Damon Snow and the Nocturnal Lessons Read online

  Contents

  Title Page

  Copyright Page

  Summary

  Chapter One

  Chapter Two

  Chapter Three

  Chapter Four

  Chapter Five

  Chapter Six

  Chapter Seven

  Chapter Eight

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  Coming Soon: God Cursed

  About Olivia Helling

  DAMON SNOW AND THE NOCTURNAL LESSONS

  by Olivia Helling

  This is a work of fiction. Names, characters, businesses, places, events and incidents are either the products of the author’s imagination or used in a fictitious manner. Any resemblance to actual persons, living or dead, or actual events is purely coincidental.

  Copyright © 2014 by Olivia Helling

  All rights reserved. This book or any portion thereof may not be reproduced or used in any manner whatsoever without the expression written permission of the publisher except for the use of brief quotations.

  ISBN 9780993918001

  www.OliviaHelling.com

  Cover design by Lou Harper at louharper.com.

  Edited by Annetta Ribken. You can find her at www.wordwebbing.com.

  Damon Snow thinks he has the world figured out. As an incubus and male prostitute, it’s a cruel, dark, lonely place where men only want one thing. But when his long-time patron Byrne discovers he’s dying, Byrne offers to leave his entire fortune to him. There’s just one catch. Damon has to write about the reason why another patron procures his services. Caught up in his patron’s impossible love life, Damon suddenly isn’t so sure he knows the answer.

  Chapter One

  September, 1809

  Mayfair, London

  The vein in my temple spasmed. My hands opened and closed as I forced them from pressing against my temple, but I couldn’t stop them from releasing the book I held to fall into my lap.

  “Damon,” my cull of the evening said. “Damon, what’s wrong?”

  I felt his hand hover over me like a brand. I slapped it away, and he didn’t have the strength to keep it from falling back into his lap.

  “I’m fine,” I said. Byrne lowered his eyes to the book in my lap, as if dragged there by the yellow-tinged skin around them. He’d be annoyed if he knew I thought he didn’t control each and every one of his own movements.

  Even so, underneath, I could see the strength of the man Byrne used to be. The kind of man who would sell his own friend to the workhouse. Byrne was all about a good deal. He understood the value of money. It was the only thing I liked about him.

  The maids whispered consumption, although we knew it couldn’t be. He did look like something devoured him, and it hadn’t been me. Only Death. Death had made an example out of Byrne, a demonstration that Death follows every man, however great his prowess.

  It was only supposed to be a bout of dyspepsia.

  I took the book back in my hands and found a page — any page, God only knows I hadn’t an idea of which page we had been on.

  I opened my mouth to keep reading, but Byrne said, “Something must be wrong.”

  He couldn’t see the bruise on my temple. My dark locks were just long enough to cover it. I had made sure of it before coming. “I need…” I started.

  I needed to feed my hunger. The bruise would heal, and I’d be fit enough to get another.

  “Yes?” Byrne enquired, all shades of courteous. As if I weren’t merely his hired whore, and we weren’t sitting in his bed, and he wasn’t too ill to even get stiff. Byrne always liked to pretend. He should have gone after actors, not a bounder like me.

  “I need to stop reading these God damned capital letters,” I said instead. I couldn’t explain to him what I was, nor would he understand the hunger burning inside me. “Every single blasted word capitalised! These words ain’t—”

  “Damon,” Byrne said. He didn’t need to say more. I knew the rebuff — stop speaking like the street rat that I was. He had spent the past two years teaching me to speak like a gentleman, to smooth the cant from my words until not even his acquaintances could tell the difference.

  “Why can they not write properly?” I asked.

  “That is proper,” Byrne said.

  “No, it ain’t — I mean, it’s unnecessary,” I said, and then read, pronouncing each offending capitalisation, “’Thus entered a woman of vast Beauty and all Eyes turned to her, even though she had no Money and no great House to speak of. She waved her Fan and made a great Proclamation.’”

