A Proper Lover (Ganymede Quartet Book 2) (28 page)

Tom thought so, too. “‘Mr. Blackwell’ this, and ‘Mr. Blackwell’ that,” he teased. “You’re entirely too fond of him, you know.”

“Hush!” Martin said in a loud whisper. “He can hear you, I’m sure of it!”

“He should be happy that you like him so well,” Tom said blithely, but he changed the subject. “You’re doing well to stay clear of Alex, by the way. He had a lot to say about you before the omnibus got to your stop.”

Henry could picture the disgruntled look that Martin would have on his face. “He’s horrid. I don’t know why he hates me so much.”

“You don’t like him, either.”

“He started it,” Martin insisted. “The things he says about Mr. Blackwell—about all the Blackwells! I have to wonder what Mr. Maxwell’s family must say about them. Where else would Alex have heard all these rude things?”

Henry had to wonder this, too. He’d always wanted to be better friends with David, and David had always seemed to genuinely like him, but perhaps Mr. Maxwell Senior had some beef with Father.

Louis turned from Wendell and asked Henry, “Which are you looking forward to most? The trapeze girl is the one Philip talked about. He said her costume leaves
nothing
to the imagination.”

“Oh.” Henry thought quickly. “Her, of course, and the magician, too.”

“That reminds me…” Louis turned in his seat and sought out Peter. “Peter! You’re not allowed to go up if the magician asks for volunteers.”

“Yes, Sir,” Peter said from down the row.

Other boys heard Louis’ instruction and likewise turned to give the same order to their own slaves.

“Why not?” Henry asked.

Louis rolled his eyes. “It’ll be the fortune teller all over again. Tell Martin.” When Henry hesitated, Louis elbowed him somewhat forcefully. “Go on, Henry. You don’t want him going up there.”

Henry turned to his left and looked at Martin, who had plainly overheard everything that Louis had said.

“Stay in your seat, all right? Don’t go up on stage.” Henry didn’t particularly want Martin volunteering, but he didn’t like forbidding Martin to do anything, either. Martin had actually handled the fortune teller all right. There was no reason to think he wouldn’t be able to handle a magician.

Martin smiled reassuringly. “Of course not, Sir. I don’t want to be hypnotized.”

Henry froze. He had been discounting the mesmerism portion of the act, but of course that was what the magician would need volunteers for, and he realized with no small degree of horror that there was no telling what secrets a hypnotized Martin might spill.

“You
can’t
volunteer,” Henry insisted with some urgency.

“I won’t, Sir, I promise.”

“Good. Thank you.” Henry turned to face forward, blushing a deep crimson. Louis looked at his red face questioningly but Henry stared straight ahead, unwilling to address his own embarrassment.

Louis shrugged and fell back into his seat. He fidgeted and kicked at the seat in front of him until the boy sitting there turned around and asked him to stop.

“It’d better start soon,” Louis said, a warning in his tone. Henry wondered what Louis proposed to do if it did not.

Charles turned around, towards Henry, and spoke to Simon over his shoulder. “Si. Hey, Si. Do you have any peanuts left?”

Simon, who was sitting on Tom’s other side, said, “I do, Sir. Here, let me get them—” The springs of Simon’s seat creaked as he dug the peanuts out of his coat pocket. Charles waited, watching impassively.

“Here you go, Sir.” Simon handed the crumpled paper cone to Charles, who rewarded his slave with a genuine smile.

“Thanks, Si. Do you want some? I’m going to eat them all otherwise.”

“Just a few more, then, Sir.” Simon reached for the peanuts and dug around in the cone right at Henry’s shoulder, and the sound of his fingers scrabbling was loud in Henry’s ear. Henry flinched away, and only then did Charles realize that they were being annoying.

“Henry,” Charles said. “Sorry. Do you want some, too?”

“Sure.” Henry would not turn down food. He and Martin had finished their nuts out on the sidewalk in front of the theater. He dared a glance back at Martin, who was not looking in his direction, but was instead talking to Stuart, who sat to his left.

“Philip says this trapeze singer is something else,” Charles remarked, crunching nuts. “Pretty, nice voice, good legs…”

“And
blonde
,” Louis interjected, leaning across Henry’s lap to do so. “She’s
blonde
and gorgeous, that’s what he told me.”

