A Private Gentleman (29 page)
Read A Private Gentleman Online
Authors: Heidi Cullinan
in excitement to one another.
205
Heidi Cullinan
Albert gently took the pencil from Michael’s hand and wrote, in careful
letters with the notebook still on Michael’s lap,
I care for you as well. Very, very
much.
He left the notebook in Michael’s lap, their twin confessions laid bare. When
the porter came by, Michael shut the book, but he held it close, remembering the
look of those sentences together, in his handwriting and in Albert’s own. Those
words, so simple, so dear.
They were seated at the back of the train, with no one behind them and only
a single seat across. The seats were all arranged like benches facing front, as if
they were in a church without a pulpit. The other passengers seated themselves
and looked around, but never back.
Beneath their lap rugs, their legs were pressed together, knees touching
intimately. Michael could feel the heat of Albert, could smell his toilet water, the
lavender his maid used on his clothes.
Albert, who cared for him.
When the train pulled out of the station, rain pattered down upon the
windows. Wearing his glasses as he always did with Albert now, Michael could
see outside, but everything was runny and vague, blurred by the rain. He
watched the London he knew go by, while before him the rich prattled on,
settling into their seats, and beside him Albert remained still, except for his foot, which tentatively reached over to brush his toes.
Michael smiled.
An old woman was seated across from them, and she was asleep before they
left the city limits. Soon there was only the rhythmic clack of the train along the
rails, the creaking of the car and the leather seats, and the hushed conversation of
the passengers.
206
A Private Gentleman
Albert leaned down to Michael’s ear. “There is a t-tunnel ahead,” he
whispered.
He kept his face nearby, and Michael turned toward him slightly as well,
keeping one eye on the window. He could see it, a mound of earth with a dark
mouth to swallow the train. He remembered what the girls who had ridden the
train down from the northern cities had told him about the tunnels. If you didn’t
like the look of the man beside you, put your hatpins in your mouth to keep him
from stealing a kiss in the dark.
But Michael very much liked the look of the man beside him, and he was
more concerned with making sure he
did
steal a kiss.
When the darkness enfolded them, he turned to his lover. Their mouths met
like magic in the darkness, finding each other without a fumble. It was a soft,
sweet kiss—innocent and desperate as a kiss stolen in the first-class train car
should be. He tasted Albert’s breath, felt his sigh, felt him shake, just a little,
echoing the trembling Michael felt inside himself.
The light grew—they pulled away quickly, but not too quickly. Their eyes
locked.
Albert smiled.
There were no more tunnels, but there was the lap rug. Beneath it, all the
way to their destination, Michael and Albert discreetly held hands. No groping.
No fondling. Just hands touching, lightly teasing, silently celebrating what they
had confessed in Albert’s notebook.
I care for you.
Just when Michael began to nod off, the train pulled over for another stop,
and this time Albert rose, urging Michael up as well.
“Where are we?” Michael asked.
Albert smiled at him, looking delighted again. “Oxford.”
207
Heidi Cullinan
As much as the coffeehouse had been a mistake, Oxford was all Wes had
wanted for Michael and more.
After securing umbrellas from a porter, they began their tour of the town.
The rain was coming down in buckets now, but Wes suspected it could have
been sheets and a degree above freezing, and even without an umbrella Michael
would have delighted in it all.
“It’s so charming,” he said, over and over. “Like a toy village. So busy, and
yet, after London, it’s—” He laughed. “Charming. Completely, utterly charming.
I could stay here forever.”
“You haven’t even b-been inside a shop,” Wes pointed out, aiming them
toward a bakery. “And you m-m-must be hungry.”
Michael, Wes had come to learn, was always hungry, or rather, he could
always eat. Meat pies, sweet rolls, hot cross buns—Wes thought even with half
the bakery at his disposal Michael would find somewhere to put the food away.
They ate as they walked, Wes only nibbling at a bun and Michael wolfishly
consuming not one but two pies, and when Wes tempted him with a gooey sweet
roll, he hesitated only a moment before taking that up as well.
“You shall make me fat,” Michael accused, falling to the sweet with relish.
Wes sincerely doubted that, but in any case, he wouldn’t mind. He would
feed Michael all day long, were he allowed. But he only said, “Eat quickly. There
is a b-b-bookstore ahead.”
This, as he knew it would, made Michael’s eyes go wide. “A bookstore—in
Oxford?” he said around a mouthful. “Oh, I imagine it’s heavenly. I wonder
what I should find there. If only I had made you go back to fetch my purse.”
“I sh-shall buy whatever you l-like,” Wes promised, but nudged his elbow
and looked meaningfully at the roll. “Eat.”
208
A Private Gentleman
“I can’t eat it all that quickly.” Michael tore half the roll away and held it up
to Wes’s mouth. “Here. Take this. You must try it, Albert. It’s heaven.”
Wes longed to take the sweet directly from Michael’s fingers. He wondered,
glancing up and down the street, if he could. Hedging caution, he accepted with
his fingers instead, tucking his umbrella into the crook of his arm as he popped
the roll into his mouth. It was heaven, yes. But better was to watch Michael lick
the sweet from his fingers after.
The bookstore proved to fulfill all Michael desired. He found three volumes
immediately that looked as if they might make him weep on the spot, and
another half hour’s perusal provided four more. He then tried to spread the pile
out on a table and choose his favorite, but Wes only motioned to the shopkeeper
to wrap them all. He gave the man a slip of paper with an address to deliver
them to and ushered a protesting Michael back onto the street.
