"Allen," said Valerie, "will bring someone from the office, as usual. He didn’t say who. Some kind of junior newbie, I imagine."

Dorian did not leave off his efforts to prevent his two-year-old nephew from putting the contents of a nearby ashtray into his mouth. "No, Oliver. That’s nasty. Wait until you’re fifteen." He whisked the ashtray onto a high shelf. "He’ll only climb up there," said Valerie, and Oliver promptly tried to prove her right by clambering onto the chair arm beside Dorian. "The point, Dorian, is that you’re not to scare this poor junior assistant clerk into fits with your famous drag-queen act."

"Oh, dear, not even if he stammers?" asked Dorian. "Fishery clerks do tend to be a dull lot. I wonder that you put up with them."

"I wonder that they put up with Allen," returned his sister. "And hand me Oliver before he poisons himself."

Dorian complied, hoping for Oliver’s shriek of outrage to be muffled in Oliver’s mother’s bosom. "I hope that doesn’t mean I’m to pretend I’m as staid and dull as Allen."

"Not at all." Valerie Red-Gloria Firsdale joggled her youngest child. "Just don’t make one of your five-star passes at him. Even if he were, um, amenable, he couldn’t take you up in front of Allen. It embarrasses them so, either way, poor dears."

* * * * *

Clarence Dobson, thought Klaus von dem Eberbach, was a poor stick of a man if he put up with the inefficiency of this office of Forestries and Fisheries. The entire officeful of civil servants were poor sticks of men. Limp sticks. He was surprised that the benighted Isles of Britain still contained any forests of fish, given the quality of care they received from their governmental guardians. It had been two whole days since he had submitted a requisition for the simplest of matters, an additional inspection in the Lake District, and the issue was not yet resolved. The requisition had only this morning reached the desk of the person who might (or might not) review it for approval.

Klaus had little interest in the fish and less in the trees of Great Britain, but Clarence Dobson was supposed to, as second assistant clerk to the minister in charge of them. And where was the minister himself, at 1:10 PM this bleak (Klaus’s opinion) but bracing (the minister’s PA’s word) overcast December day? Still taking his noon constitutional in the nearby Hyde Park? Klaus suspected the worst, despite the fact that mad Englishmen stomping about the Park at all hours were a common sight.

This hypothesis was proved wrong as the minister’s cheerfully ruddy face appeared within the doorway of Clarence Dobson’s less than palatial office. "Dobson!"

"Yes, sir?" said Eberbach, betraying no impatience at being so cavalierly addressed. If the minister had come to a lowly assistant clerk’s office, rather than having the clerk summoned by an excruciatingly obsequious assistant, it no doubt behooved Dobson to find out what he was after.

"Have you any special plans for Christmas?" asked Sir Allen Firsdale.

Klaus had been planning, before this assignment, to sulk as invisibly as possible through the annual Eberbach Weihnachtsfest that everyone at Eberbach (except Klaus) considered essential to the continued existence of Schloss Eberbach as a social landmark in Germany. The prospect had been less than enticing. Perhaps the British Minister of Forests and Fisheries would offer him an alternative which could be construed as important to his wretched and superficial existence as "Clarence Dobson."

"No, not especially, sir," he said. This sort of English took so long to convey any meaning, wrapped as it was in qualifiers. No wonder Dorian was so adept at circumlocutions of all kinds. It was built into the damned language. Worse, Klaus could speak and think in the same damned language, exact as to nuance and qualifier upon qualifier, after nearly a year of covertly—very covertly—seeking Dorian’s company for purposes that sometimes included conversation. Which had improved his accent, whatever it had done for his morals. Which had led to this damned assignment. Which had got him out of the damned Weihnachtsfest. Who said sin wasn’t rewarded? Not Dorian.

The minister, having finally received and decoded the qualified assent in Klaus’s answer, had prepared his own qualifier-laden statement in reply and was starting to speak. "Then perhaps you’re in a position to do me a bit of a favor!" he crowed. Klaus refrained from wincing. Clarence Dobson did not wince. Clarence Dobson, good civil servant that he was, attended to his superior’s every word.

"Of course, sir," he said neutrally. "Is there anything I can do…?"

"Yes, m’boy, you can. Pack your things and come down to Firsdale for the Christmas houseparty. We’re eleven, and we’d rather be twelve."

"Sir?" said Klaus. Numerology had never interested him.

"My wife prefers it," confided Sir Allen. "You’re at loose ends, you say. Why not tie up with us for the day? My wife, her sisters, one or two others. It’ll be a quiet party in the country."

