Archive of Our Own ^beta

Chapter Text

“I can’t believe I let you talk me into this,” Alex grumbles as his boots hit the gravel, a barely attempted whisper in deference to the fact that they’re now in sight of the house. It’s the same refrain he’s been repeating for the last several hours as they sat in the back of the carriage, being swiftly delivered to their terrible, terrible fate.

“Really? I had no idea you felt that way,” June replies flatly, shaking out her skirts and straightening her hat.

“You know they only invited us because Mom married an industry magnate,” he says with a whine that he knows makes him sound about five years old. He doesn’t care right now. “And they think they’ll get… clout or influence or something, by having us here. Contacts, and more money for their already overstuffed pockets so they can buy…” He looks around at the obscenely large house in front of him, the neatly dressed servants standing by to help them alight from the carriage—as if they were unable to take a couple of fucking steps without help. “…who the fuck knows what more these people need to buy. Like they haven’t got way more than their fair share already.”

“Stop acting like you’ve lived in poverty your whole life, Alex,” Nora pipes up. Her own costume is much more plain than June’s frilly lavender dress, and therefore less in need of fixing, so she’s just standing by the carriage, picking at her nails and waiting to make her way to the front door. “We can all see the shiny new buttons on your jacket and the buckles on your boots. The lace on your collar, too. You’re not fooling anyone.”

“Fuck off, Nora,” he says, rubbing his thumb over one of the aforementioned buttons. It had been an expensive jacket, but he really loved it and honestly… the money was burning a hole in his purse. What’s the point of having so much of it if he can’t buy himself nice things once in a while?

“You know that we’ve met Lady Beatrice and she was exceptionally nice, Alex,” June cuts in, trying to de-escalate their argument. “The invite came from her brother and sister-in-law, sure, but I’m certain it was her doing and not some sort of plot to re-colonise us by offering dinner and tea and garden games or whatever.”

“Yes, Alex, what a terrible destiny,” Nora says. “To be hosted for a week by all these charming rich people, who have bent over backwards to accommodate us, including sending their own carriage into town to fetch us. How very dare we drag you into their nefarious scheme.”

Nora might be teasing him, but he thinks she’s hit the nail on the head precisely. He’s not sure what the scheme is here, but there’s got to be a catch. People, particularly this kind of people—filthy rich aristocrats, dyed-in-the-wool snobs every last one of them—don’t just invite strangers to spend a week in their country house out of friendship. Brown and Jewish strangers like them? It’s probably unheard of in these parts.

“What if I don’t want to play games? What if I don’t want to drink tea? What if—”

A loud, piercing squawk rings out from behind the carriage, and Alex shuts up sharply, all his finely tuned senses perking up in search of the danger. He ducks down to look underneath the chassis and finds what he knows is only a peacock, but might as well be some prehistoric predator for the way it is stalking between the wheels, making its way directly towards him with an aggressive, obviously menacing gait.

“What the f—” He just manages to stop the profanity spilling loudly from his lips.

The thing screeches loudly and Alex jumps up, looking around to check that one of the household staff is making a move to sort out this wild animal situation, as they surely must be—but finds that no one is rushing to catch the rabid beast, no one else seems concerned. No one is coming to his rescue. June and Nora, traitorous and fickle, have, in fact, started to walk carelessly away from him, leaving Alex as the last line of defence.

He turns to the footman standing nearby. “Is that… is it normal?” he says, gesturing in the vague direction of the bird.

The absurd creatures shrieks. Alex takes several rushed steps back, sweat prickling on his neck.

The footman’s face does some sort of complicated contortion, and Alex can tell he’s fighting to suppress a smile. “Yes, sir. His Grace keeps a healthy stock of peacocks and peahens in the estate, as well as other birds more well suited for shooting. I believe there is a hunt planned for later in the week and your party will be able to enjoy them then.”

Alex takes a few more steps back, still turning to see if anyone is as concerned as he is over the bird’s determined charge towards the humans.

No one is, unfortunately.

He straightens his lapels and starts walking backwards in the direction of the house, catching up to the girls and letting June take one of his arms at the elbow as Nora takes the other, sparing one last look behind himself to make sure the peacock isn’t following them. The animal’s tale flicks up for a moment, as if it knows Alex, smelling his fear; a little warning that says I’m coming for you.

Alex narrows his eyes at it, trying to return the glare—but then it squawks once more, this time even more loudly than the first, and Alex finds himself hurrying forward at speed, holding tightly to the girls’ arms and dragging them towards the house.

As much as he’s dreading getting this weekend of high country living started, he would much rather be inside, where at least there should be no beasts waiting to ambush him.

Or so he hopes.

The household staff is pouring out of the house, assembling in a neat line at the foot of the wide steps that lead up to the front door, framed by two huge Greek-style columns. There are a lot of them: five young women in what he thinks are housemaids’ uniforms, four more young men in the same uniform as the young guy who’d helped them out of the carriage, a matronly older woman with an enormous bunch of keys hanging off a chain at her waist who he knows must be the housekeeper, and a man in a penguin suit at the top of the line—the butler.

From behind them, in a much more chaotic manner, emerge the members of the household, all wearing relaxed day clothes. At the head of them, the Duke of Windsor.

Because that’s who’s hosting them. The Duke of Windsor—or just plain Windsor, as he apparently is meant to be called—and his wife, the Duchess of Windsor. The Duke’s sister, Lady Beatrice—June and Nora’s new friend—is also here, of course, as well as the Duke’s two young children, Amelia—or Lady Amelia, as Alex has been told—and Arthur—who despite being only six years old is apparently Earl of Kingham, because that is how these things seem to run, or so June says. It has certainly been a time, learning the intricacies and subtle distinctions of the English aristocracy. What kind of backwards country is this, where little children are handed titles like that at birth? And why does the boy’s sister only get to be called lady when her older brother already has a big fucking title to go with his name? Alex despises all of it.

He hovers in front of June and Nora, because apparently that is the proper way, and the duke is the first to reach him, one hand held out and a broad smile on his face.

“Mr. Claremont-Diaz, welcome to Foxden Park. We are delighted to have you,” Windsor says, shaking Alex’s hand enthusiastically. His face is fairly nondescript, pleasant in a forgettable sort of way, but he is a lot younger than Alex had been expecting, and a lot less stuffy too. His coat doesn’t even have tails.

“Your grace,” Alex says, giving the most perfunctory bow he thinks he can get away with without getting them all kicked out on their asses.

“May I introduce my wife, the Duchess of Windsor,” the duke says, gesturing to a pretty—if just as boring-looking as her husband—woman standing a polite step behind him.

“Your grace,” Alex says again. “Thank you for inviting us to your lovely estate. What we have been able to see of it so far is beautiful and we are very happy to be here.” He turns to look for June and Nora so he can make the introductions, only to find them already giggling with Lady Beatrice, arms draped over each other’s shoulders. “Uh, may I introduce my sister, Miss Claremont-Diaz, your graces,” he says, leading the duke and duchess over to June. June drops into a note-perfect curtsey, including a demure dip of the head that Alex feels constitutes false advertising, given what he knows about his sister’s true character; “and our family friend, Miss Holleran,” he says with a sweep of the arm in Nora’s direction. The curtsey Nora manages is much less polished—and, in Alex’s opinion, much more honest. He knows if she had it her way, Nora would slap her palm against the duke’s and call it a day.

Windsor inclines his head smoothly towards each of them in turn, taking their hands and dropping a kiss a polite inch away from the fabric of their gloves. He then turns to do the last few introductions and finally they’re done with the dull formalities. Alex only hopes everyone will fucking relax as the week goes on. Because, right now this is for sure the stiffest bunch of people he’s ever met.

Their party is led up into the house, past the line of servants, none of whom are asked to introduce themselves or even lift their eyes up to say hello, only bowing their heads and bobbing their knees, because this is just the kind of backwards situation that this is. The only person who is allowed to have a name is Howard, the butler, a stiff old bird if Alex has ever seen one.

The house itself is probably the largest he’s ever seen, certainly the largest house that isn’t also a palace, or some sort of government building. It’s built of pale blond stone, weathered over decades or centuries into grey and white in patches, and stretches widely in both directions away from the front door. There are at least a dozen windows to either side, three stories above plus the tall roof he knows must house the household staff in its attics. The gate at the entrance to the estate had been just as imposing, set beneath a wide tower, and they had driven on for at least fifteen minutes after passing it, until they’d reached the main building. They’d seen a few small cottages dotted throughout the grounds as they went by, presumably meant for caretakers and gamekeepers and whatever else is needed in an estate as grand as Foxden Park.

It’s impressive, and part of Alex can’t quite believe he’s been invited to stay, but the rest of him thinks it’s all abhorrent, and fights very hard to shut down his provincial, awe-struck side.

The entrance hall is a large, double-height space, walls half-lined with dark wood and the upper sections with a deep, rich burgundy wallpaper; a profusion of boring portraits of dukes and duchesses of yore hanging on them, all pasty complexions and weak chins. A double staircase climbs into the upper floor, the panelling carrying up and leading the eye through until it splits into two separate hallways, into the depths of the house proper.

The duchess indicates that the staff is to show them to their rooms so they can change out of their dusty travelling clothes, and then requests they join her for tea in the Gold Parlour when they’re ready—wherever that may be. She departs the hall, leading her daughter by the hand and ruffling her son’s hair with a giggle, which gives Alex a little bit of hope that this weekend might indeed become more relaxed.

A footman leads them up, though Lady Beatrice walks ahead of June and Nora, talking the whole way. They turn left at the top—the right-hand corridor being the family wing, she explains—and June is deposited in the first room to the left, hand-painted lettering on the door proclaiming it the Yellow Room. Nora is led into the second—the Green Room—and Alex to the last door on that side of the corridor—the Red Room.

The large bedroom certainly lives up to its name. It is decorated tastefully in shades of red—autumnal hunting scenes hung on the walls; thick, maroon damask draped over the canopy of the bed; soft pink upholstery on the settee and chairs by the fireplace. A pair of large windows opposite the door face the front drive where they just arrived, and Alex spots their carriage disappearing in a cloud of dust as it makes its way to the stables.

