT

See Author's Note and header
Part 1
Part 2

Hugh's eyes opened when there was but a dim, underwater light making its way through the drapes at the window, and he looked up, only slightly bewildered, at a ceiling he was certain he had never seen before. Swags of fruit and blossom were worked in fine white plaster all round the edges, and in a lozenge in the centre was a little fresco, or perhaps a painting merely, of flower wreaths and cupids. He remembered going to bed with Alastair—he felt he never could forget that—but he did not recall so much as a smudge over Justin's shoulder that could have been all this decoration.

But then, he hadn't noticed the rough-planed floor in the private room with May until afterwards, either, though it had left splinters in his knees.

Across the room, near the window, was a washbasin and ewer, and Hugh sat up slowly, preparatory to going over to it.

"Ah," Justin's voice was as urbane as he had ever heard it, "you're awake, my dear."

A true gentleman, Hugh thought, getting to his feet and feeling like a changeling. He could never have managed urbanity himself, naked and smelling of the spendings of their bodies. In fact, he could scarcely bear to look at Justin's face, but forced himself to turn.

One lean white hand lay in the space Hugh's body had just occupied; Justin was staring down at it, propped on one elbow. His mouth drooped just a little, giving him an unwontedly pensive look.

"Good morning," Hugh said gently, but Justin seemed to have nothing further to say. After a moment Hugh went to wash, jumping only a little as the cool water bit at his skin, especially where Justin had bitten before. "May I use this towel?"

"Do."

But then, all Hugh's ingenuity showed him only the two options of resuming his clothes or going back to the bed, and Justin's manner had still not given any clues as to which choice would please him best. Hugh folded the towel, for something to do.

"I think," Justin said, "that I shall go to Avon, spend a few days there. I ... have had a letter from my bailiff."

"I hope 'tis nothing—"

But before Hugh could choose a suitable adjective, Justin was speaking again: "Do not concern yourself, my dear Hugh. I'm sure it is nought but triviality, and the country is too fatiguing even to consider at this time of year."

Hugh set his lips hard. It was not as though he had been angling for an invitation. He began to pick up bits of clothing and to put them on. Underwear. Hose. Small-clothes. Justin watched but did not speak. Hugh felt humiliated. He tucked his shirt in with jabbing, angry movements, turning over comments in his mind, discarding them.

"Hugh."

Justin was sitting on the side of the bed, still naked but looking far more poised than Hugh would have expected. And still so attractive that Hugh wanted only to take these clothes back off and ... but there was no point in thinking of that.

"It would be out of character were I to make a pretty speech at this moment."

"Yes," Hugh conceded, "I suppose it would be."

"You are too good, my dear, to hold a grudge."

These rôles Justin lived by were sometimes simply tiresome. Hugh took a breath, let it go. "I know your sentiments, I believe," he said at last, "so I suppose I do not need to hear you state them."

"I knew when I saw you in the undergrowth at St. James's that you must be omniscient." Justin smiled, almost naturally.

So beyond these immediate choices—clothes or not, stay or go—Hugh must always have in his mind that he could only suffer Justin Alastair to assign the rôle of Good Angel to the faulty man he knew himself to be—or he could leave the Alastair stage, probably for good.

* * *

He decided to stay as long as he might.

Justin went to the country, then came back. He did not call upon Hugh immediately, and Hugh worked hard to seem only as friendly as the duke could find unexceptionable. With Avon, he became more and more the dull man full of propriety that his friend seemed to expect; he played the part elsewhere and found it useful. It pleased his brother, certainly, when he visited town. Though Colehatch would not have liked to hear Hugh say so, the moral rôle functioned in a way quite like Justin's devilry, in fact, in that it provided an identity apart from the vagaries of fashion.

And for his other needs, there were always the mollies.

There was something he made very sure that Colehatch did not guess.

That French-bred Scotsman, whom Hugh thought of as Charles Stuart and Avon always spoke of as King Charles the Third, tried and failed to take the English throne. That Avon had been somehow concerned was obvious to Hugh, but the duke confided nothing. Presumably, whatever he had been doing, he did not feel his friend could have any relevant moralities. There was horror enough for the most bloodthirsty in the sights and stories one could not avoid. Perhaps Justin was protecting Hugh from further horrors. Hugh wished he would not, but there seemed little to be done about it.

Fanny married; Avon played deeper and grew wilder, and Hugh looked on in despair. Admonition was useless. Now he saw the worst drawback of the part he played: it was the very nature of Satanas not to listen to the good angel's advice. Justin smiled, called him "my dear," told him he was omniscient, and pursued his own way to perdition.

And the women ... actresses and girls from the country, maids and dancers and women of the streets, young gentlewomen of little fortune—two of those, Avon ruined and left with some monetary provision but no reputation, and Hugh found himself tracking down an obscure girls' school in Edinburgh and a mantua-maker's in Lyons, so that the young women would have lives in which to use the money Avon had provided. Alastair, of course, laughed at Hugh's efforts, claiming he should found instead a Home for the care of cast-off ton mistresses, "Something prettier than a parish poorhouse, but just as beneficial to Society."

"You'll be calling the girls who sell lavender off the streets next," Hugh said.

"Not such a bad idea, my dear," the Duke replied, wrinkling his brow as if in thought, turning his hand to see the sparkle of a new emerald ring upon his hand. "They would be no affront to the nose, at least."

"By Gad, I wonder you have no nose for the moral stink you leave."

"If you are begun to pass personal remarks, I will leave you, beloved," Avon said, and did, though it was nearly his normal time to go, so Hugh did not feel too snubbed.

It had been fear that Hugh had seen in Justin's downturned face, that morning under the painted cupids. Fear of his own passion; fear of Hugh's; fear for the life he was used to and the part he knew how to play. But now Hugh was the one who was afraid, for it seemed Alastair was actually trying to destroy himself.

Mistresses meant nothing, Hugh told himself, furiously. Indeed, Hugh himself kept rooms for the use of whatever young man he was most taken with at the time; there had been a number of them, all in their twenties or early thirties and most lean and dark-haired, with some education and often a drawling manner. Hugh understood his own compulsions, and had never touched a young man who did not already have a similar inclination to Hugh's own. As Justin had said in the park, that long-ago night, to have a lover—a mistress—or use a whore was only what nearly every man in Society did. But Justin seemed driven to more and more risk. When he chose a light-o'-love, she was the most demanding, the one most likely to make a loud scene in some place she did not belong; when he flirted with a well-born girl, it was the one who was most foolish and unprotected. When he returned to the practice of sodomy, which Hugh knew he still did from time to time, it was in the most public venues, as if he thought being an Alastair placed him beyond the reach of the law or of scandal.

Hugh came to the point that he could no longer bear to watch. He moved out of his London lodgings and broke with the current young man, bade goodbye to his other friends and wrote Justin a carefully-considered, much-revised note saying that he would be staying with his brother in the country for a few months and then would probably go to Paris, and he was Justin's very obedient servant and fond friend.

Thus matters stood when Justin Alastair, Duke of Avon, cast his eyes on Jennifer Beauchamp, a woman who would have none of him, even when he tried to abduct her.

In unaccustomed defeat, Justin had fled all the way to Paris. To Hugh, who tried not to let the triumph of that absorb him to the exclusion of the help he wanted to be to his friend.

Avon had attempted an evil thing, but the outcome had hurt him so deeply that it would have been cruel to chide him. There was scandal enough to have given three noblemen ugly nicknames, though Avon's had already been secure. Colehatch wrote; Hugh destroyed the letter. Fanny wrote what people were saying to Hugh rather than to her brother, so intensely did she feel their disgrace, and as she was herself at the Marlings' country home, the worst of it would never reach her in any case. Hugh forbore to mention most of it, but one piece of ton news he was forced to give: "Fanny tells us that Jennifer Beauchamp has married Anthony Merrivale."

"Has she indeed? I cannot say I am greatly surprised. It was he, you will recall, who rescued the lady from my clutches."

Avon's voice was the same, or only very slightly rougher. His mannerisms had not changed, though he was perhaps gentler, especially in his dealings with women. But his eyes were dark and tragic as tarns, the lighter glints in their hazel hue gone. Anyone who knew him could see his grief. A few Parisians had already asked questions of Hugh. Shortly they would begin to ask Avon, if they had not begun already. Lady Fanny and Lord Colehatch were not the only ones who would write letters.

Hugh made a decision. "I weary of Paris, Justin. What say you to travel?"

Avon shrugged. "What destination had you in mind, my dear? I can walk to and fro about the earth with the other devils, but you ...."

"Rome," Hugh said.

"Ah, perfect. Decadent Rome ... Rome of the Holy Father." Avon thought, and laughed a little, softly. "The contrast is a pleasant echo of the two of us, Davenant. Yes, Rome is the very place above all others that I find myself longing to visit. I am right to call you omniscient."

Hugh strove for the expected moral observation, and could do no better than, "Rome may be good for you; I hope it will be. I think it may. For though Jennifer would not marry you, Justin, I think she may have made you."

"I doubt I am not so plastic, but I am willing to try your Roman remedy, my dear Hugh."

* * *

Some weeks later, Hugh sipped chocolate and watched Justin over the edge of the cup. The other man looked tired still though he had emerged from his bedchamber but a half-hour past. He raised his quizzing glass to look upon an inoffensive dish of bacon, his mouth set in a discontented line.

"Surely," he murmured, "Italians cannot eat this ... burnt offering ... in the morning."

"No, I fancy this is meant to be an English breakfast." It was the same they'd been served since they arrived. "Have a roll, Alastair. They are fresh." Hugh wondered if Justin were suffering the effects of too much wine the night before, but drunkenness seemed unlike him. The trouble was probably elsewhere. "Were your losses so heavy, then, last night?"

Justin regarded him for some moments under half-lowered lids, the pause speaking more frankly than his words: "Pray excuse me from the labours of calculation, this early in the day."

If the duke could be stared out of countenance, Hugh had no desire to do so; he put his cup down and took up knife and fork to begin on his own rasher. He could see in his peripheral vision how Justin sat back in the gilt chair, arm outstretched to lie casually upon the table. A metronomic clink of silver to china announced a rare restlessness.

"There certainly seems to have been some cosmic mismanagement." Justin's voice sounded merely thoughtful. "According to the proverb, I ought to be lucky at cards."

A sudden exasperation choked Hugh, unfair though he knew it was. "Self-pity does not suit you, Justin," he admonished before he could stop himself.

Justin's brows rose. "I beg your pardon," he said stiffly. Then, after a pause perhaps meant to let both their tempers subside, he went on, "Indeed, I fear I am a poor companion of late, my dear."

"If you would make amends, Justin, eschew our social invitations and accompany me among the antiquities today. If you please," Hugh added belatedly.

But the duke saw fit to be amused. "Shall I bring my sketching-book? Watercolours? Oils?"

"Your company is all I ask." And that was all too true.

They rented a donkey for the day—not to carry sketching equipment, which neither brought, but for their luncheon al fresco and for the services of the donkey-boy as guide. He was a charming youngster, like a shepherd in a painting, or even a young David—his hair in tumbled dark curls, his skin brown with sun and rosy with good humour and the effort he expended, climbing the slopes and stairs before them while chattering over his shoulder in broken English. He led them far afield from fashionable haunts, and Hugh was glad to go.

Late in the afternoon they stopped on a hillside that overlooked a pretty pattern of red roofs and white walls. Heated with their walking, by common consent they both stripped to shirt-sleeves, and half-reclined on a blanket, between them wine and bread, grapes in a bunch and a dish of oil. They tore and dipped the bread like peasants, drank the wine from glasses that the hôtelier had wrapped in napkins with many admonishments to the boy to keep them safe. Hugh praised him for doing so, and he wandered off to climb a nearby tree and have his own, still-humbler meal. Cicadas whined, their high voices loud and soft and loud again as if the wind played them, a discordant Aeolian harp.

Justin was wearing an informal wig, short and unpowdered like Hugh's own. A drop of sweat had escaped it, slipping down from temple to chin and hanging there for an instant, above the open neck of the linen shirt, then dripping into it as Justin leaned forward to pluck a grape. Then he looked up, and was for a moment very still, his eyes an amber better than richest gold.

Hugh forced his gaze away, down to the little hills and valleys of the blanket where the food lay half-immersed. Justin straightened. Hugh extended his hand toward the bunch of grapes and then, nervously, stopped as Justin cleared his throat.

"What are you thinking of, Hugh?" Justin spoke as quietly as if he thought the boy could hear them. Hugh's eyes flicked over involuntarily, but the crotch of the tree was empty, the boy absent—he must have wandered off somewhere.

"Hugh—"

So, surprised out of his composure, compelled, Hugh blurted, "Mellitos oculos tuos, Iuuenti—"

Still softer, the indrawn breath and exhalation. "A Catullus scholar ... I never thought it of you, I confess, my d—" another breath, a swallow.

Hugh was looking now, and what he saw made him sit up, make an awkward move around the food and say, "No more words, then, Justin, pray you—" and kiss him. Mouth. Eyelids. Brows. Cheeks, and then eyes again. In spite of his request, Catullus' words tumbled through his mind, humming louder than the cicadas: Your honeyed eyes, Juventius, if I could kiss them three hundred thousand times, I'd seek them over and over again ... and there was the mouth once more, tasting of olive oil, garlic, wine, and Justin, Justin himself. The grass crunched faintly under the blanket. Hugh moved his hand and clutched a few grapes by mistake; they burst in his hand. He raised his head.

"That is but ten," Justin said, breathlessly, "and they count only if I am the boy." He rolled them off the blanket altogether and set about evening the score.

"Speaking—" Hugh said, had his mouth stopped, and loved it, but held onto the train of thought— "of—mm—the boy—"

"No," said Justin, undoing the tie of Hugh's shirt, "leave me some illusions, beloved. Not the boy."

"No, no," Hugh laughed, trying to pull his shirt free and simultaneously to undo Justin's, "I meant to ask where he'd got to."

"I—" Justin pulled his own shirt off over his head with complete disregard for his wig, which fell askew over one ear— "care not a whit, my dear Hugh. Not a farthing. Let him look on. It will be—" he paused, looked down at Hugh's bared chest and stroked it, absorbed for a moment— "an education." Hand and gaze moved slowly up from rib to pectoral to collarbone, onto the neck that Hugh could not help but stretch out for the touch, around his jaw onto his cheek and back into his hair, pushing his own wig back and off completely. "You've oil on your cheek, Hugh," Justin half-whispered, "here," and licked him.

Hugh's eyes closed as he savoured the caress, and Justin's hand pressed down as his body lifted. "One moment—" the low voice reassured before Hugh could panic, and it was no more than a moment before Justin was back, heat and weight against Hugh. One wet touch after another dotted his skin, cool, and then hot in the same places. Hugh looked, saw Justin sucking where the oil was, and shut his eyes again. A slippery hand stroked his ribs, the other opened his breeches deftly, and then he felt the rough prickle of the grass beneath him and the soft slick touch of the oiled hand upon his swollen yard. It felt so creamy, so silky, that he felt as if he were somehow inside Justin's mouth as well as his hand—"My God!" he cried.

Justin chuckled, the laugh itself as rich as if oiled. "Hardly."

"Don't stop!"

"No, no, I shall not stop," and the callused, slippery thumb swept across a vein, then up the length, and Hugh yipped a little as it rubbed his crown, felt a bubble of his own oil escape. Justin rubbed again, round and round, slid down to the base and up, squeezed and gentled—Hugh made more sounds, purrs and gasps and sighs.

"How you enjoy this," Justin murmured, "I had no notion ... what a love-tooth you have, my dear, my poppet. You work in my hand so ... I am almost afraid to see you ... erupt."

Hugh begged again, "Justin, don't stop!"

"And these soft plums, these alchemist's stones," Justin fondled them with the other hand. "Ah, good, they're drawing up—"

Hugh wanted to laugh, but was too excited, could not spare breath for it when his whole body was wrenched with lust. But Justin would ever be perverse—ask him to be silent and he spoke! Hugh loved the words; they were lifting him farther, pushing him faster, but it was just like Justin to give them only now. "Hold—" he gasped— "hold—" meaning squeeze, don't squeeze, keep me here, let me die in ecstasy ... let me hold you ... "Damme! F-fuck me."

It was the oiled hand that skimmed his perineum, circled the clenched muscle of his anus—that too felt as silky as a tongue, amazingly good. "The oil—" he said, and Justin rubbed with the flat of his palm and all his fingertips before two went in and stretched Hugh wide. Oil and fire both—Hugh gasped again. Justin hung over him for what seemed a long while, nibbling and sucking the skin of his torso, handling his yard, working in his arse. "Now, now, now, now, now," the desperate voice could not be Justin's, so it must be Hugh's own, and then at last Justin was pulling his legs apart and kneeling between them, hoisting, wriggling, until the blunt end of his cock was there, and the whole slid in with ease deeper than Hugh had ever taken it.

Above Justin this time was the sky, clouds blowing and the deepest blue beyond. Beneath them the grass crackled, poked, stung—this was no dream. Justin stroked Hugh still. He stared down, fascinated, as if Hugh were a stranger, or perhaps truly an angel, something wondrous, unexpected. When Hugh came, Justin was still inside him, still holding him—Hugh shouted with joy, and heard Justin's voice murmuring low, puffing out the syllable of his name as he pulsed within: "Hu-Hugh, Hugh ... Hugh."

A long time afterward, half-dressed again and lazing on the blanket eating grapes and drinking the last of the wine, Justin said suddenly, "I believe I must give up piquet."

Hugh began to laugh, and pushed a grape into Justin's opening mouth. "Yes. And whist. Quadrille. Loo. Commerce. And—" he leaned over until their faces were perhaps an inch apart— "Beggar My Neighbour." And kissed that famous gamester, Duke of Avon, until the grape-skin caught between Hugh's teeth instead of Justin's.

* * *

Part 4

Wages of Vice, Part 2

Sat, 18 Jul 2009 15:37:55 GMT

See Author's Note and header
Part 1

He went back. Every day he told himself that he would not; he rode out in the mornings in the fashionable parks and played until evening with the fashionable people, from breakfasts to soirées. The days were filled—should have been filled beyond thought of more—with theatre and opera, balls, salons, and card-parties of the ton where Hugh played the part of a young man of some name and fortune. It was the truth, yet it seemed he covered himself with it like clothing, like a masquerade dress.