Klaus rallied. "It’s unexpected, sir… but not unwelcome." What would the appropriate English excuse be to accept it? "I can’t refuse if it’s a lady’s wish, can I?"

Sir Allen gave a hearty grin. "Nor can anyone, m’boy."

Klaus smiled in return. "Thank you, sir." His mind was busy with the implications. Sir Allen Firsdale. This useless ministry office and its possibly-traitorous head. The incredibly inefficient administration of Great Britain as a whole, so incapable of governing itself that MI5 had summoned "Clarence Dobson" for assistance when it and MI6 found themselves at loggerheads. Was he suspected of being more (or less, from Firsdale’s viewpoint) than a junior clerk?

Only in the fourth place did it occur to him that the wife’s sisters might have figured into the invitation. His annoyance edged higher. They couldn’t matter to him. No one could matter, to Clarence Dobson, who had only one reason for existing.

* * * * *

It was only—"only"—December, so no snow had fallen on the sloping hills of Berkshire. The junior assistant clerk of the Ministry of Forests and Fisheries gave the countryside a long glance as his host’s Bentley slowed and turned into a curving lane. "I take it we’re nearly there?" he guessed.

Sir Allen chuckled. "Yes. It’s a beautiful place."

"It’s very good of you to invite me. You hardly know me at all."

"It’s no more than the season suggests, my wife would say."

Was that true, or an excuse to bring him here? Oddly, Sir Allen seemed to be sincere. Major Eberbach knew his forte was less subtlety than action, but to the best of his trained perceptions, Sir Allen’s invitation meant exactly what it had stated. If it did not… Major Eberbach’s forte was fast, purposeful action. He was here to find out what he could.

Sir Allen brought the car to a halt opposite a formal, panelled door, from which an attractive woman in informal but festive dress emerged. If it was a set-up it was now prolonged past all need or reason.

"Allen! You’ve been an age!" exclaimed the woman, a very English blonde of perhaps thirty. "Who’s the little assistant you’ve dragged along this year? Let Jeremy get your things and come indoors!"

"Thank you, my dear," returned Sir Allen. "This one’s not so little, as you see." Klaus removed himself from the car and stood up, smiling at her in a way he hoped was sufficiently deferential. "This is my deputy’s new assistant, Clarence Dobson. Dobson, Lady Valerie Firsdale."

"I’m honored," said Klaus, and shook her offered hand in carefully British style. A middle-aged man in something that might be a servant’s clothes had already opened the Bentley’s boot and was carrying the luggage toward a second door.

"Mr. Dobson?" the lady of the house smiled at him with warmth. "Welcome. We’re mostly family. I hope you’ll enjoy it." She led them into an entrance hall and then into a large drawing room containing a decorated tree, some graceful but comfortable-looking furniture, and several people. High voices from an adjoining room announced the presence of children.

It was going to be a Christmas party after all. Klaus sighed, silently. A holiday undercover was a working holiday, but he’d hoped for a quick break to wrap up this operation. If Sir Allen wasn’t the leak he’d been placed to find, who was? It wouldn’t do to assume there was no danger, but how subtle could Sir Allen be? How much danger would he expose his family to? "My elder sister, Ophelia," said Lady Valerie, as another blond woman rose from the sofa. A third, equally blond, woman stood near the fire with a sleek-haired, fair man beside her: Lady Helen and her husband. It was evidently a family that ran true to type.

"Do come meet the children, and then you can relax," said his hostess. "I’m sure you’d like something to drink after the drive down from London."

"Yes, thank you," said Klaus, following obediently. Best get this all over with as soon as possible.

"Let’s see if the story hour is done yet," she said, as they entered the next room, where an even larger fireplace supplied more warmth. "My brother loves doing it, but he will go on and on, past their bedtimes."

Four new pairs of blue eyes met Klaus’s gaze: two identical pairs in twin girls of perhaps seven, one pair surprised in a toddler’s round face, and one pair that gleamed slyly from under the fancy-dress hat of a man who must be the story-telling uncle.

Major Eberbach, a trained observer, knew immediately that it was Dorian—eternal gadfly, thief, and very clandestinely his lover—and felt his internal tension, deep under the bland cover, multiply fourfold. What kind of set-up might this be? What kind did Sir Allen think it was?

What did Dorian think it was?

"My brother, the Earl of Red-Gloria," announced Lady Valerie. Dorian was dressed as a Renaissance prince, something copied from a period portrait, Klaus decided after a moment. He had a vague recollection of such a portrait in one of the back rooms of Eberbach. "Clarence Dobson. Dorian, don’t say you haven’t finished with Oliver’s story yet."

