Once a Gentleman

The bell over the door jangled discordantly, and Kit quickly ducked behind a bookshelf, concealing himself from whichever unlucky soul had chosen to brave the proprietor’s mood this morning.

Cantwell was at least no toady, and he spread his sarcasm, disdain, or wrath to everyone, regardless of wealth or status. Kit had more of it due to his proximity, and a customer represented a new target for his employer. Best to simply fade away and pretend to be absorbed in shelving new stock.

So he took a stack of the latest improper twaddle, written by a lady with more imagination than sense, and began to arrange the volumes on a low table near the front window, in a spot sheltered from view of the shop counter. He allowed himself to stroke the covers wistfully for a moment.

Highly improper, but thoroughly entertaining, and Kit’s salary didn’t stretch to the purchase of books.

He vaguely heard a drawling, cultured voice requesting a treatise on mathematics, and laughed to himself. A voice like that, in his experience, belonged to a dilettante and a wastrel, and likely the book was meant to sit on a side table and impress a wealthy uncle with evidence of the gentleman’s scholarliness. As soon as the uncle departed it would become a place to rest a brandy bottle.

Kit gathered up the remaining pile of books and mounted a ladder set against the side wall, meaning to stack it all on top of the shelf there. He managed three books, and then as he tried to transfer the fourth from one hand to the other, the stack teetered, he grasped at them—and inevitably, with a bitten-off cry, he overbalanced and toppled to the ground, limbs flailing.

Or rather, to his surprise, he toppled toward the ground, but failed to reach it. Out of nowhere, two strong arms wrapped around his waist. Kit instinctively released the books, which went flying with a series of thuds, and grasped hold of a pair of wonderfully broad and muscular shoulders.

As Kit’s feet touched the floorboards, he looked up several inches into a handsome, tanned face that could only belong to the wastrel dabbling in Gauss’s Disquisitiones Generales. Wheat-colored hair in a fashionable Brutus cut framed a set of strong, perfectly symmetrical features, with pale, sea-blue eyes and lips turned up into a knowing smirk most notable among them. The purplish shadows beneath those eyes and the lines at the corners of his mouth confirmed Kit’s impression of a man who liked his brandy more than his mathematics. To Kit’s shame, they did nothing to diminish his appeal.

The gentleman’s arms tightened a little as Kit tried to squirm away. He succeeded only in rubbing his body rather lewdly against his captor’s well-muscled torso; the man finally released him, allowing him to flop back against the shelf, red-faced and flustered.

“I beg your pardon,” Kit gasped. “My foot must have slipped. I am most terribly sorry.”

The stranger opened his mouth to reply, but Cantwell’s strident voice interrupted. “What on earth was that commotion? Sir, are you injured?” he cried as he came around the corner. The gentleman turned to meet him, instantly all easy, insincere smiles.

“Why, nothing at all. Your clerk took an unfortunate tumble, but no harm done. As you see, he’s quite well, as am I.” He waved a languid hand in Kit’s direction.

Cantwell glanced his way, and Kit cringed. He’d already been dressed down three times that week, and if he lost this position, it would be the end of any hope he had. Without friends, references, or any money besides his salary, this bookshop represented his only chance at earning enough to live, and he’d been damn lucky that Cantwell had dismissed his previous clerk only moments before Kit came in to speak to him about employment.

Cantwell looked back at the gentleman. “Are you certain you’re unhurt, sir? I have never been so mortified by a clerk’s poor behavior, although I must say, placing yourself in the way of his fall was most unwise…” And Cantwell was off on a tirade, lambasting them both with equal vigor. Kit thought to slink away unnoticed and began to quietly gather up the fallen volumes to that end. His employer stopped him with a sharp bark of “Hewlett!”

Reluctantly, he turned back, arms full of Gothic novels. “Yes, Mr. Cantwell.”

And then, the words he had dreaded: “You’re dismissed. I won’t tolerate this incompetence. Apologize to the gentleman, and go to the stockroom and await me there.”

Kit kept his eyes on the floor; the humiliation of seeing the gentleman’s pity and contempt would be too much. He owed the man an apology for his clumsiness, but to appear to do it because that little mushroom of a man had demanded it rankled his very soul. “I beg your pardon, sir,” he said, the words nearly choking him. And then he fled.

He didn’t wait for Cantwell to join him, simply tearing off his apron, yanking on his coat, and going directly out the back door to the alley. Cantwell might or might not have troubled to pay him for the two days he’d worked that week had he waited, but it hardly mattered. Six shillings more in his pocket only meant starvation would be a trifle delayed. Better to have it over with, since he’d never have the courage—cowardice? Kit could never make up his mind—to hang himself. He choked off a hysterical half-laugh, half-sob at the thought. Like father, like son? He wiped the moisture from his eyes with the sleeve of his threadbare coat as he turned the corner.

And of course, he barreled headlong into a familiar muscled chest. He bounced off it, in fact, stumbling and nearly going arse over teakettle into the dirt, but for two strong hands that reached out and grasped him by the shoulders. Kit glanced up to see blue eyes and a mocking half-smile. Twice in ten minutes was really the outside of enough.

Kit wrenched himself away and slumped against the sooty bricks of the alley wall. “Bloody, buggering…” He couldn’t quite bring himself to go on, his father’s ancient strictures against vulgarity too well ingrained even after all that had happened since he’d heard them last. He gasped a few deep breaths, determined at least to not let any tears fall in front of this man. “Thank you,” he managed, sounding very hoarse and only a little insincere. “I am very much obliged.” That came out rather drier.

The fellow had the audacity to laugh. That and the accompanying shallow bow were enough to make Kit’s vision blur with fury. “Not at all,” he said. “I should be glad to assist you with anything you like.” His gaze held something like a question—a rather impolite one.

Kit had never been particularly bold in exploring his illicit proclivities, but two years at Oxford, moving in certain circles, had left even him with sufficient experience to interpret such a look. Even so, he could hardly credit his own senses. It would be sheer insanity to approach a stranger in such a way in a public street; the alternative, that Kit himself was so obvious in his desires as to provoke such brazenness, was even less palatable.

And then a third possibility presented itself. This profligate knave had watched him lose his livelihood, could certainly see by the state of his coat and boots that he had little enough to fall back upon. If he thought, perhaps, that Kit might be persuaded to satisfy his desires for money…?

His skin crawled with horror and humiliation. He might very well end his miserable life in a workhouse or a gutter, but that shame he would never accept.

A seeming lifetime before, when Kit could have passed for a gentleman, he might have laughed it off, or extricated himself gracefully with a cutting word or two thrown over his shoulder. But at that moment, looking up through tear-glazed eyes at the smirking, dissolute, well-bred face of a wealthy man with no scruple about taking advantage of Kit’s utter desperation, he simply had no other option but to plant him a facer.