Still, he made acquaintances and liked them well enough. And he saw the Duke of Avon from time to time, lean and elegant on the periphery of these festive gatherings. They talked but little, always as if resuming a conversation rather than beginning one. Hugh felt the danger Avon represented more and more, for without distinguishing attention, the older man left an elusive sense of intimacy between them.

It was most often after speaking to Avon again that Hugh went back to the Royal Oak. There he was still mainly an observer. Seraphina had eventually danced with him, and still called him extravagant pet-names whenever they met, but Hugh had danced with others too, observed their sports and even joined in some of their less involved conversations. He was growing used to the way the 'mollies'—for so they called themselves—fondled and made love in plain view of each other, and the way that he, in particular, could hardly sit down without another man taking up residence in his lap.

Once, out of sorts and half-afraid even to lay eyes on Avon from across a ballroom, Hugh tossed an invitation card aside at the last moment, and though dressed for high society, betook himself to low instead. As it happened (or perhaps he had remembered it a little) this was one of the mollies' Festival Nights, of which they had been talking for at least a week beforehand. Hugh arrived in time to see a formal 'lying-in,' something he had heard mentioned but had not believed in.

A man called Long Jess had his hair undone and falling down his back, and was dressed in a woman's night-gown with a cushion under it to mimic pregnancy. He reclined on a rough bench that had been covered with more cushions and a blanket; several others clustered round making much of him, as if he were indeed about to be confined and suffering with it. They held a mug to his mouth to give him drink, petted and spoke low to him. Eventually the 'midwife' reached up under the gown and felt about for some time, Jess' movements growing more and more frantic until he bucked so wildly that the others had to hold him on the bench. The cushion was pulled out and a jointed doll extracted from underneath, wrapped in a cloth and given to Jess to hold and make much of. Everyone chattered excitedly, exclaiming about how pretty, how like Jess, the baby was. There was even a christening, two of the mollies standing as godparents to the doll, and a feast afterward with Jess looking rosy and well-satisfied.

Baffled, Hugh turned to Sweet May, who stood near him. "Poor Long Jess's been so low there 'uz no cheering her," May said. "Her favourite cast her off, another old beau took a wife, and the chandler has been talking of another man to serve the counter. Jess is afeared the chandler knows he's here o' nights, or is a molly, any road, and hardly knows whether to wait to be let go or to leave of his own accord. By God, if ever anyone needed a lying-in, Long Jess's the one." The big man wrapped hamlike hands round his own mug, and drank. Then his low growl came to Hugh's ears again: "'Tis a hard world we live in."

Hugh knew that well enough.

One of May's hands lifted carefully, slowly, as if he feared to hurt Hugh or was waiting for a rebuff; Hugh felt a rough fingertip brush along his cheek, around his ear, dipping under his wig. "What a rich gentleman you be, all in silk and powder," May rumbled. "A hug would break you. In a week more, a month, a year, you'll be gone back to your great world."

This Hugh hoped desperately was true, so he could say nothing —shamed though he suddenly felt by the very shame he had been feeling.

"Little painted doll," and the tone was a caress though the words were insulting, "sweet little marzipan manikin. Will you marry me?"

Hugh shook his head. He'd now seen this ceremony more than once, too, when two mollies said an altered version of marriage vows and then coupled, naked, with the door of the 'marriage chamber' ajar. It was nothing he could imagine himself doing. Not in such a public place.

May drew his hand back, and Hugh reached out and caught it, squeezed as much of it as his own could hold. "Are there no rooms where we might close the door?" he asked in a rush, not wanting to hear his own voice speak the words of his desire. But his blood was burning in him; to go home now unsated was impossible.

A few teeth glinted as May smiled. "There are," he said. "Upstairs. Follow me now, m'lord, and I'll be your link boy there."

So Hugh was initiated to the mysteries of the mollies at last, opened and fucked by May's fingers, made the receptacle of another man's lust. It was a pleasure Hugh had never imagined, something even apart from the rise of his yard, for he was half-limp the whole time May moved within him. Apparently another man lived in Hugh's skin, a wanton creature whose voice rose with the flaring pleasure in his arse, who pushed back and gripped so hard that May's arms bore the marks of his painted nails afterward. His stockings were ruined on the floor of the room May found; his silk breeches were wrinkled and stained; his shirt was soaked with May's pungent sweat as well as Hugh's own. His wig they found afterward under the bed they had not used, filthy with dust. Hugh rose, debauched and laughing, full as a mug of beer with a warmth and foam of emotion he could not catalogue. He pulled clothes from his own body and from May's, and they lay down on the bed and did everything all over again. May was like a force of nature below Hugh, like a cart-horse ridden to the hunt, like a rough ocean under a bobbing row-boat. It was nothing like fucking a woman. It was more like making the world again. Hugh gloried in it.

When neither could move a muscle more, they lay drowsing in the filthy sheets, May's big hand tangled in Hugh's hair. "Do you think this wrong?" Hugh asked at last.

"My lord asks me that?" May's low voice seemed to vibrate in the bed. But then, after a pause he answered, "Nay, there's naught I can see that's truly wrong in it. Is this not my own body that I use? Have I no right to seek pleasure in my own way? I hurt no one. I fuck no one who does not say aye to it."

Hugh sat up. May's warm touch lighted on the small of Hugh's naked back. "You're the one been to university," May said. "If there be sin in this, do you not know it?"

"Aye, I know it," said Hugh. His arse ached and he was sticky all over, dirtied in every possible way. But he knew he would not leave before making an assignation to meet May again.

* * *

"You are a moralist, my dear Davenant." The look Avon shot from under his lashes could have meant anything.

What was this racing along Hugh's nerves? Fear? Did Avon have only to look at him to know his sordid secret? Gulping, Hugh looked ahead, between his horse's ears at the broad pavement before him.

He was riding in the park, had joined Avon by chance, and they had gone one full length from gate to gate and turned to go back. A couple who were definitely not of the haut ton had emerged, dishevelled, from the narrow covert between this stretch where the horses passed back and forth and the slope to the Serpentine. The man had his hat in one hand and a fold of the woman's skirt in the other, and she batted at him and laughed; Hugh had turned away, his face heating, and Alastair had caught him doing so. And called him moralist.

No, Avon could not have guessed. He always looked knowing; only this time, the irony was unintentional. For the night before, Hugh and May had found a spot in that same bank of bushes, and Hugh had learned what it meant to 'get a green gown'—the grass stains would probably never come out of his clothes, and whenever the horse moved, Hugh's tender fundament reminded him exactly what he had been doing.

Shifting uselessly in the saddle, Hugh looked once more at his companion, who was now directing that sardonic smile at a group of ladies mounted but chattering instead of riding. The same wave of feeling washed over him, but now he knew there was no fear in it. He spurred his horse, rode off, heard the other horse follow, his mind still full of that moment's vision.

The slender hands rested casually on the horse's neck, the reins threaded through long fingers. The Duke's wig was unpowdered and lay wood-brown against his neck, where the skin was pale as milk. The shadows Avon's hat cast on his cheek, the dots of stubble there from a beard that must be nearly black, the grip of his thighs against the saddle, the slight movement of the nearer elbow, were bright in Hugh's eyes as if he still were gazing at them. How could he have overlooked till now that he desired Justin Alastair? Now it was a conflagration in his body, a storm in his mind. He could neither outride nor ignore it.

It was a bumpkin's trick to ride so fast in the Park. He slowed, and Avon caught up to him. "Are you well? Hugh?"

And now of all times, Justin must needs use his name. Hugh forced his voice to work. "I—I fear not. I must go, Justin—I m-mean, Avon—your Grace—"

"Nonsense." The horse moved closer, Justin's hand gripped Hugh's sleeve, and the variable eyes looked for once direct and clear. "Hugh." Then some consciousness of their surroundings seemed to return; Justin backed off but said, "I shall ride with you. You are not fit, my friend. The streets are busy." And then with a glinting smile, a resumption of the urbane manner, "Pray allow me to exercise a solicitude for which I seldom have occasion; to provide opportunity for such a rare virtue must be counted to your eternal favour as well as to mine." He waved one of those strong, white hands.

Hugh smiled despite himself. "A new sort of good deed. I have not heard of it before."

"Perhaps I am inventing it." Justin smiled. "It would please my sense of irony to invent a virtue. And for you, my moralist."

For someone who consistently presented himself as dégagé to the point of rudeness, Avon could be solicitous, and proved it when he insisted not only on accompanying Hugh to his lodgings but on going inside and waiting until the manservant had been apprised of what Hugh was forced to call a moment of faintness and a queasy stomach. Avon returned later in the day as well. On that occasion he did not refer to the park incident, but as he had never called on Hugh before there seemed no other way to understand it than as a desire to see that the indisposition of the morning had gone.

He also invited Hugh to supper, promising "a rather more quiet evening than my reputation would suggest."

"Don't put yourself out for me," Hugh said, mouth curving in another smile he could not stop.

"I never put myself out for anyone, my dear Hugh. I do precisely as I wish on all occasions."

So that evening, Hugh did not go to The Royal Oak. He supped at a gleaming table from delicate porcelain plates and drank a light, expensive wine from a crystal glass. The food included fowl in a cream sauce, new potatoes and asparagus but lightly seasoned, and bread which Avon promised was two days old already. The sweet was junket, and Hugh laughed outright. "Do stop coddling me, Alastair!"

"Then," and his host's eyes glinted, "we shall play cards after our port. I doubt you shall not accuse me of coddling you at the card table."

Hugh lost quite a bit of money that night, but did not mind. Avon was good company, and Hugh had never felt such a wit as when he succeeded in making his Grace of Avon laugh. He laughed a good deal himself, learned even more about the ton and the strategy of the card games they played, and felt happy every time Avon said, "my dear," though he knew it was more a mannerism than anything else.

He did not miss the mollies. Coming home, he did not feel dirty, and his clothes were very nearly in the same condition as when he had left. Nor was this like homecoming after one of the society balls, tired and unaccountably lonely.

This, he told himself, was the life he had come to London to lead, and he was well satisfied by it. Sexual congress was not the only thing he needed. Of course it was not.

Every new day as Justin Alastair's friend reminded him of what he had gained by giving up the satisfaction of his carnal appetites. Avon seemed charmed by what he saw as Hugh's innocence; often he brought up one conversational topic after another in order to invoke his own demonic nickname and ask Hugh what the proper moral stance was on this or that subject. Hugh became used to pontificating on these matters without ever losing the sense of how very ironic the habit was.

Almost every hostess seemed to eye him askance, as if asking herself what the wicked Duke saw in the sober Mr. Davenant. Avon's flighty sister Fanny and his scapegrace brother Rupert twitted Hugh even more than Justin did upon his moralities and lack of high spirits. He grew fond of them both, however, and sincerely wished Justin would show them half the warmth he showered upon Hugh himself. Visiting the family seat at Justin's invitation, Hugh hunted and fished and went to the little country-side church; back in town, he danced and rode and went to coffee-houses and clubs; a day in which he never saw Justin was unusual ... though not unheard of.

At one point toward the end of the Season, Alastair vanished for over a week. Even calling on the younger members of the family produced no news. "Oh, fie," Fanny said, "are you come only to speak of my brother?" and pouted until Hugh attempted to flirt with her, though it was obvious from her responses that he was not up to her exacting standard. She let him go as soon as another, younger gallant arrived.

The week was curiously empty, though Hugh went to all the gatherings for which he had been sent invitations and spoke to everyone who approached him. He even made more of an effort than usual to make his own advances, asked some new ladies to dance and invited a few gentlemen to a supper party of his own. He thought of The Royal Oak but did not go. He need not, now. He had put all that behind him.

So he would have been at a loss to explain what he was doing in St. James's Park one evening, on foot, looking at soldiers and dressed-up Cits and wondering if Sweet May or Polly Red Pennant or some of the other mollies were anywhere present.

Strolling back and forth, he could not quite force himself to catch anyone's eye, and at last walked nearer the bushes, half from memory and half from wistful desire. The leaves were fresh and moist between his fingers; the scent of flowers came to him in gusts, as the breeze brought it. He heard scuffing sounds in the dried leaves under the branches, and hesitated, wanting to see and wanting to retreat. And then, not quite behind him but beyond the range of his sight, a kind of gasp. "Oh, it is Hugh Davenant! Whatever are you doing here—how did you stray so far from your accustomed paths of virtue? Come away this instant, my dear conscience." He turned toward the voice and the touch on his arm, and found Avon standing there, his face all alive with cynical amusement at Hugh's naïveté. "Come," the voice dropped, "you will not like what there is to see here."

The words unlatched something in Hugh, and he grasped his friend's other arm. "You don't know what I will like. You— Avon, Justin, what is your business here? What brings you to a sodomite's walk at this hour of the day?"

"What but sodomy?" The voice had grown harsh; the dark eyes were lidded, the chin raised. Avon wrenched his arm away and brushed where any wrinkles might be, the picture of lordly disdain and anger. "Have you not listened in all of this time? Why do you think I have such a name as Satanas? For shady dealings at cards? For using whores as any gentleman does?" He turned away, raised one hand to his face, as if ... Hugh couldn't quite believe the distress he seemed to see ... "Begone then. Go, Hugh. Say nothing. Go."

"Justin—"

"Go!" One hand was flung out, pointing.

Hugh caught it in both his own, brought it to his face, took the glove off and kissed where the tendons stood out stiff as blades. "Justin." The man did not move. Hugh reached, pulling on the arm he held, and though Alastair could have thrown him off, he did not; he turned into Hugh's palm on his cheek and stared as their tense bodies came closer together, within each other's heat, near enough to really see even in the twilight. Justin's eyes seemed darker than ever Hugh had seen them, full of a compunction stranger than the colour. Hugh brushed the long mouth with his own, licked at it, sipped the taste of this man, so different to any other, from lips parted in pure astonishment.

"I'd rather be your temptation than your conscience," Hugh said, low but clear, thrusting both hands under Justin's coat and pulling their bodies together as tightly as he could.

And now the two long hands held Hugh's shoulders, hard. Now the eyes blazed, and Hugh could not tell what colour they were. A hard-muscled leg thrust between his own and he practically lost his footing, but gloried in his own unbalance. Justin's teeth were bared. Hugh's hands reached for the trim curves behind. And faster than an echo, he felt an iron grip upon his own buttocks. "No, no-o," Justin's voice was molten, flowing, hot, a seduction all by itself. "No, my fallen angel, if you are here for me, then it is this beautiful angel's arse that is going to be fucked. And if you are not, if you have lost your country-bred mind, say so this instant, by God! Say so!"

"Fuck me, Justin," Hugh said straight into his mouth. "Satanas. Now."

Justin's fingers were like steel, the nails sharp, and he used his teeth even when he kissed. Hugh would bear the marks of this night for many nights to come. And then, with luck, he would have new marks to bear.

His back was against a tree-trunk, and he was not entirely sure how far they had moved. Coat, waistcoat and shirt were hanging open—his hat seemed to have been lost entirely—he couldn't understand why his small-clothes were yet buttoned. Justin held him there and stared. Then let go, stepping farther back.

"If you have been but teasing me," Hugh said, his voice shattered, "then I shall agree that Satanas is your rightful name."

"No, I—" and Justin laughed a little. "No, Hugh. But for the momentous meeting of angel and devil in sexual congress, surely there should be ... sheets."

Without thought, Hugh grabbed at Justin's wrist and said, pathetically, "You'll change your mind."

Justin twisted his hand, caught Hugh's in return, raised it. "Oh, no, I shall not," he promised, and set his open mouth upon the soft skin of Hugh's inner wrist. The edges of teeth pressed in, but Hugh did not flinch.

* * *

The promised sheets beneath him, Hugh lay knowing himself in the lair of the lion, overpowered even without a touch. And then Justin did touch him, fiercely, possessively, more as if to devour him than to make love to him. It hurt more than it had with May, perhaps because the bigger man had known he must take more care. And yet, looking up at Justin as he rocked, muscles pulling across biceps and chest, sweat making spikes of his brown hair and dripping from features no longer composed—while being shoved and tugged back and forth and glared at by eyes as feral and yellow as the candle-flames that lit them—Hugh had no thought of trying to get his demon lover to slow down. His whole spine felt on fire, and every inch of skin not currently rubbing against Justin seemed wasted. Hugh arched his back, pushed his calves against Justin's sides, slid both hands up the stiff arms, and squeezed the intruding cock.

Justin grunted, and pounded harder, faster, racing to a finish line Hugh could feel as well, though his own little death seemed far off yet. The hair on Justin's belly chafed Hugh's yard but could not enclose it—not enough to push him over, though it was enough to keep him stiff. Then, above him, every muscle in Justin's body tightened, and he gave three short cries almost as rough as coughs and certainly as wordless. Then sagged, slumping down, and Hugh pulled on the sweaty shoulders until he cradled Justin between his legs, on his still-unsated body. It was something just to hold him.

But even that lasted only a few minutes, before Justin mumbled, "Hugh—beg your pardon," and fell to one side, his eyes shut. Hugh licked thoughtfully at his own palm where the salt of Justin's sweat lay, and then took himself in hand, since Justin seemed to have fallen asleep. Brandling with his muscles aching from sex, the smell of it all round him, was an odd sensation. Hugh closed his eyes, to better imagine his lover in action, that short time past. But that made the other man's weight beside him in the bed more rather than less acutely present, and when Justin began to shiver, Hugh knew it at once. With a sigh he let go his turgid member, got to his feet, and tugged at the bedclothes.

"Eh? Uh?" Justin said, and that made Hugh grin widely.

"I knew there must be something that would stop that wicked tongue of yours," he said.

"Hugh?"

"Get up, Justin, for pity's sake, and let me —ah, tuck you in, it seems."

Justin stood, then got back into bed, brushing Hugh's hands away—and then grasped one, hard. "Is this your farewell, Davenant?" He was awake now, the lean face inexpressive, the eyes wary. Hugh could not tell what reply was wanted.

