Virtually upon sight, Alexos had decided he did not like Cherry Flintman.

When they have arrived at the poorly named restaurant, it had been Flintman who had ushered he and Larry through the restaurant proper and upstairs. He did not introduce himself, nor ask after Alexos’ name – he chattered loudly to Larry and Alexos both about costuming and cigarettes and an argument he’d apparently had with a moth the night previous and other such vagaries as that.

Picking their way through the somewhat busy restaurant, Flintman led them through a painfully narrow doorway, and although Larry was careful not to let the heavy door knock Alexos in the shoulder or hip, the base of the stairs was narrow enough he had to move out of the way to give Alexos space to actually follow him.

These stairs, Alexos would guess, had once been service stairs, because they were very narrow and very steep, with not enough space in the hall for even an inlaid banister. He was very slow-going up the stairs, and Larry kept glancing back at him nervously and apologetically as he led the way after Flintman to the next floor.

Felicitus had apparently been converted over from a house before – downstairs Alexos had noticed the old crown moulding and the light sconces, let alone the carpet, that seemed rather out of place in an eatery rather than a domestic dwelling. Upstairs, a wall had been knocked through to make one private dining room of what had previously been two rooms, probably servants’ dorms judging by the low ceilings and lack of natural light.

“Sorry,” Alexos muttered to the man behind him on the stairs who had followed them into the restaurant, finally looking back and getting a good look at the fellow’s face.

Unlike Flintman, who was tall, skinny, and strangely square, with stubble spattered over his face like so much dirt and greased back hair, this man was… was very different.

Slim and willowy, he had a halo of thick, blond-brown curls, and his eyes were a striking blue, his lips painted red, blush on his cheeks, his eyes lined and shadowed in heavy black and a pair of hearts printed on the outer side of his left eye. He smiled as he took off his hat, looking up and into Alexos’ eyes – as he gave Alexos a look up and down, his thick, mascaraed lashes fluttered.

“Please, don’t apologise,” he said – he had a faint lisp and an Italian accent, and while he was obviously of the theatrical lilt, his lisp and his manner of enunciation didn’t seem put on in the way that Cherry’s did. “I’m just grateful your boncove helped you with your coat off before you started your way up the stairs, all the better to give me a good view of the dish.”

“Dish?” Alexos repeated, and the other man stepped up the last of the stairs and stood level with Alexos. He was shorter than Alexos by nearly a head, but tilted his head back to look Alexos in the eye and at the same time give him a few down the Italian’s shirt – his tie was untied, the top two buttons undone, and Alexos was treated with a look underneath it at the creamy white flesh of his breast.

He was wearing a woman’s perfume instead of a cologne – it was powdery and floral, sweet, with elements of vanilla in it, and Alexos couldn’t resist the urge to inhale deeply and take it into his lungs, which made the Italian’s eyes light up, the blue in his eyes seeming to shine.

“Those two ripe plums stretching out your back netting, ducky,” said the Italian, and when Alexos stared down at him, stunned and strangely charmed, he gave a wink and slid past him into the room, and as he went past he pinched Alexos’ right arse cheek, making him jump and then laugh breathlessly. His cheeks felt warm, and he was somewhere between scandalised and absurdly delighted as he stepped into the room, looking back and forth to see if anyone had noticed his and the Italian’s physical contact, but no one seemed to be looking their way.

“Mr Fox, why don’t you sit over here, pride of place?” said Flintman loudly, gesturing to a seat on the other side of the large table that dominated the room – if anything, it was a bit too big for the room it was in, let alone the chairs around it.

“Testa di cazzo, Cherry, are you fucking stupid or what?” demanded the Italian, changing his tone to speak to Flintman as he slid prettily into the seat Flintman had just offered to Alexos. “What, you want him to walk around this table every time he needs to piss, eh? It’s bad enough he has to go up and down a ladder to go to the lavatory!”

Larry flushed pink, looking anxiously between Flintman, who was standing stock still with his mouth ajar, his cigarette hanging from his fingers and looking nearly ready to drop to the carpet, and the Italian, who had pulled in his chair slightly and immediately commenced to chatting to one of the ladies already sitting at the table.

“Erm, sorry, Al— Mr Fox,” said Larry, “Mr Garibaldi can be… testy.”

