There Will Be Phlogiston Page 4

  Jones watched him with eyes washed silver in the half light Lord Mercury preferred for his assignations. “You won’t let me seduce you.”

  “I’m a man. I don’t need to be seduced. I know what I want.”

  “Really?” Something—sharp as lightning—flickered over Jones’s face. “Because I don’t think you have a bleedin’ clue.”

  “Oh, go fuck your wife.” Lord Mercury got his arms into his dressing gown and swept rather magnificently off the bed.

  He wasn’t entirely sure where he was going, since they were in his room, but away would serve his purposes adequately. Once he was alone, he could safely tend to whatever nonsense lay beneath his anger and felt too much like pain.

  As he crossed the room, Jones caught him by the elbow and spun him round. There was purpose in the touch, but not violence. He should have looked ridiculous, standing there and still naked, but he didn’t.

  And Lord Mercury should have pulled away, but he didn’t either.

  “It’s not about fucking.” Like his hand, Jones’s voice was steady, certain. “It’s about family. Companionship.”

  Lord Mercury flinched away from the look in the man’s eyes. “I told you, I am not your mistress, and I certainly can’t be your wife.”

  “Would you? If you could?”

  The silence was sudden and so deep it roared in Lord Mercury’s ears. “I . . . I . . . That is, such a thing would be impossible.”

  “Why?” Jones’s hand slid down Lord Mercury’s forearm, until his fingers encircled his wrist, skin to skin. “You’re always telling me what you won’t, and aren’t, and can’t. I don’t know anymore if it’s me you’re ashamed of, or you.”

  How could anyone be ashamed of Jones? Clever, fearless, laughing Jones.

  Who Lord Mercury had tried so desperately to despise.

  And instead . . .

  “Men,” he said, wishing his voice was firmer, “do not form those kind of intimate relationships with other men.”

  Jones reached out, claimed his other wrist, and Lord Mercury still wasn’t struggling. He let Jones press him to the back of the door. Pin his hands against the wood, their fingers all intertwined. “Just fuck them?” he asked.

  “That’s merely an aberration of the body.”

  Jones blinked.

  “It means a pervers—”

  “I know what it means.” There was an odd little silence, pulled tight somehow between them. “I’ve been to the deepskies, Arkady. I’ve seen—” he shook his head, and Lord Mercury felt the sweat gather on the man’s palms, turning his grip slippery “—things. Fact is, I’ve a sound notion about what’s aberrant, and what isn’t, and liking a cock in your body doesn’t even come close.”

  Lord Mercury turned his head away, hiding his face in the prison of his upraised arms. “Don’t.”

  “Don’t what? Say what I see? The only thing aberrant here is you not letting yourself have what you need.”

  “I don’t need what you’re offering.”

  “Is that so?”

  There was a note in Jones’s voice Lord Mercury had never heard before. Something dark and hurt and ragged that frightened him far more than anger would have done. He felt the heat of the man’s breath graze his jaw, like the ghost of an ungiven kiss. It curled across his earlobe and spilled decadently down the exposed length of his throat, raising a telltale trail of goose bumps. He opened his mouth, hardly knowing what he was going to say, but all that emerged was a breathless moan, as shaky as his frantically beating pulse.

  “Are you sure?”

  Oh, how could he answer? He had never been more and less sure of anything in his entire life. All these things Jones said and did and took for granted, Lord Mercury had so long believed impossible—had refused to even let himself yearn for—that they were meaningless now.

  Words spoken in another language.

  Far easier to understand was the pressure of Jones’s fingers on his wrists. The carvings in the door digging into his spine. The familiar weight of the other man’s body. His own helplessness, the potent sickness of mingled desire and shame.

  If Jones kissed him . . . If Jones kissed him like this, then it wouldn’t be . . .

  Choice. It wouldn’t be a choice.

  Lord Mercury let his body turn lax and supple in Jones’s grip.

  Please. Please take this from me.

