by KJ Charles
Rowley had both hands up. “Clem. Slow down.”
“But I’ve failed,” Clem said through his teeth. “I’ve let Edmund down and I can’t see any way to make up for it and he’s my brother and this is my livelihood!”
“He’s your brother,” Rowley repeated. “So he’s surely not going to throw you onto the streets because of a terrible crime you had no way to foresee or prevent. Is he?”
“It’s not the murder, not really. But he’s disappointed I didn’t know Mr. Lugtrout, that he didn’t confide in me. I should have looked after him better. Been a friend to him.”
“He was a worthless sot, and your brother can’t command your friendships,” Rowley said. “And since it’s too late to amend this—”
“He wants me to find out who Mr. Lugtrout’s friends were,” Clem said. “So he can talk to them, set his mind at rest.”
“About what?”
“I don’t know. He didn’t say.”
Rowley sighed. “It sounds to me as though your brother is blaming you to make himself feel better. If he wanted someone to be a friend to that lushington, he could have done it.”
“Oh, but Edmund couldn’t be a friend to him, not really,” Clem said, instinctively defensive. “He’s, uh, his position, he wouldn’t be able to do that.”
“If you say so. But this seems to me like a great deal of fuss over nothing. What can you do to appease him?”
“Find a friend?” Clem said, rather hopelessly. “Only I really don’t think Lugtrout had any, unless you count the gin bottle, and I’ve no idea how to find out if he did, and they’d only be drunkards anyway.” He tried to imagine Edmund conversing with the rheumy-eyed gin-jerkers of Lugtrout’s acquaintance, and failed.
“What does he want, just to hear that Lugtrout was well and happy in his last days?”
“I think so. To relieve his mind, he said.”
“Well, I’ll talk to him if you like,” Rowley said with a shrug. “Certainly nobody else here listened to him any more than I did, and I had the next room. Tell your brother I was on terms with Lugtrout and I’ll give him a few platitudes.”
“Oh! Would you? Actually, Edmund asked about you—not you particularly, but because I said you’d helped me look for him.” And had sounded mistrustful, but surely if he met Rowley he’d see that there was no need to worry. Rowley could set Edmund’s concerns to rest and remove any traces of baseless suspicion. “That’s a wonderful idea.”
Rowley’s hand met his. “If it helps, I’ll be glad to. Write to him. And we’ll talk more tonight?” His fingers tightened on Clem’s, but before Clem could respond there were hurried footsteps in the hall outside and the familiar “Mr. Talleyfer!”
Clem sighed and disengaged his hand with a smile. “Tonight.”
—
Clem wrote the note to his brother there and then. He didn’t expect an immediate response, since Edmund was a busy and an important man. He certainly didn’t expect to return from an errand at five o’clock to discover that his brother was back again and waiting in the study.
“Edmund?” he said, entering in a tumble of packages and foggy air. “I’m so sorry, I hope you haven’t been waiting long—”
“Of course I have. I returned as soon as I had your note, and it is quite typical that you should have gone out without the slightest care for anyone else’s convenience. My time has value, Clement.”
“I’m sorry,” Clem mumbled.
“And speak up. Well, where is this man Green?”
“Next door. I’ll send Elsie.”
Edmund raised a hand. “You need not introduce me by name. I have no wish to intimidate the fellow.”
“No, Edmund,” Clem said obediently, and called for the tweeny.
Rowley arrived within a few moments. He looked neat and precise as ever. Clem tried to imagine what Edmund saw: someone thoroughly respectable, not perhaps very remarkable, average in height and colour and build and dress. Would he look behind the thick lenses to Rowley’s bright eyes? He wouldn’t imagine the pale, sinewy body or the capable hands, or the way Rowley’s primly set mouth could work.
Nor should Clem at this moment. “Mr. Rowley Green, this is my brother, the—that is, my brother. He was, uh, very concerned for poor Mr. Lugtrout. I told him you knew him as well as anyone here.”
“My condolences for your loss, sir,” Rowley said with a bow.