“Mr Garibaldi, is it?” Alexos asked, and the Italian looked his way, all white teeth and pretty eyes and those two pretty black hearts beside his gaze, but didn’t rejoin their conversation again, kept talking about the book he’d been reading with the woman beside him – she, too, was observing the three of them with mild interest. “He’s right – it makes a lot more sense for me to sit on this side of the table.”

“Oh, Mr Garibaldi is right, is he?” asked Flintman, putting one hand on his cocked hip and tapping ash off his cigarette to the tray on the table – he missed some of it, and Alexos looked at the dark grey curls of ash staining the white tablecloth. “What, do you think I’m stupid as well, Mr Fox?”

“By all means, exhibit evidence to the contrary, Mr Flintman,” said Alexos pleasantly as he took his seat, and then immediately put weight on his good leg, his elbows on the table, to ensure Larry didn’t jar him badly as he clumsily tucked his chair in behind him. “I’m always happy to change my opinions.”

Flintman stared at him, uncomprehending, and then started to laugh loudly and obnoxiously, dropping into the seat at the head of the table. “Where have you been hiding him, Larry? He’s tall, he’s handsome, and he’s got a tongue on him.”

“Mr Fox is a recent new f— erm, acquaintance, of mine,” said Larry, and Alexos looked at him side-on, reading the planes of his face, the furious nerves that were suddenly apparent across his features.

“Is he often tended to this sort of over-formality when nervous?” Alexos asked.

“I’m afraid so,” said Flintman, reaching across and patting the side of Larry’s face, making him laugh and relax slightly, leaning away from him. “He either corrects one way or the other, goes too far. Like when a ship starts leaning one way and then keels right over the other.”

“Cherry,” Larry hissed.

“Larry and I are recent friends,” Alexos said. “He’s been staying with us a little while – we’re much closer to Brighton than he is in Oxford, we’re not far from Crawley.”

“How did you come to know each other?” Flintman asked. “He was desperately frightened of putting you off him when he came to stay with you.”

“Yes, you’re the responsible party for the cocaine he took, I take it,” Alexos muttered, sliding his cane down onto the floor and ensuring it wasn’t in anyone’s way. “Larry is an acquainted with my mother – Georgina Fox, she writes mystery novels.”

“Oh, I love your mother’s work,” said the actress beside Garibaldi – she was a handsome woman, wore a straight bob of chestnut hair, and he wondered at what product she must put in it, to make it move as such a fine and shining curtain. “I saw an excellent adaptation of her first book, the one with all the morse code, when I was in New York last! They did all this wonderful stuff with the signaller up in a box apart from the main stage in his uniform, and all the lights…”

“I love how your mother writes murders,” said Larry, and Alexos looked at him. “If you told me she were a brutal axe killer in her spare time, I might even believe you!”

“I might believe it myself,” Alexos replied faintly, rather aching to change the subject. “As it doesn’t appear our companions are going to introduce us – my name is Alexos Fox.”

“Hullo, Mr Fox, I’m Annette Bear,” said the woman with the bob, and she stood up and leaned across the table to shake his hand to save him having to stand himself, and Alexos smiled at her. “Two predators, the two of us, hm?”

“Two calculated feeders on carrion, you might say otherwise,” said Alexos, and that made her laugh, her eyes crinkling, her hair sweeping dramatically from side to side as she sat back in her seat.

“Fell Garibaldi,” said the Italian, leaning forward – Alexos automatically leaned forward to take his hand, but Fell didn’t shake his. He put his hand forward limply, resting over Alexos’ own, and Alexos glanced across at him expectantly, raising one eyebrows. “Oh, please, Mr Fox, you don’t have manners either, hm? You don’t kiss a lady’s hand?”

“I wasn’t aware I was in the presence of ladies,” said Alexos, and Fell and Annette both gasped dramatically, giving one another twin looks of indignation, and Alexos laughed faintly as he leaned forward, brushing his lips across the back of Fell’s hand.

He had pretty hands, very delicate for a man – they were utterly hairless and very pale, and his pink nails were longer than he might expect, painted with a shining gloss.

“What is that short for, Fell?”

“Felice,” said Fell. “Alexos, it’s a Greek name, hm? I should call you Alexo?”

“Getting people to call me Alexos instead of Alex is difficult enough – I’m not about to start introducing vocative declensions into the ordeal.”

“Oh, a man who talks about declensions at the dinner table,” Fell purred, rolling his delicate little shoulders and leaning back in his seat. “How filthy is he, Larry?”

