by Rhys Ford
“The Duke of Harding was your father.” Robin paled suddenly. Already myopic behind the lenses, his focus distanced off to a faraway point, and the man frowned gravely. “He died from a skitter attack in the House of Lords. No one found it when they’d done the original sweep, and none of the Society catalogued it in their records.”
“No,” Marcus agreed in a soft voice. “No one knew it was there.”
Those all-seeing eyes snapped to Marcus’s face, and tears glistened on the man’s lashes. “I am so sorry. Oh God…. I wish I could… it was never meant to be… the skitters… everything I ever created, they were never meant to be used in that way.”
“I’ve found that out over the past few weeks waiting for you to wake up.” He tapped a thick notebook on the table. “I spent the time learning a bit about you. Rude as that may seem.”
Robin Harris flushed a bright pink, a far brighter hue than the wing chair’s cabbage roses ever had been, and his hand slapped down over the spot on his hip where Marcus knew a brand had been burned into his pale skin. Harris glanced away, buried in his shame, but Marcus refused to let him retreat. Reaching over, he cupped Harris’s chin and turned his face back so their gazes met.
“I… don’t know what to say.” The man chewed on his lower lip. “Most people come to kill me, not rescue me. I am so very sorry. Your family—”
“We miss him. He was a giant of a man. Very hard to live up to, but we try,” Marcus admitted. “But we’re doing all right. My grandmother has found other people to fight with, and my eldest brother has stepped up as Duke. You know what they say. No matter how you might strike down an Englishman, another will pick up the flag and carry on.”
“Who says that?” He tilted his head, reminding Marcus so much of the crows who’d kept him company while Harris slept off his beating.
“Everyone.” Marcus shrugged, then gave Harris a rueful grin. “No one. I’m not even sure who they are. It’s always the faceless ‘they’ people talk about. I often wondered that as a child.”
“And you say I’ve been unconscious for the past few weeks?”
“More or less.”
“And you’ve sat here the entire time?”
“Well, no. Most days,” Marcus admitted. “Usually at night. I do have estates to run and business to attend to, but at night, definitely. We’ve gone through all of Shakespeare’s better plays, and I was about to read you the really bad ones when you woke up. Thank God for that. I’m not sure I could take Romeo and Juliet.”
“Some people think that’s one of his better ones.”
“They’re young children who kill themselves because their families disagreed on something a long time ago and never got over it. In my family, we call that throwing a tantrum. We’re not allowed to throw tantrums past the age of ten. I don’t see any reason why anyone else gets to… literary or otherwise.”
“I can’t believe you didn’t smother me with a pillow as soon as you found out who I was.” Harris shook his head. By the pained grimace on his face, Marcus surmised he’d immediately regretted casually tossing his brain about again.
“It would have defeated the purpose of fighting off a pack of spoiled brats and dragging you through Little Orient, then into your house,” Marcus pointed out smoothly. “And did I not mention my family disapproves of tantrums?”
“I killed your father,” he whispered. “It was one of my… devices, but it might as well have been me.”
“You didn’t kill him.” Marcus risked touching the man’s leg, glad for the warmth of Harris’s skin beneath the sheet. “Was I angry about his death? Yes. But do I blame the man in this bed? No. The courts declared you innocent of any wrongdoing. Those people… violated your creations. I can’t hang that on you.”
“I do.” Harris fidgeted under Marcus’s hand, but he didn’t pull away. “I remember every name. I know every story. Of everyone I killed. Or helped kill. It was never ever meant to be that way, but that doesn’t excuse what happened.”
“Any more than I excuse what they did to you in retaliation.” His eyes flicked unintentionally to the spot on Harris’s hip burned deep with New Bedlam’s mark. “I had a lot of time on my hands waiting for you to wake up.”
“And you spent it reading about me?” Harris looked incredulous.
“Among other things,” Marcus replied. “But mostly about you.”
“It must have been very boring reading.” The man shifted uncomfortably under the sheets.
