A Breach of Promise - Anne Perry [90]
Rathbone was too restless to remain at home. There was a rage inside him which demanded physical action, even if it was completely pointless.
He took his coat and hat and stick, not for any purpose beyond the pleasant feel of its weight in his hand, and went out to visit Monk.
However, Monk was not in, and there was no point in waiting for him in his empty and rather cold room, even though his landlady offered him the opportunity. He left again and went to his club.
He sat and brooded over a single-malt whiskey for nearly an hour, attempting to think creatively, until he was joined by an old friend who sat down in the chair opposite him, bringing another whiskey to replace the one Rathbone had nearly finished.
“Rotten business,” he said sympathetically. “Never know where you’ll find the beggars, do you.”
Rathbone looked up. “What did you say?”
“Never know where you’ll find the beggars,” the man repeated. His name was Boothroyd and he was a solicitor in family law.
“What beggars?” Rathbone said edgily.
“Homosexuals.” Boothroyd pushed over the glass he had brought for Rathbone. “For heaven’s sake, man, don’t be coy! There’s nothing to protect now. Angry with yourself you didn’t guess, no doubt, but then you always were a trifle naive, my dear chap. Always thinking in terms of the greater crimes, murder, arson and grand theft, not sordid little bedroom perversions. Looking beyond the mark.”
A turmoil of thoughts boiled up in Rathbone’s mind, awareness that Boothroyd was right in that he should have thought of it, blind rage at the man’s complacency and ignorance of the torrent of pain he was dismissing with a few callous sentences, and then a deeper stirring of a different kind of questioning and anger that these judgments were even a matter of law.
He looked up at Boothroyd and ignored the whiskey.
“I suppose I imagined that what a man did in his bedroom, providing he injured no one, was his own affair,” he said clearly and very distinctly.
Boothroyd was startled. His rather bulbous eyes widened in amazement.
“Are you saying you approve of buggery?” he asked, his voice lifting sharply at the end of the word in incredulity.
“There are a lot of things I don’t approve of,” Rathbone answered with the careful enunciation which marked his icy temper. “I don’t approve of a man who uses his wife without love or consideration for her feelings. I don’t approve of a woman who sells her body to obtain material goods, or power, or any other commodity, in or outside marriage. I don’t approve of cruelty, physical or of the mind.” He stared at Boothroyd unwaveringly. “I don’t approve of lies or manipulation or coercion or blackmail. For that matter, I don’t approve of greed or idleness or jealousy. But I do not believe we should improve our society by attempting to legislate against them. All one would do is turn every petty-minded busybody and every mealymouthed gossip into a spy, a snoop and a telltale.”
Boothroyd was staring at him as if he could scarcely believe his ears.
“Of all the things I disapprove of,” Rathbone went on, lowering his voice a little, but still just as passionate and just as freezingly angry, “I think that two men loving each other in the privacy of their own homes, involving no outsiders, is neither my business nor is it my interest, and I have no desire to make it so.”
“I am surprised you call it love,” Boothroyd said with some astringence. “Although perhaps I should not be.”
“Love is a euphemism for a lot of relationships,” Rathbone snapped back, feeling his cheeks burn as he understood what Boothroyd meant, but the rage in him refused to correct it, dear as he knew it might cost him.
“The Bible says it is a sin,” Boothroyd pointed out. “I think all Christian men agree.”
“So is