Within a minute a pair of footmen appear to deliver his trunk and cases, followed by a housemaid who starts unpacking his things into the wardrobe. She sets aside a few shirts which she says she’ll freshen up and bring back and then departs, leaving Alex with the footman, who is clearly expecting Alex to need help getting dressed.

Alex is twenty-one years old.

He has been getting dressed by himself for as long as he can remember.

He dismisses the man, who looks so thoroughly offended it makes Alex feel bad, and sets to washing himself at the basin and changing into what June calls house-party clothes.

Alex is still trying to get used to all of this. It’s been a few months since they arrived in England, brought over by his mom’s new husband, Leo, and the demands of his various business ventures. They could have chosen to stay in America, of course, but neither Alex nor June had wanted to miss out on the opportunity to visit Europe. Nora had been brought along as her parents thought it would be a good opportunity to be escorted through English society by friends. To see the world, meet new people.

The people—and the society—part of the trip has turned out to be much more significant than any of them had anticipated.

Alex had pictured himself walking through historic sites, wandering around museums, soaking in all of Europe’s ancient history and culture. He had not imagined most of their time would be taken up in… frivolities.

Since getting off the ship, they’ve made the circuit of balls and dinner parties in the city, cafés and restaurants, theatres and clubs, all facilitated by Leo’s business contacts. It’s been strange for the three of them, so unlike their upbringing in Texas. But they have been trying to make it work, June especially, and finding a real friend in Lady Beatrice has clearly been good for her and Nora.

For himself, Alex still can’t get comfortable in these surroundings, still can’t seem to find his feet. He worries all the time that people will spot him for an impostor—which he knows he is, if he’s being honest. He’s not got a title or land. Nobody knows his name.

He can’t decide if he wants them to or not.

After what he thinks is an appropriate interval, he makes his way back downstairs and follows the sound of voices to what must be the Gold Parlour, finding that he is the last of the party to have made their way down. The room is certainly worthy of the name. Beyond the same ornate golden frames that surround all pictures in this house, there is golden upholstery on the settees, curtains of a heavy cream fabric embroidered in gold thread, and not a single accidental patch of bright or primary colour in all of the décor. The floor, shiny blond wood, is covered by thick rugs, all in shades of white, pale yellow and gold, of course.

June, Nora and Lady Beatrice have taken over a small circle of armchairs, congregating around a tray that holds a tower of cakes and treats. The duchess is sat with her daughter, Lady Amelia, who's currently doing something akin to braiding her mother’s hair, and the duke is with the tiny little lord, Arthur, at a games table, a board for checkers set up between them.

“Mr. Claremont-Diaz!” the duchess calls out when he enters. “Come in, come in. Would you like some tea?” A maid tries to reach for the teapot, but the duchess waves her off, saying, “We’re fine, Eliza, thank you. I’ll ring if I need anything, but you may go back down for now.” The girl looks a little suspicious, but she bobs a neat curtsey anyway and walks out of the room. The duchess watches her leave and then turns to Alex. “We’ve been trying for years to get rid of a lot of the formalities here, but some habits die hard,” she says with a slightly conspiratorial tone and a pleasant smile, passing a cup on a saucer to Alex.

“Thank you, your grace,” he says.

“Oh, please! Call me Martha,” she says breezily. “That’s another formality I’d be rid of in a second if I could.”

The duke abandons his game of checkers and crosses the room over to them.

“Howard, bless the man, was trained in my grandmother’s household,” he says, leaning over the low table and pouring his own cup of tea. “She is incredibly strict. I’m not sure we’ll ever be able to make the man loosen up, and so the rest of the household staff follows his lead, I’m afraid.”

Alex knows less than zero about running a house like this one. He offers up what he thinks is a polite, sympathetic smile in response to the duke’s woes with household staff and the severe difficulties of his aristocratic upbringing, and chances a glance over to June and Nora in case one of them fancies coming to his rescue.

“That must be difficult, your grace.”

“Oh, no, it’s Philip, please. Like Martha said. This is not a formal occasion and to be honest there’s just too many your graces around here, and I often get confused if people are talking to me or my wife.”

The duchess giggles next to him and takes up the conversation.

“Now, I have to apologise, Mr. Claremont-Diaz, as the house party is rather female-heavy at the moment. We are expecting two more guests: my brother-in-law, who should have already been here to welcome you, but seems to be awfully late, and another family friend. You must know how hard it is to find suitable bachelors to make up a balanced party in the countryside.”

Must he? Alex has not a single fucking clue what she’s on about. Is he suitable?

“Oh, yes. I’m sure it is.” He’s going to pull a muscle trying to be on the level with these people.

The tiny earl comes to his rescue.

“Papa, Papa, I think someone else is coming,” he calls to his father from the window. “Another carriage’s just pulled up.”

“Splendid!” Windsor says, getting up and walking out towards the entrance hall to inspect the new arrivals, followed by his wife and their children.

Alex cannot say he’s looking forward to the arrival of more rich snobs who will undoubtedly ask him questions about what club he’s a member of and… how many deer he killed in the last year? Most of the men he’s met in gatherings like this seem to drift between those two topics—that is, when they’re not complaining about their tenants, or about parliament trying to do outrageous things such as enacting taxes ensuring working people can earn a decent living.

Lady Beatrice drifts over to his side of the room, drawn by the teapot.

“Settling in alright, Mr. Claremont-Diaz?”

“Lady Beatrice! Yes, thank you.”

She gives him a cross-eyed look that makes him feel like he’s just said something very wrong.

“Oh, please don’t call me that. Only people I don’t like call me that, and I’d rather think you’re not about to join that club,” she says, raising the cup of tea to her lips and positively slurping. Alex thinks he might be a little bit in love. “It’s just Bea.”

“Okay, then please can you get everyone here to stop calling me Mr. Claremont-Diaz and call me Alex instead? Because I feel like I’ve committed a crime and I’m being called up in front of the Bench.”

She arches an eyebrow at him. “Well, Alex. I think we’re going to have fun this week,” she says with a wink.

A rumble of deep voices drifts in from the entrance hall and Bea straightens up.

“Oh, Henry’s here!” she squeals, already halfway to running out of the room.

Alex gets up and walks over to where June and Nora have taken possession of the seat by the window. Nora scoots to make room for him.

“How are you doing, Alejandro? I feel like that chip on your shoulder’s grown to full boulder size at this point. And we’ve only been here a couple of hours!”

He sticks his tongue out at her. “I maintain that you owe me big time for letting you drag me to this.”

“No, but you’re my protector,” June says dramatically. “The guardian of my virtue, the keeper of the family’s honour! Without you, how could I ever leave the house safely? How could I be trusted to not ruin myself and drag the whole lot of us into disrepute?”

He wiggles his eyebrows at her. Of the two of them, he’s certain she’s the least likely to cause any sort of reputational damage. “Do you know who this Henry is who’s just arrived?”

“The younger brother, I think,” June says. “Bea says he’s a delight.”

“Oh, great. Is he an earl too? A count? Please tell me he’s not a fucking prince.”

Nora narrows her eyes at him. “Do you even know how titles work?”

“I have made a point not to learn it and I’d appreciate it if you’d leave me to my ignorance, thank you very much,” Alex answers. Nora cackles.

June pokes at his knee. “Come on. They’re not so bad. I know the whole thing is a bit…” She gestures at the grand room around them, the high ceilings, gilded picture frames—gilded everything “…extravagant, and the formalities are very weird. Just try and see beyond it, maybe then you’ll be able to enjoy the people.”

“I don’t think they want me to see beyond their titles, June, or my lack thereof. That’s sort of the point of it.”

A soft, girly laugh flows in through the open door, followed by a child's cackle which Alex thinks must be from the mini-earl. Then the whole family comes back into the room, the duchess leading them, still mid laugh, followed by the duke, and finally a tall, windswept blond man who walks in slowly, with an odd, dragging limp—caused, Alex quickly realises, by the fact that he has Arthur wrapped around his left leg and Lady Amelia around his right, sat on his feet so that he’s obliged to heave them along as he goes. He’s laughing and ruffling the children’s hair and the whole thing is somehow absurdly wholesome.

The man straightens up when he finally notices that they have company in the room.

“Right. I do apologise for this,” he says to June, who’s standing closest to him. “I was assaulted by barbarians when I came in, and I had no choice but to engage.”

June lets off an embarrassing giggle, clearly taken in by this toff’s height and looks and apparently charming personality. Alex might grudgingly admit the man seems nice, playing with the children, but he's withholding judgement until he gets more information.

“I see no problem at all with what they’re doing,” June says, and the children laugh and tighten their arms around the man’s thick thighs.

“No, indeed. You must be Miss Claremont-Diaz,” he says with a tip of the head. June dips a little curtsey and he takes her hand. His hair flops freely over his forehead as he ducks down to kiss her glove, and Alex can see that this guy’s probably got all the debs in London eating off the palm of his hand. He doesn’t even appear to be trying to woo June, and yet—even Alex struggles to see past his charm.

“This is my brother, Lord Henry Fox-Mountchristen,” Windsor says, introducing June and Nora. “And this is Mr. Claremont-Diaz.”

Alex steps over, holding his hand out, yet again plastering on his best ‘in company’ smile—but instead of being welcomed with a grin as charming as the ones June and Nora got, he finds himself on the receiving end of a flustered look, followed by something akin to panic—and then a blank, stern face. Lord Henry gives Alex an almost imperceptible nod of acknowledgement then drops his eyes down to his niece, curls his hands back around the children’s shoulders.

“Ah, uh, yes, Amelia, darling, that’s a bit of a tight squeeze, do you think you’d mind letting go? I might find myself in a compromising position if you keep tugging on my trousers like that.”

He turns away from Alex, whose hand is still hanging mid-air, resolutely unshaken.

Alex’s mouth gapes. There’s a shift of discomfort around the room, as all the adults register what’s just happened, but the children’s laughter and utter disregard for formality propels them past it, so that within a minute Alex feels like maybe he just hallucinated the whole thing.