  “Fuck this,” said Jones, letting him go so abruptly he almost slid to his knees. “I’m done with your games and your cowardice.”

  He turned to gather up his scattered clothes, pulling them onto the body Lord Mercury had craved, and surrendered to, and barely dared to look at. Dazedly, he lowered his hands, and stared longingly after the long, clean sweep of Jones’s spine all the way to—

  He gasped.

  “Phlogiston burn.” Jones yanked up his trousers, hiding the mottled brown and white scarring that covered the left side of his body, and the top of his muscular buttocks.

  That was another impossible thing: the idea that a man like Jones could be hurt. It had never occurred to Lord Mercury to touch much of Jones beyond his prick, but perversely, he wanted to touch that rough, ruined flesh. Soothe old pain with new pleasure.

  When Jones faced him again, his eyes were splinters of broken sky. “Next time you want something from me, you can fucking ask.” He strode across the room and, when Lord Mercury wouldn’t move, leaned over him, light and shadow, and strength and hurt, and a mouth full of harsh shapes. “You can fucking beg.”

  Lord Mercury slid slowly down the wall in a billow of brocade. He curled his hands into fists to hide their shaking. His face in his knees to hide that too.

  He heard Anstruther Jones open the door.

  Close it again.

  He heard his footsteps recede.

  Rosamond was not enjoying being engaged.

  It had all the disadvantages of not being engaged—one was still expected to do the same sort of things and behave in the same sort of way—and the additional disadvantage of being expected, and therefore required, to spend more time with your intended. He visited her at home, escorted her to the park and the opera and the occasional ball.

  They had, with great ceremony and much consultation, chosen a ring together.

  He had not attempted to kiss her again.

  His mother was apparently too frail to travel, so an uncle had formally welcomed her to the family. The engagement dinner had been a small and sober affair. And afterwards came many parties.

  It was all rather disappointing. Her father should have been so pleased with her—she was going to be a marchioness, after all—but he was too busy turning Gaslight inside out and upside down looking for his half-Celestial bastard son.

  Rosamond rebuked herself for having lacked the foresight to be born out of wedlock.

  It was hard not to resent him . . . or whatever it was. Her half brother had told her once that he didn’t like being called him. That he didn’t feel it was who he was.

  Rosamond would have given anything to be a boy.

  Well, not to be a boy precisely. She very much liked her hair and her trim ankles and her tiny waist, and she had seen a sketch of the Elgin Marbles once, so she was aware that there were some respects in which boys were utterly ridiculous. She had no desire to contend with one of those drooping around inside her undergarments.

  But if she had been a boy, she would have been sent to university instead of finishing school, and then on a Grand Tour, and she would have been able to run away whenever she fucking well wanted to.

  And her father would have cared. Would apparently have torn the city apart for her.

  She could run anyway, of course. But she had no skills and no money, and she suspected life for an unprotected gentlewoman might not be entirely full of the sort of adventures she wanted to have.

  She sat curled in the window seat in the pink drawing room, watching the glinting reflection of her engagement ring in the glass. She didn’t like it. It was very proper, of
course, very tasteful and expensive: a solitaire diamond for steadfastness and purity and other similar qualities she did not, in fact, possess or wish to possess. It was probably shockingly vulgar, but she had so wanted a garnet. A blood-red, shining garnet, as big as her fist.

  She sighed.

  Lady Wolfram’s unfocused gaze hovered over her briefly like a tsetse fly. “Ah,” she said, with her blank and bitter smile, “young love.”

  And Rosamond had to try very, very hard not to hate her mother.

  That evening she went to a card party, and even Lady Mildred’s dress—seafoam-green with five tiers of pink and yellow flounces—was insufficient to divert her.

  Anstruther Jones was there as well. Not that she paid him any heed.

  She saw him—or rather she ignored him—fairly often these days. He couldn’t gain admittance to the very best houses, of course, but his money and Lord Mercury’s patronage meant he was welcome at the sort of places that gave desultory card parties on a Wednesday evening.

