by KJ Charles
“Ducks?”
“Whatever.”
Pen pressed against him. “What would I use a duck for?”
“Don’t ask me. I said you could talk me into it, not that it was my idea.”
“I’m not doing anything with a duck.”
“Fine. Forget the duck.”
“I’m not sure I can,” Pen said. “I may find myself thinking of ducks at awkward moments forever.”
“You and your ducks. Disgusting, I call it.”
They were both shaking with laughter. Pen leaned in, kissing Mark’s smile with his own, bathing in the joy of unselfconsciousness. Mark wrapped a leg round his back, and Pen kissed him harder, rubbing against him, feeling Mark’s grip on his skin, pleasure rising in tandem with need.
He could spend like this, the two of them frotting together; he wanted more. He pushed himself down, working his hard-on between Mark’s solid thighs. “Would you…Like this?”
“I’ll take that,” Mark agreed. “More if you want.”
“I like this.” He loved doing it Oxford style, joining bodies without all the meaning attached to the act of penetration. He was hard between Mark’s legs, which were tight together on him; Mark was hard against his belly, and Pen made sure he rubbed against him. Sensation all the way along, Mark gasping. Pen wasn’t quite tall enough to kiss him in this position, but he bit and licked at a nipple, tasting Mark’s skin as he thrust, felt Mark’s hand in his hair again, winding in the thick mass of it, and something else too, a blunt sensation. Mark’s short arm, he realised, rubbing against his hair. Pen groaned into Mark’s chest hair, thrusting harder, wedging a hand in between their bellies. He needed Mark coming with him, needed this to be together, had to bite his lip to hold back as he wrapped his fingers around Mark’s prick. Thumb and fingers working, pushing his head back against the pressure of Mark’s arm.
Touch me. All of you.
Mark was whispering. “Beauty. You fucking—Jesus, Pen. Like that. Like that. You gorgeous bloody—ah!” He shut his eyes, spine arching, hand clutching. Pen drove between his legs, thrilled and overwhelmed; came, gasping his pleasure, and slumped forward, emptied.
They lay there for a few minutes, Mark’s chest rising and falling, lifting Pen with its steady movement. He unwound his hand from Pen’s hair and stroked it gently.
Pen could have purred. “Oh, that was good. Was that good?”
“Mmm. I’ll tell you what would have made it better.”
That got Pen’s eyes open as nothing else would have. He propped himself up on his elbows, looking down. “What?”
“A duck,” Mark said, and wrapped his arm round Pen’s shoulders as he collapsed, howling.
Chapter 6
On Friday morning, Mark woke up with hair in his face, Pen in his bed, and guilt in his heart. Only one of those was welcome.
He wiped the trailing strands of hair away, careful not to wake Pen with the movement, and lay on his back staring at the cracks and cobwebs of his ceiling.
The last couple of days had been extraordinary. They’d spent much of them together, when Pen wasn’t working, quietly revelling in a growing sense of companionship. They’d walked for miles along the Embankment in the chilly, wet air, talking a bit about Pen’s problem, but much more about other things. Not on purpose, but because that seemed to be how they talked, rambling off at tangents, sharing thoughts and stories. It was because of Pen. He held so much life that it burst out in every direction at once, and now he’d lost that wolf-wary look of his with Mark, his exuberance was irrepressible and contagious. Pen was all air and fire, born to laugh, and to fly.
The earldom would take that from him. It would give him the world, but it would steal his joy. And maybe Pen could become like all the braying young oafs waving champagne bottles and betting a working man’s annual salary at the racecourse, but he’d always be pretending to be an earl, playacting at his own identity, like he pretended to be the man he sort of was.
He. Mark had asked about that, if there was a better way of putting it, and Pen had shrugged. “I’m not a she and I’m not an it, and at least he doesn’t cause trouble.” There was a way to think about yourself, settling for the least worst word. It pissed Mark off. He’d never shared his mother’s desire to burn down the world and start again, but when it came to thinking about Pen, and Phyllis, and Evelyn and Flo from the Jack who bound their bosoms and wore men’s suits and smoked cigars, and what the hell any of them had ever done to harm anyone…well, it pissed Mark off.