But he’s pretty sure he hasn’t. The duke’s brother has just given him the cut.

Chapter Text

To say that Alex has a restful first night at Foxden would be an utter lie. The bed is incredibly comfortable, the down pillows as plush as any he’d encountered before, and the room made pleasantly warm by the well-fed fire, but Alex can do nothing but toss and turn, kept awake by so much more than his usual insomnia.

Dinner had been an incredibly awkward affair. The duchess had striven to make things right—possibly having ascertained that Alex had not, in fact, done anything to deserve such treatment from her brother-in-law—pulling out all her best conversation starters, making sure all were included in the dinnertime chat. When the ladies decamped to the drawing room and the gentlemen were served port, Lord Henry had been utterly silent at the table—he had made no other rude gestures towards Alex, but neither had he made an effort to apologise—and the duke had kept their men-only interlude as short as possible. Finally, when they were allowed to join the ladies in the parlour, Lord Henry had excused himself after the briefest of intervals, not without receiving the sharpest of glares from both his brother and his sister-in-law, and escaped the room without another word.

At least Alex had not been the only one to notice how rude the man was.

All through the night, Alex has been thinking it through, but the end result has stayed the same: he simply cannot work out what he’s done to offend Lord Henry. He’s only been in the country for a few months. He’s certain he cannot have stepped on his toes by trying to win over his sweetheart as he has not taken a single lady out promenading. He doesn’t think he can have slighted him through unguarded conversation—he had not even heard Lord Henry’s name until yesterday.

The puzzle spins round and round in Alex’s mind, resolutely unsolved.

His bedroom door opens slowly in the early morning, when the house is still quiet. Alex tenses, wondering if it might be one of the servants come to rouse him and send him away, but finds instead only June and Nora creeping around the canopy of his bed, both wearing robes very much unsuited for company over their sleep-dresses, tip-toeing in like sneaky thieves.

“What are you two doing here?” he hisses.

“Just came to see how you’re doing, little brother,” June says. She has a creased look of concern on her face, but she doesn’t come out and say it.

“Yeah. That whole thing yesterday was very off,” Nora adds.

Well, thank fuck he’s not alone in thinking this. “Thank you! What the hell was going on with that?”

“We have no clue,” June says. “We tried asking Bea about it after dinner, but the duchess was there and she kept changing the subject. I think she’s trying to pretend none of it happened and her brother-in-law did not just try to ruin her house party.”

“Bea seemed just as lost as us, though. I don’t think she has any idea why Lord Henry treated you like that,” Nora concludes.

Alex flops back onto his pillows, pulling the covers up around his shoulders. 

“Urgh,” he whines. “I can’t believe some asshole’s just managed to make the prospect of this week so much worse. I was already hating the whole thing and now…” 

June and Nora exchange a look.

“Apparently we’re doing garden games today. A picnic and such,” his sister says.

Alex rolls his eyes and pulls the sheets over his head. “Please give my apologies to our hosts,” he mumbles through the thick bedding, “and tell them I’m about to come down with some horrible, disgusting, very contagious illness and will be feeling indisposed for the next six to seven days. They may send up soup, if they wish. Coffee, if they can produce any in this country, will surely improve the patient’s spirits to no end.”

“Alex!” June squeals, ripping the covers back down. “I absolutely will not!”

He sticks out his bottom lip, flutters his eyelashes and gives it his best shot.

“Pretty please?”

An hour later, Alex finds himself—fully dressed and completely devoid of an excuse to not make an appearance—at breakfast. It’s a quiet affair, just him and the ladies as apparently the duke and his brother are out on estate business and the children eat in the nursery. Which means Alex actually manages to enjoy himself a bit, even if he finds the look of the porridge thoroughly off-putting and sticks to the safety of sausages and bacon. Coffee, to his never-ending disappointment, continues to prove elusive, but there is cocoa at least.

The duchess takes them on a tour of the house and the manicured gardens, promising they’ll be able to explore the estate further at a later date, on horseback. After the not-so-bracing exercise, they’re deposited in the morning room with a tray of tea and biscuits and set loose to enjoy themselves. Alex wanders the halls and ends up finding his way to the library, a large and remarkably well-furnished room on the ground floor; double-height, with floor-to-ceiling shelves running the lengths of three of its walls, a narrow balcony along the halfway mark giving access to the upper sections. The shelves are all done in dark wood, as is the rest of the furniture, the sofas upholstered in pale blue damask, but the three large mullioned windows that take centre stage at one side of the room let in so much early summer light it doesn’t feel too dark. Instead, it feels welcoming. Cosy. 

Alex spends the rest of his morning exploring this treasure trove, pulling books off the shelves at random and taking them to a chair by the windows, sprawling with his feet up on the sill since there’s no one here to look at him askance, and he does not leave until a footman comes to let him know luncheon is being served in the rear lawn. With a sigh, Alex slips the historical tome he’d been reading back into its space on the shelf, puts his coat back on and makes his way out.

It’s a bright, sunny day, but not the kind of sunny day they get back home in Texas, where most people’s instinctive reaction is to stay indoors and hide from it all until the sun is down and not threatening anyone’s health or sanity. Instead, this is a soft kind of sunny; warming, comforting. The kind of day that is truly made for lying on blankets on the grass and watching clouds float by, no thought lingering for more than a few seconds.

Of course, this being a duke’s home, means yes, there are blankets on the ground, and yes, there are people sprawled on them, but it turns out to be only the children, playing with their governess. For the adult members of the house party there’s a fully-laid lunch service, with several tables and chairs having been brought out, members of staff walking around carrying trays, and a large marquee, erected to keep the ladies’ delicate complexions from burning. 

“Alex!” June calls out, waving him over.

She’s standing under the marquee with Nora, Lady Bea and a man Alex has not met before—and whose appearance makes Alex stop and blink a few times to make sure his eyes do not deceive him. This man, tall, handsome, dressed in a flamboyant purple velvet costume, edges decorated with gold thread, gold buttons to match, a plumed hat on his head—this man is Black. It is probably the first time he and June have been in a social situation in England where they are not the darkest-skinned people in the room.

“Mr. Claremont-Diaz, may I introduce Sir Percival Okonjo,” Lady Bea says. “He is a longtime family friend of ours and he will be spending the week with us here at Foxden.”

Sir Percival bows his head towards Alex, face split into a brilliant smile.

“What a delightful pleasure to make your acquaintance, Mr. Claremont-Diaz.”

“Uh, the pleasure is all mine, Sir Percival.”

He waves Alex off. “Please. No one calls me that unless I’m in the House of Lords. You may call me Percy, or Pez if you prefer.”

“Pez?” Nora pipes up.

“A childhood nickname. You, Miss Holleran, may also call me that. In fact, you may call me whatever you desire.” His words are weighted, dripping lazily like honey, and Nora’s eyebrows pop up, the tip of her tongue licking over her bottom lip as if tasting something unexpected—but very much not unwanted.

Alex feels like a bit of an interloper here.

Lady Beatrice walks over to him, slips her hand into the crook of his elbow and leads him out towards the lawn.

“How are you this morning? Enjoying yourself?”

“Uh, yeah, sure,” Alex replies. “Your library is amazing.”

She smiles. “Ah, yes. My father was very keen on books—as is my mother. In fact, I am sure that that is the room in which they used to spend most of their time when they were at home. Them and, uh—” she hesitates “—Henry.”

It has barely taken five minutes for the proverbial elephant to be brought up. Great.

“Hm,” he answers, as noncommittally as he can.

“Listen, Alex. I just want to say—I don’t intend to speak for him, but I’m sure he didn’t mean what he did yesterday. He was probably just flustered and tired from his long journey.” Alex doesn’t know how to reply to that. He’s not interested in making excuses for someone he’s never met. “I promise you, he is utterly lovely. I’ll make sure he makes it up to you—there they are!”

Alex turns to look where Lady Bea is pointing, past the picnic set-up, to spot two figures walking up a grassy slope towards them—the duke and his now infamous younger brother.

Sir Percival detaches himself from the ladies and rushes across the lawn to meet them, all sense of decorum thrown to the ground along with his half-eaten fruit scone. Alex can hear faint whoops and laughter drifting in the wind as the men come together and Sir Percival wraps his arms around Lord Henry, hugging him around his middle, Lord Henry’s feet popping off the ground for a second.

When they walk back to the area where luncheon is being served, Sir Percival and Lord Henry still have their arms around each other, both beaming with joy. The smile on Lord Henry’s face falls as he spots Alex. 

He pulls his arm away from his friend and straightens his lapels, bowing in greeting. 

“Good morning, all,” Lord Henry says to the group at large. June and Nora offer up terse little bobs. Alex offers up a glare. “Uh, right,” Lord Henry says. Sir Percival’s eyes track the interaction, confusion written all over his face.

Lord Henry walks off in the direction of the buffet and Sir Percival follows. Alex watches from a distance as they start to have what is clearly an intense discussion. There’s a lot of whispering and hissing into each other’s ears; there’s Lord Henry throwing the briefest of looks in Alex’s direction, followed by Sir Percy’s gawking expression of shock, a tiny roast-beef sandwich risen halfway to his mouth and frozen in place—followed by a small shove to the centre of Lord Henry’s chest, to which he submits himself with a sheepish dip of his head.

Alex is sort of bemused by it all—or he would be, if he allowed himself to feel anything other than anger towards the duke’s younger brother. It’s clear that other people around them are also watching this quietly heated exchange, and eventually the duchess steps up to them, making conciliatory gestures. With one final head shake, Lord Henry pulls away and turns towards Alex, straightening up and walking decisively in his direction.

Alex cannot decide if he should steel up his spine and brace for battle, or just run off into the nearby woods and pretend this whole failed foray into the world of British aristocracy never happened. Maybe if he kept running long enough he’d reach the port at Southampton? He’s not quite sure of the geography of the place.

“Mr. Claremont-Diaz,” Lord Henry says when he finally reaches him. They’re on the fringes of the luncheon party, just off the edge of the marquee so the sun is hitting Alex on the back, making him break out into a sweat. He can tell everyone else is watching the two of them.