  She had overheard some of the other debutantes giggling about him. They agreed with her estimation that he wasn’t handsome, which—surely—should have been the end of the matter. But it wasn’t. It turned out there was much to be said on the subject of Anstruther Jones. At least as concerned his mouth. Eyes. Breadth of shoulders. Hardness of chest. Ripple of thigh as experienced when dancing.

  “I heard,” Lady Mildred whispered, “there’s a word they use in the undercity, for when somebody isn’t comely but they make you . . . you know . . . fluttery on the inside.”

  Rosamond rolled her eyes so hard it was a wonder they didn’t spin in their sockets.

  “What’s the word?” asked one of the other girls.

  Lady Mildred put a hand to her mouth, and murmured coyly from behind it, “Likerous.”

  Rosamond had to concede: whatever it meant, it sounded filthy.

  And it suited Jones right down to the ground.

  “But,” put in Lady Cynthia, “I thought that was a lozenge.”

  “You stupid goose, that’s licor—”

  At that moment they caught sight of Rosamond, and fell immediately silent, five faces set into blank stares.

  “Personally,” she said, “I prefer fuckable.”

  And glided away, with a toss of her ringlets.

  Rosamond could have ruled those girls, just like at school, but she was heartsick and weary and couldn’t be bothered.

  Let Mildred have her empire of slaves.

  Eventually, Rosamond excused herself from loo and retired to a corner under the pretence of giving a wet damn about the latest edition of The Englishwoman’s Domestic Magazine. It was a strategic choice and meant she need not worry about looking bookish, but truthfully she found little pleasure in fiction anyway. What was the point of reading about other people’s lives? Especially if they were better people.

  Especially if they had better lives.

  She turned the pages at regular intervals and watched the room from beneath her lashes.

  Dull dull dull dull dull.

  Even the marquess’s two southern friends did little to enliven the tedium. They were loud and polished and laughing, but they spoke mainly to each other, and then in the cant that had apparently lately become all the rage in London—and so most of what they said was impenetrable anyway.

  And Rosamond suspected—though she was no expert herself—nonsensical.

  Eventually card games were abandoned and the conversation became general.

  “I say, what what, my boff,” observed one of the marquess’s friends, “I hear chant that the Clockwork Circus is in town. Shall we bing it thence?”

  The marquess sighed. “Must we? I fear it will be but tawdry amusement.”

  In case he happened to look at her, Rosamond composed her expression into one of corresponding contempt.

  Lady Mildred, however, seemed to have no conception of how foolish she would look gainsaying the taste of a marquess. “Oh no”—she clapped her hands with the sort of charming, girlish excitement all of Rosamond’s dedicated practice had failed to adequately replicate—“it is quite delightful, and perfectly respectable. My father used to take me when I was young. We would eat spun sugar and candied apples, and see all the marvellous things.”

  Rosamond scowled into “Railway Magic.” Not a spike wrenched from its good hold, not a tie un-tied, not a timber splintered. Bah. Why should Lady Mildred, who had no sense and no chin—well, barely any chin—get to have spun sugar, candied apples, and marvels? She tried to imagine Lord Wolfram taking her to the circus, buying her trifles, holding her hand, laughing with her over some childish nonsense. But she couldn’t. It was nothing but a puppet show, a caricature, impossible.

  “Lady Rosamond?”

  It was Anstruther Jones’s voice that brought her abruptly back to the party. She just about managed to suppress a physical start, and then she was irritated. She told herself she was irritated at him, but, truthfully, she was irritated at herself for that momentary loss of control.

  A weakness anyone could have seen.

  And perhaps Jones already had. His eyes were intent upon her. She would almost have preferred it if she had seen contempt, or triumph, or something. But there was only warmth, as if he knew exactly what she was thinking and how she felt.

  “I beg your pardon?” she said icily, as though she hadn’t been distracted, and he was simply beneath her notice.

  “I said, ‘Will you be joining us?’”

  Joining them? They were going to the circus?

