An Innocent Cicisbeo (2/4)
Title: An Innocent Cicisbeo (2/4)
Characters: Clark Kent/Bruce Wayne; Wonder Woman, Perry White, Steve Lombard, Jonathan Kent
Fandom: DC Comics
Warnings/Spoilers: None
Rating: PG
Word Count: 4500
Summary: Unexpectedly faced with his husband in the salon of Il Pianeta, Kal Starr remembers their meeting, their wedding--and the unlikely path he took to his new career.
Notes: Written for the Unconventional Courtship challenge, and based on the summary for the Harlequin romance An Innocent Courtesan. "Cicisbeo" was an actual term of the time for a male "gallant and lover" of a married woman...I have manufactured a cheerfully pansexual Regency for the purposes of this story.
Four years ago
Clark Kent was carrying a sheep slung over his shoulders when he met his betrothed for the first time.
"Clark?" Standing in the barn door, Jonathan Kent looked chagrined; the stranger looked, on the other hand, perfectly at ease. "This is--this is Bruce Wayne. I believe I've mentioned him."
Clark stared, then remembered his manners. "Of course." The sheep on Clark's shoulders gave a petulant bleat, and Clark hastily let it slide to the ground, where it shook its head and glared at everyone. Clark bowed, suddenly acutely aware of his rough nankeen trousers and heavy boots. "My Lord."
"I'm aware this is an...abrupt meeting." Clark looked up again to find the man regarding him with a smile that was faintly amused but not mocking. He was dressed in well-tailored yet simple clothes in sober colors that subtly showed off his broad shoulders and trim waist. "The fact is, I wasn't even certain that your father would remember the agreement he made with my father so long ago."
The sheep chose this moment to try and eat the laces of Clark's boots. His father spoke as Clark tried to shoo it away: "I would never forget an agreement made to a fellow soldier, my Lord, and Thomas Wayne was the finest man I ever had the honor of serving with. But I assumed--" He broke off, reddening.
"After my parents' deaths, you assumed the agreement was null and void," said Wayne. "I confess, I had forgotten about it. But the other day I was going through some of his old papers and I found a reference to it. I felt remiss in my filial duties--I must tell you that my father felt strongly that you were the bravest and most honest man he knew, and he wished very much to see our houses joined. And so I have come from London to ask if your son would be willing to honor that agreement and become my spouse." He coughed discreetly. "There would, of course, be a sizeable marriage-price as well. But I hope money is not the only consideration in such an arrangement."
"Clark?" Jonathan looked at his son questioningly, and his eyes were easy to read: You don't have to do this, son. But Clark remembered conversations between his parents that he had overheard, worried murmurings late at night about taxes and mortgages. A marriage-price from an Earl…
And then there was the fact that Wayne lived in London. London! Clark had never seen the city, but he yearned to. He was strong--stronger even than his parents realized--and he was fast, and sometimes he allowed himself to believe that there was more he could do than lift surprised cows out of mudholes. In London…
Wayne was still waiting for his answer, smiling politely. His eyes were a startling pale blue, almost colorless, below brows as sharp as a plunging hawk. It would be a marriage of duty and convenience, of course, and yet… Clark couldn't help but think there would be some pleasure in it too.
And so he found himself an hour later in the local church, preparing to pledge his vows to a man he had only just met. He had changed into his best suit, but still felt coarse next to Wayne's polished good looks. His mother embraced him, smiling tearfully, and his father drew him aside: "Are you sure, Clark? Because you don't have to…"
"Father," said Clark, "He seems to be a good man. It will work out."
"There's more to marriage than being good," muttered his father, but had raised no further protests.
Clark took Wayne's hands--no, Bruce's hands, he was not going to call his husband by his family name!--in his as the pastor read the vows. They were cold, and Clark curled his fingers around them without thinking. Bruce's fingers tightened on his, and Clark found himself staring into eyes like the sky reflected on snow. He stumbled over his vows and had to say them again, and then the pastor was telling them to seal their bond with a kiss. Bruce hesitated and looked for the first time uncertain, as if he had forgotten this would be part of the ceremony. As the moment began to teeter into awkwardness, Clark leaned forward and put his lips to his husbands'.
It was a chaste kiss, and yet as their breath mingled, Clark felt like there were hidden depths behind the gentle touch of their lips. Without thinking, he put a hand on Bruce's shoulder and leaned closer, letting the kiss deepen slightly. In that instant--and for only an instant--the kiss was not at all chaste.
And then Bruce was backing away, smiling politely once more, and his eyes were cool and detached. But Clark felt certain in that moment that there could be more to this marriage than two decent people coming to an arrangement.
Fool, Kal thought to himself, banishing the memory of that kiss, of that hope, from his mind. Blind country bumpkin. Naive, innocent Clark Kent was long gone now, replaced by Kal Starr, glittering member of the London elite. Or so he had thought. But all that was over now too, it seemed.
He forced a smile onto his face as Bruce Wayne bowed deeply to Princess Diana and himself, waiting for the shock, the denunciations, the humiliation.
Instead the shock was his, when Bruce straightened and Kal realized there was not a hint of recognition on his face.
"Why, my Lord Gotham, how unusual to see you in a salon," said Diana. "Haven't you always claimed that you find such entertainments boring in comparison to the gaming-house and horse-races?"
