PROLOGUE
If pleasure had a name, it would be Kit.
Skin pale as cream, smooth and ripe. Joe McCutcheon had never seen skin so white, much less touched it, he was afraid his hard, knotted fingers would snag it, like silk. But the slender young body rolled lazily under his touch, inviting his caresses, coaxing a gentleness from his hands he’d forgotten he possessed. And a hunger that was all too familiar.
“I fear I’ll hurt you, Kit,” Joe whispered. “I’ve never been with anyone from the playhouse, before.”
“We are scarcely hothouse flowers, my dear,” his companion laughed softly. “Plucked we may be, but never crushed. See?”
Joe felt solid bone and firm young muscle beneath the silky skin that rose up so saucily to his hungry roving hands. And something more, a reckless vitality that bewitched the wariness out of him. He was no mean judge of humanflesh, it’s what had kept him alive in the ring for so long, knowing how to sniff out the strength and stamina of an opponent, to judge his pluck, his game, his heart. He missed that life the way he missed his own youth, but those skills were never forgotten. It excited him now to think of this as the last round when he would either subdue or surrender, to imagine the combat he was to commence with this lively partner, as supple as an eel, twisting and turning beneath him, testing him with those long, elegant fingers. Joe closed at last, seizing Kit with the powerful hands that had earned him the name “Cudgel” in the ring, giving himself up to the final frenzy.
When they had been quiet again for awhile, Joe stroked back a few strands of Kit's pale fair hair and watched it cascade through his fingers like a waterfall of moonlight.
“What artistic fingers you have, Cudge,” murmured Kit. “In spite of your unfortunate moniker.”
Joe snickered and Kit rolled over to face him.
“I can’t never be sure what you’re on about, but I like to hear you talk,” Joe grinned.
“That’s the way of it with players.” Kit’s delicate fingers played slowly across Joe’s burly chest, scarred and bruised, but still well-muscled. “Our professions are not so unlike, you know. Tramping about exhibiting ourselves for a few pennies to live another day.”
“I wonder you never fancied going into the ring, Kit,” said Joe. “A fine, strong lad like yourself.”
“Because I mean to keep it that way!” Kit laughed.
“But think what a draw you’d be, the way you look. Smart as a dandy, full of sauce, and beautiful as sin. T’other fibbers ‘ud be too agog to raise their fists. Why, Major Lenoir could make your fortune for you.”
“Aye, and help himself to most of it,” said Kit. “Anyway, this face is my only living. I can’t have it bashed about.”
“Aye, ‘twould be a shame, at that” Joe agreed. He stroked Kit’s hair again and slid his hideous knuckles tenderly along the elegant high curve of the younger man’s cheek. “You wouldn’t want to end up like me.”
“You’ve nothing to be ashamed of, Cudge. You’ve earned your scars honestly.” Kit caught Joe’s hand. “For my part, I shall always have the honor to boast I was personally mauled by the celebrated Bristol Mauler.”
He turned over Joe’s hand, thick and callused from his years in the ring and all the years, since. Joe tried to keep his deformed hands out of sight, as a rule, but he didn’t mind Kit’s attention so much, even less when the youth laced his own slender fingers through Joe’s knobby ones and gently pressed his beautiful mouth to Joe’s swollen knuckles. Joe savored the fugitive thrill that prickled his belly and set his groin to itching again. But even as his body ached to remain here all night, it was late and he had his work to do. He knew what it was to be a slave to one’s living.
“There’s others, I fear, as don’t share your good opinion of my hands,” he sighed, flexing his gnarled fingers in the air.
Kit smiled again. “They don’t know what they’re missing.”
All had been quiet in the kitchen for the better part of an hour when Henry Harding began to pull on his boots. He’d been able to hear every culinary noise from the kitchen through the thin walls of this tiny room beneath the back stairs, from the guttural gammon of that damned Frenchy cook to the smallest rat foraging in the ashes. It would have been an infernal bother had he ducked in here for a night of heedless amour, but it suited his purposes well in the present moment. Norah hadn’t any window in this dank cell, of course, but he’d peeped out a crack in the door and seen all in darkness still. The last guest gone and the house all abed at last, with a few precious moments of night left in which to make his escape before daybreak.
“Hen?” There was a rustling in the shadows and Norah half sat up in the little corner bed. Norah, big and plain and half-simple, a scullery wench, God help him, her tattered chemise still in disarray. He tugged on his second boot and grimaced at the depths to which he’d had to resort.
