Chapter 5 #3
I smell his body on my skin. I am beyond mortified but I mutter something about payment.
My dear boy, he says, wide-eyed, if you expected remuneration you should have said before, not after.
I sit there wrapped in soiled sheets, full of an unspeakable hate, for him, for me, for everything.
Something makes him relent. He touches my cheek. Calls me a sweet, silly kitten. Leaves me his cigarette case, which is silver and engraved with his initials. I pawn it and do not die.
When Micha opened his eyes, he was cradled in Thomas’s arms and there was a woman crouched next to him with a bottle of smelling salts.
The acrid scent rushed over him, forcing him into a harsh, painful consciousness.
He choked, sneezed, and sat up, spluttering, trying to push them both away.
But, for once, Thomas was not to be pushed.
He was surprisingly strong for his slender form.
Perhaps this was what they called Muscular Christianity.
The thought might have amused Micha, once upon a time.
“I thought you were supposed to be resting.” Though Thomas’s voice was too gentle to be chiding, Micha resented it anyway.
“I’m sick of fucking resting,” he growled, to cover a rising sense of panic.
He hated being helpless. Yet it seemed the world and his own body were constantly conspiring to remind him that he was.
He told himself it could have been worse, for at least he hadn’t fainted in the silver cabinet, but the need for laudanum was a brand in his mind, and the possibility of actually acquiring any was disappearing over the horizon like the sails of a tall ship.
“I’m sick of looking and feeling like I’m already dead,” he went on, angry, stubborn, doggedly careless of his own best interests.
“I’m sick of pissing in a pot.” He suddenly remembered they were not alone, and, though he had no scruples in haranguing Thomas mercilessly in private, some vague, deeply buried sense of shame made him hesitant to do it publicly.
Besides, he had not been so long in the company of whores that he thought it was appropriate to talk about his cock, or any of the fluids that came out of it, in front of a respectable woman.
“Fuck. Sorry,” he choked out. “I didn’t mean to—sorry. ”
“It is quite all right.” Thomas smiled down at him like the sun. “I know how frustrating you find being bedbound. And if your frankness on the subject has startled Mrs. Clark, we are already supplied with hartshorn to revive her.”
Micha had been idly aware of Thomas’s housekeeper, but this was the first time she had impinged upon his notice. “Oh please.” She actually sounded amused. “I would not faint for mere words.”
“Are you reserving your swoons for something special?” asked Thomas, in a tone so full of affection and laughter that it went through Micha like a shard of ice.
He twisted his head in time to catch a look of real sympathy pass between them, as though they were old friends, not master and servant.
Or more than that, perhaps. Was the priest fucking his housekeeper?
Micha hoped he was, for hypocrisy was something he could understand—could work with—and the mysteries of Thomas’s nature infuriated him.
But whatever satisfaction he expected to derive from learning that Thomas had feet of clay, just like everyone else, was spoiled by something else.
Something he could not name, a bitter-tasting thing, as sour as old tears and as sharp as arsenic.
How dare Thomas look softly on someone else.
How dare he smile with such ease. Share those secret flashes of humour Micha had begun to believe were his alone.
As if these were everyday gifts. As if anyone could have them.
He cast a swift glance towards the woman who had captured Thomas’s interest, and most likely more than that.
Of course, while he was ghastly, haggard, and feeble, it was only fitting she would be extraordinary.
A lush, classical beauty, raven-haired, with eyes like the wild sea.
And then he recognised her. Their gazes snagged and held for a long moment, and he saw she knew him too.
Then she sat back on her heels and looked away.
There were few worlds smaller, Micha thought, than the world of a whore.
Plain clothes and pinned-up hair couldn’t disguise the woman who had once had punters queuing round the block to sample her wares.
She’d been little more than a legend by Micha’s time, the subject of an explicit mural in the most expensive room, and the source of Madame Defleur’s anguish and indignation.
He’d heard the story many times. He’d even listened to it, at first.
A twisting, poisonous hope curled itself around his heart.
Under different circumstances, he would have cared less than nothing for the fate of a prostitute he had barely known, but the prospect of a little power was as sweet to him as opium smoke.
