#NeverForget
Summary:
GMA BUZZ PICK • INTERNATIONAL BEST SELLER AND AWARD WINNER • A haunting, virtuosic debut novel about two young men who fall in love during World War I • “Will live in your mind long after you’ve closed the final pages.” —Maggie O’Farrell, best-selling author of Hamnet and The Marriage Portrait
A Best Book of the Year: The New Yorker, The Washington Post, NPR
“In Memoriam is the story of a great tragedy, but it is also a moving portrait of young love.”—The New York Times
It’s 1914, and World War I is ceaselessly churning through thousands of young men on both sides of the fight. The violence of the front feels far away to Henry Gaunt, Sidney Ellwood and the rest of their classmates, safely ensconced in their idyllic boarding school in the English countryside. News of the heroic deaths of their friends only makes the war more exciting.
Gaunt, half German, is busy fighting his own private battle--an all-consuming infatuation with his best friend, the glamorous, charming Ellwood--without a clue that Ellwood is pining for him in return. When Gaunt's family asks him to enlist to forestall the anti-German sentiment they face, Gaunt does so immediately, relieved to escape his overwhelming feelings for Ellwood. To Gaunt's horror, Ellwood rushes to join him at the front, and the rest of their classmates soon follow. Now death surrounds them in all its grim reality, often inches away, and no one knows who will be next.
An epic tale of both the devastating tragedies of war and the forbidden romance that blooms in its grip, In Memoriam is a breathtaking debut.
How in the world did I not know about this book last year?!?!?!?! So good!!! And again, another new author for me, Alice Winn is a debut author so really the author is new to everyone, but why quibble over semantics😉?
In Memoriam is a slow build, intricately told tale of different points in time, at least the first several chapters after a point it mostly stays on track chronologically. Some might find the time jumping a bit confusing but everything is well labeled so I had no issues. Ellwood and Gaunt will suck you in, break your heart, make you smile, bring you to tears, make you angry, and even make you chuckle here and there but it will also(most importantly) make you think about things that are still so very(unfortunately) relevant today.
The balance of love and horrors of war is so incredibly real, you can just feel both coming off the page and hitting you in the chest. The attention to detail can be hard to read at times but if you are reading a story about WW1 then you need to understand the scope of what reality was like for both the men in the trenches, in the hospitals, and the families back home. Now in In Memoriam the homefront scenes are not huge, are not significant page-wise but they are so significant story-wise. We also see the men back in England as well and what it was like for them, I don't want to spoil the situations and scenarios that happen at that point so I won't say more just that again, the author hits you in all the feels.
The person who rec'd this story to me said it could be the next The Song of Achilles and I've seen that statement mentioned in a few other reviews as well. I gotta tell you, I have not read Achilles yet but I've heard good things about it and if it's half as good as In Memoriam then it definitely is going on my 2025 TBR list. And Alice Winn has earned a spot on my authors-to-watch list because when an author hits you in all the feels multiple times throughout the book then I know I've found a gem to be respected and recommendable.
Summary:
Archaeologist Saul Lazenby has been all but unemployable since his disgrace during the War. Now he scrapes a living working for a rich eccentric who believes in magic. Saul knows it’s a lot of nonsense...except that he begins to find himself in increasingly strange and frightening situations. And at every turn he runs into the sardonic, mysterious Randolph Glyde.
Randolph is the last of an ancient line of arcanists, commanding deep secrets and extraordinary powers as he struggles to fulfil his family duties in a war-torn world. He knows there's something odd going on with the haunted-looking man who keeps turning up in all the wrong places. The only question for Randolph is whether Saul is victim or villain.
Saul hasn’t trusted anyone in a long time. But as the supernatural threat grows, along with the desire between them, he’ll need to believe in evasive, enraging, devastatingly attractive Randolph. Because he may be the only man who can save Saul’s life—or his soul.
Saul Lazenby, archaeologist before the war and disgraced during the war, now has found himself surviving after the war by working for an eccentric who believes in all things magic. Randolph Glyde, the last of his family and a powerful arcanist who is at odds with the Shadow Ministry. When these two cross paths repeatedly, is it fate, coincidence, or is there magic afoot?
I always find paranormal tales a bit hard to review in terms of the plot because I don't want to give anything away because even the smallest detail can be a huge plot factor so let me just say: Spectred Isle was awesome! Saul and Randolph both spoke to me in multiple ways. If you are asking is this an enemies to lover trope? I don't know how the author sees them but I would not classify them that way, they are definitely at odds a bit and most certainly not friends but enemies seem too harsh. However you label them, they are a perfect fit, both as warring believers on all things magic and as a team, personally and professionally, looking for answers.
I have never really read KJ Charles before, though I have several on my TBR list. There was a crossover novella, Remnant, her Caldwell & Feximal co-written with Jordan L Hawk's Whyborne & Griffin that I read when I first read Hawk's W&G series and I loved Caldwell & Feximal but I have yet to go back and read their own story. Spectred Isle is a spin-off of that pairing but you don't need to read that first before enjoying Saul & Randolph's journey. The Secret Casebook of Simon Feximal has been on my TBR list for ages but after reading Spectred it has definitely moved closer to the top.
The passion and attraction between Saul and Randolph just resonates off the page so beautifully as does the author's attention to detail when it comes to setting a scene. It was as if you were hovering in the air watching everything unfold as opposed to sitting at home reading the words. Spectred Isle will keep you hooked from the first page to the last.
RATING:
I always find paranormal tales a bit hard to review in terms of the plot because I don't want to give anything away because even the smallest detail can be a huge plot factor so let me just say: Spectred Isle was awesome! Saul and Randolph both spoke to me in multiple ways. If you are asking is this an enemies to lover trope? I don't know how the author sees them but I would not classify them that way, they are definitely at odds a bit and most certainly not friends but enemies seem too harsh. However you label them, they are a perfect fit, both as warring believers on all things magic and as a team, personally and professionally, looking for answers.
I have never really read KJ Charles before, though I have several on my TBR list. There was a crossover novella, Remnant, her Caldwell & Feximal co-written with Jordan L Hawk's Whyborne & Griffin that I read when I first read Hawk's W&G series and I loved Caldwell & Feximal but I have yet to go back and read their own story. Spectred Isle is a spin-off of that pairing but you don't need to read that first before enjoying Saul & Randolph's journey. The Secret Casebook of Simon Feximal has been on my TBR list for ages but after reading Spectred it has definitely moved closer to the top.
The passion and attraction between Saul and Randolph just resonates off the page so beautifully as does the author's attention to detail when it comes to setting a scene. It was as if you were hovering in the air watching everything unfold as opposed to sitting at home reading the words. Spectred Isle will keep you hooked from the first page to the last.
RATING:
Summary:
Devastated Magic #1
A drafted empath. A dreamwalking poet. A world at war.
Chicago, 1917.
Idealistic, aspiring poet, Elliot Stone can make people feel euphoria or horror with a simple touch. But that's only part of his magical abilities. He can also wake in the dreams of people he cares deeply for.
Stubborn, fiercely independent Warren “Sully” Sullivan is an illusionist with a secret: he feels the emotions of others as visceral sensations. A lifetime of fending for himself and parsing feelings that aren’t his own has left him guarded.
An intoxicating, intense connection on their last night of freedom should be nothing more than a one-night stand. And it is. Until Elliot awakens in Sully's nightmare with an overpowering urge to save him, regardless of his carefully crafted moral code.
As tragedy draws them together in real life to battle enemies with twisted magic, weakness is a disastrous liability. When keeping safe means revealing his to Elliot, can Sully take the risk?
This is not your typical WW1 era story, magic is real and the military is utilizing it but so is the enemy. There are not enough WW1 era stories in the LGBTQ genre so I tend to gobble them up when I find them and this one I happened upon when looking for something else. I'm so glad I did. To let you know it is an ongoing series with book 2 just recently released and #3 set for October 2025. I'll admit had I known that I may have waited but that's okay because the truth is this time of year is my busiest book-wise and I most likely won't get to read #2 until after the holidays.
Onto Imperfect Illusions.
Vanora Lawless is a new author to me and some might shy away from that especially in a story setting not typically paranormal but I welcome fresh voices. So much talent. Magic like Elliot and Warren may not be real but it does make one think how that kind of element could change the face of war as we know it, for both sides. It certainly brings in a new layer of morality. I don't want to give too much away so I'll leave their particular brand of talents for you to discover but just know that it will definitely intrigue you and make you question "what if?".
As for Elliot and Warren, there is no denying there chemistry when they meet but when their ongoing gravitation towards each other isn't quite on our level it both warms and breaks the heart. I will say it also confuses a few things when they are once again face to face physically but that's part of what makes Imperfect so perfectly, heart-hurting & warmingly delicious. Again, I'll leave that there so as not to spoil too much.
Just a brief mention of the amazing cast of characters beyond Elliot and Warren, so many great contributions to the magical and historical aspects. Was the one female given higher ranking and power more suited for contemporary setting instead of WW1? Sure but then you have to remember the whole story is paranormal and fantasy so why not have a woman take a stronger stand? It may be societal licensing but it's fantasy so the whole story takes reality liberties so for me that was a non-point but for some I know it may be.
Though, as I stated above, it'll most likely be into 2025 before I have the opportunity to continue Elliot and Warren's journey, I look forward to doing so. The creative brilliance the author has displayed in Imperfect Illusions has earned them a spot on my authors-to-watch list. Definitely winner all around.
Heart to Hart by Erin O'Quinn
Summary:Gaslight Mystery #1
Two unlikely men meet in 1923 Ireland.
Michael McCree seems to be a newspaperman, running from a past in Boston. He’s a lover of men and a drinker of whiskey, and yet one with some surprising depths and one huge secret.
Simon Hart is a surly, angry, altogether closeted and touch-me-not fellow, a Cambridge-educated private investigator whose business partner has been murdered. He meets Michael in a newspaper shop when turning in an obit notice.
They clash. Fisticuffs fly. And before Simon knows what’s happened, he’s gained a new flat-mate, a new business partner, and a wanna-be lover. It’s the “wanna-be” that drives the present story…and all that follow.
Original Review May 2014:
I read all three books and since the time frame from page 1 of Heart to Hart to the last page of To the Bone only covers about two to three weeks, I'm going to do an overall review for these entries. I won't lie, the beginning was a bit tricky to get into with the Irish slang of the time but I was able to become comfortable with it after only a chapter or so. As I write this I am thinking that it had more to do with me not letting go of the previous book before starting this series and less of the slang language, but whatever the reason, after that first chapter I was hooked. Simon and Michael grabbed my heart and didn't let go. I loved the humorous banter between the new found partners. I found them to be very enjoyable and likeable despite their moments of infuriating debates. At times, they reminded me very much of the banter and bickering of Bogey and Bacall in The Big Sleep. The mysteries are quite intriguing and definitely hold the reader's interest as does the humor and the obvious attraction between the pair. Michael McCree and Simon Hart are a captivating pair that I look forward to read many times over.
