There Will Be Phlogiston (11 page)

Rosamond was not enjoying anything.

The visits. The dinners. The balls.

They whirled around her like a carousel until they
were nothing but a moving haze, the colour of the Gaslight
smog.

Lack of enjoyment had somehow developed from a
passive state to an active one. And was manifesting in
headaches.

She was on her way to the retiring room—where she
had been spending increasing amounts of her time—when voices in the
antechamber arrested her retreat. She was not a natural
eavesdropper, being insufficiently interested in the lives others,
but she hesitated when she recognised the marquess’s southern
drawl. It was surely just prejudice for an unfamiliar accent, but
it was hard not to perceive an undertone of contempt when one
lengthened one’s As so excessively.

“—return soon,” he was saying. “And thank God for
that. I cannot abide this pissant little backwater with its
delusions of grandeur.”

“Ah, but you’ll be a married man.” That was one of
his friends, the Viscount of Whatever or Sir Thingamy. “Linked by
ties of blood and family to this pissant little backwater.”

“Hardly. It’s nothing more than money.”

“And your wife-to-be. She’s a pretty little
thing.”

The marquess gave a less-than-elegant snort. “If
your taste runs to shopkeepers and coalminers, certainly. But she’s
docile, I’ll grant you. She’ll be comfortable enough at the Hall,
and I daresay I’ll do my duty on her.”

“You can close your eyes and think of England.”

“I’ll be thinking of the divine Angelique.” The
marquess laughed. Rosamond had never heard him do that before, and
she didn’t enjoy it now. “Perhaps she’ll consider my protection now
since pockets are no longer to let.”

Rosamond had heard enough. Too much, far too much.
She slipped away.

He had expressed nothing she did not already know.
Or, at the very least, suspected. Expected. But now it was all clad
in words; it seemed real in ways it hadn’t before. And, she
realised, what he’d taken from her was hope.

It should not have been so devastating.

Surely it was better to have this certainty now than
have to come to terms with it later.

But God. God.

She couldn’t face the retiring room. It would be
full of women faffing with their flounces and powdering their
décolletages. She reeled blindly down the corridor, and barged into
. . . oh . . . somewhere.

What did it matter? It was dark within and quiet.
And she was alone. She dropped onto a sofa, covered her face with
her hands, and burst into tears.

Crying was part of her skill set. She did it very
beautifully indeed.

This was not beautiful.

It was more like hiccoughing, and the tears came not
in delicate droplets but in a damp and snotty deluge. And, worse
still, having permitted herself this weakness, she could not seem
to bring herself back under control. All she could do was sit
there, gulping and wailing, and rendering her complexion blotchy
and horrific.

And then, of course, someone opened the door on her,
spilling light into the room. She gave a little scream and threw up
an arm as if she could protect herself from being seen.

“Good God. I’m so sorry.” An elegant, masculine
figure was outlined in the doorway. “I thought one of the cats had
been locked in.”

Outrage briefly stifled her tears. “I do not sound
even remotely like a cat.”

There was a silence.

“I do not!”

“Are you in distress?”

“No,” she lied. She had nothing to handle the full
extent of her tears so she was obliged to use the sleeve of her
dress. “Please leave me alone.”

The damned fellow was still lingering. Worse, he had
come a little farther into the room, and was adjusting the wick on
an phlogiston lamp, banishing the safe gloom into which Rosamond
had fled. In the flare of orange, she recognised Lord Mercury.
Poised as ever, far too beautiful, gold glinting in his hair and in
the depths of his eyes. And, in that moment, Rosamond hated him.
For being so lovely when she felt ugly, and for being invincible
when she was weak. Oh, why did she never have any control over
anything? Why did she always have to be frightened and ashamed?

“If you utter one word of this, to anyone, I will
make sure the whole world knows of your relationship with
Anstruther Jones.”

He started and paled visibly, slender fingers
fluttering on the stem of the lamp. “I . . . have no notion what
you may be implying. We . . . we were friends awhile.”

“You think me that naïve? I know . . .” What did she
know? Just some vague intimation of acts considered immoral. “I
know he used you as a man with a woman. You are hardly discreet, my
lord. The way you gaze upon him. Your long-standing disinterest in
members of my sex.”

She tried to ignore the heaviness of her eyes, the
drip she could feel trembling on the tip of her nose, and glared at
him with all the conviction and disgust she could muster.

And the man just broke. For a moment, she thought he
might actually swoon, but then he was on his knees beside her,
clutching for her hand. “Oh God. You mustn’t . . . Please don’t. .
. You will ruin me. Please.”

It was the very last thing she had expected, and it
brought her no consolation at all. Power, yes, of a kind, but it
was joyless. Leaving her hollow and sickened. She looked down at
his bowed head, his shaking shoulders. “I—”

“Don’t,” he whispered. “Please don’t. I know it’s
wrong. I’m sorry, I try, I try so hard but sometimes . . . I . . .
can’t, and I . . . I’m sorry.”

