Chapter 19

Unlike Valentine—who, as had previously been established, was a damp lily—Belle felt she made a strong recovery. Part of it, of course, was she had only been grazed, whereas Valentine had needed a bullet dug out of his shoulder. Still, the fever and the whining, she was sure, had been entirely his own doing. She had been very weak for a couple of days, mostly from the blood loss, but she was soon able to sit in the front parlour, wrapped in shawls and blankets.

It was, all things considered, a very nice inn to be stranded at, being spacious, well kept, and situated on the outskirts of a village, which meant the clientele was lively and comfortable, instead of merely passing through in a state of resentful fatigue. They had been able to scrape together the means to pay for their stay from what was left of Belle’s money, alongside a contribution from Gil. Rufus had been predictably quick to point out the irony that their would-be robber was now financing them, but Gil had pointed out back that, if he hadn’t shot Belle and delayed them, they wouldn’t have required financing.

“Aren’t you needed in your bookshop, though?” Belle asked.

“My sister is looking after things.” Gil went a little pink about the ears and nose. “She thinks I’m meeting with an eccentric collector in, um, Fort William. So I should not return too soon.”

“You must have been envisioning quite the fuckfest,” drawled Rufus.

Gil shrugged. “What can I say? Hope springs eternal.”

“That is precisely the correct way for hope to spring.” Belle turned her attention from Gil to Rufus. “You know, I increasingly think your problem is not so much that your figurative glass is half-empty; it’s that you don’t possess a glass at all.”

“If one does not possess a glass, one can never be disappointed in the glass. Now”—he rose and moved briskly to Belle’s side—“how about we stop critiquing my philosophical stance on the abstract concept of optimism and I check your stitches?”

As impatiently as she dared, since impulsive movements still caused her considerable pain, Belle extricated her arm. “What are you expecting to find?”

“Ideally, no gangrene. And my sutures to have spontaneously improved.”

“Oh, they look fine.”

“They do not look fine.”

Dropping to one knee, he untied the makeshift sling he had made from the remains of his shirt and carefully began unwinding the bandages. “I’m so sorry, Belle.”

“I like them.” She squinted at her upper arm, which was currently rather a mess of knots and thread but carried—as far as she could tell—no signs of infection and would likely heal into an impressively jagged scar. “It will be piratical. Don’t you think I shall look piratical, Gil?”

“Splendidly,” he agreed. “Soon all the other young ladies will be jealous.”

“And”—Rufus, bent over her wound, barely spared Gil a glance—“you may volunteer yourself to shoot them.” His fingers moved with exquisite care over the stitches. “Is there any additional tenderness? I can’t feel any swelling or heat.”

“No additional tenderness,” Belle told him. “I am quite well. How long are you going to persist with this?”

“Until I am absolutely certain you are out of danger.”

“And I thought I was supposed to be the pain in the arse in this relationship.”

His eyes flicked up to hers, his expression confused, even a little hurt. “Pardon?”

“Nothing.” If she had been in a position to kick herself, she would have. She had no idea why that had slipped out. Perhaps it was his solicitousness in spite of his frustration with her that felt so unexpectedly hurtful. “Gil,” she called out, by way of distraction.

“Yes?”

“If you’re supposed to be visiting a fellow antiquarian, won’t it be a little suss if you come back empty-handed?”

“Ah. Well.” He smiled, with a kind of bashful approximation of guile. “I did actually think of that.”

“A scheme,” cried Belle, who was sincerely excited by schemes in general, but also eager to move the conversation past her earlier foolishness. “I do love a scheme.”

Rufus gave her a look. “Who? You? Never.”

“I wouldn’t say it was a scheme,” demurred Gil hastily, “so much as a mild degree of forethought. I happened to independently source a first edition of Memoirs of a Woman of Pleasure from 1749 that I can claim to have, um, purchased from my imaginary collector.”

Belle gasped. “Wait. Does this mean you’ve been running about all this time with a naughty book tucked in your trousers?”

“Not in my trousers. Such treatment would be very bad for the book.”

“Is that proscribed material?” While Rufus was still ostensibly engaged in settling Belle’s arm back in its sling, it was obvious he was smirking. “Or are you just pleased to see me.”

“Can we perhaps discuss the matter with some circumspection? I have no more wish to be prosecuted for possession of an illicit publication than I do for highway robbery.”

“I have never read an illicit story,” said Belle, with one of her most tragic sighs.

“How unfortunate for you.”

She nodded. “Yes, it is such a shame I know no-one with access to any.”

“I am not your ... your textual panderer.”

“But”—she pushed out her lower lip, letting her lashes fall low—“you shot me.”

“Leave the poor man alone, Bellflower.” Rising, Rufus dropped a kiss upon the top of her head and returned to his seat.

“Must I?”

“Yes. You cannot go around haranguing people for pornography.”

“I mean, I can . I am just yet to be met with success.”

