Band Sinister

by KJ Charles

  Corvin rolled his eyes; Rookwood sighed audibly. Guy flushed. He’d sounded intolerably prissy even in his own ears, and worse, he was being cowardly. He ought to do more than disapprove: he should defend his faith in the strongest terms against these atheists with their wild theories that cut at the heart of everything he’d ever been taught. But he’d held a dead stone monster in his hand and he couldn’t find anything to say.

  Raven opened his mouth. Penn said, mildly, “Every man is entitled to his beliefs.”

  “Yes, any man has a right to his beliefs, and a duty to question them too,” Raven retorted. “If you don’t take out your beliefs for washing now and again, they’re just bad habits.”

  That started a discussion among the company in general, greatly to Guy’s relief. He ate and drank and watched his tablemates as the conversation swerved like a drunkard in the road. They went from the need to abolish the offence of blasphemous libel and separate church from State into a discussion on the system of elections. Martelo and Salcombe argued that every man over the age of twenty-one should be entitled to a vote and representation in the House; Raven and Street suggested women’s opinions should be canvassed equally; and Corvin spoke, with languid wit that might even have been seriously meant, about the desirability of abolishing the House of Lords. “After all,” he said, “I have a seat and a voice there, and you wouldn’t put me in charge of the country, would you?”

  It was beyond argument, for Guy: he couldn’t begin to formulate answers to questions he’d never even considered asking. He just listened, in a slightly wine-flown haze, to a debate that felt like some sort of lengthy hallucination, each proposition more destructive and extreme and simply not done than the last.

  This, then, was a hellfire club: a debating society for alarming ideas. Guy could well understand why one would need a private room; a zealous magistrate could prosecute some of these opinions if aired at a public meeting. But this was Rookwood’s home and thus, since he was an Englishman, his castle. The Murder could say what they wanted in their own company, and Guy, who hardly ever said what he wanted, had nothing at all to offer this meeting of lively, informed, well-travelled people saying unimaginably bizarre things. He simply watched and listened, with the sense of being caught in one of those fiery upheavals that Salcombe said had made the world.

  He was so absorbed that he didn’t notice the food he consumed, or the wine from his ever-filled glass. He just listened, baffled, disturbed, and oddly exhilarated by a conversation the like of which he’d probably never hear again. He looked between the speakers, from one to another, and his gaze came to a stop at Rookwood.

  Sir Philip was listening to Caulfield, who was making a point about the American constitution in a quiet, hesitant voice. Caulfield had barely spoken, and it was noticeable that the voluble gathering, most of whom habitually talked over one another, all paused to listen to his few contributions. Guy didn’t know if that was because he was more worth listening to than the rest or because they were simply being kind to a shy man, and he didn’t find out because he didn’t hear a word. He was entirely caught by Philip Rookwood in the candlelight.

  Rookwood’s hair, a mix of brown and blond strands, was shot with gold as it caught the reflection of the many flames; his blue-grey eyes, the colour of a summer squall from a clear sky, were intent on Caulfield with a look of deep absorption that brought his encounter with Corvin to Guy’s mind and shortened his breath. The baronet was toying absently with a biscuit, elbows on the table, cheekbones shadowed by the dancing light, lips just slightly curved, not in amusement, but, Guy thought, in unconscious happiness. Sir Philip Rookwood was where he wanted to be in this atheistical, democratic gathering, among his friends, and those who were more than that, and there was no trace of the habitual mocking smile or the lifted brow.

  He looked painfully handsome when he was happy. He looked like someone Guy would have dreamed of calling friend and never dared ask. Like someone who kissed a man, pushed him back with confident certainty, and smiled into his eyes.

  Guy didn’t realise he’d been staring at that half-smiling mouth until it curved—a slow, sure movement—and he looked up and met Rookwood’s gaze.

  He couldn’t breathe. He had no idea how long he’d been staring like an ill-mannered gapeseed. He shouldn’t have been staring at all, at anyone but particularly not at Rookwood, and he had to stop now but he couldn’t look away from those eyes. He was sure Rookwood’s smile was all mockery, but he was pinned by that grey-blue gaze that refused to drop, and Guy had never felt so nakedly seen in his life.

