Read A Private Gentleman Online
Authors: Heidi Cullinan
chest hurt. He tried to make himself breathe. “No, if I don’t do it right now, I’ll
frighten myself out of it again.” His exhale was a shudder, but he looked Albert
in the eye. “I have to tell you. I have to tell you who it was who first bought me
when I was a boy.”
Tenderness turned to surprise and then to a hard sort of pleasure that
vanished quickly beneath steadiness. “Of c-course,” Albert said, his voice
soothing and strong even with the small hiccough. “I am listening.”
“You won’t—” Michael had to stop. His throat was so thick he couldn’t go
on. When he swallowed, his vision swam. “You won’t like it,” he whispered, a
tear sliding down his cheek.
Albert caught the tear and cupped the side of Michael’s face tenderly. “Shh.
It’s all r-right. T-Tell me, and I will help you.”
Michael shut his eyes tight. He could barely breathe. “I don’t w-want to tell
you.”
“Then don’t.” Albert’s touches were so strong, so sure. Michael wanted to
crawl into that strong, sure hand. He nearly died when it pulled away, only to
die all over again when the hand came back bare to press warm skin against his
damp cheek. “Don’t tell me if it b-brings you pain.”
“I have to.” Michael turned into his palm, nuzzling it. “Or Rodger will.”
Anger rippled through Albert’s body, making him taut. Michael sighed, the
sound half-sob, and kissed the palm that cradled him. “No. He’s right. I need to
tell you. You’ll see why, when I do. I just—” This time the sob caught him at the
throat and in his gut at the same time. “I don’t want you to hate me,” he
whispered.
Now he was enfolded in strong arms, pressed against Albert’s chest. He
smelled of starch and sweat and wind and earth. Albert kissed the top of
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Michael’s head, the gesture hard and desperate. “I would n-never hate you.”
When this made another sob escape Michael, Albert only drew him closer,
rocking him back and forth like a babe. “T-Tell me, love, so I m-may put your m-
mind at ease.” He stroked Michael’s back, his halting words and sure touches a
soothing litany. “Just t-tell me. G-Give me his n-name. I w-will still l-love you. N-
No m-matter the name.”
Over and over he caressed and crooned, lulling Michael. It made him feel
soft. Though he knew it could not be so, not truly, it made him feel safe.
Eventually it made him feel safe enough to speak.
“You kn-know him,” he whispered at last.
“It’s all r-r-ight,” Albert promised. “Whoever he is, he is n-nothing to me
compared to you.”
I hope so. Oh, I hope so, darling Albert.
He swallowed another sob and plunged on. “He is very close to you.”
“It’s all r-right.” Albert kept stroking.
It was as if Michael were back at the train station, the steam whistles all
blowing at once inside his head. He let the sound and Albert’s touch drown out
the world. “He— His name—” He choked on bile and had to start again. “He—
He— He—” He shut his eyes tight. Oh, he couldn’t do it.
“Just tell me,” Albert whispered.
The truth sat on his tongue, and Michael willed it out. “He is—”
The firm rapping on the door to Albert’s apartments stopped Michael’s
words and breath. Around him, Albert startled as well. The sound came once
more, loud and hard and angry.
“George Albert, this is your father. I demand you open this door at once, or I
shall break it down.”
“—your father.”
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The words tumbled out, both an echo and a damnation. As soon as they
were out, the full reality of it hit Michael squarely in the center of his chest. He
went very, very still.
Albert sighed heavily. “It’s all r-right. It’s just my father.” He let go of
Michael reluctantly, kissing the side of his face. “I’ll be back.”
As Albert left, the room went cold. Colder than it could be with all the
heaters, and yet cold it was to him. Michael felt as if he had been thrown
headfirst into the Thames in January.
He was here.
Daventry was here.
With a soft, terrified cry, Michael fell back against the shelves and inched
away until he met the wall—the outside wall, damp and cold. He slid down it
until he hit the floor, where he curled tight against himself as the terror took him
over.
He’s here. He’s found you at last. He told you he’d have you again, didn’t he? He’s
haunted your dreams, and now he’s here. He’ll tell Albert about you, and then he’ll take
you away, and he’ll have you. He told you, he told you, he told you—
“No!” he cried, burying his face into the wall. He was shaking so hard his
teeth were chattering. “No—no, no, no, no, no!”
But it didn’t matter. Even through the terror Michael could hear the voice.
His
voice, low and smooth and elegant and terrible, triggering all the memories Michael had put so carefully away, making him forget himself and remember
things he had never wanted to know again, of how those hands had held him
down, of how they had invaded him, of how they had coaxed and teased him as
that voice droned on, until his own body betrayed him, and the voice laughed,
echoing on and on and on—
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“No, no, no!” he cried in a broken whisper, but he knew it was pointless, that
it was already over, and he only waited, shivering and sobbing quietly, for the
hell to begin.
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Chapter Thirteen
Something dark and terrible stalked the back of Wes’s mind.
His father stood in the middle of his sitting room, lip curled in disgust as he
berated Wes for not reading his note, saying he’d convinced his merchant friend
to meet Wes again and wanted to set up a new meeting, but Wes hardly heard a
word he said. Something was wrong. He felt sick and strange inside, and the
worst part of it was that he knew part of him knew why. But whatever it was, it
was so nasty that this part of him had gone to hide inside the deepest garden of
his soul.
