Page 4 of Confounding Oaths
“Yes,” mused the major. “Shame about the other one.”
Now Miss Bickle was back, Miss Caesar was at least mildly distracted. Still, Mr. Caesar stiffened. “And what do you mean by that?”
Major Bloodworth smiled. “Well, she’s rather like Her Majesty, isn’t she?”
“I’m sorry.” Mr. Caesar feigned obliviousness. “Are you insulting the queen, or my sister?”
Like many men of his class and habits, the major had an unoriginally cruel laugh. “Both, I think. They share the same Mulat—”
He got no further. Because this, oh patient reader, is the point at which Mr. Caesar punched a man in the teeth.
The punching went poorly. Mr. Caesar was no pugilist, and soon learned the hard way that human teeth are sharp, human wrists fragile, and human sensibilities dull.
All of which combined to see him, two minutes later, nursing a sprained hand and bleeding knuckles, being escorted into the Mayfair night by the vicomte. I followed in the shape of a mouse.
“I understand he was provoking, Jean”—the vicomte always insisted on using the Frenchified pronunciation, despite having otherwise perfect English—“but you made me look bad.” He paused, staring at the floor a moment in a manner rather uncharacteristic of the mortal aristocracy. “You made usalllook bad.”
“Us all?” asked Mr. Caesar.
“You know what I mean.”
He knew. As, reader, I presume do you. But he did not like it. “There isn’t a man in that room who would have stood by and let his sister be insulted.”
“‘I do confess the vices of my blood.’”
Mr. Caesar took the allusion to the so-called bard even more harshly than I normally do. “Oh, fuck off, Alexandre. I’m not Othello.”
“To people like the major and your uncle,” replied the vicomte, “we are each of us Othello.”
Being a man of temperate character, the thought of being considered intemperate by a society that would not look past his birth inspired in Mr. Caesar ironically intemperate emotions. “And you’re taking their side.”
“I am taking the ton’s side. Your English manners are quite strict on this issue.”
With a more-English-than-the-English-will-admit exclamation of “Fuck,” Mr. Caesar sat himself awkwardly on a low wall.
“Take a moment if you need it,” offered the vicomte with Gallic generosity. “But thenleave.We cannot be associated for a while.”
What stung the most was how unexpected it wasn’t. The vicomte, being the son of a Frenchman and a woman of the gens de couleur libres and thus, by English standards, suspect on both sides of his family, had his own concerns. And in the world of the ton, solidarity was in short supply; the gossips smelled weakness and struck without mercy.
Still, Mr. Caesar had his duties to think about. “And my sisters?”
The vicomte gave him a gentle nod. “I shall see they are safe. This is a shitty business, Jean, but I don’t think anybody wants it to harm the ladies.”
Personally, I doubted the truth of that. While I, despite my avowed love of cruelty, thought the Misses Caesar would make poor sport, I suspected that there were those still at the ball who absolutely did wish them ill. Of one sort or another.
“Thank you,” said Mr. Caesar, though he was not feeling especially thankful. He and the vicomte were not exactlyfriends,despite the superficial similarities in their heritage, and the man outranked him. Still, he could not help but feel a little thrown under the carriage.
Having been too long absent from his own ball, the vicomte gave a rather stiff bow and went back to it, leaving Mr. Caesar alone in the night. And bad things happen to those left alone in the night. Especially when thethosein question have recently offended a rich man who kills for a living.
The March air was chill but the sky was clear, and for a few minutes Mr. Caesar stared—as that self-aggrandising shit Oscar would a near century later—at the stars and wondered quite how badly he had fucked everything up for his family. His parents, distracted as they perennially were by their good works, had never placed him under any especial pressure, but the stark reality of their situation meant thatsomebodyhad to make certain that neither he nor his sisters would starve in the wider world. Although why he thoughtheof all people was best suited to that particular duty I have no idea. And just as I was pondering this example of mortal hubris, I was distracted by the annoyingly loud voice of an annoyingly loud human.
“On your feet.”
Looking around, Mr. Caesar saw—to his fleeting satisfaction—that the major was still nursing a split lip. “I’d rather sit, thank you.”
“On your feet,” Major Bloodworth repeated. “Scoundrel.”
There was, Mr. Caesar knew, no real point in defiance. But in that moment he, like I, felt that pointless defiance had a charm of its own. “I’d rather sit, thank you.”
