A Rake At the Gates of Hell
by DevilChild
Fandom: Clarissa (TV)
Rating: Mature (themes)
Pairing: Belford/Lovelace
Author's Note: Written as a stocking stuffer for kezya in the Yuletide 2006 Challenge.
Copyright and Disclaimer: Clarissa (tv) is copyright its respective owners. I make no claims to ownership or creation. This bit of not for profit modern folklore (thank you Prof. Jenkins) is mine.
Lovelace told him the other day that he's got his eye on a new catch. Clarissa Harlowe. Beautiful, virginal (legs locked at the ankles), and very very rich. Her parents wish to wed her to an absolute toad of a man, Soames, and Lovelace wants to see if he can net her by pretending that her beauty and virtue has reformed him.
He will never say so to Lovelace, but Belford often thinks of that night of too much brandywine and no pretty-enough willing lasses. (There were willing lasses, but neither he nor Lovelace are such slaves to their pricks that they will lie with someone whose teeth are rotting out of her head and whose very body reeks of gin.) Belford thinks of the wicked thrill of getting away with something so utterly beyond the pale, and the feel of Lovelace's lips on his neck while his hand jerked his yard too much for his own good, he knows.
For all that Lovelace prides himself on being a Rake sine qua non, he chooses the oddest things about which to have conventional morals. Belford figures but why not have a man on the side also, if one is all about being so bad. (Except that that would be asking Lovelace to be faithful in a relationship of sorts, wouldn't it? Might as well attempt to stop the tides.)
Belford knows better to broach the topic again — Lovelace would drop their acquaintance and, worse yet, spread the word that he was a deviant. And society, being society, would assume it truth, it being such a deliciously juicy and ruinous tidbit of gossip, and ... better not to dwell on this, since Lovelace has been kind enough not to consign him to decades of loneliness and shame.
But, on some nights, as they take on the town, and Belford sits at a table, glass of brandy in one hand, pretty (and very willing if you've got the guineas) wench in his lap, and watches Lovelace turn on the charm — he doesn't need to, mind, he's got the guineas for the tart on his arm — he can't help but think that that's the thing that drew him to Lovelace in the first place, that charismatic air and charm. That, in a way, Lovelace seduced him without meaning to.
Only he's gotten to taste the victory but once.
He almost envies this Clarissa Harlowe. Lovelace will have her, of this Belford is certain, because what he wants, he gets. But Belford very much fears that she will fall in love with that dashing, handsome man for whom all things seem possible, and that, as with him, she will want a part of Lovelace she cannot have. A part that nobody can have. A part that might only exist in the minds of those foolish or unlucky enough to be snared by him.
Perhaps together they can commiserate over the fickleness of Lovelace and ruminate on the cruelness of a fate that has consigned them to wanting only that honey which is gathered off the thorns.
But enough of that. There is a game to be played, and Belford's genuinely enough of a rake that he's wondering if Lovelace can pull this off. Because, if he had Lovelace's charm — if he could learn the trick of it — the shoe'd be on the other foot, and he'd be trying to charm the knickers off this Clarissa Harlowe, too.
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Last Updated: 4/6/08