The Counterfeit Viscount

by Ginn Hale

  Maybe Nimble truly sucked his soul right out of his body along with that geyser of spunk. It certainly felt like it.

  Nimble wiped his mouth and rose to his feet, all the time admiring Archie with a proud expression, like Archie was an instrument he’d played particularly well. The thought made Archie grin.

  “You’re having that joke with yourself again, aren’t you? The royal presentation of my grand performance.” Nimble sat down on the bed beside him. His thick erection jutted up at a jaunty angle not too far from Archie’s arm.

  “I am,” Archie admitted. “If you will, imagine the royal family and all the noble holy men gathered in their velvet seats. The curtain rises, and there you are, in the midst of an orchestra, performing an astounding solo upon my skin flute.”

  Nimble laughed, but there was still a fierce need in his gaze.

  Archie reached out and ran his finger along the length of Nimble’s cock. He was rewarded to see Nimble’s breath catch and watched his amused expression give way to helpless pleasure. Archie spent a few more moments stroking Nimble and catching a second wind for himself. Then he rolled over and invited Nimble to lavish his attention and oil upon his ass.

  Even shaking and breathing hard, Nimble took his time. When at last Nimble slid into him, Archie was already quivering and truly ready for a second run at staining Nimble’s sheets with his mettle. Then they both went at it like hammer and tongs, shaking the bed till it groaned. Pillows fell and the floorboards squealed. Archie broke first, but Nimble didn’t outlast him by more than a moment. He came with a powerful thrust. For just an instant, Nimble’s full crushing weight drove into Archie as fiery spunk flooded him. Then Nimble rolled off, sweat-soaked and panting like he’d sprinted a mile.

  And it was done. Their bargain sealed for the final time.

  ***

  Before parting ways, they agreed to stage the first public encounter between Viscount Fallmont and the Prodigal war veteran, Nimble Gamigin Hobbs, in St. Christopher’s Park in three weeks’ time. For the sake of easier communication and less travel, Nimble would take up residence in Archie’s rooms at the Briar Hotel. A bank account in Nimble’s name already existed and had been steadily filling with funds for years, though the information came as a surprise to Nimble.

  “What? Why would you do that?”

  “Just in case my ruse went tits up and I needed to make a hasty retreat. It never hurts to have a little fortune tucked away under another name.” There was more to it, but Archie didn’t feel like exposing the maudlin plan he’d long ago conceived for the days after his uncle’s downfall. Days he’d always assumed would be brief and end with Nimble taking his life and soul from him forever.

  Now Archie had no idea what he would do with all the weeks, months, and years ahead of him. He ought to be relieved, he knew that—ought to be overjoyed by the opportunity to live the long, pampered, pointless life that had been stolen from the real Archibald. He didn’t feel ready to think too hard on why he wasn’t. Instead he focused on this last endeavor with Nimble.

  It gave him a small satisfaction to inform Nimble of the high-end shops he’d need to patronize in the coming days, so as to become recognized by the most informed of gossips and so he could dress himself in a manner that might catch the eye of the Viscount Fallmont.

  “Discerning, is he?” Nimble angled a meaningful glance to Archie’s ugly cloak and battered army boots.

  “An absolute snob when it comes to clothes and horses,” Archie said. It was true; even as a boy, Archibald had been very particular and vocal about his tastes. Though Archie did sometimes wonder if he would have changed, perhaps grown in his ideas of the world, if he’d lived past seventeen. “I probably do him a disservice, playing him as such a dandy—”

  “Oh, I don’t know. I think he would have liked the way all the papers make such a fuss over his latest choice of cravat or spats. Not to mention all the breathless speculation over which fair heiress will be so lucky as to catch his heart.”

  “I had no idea you followed the social pages so closely, old boot.” It was Archie’s turn to tease, and surprisingly, Nimble seemed a little flustered.

  “Of course I pay attention to what you’re doing up there in all that sunshine and fresh air, Archie,” he replied quickly, then added, “And it’s not just you. Even as rough a fellow as me needs to know what laws those noble harecops are passing over us down here.”

