Pursued: Lillian's Story Read online

  Pursued: Lillian’s Story

  Synopsis

  In Pursuit: A Victorian Entertainment, Addison Grimmins, slum-born but ambitious and ruthless, sets out on a quest to bring back the Lord Exchequer of England’s missing wife. Now, in Pursued: Lillian’s Story, we get the other side of the story from Lillian, the woman being pursued.

  From boat to stagecoach to train, as Lillian and her questionably reliable companions elude her pursuers throughout Europe, Lillian writes to her daughter-in-law on her honeymoon, warning her of what she may expect marrying into the Ravenglass estate and its cursed male line of descent. Lillian recounts how as a girl she entered a dream marriage to the “golden” son of a great Lord. And how, little by little, one misfortune after another, the dream union threatened to become a nightmare that would destroy her reputation—and her life.

  Praise for Felice Picano

  “Felice Picano is a premier voice in gay letters.”—Malcolm Boyd, Contemporary Authors

  Felice Picano is “a leading light in the gay literary world…his glints of flashing wit and subtle hints of dark decadence transcend clichés.”—Richard Violette, Library Journal

  “The Godfather of Gay Lit.”—Richard Burnett

  “Picano has always drawn his main characters as gay heroes, unashamed and unafraid of who they are and what life has to offer, whether positive or negative. This, ultimately, is the measure of Picano’s genius.”—Lambda Literary Book Report

  “Felice Picano’s contribution to contemporary gay literature in his own work has been immense. His founding of one of the first gay publishing firms, SeaHorse Press, has fostered a profound growth in the gay literary genre. Over the course of the last several decades, Picano, with members of the pioneering gay literary group, the Violet Quill, is responsible for the most heralded gay literature of the 1980s and 1990s.”—Richard Canning, Gay Fiction Speaks

  “Picano’s destiny has been to lead the way for a generation of gay writers.”—Robert L. Pela, The Advocate

  “Felice Picano is a leader in the modern gay literary movement. Among his works are many novels—both gay and straight—poetry, plays, short stories, memoirs and other non-fiction, and service as a contributor and editor of numerous magazines and books. His active involvement in the development of gay presses and a gay literary movement is widely acknowledged.”—Michael A. Lutes, The Gay and Lesbian Literary Companion

  “It is impossible to overate the influence Felice Picano has exerted over 20th Century Gay fiction. His works have shaped the Post-Stonewall landscape.”—Rainbownet.com

  “[Picano]’s a word machine. Yet he approaches the page with a newcomer’s exuberance.”—New York Times

  “Felice Picano occupies that rare constellation of literary talent populated by such stalwarts of queer literature as Christopher Cox, Andrew Holleran, and Edmund White.”—Rain Taxi Review of Books

  “Overall, the mature writing of Felice Picano and fellow ex-Violet Quill member, Edmund White, confirms what has been long suspected: the gay writing that has emerged from America over the last three decades is as consistently brilliant as writing has got.”—George Lear, Purefiction.com

  Pursuit: A Victorian Entertainment

  “Part mystery, part coming-of-age tale, Pursuit follows a young man in 19th-century Europe as he rises from trash-picking ruffian to sought-after lover and trusted associate of the British aristocracy. Picano writes the past with vividness, authenticity, unexpected twists, and engaging language. You’re carried along in his adventures from Covent Garden to the Stage and a male bordello to upper crust clubs, cheering for his hero amid danger at every turn.”—Jess Wells, author of A Slender Tether

  The Lure

  “Explosive…Picano plays out the novel’s secrets brilliantly, one deliberate card at a time. Felice Picano is one hell of a writer!”—Stephen King

  “Felice Picano has taken the psychological thriller as far as it can go.”—Andrew Holleran

  “Exciting and suspenseful. A strong plot with plenty of action. Builds to a solid surprise ending.”—Publishers Weekly

  “With its relentless tensions, solid narrative beat, and rising psychological peril this book is a tour de force of gay writing, is one of the founding books of modern gay fiction, and rightly made Picano’s reputation. It’s got a twist ending, consistently shocks and keeps you gripped.”—Gscene Magazine

  20th Century Un-limited

  “Experience once again the genius of one of the LGBT community’s best authors and see for yourself where he leads you. You and the history you know will never be the same.”—Lambda Literary Book Report

  Twelve O’Clock Tales

  “Think of Picano as a queer literary renaissance man. He writes plays and screenplays, poetry and memoirs, sex manuals and sexy thrillers, historical novels and—this is his fourth collection—short stories. The first, “Synapse,” is a creepily science-fictional account of how an elderly man has come to inhabit a boy’s body; the last, “The Perfect Setting,” is a masterpiece of detection, wherein an obsessive narrator solves the mystery of a landscape painter’s murder. Not a one of the stories is like another, such is Picano’s wide-ranging imagination; what they have in common is their power and their polish.”—The Rainbow Times

  Pursued: Lillian’s Story

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  By the Author

  The Lure

  Late in the Season

  Looking Glass Lives

  Contemporary Gay Romances

  Twelve O’Clock Tales

  20th Century Un-limited: Two Novellas

  Pursuit: A Victorian Entertainment

  Pursued: Lillian’s Story

  Pursued: Lillian’s Story

  © 2022 By Felice Picano. All Rights Reserved.