Overall Series 1st Re-Read Review 2016:
Gaslight Mysteries in another one of those series that even knowing who did what, why, and how it still gets me sitting on the edge of my seat. Simon and Michael may be polar opposites when it comes to attitude and how they face life but at the heart of it all they are a perfect match. The offset each other in a way that only makes them stronger. I'll definitely be revisiting this investigative duo more than once in the upcoming years, perhaps not annually but I'll say hi to them again.
Gaslight Mysteries in another one of those series that even knowing who did what, why, and how it still gets me sitting on the edge of my seat. Simon and Michael may be polar opposites when it comes to attitude and how they face life but at the heart of it all they are a perfect match. The offset each other in a way that only makes them stronger. I'll definitely be revisiting this investigative duo more than once in the upcoming years, perhaps not annually but I'll say hi to them again.
These Old Lies by Larrie Barton
Summary:A second chance at love for two men who fought together in the trenches of WWI. Class, ideals and prejudice drove them apart, but now, in the safety of peacetime, an illicit gay relationship has its own joys and risks.
1916, Northern France. Corporal Charlie Villiers breaks the monotony of the trenches by having sex with whoever is willing, including the posh Lieutenant Ned Pinsent. Except their stolen moments are becoming more than just a distraction — Ned actually listens when Charlie talks. But can Charlie share how going over the top is crushing his soul with the golden boy officer?
1923, London. Ned Pinsent’s reward for surviving the Great War is life as a scandalous Bright Young Thing — no cares, no responsibilities and no consequences. His carefully curated life of pleasure is upended when an errand brings him face to face with Charlie Villiers, his ex-lover from the trenches — the man whose life Ned saved and whose trust Ned betrayed.
From the roaring twenties to the world wars and beyond, Charlie and Ned will learn to fight for each other and their love.
Always love discovering new-to-me authors but in the case of These Old Lies by Larrie Barton, it truly is a new author as this is their first release. And what a way to jump into the publishing world! There is just not enough WW1/post-war era stories in the LGBTQ genre for my liking so I tend to 1-click them whenever one crosses my eye. Even though it's only a couple of months I can't recall how These Old Lies caught my attention but I am so glad it did.
These Old Lies is the story of Corporal Charlie Villiers and Lieutenant Ned Pinsent told through varied points in their journey: in the trenches, post-war/early 1920s, early 1930s, and WW2, and a final chapter farther into the future(don't want to spoil anything so that's all you'll get on the future). Their chemistry is obvious and real, fiery and subtle, their behavior ranging from barely speaking to BFFs, from their stolen moments of lust to their growing pull of love, it is all encompassing and you can't help but smile while witnessing it.
The supporting cast, from the trenches to homelife, every character is needed and not just page filler. They add to the story but they also add to the strengths and fears of Charlie and Ned.
Once again, These Old Lies is an amazing story that respects the era in multiple areas. Larrie Barton is definitely going on my "Author-To-Watch" list. Whether you like historicals or just good storytelling in general, this is certainly a winning gem.
Blogger Note: With this being the author's first published work, yes there are grammatical errors that should have been caught in editing BUT they are not enough to change the flow of the story. I'll admit I tend to mentally correct them without thinking about it nor feel a need to be over critical of it either. Also some are not editing errors but slang of the time and while we may not recognize them that doesn't mean they were missed in editing. I saw a few comments regarding the multiple times the men, mentally and/or verbally, brought up their fears of discovery so remember, this is a historical setting where being LGBT was not only considered morally wrong but was in fact illegal and Charlie and Ned's fears are real and warranted. If the author had written it by today's standards I would have been disappointed and not enjoyed the story nearly as much.
In Memoriam by Alice Winn
ONE
Ellwood was a prefect, so his room that year was a splendid one, with a window that opened onto a strange outcrop of roof. He was always scrambling around places he shouldn’t. It was Gaunt, however, who truly loved the roof perch. He liked watching boys dipping in and out of Fletcher Hall to pilfer biscuits, prefects swanning across the grass in Court, the organ master coming out of Chapel. It soothed him to see the school functioning without him, and to know that he was above it. Ellwood also liked to sit on the roof. He fashioned his hands into guns and shot at the passers-by.
“Bloody Fritz! Got him in the eye! Take that home to the Kaiser!”
Gaunt, who had grown up summering in Munich, did not tend to join in these soldier games.
Balancing The Preshutian on his knee as he turned the page, Gaunt finished reading the last “In Memoriam.” He had known seven of the nine boys killed. The longest “In Memoriam” was for Clarence Roseveare, the older brother of one of Ellwood’s friends. As to Gaunt’s own friend—and enemy—Cuthbert-Smith, a measly paragraph had sufficed to sum him up. Both boys, The Preshutian assured him, had died gallant deaths. Just like every other Preshute student who had been killed so far in the War.
“Pow!” muttered Ellwood beside him. “Auf Wiedersehen!”
Gaunt took a long drag of his cigarette and folded up the paper.
“They’ve got rather more to say about Roseveare than about Cuthbert-Smith, haven’t they?”
Ellwood’s guns turned back to hands. Nimble, long-fingered, ink-stained.
“Yes,” he said, patting his hair absentmindedly. It was dark and unruly. He kept it slicked back with wax, but lived in fear of a stray curl coming unfixed and drawing the wrong kind of attention to himself. “Yes, I thought that was a shame.”
“Shot in the stomach!” Gaunt’s hand went automatically to his own. He imagined it opened up by a streaking piece of metal. Messy.
“Roseveare’s cut up about his brother,” said Ellwood. “They were awfully close, the three Roseveare boys.”
“He seemed all right in the dining hall.”
“He’s not one to make a fuss,” said Ellwood, frowning. He took Gaunt’s cigarette, scrupulously avoiding touching Gaunt’s hand as he did so. Despite Ellwood’s tactile relationship with his other friends, he rarely laid a finger on Gaunt unless they were play-fighting. Gaunt would have died rather than let Ellwood know how it bothered him.
Ellwood took a drag and handed the cigarette back to Gaunt.
“I wonder what my ‘In Memoriam’ would say,” he mused.
“ ‘Vain boy dies in freak umbrella mishap. Investigations pending.’ ”
“No,” said Ellwood. “No, I think something more like ‘English literature today has lost its brightest star . . . !’ ” He grinned at Gaunt, but Gaunt did not smile back. He still had his hand on his stomach, as if his guts would spill out like Cuthbert-Smith’s if he moved it. He saw Ellwood take this in.
“I’d write yours, you know,” said Ellwood, quietly.
“All in verse, I suppose.”
“Of course. As Tennyson did, for Arthur Hallam.”
Ellwood frequently compared himself to Tennyson and Gaunt to Tennyson’s closest friend. Mostly, Gaunt found it charming, except when he remembered that Arthur Hallam had died at the age of twenty-two and Tennyson had spent the next seventeen years writing grief poetry. Then Gaunt found it all a bit morbid, as if Ellwood wanted him to die, so that he would have something to write about.
Gaunt had kneed Cuthbert-Smith in the stomach, once. How different did a bullet feel from a blow?
“Your sister thought Cuthbert-Smith was rather good-looking,” said Ellwood. “She told me at Lady Asquith’s, last summer.”
“Did she?” asked Gaunt, unenthusiastically. “Awfully nice of her to confide in you like that.”
“Maud’s A1,” said Ellwood, standing abruptly. “Capital sort of girl.” A bit of slate crumbled under his feet and fell to the ground, three stories below.
“Christ, Elly, don’t do that!” said Gaunt, clutching the window ledge. Ellwood grinned and clambered back into the bedroom.
“Come on in, it’s wet out there,” he said.
Gaunt hurriedly took another breath of smoke and dropped his cigarette down a drainpipe. Ellwood was splayed out on the sofa, but when Gaunt sat on his legs, he curled them hastily out of the way.
“You loathed Cuthbert-Smith,” said Ellwood.
“Yes. Well. I shall miss loathing him.”
Ellwood laughed.
“You’ll find someone new to hate. You always do.”
“Undoubtedly,” said Gaunt. But that wasn’t the point. He had written nasty poems about Cuthbert-Smith, and Cuthbert-Smith (Gaunt was almost certain it was him) had scrawled, “Henry Gaunt is a German SPY” on the wall of the library cloakroom. Gaunt had punched him for that, but he would never have shot him in the stomach.
“I think I believe he’ll be back next term, smug and full of tall tales from the front,” said Ellwood, slowly.
“Maybe none of them will come back.”
“That sort of defeatist attitude will lose us the War.” Ellwood cocked his head. “Henry. Old Cuthbert-Smith was an idiot. He probably walked straight into a bullet for a lark. That’s not what it will be like when we go.”
“I’m not signing up.”
Ellwood wrapped his arms around his knees, staring at Gaunt.
“Rot,” he said.
“I’m not against all war,” said Gaunt. “I’m just against this war. ‘German militarism’—as if we didn’t hold our empire through military might! Why should I get shot at because some Austrian archduke was killed by an angry Serb?”
“But Belgium—”
“Yes, yes, Belgian atrocities,” said Gaunt. They had discussed all this before. They had even debated it, and Ellwood had beaten him, 596 votes to 4. Ellwood would have won any debate: the school loved him.
“But you have to enlist,” said Ellwood. “If the War is even still on when we finish school.”
“Why? Because you will?”
Ellwood clenched his jaw and looked away.
“You will fight, Gaunt,” he said.
“Oh, yes?”
“You always fight. Everyone.” Ellwood rubbed a small flat spot on his nose with one finger. He often did that. Gaunt wondered if Ellwood resented that he had punched it there. They had only fought once. It hadn’t been Gaunt who started it.
“I don’t fight you,” he said.
“ϒνῶθι σεαυτόν,” said Ellwood.
“I do know myself!” said Gaunt, lunging at Ellwood to smother him with a pillow, and for a moment neither of them could talk, because Ellwood was squirming and shrieking with laughter while Gaunt tried to wrestle him off the sofa. Gaunt was strong, but Ellwood was quicker, and he slipped through Gaunt’s arms and fell to the floor, helpless with laughter. Gaunt hung his head over the side, and they pressed their foreheads together.
“Fighting like this, you mean?” said Gaunt, when they had got their breath back. “Wrestle the Germans to death?”
Ellwood stopped laughing, but he didn’t move his forehead. They were still for a moment, hard skull against hard skull, until Ellwood pulled away and leant his face into Gaunt’s arm.
All of Gaunt’s muscles tensed at the movement. Ellwood’s breath was hot. It reminded Gaunt of his dog back home, Trooper. Perhaps that was why he ruffled Ellwood’s hair, his fingers searching for strands the wax had missed. He hadn’t stroked Ellwood’s hair in years, not since they were thirteen-year-olds in their first year at Preshute and he would find Ellwood huddled in a heap of tears under his desk.
But they were in Upper Sixth now, their final year, and almost never touched each other.
Ellwood was very still.
“You’re like my dog,” said Gaunt, because the silence was heavy with something.
