A Proper Lover (Ganymede Quartet Book 2) (45 page)

On Friday, everyone at school was in high spirits, talkative and boisterous. They were scolded for their immaturity and restiveness by each teacher in turn, but the chastisement had little impact on their collective mood. They would not be back in their seats until January 2nd, a break of eleven whole days, and all were anticipating ease and pleasure, presents and good food.

They rode home on the omnibus as part of a large, convivial group, and when Henry and Louis got off with their slaves, the other boys opened the windows and shouted
Merry Christmas
at them, which embarrassed Henry but gladdened his heart. They walked the short distance home and Henry and Martin said goodbye to Louis and Peter at the front gate.

“By the way, James will be home tonight,” Louis said. “He’s coming in on a late train. Why don’t you come over tomorrow afternoon to say hello to him and Grandma Ida?”

Henry was a little apprehensive about seeing James again after their last encounter. But all he said was, “I’ll be glad to see them both.”

There was a new
Pals
waiting for them inside, and seeing it lying there on the console in the hall made Henry’s heart beat a little faster. Martin, equally excited, went down to the kitchen for some of the gingerbread he knew Cook had baked and brought it upstairs to share.

“Are you ready?” Martin lounged across the end of the bed, magazine in hand.

“Yes, yes, hurry up and read it!” Henry licked crumbs off his fingers and settled back against the pillows.

They’d left the story last month with the
Dauntless
four days’ sail from the nearest port marked on the map by the Order of the Red Eye. Hoping to catch up to Dr. DeSade, Theo had made an educated guess that this is where the
Ruthless
would have headed, but it was only that—a guess.

George stayed abed healing, with Theo in attendance as much as possible, leaving the running of his ship to other crew members. Dooley stayed nearby, as well, much to Henry’s chagrin.

“Doesn’t he know where he’s not wanted?”

Martin snickered. “Hush!”

Dooley had lots of questions, the answers to which would likely be useful to a new reader. He asked about Theo and George’s history together, learning of George’s dramatic rescue at Theo’s hands when both were young men of 22.

“Huh,” Henry said. “I don’t think they’ve ever said before how old they were. That sounds about right.”

George described being carried across Theo’s shoulders, barely conscious, blood dripping from his ruined back, and feeling the safest he’d ever felt.

“He saved my life, Sir,” George said to Dooley. “And having saved it, Sir, I felt confident he’d keep it safe. And see, he’s saved it again.” George pointed to his bandage and Dooley was suitably impressed.

“I thought he was quite the finest man I’d ever met,” Theo told Dooley. “It didn’t matter that he was a slave; what mattered was the quality of his character.”

“I’ll bet George has a really nice ass,” Henry remarked. “I’ll bet that had something to do with it, too.”

Martin snickered at this. “Henry, really!”

Theo redressed George’s wound, and Dooley stuck around for that, too, commenting on George’s many scars in an admiring fashion.

“You should see the Captain’s scars, Sir,” George told Dooley. “He was shot clean through the shoulder, and with only me to stitch him up, it wasn’t a pretty result, Sir.”

So then Theo took off his shirt to show Dooley the bullet wound and puckered scar resulting.

“He’d better not touch him,” Henry said. “He’d better not even try.”

Dooley kept his hands to himself, only admiring the scar and complimenting George on doing an admirable job of piecing the flesh back together. He was also shown the scar on Theo’s side where he’d been stabbed the first time they met Dr. Nero DeSade and Turk, and a short history of that encounter was given, reestablishing that DeSade was a dastardly, murderous fiend with no respect for human life, free or slave.

At last, long after Henry had tired of Dooley, Theo tired of him, as well, telling him to, “Make yourself useful up on deck,” and shutting the door in his face.

“What do you think Theo did after he kicked Dooley out?” Martin asked playfully.

“George was tired,” Henry pointed out. “But I’m sure he could tolerate having his cock sucked.”

