An Unexpected Mole

An Unexpected Mole by Kit Miller, with art by melanofly first appeared in issue Issue 108 in 2024.

Summary

David and Jonathan have only five days to organise a heist.

Connections

This piece is a direct sequel to Nothing But An Unassuming Valet. The characters also appear in Leisure and Little Luxuries.

Author's Notes

The theme this time is “sequel,” so of course I wrote one, but I also played around with repetition and echo in the piece itself. Several lines are uttered by one character and then echoed by another later on.

As with “Unassuming Valet,” I had great fun playing with deceiving appearances and the actual truth that lies beneath. Additionally, in that first piece, I decided, purely for my own amusement, that all members of the Prevost household would have names found in the Old Testament. With the Lewis household, I chose names that are of French origin or which are also popular in France, though I did not apply this as strictly as the OT names — you could argue that Sophia is the Germanic version of the name and I should have chosen Sophie.

I deeply, deeply regret picking 1885 as a date. Whenever I wanted to make some kind of historical reference, and went to check if it was historically accurate, I found that whatever I was looking up — be it a novel, play, or event — was either too early or too late. The only major thing that I could find that happened in 1885 was the complete criminalisation of homosexuality. Hooray. /s

Here’s a few explanatory notes of the historical trivia I did include.

• Sophia speaks of “women in Halifax wearing top hats and conducting their own business.” This is a reference to Anne Lister. Sophia also idolises the French actress Sarah Bernhardt, who was as bisexual as is possible to claim about a historical figure, and who famously played both male and female roles, at one point playing both Hamlet and Ophelia on alternating nights.
• North and South is a novel by Elizabeth Gaskell, first published in 1854. It is a social novel advocating for workers’ rights and equality, including gender equality. At the time this story is set, Gaskell’s works had largely slipped into obscurity, but I think a righteous, covertly rebellious young man like David would surely still be aware of the novel and connect with its themes.
• Sophia nicks a statuette of Narasimha, the fourth, lion-headed avatar of Vishnu. I chose to put this avatar in the spotlight as he triumphs over seemingly unconquerable evil with cunning, ferocity, and fearlessness.
• “The Law” that David and Jonathan occasionally speak about with dread is the Labouchere Amendment, which criminalised more or less everything two men could do with and to one another as “Gross Indecency.” Also known as the ‘blackmailer’s charter,” this was the law that would bring down Oscar Wilde. It would not be until the Wolfenden report in 1957 that decriminalisation of homosexuality was beginning to be discussed, and homosexuality (in private, between consenting adults over 21 years of age) was finally decriminalised with the Sexual Offences Act in 1967.
• David reads The Sins of The Cities on the Plain, which is a real Victorian queer erotica novella. If you want to read it, too, you can do so on Wikisource.
• This is the first piece of mine that is illustrated! My sincerest thanks to melanofly, who did an excellent job rendering my boys. I keep staring at their illustrations and I keep grinning like a loon.

External Links

This story is also available on Archive of Our Own (AO3).