  “It’s not a very good novel, I’m afraid,” Byrne said.

  “Then why are you forcing me to read it to you?” I demanded. Or was this simply his plot to remind me of my place? Yes, I knew full well how grateful I should be for attending him, for the great privilege of reading his most esteemed novels and sitting on his white sheets. Being waited on by his footmen during tea the few times Byrne sat up long enough to abide the small table he’d had brought in. “You could hire yourself a companion — some bright lad — an actual scholarly lad fresh from university who could read you the books you actually want to read, and not stutter over stupid words like seren—serendipitous—”

  “Damon, calm yourself,” Byrne said.

  “I don’t care about payment!” I said. “I don’t need you, like you think I ought to.”

  I could have been a clerk or a tailor or some occupation that wouldn’t irk Byrne so much as a molly boy from Covent Square. Byrne hadn’t taught me everything I knew. My mother had been a fine gentlewoman. Her father owned land in Sussex. But then of course I had ruined the picture for her. Good daughters of land-owning gentlemen did not find themselves with child without Scandal. Yes, Scandal with a capital ‘S’.

  My mother had protested all she could that she hadn’t gotten up to anything she shouldn’t have, but who would honestly believe her? I wasn’t baby Jesus.

  No, I was the unfortunate result of a dream. A nocturnal visitation by an incubus. Not even I had believed that one, not until… Well, I still didn’t believe it had only been a dream. I only believed her claim about what my father was. His legacy was writ in my flesh, as horrendously as those words in that awful book.

  I could never forget. She had named me after him. Couldn’t bear to sully her family’s Christian names.

  “Damon, pull yourself together, man,” Byrne snapped at me. His eyes glanced to the empty table, as if someone had magically appeared to witness my tantrum.

  I threw the book onto the floor. The book had probably cost him more than I was making in that whole night, but at least the book would have a happy ending. I started sliding out of the bed, which was harder than it should be, since his servants kept a hundred sheets or so all tucked in so their master wouldn’t grow too cold in the night. “I don’t need you to mock me and look down on me and—”

  “Stop,” Byrne snapped. I fell out of the bed with a squawk and picked myself back up before Byrne could comment. I looked back over my shoulder, daring him. He had collapsed against his pillows, his hand pressing onto his gut. His skin went stark white where jaundice hadn’t laid claim to it yet. “Please, just stop.”

  I wanted nothing more than to storm out of his overly hot bedroom where Death and sickness ran rampant. The heat pressed against me, as if the walls were slowly caving in until they compressed us to death. I shrugged off the feeling. It was only my hunger demanding to be sated. I felt like storming out and spending my night finding a fresh, virile cull who wouldn’t care what words I could say as long as I had a warm hole for him.

  “Damon!”

  I grimaced and stayed rooted to the spot. I would
have preferred to think it was because Byrne paid me well to just read to him. I didn’t need to undress, and he didn’t beat me. He was too tired, but even before, when he had been a dapper, he had treated me better than many of the other knockers I had met.

  “Should I fetch the physician?” I asked.

  “No, just sit. Please sit,” he said.

  “Something isn’t right,” I said.

  “Please sit.”

  I did as he asked, perching on the corner of the bed. “I’m not reading that God damned book.”

  “You shouldn’t take the Lord’s name in vain,” Byrne said, but he smiled. The corner of his lip quivered as if even that much drained him.

  “That’s how nobles curse,” I said.

  “You are better than they are.”

  He didn’t know what I really was. His words were all platitudes, regardless. No one thought a molly could be better.

  “You could be one of them,” Byrne said. I gave him a look that told him I knew that was tosh. “A gentleman at least.”

  No, I never could.

  “You just need the right clothes and the right words,” Byrne said. “You’re clever. Clever enough to learn all that you ought to know and pull the wool over their eyes again and again.”

  “You’ve tried for two years and never managed that miracle,” I said.

