There Will Be Phlogiston (13 page)

Did. Were. “It would be disadvantageous, now, to
have your name coupled too easily with mine.”

“Disadvantageous to who?”

“Whom.”

“What?”

“Disadvantageous to whom. Here ‘it’ (the
disadvantageous thing) is the subject of the sentence, while the
unknown person (to whom it is disadvantageous) is the object.
Therefore ‘to whom.’”

Once Lord Mercury had attempted to impress upon
Jones the subtleties of the may/can distinction. He had responded
by tugging Lord Mercury’s legs apart and dropping to his knees
between them.
“Can I do this?”
he’d murmured, the heat of
his breath pooling in a sly caress over the tautened fabric of Lord
Mercury’s trousers.
“You certainly have the capability,”
had
been his answer. After the helpless gasp, that is. Lord Mercury had
performed this act for many men. Few had been inclined to
reciprocate. It had never particularly troubled him, but the idea
of Jones doing it, of Jones wanting to, had made him delirious with
yearning.

Yet there he had sat, barely able to breathe, his
whole body suffused in heat, prickling with lust, and hearing, as
if from a great distance, his own voice saying:
“But in a formal
context, such as a dance, one should say ‘may I’ and wait for a
response before proceeding.”
Jones had glanced wickedly up at
him, and asked,
“Do you suck many cocks in a formal
context?”
before covering him with his mouth. And, oh God, the
heat, the heat and softness, the peculiar intimacy of being inside
someone else in that way. He had come undone, in a handful of
bright moments, hips thrusting, hands tangled in Jones’s
hair—
“Oh . . . may I please . . . may I”—
and Jones nodding,
laughing in a muffled kind of way, as Lord Mercury had spilled into
his mouth, crying out his name as if it were the only word left in
the world.

But today, Jones just grinned toothily and asked,
“To whom would it be disadvantageous?”

“You, most obviously. And anyone associated with
you. People would most likely believe that you . . . we . . . that
we . . .”

“But I am. We did. And what’s one more thing for
people to say about me? I’m already a whore’s bastard, a commoner,
a prospector. You can dress me however you like, teach me what to
say and how to bow, but I’ll never be one of Gaslight’s fine,
upstanding industrial gentlemen.”

“You’re the best man I know. And,” Lord Mercury
added sharply, “having gone to a lot of trouble to make you
presentable, I shall be most put out if you throw it away.”

“But—”

“I want you to have everything you need. That family
you’re looking for.” He moved, on instinct, to push back a lock of
hair, only to realise there was nothing there. “My life . . . I
don’t even know what my life is anymore.”

“Life is more than one street in one city in one
country.”

“For you maybe. All that is waiting for me is a
squalid little apartment somewhere on the continent where they look
more kindly on English gentlemen with a taste for buggery.”

“My life is only what I’ve made of it.”

“And I am what life has made of me.”

Jones leaned across the space between them, blue
eyes and bronze skin, and such conviction it made Lord Mercury feel
like tatters on the wind. “Surprise yourself.”

“I . . . I don’t know how.”

“I came back to Gaslight because it’s the closest
place I’ve ever known to home. But there’s so much else I’d be glad
to see if I had someone to share it with.” There was a ragged edge
to his voice now, not anger this time, but sadness, a touch of
desperation. “I could show you sunrises, Arkady, that set the
horizon aflame. I could take you places where there are so many
stars you can’t even see the sky. Where the colours of the world
are different. You don’t have to be anything to me you don’t—”

“Stop, oh please stop. You know that isn’t
possible.”

“What isn’t possible?”

“For two men to be together like that. The world
will never allow it.”

“Why do we need permission?” Jones’s hands curled
into fists. “You know, most folk are too busy trying to get by to
give a toss where other people find their happiness. Pointless
condemnation is a luxury for the wealthy and the bored.”

Lord Mercury stared at him, hurting and wanting, and
torn to pieces on it. “But everything you’ve worked for.”

“I worked so that nobody I loved would ever have to
struggle or suffer or go without again. I want you, Arkady. You
know that.” A great shudder ran through his body, and he dropped
his head into his hands. “I’m sorry. I promised myself I wouldn’t
do this, and here I am, making an arse of myself again.”

“You’ve never done anything that would make me think
that.”

Jones looked up, dark eyed, a little wild. “Well,
you try wanting to kiss someone who won’t kiss you back, and see
how sensibly you behave.”

“I’m sorry.”

“Don’t be. It’s not your doing. I want things from
you that you can’t give.”

“No.” The word burst out of him before he could
properly consider. He only knew he was—somehow—being given a second
chance, and that Jones still cared for him and desired him. “I
do
want to give them. The k-kisses and everything. Please
let me give them. Just . . . we’ll just have to be careful.”

Jones blinked. “Careful?”

“Yes, we must not be seen together, and you must not
come here too often, or without caution.”

“That sounds more like a conspiracy.”

Lord Mercury, giddy with terror and elation and
relief, stifled a laugh. “Conspiracy to commit buggery.”

“Conspiracy to be in love.” Jones did not sound
amused. He sounded . . . miserable. “I can’t do that, Arkady.
Haven’t you understood a word I’ve said? There’s a whole world out
there for us, and I don’t care what your pathetic little corner of
it thinks.”

“But I do. I’m sorry, but I do. I realise everyone
already knows exactly what I am, but I don’t have to . . . flaunt
it.”

Jones stood abruptly. His height and the breadth of
his shoulders tended to give him a slightly daunting presence, but
right now he just looked confused and helpless. “I’m not asking you
to flaunt it. I don’t want to fuck you in the middle of Lady
Copper’s ball. But when I was up there on the claim, imagining
having a family of my own to come home to, I never pictured it
would involve a discreet twice-monthly arrangement.”

