Chapter One

I first encountered Mr. Caesar during the unfortunate business with his cousin that had begun with her losing her clothes at a ball and ended with her sacrificing a British peer to an ancient goddess, fucking a disgraced noblewoman, and developing a lifelong aversion to marchpane, not necessarily in that order.

In the near year that had followed, I had been observing that lady's friends and family closely in case they should prove likewise diverting, but, thus far, they had not. Mr. Caesar in particular had proven deeply tedious. His studies for the bar had languished somewhat (and were about to begin languishing rather more for reasons you will soon discover), and he was spending the majority of his time at various London institutions that catered to a certain sort of gentleman with a certain sort of interest.

This latter point you may think would grab my attention, but I am not mortal and I am not so prurient in my outlook that mere sodomy arrests me.

Indeed I would probably have given up on Mr. Caesar as a prospect entirely had he not, at a ball hosted by the Vicomte de Loux, punched a fellow guest in the jaw.

The blow in question would not land until later in the evening, but I mention it now in case you, like me, find balls in general rather dull unless something unexpected is happening and might, therefore, put the book down in disgust were it not for the reassurance that in a few short pages you will be able to watch an irritating man get smacked in the teeth by a slightly less irritating man whose teeth-smacking skills—if we are honest between ourselves—leave a great deal to be desired.

I begin my tale in earnest, then, clinging in the shape of a woodlouse to the ceiling of a carriage whose occupants, in descending order of age, were Mr. Caesar, his friend Miss Bickle, and his two sisters, Miss Caesar and Miss Anne. We are starting early partly to build tension ahead of the much-anticipated teeth-punching, and partly because I am given to understand that you mortals find it more enjoyable to watch other people's misfortunes if you learn a little about them first.

And on the subject of learning a little about people, there is some context surrounding the Caesars which will, over the course of the narrative, prove pertinent. Their mother, Lady Mary, had been born the youngest daughter of the Earl of Elmsley but had defied the conventions of the ton by marrying a freedman of Senegalese birth whom she had met through her work with the abolition. And whereas in the enlightened twenty-first century the marriage of a British aristocrat to a Person of Colour is a wholly unremarkable thing that results in no hostility whatsoever, in the bad old days of the 1800s it caused quite a scandal.

Isn't it wonderful to know how far your species has come?

At any rate, those are the inhabitants of the carriage and this, as best I recall it, was their conversation.

"I was wondering," Miss Bickle—a fair-haired, doe-eyed creature who stubbornly remained an ingenue despite being some way into her nineteenth year—was asking the group at large, "if after the ball is over, or if the ball becomes wearisome, any of you would be interested in reading my ction. "

"What's a ction ?" asked Miss Caesar, who, at sixteen years of age, was now formally out in society and thus learning the fine art of pretending to care about things other people cared about. Of all her siblings, she was the one who most favoured her father, her eyes and her complexion both a deep brown that almost glowed in the waning sunlight.

Mr. Caesar—immaculately presented and patrician as ever—gave his sister a warning look. "Please don't encourage her, Mary."

" Ction, " Miss Bickle explained, ignoring her friend's admonition, "is an abbreviation of avrection. "

Unable to quite help himself, Mr. Caesar disregarded his own advice and offered the obvious question. "And what is avrection ?"

"Ah"—Miss Bickle's face lit up—"well, you see, that is itself an abbreviation of avid reader fiction. I am an avid reader of the works of the anonymous lady author of Sense and Sensibility and I, along with some lady friends, have formed what we call an avidreaderdom devoted to the wider anonymousladyauthorverse."

Miss Anne gave a thrilled gasp and tossed her fashionable ringlets. Though she was by far the youngest in the carriage, her grasp of the mortal art of flattery was greater than any of her companions. "How fascinating."

"I'm not sure I understand," admitted Miss Caesar. "What do you actually do in this … this …"

"Avidreaderdom," Miss Bickle reminded her. "We meet, and we discuss the works of the anonymous lady author—"

Mr. Caesar, growing increasingly aware that he was the only gentleman in the carriage and beginning to wonder if this was hampering his ability to follow the conversation, continued to look sceptical. "These works you insist upon calling the anonymousladyauthorverse ?"