Charles and Louis carried out an animated discussion of the advertised merits of this performer as if Henry was not, in fact, sitting between them. Henry leaned back a little into his seat to make room.

“Do you want peanuts?” Tom asked in a low voice.

“You have some?” Martin was surprised and eager.

“I have almost half left. Mr. Caldwell said I could have the rest. Do you want some?”

“Of course,” Martin said happily. “Thank you, Tom.”

“I’m happy to share whatever I have with you,” Tom said, his tone light, but Henry felt confident that what Tom said had greater import than was evident on the surface.

There was a boy with his long-haired slave sitting in front of Henry, the two of them side by side, and they shared a cone of nuts and whispered back and forth, and Henry wished he’d decided to do it that way instead, just Martin and himself alone. It hadn’t been a mistake, exactly, to come with a group, and to let Martin spend time with his friends, but perhaps Martin would have been just as happy for it to have been the two of them on their own.

The orchestra had been playing the same cheerful tune since they’d entered the building, but the music stopped and the lights dimmed, and the people who’d been dawdling in the aisles hurried to find seats.

Someone came out from the wings and put a title card on an easel at the left of the stage, announcing the dog act. The curtain went up and the orchestra began to play, and a half-dozen little dogs were put through their paces. The crowd wasn’t settled, people still milling in the aisles, but by the time the tap-dancing brothers came onstage, most of the audience was reasonably quiet and paying attention.

Martin whispered to Tom, “I’d like to know how to dance like that, wouldn’t you? It looks like fun.”

“I’m not the dancer you are,” Tom whispered back. Henry wondered if Tom had seen Martin dance, or even if they had danced together. It was possible they had, after all; they might have been messing around at school.

Two men in loud plaid suits came out on stage and told funny stories, interrupting each other and adding asides, and made fun of every conceivable variety of immigrant, and the immigrant-heavy crowd laughed and cheered their approval. They followed up the immigrant jokes with jokes about slaves that also found an enthusiastic reception. At Henry’s back, Martin and the others were clearly delighted. It seemed that everyone liked the recognition one way or the other. They finished up with some insults and some slightly ribald jokes, nothing too blue, and left the stage to wild applause.

A husband and wife team came out in evening dress and did some fancy waltzing, as well as some steps Henry didn’t know the names of, and it made him wish he’d continued his lessons despite the fact that neither Louis nor any of his friends had found it necessary to do so. He certainly hadn’t wanted to be the only one. He’d get another chance, though; they would all, of course, be back in dancing school in the spring in preparation for the Metropolitan Ball.

The dancers spun offstage and the boys became restive, eager for the blonde trapeze artist who had so impressed Philip. When the curtains opened on an empty stage, she was lowered down from behind the proscenium arch on her swing. She was indeed blonde, and she couldn’t have been much older than Henry and his friends. She had a heart-shaped face, shapely legs in mint green tights, and a large and elaborate hat that was very securely pinned to her hair, as it stayed in place while she swung and then hung from her knees. She sang some sprightly, innocuous songs in a frisky contralto as she pointed her toes and swung back and forth. Henry’s friends were enthusiastic to a degree that startled him; he recognized that this girl was sexually desirable, but he hadn’t expected everyone to just come right out and
desire
her with such brazen enthusiasm.

“She’s something, isn’t she?” Louis said, elbowing him.

“Er, yes,” Henry said, wracking his brain for something to say. “She’s very…” He was at a loss as to what he might say. If he merely said she was pretty, Louis would scoff at him, and then later he’d berate him for not being sufficiently interested in the girl, and Henry did not want Louis to become suspicious of him.

“That costume leaves nothing to the imagination,” Louis said happily. “You can see most of her bosoms.”

“They’re…round,” Henry said. “Very round.”

“Imagine having those in your hands,” Louis said, making squeezing gestures and clearly relishing the idea.

It wasn’t that Henry couldn’t imagine it—he could. It just meant nothing to him. The prospect of touching a woman’s breast had all the eroticism of squeezing the flesh of an upper arm, maybe. Not Martin’s arm, though, which had a hard oval muscle flexing under its warm, downy skin and was certainly the most arousing arm Henry had ever encountered. In Henry’s opinion, this blonde girl’s bosoms had nothing on the hard planes of Martin’s smooth chest, his little pink nipples ringed in reddish hair. Really, Martin was in every way superior, at least for Henry’s purposes. Despite the fairly short duration of their acquaintance, Henry was quite confident that he’d never come across another person he wanted more than he wanted Martin.