Am I truly changed so much? Kal wondered as Bruce smiled at Diana. Yes, his manners were polished now, his clothing exquisitely correct, his bearing genteel--he had worked on perfecting all these things during his time at Il Pianeta, after all. Bruce had not seen him for four years, he reminded himself--and he had never truly looked at him, even then. He felt the memory of baffled anger roil in him as he looked at Bruce's dandyish clothing, so different from the elegant garb he had worn to propose to an ignorant country squire's son. False, false in every way.
"There comes a time, Princess, when one yearns for some witty conversation," drawled Bruce. Kal repressed a start--even his voice was different: light and careless, where the voice Clark remembered (remembered all too well) had been rough and low. "And so I have come here, to see if I can find charms to soothe my jaded soul."
"Alas, my lord," Kal heard himself say, "Sparkling conversation requires two parties to sustain it. Like tennis, one cannot simply lob wit across a net into a void."
The winged eyebrows--they and the eyes were the only things unchanged--went up sharply. "Void?" Bruce said.
"Or perhaps," Kal went on, ignoring the way people were stopping to look at them, the horror in Diana's eyes, "A more apt metaphor would be pistols at dawn with a man whose weapons were unloaded. It would hardly be sporting."
In the shocked silence that followed, Bruce drew his quizzing-glass out from the folds of his ornate cravat and looked at Kal through it, studying him from head to toe without speaking. Behind him Kal could see Steve Lombard gaping at him: What are you doing?
Kal hardly knew what he was doing; the memories of four years ago seemed to wash over him, an irresistible memory of humiliation.
It was a beautiful spring day, and Clark sat beside his husband in his curricle, harnessed to two fine black geldings. Bruce was a good hand with the whip, and the landscape sped past them as the horses picked up their feet.
Bruce had been reticent since the ceremony, refusing to stay the night at the Kent's. "You needn't pack much," he had said as Clark started to put together a case, "You'll have all you need." So Clark had only selected a few sentimental items and had left at once, before the morning was even done.
He tried to draw Bruce out in conversation, but Bruce's thoughts seemed far away and his responses were terse, whether Clark was talking of the weather or asking questions about Bruce's life. "I'm looking forward to seeing London," Clark said at last as the silence became dire. "I've never been. Is it true they have--"
"--We are not going to London," Bruce interrupted him. "Or at least, you are not. You will be staying at my family estate in the Gotham countryside. You should find it very pleasant."
He didn't meet Clark's eyes, and Clark found himself frowning. "And you will be…"
"I plan to stay on in London, yes. I thought--" He cleared his throat. "I thought that you would be more content in the country. I believed this arrangement might suit us well."
"Arrangement? You mean our marriage? I expected I would come to London with you, that I would be a part of your life." Clark wasn't sure if the icy shock of disappointment he felt were due to not going to London or not living with his husband. "Instead I find you mean to exile me to some rotting estate in the middle of nowhere, and--"
Bruce whirled to glare at him. "I agreed to marry you, to fulfill my father's wishes. I agreed to nothing more." He flicked the whip angrily in the air over the horses. "I should think you'd be grateful. You get a marriage-price that will keep your parents comfortable for the rest of their lives, you get a quiet life in the country, you don't have to deal with me--"
"--Maybe I wanted to--to 'deal with you,'" Clark blurted. "I thought we could build a life together. I thought we could be partners. I have a lot I can give, Bruce, I know it."
For a long moment, Bruce stared out across the fields. For the first time, the horses' pace grew restive and uneven, as if his hands had gone unsteady on the reins.
Then he laughed, and Clark flinched from the bitterness in it.
"Partners?" Bruce's voice was filled with mocking. "Do you have any idea how I'd look in London society with a rustic like you for a spouse? Your manners, your clothing, your very voice--everything about you betrays your lack of breeding. I couldn't possibly be seen in public with you. I've done my duty to my father, and there it ends."
If he had slashed the whip across Clark's face it could not have been more of a shock; Clark felt his breath go short, his vision dim with fury and hurt. "Then I have in my ignorance tied my fate to that of a cruel and petty person," he flared up. "Do feel free to deposit me where you will and I will consider myself well rid of you."
His husband's color was high; Bruce swallowed and his mouth twitched, then firmed again. "You addressed me as 'Bruce' earlier," he said. "I would prefer if you called me by my proper title from now."
"Of course, my lord," snarled Clark. "I would never dream of presuming an intimacy with you."
The rest of the ride passed in silence, until after agonizing hours they reached a manor tucked into a green valley. If he hadn't been so angry Clark would have called it pretty and well-tended, but his fury choked any words he might have said.
"Farewell," said the Earl of Gotham as a pair of servants come to take his meagre belongings. "And...be safe."
Clark snatched his bag away from the servants and hopped down from the curricle before they could put any steps in place for him. "Enjoy your life, my Lord," he said, and strode toward the Manor without looking back.
One of the areas in which Clark's abilities were unusual was his extraordinarily sharp hearing. But even he was unsure whether, under the crunch of gravel and the clop of horse's hooves, he was only imagining that the Earl murmured "I am truly sorry," as he rode away.
Kal--not Clark, Kal!--wrenched his attention back to the man who stood before him. He could tell that his color was high, but Bruce Wayne seemed entirely collected.
"It is not every cicisbeo who would presume to aim such barbs at an Earl," he said.