  “Well, I’m still waiting on my invitation to Almack’s, but—”

  “You know what I meant,” I said.

  “The only thing a man needs to survive in this world is money and cleverness,” Byrne said.

  “Yes, I’m sure that eight pence I have saved up will go far,” I said.

  “Eight pence is more than some of these lords have,” Byrne said. I made a scoffing noise. “It doesn’t matter they don’t have actual money. They live off debts.”

  “No one’s willing to lend to a molly,” I said. “What does it even matter? It’s not like your friends are here for me to embarrass you.”

  I regretted it the moment I said it, although I knew it was the truth. Byrne looked away, stricken, as if I had just smacked him. He raised his fist, but didn’t move, quivering, as I waited for him to strike me. His acquaintances, his business partners — none of them had dropped by. None of them could stand to look very long at Byrne. He made one look death in the eye, and realise that they too would one day die.

  I could only be so lucky. I didn’t know much about the inheritance my father left me, only that it allowed me to me survive more abuse than I ought to.

  Byrne dropped his hand. “The physician came today.”

  “What did he have to say?” I asked. I made a face. “More leeches?”

  I didn’t know how such learned men expected leeches to fix dyspepsia, but I had heard enough from Byrne’s rants that physicians were desperate to use them. And the maggots. Physicians had a fetish for letting bugs eat their patients, apparently. Medical nonsense. It was why I never serviced physicians, however well they paid.

  “No. No leeches,” he said. “It’s too late for that.”

  “Too late?” I asked. “But you have money.” I had known many people to die young because they could not afford even a surgeon. A real one, who had studied in a university and not the cowherd recently arrived from the country.

  “Money doesn’t buy everything,” Byrne said. “It didn’t buy me a family.”

  “If you had been as ardent about chasing fillies as you are colts,” I said and shrugged. He’d probably have a whole stable of children by now.

  “I don’t care much for fillies,” Byrne said.

  “Who does?” I shrugged again. “But that’s how you beget children.”

  “I always thought I would have time,” he said.

  “You still have time,” I said.

  Byrne laughed, which turned into a harsh coughing fit. I rubbed his back through the thin cotton of his night gown.

  “Doctor Morson said I wouldn’t last a year. Maybe two,” Byrne said.

  “From dyspepsia?” I asked.

  Byrne shook his head no. “It’s not dyspepsia.”

  Oh. If Byrne didn’t wish to share, then I wouldn’t enquire further. “Well, I knew a boy who got roughed up pretty bad — I mean, I knew a boy who had been gravely injured. His — his abbot was flush enough to summon a surgeon. The surgeon said he wouldn’t last the night.”

  “But then the boy lived for fifty years and died a happy old man surrounded by grandchildren,” Byrne finished.

  “How many years do you think I have?” I asked. “He did outlive the prognosis, though. He made it a whole week before they called the coffin-maker.”

  Byrne laughed again, as if he couldn’t help but laugh instead of cry. Tears ran from the corner of his eyes. He pressed his hand into his side again. “Are you trying to make me feel better or worse?”

  “Better,” I said. “If he can live seven times longer, it should be easy for you. You can do a lot in seven years.”

  “Not like this,” Byrne said. His hands trembled in his lap.

  “It’s a lot of books to read,” I said. I glanced at the god forsaken book on the ground. “Not that one.”

  Byrne laughed again. When his coughing fit rescinded, he whispered, “You must endeavour not to make me laugh, or I won’t have a year. It would be worth it, though.”

  “Well, then what do you want to do?” I asked. The few people I had known with wasting sicknesses had not been afforded the luxury for such a question, except for something really simple. Apologising to their mother for the life they had lived, for one.

  “I want to read something… hopeful,” Byrne said.

  “Then the newspaper is out,” I said. “Everyone’s saying the French wars will ruin us.”