When they finally sailed into port four days after they’d started, George was feeling much stronger and Theo was on deck commanding his men, cutlass hanging at his hip.

“They’re not going to find DeSade,” Henry said confidently. “Not if Theo’s carrying a real weapon.”

The men of the
Dauntless
disembarked quietly and with as much circumspection as possible. Once again, to Henry’s chagrin, Dooley tagged along with Theo and George. George wore a jacket around his shoulders to make the sling supporting his injured left arm less noticeable. Theo had wanted to leave him behind to rest, but George had argued convincingly that he was often more successful than Theo in ferreting out information.

Three hours later in a dockside tavern, Theo’s pockets lighter by a few pieces of silver, they had made a host of new friends and learned a little more about the Order of the Red Eye. The
Ruthless
had indeed been in port overnight, leaving just hours before the
Dauntless
made landfall. Cloaked men from the
Ruthless
had been seen stealing up from the waterfront and climbing the hill to a forbidding mansion where mysterious lights flickered in the dead of night and hooded figures could be seen furtively scuttling in and out at the gate. A local boy, a lad called Sneed, offered to show them the way to the mansion, should they want to see it for themselves.

Surmising that this ominous edifice was the Order’s lair, Theo put on the dead henchman’s robe, picked up the ceremonial dagger and prepared to make the journey. George wanted to go with him, of course, but Theo ordered him—he actually
ordered him
—to stay behind, while Dooley went in his place.

“I can’t believe this!” Henry felt furious on George’s behalf. “
Dooley
is no replacement for George!”

“But George is
injured
, Henry. He can’t fight.”

Henry heard the sense of this but didn’t care. He didn’t like Dooley, and he didn’t like Dooley supplanting George in the least. He suspected the author was enamored of the Dooley character for some unknowable reason, and had written the injury for George specifically to let Dooley get closer to Theo. He suggested this to Martin, who had no convincing counter-argument.

“Let’s just wait and see. Don’t you want to know what happens next anyway?”

With Theo disguised as an Order member and Dooley as his captive, they approached the mansion under cover of darkness. Leon and Boot remained with Sneed in the shadowy lane outside the mansion’s high wall while Theo and Dooley approached the imposing front door. If they’d had any doubts they were in the right place, those were put to rest by a stained glass transom displaying a bloody-red eye.

“You know your part?” Theo asked. “You’re prepared to do what needs doing?”

“I know it, sir.” Martin didn’t have a Dooley voice but just used his own with a particularly uninspired inflection to show his disdain for the character, which Henry suspected he might be doing for Henry’s benefit. “I’m brave, sir, don’t doubt it.”

Theo knocked and the door was opened by a cadaverous butler whose throat was disfigured by the scarring of an excised mark and a newer tattoo, a red eye. The combination of Theo’s robe and the ceremonial dagger was enough to gain them entry.

“This one escaped DeSade just four days ago,” Theo explained, jerking Dooley forward by his elbow, and Dooley looked appropriately surly. “I hoped I would catch up to him here and could deliver the prisoner in person.”

“The Doctor has headed for the Refuge, Sir,” Martin explained in the butler’s raspy, cobwebbed voice. “We are in a state of emergency, Sir.”

“I’ve been a-sea,” Theo explained. “What is the emergency?”

“We’ve been exposed, Sir. Everything is chaos.” Martin coughed and cleared his throat. “I’m sorry. This voice is difficult.”

“You don’t have to do it,” Henry told him, but he couldn’t mask his disappointment.

“No, Henry, I’ll do it. Just let me get some water.” He went to the bathroom and came back with a glass of water and drank. “All right, I’m ready.”

Theo demanded to be taken to whoever was in charge, and the butler led them deep into the house, through innumerable parlors and suites and down flights of stairs until reaching a sub-basement secured behind three locks. Beyond this sturdy door they found a laboratory, thoroughly modern and state-of-the-art, and a surgical theater showing bloody signs of recent use.

“The Doctor did some work while he was here, Sir,” the butler explained hoarsely. “We’ve still to do the cleaning up.”

