A Private Gentleman (36 page)
Read A Private Gentleman Online
Authors: Heidi Cullinan
He saved his strength. He used every trick Penny had taught him. He
practiced over and over inside his mind. When he knew he was able, he spoke.
“Michael,” he whispered one day as Penny held his head over a bowl. “You
m-m-must tell M-M-M-Michael.”
“I sent word to your butler,” Penny soothed him. “I told him to tell anyone
concerned that you had gone unexpectedly out of town. Someone is even looking
after your plants.”
He didn’t give a damn about his plants. She didn’t understand. He shoved
the bowl away, wiped his mouth with his sleeve and sat up, forcing himself not
to wobble. “Michael,” he repeated, looking her as squarely in the eye as he could.
“M-M-Must tell M-M-ichael.”
She paused, regarding him carefully before putting down the bowl. She
spoke slowly. “Is…this the Michael that you spoke of as you dreamed?” Another
pause. “The Michael that you…love?”
He froze. Would she abandon him over this? Would she love an addict but
despise a sodomite? He thought of Michael and decided it didn’t matter. If she
tossed him out, he would find a way to stumble to Dove Street himself.
“Y-Yes.”
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The awkward moment expanded painfully. And then she nodded, reached
into her pocket, and withdrew a notebook and pencil. “What is his address?”
Half-laughing, half-sobbing in relief, Wes gave it to her.
A month and three weeks after Albert had gone, Michael took himself to
Oxford.
Rodger went with him. They took the mail coach, not the train, and they did
not speak for the whole of the journey. This was nothing new. It had become
Michael’s habit to go for long walks all across London, and Rodger always went
with him, his silent companion. It was only partly, Michael knew, to keep from
intruding on his thoughts. A great deal of it was because for once Rodger did not
know what to say.
Once in Oxford, as he had hoped, Michael felt lighter. He knew a bit of pain
at walking the paths he had walked so happily with Albert, but they still gave
him pleasure, and so he cherished them. He went to the shops. He went to the
inn.
He went to Bodleian.
Here a bit in him began to stir. Perhaps it was the smell of the books, the
hush that swallowed his footsteps across the marble floors. Perhaps—oh, he
didn’t know what it was, but the library made him feel strange, to the point he
almost wanted to leave. It was for this reason he kept himself moving, kept
himself wandering the shelves of books, selecting some, ignoring most. He
stationed Rodger in a reading room and went off on his own, searching from
floor to floor, from room to room, on and on as if somewhere, somehow, within
these endless lines of pages, he could find himself.
He came down one dark hallway, ducking around a group of quietly
laughing young men, trying to stay out of their way. But they were a veritable
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herd, a new clutch of them appearing as soon as the last were gone. Eventually
Michael gave up and slipped past them through the doorway, sliding up to an
empty glass display cabinet someone had propped into the corner, apparently to
take up more space in the narrow passage. He pressed up against it and stared at
the black backdrop behind it—and there. There it was.
There he was.
It was his reflection—Michael Vallant, in the glass. Distorted by the warp,
shadowed by the dim light of the hall and the ripple made by the endless pass of
bodies. He didn’t even recognize himself. His short hair curled around his head,
around his ears, falling over his forehead. His face was thin from lack of appetite,
his cheeks sunken. There were shadows under his eyes—eyes outlined by his
thick spectacles. His lips were parted in surprise. He wore his traveling clothes,
garments chosen not with care but because they were simple, serviceable.
In the glass was not a whore. Not a witty, clever scholar eclipsing the
discovery of his sodomy. Not a lawyer, not a thief. Not anything at all. Simply
Michael Vallant, the man.
The man, and the boy within.
There he was, staring back at Michael in the empty curio case, in the
shadowy glass. The boy who had been lost. The boy who had been so rudely
used. The boy who had run into the night, his home having burned down
around him.
The boy Michael had thought had died.
He was not aware of when exactly he began to weep. The tears were silent,
and few, sliding down his face into his collar like drops of rain that did not know
if it meant to begin in earnest or simply go back to bed inside the clouds. Little
dewdrops of sorrow. Not keening, not release. Simply those few tears, leaving
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salt trails across his cheeks as Michael stared at himself, afraid to move, afraid
the self might go away.
“Sir?”
Michael jumped, turning away guiltily. A man stood there, about his age. He
looked concerned. “Sir, are you well?”
Michael nodded hastily and wiped at his eyes. “Yes. Sorry—only—sorry.”
He longed to cast one last glance at the case, but he feared to see the reflection
gone or changed. He gave a thin smile to the man. “Apologies,” he said, and
pushed the rest of the way down the hall.
He went outside, into the courtyard, into what seemed a disgustingly bright
sun. It should be gray and soft, but no, the world beamed intensity at him he did
not want. He wandered, feeling empty, confused, until he could take it no more
and sat down before a fountain, collapsing onto a bench, afraid he would weep
again, afraid he might not.
The image from the glass remained in his brain. Did he look like that? That
quiet, sad man? No brass, no whore, no flirt.
Only Michael.
He laughed, the sound turning into a sob, and he covered his mouth, his eyes
blurring as he stared at the water.
When the bell tolled two, he rose and began to wander again. He collected
Rodger and went back to the inn where he ordered a plate of food that he largely
pushed around, a glass of ale he did not drink. He sat in the corner, looking out
the window at the town, the university—and he knew.
“I’m going to live here,” he said.
Rodger looked up at him, possibly as surprised to hear him speak as to hear
what he said. “What—here? Now?”
