A Wager of Love: M/M Historical Romance (5 page)

“You’re at least going to need to know how to order breakfast,” Gilbert said.

“If I go to Italy with you,” Laurie said, lifting his chin. “Either you will order breakfast or we will starve.”

“If I win our wager,” Gilbert said, “I will demand the forfeit that you learn Italian.”

Laurie gasped as if scandalised. “You rogue!”

Gilbert just laughed, and Laurie found himself laughing in concert, unable to resist Gilbert’s contagious good humour.

O
n Sunday
, Laurie took Gilbert to church as his next exhibit toward the topic of their wager. They went to the little Anglican chapel near Laurie’s hotel, where Gilbert gallantly sat through the entire service without making a comment. Watching him twitch and tense turned out to be a source of great amusement for Laurie, who was entirely accustomed to sitting through sermons. The lesson that day touched briefly upon God’s love for men and for his son, and while Laurie might have wished for a more direct focus on the topic of their wager, it seemed rather like cheating to enlist a pastor to conduct an entire sermon in favour of Laurie’s argument.

“I confess myself a little surprised that you at no point burst into flames while attending church,” Laurie teased, once the sermon was over. Lingering behind while the parishioners meandered out, the two of them wandered instead into the grassy church graveyard so that they might speak privately.

“I am, as you’ve said, an embarrassing disappointment to my master the devil.” They turned the corner of the church into the shady quiet on the lee side, where Gilbert took a seat upon a headstone and removed his hat. “It would have been unfair of me to argue with your choice of exhibit. It is your turn, after all.”

“You are indeed a heretic,” Laurie said, “but are you an Anglican heretic?”

“My parents were Anglican, to be sure, but I am an atheist, and have disavowed the King’s religion, so, no, indeed I am rather a universal heretic.”

“So you do not,” Laurie said, “in the first place, believe in God’s love.”

Gilbert’s lips twitched in irreverent mirth. “No.”

That invalidated a rather large part of Laurie’s argument. He frowned, taking a seat upon a nearby headstone and removing his hat as well. “Oh.”

This reaction drew a laugh of surprise from Gilbert. “Were you counting upon the possibility that I should?”

“Yes.” Laurie grimaced thoughtfully. “May we, for the purposes of argument, theorise upon the possibility that God’s love exists?”

“For the purposes of argument, my dear Laurie,” Gilbert said, “we may theorise anything you like. You must present your arguments of love upon the basis of faith as logically as any other argument, and I must refute them logically and without bias. We shall accept that the existence of God and the authority of the church as possibilities, and only debate them as relevant to the topic of love. Is that acceptable?”

“It is.”

Laurie nodded, then sighed, and considered how he should like to begin. The day around them was sunny and warm, and within the quiet little haven of the churchyard, the sounds and smells of London seemed very distant. A fat bumblebee wobbled past them, investigating the flowers within the overgrown graveyard.

“So,” Laurie began, “regardless of the existence and authority of God and the church, we did indeed witness the love of the parishioners for God. The faithful of London attend sermons weekly, drawn by their love of Christ, and devote their lives toward honesty for the same.”

“Is it their love of Christ alone that draws them?”

Laurie frowned with uncertainty. “I don’t follow.”

“You must exclude the members of the audience who attend because they are compelled by spouse or parent to attend and would not do so on their own.”

“Very well.”

“And further exclude those who attend not out of
love
of Christ, but out of fear of God’s wrath and the prospect of damnation.”

“A fear I see you do not share,” Laurie commented wryly.

It made Gilbert smile and tilt his head shamelessly. “I confess I do not, but that is not to our purpose.”

“Or those who attend out of responsibility or respectability—the honourable leaders of government who must set a good example for their people and must likewise prove themselves in philosophical and religious alignment with King and Country as upright Anglicans.”

Laurie’s frown deepened. “Granted.”

“And now that we have excluded the majority of the parishioners from attending out of the pure motive of love, can you indeed prove that anyone is left?”

“What of myself? I am in London with no family but my sister, who is lax about her church habits, so not compelled, nor fearful, nor weighed upon with any requirement of responsibility or respectability.”

“Your love of Christ, then, elaborate upon that,” Gilbert encouraged, with a wave of his hand.

“It is based upon a belief in the goodness of God, who created us and placed us in a world with affection and friendly bumble-bees.”