“Albert, that will cost a fortune,” he hissed. He glanced back over his
shoulder. “And where are you sending them?”
“To our l-lodgings,” Wes replied. “We cross h-here.”
Michael went, but he seemed oddly subdued. “Is it true that you have your
own money? Apart from your father’s allowance?”
Wes nodded. “From my m-m-mother’s uncle.”
“I wonder that you don’t purchase a house with it.” Michael gestured to the
town at large. “Somewhere quaint and quiet like this. Somewhere you could
have your own garden.”
This was something Wes had considered many times, often to the point of
sending his solicitor to examine houses. But to Michael he only shook his head.
“Too l-l-lonely.”
Did Michael blush there? And why? Wes wished he could ask.
209
Heidi Cullinan
“Where do you live in town?” Michael went on. “In some bachelor
apartments, I suppose? Or a boardinghouse?”
“Ap-p-partments. In M-Mayfair.” Wes smiled. “First fl-floor. Gas l-lighting
and r-r-running w-w-water.”
Michael laughed. “Goodness, Albert, you’re a prince. But then I already
know you like the finer things in life.”
Wes directed them around a puddle, still smiling. He felt so very good with
Michael. “I d-do.”
“I don’t mind them,” Michael said, sighing, “but there must be quiet, good
light and many books. That is luxury to me. That and a hot stove. I do detest the
damp.”
“D-Do you have your own r-r-room at Dove Street?”
“Yes. In the attic,” Michael supplied. “Well away from the sighing and
banging of headboards. And with plenty of space for my books.”
“And l-l-light?” Wes ventured.
“Excellent light,” Michael agreed.
“You sh-should have pl-plants,” Wes suggested.
Michael turned to look at him severely. “You would wish the plants
dead,
my
lord? I scarcely remember to take care of myself, and no maids are allowed in my
room.”
Wes grinned. “I w-w-will give you a c-c-cactus.”
Michael blinked at him. “A what? That sounds like a disease.”
As they crossed the streets, Wes described in detail the prickly plant found in
American deserts. He began to stammer as he realize he’d gone on and on, but a
glance at Michael found him only listening intently, careless of the rain that
drenched their boots and poured off the tarpaulin above their heads. He
continued on, hesitating less as he warmed to his topic, explaining the beauty
210
A Private Gentleman
and even religious importance of the cactus. At one point Michael mentioned he
would like to read a book about the Americas and the native cultures there, and
Wes vowed privately to find him one as soon as he returned to London.
And then they arrived at the university.
Wes led Michael through the colleges, letting him linger and delight at
porticos and arches, taking his own pleasure in watching Michael light up over
so many simple things, like narrow passages and lanes and doors that looked
“absolutely medieval!” But he kept him going, herding him onward to his
ultimate destination. In truth he should have left it for the morrow, for the day
was growing long, but he couldn’t wait. When he’d envisioned this trip, he had
one place in mind in which to take his lover, and they were now nearly there. A
turn down New College Lane onto Cattle Street, and there, across from Hertford
College, it stood waiting.
Bodleian.
Best of all was that Michael had no notion of what it was. He only marveled
at the architecture and the door, imagining dragons and princesses, then
amending it to “nefarious professors, waiting to pile books atop unsuspecting
boys’ heads.” Wes only smiled and ushered him inside. And watched. And
enjoyed as it dawned on Michael that he was in a library. An old, monstrously
large, musty old library.
When on occasion librarians and caretakers came forward to question who
they were, Wes took care of dispatching them, making certain nothing came
between Michael and his discoveries. It was, Wes decided, rather as if someone
could take him into a museum of plants, where all the species of the world were
contained, greater than any botanical garden Wes had ever dreamed existed.
Michael walked slowly, hushing his footsteps and behaving as if he had entered
the holiest of churches. For almost an hour he simply wandered, touching
211
Heidi Cullinan
nothing, only taking in the great halls, the alcoves, the stacks that reached all the way to the top of the vaulted ceiling. And then, as if it had finally become too
much, he collapsed against a pillar and pressed his hands together over his
mouth, his eyes full and dark and shining.
“Oh, Albert,” he whispered, staring off at another hall, another avenue of
books. “Oh,
Albert
.”
“G-Go on,” Wes urged him. “Explore.”
Michael did. He ran his fingers over spines. He asked librarians where he
might find such-and-such, or the volume written by so-and-so. Several times he
ended up in happily spirited debates with other browsing scholars, students and
sometimes the librarians themselves.
The man, Wes realized, was at home. As much as Wes was at home in a
garden, this library was where Michael Vallant bloomed.
In total they were there for three hours, leaving only when the building itself
shut down. Michael was disappointed, but he refused to believe they’d been
there that long, and once he was proved that they had been, he chastised Wes for
not removing him earlier.
“We’ve missed dinner.” He shook his head as they exited the building. “You
should have told me.”
“I w-w-will find you something to eat,” Wes promised, smiling. He swore he
had done nothing but smile since the moment he picked Michael up that day.
Michael stopped their walking, and after a glance around, he pulled Wes
into a dark corner of an arched door, blocked the view from the street with his
umbrella and pressed his lips to Wes’s own.
It was a soft, sweet, almost magical kiss. A kiss of thanks. A kiss of wonder
and lightness. And for all that, it made Wes’s eyes close and stole directly into his soul.
212
A Private Gentleman
When they finally drew apart, they walked in silence. Wes longed to take
Michael’s arm—in fact, he had to check the gesture several times. But of course
that would not do. They walked as close as possible, back through the maze of
colleges and passages, back to the city center, stopping at last at the warm light