Perhaps it was no longer necessary to leave.
At least, not yet. Not until he had regained more of his strength.
And the silver would still be there. If he played his cards right, he might not even have to be the one to steal it.
Once upon a time, stealing would have been alien to the point of unthinkable to Micha.
But he had taken up petty theft almost without noticing—a few coins, here and there, from gentlemen too drunk to notice, a cigarette case, a silk handkerchief, then a few more coins, not always from those who could afford it.
It had been such a gentle slide, there was never an opportunity for it to feel wrong.
Rather the opposite, in fact. By the time he was desperate enough to do it, he mostly believed his clients as good as deserved it.
A reciprocal indignity for the ones they practised on his body.
Even so, his thieving had always been personal and small-scale, and ransacking Thomas’s house would be a noticeable escalation.
It was use or be used; he knew that well enough.
And his mind was already turning through all the ways he could turn the situation to his advantage.
He might even be able to take some pleasure from it, as much as he was capable of finding pleasure in anything not directly derived from the poppy.
“Mrs. Clark,” as she styled herself, so clearly enjoyed Thomas’s admiration.
It would do her good to remind her of her place.
She was, after all, no better than Micha.
Worse, in fact, for he was born a gentleman.
It could be her punishment for this moment, a scrap of vengeance for having to lie here and watch them smiling at each other.
“I’d quite like to go back to bed,” Micha snapped, interrupting whatever playful observation Thomas was making about the things he supposed worth fainting over.
“Of course you do.” Thomas was instantly contrite. “I am so sorry. Here, let me help you.”
The housekeeper excused herself and fled.
Whatever she had seen on Micha’s face had made her turn pale.
And that was good. Well, good for him. The more anxious he made her, the easier it would be to get what he wanted.
Thomas, of course, would have stayed with him, but Micha waved him off imperiously.
He wanted to be alone with his cravings and his scheme.
At last, he was somewhat in control of the situation.
It made even the aches, sweats, and shivers just about endurable.
Soon he would know relief, and that was enough.
After opium, cessation was one of Micha’s few remaining bodily satisfactions.
He rarely expected, or wanted, to feel anything, but there was a certain private solace in afterwards, when things stopped, when the client was gone, when he was once again his own.
Opium was like that too. It brought him cessation from the world as a whole.
And Mrs. Clark would be back. He knew it. He had nothing to lose and she had too much.
442
Fuckingwhorecuntslutdoxyfuckingmandrakecocksuckingpricklovingsodomitewhore.
He comes, yanking off the sheath to spatter my back and arse with his clammy spendings, and it’s over.
It was nearly midnight when Mrs. Clark tapped softly on his door and glided inside.
“I came to bring you some fresh pillows.” She hovered on the threshold, clutching a bundle of sheets protectively to her chest.
Micha hauled himself upright. “No you didn’t.”
She hung her head, and the heavy coils of her hair made her look like a flower in a storm. After an awkward moment, she tumbled what she was carrying onto the nearest chair. “I thought we should talk.”
“Then, let’s talk, Mrs. Clark. Or should I say, Mademoiselle Defleur.”
She flinched visibly. How satisfying it was to wield, for once, the petty blade. To be the one to cause the hurt instead of feel it. Fair payment for her careless smiles, though Micha would never have admitted they had wounded him.
“That was never my name,” she said, at last. “And I go by Mrs. Clark these days.”
“And whose name is that? Not Mr. Clark’s, I’m sure of it.”
She shook her head. “As I’m sure you’re well aware, there is no such person, nor has there ever been. I needed the respectability of widowhood.”
“Call yourself whatever you want, you’re still a whore and the daughter of a whore.”
He waited, so he could watch her react, but this time her composure did not falter. She met his gaze calmly. “I kept your secret.”
“For now,” he sneered.
“Forever. We come from the same place. I would not betray any who tried to escape it.”
“Actually, we don’t. I fell to the gutter. You were born to it.”
“If that distinction matters to you, then yes.”
He curled his lip. “Oh, you’re worse than he is. Are you two fucking?”
“He has been kind to me.”
“Kind. Hah, he’s kind to everyone. I bet he spurts the milk of human kindness when he comes.”