"Yes." Miss Bickle had a fine line in confident nods, and she deployed one of them now.

"You don't think that's a rather silly name?"

Never having considered anything silly in her entire life, and being, I suspect, one of the few mortals who appreciated the etymology of the word, Miss Bickle was unperturbed by the criticism. "Not at all. I think it rather splendid."

The Misses Caesar, to their brother's chagrin, both agreed that it was splendid indeed.

"Although," added Miss Caesar, "I am not entirely certain how this group of yours differs from a literary salon."

"Ah, well," Miss Bickle explained, "we do not only read and discuss the works, we also write our own stories set within the wider anonymousladyauthorverse."

Miss Anne clapped her dainty hands. "Oh, how marvellous."

"Is it, in fact, marvellous?" asked Mr. Caesar. "Is it not, in fact, a slightly peculiar thing to do?"

Before Miss Bickle could either deny or embrace the peculiarity of her chosen hobby, Miss Caesar was leaning forward with fatally sincere interest and asking, "But what are these stories about?"

"For example," Miss Bickle began with the joy of an enthusiast encouraged to expound upon their area of enthusiasm, "my current wtiitpobw "—the look of perplexity on the faces of her audience was enough to make her clarify—"that is, work that is in the process of being written, is called The Heir and the Wastrel, and it concerns events that I imagine occurring between Mr. Wickham and Mr. Darcy in their youth."

"What sort of events?" prompted Miss Anne, with an innocence that caused her brother to chime in immediately with "Do remember that Anne is fourteen."

Miss Bickle, who had indeed overlooked the lady's age, opened her mouth, closed it again, and then said somewhat demurely: "Japes."

"And would I be able to join your avidreaderdom?" asked Miss Caesar. "I have read all of the anonymous lady author's works and might like to try my hand at writing avrections."

"Oh, that would be lovely." Miss Bickle beamed. "At the moment it's just me and Miss Penworthy."

"I really don't think you should be encouraging Miss Penworthy's attention," warned Mr. Caesar. "She may take it in ways you don't intend."

With casual bonhomie, Miss Bickle gave Mr. Caesar a pat on the arm. "Don't worry, we've established the parameters of our friendship very thoroughly."

A suspicion crept into Mr. Caesar's mind, and quite without any mystical influence on my part. " How thoroughly?"

"Very thoroughly. Exhaustively, really. Miss Penworthy can be very detail-oriented."

To Mr. Caesar's relief, the fates decreed that he would not need to pursue this line of enquiry any further, as they had arrived at their destination, the temporary London residence of Alexandre, Vicomte de Loux.

While Mr. Caesar and his lady companions disembarked, I took the shape of a sparrow and flew out into the night.

And there, in the sky, I saw a star fall.

When the vicomte had started arranging this particular ball, it had been a simple enough matter. Although he was of West Indian heritage, and that put him on the outs with certain parts of the ton no matter what he did, he was also rich and Parisian, and in the early months of 1815 all things rich and Parisian had been much sought-after.

Then Napoleon had escaped from Elba and begun his march on the capital. Which meant that the French, in the eyes of the ambitious mamas of London society, transformed overnight from the people who made the fashionable hats to the people who were trying to shoot their sons dead with muskets.

His solution to this problem had been to issue hasty invitations to as many British military officers as possible. The hope being that a sea of red coats in the ballroom would signal to his guests that he remained on the side of monarchy, serfdom, and the sceptred isle, rather than the side of liberty, equality, and subjugating Europe.

And this seemed to have worked. Because wealthy people very seldom need much excuse to take advantage of free food.

The overrepresentation of military gentlemen inspired a response of unalloyed delight from Miss Bickle, who had promised herself that she would be cruelly treated by an ill-reputed officer before she was twenty-two, and the Misses Caesar, whose plans were not quite so specific but who made up for it with the nebulous passion of youth. It inspired a response of slightly more alloyed delight from Mr. Caesar, who had a partiality to military gentlemen himself but who needed to be a little more cautious in approaching them.