  “True enough,” Archie agreed. “I’m voting to rescind the travel restrictions on Prodigals again this season. I think we’re close to winning the reform.”

  “Yeah? It would be nice….” Nimble’s expression looked distant for a moment, but then his attention focused back on Archie. “Best not hold my breath. Particularly not when we have more pressing business to think on just now.”

  After that, they worked out a few more details of their plan, but all too soon, Archie had to say goodbye and make his way back up from Hells Below to the resplendent south side of Crowncross, where he once again costumed himself in the costly silk and privilege of the Viscount of Fallmont.

  Chapter Three: A Terribly Beautiful Place

  The very next day, Archie contrived to bump into the dark-haired, pale-eyed person of Charles Wedmoor at the Prince Joseph Boxing Club. He was a fit thirty and nice enough to look at, in that characterless way of so many men who’d done nothing to earn their privileges: healthy, washed, well-fed, and largely untroubled by the lives of people deprived of those favors.

  In the ring, Archie allowed Charles to jab past his defenses often enough to make them seem equally matched. Though he couldn’t bring himself to lose to the other man, he behaved as a scrupulously good winner.

  Later at Wright’s Gentlemen’s Club, in the company of Charles’s two blandly blond friends—Lupton and Neet—Archie conceded that the boxing match really should be considered a tie. They all drank to that and then kept drinking, each at their own rate. Archie lost a few hands of cards and won several more while observing the other men. Soon enough he secured Charles’s sympathy when he confessed to a lingering heartache over the man’s icicle of a sister.

  “Agatha’s not actually so unfeeling as people think. It’s only that she’s difficult to get to know,” Charles assured him. “She gets damnably shy when she’s in the company of fetching men like you, Archibald. I think the things she says come out a bit more sharp than she means them to. That’s all it is.”

  “Really?” Archie schooled his expression into one of hopeful delight. Either Charles entertained serious delusions about his sister’s character, or he didn’t know what the word shy meant. Agatha Wedmoor could deliver unflinching criticism of a man’s capabilities on the dance floor, the cut of his jacket, and his grasp of classic literature, all while looking him straight in the face. And Archie still hadn’t forgotten the sensation of silver fork tines biting into the back of his hand.

  “Lady Agatha’s shy?” Neet sounded rightly skeptical. He was taller than both Charles and Lupton, but also candidly youthful; he still sported the blemished complexion of an eighteen-year-old, and at times his voice seemed about to crack.

  “Well… she is… reserved.” Lupton sounded remarkably sober for the astounding number of brandies he had disappeared down his hatch. Archie wondered just how much it would take to actually inebriate the stocky fellow. Or was he one of those rare birds who hung on to their diction right up to the point of falling down in the street?

  “I thought she was a Bible-banger. Those looks she gives when she don’t like a fellow’s jargon…. Reminds me of one of those dried-up old nuns—” Neet cut himself off just a little too late.

  Offense darkened Charles’s face, and Archie actually thought a little better of the man for showing a care for what was said of his sister. But for the sake of keeping the conversation moving in the direction he wanted, Archie broke in.

  “Yes, I know what you mean, Neet. There is something about her that seems holy, isn’t there?” Archie lifted his gaze upward.
A plump cherub leered at him from the painted ceiling. “How can a man even hope to win the affection of such a divine creature? I almost feel that I’m standing before an angel when I see her.”

  “Oh, you have got it bad, Archibald.” Lupton laughed. “Must be a family weakness.”

  “How do you mean?” Archie asked.

  “Well, your uncle has been… em… paying her a great deal of attention at the Dee Club.”

  “Has he?” Archie didn’t try to hide his displeasure. Agatha Umberry’s dowry was speculated to be immense, certainly large enough that it might reverse Silas’s fortunes. That, Archie would not abide. Not after devoting seven years to engineering the man’s downfall. And it wasn’t as if Silas’s previous rich young bride had lived long past their honeymoon. All at once the urgency to win his way into the Dee Club doubled.