“Alexos?” asked Larry – there was a slight nervousness on the name, and he looked sideways at Alexos with a shy smile as he did it, and seemed bolstered when Alexos smiled encouragingly at him in response. “Why, he’s squeaky clean, Fell, I assure you!”

“Larry,” said Alexos out of the corner of his mouth. “You’re ruining my reputation, and it’s as yet so new.”

They all laughed, and Alexos’ skin felt as if it was burning off the back of it – it was nice, genuinely, but he was grateful indeed when the door opened behind them and more of the company began to filter in.

* * *

It was meant to be harder than it was, it seemed to Alexos. It should have been difficult, awkward, and yet since the last time he’d gone out for a dinner with strangers… And God, when had that been? Ten years ago, when he was still at university, with the scattered other cripples and defective left behind from the war?

It should have been difficult, and yet somehow, it was easy.

The various actors were very free and open people – they were bold and catty with one another, and it was clear that they were all fairly intimate with and involved with one another’s lives. Several of them appeared to be sharing rooms or lodgings together, had worked together on other projects, and even the ones who weren’t cohabiting were, one might infer, in and out of each other’s beds.

They treated Alexos’ presence at the table as no occasion at all, and Alexos supposed that was part of what felt like such a relief.

Cherry Flintman was an Etonian and Cambridge graduate, and three or four of the others of the company were publicly educated themselves, but Alexos was surprised to find that wasn’t the case for all of them, and pleasantly so. He sipped at his wine and listened as Annette and Nina regaled Fell with tales of growing up in England.

Nina and Annette kept laughing as they talked about different things their parents had done to keep their houses warm – stealing coal from work, hot water bottles, cooking indoors, purchasing a large mastiff dog who was indeed warm and cuddly, but hogged the blankets and farted continuously.

“What about you, Alexos?” Fell asked, laying his hand on his chin and looking flirtatiously across the table at him. “What – or who – keeps you warm at night?”

“We have a dog as well,” Alexos said mildly. “He’s a basset hound, and his name is Aristaeus. I don’t generally let him into the bedroom with me, but he’s an amiable and dutiful footwarmer in the library.”

“You have your own library?” Nina asked, raising her eyebrows, her lips parting. “Gosh, Mr Fox, are you terribly rich?”

“We’re more than comfortable,” Alexos said honestly, resisting the urge to laugh at the question – it wasn’t a stupid one to ask, merely that he couldn’t remember ever hearing someone ask it and not be gasped at or immediately told to hush, told how rude it was. Neither Fell nor Annette seemed to have any interest in such a thing – they were as intrigued at the prospective answer as Nina was. “I’m not in line for some sort of inherited seat or a title or anything like that, and we don’t have a great deal of land or acreage. We have our home, and then my father’s stakes are in factories; my mother’s, of course, in her books.”

“And yours? What are your stakes in?” asked Nina – her hand touched Alexos’ on the table, and Alexos felt himself stiffen just slightly, unable to hold it back. She looked faintly apologetic, drawing her hand back, and she laid her hands in her lap.

“Larry’s mentioned you’re a scholar?” Annette prompted him.

“I’m a classicist,” Alexos said. “I’ve most recently finished a work on Seneca’s Thyestes.”

“Oh, how devilish,” Fell said enthusiastically, his eyes flashing with intrigue. “Do you think the meat of his children was very tender when he feasted unknowingly upon it, Mr Fox?”

“I expect it was like veal,” said Nina, wrinkling her nose. “Not to my taste.”

Alexos laughed, and he looked between the three of them, glancing up the table at the rest of the company as they want on chatting with one another, playing a game of trying to balance one of the cut flowers on the table on their noses.

“Have you played many ancient Greek parts?”

“Clytemnestra,” said Annette, and Alexos felt his eyebrows rise.

“You aren’t a bit young to have played her?” he asked, and he was delighted at the way she laughed – she had a hoarse and throaty laugh, deep with cigarettes.

“Oh, I like you, Alexos,” she murmured. “And Nina does a tremendous Antigone, I must say. I’d not met her yet, the first time I saw her on stage – how old were you, 18, 19? I wept my bloody eyes out, came to chat to her at an afters with all my make-up run down my face. Everyone thought my boyfriend must have cheated me something awful to put me in such a state!”

“Oh, Nettie,” Nina said shyly. “Fell here has no care for tragedy, of course.”

“No, I don’t,” said Fell primly. “I did some vignettes when I was younger – we adapted some of the Socratic dialogues, and I think I was quite the dashing Alcibiades, although we’d never get away with something so blatant on the stage here.”

