Chapter Fifteen

The scent of human faeces did, as Captain James had predicted, fade as they made their way further from the river, but the chill of the water and the clinging damp of the mud stayed with Mr. Caesar all the way back to his room.

"I don't suppose there's a chance of a bath?" he asked, wrestling off his shoes and tipping the remains of the river from them.

Captain James answered that with a look.

"I was only asking."

"Going to draw your own water? Carry your own tub?"

Mr. Caesar thought it over. "I'll pass."

Now that the rescue was over, a lot of the bonhomie had drained from Captain James's manner. "That all you can say? I'll pass? "

"I'll pass, but thank you for the offer?" Somewhere inside the gordian mess of his heart, Mr. Caesar knew that this wasn't quite what the captain was looking for.

"Oh, fuck off, Caesar."

Mr. Caesar bristled. "I'm sorry. I'm tired. Can we save this conversation for tomorrow?"

It was the wrong thing to say. Even with an I'm sorry at the beginning. I mean, I'm an inhuman trickster from a culture that cherishes shamelessness and even I could craft a better apology. "No." The captain was standing very still, his arms folded. Somehow he managed to make being drenched in glorified sewer water seem commanding. "You talk to me like I'm some fucking catamite. You storm out like you're some fucking child. And then you leave it to me to save your fucking life and then you want me to wait until you've had a nap before we have it out?"

"I'm sorry," Mr. Caesar said again. His tone suggested otherwise, but neither his words nor his delivery precisely conveyed the chaos that was festering in his head.

"You're not though," replied the captain. "Are you? You just want me to shut up. I'd thought you were different, but I'm starting to see that you're just like every other rich fucker I've ever met, you just don't have the money to make it look good."

It would be churlish of me to suggest that the accusation of not looking good was what struck closest to Mr. Caesar's heart. But not that churlish. "I have had," he said, "a very hard day."

"And you think I haven't? You think the men haven't?"

"No." Defiance had never suited Mr. Caesar, at least not real defiance rather than the kind of acerbic counterfeit of it you saw in the ton, and the last of it drained away now, leaving only a damp morass of shame. Which was unfortunately still paralleled by a damp morass of Thames water. "I—that is, you've—I've been awful."

"You have."

"I mean utterly awful."

"Yeah."

"And not just to you." Mr. Caesar flopped back onto the bed, leaving the sheets damp and not much caring. "Fuck me, if I'd not tried to order Mary around, she might have let us finish the job."

Captain James looked doubtful. "Maybe, but plans go wrong all the time, no sense in dwelling."

Unfortunately, dwelling was very much where Mr. Caesar was at this moment. "My father," he said, "crossed the world twice, won his own freedom, and chose to fight for the freedom of others. My mother turned her back on her birthright for love and what was right. I can't even treat a lover well or reach my sister when she needs me."

"Can you do me a favour"—Captain James came closer and sat down beside Mr. Caesar—"and not put me and your sister in the same box? It feels wrong."

There was a world where Mr. Caesar would have laughed at that. "I know you're trying to be amusing, but—"

"I'm not," replied the captain. Then, in a spirit of honesty that I thoroughly condemn, he added, "Well, maybe a bit. But this is still important. What's between you and your family is for you and your family. And if you want me to be part of it, really part of it—then I will. But I'll not be where you hide from your other life. You need to be with me because of who I am, not who I'm not."

"Who you are is—God, it's such a fucking cliché to say I've never known anybody like you, but it's—I mean, you've met the kind of men I—we're shits. That's the sordid truth of it. We're just shits, and you should stay far, far away from us."

"That sounds like an excuse," the captain told him in a tone that was veering away from sympathy and closer to tired of your nonsense.

"It's not. I—fuck—I should go. I'm never going to be able to be the kind of man you—"

With a sigh that was almost a growl, Captain James took Mr. Caesar's face firmly but not forcefully and turned it so they were eye to eye. "John," he said, "I'm going to say this once. Stop being a prick."

Blinking back tears of which he was deeply ashamed, Mr. Caesar said, tremulously, "I don't know how."

"You do," the captain told him. "You do."

"I don't."

"Just tonight," replied Captain James, "I've seen you be a brother, a lover, a lord, a son, a fool, a dandy, and a dozen other things besides. You've got a face for every room you walk into and you change them like you change your cravats. Just pick one you can be proud of."