“Clement tells me you were Mr. Lugtrout’s friend,” Edmund said, with his imposing frown. “May I ask what that signified?”
“Acquaintance, really, sir. Mr. Lugtrout wasn’t a man who confided in others a great deal.”
“Was he not? He did not confide in you?”
“Not on personal matters,” Rowley said. There was something slightly off in his tone; Clem wasn’t sure what, only that it wasn’t quite right. “He spoke about…religion. The tribulations of the day. Shared humorous anecdotes with his fellows.” Clem gazed at him, lost in admiration for anyone who could tell the exact truth with such inaccuracy. He’d have said, He ranted, grumbled, and told filthy stories. “I had the next room, so he occasionally honoured me with his opinions.”
“Is that all?”
“He looked round my shop a few times,” Rowley offered. “It’s next door. He found it interesting.”
“And…did he give you anything?”
“Give me? Such as what, sir?”
“Anything to hold for him. Valuables, say, or letters. Anything that should be passed to his family.”
“I didn’t know he had a family,” Clem remarked.
“Be silent, Clement! You were saying what you held for him.”
“Nothing.” Rowley’s voice sounded particularly flat and unemotional. “If he had any valuables, they might have been stolen in the incident last week, but I don’t think he said anything had gone missing in the end. We all told him precious things should be kept in Mr. Talleyfer’s strongbox.”
“And what about his papers?”
“I’ve no idea, sir. I wasn’t on such intimate terms with him as to ask that.”
“Did he visit a lawyer, a man of business?”
“Not to my knowledge.”
“Did he have any other close friends? Places of resort?”
“Public houses,” Rowley said, with a snap in his voice.
“He had someone come here,” Clem put in hastily. “Um, I don’t know if it was a friend. Well, they had an argument. I didn’t see who it was, but I could ask—”
“It would hardly be useful to identify someone with whom he had an argument, you imbecile.”
“Friends fall out,” Rowley said. “I think Mr. Talleyfer makes an excellent point.”
Edmund gave him a long look. “Your opinion is noted, sir. Have you anything else to say? When did you last speak to my unfortunate friend?”
“Well, the incident on Monday last week, of course. And he’d dropped into my shop a few days before that. He seemed very much his normal self on both occasions. I had no sense that he was afraid or unhappy, or expecting trouble, if that’s your fear, sir. For all I could see to the contrary, this business came entirely out of the blue.”
“Really. Well.” Edmund’s mouth tightened. “You may go.”
Rowley blinked once, slowly. “You’re welcome.”
—
“I’m so sorry about Edmund,” Clem said when Rowley had come in for tea later that evening and they were settled in the two armchairs by the fire. “He is very abrupt sometimes. He has a great deal to concern him.”
“So it seems,” Rowley said. “He’s your half brother, then?”
Edmund was white, and twenty years older, so that didn’t require a huge amount of acumen on Rowley’s part. “Mmm. Same father. I take after my mother.”
“Is he always so rude to you?”
“Yes. I mean, he’s not—”
“Yes, he is. Clem, did you think there was anything peculiar about that conversation?”
“Apart from my brother talki
ng to my lover?”
“Well, there was that, but—” Rowley stopped and held up a hand. “No, forget ‘but.’ Forget your brother, I don’t care. Would you say we’re lovers?”
“Um. Aren’t we?”
“I don’t know. I don’t know what defines that, between men. I would, myself, apply it to more than just fucking.”
“So would I,” Clem said, meeting his eyes. “And I’d like that. If all you want is to fuck, I understand, but—”
“I think I’d like to be lovers, though,” Rowley said softly. “What does it mean to you?”
Clem leaned forward, reaching out, until Rowley’s fingers met his. He wasn’t entirely sure of the answer. Gregory and Phyllis at the Jack and Knave were lovers, always returning to each other despite the many other youths and men who passed through their beds. Nathaniel had once had his Tony, and they’d been the closest thing to married that Clem could imagine for men like themselves. “What we want it to mean, I suppose.”
