Chapter 2
CHARY
The handsome, mysterious stranger walking the barrens had already found Chary wanting.
And that was fine. Most people did. He wasn’t August; he was neither handsome nor charming. Words never seemed to exit Chary’s mouth correctly. He said either what people expected of him or precisely what they didn’t—if they even cared what he said.
So he didn’t say anything.
Despite Chary’s best attempt at driving, and the excellent draft mares, the wagon rocked and bumped so that occasionally their shoulders knocked, Mr. Moore’s rough tweed shushing against Chary’s Inverness cape. Mr. Moore didn’t recoil from the touch. Most were too polite for that.
Chary had once asked August how he accomplished it, how his brother snagged people’s attention like eye hooks and made them trust him.
(August liked a mechanical reference. Chary had forgotten eye hooks were closed up.) August had looked over, faintly incredulous, then thoughtful; at last, he’d shrugged.
“They just do.”
Chary had then had a realization: that August had not considered how to charm a person any more than Chary had, say, considered how he’d come to learn to read. It was something ever-present, pre-memory, effortless magic.
The realization was worse than any would-have-been instruction of Say this firstly or Hold the cane thusly or Deploy a low timbre of voice.
At least August hadn’t admitted his ignorance; another thing he perhaps just knew to do.
But worst of all was the pity that had come, pity that August had tried to hastily hide in his demur.
“This face is more trouble than it’s worth, Chary; trust me. ”
Recent events had driven Chary to give this last sentiment more thought. Thought and understanding, tumbled and polished until he was sick.
This stranger from the fields—this Mr. Moore—clearly had the same unthinking ease.
Whatever he wanted or needed, he would get, and he knew it.
Doubtless that was part of the charm for most people, part of what set them along a happily predictable path of goodwill and pleasantness.
For Chary, it set his teeth on edge. The man knew he’d get whatever it was that he wanted so well, he’d almost had to be convinced to accept Chary’s help.
This, too, was reminiscent of his brother.
And speaking of help. Chary slid his glance left. Mr. Moore’s hands, in fingerless knit gloves only, were balled into cold fists above the blanket. Oh. Chary looked down at his own hands on the reins, the sheepskin-lined, calfskin-leather gloves covering them.
He put the reins in one hand and tugged off his left glove with his teeth. Switched, and did the same with the right. Plopped them, without looking, straight onto Mr. Moore’s lap.
Immediately, of course, he regretted it. Mr. Moore, previously fairly relaxed in spite of literally everything, stiffened like a board.
“Don’t need your gloves, sir,” he said, in a lovely, deep burr. Something rural. Chary hadn’t noticed before.
Chary bit his lip. Didn’t look left. Saying nothing was better. Nothing came out right; nothing—
“Don’t call me sir, if you please. But you do need them.”
“I don’t—”
“You do,” Chary said quickly, wincing. “Your fingertips are blanched. Your blood is failing to keep them flush with color and, therefore, warm. Look how pink my hands are. I don’t need them at present.
You do. Your circulation is restricted, inadequate.
It’s the coldest day of March in Downeast Maine. You do.”
He risked a glance—and was perplexed.
No fury. Not even a hint of empurpled indignance.
Mr. Moore was faced almost entirely away. Chary leaned for a better look. The man held himself upright against the bench seat with one arm; the other had its blanched, bared fingertips spread over his face.
He was… laughing?
He was.
“Go on,” he gasped. “Keep explainin’ frostbite to me; go on.”
“I beg your pardon?”
“Are you sincerely tryin’ to be nice?”
“Yes?” Chary said. It was the easiest—sometimes he felt his only—instinct to indulge. What else was there? He was again unnerved.
“Yourself be damned. Can’t help it, can you?”
“Well—I—I say. I’m sorry to have offended you with kindness.”
The man chuckled. “Not that, either, apparently.”
Chary stiffened. “Excuse me? I don’t know what you mean.”
He did, however. He’d gone from unnerved to half-panicked in a breath, his pulse beating across his ungloved palms.
Mr. Moore seemed strangely relaxed. “C’mon. Yeah, you do.”
“I don’t hide it,” Chary said. “It’s not illegal.”
“No. That you don’t. Which it you talkin’ about? It depends, y’know. You rich men never have to think about it, I s’pose. What a prerogative.” He rubbed his face, rueful.
Chary was silent for a moment as the wagon rocked, and he debated, in mild terror, using the momentum to push the man off the buckboard seat.
But there was interesting framing there: prerogative.
It made Chary’s soft, gay lisp into something threefold.
Obvious (which it was), and intentional (which it also was), but the last adjective…
that could have been either favorable or despicable.
One applied privilege either to something one wanted or something one despised.
And the something there was Chary’s open queerness—as a rich man.