"How do you do?" said Clarence Dobson in his working Whitehall accent, not-quite-as-good-as-Oxbridge-but-close.

"Charmed," said Dorian, after a single instant during which he gave no sign of surprise except the lack of reaction. "Mr. Dobson? Sir Allen’s new colleague?"

"Yes," said Klaus. It was possible that Dorian hadn’t known he was coming, but if this particular charade was Dorian’s doing, there would be a row about it as soon as Klaus and not Clarence Dobson could speak with him.

"I’ve only got to the second king," said Dorian to his sister. And, to the baby Oliver, "King Caspar had skin like caramel and hair like," his eyes skipped briefly to Klaus, "black silk, but he kept it hidden under a turban. The turban was white, since he was a king, and his people were traders of all things so that he valued none above its worth in gold. Thus it was gold itself that he brought as a gift to the mysterious new king.

"The three kings looked for the fourth and found him, which will be the story tomorrow night, and each one presented him with the thing he valued most in his kingship: frankincense for beauty, myrrh for transformation, and gold for trade. And they all lived happily ever after."

"Dorian!" Lady Valerie sounded ready to laugh. "You know that’s not how it ends!"

"Mustn’t finish the whole thing in one night," shrugged Dorian, his eyes smiling secretly at Klaus.

Klaus stifled his reaction, but he thought Dorian knew it had registered. The earl’s eyes flickered toward him once more as he handed Oliver over to his sister. "Let’s leave something to look forward to."

"Introduce him to the girls, please, and then send them upstairs," she said, as Oliver yawned in her arms. "I think I’d better take this one up now." And she carried him away.

Klaus, shaken in his cover, angry and unable to show it, made his greeting to the earl very wooden indeed. "Lord Red-Gloria. Sir Allen didn’t mention anyone but ‘family.’"

Lord Red-Gloria shrugged in his brocade tunic and ropes of jewels. "I am family. Don’t mind the clothes—it’s an exotic Uncle Christmas I like to do for the children."

The two gilt-blond little girls in blue velvet dresses bounced, each on a different footstool. "You do that for Oliver and Aunt Helen," said one. "We know there’s no Father Christmas."

"There’s no single Father Christmas like a storybook," said Dorian, "but don’t tell anyone. I think your father still thinks I’m Uncle Christmas. And maybe Mr. Dobson does, too." The girls giggled, their eyes on Klaus.

"My nieces, Penelope and Ariadne Firsdale," said Dorian. "Girls, this is Mr. Dobson, who works with your father at the ministry." He fixed them with an expectant eye.

"How do you do, Mr. Dobson," chorused the twins.

"Very well, thank you," answered Klaus.

When they had scampered out, the two men stared at each other for a moment. Klaus could heat the murmur of conversation from the drawing room.

"Mr. Dobson?" asked Dorian, carefully.

"Yes. I’m the new assistant clerk to the Fisheries and Forests under-minister. Sir Allen…"

"Invited you down for Christmas, yes. I see. How interesting."

"Yes, it is," said Klaus with a shade of meaning he hoped Dorian would decode as menacing rather than amused.

Dorian pulled off the Renaissance hat, releasing a spill of tumbled blond curls. "I see," he said again, thoughtfully. "Ah, it’s a very pretty bit of country around here. Perhaps you’d like to take a walk around tomorrow." Or tonight, suggested his eyes.

Klaus let Mr. Dobson answer that. "If my hostess allows, of course."

"Of course," said Dorian, just as if he wanted very much to know what was going on. Which would mean Dorian didn’t know. Which could mean he hadn’t set this up.

But someone had, and Klaus still needed to know who and why. Someone was making free with information that allowed unmonitored access to and from the British Isles via Fishery vessels. MI5 and MI6 both swore someone in the other organization must be doing it. Someone who might be very interested in maintaining an unmonitored traffic channel. Someone who was unlikely to care about the best interests of Great Britain or even the European Community. Someone who had access to information such as Sir Allen—and few others—had.

Or, perhaps, someone like Eroica.

Could Dorian have set it up? As an agent, Klaus would never be past thinking that thought. It might seem a remote possibility, for Dorian. For Eroica, however…

Eroica didn’t care about principles. Eroica only cared about art.