“For me, it means…the person you care about,” Rowley said. “Someone with whom you share thoughts and troubles and ideas, as well as a bed. The one you turn to.”
Clem felt breathless. “That sounds right to me. I, uh, I don’t know if you have other men? Or women?”
“Me? It’s been a couple of years since I had anyone. The game stopped seeming worth the candle for a while.” He gave his quick smile. “You’re worth a lot of candles. And come to that, I’m sure you have plenty of people carrying torches for you.”
“Well, yes,” Clem said. “I get lots of offers—”
“You would. I’m not the jealous sort, and I’m not a fool either. You are very much worth looking at, which I well know I’m not, so I don’t expect you to change your habits.”
Clem waved his free hand. “I don’t have habits like that. I was going to say, I get offers but I don’t really like, you know, the first time with a person. I know everyone else seems to enjoy novelty, but it’s so much work.” Unsettling, unfamiliar, awkward, always waiting to fail.
“Ah.” Rowley considered for a moment. “You didn’t like our first time?”
“No, I did,” Clem said earnestly. “But you already knew me.”
Rowley’s smile looked a little twisted. “Ah. Yes. Taking advantage of friendship, there.”
Clem tightened his grip. “Rowley, there are lots of people who think I’m worth looking at. Not so many who think I’m worth listening to. Not like you.”
A spasm of something passed across Rowley’s face. “Then there are a lot of fools out there.”
“Will you take your spectacles off?” Rowley removed them one-handed, folding the arms neatly and dropping them into his inside pocket. Clem reached out to run a thumb over his cheek. “I love how you look without them. You look like…my Rowley, the one I see, not the one you let other people talk to. And I love your eyes. And your mouth.” He moved his hand down, pressing a little too hard on Rowley’s lip. An accidental movement, but Rowley’s lips parted and he sucked on Clem’s thumb, sending shudders of sensation along his nerves. “Oh. And I love your hands, the way they move, and…could you come here?”
Rowley half rose from his chair, silent and intent, his gaze on Clem’s face sharpening as he closed the gap between them. He neatly straddled Clem’s lap and slid closer until they were face to face but not kissing, not yet. Clem caught his breath.
“You should know—” Rowley’s voice was thick. He cleared his throat. “I want to do whatever makes it best for you. If all you’d like to do is kiss, all night, I’ll take that and love every minute. Or if you want to fuck, or anything in between. Whatever you’d like to do.” He cupped Clem’s face in both hands. “You lead. I’ll listen. And there’s no hurry at all.”
Clem sat forward. Their lips met, and then they were kissing, hard and intent, Rowley a satisfying weight on Clem’s lap. He spanned his hands over the narrow, bony back, delved under Rowley’s coat, felt hands on his own body, slow and firm and controlled. Rowley’s mouth was wide to his own, gloriously open, his harsh breathing through his nose contrasting to the steady movements of lips and tongue, and Clem actually wanted him to be less controlled, for once. He wanted…
He tugged at Rowley’s coat, needing to feel skin. It was warm with the fire, and the door was locked; Rowley had made a point of that. “I want to touch you.”
“I want to touch you,” Rowley assured him, shifting back. “My God, you’re beautiful.”
They stripped each other, Rowley only offering a couple of quiet directions, until they were both kneeling, face to face, on the rug in front of the fire. Clem ran a hand over Rowley’s pale chest with its dead white scars.
“You’re lovely,” he whispered.
“I’m not,” Rowley said. “Luckily, you’re quite lovely enough for us both.”
Clem pushed him back, a gentle pressure only, but Rowley moved willingly till he reclined on his elbows, eyes dark in the firelight. “What would you like?”
“I want to touch you.”
Rowley let his head and shoulders drop back to the rug. “Feel free.”