“So too are we placed in a world of savagery and wasps.”

“Yet so too may a person love another person for both the goodness in their heart as well as the weakness and folly. Love, I believe, sees and accepts both.”

“I will allow the argument,” Gilbert said, tipping his fine, pale face up toward the sky and breathing deeply, enjoying the pleasant weather.

“You must also surely accept that the priests do truly love Christ.”

“Must I?” Gilbert asked.

This startled Laurie, who had so accepted the idea that he had not prepared an argument for it. “Certainly. For, after all, they do indeed devote their lives to Him.”

“Any man of good family who has attended university may become a priest,” Gilbert said. He sat forward again, black curls tumbling over his forehead in graceful curves that distracted Laurie’s eye. “And it is indeed a popular profession for any young man of rank who may require employment for reason of funds. What else might a respectable young man of good family do, if he has a university education but no other prospects? Indeed, the priesthood is often the
inevitable
option, not the heart’s choice.”

Laurie flushed with indignation at the heresy that members of the priesthood might not have taken their roles wholeheartedly. “My love of Christ alone, then, and leave off all others whose motives we cannot know.”

“Granted,” Gilbert said. “And is your love requited?”

“Requited?”

“As we are questioning the existence of love, we must question the existence of God’s love. Suppose as we will regarding his existence, does He, if existing, love you in return?”

“God loves all the world.”

“You must supply some proof.”

Thinking this over, Laurie got to his feet and considered a branch of the apple tree that grew above a grave. “I cannot,” he decided at last, “unless we venture into questions of theology which are not the subject of the wager. God loved the world, so he gave his son. So he gave his church as his representative, and so does the church in turn love its followers, but I cannot prove any of it without deeper philosophy.”

“Let us leave it, then,” Gilbert said more gently. He rose also to his feet, placing his hand upon Laurie’s arm. “I have no wish to question or dissuade you from your faith, Laurie.”

That earned a smile, as Laurie turned his head back toward his friend. Gilbert kept hold of his arm, guiding him back toward the street. “Shall I return you to your hotel, or will you join me for luncheon?”

“I will join you gladly,” Laurie agreed, and they mutually decided to turn their steps in the direction of the hotel in better hopes of securing the services of a carriage.

As they passed through the church gates onto the street, they passed by a beggar child who held out his hat toward them. Laurie gave him a coin.

“Thank you, sir,” the boy said. “May god bless you, sir.”

“Keep watch on your wallet,” Gilbert advised, as they continued on.

Laurie flushed indignantly. “I shall.”

Gilbert laughed. “Don’t be so indignant! You are a country boy, aren’t you? We must have you develop a healthy London suspicion toward beggars.”

“That is very callous of you,” Laurie said.

“Perhaps it is,” Gilbert said, signalling to a passing hansom cab and assisting Laurie inside. “Shall I argue, perhaps, that the boy only pretends a love toward God in order to receive coin from the parishioners who have just listened to a sermon of kindness and charity?”

“Entirely on the contrary,” Laurie insisted. “He may rather be proof of love, for beggars are loved unconditionally by Christ, who arranged for the church to care for them.”

The expression he got in return for this was akin to hurt betrayal, which seemed to Laurie to be entirely inexplicable.

Frowning with confusion, Laurie kicked his friend’s boot. “Why do you make that face?”

“Because I thought we had already discussed how it is that the church cares for and
loves
those who are poor and hungry.”

“Have we?”

“The parish vestry runs the workhouses, Laurie,” Gilbert reminded him. “If the church, in all its charity, catches that boy at his begging, they shall put him into a workhouse. The church’s charity is less mindful of God’s love, such as it is, and more mindful of such sayings as that ‘let he who will not work not eat’ and that passage wherein God cares for the birds of the air and the lilies of the field and so shall care for his followers, and so the church prefers that He shall, and bother them none with it.”

“
Gilbert
,” Laurie said, scandalised.