Ellwood tugged away.
“Thanks.”
“It’s a good thing. I’m very fond of dogs.”
“Right. Anything you’d like me to fetch? I’m starting to get the hang of newspapers, although my teeth still leave marks.”
“Don’t be daft.”
Ellwood laughed a little unhappily.
“I’m sad about Roseveare and Cuthbert-Smith too, you know,” he said.
“Oh, yes,” said Gaunt. “And Straker. Remember how you two used to tie the younger boys to chairs and beat them all night?”
It had been years since Ellwood bullied anyone, but Gaunt knew he was still ashamed of the vein of ungovernable violence that burnt through him. Just last term, Gaunt had seen him cry tears of rage when he lost a cricket match. Gaunt hadn’t cried since he was nine.
“Straker and I were much less rotten than the boys in the year above were to us,” said Ellwood, his face red. “Charlie Pritchard shot us with rifle blanks.”
Gaunt smirked, conscious that he was taunting Ellwood because he felt he had embarrassed himself by touching his hair. It was the sort of thing Ellwood did to other boys all the time, he reasoned with himself. Yes, a voice answered. But never to him.
“I wasn’t close with Straker, anyway,” said Ellwood. “He was a brute.”
“All your friends are brutes, Ellwood.”
“I’m tired of all this.” Ellwood stood. “Let’s go for a walk.”
They were forbidden to leave their rooms during prep, so they had to slip quietly out of Cemetery House. They crept down the back stairs, past the study where their housemaster, Mr. Hammick, was berating a Shell boy for sneaking. (Preshute was a younger public school, and eagerly used the terminology of older, more prestigious institutions: Shell for first year, Remove for second, Hundreds for third, followed by Lower and Upper Sixth.)
“It is a low and dishonourable thing, Gosset. Do you wish to be low and dishonourable?”
“No, sir,” whimpered the unfortunate Gosset.
“Poor chap,” said Ellwood when they had shut the back door behind them. They walked down the gravel path into the graveyard that gave Cemetery House its name. “The Shell have been perfectly beastly to him, just because he told them all on his first day that he was a duke.”
“Is he?” asked Gaunt, skimming the tops of tombstones with his fingertips as he walked.
“Yes, he is, but that’s the sort of thing one ought to let people discover. It’s rather like me introducing myself by saying, ‘Hello, I’m Sidney Ellwood, I’m devastatingly attractive.’ It’s not for me to say.”
“If you’re waiting for me to confirm your vanity—”
“I wouldn’t dream of it,” said Ellwood with a cheery little skip. “I haven’t had a compliment from you in about three months. I know, because I always write them down and put them in a drawer.”
“Peacock.”
“Well, the point is, Gosset has been thoroughly sat on by the rest of his form, and I feel awfully sorry for him.”
They were coming to the crumbling Old Priory at the bottom of the graveyard. It was getting colder and wetter as night fell. The sky darkened to navy blue, and in the wind their tailcoats billowed. Gaunt hugged his arms around himself. There was something expectant about winter evenings at Preshute. It was the contrast, perhaps, between the hulking hills behind the school, the black forest, the windswept meadows, all so silent—and the crackling loudness of the boys when you returned to House. Walking through the empty fields, they might have been the only people left alive. Ellwood lived in a grand country estate in East Sussex, but Gaunt had grown up in London. Silence was distinctly magical.
“Listen,” said Ellwood, closing his eyes and tilting up his face. “Can’t you just imagine the Romans thrashing the Celts if you’re quiet?”
They stopped.
Gaunt couldn’t imagine anything through the silence.
“Do you believe in magic?” he asked. Ellwood paused for a while, so long that if he had been anyone else, Gaunt might have repeated the question.
“I believe in beauty,” said Ellwood, finally.
“Yes,” said Gaunt, fervently. “Me too.” He wondered what it was like to be someone like Ellwood, who contributed to the beauty of a place, rather than blighting it.
“It’s a form of magic, all this,” said Ellwood, walking on. “Cricket and hunting and ices on the lawn on summer afternoons. England is magic.”
Gaunt had a feeling he knew what Ellwood was going to say next.
“That’s why we’ve got to fight for it.”
Ellwood’s England was magical, thought Gaunt, picking his way around nettles. But it wasn’t England. Gaunt had been to the East End once, when his mother took him to give soup and bread to Irish weavers. There had been no cricket or hunting or ices, there. But Ellwood had never been interested in ugliness, whereas Gaunt—because of Maud, perhaps, because she read Bernard Shaw and Bertrand Russell and wrote mad things about the colonies in her letters—feared that ugliness was too important to ignore.
“Do you remember the Peloponnesian War?” said Gaunt.
Ellwood let out a breathy laugh. “Honestly, Gaunt, I don’t know why I bother with you. We skipped prep so that we wouldn’t have to think about Thucydides.”
“Athens was the greatest power in Europe, perhaps even the world. They had democracy, art, splendid architecture. But Sparta was almost as powerful. Not quite, but close enough. And Sparta was militaristic.”
“Is this a parable, Gaunt? Are you Christ?”
“And so the Athenians fought the Spartans.”
“And they lost,” said Ellwood, kicking at a rotting log.
“Yes.”
Ellwood didn’t answer for a long time.
“We won’t lose,” he said, finally. “We’re the greatest empire that’s ever been.”
They were in Hundreds the first time they got drunk together. Gaunt was sixteen and Ellwood fifteen. Pritchard had somehow—“at great personal cost,” he told them darkly—convinced his older brother to give him five bottles of cheap whisky. They locked themselves in the bathroom at the top of Cemetery House: Pritchard, West, Roseveare, Ellwood, and Gaunt. Ellwood, Gaunt later discovered, had insisted on buying his bottle off Pritchard. Ellwood had a morbid fear of being perceived as miserly.
West spat his first mouthful of whisky into the sink. He was a big-eared, clumsy, disastrous sort of person: stupid at lessons, average at games, a cheerful failure.
“Christ alive! That’s abominable stuff,” he said. His tie was crooked. It always was, no matter how many times he was punished for sloppiness.
“Keep drinking,” advised Roseveare, from his lazy position on the floor. Gaunt glanced at him and noticed with some irritation that, even dishevelled, he was immaculate. He was the youngest of three perfect Roseveare boys, each more exemplary than the last, and he was good-looking in a careless, gilded way that Gaunt resented.
“I quite like it,” said Ellwood, turning his bottle to look at the label. “Perhaps I shall develop a habit. I think Byron had a habit.”
“So do monks,” said Gaunt.
“That was nearly funny, Gaunt,” said Roseveare encouragingly. “You’ll get there.”
Spectred Isle by KJ Charles
CHAPTER ONE
London, April 1923
It was a beautiful day for an outing.
Saul Lazenby felt an unaccustomed contentment as he hopped off the train at Oakleigh Park station, up in the wild suburban highlands of Barnet, North London. It was pleasant to stroll in the spring sunshine, particularly because he was doing so alone. He was deeply grateful to his employer, who had taken him on when nobody else would, but that didn’t make Major Peabody’s endless lectures about his ridiculous theories easier to bear. Saul had no right to complain in the circumstances, and no intention of doing so, but it was undeniably pleasant to have a little time to himself, and to be paid for, literally, a walk in the park.
That was his destination: Oak Hill Park, still a wild expanse of heath despite London’s unstoppable crawl outward over the towns and villages in its path. The green space was untouched as yet, dotted with bushes and beech stands and, naturally, oaks. Trees were ever a comfort to Saul. He’d loved the harsh desert landscapes of Mesopotamia and the unforgiving sun; he loved dry bricks and ancient stone and the feel of millennia-old earth on his fingers; but there was something profoundly soothing about an English oak, quietly standing in the green. He inhaled the clean air with satisfaction and turned his back on the city that squatted low in the Thames valley under a sullen grey haze.
Perhaps he should leave after all. He’d come to London because it didn’t care; he’d feared, if he moved to some small town, that his reputation would follow him, that new friends and neighbours would turn from him with disgust. Some former friends had suggested he change his name and start afresh, but that seemed like dodging punishment. He deserved to shoulder the consequences of his actions.
He pushed the thought aside, as far as it would ever go, and set off down the path through the park.
If my theory is correct, there will be a site on the west side of Oak Hill Park, Major Peabody had said. A burial, a standing stone, a sacred grove. A historical artefact or a local legend. Explore for me and see what your professional instincts can discover.
Saul’s professional instincts were shaped by his doctorate in archaeology from Oxford and two years working on excavations in Mesopotamia. Major Peabody believed that if the ravens left the Tower of London, the city would fall. It was not a match made in heaven, but Saul gave the Major the best work he could and strove to be respectful without losing what little self-esteem he still had.
There was no sign of any sacred Druidic grove or whatever bee was in the Major’s bonnet this time, but there was a truly magnificent oak dominating the landscape not far ahead. Saul took another step towards it, admiring the gnarled branches and the bright light green of its fresh new foliage, and it burst into flame.
The fire erupted so violently that Saul heard a faint whoomph of air, like an explosion, and his immediate war-trained thought was, Mortar. He could see all around the heath, though, and there was no engine of war, no gun, no people, even, except for one man some way down the path who was running towards the tree with such urgency that Saul found himself jog-trotting, then sprinting, to meet him.
By the time Saul reached the tree, it was blazing so hard he couldn’t go near it, waves of heat rolling out and stinging his eyes. The other man was standing, breathing rather less heavily than Saul, staring at the conflagration.
“What the devil happened?” he demanded aloud, in a decidedly upper-class tone.
Saul couldn’t tell if the man was asking him or the empty air; he replied anyway. “I’ve no idea. I thought it was a mortar at first but—”
“We’re not at bloody war any more.”
“At first,” Saul repeated. “That or lightning, but the sky’s clear as you like. Did you see anything?”
“Such as what?”
Saul had no idea. “Someone with some kind of gasoline? That blaze is—”
“Unnatural,” the man completed. He was regarding the tree with hard, sceptical eyes. Saul couldn’t blame him. The tree had been a living thing; if you’d chopped it down the wood would have taken a good year to dry out for burning, but the fire was so fierce he felt it heating his cheeks, and so loud that they were almost shouting over the noise of branches crackling and snapping. How in God’s name did a live tree burn like that?
“It must have been lightning,” he said aloud. “I had a view of the whole park.”
“And you saw a very small thunderstorm above?”
Saul had trained himself to endure contempt, but he didn’t have to take sarcasm from a stranger. He turned away from the inferno and had his first good look at the other man.
He was of medium height, but thinnish and rangy, which made him appear taller: the sinew and whipcord build that Saul himself had, and liked. English from his features, with dark hair and much lighter hazel eyes under near-black, slanted brows. A saturnine, sardonic sort of face, clean-shaven; a mouth that seemed made to sneer. He looked like the kind of man Saul had met a great deal in the war in the officer ranks: a thoroughbred aristocrat, effortlessly superior, endlessly disdainful.