Beyond the medical rooms, there was a dungeon-like area with a cell housing perhaps a dozen miserable wretches, all slaves. Like the gruesome butler, all of these slaves showed evidence of tampering with their marks, healing patchwork scars or fresh red-eye tattoos. These captives looked upon Theo and Dooley with expressions of true and unrelieved misery, as if without the least hope of salvation. Theo resolved upon seeing them that he would see each one released from captivity or die trying.

“Captain Theo really
is
a wonderful person, isn’t he?” Martin asked, though Henry did not think he expected an answer. “He reminds me of you, you know.”

“Me?” Henry was surprised.

“You care about slaves,” Martin explained. “In Captain Theo’s place, you’d rescue them if you could, wouldn’t you?”

Henry thought that he’d certainly have the impulse to help, but seriously doubted his ability to carry off a successful escape. Nevertheless, he liked having Martin’s good opinion. “I’d try,” he agreed. “Because what if some of them were like us? The master would be out in the world somewhere missing his slave so much.”

“The slave would be missing his master, as well,” Martin pointed out.

They were both quiet a minute, contemplating the romance and drama of a forced separation. Henry liked the idea that he’d go to the ends of the earth to search for Martin if Martin was stolen away, but he suspected he might become entrenched in the inertia of despair instead.

“If it was me,” Martin began slowly, thinking out loud, “I’d do my best to send you a message of some kind, or leave a clue that would lead you straight to me. But if I couldn’t do that, I’d just do my best to stay alive until you came for me. Because you
would
come, wouldn’t you, Henry?”

“Of course I would,” Henry assured him. Of course he would. There was very little he wouldn’t do for Martin. Really only the one thing.

“Shall I keep reading?” Martin cocked his head, looking to Henry for an answer.

“Please.”

Theo and Dooley were led into the inner sanctum, a dimly-lit room redolent of incense, quite in contrast with the medical area. They were surprised to see a young woman in a kimono lying limp across a divan, her long, dark hair cascading to the floor. She did not stir when they entered.

The man in charge was suitably gruesome, with a grey complexion and the pale eyes of a wolf. He wore a white doctor’s coat and had a stethoscope looped around his neck.

“Dr. von Belcher, this Esteemed Initiate has captured Dr. DeSade’s escaped prisoner.” Martin said in the butler’s craggy voice, then took a sip of water.

“Vonderful,” said von Belcher in a voice that Martin might have intended to be Germanic. “Let us put him in viz ze ozzers, yes?” He walked past Theo, taking Dooley by the arm as he did so and jerking him along with brisk yanks.

The Doctor fumbled with a heavy ring of keys and slid an oversized iron key into the lock of the cell door. As the aperture swung wide, the inhabitants of the cell backed away, huddling together in the rear, clearly terrified of the Doctor. At this moment, Theo cried out, “Now, Dooley!” Dooley shook the loosely-knotted rope from his wrists and pulled a knife from beneath his shirt. He lunged after the foul butler and slit his throat, giving him only time enough to loose a single hoarse, corvine cry. He clutched at Dooley as he went down, bathing him in blood.

Theo cornered von Belcher and threatened him with the dagger. “Tell me,” Theo demanded, “where has DeSade gone?”

Von Belcher gave an evil cackle. “I’ll tell you nozzing!” Theo gave him a little jab with the dagger, but he only laughed again. He took a pill from his pocket and rapidly put it between his lips. “I die for ze cause!” Still laughing, he began to foam at the mouth and convulse and fell to the floor dead.

Theo and Dooley then turned their attention to the captives, who were frightened and bewildered, and Theo feared they would be of no help in effecting their own escape. They had passed few people on their way into the house, but they could not count on such good fortune on their way out, especially with a dozen weakened and debilitated captives to protect. Theo searched the drawers of von Belcher’s desk and found a loaded revolver. He armed the strongest-seeming man amongst the captives with a letter opener.