Put like that, it almost seemed simple. But over the years Mr. Caesar had learned not to hope for simple. "And how do I know," he asked, almost in a whisper, "which face is the right one."

Captain James cupped his cheek and looked into his eyes with an intensity that from anybody else would have made Mr. Caesar want to turn away in fear or shame or sheer self-protection. "The one I'm looking at now seems all right."

And then, reader, he kissed him.

"I don't deserve—" Mr. Caesar began.

"Fuck what you deserve."

"But—"

The captain sigh-growled again and placed a hand over Mr. Caesar's heart. "Somewhere in here," he said, "there's a good man trying to get out. Fucking let him."

And that, reader, was the problem (or the rub, if you want to bring him into this). It seemed to Mr. Caesar that there were no good men inside him, just a hundred confused men trying to do what was right in ways that overlapped and disagreed and contradicted. "I'm not sure I can," he said.

Captain James let out a disappointed breath.

"But—" Reaching up, Mr. Caesar brushed the back of his fingers across the captain's cheek. "You make me want to try. If—if that will be enough. If it can be enough."

And the captain nodded. "You'd better bloody mean it."

"I do." Mr. Caesar nodded, almost desperate. "Orestes, please, I—no matter what, I cannot help but be different for having known you."

The captain kissed him again. And this time Mr. Caesar kissed back. As I have intimated elsewhere in this and other volumes, the precise mechanics of mortal intimacy are of little interest to me, but when they involve risks or fears or prices they become far closer to my personal area of expertise.

And prices and fears there were here in abundance—and not only because they were still in a part of the city where you stood a reasonable chance of having your throat slit in the night. As Captain James peeled off his sodden shirt and bore Mr. Caesar to the bed, he gambled that this man, unlike every other member of his class that the captain had encountered in his life, would prove constant, or at least constant enough, and not abandon him the moment he was no longer useful. And as Mr. Caesar reached up with hands and mouth and body and begged wordlessly to be drowned, he gambled that the soldier wanted him for something other than money or influence or advancement, that he could be an ally rather than a rival. And of course both men were trusting that the other would not turn them over to the magistrate for sodomy, which remained a rare but constant threat.

So they came together in a tangle of fragile trust and searching. Limbs and bedsheets and sweat and questions in a room that two months ago Mr. Caesar would never have dreamed of spending more than an hour in but which now became a sanctuary from a world crawling with enemies, only some of them unnatural.

"I've never asked how you got these," Mr. Caesar mused, a little later, letting his fingertips play over Captain James's many scars.

"Did you ever care?"

The question was at least slightly shaming, because there had definitely been nights when he hadn't cared at all. And not only with the captain, but every time he'd been with a fighting man. "I should," he replied, "and I do."

Captain James guided Mr. Caesar's hand to a mark on his arm. "Musket ball at Vimeiro"—up to his shoulder—"another at Talavera"—down to his chest where the mark was longer—"sabre at Ciudad Rodrigo"—he shifted his grip and let Mr. Caesar's hand come around to his back—"lash in a British camp."

"You were flogged?"

The captain nodded. "Insubordination."

"Doesn't surprise me."

"Officer was taking liberties with the locals. Tried to stop it. Failed."

As a man whose greatest achievement to date was finding the perfect way to put on breeches without visible creases, Mr. Caesar couldn't help but find that a little humbling. "I'm sorry."

In the dark, the captain's voice was all Mr. Caesar had to go by, and his voice was giving away very little. "I was lucky. Could easily have hanged if things had gone further."

"And"—a thought had struck Mr. Caesar and he couldn't help but voice it—"was the officer …"

The captain laughed low and merry in the shadows. "No, it wasn't Bloodworth. That particular officer didn't make it through the next battle."

"No?"

"Excellent shots, the French."

They held each other in silence awhile, Mr. Caesar tracing the lines of Captain James's scars and the captain breathing slow and steady and quiet.

But the talk of the major had sent Mr. Caesar's mind elsewhere, and so he asked: "What happened tonight?"

"With us or with them?"

Both were valid questions, but Mr. Caesar had meant the latter. The former he was trying hard to put behind him. "The men who tried to kill me."

"That's your answer then. Some men tried to kill you."