“See anything you like?” the man enquired, those finely shaped lips twisting, and Saul realised he’d been staring.
Well, sod you, fellow. “I can’t say I do, no,” he said affably, and wasn’t sure if the flicker in the man’s expression was amusement or affront.
By now there were others running up: a park keeper, passers-by, people demanding whether anyone had called the fire brigade. Saul found himself obliged to repeat his account a dozen times, in the face of blank incredulity to which he could scarcely take exception. There had been no mortar and no lightning strike, and the tree had ignited from the top, its branches burning before the trunk caught, which put paid to the gasoline theory unless an aeroplane had dropped the stuff from the sky. There was no explanation.
“Spontaneous combustion,” said a matronly woman with a firm nod.
“Lot of nonsense,” muttered a man dressed like a shopkeeper.
“It is not. It’s in Dickens,” the woman said triumphantly. “Spontaneous combustion, that’s what this is.”
“You mean, it caught fire?” Saul asked.
“That’s right. Spontaneous combustion.” She evidently relished the term. “That’s what happened here.”
Saul didn’t agree that It caught fire answeredthe question Why did it catch fire? in any satisfactory way, but the nods around him suggested he was in the minority. He glanced to the saturnine man, feeling he might see something of his own disbelief on that lean, compelling face, and saw with a slight feeling of anticlimax that the fellow had gone. He must have slipped away some time ago, for though Saul looked around, he could see no sign of a departing form.
There was an elderly man standing some way apart. His arthritic hands were clenched on the stick on which he leaned, and he looked as though he was close to tears. Saul sidled up to him and asked, softly, “Sir? Are you all right?”
“The tree,” the old fellow said. His mouth was working with palpable distress. “Her tree. Why?”
“It seems to have been some strange chance—”
“That was no chance,” the old man said vehemently. “Not her tree.”
“Whose tree?”
“The Woman Clothed by the Sun.”
Saul could all but hear the capital letters, and the expression seemed vaguely familiar. “The...?”
“The Woman Clothed by the Sun. The Prophet. Mrs. Southcott.”
“Mrs... Joanna Southcott?” Saul asked.
“This was her tree. Time and again she sat under it vouchsafing unto her followers the revelations of the Lord.”
“Of course.” As a normal sort of Englishman, Saul’s reaction to religious enthusiasm was usually to remove himself from the conversation as quickly as possible. He couldn’t. Major Peabody was going to be overjoyed by this. He smiled at the old man. “Tell me more.”
*
The Major’s reaction was all Saul could have desired. “Would that I had been there!” he kept repeating. “Would that I had seen it for myself! I must have observed some detail that would allow us to place this in its true context. You know Mrs. Southcott’s work, of course, Lazenby?”
“You have mentioned her, sir. And my informant told me a great deal.”
Major Peabody ignored that. Once he had decided he wanted to say something, a staff sergeant bellowing Yes, I know! in his ear would make no difference. “An ordinary servant girl who in the noonday of her life was touched by the gift of prophecy. She proclaimed herself to be the Woman of the Book of Revelation—”
“And visited East Barnet often, so her devotee told me,” Saul put in. “He says the tree was widely known as Mrs. Southcott’s tree. I confirmed that with the park keeper.”
“Mrs. Southcott’s tree,” Major Peabody repeated. “A true case of spontaneous combustion to which you can bear eye witness!”
“Well, I saw a tree burst into flame, and could not find any reason for it.” Saul would not put his name to any supernatural claim, but he had a sinking feeling that Major Peabody might do that for him.
“Yes, that is what I said. A remarkable phenomenon. I believe I begin to see. This confirms everything I have learned.” He hurried to his map. Saul rubbed the bridge of his nose and wondered what he had started.
“I should like to examine the box,” the Major muttered. “I must see the box.”
Joanna Southcott, the prophetess—or the crazed old woman who spouted nonsense, according to point of view—had left behind a sealed box of secret prophecies, only to be opened at a time of national crisis and in the presence of twenty-four bishops of the Church of England. Despite strong representations from her band of followers, this had not been done during the war. Major Peabody said the bishops had been intimidated by the responsibility, which Saul translated as declined to participate in such a farce.
“You think the box should be opened? Is there a national crisis?”
“I shouldn’t presume to decide when the box is to be opened,” the Major said testily. “But if Mrs. Southcott’s tree has spontaneously combusted, the box itself may display signs of supernatural activity.”
“Does it really exist?” Saul asked thoughtlessly. The Major gave him a hurt look, and Saul altered that to, “Can it be seen? Who has it?”
“That, I do not know. Perhaps you might investigate. Yes, find out for me, Lazenby. I must think about the implications of today’s event.”
Saul had heard about this job a year ago, from a man whom he had once counted a friend, and who had put the notice his way out of pity. A lunatic, harmless enough, but quite convinced by every piece of fantastical nonsense he hears. According to him, London is a hotbed of magical powers, haunted temples, and secret societies. He’s a ridiculous crank, but he’s rich, he’s offering good money for an archaeologist to act out his games, he’d be delighted by a man of your educational accomplishments, and it’s not as though you have anything to lose.
His acquaintance had been quite right. Major Peabody had been ecstatic to employ Saul, with his doctorate from Oxford and his two years’ work excavating alongside the great Leonard Woolley. He hadn’t given a damn about Saul’s war record or the conviction, and unlike the very few other people who’d been prepared to give him work since 1918, hadn’t expected him to accept lower pay and worse treatment as a consequence. He was in every way a fair and reasonable employer, except that his theories were tripe, his credulity exasperating, and his obsessions laughable. He believed every bit of folklore that came his way, every medieval myth or Victorian fantasy of the past. If Saul had harboured any hope of returning to a career in archaeology, working for Major Peabody would have destroyed it. He had, repeatedly, to remind himself that he had and deserved no such hope.
The Major’s great idea was that London was a mass of sacred sites laid out in mystical patterns. He’d covered a map in pins and connected them with threads, crowing with pride when he could connect five pins to form a pentacle or six for a Star of David. Worse, he’d concluded that if he had three likely sites that might be part of a pattern, the missing points in it could be logically inferred and a new, previously hidden sacred site discovered. This meant that he would stick a pin in a featureless bit of Metro-land, and then ask Saul to find evidence of a holy well, plague pit, or undiscovered Anglo-Saxon earthwork. Saul had wondered whether to warn him about the dangers of looking for data to fit one’s theory, and decided that was akin to advising a deep-sea diver that it was a bit wet out.
It had been a year of astounding futility right up to the point the tree burst into flame.
Major Peabody regarded that admittedly bizarre event as a spectacular vindication of his theories. Saul considered that, since this was the first of some hundred and fifty “sacred sites” that had been anything more than a random rock or patch of grass, his strike rate was significantly lower than might be expected by chance. He didn’t say so. Let the Major enjoy his triumph; it did no harm.
***
It proved surprisingly easy to track Mrs. Southcott’s box down. Saul had harboured an idea that any such thing would be a closely guarded relic, but the prophetess’s band of believers were only too happy to point him in the right direction, and two days later he and Major Peabody were at Paddington Station, taking a train to Newport. Saul had telegraphed ahead to the family who held the absurd thing, and had booked first-class seats for them both at his employer’s generous insistence. He might be acting as the private secretary to a crank, but at least he would do it well.
His mild sense of satisfaction lasted until the train was about to move off. They sat in a six-person compartment, in the usual configuration of two facing benches. It was empty except for themselves, but as the whistle screeched and steam billowed, the door opened, and a man sprang in.
“Good day, gentlemen,” he said, slamming the door and removing his hat. “I beg pardon for intruding.”
“Not at all,” cried Major Peabody as the train set off. “It is, after all, public transport; I trust my colleague and I won’t disturb you with too much talk. Good day to you.”
The man sat down opposite Saul, took up his newspaper, looked over it, and smiled. It was a sly, charming, insincere smile and it was worn by the man from the burning tree.
Saul was sure of it. He’d paid enough attention at the time, he’d had that sardonic, highly bred face and voice in his mind for hours after, and here he was, the man who’d been at the Southcott tree, as they set off to see the Southcott box.
It was the kind of coincidence that would delight the Major’s heart, and Saul wasn’t sure he could bear it. He could imagine the saturnine man’s sneer as the Major spouted mystical nonsense, and for all his fussy employer exasperated him Saul didn’t wish to see him mocked, any more than he wished to be known as a lunatic’s jack-of-all-work.
The man was still looking over his newspaper at Saul, and as their eyes met, he tilted a brow in unmistakable question.
God. It couldn’t be—
No, of course it wasn’t an approach. Surely that was just Saul’s own wishful thinking. Although there had been that Like what you see?...
No. And even if it was, Saul had no intention of entertaining it. The man was undeniably the kind he liked—those long, brown, strong fingers on the newspaper, the lean build, the winging brows—but Saul had been husbanding pennies and rationing himself to one meal a day before he secured this post; if he lost it he’d be ruined. He was not going to commit indecent acts in a railway station convenience with a total stranger on his employer’s time, even if that was the stranger’s intent, which, he told himself firmly, it probably wasn’t.
The man was looking at him with amused puzzlement, as though Saul had spoken his determination out loud, and it dawned on him that if it wasn’t an approach, he must seem deranged not to acknowledge the fellow.
“Pardon me, sir,” he said. “I think we’ve met before?”
“I think we did,” the man agreed, lowering his paper. “Randolph Glyde, at your service.”
“Saul Lazenby.”
“Charmed.” Mr. Glyde glanced at Major Peabody, who hastened to introduce himself, and volunteered that he was an antiquarian researcher.
“How fascinating,” Mr. Glyde said. “And are you an antiquarian as well, Mr. Lazenby?”
“Lazenby is an archaeologist,” Major Peabody said over Saul. “An Oxford man, now devoting his time to my studies.”
“And what do you do, Mr. Glyde?” Saul asked, before the Major could say any more. “Are you a man of leisure?” The suit he wore was sufficiently well-made to suggest wealth, whether earned or inherited.
“Ah, no, so few of us can afford leisure these days. Those iniquitous death duties, you know. I work for my bread. I’m a commercial traveller.”
Death duties had hit the great landed estates very hard, and the newspapers were filled with stories of the newly labouring aristocracy. The heirs to earldoms were becoming radio announcers and photographers, while the daughters of dukes took up as mannequins or wrote pieces for magazines. Nevertheless, the disjunct between the man’s appearance and the idea of a commercial traveller was such that Saul found his brows lifting sharply. “You’re a salesman? Of what?”
“Wines and spirits,” Mr. Glyde said promptly.
“For whom?”
Mr. Glyde’s smile glinted. “Plummet and Rose.”
“Where’s your sample case?”
“I sent it on ahead.” The smile was widening.
Major Peabody gave a harrumph. “There is no need to interrogate our fellow traveller, Lazenby. Wines and spirits are a most respectable business for a gentleman. Perhaps you could recommend me a port, Mr. Glyde? I have need to replenish my cellar.”
