by KJ Charles
“I don’t blame her.”
“Nor do I. I wish I could be happy about this. I wish I could say, ‘Yes, I’m going to claim my birthright,’ and do it.” He kicked at a stone.
“All right, but how bad do you reckon it would be?” Mark asked. “What are you worried about? What wouldn’t work?”
Pen stared at the pavement. “You said there’d be a court case. Looking into it, into me, like the Tichborne business.”
“There might be. Doesn’t have to. If the family accept the evidence we’ve got, and we’ve got plenty, there’s no need to go to law.”
That was a flicker of hope. “But will they accept it?”
“I don’t know. It’s a lot of money, not to mention the coronet. They might fight.”
“They’d at least look into it, wouldn’t they?” Pen said, feeling the hope sputter out again. “Hire someone like you to find out about me, investigate my past.”
“Probably. Want to tell me what he’d find?”
“I stood trial,” Pen blurted out. “Unnatural offences. Three years ago. I was arrested with four others in—they said it was a brothel, it wasn’t, it was a club, but—”
“I know how it is. Convicted?”
“No, thank God, but I had a warning from the bench. The others all went to gaol. I was the only one who got off, because I was in the privy—on my own—when the police arrived. It was a near thing, too. And I gave my name as Pen Godfrey.”
“Bugger,” Mark said with feeling.
“I didn’t want to be Starling in case anyone saw it in the papers. I was wearing a frock,” Pen said miserably. “If anyone looks for me under that name, they’ll find me. And the fact that there was insufficient evidence to convict isn’t the same thing as being cleared of all suspicion, is it?”
Mark rubbed at his cropped hair. “Right. I hear you.”
They turned up past Furnival’s Inn, toward Robin Hood Yard, in silence. Mark let them in and turned on the gaslight. The fire was still smouldering, which was a relief after the icy air outside; Pen took a chair as Mark threw on more coals.
“Is that it?” Mark asked, taking the opposite seat. Pen wished he was closer. He hadn’t been sure what Mark wanted of this evening; he knew what he’d like. Or what he would have liked if everything wasn’t overhung with dread. “I mean, is there anything else an agent would find?”
“I paint my face and fuck men,” Pen said. “What more would they need? Could you find that sort of thing out?”
Mark looked grim. “Depends how discreet you’ve been, and how discreet the other blokes are. It’s their arses on the line as well. Are we mostly talking about men with something to lose? Or people who might be ready to testify with their palms greased?”
“Oh God. You don’t think—”
“I don’t know. I really don’t. What I’d hope is the family would see the evidence is overwhelming, and decide there’s no point washing dirty linen in public. They think a lot of their family name, the Taillefers. Your old man had someone killed for it.”
“That’s not even a bit reassuring,” Pen objected.
Mark gave him a sideways look, then rose and came over to perch on the arm of the chair. “Here. C’m’ere.” He put his arm round Pen’s shoulders and Pen leaned into it, liking the warmth, the strength. “I hear you. But, mate, you’re Lord Moreton, like it or not. And it may not be possible to keep that quiet even if you want to, but,” he went on over Pen’s objection, “once you are Lord Moreton, recognised, there’s a whole set-up there to look after you. Lawyers and such, but also the fact that we don’t treat Lord Moreton like we treat Pen Starling. We bow to Lord Moreton. We keep quiet about his foibles—and they are foibles, not offences, when the man doing ’em pays the wages. One law for the rich, another for the poor.”
“But the rich do get arrested.”
“Not as often as they ought to,” Mark said. “There I go, sounding like my mother. But it’s how it is.”
“For people who were born to it,” Pen countered. “I wouldn’t know how to go about that. And those people protect each other because they know each other, don’t they? I wouldn’t be one of them. I’m a trapeze artist, and look at what’s happened with Kate Cooke.”
That had made headlines too, and a lot of them, when the Earl of Euston, a duke’s heir, had married a music-hall performer some years his senior. It sounded like the stuff of fairytales, but nobody of the ducal family had embraced Kate Cooke; nobody had agreed that she was now part of the upper classes. Lady Euston was, and would always be, brash, bawdy, and despised. The couple had been driven from London society and gossip claimed that the marriage was as desperately unhappy as any stickler could wish. Perhaps Lady Euston felt that the game was worth the candle; Pen didn’t.