Pen had his life set up. He spent his time at the music hall, where male and female impersonators ran wild and nobody cared about paint on your face. He had a home with Greta where he could do as he pleased. He wore silk underthings sometimes if he had to dress conventional, or gold hoops in his ears, enough to assert to himself who he was, and nobody cared because most people just saw a bloke with long hair. He could come to Mark when he wanted, fuck as suited the inside of his head that day. He could live like that forever, as long as nobody found out he was Lord Moreton.
They would. They’d have to.
Mark had gone along to Lazarus’s place in Hanging Sword Alley back on Sunday, as soon as the fog had lifted, and found it empty. Door kicked in, place turned upside down, mattress of a bed—presumably Lazarus’s—ripped apart with a knife, furniture smashed, and notebooks and papers flung onto the floor in heaps that told Mark this had been a search. Someone had been looking for something, and Mark was pretty sure that would be evidence of Lazarus’s chat with Emmeline Godfrey. He didn’t know if they’d found it, but the state of the place, the wanton damage, said not. Lazarus’s home had been done over in a way that reeked of uncontrolled rage and heedless violence.
There was a nasty bastard out there, and as of five days ago he was still active in the search for Pen. That put Lazarus neck-deep in shit, like anyone cared.
Mark suspected that Nathaniel cared.
Nathaniel had been a hollow man for far too long. He’d never really started living again after his lover’s death, and he’d bloody nearly stopped at least once. Mark had spent a dreadful evening in the Jack once, watching his friend work his way down a bottle of whisky like he was being paid to drink it. He’d said goodbye with flat finality, and Mark had slipped out after him and stopped him with his foot on the parapet of Blackfriars Bridge.
He never wanted to see any friend of his in that state again, without hope or joy. Lazarus was a weaselly shit but since he’d turned up the life had come back to Nathaniel’s eyes, and Mark was buggered if he’d see it extinguished again.
If someone was getting rid of witnesses to Pen’s identity, Mark didn’t feel good about Lazarus’s chances of survival or, if it came to that, about Pen’s safety. Because if someone wanted to make certain sure Pen didn’t become the earl, there’d be a foolproof way to do it.
Mark didn’t know if that was likely. The dead earl had ordered a blackmailer murdered, but that was sort of fair enough. To do the same to his own son, though—that wasn’t human. Anyway, he was dead. Was the Fogman really still obeying his orders? Would the next heirs, decrepit old Desmond Taillefer and his wealthy stockbroker son, really order the murder of their newfound relative for the sake of a title?
If someone wanted Pen badly enough, they’d find him, even without all the information Mark had. The twins had merely wanted to get away from a couple of rural bullies, not hide from a murderer, so they hadn’t covered their tracks in any way that would deceive a professional, and they had their names and likenesses on bills pasted all over Holborn. The Fogman could find them, and Mark had met Pen at the stage door for the last three nights because he was afraid the bastard would. If Pen had been a shopkeeper Mark could have pushed him and Greta to change their names and disappear into the country, leave it all behind. You couldn’t do that with trapeze artists, especially not ones like the Flying Starlings. Once the Fogman connected the missing Taillefer twins to Pen and Greta Starling, the twins couldn’t fly again without
being found, and if that was going to be taken from them, Pen might as well be the earl since he’d have nothing better to do.
Of course, if the Fogman’s aim was to sell the earldom to the highest bidder, he’d need Pen very much alive, which might explain why no attempt had yet been made on him. Mark liked that theory, if only because it would mean he didn’t have to sweat at thoughts of someone dogging Pen’s footsteps in a dark alley, or sawing through a rope backstage. He sweated at them anyway.
There were, so far as Mark could see, three options. First, Pen could renounce the title. That would surely get him out of trouble, the only problem being that Mark didn’t know if it was possible. Nathaniel would know, or know how to find out.
If Pen couldn’t renounce the title, maybe they could find the murderer before he found Pen. Unless he had accomplices, of course; unless he was a hired hand who could be replaced.