They discussed port for a while. Saul stayed out of the conversation, watching Mr. Glyde’s face. He knew nothing of the wines and spirits trade but he did feel sure that a commercial traveller of any competence would have a sales book with him, or make an effort to conclude a bargain, and Mr. Glyde was obviously competent. He had that air, the effortless confidence of a man who never questioned his own intelligence, fortitude, or judgement. Saul wouldn’t have been able to put his finger on precisely what showed it, but you could tell it in a man, just as you could tell a man from whom it had gone.
But the clever Mr. Glyde wasn’t making any effort to sell wines and spirits to a highly receptive audience, and Saul had an increasing sense that something didn’t add up.
It had to be chance that Mr. Glyde was on this train, in his carriage. There was no other possibility, given they hadn’t exchanged names. Or—had he still been there when Saul had given his name to the park keeper? Might he have tracked him down from that?
But why would he? Saul didn’t believe for a moment that Mr. Randolph Glyde, with his well-cut suit and faint, lazy smile, would go to such trouble for a thin, sunburned man with defeated eyes. If he’d wanted a fuck, which was at least in principle not outwith the bounds of probability, Saul was of the opinion he’d have suggested one on the spot.
He had no reason to have tracked Saul down. But if his presence here was chance, why was he giving every impression of lying about his profession, and why hadn’t he said anything about their previous meeting? Jolly peculiar show with that tree bursting into flame for no reason, wasn’t it?
As he’d anticipated, his employer took the first opportunity to turn the conversation to his obsession. Mr. Glyde made some remark about a vintage port tasting better with a dusty old book by his side upon which Major Peabody leapt, launching into a description of his library. The self-described salesman made no effort to bring the conversation back to the topic of port, instead listening to the Major with a look that was just slightly sceptical as he described his great theory of the psychic patterns of London, giving Saul undeserved and unwanted credit as his collaborator. Saul could only sit, fuming, as Mr. Glyde’s eyelids flickered occasionally in his direction.
After interminable miles, the train pulled in to a station where there would be a ten-minute stop for passengers’ comfort. Major Peabody hurried out to use the facilities. Saul and Mr. Glyde sat and looked at one another.
“So,” Glyde said. “Archaeologist. Have you dug up very many magical artefacts in North London?”
Saul set his teeth. “Major Peabody is my employer. I can’t listen to any mockery of his enthusiasms.”
“Then you must spend a great deal of time with your fingers stuffed in your ears. What drives an Oxford man to work on such tarradiddles? He must pay remarkably well to silence the objections of your academic training, if not your conscience.”
“That is none of your damned business,” Saul said furiously. “I might as well demand what makes a gentleman lie to total strangers about his profession.”
Glyde’s lips curved unpleasantly. “What a peculiar accusation.”
“You’re a highly peculiar salesman. I don’t know what brings you to this train—”
“Do you not,” Glyde said, and those light eyes snapped onto Saul’s with almost physical force, drilling into him, a look so intense and commanding that Saul felt a momentary urge to curl up and agree to anything. “Do you not have an inkling of my purpose, Mr. Lazenby?”
Saul narrowed his eyes, a physical expression of defiance that seemed to help his inner resolve. “The only motive I can imagine is one entirely discreditable to a gentleman, and if that is the case, I suggest you don’t try it. In fact, I suggest you find another carriage. I’ve no interest in your importunities and I shan’t see my employer insulted.”
Glyde’s brows shot up, then he laughed. “Nicely deflected. I almost wonder if I believe you.”
“I don’t give a damn if you believe me or not. But I’ll be happy to turf you out of this carriage if I must, and we shall see if that convinces you.”
“How remarkably belligerent,” Glyde said. “Do you have any idea what you’re about?”
“I’m capable of removing your sort from decent company, if that’s what you mean.” Saul was less sure of that than he’d have liked to admit. He’d been underfed for some years, between a Mesopotamian gaol and unemployment in London, and Glyde looked to be in hard training. On the other hand, Saul was in a hell of a bad temper, and the prospect of shaking this sarcastic sod till his teeth rattled seemed worth the probable consequences.
Perhaps Glyde read that determination in his face. He shrugged one shoulder and, as Major Peabody opened the carriage door and bustled back in, he murmured a smooth word of farewell and disappeared, leaving Saul in a frustrated state of targetless anger, curiosity, and just a touch of disappointment, as though there had been an opportunity lost.
Imperfect Illusions by Vanora Lawless
Chapter One
May 3, 1917
Chicago
IT WAS NOT ELLIOT’S finest moment. Looking up from where he’d slipped face first into wet snow, he met the laughing faces of five gleeful children. Five devious children, more like.
“Uncle Elliot said a bad word!” Alice shouted to a chorus of faux gasps.
“Snow angel!” Thomas, the youngest, cried as he flopped beside Elliot and wildly flapped his arms and legs, revealing muddy grass beneath the scant inch of snow next to the sidewalk.
“Take them for a walk, Elliot. It’s magical to have snow this late in the year, Elliot,” he mumbled to himself as he wallowed in the damp. “It’ll be fun. I won’t skin you when they come back covered in dirt and sopping wet, Elliot.”
“Mama didn’t say the last one,” Eleanor informed him right before Joseph shoved her and sent her tumbling into a bush.
Chaos. This was chaos. How on earth did his sister ever get a thing done? They hadn’t been outside ten minutes, and it was all gone to shambles. Precisely as it always had whenever May and her tiny entourage visited.
“She’s right,” Joseph said. The oldest, at ten, one would hope he’d be the voice of reason. One would be acutely wrong. He grinned at Elliot, a toothy little evil expression. “You’re going to get in so much trouble.”
Scooping up a handful of snow, Elliot launched it at him. Joseph cackled, dove to the side, and the battle was on. Swiftly rolling out of the way, Elliot got to his feet with two snowballs. “You’re extremely lucky I care enough about you to take the blame. Now you better run before the big, bad, snow ogre gets you!”
Shrieks of joy rang out and the children scampered around as Elliot chased them down the sidewalk, all the way to the gate in front of Palmer’s Mansion. Towering gray stone turrets vaguely reminiscent of an old castle rose far overhead, and in Elliot’s opinion it seemed part fortress, part ostentatious monstrosity.
The tuckered-out children stared up in wonder. They were used to the high life, but even by their standards, this was extravagant. Something out of fairytale daydreams.
Once when they were young, May had asked Elliot to recreate the mansion in a dream so she could explore inside. He’d always had a wild imagination, so he’d made it absolutely absurd. He could almost hear May’s girlish giggling as she raced along ornate golden hallways and climbed twisting fairy-floss stairs.
Alice sighed wistfully. “I want to live in a castle someday.”
Joseph wrinkled his freckled nose. “Not me. I can’t imagine it’s very warm in the winter.”
“Castles never are,” Elliot agreed, thinking of those he’d visited on his travels. “Too many rooms and too much cold stone.” Too many politely rude, ignorant people, he didn’t add.
Alice shrugged. “That’s what coats and gloves are for. And warm blankets. I could live anywhere with warm blankets.”
Chuckling, Elliot shepherded his subdued hoard back along North Lake Shore Drive. Lucky most people were inside and warm, not out and staring at the spectacle of Elliot with this parade of messy children. Not that he’d care who was watching, but his sister might. She was always more concerned about what these people thought of her than Elliot.
Put him in an artist’s colony or a writer’s retreat, and that’s when Elliot’s insecurity kicked in. The upper-crust bores he’d grown up with hardly rated. Wealth gave him leeway to appear eccentric, and he banked on it more often than his father and brothers approved of. But what else use was it? He couldn’t buy more talent or a personality that kept anyone around as long as he’d like.
Back at the mansion he’d inherited from his late uncle, everyone tromped inside, the promise of warm food and drinks luring them. Elliot was momentarily spared his sister’s inevitable wrath at the state of her offspring by his flustered housekeeper, Mrs. Roberts.
“There’s a military man waiting for you in the parlor,” she said, voice too-quick, her normally happy round face pinched with concern. “Wouldn’t say what he was here for, just that he urgently needed to speak to you and that he’d wait until you got back even though I said I’d no idea when you would be—”
“It’s all right. I’m sure it’s…” He was sure it was what? He had no idea, but he didn’t want her to worry. “I promised the children treats, do you think you can keep my promise for me?”
She dimpled, her soft spot for the little ones winning over her concern. “Of course, Mr. Stone. Been preparing all morning, I have.”
After Elliot thanked her, she rushed off for the kitchen, and he detoured to the parlor.
There was indeed an old, weathered man in full military regalia waiting in the pale mint green room among the worn furniture. Elliot never had gotten around to leaving his mark on the place. He’d never intended to stay so long. At least he loved that deep blue settee near the fireplace.
Elliot approached the man and offered his hand to shake. “Hello, sir. I hear you’ve been waiting for me. Not too long, I hope?”
The man’s grip was firm, his dark gaze devoid of warmth. “You’re Mr. Elliot Stone?”
Faint derision in his tone put Elliot on the defensive. He struggled to keep his arms relaxed at his sides instead of crossing them, intensely aware of his wet and dirty clothing. “I am. I didn’t catch your name I’m afraid.”
“Major Alfred Allen. I’ll get right to it, Mr. Stone.” Allen’s posture was ramrod straight, his expression serious. Elliot instantly disliked him. “We’re in a state of war, and I’ve been sent to recruit you. As an officer, naturally, your family being who they are. Not to mention that degree. Have to maintain appearances, you know. You’ll start as a cadet while you train, but by the time you go over, you could make Captain.”
He…wait. He couldn’t be serious?
“Captain? I’m sorry. Perhaps there’s another Elliot Stone? Some hardened man who spent his youth playing soldiers, unlike myself. I can’t imagine the military requires a poet of extremely limited success to lead anyone.”
The flash of teeth Major Allen gave him wasn’t kind. “No, I wouldn’t think so. But you’re more than that façade, aren’t you?”
Prickles of unease tingled along Elliot’s spine. “Pardon?”
“You’re a man of many talents. One might even say skilled.”
He couldn’t know. Hardly anyone knew about magic. Fewer still would use that word to describe it, an instinctual distancing from persecution. “I wouldn’t call myself that, no.”
Allen’s eyes narrowed. “How does magical sound, then?”
Christ.
“Absurd.” It came out infused with the sort of contempt that typically made men want to curl up and disappear from his presence, even as Elliot’s thoughts raced and his stomach hardened into a knot of fear.
“We know all about you, Mr. Stone. All about your kind. What you can inflict with a touch, to start. You’ve probably got some tricks left up your sleeve, I’ll give you that, but we know much more than you think.”
How did he know? Their family worked hard to keep the magic that flowed through their bloodline a secret. Much as other families did. Protecting themselves, protecting everyone skilled. History had shown time and again that when their secret slipped, lives were lost. If Allen was telling the truth, the government knew and the secret was out. Elliot’s breathing faltered. What would they do with the knowledge? What did they want?