Clem took his word for that. Rowley lay, pale and splayed, and Clem explored him, trailing his fingers over his chest, playing with his nipples till Rowley moaned, then using fingers and lips and tongue to trace the crooks of his arms and knees, the soft curve of inner thigh, all the places that seemed to make Rowley happy. All but one, rather, because he was saving that, and it didn’t seem necessary quite yet. For him, at least. Rowley’s harsh breath and rigid prick suggested he felt otherwise. Clem clambered over him, dipping his head to concentrate on Rowley’s left nipple with teeth and tongue, and felt his lover’s hips moving fruitlessly under him, the tip of his stiff cock just brushing Clem’s arse.
“Oh God, Clem, please. Please.”
“What would you like?”
“Anything. However you want, but in the name of mercy touch me, please.”
“No. What would you like?” Clem lifted his head and made sure he had Rowley’s attention. “I want to do it, whatever it is.”
“I want you to fuck me,” Rowley said. “My mouth, between my legs, my arse, my hand if you’d rather, but I want you to do it to me, exactly as you’d like. I want that so much I could spend just thinking about it. Give me that, Clem, please. Give me what you want.”
Clem stared down at him, at his wet, wanton mouth, Rowley writhing out of control. He planted both hands on either side of Rowley’s thin shoulders; shifted his knees back, carefully so as not to bump anything that wouldn’t welcome bumping, then lowered himself so his chest was against Rowley’s, their mouths close, Rowley’s cock hot and hard against his belly and his own solid prick between Rowley’s sensitive thighs.
“Oh God.” Rowley’s legs closed tighter, pressing against him. “Like this?”
“Please.”
“Fuck.”
That might have been an imprecation or an instruction. Clem began to move, not much: he hadn’t thought of anything to lubricate the skin, but he wasn’t sure he wanted it. The sensation of Rowley’s legs clamped shut around him was exquisite, as was the feel of his body bracketed by Clem’s legs and arms, the press of skin from thigh to shoulder, Rowley’s cheek against his, hot breath against his ear. Rowley whimpering as Clem moved, and his hard prick so sticky-wet Clem almost wondered if he’d spent. He moved a little harder, pushing himself into the press of flesh, and heard Rowley groan. “Please. Yes, do it to me, please.”
“I want to,” Clem gasped. “On you.”
Rowley was thrusting up against him now, as far as he could with Clem’s bigger body weighing him down, the play of leg muscles doing disturbingly good things to Clem’s agonisingly excited prick. “Use me,” he gritted out. Clem took him at his word, clamping his knees tight around Rowley’s legs, gripping his shoulders, rubbing his whole body over his lover’s, skin hot and sticky with sweat and friction and oh Jesus the pounding blood in his groin, the building need, Rowley squirming and g
roaning and trapped by Clem’s grip so it didn’t matter what Clem did or how he moved, because everything was about skin against skin and every movement was rocking Rowley’s prick or his own—
Rowley made a high sound and convulsed, and the startling feeling of his hot, wet spend shattered Clem’s tenuous control. He came too, jerking and thrusting into Rowley without rhythm or control, and heard him sobbing, “Jesus, yes, Jesus,” as the energy pulsed through him.
Clem slumped forward, face in the rug, and felt Rowley’s arms close over his back, his belly heaving in tight, hard breaths.
After a couple of minutes, with a distinct sense of discomfort from his mouth being too close to a rug that needed beating and a lot of sticky dampness drying in his body hair, Clem propped himself up a little. Rowley met his eyes, blinking.
“Was that what you wanted?”
“You couldn’t tell?” Rowley asked with a smile, then, “I mean, yes, it was. Very, very much.”
Clem studied his face. “Why?”
“Why what?”
“I asked what you’d like, and you said, what I’d like. That’s, uh, that’s not how liking things usually works.”
Rowley grinned. “When you put it that way, it does sound odd. It’s very well, honestly.”
“No, but…I know I’m not quite as easy with these things as other men, but that doesn’t mean we should only do things that I want. That’s not right.”
“Ah, I see. No. Well.”
“I mean it, Rowley. I don’t want you to, to— I can’t think of the word. I love that you’re thinking about me and what I want, but if it means I can’t think about you too, that’s not how it should be at all.” He reached for Rowley’s hand. “I don’t mean to be ungrateful—”