There Will Be Phlogiston (15 page)

“I do not want your protection.” She glared up at
him, hating his handsome face and his dull eyes, and yanked the
ring from her finger. It was rather a pleasure to cast that banal
little solitaire at his feet. “I do not want anything from
you.”

Then she swept away from him, past Lord Copper and
across the ballroom to where Anstruther Jones was standing with
Lord Mercury—still hand in hand, their fingers tightly
intertwined—at the centre of an unyielding crowd. Jones seemed as
dauntless as ever—perhaps he was preparing to fight his way to
freedom, or swing from a chandelier—but Lord Mercury was as pale as
ice, trembling very faintly.

She could hardly blame him. She felt caught
somewhere between exhilaration and terror herself. “Mr. Jones, do
you want to dance?”

Rosamond actually thought she heard the
flump
as a nearby lady hit the floor in a dead faint. Whispers rushed
away from her:
what did she say, what did she say, whatshesay
whatshesay.

He smiled. “Always.”

She glanced between the two men, suddenly uncertain.
She had meant to come to their aid, but perhaps she had only made
the situation worse. What would happen to Lord Mercury if Jones
came with her? “If . . . if you are not otherwise engaged.”

Lord Mercury pressed a hand extravagantly to his
heart. “I would not dance twice in a row with the same gentleman.
What do you take me for?”

Rosamond laughed. She couldn’t help herself.

It all seemed so simple suddenly, and everything
else so silly. It was
fun
when you didn’t have to care about
anything but the things—no, the people who really mattered.

Footsteps sounded behind them, and she spun round,
expecting the worst. Lord Copper, perhaps, with a riding crop. The
marquess come to publicly humiliate her. Her father, his expression
dark with disappointment.

But it was Lady Mildred, ill attired as ever in tan
and lavender taffeta. She gave a high-pitched giggle that, as
little as Rosamond thought of her, was not the sort of sound she
would have expected her to make. Lady Mildred was many things that
were annoying, but stupid was not one of them. “Well,” she
tittered, “aren’t we having a topsy-turvy evening. How droll.” She
drew in a shaky breath. “Lord Mercury, will you do me the honour of
dancing with me?”

He offered his hand at once, his eyes full of
gratitude. “It would be my pleasure.”

Lady Mildred turned, her expression so marvellously
vacuous that Rosamond had to repress a flare of admiration. “Why,
Mama, whatever has happened to the music? Was there not to be a
mazurka after the waltz?”

It was a bold gamble. And it was met by the briefest
of hesitations. Rosamond could not help but wonder what her own
parents would have done. Her mother would have probably been too
laudanum-soaked to notice. And her father . . . She did not dare to
finish the thought, too afraid she knew the answer.

But Lady Copper gave a sickly smile and clapped her
hands, the sound cracking through the ballroom like a gunshot.
“Play.”

The orchestra lurched into action. Lady Copper
seized her husband by the elbow and practically dragged him onto
the dance floor. Other couples began to join them, slowly at first,
but then with increasing urgency. A slightly desperate air of
normalcy settled over the ball. A hastily transacted social
covenant, allowing everyone to pretend that nothing out of the
ordinary had happened tonight. Certainly not that two sodomites and
two seventeen-year-old girls had stood in flagrant defiance of
everything society held to be right and proper and natural, and
that they had done so without causing the sky to fall or the earth
to crack.

Even so, Rosamond knew that while they might be
willing to ignore what had just happened, they would not forget it.
And nor would they forgive. She was dancing on the tatters of her
reputation. But she was dancing with Anstruther Jones, and it was
the closest thing to magic she had ever known. Even if the mazurka
could not have suited him less. His waltzing made up what it lacked
in elegance with a certain . . . masculine vigour. But, unlike Lord
Mercury who was lithe and as light on his feet as a cat in the
moonlight, Jones was simply not built for . . . well . . . for
hopping.

