There Will Be Phlogiston (16 page)

However, it left both Jones and Arkady dreamy and
mellow, and they sat awhile by the fire Jones had lit for them,
watching the shadows jump upon the wainscoting, and the flames
dance in ribbons of scarlet and gold. Jones lay with his head in
her lap, and Arkady tucked against her side, as he unpicked all her
ringlets and smoothed out her tresses, with far more care than she
had ever shown them.

Rosamond found herself wishing she had some female
friends so she could share these marvellous discoveries with them.
The secret to happiness
, she would say, sipping her tea
delicately,
is a generous-hearted, sexually amphibious man who
desires you, and a confirmed sodomite who admires your
hair.

They swapped secrets softly in the firelight. Old
hurts and unexpected joys, the dreams they had once feared to
dream, the hopes they told themselves were foolish, pieces of the
lost times of their lives. Though, eventually, grey seeped into the
darkness and the embers faded, and they grew frivolous again. And
why shouldn’t they? The night was theirs.

In the billiard room—another male mystery that
turned out to be disappointingly banal in reality (it was just a
room, for heaven’s sake; why the drama?)—they taught Rosamond how
to play. It was clearly Arkady’s game, Jones muttering with every
miscue that there wasn’t much call for billiard tables in the sky,
but Rosamond discovered she could compensate for lack of skill,
against Jones at least, by taking her shots in a particular
fashion. Jones would, for some reason, get very distracted. Perhaps
it had something to do with the way the position of her elbows
squished her bosoms together?

Not to be outdone, Arkady then started bending
rather suggestively over the table, thrusting
his—admittedly—beautifully shaped buttocks skywards in a manner she
presumed would be very tempting for a man of Anstruther Jones’s
inclinations.

Jones’s took his turn, and sent the cue ball
spinning nowhere.

And Arkady stood there smirking, his weight resting
on one leg in a manner that shamelessly emphasised the masculine
curves and angles of his body.

This would never do! Rosamond scowled at him,
largely in jest, but a little bit not. Fuck billiards. This was a
different game entirely, and while she instinctively recognised
there could (and should) be no winner, nor loser, she wanted to
play it well. She prowled around the table, as if looking for the
best possible angle for her shot, uttering impatient little noises
as her skirts got in her way.

She put her hands on her hips, and pouted. “This
isn’t fair. I am hampered in ways you gentlemen are not.”

“Well, you should have thought of that,” returned
Arkady, as he chalked his cue, “before you decided to be a
woman.”

“Oh please, it is not my sex which hampers me,
merely my garments. Jones, my dear, would you please help me remove
them?”

He gave a bow. “Anything to oblige a lady.”

His skills had not improved since the day in the
woods at Ashworth, which was fortunate indeed because she did not
like to think of him having partaken of activities that would have
given him practice at it. Arkady, perhaps because he was a man, or
perhaps because he was simply Arkady, did not trouble her, but if
any woman was going be undressed by Anstruther Jones, it was going
to be her.

“These buttons were made by mice,” he muttered,
fingers working somewhere down her spine.

Arkady helped in the end—though it did not serve his
cause—and peeled her out of her ball gown and petticoats. He nudged
Jones out of the way, and unfastened her crinoline cage. She
stepped out of it, feeling at once frighteningly exposed and
wondrously free. It was hard to believe that, when she had awoken,
today had seemed like any other day—and yet here she was, at three
in the morning, partially undressed in a billiard room, in front of
two men. Truly, nothing would ever be the same again. Certainly she
wouldn’t.

Jones shook his head at the pile of steel and silk.
“I had no idea all you ladies were running about in armour. We
should have sent you against those Russian guns, not the Light
Brigade.”

“What do women wear in the sky?” she asked.

“Whatever they want. Trousers mostly. Unless they’re
whores.”

Rosamond looked down her legs. “Maybe I shall wear
trousers sometimes.” Jones, it turned out, was also looking at her
legs. And other parts of her. She still had her shoes and stockings
and drawers and corset and chemise. But the heat in his eyes made
her feel naked, and she was very glad she had chosen a particularly
lacy set of unmentionables with ribbons at the knees. “Sir.” She
rapped on the edge of the billiard table to get his attention. “My
face is up here.”

