Wes, halfway off the bed with one foot on the floor, paused. Bedlam? He glanced back at Vallant with new concern. Good Lord! Why—?
He thought back to his conversation with Rodger, with his easy familiarity with blackmail and nonchalance over the thought of human trafficking. Was that what this was? Was Vallant under some sort of duress? Had Wes unwittingly become a part of it?
Concern kept him pinned to the bed, overriding the urge of courtesy which required him to leave and allow Vallant some peace. Though a thousand questions clogged his throat, his tongue remained as recalcitrant as ever. In his own distress, he’d manage no coherence of any kind. He hovered for several seconds, searching for some other way to communicate, but in the end he could only reach over and gently, oh so gently, rest a hand on Vallant’s arm.
“H-hush,” he managed, the sound more caress than word. “Shh. Shh. It’s all r-right.”
Vallant flinched at the touch, but only for a moment, and he calmed almost immediately. On instinct, Wes left his hand there, testing for further reaction. When none came, he let his thumb brush gently across the blue silk.
Pulling one hand away from his face, Vallant closed that fist over the top of his robe, clutching at it as he spoke. “Forgive me.” He swallowed hard before forcing a weak smile. “Please. There is no need for you to stay and witness my ridiculousness.”
Had there been any sharpness in his tone, even a hint of coolness, Wes would have stammered something benign and done as he was told. But heaven help him, he felt as if a child had just called out to him, another boy at school trying to put on a brave face after a beating, willing his friends to leave him alone so he could weep.
The thought hit Wes like a slap. He looked down at the beautiful, confident man rendered so weak and helpless, and he ached.
“D-did s-someone h-h-hurt you?”
Vallant’s sudden, careful stillness told Wes all he needed to know. I will kill him, he thought. His mind began to catalog the many, intricate plant-based poisons he knew, several of which were rendered tasteless in a simple cup of tea.
A soft, almost sad laugh cut off his mental indexing, and he glanced back down at Vallant, who was rubbing his forehead as if he were trying to grind something out of it. His eyes were still closed.
“It’s like some mad dream. All these years, nothing, and now—with you, of all people.” He rubbed harder. “I am living an opera.”
Wes, with no notion at all how to respond to this, kept up a gentle stroking against Vallant’s arm and waited for him to speak again.
“Long ago, yes. Very long ago, someone hurt me.” Vallant laughed mirthlessly. “Heaven help me, but I’m so unhinged I want to tell you the whole sordid tale.”
Wes remained quiet, his thumb moving back and forth against the silk in a regular rhythm. Vallant stayed silent as well, but he opened his eyes, fixing a dull gaze across the room. Eventually he spoke.
“My mother was a courtesan. When I lived with her as a child, I never truly understood what it meant. I knew men came and went, that for years it would be the same man, and when we changed houses it would be another. This was all. I understood we were risqué, somehow, for people whispered when we walked by, but Mama held her head high, so I did too.” His grip on his gown relaxed slightly. “I went to school. Not an excellent school, but not a terrible one, either. I did well enough. I had the usual dreams of being a lawyer or a scholar, sometimes even an ambassador. But then I turned twelve, and I came home for the end of term.”
His eyes went hard, his jaw set tight, but when he spoke, it was the little boy again, even through the cold delivery. “Mama was not there, just a man.” He stopped for several seconds, his countenance growing harder and harder, his throat working with difficulty several times before he said, with perfect coolness and ease, “My mother had sold me to him.”
Now it was Wes’s turn to jolt, a soft gasp of horror escaping.
Vallant smiled a wry smile and glanced at Wes. “Do you know, Rodger still uses the story sometimes to weed out customers? Without revealing it was me, of course. Anyone who isn’t horrified is shown the door and never allowed back again. Isn’t it interesting that neither of us thought to tell it to you before tonight?” He regarded Wes. “It’s your eyes, I think. They promise something kind. Heaven help the world should you ever turn dark. You would send Satan himself scrambling.”
Wes’s hand had stilled on Vallant’s arm. Vallant reached over, touched Wes’s fingers lightly, and moved them back and forth a few times against his own skin. When Wes renewed his rhythmic caress, Vallant pulled his hand away and began to speak again, gazing into nothingness once more.