He leaned more heavily on Mark, felt his arm tighten. “Ugh. I wish I could be braver about this.”
“I wish you didn’t have to be,” Mark said. “I asked you to talk to me because I need to apologise.”
“This isn’t your fault.”
“The lord business isn’t, no. Doesn’t stop me feeling responsible for tracking you down, mind. But I meant last night.”
“I liked last night.”
“So did I,” Mark said. “A lot. And I know you said you didn’t want to hear what I knew. But, fact was, you didn’t know what you didn’t know—”
“I know,” Pen supplied helpfully, and won a scowl.
“You should have known before we did anything,” Mark pressed on. “You might have decided differently.”
“It would certainly have put me off my stride. I’m glad you didn’t tell me. I wish you hadn’t told me now. You listened to me last night, and I’ve got a terrible feeling that nobody’s going to listen to me again, even if I could tell them.”
“I’ll listen. Any time you want me to.”
Pen stared at the fire. “The thing is, Mark…The thing is…” He couldn’t quite go on, but Mark didn’t press him. He sat, waiting. “The thing is, I’d have to cut my hair, wouldn’t I? I’d have to dress as a man, all the time, and look like one, because of my past. And that would be all right for a little while, but then it wouldn’t be. It wouldn’t. And I know it sounds absurd to you—imagine not wanting an earldom because I’d have to cut my hair and wear suits! It’s not much to ask in exchange for a fortune, is it? What self-indulgent nonsense.” His throat felt tight. “But it isn’t nonsense. It feels wrong, and the wrongness grows and grows and then everything else starts to feel wrong too. Me. My body. I don’t…feel right in myself. Do you understand at all?”
“Dunno. I’m listening.”
“Try this,” Pen said. “Would you accept an earldom if you had to wear women’s clothes for the rest of your life? Frilly drawers, skirts, a bustle, grow your hair and have it dressed?”
“Jesus, what a picture,” Mark muttered. “Uh. All right, I don’t like that idea, but—hang on, let me think—I don’t like it because I’d look ridiculous. I mean, to other people. Men wear men’s clothes, so I’d look stupid in women’s.”
“You wouldn’t just look stupid,” Pen said. “People would treat you differently. They wouldn’t know how to behave to you, whether to offer you tea and cake or a proper drink, whether they could say certain things to you. You’d feel wrong, wouldn’t you? You’d feel as though you were being made someone you didn’t want to be. Of course it’s not the same, but that’s how wrong it feels if I have to pretend to be a man all the time. And it wouldn’t always be pretending, but it would be often enough, and the more I pretend, the worse it gets, and the more it doesn’t work. My hands feel too big and my shoulders are too big and I start shaving four times a day because I loathe the stubble, and I don’t even want to look down. I don’t want anyone touching me there.” He couldn’t look at Mark’s face, in case he saw incomprehension, or the dawning horror that would accompany the realisation: This bloke’s off his chump. “That’s what it feels like if I have to pretend. That’s what it feels like
if I even think about living that way, and for me, no amount of money would be worth it. Do you—can you understand?”
There was a long pause, long enough that Pen had time to wish he hadn’t said any of it, then Mark spoke, slowly. “I dream sometimes.”
“Dream?”
“That I’ve got two arms.”
“Oh,” Pen said, cautiously.
“I was born with one, I’ve never had anything else. But when I dream, I’ve got two. I couldn’t even tell you what it’s like to have two arms, I forget when I wake up, but I know I’ve got two in my dreams, and sometimes—I’m thirty-one, I’ve always been like this, and I wake up and I’m confused for a second because I don’t—it’s not—” He took a deep breath. “Anyway. That ain’t something I’ve mentioned to anyone before, and it’s probably not the same thing. But—”
“I think it might be a bit the same,” Pen said. “In a way.”
“Yeah. Hell’s teeth. All right, I hear you, and I think I understand. I’ll do my best, anyway.” He made a noise something between a breath and a laugh. “Phyllis told me yesterday I was penny plain and you were tuppence coloured, but…I think you’re a shilling’s worth at least.”