If that was the case, or if they couldn’t track down the killer, which was how it was looking right now, Pen needed to claim his fucking earldom.
Mark didn’t like that for himself, and he hated it for Pen, but he couldn’t see another way out. Pen Starling the trapeze artist could be stabbed in the streets. Lord Moreton’s unnatural death would be a scandal, and the beneficiaries of his demise would be gone over with a fine-tooth comb. Pen would surely be safe if he came into the light, as long as Mark could make bloody sure they had a watertight case, one so overwhelming that the Taillefers wouldn’t waste their money on lawyers and courts and delving into anything Pen Starling Godfrey Taillefer had ever done.
He needed a lawyer, and the evidence Nathaniel and Lazarus held, and he couldn’t keep Nathaniel kicking his heels in the country any longer. He would write to Nathaniel today, and please God, please, Nat would say it was possible for Pen to sign away his birthright if he wanted to.
There was a mumbling sort of noise from his side. Mark craned his neck and saw the dark mass of hair next to him tumble and slip as Pen shifted.
“Morning,” Mark said.
“Mmph.” One eye opened, just visible under the veil of hair. “Already?”
“ ’Fraid so.”
Pen pushed himself up onto his elbows, shaking his face clear. “Bother. Good morning.”
Mark leaned down to kiss him. It felt absurdly normal—Pen here in his bed, waking together. All of it felt normal. Pen had come out of the Cirque painted last night, wearing a gauzy sort of scarf, and once they’d been all over each other back here he’d asked Mark to do it Oxford style and not to touch his prick. Not that sort of day, he’d said without apology, so they’d turned the gas low and made love in the bed, close and gentle. Mark could almost have believed he was with a woman, with Pen’s beautiful throat arched and his long hair falling back, his thighs tight and slicked with oil, warm and welcoming.
It hadn’t mattered how they’d done it. What mattered was him and Pen, and how this felt exactly the way his life was meant to be.
I don’t want to spoil this. I don’t want to lose him. I just found him.
Pen had a slight frown in his sleepy eyes. “Are you all right? You look a bit worried.”
“Ah, the usual. What are you up to today?”
“Practice. And I ought to talk to Greta. I don’t think I said last night, did I? We had a bit of a row.”
“What about?” As if he couldn’t guess.
Pen sighed. “She thinks I don’t look enough at the future. I know she’s right, but honestly, I have enough on my plate in the present.”
“Is she pressing you to take the earldom?”
“No, she wouldn’t. But of course she’d rather be rich than poor, and to have that offered and then have to turn it down—she’d be a saint not to mind a little bit. And I have spent an awful lot of time with you over the last few days. I think she feels a bit, well, flat.”
“Has she got an admirer? Gentleman friend? Lady friend?”
“Buckets of admirers, she can’t bear them. No gentleman friend at the moment. And I’ve been leaving her sitting around at home, not being a rich earl’s sister.”
“Maybe you should do something with her tonight, then,” Mark said for him. “I’ve got a lot to do today anyway. I could see you Saturday evening, or make it Sunday if you need.”
“Do you mind?” Pen looked half disappointed, half relieved. “It’s only, everything happened at once this week, so she and I haven’t talked enough, and…to be honest, neither of us has ever had anyone very serious before.”
Mark’s heart leapt and lurched at once. “Serious,” he repeated.
“Well, this is serious. You and me. Isn’t it?”
“Yeah. Yeah, it is.”
“I know it’s only been a few days, and I promise I’m not being dramatic,” Pen said softly. “I’m perfectly able to share a bed without turning it into a three-act performance. But I feel right with you, Mark. And I know it’s right, because I spend quite a lot of my life feeling wrong and I can tell the difference. I feel like we fit.”
“I was thinking that before you woke up. How bloody lucky I was to have you in my bed.”
“I’m lucky to be here,” Pen said. “You have no idea how extraordinary you are, do you?”
“I’m really not. I’m just a bloke.”
“Just a bloke who makes everything right all around him. Just a bloke who listens to people and respects them and doesn’t even blink at how anyone else is, except if it’s ducks—”
“Keep your damn ducks out of it.”
