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It was nearly three in the morning and The Right Honourable the Viscountess Waring had discarded hat, gloves, shoes, and dance partner, leaving her with a dress of eye-catching vermilion and four bare limbs flashing in eight directions.
She did make it look entirely a la mode.
Kim did not Charleston, as a matter of both personal preference and self-preservation. He was quite content to lounge at a table with his adequate corpse reviver and more-than-adequate company.
Will was watching the dancers with open admiration.
"Phoebe's bloody marvellous at that, isn't she? Mind, I wouldn't get within three metres without a Brodie helmet."
Kim snorted his agreement. "She does rather clear the dance the floor, doesn't she?"
"Like skittles."
"It's a very Phoebe way to dance."
"Everyone either gets swept along or swept out the way?"
"The way it looks like perfect chaos, but if you pay the least bit of attention it's very precise."
They both winced as a young-ish man in dishevelled evening dress ventured a little too close and was forced to retreat in disorder.
"More or less."
Maisie apparently possessed more fortitude than either of them. Her dress tonight was all black and silver and beading, long and low-cut with something of the fierce gravitas and all the structural complexity of modern architecture. Romantic poets wrote of awe and terror, and it was their bad luck not to see Maisie Jones throw her arms wide and go sailing across the floor to Phoebe.
They nearly collided, and never stopped dancing. Phoebe did mesmerizing, boneless things with her arms and Maisie's feet defied modern science. They moved around one another, sometimes partnered and sometimes parallel and sometimes breaking away in individual musical inspiration, but their awareness was all wrapped up in the dance and each other.
The girls could do that.
When the song came to a close, Phoebe held a queenly pose, arms raised like a portrait of a Bacchanalian priestess, before she and Maisie collapsed into each other, laughing breathlessly. The band was taking a breather and apparently so were the Maenads, who picked their way back to the table.
"Darlings! Help me, I'm too parched. Oh, thank you, Kim."
Kim wasn't quite sure he had offered Fee his drink, but he waved magnanimously as she threw back the remains of it.
"Phoebe, love, your stockings," Maisie said, while Will toasted them with "You two don't half put on a show out there," and Phoebe cackled and kicked her shoes out from beneath the table.
"Oh what fun! I must be desiccated though, and my ankles will ache in the morning."
"It is rather late," Maisie said, with some reluctance.
"Oh, not at all! Don't mind me, dear heart, I just need a moment to sit is all, and then I shall be positively straining at the whatever it is that creatures strain at in bucolic metaphors. I know you're not finished, you could be one of those beautiful princesses in the story who dance through all their slippers, and really they must have all been frightfully healthy, mustn't they?"
Maisie twinkled at her. "And possibly in need of better shoes. Pass me my gin and tonic, Will, there's a love. The band is fine tonight, aren't they? I think they've got a few numbers left in them. Dance, Will?"
"Be a pleasure," Will said, and stood to lead her back out onto the dance floor as the clarinet player picked out the first notes of a popular tune.
Phoebe watched them go, smiling. "Do you mind if I smoke? Or Kim, darling, would you care for a foxtrot?"
"I am not for this ambling," Kim demurred. "Being but heavy I will bear the light." He offered Phoebe a match for her gasper and his most charming smile.
"What a perfect gentleman you are. Lovely, we can watch Maisie and Will dance, you know that's a treat. I do like this place, Kim, I hope it doesn't get raided for serving after hours. I'm a peeress, now! Just imagine, running from the police would be far beneath my dignity. Oh, there they go!"
The musicians struck up in earnest, and Kim found Will and Maisie on the floor. They bounced in place for a moment, grinning at each other. Then Will thrust their arms out together, Maisie adjusted her feet with a scintillating swirl of silver, and they were off, sweeping a circle around the floor in a flashy, twisting quickstep variation that had been nowhere in Kim's dance lessons. They were going at quite a pace, but they whipped sharply around one another and slid by other couples — to say nothing of tray-laden waiters and some patrons a few drinks beyond good balance — with no visible strain.
"He's awfully good, isn't he?" Phoebe said, in perfect parallel to Will.
"They both are."
"Yes, they do look well together. All quick and syncopated — or synchronized — if that's the word I mean. You know, darling, when two lovely things go so swimmingly together that everyone thinks it's just delightful."