Klaus would swear that Dorian had been surprised to see him, but he couldn’t prove it. The setup was far too cozy: a holiday in the countryside with Dorian only a bedroom away… Klaus swallowed, shocked at the thought that followed. He had a mission. Clarence Dobson didn’t know the Earl of Red-Gloria and certainly would not be susceptible to any improper invitations from him. "Perhaps we should rejoin the others now," he said, with Dobson’s stiffness. "I don’t believe I’ve met everyone yet."

"Then I suppose I’d best introduce you," said Dorian easily. "I know everyone."

* * * * *

There was dinner, during which Dobson made small talk as well as he could with Sir Allen’s brother. There was a further period of conversation over brandy and coffee back in the drawing room, during which it was discovered that Mr. Dobson did not play card games, but could sing Christmas carols in a dependable baritone.

Klaus concentrated on using Oxbridge English in the familiar tunes, waiting for whatever might develop in this bizarre mission. He hated waiting. Had he been brought here because Firsdale was suspicious and prepared; because Firsdale was suspicious and incautious; or because Firsdale, incredibly, was not only innocent but simply felt hospitable toward a junior clerk?

Dobson allowed Sir Allen’s mother to tell him a long and pointless story, nodding at the correct moments. Dorian could be relied on to take fullest advantage of any opportunity like this, regardless, and of course it could not be allowed. Even if he knew nothing, how much trouble could he cause?

As much as possible. That was a foregone conclusion.

Klaus tried not to feel the shiver of desire that ran through him. It was an unconsidered, ill-considered, dangerous feeling, neither reason nor reasonable. Even clandestinely, Clarence Dobson was not, and could not be, the Earl of Red-Gloria’s lover. Breaking cover for hours at a time was no way for a trained agent to behave, and Klaus had no intention of behaving so. His own regrets had nothing to do with the case.

Dorian might be innocent. Eroica’s most ridiculous escapades had been quixotic, not treasonous.

That was no assurance of his innocence in this plot. It was, especially, no reason to cooperate in what could still be a set-up. Could this be a set-up by Firsdale without Dorian’s knowledge? That was possible, but not a guarantee that Dorian would be manageable.

Still, Klaus had to try.

After an hour of conversation and the threat of cribbage, which was played with both cards and a scoreboard, Klaus escaped the party room to wander discreetly in search of solitude. He found it in a dark but open room that was furnished with table, chairs and distant smells of food. The window curtains stood open to a moonlit vista of shallow hills and valleys. The light was patchy and often faded altogether, so that the landscape more resembled a shifting sea than still, dry land.

"The view from this side of the house was famous, before the two towns to the south cluttered it up with suburbs," said Dorian’s voice behind him.

"I’m sure it was," said Dobson.

"It’s still very beautiful, I think." Dorian, now dressed in perfectly ordinary English country-house clothes, came to stand beside him, as though to admire the view as well.

"Dorian, what are you doing here?" muttered Klaus. Against his better judgement.

"Looking for you," returned Dorian, voice as low as Klaus’s. His hand on the windowsill did not touch Klaus, but Klaus felt as if it had.

"Anyone could come in here." He was acutely aware that Dorian’s mouth on his, or Dorian’s arms around him, were less than a word away. He need only ask, or perhaps only fail to repulse, his lover. None of it could be allowed, but the thought would not leave him. His hand clenched on the cool wooden sill.

"Anyone could," murmured Dorian, "but they all know me." He continued to stand, very correctly, just outside of Klaus’s personal space. Close enough to touch, if Klaus wanted to.

Klaus wanted to pull the hot, slim body against himself and let events unfold from there, but he should be Clarence Dobson in this room. Klaus was not at leisure; he was an agent waiting for Firsdale to make a move. "But you don’t know me, Lord Red-Gloria."

"Why are you here, then?"

"Sir Allen invited me."

"Why did you accept?"

"He’s my superior at the ministry."

Dorian shifted his weight, but did nothing to close the distance between them. "Balls. What are you doing there?"

"Clerking." I can’t tell you, dammit, Eroica. I can’t talk to you myself. And you should know that.

"I see." Dorian’s bland tone meant he had—or thought he had—the gist of the matter. He really must not have thought so earlier. And if Dorian had had nothing to do with the invitation, Sir Allen’s motives were still every bit as suspect. More so. There was always the possibility that Sir Allen knew that his new clerk and his brother-in-law were far more than strangers, and that he might use that to compromise Klaus. Anything was possible.

He couldn’t give Sir Allen what he wanted if that were true. There was every reason to refuse Dorian, and no way to explain, here, except: "You’ve only just met me. Why the interest, Lord Red-Gloria?"

