Chapter Text
“Wylan,” a voice is saying. “Lovely, wake up, it’s all right, you’re safe.”
Wylan sits bolt upright. His heart is racing, his hand pressed to his chest, a sob working its way out of his throat.
The light trickles in through the heavy drapes. He’s home, in the ridiculously large four-poster bed, in the master bedroom of the Van Eck mansion on the Geldstraat. He’s fine.
“Bad dreams again?”
He nods, reaches for the glass of water on the side-table. His hand, he notices absently, is trembling. He drinks, then puts the glass down and snuggles back down into the bed.
Strong arms draw him into a hug. “What was it this time?”
“I don’t remember, really,” Wylan admits. He hates that, hates the multiple ways his stupid brain lets him down. “Just… panic. Fear.” He huffs and rolls over to stare up at the rich red tapestry above his head. “It’s like… this terrible feeling that I’m trying to find someone, I’m calling for someone, but they can’t hear me, or I can’t reach them. And I feel so lost…”
He reaches out now, blindly, feels his hand being taken and held.
“I’ll find you. I promise.”
“I know,” he says, feeling his heart slow, the panic ease. “I know you will. I love you.” He turns his head for a kiss, and tries to push the dream into the back of his mind, to overwrite it with touch, lips on his lips, a hand in his hand. “What time is it?”
“Just past six bells.”
“I should get up,” Wylan says, without moving. He should. He has a lot on today: a meeting of the council, correspondence to go through, drinks with shareholders. But the dream is lingering, leaving a sour taste in his mouth and a strange ache in his gut, and all he really wants to do is hide under the covers, rest.
But he’s Wylan Van Eck, head of the Van Eck household, youngest member of the merchant council, and there are expectations. So he gets up, and washes, and puts on his suit, and gets ready for the day.
He can feel eyes on him at all times, knows without looking what expression he’d see if he turned round. Pride, care, concern. He’s the luckiest man in Ketterdam, to have what he has.
The council meeting goes… fine. They’re soon to vote on the renewal programme, sponsored by Hiram Schenk, and opinions are divided. Wylan, who may well have the deciding vote, made up his mind on the proposal some time ago, and is rather bored by the debate. He lets his mind wander instead, doodling little guns in the margins of the agenda, until Schenk and Jan Meijer, one of the newer members, argue themselves into irritable silence.
Afterwards, Jellen Radmakker intercepts him as he’s heading to the stairs. “I’m surprised at your voting intention, young Wylan,” he says.
Radmakker has never been one for small talk, and he always calls him young Wylan, which Wylan should probably mind, but somehow he doesn’t. Radmakker and him don’t get on, exactly, and they don’t always agree, but Radmakker is straight as an arrow and one of the less insufferable members of the council. Wylan is a little sad they’re on opposite sides of this particular question, but these things happen.
“I think the city is crying out for this kind of improvement,” Wylan tells him.
Radmakker’s bushy white eyebrows draw together. His dark eyes are sharp beneath them. “You young things,” he says. “Always pushing for change. You’ll learn in time it’s sometimes easier to live and let live. I doubt the people you think you’re helping will thank you, either. In fact, I had expected your… acquaintances to make a strong argument in favour of the status quo.”
They’re down the curve of the grand wooden staircase now. Wylan can see his carriage waiting outside. “I’m doing what I think is best,” he insists.
“Well,” Radmakker says, “man proposes, Ghezen disposes.” He watches Wylan leave, still frowning. Not cross, so much as confused, Wylan thinks. It’s strange. As far as he’s concerned, the choice to support renewal is obvious. Ketterdam desperately needs to be made better. Anyone who spends any time in the Barrel knows that.
Back home, in his study, he sits in the imposing wooden chair his father used. He’s still not quite used to it – still feels like an interloper, a child playing dress-up, on the wrong side of the desk. Sometimes he’d rather like to flee into the parlour, lie down on one of the sofas instead. Fewer memories there of sitting frozen and scolded and shamed.
But he’s head of the household, and this is the office, so here he is, eyes closed, listening.
“Another letter from Radmakker arrived with the afternoon post. He’s like a dog with a bone, that man. Want to hear it?”
“I can guess the gist,” Wylan says. “Think better of your choice, young Wylan, if the people in the Barrel lived more virtuous lives in Ghezen’s sight, they would deserve more than they currently have, bla bla bla.”
A laugh. “Yes, more or less. There’s a letter from your mother too, that one I will read.”