Body reacting to the threat before his mind decided a course of action, Elliot started to move closer. Allen didn’t let him get more than a step in. “Ah! Keep those hands where I can see them, Mr. Stone. It’s all documented. And there’s nothing to gain by attempting to manipulate me. Got a lot to lose, though, haven’t you?” He peered around the parlor, dispassionate gaze lingering on Elliot’s favorite uncle’s belongings. Martin had spent his life traveling to every corner of the globe, collecting knickknacks from magical communities that he’d proudly displayed in this room. More than once he’d taken Elliot on whirlwind adventures during school breaks and was largely responsible for Elliot’s own appreciation of travel, good poetry, and healthy disregard for social convention.
It had been five years since Martin’s death, and the loss still stung. Allen’s judgmental perusal of Martin’s legacy only heightened the tension coiling in Elliot’s body, his shoulders stiffening, his fists clenching at his sides.
“You come from a wealthy family,” Allen continued when Elliot didn’t respond. “Very close to your sisters and their children. Would be a shame if information to jeopardize those relationships came to light.”
Weighing his options, Elliot remained motionless and kept his face blank. Don’t give him anything to use against you. When he was a child, it was a lesson repeatedly reinforced at school. “You can’t blackmail me with magic. My family knows all about it. Who would believe you if you tried to make it public?”
More people than would be good for Elliot’s continued health and wellbeing, he feared, but maybe there was an advantage to making it sound ludicrous.
“No,” Allen said, drawing the word out. “No, we can’t blackmail you with magic. Not without fully exposing its existence. Think of the uproar that would cause. Another witch hunting panic like Salem. Imagine all the poor individuals who haven’t used magic a day in their lives who’ll get caught up in the crossfire.”
“I don’t have to imagine,” Elliot snapped. “I can simply read history books. The witch hunts are common enough knowledge.”
“Exactly. How many of them were innocent, do you think?”
Fighting a losing battle with anger, Elliot muttered, “All of them.”
“I suppose I should’ve specified; how many weren’t even playing with magic?”
Stubborn, Elliot kept his mouth shut this time. His temper, fed by fear, was far too close to the surface. He needed to think. If they weren’t going to blackmail him for magic, then there must be something else. But what was it? Internally, he groaned. What wasn’t it, would be the easier question to answer. He didn’t have much regard for certain backwards laws in this country. And he’d been much less careful since he’d returned from Paris than he should have been.
“No guesses? I’d wager a lot of them. You fellows are rare enough, I just can’t wrap my mind around there being all that many of you. But they tell me there are a fair few and that it runs in families. Maybe we ought to be taking a closer look at yours after all.”
Allen paused as though he was letting his words sink in. Elliot waited for Allen to get to the point, his impassivity a cover for the anger and fear amalgamating and crawling beneath his skin. Not everyone in his family was skilled, but enough were. May was.
“If I’m honest, we’d rather not blackmail you to begin with. What do you say we skip it? We’re willing to overlook your deficiencies in favor of the skills you’ll provide.”
“My skills wouldn’t be useful in war. They’re hardly useful in everyday life.” What use would dreams be? Or the power at his fingertips? When Elliot thought of the war, he certainly didn’t want to be close enough to the enemy for touch.
“Only because you fail to utilize it. Or you’ve never had the opportunity to really see what you can do. A training camp is being constructed for skilled recruits. Specialized education, physical fitness, and magic development programs have been crafted. All we need now are the recruits. And that’s where you come in, Mr. Stone. Where’s your patriotism? Hasn’t this country done a lot for you?” Allen pointedly glanced around at furnishings that only appeared rich if you didn’t know most of them were older than his uncle had been and you weren’t examining them closely.
What was he supposed to say? ‘No, I’m not patriotic. This country hates me for who I choose to love. What exactly has it done for me?’ Further to the point, he wasn’t a fighter and not fit to be an officer. Not someone as selfish and self-indulgent as he was. Soldiers deserved someone responsible issuing orders, someone who believed in what they were doing. Not him. No, nothing about the prospect appealed.
“I’m not sure what you think you know,” Elliot said, coldly. “But if any of that was meant to entice me, you’re nowhere close.”
Allen’s features hardened, and he crossed his arms. “Hmm. Notice I said we’d prefer not to blackmail you, not that we can’t. Some might even say it’s our duty to bring your illicit activities to light. Does your family find it suspicious? How much time you spend with friends? Gentleman friends, that is? Are all the ladies you’ve been spotted around town with for show?”
Teeth grinding, Elliot’s body flushed with an angry heat. He jerked his chin up, refusing to be shamed. “No. Not only for show.” He didn’t need to explain his preferences to this bastard son of a piss. His fists curled tighter, and he dug in his nails to stop from saying something he’d regret. He curved his lips in a smile that felt grim as grave dirt. “It’s starting to seem like you’re not very reluctant to blackmail me at all.”
“Not going to bother denying what you get up to?”
It was a taunt. A dare. Christ, Elliot hated this man. He clenched his jaw so tight it hurt. “How long do I have to consider your offer?” Loathing coated the last word, impossible to hold in.
Triumph briefly glittered in Allen’s flinty eyes, and Elliot hated that too. “You’ll receive a letter next week with your train ticket. Be on the train, Mr. Stone. Or don’t and see what happens. I guarantee it won’t be pleasant.”
He left. Elliot stood in the parlor, unmoving, body blazing rage that made his muscles quake with the necessity of restraint.
How had his entire life unraveled in the span of one conversation? What was he supposed to do?
The unfairness of it burned in his chest, made him want to shout and knock things over. Nothing he’d ever done had hurt a soul. Not the men he spent the night with, not the women either. He was always attentive with his lovers. They left satisfied, and it was no one’s business but theirs.
Except small-minded people would always be waiting to judge, to ostracize him. Even if he believed at least some of his family might stand by him—May would—could he subject them to that?
And the threat about examining the rest of his family, the idea of them knowing May was skilled, the thought she could be ripped from her children and forced into a war she had no business being anywhere near, made Elliot’s blood run cold.
His choices were to stand his ground and live to see twenty-six or give in to blackmail, keep his family intact, and likely die on foreign soil before his next birthday.
The uncomfortable sogginess of his clothes eventually pulled him to action. Elliot forced himself upstairs to change, physical imperative overriding his mental crisis. Buttons were something he could handle; the looming prospect of his participation in a war he’d already lost so many overseas friends to wasn’t.
Bile rose in his throat, and he swallowed hard.
Love of Christ, he hadn’t been in so much as a fight since he was five and the bigger kids had picked on him. His charm and good looks kept him from needing to. Now they expected him to what? Shoot at people? Kill people? Enemies or not, how could he?
But if he didn’t. If they took May instead…
Hell. He had to go.
Heart to Hart by Erin O'Quinn
CHAPTER 1
The Dun Linden New Dawn
Monday, May 1, 1923
Your Sun of Ireland 1 P
Michael’s life began all over again on Monday. The rain that had been threatening for weeks finally banged Dun Linden with bare fists just as dawn broke, pummeling and pounding, leaving everyone a little off balance. Setting the banner line for the day’s newspaper edition, he’d looked up from the linotype into the most arresting pair of eyes he’d ever seen. They were soulful and tormented, of a color somewhere between teal and turquoise, like a rare metal seen once in a lifetime. Or an undiscovered ocean on the edge of a wet dream. He stared in spite of himself at the man behind the eyes.
He was tall—all of six feet, almost as tall as Michael. A black felt bowler hat covered his hair. But Michael knew it had to be as dark as the eyebrows and the growing shadow around his upper lip and chin. Had the man even slept last night? The mouth itself was sulky, arrogant, almost angry.
Michael’s cock set up a slow hammering beneath the stiff leather apron.
He grinned and shifted a wooden match between his teeth. “’Tis help ye need, now?”
Under a fine woolen greatcoat, invitingly open, the man was wearing an impeccably smooth silk brocade jacket, with a neck scarf to reflect the unusual blue of his eyes.
“Yes.” His voice was as clipped and rude as his mouth. “You may place this obituary in the newspaper. And you may insert an advert as well.”
I may, may I? Maybe I’ll insert something else, lad. To himself, Michael mimicked the other’s tone of voice. He knew the man had been educated at a few up-yer-arse schools, probably Eton, then Cambridge. He barely moved his mouth when he articulated every syllable. Here was a man who wouldn’t know a back-alley expression if it slid up his bunghole.
“An’ what’ve we here, then?” Broadening his accent even more, he reached for the first square of paper, the one the stranger held as if reluctant to hand it over.
“A death announcement. To be placed in the first page of the obituaries, four-point black barred, four columns width, one column depth.”
Michael reached for the paper, but the man placed it just out of reach on the surface of the linotype, as if reluctant to see it in the hands of any but himself, smoothing it and letting the expensive woven surface crackle.
“The obituary notice is to run immediately, as soon as this morning’s press run, until and including Thursday. No later. The other, the advert, must run daily until I remove it personally or send a courier. Is all this quite clear?”
If the man hadn’t been so suck-my-dick handsome, Michael would have turned his back and walked into the pressroom of the newspaper, sending an apprentice typesetter to contend with the rude bastard. But, in fact, he was that riveting. Michael was hooked like a bloated fish, but he’d be goddamned if he’d show it to this uppity-muppity.
“An’ there be something else, m’lord?” He knew he was being insolent, but it was the only way he saw at the moment to insert a pinprick a very small way into the man’s starchy veneer.
The man’s eyes flicked across him briefly, as though loathe to acknowledge his presence. “As a matter of fact, there is. I wish to send a telegram to New York. Is there anyone at this establishment capable of doing it or must I send it myself?”
Michael held out his hand. “Ye’re fortunate I’m a cheerful lad. I’ll do everything ye’ve asked today, for a quid-ten.”
The other man stood, adjusting his cuff as if he had not heard a word.
Michael walked from behind the giant linotype, wiping ink-stained fingers on his heavy printer’s smock, sizing up the visitor. Here was a man who badly needed a few things. One was a good frigging lay. He also, by God, needed a man who could take some of the starch from his collar—and he was just the one to do it. He was easily three inches bigger around in the chest than this too-proper prick, and probably in the biceps, too. And a few other places besides. His cock shifted menacingly under the apron.
The sulky mouth spoke. “A pound and ten is robbery, pure and simple.”
“An’ ’tis a pity Dun Linden has but one respectable newspaper.”
“But luckily the newspaper has but one street hooligan from the underbelly of Boston. Probably Boyle Street, from the guttural edges of his accent.”
Now Michael was not just delighted. He knew he had to have this man, at his speed, and in his own way.
A man like this no doubt was a member of some gentleman’s club-or-other, taking lessons once a week in how to defend oneself from the spit-riddled sidewalks. He was careful to speak with a sneer. “No man in Dun Linden would be me equal in a bare-knuckles bout.”
“That same quid and ten says you are quite mistaken.”
“I’ll take your wager, mister. But it has to be at me own call. When and where I say.”
He was astonished when the man squarely met his gaze. “Very well. Call it.”