"Complementary."
"But I don't just mean that they're both terrific dancers, it's that Will is good at leading a dance. Some people can dance all the steps as neatly as you please, and still be a perfect bore to dance with. Well, you know all the steps, but that doesn't mean you like leading them. You can see that Will likes it, and he likes seeing to it that his partner does too. You could be as graceful as the man with two left feet but if you went dancing with Will Darling you'd feel like you had all the shiny feet and hardly any of them left, like that splendid lady who sounds like an instrument."
"Terpsichore. Muse of the many-twinkling feet."
"And those shoulders, darling!"
"Phoebe, if I were a man given to such bourgeois vices as jealousy…."
She gurgled with laughter. "I don't mean a thing by it, except as pertains to dancing. You just look at Will and think well, imagine, he could just haul one around the floor. Oh, listen to me, I sound positively Gothic! But if Will danced the Texas Tommy you'd feel like the man on the flying trapeze."
"In that case, you make a very cogent point, and I am entirely in accord on the subject of shoulders. And indeed on arms, hands, and dare I say calves."
Phoebe nodded very primly, her eyes alight with mischief. "Calves," she concurred.
Kim hailed a waiter for another round of unlicensed drinks.
The redoubtable William was quite irresistible when dressed for going out and exhibiting such obvious competence on the dance floor, and he drew the eye — Kim's, at least — even amidst the ladies' bright colours and flashing skirts. But Kim did not usually muse on what it would be like to dance with him.
Will would probably be less than appreciative of being described as twinkle-toed, but Phoebe was quite right about him.
He never dragged at his partner's arms or clumsily forced them hither and fro, like Phoebe had described some gentlemen doing in raucously comedic detail. But there was undeniably something delightfully masterful in the way he whipped Maisie through those sharp turns. Kim imagined it must be delightful, anyway. He was imagining quite vividly. A large, strong hand on one's back, a force of controlled momentum driving one on. Those shoulders an unquestionable support in a twirl or a dip.
The band flowed from one song to another, and Maisie and Will kept dancing, changing tempo into "Red Hot Mamma" and jumping like fleas. They contained themselves to a smaller patch of the floor now, rather than promenading around it, and looped in and out of different holds with dizzying frequency. Will always seemed to know when Maisie had a dramatic move ready. Phoebe was maintaining a steady chatter on the subject of Will's dancing, Maisie's dancing, the band, the music, the other patron's dancing and dresses both, but Maisie executed an homage to Gilda Gray that struck even Phoebe dumb.
She really was good.
When the band paused for another breath and Will and Maisie returned to the table, Phoebe stood with a great air of determination. "Entirely marvellous, both of you! Will, darling, I demand a dance and I will simply not be denied."
"Half a mo and I'm all yours, Phoebe."
Kim smiled at Phoebe's wiggle of delight, and the comically enthusiastic look she shot him. Shoulders, she mouthed. Indeed. He maintained his expression with only a bit of effort.
"Did you want a dance, Kim?" Maisie asked.
Etiquette was utterly unambiguous on the correct response from Kim, but he wasn't quite able to face the floor. "I beg you'll excuse me. You have dancing shoes with nimble soles," he said, continuing on his earlier theme. "I have a soul of lead."
"We'll see about that," said Phoebe, with decision. "Maisie, darling, that gentleman in the two-toned shoes has been working up the nerve to ask you, and he's awfully light on his feet. Come on, Will, I'm simply dying for a spin!"
She took Will's arm in both her hands and the two of them took to the floor, leaving Kim and his cocktail to watch from the side.
It was inevitable, perhaps, that Phoebe should then seek out the latest highly discreet club recommended by her knowing, fashion-setting friends, and inform Kim that he was to bring Will, and brook no arguments.
Kim's experience with queer places ranged from the shabby-genteel ersatz respectability of the Junior Antinous, to the aggressively Bohemian, to the downright sordid. Will's was more limited than that.
Phoebe's nameless club was a small but well lit subterranean space, with a bar crammed haphazardly along one wall and a quintet of instruments shoved into the opposite corner. The clientele was more mixed than Kim was accustomed to, men and women and those unidentifiable as either. Mostly well-dressed, and those that lacked quality tailoring made up for it in sheer flamboyance. Mostly white, but by no means exclusively so.
