An Unsuitable Heir

by KJ Charles

  He shrugged off his own coat and hat, then deliberately lifted his long ponytail of hair, settling it back as Mark returned. If the man didn’t like it, best to get that out now and in a public place.

  Mark surveyed him with a quick, sharp glance, the kind that made Pen think he hadn’t missed any details, but he didn’t seem bothered by hair or earrings, taking up his glass without comment. His jacket sleeve was also shortened, not simply folded and pinned up. It looked as though the arm was missing from above the elbow. Pen wondered what had happened to him, what the injury looked like, and how one managed. The idea of not having both hands gave him a slightly queasy feeling.

  “Pen, was that?” Mark asked. “Is that Quaker, or is it short for something?”

  “It’s just my name.”

  “Fair enough.” Mark brought his glass to his mouth, barely moistening his lips for all he’d said he needed a drink. “So what do you do, Pen?”

  It was an approach. Pen was sure of it, alarm and excitement warring in his mind.

  This was always such a guessing game, and he knew himself hard to guess. People tended either to see the long hair and the way he often dressed and decide he was womanish, or to see the broad shoulders and bulging biceps and conclude he was a fine strong man. They were all wrong, and he was so tired of trying to explain why.

  Mark had perceptive eyes and they were taking Pen in at their leisure. He almost wished he was wearing eye paint; he very much wished that they’d met in one of the places you could wear it without fear.

  Mark cocked a brow, and Pen realised he hadn’t answered the question. “Oh. I’m an acrobat.”

  “Acrobat? What, like in the circus?”

  “Music hall, yes. Trapeze.”

  “Swinging off ropes?”

  “And jumping between them. A double flying trapeze act.”

  “Blimey.” Mark seemed surprised and impressed. “Double. Does that mean you do it with someone else?”

  Pen said yes, he worked with his sister, and found himself answering the next question, and the next, and quite a few more beyond that—Were you brought up in the circus, then? What’s that accent? He didn’t get the impression Mark was asking for any more reason than interest, and to keep the conversation going into another glass of gin, and all the time Mark’s eyes were on him, examining his features, taking note. He wanted to untie his hair and let it hang loose over his shoulders, to see how Mark reacted, and had to remind himself that the Kitchen wasn’t a place for that.

  “So would I be able to see you on the trapeze?” Mark asked.

  “As soon as the fog clears, yes. The Grand Cirque.”

  “Holborn, right? I know it.”

  “That’s where we perform, exclusively. The Flying Starlings. My sister’s working on our costumes now.” While he sat in the Gin Kitchen chatting up an attractive man, but he’d waited at home for her often enough, and she had, after all, told him to find something to do.

  “Costumes. Like, those things you see on the posters?” Mark’s eyes seemed somewhat darker. “They look pretty tight.”

  “Very close-fitting,” Pen agreed, rather breathlessly. “Clinging to the skin.”

  “Right.” Mark swirled the gin in his tumbler, not looking away from Pen’s face. “Here’s a funny thing, my mate went to see the Flying Starlings, and I could swear he said it was two women…?”

  His tone wasn’t aggressive or accusatory. More, it wasn’t demanding a denial. It was a question, a trail of interest that lit Pen’s nerves up like a match to powder.

  “We costume differently,” he said. “Depending on the act. You know how music hall is.” Male impersonators, female impersonators; sometimes it seemed half the people on the stage were dressed against what their bodies dictated.

  “So is that why the long hair?”

  “Mmm,” Pen said, because it wasn’t, not entirely.

  “It looks good.”

  Pen couldn’t quite believe he’d heard that. Mark had said it quietly, but he’d definitely said it and his gaze was intent on Pen’s face and oh, God. “Thank you. A lot of people think it’s odd.”

  “Well, a lot of people are arseholes.” Mark made that remark in a goes-without-saying tone; Pen spluttered amusement. “It suits you. What’s it look like loose?”

  Pen wasn’t sure how to answer that. “It’s a lot of hair. It’s, uh…sometimes my sister braids it, or puts it up. For performance.”

  “Yeah?” Mark’s lips curled in an almost savage grin. “I’d like to see that.”