Everyone was staring at them now, and Kal forced his voice to stay level. "Clearly you are not acquainted with the men and women of Il Pianeta," he retorted. "Here we judge a person's worth by their intelligence, not by their titles. In our world the measure of a person is not their wealth and their power, but their wit, their bravery, their compassion."
Bruce's icy eyes seemed to sharpen at the last word. "Ah yes," he drawled, waving a languid hand at the opulent surroundings. "I can certainly see how you cherish the lowly of the earth, showing charity to all who hunger and suffer."
Kal sucked in a breath. "My lord is perhaps unaware that most of us come from humble beginnings," he said. "It pleases the nobles who avail themselves of our services to pretend otherwise, but all of us know well what it means to labor for our daily bread. Many of us have extended families, whole communities, which we help to feed and educate. Did you know Lois has started a school for the girls who work in the silk mills? Or that Jimmy spends much of his free time agitating for the reform of debtor's prison? And what has my lord done to help the unfortunates living on the streets of London?"
Bruce opened his mouth, but then Steve Lombard swooped in and cut him off. "I've heard you're a very fine dancer," Steve said. "How delightful it would be if you were to escort me in the cotillion!" He shot a meaningful look at Lois, who hurried to the pianoforte and struck up the opening bars as Bruce allowed himself to be dragged off, casting one thoughtful look back at Kal as he went.
"Really, Kal," Diana whispered as she took his arm and pulled him into an alcove, screened by brocaded curtains, "What possessed you to antagonize the Earl of Gotham?"
"He has a stupid face," Kal said, knowing he sounded sullen and petty.
"He may not be the brightest light of the ton, but that hardly makes him worthy of your contempt," said Diana. "It is not like you to judge someone so harshly. All of us have our quiet tragedies--the Earl's parents were murdered in front of him when he was but a boy, and now he is married to an invalid--"
"An invalid?" Clark heard the sharp disbelief in his voice, and Diana looked at him, puzzled.
"Why yes, his husband, the poor man, is quite frail and never leaves their house here in London. The Earl often leaves parties quite early to go home and sit with him. Poor dear."
It was too much. Kal felt a completely inappropriate hilarity bubbling up inside him, mirth mingled with fury: he threw back his head and laughed. At the end of a turn of the cotillion, he spotted a glimpse of pale blue eyes flashing at him like a sword, but ignored it. "More likely sneaking off to one of a string of lovers, no doubt! His lordship hardly seems a paragon of marital devotion." Diana gave him a reproving look, and he went on angrily in a lower tone, "He is exactly the kind of social parasite you have always loathed, Diana! Precisely what you and I have been--"
The warning in her eyes stopped him, even as he saw the flash of memory within them: a dank cul-de-sac and a moonless London night years ago.
London was dirty, was the first thing Clark realized as he stepped down from the coach. The fragrant horse droppings on the street were something he was used to, but the grimy buildings and hazy air surprised him. "Coal smoke, guv'nor," said the coachman at his incredulous look. "Welcome to city life."
Clark pulled his tiny bag from the coach and set out into London to find his husband.
He had put up with the isolation of Wayne Manor for a year: a quiet, peaceful, utterly tedious year. Bruce had never come to call, had not even sent a card. The servants were kind and pleasant, but Clark's attempts to make friends with them had met with a polite reserve--he was, after all, the Earl-Consort now. Clark offered to help with chores, but was met with cordial disbelief and discomfort. Once he heard two stableboys discussing how lonely he seemed, only to be sharply told by the stablemaster that "Pennyworth would not approve of gossip."
The mysterious "Pennyworth" rather haunted the Manor, it seemed--the gardens were mulched with birch bark because "Pennyworth said so," the silver polished each week "on Pennyworth's orders." Yet all his communication seemed to be via letter alone: no avenging Pennyworth ever descended upon the Manor to discipline his employees, and no dark-browed and ice-eyed Earl, either.
And at last Clark had grown tired of waiting.
No one had questioned his assertion that he was going home to visit his parents--"My lord is no prisoner, of course, and may do as he please," was the murmured response. He supposed it didn't actually matter where he was as far as the Earl was concerned: he had done his duty to his father, after all. So he had set out toward home, his small satchel in hand.
But when he had gotten far enough away, he had switched coaches and headed toward London.
He wasn't sure exactly what was driving him--an inchoate desire to confront his husband, a need to see the metropolis he had longed for. But now that he was here, the idea of striding in and denouncing the Earl of Gotham seemed bizarre. So he wandered the streets of London through the afternoon, gaping at the stores and the crowds, and realized only as it grew dark that he had no place to stay.
Well, it wouldn't be the first time he had slept out in the open. He set off looking for a place to shelter for the night, a quiet dead-end somewhere where he would go unnoticed.
And so he found himself in a dark cul-de-sac, sitting on the cobblestones and wondering if it was wise to spend some of his money on a piece of bread, when he heard a woman's scream pierce the night.
None of the other shadows hunched in the darkness even responded as he jumped to his feet and ran to the sound. There at the end of the cul-de-sac were two women. One was in shabby clothes and worn shoes, crawling on all fours to get away from five men holding blackjacks. The men were ignoring her to focus on the other woman, who stood in the middle of them, and Clark found himself unable to look away from her as well.