Rosamond could barely contain her giggles. She was
sure it should have felt wrong to be laughing. She had, after all,
abandoned every precept she had ever been taught. Thrown away every
hope of a respectable future. She didn’t even know what was going
to happen to her when the dance was done. It would have been more
sensible to weep.

But she didn’t. She laughed, and Jones smiled down
at her, and nothing about anything felt wrong.

As it turned out, what she did next required no
thought at all. It was simply the action of tucking her hand into
the crook of Jones’s elbow, and waiting for Lord Mercury to take
his other arm. Which he did, a few moments later, having bid a soft
farewell to his dancing partner. Despite her resolution to think
better of Lady Mildred, Rosamond permitted herself the slightly
spiteful reflection that the other girl would likely keep the glove
Lord Mercury had kissed, pressed as a cherished memento between the
pages of a romantic novel.

“I’m afraid,” murmured Lord Mercury, “I have quite
ruined any hope of a respectable future for either of you. What do
we do now?”

Jones began to walk them away from the ballroom.
People drew back as they came near, whispered behind their fans, or
stared at them in mingled curiosity and dismay. “We go home,” he
said.

Rosamond squeezed his arm in sheer glee. Was this
all one had to do to be happy—choose, and act, and not look
back?

But in the entrance hall, her mother was waiting,
frail as a ghost in rose silk, locked inside her beauty like a
music box without a key, and all of Rosamond’s courage crumbled.
She was a little girl again, when her mother was perfect, and her
father was wondrous, and he used to kiss her hands and laugh and
fill her skirts with petals. Before Lord Wolfram had been sent to
fight a trade war halfway across the world. Before Lady Wolfram’s
headaches and the laudanum. Before Rosamond knew Gaslight
afternoons were grey, not gold, and she had learned to hate the
scent of roses.

“I . . . oh, Mother . . . I’m sorry . . . I’m so
sorry. I had to. I couldn’t—”

“Shhh.” Lady Wolfram put a finger to her lips. She
was so pale, her skin seemed almost translucent. She came towards
them, soundless as a feather, and kissed Rosamond on the forehead.
The lightest brush of flesh and breath. “Be happy, my
daughter.”

She pressed something hard and cold into Rosamond’s
palm, turned, and slipped into the night.

Nobody saw her again.

Safely in Lord Mercury’s carriage, Rosamond opened
her hand. It was a ring. Her mother’s wedding ring. Rose gold,
decorated with a pattern of entwined flowers. She held it up to the
window and, by the uncertain flicker of the gaslights, read the
words engraved on the inside:
my luve’s like a red red
rose.

Then she cried, not so much for herself, but for two
lovers who had lost each other long ago, and two men took turns
holding her.

By the time they arrived at Lord Mercury’s grand but
clearly neglected townhouse, Rosamond was out of tears. And she was
holding his hand, not Jones’s, as a housemaid let them inside.

“My butler left,” he explained. “Because I’m a
pervert.”

“Oh, my lord—” Rosamond put a wrist to her brow
“—one can overlook a little sodomy between friends, but this is
beyond the pale.”

His fingers tightened around hers. “Arkady.”

“J-Jones calls me Ros.”

She slid a sideways glance at him. It seemed
slightly safer, somehow, than looking at Jones. Was it peculiar, or
perfectly natural, to have more in common with him, than the man
she loved? Or perhaps it was that—loving Anstruther Jones, and
being loved by him—that truly bound them. “I was tired of being
frightened too,” she whispered.

“Fear is what it is,” said Jones. “It’s what you do
that matters.” He stepped close, cupping the edge of Lord Mercury’s
jaw, and Rosamond felt the touch, and the shiver that ran through
Arkady as he turned his face blindly into the caress.

“But I’ve been such a coward. All these years.”

“Don’t say that. It’s easy to be brave when you’ve
nothing to lose.”

“And what,” Arkady asked softly, “of your
losses?”

“I . . .” Jones’s voice caught, turned rough at the
edges. “I have everything I’ve ever wanted.”

