The Doctor's Discretion

by EE Ottoman

  “Moss,” he called, his voice echoing down the hall.

  “Here!” came a shout from the kitchen.

  Now he was far enough down the hall, he could see a faint light coming from the kitchen doorway.

  Moss was sitting on the big table in the center of the room, his feet a good few inches off the floor although neatly crossed at the ankles. A candle sat next to him, and the book he’d brought from the library was open on his lap.

  He looked up when Augustus came into the room. “Well?”

  “He’s gone,” Augustus said. “But I’m afraid he knows something.”

  Moss looked at him for a long moment and then closed the book with a decisive snap. “Well, I might as well get going and see how far I get on my own.”

  “And how far do you think that will be?” Augustus put his candle on the table and folded his arms. “They’re looking in earnest for you now, and God knows, they could have soldiers watching the house.”

  “You’re right; I probably won’t make it far. But we both know that if I stay here, all three of us will go to prison, and at least this way, it will just be me.”

  “We can get you on a boat.” Augustus looked away. “We just need a little more time.” He needed to think, needed to come up with a way to fix this—for Moss and for Blackwood.

  “With more time, I could contact someone myself,” Moss said. “There are people outside of New York who would help me and have the means to. It’s getting word to them without being taken back to prison that is the problem. Whatever plan either of us comes up with will require more time and a safe place for me to lie low without being seen.”

  Augustus sucked in a long breath and let it out slowly. There was one place he could think of which would be as close to beyond the reach of the law as was possible—where he could be absolutely sure Moss would not be turned in. It would only need to be for a few hours anyway. Tomorrow, they could probably find him passage on a boat, or, at the very least, a coach heading upstate.

  “I have an idea.”

  Their gazes met and locked, and Augustus smiled.

  “Ever been to a whorehouse, Mr. Moss?”

  CHAPTER 7

  ~

  William didn’t like this.

  He knew it was hypocritical, but he couldn’t help it. He’d slept with men he barely knew. After all, he and Hill had known each other less than twenty-four hours before they’d had each other that way. But there were lines he wasn’t willing to cross, and paying a prostitute for sex was one of those.

  It wasn’t even that much to do with the Christian faith in which he’d been raised. William might not have worked in a hospital long, but he knew how most brothels were run and how most men and women came to work there. It was a system of use and desperation built on the backs of people society refused to care about or care for.

  It was repulsive, to use desperate people like that. Yet at the same time, William could not altogether condemn the trade, because the answer most often on the lips of men with power and learning was to shut down the brothels and leave their occupants to starve on the streets. Or worse—and there was always worse to consider. A prostitute still got paid, after all.

  There was also the fact that for men like them, prostitutes were safe. Safer than meeting a stranger in an alley at least. You’d be less likely to end up with your throat slit and your pockets picked, or turned over to the night watch, or beaten to death because some stranger felt you’d somehow impinged upon his manhood simply by existing.

  William could imagine this was particularly true for men with a secret like Hill’s. A professional could be paid a little extra to keep their mouth shut, not ask too many questions, and only touch where and when they were allowed. And William knew from experience that was how Hill liked to fuck.

  If anything, it made a little bit of happiness curl in his chest to think Hill had trusted him enough to go home with him that first night without being sure what William might want or demand. He trusted you to give him what he wanted without having to pay for it.

  At the same time, he couldn’t help but realize the entire reason they were going to a brothel in the middle of the night was because Hill trusted at least one prostitute enough to put all their lives into his, or possibly her, hands.

  That started a whole new mixture of resentment, anger, and discomfort boiling through him.

  William pulled his coat tighter against the cold. It didn’t matter that there was so much of Hill’s life and past he didn’t know about. He’s not yours, he’s not yours, he told himself as fiercely as he could.

  It would have been easy to stay angry if Hill had been different. If William had been able to look at him and see a woman, it would have changed things. He couldn’t, though, not in Hill, not in Moss. Both were no different from any other men he’d known.

  Even if he pointed to the roundness of Hill’s hips and the slight swell of his chest, he’d only have to remember that he’d known plenty of men—slept with plenty of men—who had hips as round and chests that were not completely flat.

  William’s own brother had hips as wide as Hill’s, heavy thighs, a rounded backside, and weight on his chest his finely tailored clothes never quite hid. Hill was short and slight but so was William. And William knew that Hill had fine dark hair along his upper lip and on his chin, and even soft finer hair along the line of his jaw.

  When William looked at him, all he saw was Hill.

  There was also the fact that Hill could have continued on as they had been without telling William anything at all.

  True, his connection with Moss would have been much less understandable, but William had no doubt Hill could have come up with some argument for them to go through with the plan anyway. He could have argued William into it by claiming they had some kind of higher moral obligation. He could have brought up their shared preference for men and pointed out, rightly, that it could have been either one of them bound for the asylum, all without telling William anything.

  But Hill had told him, trusted him.