“You’ve had a very interesting life.” As far as Marcus was concerned, interesting was a pale word to describe the bookish man he’d sat near and worried over. “But it didn’t tell me much about you.”
He’d been diligent in reading through everything his secretary could find on Robin Harris, the young scientist the Society fooled into creating their weapons. The original intent of his designs was difficult to discern from drawings and schematics, but someone had seen the potential for death in Harris’s mechanisms. Where Harris saw creation, the Society saw destruction and a way to destabilize the Empire’s strong foundation.
They’d almost been successful. And to this day, people were still suffering from the small pockets of devices they’d left behind. The old Duke had been only one of the Society’s belated victims, and Marcus knew he certainly wasn’t the last.
But the Society’s greatest victim was now sitting up in bed, a pale, pretty dark-haired man with sheets swaddled about his slender hips and a look of intense shame on his face. While the Society killed nearly two hundred people to reach their insidious goals, they’d truly only taken the life of one man—Robin Harris, a very young and unsuspecting engineer.
While the courts declared him innocent, English society did not, and Harris found himself in a quagmire of accusations and a very public humiliation that eventually led him to the dock and two years on New Bedlam Island in the middle of the bay, jailed and branded as a sodomite.
Harris hadn’t protested the sentence. From everything Marcus had read, the branding had been done in a nearly theatrical manner, with certain members of the gentry paying for the privilege of seeing the young man stripped naked and a hot iron put to his hip. Marcus didn’t think he would have survived the shame of it, but from what he’d gathered, Harris endured it as he’d endured the trial—stoic and quiet—a true Englishman in the face of adversity.
He’d not known about the perversion trial or Harris’s incarceration in New Bedlam. Despite the pain and ache of his father’s death, Marcus knew in his bones his family would have protested Harris’s mistreatment.
Still, he’d been there when Harris—Robin—thrashed about the bed in a fit of fevers and screamed about the flesh being burnt off his bones.
“I’m just… me.” Harris shrugged.
“You continue to build things,” Marcus pointed out. “I finally figured out what it was you were carrying that night. Well, after Doctor Horan gave me a hint. They’re supports for a little boy’s legs. So he can walk.”
“His own legs are weak.” The man ducked his head, burying his face in a wash of black hair. “I was coming back from doing a fitting. The family must think I’ve forgotten about him.”
“The good and fierce doctor sent word around. Still, it’s dangerous, what you’re doing. Mingling science and arcane. You could have been killed if you ran up against a zealot of either philosophy.”
“It needs doing.” For the first time, Marcus saw fire in the man’s eyes when Harris lifted his chin and stared at him from across the bed. “Too many people… suffer because people are too bound to a single philosophy. Both of them, the arcane and science, can be useful. The key is not to abuse that knowledge. Something I learned firsthand from the Society.”
“No need to build a soapbox,” Marcus laughed, holding up his hands. “I agree with you. I just don’t have the knowledge to be either a scientist or an arcanist. I’ll stick to listening to the arguments and passing laws to support change.”
“As important,” Harris
conceded.
“So, Robin Harris,” Marcus said as he settled into the wing chair. “Now that I know all about what happened to you, why don’t you tell me something actually about you for a change?”
“I can tell you one thing.” Harris slanted him an awkward look.
“Anything.” Marcus leaned forward, concerned by the man’s discomfort. “Whatever you need. Whatever you want. You can tell me anything.”
“Thank you. Truly. I appreciate it,” the man murmured softly. “But I really need to take a piss.”
Four
SOMEONE HAD definitely moved the stairs while Robin had been upstairs getting changed, or at least slanted them in a different direction, because Robin struggled to keep upright coming down to the lower level of Marcus’s much larger townhome. About halfway to the first floor, he debated heading back up to his assigned room, but the way up seemed much longer than it had coming down. His legs hurt from inactivity, and the sudden bustle up expansive marble staircases and enormous rooms sucked out what little energy he’d stored up inside him.
Although fretting also seemed to wear him down. And he’d certainly fretted. Nothing wore Robin down more than attending a dinner hosted by the family of a man he’d inadvertently killed. They’d certainly not be pleased to see him and even less pleased to discover the family’s youngest son’d gone rogue and was hosting said murderer in his townhouse so Robin didn’t have to make his way back down to Bayside afterward.