  “If everyone’s finished,” Raven said, “are we going to listen to George’s new piece?”

  “Of course,” Rookwood said. He kept Guy’s helpless gaze an endless second longer, then leaned back with a slow blink. “George’s composition, Frisby, and Ned will grace us with his playing. We can wait if you and David wish to visit the fair invalid first.” He smiled. Guy shivered. “Don’t be long.”

  CHAPTER FOUR

  They gathered in the drawing room to listen to the musicians. Philip had made a small wager with himself as to whether Frisby would use his sister as an excuse to run and hide, and was pleasantly surprised to lose. The man didn’t look precisely confident as he slipped in behind David, but he was there, even if he didn’t quite manage to meet Philip’s eyes.

  “Not scared him off yet, then,” Corvin breathed in his ear. That required standing extremely close, so Philip turned, gave him a fond smile, and ground his heel in a slow emphatic movement on Corvin’s toes.

  “Touchy,” Corvin said, with a provocative grin, extracted his boot from under Philip’s foot, and went to take a seat. Philip cast him a look and turned back to see Frisby was now looking at him with the sort of shock that suggested Philip had slapped him in the face.

  What on earth—? He couldn’t have heard Corvin unless he had ears like a bat, and a man standing on his friend’s foot was surely nothing to get upset about. One would hardly be shocked by the informality after that exchange of looks earlier.

  He considered that as they settled to listen to the new sonata, George on piano and Ned playing the violin. Philip liked music well enough, but he lacked whatever sensibility it was that caused people to go into raptures. Ned’s face as he played was that of an angel on the verge of spending, and Corvin could sit entirely absorbed through concerts that lasted hours; Philip tended to find it a reasonably enjoyable background noise while he thought about something else.

  Frisby was evidently one of those who liked music properly, because the slapped look and the self-conscious awkwardness had both fled. He sat and listened to the musicians with wide eyes and slightly parted lips, and since it was, for once, possible to watch him without sending him scurrying, Philip did.

  He wasn’t in the habit of approaching unknowns. Corvin and John had been there since he was ten for the needs of body and soul, and Philip counted himself one of the luckiest men in Britain on that account alone; if he wanted variety, he could rely on Corvin’s supernatural ability to discern on sight if someone might like to share his bed. Asking the wrong man risked violence, denunciation, extortion, or a panicked flight to the nearest magistrate, and Philip did not like any of those prospects.

  He was as sure as he could reasonably be about Frisby, and absolutely sure Corvin would have told him if he was barking up the wrong tree, but that didn’t exclude the possibility of the aforesaid panicked flight. That might even be more likely if the man was one of those terrified to acknowledge his own nature. It would be a glaring stupidity on Philip’s part to do anything but ignore the fellow until he took his sister home, never to pass Rookwood Hall’s threshold again. The man was nervy, under a great deal of strain, doubtless inexperienced, and a Frisby. Each of those factors suggested Philip should leave the fellow well alone; together the conclusion was inarguable.

  And yet.

  He kept thinking of what he’d heard that first night. The way Frisby had sat by his sister and s
poken to her, never stopping or giving up. The way he put her first and stood for her in the face of his own obvious fears. Perhaps other people would shrug and say that was natural in a family, but Philip had no experience of that, direct or indirect. His own family had hated the sight of him and said so; Corvin’s parents had been so uninterested in their offspring that they made stray cats seem nurturing; John couldn’t name his country of origin, far less any relative.

  He would, he thought, sit by John or Corvin’s bedsides, were such a thing required of him. He didn’t believe that family love was of a superior kind to the affection one gave by choice. But still he’d stood in the halls of the home where he’d been loathed for existing, and listened to Frisby weep for his sister, and his heart had twisted like wet washing with a childish, agonised longing for something he’d never have.

