Page 22 of Rears & Vices

And then, God forbid, Vitaliy would simply walk away.

D’Arcy held his coat out over the cobblestone with one hand; the other he had upon the shoulder of his sunburnt, ginger-hackled tagalong, who was apparently named Bellingham.

“C’mon, Ev. The coat’s wool, you’ve ceased dripping, and you’ve somehow retained your boots. No one is going to notice you’re wet.”

Everard was momentarily offended.

“It’s not that. I mean, it is. Of course people shall notice. But…”

It wasn’t that he cared about his own appearance precisely, but rather what his hatless, damp, wrong-rank appearance of five in the morning would do for the Widow Bess. Or rather, what it would not do. Hers was an officers’ boarding-house. To approach it, and be seen like this by the wrong person, could bring its reputation—and, correspondingly, Bess’s—lower than he could bear. And a woman’s reputation, he wanted to say, was more tenuous than wet paper cloth.

But he found himself too tired to explain. Why didn’t D’Arcy—a full-blood gentry—simply understand this?

“No,” he said at last. “I’ll write for Thom in the morning, and he can meet us as he chooses. If he chooses.”

“Oi!” came a bellow; they all jumped.

“Shite-on-a-stick.” D’Arcy laugh-groaned. “The watch.”

Another bellow. “Oi, there!” A shrill whistle.

“Gad, I haven’t done this in decades,” D’Arcy said. “Run!” Laughing like a loon, he tugged on Bellingham’s hand, shoved at Everard. “Run, run!”

Everard ran. He didn’t look to see if Vitaliy followed.

Maud’s was notorious. It was also immaculate, well-lit, and—miracle of miracles—smelled of chicken pie and baked goods. Being tavern and boarding-house, it was larger than Bess’s at nearly three storeys; its south, red-brick side was thickly enlaced with summer ivy.

Maud herself turned out to be Matilda Liliana Inocente de Guzmán-Delaney, who was already up at such an ungodly hour due to some mysterious inner workings of the tavern kitchen. When D’Arcy knocked at the alley-side door, she peered a dark eye through a viewfinder before yelping.

She embraced D’Arcy, damp and all, and they were then all four of them pulled before the massive cook hearth, being beaten by towel and apron alike. In rapid Spanish she berated them for their carelessness against la gripa, el tós, que les iban a poner muy mal y ni ella ni Dios sabía de que más⁠—

Within the space of the two apologetic sentences in Spanish that Everard offered in return, she’d sussed out Everard’s faint Català—which no one had done since he was twelve. She continued her reprimands in the said-same language, and Everard, dumbfounded and with skills shamefully rusted, enquired in his mother’s tongue that he was much gratified to know her anew, but did she not have dispensable to them a room—for sleeping?

In the end, she had two rooms, and miraculously so because it was not a short-term hotel that she ran, it was to be very clear, but D’Arcy was family, although he did not keep yearly accommodation; and since the war had only just ended, there were still many sailors and their agents coming and going in Kingston, so she was nearly full up; lucky they had come when they had. Desayuno was at seven and supper a la misma hora, but of the night, and lunch was to be on their own terms, but there were bollos available at any hour for the asking.

“Yes, ma’am,” Everard said to this trilingual barrage, knowing there was no other possible response. “Very many thanks. I—we are indebted to you.”

D’Arcy was grinning, but of course his sailor’s Spanish was passable for comprehension. Bellingham looked as though he had not the slightest idea what had just gone on, and didn’t care; in shirtsleeves with hands clasped before him, the vicaresque impression remained. Vitaliy was stoic at the door, arms crossed, his skin still pink all over from the rough drying.

Everard enquired after the bollos—to be sure it was in fact the sugar-encrusted bread and not a euphemism for genitalia towards which he had no affinity—and Maud put a quantity of them in a cloth and tied it. She led them up the stair to the second floor, before a six-panel door likely older than herself.

This opened onto a curtained four-poster bed flanked by two windows, an armoire, and a sitting table and chair beside the red-brick fireplace. The second room was identical, she explained, connected through the left-side door, as the pair of rooms were meant for husband-and-wife apartments. She dimpled knowingly. Everard wondered precisely how discreet D’Arcy was—or wasn’t—there.

Probably not very. He was beyond caring.

With a warning against crumbs in the bedsheets, Maud left them.

Bellingham St. Clare sat on the edge of the first four-poster, spine straight. A moment later, he gasped and scrambled up—because he was undoubtedly still damp.

D’Arcy laughed. “That’s your side, Bellingham.” He untied the sack of bollos, pulled three forth onto the table napkin. “Ever? You want to…?” He jerked his head left, to the connecting apartment, and made significant eyes towards Vitaliy, who was peering out the curtain to the dawn-lit street below.

Everard was too tired to even pointedly ignore him. He merely clutched fingers around D’Arcy’s wrist and pulled him towards the connecting door.

“Oh? Hey, you don’t need to—ow! All right, I’m claimed, I’m claimed⁠—”

There was no way in hell he was leaving D’Arcy with the traumatised tagalong before he could properly question the man about his intentions. D’Arcy, not the marine.

On Vitaliy’s behalf he worried not at all.