As his father droned on, the darkness hunted, unearthing every corner,
determined that the truth would come out. Darkness always slithered inside him
when he took opium, especially the drops straight like that, especially so many,
but this was different. Normally opium was like a great blanket. It didn’t
separate him from the fear, not exactly, but he felt…more aware, as it were, of his
parts. He could sense the frightened part of him—and most importantly of all, he
could calm it. This was key. When he was lucid, he couldn’t help this part of
himself, for it was far, far too loud, far too strong. The opium let it gentle, and he could talk to it, tell it that nothing bad would happen, and it would listen.
He could see other parts too. He could see the intelligent part of himself,
always working in the background, like a clerk sorting papers. He could hear it
so much more clearly with the opium, but he’d learned long ago that the amount
it took to calm the nervous one turned the intelligent one’s language into mush.
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So he could see his clever self, but it churned out reams of nonsense and nothing
more.
Tonight was different. Everything about this moment was wrong. It wasn’t a
comforting dark inside him, clawing at him as he listened to his father, as
Michael hid in his lavatory. It was a yawing, hollow darkness that no opiate
could touch, not without killing him first. It was a terrible truth. Instead of
comforting him, all the opiate did was make him more aware that just as one part
of him was determined to lift the veil, another part was desperate to keep its eyes
firmly closed.
I don’t want to tell you,
Michael’s voice whispered, remembered in Wes’s
mind.
“I needed you there,” his father all but snarled. “One simple thing. You had
hardly to speak. You only needed to be there. Your only use, and you could not
give me even this.”
You won’t like it.
“I heard you were on the train. With a man. Good God, but I hope he was
only a fellow plant idiot and not what I fear him to be.”
I don’t want you to hate me.
“Is that what you have sunk to now? Flaunting your perversity in public? It’s
bad enough you won’t marry, not even the desperate souls who would have
someone as damaged as you. But to carry on an affair? Are you this stupid, boy,
that you don’t even know to conduct such things in private? Must I arrange even
this for you—your perverted pleasure?”
You know him. You are very close to him.
A thought closed its circle in Wes’s mind. Horrible. Terrible. Impossible.
“No,” he whispered, but the darkness kept coming.
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“Thank God for that.” Daventry regarded him with open disgust. “I have
rued the day you might fancy yourself in love with one of your perverted
bedmates. That would be your way. I promise you, there will be pain if it comes
to that. You may be a bugger, but you are a Daventry. Use who you must, but no
love. They’ll only blackmail you, and by extension me. And then things will get
messy, which you won’t care for either.”
I need to tell you. You’ll see why, when I do.
I don’t want you to hate me.
Sick. Wes was going to be sick. No, this was just his fancy—no,
no
, he was
wrong. But God in heaven help him, as he stared at his father, as he thought of
Michael’s fear, he could think of nothing else to inspire it.
He is—
He is—
He is—
“No,” Wes burst out, stopping his own inner whispers. “No. You w-w-
would never d-d-do that. You would n-n-n-never h-hurt someone l-l-like that.”
His father laughed in his face. “You fool. You simpering nancy boy. I w-w-
w-would, and I have, and I will again.”
Wes nearly vomited.
He doesn’t know what you’re thinking. He thinks you’re
speaking of his disposing of your paramours.
The reminder did nothing to push back the terror. “But n-n-not a ch-child. You w-would n-n-never h-h-hurt a child.”
Too late he realized this was even worse—now his father would think he
favored boys. He tried to correct himself, but his stammer swallowed him whole,
and he stood paralyzed.
Which was why as his father’s face went blank—oh-so-carefully blank—and
he stilled, Wes saw it all. And he saw, too, the hint of surprise and—just a shade,
but it was there—approval.
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“Well,” Daventry said at last. “If that’s the way of it, you must take great,
great
care.”
No!
Wes wanted to shout.
No, no, no, no, no!
But he had never been more mute than he was now. Mute and frozen, and this time when the whispers
began, he could not stop them, could not turn away.
He is your father.
Daventry was watching him with new eyes. Not admiration, not exactly, but
it was sickeningly close. “You surprise me, son. You have more depth than I
thought.”
Wes wished he could vomit on him. He couldn’t even manage a single
sound, but inside he was screaming.
Not like that. I don’t have depth like that.
His father retrieved his hat from a side table. “On that note, I shall leave you.
But come by the house soon, and we will…discuss things. Including how you
will make it up to me for missing this party.”
The Marquess of Daventry placed his hat upon his head and smiled at Wes.
He let himself out the door, leaving his son to stand there swimming in horror as
his footsteps disappeared down the hall.
He wasn’t sure when, exactly, he began to move. All he knew was that he
found himself in the doorway of the lavatory, clutching tight to something in his
hand. On the other side of the room, Michael was curled into a ball between two
pots of empty soil, a small, trembling splash of blue and pale yellow. When Wes
went to him, Michael cried out and shrank into the shadows.
Wes’s heart cleaved in two. “M-M-Michael,” he whispered.
Michael tucked tighter into himself, but as he shifted, Wes could see his face.
It was pale and streaked with tears. “I can’t. I can’t. I can’t.”
He murmured the words like a litany. He was lost in panic, in fear—a place
Wes knew too well. And it was then Wes realized what he had in his hand,
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recognizing it by feel but confirming it with a glance: the bottle of laudanum
drops.
Swallowing the sea inside himself, he uncapped the bottle and smeared a
drop on his finger. Gently, carefully, he rubbed the droplet onto Michael’s
trembling lips. Michael drew back, startled, but it didn’t matter. As he tucked his
lip into his mouth, the opiate went too. He stilled somewhat almost immediately,
though most of that was from surprise.