“No?”

“Oh, no. I put rouge on my nipples,” said Fell, and Alexos laughed. “What? I expect the good general himself would have done the same, had he thought to!”

“Who’s to say he didn’t?” Alexos replied, and the four of them looked sidelong up the table as Cherry Flintman let out a loud roar of triumph, balancing a cut rose on his nose, his head tilted right back to allow for it. “I really dislike him.”

“Oh, we all do,” mused Annette. “He really is marvelous in bed though.”

“Has about an average set of equipment, but rides like a stallion,” agreed Fell. “One is best advised to check him for sores and pustules before one saddles and reins him though. I must take a short journey to the powder room. Join me, darling?”

“Of course, dear,” said Annette, and Fell took her arm once they were around the narrow part of the table, although they had to go single file down the stairs.

“Sorry,” Nina said softly. “I, erm— Well, I got the impression you were a Greek sort, even before you were chattering a bit more with Felice. I’ve always been drawn more to men like you – I don’t know what it is.”

“Perhaps that we’re a bit cleaner than our… What’s the opposite of Greek, in this context?” Alexos asked faintly, feeling a sort of rush in his ears at the strange vulnerability of the question, of the conversation between them. “French?”

“Oh, God,” said Nina, wrinkling her nose, and Alexos laughed.

He was hesitant before he said, “I must say, I’m not… I wouldn’t say I’m tremendously worldly, Nina. I don’t often leave my home – I’ve been critiqued of late for being something of a recluse.”

“You should come to the theatre more often,” said Nina warmly. “I can’t promise you no one will ever be a nuisance, but in a place like that – in a theatre, in an auditorium, all eyes are on the stage. No one to stare at you.”

“The staring doesn’t bother me as much,” Alexos murmured. “It’s no great compliment, of course, but at least I can ignore it. Comments, assumptions…”

“Did it embarrass you?” Nina asked. “When Fell snapped at Cherry like that?”

“No,” Alexos said, huffing out a noise, and he rubbed the back of his neck before he said, “you know, what embarrassed me more was Larry apologising for him – the awkwardness at Cherry having made a thoughtless error, an assumption, and being more embarrassed at Fell’s accurate correction, however emotional, than at the error itself.”

“Oh,” said Nina, furrowing her blond brows, and she nodded her head very seriously, her lips pressed loosely together. “That makes sense. Sorry.”

“It’s alright,” Alexos said. “What is it about me?”

“Sorry?”

“You guessed I was of a Greek lilt, as you put it, once you laid eyes on me – I’m not as blatant as Cherry, and I don’t have a lisp like Fell’s, I’m not as pretty as he is, as delicate. For an academic, I’m something of a coarse man – I’ve coarse hands and strong wrists. I’ve been recognised, and recognised like-minded men in turn, but it never occurred to me what precisely made me…”

Nina was looking at him consideringly, her head tilted to one side, and she drummed her fingers against her knees. She wore the same glossy polish on her nails that Fell Garibaldi did, and Alexos wondered if they shared the bottle, if they painted one another’s nails.

“I don’t know,” said Nina. “I know it’s not very helpful, but, um… I don’t know that I’ve got the sense for it that Nettie and Fell do – the observation and the little clues, the tiny inferences and deductions. I’m not as clever as they are – Nettie says it’s something I’ll hone as I get older, but I don’t think I’ll get it that honed.”

“What clued you in, then?”

“Well,” said Nina, and sighed, crossing her skinny arms over her breast and slumping back slightly in her chest. “If I’m honest with you, me liking any man at all is a sign that he might be that way. Bit of a useless sixth sense, if you ask me.”

Alexos laughed, but not without sympathy. “That is a tough one,” he said. “Particularly if the options you’re left with are the likes of Cherry over there.”

“Right?”

“Mr Fox,” said Fell as he and Annette came up to the top of the stairs, and his pretty hand alighted delicately on Alexos’ shoulder, his thumb pressing pleasantly into the meat of it. “Us girls are going to make a break for it – want to join us?”

“You expect me to run?” Alexos asked dryly, leaning back to look up at the other man – he touched his cheek against the warm back of Fell’s hand, felt how soft the skin was, smelt the cream he probably rubbed into them every night.

“Oh, Nettie’s basically an Olympian, she can carry you fireman style, and I’ll carry your cane,” Fell suggested, and Alexos and Nina both laughed, even before Annette made a furious no gesture behind Fell’s back. “No, ducky, we can probably just creep away without having to put those poor legs of yours to undue labour.”

