Page 35 of Confounding Oaths
Mr. Ellersley curled his lips into a smile that Mr. Caesar had always been unsure if he wanted to kiss or punch. Although given how poorly punching had gone for him lately, he’d probably madethe better choice overall. “Claws in, prince of cats. I just wanted to see how you found the show.”
He did not, Mr. Caesar knew full well, want to see how he had found the show. “Delightful,” he said. “So delightful that it almost distracted me from what Lord Wilmslowe was doing with that lady he swears is his niece.”
“Oh, well deflected,” replied Mr. Ellersley. And there was that smile again. “Although thinking about it, if sheishis niece that makes things substantially more interesting.”
I sometimes almost liked Mr. Ellersley.
Captain James, not especially interested in being caught up in a duel of manners between bitter exes, fell back on his training and looked for the nearest path of escape. “Do you reckon that if we put a sprint on we could make it somewhere fun before we get trampled by theatre folk?”
“Oh don’tgo.” A gleam came to Mr. Ellersley’s eye. “Why don’t you bring the captain to the club? I’m sure he’d go down wonderfully.”
This kind of sniping was to be expected from Thomas Ellersley and normally Mr. Caesar would have taken it in stride. But the joke was not entirely at his expense, and while the captain, in any other circumstance, was worth twenty Ellersleys, to the opera crowd he was an upjumped slum rat from the ranks whose words would by definition be worthless.
“I think you’ll find,” Mr. Caesar began, but then his words ran uncharacteristically dry.That is but one of many areas in which he is your superiorhad been the retort that sprang instantly to mind. But that would have been forhisdefence, not the captain’s. One could hardly defend a gentleman from the intimation that he was your catamite by praising his sexual technique. “I mean to say—” was the next fateful stumble.
“Shall I send a man ahead?” Mr. Ellersley continued. “Or do you want to surprise them?”
It should not have been this difficult. All he needed to do was to take what the other gentleman had just said, turn it around, and fire it back in a way that made him look foolish. He’d done it a thousand times. But never once in a way that required him to think about the well-being of another party.
“Having a bad evening?” Mr. Ellersley continued innocently. “You’re usually much better sport. Whathasthis creature been doing to you?”
He was failing. He was failing at the one thing he was meant to be good at. So Mr. Caesar took a deep breath, looked Mr. Ellersley in the eye and said: “Tom. Fuck off.” Then before his brain could process the damage to his reputation as a wit and a gadabout, he turned to the captain. “Come on, let’s go somewhere that isn’t miserable.”
“Paying your respects to the men in uniform?” Mr. Ellersley shot after them, having at least partially recovered from the sheer effrontery of having been dismissed so curtly.
“You know,” Mr. Caesar returned over his shoulder. “I think I actually might.”
So they went back to the Folly. It was not the kind of place Mr. Caesar would normally have gone after the opera, but it was nearby and it was mercifully free of the Mr. Ellersleys of the world.
The hour having grown later, the inn had grown more vibrant and the Irregulars were in attendance in greater numbers. Captain James threw himself down at the bar with Mr. Caesar companionably close beside him. He could probably have sat closer—the clientele of the Folly seemed to give zero fucks about who was and wasn’t a bugger—but long habit kept him at a deniable distance.
“How was the show?” asked Kumar with a waggish tone, sidling up alongside the newcomers.
“Still got no idea,” replied Captain James. “But according to this one”—he jerked a thumb at Mr. Caesar—“seeing the show isn’t the point. On the other hand we did get to watch a rich man getting up to something that might have been incest.”
Feeling some need to come across as less of a total cultural vacuum, Mr. Caesar made a tokenistic effort to defend himself. “Obviously wealsoappreciated the music,” he said. “Which was very … sweeping.”
Sal slipped herself onto the captain’s lap, a gesture which stirred irrational jealousy in Mr. Caesar despite its being clearly a more familial gesture than a carnal one. “Was Anna Milder still in the title role?” she asked.
“It wasFidelio,” replied Mr. Caesar with a fatal lack of thought.
“John reckons he was probably the tall one,” added the captain with still more fatal helpfulness.
Sal smirked. “Fidelio is a girl.”
“Are you sure?” She was clearly sure. And Mr. Caesar knew she was sure. And she knew he knew she was sure, and I knew that they both knew that they both knew. I found opera in general as dull as an ill-used sabre, butthiswas showing all signs of being a delightful evening.
Captain James made a perfunctory attempt to suppress a grin. “Sal used to be on stage. She knows what she’s talking about.”
“It’s a gentleman’s name,” protested Mr. Caesar, rather limply.
Sal heaved the sigh of a woman who has needed to explain opera to people many, many times. “Fideliois the story of a young woman named Leonore who disguises herself as a boy named Fidelio in order to search for her husband who has been cruelly imprisoned by the wicked Pizarro.”
“So not,” the captain faux-asked, “about a very faithful man who is torn between duty to his country and something something something?”
Ordinarily accustomed to the restrictions of his linens, Mr. Caesar was grown uncharacteristically hot in the collar region. “In my defence, I don’t speak a word of German.”
And Captain James laughed. And the Irregulars laughed. And in spite of himself, Mr. Caesar laughed. It was only later in the evening that it would strike him how rarely he had done that of late.