"Why not?" returned Dorian, as a light footstep could be heard in the room’s open doorway.

"Dorian, don’t pester Mr. Dobson," said a voice with an unmistakable elder-sisterly ring to it.

"We’re just admiring the landscape, Val. Come and see the moonlight."

Klaus could not allow himself to leave the house party, if this was where Firsdale meant to make his move. He was here to catch that move. He realized with sudden, throat-drying clarity that he mustn’t send Dorian away, if a midnight visit from Dorian was part of Firsdale’s move. He could only play out the game until the move was revealed as check or mate. And his role in the game was… he summoned the slightly-too-jocular tone of a flustered, but polite, Oxbridgian. "There’s no offense, Lady Valerie. He’s been telling me the local history."

"Of course he has," said his hostess, with a nod of patent disbelief. "Out, Dorian. I’ll see to Mr. Dobson."

It was unlikely that Lady Valerie was involved, if she meant to remove Dorian instead of encourage him. Unlikely, not impossible. Klaus held his peace until Dorian shrugged, flashed a charmingly apologetic smile at his sister, and departed.

As Clarence Dobson, Klaus went on: "He’s said nothing I can take exception to, my lady. Nothing at all."

"Perhaps not," she returned. "He’s dreadfully eccentric. One never knows what he’ll say. In any case, he’ll be out of your way this evening." The tone said, as closely as Klaus could read, He’s my brother, but I won’t let him give you any trouble. If she was more than a hostess dealing with a guest, it was undetectable. Innocence or complete deception—which?

"I imagine you’re right. I understand the house is very old?"

She picked up the new topic with a touch of relief that Klaus would have said was genuine. "No more than a century, even the oldest parts. This room, for instance, and the drawing rooms. I’ve always liked the fireplaces in those. Let me show you." She led him back to the rest of the party.

"Not everyone appreciates this Valerien work," said Mrs. Firsdale, when her daughter-in-law appealed to her knowledge on Clarence Dobson’s behalf. "It’s sweet to see that someone in the government has a sense of history."

"Yes, ma’am." Klaus supposed it would do him no harm to hear a little useless information, even if it wasted time. There was nothing to do at the moment that did not waste time.

Clarence Dobson suffered himself to be lectured upon the fireplaces and other corners of the downstairs rooms, but after that and another hour of pointless conversation with his hosts, Major Eberbach’s investigation was no further advanced.

If his involvement with Dorian were to be used against him here, it would confirm Firsdale’s involvement in the plot. His move, then, was not to avoid Dorian and a situation which would be thought to compromise Major Eberbach’s career; his move was to go along with the game until he could expose the trap.

It could put Dorian in danger.

So be it, thought NATO agent Major Eberbach.

No, thought Klaus. He is an amateur.

He can take care of himself. The Major recalled numerous occasions on which Eroica had been irritatingly self-sufficient. Telling him anything would break my cover.

Not telling him could kill him. If there was, in fact, a game of check and counter-check being played by more than the Major tonight.

"I’m afraid it’s late," said Sir Allen, and Clarence Dobson nodded and made an appropriately ungraceful English assent.

* * * * *

The guests were housed in one wing and the family, including Dorian, in another, Klaus noted. Lady Valerie shooed her brother toward one staircase before she led Mr. Dobson toward another. "It’s a piecemeal old house, really," she said "full of odd corners. I had to rearrange it all to put the nursery in the south wing when the twins were born. It used to be over here where it wouldn’t bother the adults, with two nursemaids and a schoolroom and its own tweeny, when one had such things. Now it’s a lovely, quiet place for visitors."

She left him at the door of a lovely, quiet room to enjoy his own thoughts and, if he could, sleep.

Klaus turned off the lights and sat in the room’s armchair, trying to decide what his thoughts were. The lack of action and the presence of Sir Allen’s family argued that nothing here had to do with the mission. Was it only Dorian that made Klaus think the situation was too convenient? Dorian being here was indeed far too convenient, but the suspicions of Firsdale had nothing to do with Dorian and must be investigated.

That was why Klaus was here. Not to meet his lover.

"Hul-lo," murmured Dorian’s dulcet voice. "You didn’t lock your door."

And if there was the slightest chance that Dorian was part of a potentially treasonous smuggling operation? Major Eberbach’s duty was clear.

"It’s your sister’s house," he said. "Would locking the door make a difference?"

"Probably not," said Dorian, leaning against the inside of the now-closed door. "Still, I’d’ve taken it as a sign that you intended to resist me."

"That only encourages you. In fact, everything encourages you."

