The Highwayman Came Riding

by Qeturah Edeli

  “We do?”

  “People have started to notice you spend a lot of time here. ‘Who’s he?’ they ask me. ‘Is this some beau of yours?’ ‘Where’d he come from?’ ‘Why’s he talk like that?’ And I don’t know what to tell them. Shall I say you’re courting my brother?”

  “Are you mad, woman?”

  “Shall I say you’re courting me?”

  Augustus made a gagging sound.

  “Sorry, Elias, I’ve stolen your job,” Bess muttered. Augustus made an indignant sound, but she talked over him. “It’s the only reason I can think of for how to explain your doe-eyed presence every fucking evening for more than a fortnight. I work the floor any time Elias works the bar, so it makes sense you would sit at the bar if you were waiting to talk to me. If we spread this story, no one will think it strange if you two flirt for hours on end because Augustus is just passing the time until he can talk with me, you see?”

  “Whatever you think is best,” Elias said. “Though would you really want to date this molly? I mean, look at him.”

  “Bit rich, coming from you,” Augustus snapped.

  “So what shall I tell the regulars about you?” Bess continued. “Why are you here? Where are you from? You’re a cagey little sod, but I’ve never been one to keep mum on a beau, and I’ll not start with my artificial beau.”

  “Whatever you want to say, honey,” Augustus said and, by the sound of it, blew her a kiss. “I’ll go along with whatever you want.”

  Elias decided not to warn him against such carelessness. The results would be too entertaining.

  * * * *

  “So, you were accused of indecencies with a goat?”

  Elias spit his beverage across the bar.

  “I beg your pardon?” Augustus sounded horrified. Elias wiped his mouth, hiding his smile.

  Mr. Jones had come to sit next to Augustus. “Miss Burgess was telling me you had to leave London over a misunderstanding?”

  “Er, accused, yes, that’s right. Most assuredly not guilty of such indecencies. A complete misunderstanding. Miss Burgess told you that, did she?”

  “That she did,” Mr. Jones replied.

  “Miss Burgess,” Augustus barked across the room. “Darling. Do come here a moment, would you?”

  Elias sat on the tall stool behind the bar, which he avoided most shifts, set his elbows on the bar, and turned his ear to the show.

  “Miss Burgess, do you really think it wise to spread falsehoods about my experiences in Town?”

  “Falsehoods, Mr. Westwood? Why, that is what you told me about why you had to leave so abruptly and for so long. I understand the accusations were falsehoods, but reiterating what the false accusations actually were is not a falsehood in and of itself. Wouldn’t you agree, Elias?”

  “Oh, most definitely,” Elias said. “Are you calling my sister a liar, Mr. Westwood?”

  “No, never, that was never my intent, Mr. Burgess,” Augustus said quickly, apparently conscious the noise level in the bar had dipped as the locals strained to catch the conversation. “Only, do you think it pertinent, Miss Burgess, to share such information? Given that it’s false and creates terrible imagery?”

  “Not at all, Mr. Westwood! We’re simple folk in Kitwick, as Elias here has told me you seem to have gathered, so you must understand the idea of you committing indecencies with a goat is neither a foreign nor altogether unexpected concept. Why, just last year, Mr. Smith—”

  “Miss Burgess, I care not a whit about the accusations against Mr. Smith.”

  “Mr. Westwood, are you upset with me?”

  “Upset? No, Miss Burgess—”

  “I know I should shut up, oh, I am so very stupid, Mr. Westwood, aren’t I?”

  “Stupid? You? No, er, sweetheart, not at all.”

  “Oh, please don’t break ties with me, Mr. Westwood. I should die if you did such a thing, die of a broken heart!”

  “Miss Burgess—”

  “And if I did not, I would cut out my own heart anyway for I would be so ashamed, after”—her voice fell to a whisper—”after everything we’ve done together.”

  “Good God, I hope you don’t mean… Ah, no, ah, Miss Burgess, don’t cry, dear, dry your eyes.” There was a rustling as though Augustus was extracting a handkerchief from his waistcoat. “And you really mustn’t say such things, people might get the wrong idea.”