Not that approaching soldiers was part of his plans for this evening. For all its gaiety, this event—like any event now his sister was of age—had a serious purpose. Mary was formally on the marriage mart and while there was no rush exactly—sixteen was young to marry even for that time and set—Mr. Caesar knew that years had a way of getting away from one. He was himself already in his early twenties and while gentlemen were afforded rather more latitude in these matters than ladies, he had lately begun to wonder if he would ever truly find a permanent place in the world. The bar did not suit him, and was no career for a gentleman, but his mother's inheritance and his father's speaking fees would not last the family forever. At nineteen he had assumed it would all be sorted out by now, and it most certainly was not.

Still, he endeavoured to do what he could for his sisters. In a better world, it would not have been a concern. In a better world, every lady would have the same luxury as Miss Bickle, who stood to inherit wealth so vast that her only matrimonial concern was avoiding fortune hunters. Or as his cousin Miss Mitchelmore, who had been lucky enough to fall in love with a woman of independent means. But in the world as it actually existed, people needed to eat, and that meant securing an income. And for ladies, the only acceptable way to secure an income was to marry it.

While Mr. Caesar was musing on his life's many imperfections, one of the thornier ones appeared just over his left shoulder. That imperfection was Mr. Thomas Ellersley, who the wags of the ton quite correctly whispered that Mr. Caesar had once fucked, and slightly less correctly whispered that he was still fucking.

"I swear," Mr. Ellersley purred, "you look worse every time I see you."

It was a barb on principle, but Mr. Caesar did privately feel that he'd been letting his personal grooming slide a little of late, so it stung more than it should. "Really? You look better every time I see you. But then you're usually further away."

"Quite the selection, isn't it?" observed Mr. Ellersley, perusing the crowd with one hand resting languidly and a little possessively on Mr. Caesar's back. "Who do you fancy?"

Having been scanning the room more for net worth than for rough trade, Mr. Caesar was quite without opinion. "Tonight, nobody."

"Fuck me, John, when did you get so dull?" I shall say that in our limited interactions I never especially liked Mr. Ellersley, but in this moment we shared something of a bond.

By way of answer, Mr. Caesar tilted his head towards his sisters, who were standing a little way off with Miss Bickle.

"Oh, come on, John"—Mr. Ellersley hooked a playful finger into the collar of Mr. Caesar's coat, the play of the nail down his neck awakening the ghosts of old passions—"why don't we give this place the slip? The girls will be fine."

It said terrible things, Mr. Caesar reflected, about the state of his soul that he found the offer mildly tempting. The choice was between duty to his family and the company of a man he disliked. To his father, he had no doubt, it would not have been a choice at all. But Mr. Caesar was not his father. He was not wholly sure who he was, but he knew he was not that. Still, appearances had to be maintained, so he turned his head just far enough that he could see Mr. Ellersley in his peripheral vision and, when he was sure he had the man's attention and that his profile was displayed to exactly the right advantage, raised an eyebrow.

"They'll be fine, " Mr. Ellersley repeated. "In this … room full of soldiers. With … only Lysistrata Bickle to look after them." He flushed a little. He'd always flushed readily, Mr. Caesar recalled. "Actually I do see your point. Probably best we stick around."

A youth in a red coat sauntered over to the trio of ladies and led Miss Anne away to dance. Although her gown was a little out of fashion and her youth was very notable, she made a fine figure on the dance floor. She was delicate of feature and graceful in motion, and eyes turned to her quite naturally.

Soon enough that dance ended, and the cycle began again. Two gentlemen this time, one for Miss Anne, one for Miss Bickle. Not wishing to leave Miss Caesar wholly alone, Mr. Caesar went to her side, Mr. Ellersley following him like a spiteful shadow.

"Am I invisible?" Miss Caesar asked, and Mr. Caesar suspected she wasn't really asking him specifically, but he felt compelled to answer anyway.

"Gentlemen can be boors," he said. It was the kindest answer he could think of. Certainly it was kinder than telling her that the issue was not invisibility but its opposite. Miss Caesar was of a height with her younger sister, but fuller figured and broader featured. She had a beauty of her own, but in an English ballroom at the height of the Empire, her hair twisted into a style it would not hold and her gown cut for a fashion she did not fit, she was sunlight behind clouds, the sky through a narrow window.

"If I dance at all tonight," Miss Caesar continued, "it will be with some elderly gentleman who takes pity on me. And I do not want to be pitied."