"Not so. I’m very easy to discourage. Just say ‘no’ and don’t look wistful about it."

Klaus allowed Clarence Dobson to answer that one as he rose and pushed back one window’s curtain—one that would not give a view of Dorian to any possible looker-in—onto another moonlit vista. "Lord Red-Gloria, you’re being a bit too forward, wouldn’t you say?" There were no visible watchers, no movement, no likely cover for an observer, just as if the host of the houseparty were perfectly innocent of espionage.

The tone and vocabulary seemed to register. Dorian frowned. "I suppose you might say so." He mimed a listening gesture and shook his head. "You’ve obviously got a lot on your mind. Do you want to brood about it, or…" a delicately meaningful pause, "would you like to try to think of something else?"

Dorian’s interests were predictable and obvious, of course. Were they being exercised purely for the predictable and obvious reasons? Dorian had the most effective possible disguise for a seduction with ulterior motives.

All of Klaus’s instincts said that Dorian was as surprised as he was at this suspicious houseparty. Any plots were someone else’s. He smoothed the curtain back into place, restoring the illusion of perfect privacy in this room, and lit one lamp. He wanted to see Dorian even if he should not touch him.

His intuition was unsupported by evidence. Nothing denied the guilt of every adult in the house except Klaus’s unchecked desire. Even if Dorian himself was innocent—of treasonous plots, Dorian being innocent of little else—all the dangers remained of letting one’s attention lapse in the midst of a mission. If it became necessary, would Dorian take Klaus’s side against his brother-in-law? Against the safety of his sister and her children? It would be reasonable for the earl to think first of his relatives.

In the low light, Dorian’s curls gleamed his smile flickered teasingly, his long-fingered hands were pale against his dark jacket where he’d folded his arms. It would be reasonable to ignore the temptation of those clean-lined features, the thought of how Dorian’s mouth would be warm on his skin wherever it touched him…

The silence in the room reverberated like a crack of thunder to Klaus, as all his chains of reason and logic shattered. "Dorian?" It was his own voice, he was horrified to hear, not Dobson’s. He tried again. "My lord?"

Better. Any listener but Dorian wouldn’t know the difference.

Dorian did.

Dorian’s smile broadened. "Wouldn’t you like a distraction from the cares of the workaday world?"

The silent thunderclap shook him again. He knew what he wanted. He was ready to break all the rules of his training. He was endangering the mission.

He believed Dorian was loyal to him. He was going to act on that belief and he only hoped he was right, because he was aware now that it didn’t matter whether he was right or not: he was going to welcome Dorian into his bed and trust him.

Trusting an outsider was madness, for a working agent.

He was going to bet his mission on it, and possibly his life.

He stood up, nerves thrumming less with the tension of an active mission than with Dorian’s presence. Dorian moving closer. Dorian nearly touching him.

He might be mad, but he wasn’t foolhardy. Klaus held up one hand in warning, and Dorian stopped and waited, silent. For whatever reason, perhaps even the right one, Dorian was following his lead tonight. Klaus opened an anonymous, well-locked case and, while blood and arousal beat in his ears, satisfied himself that active electronic surveillance was not being carried out at the moment. An eavesdropper on their tryst would have to do it in person, he hoped from inside the house. The window still showed nothing that suggested even a potential watcher. Dorian waited without comment through a brief excursion to establish that no one lurked in the hallway or nearby rooms. The game, if anyone else was playing, was too deep for the next hour’s action to make a difference. Unless Dorian was a gamepiece.

Eroica was nobody’s gamepiece.

As he faced Dorian again from inside the relocked door, a third bolt of thunder and desire tore Klaus’s mind from reason. He, too, followed no one’s orders tonight.

"Come here, then. My lord. And please be very quiet about it." He didn’t recognize the voice he used, which was neither his nor Dobson’s, and was amused when Dorian eyed him doubtfully.

"K1…" At Klaus’s violent headshake, Dorian paused, head cocked in query.

"Please don’t call me by name." His voice had relaxed into the English intonation he used in private with Dorian. "Don’t call me anything." He switched off the lamp, relying on their night vision.

Dorian’s eyes opened wide, dark in the darkened room. "Ahh. Of course not. Whatever you want. What do you want?"

In silence, in near-darkness, Klaus began to undress.

"I see," said Dorian, and did the same.

Clarence Dobson’s clothes came off, and with them all vestiges of Dobson—but who was left? I shouldn’t do this. Who is doing it?