  Something perilously close to excitement unfurled within her ruthlessly guarded heart. It would be . . . a change. A break. An escape. Something new to see and do.

  And fuck Lord Wolfram. She could enjoy candied whatever-it-was and all the other things perfectly well on her own. She didn’t need him.

  When she was marchioness, she wouldn’t need anyone.

  Lady Mildred tittered. “Our darling Rosie is far too refined for such girlish pleasures.”

  Oh, that odious bitch. Rosamond’s eyes narrowed wrathfully, but she was double, triple, maybe even quadruple trapped. The marquess had already made his opinion of the circus very clear. If she expressed enthusiasm now, she would not only imply she lacked refinement, but her future husband would most likely think less of her. It was, after all, her role to agree with him—at least in public. “I have no wish to go anywhere without the marquess.”

  “I could escort you.” Anstruther Jones. His face the picture of innocence, the hint of laughter in the curve of his lips anything but.

  There was an excitingly tense silence.

  “That is unnecessary, sir,” returned the marquess, in the same tone of voice Rosamond imagined the hero of a novel might say name your friends, “as I will be escorting my betrothed.”

  Rosamond ducked her head modestly.

  But, privately, she was glowing. Take that, Mildred.

  She was going to the circus after all. And the marquess, who usually treated her with a detached courtesy, was oddly attentive for the rest of the evening, barely straying from her side for a moment.

  She knew enough of the world to recognise it for what it was: pure possessiveness. But she did not think one would wish to possess something one did not value, and so she fully intended to make the most of it.

  She watched Jones slyly as the marquess draped her stole over her shoulders. She had enjoyed kissing him very much indeed—and thought about it often, most particularly when she was alone and sleepless, her hands idly touching the secret places of her body—but kissing was not freedom, or a place in society.

  Kissing was not a future.

  It was just . . . kissing.

  She had thought his attentions—his obvious interest in her—would prove a disadvantage. But she was starting to think perhaps the opposite was true.

  Perhaps he would be useful to her, after all.

  Rosamond was not enjoying the Clockwork Circus.

  She had been daydreamin
g about gleaming sunlight and rainbow tents, gasping crowds and magical sights.

  But it was not like that at all.

  Even the small dark pleasure she could have derived from doing something of which she knew her father would not have approved was swallowed up by the smog and drizzle, and the grimy reality of a sodden field and a scattering of sideshow tents, as garish as toadstools through the greyish haze. The big top itself squatted at the centre, its red and white flags crackling and snapping in the wind, and the air was sticky-sweet with roasting chestnuts and mulling wine, toffee and cinnamon and sugar. It should have contributed to a festival atmosphere, but it only churned her stomach.

  Despite the weather, there was a sizeable crowd—mainly, at this time of day, the middle class, the idle, and the itinerant. Rosamond, prey to a strange restlessness that was too ambiguous to be hope, had dressed with special care that morning in a gown of dark-green moiré silk with Pagoda sleeves and a green-and-gold fringe. And now she was jostled, dishevelled, and muddy, and nobody seemed to care how fashionable and pretty she was. It was noisy too, the incessant babble around her blending into the harsh cries of the touts and the grinders, and beginning to give her a headache.

  The rest of her party, however, seemed to be experiencing no such adversity. Everyone seemed so terribly gay, and that just made her feel awkward and uncomfortable and strange on top of everything else. As if she was missing whatever internal part was required for happiness.

  Perhaps Lord Wolfram was not the sticking point of her imaginings.

  Perhaps she was.

  She had gazed, occasionally, at the image of herself reflected by the family portrait that hung by the stairs: a grave little girl, pristine in white lace, her pastel eyes revealing absolutely nothing.

  She peeped up at her future husband. He merely looked bored.

  How eerie it was, to be amid so many people, and to be so utterly alone.

  She found herself looking for Anstruther Jones, but he had gone off somewhere with Lady Mildred. They were probably laughing together, and he would be looking at her with all that smouldering intensity and unexpected tenderness.