“Pay now. An’ if ye beat me fair and square, I’ll hand it back to ye.”
For the first time, the other man smiled. It was a slow smile, but one that caught him up in those ocean-sky eyes and threatened to drown him. Michael could not wrench his eyes away. The man unfolded his advert and a telegram message printed in block letters and laid them next to the obit on the type machine’s gleaming black metal surface.
“Tell me, then. The place? The time?” He arched his exquisite eyebrows.
“Within one week. The place? I’ll let ye know.”
Now the man threw his head back and laughed outright. “You Yanks. I look forward to taking your money. Send my telegram right away. Good day.”
In two swift gestures, he inserted his hand in his trouser pocket and threw a sovereign, then ten shillings on the surface of the large typesetting machine. He strode to the exit and pulled open the heavy, glass-paned door. A sullen rain continued to pound the sidewalk outside, and he took a moment to re-button his coat at the waist. Once outside, the man snapped his cane, a movement causing it to billow into a large umbrella. The last sight of him Michael enjoyed was a figure in a greatcoat holding a black silken barrier against the sky.
By now, a small ache had begun in his balls. He grinned and fingered the stiff paper as he read the handsome script.
The friends and family of Sullivan “Sargent” Castleton grieve the passing of the former decorated Lieutenant, stricken in his twenty-and-fifth year. He is survived by his brother, James Riverstone Castleton; his brother’s wife, Mrs. Rose O’Hara Castleton of Baybridge South; and by his father, John J. Castleton, of New York. A brief Memorial will be held at noon on Friday the fifth of May in the year of our Lord 1923, at the Blackpool Circle of Remembrance, twenty and a half Markham Lane. Funeral follows at the Blackpool Cemetery.
Strange a man so young was dead. “Stricken.” An accident? A dread disease? Michael wondered whether the deceased had been a brother, a friend, or a lover. Somehow, the angry stranger didn’t seem the type to keep a lover. Maybe this dish was James, the brother. It came to him without pondering overlong when he picked up the other paper and read the advert. It, too, was written in an elaborate script, in deep black ink, with an emphatic flourish under the letters SH.
Roomer needed. Must be neat & quiet. Two quid a month for gentleman’s quarters near the Zool Gardens. Inquire at number three Rolling Street, 3-C, from four in the afternoon. ~SH
Yes, the departed had no doubt been a roomer, perhaps even a friend. Knowing now where this fellow lived, he’d call on him and politely extract another quid-and-ten. An’ maybe a little more besides. His grin widened as he re-folded the advert and put it in his pocket.
The telegram was addressed to John J. Castleton, Clothiers, in Manhattan, New York.
SARGENT DEAD-STOP-SERVICE FRIDAY MAY 5-STOP-IN SORROW SIMON HART-STOP
Suddenly, Michael lost his grin. There was something ironic and sad about the last two words: Hart-stop. No wonder the man had seemed distant and snappish. The dead man really had been held dear, and this stranger, Simon Hart, was in mourning.
He decided to give it a few days before he exacted the quid-and-ten. Pushing his visor back from his forehead into his long blond-red hair, he finished setting the first page, sliding the type slugs into place with practiced fingers, before calling his apprentices to complete Monday’s edition. The rain was still falling in fits and starts when he left the newspaper building two hours later and headed for the Zoological Gardens.
* * *
Michael McCree let his stiff bowler be a rain shield, pulling it down over his too-thick hair as he lounged back against a stout brick wall. He was in a small alcove across from a group of two- and three-story brick houses near the city park. The structures were no doubt a few hundred years old and included a pub, a butcher’s shop, a lady’s millinery and a dry goods grocers.molly house 200
He eyed the Silver Hind, a middlish-class pub whose address marked it as the living quarters of Simon Hart. In this city and throughout the British Isles, keeping rooms above a pub, or even a bookshop or other place of business, was common enough. He wondered idly if the man he sought had chosen the pub for its initials. SH. Stor. Haisce. Both Gaelic words for “treasure.”
After reading the stranger’s advert, he’d decided two quid a month was fair exchange for a change of living style. He’d been staying with a distant aunt and her three sons in a large, run-down flat near the docks, paying her one quid a month for room and board. He loved his good-natured, hard drinking kin, but he found himself often prowling the seamy underside of the docks, staying with fellow rough-trade omi-palones, not often finding answers, but always looking.
Michael was, by nature, a man’s man who craved men, but he shied from the bitches—effeminates who ogled every bulge in a man’s pants. He’d always been attracted to men like himself, roustabout street boys, those with a grudge and a few dark secrets. Men with an attitude. Especially heterosexuals—omis—who didn’t yet know their innermost cravings. Men like Simon Hart, he was sure of it.
Now that he’d encountered Hart, he wouldn’t easily let him go. The man needed someone right now, he had already decided, and he would be there when Hart was ready. Now he must find out more about the man and how a fair-to-middling-looking newspaperman and runaway Irishman could fit into his life.
His thoughts flicked for a moment back to Boyle Street, the so-called Mick Metro, a haven for immigrant Irish near the Boston Harbor. Simon Hart had guessed his neighborhood, even to the very street. Yes, he was Irish and proud of it. But from the moment his family, a generation back, had arrived in the town, they’d been reviled and driven to pockets of “New Ireland,” places where only the Irish lived and only the Irish felt safe. To make his living at the Boston newspaper, he’d dyed his hair and carefully lost his accent. Of course, he’d lied about his name, calling himself Mo Mammoth, his own tongue-in-cheek reference to his genitalia.
He kept his recent past shrouded in mystery, even from his relatives. Three years ago, he told them, his identity had been discovered, forcing him to run for his life. Emphatically, no Micks were allowed at the Boston World, or any similar respectable place of business. He had two choices: return to the docks or flee to Ireland. And so, to hear Michael tell his tale to his cousins, he had arrived in Dun Linden with a small stipend in his pocket, a large chip on his shoulder, and his prick tucked between his legs like the tail of a whimpering hound.
The truth was much more inconvenient. He shifted a little, pulling his bowler lower on his forehead when the rain eased a bit. Michael was a man who could slip into any role, and his employer thought his Irish heritage would allow him to step onto any stage, from the High Mall to the docks. He was, in short, a brain and body for a shadowy agency that ostensibly did not operate in Ireland at all.
The rain had ended, but Michael kept the hat lowered. If Simon Hart were to appear, he needed to blend into the brick wall. He alternately leaned, squatted and knelt in the corner, half hidden from the street by a large dustbin, which the proprietors must use as a common repository for everything foul-smelling.
“Say, mister, got a ha’penny?”
He stiffened. The voice belonged to a child. Yet a child could be a betrayer as easily as a grown man.
“Off wi’ ye lad,” he said gruffly.
“Ye new here?” the voice persisted. It was coming from the far side of the dustbin. Michael glanced up from his crouch and saw the stiff, copper-hued hair of a boy maybe ten or eleven years old. He must have been standing, or crouching like himself, in the rain. But why?
“Waitin’ on a friend,” he muttered, wishing the boy would leave.
“Blue blag?”
Shit, criminy, this kid was street wise. He had just asked Michael if he was trolling for a homosexual bang.
“Right ye are, lad. So bugger off.”
“A ha’penny makes me invisible.”
Michael dug in his pocket, pulled out a ha’ppence, and flipped it to him. Even from eight feet, the boy caught it with a practiced flourish and took off running.
Michael settled back into his squat and returned his gaze to the Silver Hind. It might be a very long night. When he got tired of this post, he’d go inside for a pint and keep an eye out for his quarry from a different vantage point. There must be a roomer’s portal around back. Yes, he could wait. He must be sure of the man he’d selected on a moment’s whim, a one-second leap o’ the cock.
The sky opened again.
He lapsed back into thoughts of three years ago when he’d arrived in Dun Linden as a man with a secret. Actually, many secrets. He’d right away melted into the coarse fabric of the docks. By day, he’d bought himself into becoming a newspaperman, thanks to the funds provided by a sudden “death in the family.” By night, he soon learned every seam of the sprawling town-becoming-a-city—from the tenements to the granite homes of the wealthy.
His natural language was the street lingo every homosexual spoke, from Boston to Belfast, from Cambridge to the continent beyond, a way of effectively shielding themselves from the hetero world around them. Yet Michael knew how to enter a fine drawing room, how to speak politics with the uppity-muppities, how to blend with any crowd he selected.
Always he came home to the brawling, rollicking, free-drinking docks of Dun Linden, the ones reminding him of home. He’d gone from New Ireland to the real Ireland, and he loved it.
Now he was consciously seeking a change in his life, drawn by his own unruly prick to the promise of a desirable man. From the life I enjoy to the one I crave. Grinning, he shook his head, and the gesture caused accumulated rain to drip from his hat into the collar of his thin linen shirt and run down his back. He balled his hands into fists as he squatted, letting the sky bash him, never taking his eyes from a doorway across the cobblestone street.
It occurred to him that today was Beltane, a day replete with centuries of meaning. A day for lovers. His grin widened.
These Old Lies by Laurie Barton
1 Resurrecting Ghosts
London, May 1923 / Ned
Ned looked at his watch and tried to calculate how much of his afternoon he would lose to Hugh’s latest escapade. In principle, this should have been a simple errand before dinner, but life experience had taught Ned that few things were simple when Hugh was involved.
“Remind me again why I am accompanying you to this hat shop?” Ned turned to the blond-haired dreamer beside him in the motor.
Ned had never met another man with such perfect bow lips, skin such a creamy colour of porcelain, or hair such a golden halo of beauty.
“Because I’m going to let you fuck me after dinner,” Hugh responded, completely nonplussed by Ned’s question or the underlying sarcasm.
Ned glanced instinctively up at the driver even though he knew the screen prevented him from overhearing their conversation. There was no point in telling Hugh to be more discreet or explaining the risks of a gross indecency charge. Hugh’s strident refusal to pretend to be something that made society more comfortable was what spurred Ned to buy him a cocktail at Soho nightclub in the first place.
Hugh slid an arm around Ned and stretched out over the sedan seats. “But even without tonight’s entertainment, you really should be thanking me for bringing you along. The shop seems awfully middle class and dull on the outside, but their custom pieces are the most beautiful creations. Like the theatre, but better. All colour and movement, except the hats don’t move at all. I can’t really describe it. They are magic. Remember the hat I wore to the Ritz last month? When I walked into that room, I became the centre of the universe.”
Ned couldn’t help but smile at the younger man’s enthusiasm. “Who makes these creations? A team of fairy godmothers working their fingers to the bone for your latest dramatic entrance?”
“I don’t know,” Hugh answered as if he’d never pondered the question before. Interest in others wasn’t his strong suit. “The owner is an impossible stick-in-the-mud, all old-fashioned and formal. I had to practically bribe the shopgirls to show me the custom hats.”
Ned glanced out the window. They had only a few minutes before arriving at the Marylebone address Hugh had given the driver. Time was up on word games. “As a point of reference, how much do you owe?”