"I see," said Dorian again, in a voice of erotic promise. He was repeating Klaus’s actions move by move, and Klaus wondered if the message was deliberate. Klaus raised a hand again, signalling stop, and saw Dorian return that gesture too. If there was any game here, it was entirely between him and Dorian. He’d forgotten any reason to be here except Dorian, and desire.

Dorian-and-desire had become the same thing. The mirroring hand opposite Klaus’s approached him, touched his hand, joined with it and held for a moment. Their eyes locked while Klaus freed his hand, wanting… he wasn’t sure what he wanted except that he wanted Dorian. He laced his fingers into the soft hair above Dorian’s temples and held him carefully while he kissed Dorian’s forehead.

The gesture was not one that had occurred between them before. He knew Dorian was surprised at it, but there were no protests and no questions. Klaus moved down and kissed his mouth, also in a single touch, more a signal than an erotic caress. Aside from a quiver of reaction, Dorian allowed that too to pass without a response. He was waiting for Klaus, or for what Klaus had become.

Klaus’s hands slid down, dragging smoothly through the curls until he could clasp Dorian’s shoulders and kiss his throat. He went downward from there, outlining his desire with hands and mouth. Dorian allowed it, breathing silently and moving little as his body was traced from head to heels. As Klaus’s fingers brushed his bare insteps, Dorian put his hands lightly on Klaus’s head as if to repeat the same progression on his lover.

Klaus reached for the hands as he stood up, kissed each of them and replaced them. He felt invisible in this dark, dangerous room with Dorian. Nothing existed until Dorian touched it. He let Dorian’s hands on his body define him without words. Any name he had would prevent him from allowing this, so here and now he had no name and no purpose beyond feeling Dorian’s touch.

Warm fingertips trailed over him, making him real, making him ache with desire, making his skin itch and his muscles shake and his penis jump. He moved in turn and made Dorian itch and shake and jump. Dorian would not shiver or squirm, not when they were being silent like this, but he knew where to touch and his mouth was warm and hungry.

Dorian knelt, arms around his waist, hair a frothing distraction, offering silently the easiest release of passion: a mouth wet and enveloping that would suck an orgasm from his lover. It would have been enough yesterday or tomorrow, but not here and now. Dorian’s lover shook his head, and saw Dorian look upward, questioning. He pulled Dorian to his feet, arms around his body, and himself slowly knelt, feeling his hair slide over Dorian’s breast and ribs while his hands smoothed up slim hard thighs, one to cup softly sensitive testicles and one to encircle the hard shaft and direct it toward his own mouth. He bent further and let his lips slide over the smooth head and down, seeking to contain it, wanting to. Wanting this piece of Dorian proved he was perverted, as perverted as Dorian. He was the same as Dorian, tonight: no better, no worse.

Dorian whispered "What…" for this too did not happen often in their lovemaking.

The kneeling lover pulled his head up and off, slowly, and looked up. "I want to."

"Whatever you want," said Dorian, and he sounded as if the words were more than assent to a pleasure. His erection tasted of skin and sex and salt. Dorian’s breath hissed in and out with the effort of standing quite still for the mouth that took him in and played him to perfect hardness. When the mouth was removed, leaving hardness behind, he sighed deeply and whispered, "It’s too good to last. You…?"

Dorian’s lover looked up and said, "I want…" What he wanted, he couldn’t say. He could only stroke his palms up Dorian’s legs, up to rest on a lean-muscled pair of buttocks, fingertips trailing into the cleft between.

Dorian gave a breathy, unvoiced laugh. "My arse? It’s been yours for the asking any time, you know."

"I know." But that wasn’t what he wanted. He rose slowly to his feet, pulling Dorian against him so the motion became a slithering caress of Dorian’s taut-erect penis against his body, ending pressed against his own taut erection. Dorian was real, and Dorian was desire. Nothing else existed.

Upright, he kept Dorian close against him as he backed both of them toward the bed. He couldn’t lose the feel of Dorian against him and still remain the anonymous self he was now, so he lay back and pulled Dorian down on top of him, letting the weight and contact tell him where he was.

"Um." Dorian rubbed curls up and down his neck, nipping an ear before he moved to the other side. "What…?"

Desire rose over him: Dorian on hands and knees, hot erection resting on his lover’s belly, waiting only for his lover to show him what form desire should assume. Dorian’s lover grasped Dorian’s shoulders for leverage and turned himself to lie face-down under Dorian. He wanted… He was nothing but a body, indulging forbidden desire. He was Dorian’s counterpart, and this was the counterpart to Dorian’s desire. His desire.