In the end he said so: "I can leave if you wish it. Or stay if you—"

"What do you want? Do you suppose I did this only for my own pleasure?"

Hugh could not think what else he was to have supposed.

Justin sat up. "I'm damned—oh, I suppose I shall be damned in any event, but let it not be said even among the devils that I did a friend such a bad turn as that—" and he gestured to Hugh's flagging erection. "Come back to bed, Hugh, and let me give you ease."

When they lay together and naked in the bed, when Justin's nearness and his scent and the touch of his long body was making Hugh hard all over again, he could do nothing but put his face into Justin's neck and sigh, almost groan. He licked there, where the taste was the same he had found on his own hand, took deep breaths and asked for nothing.

"Aye, you shall break my heart, is what you shall do," Justin murmured. "For all that I am rumoured not to possess such an organ. Give me that," and at last the long fingers Hugh had been thinking of, dreaming of, wishing for were touching him. He pushed into them, and the other hand stroked his shoulder and upper back; he clutched and sighed and spent himself in a few bursts, foolish tears rushing to his eyes.

He was laid upon his back, but he didn't dare try to see. He only hoped the light was too low to show the unsteadiness of his traitorous lips, and perhaps it was. Justin said nothing before he kissed them, stilling their trembling with the pressure of his own firm mouth. Afterward the deep voice said only, "Sleep," a command easy enough to obey.

* * *

Part 3

The Wages of Vice, Part 1

Sat, 18 Jul 2009 15:26:14 GMT

See Author's Note and header

Léonie Alastair, Duchess of Avon, had been so much younger than her husband the Duke that none of their acquaintance had imagined that he would outlive her.

Yet so it was. At the age of fifty-one, that lively and self-willed lady had insisted on riding to the hunt, had fallen from her horse on a jump she had made safely countless times before, and was taken up insensible. She never woke, though several prominent members of the medical faculty examined her, and rubbed their chins wisely over her case. Not a one of them could help her; not a one but was glad to leave the sickroom dominated as much by His Grace's icy gaze as by the dying woman's laboured breath; not a one but felt lucky to escape with his life from the Marquis Vidal's fury at their inability to heal his mother.

Between them moved Mary, Lady Vidal, calm and courteous, self-controlled and gentle. She brought food and drink to Avon, where he sat in his wife's chamber; she cared deftly and affectionately for the still, thin body that had housed such a vital spirit; she soothed her husband's rages, gave him to eat and drink, and led him to his rest of a night; if she grieved, it was in private.

At last the Duchess' struggle was ended. Many were the mourners who gathered at her obsequies, French and English, young and old. The little churchyard at Avon was a field of unrelieved black, wavering with each knell of the death bell like grain bowing in the wind. Lady Fanny Marling, the Duke's sister, clung to her son John and hid her face in his shoulder; Lord Rupert Alastair broke down and sobbed like a child. Indeed, little Barbara, Vidal's daughter, wept more because her great-uncle did than for her own grief for her Grandmama, the loss as yet incomprehensible to her. Mary used her own black handkerchief sparingly. She could not yet afford to let her sorrow show. Lord Vidal had so adored his mother that he could scarcely bear to speak to those who ventured to offer condolences, and was useless as a host to those of the family who were staying at Avon.

His Grace the Duke, however, was very nearly his usual self. He spoke to this one and that, switching with well-bred ease from English to French. As usual, he gave orders to his major-domo and conferred with Mary over the allotment of bedchambers. He drank neither more nor less than was his habit, and his mien was ever cynical and remote. Even now, as mourners moved in his drawing room and consumed his sherry, their voices could be heard hissing the consonants of his old nickname: Satanas. Indeed his composure seemed scarcely human.

At last, the guests who lived in the area or were staying at local hostelries departed. The Saint-Vires and Alastair connections went to their elegant beds. Mary, with a deep sense of relief, left Hugh Davenant sitting with Avon in the library and led her husband to their chamber. At last. She could take her hair down now; she could loosen the stays that dug into her body; she could remember the dead woman, who had been more than friend to her, and much better than the phrase "mother-in-law" could suggest. She sat at her dressing table and put her hands over her eyes, able at last to weep. As if her tears gave a permission he had needed, her husband knelt beside her chair and wound his arms round her, pushed his head into her body, and began to cry as well. It was a dreadful, whooping noise he made. But, she thought as she cradled him in her arms, better that he make this sound than that he keep silent and let it toll and echo all within.

She wondered if the Duke had yet allowed himself to mourn. Unlike the guests who had been shocked by his cool manner, she knew how he had adored his wife. Davenant, the best friend the Duke had, might be able to bring him some comfort. Mary prayed it might be so.

* * *

"Justin," Hugh said quietly, not for the first time.

The tall, lean figure in the opposite armchair stirred. In the dim light of the fire he might have been the far younger man whom Hugh had first known: he had worn powdered wigs then, but now his hair was white whether he powdered it or no; the stillness that had once been affectation now was weariness. The slender hands that lay upon his lap were thinner, the knuckles larger, and the skin if seen in daylight was as translucent, as flecked with tiny dark spots, and as full of faint wrinkles as Indian gauze ... but they had always been just as white, and the ruby ring upon one finger burned with the same fire as ever.

So did his Grace of Avon's eyes, when they focussed on his friend.

"My dear Hugh, did you speak?"

"I did. You are fatigued, and no wonder. Let me call Gaston."

Avon put his hands on the chair arms, set his jaw, and pulled himself to his feet almost smoothly. "I may, as unlikely as it always seems to me, be seventy-five years of age," he said, "but I am yet able to ring a bell unassisted. Pray, Hugh, do not consign me to my dotage for one moment of abstraction. I shall call my valet when I want him, and not before."

"As you wish." Hugh remained seated.

Avon took the few steps to the hearth, leaned upon the mantle and stared down into the fire. Hugh cast about for an unexceptionable topic of conversation.

He said at last, "How very large Armand Saint-Vire has grown."

"Every time I see him, he is more obese," Avon replied. "I thought when he came to Vidal's wedding that he—Armand, I mean—could grow no more gross, but now he makes the whole of the Hanoverian cattle-byre seem positively lissom in comparison."

Hugh was long accustomed to ignore anything Avon said which could be construed as political comment. "His son Bertrand is a comely youngster, though."

"Oh, he takes after his mother. Too much so. Not one of my female connections has such airs and graces."

Unaccountably, Hugh felt stung. "He seems a good-hearted creature. That manner is mere fashion." He felt as though he reached out and straightened his composure by force. "In any case, Justin, the court manner in our own day was amply full of airs and graces, if of a slightly different kind."

"Mine was," Avon admitted. "Yours, beloved, was not. Ever."

If anyone else had spoken with that curling lip, Hugh would have known himself insulted, but now he smiled quite genuinely. "Shall I ever forget your chicken-skin fan? Gad, you flirted with it, Justin."

"Dear March. He wrote begging me to use it, as I am certain you remember." Avon shook his head a little, his mouth in a reminiscent curve. "Even after my marriage he sent me gifts until it was a positive embarrassment."

"You, Justin? Embarrassed?"

But it almost seemed he was, for the long white fingers sorted through the objects on the mantelpiece, moving a figurine, opening and closing a box. "I rarely admit to error, as you know," he said at last.

"Indeed," Hugh said dryly.

Avon threw him a glance. "Indeed. But I was wrong .... I feared my L-, my little Duchess would find the situation an embarrassment. But instead it amused her. She must always see the packages March sent and laugh over his letters."

Hugh put a hand to his forehead, shading his eyes, a prey to conflicting emotions. He could see in his mind's eye the merry face which he too had loved, though not as Justin had. He wondered whether Léonie had known how her amusement forestalled what might well have been a danger, for all Justin's disdain for the gifts themselves. In the rôle of Satanas, Avon had ever been one to take what was offered him.

"March," Hugh said, heard roughness in his voice and swallowed before continuing, "March had an uneven taste."

"Precious. He would have adored Bertrand."

In fact, March's manners had been a good deal as Bertrand's were now; this reflection made Hugh smile though his eyes were still lowered.

"Your memory is far too exact, dear Hugh—" Justin appeared to read his mind. "Allow me this one privilege of age: to waste my meagre remaining time deploring the follies of the young."

"But you have always deplored folly, Justin. It is your chief charm."

* * *

Hugh remembered how that remote amusement had drawn him before he even knew the name of Justin Alastair. Fresh from the country, baffled by the quick, allusive talk and the rainbow-hued clothing of the ton, Hugh felt trapped in an aviary: everywhere a flapping, screeching, ruffling, squawking din. Almost he agreed with his brother, Lord Colehatch, who had bidden Hugh stay at home or go into some decent profession such as the army, rather than waste his energy and endanger his virtue in the city—but no, Hugh had no aptitude toward a profession and refused to remain under Colehatch's thumb forever. But the social whirl was confusing, he had to admit. Avon was the one still point in the chaotic storm of this first party.

The man stood to one side of a black marble mantel, one hand placed upon it as if to show off its graceful, pallid shape. White hand, white lace, white powdered face and wig—against this fashionable pallor his brows and lashes seemed nearly as dark as the marble, and the black satin patch on his cheek shone. On a girl, the patch and the indentation it rode would have been coyly flirtatious. On this man, it was sardonic. The wide-lapelled and -skirted coat was the colour of dried rose petals. Its sleeve rippled as the man lowered his arm, the muscles under the cloth as obvious as a lazy lion's.

Hugh's own hands and feet were suddenly twice their normal size and made, evidently, of wood. He could almost hear a hollow clop as he moved. The man in rose-pink watched, lids drooping over eyes the astringent colour of tea. Hugh bumped into a small inlaid table, jostling a vase of flowers and a porcelain figurine.

"Perhaps," said a quiet voice as if they had already been talking for some while, "you could contrive to knock that simpering shepherdess off the table entirely. It would be a great relief to me."

"I don't think," Hugh responded, "that I could bump into the same table a second time. Not with convincing innocence."

"No?"

The syllable was uttered indifferently. Hugh had the strange impression that he ought to feel abashed or offended, but he did not. The pause which followed was also odd in that it was not so awkward as might have been expected. If this silk-clad and obviously high-ranking gentleman, some years older than Hugh, did not want an introduction, Hugh was obliged to accept the snub and move on. Yet he stayed.

Nor did his companion seem at all discommoded. Instead of turning away or offering a set-down, he took a step toward Hugh and made an elaborate bow, sword as high behind him as a cock's tail, one hand waving a lace handkerchief that bore a pleasant, spicy scent. Hugh, rather stunned, bowed in return.

"Permit me thus unceremoniously to solicit the honour of your acquaintance." But the man fell silent after that. He evidently was of high rank indeed.

Hugh bowed again. "Your very obedient servant, Hugh Davenant."

"I am Justin Alastair, Duke of Avon."

"Your Grace." Hugh was surprised, began a third bow, and caught himself, not wanting to seem servile. "You honour me."

"Not at all." The response was pure convention, but it was with a sort of elegant mischief that Alastair continued, "As there will be many to inform you."

Indeed there had been many. Previously all but invisible, Hugh was now besieged by interlocutors whose conversation turned inevitably to the Duke of Avon. Even the hostess, who after all must be acquainted with the nobleman, asked eagerly if Avon had seemed pleased with the company, wanted to know what they had spoken of (Hugh forbore to mention the shepherdess), and chattered about what a rakish, wicked creature the Duke was.

"Then I wonder you invite him." Hugh's irritation at last made him blunt.

"Oh, all the world invites him. An Alastair, after all! I am sure one may meet him anywhere!"

An attitude such as this was exactly what Hugh had scorned a few short weeks ago, in the country. He longed for that clarity of vision now. He wanted to believe that either a gentleman's behaviour showed his principles and made him a profitable acquaintance, or ... or bad behaviour made him unworthy of society's notice. But he felt Alastair's fascination himself, far too strongly to deny.

He knew exactly why the bright birds chirped to each other about the lion but feared to approach too near his jaws.

Hugh had no engagements the next evening, and after supper his rooms seemed dark and close. At last he gave up trying to choose a book, rang for his man, donned tricorne and cloak and gloves, stowed purse and card-case in his pockets, grasped his cane, and went out to walk the city streets.

The sky was still all alight with the long rays of summer evening. He told himself he missed the countryside, and indeed the London air was 'fresh' only in contrast to the smoky chimney in his sitting room, or the bedchamber which seemed dusty and unlived-in though he had been there a week already. The streets were foul; the river fouler. Still, it was this ceaseless bustle he had sought, and he looked curiously at carriages and shop windows, street-vendors and errand boys and pages, windows full of flapping curtains and area railings where men bent to talk to maids stealing a moment at the kitchen door. He caught a glimpse of green ahead of him and thought he had reached the park, but it was St. James's Square.

He skirted the railed-in garden, its ordered rectangles of blossom, its shapely topiary. Ducking down one side street after another, he looked at the blank white faces of the houses. Then all at once, some yards before him, he noticed a white, bell-like skirt floating down the sidewalk, a tall powdered head, the whole figure bright as a flag under a red cloak. She could not be a lady, not out alone at this time of the night; she did not look to be a whore, and in any case this was hardly the neighbourhood for such. Hugh, curious but cautious, followed her. Had she looked over her shoulder, just then? Was that little smile meant for Hugh? She turned a corner; he turned after her; she was just vanishing into a doorway under a hanging sign. As it was now nearly dark, Hugh had to walk nearly to the door himself to read the painted words: The Royal Oak. A public house, then.

He was, by this time, thirsty enough with walking—and excited enough by the intrigue—not even to pause before he went in.

Inside was a bustle and chatter even fiercer than at the ton party. The white and red figure was clasped in someone's arms, being thoroughly kissed. "Princess!" someone else cried, from farther inside the room. "Fie! 'Tis far too long since you have come to us to be married. Have you taken the veil?"

The kiss broke off as both participants began to laugh—and the high-dressed head of the creature in the white dress tilted back until Hugh could see a working adam's apple as a deep roll of laughter came out of the rouged lips. "Never, my Polly!" said the man in woman's clothing. "I'll never give up all the pretty gentlemen!"

"Ah, Seraphina," said the taller man whose hands were still clenched in the fabric of the red cloak. "You've been too long away. What'll we give your Highness for it, eh?" And he playfully slapped at the skirt over the Princess's buttocks.

"Why," Seraphina wriggled provocatively in the man's arms, "will you punish me for my own misfortune? And when I've led a new young gentleman to our pleasures here?"

Suddenly Hugh was the centre of attention.

"And who is the cub, eh? Who can vouch for him?" Seraphina's partner broke free at last of their embrace and came a step nearer, towering over Hugh now. A carter, he might be, or even a blacksmith. Hugh, a tall man himself and no stranger to self-defence, felt he might yet be outmatched. He clutched his stick and stood his ground, not even asking himself whether he might not just slip back out the door and away.

"Oh, but Sweet May, is he not a lovely little gentleman?" Seraphina swayed, sending the skirt back and forth with a swishing sound, pouting. "La! Look at those shoulders, that shapely leg, that fresh complexion! He must be a country Cupid. May, my dear, my pigsnie, don't hurt the pretty fellow. I want to dance with him."

When May lifted his chin it cleared the top of Hugh's head. The big man glared down and said, "Who are you, then, and what do y' here?"

Hugh swallowed. "I am a gentleman. Is this not a public house? I came for a pint."

There was some laughter. "Ah, Princess Seraphina, he scorns you."

Seraphina came closer to Hugh, leaned in. The scent was a woman's; the planes of the face were, on closer inspection, plainly a man's, and a middle-aged man's at that. Hugh thought he should pull away, but did not—could not. The so-called 'Princess' fascinated him, held his eyes, and when the lips parted that were nearly as red as the cloak, Hugh took a swift breath as if he could do so only when they gave permission. That mouth was so near his own, now. He could see grains of powder and the pores of the skin beneath. Seraphina kissed him, lightly. He did not return the caress but did not recoil.

"Not an informer, then?" May asked.

He answered, but dully, looking still into Seraphina's eyes. "No ... informer?"

"Precious plum," Seraphina cooed. "It wants a pint? Shall have one. I picked you up and I shall give you to drink."

It was like a dream. As they came to the bar, May kissed his cheek, and so did at least two of the others; they called him "Sukey," gave him a seat at a heavy, scarred table which could have stood in any pub, and set a foaming pint before him. When he had drunk it, Seraphina coaxed him to pull his chair out and then perched in his lap, thighs sinewy and hard. The weight was heavy. The others talked vociferously of people they knew and things that had happened to them while Seraphina laughed and joked and kissed all over Hugh's face. All the voices were deep though Seraphina's were not the only skirts spilling around the sides of the chairs. Half of what they said sounded like fairy stories. Miss Beatrice of Bath had got herself a green gown and sat in the stocks. Letty Swift danced at a masquerade with a Magistrate. A soldier and Jenny Tailor had been nearly caught in the choir stalls of St. Paul's, and only their shirts hanging down covered their pindles. Poor Lady Harriet had gone to Battersea. "Bad news for Miss Clover—has anyone seen the lady?" asked one man, and "No, methinks he knows his days are numbered, for he's tedious poxy already," another replied.

Hugh's head was spinning as if he'd been drinking far longer than he had. Seraphina leaned to one side and slid, nearly falling but that Hugh caught the trim waist, and for that he was kissed much harder, a hand burrowing through the skirts of his coat and finding his confined penis.

This was sin he was committing. Allowing to be committed ... on his own person. And it was vulgar as well, lewd and public and wrong, wrong, wrong.

And his yard was engorged with blood already, Seraphina's fingers only teasing it further, until Hugh moved in his chair despite the other's weight. He groaned, unable to say no or yes or stop, or even to ask where a bed was, a question that seemed more urgent to him every moment.

"It isn't time to be married yet," Seraphina spoke in his ear, still stroking. "Oh, how strong, how lovely. It's hard, sweet and hard for me, just the way I like it ... Lud! Sukey, you are a wonder, you are."

Remotely, Hugh heard a fiddle tuning, scraping, and then furniture being pulled this way and that ... rhythmic sounds and music ... men were dancing, just as Seraphina had predicted, but the princess did not rise from his lap, just went on murmuring obscenities into his ear and loosening his clothing, feeling everywhere as if to rob him.