“Aye, but I’ve already seen your face.”

She knew she was blushing, the warmth of it
spreading and tingling through her whole body, gathering with
particular intensity in certain places. “Well, I hope you enjoy the
view.”

She wriggled into position, leaned far over the
table and managed a very neat cannon, even if she said so
herself.

“Hmm.” Arkady tilted his head, as if considering the
table. “You know, I do believe my coat is rather hindering my range
of motion.”

He stripped it off with a flourish. She did not
think he looked quite as impressive in his shirt sleeves as Jones,
but then she did not want him in the same way she wanted Jones. His
body was built quite differently, without the raw power, but, she
could gladly concede, no less pleasingly. He was all clean, smooth
lines, a graceful cat of a man, lightly muscled and elegant.

He rolled his shoulders. “And my waistcoat.” That
came off too, more carefully than the coat. “And, for that matter,
my shirt.” He whisked it over his head, and Jones made a low,
hungry noise at the back of his throat.

And Arkady deserved to have that noise because he
was truly exquisite, even with the bruises that cast angry shadows
across his body. Jones, she recalled, was amply and excitingly
befurred, but Arkady was like some perfect sculpture, a dream of
male beauty Pygmalion might have carved had his tastes run
otherwise. The hair that curled upon his forearms, and formed a
wicked little arrow down his abdomen, glinted gold and mahogany and
russet red in the flickering gaslight.

Jones dropped his cue and held his hands up in a
gesture of surrender. “I’ve lost. Or won. I really don’t care.”

Arkady laughed and bowed to Rosamond. “Well played,
my lady.”

“And to you, my lord.” She dropped him a curtsey.
“How do we celebrate such a victory?”

“We go to bed,” said Jones, decidedly.

It was probably already close to dawn, so that
seemed like a very sensible notion, but as they climbed the
stairs—Rosamond in her drawers, Arkady without his shirt, Jones
walking with visible discomfort—an odd, slightly tense silence
settled over them. She was not quite sure what had changed, but
perhaps nothing had—it was simply that certain things had become
undeniable, and certain questions had to be asked.

“This . . . this is not normal, is it?” she blurted
out.

Arkady paused, one hand resting lightly on the
banister. “It’s not usual.”

“Spare me the semantics. I am uncertain how it is
arranged when a lady retires with only one gentleman, let alone two
of them. Do we go separately, or all together? What are our roles?
Is there to be a schedule of occupancy? And what if we wish to
negotiate times or activities or—”

“Why don’t we work it out?” Jones swept her into his
arms like the barbarian he was.

She thought about protesting, just on principle, but
quickly decided that would be a silly principle because it was
rather thrilling to be carried about as though she were the heroine
in a melodrama. Although she supposed if she were a proper heroine,
she would have fainted by now, rather than be enthusiastically
participating in her own debauchery. But that, she thought, as she
tucked her head against Jones’s chest, his heart thudding beneath
her cheek, was a flaw in heroines, not a flaw in her.

She had never been in a gentleman’s bedroom before,
but as it turned out, they slept in much the same manner as women,
if under fewer frills. There was, however, something rather
extravagant about Arkady’s bed with its gleaming, intricate
carvings, and the lavish hangings in burgundy velvet and gold. It
made her a little sad for him, imagining him every night, restless
and alone in all that space and grandeur.

“You had better help me with my stays,” she said, as
Jones lowered her onto the pillows. “Or I may suffocate.”

It took both of them, for Jones was once again
inept, but it felt so good to be out of her corset. She stretched
her arms above her head, filled her lungs to their capacity, and
let the luxury of being able to move freely rush all the way
through her, until she felt even her toes uncurling.

Jones closed a hand around one of her ankles. Drew
it slowly upwards over her stocking-covered calf, a sweet-rough
drag of heat and pressure, at once arousing and comforting. Arkady
sprawled out next to her on his stomach, watching her lazily, his
lips curled into a half smile. She had always thought his eyes
quite cold in their beauty, too bright, too perfect, like glass,
but in this light they were mossy-dark, and soft with something she
thought might be contentment.