  He’d thought for several terrible moments this morning that Amanda Frisby had died. He’d been sure of it, and startled by his own distress at the thought of Frisby’s bereavement. Nobody who loved another person so much should lose them so cruelly. And then the man had said, “She’s going to be all right,” and his face had looked like Ned’s when he played, or Corvin’s when he fucked.

  Because it turned out that Guy Frisby was in fact rather more than just pretty when he wasn’t grey with worry and exhaustion; that there were fires banked under that unassuming polite-to-a-fault exterior; that his eyes widened at new ideas even while his lovely lips pursed. And that he looked at men, because Philip had rarely been so looked at. Corvin hadn’t needed to kick his ankle to alert him to Frisby’s fascinated stare, although he’d done so anyway. Philip had felt that gaze on his skin.

  And he ought, he really ought, to leave Frisby well alone, but when a man made it so clear what he wanted, it seemed rude not to offer.

  Frisby had a compact form, not lean or gangly. Habitually rounded shoulders of the type one saw in men who spent their days bent over a desk, although not in the way Philip might like to see him bent over a desk. Dark brown hair, straight and short and cut with competence rather than flair. Dark brows too, over hazel eyes of that flecked green-brown type that looked like nothing much from a distance but rewarded close inspection. A pleasant face, of the sort with which one became comfortably familiar rather than the sort that left one breathless, except for the mouth. That was beautifully shaped, with an elegantly curved top lip and a full bottom lip. A sensitive mouth that moved apparently without the man’s conscious awareness, as though he were used to reading aloud or speaking his thoughts to himself. It had moved silently while Sheridan and Harry had spun pictures of their monstrous ancient world, and Philip had wondered what Frisby saw in his mind’s eye.

  He was sitting rapt now, upright, as the violin soared and trilled. George wrote for Ned’s playing, pushing him harder with every piece, and Ned’s bow seemed to flicker with the speed of its dance. He was almost on his toes, rigid with physical tension as he controlled the bow, and Philip wondered why, if you loved a man, you’d make his life so difficult. George gave Ned’s gift no quarter, forcing him to live up to the music of his partner’s imagination and the outer limits of his own skill, increasing the tension every time until the surely inevitable day a string would snap.

  Doubtless they made better music that way; doubtless it suited them. It would not have suited Philip. Corvin had never asked him to be more than himself. He’d simply loved, warts and all, without hesitation or qualification as he always did, since the day ten-year-old Philip had been deposited in the Corvin household to spare his parents the sight of him. He’d lived by his friend’s generous affection, the first he’d ever known, gulping it like a thirsty man plunging his face into sweet water.

  Perhaps he and Frisby had more in common than met the eye, in fact, when it came to mothers who cuckolded their husbands and abandoned their children, and fathers who didn’t care if one lived or died. Not that Philip knew much of the deceased Mr. Frisby as a parent except that he had drunk himself to death while wasting his substance at the gaming tables, but that didn’t suggest a deal of consideration for his offspring. Doubtless people had clucked disapprovingly and thought the less of the children for the father’s selfishness; they always did. No wonder the brother and sister were close. No wonder Frisby preferred not to be looked at.

  Then again, Philip had once wished with all his heart to go unnoticed, and then Corvin had seen him and refused to look away. Perhaps Frisby needed to be seen the right way too.

  Why, it’s all but an act of charity, he imagined Corvin saying, and found he was smiling as the musicians finished and they all broke into applause. Those who knew about music clustered round to offer superlatives; the rest of them gave congratulations. Frisby hung back a little, looking uncertain, and Philip drifted over.

  “Don’t feel shy about saying you liked it,” he remarked, and saw the man twitch at his voice. “And don’t feel shy about saying if you didn’t, come to that. George prefers intelligent criticism to ignorant applause, which is why I’m keeping back.”

  “Don’t you like music?”

  “I like it well enough but that’s all,” Philip said. “It doesn’t transport me in the way it does some. You, perhaps?”

  “I, uh, I don’t know about transport,” Frisby muttered. “I thought they were very good.”

  “I think you thought more than that. Or, if you didn’t, you ought to rent out your face for the benefit of artists, because you looked enchanted.”

