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

away.
    I was also developing a sleeping problem, tossing and turning in my large bed late at night. However, when I finally managed to sleep, apparently so did my moral sense , and wicked dreams of an erotic character troubled me. Simon the thief intruded my dreams unbidden, just like had he had trespassed on my property. To evade my sinful dreams , I slept very little and took long walks in Hyde Park and Kensington Garden, but even there, in the peaceful and beautiful Italian garden that was covered in snow, did I sometimes have a feeling of being watched.
    Carl noticed my altered behaviour, but I told him I was just trying out a new lifestyle, which of course , earned me another silent frown, followed by a small shudder. Why change anything? Carl’s raised eyebrow seemed to say. Surely changes can never be for the better? And what will happen to the British Empire if everyone suddenly decides to change?
    Then Sarah, one of my maids, died in a violent fever. I sent for Dr Steinbeck, my family’s private physician , and he did everything in his power to break the fever, but he was unable to save her. I stayed up that night, waiting outside her door while the doctor and a nurse took care of her. I heard her raving about cleaning until the end . She was talking about dusting the broken cabinet, until her voice got fainter and fainter and at last stopped when Death merciful ly arrived. Half an hour later D r Steinbeck emerged, looking at least two decades older.
    “I could not save her,” he said with his soft German accent, and I thought I heard him mumble under his breath, “I hate it when they are young,” as he arranged the dark glass bottles in his leather medical bag.
    Before he left, he enquired after my health, obviously unable to miss the traces of sleep deprivation and my nervous mental shap e. I told him I had had disturbing dreams lately, which was true. I kne w he was a physician and that his confidence was as sacred as a priest’s, but I just could not admit the dreams’ wicked character. He prescribed a sleeping draught , which I was to take before I went to bed , and warned me strictly from us ing it more frequently than that.
    We mourned Sarah , and I made sure she got a proper burial. She had an older sister, who was a widow with two young children, but no other family. The sister was , of course , not able to attend the funeral , since she was a woman; however, I asked Carl to make sure that she and her children were comfortable. He reported back to say that he was happy to announce that the little family was going to move to a nice house in a much better area and that the sister was considering the offer of setting up a small sewing business after the mourning period.
    I did one other change as well. Just a small one. I started to leave the window in my bedroom a little bit open when I had gone to bed. I told myself I slept better with some fresh air, even if it was the chilly smog of London . It might have been foolish, but I also left a small ca ndle burning by the windowsill. P erhaps to keep the wicked spirits away or perhaps to gui de them and invite them in, I was not entirely sure.
     
    *
     
    It was the middle of February , and the snow had once again reclaimed London, hiding her worn and tired face under a spell of frost and snow. I waited until after midnight before I returned to the house in Kensington. I had decided that I would sneak in the same way as last time and leave the golden bracelet in the drawing room with the horrible little weird heads. H owever , when I arrived to the fashionable terraced house, I noticed a small light shin ing by the window on the floor above the drawing room. It was n ot a lantern or an oil lamp, but a single candle.
    Curiosity got the better of me, and I decided to climb all the way and have a peek through the window. Climbing the ivy in this weather was rather a challenge, as it was slick with frost, but finally I arrived at the window and , to my surprise , found it slightly ajar. C an it be a trap? I wondered as I carefully looked inside. It was the master bedroom, as I had suspected, since I am vaguely familiar with the design of these modern houses. It was a classic posh example of an upper -class bedroom, with a large four- poster bed, an oversized wardrobe in dark wood, and a bureau with peculiar S-shaped legs.
    But of course , it was not the elegant wallpaper or the thick Oriental rug which had caught my attention. It was the beautiful man