“Look out the window, Laurie,” Gilbert said with passionate fury. “See the whores, the scavengers. The ‘pure-finders’, who spend their days gathering dog shit in the streets that they might sell it to the tanneries. Do you know of the mudlarks of London? They’re the children and the elderly who can manage no other occupation, and so do sludge through the mud of the Thames in all weather, barefoot and without coats, in hopes of finding enough scraps of metal, bone, or driftwood that they might sell for food. They are the destitute who cannot even apply to the parish for labour, for indeed many of the workhouses which do allow vagrants for a night’s shelter do require those vagrants to break a certain number of
rocks
in the morning so that they may prove that they are willing and able to work before they might be provided food. Such is the love of the church, Laurie. It has none at all to spare for those who are too weak to work, be they too young, too old, or too sick. If they cannot survive work and have no monied relatives to see to them, let them die.”

Speechless in the face of Gilbert’s argument, Laurie sat back in his seat and stared numbly out the window as bidden, and began to understand why Gilbert did not believe in love or God.

T
hey returned
in silence to Gilbert’s residence, where they were served luncheon in the grand dining-hall, which had space for twenty and felt lonely and dark in the flickering light of the kerosene lamps. Laurie searched about for some subject which might serve to lighten the tense mood between them, but it was Gilbert who first supplied one.

“Have you read Plato’s
Symposium
, Laurie?”

Laurie looked up from his meal, wondering what aspect of their wager this topic might or might not concern. “I confess I have not. I know of it, but it was never assigned to my curriculum.”

“I shall lend you my copy,” Gilbert promised. “It is entirely relevant to our wager, though I find I disagree with Plato’s conclusions. I would gladly hear your perspective on the thing.”

“Really? I’d always heard it was nothing but a conversation at a dinner party, and not much worth reading unless one intended to make an exhaustive study of Plato.”

“Not at all. It is quite my favourite of Plato’s works,” Gilbert assured him, cheer returning to Gilbert’s handsome, rosy face as they conversed. “I think, rather, that the university dons discourage the reading of it on account of the behaviour it may promote among the students.”

That brought Laurie’s brows together in puzzled curiosity. “What behaviour?”

Gilbert’s grin widened with wicked playfulness, which he schooled into mock innocence. “I suppose you shall rather have to read it and find out, won’t you?”

“Very well. It has some concern for the topic of love?”

“The entire thing is writ upon the topic of love,” Gilbert confirmed. “Its origin and nature. Unlike ourselves, the characters presented in the
Symposium
make no question upon the existence of love, and seek only to divine its nature and purpose.”

“And do they?”

“They lead the narrative quite assuredly to Plato’s conclusion, and treat most beautifully upon the topic of love along the way. But it seems to me that in the end, Plato values philosophy and privation over the sort of passionate love described in Shakespeare’s sonnets. I do believe I’d rather have the latter.”

“Would you?” Laurie asked, his lips curling in a smile. “But you do argue that love does not exist.”

“And yet, as we have discussed, I still desire to feel it.”

Finishing their meal, the two of them rose and ventured upstairs to the library, where Gilbert took down a well-worn, handwritten journal. Laurie settled himself upon one of the couches, whereupon Gilbert sprawled across the couch with his head in Laurie’s lap. That made Laurie blush, but he tilted the book up as Gilbert opened it, looking at the small, slanting script with copious notes in the margins. “Is this your translation?”

“Yes,” Gilbert answered, and began to read. “
Symposion.
As related by Apollodoros to his friend.
I think that I am not unprepared to speak on the subject about which you ask…
”

Gilbert’s voice was smooth as cream as he read, pausing occasionally to make some comment about the translation. Relaxing back into the couch, Laurie let his hand rest in Gilbert’s soft curls, combing through them gently as Gilbert read to him about the illustrious company of Phaedrus, Pausanias, Eryximachus, Aristophanes, Agathon, Alcibiades and Socrates at their party as they agreed to each perform a speech in honour of Love.

“
For I do not know of any greater blessing for a young man than to have an honourable lover, nor a lover with his honourable beloved—
” Gilbert paused, and glanced up. “It uses the term
ἐραστής
and is referring here to the love between men,” he added, as casually as he’d made any other translation note.

Certain that he’d misunderstood somehow, Laurie frowned. “What love between men?”

Gilbert set the book down, looking up at Laurie from where he still had his head pillowed on Laurie’s lap. “The subject matter of which I mentioned that university dons might disapprove. To the Ancient Greeks, romantic love between men was more honourable and lofty than love between a man and a woman. Most of the
Symposium
treats of love between men accordingly.”