  William couldn’t, wouldn’t, take that for granted, although he was very afraid he already had. Moss had said he wouldn’t have forgiven William. Would Hill?

  Behind him, Hill bustled out of Doctor Russell’s house, Moss at his side.

  “This shouldn’t take long,” William said as the two of them descended the stairs from the house’s front stoop and stopped next to William on the sidewalk.

  “I think I see a cab down that way.” Moss pointed, and Hill took off with long easy strides to see if he could hail it.

  “Are you all right with this plan?” William kept his voice low, and Moss turned to look at him.

  He was wearing Hill’s too-small coat over William’s old suit. It made him look rumpled and strangely vulnerable, like a man who couldn’t put himself together properly. William wondered what he looked like when he picked out his own clothes.

  “It should be fine for tonight.” Moss stuck his hands in his pockets and looked down the street to where Hill was now talking with the cabbie. “I’m just tired.” He turned back to look at William. “I’m tired of being afraid, of hiding, of not having any control over what happens to me.”

  William winced. And here he’d been stewing over his sexual frustration and jealousy because Hill might have been sleeping with another man.

  He wished he could tell Moss it would be all right, that they’d get him out of this somehow, that there was someplace he could go where he didn’t need to live with this kind of fear. Realistically, William doubted there was. Moss would probably always be looking over his shoulder, afraid that what had happened to him once could happen again. There was nothing William could say that would lift some of this burden and yet still be true.

  The cab stopped beside them. Hill opened the door and beckoned them both in.

  William could feel the cabbie’s eyes on him as he ducked into the cab, and Moss climbed in after. He was half afraid the man would refuse to take a mixed-r
ace group and turn them back out onto the street.

  The cab rolled off, though, almost as soon as the door was shut again, heading down Manhattan Island and towards the waterfront.

  “I’m still not convinced this is the best plan we can come up with,” William said into the silence that hovered between the three of them. “Surely, if the house was being watched, whoever doing it just saw the three of us leave together and will arrest us not only for kidnapping but also for soliciting a man of the town.”

  “We’ve already talked about this, and I am not involving one of your family members.” Hill’s voice had a hard edge to it. “I can’t very well call on any of the professional men of my acquaintance, except for the one we are going to see now.”

  Moss stayed silent but his expression was pinched.

  William swallowed. “All right. Well, as you said, this is the plan we have.”

  They all lapsed into tense silence as the cab jolted them back and forth, the streets that were kept clear and as clean as could be managed by Washington Square giving way to the potholed, refuse-strewn streets of the city’s eastern wards.

  William also knew they had to be getting closer to the docks by how slowly the cab was going. Even at this time of night, or maybe especially because it was night, the street were full of people. There would be carts and wagons too, jockeying for what little street space there was.

  As they slowed to a halt, Hill rapped on the roof, and the three of them piled out.

  “This is far enough; we can walk from here.” Hill handed over their fee to the driver, who looked happy enough to turn the cab around and go back the way they’d come.

  William moved a step closer to Hill. He was already feeling hemmed in by the crush of people. Unwashed bodies stinking of drink seemed to crowd in on all sides. All around them came the yell and cry of street vendors, the loud laughter of drunken men.

  He didn’t realize how close he had gotten until his hand brushed against Hill’s.

  Hill, too, had been surveying the street, but he turned as their hands met. William knew he should pull his hand back and even take a step away, but he couldn’t seem to make himself move, not even enough to break the feel of Hill’s skin against his own. Slowly, Hill tipped his face up. William’s pulse was now hammering in his ears, his blood thumping so hard Hill could probably feel it where his hand brushed William’s own. He wanted to bend forward just a little, just the hair it would take to bring them close enough together that their lips would touch, right here on the street with most of New York looking on.

  What would happen if he did?

  There was a humming in William’s ears, running down his arms and the back of his neck to possess his entire body, which lit like dry leaves to fire, his whole self filling with snapping sparks. William leaned forward before he could stop himself, neck bending, head tilting down.

  Hill jerked back before they could touch, his eyes gone wide. William watched his lips part and then move, but the street was too loud, and Hill spoke too low for William to make out the words.

  Everything seemed to snap back into focus with nauseating speed. William’s hands clenched hard into fists.

  What had he been thinking? And in a public street, no less.

  He glanced around them carefully, trying to see if anyone had noticed their behavior. People on the street seemed to be minding their own business. Still, the presence of danger sent a chill through him, cooling anything he might have felt a few moments earlier.

  Hill had turned and was heading down the street, Moss beside him. William quickened his pace to follow after.

  The building they stopped at looked very ordinary from the outside—rickety and wooden. It was cleaner than he was expecting inside, the walls and floor bare, the furniture plain but functional. William had not been in many taverns and most of those he had been in had not been in the United States. They had looked much like this though—cozy, with each of the tables crowded with men and women, talking, drinking, and laughing.

  He could pick out the working women and men by the clothes they wore, most not finely made but in bright eye-catching colors. Both the men and women wore rouge on their lips and cheeks, and the women also wore heavy brass jewelry.