Alex narrows his eyes and crosses his arms. “Oh, you can see me now, can you?”

Lord Henry grimaces and ducks his head, a clear show of embarrassment—more emotion than Alex has seen from him the entire time he’s been here. “I—uh, yes. Well, about that. I just wanted to offer my most sincere apologies for what happened yesterday afternoon. I was distracted by my niece and my nephew; one of them had their fingernails digging into my thigh and the other was pulling my—well, you don’t need to know about all of that. My point is, I did not intend to cut you. And I am incredibly sorry.”

Alex stares, delighting in the way Lord Henry squirms uncomfortably, and says nothing. After a near minute of silence Lord Henry clears his throat awkwardly and starts speaking again. 

“Yes, well. I have offered my apologies to my brother and my sister-in-law, and I have volunteered to leave Foxden, if my presence here makes you uncomfortable. I would understand if it did.”

Which feels like delicious, truly mouth-watering revenge. To send this asshole away from his own home. And Alex is not in the business of giving posh assholes a free pass, he’s really not. But he can’t deny the fact that things would be incredibly awkward for them if he did. Plus, there’s something about Lord Henry’s whole attitude right now that looks sincere. His cheeks are flushed pink, the colour running down along his neck and disappearing into his shirt collar. He’s wringing his hands, fingers curling and tugging around each other, and Alex is briefly distracted by them, noticing how long and well-formed they are, how nimble.

He’s pulled back from his reverie by the sound of Lord Henry clearing his throat again.

“So. Uh—shall I leave?”

Without having truly decided to, Alex shakes his head.

“No. You don’t need to leave.”

Lord Henry’s shoulders relax and drop by an entire inch.

“Oh. Oh, good,” he says with a soft exhale and a smile. “And you do accept my apology?”

“I suppose I do, as long as you’ve made it clear to everyone that I’ve done nothing to deserve the treatment you gave me.”

“I did! I promise I did.” Lord Henry scratches his head, looks down at his feet, and mumbles, “they’re all quite cross with me, if I’m being honest—Bea and Martha and Pip, and even Pez, even though he’s only just arrived.”

“Well, good. I guess we don’t have to duel then,” Alex says, grinning in spite of himself, “which is good news, because I don’t have a gun, or a second, and also I cannot shoot.” Unexpectedly, Lord Henry lets out a loud, unguarded laugh, which he immediately covers up with his hand. They let the laughter fade, the sound hovering in the air between them and by virtue of its simple existence making the atmosphere a lot less dense, less loaded with the weight of Lord Henry’s slight.

“Me neither. I’m sure you’ll see it when we go hunting tomorrow. I would definitely have had to shoot up into the sky.”

Which is a kind of funny and sweet admission, but Alex is not ready to be friends with this guy just yet.

“Okay, well. I think it’s about time to sit down for luncheon,” he says, walking off towards the tables. There are relieved faces all around him—clearly, all of their friends and family have been watching the interaction between the two of them closely. Lord Henry follows him, and when Alex turns back to look at him one more time he finds a very soft, light smile on his face too—so different from the hard, arrogant gaze he’d sported all evening yesterday.

Much more endearing.

After they’ve eaten, Lady Beatrice stands up, claps twice sharply and calls out to the party at large, “Right! Croquet time!”

The reactions from her family around the table are mixed. Windsor groans and lets his shoulders slump, whereas the duchess smiles slyly; Lord Henry rolls his eyes and stifles a laugh, but Sir Percival shrieks with glee. The children rush over from where they had been playing with a wooden crocodile pulled along on a string and start jumping up and down in front of their aunt.

Alex wonders what can be the matter with a simple game of croquet that’s got all of the Fox-Mountchristens looking so riled up. Not that he’s ever played it himself, but still.

They are led down a small slope to the croquet lawn, a neatly mown patch of grass next to a copse of trees. There’s a couple of footmen getting the game ready, pushing hoops down into the ground, making sure they’re set firmly.

Lady Bea takes charge. “Okay, since there are so many of us but the Americans haven’t played before, I think we should divide evenly and play together, at least the first time around. Me and Hen and Alex and Martha can be one team, and the other can be Pip and Pez and June and Nora.” The children jump up in protest in front of Lady Beatrice. “Yes, yes, I suppose since we’re throwing normal rules out of the window you can each join a team. Amelia, you can be with me; Arthur, with your dad.”

She proceeds to explain the game, which involves using mallets to knock balls through the hoops fixed into the ground—this much Alex knew already—but then it all gets convoluted, with going through hoops in order and extra shots being added on and knocking into one’s opponents’ balls for an advantage or something. Alex stops paying attention halfway through.

“I can see she’s managed to lose you already.” Lord Henry had sidled up to Alex while he was trying to listen and is now offering up a sly grin.

Alex’s shoulders droop. “I’m afraid she has. Balls through hoops, yes?”

“Quite. You’ve got the gist of it marvellously,” Lord Henry teases with a smile that is no more than a crook of one corner of his lips. Alex nearly sticks his tongue out at him. “How about I guide you through it? Let you know what the best shot is? If you don’t mind a bit of tutoring, that is.”

Alex examines him for a few seconds, eyes drifting over his face and his body. He has relaxed significantly since their chat before luncheon, and out here, with the sun shining on his golden hair, one ankle crossed over the other, leaning casually on his mallet, he seems a lot more likeable.

“I don’t mind,” Alex answers. “You can tell me what to do.”

Lord Henry’s face goes blank. He blinks twice, very slowly, and then looks away.

“Very good, then.”

It turns out Alex is terrible at croquet. Nora, to no one’s surprise, has excellent aim once she’s worked out how to wield the mallet most efficiently, and June floats through with plenty of mistakes but enough giggles to make up for it. Sir Percival takes a hand in showing her how to best play and she seems happy enough to listen to him. But it’s Lord Henry who truly surprises Alex. His strong fingers curl around the wood with grace and he swings his mallet with a precision Alex hadn’t known was possible, sending balls easily through hoops even at awkward angles, knocking into their opponents’ balls and making their lives so much harder—even when Alex doesn’t quite understand what’s going on. Lady Bea’s cheering is a very clear indicator that Lord Henry is very, very good at this.

And Alex, well. Alex tries. He really does, watching how everyone else is holding their mallet, taking his cue from their stance, the way they shape their backs as they prepare to take a swing. But it’s hopeless. He walks into balls, rendering plays invalid. He trips over a hoop and lands ass-first on the dusty grass, very nearly ruining his fancy pants. He sends a wild ball in the wrong direction and while little Amelia ducks just in time, Sir Percival is not so lucky and ends up hit in the—well, in an area no man should ever be hit—stumbling backwards and bringing down a footman carrying a tray of refreshments along with him. Both men fall to the ground, faces turned ashen and sick—though each for their own individual reasons—and for a few minutes Alex thinks this is it and he’ll have to go back to the house and hide in shame at his disastrous lack of skill. But then Lady Beatrice helps the footman clean up and June fetches Sir Percy a glass of lemonade and presents it to him with a bat of her eyelashes and they both seem to make a miraculous recovery. And the game goes on.

Lord Henry tries to help—Alex will give him credit for that—with tips on angles and posture, but it seems to have no effect in improving Alex’s game. He keeps throwing Alex these pitying, sympathetic looks which are probably meant in support, but which just cause an overwhelming urge in Alex to let his mallet slip and hit Lord Henry in the kneecaps instead.

He grows more and more frustrated as they start a second round, and as that turns into a third he feels about ready to blow. Everyone else seems to be having fun, June and Nora especially delighting every time he sends the ball off in a completely unexpected direction, and Alex would like to think that it’s because it benefits their team, and not just because they like to see him make a fool of himself, but he knows he’d be lying to himself. The duchess keeps reassuring him that it’s not his fault and that it can be a tricky game to learn—even though Lady Beatrice is staring at him with clear regret on her face at having picked Alex for her team.

“Come on now, Alex. It’s an easy shot. Just knock those two apart, you can do it,” she coaches him, voice hissing out through clenched teeth. “They’re right there.”

Alex is not even sure how he does it.

One moment he’s standing in the middle of the croquet lawn, surrounded by people, lining up for his shot; the next he grips the mallet too tightly with his sweaty hands, everything slips off axis by a fraction of an inch and he whacks the ball all the way into the small woods next to the lawn.

“Goddamn it!” Alex shouts, his thinly held self-control finally snapping in the face of this hell-hewn game. 

To give the Fox-Mountchristen family credit, they are less shocked than Alex would have expected. The duchess seems half-horrified, half-amused. Lady Beatrice looks at him with something like grudging respect. Windsor turns his eyes up at the sky, as if this is not his first time being subjected to profanities and his preferred method of dealing with it is to pretend it hasn’t happened. June grimaces, and Nora flirts with Sir Percy, oblivious to Alex’s distress.

Lord Henry walks up to him and puts a gentle hand between Alex’s shoulder blades. He tips his head in the direction the ball was last seen, vanishing among the trees. “Come on. I’ll help you find it.”

Dejected, Alex follows him down to the copse, wishing that just one fucking day in this house could go by without any sort of reputation-destroying incident. It’s barely been twenty-four hours since he arrived.

“Sorry about that,” he mumbles in Lord Henry’s direction, using his mallet to push aside some low-growing plants in the hopes of finding the lost ball.

Lord Henry gives him a smile that is much more filled with mirth than Alex would have expected. “Think nothing of it. Croquet can be a vicious game and you are not the first—nor will you be the last—to let it get the best of you here at Foxden.”

“Are you making fun of me?” Alex says with a glare, and Lord Henry laughs.

“Not at all. My father was known to be an incredibly competitive croquet player. Over the years my mother had to set down very strict rules of engagement for croquet matches so that they would not descend into an outright family feud. Apparently there were some, uh… intense clashes between him and his brother when they were young. By the time I was old enough to play he had—just about—managed to mellow a bit. We always loved playing together.”