“What’re ye about, Hen?” The drab screwed up her eyes at the single candle he burned on a shelf to dress by. “Come back to bed.”
“Alas, I’ve pressing business elsewhere.”
He stood, drew on his coat and admired himself in her tarnished little glass. Two and thirty, with a shapely leg befitting a professional dancer upon the stage and the dark, brooding looks that would boost him into heroic dramatic roles soon enough, looks fit to make Norah swoon, and dozens better than she.
“At this hour?” she bleated.
“There is no hour so fit.” He saluted himself in the glass, grabbed his hat and reached for the door.
“But ... I thought,” the girl stammered, “I thought we . . . ”
He threw her a last, pitying gaze. Could she not recognize acting when she saw it? He’d wasted the finest performance of his career on an audience too ignorant to appreciate it.
All was silent darkness out in the little passage that led to the side door where deliveries were made. He peeped into the kitchen as he passed and found it cold and empty; it would be Norah’s job to light the fires soon enough, but by then, he would be long gone. He hadn’t troubled her sleep, much, hadn’t the stomach for it. But it was worth it, now. Lenoir’s was shut down for another night, the dining room closed, the Bristol gentry and the blacklegs who fleeced ‘em swept out of the private gaming rooms upstairs. The cards and dice stilled, the fizz and claret locked away, the debts collected — most of ‘em, anyway. The bruisers guarding the doors must have drifted off to their ratholes by now and he hadn’t seen that Cudgel McCutcheon for at least an hour before he’d ducked into Norah’s foul crib.
The side door beckoned like the gateway to paradise and Harding slipped through it unhindered and out into freedom. Damnably cold for November, it was, yet he was warmed by his own craftiness. It was too easy, really. Better men than Major bloody Lenoir had tried to serve out Henry Harding and received naught but humiliation for their pains. The major ought to be grateful for his patronage, ought to pay him for injecting a bit of dash into his tawdry establishment instead of harassing him like Shylock over a few trifling debts. He was a bit short of blunt now and again, but what gentleman was not? Fortunes were won and lost upon a single hazard of the dice, but those who ventured nothing had naught to gain. It was the age of play and Harding was a consummate player. Soon enough he would take his place among the immortals of the stage; he did not intend to be stuck playing Clown forever! And when he did, parasites like Lenoir would be begging for the lustre of his patronage. They were all sporting gentlemen, after all, and it did no credit to Lenoir to trouble one of his best clients over the matter of a few pounds. Did he think Bristol was the only city in England where gaming houses could be found?
Harding peered out of the alcove beyond the door, but nothing was astir at either end of the side street. The high road that ran past the club’s front door was the most direct route to the coaching inn, but prudence still seemed the best plan, so he crossed the side street, strolled another half block in the opposite direction, then slipped into a shadowy alley. B’God, it made him grin to think how outraged the major would be to learn his quarry had given his bruisers the slip; it was all he could do to restrain himself dancing a little victory jig right there in the alleyway. Lenoir would learn that Henry Harding was not some backwater cove to be trifled with. He was a man of the world, a sporting gentleman of no little sophistication. He could outwit a dozen Lenoirs and the half-witted, heavy-handed bruisers who did their bidding.
Grey was showing at the end of the alley, the drowsy strumpet dawn making ready to show her face. A few more back streets and he would gain the inn; by noon, he would be back with the company for the winter season, where no damned gaming impresario . . .
Something heavy snagged his coat from behind. He half-turned to find himself gazing into a cold, narrow-eyed glare.
“Leaving us so soon, Mr. Harding?”
“But . . . how the devil . . ?” Even in darkness Harding knew McCutcheon's voice. “I’ve told the major he’ll have his money . . .”
“It’s too late for money, even if you had any. Major Lenoir can’t afford to be mocked in his line o’ work. He has another kind of payment in mind. The kind as’ll make an impression on you, as ye might say.”
Harding stumbled backward and tried to peel away, to shake his arms out of his coat sleeves, diving for the grey light of the street ahead. But his arm was held in a grip like a tourniquet that swung him back into the dark of the alley. He felt a cold stone wall against his back as an implacable face swam before him.
“That’s a right handsome phiz as ye got there, Mr. Harding. Let me tip you some advice. Never wager more’n what you can afford to lose.”
He saw the bruiser’s elbow draw back to launch the celebrated left that had pounded so many opponents into oblivion. Then Henry Harding saw no more.
Top: Joseph Grimaldi as Clown, 1822
Above: Play at Crockford's Club, 1843