  Pen’s pulse was thumping as if he were on the platform, ready to swing out into the void. His companion’s interest was clear, but Pen wasn’t picking up any of the signs that suggested misunderstanding: the girlish diminutives, the words like “sweet” or “pretty” that he knew damned well didn’t suit his build and jawline. He swallowed. “If you did attend a performance, you could come backstage afterward. I’ll tell the stagehands to let you by. If you like.”

  “That’d be—” Mark’s entire face stilled, as though something had dawned on him. “Yeah. No, look, don’t worry about that. You don’t want to be bothered at work. Uh, do you go there while the fog’s on? For practice?”

  “Not at the moment. You can’t see across the auditorium, it wouldn’t be safe.”

  “Makes sense.” Mark glanced around the Kitchen. “Does this place open on Sundays?”

  “It hardly ever closes.”

  “Suppose I met you here tomorrow?” He wasn’t precisely getting up and leaving, but he seemed suddenly uncomfortable and Pen wasn’t sure why. Had he been too blatant, scared his companion off? Surely not. Mark didn’t give the impression of an uncertain or changeable man.

  “Tomorrow?”

  “Call it two or so?”

  “If you want to,” Pen said, a little dubiously.

  “I do want to, and I don’t want to wait on the fog’s convenience.” Mark shot him a quick grin. Pen wouldn’t have said it looked forced, but it was certainly embarrassed. “But I’ve got to go now, I didn’t mean to stay so long. Lost track of time talking to you.”

  “Oh.” That explained it, if true. “Oh, well…yes, of course.”

  “Cheers, Pen. It was good meeting you. Tomorrow, yes?”

  Pen took the extended hand. “Tomorrow.”

  They parted at the door to the street, and Pen returned home in an optimistic frame of mind.

  Greta had finished her needlework and had her feet up by the fire, where she was rereading The Eustace Diamonds for, Pen estimated, the fourth time. “You found something to do then.”

  “Mmm.” Pen took off his coat, untied his hair and shook it out. “I met someone.”

  “Anyone I know?”

  “No, I mean, I met someone in the street. We had a drink.”

  Greta put her book down and her eyebrow up. Pen grinned. “Just a drink. Except, well, he suggested meeting tomorrow.”

  “Really?” Both brows were raised now. “Someone in the street, Pen Starling?”

  “He asked me for directions, and then we were passing the Kitchen, and—I don’t know, we hit it off. I, er, thought I’d give his name to the doorkeepers.”

  “You did hit it off. You’re sure that’s safe?”

  “He said he liked my hair.”

  “Oh.” Greta considered. “You’re going to meet him tomorrow, then? The Kitchen?”

  “Don’t even think about it,” Pen said firmly. “If I see you in there—”

  “A girl’s entitled to a glass now and again, for ’er ’ealf,” Greta said in the prop mistress’s throaty rasp. “As long as you’re sure.”

  She didn’t say, Some men don’t like you; she didn’t have to. Pen had only taken a beating once, four years ago, but it had been enough. He remembered Greta’s tears of rage as she cleaned the split over his cheekbone, caused by the fist of a man for whom Pen had inconveniently failed to fit his assigned role.

  “He was rather charming, in a brusque sort of way,” Pen sai
d. “Very forthright. Interesting.”

  “What does he do?”

  Pen paused. “He didn’t say, actually. We mostly talked about, well, me.”

  “No wonder you think he’s charming.”

  “Shut up. He was perfectly pleasant, he didn’t make me uncomfortable at all.”

  “Good-looking?”

  “Not exactly, but I liked his face. Strong features, very, oh, solid. He’s only got one arm,” he added, not sure why except he wanted to talk more about the man.

  Greta’s eyes lit. “I can see why—”

  “Don’t say it,” Pen said. “Don’t you dare say it or I’ll drop you on the stalls.”

  “I can see why you think—”

  “Greta, I’m warning you.”

  “I can see why you think he’s ’armless!” Greta said over Pen’s vigorous protest, and the conversation degenerated into hysteria as he assaulted her with a cushion.

  It didn’t occur to him until much later that Mark had apparently found his way out of Fox Court without any trouble at all.

  —

  The wind got up that night. It was strong enough to whistle through the eaves and send slates and branches crashing down, and the next morning Pen opened the shutters onto a vista of rooftops and chimney stacks instead of murk. The weather had finally lifted, after a full week, the sun was visible, and London was uncurling from under the blanket of fog and embracing a bright new day.