Pen grinned briefly. “But I’m serious. I don’t think anyone except Greta has ever seen me before. They all see what they want.”
“I want. I’m not a philanthropist, mate. I want you all the time.”
“But you want me,” Pen said. “Not me as a man or a woman, or me without the difficult parts. Just me.”
“Just you,” Mark agreed. “All of you. The Pen, the whole Pen, and nothing but the Pen, so help me God.” And God help me.
“We fit,” Pen said again. “And that’s new for me; I’d never thought there might be someone who could be right. I always thought Greta would find someone first, if either of us did. It’s been the two of us for so long.”
“That’s going to be hard on her,” Mark said. He felt remote, almost dreamlike. As if most of him was in this moment, exchanging words that rang with commitment and imagined a future, while a small part of his mind, the real part, was shouting at him to wake up. This can’t last. You know what he’ll have to do. “Look, Pen, go home, have some proper time with her. I’ll be here when you’re ready. There’s no hurry.” Yes, there is. “We’ve got all the time in the world.” We don’t, we truly don’t.
Pen sat up, looking at him, eyes huge. “Say that again.”
“All the time we need,” Mark said, and went down under an embrace that felt more like a rugby tackle.
—
The message from Nathaniel came in the form of a telegram to Robin Hood Yard on Tuesday morning. Mark had spent the last few days achieving very little, talking to Inspector Ellis, who was investigating the murders, without effect, and failing to find either Nestor Potter or any trace of the Fogman. He’d begged Pen to be careful, to keep an eye out and have the theatre people and his dodgy landlady do the same, but absolutely nothing had happened. Nobody hanging around or asking questions, nobody following either twin, no messages, nothing. Mark didn’t let that make him feel any safer. He wasn’t going to assume that the Fogman was no longer a threat until he saw the bastard dead.
Pen came out of the bedroom, yawning, as Mark read the telegram.
BACK TODAY ROBIN HOOD YARD 2PM NATHANIEL
“Who was that at the door?”
“Nobody,” Mark said, stuffing the paper into his pocket. “Just a message.”
Pen was wearing Mark’s robe, which was a warm and serviceable thing he’d owned for years. He’d never thought of it as shabby and unflattering—he’d never thought about it at all, in fact, until he saw Pen in it, with his magnifi
cent build shrouded in drab grey flannel. He ought to be wearing silk with dragons and peacocks, Mark thought, and hard on the thought’s heels came, I can’t give him that.
It wasn’t like he needed to give Pen anything. But Pen’s world ought to be vivid and bright as he was, shimmering and changeable and full of joy, and Mark…wasn’t. He was penny plain to the core, a caterpillar to Pen’s butterfly, always doing the efficient, practical thing. Not like Pen, who spread colour everywhere he went, and made the day a brighter place by being there.
Mark had always said he wasn’t fussy, and believed that was true. He liked men and women and those who made their own definitions; he liked any kind of fucking that involved two grown people pleasing one another. He’d liked everything, which made it fine that he’d loved nothing. And now he’d met unique, irreplaceable, extraordinary Pen, and it turned out Mark was the fussiest man in the world.
I can’t keep you, and when you go I’ll never feel like this again.
“Mark?” Pen was watching his face with a look of alarm. “What’s wrong? Was it bad news?”
“Nah, nothing like that. I thought of something, that’s all.” He couldn’t say; it wasn’t fair. It would only make everything harder for Pen. “Something I’ve got to do.”
“Are you sure?” Pen put both hands on his cheeks, gazing into his eyes. “You don’t look yourself.”
“I am sure.” Mark hooked his hand behind Pen’s head and pulled it forward, so their foreheads met, and they stood together quietly for a moment as he got a grip on himself. “Sorry. Ah, Pen. Are you busy today? Could we go somewhere, have lunch?” Just one day, a few hours…
“I promised Greta I’d be at the Cirque by ten. We have a lot to do on the new routine.”
“Of course. Sorry.”
“We could have lunch tomorrow if I plan it with Greta,” Pen said. “Or even, all of us together? So you and she can get to know one another? I do want you to get on.”