Oh God, oh God, oh God, it was all going wrong
already. He’d barely got Jones back, and he was losing him. “I’m a
man, Jones. You can’t marry me, and you can’t—”

“In the sky, you know who gets married? People in
love. So down here I can’t stand next to you in a church and mutter
some promises to a God I don’t reckon to be there. But we can still
have a life together. We just have to make it for ourselves.”

“But there’s so much that you would lose in trying
to be with me.”

“What about what we’d have? Oh, Arkady.” Another
gesture—flying hands that suddenly seemed not to know what to do
with themselves. “I know I’m a simple man, a common one, but can’t
you be proud to be loved by me?”

Lord Mercury gazed up at him pleadingly, wishing he
could make Jones understand. “You’re the least common man I’ve ever
met. I just . . . It’s me. I don’t know how to be proud of me. And
I don’t know how to do what you want me to do.”

There was a long silence. Then Jones nodded. Bent to
pick up his coat. “There’s so much I want to give you, so much I
want to share with you. The truth is, I want you to be free,
Arkady, but I can’t make you.”

Lord Mercury’s heart turned to ash in his chest.
“Don’t—”

Jones stood for a moment, looking at him, then
leaned down and kissed his brow, very gently. “I love you, but you
make me ashamed. And freedom is something you have to find for
yourself.”

Then he was gone.

Again.

And it hurt just as much the second time as it had
the first.

The days trickled by. Lord Mercury’s ribs healed
slowly, his cuts closed, his bruises turned like autumn leaves,
from scarlet through purple to yellow-green, though his body—rather
like his life—still felt distantly not quite his own. But his sense
of reality was, finally, beginning to settle: it had really
happened, all his greatest fears had come to pass, and there was to
be no reprieve, no change that did not come of his own making.

He had been so certain Jones would be the ruin of
him, but here he was, ruined anyway. If he had found the strength
to be only a little bit honest, a little bit brave, he would likely
have been with him now. He could have been his lover, his catamite,
his mistress, his wife, what did it matter what one called it? He
would have been touched, kissed, safe, loved.

Not long before his mother had left, one of the
poets had called him a beautiful Ganymede. Kissed his lips. And
Lord Mercury hadn’t stopped him, hadn’t even been afraid. He had
liked the way the gentleman looked at him—the same way gentlemen
looked at his mother. His mouth had been sweet and soft with
honeyed wine. And Lord Mercury’s body had answered. In the
confusion of grief, he had sometimes wondered if that was why his
mother had fled him. Because she had known he had solicited kisses
from the poet. With adult understanding he had put such ideas to
rest.

But the loss had remained. He had known it was all
his nature could possibly bring him.

Except it had also brought him Jones.

A man he so desperately wanted, but did not know how
to have. And in whose arms Lord Mercury had lain, bewildered with
intimacy, wondering how such joy could possibly be wrong. But it
was hard—on the brink of impossible—to find pride in such absolute
capitulation to the part of himself he had always known to hate and
to fear.

And so he had lost the man he loved—for what else
was it, if not love?—twice over.

Compared to that, disgrace was a mere shadow of
pain. And brought with it the unexpected consolation of relief, for
he was no longer waiting. No longer afraid. Instead of myriad
imagined possibilities, infinite opportunities for shame, for
failure, for dishonour, there was only what was. A simple set of
truths.

He crawled out of bed and limped to his dressing
room. To the looking glass, where he found himself staring at a
reflection that was at once stranger and more familiar than it had
ever been. His body was still a mottled mess of marks, and without
the framing of his hair, his face looked . . . starker, more
exposed. He could hardly articulate what he had expected to see
there, what he had thought would be revealed. But there was
nothing. No particular deviance or effeminacy, not a mouth made
soft for sucking cock. Only him. Pale skinned, green eyed, freckle
dusted, beautiful to some and to the one who mattered, no different
from any other man.

Was he really less worthy of the things that other
people took for granted, or more capable of living without them?
Simply because he desired other men. Found love with men. What
would it mean if he wasn’t? What would it mean to be free?

As he stood there, looking at himself, thinking of
Jones, he realised there was an extent to which he already was.

If he chose to accept that freedom.

What did it matter if whatever he would have with
Jones looked nothing like what anyone else would consider decent or
right or real? Nothing he had done before his disgrace had been
decent or right or real either: it had all been pretence.
Increasingly it was his past, rather than his present, that felt
unreal. Everything he had believed, everything he had done and
failed to do, was beginning to seem close to incomprehensible. Acts
committed by a stranger who wore his skin, in flight from monsters
he now realised were only shadows on the walls of a prison.

Or perhaps it was simply he was finally capable of
seeing things clearly. Of seeing himself as he was, not merely as
he wished to be, or as he feared the world saw him. It would take
him a while to learn how to be proud and how to be free. But, for
now, he could be proud of Jones, and of Jones’s love, and the fact
Jones would have chosen a future with him over anything the world
could offer.

Perhaps, it was not too late. And, even if it was,
perhaps he could still show Anstruther Jones that he would never
make him ashamed again. He could, at least, give him that. He could
find the courage to trust in love, in Jones, and in himself.

It was the Copper Ball tonight. Anybody who was
anybody or aspired to be somebody in Gaslight would be there. Lord
Mercury had received his invitation long before his preferences for
sucking off strangers in back alleys had become public
knowledge.

He pulled in a breath so deep his ribs ached. Ran
his hands between his injuries, feeling the skin prickle in
response, fine hairs standing up to brush the pads of his
fingers.