Mr. Ellersley gave a soft chuckle. "A pity-dance is better than no dance at all."

"Oh, shut up, Tom," Mr. Caesar snapped, then immediately regretted the lapse in composure. In the great game of who-can-be-more-artfully-cruel-to-whom which Mr. Caesar had been playing with the ton his whole life, to rise was to lose.

While Miss Anne and Miss Bickle danced, Mr. Caesar glanced across the ballroom to see another of the world's great imperfections slinking into view.

Richard, Lord Hale, was his maternal uncle and failed to be the bane of his life only by virtue of his persistent absence from it. The Baron Hale had long felt that his sisters' marriages—Lady Mary's in particular—had brought shame on the family and took every opportunity to vex his nieces and nephew. He approached now in the company of an older man in military dress. A major by his insignias, a drinker by his complexion, an arse by his company. They were both, I was sure, the worst kinds of mortal, but the worst kinds of mortal so often make the best kind of sport, and so I watched their arrival with a keen anticipation.

"Uncle Richard." Mr. Caesar inclined his head the exact minimum distance required for the gesture to be considered not completely disrespectful.

"John." Lord Hale made a similarly minimalist gesture. "May I introduce Major Bloodworth; Major Bloodworth, this is my nephew Mr. Caesar, his"—the pause was so pointed you could strap it to a rifle and call it a bayonet—" friend Mr. Ellersley, and my niece Miss Caesar."

Mr. Ellersley and the Caesars made the obligatory delighteds .

"Capital," declared Major Bloodworth. Then he added: "That's the wonderful thing about the vicomte's events, isn't it? They always attract such a colourful crowd."

Like Mr. Ellersley, the major had opened with a barb. Unlike Mr. Ellersley, he had chosen one without the softening grace of mutuality. One that, if challenged, he would most certainly deny. And one that, bitterest of all, was as directed at Miss Caesar as much as her brother. Cold experience had taught Mr. Caesar that the best thing to do was to ignore it, and in this instance, he chose to do the best thing. "Don't they?"

"He's even invited Wellington's favourite," added Lord Hale, nodding across the dance floor. There was a definite sneer attached to the word favourite.

The subject of the nod and the sneer was a singular figure and, to Mr. Caesar, an immediately arresting one. Firm-jawed, dark-skinned and with just the right note of dashing, the stranger moved through the crowd with the confident disinterest of a man who cared more for battlefields than ballrooms. For a moment, Mr. Caesar found it hard to tear his gaze away.

Black men were not unknown, or even uncommon, in the British army—the Empire was, after all, an empire and its soldiers came from all corners of it—but in a system where commissions were almost always bought rather than earned it was rare for one to rise to the rank of captain. Rarer still for him to attend a ball with the gentry.

" Captain Orestes James, " observed Mr. Ellersley, whose interest in military matters was keen if highly specific. "They say he saved Wellesley's life at Talavera."

Major Bloodworth was unimpressed. "They say a lot of things. Never believe soldiers' talk."

While Mr. Caesar would, begrudgingly, admit that enlisted men were not always the most truthful of individuals, looking at the captain he found himself well able to imagine Captain James riding to the rescue of a duke. And for a moment at least it was a pleasing thing to imagine: a tall man on horseback, hands rough from swordplay, arms warrior-strong, eyes deep and soulful and …

This was not, he reminded himself, the time for daydreaming. There were appearances to maintain, and while he knew rationally that the ton could not read his mind, it often behaved as if it could. Besides, the dance was finishing, the couples were returning to their places, and he needed once more to play the stern elder brother. Miss Bickle and Miss Anne both came back to the little group, though it was merely a matter of moments before another suitor was sweeping in to carry Miss Anne away again.

"Shaping up into a regular Cleopatra, isn't she?" said Lord Hale, archly.

"Yes," mused the major. "Shame about the other one."

Now Miss Bickle was back, Miss Caesar was at least mildly distracted. Still, Mr. Caesar stiffened. "And what do you mean by that?"

Major Bloodworth smiled. "Well, she's rather like Her Majesty, isn't she?"

"I'm sorry." Mr. Caesar feigned obliviousness. "Are you insulting the queen, or my sister?"