She was dressed in scarlet, her skirt long in the back and short in the front, revealing bare muscular legs. On her breast gleamed a golden eagle, and her wrists were covered with heavy embossed bracelets. She stood with her head high and her wrists crossed in front of her--not demurely, but as if ready for a fight, and Clark's heart went out to her immediately.
"We'll take those pretty bracelets, lady," growled one of the men.
"This ain't no lady," drawled another. "Look at that skirt. She's just a doxy out looking for a roll."
"There is no shame in a woman choosing to have sex where she will," the woman said gravely. Her voice was low and husky, touched with an accent Clark couldn't place. "But neither does my apparel indicate my sexual availability. In any case, I suggest you leave my sister and me alone."
One of the men lunged forward, blackjack raised, and Clark could wait in the shadows no longer. Bolting forward at top speed, he was between the woman and her assailant before the blow could land, and the robber yelped in pain as he struck a shoulder that could lift boulders without flinching.
Clark grabbed him by the collar and hoisted him in the air. "Leave the lady alone," he gritted.
The other men's eyes bugged out and they began to back away. Belatedly, Clark realized that there were only three of them fleeing, and that they were staring not at him but slightly behind him.
He turned to find the woman in red holding the fifth blackguard easily off the ground by his lapels, his feet kicking wildly at the air.
For a moment they both regarded each other with appreciation. Then, as if at a silent signal, each turned and tossed their captive at the other fleeing thugs. All five scrambled to get away, and Clark heard the woman laugh in delight at the expressions on their faces.
The laugh trailed off as the other woman gasped and scurried away as well. "Um, your sister…?" Clark said.
The woman inclined her head gravely. "I meant the term only in the abstract sense that all women are sisters," she said. "My thanks for your help."
"I couldn't stand by and do nothing," he said.
"Could you not? Yet so many of this city's inhabitants do exactly that." She looked at him. "You are quite strong."
"I'm fast, too."
"How fast?"
He smiled and pointed to the end of the alley. By the time she finished turning to follow his gesture, he was at the mouth of the alley; then back at her side. The breeze of his passing billowed the back of her scarlet skirt.
Her smile was as slow and radiant as the dawn. "I have been looking for one who shared my hopes of making this world a better place. A comrade."
He bowed slightly. "If a man may take the liberty of calling you sister, I would proudly do so."
"So be it, brother."
Princess Diana had given him a purpose, given him hope when he had none, and asked nothing in return--not his history, not even his full name. It was she who had recommended him at Il Pianeta. "A whorehouse?" he had said without thinking, and for the first and only time had found himself on the receiving end of her wrath.
"The people of Il Pianeta sell their company and their conversation," she had informed him, her voice cold. "Anything else they choose is neither an obligation nor a gift--as if sex were a painted present to be awarded to a worthy person, pfah!"
"But I can work in the mills," he said, "Or at the docks--"
"Clark," she had said gently, "I need my partner in this to be someone who can fit in with Society. Someone who can travel openly with me without arousing suspicion. At Il Pianeta you will learn how to gather information from the true villains--the ones who create and perpetuate the systems of poverty and inequity. You will learn how to how to charm and beguile the most powerful. Not all battles are won by throwing people against walls. Only the fun ones," she had added with a smile.
As Kal made his way upstairs, the evening over, he caught a glimpse of himself in the mirror on the turn of the stairs and remembered her words. He had come to live at Il Pianeta, had put aside Clark Kent and become Kal Starr, the most charming cicisbeo of London: always ready with the bon mot, always leaving his customers feeling smarter and stronger and more confident when they left his company. Clark, with his rough clothes and rougher manners, could never have convinced three members of Parliament to push for stricter child labor laws. Clark could never have collected the information that saved a popular and subversive female playwright from an assassination attempt. Kal Starr had become everything Clark Kent had not been: polished, urbane, stylish and witty.
He had thrown himself into his work, training with Diana in the martial arts on precious mornings, gathering information and influence in the evenings, and now and then patrolling the streets of London, stopping the more sordid and simple crimes. He had put all thoughts of his wayward husband completely out of his mind.
Until tonight.
He closed the door behind him and sat down hard on his bed, remembering the final gleam of pale eyes as Bruce Wayne had left the salon without speaking to him again. Kal would be lucky if Bruce didn't try to have him fired for his impudence. He supposed he should feel grateful that Bruce hadn't recognized him, but instead he felt...empty. He undressed mechanically and slipped between the pure white sheets, sheets none but he had ever laid beneath. From the room next door he heard a woman's low laugh cut off into a gasp of pleasure, and he rolled away from the sound with a sigh.
For the first time in years he had the old dream, the dream he thought he had banished forever: a dream of warm hands that belied mist-cold eyes, of a low voice murmuring things that made him groan with pleasure and arch into a possessive embrace, stammering foolish endearments, confessions, pleas--
He woke disgusted with himself and his traitorous body, which was safer to blame than his treacherous heart. Yet despite that he made sure he looked cool and composed as he went down to the dining room, where various cicisbei and cyprians sat in their dressing gowns and negligee, gossiping about last night's guests and their plans for today. There was a lull in conversation as he entered that made him wince; apparently he was something of a topic for gossip this morning. Well, let them talk.
"Kal!"
He looked up from his breakfast, picked-at but generally uneaten, as Jimmy called his name. "What is it?"
"Perry wants to see you," Jimmy said with a smirk, and Kal felt his heart sink further in foreboding. "And he's got a letter from the Earl of Gotham!"