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Michael considered this, then shook his head. “No. Not now. Not just yet.
But soon.”
The idea warmed him. He would find himself a set of rooms. He would like
a house, but he wouldn’t have the money for such things. He would need an
income of some sort—Rodger would find him something, or set him up with an
income, because that was what he did. But Michael would be here. He would
move about the town, about the library, about the countryside on long walks
alone. They would not know him as the whore, the sodomite. He would be the
scholar. The kind man who lived upstairs and frequented that corner of the pub.
A quiet gentleman.
When the call came for the coach, Michael rose with Rodger and boarded. As
they rode out of town, Michael played the day over in his head.
“I will miss you,” Rodger said gruffly.
Michael didn’t even look to see if the other passengers were awake or asleep.
He simply laid his head on Rodger’s shoulder and took his hand. “I will miss
you too.”
And then, because they were still English, they broke apart and resumed
their silence. Michael felt both light and heavy as they took their cab to Dove
Street, feeling as if he had traveled much farther than the distance to Oxford and
back. He was ready to tuck himself into bed with a novel and a cup of tea and
lose himself in fiction for the evening.
When Michael got out of the cab, Rodger had gone still and stiff on the walk.
Peering around him to see what had upset his friend, Michael saw a tall, titian-
haired and eccentrically dressed woman standing there smiling at him.
“Hello,” she said, ignoring Rodger and looking straight at Michael as she
spoke in a bright American accent. “You must be Michael Vallant.”
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Chapter Fifteen
The woman was, Michael decided as he watched her standing in the middle
of Rodger’s office, quite possibly the tallest female he’d ever seen. She dwarfed
Rodger by several inches, and she would even if she weren’t wearing boots with
heavy heels. She looked as if she should be bearing a shield and leading dead
Vikings to Valhalla—except that she was red-haired, not blonde. Her face was
not precisely pretty, but she was striking all the same—something about her
declared that there would be no more nonsense, and that was the end of the
discussion. She looked to be in her thirties. No ring glinted on her finger, either.
Rodger was standing between the woman and the window, chest out, hands
resting defiantly on his hips.
“Who the devil do you think you are,” he began, using his clipped and
proper high-Brit voice, “to come barging into my establishment and bark out
orders like some sort of manic seal?”
“I am Penelope Barrington,” she replied in her flat tones, not cowered in the
slightest. “Not that it’s any of your business. Because you aren’t Michael Vallant,
and therefore I have no business with you.” She gave him a quelling glance.
“And I’m not barking out orders. I’m simply asking to speak with him in private.
I understand that I terrify
you,
Barrows, but I promise I shall not bite your friend.
Not even a little.”
Rodger began to sputter, his accent falling into cant in his rage. “You rabid
bit of baggage. I’ll have you know—”
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Penelope Barrington stepped around Rodger, ignoring him completely, and
smiled at Michael. “I’m sorry, it appears I shall have to give you my message in
public. I am here on behalf of Lord George Albert Westin, and—”
“You know Albert?” Hope and wariness battled within him.
A woman.
Rodger said he was with a woman.
“You know where he is?”
Rodger shoved him—gently—back out of the way and aimed a finger in
Miss Barrington’s face. “Listen here, Madam Harpy, woman or no, I don’t mind
giving you a taste of my fist.”
Barrington wrinkled her nose at him as if he were a piece of garbage stuck to
her heel in the street. “Oh, I loathe your kind of man more than any other. You’re
nothing but a bully, aren’t you?”
“Bloody hell, woman, but you have a lot of nerve, barging into my
establishment
and
my office and insulting me. I’m not above having you thrown out.”
“By all means, try,” she said sweetly.
Michael stepped between them again. “Please—please, madam, you said you
have word of Albert?”
Rodger swore and stalked out of the room, slamming the door behind him.
Barrington relaxed significantly with Rodger gone, and now for Michael she
was all smiles and softness, leading him to a settee. “He is staying with me, at a
house I run down by the docks.” Her smile died. “I will not lie to you. He has
been very, very sick, and he is still not even close to recovered. I thought he was
dead several times. He is stable now, but very weak, and it was only today that
he was able to explain to me what I think he has been trying to tell me for some
time. He asked me to come here to tell you that he is sorry.” She squeezed his
hand and added, “And that he loves you.”
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It amazed Michael he had any tears left to shed over that man, but it
appeared he did, for they were rolling down his cheeks. He wiped them away
with the back of his hand.
“Your pardon,” he murmured. He realized what the woman had just
confessed to him and with what acceptance, and he looked at her with new eyes.
“You are not offended to be charged to tell one man that another loves him?”
Her smile was enigmatic. “I have learned in my life, Mr. Vallant, that love
does not share the prejudices we humans have—and that it is rare and precious.”
She sighed. “I am sorry I did not come to you sooner. When Barrows’s men came
to the door, I believe they mentioned your name, but I didn’t understand. I
thought they meant to collect on a debt—I didn’t know.”
“It’s all right,” Michael said.
“You must understand. He was soaked in opium when he came to me. It is a
wonder he did not die from what he took.” She shook her head. “He was doing
so well. He had been coming to me with help in elocution, and I thought he was
even cutting back on his doses of laudanum—I don’t know what threw him so
badly, but something did.”
“I know.” Michael stared down at the floor. “But it is a long story to tell, and
unpleasant.”
“I would love to hear it.” She glanced around Rodger’s office in distaste.
“Perhaps not in a brothel, however.”
Michael had to laugh at that. But then he thought of Albert, wrecked as she