  ISBN 13: 978-1-63679-198-2

  This Electronic Original Is Published By

  Bold Strokes Books, Inc.

  P.O. Box 249

  Valley Falls, NY 12185

  First Edition: April 2022

  This is a work of fiction. Names, characters, places, and incidents are the product of the author’s imagination or are used fictitiously. Any resemblance to actual persons, living or dead, business establishments, events, or locales is entirely coincidental.

  This book, or parts thereof, may not be reproduced in any form without permission.

  Credits

  Editors: Jerry L. Wheeler and Stacia Seaman

  Production Design: Stacia Seaman

  Cover Design by Tammy Seidick

  eBook Design by Toni Whitaker

  For Barbara Fishman—long-time friend, loyal reader

  She comes slowly—

  Oppressed—

  in a golden carriage.

  Hexagram #47, Line 4, The Book of Changes

  To: The Honourable Lady Caroline-Ann Augusta

  The Glebe, Ravenglass

  Broughton, England

  12 September 188—

  My Dear Lady Caroline-Ann,

  By the time you receive this letter, I have been assured I shall no longer be within the confines of the British Isles. I apologize for whatever inconvenience to yourself and even more so to your reputation that may occur from so sudden and utter a removal by one so apparently intimate to your new state as your mother-in-l
aw.

  Doubtless the earl, your father-in-law, and your own husband will attempt to explain away so hasty and so unprepared-for an absence as mine with excuses oiled smooth as Venetian glass, with rationalizations more complex than an old Greek philosopher. Credibility, above all, is their motto, you will come to understand, credibility and the wholesale glossing of what cannot as a rule be easily explained or understood. For that reason alone, I should have left Ravenglass years ago.

  Trithers the housekeeper, Samson the butler, Farnsworthy the groundskeeper, and Jannequin of the kitchen staff and their minions have received plans and schedules, menus, and work lists to occupy them while you are upon your all-too-abbreviated honeymoon trip and, indeed, well beyond your return. All of them may be prevailed upon, especially as I’ve requested that they be at hand, to inform and to explain to you the varied areas necessary in ruling over so large a house and demesne as Ravenglass. This is a great deal more than I was provided with in my time, and so I hope this in a small way obliges you to me and serves as a small compensation.

  From such a statement, you will correctly infer that my absence is intended to be as permanent as it may seem incomprehensible. Why would the mother of the happiest young bridegroom in British society, as the Times of London says, the mother-in-law of the newest blushing young bride in our exalted circle (ibid), indeed the “wife and lifelong helpmeet of the second most powerful peer in the realm,” evanesce in quite so untimely and mysterious a fashion? As independent as you appeared to me and at times as forward a young lady of fashion in our fair isle as you resembled, I’ve no doubt you will be asking yourself exactly such questions.

  And I shall tell you all why I have fled. What the Great Man has done to me to force me to do so. What they all have done to me. How I have conspired these many months with friends old and new and with strangers, men I’d never thought to encounter in person—low tradesmen, Foreign nationals even—never mind associate with quite so closely as this, all to make good my escape. How it was evidently planned out for me decades before by my predecessor, the late Marchioness, harpy as she seemed at the time, planned and partly paid for by her suffering and by my own.

  You will be shocked, I am sure of it, to read my words. Perhaps if I have written rightly, you will one night turn to that smooth, guileless-seeming young man beside you in the bed, my own flesh as he is, and start back in horror. Wondering if even he carries the curse within his oh so oblivious mind and so apparently innocent body. Could he cannot help but do so? Nor can you help but be its victim as I and other women before me were.

  Yet, Lady, you must wait a while for details. The cross-channel packet is this moment cresting the churning waves with such a thwump and slap, thwump and slap of its bottom planks that this tilting lounge asea has suddenly become quite unoccupied by the passengers’ society, such as it was to begin with, and now a boatswain or mate or some such other official is speaking, telling us that “heavy weather lies ahead” and that “we would do best for our health” to repair to our rooms below.

  Without much modesty, I can report that I am myself as stalwart a sailor as he. Being reared in the marine neighbourhood of Ravenglass, how could I help but be so? But the very young lady’s maid alongside me and the travel lieutenant accompanying me are from parts farther inland and seem rather the worse for the channel, she already unquestionably “green about the gills,” as the local salts used to so colourfully put it, that we shall, I fear, have to all go down to our marginally less mal-de-mer inducing quarters. And so, I shall complete this missive at a later time.

  Hours Later

  A remarkable incident has occurred upon this ordinarily most banal, this most pedestrian of passages between the last time I set pen to paper and now. A person has gone missing. Or, rather, a personage. A rather large, heavy one. One might even say a gross personage.