  “Thank heavens,” Greta said. “Practice.”

  There were no performances on Sunday, which meant they could spend as long as they liked reminding themselves of the routines they’d missed so much. Pen could almost feel the chalk on his callused palms, the trapeze in his hands, such a part of him that he sometimes woke with his fingers curled around an imaginary bar. Greta’s eyes were bright with glee as they headed to the Cirque. She’d missed the trapeze as much as he had. Pen almost wished he hadn’t made an appointment for the afternoon; he already felt reluctant to break off their work.

  The Cirque’s doors and windows all stood wide to let the stiff breeze clear the air inside. Pen and Greta went through, exchanging waves and greetings, and had changed into their practice costumes when Mr. McCollum’s characteristic knock sounded on the door.

  “Are you decent?” he called.

  “No, but we’re dressed,” Pen and Greta chorused, according to hallowed tradition. They were both engaged in pinning up their hair. Greta’s was as long as Pen’s, a shining oakwood river that reached the small of her back. They matched, as in most things.

  Mr. McCollum came in and shut the door. “I’m glad to see you back where you should be. We’re pasting up bills now and opening the house tomorrow. Tell me, have you had any trouble? The business you mentioned?”

  They hadn’t told him everything; only that there were certain unkindly disposed men who had to be avoided. That was all he needed. Mr. McCollum was a good manager who took the welfare of his performers seriously, and their privacy too. “We’ve had no trouble,” Greta said. “We’ll keep an eye out, but I’m hoping it’ll come to nothing.”

  “I’m afraid you may be wrong,” Mr. McCollum said. “I had a visitor on Thursday. He came with a note of introduction from a friend of mine. Supposedly he came for information about travelling circuses, to ask me for contacts. But he soon started asking about you.”

  “About us,” Greta repeated. Pen put down the hairpins he held.

  “My friend tells me he’s a private enquiry agent, which is to say someone hired to ask questions. He wanted to know what your real names were, and where you were from.”

  “Did he,” Greta said levelly.

  “I had him escorted off the premises as soon as I realised what he was up to, of course, but it seems he went round to the stage door later, asking about you. They gave him short shrift, everyone assured me.” He grimaced. “He was offering a guinea for information.”

  “About us,” Pen said. “What did he want to know?”

  “Your real names and your address. I hope nobody was so disloyal as to give it over, but…” Mr. McCollum made an apologetic face. A guinea was a great deal of money. “He told me, ‘I’m not the bloke they’re scared of. I’m trying to find them before he does.’ I don’t know if that was true, or if it means anything to you.”

  “Did you get a name? What did he look like?”

  Greta’s face was tense, eyes flicking to Pen, and he felt an awful sinking sensation even as Mr. McCollum said, “It was Bra—Braggugh—a Polish or Russian surname, began with a B. And he only had one arm.”

  “Christ,” Pen said, when McCollum had gone. He sat heavily on the chair in front of the dressing table. “I feel stupid.”

  “Pen.” Greta stopped behind him and wrapped her arms around his shoulders. “It’s not your fault if he lied to you. Uh—you didn’t say anything he could use against you?”

  Pen met her eyes in the mirror. She was a powerfully built woman, with wide shoulders and hips and a strong face, none of their mother’s pretty delicacy. Some people called her mannish. She looked a lot more like Pen than he did himself.

  He put his hand up to meet hers. “I don’t think so. Nothing anybody could cite. I invited him backstage but that’s nothing. I just—Ugh. I liked him and I thought he liked me. Imagine pretending that.” He made a face. “Imagine being fooled by it.”

  “No repentance, no regret. You’re supposed to be meeting him in the Kitchen this afternoon,” Greta said thoughtfully. “Should we bring half a dozen stagehands and teach him to mind his own business?”

  It was tempting, but Pen shook his head. Greta cocked a dark eyebrow. “Sure? What if he brings Erasmus along?”

  “God. You don’t think—”

  “He’s working for someone. Who else would it be?”

