There Will Be Phlogiston Read online

  “One does not waltz with one’s hands in one’s damn pockets.”

  “One offers one’s most sincere apologies.”

  There was a comedically well-timed orchestral boom from the phonograph, as if Strauss had deliberately written the piece to make Lord Mercury look silly in front of Anstruther Jones. “Position,” he said, “is very important. Under no circumstances should the dancing couple stand vulgarly close. That is for Europeans. You should clasp the lady’s hand, and place your own hand at her waist thus.” He demonstrated on himself. “Neither any higher nor any lower, certainly not embracing her, and you must only touch her lightly. You are not, under any circumstances, to press your hand upon her.”

  “Why?” asked Jones. “Will she break?”

  “No, but she would probably find you pawing at her with barbaric enthusiasm deeply unpleasant.”

  Jones tilted his head, the mischief still in his eyes. “Are you friends with many women?”

  “I have many female acquaintances. Now, please attend me as I demonstrate the basic steps.” Lord Mercury’s heels clicked far too loudly as he made his way to the centre of the dance floor. Knowing Jones was watching him made him aware of himself in peculiar ways: the flow of his coat over his hips, the cling of his trousers to his thighs. “The gentleman begins like this: on the beat, left foot, as so, then the right, and another step with the left, like this. And no galloping, Jones. Remember you are dancing with a lady, not a racehorse. And, after that, you simply continue, left-right-left—are you attending?—for the next six beats.”

  “I’m attending.”

  It was . . . It was . . . beyond strange, dancing with an imaginary partner in an empty ballroom for Anstruther Jones. Lord Mercury knew he was a good dancer—he was renowned for it, in fact—and, as a general rule, he enjoyed it. But now he wasn’t sure what was wrong with him. Light-headed and hot and absurdly exposed.

  “And then the . . . then the . . .” He had no reason to be out of breath, but nevertheless he was. His heart was beating hard enough to choke him. “Then the gentleman reverses his steps, like this, in order that the couple may continue about the room.”

  “I think I can manage that.”

  “Good.” Relief rolled through him. It was only dancing. It shouldn’t have felt as though he knelt naked at the man’s feet. “Now to put it into practice. Take your posi—” And that was when Lord Mercury realised precisely what this lesson entailed. For some reason—perhaps self-protection—his mind had slid away from the reality of it. Or perhaps it hadn’t. Perhaps the part of him that was weak and fleshly and traitorous had wanted this all along.

  “Do you want to lead?” The gentleness in Jones’s voice was mortifying. Magnified, somehow, too, by the silence as the cylinder reached its end.

  “No. You need to learn. I will . . . I will take the part of the lady. On this occasion.”

  “It’s just a dance, Arcadius.”

  “I am well aware of that.”

  Lord Mercury went to restart the music. Came back slowly, almost reluctantly, fearful of what it might have meant had he been otherwise.

  Jones stepped close to him. Vulgarly close. It had to be vulgarly close because why else would Lord Mercury be so . . . so conscious of him? The shape of his body, the heat. Except, when he opened his eyes (oh, when, why, had he closed them?), he realised Jones was standing entirely properly and upright as directed. “I’ll try not to barbarically paw at you,” he promised.

  A dreadful breathy sound issued from between Lord Mercury’s lips.

  And then Jones tried to take his hand, and Lord Mercury jumped away like a startled rabbit. “We . . . You . . . would most properly be wearing gloves. I should fetch some.”

  Jones gave him a look, exasperated but softened by affection. “I washed my face and hands before I came. I don’t have the skypox.”

  The man was right. He was being a fool, and his foolishness was more revealing than indifference could ever have been. He grabbed for Jones’s hand—ignoring the rough kisses of all those calluses against his tender palms—and yanked him back into position. Then he realised he was going to have to put his other hand somewhere. Tentatively he rested it on Jones’s shoulder. He didn’t want to be so physically dependent on him, but at the same time it felt so vulnerable to be led, and it was all he could do not to cling.