Characters: Clark Kent/Bruce Wayne; Wonder Woman, Perry White, Steve Lombard, Jonathan Kent
Fandom: DC Comics
Warnings/Spoilers: None
Rating: PG
Word Count: 4500
Summary: Unexpectedly faced with his husband in the salon of Il Pianeta, Kal Starr remembers their meeting, their wedding--and the unlikely path he took to his new career.
Notes: Written for the Unconventional Courtship challenge, and based on the summary for the Harlequin romance An Innocent Courtesan. "Cicisbeo" was an actual term of the time for a male "gallant and lover" of a married woman...I have manufactured a cheerfully pansexual Regency for the purposes of this story.
Four years ago
Clark Kent was carrying a sheep slung over his shoulders when he met his betrothed for the first time.
"Clark?" Standing in the barn door, Jonathan Kent looked chagrined; the stranger looked, on the other hand, perfectly at ease. "This is--this is Bruce Wayne. I believe I've mentioned him."
Clark stared, then remembered his manners. "Of course." The sheep on Clark's shoulders gave a petulant bleat, and Clark hastily let it slide to the ground, where it shook its head and glared at everyone. Clark bowed, suddenly acutely aware of his rough nankeen trousers and heavy boots. "My Lord."
"I'm aware this is an...abrupt meeting." Clark looked up again to find the man regarding him with a smile that was faintly amused but not mocking. He was dressed in well-tailored yet simple clothes in sober colors that subtly showed off his broad shoulders and trim waist. "The fact is, I wasn't even certain that your father would remember the agreement he made with my father so long ago."
The sheep chose this moment to try and eat the laces of Clark's boots. His father spoke as Clark tried to shoo it away: "I would never forget an agreement made to a fellow soldier, my Lord, and Thomas Wayne was the finest man I ever had the honor of serving with. But I assumed--" He broke off, reddening.
"After my parents' deaths, you assumed the agreement was null and void," said Wayne. "I confess, I had forgotten about it. But the other day I was going through some of his old papers and I found a reference to it. I felt remiss in my filial duties--I must tell you that my father felt strongly that you were the bravest and most honest man he knew, and he wished very much to see our houses joined. And so I have come from London to ask if your son would be willing to honor that agreement and become my spouse." He coughed discreetly. "There would, of course, be a sizeable marriage-price as well. But I hope money is not the only consideration in such an arrangement."
"Clark?" Jonathan looked at his son questioningly, and his eyes were easy to read: You don't have to do this, son. But Clark remembered conversations between his parents that he had overheard, worried murmurings late at night about taxes and mortgages. A marriage-price from an Earl…
And then there was the fact that Wayne lived in London. London! Clark had never seen the city, but he yearned to. He was strong--stronger even than his parents realized--and he was fast, and sometimes he allowed himself to believe that there was more he could do than lift surprised cows out of mudholes. In London…
Wayne was still waiting for his answer, smiling politely. His eyes were a startling pale blue, almost colorless, below brows as sharp as a plunging hawk. It would be a marriage of duty and convenience, of course, and yet… Clark couldn't help but think there would be some pleasure in it too.
And so he found himself an hour later in the local church, preparing to pledge his vows to a man he had only just met. He had changed into his best suit, but still felt coarse next to Wayne's polished good looks. His mother embraced him, smiling tearfully, and his father drew him aside: "Are you sure, Clark? Because you don't have to…"
"Father," said Clark, "He seems to be a good man. It will work out."
"There's more to marriage than being good," muttered his father, but had raised no further protests.
Clark took Wayne's hands--no, Bruce's hands, he was not going to call his husband by his family name!--in his as the pastor read the vows. They were cold, and Clark curled his fingers around them without thinking. Bruce's fingers tightened on his, and Clark found himself staring into eyes like the sky reflected on snow. He stumbled over his vows and had to say them again, and then the pastor was telling them to seal their bond with a kiss. Bruce hesitated and looked for the first time uncertain, as if he had forgotten this would be part of the ceremony. As the moment began to teeter into awkwardness, Clark leaned forward and put his lips to his husbands'.
It was a chaste kiss, and yet as their breath mingled, Clark felt like there were hidden depths behind the gentle touch of their lips. Without thinking, he put a hand on Bruce's shoulder and leaned closer, letting the kiss deepen slightly. In that instant--and for only an instant--the kiss was not at all chaste.
And then Bruce was backing away, smiling politely once more, and his eyes were cool and detached. But Clark felt certain in that moment that there could be more to this marriage than two decent people coming to an arrangement.
Fool, Kal thought to himself, banishing the memory of that kiss, of that hope, from his mind. Blind country bumpkin. Naive, innocent Clark Kent was long gone now, replaced by Kal Starr, glittering member of the London elite. Or so he had thought. But all that was over now too, it seemed.
He forced a smile onto his face as Bruce Wayne bowed deeply to Princess Diana and himself, waiting for the shock, the denunciations, the humiliation.
Instead the shock was his, when Bruce straightened and Kal realized there was not a hint of recognition on his face.
"Why, my Lord Gotham, how unusual to see you in a salon," said Diana. "Haven't you always claimed that you find such entertainments boring in comparison to the gaming-house and horse-races?"