“Let me help you, Robin.” Marcus appeared from around the staircase end, his hair damp from a walk outside. St. Francisco’s heavy fog chased them inland, swaddling the park and its surrounding neighborhoods in a thick pea soup.
The tiny jewels of water on Marcus’s evening clothes did nothing to detract from his appearance. God, the man looked incredible in black silk and formal whites.
After Robin woke up fully on that day, they’d left off the subject of Robin’s work in blending arcane and science for a later time. Instead they spent the next week getting Robin back on his feet. Westwood insisted on exchanging first names, pointing out they were probably more intimate with one another than most marriages. Robin agreed, burying the idea of Marcus’s strong body lying next to him in a marriage bed as soon as it rose in his thoughts.
Still, there were little signs of Marcus’s attraction. The man’s hands wandered over Robin’s body, periodically examining his healing wounds, and the memory of those touches fueled Robin’s fantasies in the dark of night when he buried himself beneath his bed linens. As he stroked his own cock to fruition, Robin bit his lip to prevent from crying out, since the object of his desire spent most nights in a room down the hall, and Marcus seemed to keep a keen ear out for any stray noise.
Robin’d been pulled out of his nightmares more than a few times by Marcus’s strong embrace and murmured soft words, but he certainly didn’t want the man to mistake his cries of pleasure for another bad dream.
It was embarrassing enough he’d needed help using a chamber pot during his convalescence. While Robin didn’t quite remember Marcus’s guiding hand on his cock when he’d been feverish, his body certainly did, because it burned with want every time the man was near.
For the first time in Robin’s life, he had a friend, someone who didn’t mock his meandering mumbled outbursts about things fitting together or how something worked. He didn’t know what Marcus got out of the relationship, but Robin suspected it was having someone to fix. They’d argued about the staff… the house… and most of all, the bills from grocers and butchers, but Robin lost each one, bowled over by the force of a viscount raised to give orders and lay down logic.
Which appeared to be what Marcus was doing right now by hooking his arm around Robin’s waist to guide him down the stairs.
Damn the man for smelling so good—for looking so good. Even for feeling so good against Robin’s body.
He hated wanting another man—this man, especially.
Marcus’s black silk evening jacket fit neatly over his broad shoulders, narrowing in to follow the line of his trim waist. Robin knew there was a powerful body beneath the lush fabric. He’d spent a few minutes of exquisite torture watching shirtless Marcus teach a younger man to box.
He’d been strong when the first bead of sweat appeared on Marcus’s chest, but when the salty drop began its journey down around the man’s tight brown nipple, Robin nearly swallowed his tongue. He’d bitten through his cheek when Marcus’s torso began to glisten and the thin trail of golden hair beneath his belly button caught yet another drop of sweat.
Marcus plowed a powerful blow into his young opponent’s stomach, and as the gasping youth bent over, Marcus winked slowly at Robin from across the ring, a whiff of his spicy aroma tickling Robin’s nostrils.
In that moment, Robin fled and discovered St. Francisco’s icy rain was definitely cold enough to douse his arousal—providing he stood directly in the way of the wind screaming through the gym’s back alley.
He certainly wished he had a bit of that icy touch of water now, because his body was reacting strongly to the press of Marcus’s body, and it had a definite adverse effect on his walking ability.
“Are you certain about this?” Marcus used what Robin called his viscount voice, a polished pearl of a tone stropped sharp by years of living in high society. “We can postpone—”
“We shall do no such thing!”
Robin blinked, and in a moment, the foyer at the end of the stairs bristled with a Valkyrie—if the Norse Gods were recruiting from the ranks of wee little English matriarchs.