  “If Erasmus is there I’ll deal with him myself,” Pen said. “I am tired of this. If I see him—”

  “We’ll deal with both the bastards,” Greta said. “I’ll kick Erasmus in the doings, you throw Nestor into the cesspit, then we’ll both have a word with this one-armed joker, what do you say?”

  Pen forced a smile he didn’t mean. He was surprised by how disappointed he felt. He’d talked to Mark for an hour, nothing more. He’d been manipulated, and he had every right to feel deceived and angry, but no reason to feel betrayed.

  Mark hadn’t needed to pay compliments about his hair, though. That had been unnecessary. It had been cruel.

  “Sod him,” he said, rising. “Sod them all. Let’s fly.”

  Chapter 2

  Mark finished the last forkful of his steak and kidney pie, pushed the plate away, and sat back to think. He had an hour before he was due to meet Pen and plenty to think about before then, none of which ought to be the trapeze artist’s muscular shoulders, or his long hair, or those glowing eyes.

  He worked his notebook out of his pocket and flattened it on the table, turning the pages with his thumb.

  The last few weeks had been what you might call interesting, what with the arson, murder, torture, blackmail, and bigamy. It all came back to his mate Clem’s half brother, the Earl of Moreton, and the secret marriage he’d contracted some twenty-four years ago. The earl was dead now; the trouble he’d caused was alive and well.

  Moreton’s secret wife had been one Emmeline Godfrey, a devout beauty but common as muck. The earl had had his way, then regretted his bargain. He’d concealed the ill-judged marriage and forced the girl to keep her silence, but when she’d fled her home, she’d been carrying his children. Repentance and Regret, she’d named the twins she bore, and even if Moreton had ruined her life that was a bloody awful thing to do to a pair of babes. Mark wasn’t surprised to learn they went by Pen and Greta.

  If Pen Starling was indeed the son of that ill-starred marriage, he was the rightful Earl of Moreton, and there was a thought.

  Pen was…something. Twenty-three years old, and built with an astonishing blend of muscle and grace. He moved like the wolf Mark had se
en in Jamrach’s Menagerie, shoulders shifting under the skin. A big chest, a lot of power, his movements so fluent, his eyes so watchful.

  And that hair. Mark’s hair grew upward in a curly mess that nothing could tame except clipping close to the skull. Pen’s hung halfway down his back, thick, wavy, lush. Mark loved hair. They said it was a woman’s crowning glory, and it was certainly one of the things that got his attention, on men or women. There were a few fellows he knew who wore it collar-length, mostly the artistic sorts who wouldn’t look twice at someone like Mark unless they were after a bit of rough. Pen’s was far more than that, and he’d looked at Mark. How he’d looked.

  Mark had wanted him to loosen the tie and shake his hair out, and he didn’t think Pen would have minded doing it, either. Earrings in both ears, biggish gold hoops at that. Holding his shoulders back and down, as if he was trying to make them smaller, and he was on to a loser there. He dressed as a woman on the trapeze, Clem said, with his hair braided, and that was a sight Mark wanted to see.

  Cross-dressing wasn’t to everyone’s taste, which probably explained Pen’s wary look. Mark had no problems with it. He knew a fair few men who dressed and talked and sometimes lived as women, and a fair few women who went the other way. Phyllis, the strapping six-footer who ran the Jack and Knave pub with an iron fist and a selection of fetching satin gowns, had a rule, which was, If someone tells you what they want to be called, that’s what you call ’em; if someone tells you how they want to be treated, that’s how you treat ’em. This last maxim included the assumption that if someone didn’t respect the rules, it showed they wanted their arses thrown out of the Jack, and they would immediately get their wish.

  Mark wished to hell he’d met Pen in the Jack, or as anything other than the subject of a professional enquiry, but it was too late for that.

  If you could call it professional when Mark wasn’t even getting paid. His mate Nathaniel had offered, and had deep pockets, but Mark didn’t take money off his friends when they were in trouble, and the lot of them were in it to their necks.

  It was all the Earl of Moreton’s fault. He’d set Clem up to run lodgings and ordered him to house a drunken clergyman named Lugtrout. That wasn’t charity. Lugtrout had solemnised Moreton’s secret marriage, helped him conceal it when he’d changed his mind, and then blackmailed him for bigamy when he’d married a marquess’s daughter without troubling to dispose of the first wife.