Kim was not sure of the likelihood that Lord Arthur or Lady Waring would be recognized here, but he was reasonably confident that anyone who did know their faces would have the good taste not to recognize them at all. Even if his companions did turn more than a few heads as they circled the room: Maisie and Fee both wore frothy creations with handkerchief hems fluttering daringly at their knees, Phoebe in draping royal blue and Maisie in white beads on butter yellow. Will wore his better jacket, freshly polished shoes, and an expression that would stop a German tank from getting fresh.
The band was on break, but a lone pianist played a Scott Joplin waltz. Some couples danced, some stood in close embrace and swayed. One tall, handsome pair swept around with particular panache, light-footed and graceful and competition-perfect. Kim smiled, and wondered if Will had noticed that the dancer in the long navy gown and silver shoes had an Adam's apple and a wig.
"Oooh, how fun!" Said Maisie. "Phoebe, don't stare, but do look at the frocks on that lot opposite…"
"Oh, those colours, darling, very bold…"
"Not a lot of room to sit," said Will.
"Not a lot of room at the bar, but I believe in our powers of infiltration," said Kim.
The pianist went into "Kansas City Stomp," and Phoebe gave a school-girlish hop of enthusiasm. "Maisie, are you ready to be dashing and glorious?"
"Let's show London what's what."
They clasped hands and hurried to the dance floor.
"Shall we?" Will asked, only a bit awkwardly.
"Mercy, please. Let me have a cocktail first."
Kim ordered a sidecar and a beer. Will found a spot at one of the high, standing tables to lean on. Will studied the club. Kim studied him.
"You love dancing," Kim said.
"What's not to like? Good band, good partner, get your feet going." Will examined him for a moment, then picked his beer up and turned to watch the girls. "Easy to lose yourself dancing, nothing to bother you more than the next couple over. Don't need to talk over the noise, you can say everything you need to just by moving."
"Aha. The appeal becomes clear."
"Oh, less of it. You're not Austrian, and I'm not the one Phoebe wants to send for analysis. Dancing's a good time, and sometimes that's all there is to it."
Kim didn't bother to hide his smile as he privately amused himself with the image of Will Darling versus psychoanalysis. "If you say so."
"You don't like dancing."
"I don't dislike dancing."
Will raised his eyebrows.
"I don't dislike it," Kim said carefully. "But my experience of it is not….losing yourself, as you say. Learning to dance mostly made me feel rather exposed and uncomfortable. I had lessons, of course, we all did, though my father never would have countenanced any of the popular new dances of the day."
"No bunny hug or grizzly bear for His Lordship?"
"Hardly. He viewed the waltz with Byronic disapproval, though of course we learned several styles of it." Kim gave a rueful smile. "It's old-fashioned, of course, but I must admit a fondness for the waltz, myself. But Phoebe doesn't much care for waltzing — she had her own tribulations with the dancing master — and I enjoy dancing with Phoebe more than anyone else. It's so often just—" he waved a hand. "—another part of the game. Playing Lord Arthur."
Will's eyes were fixed determinedly on the dance floor. The rest of the five-piece had struck up while they talked, and it was filling up fast. "Have you danced with men, before?"
"Ah. Not like this." Drunken fumblings in clubs even more dubious than this one surely did not count. "I would like to try dancing, with you. Phoebe says you're an excellent lead."
Will's head turned sharply, his gaze finding Kim's with uncomfortable perspicacity. But he just said "Right. Let's give it a go then, shall we?" And stood.
Kim threw back the rest of his sidecar, and followed Will onto the floor.
The space was crowded and the dancers none too conscientious of each other's toes, but Will had a way of making room. He clearly felt odd about taking Kim in his arms so publicly, and just as obviously meant to push through on sheer stubbornness. They lined themselves up and began stepping to and fro.
It was discombobulating, in more ways than one. Kim could reverse his position well enough, he understood the mechanics of the lady's part even if the backwardness of it itched under his skin. But every misplaced step was a missing-stair sort of jolt. And Will was as tall as Kim, or near as made no difference, and noticeably broader, and far be it for Kim to complain about that, but it put his elbows at unfamiliar angles. And Will's frame was wrong. Kim kept trying to correct himself into a lady's position, but Will was no help at all. His arms were looser and lower. His right hand was very firm on Kim's shoulder blade, and he kept pulling him closer.