Am I truly changed so much? Kal wondered as Bruce smiled at Diana. Yes, his manners were polished now, his clothing exquisitely correct, his bearing genteel--he had worked on perfecting all these things during his time at Il Pianeta, after all. Bruce had not seen him for four years, he reminded himself--and he had never truly looked at him, even then. He felt the memory of baffled anger roil in him as he looked at Bruce's dandyish clothing, so different from the elegant garb he had worn to propose to an ignorant country squire's son. False, false in every way.
"There comes a time, Princess, when one yearns for some witty conversation," drawled Bruce. Kal repressed a start--even his voice was different: light and careless, where the voice Clark remembered (remembered all too well) had been rough and low. "And so I have come here, to see if I can find charms to soothe my jaded soul."
"Alas, my lord," Kal heard himself say, "Sparkling conversation requires two parties to sustain it. Like tennis, one cannot simply lob wit across a net into a void."
The winged eyebrows--they and the eyes were the only things unchanged--went up sharply. "Void?" Bruce said.
"Or perhaps," Kal went on, ignoring the way people were stopping to look at them, the horror in Diana's eyes, "A more apt metaphor would be pistols at dawn with a man whose weapons were unloaded. It would hardly be sporting."
In the shocked silence that followed, Bruce drew his quizzing-glass out from the folds of his ornate cravat and looked at Kal through it, studying him from head to toe without speaking. Behind him Kal could see Steve Lombard gaping at him: What are you doing?
Kal hardly knew what he was doing; the memories of four years ago seemed to wash over him, an irresistible memory of humiliation.
It was a beautiful spring day, and Clark sat beside his husband in his curricle, harnessed to two fine black geldings. Bruce was a good hand with the whip, and the landscape sped past them as the horses picked up their feet.
Bruce had been reticent since the ceremony, refusing to stay the night at the Kent's. "You needn't pack much," he had said as Clark started to put together a case, "You'll have all you need." So Clark had only selected a few sentimental items and had left at once, before the morning was even done.
He tried to draw Bruce out in conversation, but Bruce's thoughts seemed far away and his responses were terse, whether Clark was talking of the weather or asking questions about Bruce's life. "I'm looking forward to seeing London," Clark said at last as the silence became dire. "I've never been. Is it true they have--"
"--We are not going to London," Bruce interrupted him. "Or at least, you are not. You will be staying at my family estate in the Gotham countryside. You should find it very pleasant."
He didn't meet Clark's eyes, and Clark found himself frowning. "And you will be…"
"I plan to stay on in London, yes. I thought--" He cleared his throat. "I thought that you would be more content in the country. I believed this arrangement might suit us well."
"Arrangement? You mean our marriage? I expected I would come to London with you, that I would be a part of your life." Clark wasn't sure if the icy shock of disappointment he felt were due to not going to London or not living with his husband. "Instead I find you mean to exile me to some rotting estate in the middle of nowhere, and--"
Bruce whirled to glare at him. "I agreed to marry you, to fulfill my father's wishes. I agreed to nothing more." He flicked the whip angrily in the air over the horses. "I should think you'd be grateful. You get a marriage-price that will keep your parents comfortable for the rest of their lives, you get a quiet life in the country, you don't have to deal with me--"
"--Maybe I wanted to--to 'deal with you,'" Clark blurted. "I thought we could build a life together. I thought we could be partners. I have a lot I can give, Bruce, I know it."
For a long moment, Bruce stared out across the fields. For the first time, the horses' pace grew restive and uneven, as if his hands had gone unsteady on the reins.
Then he laughed, and Clark flinched from the bitterness in it.
"Partners?" Bruce's voice was filled with mocking. "Do you have any idea how I'd look in London society with a rustic like you for a spouse? Your manners, your clothing, your very voice--everything about you betrays your lack of breeding. I couldn't possibly be seen in public with you. I've done my duty to my father, and there it ends."
If he had slashed the whip across Clark's face it could not have been more of a shock; Clark felt his breath go short, his vision dim with fury and hurt. "Then I have in my ignorance tied my fate to that of a cruel and petty person," he flared up. "Do feel free to deposit me where you will and I will consider myself well rid of you."
His husband's color was high; Bruce swallowed and his mouth twitched, then firmed again. "You addressed me as 'Bruce' earlier," he said. "I would prefer if you called me by my proper title from now."
"Of course, my lord," snarled Clark. "I would never dream of presuming an intimacy with you."
The rest of the ride passed in silence, until after agonizing hours they reached a manor tucked into a green valley. If he hadn't been so angry Clark would have called it pretty and well-tended, but his fury choked any words he might have said.
"Farewell," said the Earl of Gotham as a pair of servants come to take his meagre belongings. "And...be safe."
Clark snatched his bag away from the servants and hopped down from the curricle before they could put any steps in place for him. "Enjoy your life, my Lord," he said, and strode toward the Manor without looking back.
One of the areas in which Clark's abilities were unusual was his extraordinarily sharp hearing. But even he was unsure whether, under the crunch of gravel and the clop of horse's hooves, he was only imagining that the Earl murmured "I am truly sorry," as he rode away.
Kal--not Clark, Kal!--wrenched his attention back to the man who stood before him. He could tell that his color was high, but Bruce Wayne seemed entirely collected.
"It is not every cicisbeo who would presume to aim such barbs at an Earl," he said.