Chary’s own face must have been making an expression indeed, because Mr. Moore sighed.
“Ah, geez. I didn’t mean to scare you. You look like you could hit me right now, despite yourself.”
Chary agreed. He was still debating a well-timed shove. The horses were more than capable of speed, even emburdened.
“Hey,” Mr. Moore said, “hey, look.”
Chary did look, because there was sudden, alarming movement. Mr. Moore leaned back, undoing the buttons of his tweed jacket, quick, and reached beneath and unbuttoned suspenders. Then the top button of his denim waist trousers.
Chary started. “What in God’s name are you doing?” He slid sideways, as far away as he could go on the bench without falling off.
Mr. Moore gave him a blinding grin, roguish. Handsome, but it was merely a reminder that attractive men could do whatever they wanted, and whenever, too. “Drive straight, will ya? This isn’t an automobile. I’m not exposin’ myself, swear.”
Chary faced forward, though it felt like showing his neck to a lion. Ought he warn the man he had a gun? “You wish to speak to me of illegal? Indecent exposure is quite illegal—when it is plenty to find yourself on the wrong end of a policeman’s regard—!”
“So, you do know law and prejudice.”
“Of course I do.”
Mr. Moore huffed. “It’s a tattoo I’m tryin’ to show you. Jus’ that it’s inconvenient to get to, with the long underwear. You can look now.”
“A tattoo. A likely story.” Chary glanced over warily.
But Mr. Moore had unbuttoned his blue jean trousers only so far as his—fuzzy—abdomen, and the flannel union suit was split apart only a little, barely enough to see his navel.
A little below and to the right was indeed a tattoo, the ink black and strong: a tiny five-point star.
Centered beneath that was script Chary couldn’t quite read.
“What does it say?”
“Industry is the root of all ugliness.”
Chary swallowed. Surely, that was him, all summed up: ugliness born of industry. Third generation.
“Oscar Wilde,” he said shakily. “I believe we have different ideas of prerogative, Mr. Moore. And… obvious.”
Chary rather thought he preferred a carnation. But though his alarm ebbed, his heartbeat stayed the same. Mr. Moore was queer too.
“Are you a convicted criminal?” Chary asked. “Or you simply don’t fear being identified as one?”
“Are you?” Mr. Moore said easily. He re-buttoned just as quick, with a shudder against the wind, then sat up straight and stuck his hands beneath his arms. “The Prince of Wales is sposta have a tattoo. Maybe I’m a prince. Anyway, not many coppers read Wilde.”
Chary nudged the hot brick farther his way. “Are you a prostitute?” he pressed. “A fairy?” All the way in Berryfield?
“Et tu?” Mr. Moore raised his brows.
Chary narrowed his eyes. Shakespeare? (August would’ve kicked him for his bias. But really.) “Hardly. Who are you?”
“A man who didn’t mean to scare you, promise. Swear. I’m Laurie Moore; that’s all. And your gloves won’t fit me, not in the slightest, Mr. Wright.” He showed one hand. “Look.”
“I don’t wish to hear that word ever again. If you please.” He clicked the mares forward; Mr. Moore clutched at the bench at the lurch.
But Chary did look. Again. Mr. Moore had large hands, not especially thick nor delicate but well used and long-fingered. Chary’s gloves wouldn’t have fit him after all.
Mr. Moore said, “I don’t need ’em. I wear these gloves a-purpose, to make impressions on men like you.”
This, too, was code Chary hadn’t encountered. Fingerless gloves? Did the yarn weight matter? Or the color? Or the fingerlessness itself?
“Men… like me,” he said flatly. “Like us?”
Mr. Moore gave him a sly glance. “No, like you. Businessmen. Men of means. The Upper Ten Thousand. I will say it don’t usually come down to ’em donatin’ things off their backs.”
“I’m not a Rockefeller.”
“Oh, sure.” Said like shore. “D’you have a mansion?”
“Mm.” He did now.
“Domestics?”
“Of course.”
Mr. Moore smiled; not a nice one. “Footmen?”
“…one.”
“Annual donations to philanthropies? Read Carnegie’s ‘Wealth’?”
Chary grumbled. “Yes,” he said, and quoted, “The most injudicious mode is when the estates and the greatest portion of the wealth are left to the first son, that the vanity of the parent may be gratified… Is that what you mean?”
Mr. Moore made a satisfied noise. “That’s it. Sounds about right.”
Shakespeare and Carnegie and Wilde? Who are you, Laurie Moore? “Sounds like my father did not read it, you mean.”
Mr. Moore laughed, big and loud. “Right, no. Sounds like not. Now you’ve inherited a blueberry farm.” He gestured to the barrens to either side. “This one. Some vanity. They tell you how many acres she is?”
“Actually, it was my brother’s idea, before he passed on.”