A Private Gentleman

by Heidi Cullinan

  Only Albert mattered.

  If only I mattered to him.

  He knew without question Albert would never hurt him deliberately, that he ignored him not to wound, not to mock. Yet Michael found that didn’t change the fact that he did hurt. In a strange way the idea that Albert simply didn’t think of him now, too wrapped up in his pain to notice, hurt worse than any deliberate slight.

  Turning away from the orchid, he caught a look at himself in the mirror, at his long hair. He thought of all the men who had stroked it. He thought of how Rodger called them his golden locks, rubbing his fingers together to indicate coin.

  He thought of how he had lain in bed with Albert at Oxford, safe and loved as Albert held him and methodically stroked the long, silken strands, calling him beautiful.

  He thought of Albert with the unknown woman even Rodger couldn’t reach.

  Michael touched his hair sadly.

  Gathering the rest of his things, he headed down the stairs. He found Clary in the ready room, drew a breath, and said, “Darling, do you have time to cut my hair?”

  Every nightmare Wes had ever had in his life was haunting him at once, and as days turned into weeks and the weeks into a month, he very, very sincerely wanted to die.

  He didn’t even remember coming to Penny. As the opium left his system, his memory began to scramble, and he could recall both her finding him in an alley and falling through her door in a faint. He also thought sometimes he was with his father, or underwater. But his faulty memories came and went. Penny herself was always there when they receded.

  She took the opium from him slowly. To do otherwise might kill him, she said, though as the withdrawal set its teeth into Wes he wished he were dead. The road back was full of nightmares, literal and metaphorical both. Shakes, fevers, retching, tortured visions—his body and mind were melting away, and there was nowhere for him to hide.

  Penny stayed by him through it all. No matter how he wept, no matter how he shouted, no matter that he vomited or soiled himself, she remained. She listened to him plead. She heard his bargains with God and with the devil. She witnessed his hallucinations, most of them about his father.

  His father and Michael.

  Over and over again he watched his father rape his lover. Over and over again Michael called to him, but Albert could never move. He could barely speak.

  “You’re worthless,” his father told him. “You’re pathetic and worthless. How could you ever save him? You cannot even save yourself.”

  His father became the burglar. The burglar became the nasty boys at school. The nasty boys at school became the superior members of the Botanical Society, all of them sneering at him as they raped Michael over and over and over. Night and day, waking or sleeping, the visions never stopped, and they were worse than the chills, or the fevers, or the sick or the spiders and lizards and monsters that erupted from the walls. None of them held a candle to his failure, his worthlessness, played like a bad, endless opera before the backs of his eyes.

  He would have run mad, he was sure of it, had it not been for Penny.

  “You are not worthless,” she told him every time he repeated the nightmare’s accusations aloud. “You are not pathetic. You are not weak. You are strong, George Albert Westin. You are strong and capable, and you are alive.”

  “No,” he would weep. “No, I’m not,” he would insist, but she held fast to his hands and whispered in his ear.

  “Yes you are. And your Michael thinks so too.”

  On and on this went, torture that seemed like years, that seemed it would never end. Yet end it did. Not at once. But the nightmares began to get weaker, and wonder of wonders, Wes grew stronger. One day he found himself shouting back at his father, at the burglar, at all the boys and men who mocked him, parroting Penny’s words.

  “I am n-not worthless. I am n-n-not w-w-weak.”

  Whenever he defended himself, Michael would look up at Wes, his beautiful eyes cutting right to Albert’s soul, and he would whisper, “I love you.”

  He was still very sick. He threw up on Penny as often as not, but now there was no blood. It took him over a month to stand. Walking seemed years away. But he was getting better.

  “Rest,” Penny urged him when the panic tried to drown him. “Think only of getting better. Don’t dwell on troubling things.”

  “M-M-Michael,” he rasped. “M-M-M-M—”

  Penny rubbed his back, the same soothing strokes his mother had once given him. “Michael can wait. You’re no good to him until you’re better. Rest, Wes. Rest.”