  “You look good when you’re dancing.” Lord Mercury’s head jerked up at that, and God, Jones was far too close. He could see the patterns of lines in his lips, the radials in his irises . . . “Happy.”

  “Start on the left foot,” he said.

  “I remember.” Jones stepped, and Lord Mercury stood on his foot. “Ow.”

  He felt the blush burning on his cheeks. “I’m sorry, I’m not accustomed to doing it this way.”

  Jones grinned. “Starting on the left . . . one, two, three . . . step.”

  They managed six beats, not entirely disastrously, but then Lord Mercury forgot he was meant to be transitioning into travelling step rather than pivot step, and they collided. For a moment they were flush, carnally interlocked, thigh-to-thigh, chest-to-chest, and Lord Mercury startled so violently that he tripped over Jones’s leg. Thus the most graceful man in Gaslight ended up on his arse on the ballroom floor, Jones staring down at him with astonishment, and incipient hilarity.

  Lord Mercury put his head in his hands. “Don’t laugh at me. Please don’t laugh.”

  “Never.” A pause. Perhaps Jones was willing himself to sobriety. “Are you hurt, pet?”

  “Just my pride,” he mumbled, too stricken even to chafe against what was surely an inappropriate endearment.

  “Only one cure for that.”

  “I didn’t think there were any.”

  “Stand up, head up, try again. Besides, I think I was just starting to get the hang of it.”

  Lord Mercury had rather been hoping for spontaneous demise, but Jones was right. He peeled himself off the floor, reset the cylinder, and stepped once again into the man’s arms.

  Just a dance. Just a dance. Just a dance.

  The light brush of fingers under his chin made him look up.

  “I’m not expert,” said Jones. “But I think it might be easier if you stopped trying to lead.”

  Lord Mercury could not quite repress his shiver of response. It felt so strange to be touched in that fashion, romantic in bewildering, impossible ways. Gentling him. “It . . . It . . . It’s difficult when you . . . can’t see where you’re going.”

  “I realise I’m new at this, but I’m not going to walk you into a wall.”

  “I know but—”

  “Can you trust me?”

  “Yes.” Oh God. Was there anything more terrifying than the truth, uttered without thought?

  Jones smiled. Such a smile, his eyes all sky. “One, two, three, and . . .”

  And they danced.

  For about thirty seconds, Lord Mercury let another man hold him. Protect him. Whirl him round the room where his mother had once danced and dazzled.

  Jones’s arms were strong, his steps certain. He smelled of the cold morning, fresh and clean. And Lord Mercury—

  Pulled away, just managing to avoid another humiliating stumble. Tried to steady his breath, his heart, his voice. Ignore the hollow ache that rose up like some unspeakable leviathan from deep inside and . . . and . . . wanted. “I think you have mastered at least the basics. If you need more practice, I suggest you engage a dancing master. Good day.”

  He turned on his heel and left the ballroom. He considered it to his credit that he did not run.

  He did not see Jones again for the best part of a week. Business had called him to London, and Lord Mercury had time to half-convince himself that his responses had been exaggerated, his feelings imagined. A fevered moment born of simple physical proximity.

  But then Jones came back, and Lord Mercury knew he had only been lying to himself.

  Tucked under Jones’s arm was a neatly wrapped parcel from Hen
ry Poole & Co of Number Fifteen Savile Row, London, the tailor to whom Lord Mercury had introduced him. “For you,” he said. “They already had your measurements.”

  “I . . . What is it?”

  Jones stuffed his hands into his pockets. “You’ll see if you open it.”

  It was a waistcoat. Lilac silk, so fine that holding it made his hands feel rough. The most opulently beautiful thing Lord Mercury thought he had ever seen. Also the most inappropriate.

  Perhaps in London. For the pre-Raphaelite set.

  But in Gaslight? For him?

  How did Jones know? Could one tell? Had he heard something?