But the only thing Hugh was losing was his soul.

That, and the spendings he left in Seraphina's hand.

* * *

Part 2

Saving fic from Geocities, one at a time--Author's note for "Wages of Vice"

Sat, 18 Jul 2009 15:16:31 GMT

There are half a dozen things I should be doing, including writing other fic, but a kind rec I read while looking for new reading in the Heyer slash fandom reminded me that there was a hella lot of coding in "Wages of Vice" and that I didn't really want to have to redo it should I miss the Geocities closing (for which I have now heard two or three different dates).

Fandom: Georgette Heyer, These Old Shades and Devil's Cub; I mostly ignore That Infamous Army
Pairings: Justin Alastair, Duke of Avon/Hugh Davenant (and others, both canon and with OFCs, both m/m and m/f)
Rating: NC-17
Warnings: Canon character death
Summary: Hugh's relationship with Avon influences most of his life. Whether the influence is so strong in the other direction is more uncertain.
Part 1
Part 2
Part 3
Part 4
Part 5
Part 6
Part 7

The novels of Georgette Heyer of course belong to her estate. I am not among the owners. This is pastiche, and not meant to divert profit from anyone to whom it ought by legal right to go. Certainly no monetary profit accrues to me.

For purists, I should clarify that I have messed with the post-novel timeline because I cannot make the math work out for everyone's ages (clarifying the dates I did use was hard enough); also, Avon's eyes are described as hazel in These Old Shades, and as grey in Devil's Cub. On the grounds that hazel eyes can look grey, I am keeping them hazel.

I owe a great debt to Rictor Norton, from whose book Mother Clap's Molly House, I learned any actual facts that appear here about the gay subculture in 18th-century England (including the notion, very odd to slashers, that lubrication was not so routine as we like to write). There was a real place called The Royal Oak, and a real person known as Princess Seraphina and as John Cooper; they appear in English court records (in separate trials) of 1725 and 1732. I know very little else about them. Here I invoke the principle that characters in this fiction are not meant to represent any person living or dead. An original character also paraphrases the statement to arresting officers by William Brown in 1726: "...I think there is no crime in making what use I please of my own body." (For those interested, Norton also has several articles from Mother Clap's Molly House online at his own webpage,.

I've been complimented on my research in this story, which is lovely, but inspires me to clarify: ALL of the preceding paragraph is from Norton's book. I did look up stuff about women's underwear of the period and about Vauxhall, but that's mostly it. I mean, it's not like I looked up the trial records!

Rare Slash: I Write It

Wed, 15 Jul 2009 03:02:39 GMT

Title: "In Vino"
Fandom: To Serve Them All My Days, novel by R. F. Delderfield, PBS miniseries adaptation
Pairing: Ian Howarth/David Powlett-Jones
Word count: 3681
Rating: PG-13
Warnings: war images (WWI)
Disclaimer: The characters in this story belong to the estate of R. F. Delderfield and the BBC copyright holders for the script. I have quoted around five minutes of dialog, but this story makes no profit and is meant as tribute to the performance of the actors and the storytelling of the author.

Author's Note: Much though I love the book, Alan McNaughtan's performance of the role of Haworth makes the miniseries so much slashier that I just had to write this.

In Vino

Ian Howarth was not one of those sentimental nincompoop schoolmasters who choked up at the eloquence of Shakespeare, or any other writer, for that matter. He had nothing but contempt for those who flew easily off the handle, like that Frenchman Ferguson, or showed off their tender patriotic hearts, in fact dressed them in little uniforms and took them on parade with bagpipes howling, like that idiot Carter. Schoolboys who started crying while he had them on the carpet soon felt the lash of his sarcasm. In a few cases he felt compunction afterward, but he simply could not bear trembling lips and imploring, brimming eyes--they made his stomach roil and his breath catch with rage.

So one would think that Bamfylde’s school “sausaging” on the occasion of the Armistice would be nothing but an ordeal. One would think that the sad excuse for a sausage on his plate would be inedible while the boys sang soldiers’ lyrics reminiscent of the more inept passages of Kipling and the less flowery effusions of Elizabeth Barrett Browning. One would think that the sight of David Powlett-Jones, the one veteran among the faculty, trying to slip inconspicuously along the whole length of the head table to the door while looking at the wall, would be just one more folly to observe and congratulate himself that Ian Howarth would never make such an exhibition of himself.

Instead he got up and followed. And when he found the boy (only, after all, a few years older than the Sixth-form singers at the front tables) bent over as if he’d taken a football to the solar plexus, why on earth did Ian not retreat? He could shut the door, he thought, leave the youngster to his privacy, get back to sawing the withered object on his plate into masticatible chunks. Instead, with an involuntary, terrifying false grin stretching his face, he tried to chat. “Ah, hullo there, Powlett-Jones.” How horribly banal. “Saw you sneaking off, my dear chap.”

Powlett-Jones pulled himself up and turned completely away, one hand to his mouth. He trembled all over and his shoulders hitched. Yet Ian’s mouth just kept yawping away with no help from his brain: “Obliged to you for the hint. Bit … much, I felt? Still, one can‘t blame them.” A convulsive sniff was the only reply. “Look,” he said, shamed. “Just say the word, and I’ll go away.”

“No,” only a whisper at first. Then Powlett-Jones pulled an unsteady voice from somewhere and went on, glancing over his shoulder, “No, it’s all right. I thought it was over. Feeling that way about it.”

“Here,” said Ian because he could not weep, “why not come up to my rooms? Nothing elaborate! I simply propose to drink gin at a slow and steady rate until I lapse into total unconsciousness.”

This got what was meant to be a bark of laughter, then another sniffle or two. “Yes,” Powlett-Jones said, “yes, I should be delighted.”

After that, Howarth simply led the way past the kitchens and out.

His rooms were claustrophobic with the detritus of housemasters past plus his own accretion of holiday souvenirs, Christmas gifts, and books. At least Herries, in his capacity as Headmaster, had sprung for two good leather armchairs, and Ian had worn one of them enough to put an antimacassar over the back. He waved Powlett-Jones to the other one and provided him with a water glass a third full of Plymouth Gin. The boy drank it almost like water, too.

“You’re forgetting the ‘slow and steady’ part of this plan,” Ian said.

“Ah, sorry! I learned to drink like this over there,” Powlett-Jones replied. “What spirits we could get on the lines were so vile, you didn’t want to give a mouthful time to soak into your taste buds.”

“I shouldn’t have thought strong drink in the trenches was such a fine idea.”

“No. Once--” His breath hissed in, and he didn’t continue with what had happened that once. “But then, the water was often bad. Flux didn’t do much for us either. And the liquor kept out some of the cold.” He shivered with memory. Ian offered him a cigarette, and he took one.

"I’ve heard--” and Ian too stopped himself before anything too inane had a chance to come out.

But he‘d already said too much, apparently. “Yes, heard!” Powlett-Jones said bitterly, pointing at him with the barely-lit Gold Flake. “Hearing is all you could do here! Don’t I know it! That’s why--”

“Yes,” Ian put in, “yes, but isn’t it--” and was interrupted in his turn.

“Of course I don’t want any of those boys, those babies, to know what it’s like out there, freezing mud and bits of men you knew hung on the barbed wire and--”

“Powlett--”

“--and the shelling all night and screams you hardly could tell from what direction, yours or theirs or some bomb on its way down and the sobbing in the night--”

“--my dear chap--”

“--and the rats, God, the rats.” The liquid leapt in the glass, he was shaking so hard, and then he seemed to notice and gulped it down though the glass clinked against his teeth, then pulled fiercely at the cigarette.

“My dear chap,” Howarth repeated softly. “It’s over.”

Powlett-Jones breathed out smoke, sighed, then titled the glass and looked into it “So they tell me,” he said. “Sorry. I suppose I haven’t the proper English stiff upper lip!”

“The hell with that,” Ian said, irritated. “I hope I’m not such a coward that I can’t bear simply hearing about suffering. It’s you, what it does to you to say it!”

Powlett-Jones stared at him. “That’s kind, Howarth,” he said. “But saying nothing’s corrosive in another way.”

“Then say what you like.”

But Powlett-Jones was silent.

“Here, I’ll get you another.” Ian poured for them both and poked at the fire into the bargain before Powlett-Jones spoke.

“That‘s what Beth said.”

“Who?”

“A girl I met. A nurse, actually.”

The resentment Ian felt surprised him. “So you opened your heart to her?” He pictured a pretty young thing, smoothing the sheet perhaps, or that forelock that liked to fall onto Powlett-Jones’ forehead. Ian’s free hand clenched on the chair arm until the leather creaked.

Powlett-Jones shook his head, then tipped it back against the leather. “It’s odd, but when she said that I didn’t need to any more. It was the same just now, with you,” and his smile was charming, shy, young and open.

It was Ian’s turn to gulp from his glass. Then he pretended the feeling in his chest was only the burn of the liquor. His mind raced in circles for a joke. “You Celts, so perverse,” was the best he could do, and he felt the blood in his cheeks, with the echo of the last word.

Powlett-Jones’ little crack of laughter was real, this time. “I suppose so,” he said and turned his head toward the fire. He sipped and stared at the flames.

Ian lit a new cigarette of his own, keeping his eyes on the match until it was tossed in the grate and gone. He drew in smoke for a minute or so before trying again. “Do we seem terribly provincial and sheltered, then?”

“Oh, no. Or, to be honest, yes, but not so much about the war. Nobody who hasn’t been in the trenches knows about it, or wants to. It’s taking me more time to get my head round the rest of this--” He gestured around the crowded, dingy little room. “This’d be the height of giddy luxury at home, but I know you don’t think so.”

“No!” Ian was the one who snorted with laughter now. “I certainly don’t.”

“What kind of people do you come from, Howarth? If you don’t mind my asking?”

“Nothing special. Mother a prebendary’s daughter, father a doctor. Like something out of Barchester Towers.”

“You see? Imagine what that looks like to a miner’s son.”

“Nobody cares for that, P-J. Not when they meet you.”

“Oh, some of them do!”

“You mustn’t hold an empty-headed vegetable like Carter to the standards of the vertebrate creation.”

Powlett-Jones laughed again, then drank. Ian tapped ash off his Gold Flake and sipped.

“M’father was an atheist,” he ventured. “Said that when you’d seen babies die of dysentery and measles, there was no sense trying to believe in a merciful God. I inherited it, you might say. But there is something I do believe. The dead demand that we remember them.” And then, very deliberately, “They’ll haunt our nightmares if we don’t.”

“They do that! Oh, they do.”

“Then tell me about one of them. Just any one, and make sure you won’t dream tonight.”

“I thought the gin was supposed to take care of that.” Powlett-Jones stared at the glass he had lifted in illustration and said as if surprised, “Oh, it’s empty.”

Opening a new bottle, Ian poured him another, but pulled the drink back just as Powlett-Jones reached for it. “The story?” Ian asked, and Powlett-Jones smiled again and took the glass.

“It’s two men I’m thinking of,” he said. “They both went west. I think you reminded me, taking me under your wing just now when I was piping my eye. Just after they promoted me, this was. We got raw recruits to replace three of our dead men, and one of them was Jimmy Easterly. He was a little scared rabbit, rather like Meredith, remember him?”

Ian nodded. “Of course I do. The Lower Fourth nearly drove him to a nervous breakdown.”

“They did that! Well, imagine him in a trench. He cried every night for his mam. It’s one thing to hear a snuffle or two, but he got on everyone’s nerves, he did. A young thug named Fenton used to try to kick him to sleep, but his mate Henry Harper stood up for him. One night I remember getting up for a sip of water and seeing Harper with Easterly fast asleep on his lap, just like a little babby. I’m not sure he didn’t have his thumb in his mouth.” As he spoke, Powlett-Jones slipped almost imperceptibly down in the chair, his tie working itself askew above his waistcoat, until his elbows on the chair arms were nearly at shoulder-level. “Well, we were taking a pounding around then. Barely held the line, and little Easterly was wound up so tight I thought he’d snap any time. I noticed that, ironically, I wasn’t hearing him cry in the night any more. I was afraid to say anything, thought he’d be spooked back into it, but I decided to take a look the next time I had the energy to get up once I’d had a kip.” He turned his head to look into the fire again--it had burned down a bit--and the light bronzed his hair and lit sparks in his eyes.

After a lengthy pause, Ian asked, “And did you?”

“Yes,” Powlett-Jones said, and grinned self-deprecatingly. “I don’t know why I’m telling this.”

“Because I asked.”

“You did, didn’t you? Your own fault then. So I did wake, and just lay for a moment trying to tell myself I was curious enough to leave my warm, and I could hear an odd sound, wasn’t sure what, a kind of squeak or grunt or something.”

The point of the story swept over Ian as if someone had dumped a pail of water over him, and he sat bolt upright.

“Yes,” said Powlett-Jones with a glinting grin. “I spied the two of them, at it right there in Easterly’s pallet, his back to Harper’s front and trou’s round their ankles, and the men around them either fast asleep or ignoring it. I was all green, Haworth, green as leeks, and I stood there like a stock trying to work out whether I ought to put them on report or what.”

“And--” Ian had to clear his throat and start again. “And did you?”

“What d’you take me for, then? No. They gave each other a bit of comfort, that’s how I saw it, and I was never sorry, for they both bought it within the week. So what good would having them court-martialled have done?”

“None,” and Ian sat back again and regarded the other man with approval.

Powlett-Jones seemed to misinterpret his silence and said uncertainly, like a Fifth-former rethinking an answer in oral revision, “Things went on there, you know, that wouldn’t do if they happened, oh, here.”

Ian left the cigarette in his mouth, rising to get another refill. “You really are a very tolerant young chap, Powlett-Jones.” Had that sounded too heartfelt? He made his voice still drier as he poured into one glass, then the other: “Very civil of you to sit there, and drink my gin and smoke my cigarettes, listen to my maudlin indiscretions.”

“That’s all right,” said Powlett-Jones, and then as if he’d only belatedly heard, “You haven’t been indiscreet, have you?”

“Not yet! But I feel the urge coming upon me,” Ian said. Nothing like the true word spoken in jest.

The thing to do, he thought as he handed back his guest’s glass, was to try to think of himself at that age. It seemed a lifetime ago. At that age--ah, of course. “Powlett-Jones, do you know Heine?”

“No, I don’t think so.”

Turning toward the fireplace, Ian was stopped by Powlett-Jones’ “Is he in your house?”

Ian had to look to be sure he wasn’t being ragged. “Good God, no. What a strange chap you are! I was referring to the poet. The German poet. Irony again, you see.” He stood straighter just remembering how he’d memorized and recited Heine, especially “Enfant Perdu”: “’But wars and justice have far different laws,” he declaimed, “And worthless acts are often done quite well;/The rascal’s shots were better than his cause,/And I was hit--and hit again, and fell’--appropriate, wouldn’t you say?”

“Appropriate to the whole generation.” Powlett-Jones put out his cigarette.

“And,” Ian said, lifting his glass as if toasting, “ironic.”

Powlett-Jones still looked a bit puzzled. “I thought Heine wrote a lot about love.”

“Oh, he did.” Ian sat down, suddenly weary, and let his head fall back to look at the little crack in the ceiling above the door. “He most indubitably did.”

“Indubitably,“ the boy repeated.

Amy’s young face came into Ian’s mind again, prettier even than her brother’s, though it had been a near thing. He’d said Heine’s poem to her, and he repeated now, “’The old dream comes again to me;/With May-night stars above,/We two sat under the linden tree/And swore eternal love./Again and again we plighted troth…Ah!’” He suddenly threw his cigarette into the fire, and when Powlett-Jones stared, Ian could only mutter, “Tch! Burned my finger.”

“Howarth, have you ever been married?”

“No.” He swallowed. “You?”

“No.” Powlett-Jones’ head fell back as if in despair.

“I nearly was,” Ian confessed. “When I was about your age. Seemed just the thing, what with the Heine, and so on, you know. I was very naïve at your age.” He finished off his gin with a flourish. “Girl did the right thing, though. Married a stockbroker. Wasn’t the financial aspect either. No! She just couldn’t face the bloody awful prospect of a lifetime as a schoolmaster’s wife, that’s what it was, you see.” He hauled himself out of the chair to poke the fire after all. “Miserable prospects! Bleak accommodation. Thoroughly dispiriting companions.” He looked over his shoulder to meet Powlett-Jones’ eyes for the caveat, “Present company excepted, of course. What woman in her senses would take that on?”

“There’s…Mr. and Mrs. Herries,” Powlett-Jones said, so the nurse was still evidently in his mind.

“Oh,” Ian hastened to say, “that man’s a law unto himself. I‘m talking about ordinary mortals, like you and me. No, if you want to stick it, put all thought of tender domesticity from your mind.” He turned away from the younger man’s disappointed face. “And alone. ’Withouten any companie.’ Treasure the small compensations, P-J. A little temporary power. Toasting your own muffins, not having to share them. Bed socks in winter, snowflaked with sheet fluff. It’s a bachelor’s life, Powlett-Jones, my dear chap, you’d better face up to it.”

The boy was unconvinced, of course, but too drunk to argue. “I’d better go,” was all he said.

“Nonsense, we’re only about halfway through our programme! Neither of us is dead to the world yet.”

“If I drink much more, I may blub again.”

“Well, you’ve a handkerchief, haven’t you? Go to it.” Ian waved a negligent hand. Powlett-Jones glared at him. “Oh, no,” said Ian, “you’re not one of those belligerent drunks, are you? I’ll be sorry I asked you up here.”

“No, that’s Emrys.” It was a sufficient distraction. “Though he’s a bit of it all the time, belligerent I mean.”

“Your brother?” Ian guessed.

“Yes.”

“I,” said Ian as if it were of the greatest importance, “am an only child.”

Powlett-Jones sputtered with laughter, and Ian joined him, the laughter feeding on itself and then fading slowly into chuckles. By that time they were both sprawled in the chairs, legs stretched out, and Ian’s antimacassar was scrunched behind his back.

