Page 4 of By Any Means

This stranger from the fields—this Mr. Moore—clearly had the same unthinking ease. Whatever he wanted or needed, he would get, and he knew it. Doubtless that was part of the charm for most people, part of what set them along a happily predictable path of goodwill and pleasantness. For Chary, it set his teeth on edge. The man knew he’d get whatever it was that he wanted so well, he’d almost had to be convinced to accept Chary’s help.

This, too, was reminiscent of his brother.

And speaking of help. Chary slid his glance left. Mr. Moore’s hands, in fingerless knit gloves only, were balled into cold fists above the blanket. Oh. Chary looked down at his own hands on the reins, the sheepskin-lined, calfskin-leather gloves covering them.

He put the reins in one hand and tugged off his left glove with his teeth. Switched, and did the same with the right. Plopped them, without looking, straight onto Mr. Moore’s lap.

Immediately, of course, he regretted it. Mr. Moore, previously fairly relaxed in spite of literally everything, stiffened like a board.

“Don’t need your gloves, sir,” he said, in a lovely, deep burr. Something rural. Chary hadn’t noticed before.

Chary bit his lip. Didn’t look left. Saying nothing was better. Nothing came out right; nothing⁠—

“Don’t call me sir, if you please. But you do need them.”

“I don’t⁠—”

“You do,” Chary said quickly, wincing. “Your fingertips are blanched. Your blood is failing to keep them flush with color and, therefore, warm. Look how pink my hands are. I don’t need them at present. You do. Your circulation is restricted, inadequate. It’s the coldest day of March in Downeast Maine. You do.”

He risked a glance—and was perplexed.

No fury. Not even a hint of empurpled indignance.

Mr. Moore was faced almost entirely away. Chary leaned for a better look. The man held himself upright against the bench seat with one arm; the other had its blanched, bared fingertips spread over his face.

He was… laughing?

He was.

“Go on,” he gasped. “Keep explainin’ frostbite to me; go on.”

“I beg your pardon?”

“Are you sincerely tryin’ to be nice?”

“Yes?” Chary said. It was the easiest—sometimes he felt his only—instinct to indulge. What else was there? He was again unnerved.

“Yourself be damned. Can’t help it, can you?”

“Well—I—I say. I’m sorry to have offended you with kindness.”

The man chuckled. “Not that, either, apparently.”

Chary stiffened. “Excuse me? I don’t know what you mean.”

He did, however. He’d gone from unnerved to half-panicked in a breath, his pulse beating across his ungloved palms.

Mr. Moore seemed strangely relaxed. “C’mon. Yeah, you do.”

“I don’t hide it,” Chary said. “It’s not illegal.”

“No. That you don’t. Which it you talkin’ about? It depends, y’know. You rich men never have to think about it, I s’pose. What a prerogative.” He rubbed his face, rueful.

Chary was silent for a moment as the wagon rocked, and he debated, in mild terror, using the momentum to push the man off the buckboard seat.

But there was interesting framing there: prerogative. It made Chary’s soft, gay lisp into something threefold. Obvious (which it was), and intentional (which it also was), but the last adjective… that could have been either favorable or despicable. One applied privilege either to something one wanted or something one despised. And the something there was Chary’s open queerness—as a rich man.

Chary’s own face must have been making an expression indeed, because Mr. Moore sighed.