Page 6

“I cannot wait to introduce you to my latest lover,” Silas said. He collapsed on the divan in the living room of the rooms his friend Raoul Desjardins shared with his lover, John Seales, Lord Therkenwell.

“I don’t know which hurts worse,” Silas continued. “My heart or my bollocks, which can only be emptied by Ezra Curiel. I have not been able to see him all week, because he traveled to Liverpool for a series of weekday matches. At least he will be at New Cross this evening, and I will see him afterward.”

“Curiel?” Raoul asked. “The boxer?”

“Indeed. He is a most masterful man, in the ring and in the boudoir.”

Raoul poured glasses of wine for both of them, then sat across from Silas. “How in the world did you come in contact with him?”

“I have taken to attending boxing matches.” Silas sipped the wine and smiled. He had developed more of a taste and tolerance for wine since meeting Ezra. “The fighters are so muscular, and with their shirts off everything is on display. Their bodies are oiled, and when they tense up, or swing their fists, you can see every tendon and sinew.” He sighed extravagantly. “It is so much more erotic than spying on men at the seaside.”

“And Curiel has a body you admire?”

“Oh, my Lord. He is swarthy, you know, which is an extra bit for me. I have had always a taste for darker meat. He is a Spanish Jew, by way of Algeria and France, and so his skin is naturally more colored than mine, or even yours.”

Raoul’s skin was darker than Silas’s, which was so fair it could light up the night, though Raoul did not think himself particularly swarthy. He had to admit that his jet-black hair to Silas’s blond, and the hair that covered his arms, chest and legs, did tend to darken his overall appearance.

“How did you encounter him? At a molly house?”

Silas shook his head. “No, at one of his fights. I was in the front, and I caught his eye and smiled, and he smiled back.” He leaned back in a swoon. “And so it began!”

“You did not stalk him, did you?” Raoul was aware of Silas’s hyperactive temperament, and he could see his friend following the boxer around London observing him and waiting for a moment to approach him.

“Indeed I did not,” Silas protested. “I will admit, I waited around in the alley outside the boxing hall until after all the cards had been finished. Ezra’s eyes positively lit up when he saw me standing there. It was as if someone had struck a match, igniting our two candles at once.”

Silas reached down to grab his cock, to make the metaphor complete, and Raoul laughed.

“And did he take you right there in the alley?”

Silas crossed his arms over his chest, affronted. “I am not that much of an easy mark,” he said. “He offered to buy me a glass of wine first.”

Raoul laughed. “And then?”

“Then it was like one of those fairy tales by your Monsieur Perrault. We spoke, we touched hands, we fell headlong into love.”

“Or lust.”

“Well, lust at first, certainly. Unfortunately I do not have a Frenchman’s tolerance for wine, so I fell asleep before he could bed me. He was such a gentleman, though. He paid a carriage driver to take me home and tuck me in.”

“So you bedded the carriage driver instead.”

Silas shook his head. “I was so drunk I might have, but there was no evidence the next morning. I had to wait until the following Friday to return to the boxing arena and try once more. Fortunately I was able to draw him to my petite apartment, where he ravished me so completely that I could barely remember my own name.”

Raoul smiled. John had the ability to ravish him in the very same way. He poured another round of wine into the globe-shaped glasses. He marveled yet again at the luxury which he enjoyed now that John had invited him to share his rooms at Eaton Square in the Bloomsbury section of London. Surely, love was wonderful.

Silas drank deeply. “Since then, we have become a regular item. I attend his boxing matches, and he comes home with me afterwards.”

“And his wife does not notice, or does not care?”

“Theirs was a marriage of convenience,” Silas said, waving his hand in the air. “Her father is a wealthy Parisian merchant, but because she has a sharp tongue she could not find a husband. Ezra showed no intention of marrying, focusing on his body and his developing career as a boxer.”

He sipped his wine again. “He and Ezra’s father were compatriots of the same Parisian synagogue, and both wished their children to be married. Madame Curiel’s father settled a sizeable amount on the new couple, which allowed them to escape their fathers’ thumbs and come to England.”

He finished his glass and held it out to Raoul for a refill. “He is unhappy but does not know how he can escape the marriage now.”

“So he is forced to seek solace in your boudoir,” Raoul said.

“I hardly have to force him,” Silas said. “If anything, he is the one who exerts the force. He enjoys tying my arms and legs to the bedpost and attacking my arse with his tongue, until I am as loose as a plate of sizzling oil and begging him to spear me with his sausage.”

Raoul held up his hand. “Please, spare me the details. How long has this been going on?”

“We shall celebrate the three-month anniversary of our meeting next week,” Silas said. He laughed. “I know, you will chide me for such sentimentality, which I have never before felt, and in the past derided. But I cannot help myself.”

It made Raoul happy to see his friend’s enjoyment, but he worried about what might happen if the boxer was to be reeled back in by his wife, and forced to forswear male company. He had seen it happen in Paris, and once or twice in London as well.

He and John had been helped out of a tricky situation by the mentorship of a more established couple, Lord Magnus Dawson and his lover, Toby Marsh. Since then, they had been brought into a social circle that opened their eyes to the wide array of entanglements men who loved men often found themselves in.

There were older men with younger lovers, and men who were married to women but sought occasional pleasure in the arms of other men. He had met those who could only express their desires in secret or with anonymous encounters. And those who for reasons of family wealth or social pressure could not be open.

He sat back with his wine in his hand and his legs spread. He knew of men of the lower classes who sometimes had more freedom than their betters. The tavern he and John frequented was owned by a pair of men, one of whom dressed as a woman to serve customers, and no one batted an eye.

Of course, half the patrons had no idea what was under the barmaid’s skirts, so clever was her disguise.

Too often, though, he had seen affairs like the one between Silas and Ezra come apart, and suffered the wails and torrents of tears that accompanied such a break. He only hoped that Silas would be the exception, though it was hard to see such a public figure and avatar of masculinity as Ezra Curiel squiring the flamboyant Silas Warner around town in his Indonesian silk robes and colorful peacock shirts.

Silas could have his quiet side, however. He dressed very plainly at work and kept his flamboyance in check there.

“Well, I hope you shall both be very happy,” Raoul said, though he could not see a way forward to such an event. He and John narrowly escaped the prejudices that accompanied male unions by virtue of John’s title and his family wealth. The same was the case for Magnus and Toby, and for their female friends the Honorable Sylvia Cooke and her companion Miss Cleaver. And Ezra Curiel had already cultivated too large a public persona to disappear into anonymity as the bar owners had.

Raoul quieted a sigh. Silas would do as he would, and Raoul and John would be there to pick up the pieces as necessary.