Alex may not know a lot about British aristocracy, but he knows enough to be sure that if Lord Henry’s older brother is now the duke, that can only mean one thing.

“Did he pass a long time ago?”

Lord Henry tips his head side to side, a gesture lost somewhere between yes and no.

“Four years now.” He lets out a small sigh. “Sometimes it feels like yesterday he was still here, goading us into match after match after match. After we lost him, I never wanted to play again, but Bea refused to let one of the things he loved the most in the world die with him. She insisted we play again the summer after he passed, and though those first few games were tough, I’m glad she made us do it. So we didn’t forget how joyful it could be. It always brings back some of my happiest memories of him when we play.”

“I’m sorry today’s match was not one to remember,” Alex says dejectedly.

But Lord Henry lets out a soft laugh. “Are you joking? This has truly been one for the ages, Mr. Claremont-Diaz. The shattered glassware, Amelia’s quick ducking, the look on Pez’s face when that ball hit him? If I had any artistic talent I’d set it to canvas, to make sure we’d never forget it.”

Finally, Alex manages to relax about the disaster of it all, even going so far as to let off a little laugh. “I suppose it was quite funny. From an outsider’s perspective, anyway.”

They walk deeper into the copse, still shifting the vegetation to search for the ball. Alex finally spots a glimpse of red and yellow in the middle of a thick mass of weeds and walks over to dig through it. He’s bent over, preoccupied with pushing some nettles aside with his mallet—which is probably why he doesn’t see it until it’s too late.

A loud, repeating squawk rings through the copse—right next to Alex’s head, or at least it feels like it—and Alex lets off a shriek of his own to match. He straightens up to find the peacock—this must be the same one as yesterday, he’s sure of it—barely two feet away from him, staring with clearly murderous intent.

He takes three quick steps back, gets his feet tangled in some roots, and falls on his ass for the second time this afternoon, landing fully in the patch of nettles.

“Mr. Claremont-Diaz?” Lord Henry’s concerned shout reaches him, the sound of rushed steps in his direction following suit. The man himself appears through the trees, a few feet to the right of the peacock, face creased with concern. “Mr. Claremont-Diaz, are you alright? What happened?”

“What happened?” Alex shrieks. He does not take his eyes off the threat. “What happened is you people think it’s a good idea to encourage these beasts to roam free around your property, and they keep assaulting me at every turn! How am I supposed to function like this, how do any of you? There is no place of safety!”

Lord Henry looks around the copse, taking in Alex’s state on the ground—his muddy hands, the now torn pants—and the menacing bird pecking through the undergrowth. He keeps looking around, as if trying to identify the danger Alex is talking about. “Do you mean… the peacock, Mr. Claremont-Diaz?”

“Yes, I mean the goddamn peacock and will you drop it with the Mr. Claremont-Diaz!” Alex shouts and whines his own name, mental faculties fleeing with the speed of an approaching bird of prey. “We are under attack and there’s no time for it!”

The bird shrieks once more, long and loud, flicks his tail feathers open into what even Alex might have admitted was a beautiful display were he not so distressed, and wafts the whole mass of it twice in Alex’s direction. Alex rolls over onto all fours, nettles be damned, getting ready to make a most ungraceful escape, but then the peacock throws him one last look of disdain and one last shake of its ass and turns and walks away with a departing squawk—completely indifferently.

Lord Henry is biting down on his bottom lip hard, and even so the corners of his mouth are turning up into an unmistakable smile. “Under attack, you said?”

“Shut up,” Alex hisses. He tries to stand up, but he’s still tangled and he flops down again, a wet squelch issuing as his ass hits the ground.

It’s the squelch that does it, Alex registers faintly. Lord Henry’s composure breaks at last and he starts laughing. Quietly at first, still trying to control himself, and then building, growing and growing into a high-pitched, wet sound, until he’s bent in half, clutching his stomach, until tears are falling from his eyes, until he finally gives up stopping himself and drops down to the ground near Alex.

“It’s not that funny,” Alex growls. It’s a lie. He can see that it’s pretty funny, even as cold moisture soaks through his pants and his entire body itches from the nettles.

“You—you thought the bird was attacking you? The peacock, Mr. Claremont-Diaz? The famously ornamental and aloof bird?”

Alex huffs. “I said quit it with the mister. It’s Alex.”

“Fine, Alex. You don’t need to worry. Peacocks rarely attack humans. As long as you don’t act in a threatening manner, you don’t have to worry.”

“Okay, but how am I supposed to know what the bird is going to consider threatening? It’s got a brain the size of an actual pea.” Alex is not at all proud of how high-pitched his voice has gone—but then again, he’s got a long list of things not to be proud of this afternoon. This one can wait its turn.

“Sure. Fair enough, Mr—Alex.” Lord Henry corrects himself under Alex’s glare. “But that one didn’t look very threatening, did it? It was only pecking at the ground.”

“Fine. Maybe I’m not very fond of large birds. And I just—I can tell that they know. The peacocks here have all been staring at me with their cold, heartless eyes like they know I’m an easy target. They can see into my soul, and they can smell the fear.”

Lord Henry squeezes his lips together, his eyes crinkling at the corners. Nonsensically, Alex notices they’re an impossible shade of blue, so intense as to seem man-made, a pigment on an artist’s palette. “That must be very hard for you.”

“Oh, fuck off, my lord,” Alex snaps, and Lord Henry has the gall to laugh.

“If I have to drop the mister, you absolutely must stop it with the my lord. I cannot abide it.”

“Fucking fine,” Alex huffs. Politeness seems to be out of the window for today—and Alex is much happier this way, even if it has taken abject humiliation to get there. “Then are you going to help me up or not?”

“I will,” Henry says. He collects Alex’s stray ball from the tangle of crushed plants, stands up, wipes a hand off on his clothes and holds it out to Alex.

They’re both filthy—Alex much more so than Henry—but when Alex takes the proffered hand it feels like being with someone new, so completely different than the man who’d humiliated him the night before. Somehow, bonded by Alex’s extreme clumsiness and irrational fear of large birds, plus Henry’s kindness, they seem to have reached a place that’s unexpectedly near to friendship.

“Thank you,” Alex says, and finally manages to crack a smile about the whole thing. He looks down at his clothes. “I am infinitely glad at my sister’s wisdom in making me refresh my whole wardrobe before we came here. I am not at all sure that these pants are salvageable.” Alex can feel how muddy his ass is, and he’s pretty sure a seam has come undone at his hip.

“You know pants means something else here, right?” Henry says with a smirk.

“I—yes. Fine. These trousers.”

“No, but do carry on talking about your pants. It’s not like there’s any hint of propriety left between us. Between me humiliating myself yesterday, and your, uh—delightful performance today.”

Alex rolls his eyes. Propriety, indeed.

They continue walking back through the trees to find the rest of the croquet party, but as they emerge from the copse it becomes apparent that the game is finished. There’s a pair of maids collecting stray shards of glass from the grass and a footman tidying mallets and balls into a wicker basket.

“I hope it wasn’t something I did,” Alex quips. Henry laughs.

“Who’s to say? Maybe they’d worked up an appetite.”

“We literally just had lunch.”

They hand their equipment over to the footman and start to walk back up the slope in the direction of the house. Forgetting his injuries, Alex runs his hand through his hair—and immediately lets out a pathetic, whimpering noise at the sting. 

Henry turns to him, looking serious for probably the first time since he found Alex in a pile of weeds, cowering from an ornamental bird. “What’s the matter? Did you hurt yourself when you fell?”

Alex nods. “I think I put my hand in the nettles,” he says, holding it up for examination. If he were being completely honest, he’d say he definitely put more than just his hand in it and his whole goddamn body is itching. But he doesn’t think this fledgling friendship is quite ready for that yet.

Henry steps up and takes hold of his hand with gentle fingertips along the sides, like Alex is a piece of clear glass he’s trying not to smudge. 

The skin of Alex’s palm is red, angry, covered in grazes.

“Oh, that does look sore.” Sympathetic blue eyes flick up to meet Alex’s and something inside him feels so soft, so melted, he doesn’t really know what to do with himself. This is not where he thought he’d be twenty-four hours ago.

“Yeah. It is,” Alex says quietly.

One of Henry’s thumbs moves featherlight against the side of Alex’s hand. It lasts barely a second, but it sends a flare of heat up from that narrow patch of skin, all the way down to the base of his spine.

Then Henry straightens up, as if drawn back to reality, and the moment is gone. He lets Alex’s hand drop and takes a step back.

“I’m sure Mrs. Hastings will have an ointment for it. I remember her doing something like that for me when I was little.”

“Oh. Great, yeah. That sounds good, thank you.”

“Of course,” Henry says, sparing a soft look back towards Alex before lengthening his strides and speeding up the hill.

Alex struggles to keep up.

Mrs. Hastings—the Foxden housekeeper, it turns out—does have some sort of miraculous ointment, though by the look on the faces of the footman and the housemaid who come to set him up with a bath there might be no miracle capable of salvaging his pants. 

Trousers.

Alex has a long soak, giving in to the indulgence of the warm and sweetly perfumed water, knowing he has nothing to do until dinner, no responsibilities, no appearances to make. It’s been a long and tiring day, both emotionally and physically. His skin is itching like mad in the tub, but his muscles relax, the tension in his shoulders releasing.

He feels thoroughly refreshed when he returns downstairs for pre-dinner drinks, fully anointed and dressed in daisy-fresh clothes.

“Mr. Claremont-Diaz!” the duchess exclaims when he walks into the drawing room. “I hope you have recovered from your mishap earlier,” she asks politely. Not that he’d missed the fact that the whole party had been thoroughly amused by the state of his trousers.

“I have, thank you, your grace. The bath was most refreshing.”

“Oh good, good! You know, the soap was made with rose petals that Lady Beatrice collected herself, from the gardens here at Foxden. She is very enthusiastic about it, and every summer she and the maids make enough to supply the entire household!”

“I—oh. That’s interesting,” Alex says, baffled. The duchess hands him a small glass containing, he thinks, sherry, and starts to lead him across the room, to the knot of giggles that is made up of June, Nora and Bea.