“Were you a soldier?” asked Nina.

“No,” said Alexos.

“Rickets?” Annette asked.

“Polio.”

“Oof, hard luck,” said Annette. “My cousin got it bad – a few of her friends died, and there’s one boy in an iron lung, but she’s mostly alright. Uses a chair. Mind you, the doctors say her snoring is from the polio.”

“Snoring?” Fell repeated sceptically. “From polio? You’re not sure they’re just making excuses for her?”

“Apnea,” Alexos supplied, trying not to laugh. “Polio causes wasting of the muscles, including around the throat and lungs – her airways close up while she sleeps. The worst that can come of that, of course, is death, not to mention interrupted sleep, but in the meantime… Snores.”

“I wish she would die sometimes,” Annette said, with such a serious expression that Alexos felt his mouth drop open. “If only so I can get some shut-eye.”

“You’re so awful, Nettie,” Nina said, and then the three of them started laughing, and Alexos almost couldn’t believe he was laughing himself – there was something in the way the three of them leaned into one another, the way they laughed a similar laugh despite having such different voices, different faces.

Annette and Fell’s eyes both crinkled in the same ways despite their features being so different, Fell’s so pretty and rounded, Annette’s so square and handsome; Nina had big, brown eyes that glittered just like Fell’s did despite being such a different colour; Nina and Annette held their hands similarly when they laughed, pressed their knees together in the same manner.

“I don’t know that I’m up for further excitement tonight,” Alexos said reluctantly – his body was aching from sitting in the dining chair, and his bladder was uncomfortably full. He’d been avoiding taking the stairs downstairs, and he was dreading it now, knew that the descent would be so much more painful than walking up them, and so much the slower.

“You’re at the Sun, right?” Fell asked. “We’ll walk with you. Why don’t you start heading down the stairs, and we’ll collect our things and make our excuses.” He hesitated, and then said, “Would you rather that, or would you like one of us to support you a bit?”

“I would rather descend alone, yes,” said Alexos softly, feeling the warmth in his smile rise up to his own cheeks, and Fell winked at him again, blowing him a kiss before he went to fetch his hat and coat.

An agonising twenty minutes later, Alexos walked very slowly, and Fell Garibaldi walked at his side with his hand curled through Alexos’ arm. He was leaning into him, although not enough to put any weight on him.

It was really—

It was really quite lovely. Unexpected.

“Are they tattooed, those hearts by your eye?”

“They are, yes,” Fell said. “I’ve other tattoos, here and there – a few of my sea-queen friends kicked up such a fuss at the idea of it, me with ink right on my face, but people are always rather charmed by it.”

“You’re sure they aren’t charmed by you?”

“Oh, I know they’re charmed by me, ducky,” said Fell. “They were a gift from my husband – I wore mine on my face, and he wore his over his heart.”

“Oh,” said Alexos, and he felt himself tense, looking sideways at Fell. “That’s… That’s lovely. Your husband, he’s…?”

“Oh, darling,” said Fell, giving Alexos a small, sad smile. “Don’t you worry about infidelity – I’m a war widow, I’m afraid.”

“I’m sorry.”

“Oh, me too. But he said it wasn’t enough being my hero – he had to go and be king and country’s as well.”

Alexos held his tongue in response to that, didn’t see the value in denigrating whatever the man’s legacy was, in Fell’s eyes.

“Am I going to fuck you when we get back to my hotel, Mr Garibaldi?” Alexos asked.

“Oh, you are a bold one,” Fell said. “Would you like to play the Socrates to my Alcibiades, Mr Fox?”

“I’m sure you’re as impossible to teach.”

“I make a point of it,” Fell whispered. “But I’ve got some lovely things to teach you.”

Fell was wearing a woman’s coat – it was russet brown, the sort with a removable fur stole, and he was wearing a cream-coloured silk scarf around his neck, the same colour as his hat.

It occurred to Alexos as they moved through the hotel to his room, Fell no longer on his arm, that the others in the hotel lobby didn’t even seem to realise Fell wasn’t a woman, what with the sway of his hips, how small he was, how pretty.

Alexos hung a tie on the handle of the door as they stepped inside, and then went to help Fell off with his coat.

“Oh, you are a gentleman,” Fell murmured, and tugged Alexos by the shirt collar down into a kiss.