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PRETTY BOY

F or seven hours, Léon sat right there in the pub, listening to increasingly outlandish tales about Le Baron Noir , while making up stories regarding his own lurid career.

In between, he spent his time promising to get one man and another this and that grotesque souvenir, and fighting off the never-ending offers for company from enamoured women.

Thankfully, most of them were scowled down by Souveraine, who was yet to give up the fierce crush she’d had on him since they were children.

Souveraine had been his best friend for as long as either of them could remember.

Close in age, neighbours, they were playmates from the cradle.

He’d watched her grow into a tall and buxom beauty, with bright and beautiful blue eyes, thick and luminous dark hair, and a body that, he was told, men would die for.

Yet the lot of it left him cold beyond the fondness of their warm friendship.

When she’d first been publicly acknowledged as a beauty, he’d been advised to stop hanging around her, lest he ruin her reputation.

Yet the two of them snuck out together anyway and remained just as close as they’d ever been.

When he’d been informed that it was time to offer for her hand or step aside for other men, he’d laughed at how ridiculous the notion was that he was causing any trouble simply by falling asleep in the hay barn with her on hot summer days.

When they were sixteen, and she told him she’d fallen in love with him, he deeply regretted his actions up until that day, and he told her he didn’t want to marry any woman.

No one—not ever. She told him she would never love another man, and that she would wait until he was ready.

And so they carried on, the closest of friends, but now with a tension growing daily between them.

Then he became headsman, and quite beyond his control, acquired the air of a man who was both dangerous and damned, a combination which proved near-irresistible to the lustier occupants of the city.

As his fame as a forbidden beauty grew, so did his admirers, in frequency and boldness.

Women threw themselves at him openly, and when Souveraine’s jealousy and fear flourished in equal measure, he reacted with more public shows of loyalty to her than ever before.

Every person who knew them expected them to marry, and at twenty-four years of age, it had become something of a joke amongst their circle.

For Léon, it was, “Why buy the cow when he can get the milk for free?” and a slap on the back.

For Souveraine, it was gossip, sympathy, jealousy, and being told she was a slut who would soon lose her looks, or that no other man would want to marry her since she gave it away for nothing.

But Léon would marry her.

Any day now. His little brother needed a mother, or so everyone told him.

And after all, he did love her.

As a friend.

A friend who he would never give children.

Who would spend her married life wondering why her husband wasn’t like all the other husbands.

Wondering why he had trapped her in that passionless marriage…

Léon downed another drink to fortify himself, then forcefully tried to stop thinking about that man from earlier.

Tried to stop imagining him taking him in the alleyway.

Tried to stop imagining how he might smell, how his stubble might feel against his cheek, what his thighs might look like without their leather veil.

He threw back another drink.

Somewhere around two in the morning, the tavern closed, and Léon, like on every other execution day, was the last to leave.

He kissed Souveraine’s cheek, she let out a faux wail of despair, followed closely by an I’ll-get-you-next-time wink, and he stumbled out into the night.

He was the sort of intoxicated that’s one bad smell away from stomach-rupturing vomit.

Not ideal in Reims in the year 1792, which this was.

The ground outside the tavern was wet with piss, old and new, and hay and sawdust did nothing to soak it up.

He dodged a pile of vomit, nausea churning about his gut as he thought he recognised the very carrots he’d eaten in his stew that night.

The hot flank of a horse stepped back against him as he rounded a corner, and he tripped three feet to the left, landing against a wall with an aching smack into his shoulder and his boot in a pile of fresh manure.

“Shit!”

Léon steadied himself, swallowed back some bile, then trudged forward with drunken determination.

He got a full five steps before a strong hand reached out of the darkness, grasped him by the throat and yanked him into an alley.

His head smacked back against the wall and he felt the cold, sharp tip of a blade pressed beneath his chin.

“Listen carefully, pretty boy. You’re going to do everything exactly as I tell you.”

The world swayed before Léon’s eyes—grey stone and a whisper of lamplight around two dark, piercing eyes and cheekbones he wanted to flay himself alive on.

That man.

The man from the bar.

His fantasy come to life.

A voice as rich and deep as good beef bourguignon rang in his ears, and he tried his best to focus on the gorgeous lips that had spoken the two words his sozzled brain allowed him to process.

There was only one reply to be made.

“You think I’m pretty? I think you’re pretty, too.”

And Léon promptly doubled over and threw up on the man’s shoes.