  God, that dockhand . . . but how did he know? How did he know Lord Mercury was Lord Mercury? He had offered the man nothing more than coins and his body, all other traces of identity carefully removed before he left his house, fittingly enough by the back passage. Unlike others of his acquaintance, Lord Mercury was discreet, so very discreet, and he rarely surrendered to his inclinations. Only when the hollowness of his flesh and spirit became too much to bear.

  “Is this a jest?” he asked, with what he thought was admirable calm.

  Jones shrugged. “It’s a present.”

  “I’m not . . .” That sentence was absolutely impossible to finish. “Not your mistress.”

  There was a look on Jones’s face that Lord Mercury couldn’t read. “Just thought I’d like to thank you.”

  “I am not what you think I am.”

  Lord Mercury turned away in what he thought was obvious dismissal. But while he was fairly sure Jones could recognise a hint, he had never been able to persuade him to actually take one.

  Jones’s arms came round him from behind, pulling him against that tall body, all heat and strength and work-made muscle. The man’s breath was hot against his ear. “What are we, Arcadius?”

  “Using my given name without permission again.” It wasn’t supposed to be like this. It was supposed to be an exchange, a necessity, an imposition, a sacrifice for his family name.

  “I came to you because I needed you. I stayed because I liked you.” Soft words from a hard man. Lord Mercury had prepared no defence against such things. A blunt-fingered hand pressed against his erection. Nearly made him groan with the longing to be touched. For the terrifying vulnerability of skin. “Say no, and I’ll stop.”

  Lord Mercury twisted helplessly like a heretic on the rack. Unable to utter the word that would end his torment. No, and he would be a gentleman again, and Anstruther Jones would be nothing but an upstart. His unshapeable Galatea. A sordid fantasy for endless solitary nights.

  Jones gripped him. Even through fabric, he could feel the warmth of the man’s hand, and it was beautiful, horrifying, blissful. Then he stilled. “Say yes, and I’ll continue.”

  He shook his head frantically. He couldn’t say that either. One thing to have this happen, in darkness and in shame, an act perpetrated between unaccountable strangers. Another entirely to ask for it. Be part of it.

  “I don’t bed the unwilling.”

  Lord Mercury couldn’t quite restrain the pleading tilt of his hips. He wasn’t unwilling. He wished he was.

  “Or people who don’t know what they want.”

  Jones was going to let him go. Let him go and walk away. Leave him like this.

  And it didn’t matter . . . It didn’t matter . . . because he would go out tonight. Find a Jack tar or a soldier or airman. Acts, they were nothing but acts, the things he craved. It would be the same.

  It wouldn’t be the same.

  He wouldn’t be held like this. Or touched like this. It wouldn’t be Jones. With his grey-sky eyes and his smile-hiding mouth, his certainties and convictions, his heedless kindness.

  Jones’s other hand came round him, brushed the edge of his jaw. Found the piece of skin above his collar. Stroked him there.

  Where it shouldn’t have meant anything.

  “Tell me,” he whispered. Not command, not demand, not plea.

  And Lord Mercury was undone. “Yes. If you must know. Yes.”

  To his bewilderment and his quick-flaring horror, Jones let him go. It had been a trick, nothing but a trick, some further mortification, blackmail perhaps, or—

  “Where’s your bedroom?”

  “That’s . . . that’s not necessary.”

  Jones laughed. Leaned down and—of all things—pressed their brows together. “I’ve spent most of my life on airships, making do. You can be damn sure it’s necessary.”

  Lord Mercury was never quite sure why he allowed it.

  But, somehow . . .

  In his own bed. With Anstruther Jones.

  It was not like it had ever been before.

  He thought of pleasure as something to be snatched from whatever was done to him, but Jones lavished him with it. Made him wanton.

  And, afterwards, Lord Mercury hid his face in the crook of his elbow and cried with shame.

  “You’ve done that before? I didn’t hurt you?” Jones’s fingertips skated lightly down his sweat-slick spine, the sweetness of his touch spreading a kind of sickness in their wake.

  Lord Mercury shook his head.

  The bed shifted as Jones settled on the coverlet. “That good, eh?”

  “No . . . I mean . . . It’s just now I am truly your whore.”