"Is dancing a martial art where you're from? You'll put someone eye's out with that sandwich hold out there."
"While in your native climes it may well be grounds for an indecency charge."
"It's packed in here, you've got to dance close." Will gave him a smirk and pulled him forcefully inwards. Kim grasped hard at Will's shoulder, knees nearly buckling. "Relax."
"Fine for you to say, Charleston Charlie," Kim said rather sharply. Embarrassingly, his stomach was swooping about in a way which would have been highly congenial if not for the awareness of some dozen men and women within knife-fighting distance.
He was supposed to be the cosmopolitan one, damn it.
"Loosen your shoulders. And your arms, just a bit. Keep enough tension so you can feel what I'm doing. It's not Queen Charlotte's Ball."
"Do I look like a debutante?"
"You look like an Arthur Aloysius Et Cetera with that arm out."
"Calumny!"
Will executed a series of showy turns, and Kim focused on his footwork for a long, breathless minute.
"You are enjoying this."
"I told you I like dancing."
"You're enjoying this," Kim said accusingly, and Will grinned.
"Well. You're an aristocratic sod who's too clever for his own good, weasels around everyone getting his own way, and looks damned fine in evening wear. It's not bad having you on the back foot now and then. So to speak."
He emphasized this by trotting Kim backwards through a rapid one-step promenade, throwing in a few flourishes and looking entirely pleased with himself.
"You're a menace."
"Cheers. And stop craning your neck, I won't let you crash into anyone."
"You won't, will you?" It hadn't really occurred to Kim that letting Will lead meant sparing himself helmsman duty.
"'Course not. Just let me know if I'm about to run over someone's feet."
Kim nodded once, and attempted to relax.
The backwardness still itched, but the strong rhythm of "It Had to Be You" helped something lock into place, and though he still faltered following Will's turns, he made no more false starts. Will's hands on him were wordless instructors in posture and position. His movements were smooth and confident — nothing superfluous, no stutters of hesitation — and Kim found he could indeed read Will's intentions in his body.
He loosened his left arm enough to feel the shifting of muscles in Will's shoulder and biceps brachii, then tightened his fingers enough for Will to feel his appreciation.
Will let out a surprised huff. Kim could feel the puff of air.
"Can I dip you?" Asked Will.
"What?"
"Just lean back a bit, coming up on the end."
Kim narrowed his eyes. "You will not drop me."
"Wouldn't dream of it."
Backwards right, left, right-left, turn, and Will lunged one leg forward, his arm secure around Kim, and Kim’s knee bent naturally and he leaned. He might possibly have even thrown one arm out, as though he were in a Shakespearean tragedy or a Valentino picture.
Someone whooped at the band, but Will didn’t let go to join in the applause. He just smiled at Kim, and Kim smiled foolishly back.
“Trying to sweep me off my feet, Darling?”
“I can keep trying ‘til it takes.”
They reconfigured themselves without much grace. Kim might have headed straight back to the bar, but Will caught his right hand and tucked it up to his chest in a sweetheart hold, unexpected and inexorable.
"Dance with me some more?"
Kim did not lose himself, dancing with Will. It took far too much attention not to stumble over one or other of their feet. He was not confident in the lady's part, much less as fearless as the girls, and he had at least sufficient self-knowledge to recognize that flicker of resentment at anything that made him feel incompetent.
He did not lose himself, but time did sway and dip as they danced. A four minute song was an epic, but five of them passed almost before Kim could notice. And there were moments of euphoria, like fighting without the violence. A sense of conspiracy, like sex or espionage but much less messy.
He was also simmeringly, frustratingly, outrageously aroused.
Following the steps presented enough of a distraction that Kim was not in danger of embarrassing himself or the lines of his suit, but Will's mouth was so close and his movements strong and sure, his body warm under Kim's hands and the faint smell of exertion coming off him when they brushed close. His face was relaxed, and charming with it. Will was having fun, and Kim had to mind his feet in front of several dozen strangers and a five-piece jazz band and not shove him into the nearest wall.
It was becoming rather trying.
