A Private Gentleman

by Heidi Cullinan

  Michael kissed him softly on the cheek. “Albert, don’t cry. It’s all right.”

  “S-S-S-S-S-S-S-S—” Wes choked, coughed and tried again, but everything caught at his teeth. “S-S-S-S-S-S—”

  Both Michael’s hands gripped his face now—clumsily, and when he spoke, Michael’s words were slurred too. “No. No, Albert—I won’t let him hurt you too.”

  That statement of protection only made Wes weep harder. His chest hurt, and his body ached as if it were splitting in half. When Michael kissed the bridge of his nose, he choked on a sob and reached up to grip his shoulders.

  You must be very, very careful.

  “S-S-S-S-S-S-S-Sorry,” he choked out. “S-S-S-S-So s-s-s-s-s-orry, s-s-s-s-s-s-s-s—”

  “Shh.” Michael kissed one of Wes’s eyes, then the other, then his lips. “Hush, love.”

  The pain tore Wes to pieces inside. Not pain—sorrow, shame and guilt like he had never known. His father—his father! After all the names he had called Wes, all the accusations—and he had done this? This?

  And to Michael?

  The sob that had been choking the back of his throat broke free.

  Michael caught it with his mouth. “Don’t hate me,” Michael whispered against Wes’s lips. He was crying too. “I could bear him using me again, anything in the world but that you would hate me.”

  Wes held him fast. “N-N-No.”

  Michael clutched at him. “I’ll do whatever you want. Just don’t go, Albert—please, please don’t leave me because it was him.” He kissed Wes’s cheek, his ear. “Just don’t leave me, Albert, please.”

  Wes could not answer. He could barely think. He needed more opium. He needed an entire bottle of brandy.

  He needed a knife to carve this horrible truth from his head.

  This time when the knock came on the door, they both yelped, but when Wes heard Rawlins’s familiar voice, he calmed at once. “B-B-Butler. It’s m-m-my b-butler.” He dragged a kiss across his cheek. “I’ll be r-right back.”

  He rose carefully, listing back and forth as he made his way to the door. When he opened it, the butler was standing there holding a lumpy burlap bag.

  “This was just delivered for you, my lord.” Rawlins’s nose curled slightly. “The…gentleman gave it to me, and his companion said they would ‘settle up’ with you later.” He handed over the bag, made a proper bow and left.

  Wes shut the door, opened the bag and looked down at a slightly ragged but otherwise perfect orchid, an exact copy of the one he’d seen at Mrs. Gordon’s house.

  He didn’t know how long he stared at it. He only knew that eventually he heard a soft voice down the hall, and he turned to see Michael standing there, swaying on his feet, looking as if he had just climbed through and were poised at the portal to hell.

  “Albert?” he whispered, his entire world in the word.

  Wes put down the orchid and its bag on the table, not even bothering to rewrap it. He stumbled down the hall toward Michael.

  On the way he picked up the bottle of wine he’d opened earlier. After a brief, reassuring kiss to Michael, he picked up the laudanum and put a liberal amount in the bottle.

  He took a deep, deep drink directly from the mouth.

  As the now-dangerous amount of opium swirled inside him, he stumbled back into the hall. Wrapping his arm around Michael, he led him back into his bedroom.

  Michael sagged against him. “I’m sorry.”

  Wes kissed him, gently, then took another swig from the bottle, deeply. “F-Forget.” He kissed him again.

  Forget.

  Forget everything.

  Everything.

  He laid Michael down on the bed. He kissed him. He made slow, sweet, opiate-laced love to him. He let Michael cry, and he cried too. He held Michael close as he quieted and drifted fitfully to sleep.

  Then Wes rose. He penned several notes at his desk. He paused at the orchid, closed his eyes and turned away.

  He slipped out of his apartments and out of his house, out of Mayfair and into the night, not knowing where he was going, not caring. He wandered on and on, trying to outrun the feeling of despair no opium could hide, the despair that as the drug wore off would only get worse.