It was not supposed to be like this. She had, after
all, operated quite successfully in this manner previously, having
deployed it upon her half sibling to ensure his friendship. So more
effective than confessing the pathetic loneliness that had driven
her to seek him out. And, in this case, she had simply wanted to be
left alone. To bury her own vulnerability safely beneath someone
else’s. Not to make Lord Mercury as entirely wretched and helpless
as she was.

She felt like crying again, but she managed to
steady her voice. “No, it is I who am sorry. I should never have
said such a thing. It was reprehensible of me.”

He lifted those extraordinary eyes to hers, and she
had never seen a look so despairing and so empty. “But it’s true. I
am exactly what you say. You would be right to despise me.”

She was ill equipped to offer comfort. She had never
been close enough to anyone who required it. “Nonsense,” she said
bracingly. “If I wanted to despise you, I could find a far better
reason than sodomy.”

He cringed from the word as though it hurt him. But
otherwise he was silent, pressed against her skirts. She had always
believed him to be unassailable, a man with everything—beauty,
birth, fortune. She had envied him, even hated him a little bit.
When, in truth, he was just as hurt and lost and alone as she
was.

She slid her fingers lightly into his hair. It was
so soft, and full of colours, like the forest where she had lain
with Jones. “Please forgive me,” she whispered. “I was embarrassed
that you saw me like this, and I wanted to embarrass you back. That
was all. It was cruel of me. Childish.”

For a long time, he did not answer. And then, “I’m
so tired. I’m so tired of being frightened.”

Rosamond was far more shocked by that than by any
understanding of what Lord Mercury might have done with Anstruther
Jones. She did not know men even had the capacity to be frightened.
But now she realised just how foolish it was to believe such a
thing. Her father feared anything that challenged his understanding
of the world. Jones feared being alone. And Lord Mercury feared
himself. Feared love.

“I’m frightened too,” she said. “I’m frightened of
being powerless. I’m frightened of marrying a man who has no
interest in me at all. I’m frightened of nobody ever having any
interest in me.”

Lord Mercury sat back on his heels, oily light
sliding over the arch of his cheekbones and gilding his eyelashes.
“You should marry Jones.”

Another thought made suddenly real and cast into the
world.

She nodded. “I know. But . . . but I am not like
him. I am too afraid of what people will think and say. And, before
you chastise me for my cowardice, you are not with him either,
though you could be, and far more easily than I.”

He brushed the last traces of moisture from his
eyes. “Do you really think society looks so kindly upon
catamites?”

“I can see—” she tried to smile, but it felt cracked
at the edges “—there is little to be gained from comparing our
lots. I suppose what I can’t understand is why . . . why we care so
much.”

“Because this is what we know. And, without it,
there is nothing.” He rose gracefully, composed once more, all that
careful refinement snapping back into place like armour. Plucking a
handkerchief from an interior pocket, he dropped it into her lap.
“Your secrets are safe with me. Do what you will with mine.”

And, with that, he was gone. And she was alone.

Lord Mercury was sleepless that night. Full of
longings that pierced him like arrows. He told himself it was
physical, merely physical, easily conquered with forbearance and
resolve. And perhaps a vulgar release bestowed by his own hand. But
he might as well have been composed of air, so little satisfaction
could he derive from the touch of self to self.

He abandoned all hope of rest. Rose, dressed in his
plainest clothes. Found his way through the servant’s quarters,
down the back stairs, and into the night. The fog crept out of the
shadows, an old friend to conceal his sins. He took a horseless
carriage to the docks. To a tavern he knew, where men sought each
other and came together in the greasy darkness of the surrounding
alleyways.

He caught the eye of a young soldier. Ended up
outside, on his knees. A stranger’s hands and a stranger’s voice—“I
say, do you mind awfully?”—and a stranger’s prick in his mouth.

It was everything it should have been—there would
have been a time, not so very long ago, when Lord Mercury would
have remembered it with shame-struck pleasure—but tonight it could
not even touch the hollow places inside him.

He walked slowly away, looking for another carriage
to bear him home. The fog was deeper here, dust-thickened from the
factories. It had swallowed both the sky and the horizon, leaving
only a handful of the world behind, but he knew his way well
enough.

And then he heard footsteps behind him.

Most likely it was nothing. There was little in his
garb or demeanour to tempt an opportunistic thief. A quick glance
over his shoulder revealed the shapes of two men.

He quickened his pace, and their pace quickened
also.

His heart jumped, fear warring with something like
embarrassment. How foolish he was going to feel when he looked back
on this later, allowing two strangers whose path had briefly
accorded with his own, to alarm him so.

He thought about running. Away from the waterfront
and the warehouses, he would be more likely to find a cab. There
might even be people around, although he knew well enough, given
his own proclivities, it was hardly a respectable hour to be
abroad. But, then again, if he ran, they might chase him simply
because his behaviour suggested he was worth pursuing.

He walked a little faster still, sweat gathering
under his collar and his arms. He had just resolved to damn his
pride and this uncertainty and flee, whatever the consequences,
when a man in a red coat stepped directly into his path. A solider,
he thought dazedly, from the same regiment as the fellow he had
just—

A fist slammed into his stomach.

Shock. Then pain. It felt like he was dying. As if
he might never breathe again.

A shove, and he was on his hands and knees on the
ground.