  “Oh, let the French have Perceval,” Byrne said. “I’ve had three ships go down off the coast of Africa, thanks to his moral idiocy.”

  “Yes, terrible that,” I said. “Can you believe him? Actually thinking that men shouldn’t be owned by another? Where is the profit? Well, besides with the former slaves, who would then get a fair wage for their work instead of the whip.”

  Byrne sniffed. He looked to the fireplace on the other side of his bedroom. Small flames licked the blackened logs. Perhaps he had realised just how silly it was to complain to a molly about the loss of slave ships. Or perhaps he was just imagining keeping me in a collar, chained to his bed to do whatever he desired. Without pay.

  “May I ask you something?” Byrne asked. I shrugged. I hoped it had nothing to do with politics. I cared little for what happened at Westminster, unless it involved a gift of coin and me on my knees. “Are you happy?”

  I mouth opened and I almost laughed. “Halfway to the grave,” I said, “and you still find time to mock me.”

  “How does that question mock you?” Byrne asked. His forehead furrowed, as if he actually had to think hard on my response.

  “No, I am not happy,” I said. “I expect no one really is, not at the bottom of the barrel. Although, I’m not actually at the bottom. That place is reserved for those poor halfwits stuck in St Giles.”

  “Damon’s Circles of Hell,” Byrne muttered. “How clever.”

  “You think so?” I asked. “It’s only the truth. I suppose I’m less unhappy when I get paid. And I do get paid. There’s nothing slave-like about me. Oh, and I do enjoy myself after I’ve downed a bottle of blue ruin, but still, I would not call it happiness. Whatever happiness is.”

  “There is no one you care about?” Byrne asked. “No one who really cares about you?”

  This time, I really did laugh. I collapsed against the wall as laughter ripped through me. Byrne enquired after my health, but I held up my hand to stop him from speaking and making it worse. Eventually, I calmed myself. “You have never been more hilarious in your life,” I said. “Good show, sir.”

  Byrne didn’t say anything. I looked up and he didn’t seem to be self-congratulatory over his success. His face lacked expression of any kind, which brough
t out the dark shadows around his eyes, the yellow tinge of his skin. Haunted, I supposed the word was. Or perhaps even sad.

  Well what had Byrne expected me to say? Oh, was he trying to pretend again? Was I supposed to have replied, “Of course, when I’m with you?” I snickered again. Of course not. I wouldn’t be here if Byrne hadn’t been paying me. I didn’t do anything unless I was compensated for it.

  “I want you to write something for me,” Byrne said.

  “Me?” I asked. “I’m not capitalising every silly word.”

  “You don’t have to,” Byrne said.

  “I’m not a writer,” I said.

  “You’ve read a lot.”

  “Only for you,” I said. “So you should be the one writing it.”

  What did I know about hope? The only thing I could ever really hope was to put off my hunger for one more day, but it was only a small respite at that. Or I could hope that I had pence at the end of the night to buy a bottle of gin, or that one of the other mollies at Mother Dover’s had a good night and was willing to share.

  “Let us make a business deal,” Byrne said.

  I eyed him. “Save it for the reaper.”

  “I’d rather spend it now,” Byrne said. “If you do this for me, I’ll leave you my entire fortune.”

  My jaw slackened. It wasn’t the most sensual move, and my previous abbot would have beaten me for it, but I couldn’t help it.

  “Is this disease rotting your brain?” I asked. “You can’t leave me your fortune. What about entails?”

  Whenever I had attended one of Byrne’s gatherings, at least one of his friends had bemoaned the entails on his inherited estate. Dibs out of tune, and couldn’t even sell any of their property to try to bolster their coffers.

  “What about entails?” Byrne asked. “My assets are not inherited land. Some land yes, but with no stipulations upon whom may receive it. Assets like money, easily granted, and my business… well, I do have partners, but you would own my share.”

  “You can’t make me your heir,” I said. “You must have someone to leave it all to. Someone better than a molly.”