  Archie bought several more rounds of drinks and steadily won more and more cash off Charles and his friends, but he didn’t hold them to their wagers. He smiled and listened to their woes: Charles’s father had refused to advance him any more cash this year, Lupton resented the trade tariffs limiting him from the importing all the Nornian brandy he wanted, and Neet despaired of ever growing a proper mustache, much less the full flowing beard so many elder statesmen possessed.

  Archie made commiserating sounds, offered his sympathy, and even granted Charles a small loan to ensure he could snap up the latest orchid for his collection. He offered Lupton a bottle of prewar brandy from the case that remained in the wine cellar of his northern country house. A little later he assured Neet that court fashion currently favored the clean-shaven man for facing the world with a more hygienic and honest visage, according to the Royal Consort, Prince Joseph. Archie had shaved off his own mustache three years ago and hadn’t regretted it.

  Hardly a day later, Charles and his friends extended Archie a membership into the Dee Club. He accepted, forked over the steep membership fee, and stifled an idiotic impulse to race down to the Briar Hotel to inform Nimble of their quick success. Instead he accompanied the three noblemen on a riverside ride to take a tour of the place. Their route was not a dangerous one to follow by daylight, but it led into an area of docks and piers where few gentlemen—and certainly no ladies—would wish to find themselves alone at night.

  The building the Dee Club occupied had been painted brilliant green and gold, but neither the costly colors nor the Gothic facade and columns were quite enough to distract from the fact that the rambling edifice teetered over the White River, like a man crouched to shit down into a boghole. Thick wooden piles rose from the river like the supports of a fishing pier, and a large portion of the back of the building seemed to spill across them. As he rode closer, Archie noted that someone had even tethered a small boat to one of the wooden braces beneath the overhanging house.

  “The place was originally built by smugglers. Generations of them used it,” Charles informed him. “The last sod fell afoul of the monks in the Queen’s tax office and had to relocate immediately. So I was able to pick the entire place up rather cheap, if I do say so myself. And its history endows the place an amusing ambiance. Don’t you think?”

  Archie nodded. The stench of chamber pots and rotting kelp rose off the river, imparting a rank pong to the pretty cherry trees and rose bushes planted all around the building. On either side of the club stood large warehouses, and dozens of merchant vessels plied the waters surrounding it. Archie wondered if the sailors and stevedores might have witnessed anything the evening Nancy disappeared. Perhaps it would be worth the effort to chat up a couple of the night guards who patrolled the nearby warehouses as well.

  “Of course, the heap was ugly as sin when I got hold of it six years back. Bloody giant holes in the floors and walls where the Inquisition had ripped open all the trapdoors and smugglers’ passages,” Charles went on. “But Agatha took it on as a pet project. She worked absolute wonders. A woman’s touch, as they say. And now the place is pretty as a picture inside.”

  He wasn’t wrong. The interior of the Dee Club neatly erased any hint of disgorging sewer pipes, surrounding warehouses, and noisy workforces of sailors and longshoremen. Very thick, beautifully papered walls displayed large paintings and smaller studies by a number of Prodigal artists. Sykes’s startlingly lifelike painting Dragonflies Amidst Water Lilies held pride of place among them. Marble sculptures, exotic potted plants, and side tables boasting huge vases full of flowers kept the large rooms and long hallways from appearing cavernous.

  They also appeared to partly conceal the seams of sliding doors, through which servants came and went with drinks, newspapers, and cushions. Once he started looking, Archie realized that a warren of back passages and secret doors riddled the building. All the soft footsteps and whispers reminded him a little of mice skittering behind walls.

  Huge windows, which should have looked out onto commerce and sewage, instead displayed stained glass vistas of rose gardens, summer glades, and pristine blue waterfalls. Brightly colored sunlight filled every room Archie strolled through. The club members he passed were all of natural heritage and mostly men. Archie recognized many of them, including a dowager princess and an earl from the Lords Pavilion of the Royal Races. By contrast, every single servant he encountered appeared to be of Prodigal descent. Gloves hid the black fingernails of the footmen and butlers, but their yellow eyes and pointed ears stood out. The single maid he spotted through a distant doorway possessed a formidable set of sharp teeth—though the smile she turned on a young footman struck Archie as truly affectionate.