  How long he wandered, he didn’t know. He had vague, distant memories of strange rooms full of smoke and naked women who tried to entice him, but all Wes wanted of them was the pipes they held in their hands. He remembered a great deal of vomiting. That was the way of life, with opium, but there was so much more vomiting now, it seemed. And then there was the other problem. His gut twisted in knots so tight he wanted to drive a knife into them to loosen his stool. Another curse of opium. Wes wanted oblivion, but opium now only gave him hell. All he knew now was despair, the yawning portal of deep terror that chased him, growing ever closer.

  In the bowels of the darkest alley in London it found him, and he knew he could run no more. He let go, ready now for the end.

  It did not come.

  He had tried. He had found a knife, or a piece of glass—he couldn’t tell which in his delirium—but whatever it was, it was sharp, and it would work. Even here he failed. A vision stopped him, a sad, beautiful vision of a man who reached out and stayed his hand. When Wes shut his eyes, the man began to weep, and Wes ran, stumbling, nearly fainting, but running on and on, trying to get away from that terrible sound.

  Michael’s head and mouth felt as if they were full of cotton. Only the top of his head, though, because his ears felt far, far too open, and every sound was magnified, and the barest scrape of a fingernail seemed likely to make him cast up his accounts.

  “The bastard drugged him. Drugged Michael.”

  The words sounded funny, echoing as if they were being spoken through a speaking tube, but Michael knew the voice even so. He lifted his head.

  “Rodger?”

  He opened his eyes, but everything was blurry. His stomach threatened to heave.

  “Rodger?” he called with more panic. “Rodger, I don’t feel w—”

  A hand thrust him forward as a disgusting torrent came out of his mouth. Michael had just enough time to whimper and smack his lips against the foul acid of his stomach when it happened again. One time more, and then strong hands were lowering him back down as a cool cloth rested upon his sweaty brow.

  “Good God in heaven,” Michael slurred, letting his suddenly very heavy eyelids close.

  “Hush.” This was Rodger again. The cool cloth slid gently down his cheek. “You hush, love. I’ve got you.”

  “What happened?” Michael couldn’t remember. He couldn’t remember anything at all.

  “Lord George drugged you is what happened,” Rodger said tightly. “And I’ll kill the bastard when I find him.”

  Lord George.

  Albert.

  Michael’s eyes flew open, and he tried to sit up. Then moaned and sank back down.

  “I have to—” His stomach heaved in protest of his attempts to move, and he held his breath a moment, trying to recover. “Albert. I must—”

  “He’s gone, love.” The anger in Rodger’s voice was acute. “He fucking up and left. Left you here. Sent a runner for me, so he gets some credit for that, but he left you here in the meantime and run off like the snake he is.”

  Michael’s eyes opened again. “Ran off?”

  Rodger’s bleary face suggested a grimace. Michael needed to see him. “Where are my—?”

  Rodger handed him his spectacles without a word.

  Michael slipped the glasses onto his face. Rodger was scowling.

  And sad.

  “Where is Albert?” Michael repeated. “Where has he gone?”

  The tic in Rodger’s cheek grew deeper. “I don’t know.”

  Michael’s blood ran cold. “No.” He looked up in despair and desperation at Rodger. “Why—?”

  But then he began to remember.

  I have something to tell you.

  Michael’s hands trembled. “Daventry. Daventry was here.�
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  All sorrow evaporated into anger as Rodger’s hand seized his shoulder. “If that bastard harmed you—”

  Michael shook his head. “No. No, he was…” He shut his eyes, remembering. “He was at the door. He came to the door—I don’t know if he came in. I think….” He ran a hand over his face. “I think I went into some kind of hysterics. I don’t remember. I only know that I was terrified and that Albert tried to comfort me.” The last piece of the puzzle clicked into place. “And that was why he gave me the opiates, I would imagine.”

  “He could bloody well have sent for me then.”

  Michael ignored Rodger. He could remember all of it now. The cold fear, the old terror rising inside him, choking him.

  “I hope he is rotting in some alley, damn him,” Rodger swore.

  “No.” Michael didn’t know if he was speaking to Rodger or the terrible swirl of memory. He’d told him. Told Albert. Albert knew. Albert knew, and he’d given Michael opium.