All her half-formed fears fled. Fuck normal. She
wanted this, exactly as it was, a secret shared between three
people who had always been alone. It was hard to believe she had
ever thought Lord Mercury remote. She had dismissed him as a
perfect gentleman, a distant star, but he was her Arkady now, and
Jones’s. She had held his hand, and seen him smile, and shown
him—on more than one occasion—the worst of her. And in return, he
had dried her tears, and played with her hair, made her feel
beautiful, and trusted her with who he was.

Made brave by the steady warmth of Jones’s hand upon
her, she reached out and traced a careful path down the bridge of
Arkady’s nose. He did not flinch, only lightly kissed her finger as
it passed his lips. His mouth did not feel like Jones’s mouth, but
she could not have articulated why or how it was different. Perhaps
it was simply because he did not stir her in the same way, though
it pleased her to touch him, and be touched in return.

He quirked a brow at her. “I’ve never had a woman in
my bed before.”

“Does it meet your expectations?”

“It far surpasses them. I’ve never been able imagine
a situation in which it wouldn’t have been miserable for both of
us.”

“You’re not miserable now?”

“No, I’m . . . oh God . . .” He pressed suddenly
into her arms, trembling. “I think I’m happy.”

Rosamond held him, as tight as she could, for she
knew his bewilderment and his trepidation, and then Jones let her
go, crawled up the bed, and enfolded both of them. After a moment
or two, Arkady pulled free and rolled onto his back, looking up at
Jones with such naked longing that Rosamond felt a little
breathless for both of them. With an unsteady hand, he caressed the
side of Jones’s face, and the hair-shadowed jaw that Rosamond found
so terribly vulgar and appealing.

“Please,” he said. “I need you to kiss me. Please,
oh please, will you—”

Jones’s mouth came down on his.

Needless to say,
witness two men kissing
was
also on Rosamond’s list of Things Not Previously Experienced, along
with brandy and billiards, so she lacked sources of comparison, but
it indisputably seemed like a highly satisfying endeavour for both
parties. She was not at a good angle to see their faces, but the
way their bodies moved together, Jones falling into the cradle of
Arkady’s opening thighs, and the intermingling sounds they made,
soft gasps and helpless moans, communicated a mutuality of pleasure
in a manner that required no further explication.

She was not entirely sure what she might have
expected. She had been taught that it was a man’s character to
conquer and a woman’s to yield, but her own experiences with Jones
had already proven this to be arrant nonsense. Nevertheless, since
men were supposed to be creatures of flesh rather than creatures of
spirit, she wondered if the way they kissed each other would be
different, perhaps even a little brutish.

But it was not like that at all. There was nothing
in it of aggression or subjugation. It was an effortless union,
simply a lover’s kiss, an exchange between equals, like their
dancing. Just as lovely to behold. What shook her, as it turned
out, was not the fact they were two men, but how vulnerable they
were to each other when they came together in pleasure. How much
power you granted another person when you let your body tell them
things as frightening and wonderful as
I need, I want, I
love.

She had felt something similar that day in the
woods. And she could see it now in the way Arkady’s fingers were
curled too tightly in Jones’s hair, in the straining of the muscles
down Jones’s back, in the shuddering curve of Arkady’s naked
throat, and in the sweat that gleamed at Jones’s brow. All their
truths made manifest in the desperate entangling of their
interlocked bodies.

Jones pulled back, breathing hard, lips kiss-dark
and slightly swollen. “Arkady, oh my Arkady, you don’t need to ask
me for anything.”

“But I want to. I want to ask you for
everything.”

They kissed again, softly this time, a simple touch
of mouths. “It’s already yours.”

“That’s why I am not afraid to ask.”

There was some current between, at that moment, that
Rosamond could not entirely understand, but she did not need to.
She understood enough, and anything else would have felt like
imposition.

Arkady tipped his head back to look at her. “Are you
shocked? That I would seek this?”