“Yes, Bea is very keen on the domestic arts,” she continues. “I have some of her embroidered cushions around here somewhere, I’d be happy to show you. Here we are,” she gestures at the trio of girls with the pleased air of someone who’s just finished a set task—as if delivering him to where he’d wanted to go all along. They all look bemusedly at Alex. “I’ll just run over there and fetch it. Be right back!” the duchess trills, skipping off across the room with a little giggle.

The three girls look at Alex with utterly bemused expressions on their faces.

Alex shrugs. “I—uh, she’s fetching me a cushion, I guess? Apparently Lady Bea embroidered it and it’s beautiful and I have to see it.”

The lady in question lets out a low groan.

“Oh, not this again,” she mumbles under her breath. “I should’ve bloody known.”

Alex, June and Nora exchange glances.

“You should have known what, Bea?” June asks.

“She’s trying her hand at matchmaking again. Of course she is. My own mother is unfit to do it, so she’s taken it upon herself to see that I do not end up a lonely old spinster.”

“You don’t seem lonely to me,” Nora says absently, chewing on a cheese biscuit.

“Thank you!” Bea cries. “And I am not. But apparently being unmarried at six-and-twenty is an unacceptable state of affairs. Never mind the fact that my father left me money of my own and I do not need a man to support me; it is still Philip’s—and therefore Martha’s—responsibility to oversee my welfare, and that means trying to marry me out.”

“I—to me, you mean?” Alex asks. Bea nods. “I’m sorry, I didn’t know that was part of the order of business for this week.” He’s not exactly sorry—it’s not his fault, and plus, Bea is lovely, and funny, and Alex quite likes the competitive streak she showed in the croquet lawn. He might have considered the possibility, if it wasn’t for the fact that she looks about a country mile away from happy at the prospect right now—which Alex takes to mean she is thoroughly uninterested in any match between the two of them.

Fair enough.

“It’s fine. It’s not your fault. I’m the one who put this house party together, but I should have known something like this was bound to happen. At least then I could have prepared you for it,” she says apologetically.

The duchess returns with the famed cushion, and they all ooh and aah politely over it, even if Alex can’t really tell if the animal depicted on it is meant to be a dog or a bear or a… hippopotamus? But it doesn’t matter, because the woman is on a rampage. When they are led through to the dining room, Alex is not at all surprised to find he’s been allocated the seat between June and Bea, and that the duchess continues her attempts to impress upon Alex just how delightful Lady Bea is, what good company, how well raised she was—and how well-prepared she is to run a household. From the amount of effort she’s putting into this, Alex wonders if the duchess has been misinformed as to the state of his own private finances. Just because his mother’s husband is wealthy, doesn’t mean he has any money to his name at the moment.

Bea grows increasingly frustrated as the meal goes on.

“Don’t let her fool you,” she whispers at Alex as the soup course is served. “My mother is a recluse. I have not been trained on how to run a household.”

Alex hums politely.

“I know it’s true that Philip and Martha have already had two children, and my mother three of her own,” she hisses as a footman offers up a platter of roast pheasant, “but you must know that means nothing of my own childbearing abilities. For all we know, I may be barren.”

Alex splutters the sip of wine he’d just taken.

“Oh for the love of God,” she says a little too loudly as Alex spoons some raspberry fool into his desert plate and the duchess waffles on about Bea’s skill with the violin, “this is all because she knows she has absolutely no chance of marrying either me or Henry off, and she’s just can’t take it!”

Alex looks up from his desert.

There’s a sharp gasp and an upper-class hiss of “Beatrice” from across the table, followed by a stricken silence among those near them. Bea is clenching her teeth and visibly regretting her words, June next to her looks confused—and across from them, Henry and Sir Percy both look utterly shocked at what she’s just said. No one else seems to have heard her.

Alex doesn’t quite get where this reaction is coming from. She was just quipping, making fun of the fact that she herself has no desire to be married, and that Henry—well, Alex doesn’t know what it is about Henry. Maybe he is a famous rake at Oxford, where he is studying. Or maybe it is because he’s a second son, maybe he’s going to take the cloth, maybe Windsor has not settled any money on him and his prospects are not good. But surely his own sister would not be bringing that up if it were the case? That would be considered extremely impolite, even if they are dining en famille.

The look on Henry’s face is pained. Bea’s shows deep regret.

“Hen—” she says, but Henry gives a sharp little shake of his head, cutting her off. “I’m sorry,” Bea whispers to him. Alex still hears it.

“What’s the matter?” Alex says, leaning in to speak close to her ear.

“Nothing, I just—I spoke out of turn, is all.”

She falls silent, eyes flicking from her desert to her younger brother. The apologetic look never leaves her face. Henry settles his spoon to the side of his plate, his pile of raspberries and cream left untouched. As soon as the ladies stand up to go to the parlour he excuses himself, pleading a headache, and disappears into the private wing of the house.

It’s not quite clear to Alex what Bea has done that could be considered such a faux-pas, but it’s clear that Bea, Henry and Percy all read the situation the same way. Sir Percy had immediately stepped in and taken the reins of the conversation, leading it in a completely new direction, bringing Nora in, keeping the heat off Bea and Henry. 

Alex keeps mulling it over.

Henry, never being married. Henry, and his complete—if polite—disinterest when the duchess tried to get him better acquainted with June and Nora. Henry, and the guilty little looks he keeps shooting Alex’s way. 

And as he thinks it over, one more image pops into Alex’ head, pointing a beacon so that suddenly all of it makes sense—or no sense at all.

Henry, and the way he’d held Alex’s hand earlier—tender, full of care.

Chapter Text

The strange mood in the dining room has not quite lifted by breakfast time. Sure, there’s polite chatter over buttered toast, yawns stifled into cups of tea, gentle talk of the plans for the day—a spot of shooting for the gentlemen, afternoon tea in the garden for the ladies. But beneath it, Alex can sense a stiffness between the duke’s younger siblings: an obsequiousness that is quite unnatural in Bea when she offers to pour Henry his tea, a hint of sharpness in Henry’s nod to her that is unlike the way he normally responds to his sister. Then again, maybe he’s reading too much into things. Just like he maybe read too much into what happened last night.

June, Nora and Sir Percy seem to be feeling lively enough to carry the conversation around the table, improving the mood, but even so Alex is thankful to be able to escape by himself back to the library when he’s finished eating.

He’s only just settled into the wingback chair by the window with the book he’d started yesterday and is working out how best to angle himself so the morning sun will illuminate the pages, when the double doors to the room open and Henry walks in. He heads for the pair of chairs by the fireplace, focused on balancing a cup of tea on a saucer and doesn’t notice Alex’s presence until he speaks up.

“Hello there,” Alex says.

The teacup nearly ends up on the floor.

“Oh, Al—Mr. Claremont-Diaz,” Henry stutters. He sets the saucer down on the little table between the armchairs and shakes his hands, droplets of milky tea flying through the air. “Good morning. I’m sorry for intruding, I did not realise anyone was in here.”

“That’s okay. I’m sorry I startled you,” Alex replies, walking over and handing Henry his handkerchief.

“Thank you,” Henry says as he cleans himself up.

Alex nods, the ending of last night’s dinner drifting unbidden through his mind for not the first time this morning. “I hope you’ve recovered from your headache.”

“I—yes. I have, thank you. I don’t think I would be allowed to skip the hunt today even if I hadn’t.” Henry says this with a half-smile, but even that seems to be too much for the odd mood he’s in. It vanishes in an instant. “You were reading by yourself, I realise. Shall I leave you to it?”

“No! Of course not. I’m happy to have the company. It’s just such a nice room, and nice to have a bit of respite from all the…” Alex searches for a polite way to say what he’s thinking.

“Sisterly interfering? Matchmaking?” Henry offers up helpfully.

Alex chuckles. “Yes, that.” And the relentless company, and the need to be in his best form constantly. Though somehow being here with just Henry doesn’t make him feel the weight of social expectations in the way being with the whole group does. “I’m not sure how you put up with it.”

“Oh, I don’t. I hide away in Oxford as much as possible,” Henry says with a mischievous grin, raising his nearly empty cup up to his lips in a poor attempt to hide it. “And even in Oxford, I prefer to spend my days in the Bodleian. Though, if I’m being honest, this is my favourite library.” He tips his face up to the shelf-lined walls, a gentle, affectionate look blossoming.

“It is pretty wonderful,” Alex says, turning on his heel to look around the room.

“My father built it. Well, not with his hands, of course. When they first came to live here, my mother wanted a proper library, not just a duke’s study with books in it, and so he converted a parlour for her, because apparently this room had the best light. This has always been her favourite bit of the house, or at least when she…” He stops talking, shuffles on his feet, and Alex can tell he’s holding something back. “Uh, anyway. As I was saying, we used to spend a lot of time together here when I was home from school.” As if pulled by a magnet, Henry wanders to a corner of the room, fingertips dragging lightly along the polished edges of the shelves. “This was my section,” he says, squatting down to touch the spines of the books.

“Yours?” Alex asks. He drifts over, approaching with soft steps so as not to spook Henry’s pensive mood.

“Hm. When I was little, they would let me move my favourites over here. My father used to call it Henry’s Library. Of course Pip and Bea were always welcome too, but they never seemed to spend as much time in here as I did.” 

There’s a child-sized armchair off to one side, upholstered in a blue so bright as to match that of Henry’s eyes. A sudden vision of a tiny version of Henry—covered in freckles, his hair even paler—materialises in Alex’s mind: sat in his miniature chair, lost in a book, not a care in the world. Loving mother and father looking on dotingly. “Was that yours?”

Henry nods. “It was. It’s Arthur’s now, or at least on days when he’s allowed to escape the schoolroom upstairs and spend time in here. He likes to sit with me while I read.” A soft smile flits across Henry’s face.

He moves to the shelves and tugs out a volume, cups it in both his hands without opening it or even looking down at it. As if the physical object in his grasp was enough to deliver all the stories, all the images directly to his mind. His eyes flutter closed and this thumb caresses the spine.