Hugh met his eyes without any shame. “The stick-in-the-mud’s son and I’ve a disagreement about the terms of payment for a number of items.”
“Let me at least know the scale.”
“The cretin says I owe fifty pounds, which can’t possibly be right.” Hugh glanced at Ned through his long blond lashes, a manoeuvre that was almost insulting in its flagrancy. “But I was hoping I could rely on you to negotiate a more reasonable settlement.”
Which meant paying the bills. Ned bit his tongue against all sorts of responses. Fifty pounds was less than he’d feared, and it had been a while since he’d provided Hugh with a suitably large “gift.” Hugh’s acting brought in some income, but not enough to cover his lifestyle. He was always clear with his companions about certain costs. It wasn’t as if Ned needed to be concerned about money.
Hugh probably considered it payment in kind for the time he spent in Ned’s bed, although Ned liked to think that Hugh didn’t find him entirely unattractive. In truth, Ned preferred Hugh’s company and the dramatic fantasy that followed him to their physical relationship. Hugh was the sort of person that made every moment one of high levity or dramatic failure. His world was one where a tragedy was unexpected rain and victory was a delicious cake. Hugh provided an intensity of feelings that had been burned out of Ned’s soul during the war, but he could get a taste of it again when Hugh was around.
The motor stopped in front of a shop that was exactly as Hugh had promised—exceedingly boring in every respect. The hats in the window weren’t so much out of fashion as they were lacking any fashion at all, plain and serviceable. As Ned stepped out onto the pavement, he glanced up at the lettered sign above the door: “Villiers and Son, Fine Hats for Ladies of Distinction.”
There was no air to breathe.
It had been six years since he had last seen Corporal Charles Villiers, but that didn’t make reading his last name any less of a knife to the gut. A vivid memory flashed in front of Ned’s eyes. Charlie walking towards him, rifle over his shoulder, covered in mud, a cigarette in hand, grinning about some horribly inappropriate joke. Blue eyes twinkling, bright against his dull, brown-green uniform.
As quickly as it had appeared, the mirage shattered, and Ned found himself standing alone on the pavement, hands trembling.
It wasn’t the first time an innocuous reminder had sent him back to Flanders. He had once spent twenty minutes in a cold sweat after seeing a jacket with the same cut as his trench uniform. This was just another such moment of his treacherous mind resurrecting ghosts on the most spurious of connections. The extra twist of the knife was the sense of loss that crashed over Ned at the memory’s dissipation. A foolish wish that this time the memory had actually stayed with him longer.
There was no point in dwelling on any of that. It was 1923, not 1916, and there were hats to buy. There were hundreds, if not thousands, of Villierses in London; no reason for Ned to think that this shop had any connection to his Charlie Villiers. Hiding his still trembling hands in his coat, Ned pushed open the wooden door to follow Hugh into the shop.
In contrast to its dull window display, the store was elegant, bright, and surprisingly busy. Hugh had already pushed past three grey-haired ladies to get to the counter.
Ned hung back near the window displays, fighting the temptation to search the shopgirls’ faces for a hint of something familiar—the curl of brown hair, those laughing blue eyes, the freckles on pale skin. When he had first come back to London, he had constantly searched the crowds for Charlie’s face even though there was no guarantee that he would have returned to the city after the war. Yet living with the constant hope of hearing Charlie’s mischievous laughter across a busy street or spotting his curly brown hair from the window of a motor was the devil’s bargain that Ned had struck.
“Edmund!”
Hugh beckoned to him from the counter, snapping Ned out of his daydreaming. “Come and see!”
Ned moved through the other customers to join Hugh at the counter, where a partially constructed hat had been placed in front of him. It was, quite simply, magnificent. A take on a Panama hat, but somehow crisper and leaner. The colour was vibrant without being garish. Ned knew instantly that it would bring out the small flecks of gold in Hugh’s eyes. It was unmistakably a man’s hat, and yet there was this chimeric, feminine quality to it as well. Ned was enchanted.
So much so he failed to notice the shadow that fell across the counter. Someone cleared their throat. “Lieutenant Pinsent, what an unexpected pleasure to have you in our shop.”
Jesus fucking Christ. That low-timbre, working-class burr echoed in his bones.
Ned’s heart raced and, for a split second, he wondered if his broken mind had finally abandoned him and given in to delusions in front of his daily life. As he looked up at the shopkeeper behind the counter, he knew this was no shell-shock mirage.
Six years might have passed, they might be in a Marylebone ladies’ hat shop rather than the trenches, and wearing suits rather than uniforms, but there was no mistaking Charlie Villiers. His muscular figure stood a good half foot shorter than Ned’s. Charlie had no post-war softness, nor had his hair begun to thin. It was just as curly and thick as he had remembered, and his eyes were just as disconcerting.
A detached calm descended on Ned. His superiors at the front had always praised his ability to maintain his sangfroid under crisis. “Corporal Villiers! What a delightful surprise.” His voice sounded like another man’s—calm and composed.
Hugh glanced over to Ned, not bothering to hide his surprise. “You’re acquainted already?”
“I served under the lieutenant for two years.” Charlie’s voice was tight, his blue eyes never breaking with Ned’s.
“Four years at the War Office filing paperwork for Edmund? What inhumane suffering,” Hugh replied, his small smile showing that he was pleased with his own witticism.
“I didn’t do a lot of paperwork with Lieutenant Pinsent in the trenches, unless you count losing to him at cards. It was more along the lines of shells, mustard gas, and night raids.”
“And now you find yourself meeting again! Well, that’s one of the delights of London; you never know who you will run into.” The teasing look vanished from Hugh’s face, although his broad smile remained. Ned had deliberately never spoken about his time at the front with Hugh.
Charlie’s eyes flicked over to Ned’s, as if questioning the rapid change of subject. Ned couldn’t fault Hugh for not understanding. Like all Ned’s acquaintances these days, Hugh came of age after the war.
Hugh continued, breaking the awkward silence. “The Honourable Mr Pinsent is a dear, dear friend of mine. Always just so helpful in sorting out complicated issues.”
Honourable? The arse. Ned suspected that Charlie knew about his title, but he had been careful never to use it in the trenches. Certainly never with Charlie.
“I’m sure he is,” Charlie responded with a quirked eyebrow. It was such a familiar mannerism that Ned found himself once more at odds with himself, fighting the urge to gasp. “But I am afraid my position remains as it was, Mr Ruperston. We appreciate your business, but this is a business. We must be paid for our work. And there will be no more progress made on this hat, or any others, until you have settled up the account you already have with us.”
Before Hugh could respond, Ned cut in. “I understand Mr Ruperston’s debt to the shop is fifty pounds?”
Charlie responded evenly, “Forty-eight pounds, two shillings, and seven pence.”
The man had always been prideful as sin, no way would he accept any charity, even if it was letting Ned overpay him by less than two pounds.
Ned took out a pen and paper and wrote a quick cheque. “This should cover the funds in full.” Ned couldn’t imagine lowering either himself or Charlie to the indignity of haggling.
“Thank you, sir. I appreciate your respect of honest work,” Charlie replied.
“It’s the least your craftsmanship merits. That hat is stunning.” Ned took a breath. “It’s good to see you doing so well for yourself, Villiers.” This whole interaction was all so banal. It could have been any exchange between any two war acquaintances.
As he handed over the note, Ned’s fingertips met Charlie’s with the lightest of touches, and for a moment he thought he saw a flash of emotion flicker across Charlie’s face, an indication, however quick, that this meeting was having a sliver of the same effect on Charlie as it was having on Ned.
Ned wanted to fall to his knees and cry. To yell and scream at Charlie for leaving him. To ask him a thousand questions about everything he’d done and seen over the past years. To push Charlie against the wall and kiss him senseless. To hold his face and memorise his body and all the changes six years had brought to it. After all these years, Charlie Villiers still shattered him. Completely, utterly shattered him.
Instead, their ridiculous theatre continued. They exchanged pleasantries regarding the completion of the hat, followed by an obligatory moan about the weather. Then Hugh was turning towards the door. Logically, Ned knew he should be grateful for this small interaction with Charlie, but emotionally, it burned that their last conversation would be about shopping debts and hats.
Ned already had enough regret about goodbyes for a lifetime. His mind cleared for the first time since entering the damn shop, and he reached into the front pocket of his jacket, pulling out his card.
“Good day, Mr Villiers.” He extended his hand and pressed his card into Charlie’s rough and calloused hand. “I hope our paths cross again.”
❖❖❖
Once back in the motor, Ned stared out the window, trying to focus on the red-brick shops which lined the passing streets. Finally, Hugh spoke, “I thought you said you were mostly at the headquarters.”
“I was,” Ned replied, continuing to stare out the window. “At the end.”
“You scream about it in your sleep.” Hugh paused as if wanting Ned to explain more, but Ned offered no response. Hugh broke the silence for the second time. “Was Villiers your lover?”
Ned didn’t want to respond to that question either, but in that moment, the weight of never speaking of Charlie, never speaking of what they had shared, felt like it was going to smother him. “Yes, he was.”
“What happened?” Hugh’s tone held surprising gentleness.
“I did something unforgivable,” Ned answered, unable to stop the words. “I saved his life.”
Alice Winn is the author of In Memoriam. She grew up in Paris and was educated in the UK. She has a degree in English literature from Oxford University. She lives in Brooklyn.
KJ Charles is a recovering editor and RITA-nominated author. She lives in London with her husband, two kids, an out-of-control garden and a cat of absolute night. She writes mostly historical: queer romance, paranormal, fantasy, mystery. Shenanigans may occur. High body count.
Vanora Lawless is a bisexual genderfluid Canadian with ADHD and a passion for telling love stories set in magical or niche historical worlds. A graduate of Saint Mary’s University, Vanora has a B.A, majoring in psychology. As a Nova Scotian, loving long walks on the beach is practically a law, so Vanora takes every possible opportunity to explore the best sandy shores. In spare time between crafting new worlds and stories, Vanora can be found behind the lens of a camera or in a blanket burrito with a good book.
Erin O’Quinn earned a BA (English) and MA (Comparative Literature) from the University of Southern California. Her life has been a pastiche of fascinating vocations—newspaper marketing manager, university teacher, car salesperson, landscape gardener—until now, in relative retirement, she lives and writes in a small town in central Texas.
O'Quinn has authored more thgan 50 books. Two-thirds are M/M mystery-romance. The others are fantasy for all ages and M/F romance-fantasy.
The latest in a four generations of romance readers, I proudly carry on the tradition of enjoying losing myself in stories where couples find their happy.
These Old Lies is my first novel, and draws off research on the First World War that I undertook as part of my beloved history degree. Getting under the skin of people who made up the past is one of my life long passions.
Alice Winn
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KJ Charles
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Vanora Lawless
In Memoriam by Alice Winn
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Spectred Isle by KJ Charles
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Imperfect Illusions by Vanora Lawless
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Heart to Hart by Erin O'Quinn
These Old Lies by Larrie Barton
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