  There was a long silence. Even muffled by his arm, Lord Mercury could hear his own breaths, too loud and ragged. “Well,” said Jones, “this is awkward because I don’t remember agreeing to pay you.”

  Lord Mercury sat up, feeling more naked than his nakedness warranted, and tugged a pillow over himself. “You already bought me.”

  “I didn’t buy this. You asked me for it.”

  Heat gathered horribly under his skin—it burned in his cheeks, spilling down his throat, over his chest, a spreading scarlet brand. “I . . . I know.”

  “And I didn’t buy you either.” Jones stretched out, unabashed and magnificently naked, sweat glinting on the dark hair that curled across his chest and thighs. “Trade is trade. I don’t see the rush to make it something filthy.”

  “But I’m a gentleman.”

  “And my mothers were whores. I don’t think any less of either of you.” He reached out and pulled the pillow away from Lord Mercury’s body.

  He thought about resisting, but it would have been undignified. Covered himself with his hands instead.

  Jones grinned at him. “You’d think you’d never been naked with a man before.”

  It was hard to manage hauteur when he could smell sex on his own skin, but he tried. “As it happens, I am not in the habit.”

  “You’d better make the most of it, then.” Jones held out his arms, and Lord Mercury, without entirely realising what he was doing, tumbled into them.

  The shock of intimacy hit him like cold water, and made him gasp. After the sins they had just committed, a simple embrace should have been nothing. He stared helplessly at Jones’s still-smiling mouth, so close to his own that he could almost taste his breath.

  If he . . .

  If Jones . . .

  He jerked his head away, and Jones’s lips grazed his cheek. When he turned back, any trace of softness in the man’s expression was gone.

  Lord Mercury had intended his coupling with Jones to be a one-time aberration—a moment of weakness they could both pretend had never happened—but his will proved unequal to the task. Unlike his furtive, back-alley encounters, Jones could not be boxed away and ignored. He was there, present and inescapable, his clothed body a constant reminder of his naked one, even the most innocent movement of those big hands sufficient to reduce Lord Mercury to a quivering ruin of lust and need.

  He always had to instigate.

  Every single time, he told himself it would be the last.

  But he came to pleasure like an opium addict to his pipe, and Jones broke him with ecstasy. Made him sob and scream and beg, utter the most unthinkable obscenities, disport himself with unspeakable wantonness. But he never held
him again. Or tried to kiss him.

  And it was never quite the same as that first afternoon.

  Rosamond was not enjoying the ball.

  Not that anyone would have been able to tell. She was too good for that.

  It was not that there was anything wrong with the ball itself—unless one counted a regrettable lack of care with the guest list—but she had been to several balls, and they were all the same.

  The dresses were the same.

  The music was the same.

  The guests were the same.

  Sometimes the very idea of attending another ball—or another soiree, or another card party, or another opera—made her want to cry. But she had her pride. She danced, she smiled, she said the right things to the right people.

  She was sure she was perfectly enchanting.

  And she absolutely did not pay any attention to that dreadful Anstruther Jones. Of all the nerve. She enjoyed a private shiver of outrage at the man’s temerity.

  Asking her to dance indeed.

  But . . . why her?

  She was not the richest debutante here, nor the most connected, nor—bleak candour forced her to concede—the most beautiful. And from across a room, one could not judge her perfect manners, her dulcet tones, her many ladylike accomplishments.

  Nothing that would lead the most talked about man in Gaslight to single her out.

  Unless he thought her the sort of woman easily swayed by a lot of money, and a few scraps of fame.

  Well, he was mistaken. As he would surely discover to his cost. Somehow. In some way.

  Perhaps when he saw that she was dancing with a marquess.

  A proper southern marquess, who owned land, and a great estate, and could trace his line back twelve generations. Who knew nothing of factories, or airships, or industry.

  That was the sort of man she could aspire to wed.

  The sort of man it was her duty to wed.

  Rich, noble, and—if she was fortunate—malleable. She had no wish of turning into her mother.