  In the end Wes had no choice. He was so weak he could barely sit, let alone compose sentences enough to explain. But he could still think. And though the monsters were slain, this duty was far worse, far more terrible an outcome left untended, and unlike the hallucinations, this one was real.

  He saved his strength. He used every trick Penny had taught him. He practiced over and over inside his mind. When he knew he was able, he spoke.

  “Michael,” he whispered one day as Penny held his head over a bowl. “You m-m-must tell M-M-M-Michael.”

  “I sent word to your butler,” Penny soothed him. “I told him to tell anyone concerned that you had gone unexpectedly out of town. Someone is even looking after your plants.”

  He didn’t give a damn about his plants. She didn’t understand. He shoved the bowl away, wiped his mouth with his sleeve and sat up, forcing himself not to wobble. “Michael,” he repeated, looking her as squarely in the eye as he could. “M-M-Must tell M-M-ichael.”

  She paused, regarding him carefully before putting down the bowl. She spoke slowly. “Is…this the Michael that you spoke of as you dreamed?” Another pause. “The Michael that you…love?”

  He froze. Would she abandon him over this? Would she love an addict but despise a sodomite? He thought of Michael and decided it didn’t matter. If she tossed him out, he would find a way to stumble to Dove Street himself.

  “Y-Yes.”

  The awkward moment expanded painfully. And then she nodded, reached into her pocket, and withdrew a notebook and pencil. “What is his address?”

  Half-laughing, half-sobbing in relief, Wes gave it to her.

  A month and three weeks after Albert had gone, Michael took himself to Oxford.

  Rodger went with him. They took the mail coach, not the train, and they did not speak for the whole of the journey. This was nothing new. It had become Michael’s habit to go for long walks all across London, and Rodger always went with him, his silent companion. It was only partly, Michael knew, to keep from intruding on his thoughts. A great deal of it was because for once Rodger did not know what to say.

  Once in Oxford, as he had hoped, Michael felt lighter. He knew a bit of pain at walking the paths he had walked so happily with Albert, but they still gave him pleasure, and so he cherished them. He went to the shops. He went to the inn.

  He went to Bodleian.

  Here a bit in him began to stir. Perhaps it was the smell of the books, the hush that swallowed his footsteps across the marble floors. Perhaps—oh, he didn’t know what it was, but the library made him feel strange, to the point he almost wanted to leave. It was for this reason he kept himself moving, kept himself wandering the shelves of books, selecting some, ignoring most. He stationed Rodger in a reading room and went off on his own, searching from floor to floor, from room to room, on and on as if somewhere, somehow, within these endless lines of pages, he could find himself.

  He came down one dark hallway, ducking around a group of quietly laughing young men, trying to stay out of their way. But they were a veritable herd, a new clutch of them appearing as soon as the last were gone. Eventually Michael gave up and slipped past them through the doorway, sliding up to an empty glass display cabinet someone had propped into the corner, apparently to take up more space in the narrow passage. He pressed up against it and stared at the black backdrop behind it—and there. There it was.

  There he was.

  It was his
reflection—Michael Vallant, in the glass. Distorted by the warp, shadowed by the dim light of the hall and the ripple made by the endless pass of bodies. He didn’t even recognize himself. His short hair curled around his head, around his ears, falling over his forehead. His face was thin from lack of appetite, his cheeks sunken. There were shadows under his eyes—eyes outlined by his thick spectacles. His lips were parted in surprise. He wore his traveling clothes, garments chosen not with care but because they were simple, serviceable.

  In the glass was not a whore. Not a witty, clever scholar eclipsing the discovery of his sodomy. Not a lawyer, not a thief. Not anything at all. Simply Michael Vallant, the man.

  The man, and the boy within.

  There he was, staring back at Michael in the empty curio case, in the shadowy glass. The boy who had been lost. The boy who had been so rudely used. The boy who had run into the night, his home having burned down around him.