  Frisby went delightfully pink. Philip took his shoulder, feeling the muscle tense, and gave him a gentle push toward the musicians. “Speak your thoughts, that’s the purpose of our gathering. George, our guest appreciated your work.”

  “It was marvellous,” Frisby managed. His manners clearly forced him on when his preference would have been to flee. “The melody line was remarkably beautiful. Thank you for letting me hear it. And the playing—it was exquisite.”

  George bowed, starting a response. Philip stepped away and found himself knuckled hard in the back. That would be John.

  “Something to say?” he enquired.

  “Just wondering what you’re playing at. If even Corvin’s letting something lie, shouldn’t you?”

  “The day I measure my behaviour by Corvin’s standards, you may begin to rebuke me.”

  “I’ll rebuke you when I please.” John slipped an arm through his and dragged him to the window. “Don’t be an idiot. You’ve enough bad blood with that one for a lifetime, and if you give him grounds to make an accusation—”

  “I think you’re too severe.”

  “I think you’d be a fool to foul your own nest. It’s a bloody stupid way to go on, and if I want to see my friends being bloody stupid—”

  “—you’ll have no trouble finding examples,” Philip completed for him. “Yes, all right. I grant your argument has some merit.”

  “Good. Oh, and while I remember, sitting tomorrow.”

  “I’ve my steward all morning, but the afternoon is yours.”

  John let him go with a nod. Philip turned back to the room, and was somewhere between relieved, unsurprised, and unreasonably annoyed to see that Frisby had gone.

  HE NORMALLY RATHER enjoyed his meetings with his steward. Lovett was not an original thinker, but he made up for that in practical intelligence, competence, and obedience. Philip had read a few recent works on theories of agriculture after he’d succeeded to the title, decreed that repairs were to be done promptly and tenants treated as knowledgeable partners, then not come back for three years. He’d returned to discover that Lovett had obeyed him to the letter and was generally considered to be robbing his master for the benefit of his tenants, who would therefore appreciate it if he remained an absentee landlord all his life. He’d gravely displeased the other local landholders by failing to sack Lovett and double the rents, but confirmed his reputation as an eccentric by introducing various modern ideas in the way of equipment and crops, leaving Lovett to deal with the actual business of argu
ing the farmers into it.

  The latest idea, thanks to an enthusiastic agriculturalist of his acquaintance, was new to the point of madness: the extraction of sugar from beetroot. A factory had been established for the production of beet sugar in Silesia, and Bonaparte had decreed that France too must begin growing the crop, to reduce his nation’s dependence on imports and guard against the possibility of a British naval blockade cutting off supply.

  It could be done in England, and should. A domestic sugar industry would surely be able to beat the prices of sugar imported from the West Indies, and reduce the profitability of slave sugar, and while Philip didn’t delude himself that would be the end of the plantations, it would be something. So Corvin was funding the construction of England’s first beet sugar extraction factory, Philip had set aside several fields to grow the latest strain of Silesian white beet, and the sense of limitless possibility was thrilling. Or had been.

  “They all think you’re mad,” Lovett said. “The stuff’s useless.”

  “It’s not useless, it’s the future. Tell them Bonaparte’s growing sugar beet.”

  “I’d rather not, Sir Philip. It wouldn’t help.”

  “Then tell them I’m a violent eccentric and their very lives depend on doing this properly.”

  “Mmm,” Lovett said. “Perhaps there’s a middle way?”

  Philip sighed. “Tell them whatever you like as long as I get my beet. Why they must be so hidebound...”

  “People like the old ways, Sir Philip. They like what they know.”

  There was an explosion of laughter from up the corridor, sufficiently loud that they both turned instinctively towards it. Evidently Philip’s friends were enjoying a joke. “In ten years’ time sugar beet will be the old ways that they know. Then someone will discover a new means of extracting sugar from sea water and the farmers will cry, But beet was good enough for our forefathers! It’s how progress works. The printing press was a modern innovation once. So was fire.”