"It sounded like they were trying to sacrifice me. I was under the impression that people did not get sacrificed in the nineteenth century. It seems barbaric."

That earned another laugh, albeit one of harsher character. "I spend my life nearly dying for a cause I don't give a shit about. Your own father was abducted, branded, and sold to make some bastard rich. You don't think our fearless leaders would spill a bit of blood to get the gods on their side?"

"There are laws," Mr. Caesar protested.

"There's laws against murder too; want to know how many men I've killed for the king?"

A grim fascination took hold of Mr. Caesar. "How many?"

"No idea. Too much smoke and noise to tell who shot who. And with a sword all you know is that you're standing and the other man isn't. You've no idea if he lives or dies."

"Do you think they'll come back?"

Lazily, Captain James reached into his pile of discarded clothing and picked up the major's sword. "Bloodworth'll want this, but from what I saw I don't think he's really in charge. I think that's the other one. Or maybe it's just that the one with the rank isn't the same as the one with the plan."

Mr. Caesar laid his head on the captain's chest. It was disquieting to realise he was surrounded by enemies of which he knew nothing, though not, perhaps, as disquieting as being with a man who wanted him to be better.

But that is a very sentimental notion; I am almost ashamed of myself for recording it. Indeed I bothered myself so much that I withdrew, and attended to other matters that it pleases me to conceal from you.

The following morning, an at least partially contrite Mr. Caesar rose extremely early by his standards and expressed to his lover his intent to return home and have a frank conversation with his father.

"You want me to come with you?" asked the captain in a tone that the part of Mr. Caesar that was used to everything being an elaborate social trap assumed was an elaborate social trap.

"If you wish," he replied. "I think my parents like you, although my sisters have their misgivings. But I would understand if you had business of your own."

"Until His Majesty calls me to France," replied the captain, with an edge in his voice that I, at least, noted, "I've got time."

"And after that?" Mr. Caesar asked.

"Then I'll be gone. And then I'll be back, or I'll be dead."

It was not a possibility that Mr. Caesar was, in that moment, of a mind to countenance. "You'll be back, I am sure."

Captain James shrugged. "I might. But if I don't I'd rather not spend the next few weeks talking about it or arguing. Let's get you home."

The walk across London in the early morning was unfamiliar to Mr. Caesar but far more pleasant than he felt it had any right to be. Yes, the streets were crowded and filthy, and yes, his clothes were still rather damp, he was missing his cravat, and he could feel every cracked cobblestone and broken bottle through the soles of his shoes, but there was a liberation to it. And having already been accosted at gunpoint once, he found himself with little to fear that he had not already experienced.

Unfortunately, as the sun rose and the crowds thinned and they passed into the more socially acceptable parts of the city, that confidence began to wane. On the streets of St. Giles, his dishevelment was invisible and even his heritage relatively unremarkable. On the streets of Mayfair, he and the captain stood out like stars amongst the respectable couples taking their pre-breakfast walks and the well-groomed servants running early morning errands.

At the Caesar house, Nancy opened the door and Mr. Caesar arrived just in time for breakfast, earning a look of mild disapproval from Lady Mary, who felt it inconsiderate to bring a guest unannounced to a meal.

"It's no trouble, ma'am," Nancy reassured her. "I'll get another round of toast on and see about some more coffee."

The entire family had gathered for breakfast, despite the fact that the elder Mr. Caesar ate sparingly and Miss Caesar of late ate not at all. The atmosphere would almost have been pleasant had recent events not been casting so long and deep a shadow over the household.

"So who found you?" Captain James asked Miss Caesar with unrefined directness.

"Mr. Bygrave," she replied, with the very slightest look of smugness directed at her sister. "He was very gallant, and to have gone to such lengths I feel he must be quite besotted with me."

"Well, he would be besotted with me also," Miss Anne replied, "had I the advantage of fairy magic."

In Mr. Caesar's heart, a new impulse towards openness warred with old habits and lost. "Perhaps he likes her for her temperament."

"Her temperament is vile," Miss Anne insisted. "And besides, men may pretend to value temperament, but I am sure they do not. Madeleine Worthing is as sweet-natured a lady as can be but nobody ever wishes to dance with her."