Pen sniffed. “As long as you agree I’m more valuable.”
“Oh, mate, nobody’s arguing that.” Mark let go his shoulders, slipping round and down to crouch in front of the chair. “You’re something special, you really are. Shit and derision, I wish we didn’t have this bloody business.”
Pen reached for his face, running a finger over his chin. Mark hadn’t shaved that morning, he’d guess. His skin was rough, prickly, his jaw strong. “What would you do if we didn’t?”
“Ask you to talk to me,” Mark said hoarsely. “I’d ask you to tell me what you’d like, exactly how you felt right then. Learn the differences. Make it right, for whatever way you were feeling.”
“I’d like that.” Pen ran his fingers over Mark’s lips, felt them move in a whisper of a kiss. “And what would you tell me about what you wanted?”
“Oh, I’m easy to please. Don’t worry about me.”
Or, I’m all right, I’ll take care of you. Pen tried to tell himself Mark would give this much, this generously with anyone, man or woman or neither. He wished he believed it.
“Will you take your shirt off?” he asked, and felt Mark go still under his fingers.
“My shirt.”
“I’d like to see you. If that’s allowed.”
“It’s allowed.” Mark wasn’t moving. “I wouldn’t call it a pretty sight, though.”
“It’s up to you,” Pen said. “But I’ve told you about me, and I’d like to see you.”
Mark’s eyes met his for a long moment, then he sat back on his heels. He shrugged off his coat, and Pen saw that his left shirtsleeve was sewn short as well. He unbuttoned his waistcoat, pulling it off the truncated left arm first, tossed it away. Pen made himself watch, but not stare.
Mark flicked open the shirt buttons at his neck and pulled the cloth over his head, a smooth movement that Pen wasn’t sure he could do one-handed himself. He’d expected the process to be more difficult, somehow, as if Mark hadn’t been doing this daily all his life.
The shirt fell to one side, a pile of crumpled linen, and Mark knelt, bare-chested, watching him.
He was fair-skinned, with a thin tangle of blond hairs over a chest which was notably more developed on the right pectoral. His right arm was as powerful as Pen’s own, with a bulge of biceps that suggested tension. His left arm…stopped. There was the beginning of the limb, unmuscled and near-hairless, extending from the shoulder perhaps two-thirds of the way to where the elbow would have been, and ending in a smooth curve of skin.
It didn’t look right. For every day Pen had felt as though his body wasn’t the one he should be in, he’d had another glorying in his fluent strength. He’d never felt as though his body was flawed, only that it didn’t always suit his mind, and when he’d been reluctant to undress in front of a lover, it had been because of his own feelings. He’d never in his life had to worry that someone else might not like what they saw.
He slid forward, out of the chair, so he was kneeling on the rug, opposite Mark, mirroring his position.
“May I touch?”
Mark nodded. His eyes were watchful.
Pen reached out and ran a fingertip over Mark’s chest. He twitched. Pen brushed his hand over the sparse hair, circling, catching a nipple between his fingers, getting used to the feel of Mark’s skin, letting him relax into the touch. He added his other hand, spanning Mark’s chest and exploring the muscles.
“Mmm.” Mark sounded a little strained.
Pen ran his hands over Mark’s shoulders. Muscle, bone, warm skin. He spread his fingers wide, rested them there. “Do you like being touched, on your arm?”
“People mostly avoid it.”
“Do you want me to?”
Mark exhaled. “Jesus, Pen.”
“I want to know,” Pen said. “Or if it’s different on different days, or if you’d like to try and I’ll stop as soon as you say. I know all about that.”
“Yeah, you do, don’t you? I dunno. Most people ignore it.”
“What was it you said about most people?”
“True.” A muscle worked in Mark’s throat. “All right, go on.”
Pen slid both hands down, over Mark’s arms, curling his fingers around them. The right was magnificently solid, the left far less so, soft under his fingers. He ran his hands further, matching them, until he reached the rounded end of the stump, and carefully cupped it in the palm of his hand.
Mark inhaled in a way that sounded like pain. Pen glanced quickly at his face. “Does it hurt?”
“Nah. Just a bit…odd.”