“He bought me for the entire break between terms. He stayed in the house with me except for a few times when he had to leave, and then I was shackled to the bed until his return. All the usual servants were gone and new brought in, but let me assure you, it was a special kind of hell to endure that in my own home, in my own mother’s bloody bedroom. He had me every way he liked until a few days before term was due to start again, and then he left. The night he did so is something of a blur in my memory.
“I remember him leaving. I remember my mother appearing at the bottom of the stairs from wherever she had hid herself, wiping at her eyes constantly, speaking with false cheerfulness, trying to pretend it hadn’t happened. She spoke of how excited she was for me to go back to school, how the headmaster had reported me such a model student, how grand things were ahead of me, surely. She produced a treasure trove of gifts, every book and trinket I had ever asked for but never received. She produced a grand new trousseau for the next term. She promised a holiday soon, to wherever I wanted to go. I kept silent through it all, shocked at first, and then hurt, and then furious, and the longer I said nothing, the more extravagant her promises became. At last she broke down and wept hysterically.
“She rationalized it several different ways. She was out of money. She was too old, and no one wanted her. She had panicked. She was weak. She was terribly sorry, and she knew it was wrong, but couldn’t I see there was no other way to keep up the lives we had become so fond of living? Didn’t I want to go to university? Didn’t I want grand things? What, had I thought such would come for free? Wasn’t it time I provided for us, for a change? She wheedled, promising I could have it all, any and everything—so long as, every now and again, I spent some time with the man. And of course unspoken but understood was the truth that after this man, there would be another. And another. And another.”
Wes hissed out a breath, and his hand tangled in the blue silk. His stomach turned and he saw nothing but red. He didn’t realize how tightly he gripped Vallant until he felt fingers brush his own. He relaxed his grip, but to his surprise, Vallant did not release him. In fact, he captured Wes’s hand, drew it to his lips as he turned his head, and kissed his knuckles before returning Wes’s hand back to his sleeve.
“Well,” Vallant said, as if this were some light gossip he repeated, “I left that night. In the true form of the fool I was, I tied my most precious belongings into a bedsheet, slung them over my back and darted out into the night.” His laugh rumbled through his body, and he shook his head. “Good God, but by rights I should have learned the many horrible ways men on the streets could be worse than—” He stopped, bit his lip and sighed. “Suffice it to say, I was fortunate beyond anything I deserved. The first person I ran into—literally—was Rodger, who at the time was but sixteen, though he already ran an impressive ring of prostitutes. Mistaking me for a lordling, he proposed to ransom me to my family, only to withdraw in shock as I went into hysterics, threatening to tear out his eyeballs if he so much as dared to think of sending me home again. My tale came out shortly thereafter, and my life as it is fell in to place. Rodger took me under his wing, and then he took me into his bed. With my permission, mind you. Though we both tired of that quickly enough.” He stopped and blushed. “I don’t know why I just told you that.”
His hand reached up to stroke his
own hair, and his gaze across the room turned strangely pensive. “I enjoyed sex even then. Despite what she may have intended, my mother did not sell anyone my virginity, nor the concept of sex with my own gender. And as I watched Rodger’s girls and boys work their corners, as I saw their power and even their pleasure, I thought of what my mother had said, of all she had promised, if I would only sleep with the man. And I thought, well, why not? Now that I had been relieved of my fantasies, there was really nothing else for me to do but whore.
“But with Rodger it would be on my own terms. There seemed a sort of justice to it—she had ruined me, but I could remake myself, even thumbing my nose at it all by taking what they had made me and doing them one better. So I did, and I did it well. I was pretty then, acutely so, and so I was popular. And I wasn’t stupid. The Dove Street house was my plan, built on the ashes of my mother’s schemes. Sex on our terms, for our rates. And for many years now, that has been the whole of it. I have enjoyed many fine things and as much pleasure as I care to reach for, protected and monitored by Rodger.”