It’s not one Alex recognises, though he spies the name Austen between Henry’s fingers.

He doesn’t know where the impulse to move closer comes from, doesn’t remember deciding to reach out—or maybe he’s just choosing to not examine it, just like he’s choosing to not think about last night. Maybe he only lays his hand on the volume Henry’s holding so he can see what it is properly, work out what’s so special about it that’s got Henry transported to another world by touch alone. 

His fingertips brush against Henry’s over the leather binding.

A sudden burst of molten heat flows through Alex and Henry’s eyes fly open, landing squarely on him. It’s barely anything, the area of skin that’s touching almost negligible—except for the way it’s affecting Alex, incontrovertible evidence that it is very much not negligible. He should pull back, knows he should, that this is weird, but he feels burned into place, a charred statue—except for his eyes, which flick repeatedly from Henry’s face to their fingers and back-up again.

It only lasts a few seconds. The doorknob turns and Henry snatches the book—and his hands—away.

“Fellas! There you are!” Sir Percy says, walking in with a wide sweep of his arm, oblivious to what he’s just disrupted. Whatever that was.

Alex’s heart pounds fast against his ribs, the thumping filling his ears. For how loud it is, he’s sure it must be audible to everyone else in the room.

“You knew where I was going to be,” Henry says, recovering quickly. There’s only the faintest hint of a wobble in his voice. “I told you.”

“Yes, well. I was maybe distracted by the delightful company at breakfast.”

Sparing a quick look in Alex’s direction, Henry clutches the book to his chest and sits down on one of the chairs by the fire. Sir Percy takes the other one, and Alex drifts back to his original seat across the room, far away from the two of them.

Sir Percy carries on talking, about June and Nora, about the hunt this afternoon, clearly in a chatty mood. He’s probably not the best company for quiet reading time in a library, though Henry doesn’t seem to mind. But it bugs Alex, not because the man is unpleasant, but because he feels like there’s something on the edges of his mind, trying to fight its way into focus, begging for his attention—and Alex can’t get his brain to still for long enough to grasp it.

Eventually, he gets fed-up of the nervous energy thrumming through his whole body and takes himself off for a walk around the gardens. 

When, after a long, punishing ramble, he finally makes his way back to the house, he finds the place buzzing. Other local gentlemen have been invited to the hunt, as well as ladies to spend the afternoon with the duchess, which means their hosts are both busy holding court. After lunch, Alex goes up to his bedroom to change into his riding clothes, and when he comes back down he finds the entrance hall filled with people, all getting ready to go. He spots Henry to one side, tightening the buckle on one of his tall riding boots, the lines of his body made even longer by the close fit of the pants he’s wearing and the way he bends down. Alex looks away.

The men move out to the stables, where they are each allocated a horse. There are about twenty people in all, gentlemen, stable lads, footmen and gamekeepers, as well as a pack of hounds, rounded up and waiting outside. The ease with which most of them seem to find their horses and get them ready makes Alex feel a little uncertain, but it’s not until he sees the full array of hunting equipment and the stack of guns that he realises he’s probably woefully underprepared for this.

He sidles up to Sir Percy, standing by a powerfully muscled horse that must be at least seven feet tall.

“Uh. What would happen if I said I can’t ride?”

Sir Percy cocks an eyebrow at him. “Can’t you?”

“Not… not completely. I can sit on a horse—” he watches the gentleman across from them step onto a stirrup and swing one leg confidently over the horse’s back to settle into his saddle like he’s been doing this his whole life. Which, Alex realises, he probably has. “—but I think keeping up with the party might be beyond me.” Never mind holding a gun, and discharging it accurately.

“You can sit on a horse?” The look on Sir Percy’s face does very little to bolster his confidence.

“Yeah.”

“And that is the extent of your equestrian abilities?”

“Pretty much.”

Sir Percy looks up the entire length of Alex’s body, as if taking the measure of him—and then his eyes twitch up to something behind him and twinkle.

“Haz!” he calls out. Alex turns and spots Henry, making his way towards them. Sir Percy lays a hand on his forearm and leans in. “I’m afraid I can’t help you, Mr. Claremont-Diaz. I myself am also not very good with horses. But I am sure Lord Henry would be delighted to be of assistance. He is a most excellent rider.”

“Uh—” Alex tries. Sir Percy doesn’t let him get a word out.

He puts his other hand on Henry’s shoulder. “Haz, dear. Apparently Mr. Claremont-Diaz here requires a bit of instruction when it comes to dealing with horses. I’ve told him I am not quite proficient myself—”

“You what?” Henry interjects.

“—but that you would make an excellent teacher. Now be a good host and show him how to get on, would you?” Sir Percy swats at Henry, pushing him towards Alex, then turns to his own horse, climbs on with enviable ease, and proceeds to trot off with a perfectly straight back, hands light on the reins.

Alex gets the feeling he’s just been swindled.

“Uh. Sorry about that.”

Henry gives him a kind smile. “Think nothing of it. I’d be glad to help. Now which horse did they give you?”

“The one over there,” Alex says, gesturing to the horse in the stall, busy munching on some hay. She’s white with brown patches, and thankfully not quite as tall as Sir Percy’s, but he’s still not particularly keen on stepping into the enclosed space with her.

Henry moves into it with ease though, and Alex has no choice but to follow.

“Oh, Marigold! She’s one of my favourites. I think she was one of the first horses I rode when I grew tall enough to move up from ponies. She’s very tame, Mr—Alex. You have nothing to worry about.”

The horse snickers and Alex jumps back. Accidentally.

Henry looks at him with surprise, then frowns and crosses his arms in front of his chest. His gaze pins Alex in place.

“Is this another peacock situation?”

“Fuck off,” Alex grunts. “There’s no peacock situation.”

Henry narrows his eyes at him. “Then you won’t mind if I tell you there’s one right behind you?”

Alex jumps around with an undignified squeak, and is still looking for the beast when Henry breaks into laughter. 

He turns back slowly.

“You’re an asshole. Never mind helping me, I’ll be fine on my own.” He starts to walk off.

“No! I’m sorry, Alex.” Henry’s words are undermined by the fact that he’s not yet stopped laughing. “I’ll help you. We can stick to the back of the line. The horses will follow the others happily. Trust me, they know what they’re doing better than most of the riders do. You just have to try to relax and trust your horse. They can feel it when you’re scared.”

“That sounds like a physical impossibility.”

“I’ll show you. Come on.” Henry unhooks the reins of Alex’s horse from the stall and leads them—Alex and Marigold—outside. “Alright, so: foot on the stirrup.” Alex hesitates for a second before obeying. At this point, he’s probably come too far to back down. “That’s it. Now take hold of the saddle and pull yourself up, swinging your other leg behind and over to the other side.”

“Fucking know how to climb onto a horse,” Alex mutters under his breath. Henry laughs.

He manages to sit himself upon the saddle without any more damage to his dignity and Henry nods approvingly. He moves around the horse to adjust the height of Alex’s stirrups.

“Very good. Now, the first thing is: don’t hold the reins too tight. It’ll hurt the horse and it’s not necessary, but it’s the kind of thing nervous riders often do because it makes them feel more in control. You want to give them some slack.” Alex does as told, and the horse shakes her head, appearing to relish the freedom. She doesn’t try to run off with Alex on its back, which he takes as a good sign. “Now, Marigold is a sweet, sweet girl,” Henry continues, running a hand down the centre of the horse’s nose. She dips her head, mouth searching for his hand, looking for a treat. “She will follow the rest of the line. Squeeze with your thighs if you want to encourage her to go faster—”

“Unlikely,” Alex cuts in.

“Quite,” Henry sniggers. “You have your crop, but I would advise against using it.”

“Okay.”

“Now, if you’ll give me a minute, I’ll go fetch my own horse and come back to join you. I can stick by your side if it’ll make you feel more comfortable.”

Reluctantly, Alex nods. It would indeed.

It only takes a few minutes of Alex sitting on Marigold while she crops at the grass with complete indifference before Henry reappears.

He looks… striking.

Alex already knew about Henry being tall, but sat atop a huge chestnut horse their height difference is much more noticeable. His posture is regal, impeccable: back ramrod straight, heels down at his stirrups. The lines of his thigh muscles are visible through his pale riding pants and Alex has the sudden urge to look up at the sky.

He shifts in his saddle.

The shooting party starts to move out, led by the gamekeepers, with the duke following close behind. Alex and Henry linger at the back, but Henry seems unbothered.

“You don’t need to ride with your brother?” Alex asks.

“No. I love riding, but hunting is not a favourite pastime of mine and Philip knows this. He won’t mind.”

“You don’t like hunting? I thought all gentlemen enjoyed a bit of blood sport. I thought it came with the titles and the blue blood and the ability to make everyone else feel inferior with a single glance.”

Henry laughs. “I’m afraid it skipped a generation in my case, though my sister’s got more than enough enthusiasm to make up for it. She’s only missing this today because she wanted to spend time with your sister and Miss Holleran.”

“I didn’t know women were allowed on hunts.”

“My parents never seemed to mind. I would stay home and Bea would come in my place. Not that my grandmother approved, but that never seemed to stop us. My father loved it, and always made sure Foxden Park was well stocked with game. And Philip took after him on that account.”

They start off at a slow pace, crossing the open fields near the stables, picking up speed the further away they get. It builds slowly into a canter, and with Henry giving him quick tips and encouraging smiles Alex starts to find maybe this hunting stuff is not too bad. 

“Is this still part of Foxden?” he asks. The woods they’re heading for have appeared over the crest of a hill and it turns out they are more of a forest than anything else. He’s not sure people are allowed to own forests, but maybe in this country.

“Uh, yes. It does go on for quite a long way.”

“Quite.”

There’s a narrow path that snakes its way in through the trees. The horses instinctively know to line up in single file, and Alex lets Marigold do as she pleases. Henry slots into place in front of him, ducks under some branches and disappears into the thick of it.