There wasn’t a spot on the older woman that didn’t glisten. From her frosting-white hair down to her bright-violet ballroom slippers, nearly every inch of her sparkled with spangles, beading, and jewelry. Technically, the plum she wore was a mourning color, but instead, it screamed Merry Widow, cloaking her impressive figure in a vivid dusky hue. The dress was definitely a modern cut, an off-the-shoulder bodice with wispy tulle pretending to be draped sleeves across her upper arms. Her skirts flared out, giving her nearly as much width as she had height, but either nature or a very good corset balanced her out, her full chest nearly straining the patience of the plum silk.
The strands of pale-white diamonds around her neck and wrists were enough to sternly remind Robin he was a masquerading fraud waiting to be exposed.
Suddenly, upstairs didn’t seem too far away. In fact, Timbuktu seemed like a nice place for a holiday, and if he hurried, he could catch a steamer to Africa before the tide went out.
“Mr. Robin Harris, I would like you to meet my grandmother, the esteemed Augusta Stenhill, the Dowager Duchess of Harding.” Marcus made a slight bow to the older woman, winking at Robin as he straightened. “Grandmother, may I present to you a very dear friend of mine, Harris.”
“Oh, Westwood! He is lovely!” The elegant woman glided forward and caught Robin by the crook of his arm. Barely reaching his shoulder, she tilted her head back to look up at him, her mouth pulled into a moue. “You have gorgeous eyes, dear. And such bone structure. You’ll be lucky to sit out a dance tonight.”
“Dance?” Robin squeaked at Marcus as the purple-draped storm whisked him toward the front door.
He’d barely found something formal to wear that fit his long legs, and a hurried tailor had muttered dark curses at Marcus as he’d driven a team of seamstresses to finish altering an abandoned evening suit for Robin’s lanky body. A dinner was all he’d been aware of. Dancing was something totally outside of his realm of skills, but it seemed like any protest he made fell on deaf ears.
His shoes squeaked as he was rushed down the front steps, but no one else seemed to notice.
Or maybe Marcus did and that was the reason the damned man wore a broad smile on his handsome face.
They’d lost the sky to the fog. It descended over the city low enough to catch the ironworks embellishing the hill’s balconies. Despite the soup, a zeppelin belled its approach overhead, its lights cutting through the fog’s thin p
atches. As Robin watched, it slunk away, heading to parts unknown… and without a certain overly dressed inventor who found himself staring at a sleek-lined black carriage with a gold crest on its partially opened door.
“We’re taking a carriage?” Robin balked, dragging his leather-shod feet. “To go a few blocks?”
“It’s damp,” Marcus said by way of explanation. A footman helped the duchess up, taking a few moments to arrange her skirts. “And besides, this way I can be pressed up against you for a good half an hour without anyone seeing us.”
Robin stuttered. Or at least his heart had. This moment was Marcus’ declaration of intent and it came on the brink of a potentially disastrous evening. The man’s eyes bored through him and Robin flushed, the heat of his arousal roaming up from his belly to eat away at his composure and redden his cheeks.
He chose to ignore the flirtation but it was too late. His body’d already primed itself and Marcus’s hand on the small of his back held more than the promise of heat.
“Your grandmother will see us,” he hissed back at his friend. “And what’s this about a dance?”
“There’s a small gathering of a few hundred people after supper.”
“A few hundred people?” His voice broke, squeaking louder than his new shoes. “Are you insane? Marcus, I’m a pariah! It’ll be a disaster!”
“It’ll be fine.” The man straightened his shoulders and waved away Robin’s concern with an elegant toss of his hand. “You’ll see. Everyone will love you.”
“OH GOD, this is a disaster.”
“Marcus, stop your pacing.” His grandmother eased back into a spindly-legged chair his uncle had brought over from France. Most of the Stenhills ran large, more so than the average man, and most of the ancestral home’s furnishings were built for their comfort. Everywhere but in the blue library where his grandmother still reigned supreme, despite his brother’s ascension to the family seat.
The room was a mixture of old and new, classic Continental seating but lit with converted arcane lamps, a costly expense seeing as his grandmother insisted on paying for the brightest white magick could create. When he’d been younger, Marcus and his brothers were required to have afternoon tea with the woman in the blue library so she could grill them about their studies.