Page 52 of Confounding Oaths
“Do they?” asked the elder Mr. Caesar, placidly.
Miss Anne nodded. “That’s what Mr. Bygrave says.”
“I thought you’d gone off Mr. Bygrave,” observed Lady Mary.
At that, Miss Anne’s face fell. “I think he’s gone off me.”
Her father, however, was not quite ready to change the subject. “Try to remember, Anne, that those who mistrust the Irish also mistrust me.”
“Don’t be silly, Papa,” replied Miss Anne with a confidence born of limited experience. “Mr. Bygrave has never been anything but cordial to you.”
“A man can be very cordial when another man has a pretty daughter.”
This piety was boring me, and so I continued upwards. Miss Caesar, I suspected, would be doing nothing interesting until the Lady returned, and so I went to call instead on her brother.
The sun being well up, even Mr. Caesar’s exhaustion and ideological commitment to the life of a gentleman could not quite keep him abed. The presence of Captain James might have provided him with some incentive, but the captain was already stirring restlessly, moving the arrangement from romantic to pointed.
Once the early morning birdsong was drowned out by the hoofbeats and cries of a busy London street, Captain James could justify indolence no longer. He swung himself out of bed, grabbed his jacket, and was instantly ready to face the day. Mr. Caesar propped himself up on his elbows and looked over at him.
“Going so soon?”
“We should be up. Have to keep moving.”
Mr. Caesar looked sceptical. “Do we, actually?”
“Got a fairy to catch and a cult to outrun.”
Accepting, albeit grudgingly, the necessity of activity, Mr. Caesar peeled himself out of bed and began to dress. Then he continued dressing. And continued to continue dressing.
Already jacketed and booted, Captain James watched with growing disbelief. “Do you do this every day?”
“Unless I’m in chambers. Then there’s a wig.”
Captain James considered the spectacle before him. Mr. Caesar had dealt with stockings and breeches and was now taking a moment to ensure that these latter garments hugged the contours of his thighs in the way that fashion dictated before moving on to the complex layers that would adorn his upper body. “Shouldn’t you have somebody to help you with this?”
“We can’t afford a valet, and it would be both unfair and unseemly to ask Nancy.”
With an indulgent half smile, Captain James picked up Mr. Caesar’s shirt and held it out for him in a passing imitation of a gentleman’s personal gentleman.
“You don’t have to—”
“I do if I want to get out of here before noon.”
So Mr. Caesar let himself be helped into his shirt. Then his waistcoat. Then his tailcoat. And while this would have been perfectly ordinary behaviour had his assistant been an employee, it was different when it was a man he had lain with, and who had saved him from violence. There was an intimacy to the interaction to which he was unaccustomed. The warmth of the captain’s hands as he smoothed—inexpertly, if Mr. Caesar was honest—the creases from his clothes. The scent of him as he helped to settle his jacket.
“You’ll need to do your own cravat,” Captain James whispered in his ear.
This came as something of a relief; Mr. Caesar would never have trusted anybody else to tie his neckcloth.
Standing in front of a full-length mirror with Captain James behind him, Mr. Caesar tried to focus on his knots. It was proving more difficult than he expected. This, then, was another experience to which he was unaccustomed. As an avowed sodomite, Mr. Caesar had been with many men, had even liked some of them as people, but he had neveroncehad a lover who could distract him from his personal grooming.
“Pretty soon,” said the captain, far too close to be convenient but nowhere near close enough, “you and me are going to need to have a tough conversation.”
A little embarrassed at the intensity of his own response, Mr. Caesar shuddered. “About what?”
“About whether we’re using your sister as bait.”
The fact that Mary’s predicament had not, in that exact moment, been the first thing on his mind made Mr. Caesar feel like a terrible brother. Then again, if it had been he would have felt like a failure as a gentleman. “I’m sorry, I must have misheard. I could have sworn you said we needed to talk about using my sister as bait.”