Ian hitched himself up in his seat. Powlett-Jones stayed slumped; indeed, he looked nearly unconscious. The gin seemed to have hit him all at once. His dark lashes lay against his flushed cheeks. Even his ears were red, and his lips puffed out for exhalations that seemed more like weak whistling. His knees had spayed apart and the tweed of his trousers was taut across his groin.

While the boy’s eyes were closed, what harm could it do to look at him? Ian took note of each detail, from the mussed hair to the scuffs on the turned-out shoes’ toes. And if his gaze dwelt on the parted lips, the bony wrists extending from slightly frayed shirt-cuffs, and the bulge under the tweed fly, who was there to know? Only Ian, storing the vision up for tomorrow night, and the nights after that when he would only have fantasy--withouten any companie.

For instance, Ian could touch Powlett-Jones if he chose. Right now. He could take one step, or perhaps it would need two, and kneel on his own rug between the boy’s legs. If he tried, he’d be able to twitch one fly button after another out of the button-holes without pulling too much. Then it would be easy to slip one hand inside the rough linen pants, and his mind filled with the soft warm flesh he’d touch, draw out, take into his mouth--

Powlett-Jones was looking back at him.

Ian jumped in his seat, the cloth of his own trousers rasping against the too-clear evidence of his fantasy. He was breathing through his mouth, too. He shut it, and rubbed his lips with one hand while the other felt for his packet of Gold Flakes.

“Whatever were you thinking of?” The question was asked almost without inflection, and Powlett-Jones blinked lazily as Ian cast about for an answer.

“Amy,” he lied. “The young lady I spoke of, don’t you know. A long time ago.” He held the paper packet in his fingers, squeezed it, and looked as candid as he could manage.

“And you still feel like that about her?” The boy’s gesture was vague, but Ian knew it must mean the erection that Ian could neither ignore nor force to subside.

“Hm. Yes,” he said shortly.

“After all this time. Does the past never leave, then? Are we , what are we, what does it matter? How much we drink? If I’m still thinking of her, of them, when I’m--” He brought his hands to his face, the picture of despair.

“It’s not that, not like that,” Ian said, horrified. Dropping the packet, he pulled at the arms of the chair, and lurched to his feet, half-falling as he stood, half-stumbling as he took one pace and then another to Powlett-Jones’ side. Once there, though, he didn’t know what to do: his hands went out to the boy but hovered a few inches away from touch, shaking.

Powlett-Jones reached blindly up, met one of Ian’s hands and grasped it hard. Ian let the other settle on the boy’s head, tangling his fingers in the thick hair, helplessly stroking it. After a time, he managed to say, “We’re back at the starting point, I think,” though his voice was rough and its cynical poise quite gone.

Under his hands, Powlett-Jones shook his head. “Not blubbing,” he said.

Ian had meant his own feelings. No human creature he’d known had made him so want to comfort and shelter it. Now the impulse was even stronger than it had been outside Big Hall. From moment to moment he tried to ignore the flashing conviction that his life was changing, had changed already, that he was leaning like a plant toward the heat and light of this young man: David Powlett-Jones, former shell-shock patient and junior master of History and English, with a girl he was thinking of marrying somewhere in the background. What on earth was to be done?

“Let the gin blunt it, that sharp edge,” he told them both. “Let it go, let it all go. Tomorrow--” and there was no bromide ready to his tongue, but Powlett-Jones nodded as if he had produced one.

“Yes,” he said, and unbent his arms, lying in the chair and gazing up at Ian. “May I stay?”

“In this state? My dear chap--” My dear, rang in Ian’s brain, my dear-- “Herries would have my head if I let you go! Imagine stumbling across the quad in full view of the windows….”

But Powlett-Jones only sighed and shut his eyes. His fingers loosened around Ian’s and the hand dropped. Ian thrust his own hand into his pocket, pressing it against his thigh, and stared down at the sleeping man for a long while before pulling himself away and seeking his own cold bed.

SO not a Model

Mon, 13 Apr 2009 17:30:02 GMT

This post explains why I have taken one of my stories off my Geocities site.

At one point, I was intrigued by the idea of SH fanfic as a way to fix canon. (I didn't do that much in any other fandom except, mildly, when I wrote "The Wages of Vice," and I should have remembered, especially, how loathe I was to go back and retouch, say, "The Omega Glory" from Original-Flavour Star Trek...but anyway.) And there was simply no contest if I were asked to choose the most incoherent, illogical, offensive episode in SH: "Starsky and Hutch on Playboy Island," aka "Murder on Voodoo Island," and do I need to say more?

Well, I guess I can say that several people I talked to said the epiosode, in spite of the blackface "entertainment" scene, was on their guilty pleasure list for the frequent opportunity to ogle the boys in shorts, sometimes shirtless, and for one lengthy sequence, wet. If you (assuming "you" might not be in the fandom) ever see SH slash vids, you will probably see a clip or two from this ep.

So, in the quest to resolve the plot and re-vision the race relations and slash the gender politics, I wrote a story. I went to what was at that time the best of the SH research sites, which was less than helpful except for original air dates and some canon-timeline information. The one link Blue had for Voodoo was, if I remember correctly, of the DIY Hoodoo Doll sort. I did a good deal of internet research, and I wrote as sensitively as I knew how, and, um, failed anyway. It took me a long while to decide that I had failed, in spite of all the work I had put into it and how much I liked the descriptive writing and that last sex scene which I am still a bit proud of, and how much I enjoyed the opportunity to write Roscoe Lee Browne's character and LaWanda Paige's character. And to do another take on Huggy. But. There's also the part of my author's note where I elided the fact that my research sites contained song lyrics etc. in different creoles and so were evidently not about the exact same religion. And, um, the end of the note said something like, "No actual chickens were harmed in the writing of this story," for which I just plain apologize.

My conscience has been bothering me about this story since I read in the course of my RaceFail09 surfing about some of the appropriative stuff white YA and children's writers have done with Native American cultures and stories. That hit home because I live in a place where too many white people still think the Potowatomi and Oneida lived in tipis before the traders taught them how to build actual snowproof houses. The story has been niggling away at the back of my mind, and I thought about revising it and I thought about annotating it, kind of a commentary track thing, and I wriggled and fought myself and felt a lot of self-pity (which is particularly absurd in this case because, to be frank, hardly anybody has even READ "Fallen in the Sea" as far as I can tell, except for the person who read the subtitle (Tonbe nan la Me) and told me the French was bad, which it certainly would be if it were French).

I know the connection between a birch-bark tipi souvenir in the Wisconsin Dells and a slash fanfic set in the Carribbean is not obvious, but this is the way my conscience works once it finally starts working. I also thought one recent morning while I was brushing my teeth, "What if somebody messed up the difference between, say, Catholic and Protestant in a story? Presbyterian and Baptist? White Baptist and Black Baptist? And those groups speak the same languages, numbskull."

And anyway, what did I think I was doing with the Voodoo rituals in the story? Would I have written as easily about S&H at Lourdes or performing a Kabbalistic ritual? This reminded me of a discussion thread on some post about how when the X-Files case involved white characters, the solution was bound to be some secret, but rational, conspiracy, while cases with CoC had supernatural causes (No, I don't watch X-Files, so don't ask me, but the underlying privelege point is a good one). Empowering the black characters with real magic was...well, it was meant to untangle the episode's plot, which makes no sense if voodoo cursing does not work (because Starsky is magicked into attacking Hutch) but also makes no sense if it does (since Papa Theodore is much too easy to capture, and the script suggests that Starsky is just being cutely superstitious when he fears Theodore's power). But the effects of the ceremonies in my story include a murder with particularly vicious details, for which I had absolutely no basis in the research I'd done, and the whole idea of spirit-possession in people who aren't even believers is also unfounded.

This was the point at which I realized that even redoing the research and doing a better job wouldn't fix the central flaw, because that flaw is that the WHOLE STORY was based on exploitative appropriation. I cannot fix that ep, because when you take out the offensive bits you really are left with a golf scene and a wall-climbing-in-wet-shorts scene. Revising? Adding more scenes? Making the Magical Negros more magical? Adding a glance back at colonialism and making the Bunnies at the hotel less stupid? Did not help. Damn it. I embroidered very carefully around the fail and just succeeded in decorating it.

To sum up, I trivialized a religion after making a big point at the beginning of my author's note about how it was a really real religion and I totally wasn't appropriating it like the show's writers. Which was Fail. I can't control the googlecache, but I'm asking people not to archive it any more or pass it around.

Teaching Moments, How Not To Do Them

Sun, 12 Apr 2009 05:01:10 GMT

So, over a month ago in Racefail09, Elizabeth Bear said of her relationship to the rest of this particular round of White F/SF Fans Not Getting It,

This thing is my fault, but not in the way you probably think.

It's my fault because I accepted criticism of my book that I knew to be untrue ... because I felt it was important to serve as an example of how to engage dialogue on unconscious institutional racism.

I wanted to be part of the solution, and make it a teaching experience, rather than responding with hurt and defensiveness. I wanted the dialogue to be about racism and how to combat it, rather than about me.

Later, in a comment on someone else's LJ, she added,

It was a choice not to defend myself, and to accept her judgment, and attempt to provide a useful model for accepting criticism.

You know (but except for a few SH fans, you wouldn't), I actually do teach. I model behaviors I want to encourage in my students. I create teaching experiences on purpose, every working day, and though I cannot always make them work, I can guarantee that this is not how to do it.

Models alone rarely work well anyway. One curricular-design researcher I read compared model-centered writing instruction to handing an neophyte shoemaker a finished shoe and some leather and expecting him/her to create a matching shoe.

I wouldn't want to walk in that pair of loafers, that's for sure.

The minimum most people need is an example and an explanation at the same time. So for one thing, "taking one for the team" (euw, but she said it), and then waiting awhile to ~~make excuses~~ add an explanation of what she was doing in another location to different readers, was not going to BE a teaching experience to the white LJ-readers/fellow-writers who are her only conceivable audience for "how to take criticism from readers of color" lessons.

Oh, wait, Bear, "Look, everybody, this is how to respond to a reader critiquing your handling of race" sounds pretty condescending, doesn't it? Unless you're an authority. Thinking you're that expert when nobody actually asked you to teach them, even implicitly? Is making a significant part of the dialog about you. (Even BEFORE the posts about your pain and ... well, more of your pain.)

When modelling in the classroom, I plan time to do it consistently and repeatedly, to meta-analyze ("See, I just related features of the poem's form to its meaning, like the rhyme scheme here"), to invite participation ("Why do you think the line break falls between "We" and "Real cool"?), and to respond to practice performances ("But if this poem is about friends hanging together, why does the poet end by emphasizing death?").

That last is yet another reason for Bear to respond in some way to her friends dropping their pants all over her LJ (and a bunch of other places), if she had really been bent on providing a teaching experience...instead of avoiding the responsibility of classroom management.

One more thing: if I'm modelling a behavior that I want to see my students perform, it's because I value that behavior in and of itself. I do not fake it, or short the effort, or make a half-assed gesture for the sake of looking like I'm trying. I do the REAL THING, because the REAL THING is what I want my audience to learn to do, and because I love and want to do the REAL THING for myself. Having done it, I can only take it back to concede that someone else in the room has done it better ("I never thought of that: let me try again")--and, incidentally, there is nothing so fantastic as that! I dance for the rest of the day when that happens.

None of this is rocket science, or significantly different from the codes of peer-critique used in any writers' group or seminar I've ever seen, so I don't think lacking a background in curricular design is any reason to not get it. Of course, if one considered oneself a shining example of anti-racism in a white person and just wanted to show off and end the conversation before it got uncomfortable, behavior like this would make more sense, including the parts where the white audience (which, after all, is the real one if the goal is to get a gold Not-A-Racist star rather than to "be the change you want to see in the world") could run amok in comments and her main response was to explain elsewhere and at great length how pure her motives were.

Still on LJ

Fri, 03 Apr 2009 16:00:26 GMT

And reading as much of RaceFail09 as I can stand at a sitting, then going on with my other life, then going back for more. (Most concise summary EVER, in that first comment.)

A lot of the discussion, the most important and moving part, has been the perspectives of readers and writers of color; the fact that this is the real heart of the issue has needed a lot, a whole, whole lot, of work to keep on the table so that the whole thing doesn't just slip down the toilet of FAIL. Specifically, so much "OMG consider our white feelings!!!11" has been going around that there's now a whole community to encourage more talk about racism in F/SF instead, of, you know, what a very nice person Failhappy Fails was when I met him/her at a con, while Cocksure Failey and Mr. and Mrs. Pantsless Failton-Smythe are just loyal friends and the lurkers s. them in e. (And for god's sake talk nice, because otherwise I won't listen, having the privelege to turn away and all.)

Meanwhile, um, I'm a white writer who wants to talk about my feelings and how I write characters of color. In other words, I am on the outskirts of the discussion. Which is the right place. Moreover, I don't imagine there's really that much traffic here, especially since it's been three years since I posted anything, so that my big contribution is probably the links above.

Still, I'm posting.

I do write characters of color because we do not live on White Planet. I write characters of various sexualities because we're all here. I write about women and men...yeah, you get it. (Intersex, I'm going to get to in another post, if I decide not to just dump the draft and try to fail better next time.)

I write fantasy and SF because I imagine other worlds, other versions of our world, and I write slash fanfic and historical fiction out of the same basic impulse, since "Starsky and Hutch could be bi, you know (and so could those fighter pilots in Dawn Patrol)" is frankly a fantastic/othering viewpoint, a resistant reading of the real "text"s.

The impulses are alike for me. But there are, there MUST be differences in approach and method. I'm going to spend a couple of posts navel-gazing and self-evaluating about this. If nobody looks, it's still worth doing, and worth doing where I can be called on my shit if I need it and if anybody bothers.

(Offline life note: end of tax season and afterwards of semester may cramp my responding and/or posting style. Comments are, nevertheless, open.)

Hey, I'm Chip Delany!

Sat, 23 Dec 2006 00:46:54 GMT

Hah, that's great! I'll be the author of The Reflection of Light in Water ANY time. And what a handsome beard he has these days.

I am:

Samuel R. "Chip" Delany

Few have had such broad commercial success with aggressively experimental prose techniques.

Which science fiction writer are you?

(Though if only I were quieter (and married), I could have been Ursula K. LeGuin, who...yeah. BEST RITR EVAH!!!11! mad fangirl, here.)

Hi, My Name Is Ranty McRantypants

Tue, 24 Oct 2006 07:46:10 GMT

I should shut up, since I’m not a member of the list this discussion happened on, but…well, the Internet is for porn and the LJ is for rant. Much wanky tl;dr ahead, so be prepared.

Back in days of not-very-yore when I joined Starsky and Hutch fandom, I was surprised at the how many straight-guys-getting-their-boogie-on stories there were in the archives and posted to the lists. It was…quaint, you know? I’d been doing K/S, for chrissake, so it’s not as if I had never heard of the subgenre before. I’ve read Leslie Fish. But the Trek lists I was on had moved on to the next shiny slash subgenre, and there was a minimum of “Oh no I have feelings for a MAN whatever shall I do my virility is compromised and he won’t wanna be my bestest friend any more I must keep this a deep, dark secret until he’s hurt!!!!” Occasionally they cropped up, as in the Mistletoe challenge, which while designed for any old pairing, evoked nearly all Kirk and Spock first-times. Straight guy first times. Angsty straight-guy first times. Well, I suppose surprise-kiss fics would logically work with this kind of idea, but I think it was that set of stories that really got me started analyzing what this slash fanfic stuff was all about. I had some discussions around that time, but nobody could tell me anything about the mysterious power of angsty straight-guy first-time slash fics except that they, as individuals, liked them.

Not that there’s anything wrong with that explanation.

And when they were well written, I liked them too. Still do.

But they have this cumulative effect. I tried to ignore it and just read the stories, but, honestly, it’s like reading all those Harlequin Romances (yeah, I did) in which the woman is always younger and poorer and spunky but unworldly, so she keeps stamping her tiny delicate foot and flouncing off to get into trouble so that the big strong older richer guy can rescue her and tell her that she’s funny when she’s mad. Sooner or later the chant of “ssssexxxxiissssst” in the back of my head Would. Not. Go. Away.

The overload happened in straight-boy slash when I was an SH newbie. I began to engage straight-boy-slashers to find out whether the voice in the back of my head had any merit. Sometimes, I’m sure I was wanky, but I remember a lengthy email discussion with Helen, someone I knew as a K/Ser before finding she was on The Pits too, and I tried hard to be respectful of her views. I just wanted to know what the hell they were, because people saying “Well, I just think it’s romantic” was not helping. Slash = love stories = romantic, as far as I can tell. (I mean, basically. Obviously there are subgenres for hatesex and all kinds of other stuff, but the causal relationship between the characters’ orientation and the concept of romance was just flying past me somehow.)

While trying to think the best of most of my fellow fen, I was dumbfounded by some of the things they said, like the “slashers” at KiSCon who (I was told) said that Spock and Kirk couldn’t possibly be gay because they were heros.

A bunch of stuff happened at the Pits Yahoo group, but one of the things was the Return of Charlotte Frost, with much hoopla. I was excited, and not just because I liked her stuff on first reading. (As it happens, I don’t reread it now.) She posted a bit, and almost right away got into a discussion about why we like slash that was actually largely about why some of us like slash for reasons that completely escape others of us. She said vehemently and many times that it was essential, absolutely foundational, that Starsky and Hutch be straight and then fall in love with each other. She also, eventually, said something else very poignant and suggestive: that in her youth, she had loved Starsky and Hutch because their love for each other was so pure and intense, that the show had given her hope in her dark times, and that this was why she had at first resisted the whole idea of slash fic. But she became reconciled as long as they were not portrayed as gay. Because if they were, then their relationship would be all about the sex, and be completely drained of all the pure brotherly love that she adored about them in canon.

If you haven’t read any of CF’s S/H, the basic pattern is hurt-comfort, in which one of the guys (call him G1 for clarity) decides that the other one (G2) needs TLC and possibly sexual release, so without any initial desire to do anything but comfort, G1 approaches G2 sexually, they start to make out, and within a few pages are fucking like bunnies on crack. Later, G2 frequently says he didn’t in fact want sex with G1 but now that they’ve found out how utterly fantastic it is, they should move in together and forsake all others. There are, of course, other plot elements, but that’s the slash first-time part.