  “Mr. Westwood, I am so sorry, I know you have your reputation to think about, only I can’t forget how you—”

  “Shut up, you hussy,” Augustus hissed savagely, so low the patrons could not hear.

  “Kiss me then, you dumb ponce,” Bess shot back.

  “Hey!” Elias snapped.

  “On the cheek,” Bess modified her request.

  “Do you speak in jest?” Augustus demanded, still talking in a harsh whisper and as though he was scarcely moving his lips.

  “No. You want me to stop, I want a peck on the cheek.”

  “The hand,” Elias and Augustus said together.

  Bess was quiet a moment. “Fine,” she conceded. “The hand.”

  “What is the meaning of this?” Elias whispered to her.

  “Tax. It’s the least he can do.”

  “Ugh,” Elias muttered.

  “Is it all right, Eli?” Augustus murmured.

  “All right?” Bess questioned.

  “I won’t if you don’t want me to. We can work out something else.”

  “She’s basically me. It’s fine. Use a little tongue if you want.”

  “You know I don’t care for anyone like that but you.”

  “Don’t be disgusting. Just kiss my sister and be done with it.”

  “Like you mean it, now, lover boy,” Bess said. Elias jostled a glass so he did not have to hear them for a few seconds.

  “My most sincere apologies,” Augustus said loudly when it was over. Elias knew Augustus meant this for him and not for Bess. “I never meant to hurt you. You are very dear to me.”

  “As are you to me, Mr. Westwood. Now do unhand me before my father sees.”

  “Your father?”

  “He should be done at any moment. He promised Elias he would take the latter half of this evening.” Elias had asked for an evening off because he wanted to spend time alone with Augustus once the sun was down for once.

  The sound in the tavern resumed its normal level.

  “Jesus,” Augustus groaned. “I should go.”

  “Whatever for?” Elias demanded. He had not bartered with his father for nothing, had he?

  “Your father—”

  “Doesn’t give a damn. He’d like to meet you.”

  “You planned this?”

  “I wanted to go for a stroll in the dark, just us two.”

  “But I have to meet your father first? And he knows what we’re about? Are you daft? I’m waiting outside.”

  “Augustus.”

  There was a squeak of wood, and he was gone.

  “Smooth,” Bess said.

  “Says the woman who just wrestled a kiss out of a sod.”

  “He more blew over my knuckles than anything. It was absurd. Next time I’m demanding tongue.”

  “Next time!”

  “He’s very pretty, Elias, you’ve done well for yourself.”

  “Haven’t you got enough beaux of your own without making eyes at mine?”

  “Edmund’s gone chasing after Letitia Harris—I can’t think why, other than she must have promised him something splendid—Gilbert’s gone to Mitton for training, and Ambrose looks at you more than me these days.”

  “Ambrose Lovell is looking at me?” Ambrose, a year their senior, had been one of the village boys who bullied Elias as a child. He had liked to pull Elias’s hair and call him names like “lazy loopy loony eyes,” “bat boy,” and “blind baby Burgess.”

  “Honestly, ever since you walked through town naked a few times, it’s as if you awakened something in him.”

  Elias snorted. “I’m sorry,
the idea of Ambrose Lovell finding anything in me to be desired is absurd.”

  “It’s more that he desires to put something in you, I think.”

  “What the fuck do you mean by that?”

  Before Bess could answer, Elias heard their father’s heavy tread on the stairs.

  “Father’s coming,” he said.

  “Best behavior, then, lest he revoke your privileges.”

  “Let the bastard try. I’ll have my walk tonight if it’s the last thing I do.”

  “Evening,” their father grunted once he had joined Elias behind the bar.

  “Good evening,” Elias said. He always made more of an effort to get along with his father when he wanted something.

  “Where’s your beau?”

  “He had to step out. I’m going to meet him.”

  “Rich little shit didn’t want to meet me?”

  “Er, he had to retrieve his cloak from the Prissy Peacock, as he wasn’t dressed for a long walk.”

  “Hmph. Sounds like a prick.”

  “He is a bit of one, yes,” Elias agreed.

  “What do you see in him?”

  “Absolutely nothing.”