"Time for a break?" Will asked, the smug shit. Kim nodded, only a little breathlessly. Maisie and Phoebe had yet to slow, and were even now embarking on a smooth and magnificent Castle Walk. Kim urgently required a drink.
By the time Will and Kim fought their way through to the bar and back, though, the girls were wandering off the floor. A young sheik in a sharply cut suit and dramatic kohl had joined the musicians, singing how he wished he could shimmy like his sister Kate, and Will tapped a finger on the table with one hand while hailing Maisie with the other.
"Blimey, Maise, did I know you could lead like that?"
"Of course I can, Will Darling, who do you think we danced with when all you lads were off at war?"
"Kim, you danced! How you danced! Though I will now of course expect your undying sympathy for all the dancing we do backwards and in heels. I supposed you're tall enough without the heels, though I must say I think they add a bit of something when I dance. Those noises, you know, very musically how-do-you-say-it, and the way they swivel. Maisie, what heels would you put on Kim?"
"Lattice, not t-straps," said Maisie promptly. "D'Orsay pumps maybe—"
"In purple—"
"Or silver—"
"I saw the most fascinating lattice fronts that would look just divine on you, darling, just right for that dress you're working on. Should we be selling shoes, Maisie?"
"You know, I'm feeling superfluous in this conversation," Kim put in. He ruthlessly controlled his own face, but Will's was a picture.
"Oh of course, darling. I'm babbling on, and you'll be wanting to get home."
"We—?"
"Naturally you do." Phoebe gave her sunniest smile, with just a bit of mischief. "We mustn't keep you waiting darlings, don't worry about us. We're quite capable of making our own way out, no need to be Victorian about it."
"Well that's us told," said Will, still looking slightly thunderstruck.
Kim should be chivalrous, but he did want to go home.
Past time, too, because the singer was striking up "Charleston Charlie," very much putting his own style on it, and Will was smirking at him.
"Charleston Charlie, he's so jolly
He sure does know his stuff
He never gets enough
Fellas crave him ’cause he's rough…"
There were two gents well on their way to criminal behavior in the coat room. Kim tipped his hat in their direction and towed Will firmly away.
The late Autumn night was chilly enough to make a sharp and sobering contrast to the overheated nightclub. This had no noticeable affect on Will, who seemed to content to stroll towards Holborn at a leisurely pace. He was singing, in a soft tenor. "He never worries, never hurries, takes his own sweet time…. He does a dance so classy, when he shakes—"
"Let's get a cab," said Kim.
The ride felt excruciatingly long, with Kim and Will a full seat apart, and Will still humming absent-mindedly. The walk to Kim's flat was silent. Kim had music in his head, but he wouldn't inflict that on Will, never mind the neighbours.
"Anything to eat in here, or do we have to wait for the elves in the morning?"
"Check the kitchen, Peacock should have left some cold cuts," Kim replied distractedly.
The gramophone here was as much Phoebe's domain as Kim's, and he was a few moments fiddling about to find exactly what he wanted.
Will tilted his head with an air of some familiarity.
"What's this, then?"
"Ah. Russian Romanticism, as it happens. Tchaikovsky. One of his waltzes."
Kim busied himself making drinks, until there was a soft scrape behind him. Kim turned and raised his eyebrows. Will was rearranging the furniture.
He stood in the centre of the rug, and made a sweeping West End bow. "May I have this dance?"
"William."
"Come on, show me how they do it at Buckingham Palace."
"Not like this, I should think."
"Come outrage your father's sensibilities, then."
"My votary of waltz and war. All right."
Will extended his arms in a proper ballroom hold, and Kim took his place just to his left.
Right foot first.
They couldn't go sweeping about Kim's flat like a Viennese ball, but the rug made a sort of enchanted circle that only emphasized the closeness of it all: their fingers, their faces, their breath. Will guided Kim out and under his arm in a turn.
"You waltz well," said Kim.
"You're not too bad yourself."
"Thanks ever so."
Will met his eyes, an odd look on his face. "You teach the torches to burn bright."
Kim swallowed, hard, and couldn't help his smile.
"You too. When you shake your derry-tassy."
"Berk."
"Come dance with me, my love."
"We are dancing."
Kim gave Will his very best long, lowered-eyelids sort of look.
"Oh," said Will, and pulled him into close embrace.