Almost a Gentleman (6 page)

"And I take it he's to be trusted with one's silly secrets—those absurd tastes and habits, don't you know, that make life bearable," she'd murmured, nipping the card through her long fingers. Her voice sounded offhanded enough, she thought, if a bit distracted.

"Make life bearable, that's a good one, Phizz. Oh, yes, he's most trustworthy, entirely discreet. Well, he wouldn't have any custom if he couldn't keep a secret, would he?"

Still, it had taken her some months to summon the courage to visit the address listed on the card. The venue proved unexceptional; most of the building's occupants seemed to be solicitors. And Talbot did seem trustworthy, if unpleasant. He'd reacted to Phoebe's terse disclosure of her sex with only the faintest of nods, letting heavy lids fall over colorless, reptilian eyes, and then quoting her a price that she suspected was approximately double what he'd charge a "normal" client.

She'd been terribly nervous as the night of Billy's first visit approached. Receiving him in her bedchamber, she adopted a coldness of demeanor that should have intimidated him, but to which he responded with exquisite sweetness and docility. Still costumed as Marston, she'd told him to undress for her. She'd sat in her big armchair, feet resting on the ottoman, directing commands at him: "Slowly, slowly, that's better. Now bend, turn, a little more to the right, boy. Stop now, and open your legs. Ah, yes, very nice indeed."

She'd felt encouraged that he seemed to enjoy performing for her. Her imperious tone of voice might perhaps have masked her nervousness, but there was no hiding the desire she felt, nor the evident pleasure he took in it.

Finally she'd risen from her chair and instructed him to undress her.

For a moment she'd feared that she might disappoint him. But, after a gasp of astonishment, he grinned so broadly and embraced her so enthusiastically that she let go her fears and simply let things take their own delightful course.

Billy wasn't in his line of work by choice or preference. Mr. Talbot had a standing arrangement with the constabulary to inform him when they'd picked up a likely candidate. And so a pretty young pickpocket or street tough might avoid prison if he were willing to be of regular service to wealthy gentlemen of a certain persuasion.

It wasn't a bad life, Billy had told Phoebe after they'd gotten to know one another better. It wasn't his first choice, of course, but there were worse things than having it off with gentlemen. What rankled was that he and the other boys did all the work while Talbot pocketed the money.

"But when I saw that you
wasn't
no gentleman," Billy had added, "well then, miss, I thought I'd died and 'ad gone directly to heaven."

He did everything Phoebe might want—how extraordinary, she'd thought at first, to have this beautiful young creature completely at her service: hands and mouth and the eager, pulsing member that grew so magically at her touch.

He seemed to have an instinct for pleasing. Which was fortunate, for sad to say, now that she was free to take what she wanted from a man, she'd quickly discovered that she didn't exactly know what that was.
Her
enjoyment, after all, had been the furthest thing from Henry's mind. In fact, the few times that he'd chanced to satisfy her he'd seemed oddly fearful of her response, as though erotic pleasure were somehow spoiled by sharing it.

It wasn't as though he hadn't spent time in her bed, especially during the first year of their marriage. He'd been an energetic, dutiful husband, she supposed, acquitting himself quickly, successfully, and with reasonable frequency. In return, meanwhile, she'd become quite expert in giving him what he wanted. Obscurely troubled by her moments of enjoyment, what he'd truly demanded from her was gratitude. She'd soon enough learned to feign this; a long sigh and a bit of rolling her eyes did the trick nicely.

Poor Henry, she'd surprised herself by thinking one night as she cradled a sweetly sleeping Billy in her arms; it was the first sympathetic thought she'd had for Henry in years. But how sad it had been, she thought. How strange, how
unnatural
his insistence upon segregating satisfaction from affection, copulation from caring. As she learned more about pleasure and desire, she began to wonder if he'd been abnormally lacking in emotional capacity. Had he been dreadfully hurt by someone before she'd met him? Or was he, on the contrary, simply an ordinary exemplar of his type? Perhaps all men were as fearful, as dead to human connection as her husband had been.