(OK, snarky summary, but can any CF fan honestly tell me this is not a pretty fair outline of most of her slash stories?)

Helen told me also about the high romance that would be destroyed if the guys were having sex because they liked to have sex with other men (and loved each other) instead of loving each other so very much that sexual desire became irrelevant. She also told me that the relationship seemed more stable to her if the guys were straight than if they were gay, because if they were gay, then they might be attracted to someone else sometime and cheat. I hope that’s a fair summary, because it lives in my memory for the parts that were all kinds of WTF to me, and I may be summarizing poorly.

And now I’m hearing, third-hand or so, that Jeylan says Real Slash is Straight Men. I won’t quote because I’m not on the list any more, and it’s invitation-only and all. But from what I hear, the arguments are the same, if not just that little bit more extreme. “Gayfic” is the kind of slash, well, the kind I write and predominantly read, in which the guys love each other as in canon and are sexually attracted, not as some weird anomaly in their lives, but in the same way that any other two people in the universe might fall in love with someone they already felt was important enough to risk their lives for. Jeylan does not like gayfic because it does not show the true transcendence of the human spirit as expressed through love.

Frankly, this kind of talk makes me so, so glad I am not straight myself.

I hope the number of straight women who feel that to be really in love one must deny one’s actual attractions, fall into the arms of somebody you feel platonically about, and hope that the ensuing sex isn’t distasteful is really SMALL. Like, confined to the three I personally know of. I hope they all three had good luck in their own journey to romantic transcendence, I really do. It gives me shivers to think otherwise.

Because looked at dispassionately, I must say I think this line of thought is so whacked that I cannot any longer even call it an argument. Love is only pure if it’s nonsexual, so the reader will enjoy watching it turn sexual because that’s so romantic? Really? It’s nonsexual, so it’ll be more stable when it’s sexual than if it were, you know, sexual. I see.

Only not.

News flash: Gay people actually can fall in love. In fact, I know you may be shocked to hear this if you’re one of the lurkers who support Jeylan in email (yes! I’m told she really did! Say that!) but even bisexual people can fall in love. The feeling is not different from the way straight people feel when they’re in love, from descriptions I’ve gotten from straight people, and if you can believe that a straight relationship can actually last and be committed despite the fact that neither partner is giving up a whole lifetime’s sexual orientation, and you are not homophobic, I do believe logic obliges you to admit that gay and bi people can have a stable, Real Love relationship.

Now the kind of life-altering, overwhelming, transcendent love that is a spiritual experience as well as a physical one is admittedly rare for everybody. I concede that this kind of love is more romantic, and also more Romantic (since my colleague Jeylan brings up the literary/social movement), but I’m not at all prepared to concede that the only way to reach it is to fall for someone whom you would normally never find attractive. I’m such a Romantic myself that I think the most intense experience is the one that engages the person on all levels. I don’t think the only metamorphosis that is meaningful is in sexual preference. I have written slash epiphanies myself, thanks, and I never needed “OMGbutI’mstraightWTF?” to do it, either.

I do think love can change us, renew us, transform us. Usually it doesn’t, in this sublunary world. But I think it can, and I do not think who you usually like to fuck is important enough to be the Big Transfigured Thing in the reborn character’s life.

So I do not write it that way. That’s not the only reason I write my slash couples as bi in most of my stories (I don’t get to read much about bi people, so I give myself that treat; also, it simplifies the relationship between fanfic and canon), but it is a big one. I don’t WANT the revelation that G1 wouldn’t totally mind fucking G2 to be the big point of my story. If that’s what someone wants to read, it’s out there, and there’s no conspiracy to stop it, but I do not do that, and it’s a mercy I’m not on a list with someone who thinks that I should shut up about what I like to write so that she can avoid having to think about the fact that I’m not even the only one who likes it.

*deep breath* There, that’s my wankiness allowance for the year, POOF! Gone. I’ll have to be good now.

Apology

Mon, 29 May 2006 14:25:08 GMT

I've got an early-summer-session class, and it's been EATING MY BRAIN. I'm making this general apology for not answering the feedback people have given me, and ... now I will go answer it.

SH Five Things Story: Ce n'est pas un baiser, part deux

Sat, 06 May 2006 08:06:30 GMT

back to Part 1

Title: Ce n'est pas un baiser (Or, Five Times Starsky and Hutch Did Not Kiss) (Not Really)
Genre: Slash
Rating: PG
Spoilers: through Season 3
Word Count: 4245, in two parts
Author's Notes: The five things meme seemed a way to get something out of the draft story tentatively titled "Basia" because I was reading Catullus in translation, and yes I am a research geek, I surely am. I don't know whether I'll ever excavate the companion story from the messy!demon!that!ate!my!brain!draft. I sure don't own these characters.

Starsky was snoring, too softly to be heard in the other room but clearly audible in here. Hutch went over to the side of the bed but could see almost nothing, so he got carefully down on his knees and stared again. He made out the lines of brows and lashes, the mole on Starsky's cheek, the slight parting of his lips where the snores issued. Hutch's free hand hovered, as it had in the hospital that other morning, but this time he took it back, laid it on the bed where he could feel the warmth of Starsky's shoulder without touching it. Elbow to fingertips rested there, on the rumpled blanket, and Hutch leaned and looked and leaned more.

He didn't ever consciously decide. It didn't feel like a choice at all, but like the working of gravity or fate. His dry lips touched Starsky's eyelid, lifted, touched again on the other side. When Hutch looked, they were still closed, and this time he bent deliberately until the fan of Starsky's breath touched his lower face, until it entered his mouth, still bearing the heady, musky sweetness of beer, almost strong enough to taste. Hutch licked his lips and his tongue just touched Starsky's mouth as well.

He couldn't, really couldn't kiss the man while he lay unconscious. Not hard, anyway. No more tongue. While Hutch told himself so, he just touched his mouth to the slack, soft lips, then nibbled delicately at the upper one. Paused. Starsky's breath seemed deeper, so Hutch did it again. Then he got the surprise of his life when Starsky's lips seemed to close around his--he pulled back, startled. The sleeping man smacked his lips again, sighed, and snored.

Hutch sat down on the floor with a bump, and would have laughed at himself but that he was sure the noise would wake Starsky. Instead he put his head down on his arm and closed his eyes. He should have been at least as wakeful in that cramped position as he'd been on the couch, but before he knew it, the bed was moving and there was a pale, jaundiced sort of light in the room. His mouth tasted vile and when he raised his head, a crick caught in his neck.

And Starsky was frowning at him. Hutch stared mutely back.

Starsky blinked; his brow smoothed. Reaching out, he voluntarily touched his partner for what seemed the first time in days, fingertips resting lightly below one cheekbone.

"You should see the mark on your face," he murmured. "Looks like somebody crumpled you."

There was not one snappy, or even sensible, reply in Hutch's head.

"Hey--" Starsky got up on one elbow-- "you're still out of it, aren't you? I gotta get up anyway--" and he did: sat up, swung his legs over the edge of the bed where Hutch had been leaning, and then stood, bent and hauled Hutch to his feet as if in deliberate reversal of the night before. "G'wan, get in--" and pushed him down again into the warm, tousled bedclothes. Starsky's face changed, though, when he registered that Hutch was holding Terry's bear.

Hutch settled against the dented pillow, still unable to think of anything to say. Starsky took hold of Ollie's other side, seemingly to take the bear away, but didn't pull. "You took that note ... way too seriously, Hutch." The grin was small, a little tight, but the warmth in his bloodshot eyes was real. "I mean. Sleeping next to the bed! Watching over me?"

No, Hutch thought, just managing not to crawl in with you. And he couldn't say that, not now, but he had to say something. "I don't remember," he said, and it was only partly a lie--he sure couldn't remember why he was clutching the bear, or for that matter what had come over him. He did remember the touch of loose, soft eyelid-skin, of slightly-chapped lips, lax in sleep, and he licked his own lips involuntarily.

"Thirsty?" Starsky had no idea, of course. But there was clearly something satisfying for him in taking care of Hutch, this morning, and Hutch didn't mind--or wait--Hutch sat up convulsively, startling Starsky back a half-step--

"The kitchen's a mess," Hutch blurted.

"Oh," Starsky said, "Yeah, I remember now. Aw, shit--" he sat down himself, on the edge of the bed, back to Hutch, and rubbed his temple. "I don' wanna crawl around pickin' it up."

"My fault," Hutch said, but Starsky shook his head.

"Playing in there was my idea."

"We're a pair." Hutch meant the hangovers and the mess, but Starsky smiled.

"Yeah," he said, "we always are, huh?" Then he slapped the covers over Hutch's thigh. "I'm gettin' a shower first," he said. "You sleep if you want."

And, though he hadn't meant to do more than shut his eyes and think for a little while, the rushing water did put Hutch back to sleep. When Starsky came back from the shower, he stared for a while before getting dressed in careful silence.

~~~

Starsky got Hutch home from the airport, tucked him in, and let him fall into the sleep he'd been fighting the whole way in the car...it looked familiar, even though Hutch was in his own bed here and the light was all different. He was still pale, too, shadows under the eyes that were just losing that plague-ridden, despairing look that had torn Starsky up inside.

Sitting on the floor next to the bed, Starsky stroked the hair that lay next to Hutch's face on the pillow. Not quite touching skin. Still, Hutch's eyelids squeezed shut and then flicked open, and he didn't look at all surprised.

"Tuckin' me in?" he asked, sleepily.

"Yeah," Starsky said. "Want the bear?"

Hutch's lips stretched lazily in a closed-mouth smile that was suddenly far too much like the would-be-brave expression he'd worn in the hospital before the pain and fever got to be too much for him. Starsky took a gasping breath, got to his feet, and then Hutch sat up, reached for him, pulled him down again. They hugged for a while, Hutch's voice singing and buzzing in Starsky's ear: "I'm here. I'm here, buddy, it's all right."

"Oh, God, Hutch."

"I know. I'm here."

"You are," Starsky said, breathlessly. "Yeah, you are." He pressed the side of his face into Hutch's, held on tight, just got the feel of him, big, breathing, warm.

Hutch's head slid a little, until his forehead was on Starsky's shoulder, and he said down into the space between their bodies, "You're better than the bear."

Starsky's throat hurt. "Lie down."

Hutch did, closed his eyes again, seeming so at peace that Starsky wouldn't even go on with the tucking-in joke. Though one fingertip brushed the place where he'd have laid a little good-night-nap kiss if he had gone through with it. And Hutch smiled as if he really had been kissed.

Starsky's hands were shaking when he reached the living area and collapsed on the couch. He kept having these weird flashbacks: fear and rage and other feelings wrought so high and so over the top of whatever situation he was really in that he didn't even look at what they were, just did the mental equivalent of balling them up and stuffing them away, sitting on the lid, and it didn't really work for long but it let him function.

Being afraid made him angry--he did know that--but what was there to scare him now?

Hutch's skin under his fingertip.

That was stupid. They touched a lot. They always had. And he'd been so hungry for it while Hutch was quarantined. Missed it so much that he'd had to go in, gloves and mask and all shutting them apart anyway, just for the half-touch through the plastic, while Hutch told him to get out and find the carrier so the doctors could find the cure.

Starsky wrapped his own arms around his midsection and concentrated on balling up, stuffing away, sitting down hard.

But he could still feel not only the real touch but how it would have felt to kiss Hutch, even that silly little bit, like a dad kissing a kid.

Sagging back into the couch cushions, he closed his eyes.

He'd kissed so many people--so many women--and the thing was, there wasn't all that much difference. Some scale, yeah, between the casuals when he concentrated on his own technique, excited as much by the power he felt in himself as by the woman's mouth and skin and soft wet sex, and the serious relationships when he was trying to communicate more than let me fuck you. The kisses he'd given Helen, Sharman, Terry, and Rosie were as sweet and loving as he knew how to make them, seeking out the woman's own taste, herself in her kiss--giving himself. Oh, he'd meant them, those kisses.

And yet they were much the same, as his memories went from woman to woman.

Hutch was ... Hutch was different. Always. From everyone. Never anybody else like Hutch in his life, never ever ... and kissing Hutch, if he ever did, for real ....

But then what? A life like Johnny Blaine's? Hiding all the time, lying to everybody--yeah, even to Peter--though Starsky hadn't warmed to the guy, he could tell he was the kind, well, the kind of mistress who thought her--his--man would get a divorce any time now.

He couldn't do that, and Hutch couldn't. He'd kill anybody who tried to do that to Hutch.

But it wasn't fair. It made him angry and scared him both. There ought to be a woman who was different from all the others. There ought to be somebody else than Hutch who could make Starsky feel like this. But whenever he thought there was--like with Sharman, taking her through the drying-out just like he'd helped Hutch through cold turkey--there was something missing, in him or in her, or the luck ran out that had kept Hutch, and Starsky too, from dying time after time. Oh, it wasn't fair, not at all, that Terry died but Hutch lived.

And that was a terrible thing to think.

He felt so disloyal to both of them that it was just eating him up, corrosive as an ulcer.

Casual? How could anybody think preferring a man was fucking casual! How could Hutch make stupid casual jokes about it? Saying that Starsky wasn't even a good kisser?

There on the coffee table sat that soapy little statue. Must have been Vanessa or Abby or somebody who bought it. Starsky couldn't imagine Hutch picking the thing up in those big masculine hands, taking it to a cashier and actually paying for it. But he had kept it, and there it was, mocking Starsky in a dozen ways, the two girlish little cherubs so near to a kiss but never quite there.

He stood, grabbed his jacket from the hook near the door and got the hell out of the apartment before he picked the damn thing up and threw it right out the window.

In the bedroom, Hutch opened his eyes and stared at the ceiling.

~end~

SH Five Things story: Ce n'est pas un baiser, part 1

Sat, 06 May 2006 07:59:27 GMT

There are sooooo many things I should be doing instead of this. In fact (looks down at time on monitor) sleeping is one of them.

But I just read yet another five-things story (in SG-A, actually) and thought again about that shapeless mess of a story about S&H's first kiss that I periodically pull out and try to write, and maybe...maybe, what it needs is to be a couple of five-things-meme stories.

So let's try that. Here's the first one, which was the easiest since it was just carving out of the huge shapeless mush of scenes that the draft was.

(P.S. Ironically, the POV is pretty mixed here.)

Title: Ce n'est pas un baiser (Or, Five Times Starsky and Hutch Did Not Kiss) (Not Really)
Rating: PG
Spoilers: through Season 3
Word Count: 4245, in two parts
Author's Notes: The five things meme seemed a way to get something out of the draft story tentatively titled "Basia" because I was reading Catullus in translation, and yes I am a research geek, I surely am. I don't know whether I'll ever excavate the companion story from the messy!demon!that!ate!my!brain!draft. I sure don't own these characters.

~~~

Their first conviction as partners was a rough ride in court, the perp all dressed up and looking (Hutch said) like a Communion wafer wouldn't melt in his mouth, and his wife and kids in a row behind him, dressed up for Easter Sunday. His wife wore gloves and a hat with a little net veil. "Imitating Ladybird," Starsky muttered, and Hutch snorted, because the last time they'd seen somebody doing Mrs. Johnson, it was in a drag show they'd been busting for coke and prostitution.

The photographs of the crime scene undid a lot of the benefit of that little act, though. And the defendant's clothes, spattered with blood you could smell clear to the jury box when the prosecutor held them up.

Still, the defense attorney was fierce and fast, drilling the two cops with questions, trying to undermine their testimony six ways from Sunday. Their behavior at the scene and at the defendant's house ... snippets of the interrogation tapes ... information about their acquaintance with the victim ... insinuations about them personally--it was all there. "How long have you been working this beat, Officer Starsky?" "Officer Hutchinson, is it really true that you knew Miss Kooch only in the context of your work?"

Hutch started to stammer, then blushed with vexation, and altogether looked like he'd been buying sex from Koochie every night of the week, instead of just getting a little information out of her when they needed an in on Porn Row. He was grinding his teeth in the seat next to Starsky for the rest of the defense's case. Starsky grabbed his partner's forearm and just hung on, shaking it a little from time to time or rubbing back and forth an inch or so, though he knew Hutch could hardly feel it through the suitcoat and shirt. Just a distraction, anyway, just a way of saying I'm here, right here, the way they did when things got to be too much.

And then they won. "Guilty," said the foreman. After a moment, the courtroom exploded. Both cops jumped to their feet, and a motley bunch of Koochie's friends were cheering behind them, and Starsky was shaking Hutch's arm hard, and then had his shoulders, babbling something about doing it, they'd done it, Hutch had done it, and then gave him a kiss on the forehead, which would have been just excitement and nothing else, but for the look in his eyes. He left his hands on both sides of Hutch's head, pulled until their foreheads touched, and for a second they were all alone.

~~~

While Starsky was dying, guts twisting, hands shaking, sweating, stumbling, Hutch held on as best he could, sometimes with bad jokes, sometimes with anger Starsky talked him out of, sometimes with his uselessly strong arms. Mouth in Starsky's hair, Hutch's lips moved, only half with words he didn't believe but could not stop saying. "We'll do it, hang on, just hang on, I'm here, it'll be okay."

Miraculously, it was. And the next day, when Starsky was still alive, in the hospital bed, Hutch stood swaying with fatigue and touched his lips with shaking fingers, then Starsky's ... and paused for a long moment, feeling the puff of breath kissing his skin. At his fingertips was a tiny throb, a pulse. He gulped, his throat suddenly tight and sore, and left the room in such a hurry that he almost ran into Dobey in the hallway. "Go on home, Hutch," the big man said, and then gripped Hutch's arm harder and said, "No, don't. Wait for me. I'll take you. You shouldn't drive--you haven't slept. Now you sit down over there, all right, son?"

Hutch nodded. It had been the Torino he'd driven anyway, and that might as well stay here until its owner left. He collapsed into a plastic bowl chair and looked at his fingertips, touched them gingerly with his other hand, and thought about Starsky's even breathing. The morning light coming through the window was cool and pale yellow, like daffodils.

It didn't seem possible. Not any of it. Life was so unlikely sometimes. Hutch covered his face with his hands and laughed quietly, hoping he didn't look like too much of a lunatic. The pulse still beat in his fingertips, and he didn't know if it was his own or Starsky's.