He dared a glance over his shoulder, and Martin caught him looking and smiled. Henry blushed and turned to face the blonde on her swing.

At his back, Tom said, “You at least recognize she’s pretty, don’t you?” in a low voice.

“Of course she’s pretty,” Martin replied, “She’s just not what I prefer.”

“Are you really so happy with Mr. Blackwell, then?” Henry had to strain to hear Tom’s voice now.

“I really am,” Martin asserted. “I have a very good relationship with Mr. Blackwell. He’s a kind master and he’s very considerate.”

The girl finished her song and leaned back on her swing, pointing her toe and blowing kisses to the crowd as she was raised back up into the rafters. Henry could hear no more of what Martin and Tom said, as the entire hall was going crazy applauding her and whistling. People were calling for an encore, but the orchestra was playing its cheerful idling tune and the house lights came up and it became clear that they’d seen the last of the blonde on the swing.

“Rats,” Louis said sullenly. “I thought we could at least get another song, didn’t you?” He did not wait for Henry to answer, but said, “Do you think we could meet her? We could go around to the stage door, maybe.”

“Maybe,” Henry hedged. He didn’t want to do this, but suspected he would end up standing in the alley with his friends anyway, waiting for the blonde to leave the theater.

Henry didn’t want to think about the blonde anymore. He turned in his seat and looked up at Martin, who was standing next to Tom in the narrow space in front of their seats.

“Are you enjoying yourself?” Henry asked.

Martin smiled, dazzling and fond. “Oh, yes, Sir! I like the variety. I’m especially looking forward to the magician, though.”

Henry got to his feet so he could look Martin in the eye and needn’t twist himself up. “Have you seen a magician before?”

“Just one time, Sir. We had one perform at my last Halloween party at Ganymede.”

“What sort of tricks did he do?”

“Mostly card tricks, Sir. I think this magician will do something more elaborate, though, don’t you?”

Henry nodded his agreement. “Oh, definitely.”

Freddie called, “Tom, come here a moment, will you?”

“Excuse me, Sir,” Tom said, giving Henry a little nod. He touched Martin’s elbow, an affectionate gesture, and made his way down the row toward his master.

All around them, their friends milled about, moving up and down the rows and horsing around in the aisle. Henry knew he and Martin would become conspicuous just standing gazing at one another, but he couldn’t resist doing it anyway, just for a moment. Could Martin see his longing; did he realize? He wished he could be more overt, wished he could touch Martin the way Tom had done.

There was some commotion at the end of the row; Henry’s friends and their slaves were cheering on Ralph, who was walking on his hands in the aisle, his jacket hanging around his head and shoulders like a curtain.

“Can we watch, Sir?” Martin cocked his head, hopeful, and Henry wouldn’t say no.

“Sure. Come on.”

A bunch of working-class kids stood watching also, boys and girls both, and Henry and his friends made a point of not noticing them. Ralph did a sort of pirouette, making rapid adjustments with his hands, and then bent at the hips and let his feet drop to the floor, righting himself gracefully and giving a little bow. Masters and slaves alike gave him a little applause, as did a few of the onlookers..

“What other tricks do any of you know?” Louis asked the slaves in general.

“It’s not as impressive, but I can stand on my head, Sir,” Simon offered.

“I can also, Sir,” Martin said.

“Me, too, Sir,” Alex said. “Longer than either of them can.” He seemed oblivious to the dirty looks the other two gave him.

“We’ll have a contest,” Louis decided.

Henry did not want this to happen. He didn’t want Martin’s beautiful hair touching the dirty theater floor. Blushing, he asserted himself.

“No, we won’t. Martin can’t do it.” He flushed a deep crimson, but was determined to hold his ground.

“Why not?” Louis asked.

“I don’t want him getting lice or something else gross from this carpet. Who knows how often it gets cleaned?”

By the expressions on their faces, neither Charles nor David were now eager for their slaves to participate, either. Wendell frowned and whispered to Ralph, who took out his handkerchief and wiped ineffectually at the palms of his hands. Louis looked annoyed to be thwarted in his quest for amusement, but he did not try to argue in favor of headstands.