His eyes closed on a sigh. “Except now, for no reason I can explain, pleasure has turned to panic. I dream dark, terrible dreams, and while I can kneel before a man in a crowded room and suckle his root like a calf at a teat, while I can take his cock in my hand and draw his pleasure out of him with a skill I have taken years to hone, if you put me in a room alone with a man and let him cover me with his body, if he tries to enter me, or even sometimes if he simply moves the wrong way or the smell is right, I am so filled with panic I nearly cast up my accounts on the spot. Let me assure you this is the very devil to explain to a client who has already put his coin in Rodger’s greasy hand.” He rubbed his forehead. “And that is the tale, my lord. I am a whore who can no longer fuck, and I don’t know why. I’ve had no one in well over a month.” His lips pressed together. “Since you, dear Albert. No one since you.”
The sordid, impossible story kept swirling inside of Wes’s head—operatic indeed—but at this, Wes deflated slightly. This is why he asked for me. Immediately, he felt ridiculous. What had he expected? That the beautiful whore had fallen in love with him? That this was some idiot fairytale?
My mother sold me.
Wes shut his eyes and pinched the bridge of his nose, willing the disgusting thought to roll back into the depths of his consciousness, but it would not go. He thought of the hopeless case he’d been at twelve, at how he’d barely been able to leave the house, let alone speak. He could not imagine what he would have done if his father had sold him—his mother had been dead by then, so she could not have. The thought of her doing so wasn’t even something he could put his mind around. Not his father either. He couldn’t imagine anyone doing it. It was beyond disgusting.
I have long ago learned not to be surprised. That was what Rodger had said. Wes began to understand why.
Vallant took Wes’s hand again and kissed his fingers gently. “You are a darling man to listen to all that prattle. I don’t even know if that explains it properly, but hopefully this allays your concern enough to allow you to leave. I had thought—” He grimaced. “Oh, it’s ridiculous, obviously. But I’d thought perhaps, with you, it would be all right. That it would cure me or something. Which now seems nothing but mad. I am sorry to have troubled you, to have exposed you to Rodger, to have involved you in this at all. Please consider yourself absolved. Whatever Rodger held over you, I promise to make him release it. I know you have no reason to believe my word, but I swear to you, you have nothing to fear from me, now or ever.”
Wes stared at him in disbelief. Go? Go? Vallant thought he would leave, just like that? Frowning, he opened his mouth to speak.
“D-d-d-da— T-t-t-t-t-t-t-t—”
Growling in impotent rage, Wes swung his legs off the bed, doing up his trousers with trembling hands. He hated himself, hated his stammer, hated his tongue, his mind, his stupid timid nature, stupid, stupid, stupid—
My mother sold me.
You learn not to be surprised.
Wes stormed over to his discarded waistcoat, not even aware of what he was reaching for until the notebook was in his hand. He dug into the pocket again until he found the stub of pencil and exhaled a victorious huff. As he returned to the bed, he could see Vallant eyeing him warily, but he ignored this, sat on the opposite end and braced the pad on his knee.
You think after all that, I will leave? What sort of monster do you take me for? You think I could be that callous? No better than the piece of filth who used you, nor the soulless fiend who sold you?
He ripped off the page and handed it over, but he began a second note even before Vallant had taken the first from his hand.
Is this bastard still alive? I assume not, that Rodger had him strangled? He had to pause, forcing his grip on the pencil to lighten before he went on. I want his name, if he isn’t already dispatched. I’m not without resources or influence. And I’m very difficult to prosecute.
He stopped writing then, but his blood was pounding in his ears, and without meaning to he crumbled the bottom half of his notepad. He had never felt such rage in all his life.
“No.” Vallant’s reply was short, sharp and brooked no argument. He handed the notes back to Wes. “No, you will not have the name. Don’t ask again, either. Ever.”
Wes wanted to press the issue, but he knew a brick wall when he saw one. And notes could only be so persuasive. He turned over the first piece of paper and wrote again.
I want to help you.
Vallant took the paper with visual trepidation, but he laughed once he saw the words. “Well, you can’t, darling. You saw where we landed.”