Of course
Billy
wasn't that way, but Billy was hardly more than a boy, only recently grown into possession of a man's beautiful body. And Billy had no choice, she thought, but to take what pleasure he could wherever he could. For he was in no position—
ah, but there's your answer
, she told herself.
Position
. Social priority and power. Money, property—the unnatural but perfectly legal freedom to rule and to exploit—perhaps it was these things that numbed a man to the warmth of shared touch.

It was a decent hypothesis anyway, and she hadn't yet encountered a gentleman among the
ton
who seemed to present a convincing counterexample. Meditating on this alienation from human connection, she'd come increasingly to model Marston's coldness, self-regard, and empty perfection of style upon it.

She'd become quite enthralled by these matters. How interesting the human sexual animal was, she'd thought—until a few weeks ago when Billy had come to her with welts and bruises on his body, and her rather abstract fascination had given way to the most concrete rage and horror.

Absurdly—since it had been he, after all, who'd suffered the pain—she'd burst into tears at the sight of the livid marks on his back and buttocks.

"But that's what lots of 'em wants from us, miss," he'd told her, gently drawing her into his arms. "Them that don't want to be punished themselves. It's just the luck o' the draw, you know, that you ain't seen me this way before."

"But… why?"

Stroking her hair and kissing away her tears, he'd patiently explained to her about the vagaries and varieties of human desire. She'd been abashed at how much she still had to learn from a barely-grown, hardly literate ex-pickpocket.

"Well, they enjoy it, you see. Why not, takes all kinds, don't it? Ain't nothing wrong with enjoying a thing, if the other fellow does too. Rather like going to a show, full o' thrills and danger. Only you two is the show."

"Do
you
enjoy it?"

"Ain't my style, miss. No, I hate it. Ain't no thrill to me when somebody takes a whip to my back. But it ain't me wot's doin' the paying, innit?"

Mr. Talbot had laughed when she'd asked how much it would cost to buy out Billy's arrangement with him,

"More than
you've
got,
Mister
Marston. The boy's a gold mine."

Phoebe breathed a long, steady breath. It would demand some strength of character to maintain Marston's sangfroid while that calculating laugh rang gratingly in her ears.

"All right, then, sir. Let's see what I
can
afford."

Finally they'd worked out a new arrangement. Billy would visit twice a week (at even higher rates) and Mr. Talbot would make a serious effort to honor Mr. Marston's delicate sensibilities by keeping the boy's skin unmarked.

"No promises, though. My rule is that they can do anything they like to my boys, short of bruising the face or injuring the working parts, so to speak.

"But if Jamie or Jo is otherwise occupied, Billy goes where he's wanted, no questions asked, and it's the customer's right to make forcemeat of him if that's his pleasure. Business is business, so to speak. And
my
business is your pleasure, eh, Marston? Particularly as it's none of my business what
your
particular pleasure might be. You do follow my logic, don't you,
Mister
Marston?"

She'd followed it precisely, especially the threat to her privacy. But it didn't matter. Nothing mattered except that she'd done what she could for Billy—even if (though she tried not to think about this) it probably meant putting more of a burden on the other boys.

So far it had worked. Billy hadn't been subjected to any more beatings from his other customers, and he'd made it delightfully and abundantly clear how happy he was to be in her bed twice a week instead of once.

The irony of the situation, though, was that she'd come to need him rather less these days. For now that she knew a bit more about what she liked, Billy's visits had lost some of their charm: an element of surprise, perhaps, or of complexity. She still enjoyed taking her pleasure from a skilled and willing provider—England, she thought, would be a far happier place if every woman in the realm were granted one night a month with someone like Billy.

But sometimes she thought there must be something more to this lovemaking business. Something a bit daunting, perhaps—for she suspected that what she wanted would mean giving away a measure of control—but something beautiful as well.