  The Prodigals sponsored into the club were distinguished from staff by large gold medallions hung around their necks—the sight of which reminded Archie disturbingly of the ornate collars that were currently fashionable to bestow upon favorite pets.

  As they strolled through sitting rooms and winding galleries of more artistic works, Charles presented Archie to several members, but Archie had to ask before anyone thought to introduce the lanky sponsored Prodigal who stood silently alongside their group. The young man was a composer, and his whole countenance seemed to brighten when Archie admitted to enjoying the foreign scales employed to compose both Nornian and Hamiri songs.

  “If that’s the case,” the young Prodigal told him, “you must hear ‘The Nightingale’s Lament’—”

  “Dining room, I think!” And just like that, the Prodigal’s sponsor cut their fledgling conversation off. The young composer’s face drained of excitement, and he immediately bid Archie good afternoon. Then he turned and trailed his sponsor out through an arched doorway.

  “That was rather abrupt,” Archie commented.

  “Well….” Charles shrugged. “Some members can be a little possessive, particularly of their newest discoveries. It doesn’t do to seem too interested, lest they suspect you of poaching.”

  “Poaching….” Archie scowled.

  “Oh, don’t take it too seriously, Archibald,” Charles added hastily. “Once you’ve presented a discovery of your own, Reggie and men like him won’t fuss nearly so much. It’s only when a member is new and on the hunt for something spectacular that they get their backs up.”

  “It’s true,” Neet added. “Soon as you have one of your own, everyone else will want to show off their prizes and give you endless pointers for your next acquisitions.”

  Prizes? Acquisitions? These were people they were talking about, not exotic plants. Archie struggled to keep a neutral expression on his face.

  Lupton offered him a sympathetic glance. “Don’t let all this talk of hunting and collecting worry you. No one is expecting you to bring down a bird-of-paradise on your first venture. It’s really not too hard to find someone to throw money at. And Lord knows there are plenty of Prodigals more than deserving of a little favor in their lives,” Lupton assured him.

  “Oh, and if you haul in a complete dud, then that could actually give you an excuse to approach Lady Agatha!” Neet added. “You might implore her for advice on how best to present your find
and encourage an artistic nature. She never tires of delivering lectures on the importance of a nurturing environment. And if you really flub it, well, she loves correcting every damned—” Neet caught himself again as Charles frowned at him. “I mean she likes seeing to it that men improve themselves! She’s very generous that way!”

  Lupton nodded, but that appeared to be directed at a servant, because a moment later, a footman delivered a brandy to him.

  Archie peered down the hallway that was exposed as the footman retreated through another hidden panel. Had that been a staircase he’d glimpsed? He recalled Thom mentioning infirmary rooms downstairs.

  “So, anything to see on the lower floors?” Archie asked.

  “The wine cellar and a little show arena, but that’s all rather dull until Sundays,” Charles told him, then added with a wink, “What you really came here to see will be in the library. It’s just a little farther.”

  The circular library was impressive, and not just because of the sheer number of books decorating the two-story ring of shelves. Overhead a huge skylight made the heavens above into a constantly changing mural. Archie guessed that a good twenty men occupied the chairs and circled the tables beneath the skylight. A few claimed the solitary seats on the upper floor. Amid so many men, Agatha Wedmoor stood out in her periwinkle dress and extravagantly composed crown of ringlet curls. She wore a brooch of turquoise butterfly wings, and dozens more topped her hairpins.

  “Agatha, my dear!” Charles called as they approached her seat.

  Agatha looked up from her book with an expression of long suffering and set her reading on the half-moon table to her right.

  “Look who joined our club!” Charles beamed as if somehow he could transmit his smile to his sister’s face. “You’ve already met, but just to keep things proper. Archibald Granville, may I present my sister, Miss Agatha Wedmoor, Lady Umberry. Agatha, my dearest, this is fine fellow is Lord Archibald Granville, Viscount of Fallmont.”