"Ahh?" Dorian’s body came down to blanket him, from the faint tickling of hair trailing onto his shoulders to the hard column of warmth pressing into his buttocks.

He tried to push his legs apart under the weight of it; tried to speak. "E—" Nothing further seemed possible.

Warm breath on his ear, as a warm hand stroked down one flank. "Yes?" The voice was alert, eager. Desire knew what he wanted. Desire would give it to him.

"Eeh.. Yee… Yes," he managed, moving as best he could under Desire to offer his body for Desire’s completion. Nothing but Dorian’s taking of his body would fulfill his nameless self.

"Ahh," breathed Desire again from above him, shifting now to let him open his legs. There was a long, cold moment of absence; then Desire was back to kiss the nape of his neck, warmth radiating over his back as Desire settled solid and heavy between his thighs. "Ah, lover, lift up a little."

Dorian’s lover made no protest at the speech, and none when hard warmth clasped his erection and smooth pressure stroked between his buttocks, searching. When smooth warmth pressed into him, he froze for an instant of pain, but opened himself to Desire. "Yes." Every part of him was cold except the province of Desire and Desire himself.

He pushed up onto Desire, gasping at the pain of it but unwilling to stop. "Easy, lover," whispered Desire, and the pain that was desire retreated. He moaned wordless loss, and stopped when the sound threatened to distract him from Desire.

Desire returned then, pushing into him again and bringing pain made smoother, larger, easier to bear. It was in him, of him. It was him; nothing existed but the slow pain of Desire thrusting into him and the hard stroking hand of Desire on him. Desire rode him like a demon, and he himself had called the demon and could not deny it.

Desire took him through pain to deeper, irresistible pain. He groaned without hearing it, moved without willing it, accepted Desire into himself and accepted pleasure when it burst into him unbidden. It was himself. It was Desire. It was everything.

His body ceased to be the world and came back to pain in reluctant shudders of awareness and desire. Dorian breathed behind him in slowing gasps, while weight pressed on his shoulders and sore fullness warmed his groin. "Aah?" he said, perhaps no more meaningful than a groan.

"Yeees," sighed Dorian, and bent over him to sigh again into his ear as the sore fullness went to a sore, cold emptiness.

"Vaaa?" It was not a word. There was some reason he shouldn’t speak in words yet. He didn’t know what it was. He didn’t want to move.

Dorian lay down beside him and pulled him into a long-bodied embrace. He did not resist. Dorian kissed him, infinitely gentle, and kissed his forehead. "Lover."

He moaned again, still wordless in English, and wrapped himself around Dorian’s warmth as best he could. There was nothing else that mattered. He couldn’t let anything else matter.

He thought he heard "Sleep," from his lover, but if so, he obeyed too quickly to remember it.

* * * * *

Klaus woke. He was in the bed in Sir Allen’s guestroom, alone under neatly layered blankets and sheets. It was morning, marginally light as yet but definitely morning. He was alive and well, insofar as he could judge without moving. He didn’t want to move yet. He didn’t want to think, but he couldn’t stop. If there had been plots to be played last night, they had played without him. He’d been…

He’d been with Dorian. Foolish, fool-hardy Dorian who came to him in the guise of Desire.

Foolish, fool-hardy self, that took the desire for its own. And let Dorian know it. Let Dorian…

He turned and stretched in the bed, unconstrained except by the memory that was a loose soreness in his body. Why was everything else of it invisible, erased somehow from the clean bed?

Dorian. Dorian had been with him. Dorian could have done anything while he slept. In spite of all caution he trusted Dorian. Klaus knew he was a fool, but if it killed him, or Dorian, or led to chaos, he trusted Dorian all the same. It was not a choice, but a fact.

Klaus remembered what Dorian had done and what he himself had done last night, feeling now only surprise at the bone-deep sensation that had been neither pleasure nor pain but only desire. Now that Dorian had proved it on his body, Klaus knew the desire would return when he called for it, and perhaps if he did not. It was himself and he could not escape it.

Like Dorian. There was no escaping Dorian, neither as Eroica nor as his lover. Major Eberbach had tried to escape him for years, and Dorian won whatever he wanted anyway. Including Klaus.

Very well, Dorian was his lover. His, not Clarence Dobson’s. Today, in this house, Dobson was his name and his safety. Could he trust Dorian to know that?

Dorian had let him wake in Dobson’s chaste, unruffled bed. Perhaps that was answer enough.

Until next time.

Klaus stretched again and got up to put on today’s identity.

END