  I was apprised of this by the craft’s purser knocking on our stateroom door. The green-faced little maid answered to that official, and he and his mate stood in that sketch of a foyer and requested to enter. At this request, my male sentinel stepped forward and bluntly asked upon what business. They then explained that in the past several hours, a first-class passenger had gone missing, and they asked if we knew of him, had seen him, had remarked him, or indeed remarked “anything at all unusual.”

  Naturally, he assured them in the negative. They then apologized, saying they needs must ask everyone on board and search every square foot of the ship to ensure that Bey Jurma Gorglek, the unfortunately named Turkish person was, in fact no longer aboard. The purser was most courteous and deferential, and so I let them look about our rather limited quarters. And while I am listed upon the ship’s register under the name of Mrs. Sm—th, the fellow must have recognized quality, and intuited “position,” even now that I am actively abjuring it. Evidently many ladies are forced for one reason or another these days to travel incognito such as this.

  Once they had left the rooms, I sent my protector out to gather further information on the disappearance, which I think he was happy to do if only to escape the close confines of the cabin and also to do some of his own detecting, as he fancies himself adept in that regard. No, Lady Caroline-Ann, you have not yet guessed the identity of this most valuable fellow, who has agreed, indeed, sworn upon the Good Book, to see me through my travails and not leave me until I am settled in complete safety.

  He returned following a period to confirm that the missing Bey travelled alone, which several people remarked upon, but he had seemed most concerned about several other passengers who he was certain had noticed him. The Bey was either still or only just recently an official of the Ottoman Empire. Perhaps, my informant opined, based upon what talk he’d collected from others on board, the Bey was the victim of an assassination. Several swarthy, slender fellows affecting no knowledge of English or French diction are said to have scowled upon first seeing the Bey some time after we had all boarded the channel packet in England. They are believed to be nationals of Albania or another of those Balkans now under Franz Joseph’s benevolent sway, only lately recovered from the Ottomans. Their motive, of course, is presumed to be revenge, if not of a personal nature, than perhaps a more sweepingly national or even racial one, or as a result of their long centuries beneath the Turkish yoke.

  So, it is all grim and political and rather titillating too, I must admit. It is no wonder that my own mother-in-law, the much put upon, late Dowager Marchioness Bella, once assured me that “foreign travel is so broadening to the mind, or so I have been informed.”

  It is good policy for any new Lady to become acquainted with some of the local people. Gentry, I know well, shall pursue you on their own given any encouragement from your new high state. But among those of the nearby villages are several persons you would certainly overlook to your disadvantage.

  First, consider Mrs. Adelaide Eagles, née Creswell, an upright woman who at times has taken on the duties of the old dean, Dr. Gribble, in the chapterhouse and rectory. Although one cannot understand how this estimable person appears to know virtually all that transpires in the villages surrounding the manor house, she can become as invaluable to you as she ended up becoming to myself.

  The former Miss Creswell was the elder of three sisters and by no means the handsomest. Still, her bright blue eyes, her sharp facial features, her small, well-shaped head and extremely acute ears provide her advantages neither of her elder, duller siblings can lay claim to. She is quick to report on any miscreants, but possesses equal asperity in remarking on anyone who may be beset by misfortune in the surrounding farms and shire, with the consequence that such persons may be uplifted or mollified by a well-placed handful of shillings, or that employment might be found for one of their family members about the manor house or grounds, assuring a secure source of enrichment for them and greater loyalty toward yourself and the estate. She will not only be able to recommend that unfortunate’s best hope, but also in which likely p
osition the person should be employed to greatest effect. She is seldom mistaken, and through her good offices, Lady Caroline-Ann, your own sovereignty shall take on a far more substantial glow at Ravenglass, as did my own.

  If I might be so immodest as to point out the country folks’ applausus when my own poor name was mentioned at his young lordship’s nuptial supper given for us all at the manor house the day following your naturally more glittering London ceremony? Such an homage is chiefly due to my harkening to Miss Creswell’s constant counsels. Indeed, during my lengthy and often forlorn decades as mistress of Ravenglass while your husband was away at school, and my own husband endlessly away in the city upon political business, it was those simpler souls’ company, their amusements, their daily goings-on and habitual life that, of necessity, configured the greatest support of my existence.

  I have much justification in believing that although you pride yourself upon being a modern young lady with many friends, that you shall find yourself at last comprehending all too well and all too soon the portent behind my low-spirited words.

  I only hope I am mistaken. But alas, the last few interviews I’ve had with your husband, my only son, have shown that in the speech of our neighbours, the apple falls closer than ever to the tree, for he thinks exactly like his father. This betides woe to you, as it unquestionably did to me.

  A tap upon the door confirms what the noticeably calmer sea predicted: we may ascend for air and light, with embarkation upon the continent to ensue.

  I post this to you, Lady, with all my heart yet with the greatest anxiety,

  Your mother-in-law, Marchioness, Lillian of Ravenglass