“Please.” Wylan’s mother is at the house down south; she spends every summer there now. Ketterdam never gets hot, exactly, but the humidity in the warmer months can get oppressive, and she likes the fresher air and open spaces. Wylan misses her. Perhaps they can visit for a weekend, after the vote.
“Darling Wylan, I hope you are well. All is fine here. I am becoming quite the countrywoman, rising early to collect eggs for Gretje to cook for breakfast. My days pass calmly and quietly; I paint a little, play the pianoforte, and read the most scandalous novels from the travelling library, they would certainly make you blush. Perhaps I’ll bring some home for you.”
Wylan looks up to see eyebrows waggling, teeth white in a bright smile. “Then she asks how I’m doing. I can’t think why the idea of you blushing would prompt her to mention me.”
“Tease,” Wylan says. “Carry on.” He tips his head back and lets his mother’s words roll over him. He’s not proud of many things in his life, but the day he travelled to Saint Hilde’s and got his mother out, the joy on her face when she saw him, her fingers tracing his features, both of them in tears… He will carry the happiness of that moment to his grave. There was so much love in that room, his and his mother’s, and in the arms that circled him from behind, almost holding him up he was so overwhelmed… He’d turned, at some point, he’d needed to see that beloved face, to check it wasn’t all a dream…
A headache spikes, abruptly. He winces, and must make a noise, because the words cease.
“Are you feeling all right?” Worry in his voice. Wylan’s sick of being worried over. It makes him feel small, burdensome.
“I’m fine,” he says, waving a hand. “Keep going.”
The headaches are a recent phenomenon. He has medicine for them, little brown pills, and they do help, but they leave him foggy, which he hates. He’s not sure what brought the pains on. Years of squinting at unreadable books, he thinks sometimes. Another thing to blame his father for.
He swallows two of the pills before the drinks reception. He hates these events, always has. When he was very young they were simply noisy and boring. As he got older, he’d spend them near silent and so tense he felt sick, knowing he was failing in some way, dreading finding out how, and what his punishment would be.
It is yet another expected thing, though, so he grits his teeth and endures. At least he doesn’t have to do it alone any more.
Currently he’s being buttonholed by the De Groot widow, possibly Beatrix but he’s not entirely sure he ever knew her first name. She’s a hunched over little woman, her eyes beady under her stern cap of black silk and white lace. He remembers her pinching his cheek when he was little, always slightly harder than necessary.
“I’m so glad we have your vote,” she says. “There was some concern you’d be swayed by those wretches you used to associate with.”
Wylan nods in what he hopes is polite dismissal. The room is hot with candlelight; it makes everything waver briefly. He feels faint, takes another gulp of expensive champagne. “I always judge a proposal on its merits.”
She pats his hand like he’s a child. “Such good choices of late,” she murmurs. “Of course there was all that unpleasantness, but still, I do think Jan would be proud.”
His pleasant smile turns into a grimace turns into him baring his teeth; he tries to soften it slightly. None of them truly know what his father was – though he’s frightened, sometimes, that even if they did, they wouldn’t see anything wrong.
“Your young man must be keeping you on the right path,” she burbles on. “So much more appropriate, I cannot tell you how relieved we were to hear, you must introduce me to him–”
“Of course,” Wylan says, thinking thank all the saints, because if he has to listen to her for another minute he might scream. He waves across the room like he’s summoning a rescue, and of course rescue comes immediately.
“You wanted me?”
“Yes, Mme De Groot would like to make your acquaintance– Mme de Groot, please allow me to present Pieter De Jong–”
“Charmed,” Pieter says, bowing over the widow’s papery hand at the precise angle etiquette demands. Wylan flashes him a grateful smile and flees.
Later, in bed, Pieter asks, “Why do you hate socialising so much?” His blue eyes are like the sea, deep enough for Wylan to drown in. He’s drawing idle circles on Wylan’s chest.
Wylan shrugs. “I suppose I just feel like they’re all waiting for me to fail.”
“You’re not going to.”
“I know, but it doesn’t matter. If they knew the truth about me, they’d sell their stock overnight, despite the higher yields these last few years, and then I would fail, regardless.”
Pieter draws him in closer and nuzzles his neck. It’s a little ticklish; Wylan squirms. “I won’t let you fail, lovely.”
“I know,” Wylan breathes. “I couldn’t do any of this without you.” He can’t believe how lucky he is, that the secretary he hired only a couple of months back is now here, in bed with him. It’s been fast, but it feels so right, like it was meant to be. He has no idea, now, how he’d ever managed before Pieter came.
His lover grins, a brief darting thing. “No need to worry,” he says. “I’m not going anywhere.”