Everyone was staring at them now, and Kal forced his voice to stay level. "Clearly you are not acquainted with the men and women of Il Pianeta," he retorted. "Here we judge a person's worth by their intelligence, not by their titles. In our world the measure of a person is not their wealth and their power, but their wit, their bravery, their compassion."
Bruce's icy eyes seemed to sharpen at the last word. "Ah yes," he drawled, waving a languid hand at the opulent surroundings. "I can certainly see how you cherish the lowly of the earth, showing charity to all who hunger and suffer."
Kal sucked in a breath. "My lord is perhaps unaware that most of us come from humble beginnings," he said. "It pleases the nobles who avail themselves of our services to pretend otherwise, but all of us know well what it means to labor for our daily bread. Many of us have extended families, whole communities, which we help to feed and educate. Did you know Lois has started a school for the girls who work in the silk mills? Or that Jimmy spends much of his free time agitating for the reform of debtor's prison? And what has my lord done to help the unfortunates living on the streets of London?"
Bruce opened his mouth, but then Steve Lombard swooped in and cut him off. "I've heard you're a very fine dancer," Steve said. "How delightful it would be if you were to escort me in the cotillion!" He shot a meaningful look at Lois, who hurried to the pianoforte and struck up the opening bars as Bruce allowed himself to be dragged off, casting one thoughtful look back at Kal as he went.
"Really, Kal," Diana whispered as she took his arm and pulled him into an alcove, screened by brocaded curtains, "What possessed you to antagonize the Earl of Gotham?"
"He has a stupid face," Kal said, knowing he sounded sullen and petty.
"He may not be the brightest light of the ton, but that hardly makes him worthy of your contempt," said Diana. "It is not like you to judge someone so harshly. All of us have our quiet tragedies--the Earl's parents were murdered in front of him when he was but a boy, and now he is married to an invalid--"
"An invalid?" Clark heard the sharp disbelief in his voice, and Diana looked at him, puzzled.
"Why yes, his husband, the poor man, is quite frail and never leaves their house here in London. The Earl often leaves parties quite early to go home and sit with him. Poor dear."
It was too much. Kal felt a completely inappropriate hilarity bubbling up inside him, mirth mingled with fury: he threw back his head and laughed. At the end of a turn of the cotillion, he spotted a glimpse of pale blue eyes flashing at him like a sword, but ignored it. "More likely sneaking off to one of a string of lovers, no doubt! His lordship hardly seems a paragon of marital devotion." Diana gave him a reproving look, and he went on angrily in a lower tone, "He is exactly the kind of social parasite you have always loathed, Diana! Precisely what you and I have been--"
The warning in her eyes stopped him, even as he saw the flash of memory within them: a dank cul-de-sac and a moonless London night years ago.
London was dirty, was the first thing Clark realized as he stepped down from the coach. The fragrant horse droppings on the street were something he was used to, but the grimy buildings and hazy air surprised him. "Coal smoke, guv'nor," said the coachman at his incredulous look. "Welcome to city life."
Clark pulled his tiny bag from the coach and set out into London to find his husband.
He had put up with the isolation of Wayne Manor for a year: a quiet, peaceful, utterly tedious year. Bruce had never come to call, had not even sent a card. The servants were kind and pleasant, but Clark's attempts to make friends with them had met with a polite reserve--he was, after all, the Earl-Consort now. Clark offered to help with chores, but was met with cordial disbelief and discomfort. Once he heard two stableboys discussing how lonely he seemed, only to be sharply told by the stablemaster that "Pennyworth would not approve of gossip."
The mysterious "Pennyworth" rather haunted the Manor, it seemed--the gardens were mulched with birch bark because "Pennyworth said so," the silver polished each week "on Pennyworth's orders." Yet all his communication seemed to be via letter alone: no avenging Pennyworth ever descended upon the Manor to discipline his employees, and no dark-browed and ice-eyed Earl, either.
And at last Clark had grown tired of waiting.
No one had questioned his assertion that he was going home to visit his parents--"My lord is no prisoner, of course, and may do as he please," was the murmured response. He supposed it didn't actually matter where he was as far as the Earl was concerned: he had done his duty to his father, after all. So he had set out toward home, his small satchel in hand.
But when he had gotten far enough away, he had switched coaches and headed toward London.
He wasn't sure exactly what was driving him--an inchoate desire to confront his husband, a need to see the metropolis he had longed for. But now that he was here, the idea of striding in and denouncing the Earl of Gotham seemed bizarre. So he wandered the streets of London through the afternoon, gaping at the stores and the crowds, and realized only as it grew dark that he had no place to stay.
Well, it wouldn't be the first time he had slept out in the open. He set off looking for a place to shelter for the night, a quiet dead-end somewhere where he would go unnoticed.
And so he found himself in a dark cul-de-sac, sitting on the cobblestones and wondering if it was wise to spend some of his money on a piece of bread, when he heard a woman's scream pierce the night.
None of the other shadows hunched in the darkness even responded as he jumped to his feet and ran to the sound. There at the end of the cul-de-sac were two women. One was in shabby clothes and worn shoes, crawling on all fours to get away from five men holding blackjacks. The men were ignoring her to focus on the other woman, who stood in the middle of them, and Clark found himself unable to look away from her as well.
She was dressed in scarlet, her skirt long in the back and short in the front, revealing bare muscular legs. On her breast gleamed a golden eagle, and her wrists were covered with heavy embossed bracelets. She stood with her head high and her wrists crossed in front of her--not demurely, but as if ready for a fight, and Clark's heart went out to her immediately.