  And gone. Left in the middle of the night and disappeared.

  To kill himself, a dark part of Michael’s mind whispered.

  When he cried out this time, Rodger drew him into a gruff embrace. “It’s all right, love.”

  Michael’s throat was almost too thick to speak. “He means to be dead. He will drug himself until he is dead.”

  “He isn’t worthy of you,” Rodger shot back, but Michael shook his head. “He might as well be dead.”

  “I love him. I am in love with him. If you wish him ill, you wish me ill as well.”

  “He’s a coward who descends into drugs and runs when confronted with the truth.”

  “No!” Michael cried.

  Rodger didn’t yield. “He ran, love. You need him right now more than ever, and he ran.”

  Tears had been brimming in Michael’s eyes for some time, but at this, he gave in and let them flow. Yes. That cut. It cut like a saber across his chest, that Albert had run. It was worse than a rejection, somehow. But it still didn’t matter. “I love him. I don’t want him to die.”

  Rodger sighed and kissed Michael’s cheek. “I already have the boys out looking for him. I want to kill him myself for leaving you, but if you want him, Michael, you shall have him.”

  Michael leaned forward and kissed Rodger softly on the cheek.

  Rodger grunted and rose from the bed, calling for the men who were with him. They tried to carry Michael, but he refused them, insisting on standing on his own feet. He made it all the way to the sitting room. There he saw what could only be an orchid, exotic and frail, roots exposed and drying as it lay helpless and half-broken on the floor.

  That was when it hit him, not fear, not panic, just sorrow, and he fell to the floor, took the orchid carefully in his hands and cried.

  Chapter Fourteen

  They could not find Albert anywhere.

  Rodger pointed out, almost hourly, that they had found no sign of his body, either, and that a man of his birth would not be lost for too long even in death. But with each passing day, Michael grew more and more frantic. Because he could, he took it out on Rodger.

  “You always brag that you can find anyone in London.” Michael stood over Rodger’s desk in his dressing gown, doing his best to loom. “You say no one can slip away from you, that this is your city.” He folded his arms over his chest. “Where is he, then?”

  “I don’t know.” Rodger tightened his lips into a thin line. “He went out the back door and down the alley. He got into a cab somewhere around Grosvenor.” He ran his hand through his hair. “And that’s where I lose him. I interviewed the man who picked him up myself. He says he let him out on a street, but there was no one on that street who saw him get into another cab. I know where every cab that ran down that street went. I’ve investigated every route, every destination. Everything runs cold.”

  Michael sat down and wrapped his gown closer to his body. He stared at Rodger’s desk for a long, terrible moment.

  Rodger shook his head, reading his mind. “He’s not dead, lad. I’ve been watching the corpses too. The only thing I can think of is that he isn’t in town. All his usual places I have eyes on. Even some of his unusual. But I don’t get anywhere checking non-London options either. The only thing that confounds me is that his family isn’t looking. Even a bastard like the marquess would want this handled delicately. Either they’re accustomed to this, or someone has warned them off, that he’s invisible but fine. Something is odd here. He can’t go missing this long, not this easily. Not by accident.”

  This pinched at Michael. “You’re saying he’s hiding from me deliberately?”

  Rodger snorted. “That’s exactly what I’m saying, ducks.”

  “But why? I understand his being upset, but—hiding?”

  Rodger leveled a look at him.

  “I don’t believe you,” Michael said. “I don’t think he’s hiding from me. I think something’s wrong.”

  “And now you’re being a ninny.” He waved in irritation at Michael. “Go on with you. I have other things to do in addition to hunting down your idiot of a lover, and your nagging helps none of it.”

  Michael left Rodger, reluctantly, and returned to his room.

  He tried to read, but he couldn’t keep his attention on anything. He tried a bath and some lunch in the kitchen.

  As the days turned into a week, he even tried working.

  Not sex. Not even hand jobs—they didn’t frighten him, but it felt like a betrayal, so he didn’t allow them. He flirted and danced and teased, working the customers into such a state they could barely make it to a booth to relieve themselves. Every night he took a shift at the ballroom, trying to distract himself from the fact that he was dying inside.