  The boy Michael had thought had died.

  He was not aware of when exactly he began to weep. The tears were silent, and few, sliding down his face into his collar like drops of rain that did not know if it meant to begin in earnest or simply go back to bed inside the clouds. Little dewdrops of sorrow. Not keening, not release. Simply those few tears, leaving salt trails across his cheeks as Michael stared at himself, afraid to move, afraid the self might go away.

  “Sir?”

  Michael jumped, turning away guiltily. A man stood there, about his age. He looked concerned. “Sir, are you well?”

  Michael nodded hastily and wiped at his eyes. “Yes. Sorry—only—sorry.” He longed to cast one last glance at the case, but he feared to see the reflection gone or changed. He gave a thin smile to the man. “Apologies,” he said, and pushed the rest of the way down the hall.

  He went outside, into the courtyard, into what seemed a disgustingly bright sun. It should be gray and soft, but no, the world beamed intensity at him he did not want. He wandered, feeling empty, confused, until he could take it no more and sat down before a fountain, collapsing onto a bench, afraid he would weep again, afraid he might not.

  The image from the glass remained in his brain. Did he look like that? That quiet, sad man? No brass, no whore, no flirt.

  Only Michael.

  He laughed, the sound turning into a sob, and he covered his mouth, his eyes blurring as he stared at the water.

  When the bell tolled two, he rose and began to wander again. He collected Rodger and went back to the inn where he ordered a plate of food that he largely pushed around, a glass of ale he did not drink. He sat in the corner, looking out the window at the town, the university—and he knew.

  “I’m going to live here,” he said.

  Rodger looked up at him, possibly as surprised to hear him speak as to hear what he said. “What—here? Now?”

  Michael considered this, then shook his head. “No. Not now. Not just yet. But soon.”

  The idea warmed him. He would find himself a set of rooms. He would like a house, but he wouldn’t have the money for such things. He would need an income of some sort—Rodger would find him something, or set him up with an income, because that was what he did. But Michael would be here. He would move about the town, about the library, about the countryside on long walks alone. They would not know him as the whore, the sodomite. He would be the scholar. The kind man who lived upstairs and frequented that corner of the pub.

  A quiet gentleman.

  When the call came for the coach, Michael rose with Rodger and boarded. As they rode out of town, Michael played the day over in his head.

  “I will miss you,” Rodger said gruffly.

  Michael didn’t even look to see if the other passengers were awake or asleep. He simply laid his head on Rodger’s shoulder and took his hand. “I will miss you too.”

  And then, because they were still English, they broke apart and resumed their silence. Michael felt both light and heavy as they took their cab to Dove Street, feeling as if he had traveled much farther than the distance to Oxford and back. He was ready to tuck himself into bed with a novel and a cup of tea and lose himself in fiction for the evening.

  When Michael got out of the cab, Rodger had gone still and stiff on the walk. Peering around him to see what had upset his friend, Michael saw a tall, titian-haired and eccentrically dressed woman standing there smiling at him.

  “Hello,” she said, ignoring Rodger and looking straight at Michael as she spoke in a bright American accent. “You must be Michael Vallant.”

  Chapter Fifteen

  The woman was, Michael decided as he watched her standing in the middle of Rodger’s office, quite possibly the tallest female he’d ever seen. She dwarfed Rodger by several inches, and she would even if she weren’t wearing boots with heavy heels. She looked as if she should be bearing a shield and leading dead Vikings to Valhalla—except that she was red-haired, not blonde. Her face was not precisely pretty, but she was striking all the same—something about her declared that there would be no more nonsense, and that was the end of the discussion. She looked to be in her thirties. No ring glinted on her finger, either.

  Rodger was standing between the woman and the window, chest out, hands resting defiantly on his hips.

  “Who the devil do you think you are,” he began, using his clipped and proper high-Brit voice, “to come barging into my establishment and bark out orders like some sort of manic seal?”