"We'll take those pretty bracelets, lady," growled one of the men.
"This ain't no lady," drawled another. "Look at that skirt. She's just a doxy out looking for a roll."
"There is no shame in a woman choosing to have sex where she will," the woman said gravely. Her voice was low and husky, touched with an accent Clark couldn't place. "But neither does my apparel indicate my sexual availability. In any case, I suggest you leave my sister and me alone."
One of the men lunged forward, blackjack raised, and Clark could wait in the shadows no longer. Bolting forward at top speed, he was between the woman and her assailant before the blow could land, and the robber yelped in pain as he struck a shoulder that could lift boulders without flinching.
Clark grabbed him by the collar and hoisted him in the air. "Leave the lady alone," he gritted.
The other men's eyes bugged out and they began to back away. Belatedly, Clark realized that there were only three of them fleeing, and that they were staring not at him but slightly behind him.
He turned to find the woman in red holding the fifth blackguard easily off the ground by his lapels, his feet kicking wildly at the air.
For a moment they both regarded each other with appreciation. Then, as if at a silent signal, each turned and tossed their captive at the other fleeing thugs. All five scrambled to get away, and Clark heard the woman laugh in delight at the expressions on their faces.
The laugh trailed off as the other woman gasped and scurried away as well. "Um, your sister…?" Clark said.
The woman inclined her head gravely. "I meant the term only in the abstract sense that all women are sisters," she said. "My thanks for your help."
"I couldn't stand by and do nothing," he said.
"Could you not? Yet so many of this city's inhabitants do exactly that." She looked at him. "You are quite strong."
"I'm fast, too."
"How fast?"
He smiled and pointed to the end of the alley. By the time she finished turning to follow his gesture, he was at the mouth of the alley; then back at her side. The breeze of his passing billowed the back of her scarlet skirt.
Her smile was as slow and radiant as the dawn. "I have been looking for one who shared my hopes of making this world a better place. A comrade."
He bowed slightly. "If a man may take the liberty of calling you sister, I would proudly do so."
"So be it, brother."
Princess Diana had given him a purpose, given him hope when he had none, and asked nothing in return--not his history, not even his full name. It was she who had recommended him at Il Pianeta. "A whorehouse?" he had said without thinking, and for the first and only time had found himself on the receiving end of her wrath.
"The people of Il Pianeta sell their company and their conversation," she had informed him, her voice cold. "Anything else they choose is neither an obligation nor a gift--as if sex were a painted present to be awarded to a worthy person, pfah!"
"But I can work in the mills," he said, "Or at the docks--"
"Clark," she had said gently, "I need my partner in this to be someone who can fit in with Society. Someone who can travel openly with me without arousing suspicion. At Il Pianeta you will learn how to gather information from the true villains--the ones who create and perpetuate the systems of poverty and inequity. You will learn how to how to charm and beguile the most powerful. Not all battles are won by throwing people against walls. Only the fun ones," she had added with a smile.
As Kal made his way upstairs, the evening over, he caught a glimpse of himself in the mirror on the turn of the stairs and remembered her words. He had come to live at Il Pianeta, had put aside Clark Kent and become Kal Starr, the most charming cicisbeo of London: always ready with the bon mot, always leaving his customers feeling smarter and stronger and more confident when they left his company. Clark, with his rough clothes and rougher manners, could never have convinced three members of Parliament to push for stricter child labor laws. Clark could never have collected the information that saved a popular and subversive female playwright from an assassination attempt. Kal Starr had become everything Clark Kent had not been: polished, urbane, stylish and witty.
He had thrown himself into his work, training with Diana in the martial arts on precious mornings, gathering information and influence in the evenings, and now and then patrolling the streets of London, stopping the more sordid and simple crimes. He had put all thoughts of his wayward husband completely out of his mind.
Until tonight.
He closed the door behind him and sat down hard on his bed, remembering the final gleam of pale eyes as Bruce Wayne had left the salon without speaking to him again. Kal would be lucky if Bruce didn't try to have him fired for his impudence. He supposed he should feel grateful that Bruce hadn't recognized him, but instead he felt...empty. He undressed mechanically and slipped between the pure white sheets, sheets none but he had ever laid beneath. From the room next door he heard a woman's low laugh cut off into a gasp of pleasure, and he rolled away from the sound with a sigh.
For the first time in years he had the old dream, the dream he thought he had banished forever: a dream of warm hands that belied mist-cold eyes, of a low voice murmuring things that made him groan with pleasure and arch into a possessive embrace, stammering foolish endearments, confessions, pleas--
He woke disgusted with himself and his traitorous body, which was safer to blame than his treacherous heart. Yet despite that he made sure he looked cool and composed as he went down to the dining room, where various cicisbei and cyprians sat in their dressing gowns and negligee, gossiping about last night's guests and their plans for today. There was a lull in conversation as he entered that made him wince; apparently he was something of a topic for gossip this morning. Well, let them talk.
"Kal!"
He looked up from his breakfast, picked-at but generally uneaten, as Jimmy called his name. "What is it?"
"Perry wants to see you," Jimmy said with a smirk, and Kal felt his heart sink further in foreboding. "And he's got a letter from the Earl of Gotham!"