  Hill wove his way through the tables and then stopped, his gaze traveling over each of the people sitting there and landing on a man.

  He wore a coat in a striking purple, his face painted like the others, and he sat comfortably in the lap of a man shorter than he was but much wider in the shoulders. Based on his dress, William would have guessed the client was a less prosperous merchant or craftsman of some kind.

  The working man met Hill’s gaze and stilled for a long moment. Then he bent and said something into his companion’s ear, slid off his lap, and came towards them.

  “Lake,” Hill said when the man was close enough to hear them over the noise of the room. “I have a favor I need to ask of you if we could go somewhere to talk.”

  “I’m not sure if you’ve noticed, but I’m working at the moment,” Lake said, surprising William with how deep his voice was. Up close, he was a lot taller and more broad-shouldered than he’d appeared at a distance.

  “I’m sorry; but it’s urgent.” Hill’s gaze went to Lake’s companion. “I’ll double whatever he’s paying.”

  Lake clicked his tongue. “He’s a regular, and I can’t afford to put him off my services even for double payment. If you wait, though, and buy your friends a drink, I’ll speak with you after I’m finished. With payment, of course.”

  He turned back towards the table with his waiting customer before Hill could reply.

  “I guess we should find ourselves a seat then,” Moss said from a few steps behind Hill’s shoulder. “I could do with a drink anyway.”

  They found an empty table in the back rather closer to the fire than William would have liked.

  William wondered if they only served rum here. It wasn’t uncommon for establishments such as this to only offer rum, but William never drank the stuff or consumed cane sugar, imported as it was from slave-worked plantations in the Caribbean. He didn’t smoke tobacco or wear cotton for the same reason.

  If they did only serve rum, he’d go without drink tonight, but the thought that Moss and Hill might not think anything of drinking it sat unexpectedly heavy inside William’s gut.

  “Buy us three glasses of applejack,” Hill said passing Moss some coins. William relaxed a little bit as Moss headed towards the bar to procure them glasses of apple brandy all around.

  “I’m glad to know they serve more than rum here.” William hung his overcoat on the back of his chair and sat.

  “Yes, so am I.” Hill sat beside him. “I try not to buy slave products, but I’ve also seen too much of what it can do to a body.”

  It was warm enough that William wished they weren’t in public so he could take off his coat too and turn up his shirtsleeves. He was also very aware of Hill, of his body and the strength in his arms and chest underneath the layers of shirt, waistcoat, and coat.

  He’d almost kissed Hill on the street, where anyone could have seen.

  It made his cheeks burn now, his hands tremble, and not with excitement. How could he have? What in God’s name could he have been thinking?

  Not only was it illegal, but they still hadn’t even talked.

  Moss came back, weaving through the crowd, and placed a glass in front of each of them.

  William picked up his glass as Moss settled himself on Hill’s other side, and took a sip. It was of slightly lower quality, but it had the tart bite of apples mixed with spirits mellowed by a light sweetness he’d always enjoyed.

  A man and a woman approached their table, arm in arm. They moved through the crowd with a casual, unhurried ease, but it was obvious from their clothes and makeup that they were working tonight rather than looking to share the available table space.

  “You gentleman interested in company?” the woman asked, unlooping her arm from around the man�
��boy, really, William saw now that they were close. She leaned one hip against the table and gave them all a smile. She was pretty, William would admit, voluptuous with dark brown hair spilling over her shoulders and framing a round face with a slightly turned-up nose. Her companion was pretty too, with dark curls and skin not quite as dark as William’s, and a strong-featured face he had softened with paint. He was much too young though. William couldn’t tell if he was really that youthful or if he’d groomed himself specifically to look younger than he was. Maybe a combination of the two.

  Hill gave them both a smile. “I’ll be fine, but thank you. We’re expecting the company of another of your number shortly.”

  The woman’s eyebrows rose. “For all three of you?”

  William wanted to sink through the floor and die, but Hill grinned and spread his good hand flat on the table. “What can I say? He’s an ambitious man.”

  “How about instead you try the two of us together?” She gestured between herself and the young man. “Trust me, there will be plenty of us to satisfy the three of you.” She gave Moss a sly grin, but he raised one eyebrow at her, and Hill shook his head.

  Her companion seemed to be losing interest. “Jenny. Let’s leave these gentlemen to their drink and see if they feel differently later.”

  She nodded a little more reluctantly, looped her arm into his, and sauntered back into the crowd with her young man in tow.

  “Maybe we should have taken them up on their offer.” Moss watched their retreating backs.

  “If Lake agrees to let you stay, I’ll give you some money, and you can see how far you get.” Hill finished off his glass with a few quick swallows. “But we can’t afford to get sidetracked quite yet.”

  Moss had finished off his too and stood to collect both their glasses.

  “Are you planning on nursing that all night?” he asked William when he returned with refills for Hill and himself.

  William reached for his still half-full glass and took another careful sip.

  The three of them drank in silence.