It was the oddest moment. Rosamond wasn’t sure how
it came about, but the next thing she knew, Anstruther Jones was on
his knees on the hall floor and she had her arms tight around him,
and so did Arkady, and it was hard to tell who was holding whom in
that sweet muddle of warmth. And all Rosamond could think was how
miraculous it was that this strong, lonely man was . . .
theirs
. And how utterly right it felt to be there, with both
of them: Jones, whom she loved, and Arkady, whom she
understood.

Jones’s mouth moved against her skin as he spoke.
“Ambition can be a hungry feeling. It’s served me well, made me
what I am, given me what I have, but I hope I don’t need it
again.”

“Indeed no.” Rosamond grinned. “Your ambitions are
to be limited to be satisfying what I believe may turn out be my
insatiable sexual appetites and keeping me in the manner to which I
intend to grow accustomed.”

“I, too,” added Arkady, “will require sexual
satisfaction. And also sunrises. And also flowers.”

“And—” Jones’s partially muffled laughter made his
body shake “—what do I get out of this?”

“All my love,” said Arkady. “All the happiness I can
give you.”

“And mine,” said Rosamond. “Though I do not think I
am very good at loving people, for I am selfish and greedy and have
previously found blackmail superior to friendship. But all my
governesses have noted what a quick and agile mind I have, so I
believe I . . . can . . . I will learn.”

“You do all right.” Jones’s fingers stirred the
little hairs at the back of her neck, making her shiver with
silver-bright pleasure.

Arkady’s eyes gleamed mischievously at her as he
peeped over Jones’s shoulder. “Just don’t blackmail me again.”

She sorted through their hands until she found the
one that was clutching his—so different to Jones’s, with its
tapering fingers and butter-smooth skin. She gave it a squeeze. “I
promise.”

“I’m not sure you could, in any case. The whole of
Gaslight probably knows more about my proclivities than I do.” He
pressed a light kiss to Jones’s brow. “Which is something I very
much desire to correct.”

Rosamond nodded. “I have had insufficient
opportunity to develop proclivities.”

“I can already think of one we share.”

“Yes,” said Jones, sounding remarkably flustered for
the man who had taught them pleasure, “you’re both depraved.”

“Oh—” Rosamond pulled back a little to meet his eyes
“—I like the sound of that.”

There was a slash of red across the crest of his
cheekbones, and she realised suddenly that he was almost shy, not
of depravity as he had suggested, but love. That while he gave it
without hesitation, he was as inexperienced as any of them in
receiving it. “I . . . I can’t . . . I don’t ask questions about
good fortune but . . . thank you. For whatever this is.”

“I’m not sure, having little knowledge of such
matters but—” she let go of Arkady and pulled Jones into an bold,
open-mouthed kiss that made him shudder and groan, his body
stirring in interesting ways “—I think what it is . . . or perhaps
may come to be . . . is family.”

One of Arkady’s arms curved protectively over
Jones’s shoulder. “You know, I keep thinking of that conversation
we had—the, ah, the one where you . . . the one where I said that
without what we knew, we were left with nothing.”

“I remember.”

“Well, I was wrong.” He smiled at her, curling into
them both. “We have each other.”

They were all a little silly after that. It was some
giddy combination of relief and release, tinged—for Rosamond, at
least—with a faint sense of unreality. She half feared she was
going to wake up her in own bed, and discover this was nothing more
than some kind of torrid, highly specific fever-dream. Although
nothing of her life and temperament to date suggested that even her
most aspirational fantasies would have inclined her to harbour
designs on the possession of not merely one man, but two.

They crept through the darkened rooms of Lord
Mercury’s house, holding hands and giggling. They smoked Jones’s
cheroots on the overgrown terraces, Rosamond faring far better than
Arkady, who choked on the bitter smoke. In the bare-shelved
library, they drank Arkady’s finest brandy straight from his last
crystal decanter. And in this Rosamond did not excel, for the stuff
tasted horrible, harsh and fiery. It had been her general
experience that men preferred to keep the best things for
themselves, but in this case, that made no sense at all.