Page 39

“I only fancy women.”

Raleigh’s frown was skeptical. “I won’t ask if you fancy Muriel.”

“Dr. Raleigh,” drawled Kit. “I’m beginning to think there’s nothing you won’t ask.”

Raleigh gave him a grudging, sheepish look.

“Touché,” he muttered. “Fancy whoever you please.” He turned his gaze up to the low ceiling. “Well. This is awkward. Should we introduce a new conversational topic or go our separate ways?”

“Did you come out tonight for conversation?” Kit raised his brows. “Or were you looking for a lark? If the latter, that fellow at the bar didn’t seem a bad sort.”

“Good grief.” Raleigh started, then laughed. “You’re in earnest.”

“Always. I’m particularly earnest about irony. Makes me feel modern.”

“You’re not offended, then, by my erotic dispensation? Or my suggestion that you shared it?”

“No.” Kit smiled wryly. The tension in his neck and shoulders eased. “The social order offends me. Most theology. The doctrine of separate spheres.” He ticked on his fingers as he talked. “Reviews of novels that spoil the effect of the plot. Overcooked carrots julienne. I’ll leave it at one hand. You get the idea.”

“Overcooked carrots. A true abomination.” Raleigh wore a thoughtful expression. “I did worry, though, for a moment. I don’t usually announce my proclivities.”

“Of course not. We are meant to act as though certain desires don’t exist. And yet society is set up to regulate or repress them, which rather proves the opposite. It wouldn’t be illegal for men to kiss each other if some didn’t want to do it.”

Raleigh made a noise in his throat. “Our lawmakers all spooned together at Eton.”

“It’s not illegal for women to kiss each other,” Kit continued slowly. “To make it a crime for women to kiss women would be to admit, publicly, that women kiss women, and that women kissing women is sometimes a matter of sex, not friendship. Erasure, not prohibition. Different but related tactics.”

Raleigh’s expression grew more thoughtful still. “The medical literature on sexual anomaly contains far fewer case histories of women.”

“Because it’s less common? Or because the doctors are men?”

“You sound like Muriel.” Raleigh’s mouth quirked. “The claim is that sexual inversion is a variation in the species, analogous to color blindness, or color hearing. Men have more variability, biologically, and so there are more male inverts.”

Kit snorted. “The same argument is used to support the idea that there are more male geniuses. Biology can stuff itself.”

Raleigh blinked, bemused. “As a man of science, I wouldn’t go so far as that.”

It had to be the whiskey that prompted Kit’s next words, or some confessional quality possessed by the quiet alcove, combined with the fact that Raleigh had already confessed himself.

“As someone who wasn’t raised to become a man,” said Kit, “I would.”

He held Raleigh’s gaze, until a light kindled in the doctor’s eyes.

“I don’t particularly care what the medical literature has to say,” he went on. “I’ve read some of it myself. I’ve read that female inverts are mannish. But I used to belong to a ladies’ club in the West End convened by sapphists with perfumed skin and waist-length tresses and elaborate taste in corsetry. I’ve known toms who pass as men and others who pair dinner jackets with skirts in mixed company. Some women from the laboring classes put on trousers to get work. They might feel the trousers suit them, or simply that starving doesn’t. There’s nothing but variety. Is my friend Ponsonby’s masculinity real while mine is an imitation?” Kit realized he’d swerved, that his speech had devolved into a tirade, but the venting came as sweet relief. “I swear to God he’s been imitating me for years.”

“Ponsonby.” Raleigh hadn’t looked away. “Your charming squire. That’s what he called himself, when we were repairing that fence. Your squire, I mean. I added the charming. He was rather.”

Kit grunted. “He has his moments.”

“You of all people shouldn’t dismiss medical literature. Sexology is a burgeoning field.” Raleigh pushed off the wall and came toward Kit. “It demonstrates that anomalies are as natural as the norm, and that moves us closer to social acceptance.”

“But the norm itself isn’t natural, but rather customary. We’re accustomed to dividing everyone into male and female, absolutely.” Kit rocked on his heels. “And from what I’ve read, that’s how the doctors describe inversion as well, in terms of those two categories. I’m saying we’re more approximate. Not only the sods and the toms and the sapphists—everyone.”

Raleigh tilted his head, musing. “You’re saying the whole system of classification needs to change.”

“I suppose I am.” Kit stilled. “Discuss that with your sexologists.”

“I’ll have to brush up on my German.” Raleigh folded his arms. “But I just might.”