  But it didn’t work. He still pined for Albert, and on top of it all he didn’t feel the thrill in working anymore. He didn’t hate it, didn’t feel sick doing it, and didn’t panic. It only felt…strange to smile and tease men who were not Albert. It didn’t feel wrong, either. It just didn’t feel…satisfying.

  Which was a revelation in and of itself. Was that why he had been a whore? Because it was satisfying? He would have laughed at the idea before, but now the question loomed in his mind. Why was he a whore?

  He found Rodger late one evening and asked him.

  Rodger gave him a very strange look, one that seemed to question Michael’s sanity in earnest. “Are you ill, love? Or simply tired?”

  “Neither.” Michael rested his elbows on Rodger’s desk. “Honestly, why am I doing this? Because it seems something I should be able to answer, and I can’t. I don’t even remember precisely how it started. It just seemed to happen.”

  Rodger leaned back and threaded his fingers over his chest. “You asked me to let you try. A man had been eyeing you, and I commented on it, and you went still and quiet. I thought you would be upset, but you just said, ‘Is he still looking?’ and he was, so I said so. You told me you were going to go up to him and offer to jerk him off, and how much should you ask for? Could have knocked me over with a feather. I told you to go on ahead, and I’d keep an eye out for you. After that night, you never looked back.”

  Michael remembered now. He smiled absently as he stared unseeing at the wall, letting the old scene pass through his vision. “Yes. I remember now as well. There was something about him I liked. He was hungry, but not domineering like Daventry. And handsome. I liked the idea of watching his face while he came—and getting paid for it.”

  Rodger nodded. “It’s always been about power for you. About pleasure too, but mostly power. Which I thought was a proper attitude for a prostitute, so I encouraged you. And here we are.”

  Power. Michael frowned, still staring off at nothing. “Then why don’t I care about it anymore?”

  “We been over this, ducks. Lord George reminded you of Daventry—”

  “No, that’s not what I mean.” Michael gestured vaguely toward the front room. “I’ve been flirting with the men all week. I even went into the booths a few ti
mes—I didn’t let them touch me, but even if they had, I could tell it wouldn’t have mattered. It was almost boring. I felt nothing at all. Not disgust, not aversion. Just…disinterest.”

  Now he had Rodger’s attention. He sat forward, looking hard at Michael. “No panic?”

  Michael shook his head. “None.”

  “Hmm,” Rodger said, and returned to his ledgers.

  Three days after that Michael was called into Rodger’s office to find his friend looking angry and grim.

  “I have had word,” he spat out, “of Lord George.”

  Michael’s stomach became abruptly hollow. “You have?”

  Rodger nodded tersely. “He is on the east side, down by the docks.” His fist tightened on the desk. “With that damned woman.”

  The pit in Michael’s abdomen widened. “Pardon?”

  “He’s with Brannigan. It took me a week to confirm it, and that’s all I can get. Not without creating a royal fracas, and I won’t do such for the likes of that bastard.”

  With a woman. Michael tried to shove his doubts aside. “But—did you explain? Did you tell him—her—I was looking for Albert? Me, Michael?”

  There was a horrible pause. Eventually Rodger nodded again. “Aye.”

  Michael stood there a long time, until the silence pressed on him and he turned away without speaking.

  “Michael, love,” Rodger called out, but Michael spoke over him.

  “I need to go for a walk,” he said, heading for the door. Blessedly, Rodger let him go.

  He didn’t go outside, however, but to his room. For several minutes he sat on his bed, staring at the floor, thinking. Then he rose and rifled through his closet.

  As he dressed, his eyes fell on the space beneath his window, and out of habit, he crossed to the shelf and stroked the glass jar.

  With the help of some books, Albert’s notes and advice Rodger had hunted down for him, the orchid was still alive. In a very narrow sort of way Michael fancied he was one of London’s top orchid experts now. Whenever possible, he took the jar—carefully, so carefully—to the bath with him, steaming up the room as much as he dared. He kept a pot of boiling water atop his stove, making the attic as humid as possible. Likely he had ruined scores of books. He cared for none of them now. Only Albert’s orchid mattered.