Of course,
she
would never again give up any measure of her inner self to any man. She'd been too deeply hurt, too absolutely emptied of trust and innocence. But she suspected that there were women who'd been luckier. They might be the most ordinary, hardworking, down-at-the-heels women, whose skin had never known the touch of satin, whose heads had never rested on lace pillows. But she was sure that such women existed—sometimes she liked to imagine that she saw one hurrying by in the street, eager to get home to a husband who desired and cherished her.

It made her oddly happy to think that there were women who had what she lacked. Somehow she needed to believe in a city of secret nighttime lives, mysterious and darkly beautiful in ways she couldn't even begin to divine.

She roused herself from these meditations.

"But what I
would
like, Billy," she said, "is for you to rub my feet. Rub them hard. I've been out waltzing tonight."

She poured herself a cup of tea and abandoned herself to Billy's strong, patient hands. He had a lovely touch—sleepily, she considered taking him to bed after all. But when she closed her eyes, taking deep slow breaths as her muscles revived under his pulling and tugging, it wasn't Billy's face or body that filled her inner vision.

" 'Oo's the gen'leman, miss?" Billy asked quietly as he finished up the massage with a few long, gentle strokes.

"What, Billy?"

"None of my business, of course, miss, but in my line of work we get to know that sort of thing. People hire us, sometimes, to pretend we're somebody else entirely. It ain't hard to tell, you see, when they've got somebody else in mind."

"I see. Not very kind of them, is it?"

"They ain't very kind to us most times, as you know, miss. Don't understand it myself, why they think there's got to be something mean and sneaky about it."

"Poor Billy. Have some tea, dear."

"Thank you, miss, I believe I will."

Mean and sneaky
. For a moment she thought again of Henry. Both she and Billy had suffered from the same sort of stunted, exploitative sexuality, though she wouldn't tell Billy that; some things were simply too difficult, too intimate to be spoken. She wouldn't know how to give voice to certain truths—for example, that when she'd wept at the sight of Billy's welts and bruises, she'd been weeping for herself and the humiliations of her own marriage.

Or that when she'd closed her eyes this evening, it had been Lord Linseley's face and body that had appeared in her imagination.

Foolish of her, she thought. She knew nothing of him; they'd spoken briefly, trivially. And yet her memory seemed to bear an indelible seal—a profound impression of massive shoulders and thick waves of black hair just beginning to be tipped with gray. Of eyes the color of a warm night sky and a rich laugh rumbling from deep within him.

He'd laughed kindly at her foolish witticism about his cravat. She'd liked the sound, its large-spiritedness, its comfort and sensuality. And then he'd gone unconcernedly on his way. By now he'd doubtless completely forgotten about her.

Might the earl of Linseley be an exception to Phoebe's hypothesis—did he constitute the one case that would logically disprove her theory about gentlemen and their crabbed emotions? Could he be easy enough with his prerogatives that he wouldn't need to impose power upon those weaker than himself? Might he want more from a woman than servility and gratitude?

Well,
she
would never find out. Never have the opportunity. Just as well, she thought. She intended to forget about him. Utterly and completely. Starting right now.

She raised her eyes to Billy's patient face.

"Have any of your customers been physically cruel to you—or to the other boys—lately?"

"Not to me, miss, though I can't say the other boys have been so lucky. But we've been sharing some new tricks, see. Ways to distract 'em, you know. There's one, Lord Crashaw, used to like to take a riding crop to me—and
hard
, too, damn 'is eyes, made me scream, he did. But then one night I discovered it excited 'im when I blacked 'is boots for 'im. I'm all naked, see, and down on my knees rubbing away and twitching my arse; 'e made me finish up the polishing with my tongue before 'e turned me around to get onto 'is own business with me. Well, it was silly, but I didn't mind. All in a night's work, you know. And it worked last night, good as gold, for Jamie too. 'E didn't get walloped at all, though his tongue ain't a pretty sight, I can tell you."