Aleksey's Kingdom (A Royal Affair #2)(41)
“What?”
“Shush, they will hear you.”
“What do you mean?”
“When you were fighting with the madman, I sat with him as he died. He told me he did not want to leave me sad.”
I could not think of one thing to say to this. I kissed his face, brushing the dampness away with my lips. After a while, I ventured, “I think the same as he did, Aleksey. If I… went… you must find another. Will you promise me that you will?”
“No.”
“Aleksey, I am serious. If… even if you just stop wanting to be with me and find another, I would not actually kill you or him—if he made you happy. If I die, you must find someone else.”
“I will go out and find someone else now if you do not shut up.”
“I mean this! Promise me!”
“I will promise you, if that is what you want to shut you up, but I would not mean it, and I will break my promise as soon as you are in the ground.”
“How will you immediately break your promise, as you are promising to go and find another man? How can you immediately not do that?”
“I don’t know! I will immediately take myself off to a nunnery, disguised as a woman—how is that for a plan?”
“It is dreadful. Although you would probably be the prettiest nun there.”
“Maybe I will take up with a nun, recant my sinful life of sodomy.”
“If you took up with a nun, you would be committing just as many sins, and as they would think you a woman, you would still be committing unnatural acts, just as we do.”
“What are you talking about, Niko? I have never ever heard anyone talk as much rubbish as you do, and my father once had a genuine fool in his employ because he heard somewhere that all kings benefit from their wisdom. Women cannot… you know… with other women, can they?”
I chuckled. “You have led too sheltered a life, little one.”
“No, you have led too dissolute a one.”
“Aleksey, use your head. Women join with women as often as men do with men. Only, I grant you, it is less noticeable. Do you remember the sisters aboard our ship? The ones who helped you nurse me?”
“What!”
“Hush! Yes, they were not sisters.”
“What!”
“Aleksey! Shush.”
“But… but….” I waited for it, knowing it was coming. “But how?”
I chuckled. “Think about it.”
He did and made a low grunt of amazement.
“I thought for a while that Anastasia was….”
“What!”
“Be quieter!”
“Anastasia! No! Poor Johan!”
“Oh God, I did not say she was, only that I thought she might be.”
“So there are women who look at a man and do not admire him?”
“Oh, I think they do not have to prefer unnatural acts to think that about most men, do you?”
“But could a woman look at you and not want you? I find that very hard to believe.”
I felt a surge of warmth from his disingenuous thought that made me smile privately, but I replied, “Do you not look at the most beautiful women… and I take Anastasia as my example yet again… and want them not?”
He was silent for a very long time and then said hesitantly, “I think I have a theory. Do you want to hear it?”
“Is it as good as my theories?”
“Much better, for it comes out of an educated and intelligent brain.”
“All right, then. I am agog to hear it.”
“Your mimicry of my accent is awful.”
“Hurry up, or I will be soon asleep.”
“Well, what if some women get born with a man’s brain—I mean, we know some bodies are male and some female, but what if brains were male and female too, and the woman who does not desire you has in fact a man’s brain.”
“But what if she had a man’s brain, but was then a man like us? She would be a woman with a man’s brain who wanted other men. That would be interesting. And then, my little thinking one, would not some men be born with women’s brains, and someone who did not know you might say, oh, that very pretty man with the green eyes is actually a woman called Posy.” He hit me very hard, which was not easy given how close we were lying, but he had a lot of practice and so had perfected this over the years. I laughed quietly. “But I do like your theory a great deal.”
“No, you do not. You are only humoring me.”
“No, seriously, I do like it. Think back to the sisters Peel aboard the ship. Did not something strike you about them that might prove your theory?”
He thought about this for a while, then said in a wondering voice, “Miss Jane Peel was very… mannish… wasn’t she? She strode around giving orders just as you would have done had you not been… I do not like thinking about that.”
Neither did I. More diversion for his thoughts was needed. “Of course, that would mean that in every pairing of men, one might be said to be the female of the pair—the one with, as you call it, a female brain.”
He actually had to think about this before he hit me again. I pulled him even closer. “So that would mean that a man like me does really want a woman, and he seeks for her in another man. You have made me a very happy man, Aleksey. I am quite as other men.”