  “You know what I mean, boy.”

  “It’s purely animalistic attraction,” Elias muttered. He did not want to put into words what he so enjoyed about Augustus’s company. He did not rightly know, anyway.

  Their father grunted. “At least that’s something. Be back before closing, now.”

  Elias doffed and stowed his apron, then donned his jacket and cloak when Bess passed them to him.

  “Be good,” she said. “And don’t let him take advantage of you.”

  “Says the woman who just took advantage of him.”

  “You know what I mean.”

  “I actually don’t.”

  Bess escorted him to the front door. She pecked him on the cheek, then pushed him out into the crisp early autumn evening. “Be good now.”

  The door swung shut behind Elias, and he stood on the stoop a long moment, breathing in the damp, earthy air and listening to the dry leaves rustle in the street.

  “Eli,” Augustus whispered, and the hairs on the back of Elias’s neck stood on end.

  “You waited.”

  “Of course.” Augustus threaded his arm through Elias’s elbow, then drew him close to his side. “I’d wait an eternity for you.”

  “Don’t be stupid. You’ve sixty more years in you, maximum.”

  “Probably less. No one in my family lives very long.”

  Elias did not like the idea of the man standing next to him, so warm and vivacious, cold and lifeless like a corpse in one of the macabre stories Bess liked to read him. He crooked his elbow tighter, pulling Augustus closer. “You’ve never talked about your family.” They made their way into the quiet streets of Kitwick, the boisterous sounds of the Peach and Pear fading behind them.

  “My mother died when I was a child. I scarcely remember her. My father was a pompous cunt and died of consumption a year ago.”

  “I’m sorry.”

  “Don’t be. I don’t miss him.”

  Elias wondered what he would feel if his father died. Probably nothing. “My mother killed herself when I was a child,” he offered.

  “Did she really?”

  “Well, she disappeared. I always assumed she killed herself because what sort of mother up and leaves her children with a sorry sot like my father? Bess thinks she ran off with traveling folk after they swept her memory clean, but that doesn’t sound like something a mother from Kitwick would do.”

  “One never knows,” Augustus said.

  “No. I suppose I never will know what became of her.”

  “Where are we going?” Augustus asked as they continued walking.

  “There’s a glen beyond the Joneses’ pasture,” Elias said. He knew this because Bess told him she went there sometimes with her beaux. “I was thinking we could go there. Mr. Jones is drinking at the Peach and Pear tonight, as he does every night, and Mrs. Jones and the children will surely be asleep by now.”

  “Now, what would we do in a glen at this time of day?”

  “You tell me,” Elias murmured.

  When Elias’s familiarity with the road ended, Augustus took over navigation, for he said he could see a small house with a pasture by the light of the moon. He guided Elias through the pasture fence, which involved some contortions and a coat getting snagged on the raw wood—Augustus cursed the splinter that tore a hole in his pocket—through the pasture and a second fence, and into the glen beyond.

  “This is beautiful,” Augustus murmured as he led Elias between the trees along the sloping terrain. “Heavens, if this isn’t the second most beautiful thing I’ve seen this evening.”

  “Second?”

  Augustus stopped walking. “I’m going to touch your face,” he said, then put a hand to Elias’s cheek and kissed him on the mouth. “You’re the first,” he whispered.

  Elias tossed his head. “Disgusting.”

  “You like it.”

  Elias did not comment. Augustus let him go, and there was a rustling sound.

  “What’re you doing?” Elias asked.

  “Laying down my cloak. Come sit with me.”

  Augustus took Elias’s hand and guided him to the ground, where they sat on the fur-lined interior of his cloak.

  “I can’t think of anywhere I’d rather be just now,” Augustus said, a light hand on Elias’s wrist while the other traced his lips. Though the air was chilly, Elias felt warm. He was alert to the new sounds and scents of the glen, and to Augustus’s every movement in the rustle of his clothes and the sound of his breath, a little faster than usual. His summer congestion was long gone.

  Truth be told, Elias could think of no preferable spot or company at present either.

  As they faced each other, Augustus pressed his finger into the center of Elias’s lower lip. “I want to kiss you again.”

  “By all means.”