"And Miss Bickle," added Miss Caesar, "is the flightiest creature on God's earth, but gentlemen line up for her favours."

Sliding easily into old patterns, Mr. Caesar smiled. "Now, now, that isn't just because she's pretty. She's also extremely rich."

"Not helping, John," warned Lady Mary. "And I hope you don't think that you've avoided our asking why you look like you recently lost a fight with a lake."

With an instinctive protectiveness, Captain James set down his coffee cup. "Because we did," he said. "Only it was the Thames, and we won."

The elder Mr. Caesar raised an eyebrow. "You won a fight with the Thames?"

"With four men," clarified Mr. Caesar the younger, "on the banks of the Thames. And when Orestes says we won he's doing me a kindness. He rescued me."

"Again?" asked Lady Mary, a little archly. "He seems to be making a habit of it."

"It worked out well enough for Cousin Maelys," pointed out Miss Anne.

Mr. Caesar looked uncomfortable. "If it's all the same to those present, I think I'd rather avoid following Maelys's example."

Calmly, the elder Mr. Caesar turned to Captain James. "Maelys was the victim of a mysterious curse last year," he explained, "and Lady Georgiana Landrake saved her life a number of times. They are now … good friends."

"They're fucking," Mr. Caesar clarified. "Believe me, Papa, he knows how these things work and we needn't be coy around him."

Lady Mary half smiled across the breakfast parlour. "In my experience, good friends are far more important than lovers and one is not necessarily the other."

Almost playful, the captain shot Mr. Caesar a sidelong glance. "So why don't you want to follow her example?"

"She nearly died of leprosy," Mr. Caesar told him. "And she now lives half the year in Yorkshire, which is a fate I would find frankly intolerable."

The elder Mr. Caesar had finished a single slice of toast and cup of coffee and was now fixing his son with a steady gaze. "You might also remember that you were extremely suspicious of mysterious rescuers when Maelys encountered one."

Mr. Caesar squirmed uncomfortably. "Well, I learned my lesson. And besides, Orestes is a British officer."

"Not," Captain James said, "that you should ever trust an officer." He turned to the elder Mr. Caesar and Lady Mary. "The four men were soldiers. Bloodworth was with them."

Setting her coffee down with an unsteady clink, Lady Mary blanched. "John, this is becoming serious and I am beginning to mislike it."

"Then I shall be sure to write the major a letter asking him to kindly stop trying to kill me," replied Mr. Caesar coolly.

This went over poorly with the whole of the rest of the family, but especially with Miss Caesar who folded her glass arms across her chest and said, "There now, he interferes in my life and can barely take care of his own. You would be a better brother if you attended first to your own difficulties."

Miss Anne, who would never agree with Mary unless it was in criticism of some third party, was about to voice her concurrence when Captain James interrupted.

"It's not my place to say," he offered, "but as I see it, a brother who puts your needs above his own is a fine one to have."

Mr. Caesar shot him a look of profound gratitude, though privately he did not think it had turned out very finely for his sisters so far.

"You're right," Miss Anne replied, "it's not your place to say."

With a deliberate grace, the elder Mr. Caesar brought his hands to rest on the table in front of him. "Children." He seldom called his children children, partly because John had attained legal majority some while ago and partly because no child likes to be called a child. "I will have no more of this. We are under attack, and if we do not stand with one another, who else will stand with us?"

"Everybody would be standing with us," insisted Miss Anne, "if John had not made such—"

Now it was Lady Mary's turn. "No, Anne. They would not. At best they would stand against us more politely."

The Misses Caesar were not quite willing to formally concede the point, but their parents took their silence for at least the beginnings of understanding, and the conversation was soon interrupted by Nancy, who appeared bearing Mr. Bygrave's card.

The family had observed enough of Mr. Bygrave to know that his visit would consist of little more than him sitting in a chair and staring rapt at Miss Caesar while the light danced through her at fascinating angles. And so they retired to their various rooms—save Lady Mary, who, out of deference to conventions not entirely applicable to her situation, remained behind to chaperone, and Captain James, who had no room to go to.

Mr. Caesar, however, took the opportunity to follow his father into his office and wait, hands folded behind his back, to be acknowledged.

Which, eventually, he was.

"Yes, John?"