~~~

It looked bad. Really bad. The car was on Hutch's legs, and he lay still and limp. Probably it would have been better not to touch him, but Starsky couldn't possibly wait. The hair under his hands was greasy, dusty, and clotted with blood from a head wound. The slack face was bruised and grayish. Hutch's eyes didn't seem to be focusing. Still, "We made it, bud," Starsky said, cradling the warm, solid skull between his hands. Hutch did something with his mouth that was probably meant to be a smile, though it looked nothing like one.

He could have kissed his partner then. But, somehow, this was too important, ran too deep for a comic smack or even a brotherly peck. Starsky ran the pads of his thumbs back and forth on Hutch's living skin, shifted one hand to rest against the strong pounding vein in his throat, and just looked, murmuring once in a while, "We made it, Hutch," until the helicopter found them.

~~~

The night they opened the presents Terry had left them, they'd spent the time from work until 11:00 or so drinking beer and talking in a determined way about trivialities. Then Starsky made his wavering way to the kitchen and insisted on playing Monopoly right now, right here, sitting on the floor. "Closer to the beer," he said, though they both knew it was closer to the cabinet with the gifts in it.

They had plenty of the beer, too, of course. "If we did," Starsky said hesitantly, "quit--what'ud you--y'know?"

Hutch stared at him for a while. Starsky's mouth was bent, forced into smile-shape, and the tension in it made Hutch's jaw ache too. The edges of his eyes were red, though Hutch hadn't actually caught Starsky crying at all, yet. The curly head sagged, and Starsky pushed his Monopoly token, the little metal car, with one fingertip. An inch or so forward, to the corner of the space it was in, then back to the center, then forward again.

"C'mon, Hutch," he said.

So Hutch had to think about it. He couldn't even imagine doing any job without Starsky any more. As it was, they were too far apart, with the board and all the game junk in between them, but since Terry had died, Starsky had pulled away from hugs and pats. That might even have been why he got the two of them off the couch and in here .... Hutch wrenched his mind back to the question. Job. It would have to be a partner thing, or a group thing, or a team thing ... "Football."

Starsky looked skeptical. "You even played?"

"Sure thing." Hutch rolled his eyes, or started to--it made him lean back, for some reason. When he was sitting up straight again, he went on, "Every kid's played football. I was good, too."

"And they'd draft you where?"

How that ended up with Hutch actually on the phone with somebody at the office of that Canadian team he'd seen once, the Lions, he never knew, afterwards. Were they actually going to do it? Quit? Did Starsky really want to? One minute he was shaking his head, the next saying "Yeah," when Hutch told the telephone and the sleepy annoyance on the other end that they weren't going to be cops much longer. Hutch's jeans were binding, the wall slipping behind him, and the telephone cord twisted around his neck somehow after the Lions' person hung up on him. Drunker than he'd thought.

He got back down on the floor, leaned his dizzy head against a cabinet door, and they tried to play a few more moves, but there were only seconds left before midnight, and they both knew it. The candle Starsky had lit was smoking a little, and that might have been why Hutch's eyes were stinging ... the wax was dark blue, like Starsky's eyes. Maybe Terry had bought it.

Starsky's heartbroken smile was killing Hutch. Yes, he'd loved Terry as a friend himself, and it was terrible to know that she was dead, but right now, right now, those wet dark eyes, that almost bashful look as they opened the gifts, the way Starsky grinned and took deep breaths and tried so hard not to break down ... it all just got to Hutch, and his own eyes stung and filled until there was nothing in front of him but a blur. He held Ollie clutched in one hand, the note telling him to take care of the bear and Starsky in the other, and his arms ached with emptiness. The paper crackled between his fingers. Starsky suddenly covered his face with one bent arm, which was the last straw. Ollie skidded across the floor, the Monopoly pieces scattered, and Hutch was kneeling on the board and holding Starsky at last, wrapping him as tight and close as arms could hold him, the curly head burrowing in his chest and almost stifling the gasping, shuddering breathing that in anybody else would have been outright sobs. Hutch rubbed and patted and murmured, feeling tears soak through below his collarbone.

"--here--okay--Starsky--baby--"

And Starsky sat back, pushed away, and stared with spiked, wet lashes and angry eyes. "What did you call me?"

He had never looked less babyish. Even in tears, he had an almost feral strength. Hutch had never meant to diminish it--but he wouldn't be able to explain, so he shut his jaw tightly before he could make things any worse. At last he managed, "I'm drunk, Starsk."

And, weirdly, that seemed to be the right thing to say. The anger dropped off Starsky's face and he relaxed. His body drooped, and he even shut his eyes.

Hutch reached up and held the long face, gently, warming it, the stillness of his hands giving all the pledges he could not speak.

After a while, very carefully, turning over words in his mind like cards until he found the right ones, Hutch said, "Rest, huh, buddy?"

Starsky nodded, his eyelashes flickering a little. Hutch forced his hands apart, away, to his sides, to the floor to get himself up. By this time, the dark eyes were fully open. Their clear gaze seemed brighter than the candle flame. Hutch held out his hands and Starsky took them, pulled and scrambled a little until they were both upright. Then his head bent again--but this time it wasn't emotion. "Look at this mess," he said, voice still hoarse.

"Leave it," Hutch said.

"The candle--"

"It'll be fine. What's gonna catch, the linoleum?"

Starsky didn't really smile, but he wasn't not-smiling either. "You like bein' a slob, don'cha?"

"Only way to live," Hutch said, putting his hand on Starsky's shoulder as they walked unsteadily toward the bedroom.

Starsky moved out of Hutch's reach to undress, and Hutch knew he should get out but couldn't quite make himself do it. Starsky might need something. He might not be able to --well, okay, he was getting things unbuttoned and unzipped just fine, but if he lost his balance ....

He didn't, but he didn't seem to care if Hutch stayed, either. He behaved, in fact, as if he were alone in the room, so Hutch just stood there feeling useless until Starsky slid between the covers and looked at him, expression unreadable.

"Okay?" Hutch asked.

"T'rrific. You be okay on the couch?"

"Sure."

He left the bedroom, looked at the sofa cushions that were still askew from when they'd gotten up and the empty beer bottles on the coffee table, and then wandered into the kitchen. Bracing himself against the counter with one hand, he reached down and snuffed the candle with his fingers, then snatched them back. It did sting. He wasn't Lawrence of Arabia after all, he thought with a little secret grin in the dark.

He stopped grinning sometime while he was stumbling, hopping, and half-tripping over all the stuff that he'd sent flying when he knelt on the Monopoly board. Near the door, one foot thudded softly against something that gave. He pushed it again, and one more time until it was near enough to the wall for him to lean down and get it. Ollie, of course.

He took the bear back to the front room and sat it down between the empty bottles, then lay curled on his side, staring at the dim light reflecting from the glass and the black plastic of Ollie's eyes. Hutch's body felt heavy, his limbs oversized. He had the illusion that he was sinking deeper and deeper into the cushions. He was weary, yawning, closing his eyes hopefully and then opening them with some irritation because he could not seem to sleep. Eventually, he could see everything in the room in shades of charcoal gray and black.

The bear was staring at him. At first the stare seemed kindly, but after Hutch opened his eyes to it for the fifth or seventh or some time, it began to look ... judgmental. Stern. Sarcastic. Something. He sat up and grabbed the stuffed animal, turned it a little, and still couldn't really tell what the expression was.

He was in the dark, after all, so he could barely see it. And it was just a teddy bear, not some sort of oracle, even if it had come with a note that made him cry.

... Please love them both ....

Perhaps it was that memory that got Hutch to his unsteady feet and sent him into the yet darker space of his partner's bedroom. It was the only reason he could think of afterward for taking the bear along.

Part 2

tl;probably dr ... on SH POV

Fri, 05 May 2006 21:00:24 GMT

Mostly in response to the second reply post on my shiny new LJ! (And relax, I'll stop counting now.)

Point of view is one of those things I came into SH fandom with some ideas about already, as a veteran of Trek fic discussions on ASCEML in which the only rule was pretty much "does it work?" As it happened, limited third-person POV (in which the narrator is not identical with any character but reports one person's perceptions and thoughts but not others', in case anyone was wondering) is both what I usually write and what zine editors from the old days had encouraged, which made it A-OK amongst SH fen.

I do like a wandering limited-third, though. I guess I'd call that a modified omniscience, really--I want to be able to shift from Starsky's POV to Hutch's every once in a while, especially in a longer story. The first longer story I posted was "The Corsicans," on YahooGroups' The Pits (later Pitsfic and, I think, Pits again now). It has that modified-omniscient POV, and some of the comments I got on the parts as they were posted were along the lines of "I don't mind the shifts in POV as much as I usually do, but other people may not like it."

(These "other people" are the malicious ghosts of SH fandom. "Other people" who never themselves write me don't like an awful lot of what I write about, apparently: the guys written as bisexual, having previous same-sex experience, in a non-exclusive relationship, in a threesome, in an AU, not together at the end. "Other people may not like it" apparently worked for a good long time to regularize SH slash writing. Maybe it's a list version of something zine editors used to say, though no zine editor has EVER said so to me.

Maybe this doesn't happen on LJ. I think this would be a good thing.)

As a matter of fact, the very first SH story I posted ("Rainy Night, Sunny Morning") was in a POV I hadn't used before for fanfic and didn't use again: a kind of distant omniscience that can best be described, I think, as writing as if the guys share consciousness, though the narrator barely taps into it. It felt a little cold, even though in theory it embodies the extraordinary closeness of the characters. (Maybe I just couldn't pull it off.) I hesitated before posting it to begin with, but it was in the context of a discussion of genres and it seemed easier to post a PWP than to explain it. I thought about revising it, but really I'd rather move on.

The hardest POV decision I remember making was for the AU "Another Dawn Patrol". I wanted Hutch's POV, but the whole story could not be told that way. I needed another POV, but I didn't really want to do the same old, same old half-Starsky half-Hutch. Also, of course, I was following the movie Dawn Patrol, in which the other point of view from the flyboys is the colonel and his second in command. I enjoyed doing the Blaine scenes, yet I never wrote a story completely from a non-SH POV...at least not about them--there's always the "Cup of Decaf" spinoff of the virtual-season story, which is a Dobey piece, but Starsky and Hutch don't appear in it.

And here's where my Maverick Fanfic Writer pose breaks down, because probably the reason I never went back to the out-of-pairing POV was that people betareading both those stories commented on it. For ADP, the comment was the good old "other people might not like it," while in the case of the snippet I had much too much pressure over what a good Dobey voice was, how he talks, (when, frankly, he hardly talks at all in most SH fic, and in any case I was writing a younger, street-cop Dobey). I've written first-person pieces, but not too many, as my longer stories don't lend themselves to being told by one character.

As for other people's fics, the third-limited POV is what I see most often, and any variation from it gets some comment on the YahooGroups, or did when I was frequently reading there. But what I'm noticing as I read LJ is that there are more drabbles, more snippets, more short or experimental or collaborative forms, so I guess it wouldn't surprise me if there's more use of the POVs that seem harder to sustain, like first-person or second-person.

I'll have to read and see.

Old Starsky/Hutch fic: Wrestling as One of the Fine Arts

Sat, 15 Apr 2006 02:36:43 GMT

I need to learn to use LJ-cuts, and this is actually one of my personal favorites of my fanfic. So...

Wrestling as One of the Fine Arts
Starsky/Hutch
5877 words
PWP, NC-17

Hutch thought it was so cute, throwing Terrible Tessie the lady wrestler at me and talking about double dates. Not that his dating Mrs. Ice in Her Pants Forbes wouldn't be its own punishment, but ... well, I had something else in mind. So I waited a week or so, to make it credible. Then I made my move.

It was finally Friday. We were in the squad room, about ready to go home. Doing a little paperwork, me filling out forms by hand and Hutch on the typewriter. Chatting. Hutch had plans for the weekend and told me about them. Then, walking right into my trap, he asked about mine.

"Oh, I dunno." I made my face a little pathetic. If I do this right, it really gets him. I cleared my throat, like I was going to have to back down about something. "Y'know, Hutch," I said, "that Tessie's still after me."

He grinned. Yeah, buddy, I thought, you think it's funny. Go right ahead, laugh it up.

"She is?" he said. "Thought she was engaged to that Russian guy."

"I don't know about that, but she keeps callin'," I said. It was true she called the station once, and sent a note with a little green plant, and I made sure to tell Hutch about those. But actually when I didn't call back, she laid off.

"Well, go for it then, partner, you got a score."

She's not my type, but that wasn't my point. "She's got all these wrestling moves, Hutch, it's kinda intimidating. I don't get off on being thrown all over."

"No?" he asked, just glancing up.

It's not like it's easy to fool him. "I don't like girls who are stronger than I am," I said firmly. Absolutely no nonsense there. "I don't want a woman to dominate."

"Ah," he said, back to his typing.

"So I was wondering ... " I waited until he looked up again. "Could y'teach me some of the wrestling moves? Kinda even me up with her?" He smiled a little and I said quickly, "Teach me. Help me learn how. Don't just show off wipin' up the floor with me."

He gazed at me for a while and then said, seriously, "You know, Starsk, it isn't something you just catch on to in one practice bout. I don't know how much good it'd do you."

You have no idea how much good it'll do me, I echoed in my head, but kept the amusement off my face.

"Well, yeah, it's an art form," I said, and he rolled his eyes. "It is, for godsakes, what were you just saying?"

"I was saying it's a skill that I'm rusty in myself, and I can't guarantee you'll master it in fifteen minutes, and none of that has anything to do with this goofy art-form thing of yours." He took the triplicate form out of the typewriter, leaned way over to snag a pen off the desk, and signed the bottom of the sheet. "You done with that yet?" He gestured at the form I'd been filling out. I gave it to him and he put both of them in the file box.

"That's it, you know," I said. "We're done."

"Yeah? Wanna go to Huggy's?"

So we did, and had the week's special, which was a BLT and fries. For somebody who drinks that health-shit-shake in the morning and runs and all, Hutch can eat junk food with the best of them. And we talked about wrestling.

"Now," said Hutch, leveling, "you know you can't learn too many moves tonight, nothing fancy."

Got some fancy moves of my own and you know it. But all I said aloud was, "Okay, you're the expert."

He grinned, holding a french fry in mid-air. "Could you say that again? I want to savor it."

"Can it, Hutch."

He laughed and ate the fry, and then a few more, his face getting thoughtful. "This is a challenge."

I kept my mouth shut, but I couldn't stop the grin.

He eyed me as skeptically as if I'd made the smart-ass comment I'd thought of. "What I mean is," he said slowly, then let his voice get normal again, "I coached a few beginners, years ago, but only for matches against other beginners. Hmm." His forehead furrowed a little. "When I threw you, I moved in right away because I knew you wouldn't be ready. You were thinking too much ... about what you were doing and not about me."

I love watching him think. And I love tripping him up when he's missed something.

"I've watched wrestling, remember. More than you, lately, anyway. And the pros don't do that instant throw stuff."

"No, they can't often because they're more evenly matched. They're watching each other, getting each other's moves down. But Tessie knows you're not a wrestler, like I did, so she won't wait." We ate some more. Hutch had mayonnaise on the side of his mouth, but I didn't tell him. "It's not like you don't have quick reflexes, buddy, so it's just a matter of using them."

Another straight line. The boy was just full of them tonight. But I didn't mind even if I couldn't use all of them. Meant he wasn't thinking things through, how they'd sound, what possibilities they had.

And then I wondered, because he said, "We'll do this at my place. We can use that big mat I bought for Aikido way back, remember?" and that just seemed too innocent to be believed. Still, his eyes were all level and honest, so I just agreed.

I felt just a little funny about it, though, and that's why I picked up his napkin. Actually I thought about cleaning off the mayo myself, but then I just put the crumpled soft paper in his hand. "Wipe your face, blondie," I told him, hearing my own voice go gruff.

Maybe, too, it was remembering about Aikido, because he'd taken it up right after his divorce and he threw himself into it like he'd found religion. Didn't have a spare moment, never hit the gym any more, didn't hang out at Huggy's. That's when he started eating all that nasty stuff, the butterfly bones and liver powder and so forth. Kept talking about his sensei. Bought robes, or these odd pajama-things, anyway, and all kinds of books and the mat and I don't know what all. It just seemed so un-Hutch that it worried me. Thought he'd shave his head next or something. But he got over it, or mostly.

I didn't have anything to do with it. Just showed up at his place one day and saw that the mat was put away. I realized he hadn't said a word about sensei in a while. I didn't ask any questions. We played Monopoly that night, I remember. Left it half-played on the table when we got tired, and finished the game a day or so later.

That felt good. The sex we had after he won the game felt even better.

I told him later I'd let him win the Monopoly though actually I don't remember whether that was true. But I do remember letting him take the lead over the sex thing. He and Vanessa were supposed to have had this open marriage, and we'd made it from time to time while he was married, but never during that last year or so when things went from bad to worse. Soon as I realized that every time we did it was a bargaining chip on her side, turning on that king-sized Hutchinson guilt, that was it. The look on his face when we talked about it, and I knew I was basically saying, go without, and he wanted to argue and wanted to give in -- I just never want to see him in that place again.

I was thinking about that on the way to my place so I could pick up some better clothes for wrestling. Hutch teases me about my jeans, but they fit just fine to move around in. Still, he didn't need to tell me twice this time. I threw on a muscle shirt and the shorts I wear on the beach, and a jacket over that, and jumped back in the car. I didn't want to leave Hutch alone to think this situation over any longer than I had to.

He's not even slightly stupid, and he'd been avoiding the whole question of sex with me for a while. I hadn't known what to do about it until this Tessie thing came up.

When I got to his place, he was wearing his gym shorts and a t-shirt. He'd already gotten the mat out of the crawl space and moved back some of the furniture. "Give me a hand with the couch," he said, and we carried it back under the skylight. Then we spread out the mat. It took up most of the floor.

Hutch looked around in a satisfied way, dusting his hands. "Okay." Then he turned to me. "Now, the object of real wrestling," and he paused as if to let me get in something about pro wrestling, but I couldn't be bothered just then and he went on, "is to pin your opponent. Not to bounce them as hard as you can and jump up and down on them. Just get the opponent down, on his back -- or her back -- shoulders touching the mat."

"I'm gonna like this," I said, grinning, and if he misunderstood what I was imagining, well, I'd been working hard to get him to.