  “I am Penelope Barrington,” she replied in her flat tones, not cowered in the slightest. “Not that it’s any of your business. Because you aren’t Michael Vallant, and therefore I have no business with you.” She gave him a quelling glance. “And I’m not barking out orders. I’m simply asking to speak with him in private. I understand that I terrify you, Barrows, but I promise I shall not bite your friend. Not even a little.”

  Rodger began to sputter, his accent falling into cant in his rage. “You rabid bit of baggage. I’ll have you know—”

  Penelope Barrington stepped around Rodger, ignoring him completely, and smiled at Michael. “I’m sorry, it appears I shall have to give you my message in public. I am here on behalf of Lord George Albert Westin, and—”

  “You know Albert?” Hope and wariness battled within him. A woman. Rodger said he was with a woman. “You know where he is?”

  Rodger shoved him—gently—back out of the way and aimed a finger in Miss Barrington’s face. “Listen here, Madam Harpy, woman or no, I don’t mind giving you a taste of my fist.”

  Barrington wrinkled her nose at him as if he were a piece of garbage stuck to her heel in the street. “Oh, I loathe your kind of man more than any other. You’re nothing but a bully, aren’t you?”

  “Bloody hell, woman, but you have a lot of nerve, barging into my establishment and my office and insulting me. I’m not above having you thrown out.”

  “By all means, try,” she said sweetly.

  Michael stepped between them again. “Please—please, madam, you said you have word of Albert?”

  Rodger swore and stalked out of the room, slamming the door behind him.

  Barrington relaxed significantly with Rodger gone, and now for Michael she was all smiles and softness, leading him to a settee. “He is staying with me, at a house I run down by the docks.” Her smile died. “I will not lie to you. He has been very, very sick, and he is still not even close to recovered. I thought he was dead several times. He is stable now, but very weak, and it was only today that he was able to explain to me what I think he has been trying to tell me for some time. He asked me to come here to tell you that he is sorry.” She squeezed his hand and added, “And that he loves you.”

  It amazed Michael he had any tears left to shed over that man, but it appeared he did, for they were rolling down his cheeks. He wiped them away with the back of his hand.

  “Your pardon,” he murmured. He realized what the woman had just confessed to him and with what acceptance, and he looked at her with new eyes. “You are not offended to be charged
to tell one man that another loves him?”

  Her smile was enigmatic. “I have learned in my life, Mr. Vallant, that love does not share the prejudices we humans have—and that it is rare and precious.” She sighed. “I am sorry I did not come to you sooner. When Barrows’s men came to the door, I believe they mentioned your name, but I didn’t understand. I thought they meant to collect on a debt—I didn’t know.”

  “It’s all right,” Michael said.

  “You must understand. He was soaked in opium when he came to me. It is a wonder he did not die from what he took.” She shook her head. “He was doing so well. He had been coming to me with help in elocution, and I thought he was even cutting back on his doses of laudanum—I don’t know what threw him so badly, but something did.”

  “I know.” Michael stared down at the floor. “But it is a long story to tell, and unpleasant.”

  “I would love to hear it.” She glanced around Rodger’s office in distaste. “Perhaps not in a brothel, however.”

  Michael had to laugh at that. But then he thought of Albert, wrecked as she said he was, and his smile died. “I want to see him. Please—I need to see him.”

  He did not like the way she hesitated. “You will, but not yet. Let him be ready. Let him become a little stronger.”

  “But I want to help him,” Michael protested.

  A strange shadow passed over her face. When she spoke, it startled him at how soft she had become, how she could not look him in the eye. “As one who has witnessed a loved one in this state, I advise you to wait. It is a s-special kind of hell to see them too s-s-soon.” She shut her eyes. “And if they d-d-on’t make it all the way through, it is unb-b-bearable.”

  Now it was Michael who squeezed her hand. “Very well,” he said quietly. “I will trust your judgment. For now.”

  She rose, dabbing at her eyes with a handkerchief. “I must get back to him now. But I will come by soon to hear your tale.”