The relationship between the Misters Caesar was a complex one, as relations between fathers and sons often are, and so the younger gentleman found it a little difficult to say what he had come to say, as simple as it was. "I just wanted to tell you …" he tried, then stopped and adopted a different approach. "What I mean is, although I don't think I need to explain—you were—I shouldn't have—the family needs me and I shouldn't have run."

"No," the elder Mr. Caesar agreed, "you shouldn't have. But I understand why you did. There is"—he looked down at his correspondence for a moment, then back up at his son—"a lot that you have to navigate. I wish that it were otherwise."

The younger Mr. Caesar bowed his head. "I … I do not, I think. I would choose no other father than you, nor any other mother than Mama. Despite everything I don't even think I'd choose other sisters than Mary and—"

On cue, Miss Anne's voice echoed through from the drawing room. "But why not ?"

Sighing, the elder Mr. Caesar rose to his feet. "If you will excuse me, it seems the peace has not lasted."

The two gentlemen returned to join the party, where Lady Mary was holding a differently styled calling card, Mr. Bygrave was indeed just watching Miss Caesar in silence, and Miss Anne was making a petulant protest.

"Is there some concern?" asked the younger Mr. Caesar.

"Mama is denying my guest," Miss Anne explained. "When she allowed Mary's."

Lady Mary handed the card to her husband. "The guest is Lieutenant Reyne. I do not think him a suitable suitor for Anne. Indeed I am not sure she is of an age where any suitor is suitable."

This went down still more poorly with Miss Anne than the exclusion of a single suitor. "I am fourteen, " she insisted. "Margaret Beaufort married Edmund Tudor when she was twelve. "

"Sometimes, Anne," Lady Mary observed, "I am concerned at quite how encyclopaedic your knowledge of child brides is."

At last the quarrel drew the attention of Mr. Bygrave, who wrenched his attention away from Miss Caesar. "I am not greatly familiar with Lieutenant Reyne," he said, "but I know him to be from a good family, if not a very wealthy one."

"And though I agree he's old for the girl," added Captain James, "I've heard he's a good officer. Doesn't waste lives needlessly."

"You see?" Miss Anne looked triumphant. "All the military men support me."

"And it would be very vulgar," Miss Caesar added, "to say that we are not accepting visitors when we have plainly already accepted one."

Grudgingly, the Caesars acceded to this logic. They could scarcely pretend not to be at home with an existing guest. So the lieutenant was permitted to ascend, and for a short while he sat decorously beside Miss Anne, paying her flattering attention and speaking artfully of nothing. At the very least, however, his skill in this matter exceeded that of Mr. Bygrave. The lieutenant had developed the technique of disguising his nothings as somethings, and that made all the difference.

Since the existing dispute was settled and the elders of the family were present to watch over their daughters' collective virtues, Mr. Caesar felt little need to resist when Captain James uncurled from the seat he'd been lounging in, tapped Mr. Caesar lightly on the shoulder, and led him away into an adjoining room.

"I should remind you," Mr. Caesar told him, playfully, "that we are in my parents' house and—"

But the captain placed a finger over Mr. Caesar's lips, and not in a flirtatious way. "Listen," he whispered.

They could just about make out voices from the adjoining room, the numbing hum of pleasantries constrained by manufactured propriety and newer-than-imagined traditions.

"Miss Caesar, would you care for a turn about the room?" was Mr. Bygrave.

"I declare, you have the most marvellous stories" was Miss Anne.

And, "Nothing, I assure you, compared to those of the men I have served with" was, by process of elimination, Lieutenant Reyne. It was a rather fine voice, to my ear. To Mr. Caesar's it was mellifluous, soft, and familiar.

A voice he had heard at least twice before.

"It can't be," Mr. Caesar replied, sotto voce.

"It can, and I'd bet a month's wages it is."

"Still," Miss Anne was saying, "you must have seen such wonders."

There might have been laughter there, from Lieutenant Reyne, but it was muffled by the door and the distance. "War is many things," the soft-voiced man replied. "But it is seldom wonderful. It is a banquet for gods who delight in blood and chaos."

To give the man his due, he was good. Not only was he entirely accurate about the nature of this world's divine custodians but he had judged his audience well. There was little that appealed to Miss Anne more than tales of blood and chaos.

Tales, of course, being so very different from reality.

As she was soon to discover.