It would be, if nobody touched him there, if lovers ignored a part of him over and over again. Pen rolled his palm against the end of the stump, watching Mark’s face. It was set with tension. “Do you want me to stop?”
“No.”
“It’s very smooth,” Pen said. “Smooth and soft, when the rest of you really isn’t.”
“You’ve not seen the rest of me,” Mark said, almost in his usual tones. “Not all, anyway.”
“I’m drawing conclusions from the facts in front of me,” Pen informed him. “I’d have thought an enquiry agent would know about that.”
A real grin dawned at that. “Bad practice, mate. You want to see all the evidence first-hand.”
“I do, yes. As soon as possible. Only…”
He leaned forward, gently tugged Mark’s arm up toward him, and kissed the end of the stump. Mark swore in his throat, but didn’t pull away, and Pen worked his way up, along the arm, taking his time, over the shoulder, up Mark’s neck to his ear. He mouthed the earlobe, his hands around both Mark’s upper arms, till he heard him moan; used teeth and tongue, glorying in the reaction he was getting. Mark was arching under him, gasping, skin goosepimpled under Pen’s fingers.
He pulled back, still holding Mark’s arms. They looked at each other. Then Pen went in forward, felt Mark pull him back, and they were over the rug, grappling together, Mark’s hand coming round Pen’s back, grabbing on and holding tight as they kissed and rocked, tongues and lips bumping and searching.
Mark was bare to him, truly bare, and that odd vulnerability made Pen feel like he had too many clothes on. He sat up, straddling Mark, who seemed content to lie on his back and watch as Pen pulled off coat, waistcoat, and shirt.
“Cor blimey,” Mark said as he threw the shirt to one side. His eyes were wide. Pen knew damn well what he looked like, with his chest and arm muscles still singing from the exertions of performance, and Mark evidently appreciated the view. “Bloody hell. Will you take your hair down?”
Pen had tied back his hair and wiped off the stage paint before leaving the Cirque, leaving only a bit of kohl round his eyes. He untied the black velvet ribbon with a swift movement and dropped it on Mark’s chest, letting it flutter down, then shook
his hair out, using both hands, letting it flow over his shoulders.
“Cor bloody blimey. Pen.”
Mark reached up. Pen leaned forward, over him, so that his fall of hair brushed Mark’s skin as Mark’s fingers roamed his chest and shoulders, exploring the muscles. “Jesus. Is this what hanging off a trapeze does for you?”
“It’s hard work.”
“Got to say.” Mark sounded raspy. “This thing where you paint, and you wear your hair long, and you’re built like a sodding Greek god? I like it.”
That much was obvious from where Pen was sitting. He tossed his head sideways, sweeping his hair across Mark’s chest. “Good.”
Mark grabbed a handful of hair, rubbing it and his fingers against Pen’s face. “You want to tell me what you’re feeling like?”
“I’d like to touch.”
“Makes two of us.”
There was no way to deal with boots, trousers, and drawers without getting up, so Pen did, kicking away his clothes with spendthrift carelessness. Mark had sat up to do the same, but as Pen turned to him he lay back on the rug once more, pillowing his head on his full arm, watching.
He looked bloody good himself. Pen was getting used to the truncated arm; the rest of Mark was muscle and bone. His was more sinewy than Pen’s own build, lean and strong, hard prick jutting shamelessly from a nest of fair curls.
Pen walked over, watching Mark watch him, straddled him and knelt, resuming their previous positions, with the small difference that now his prick was bumping Mark’s, straining for action. He resisted the temptation to grasp them both together and instead reached out to put both hands on Mark’s chest, feeling his heart thump. He leaned forward, putting his weight into it, and met Mark’s mouth that way, bodies pressed together, skin to skin, groins awkwardly, marvellously trapped together. Mark kissed him back, worming his hand out to get it into Pen’s hair again, and they rocked together for a few moments of building sensation before Pen made himself pull away a little, looking down. The fall of his hair framed Mark’s face.
“What do you like?”
“Most things,” Mark said. “Pretty much everything. I’d rather give than receive in general, but I’ll be honest, right now you could probably talk me into anything. Chains or leather or ducks.”