Wes scowled. I didn’t mean help you that way. Please. You must let me give you aid. I think now you meant Bedlam as a joke, at least a dark one, but this cannot be healthy regardless. You thought something in me might help you, enough to send for me. Now that I actually know what I’m meant to do, let me at least attempt it.
Wes watched Vallant’s face as he read, but it gave him no clue. When Vallant spoke, he glanced at Wes without turning his head or lowering the note. “Aid me how? What is it you think you could do?”
Wes had no idea. He didn’t write this though, pausing with his pencil over the paper as he frantically tried to think. He began a few lines only to cross them out. After three such tries, he balled up that paper, tossed it over his shoulder into the fireplace and started one afresh.
I want to keep seeing you. I don’t care if we have intercourse or not. We can talk. Or write notes. Or paint bloody watercolors. I hardly care, to tell the truth. I know only that I can’t simply walk out of here and whistle my way back to my apartments as if you were just some whore I fucked and nothing else.
He hesitated over that last, but in the end he passed it over before he could second-guess himself. He waited as Vallant read, watching his face to see if he laughed. But Vallant didn’t, only cast him an unreadable glance when he finished.
“This argument again. Darling—I am some whore you fucked and nothing else.” He lowered the note to his lap. His tone turned gentle, soothing. “I’m flattered, truly, but it doesn’t matter. I’ve already impeded the ledgers as it is—I’ve been out of service for over a month.” He grimaced. “I think I just need Rodger to hold me down a few times. Desensitize me. Or perhaps I should drink. Something to— Oh, heavens. You’re scribbling again.”
Wes’s stomach had turned over at “need Rodger to hold me down a few times”, and he’d shut his ears to the rest as he fumbled for his notepad. By the time Vallant had realized Wes was writing, he’d finished, and he handed the note to him. Vallant read it, frowned at Wes, and read it again.
“Eight hundred pounds? What is that supposed to mean?”
Wes took a few breaths. “I’ll g-give it to y-you.”
He enjoyed watching Vallant’s eyes widen. “You are the one heading to Bedlam. Why would you do such a thing?”
Deciding not to risk speaking, Wes wrote quickly.
/> For the pleasure of your company for one month. Your company and nothing more, unless you wish it.
Vallant stared at the paper for several seconds. Then he drew it slowly to his chest. He said nothing, only looked at Wes.
Wes raised an eyebrow at him.
Vallant’s laugh, bursting out of him soft and quiet, was a balm to Wes’s soul. As was Vallant’s self-conscious hand through his silken hair. “I can’t accept it, my lord. You flatter me beyond anything I’ve ever known, but—”
“Al-Albert,” Wes interrupted. He took a breath as Vallant paused, surprised. “Y-you c-can ac-c-cept. S-s-ay y-yes.”
Vallant studied him a moment. “If I were to accept this—which I’m not saying I am—I would insist on some better compensation on your part. Given that I might never be able to give you more than witty rejoinders to your notes, I want to give something to you. I just have to think of what.”
He bit his lip in an unconscious gesture, and Wes found it endearing beyond words. He warmed in a way that felt like arousal and yet wasn’t at all—an internal arousal, if there were such a thing. You don’t have to give me anything. You have no idea what a gift simply being with you every day will be.
Before he could find the way to stammer some of this, however, Vallant was shaking his head and speaking again. “But what shall we do if we aren’t fucking? Go to the opera?” He paused and looked almost wistful. “Going to the opera and actually watching, not sucking someone off in the back of a darkened booth. That would be something.”
Wes had been recoiling inwardly at the thought of the crush at the door, but at the mention of a booth, of being alone with Vallant, his panic quieted. Perhaps the opera would not be so bad.
“But what else? Dancing?”
Wes shook his head vigorously. “I d-d-do not d-d-dance.”
“Hmm. That leaves out the Dove Street balls. I can’t imagine your dislike of crowds would make an exception for a gaming hell, and in any event, I don’t like them either.” Vallant paused, then looked at Wes helplessly. “I’ve no notion what we would do to occupy our time, if we aren’t having sex. What do you do all day?”
A Private Gentleman Page 8