Like many men of his class and habits, the major had an unoriginally cruel laugh. "Both, I think. They share the same Mulat—"

He got no further. Because this, oh patient reader, is the point at which Mr. Caesar punched a man in the teeth.

The punching went poorly. Mr. Caesar was no pugilist, and soon learned the hard way that human teeth are sharp, human wrists fragile, and human sensibilities dull.

All of which combined to see him, two minutes later, nursing a sprained hand and bleeding knuckles, being escorted into the Mayfair night by the vicomte. I followed in the shape of a mouse.

"I understand he was provoking, Jean"—the vicomte always insisted on using the Frenchified pronunciation, despite having otherwise perfect English—"but you made me look bad." He paused, staring at the floor a moment in a manner rather uncharacteristic of the mortal aristocracy. "You made us all look bad."

"Us all?" asked Mr. Caesar.

"You know what I mean."

He knew. As, reader, I presume do you. But he did not like it. "There isn't a man in that room who would have stood by and let his sister be insulted."

"‘I do confess the vices of my blood.'"

Mr. Caesar took the allusion to the so-called bard even more harshly than I normally do. "Oh, fuck off, Alexandre. I'm not Othello."

"To people like the major and your uncle," replied the vicomte, "we are each of us Othello."

Being a man of temperate character, the thought of being considered intemperate by a society that would not look past his birth inspired in Mr. Caesar ironically intemperate emotions. "And you're taking their side."

"I am taking the ton's side. Your English manners are quite strict on this issue."

With a more-English-than-the-English-will-admit exclamation of "Fuck," Mr. Caesar sat himself awkwardly on a low wall.

"Take a moment if you need it," offered the vicomte with Gallic generosity. "But then leave. We cannot be associated for a while."

What stung the most was how unexpected it wasn't. The vicomte, being the son of a Frenchman and a woman of the gens de couleur libres and thus, by English standards, suspect on both sides of his family, had his own concerns. And in the world of the ton, solidarity was in short supply; the gossips smelled weakness and struck without mercy.

Still, Mr. Caesar had his duties to think about. "And my sisters?"

The vicomte gave him a gentle nod. "I shall see they are safe. This is a shitty business, Jean, but I don't think anybody wants it to harm the ladies."

Personally, I doubted the truth of that. While I, despite my avowed love of cruelty, thought the Misses Caesar would make poor sport, I suspected that there were those still at the ball who absolutely did wish them ill. Of one sort or another.

"Thank you," said Mr. Caesar, though he was not feeling especially thankful. He and the vicomte were not exactly friends, despite the superficial similarities in their heritage, and the man outranked him. Still, he could not help but feel a little thrown under the carriage.

Having been too long absent from his own ball, the vicomte gave a rather stiff bow and went back to it, leaving Mr. Caesar alone in the night. And bad things happen to those left alone in the night. Especially when the those in question have recently offended a rich man who kills for a living.

The March air was chill but the sky was clear, and for a few minutes Mr. Caesar stared—as that self-aggrandising shit Oscar would a near century later—at the stars and wondered quite how badly he had fucked everything up for his family. His parents, distracted as they perennially were by their good works, had never placed him under any especial pressure, but the stark reality of their situation meant that somebody had to make certain that neither he nor his sisters would starve in the wider world. Although why he thought he of all people was best suited to that particular duty I have no idea. And just as I was pondering this example of mortal hubris, I was distracted by the annoyingly loud voice of an annoyingly loud human.

"On your feet."

Looking around, Mr. Caesar saw—to his fleeting satisfaction—that the major was still nursing a split lip. "I'd rather sit, thank you."

"On your feet," Major Bloodworth repeated. "Scoundrel."

There was, Mr. Caesar knew, no real point in defiance. But in that moment he, like I, felt that pointless defiance had a charm of its own. "I'd rather sit, thank you."

From the shadow of a nearby coach, two large men emerged. They were not, to my expert eye, professional ruffians, but height and weight can make up for all manner of deficiencies in other areas.

"Make him stand," commanded the major, and the larger of the two large men stooped to haul Mr. Caesar up by his collar.

And I was just shifting my shape to something more airborne, in order that I might watch proceedings from a better vantage, when from the direction of the townhouse, a low, London voice asked: "Is there a problem?"