  They kissed, Augustus’s hand on Elias’s knee, and they slid from sitting upright to lying face to face on Augustus’s cloak. Augustus brushed Elias’s hair, which had slipped loose from its ribbon over the course of the evening, back from his face.

  “God, this is nice,” Elias murmured when they paused.

  They kissed again, and this time, Augustus bit Elias’s lower lip. Elias gasped, jerking his head back.

  “Do you not like that?” Augustus asked.

  “It’s not that I don’t like it, it was just unexpected.”

  Augustus drew him closer again. “Expect it this time.”

  Elias was prickling and hot, his trousers feeling restrictive, a few minutes later as they continued to kiss. He pulled away again, panting.

  “What?” Augustus asked, sounding like he had a fever. “Is everything all right?”

  “I’m…I’m just…”

  Augustus slid the hand at Elias’s knee up his thigh. Elias grabbed it. If Augustus went any higher, he would feel it, he would feel how Elias swelled to kiss him like this, in a glen at night, alone. The idea of Augustus feeling what had happened to Elias was mortifying.

  “What?” Augustus asked. “Do you not want me to touch you?”

  “I—”

  “It’s fine if you don’t, I understand.”

  “I’d rather you didn’t.” Could Augustus see what had happened? Elias tried to rearrange his cloak so it covered his crotch.

  “There’s no need to be embarrassed. It’s fine.”

  “I’m not embarrassed!”

  “Here, let me show you something,” Augustus whispered. He took hold of Elias’s hand and pulled it slowly toward him. When Elias’s fingers contacted cloth, he was confused.

  “What?”

  “Feel.”

  Elias stretched his fingers and grasped the cloth, then gave a start. There was a hard, rod-shaped mound beneath the doeskin of what must be the front of Augustus’s trousers.

  “Am I feeling…is tha
t your…”

  “It happens to every man when he’s as excited as you’re making me right now.”

  Elias wondered how he had gone so long without knowing this. Without intending to, he gave Augustus a gentle squeeze. Augustus emitted a halting gasp, and the sound made Elias’s stomach erupt in a flurry of excitement.

  “Careful,” Augustus said, sounding weak.

  “Sorry.”

  “Don’t worry about it.” And Augustus kissed him again. Elias did not let go of the tight bundle in Augustus’s trousers, but he did squeeze it occasionally, just to hear Augustus gasp again. He learned if he pressed in with the heel of his palm and dragged the pressure up, Augustus would moan.

  “Fuck,” Augustus murmured into Elias’s ear the third time he did this. “You tease, oh…”

  Elias, feeling empowered, bit Augustus’s lip.

  “Shit,” Augustus said, wrapping an arm around Elias and putting his hand in the small of Elias’s back. Their hips pressed together, and for one glorious moment, Elias felt the hard swell in the front of Augustus’s trousers press against the tent in the front of his own. Elias bucked away.

  “Oh, sorry,” Augustus said, letting go. “I’m sorry, I didn’t mean—”

  “It’s fine,” Elias said, panting. He felt as though he had just been energized by the Mitton doctor’s electrifying machine. When he was very young, his parents had paid handsomely for him to be shocked on the face with hopes of stimulating sight.

  “You’ve really never done anything like this, have you?”

  “No, not at all. The closest was when my redcoat…friend…made advances.”

  “I see. We don’t have to. I mean, if you don’t want to right now, we don’t even have to kiss. You look distraught.”

  Elias was overwhelmed. Augustus was giving him a choice?

  “I think… I think I just need a moment to, er, calm down a bit.” He breathed slowly and steadily for a few quiet minutes while he coaxed the swell in his trousers to relax by thinking about cuddling with Lord Nelson.

  “How are you feeling now?” Augustus asked.

  “Better.”

  “Sorry again.”

  “Don’t be. I’m just a novice, that’s all.” Elias wondered how experienced Augustus was, for he seemed never to lose his cool. It did not seem an appropriate time to ask.

  “I am too,” Augustus said, as though it would console Elias. Great, Elias thought. He was just naturally bad at this. “I’ve only had one beau, if I could call him that, and we never did anything as advanced as this.”