A Gentleman's Secret ~ The third novelette from "Different Desire", a Gay Victorian Romance and Erotic novelette collection

compelling. Besides , I wanted to get my dress coat back. I had won it playing cards with a young dandy, and I missed it. I t was almost like a part of me a nd a kind of statement that separated me from the rest of the sorry lot of lower London. I had once broken another fellow’s nose in a spray of blood after he had said an ill-chosen remark about my dress coat, a nd after that, no one around Fleet Street had dared to comment on it again. Also, the weather was miserably cold, and I felt shabby and ordinary without it.
    I must admit I did look forward to g oing back to the white , terraced house in Kensington. I did not know why, really. It certainly did not have anything to do with that handsome but rather pesky gentleman, whom I was unable to get out of my head. Absolutely nothing at all.
     
    *
     
    Carl and the rest of the staff invaded the house a couple of days later. When Carl politely enquired about the broken cabinet and the marks on the carpet, I told him that I had dropped a candle and that I , by accident, had managed to break the cabinet when I had tried to open it . Carl had frowned , of course, but said nothing. The message was crystal clear , however– t he son of an e arl was not sup posed to try to do things which were better handled by the servants. Had he left me alone any longer , only God knew what I would have managed to do to the house and myself. Within a week , I would probably have managed to burn the house to the ground or , worse , permanently muddled the way my clothes were organized in the wardrobes. If only the servants were allowed to intervene, the whole world would run so much more smoothly. Personally, I believed it was quite possible that he was absolutely right.
    I never reported the burglary for several reasons. First of all, well , not that much was stolen except that one bracelet. There had been two identical golden bracelets with a matching necklace in the cabinet. The bracelet was probably rather valuable, but it mattered not. The whole house was filled with exotic items, some of them were unique and in gold. Besides , I had more than twenty thousand a year to do what I wanted with, so money was not an issue.
    The second reason was that I did not want to create a rumour about the burglary. Not only could it attract other thieves, but the fact that I had not been dressed properly and , in addition , armed myself with a Maasai spear was the perfect recipe for a meaty rumour. Give it a week and the gossip would be that I had put on a full African outfit. After two weeks, everyone would have been told that I had been completely naked and charging the thieves screaming in Swahili. If it was within my power to avoid a rumour like that, I would rather not report the incident.
    And the third, very private reason, which I would never tell anyone about – and most certainly no t in an official police report! – was regarding how the second thief had escaped and the most improper kiss which had occurred.
    I tried not to think about it, nor to think about him, but he haunted me. Who is he? Why had he kissed me? And why does he not leave my mind in peace? I tried to reason it out, to think about it logically. It was possibly a mild ly traumatic incident, as I am not used to that kind of intimate contact, and especially and above all, never ever from another member of my own sex! In every way , it was illegal, wrong, and wicked! Still, I wondered why it did not leave me repulsed and why my heartbeat quickened when I thought about him.
    I had even kept his dress coat , and I hid it in an old suitcase that no one ever used. One evening , I took it out to look at it. It was a nice blue dress coat , only slightly worn an d a little dirty. A small blood stain speck l ed the right sleeve. I wondered if it was Simon’s blood. I let my hands stroke the rich satin material. Then I surprised myself by smelling the dress coat. I expected it to smell bad , perhaps slightly like down the river before they buil t the new sewer system , b ut it did not. It smelled exotic and different, and underneath that, it smelled of him. The sensation triggered something far more exciting and wonderful than I had ever anticipated. It was a shock to realize what I had just done. That I had actually smelled his old dress coat, and that I, in fact , had savoured the moment. I decided right away to get rid of it . Clearly , it was an unhygienic thing , and it had the oddest effect on me!
    However, I never threw it