Gil glanced between them, brow faintly furrowed. “Do you think I haven’t noticed the way you take turns to harangue me? You are like two cats with a mouse.”

“It is how we show love,” said Belle, at the same time Rufus offered, “It is because we are terrible people.”

Their eyes locked, Belle smiling first, then Rufus.

“Both,” she suggested. “It can be both.”

“Both,” he agreed.

Gil laughed, shaking his head, as though unable to decide whether he was amused by them or exasperated by them, which was—in Belle’s experience—pretty standard. “If I had a better book, Miss Tarleton, I would share it.”

“Oh.” Somehow this was even worse than not being allowed to read it. She’d been looking forward to boasting to Bonny about having got her hands on something naughty and forbidden, but what was the point if it turned out disappointing? “Why was it banned, then?”

“For the same reason most things are: fear and ignorance. In this case, I suspect it has something to do with the fact the book takes as axiomatic that women can be creatures of pleasure just as men can.”

It was depressing the way time marched on, and nothing changed as much as you hoped it might. Or could. “And yet,” she asked, “it is not worth reading?”

There was a pause, Gil biting his lip, obviously conflicted. “You may if you wish. It’s not really my place to decide for you. Though try not to, you know, fold the pages back or spill beans over it. Very few copies of this book are still in circulation.”

“Surely it will be unbanned sometime soon?”

“Surely,” echoed Gil, though he did not sound very convinced on the matter.

“Well, the idea of a woman liking sex can’t remain so very shocking, can it? I expect we can figure that out in, say, less than a hundred and fifty years.”

“Oh please.” Rufus swiped his hand disdainfully through the air, as though dismissing the decades to come. “A hundred and fifty years to concede that women are people? Give us two hundred and ten, and we will probably still be banning books and hating each other.”

Belle turned to Gil in despair. “You see what I mean? Absolutely no glass to speak of.”

“I fear his cynicism is not wholly without merit. But”—and here Gil raised an imaginary glass of his own—“I shall nevertheless join you in hoping for better from posterity.”

As topics of conversations went, it was not one easily followed. Misliking the silence, as she was often wont to do, Belle was the first to speak up. “If you don’t mind me asking, Gil, what do you find so objectionable in this particular book?”

“I wouldn’t say I found Fanny Hill objectionable. It’s more that ...” His head drooped, curls falling forward into his eyes. “It makes me sad.”

Belle blinked. “That seems a particularly damning indictment of an obscene text.”

“Well, what is obscenity, really? Perhaps the work of someone like de Sade, which speaks less of pleasure than of contempt, and, even less forgivably, is tedious to read. But no, Cleland’s work is mostly exuberant. And nothing but imaginative when it comes to terms for the, the ...” Perhaps recalling where he was, and with whom he spoke, Gil turned a painful shade of scarlet and pointed a finger in a generally “downwards” direction.

“Dick?” offered Rufus, helpfully. “Cock? Rampant fuckstick? All-dissolving thunderbolt.”

“Yes. That. ”

“When you say imaginative ”—Belle’s curiosity had now been thoroughly stirred—“do you mean more or less imaginative than rampant fuckstick ?”

“I would say, more euphemistic? Plenipotentiary instrument? Stiff staring truncheon. Engine of love-assaults?”

“And yet somehow you do not relish this?”

“There’s a scene near the end,” said Rufus abruptly, “where the heroine witnesses two young men together and is so disgusted by the sight she passes out, lamenting afterwards that she was unable to bring them to the swift justice they so clearly deserved for engaging in such an unnatural and debasing act.”

“Oh.” Belle’s interest waned with nauseating rapidity, leaving only guilt and discomfort behind. “Oh. Yes. I can see how the presence of such content would preclude relish.”

“And this,” Rufus went on, “from a narrator who, as far as I can recall, engages in all manner of acts with men and women, including group sex and flagellation. And yet two young men engaging in what is clearly a consensual and mutually pleasurable exchange are fit only for the most vicious scorn.”

“It upset me when I read it,” Gil admitted. “Because it is prettily described, and I found it stirring—I felt there was tenderness in it, with an exchange of kisses and the elder playing wantonly with the other’s curls as he entered him. And then ...”

His voice trailed away, and fresh silence fell between them.

“Perhaps”—it was Belle again who broke it—“the author felt he could not include it unless he was shown to condemn it after?”

Gil gave a faint smile. “It is quite the condemnation.”

“I do not doubt it. But there were still choices he could have made that he did not, choices that could have supported a negative perspective rather than confusing it.”

Both Gil and Rufus were staring at her.

“I’m not defending him,” she went on quickly. “Merely pointing out he could have portrayed the encounter as predatory or ... or worse. He could have excised any of the details that pleased you or portrayed their coitus as distressing or unpleasant.”

Slumping back in his chair, Rufus uttered a despairing groan. “Not everything needs to be championed, Belle, nor should it be.”