"So last time," he took me by the wrist and led me onto the mat, "I positioned you like this," put my hands on his shoulders and his own on my forearms, "and you weren't sure what I was doing," and I still wasn't, though I tried to remember. While I was trying, just like before, he ducked under one of my arms and grabbed my thigh and I was in the air.

"Hey!" I think I said, flailing my legs and trying to get them under me, but then my back hit the mat and he was ready while I was still having the air knocked out of me, so he held my shoulders down and leaned on them. Not a hair out of place, looked like, not so much as a deep breath, it was so easy for him.

He sat back on his heels beside me and I got up. "All right," I said, "again."

He stood. I put one hand on his shoulder and braced myself, and this time grabbed his forearm on the other side. He dropped to his left and I tried to move the leg back, but that made me off balance and he just lunged farther and took me down again.

I slapped the mat with both hands and bounced up. Now I backed away, saying, "Come get me at least."

"That's a whole new set of moves," he said, but stalked after me, and at least I had time to watch how he looked down my body and targeted the same leg and went after it, brushing my hands aside as if I had no more strength than a kid, grabbing one elbow like a handle, and just tipped me over again.

"Dammit," I said to the ceiling. "What am I doing wrong?"

He gave me a little smile, his hands still on my shoulders. "Nothing." Then he let go and got up. "Once you start."

I heard that, so this time I tried to make the first move, diving at him almost before I was all the way up off the floor. But he was all prepared, moving back at me already, and I couldn't get below his grasp the way he had with me. My shoulder hit him right on the sternum and he grunted at the impact. I pushed and so did he, but his leverage was better, coming from above, and though I'd reached his thigh I couldn't pull it out from under him. I pushed harder with my shoulder, and his hands were on my biceps and his whole weight was leaning on me. I thought there ought to be some way to use that. I tried twisting to get at his other leg, but he suddenly moved back and I almost fell forward.

"I thought it was defense moves you came here to learn," he said, and at least he was beginning to sound out of breath.

"I'm trying to use my quick reflexes," I answered, and made a dive in his direction, almost a football tackle.

He dodged to the side and I hit the mat on hands and knees, and then he was on my back.

"Don't let yourself be pinned," he said, his breath hitting my ear hard between the words and his voice low. I locked my elbows and dug my knees into the mat.

It felt a lot like a sexual position. His hands were on top of mine and his chin was on my shoulder and his hip bones pressed against my ass. He covered me. He was warm.

He was also thinking about wrestling and not about sex, as I could tell only too well from what was not pressing into my ass. He put his arm around my waist and tried to tip me over, and as soon as I leaned to that side, shoved one of his knees between mine and forced my knee out from under me. I had just enough warning to shift my weight again, but then he got one leg twisted around mine and shoved my opposite arm and I was flat on my stomach, and then I had no way to stop him rolling me over, though I did try, twisting and squirming and trying to act heavy.

"You can't," he said, "hang onto the mat," which I'd just found out for myself, thank you. "This is about bracing against each other." And he was up again.

"Let's," I started, "let's try," trying hard not to pant, "that starting position, you know, again." We stood for a few seconds, and then he nodded and reached for my wrist, but I held it away. "It's gotta be an advantage, for you, if you put me right where you want me," I said.

"Well, how's this," he said and just threw himself toward me. Not unlike something Tessie might've done, actually. He reached for my neck or shoulders and I grabbed at his arms, and we pulled and pushed. I leaned hard to one side, trying to tip him over, and he said, "Good move," but curled his arm around mine on the other side and braced himself against my ribs to push back, then lifted and stepped in, turning me over his hip and throwing me again. I had tried to copy that wrapping move, got one of my ankles hooked around his, and he'd been charging in so hard when I went over that both his feet left the floor, kicking above us as I pulled him down with me.

I hadn't actually meant to. In fact I was sorry as he thudded down on my ribs. But he bounced up again and I was really against lying there and taking it, so I heaved myself up after him and tried another tackle, grabbing him around the waist and leg and just shoving as hard as I could. I was on one knee and trying to push up, he was hanging over me and trying to push down, and nothing happened for a moment. Then he bent his knees and rushed into me, shoving me back across the surface of the mat, and I dug in my feet and charged back, and he stumbled. I got up and he went down and I fell on top this time, but somehow he rolled and got me on my back again.

"You're --" he gasped "-- a natural." Then pulled back, but he was still on hands and knees.

This was turning out to be quite a workout. Sweat was soaking through our shirts and the tang of it was in the air. I looked over before I sat up and saw that he was at least partly hard, his cock hanging down low and big in his shorts. He was flushed. We were both breathing like trains.

He looked wonderful. Damn. He did. I wanted to be the one riding his back, so before he had time to collect himself I rolled up and lunged. Got on top of him, sort of, and tried to push him flat. He seemed the size of a horse just then, his back too broad and his limbs too long for me to cover, and though he collapsed at first he bucked and arched his back and tried to slide out from under me. I tried to hook one knee under him, mostly for the wrestling, and brought the other leg up around the outside to try and get some purchase to turn him over. He twisted and we slid around together, shuffling around an arc that turned us both completely in a circle without giving either of us any more advantage.

Felt good to be on top, too, even though Hutch's ass was too far up my body, so my cock was left dangling in my shorts and his upward heaving punched into my stomach until I got more interested in breathing than in teasing him. The sweat had soaked his shirt where my face lay and all the muscles in his sides and back kept working. I almost bit him but it wasn't time for that kind of play yet.

But I was enjoying the position too much, and Hutch must have felt my attention shift, because he shot out suddenly and I couldn't keep him. He spun around and we both got to our feet, crouching, and for the first time it really felt like the wrestling I'd watched other people do. Wilder than before but something, I don't know, not completely serious in it.

And then Hutch leapt at me again. Hit me so hard we just traveled, the room around me shifting, and I had to focus on him because nothing else was stable. I grabbed over his back, at his waist, which ought to have been good for something but didn't seem to matter. I twisted away and his hands slipped, and I found myself facing away from him, on one knee with him hanging onto my lower leg and foot. That was a bad idea so I turned back, tried throwing myself on his back from this end, and his head slid across my pelvis and my face was on the slope of his ass. I think I opened my mouth as my head was turning, nose and chin and cheek against Hutch, and if he hadn't known I was throwing a rod, there was no hiding it any more. It was all I could do not to groan, not to bite, to remember I was letting him be the expert here. And to remember to wrestle. Wrestle, I thought, oh, right, turn him over, except it was my legs that were leaving the floor. I let go and rolled away from him and he lunged after and caught me before I could get up.

He didn't just pin me down quick this time. He shifted around until I was immobilized, lying flat, held at shoulders and thighs and shins. His head was closer to me than it had been so far, kind of hanging down. He was really puffing, and the sweat was dripping down his skin and off the ends of his hair. One advantage of being underneath -- mine was running down the sides of my face. I felt it slide down my neck and in the creases by my eyes. Must've looked almost like crying, but Hutch's eyebrows were dripping too.

It was getting to be too much of an artistic challenge. I couldn't keep pretending I hadn't planned it would end up this way.

Hutch looked down and I looked up.

I see him all the time, of course. But sometimes, it's just different. Like after the explosion in the warehouse basement that blew both of us against the wall. He pushed me off and put me on my feet but I wasn't ready yet. For a second I thought I might never be ready to step away.

Now I took the time to feel the weight of him suspended above me again and his hands clamped on my arms and his shins across mine. His harsh breathing seemed to go right into my lungs. I felt the drops of his sweat like rain. They landed on my cheeks, my forehead, near my chin ... one hit my mouth, and then another one in the same place, and I opened my lips just slowly, feeling its wet slide in and tasting its bitter salt.

His mouth opened at the same time, as if it was happening to him.

He tastes so good. I licked my lips.

That was the last straw. He dropped down onto me, his whole body, his mouth, his hands moving up to my shoulders, my hair. Mine the same, tangling in those wet strands, holding that solid skull -- I lifted my head into the kiss and taught him what I know about wrestling.

We joke about this. He says I'm not a good kisser and I say he doesn't even know a good kiss. But when it's going on there's no joke about it, his mouth's so deep and his tongue's so strong, we dive in farther and hang on tighter than we can with women and there's nothing else in the world so hot. I worked my jaw and he pulled up against my hands until he could lick around my lips, and around again, but I caught his tongue, sucked it in, rubbed it with mine, pressed my teeth to his.

His knees had slid to each side when he dropped on top of me, and I spread my legs wider, dragging his apart and pressing our cocks together. Raised my hips. He groaned. Damn, that makes me wild, his voice all deep and vibrating in my mouth. I rubbed his shoulders, his sides, his hips, grabbed his ass, arched against him, and he kept groaning.

He knows what drives me nuts. We fly so high together. More than once we've never even gotten naked.

I thought this might be one of those times. We were so sweaty it was hard to tell, but it was sure damp down there and I was close to exploding. Hutch humped and I felt the bloom of his pre-come soaking through the layers of cloth, and I shuddered. When he does that just for me, I can't help it -- feels like a jolt of current right through me. I broke away from his mouth and arched my neck and gulped in some air. He just moved those magic lips down onto my throat and licked and nibbled and sucked like he wanted the whole area to be one big hickey, and though it would've been embarrassing the next day I could've cared less then. I kept breathing hard and shallow, because his weight was still on me and he's heavy. I kept grabbing his ass because I wanted to feel it, reaching my fingers into the crack, bunching the soft cloth in there, teasing and fiddling around because I know what makes him crazy too. He's not much for being really fucked, but he loves to be played with and a lot of women won't.

And I love to play with him. So much of him and it's all Grade-A meat. I wanted it, wanted his skin and the bare heat of his cock, the little clenching ring of muscle and all the sweat, not just the damp soaking through his shorts, so I clenched my teeth and pulled my hands away. It wasn't easy. No, not after working him so hard to get to this point. I slid my hands back under his shoulders and shoved. Had to get his attention, which at the moment was on my chest, working across in the scooped neck of my shirt where the hair just starts, nipping like he actually wanted my hair stuck between his teeth. He mumbled, almost growled, and kept going, and I shoved again. "Hutch." It was the first real word either of us had spoken since we traded the art of wrestling for another art. And then I thought of the best way to get his attention -- always the best, unless he's just in an evil mood.

"Ouch," I said, "let me breathe, will ya?"

He rolled to one side right away.

My cock was so full and throbbing that it took something really special to get blood somewhere else, let me tell you, or get me to feel much anywhere else on my body but a sexual tingle. Fact is, though I'd known I couldn't breathe properly, it really hadn't mattered. But the way he moved the minute I asked, that made my heart clench and feel like it was the part full enough to explode. All I ever have to do is tell him I need anything, and he'll be there to give it, or do his damnedest. And even when his damnedest has been something I personally thought was cracked, like him sitting down to do geometry for God's sake, when he thought we were trapped in that airtight room, to figure out how long we could breathe in there instead of getting us the hell out, even then I knew what he meant by it.

I bent to kiss that big, big heart of his through the wet cloth of his t-shirt, and he put one hand on my neck, still panting and wanting but gentle when I asked.

It's no wonder his women love him so. Girls who love me like to play, like the wild side. Girls who love him want to be taken care of. And he does. He'd take care of all of us if he could. The whole world. And it makes us so perfect when we're making it together, me wild and him caring for both of us, that we can push each other higher than the sun.

That's what I wanted to do right then. It'd gone way past the tricky little seduction I started with. I cupped my hand over his cock to feel the strength and heat of it and he said, "Starsky!" his voice all harsh.

"Not teasing," I soothed him, my own cock aching for him, feeling the tension all over like when we were wrestling. I put my hands on the waistband of his shorts. "Let's get these off you."

He turned away and got to his feet, peeled off the shorts and shirt so fast, I just sat on my heels watching the sculpted body moving so gracefully. He's only a klutz sometimes. He dances when he makes love. Naked, facing me, rod standing up so proud, he looked like one of those statues, marble and gold. "Well?" he said. "This a one-man show?" And he put one hand on his hip and the other on his cock as if he would jack off right there in my face.

Sometimes he's the one who likes to play. Not like I mind.

So I knelt up, reached for him, just my fingertips, and my hands were shaking and I knew he could see it. I touched the outsides of his knees, traced around the bone and up, lightly, against the grain of his hair, slowly, dragging it out. He closed his eyes and grabbed himself, using both hands.

"Show me," I said real soft. Another change of plan, but I'm adaptable.

I felt so edgy, like a jangling noise all over inside, that I couldn't be still, and yet I wanted to hold this moment, take a long time drawing lines up and down the hard muscles and in the tickling peach-fuzz hair. A long time to see him showing off until it nearly killed him, palms and fingers working, pumping and pinching and drawing circles around the head of that monster dick that just got bigger and redder and leaked one cloudy drop after another.

It jumped in his hands again and I gasped. He was going to come and so was I, without even touching myself.

But when he heard me, he opened his eyes, clamped hard on his cock with both hands, and I could see how tightly he squeezed it. Then he took a couple of deep breaths and looked down at me, held me with his eyes while he knelt again, and this time it was his fingers that touched as lightly as dry paintbrushes on my cheeks, down my neck. He picked at the thin strip of cloth on my shoulder. I didn't move. "Let me," he said. Took a breath. "Touch you. Bring you off."

Let him! You'd think this wasn't all about getting him to.

We stripped me quickly and lay down, me on top at first, but I really wanted to feel his ass again, so we ended up on our sides, foreheads together or kissing sometimes, his top leg hooked over my elbow so I could rim him with my fingers while he stroked us off together. He does that so good, I never can find the words to describe it, how his palm holds us and his fingers tickle us and we just seem to melt together. When that happens I always want to tell him, give it back to him in words, but I never know what to say and I'm too wild to make sense anyway. I tried then, said "Hutch" and "beautiful," I think, and he was smiling and when I pressed into his ass I thought he'd squeeze the end of my finger right off. Over and over. Higher and higher. Time for one last kiss and I took it, said "Mmm," into his mouth, and that was it. Damn, I love that, when he throws his head back and comes in my arms. I love feeling it happen, love coming with him, love cooling down again with him, kissing each other, holding tight. I was hanging onto the inside of his thigh and he’d moved his hand to my hip, lowered his leg. We lay right there on the floor, totally comfortable.

He swallowed and said, "I don’t think this was ever about Tessie. Was it?"

"You really are the brains of this outfit," I told him.

"Ha," he said. "Ha." He moved his hand to the nape of my neck and massaged. His eyes were closed and he seemed relaxed, but when I stroked between his thighs he looked at me again and there was an odd kind of sadness there. I took my hand out of that warmth and his eyes got even sadder before I touched his shoulder, and then his face, up near his hair. It wasn't the first time I'd seen him that way after sex, and I wondered if that was why he'd seemed off it lately, with me anyway.

"Hey," I said. "Wasn't it good for you? Hutch?"

When he shut his eyes this time I got the idea he didn't want me to see what he felt. "What do you mean?" he asked, looking like he was drowsing off. "Think I was faking or something?"

But, see, it's not easy for him to fool me either. "Tell me," I said.

"Okay." But it was too easy and his eyes were still shut. "It was great, buddy. Felt wonderful. Don't even mind how you tricked me into it, though it was way too much trouble to take when you could've just asked me. It's," and he kind of caught his breath, "it's always good. With you."

I hugged him. At times like this I wish I was better with words. I wish I could talk and fuck at the same time so I could tell him when I know he'd really believe it. "Hutch, it's so good when you do us. So beautiful and wild and fine. Hutch, you know that, don't you?"

"Yeah." His voice was real low.

I didn't know how to convince him. So I just held on tight. I rubbed his back and nudged my head under his and he held me pretty tight, too. "You're an artist," I said, and though my voice was muffled I knew he could hear me.

He kind of laughed then. "You," he said, "are a con artist."

"Hey, there's all kinds of arts," I said, and I meant it. Like friendship. And beyond, whatever this is we have, so special I don't have an exact name for it.

"Well," he said eventually, "one art I really don't want to acquire is sleeping on the exercise mat. Can we move it to the bed?"

So we did, or anyway we got up, and Hutch used his t-shirt to clean up the spatters on the mat. He didn't bother to put anything back on, and neither did I, just balled up the clothes and took 'em into the bedroom. I watched his big frame walking in front of me--he looked less graceful, tired, a little strained, and seeing that made me sad. The art of understanding Ken Hutchinson is one I'm still acquiring, and it's a lot harder than wrestling.

I wanted to do something for him, so I went into his bathroom, cleaned myself off while I was there, and got him a washcloth and towel. Then, seeing how he stood there, I didn't just hand them over: instead I wiped him down, chest and belly and groin, and he just watched, a little puzzled looking.

"Get in bed," I told him, and he did, sliding across. And then I thought of his date, and asked, "Should we set your alarm? When you meeting whatshername?"

He just shrugged and flipped the covers back for me. "I'm wiped," he said, and lay down on his side, facing away. "Don't want to think about the alarm. I'll call her." Then, after a pause, "Thanks, though."

I got in after him and lay on my back. "Okay," I said, and it probably was. Nothing I could do about it then, anyway. I was pretty tired too, and drifted off almost right away.

During the night Hutch turned over, and I woke up and found his hand was on my chest. Cupped over my heart.

Even in his sleep, even without words, he says things better than I do. Or maybe it's that neither of us is ready to say some things aloud.

Timing's an art too.

This time, I just put my hand over his and went back to sleep.

Hello, eljay

Sun, 09 Apr 2006 17:27:50 GMT

I began to feel like someone who wouldn't give up Betamax. Also, I'm spending increasing amounts of time reading lj comms, and I might want to post on one someday.

I don't think I'll really be doing much journaling, but there should be some fic on here eventually.