“I am not,” she protested. “I am simply considering that there may have been complexities to the situation we are not privy to.”

“Reactive abhorrence is simple by its very nature.”

“Possibly.” That was Gil. “But it’s still an intriguing thought, Miss Tarleton. One I was myself too flustered and ... and hurt, in the moment, to consider.”

“You’re as hopeless as each other,” muttered Rufus.

“I don’t think it is we who are hopeless,” Belle retorted.

“Ridiculous, then.” He paused, regarding them both with an expression Belle could not read. It seemed ... searching, almost? Then he relented, his mouth softening. “Perhaps the publication of Cannon’s Ancient and Modern Pederasty that very same year also had some impact.”

Belle tilted her head enquiringly. “Cannon’s what now?”

“It is, I believe,” explained Gil, “a defence of the love that some men feel for other men, on the philosophical grounds that what exists in nature is right and just, and that there cannot therefore be such a thing as unnatural desire, because desire is itself entirely natural. But that is all I can tell you. I have only been able to find fragments of the work, for the writer and the printer were both arrested on charges of indecency, and all copies ordered destroyed.”

“There may additionally be some passages celebrating the”—Rufus, who did not usually mince words, gave a light cough—“male passage. And its potent Cling.”

Gil cast a doleful look at the ceiling. “Well, I wouldn’t know.”

“How unfortunate for you.”

“Don’t you mean the passage?” Belle piped up, having been pursuing a different thought.

Rufus turned towards her, startled. “I beg your pardon?”

“You said male passage , but we all have that passage, and I can assure you the cling is equally potent.”

“You ... you have had opportunity to ...” Gil was reduced to flailing and blushing.

Taking pity on him, Belle nodded. “Oh yes. Like most such activities, it has little to do with whether a person has a cock or wears a dress or both or neither, and everything to do with what an individual enjoys. Or”—she smirked—“is receptive to.”

Gil gave a small wail. “Why does it feel like everyone in the world has entered effortlessly into that which I crave so ardently?”

“No, no,” Rufus reassured him, “not everyone in the world. Merely everyone in this room.”

“Are you sure you want to marry this man?” Gil asked.

“Yes,” Rufus answered for her, which was not the kind of thing Belle usually appreciated but on this very specific subject was willing to let go. “Yes she is. Moreover, I shall now demonstrate my regard for both of you by reminding my affianced that she needs to rest. That should, in turn, spare some of your blushes, Gil.”

“His blushes are adorable,” said Belle, “so I see no benefit in sparing them. Also, I’m not tired and I don’t want to rest.”

“So you claim. And then you fall asleep in the corner.”

“I’d rather fall asleep in the corner. Being in bed by yourself and during the daytime is boring .”

“Belle—”

“My corner, my choice.”

“Belle—”

“If you pick me up, I shall scream and bite you.”

“I wasn’t going to.” Clearly he had been going to. “But,” he added, “for future reference, screaming and biting tend to be mutually exclusive.”

“Your face,” she told him haughtily, “is mutually exclusive.”

“What does that even mean?”

“I ... have no notion. It just sounded insulting.” Unfortunately, Belle could feel herself beginning to flag. The only thing worse than someone trying to convince you to do something you didn’t want to do was them being in the right about it. “Ten more minutes?” she pleaded, as though she was eight years old again, and not wanting to put out her candle at bedtime. “Let us do something entertaining for ten more minutes, and then I shall retire without further complaint.”

Rufus’s eyes narrowed suspiciously. “Define entertaining .”

“Let’s play a game.”

“Oh, I love games,” said Gil.

“We’re aware,” Rufus threw back.

“Let’s play the game ,” Belle suggested.

Rufus whipped back to face her. “Belle, no. The last time we played the game , you got shot.”

“And what is the likelihood of such a thing happening twice?”

“With you? About fifty-fifty.”

“What is, um, the game ?” asked Gil, glancing between them.

“It’s the best game,” Belle declared. “How it works is that the next person to pass before the door on their way to the taproom becomes one of our lovers hypothetically, and we must explain to the others how such an encounter would proceed and what would be the consequences.”

Gil considered. “Do they get a say in the matter?”

“Well, no,” Belle admitted. “But only because they are fictionalised versions of themselves.”

He squirmed in his chair. “This feels as though it could have the potential to become a little hurtful.”

“You’d think that,” said Rufus wearily, “but so far its only victim has been Arabella herself.”

“See.” Her store of gestures was somewhat curtailed, so she tried to toss her hair with vindication. “It’s perfectly safe. What happened last time was an inexplicable aberration, and this time there can be absolutely no such—”

Footsteps resounded in the hallway.

A young man flung into the room, hand upon the hilt of his sword.

“Sir Horley Comewithers?” His burning midnight blue gaze raked over each of them before settling upon Rufus. “You have defiled my sister, sir, and I will have satisfaction.”