It’s peaceful in the woods. The sun is shining bright enough to poke through the canopy, giving everything a pretty, dappled quality, and there is a thick carpet of blue flowers underfoot, creating a purple haze that fades far into the distance. It’s not silent by any means, the air humming and tinkling with the sounds of the horses and their riders, plus the barking of the hounds cutting through, but Alex can see how it would be peaceful in here on another, more solitary day.

Ahead of him in the line, Henry turns back and smiles.

He’s mesmerising on the back of a horse.

He looks so comfortable, moves with such ease, Alex is almost jealous. He notices how thick Henry’s thighs are, the muscle presumably built onto his bones by the years of riding; how seamlessly he guides his horse with a light clench and a quick release. Alex finds himself unable to look away, and when Henry puts his weight forward on his stirrups and rises up to a near-stand as if to spot something in the distance his pants stretch tightly over his ass and. Oh. Alex is suddenly very aware of some more muscle, perfectly round, exquisitely carved by decades of exercise.

At that, he bites the inside of his own cheek and forces himself to get a fucking grip. The confusion that’s been addling his brain since yesterday only seems to be getting worse, because he’s now watching a man’s ass bounce as he rides a horse and wondering if his hands would even be big enough to hold each cheek and he does not know what the fuck is up with that. Maybe it’s all the tea he’s been drinking, or maybe there’s something off with the British air.

He makes a mental note to check with June and Nora if they’re feeling the same symptoms.

The hunt itself is… underwhelming. They spot a few deer, and a couple of people chance their aim, but no one manages to get a hit. Windsor climbs off his horse and attempts a shot from behind the trunk of a tree; he makes it look good, but the bullet goes wide and the prey is spooked, along with a host of woodland birds who take off with scandalised noises. Alex doesn’t even bother trying to shoot anything, and neither does Henry. He seems perfectly content to ride at ease near Alex, eyes roaming the tree line as if taking in the scenery.

In the end, the duke gets fed up, and they all turn their horses back in the direction of the stables. When they emerge from under the trees the sun is just starting to dip towards the horizon, and it hits Alex at an angle, warming his face.

It reminds him of home.

“At least it was a good day for it,” Henry says, noticing the way Alex is tipping his face up to the sky. “No rain, and no mud on the ground.”

“Surely you wouldn’t come out shooting in the rain?”

“Not without coercion, I can promise you that,” Henry quips. Alex laughs.

Sir Percy pulls out of the line and hangs back until they’ve caught up.

“Gentlemen. Enjoy the sport?”

“Oh, greatly,” Henry says casually. “Never before have I felt so alive as when I’m sitting on horseback, watching a bunch of miserable men gaze longingly at a collection of trees, and getting spooked by irregularly timed loud noises. Truly, this is what it must have been like in the time of our ancestors. The thrill! The rush!”

Sir Percy laughs. “Oh, jolly good, old boy. The bluebells were nice though, weren’t they?”

“Yes, they were lovely, Percy. If nothing else, I’m glad Philip brought us out to the woods to enjoy them.” He turns to Alex. “They come out only once a year, and last no more than a few weeks.”

Percy nods along. “Shame for Philip he didn’t get a shot in, he seemed so keen on it. Though if I’m being honest, I cannot remember the last time I’ve seen him use his gun with any accuracy.”

Henry laughs out loud and they carry on chatting. They’re an odd pair—guarded, soft-spoken Henry, and flamboyant, effervescent Percy—and yet listening to them talk it somehow makes sense. Like they’ve both been shaped outside of the mould of the society they find themselves existing in, both unable or unwilling to meet expectations and fall in line with all the other gentlemen around them, and that in leaning into each other they know they’re not alone. Their friendship reminds Alex of himself and Nora: they’re not the same, and yet they are able to understand each other better than anyone else.

All three of them are in a jolly mood when they arrive back at the house, and the mood continues on through the afternoon as they’re brought tea to warm up, as the women welcome them and pay absolutely no mind to their tales of heroics. Most of the guests of the shooting party stay for dinner, the table crowded to within an inch of its capacity, wine flowing freely. Alex is surprised to find himself a lot more relaxed than he’d ever thought he could be in the duke’s house. Things are, perhaps, helped along by the fact that he’s not sat so near to the duchess tonight and therefore he and Lady Bea—still made to eat next to each other, of course—are allowed to make their own conversation, her offering up stories of previous underwhelming hunts with her older brother, Alex repaying the favour with a truthful retelling of his encounters with the Foxden peacocks.

He gravitates back towards Henry and Sir Percy during the men-only portion of the evening, and when they’re finally allowed to rejoin the women in the Gold Parlour Alex feels as if they’ve done a one hundred and eighty degree turn from the first two nights of his stay, enjoying Henry’s company and discovering with curiosity that of all the new people he’s met, Henry’s the one he’s the most comfortable around.

He collapses down on a settee, accepts the brandy offered by one of the footmen, and looks over with interest as Lady Bea is pushed by the duchess to take up the stool at the pianoforte. The duchess throws a look his way—as if to make sure he’s paying attention—that lets him know she’s not quite forgotten her intentions for the two of them, but for now Alex is happy to watch Bea and indulge his hostess. Bea launches into a lively tune and Alex smiles and leans back as the music fills the room and his brain, for a rare moment empty of worries and the urge to be doing things.

A second song follows the first and soon people are standing up. Pez takes Nora’s hand and pulls her into an empty space by the pianoforte, Henry gets pulled up from the sofa by his niece—who’s been brought down from the nursery to say goodnight to her parents and clearly indulged to stay with the party, though her brother sits stiffly on an armchair, trying to act the serious gentleman. An industrious footman shifts pieces of furniture around to open up the space and Henry sweeps Amelia up into his arms, her little legs dangling as he turns and dips in time with the music, a stream of giggles pouring from both of them. Dancing merrily, Henry is flushed and laughing and Alex again finds himself unable to look away.

The way Henry’s fingers curl around the stem of a glass as he takes a refreshment break remind Alex of how he held his horse’s reins, and the way his lips slide open around the rim bring back the unguarded smile from this afternoon.

“He seems a lot nicer today than he did on the first day, does he not?” June says, dropping into the seat next to him, panting after a turn about the dance floor with the duke.

“He does indeed,” Alex says.

“And you had fun during your outing today?”

“We did,” he confirms. “He was surprisingly good company.” Alex catches a thought drifting through his mind. “Wait a minute, June. You’re not actually considering the duchess’ matchmaking efforts, are you?”

She arches an eyebrow at him. “Not particularly, but try not to sound so appalled at the idea, little brother. You know, I am expected to marry at some point.”

“Yeah, I know. Sorry.”

“What would be so wrong with Lord Henry anyway?”

“I don’t know. I just…” Fuck, he doesn’t know how to explain the fact that just thinking about a match between June and Henry makes his stomach twist up into knots. He’s not even sure how to explain it to himself. “It feels wrong, somehow.”

“Well, I agree, for what it’s worth.” Alex lets out a sigh of relief. June stands up and holds a hand out to him. “Come on. Show me around the dance floor?”

Alex grins and takes her hand.

It feels like a blur—the space around the pianoforte is not all that big, even though the larger chairs and tables have been pushed to the side for the impromptu dance—and there are far too many people joining in. They bump into each other, Alex’s back against Sir Percy’s as he spins the duchess around, June stepping on Henry’s toes as he dances with Nora—and yet he can’t stop laughing.

After several songs, Bea stops for a rest, and to Alex’s surprise Henry walks over to the pianoforte and takes her seat. His long fingers wriggle out in a stretch and then settle over the keys as if completely accustomed to it, and Alex only has a second to brace himself before Henry starts playing. Then the music starts again, flowing from Henry with even more ease than it had done from his sister.

Alex doesn’t even register Nora poking him, tilting her head in invitation. He places his hand automatically around her waist, but struggles to lead her around the improvised dance floor, eyes repeatedly drawn back to Henry—head softly bowed over the black and white keys, that perfect posture again. The candlelight bounces off the décor and lands over him, painting Henry golden. Strands of hair fall loose over his forehead, maybe obstructing his eyes, and he tips his head back, flicking the hair away with a laugh, gold and blond and pearly-white, somehow the most fascinating thing Alex has ever seen.

By the time Alex is allowed to sit down again he’s sweating, and desperately wishing he was allowed to shed his dinner jacket. He drinks another brandy, and a glass of water, and then another one of brandy, leaning into this warm feeling thrumming through him, this thing that seems to flare brighter every time Henry tips his head back with a laugh, every time he stretches his fingers out between songs, every time he swivels and his eyes find Alex’s.

Alex barely notices when the party starts winding down. The children are ushered back to bed by the anxious nurse first, and then the other guests start saying their goodbyes and sending for their carriages. Smiling widely, clearly pleased with the outcome of the day, the duchess excuses herself, taking her husband along by the hand—the bright pink of her cheeks indicating she’s probably had at least as much brandy as Alex has.

Bea sidles back over to the pianoforte and bumps Henry’s shoulder with her hip, clearly telling him to move off so she can take over again, and Henry complies with a happy laugh. He makes straight for the drinks cart and guzzles down a glass of something, and then another. 

His eyes meet Alex’s across the room and he smiles, soft and at ease in a way that Alex immediately cherishes. He walks over to meet him. 

“I did not know you played the pianoforte.”

Henry ducks his head, something almost abashed in it. “Bea was made to learn when she was a child, and I insisted on being taught as well. Of course my parents were only happy to indulge.”

“Well, you are both very good. Clearly worth the tuition money.”

Henry grins. “I’m not sure the dance tutors were quite as successful, but they tried their best.”

The words fly out of Alex’s mouth before he can stop them. “No, you looked good out there.” 

He clamps his teeth on his bottom lip, but it doesn’t bring the words back. Henry’s head snaps towards him, a look somewhere between pleased and shocked flitting over it before being covered by a perfectly pleasant—and perfectly bland—mask.

“Uh, if you’ll excuse me, I’m feeling a tad overheated in here. I’m just going to step outside for a few moments to cool down,” Henry says, slamming his empty glass carelessly down on the drinks cart and striding off towards the French doors that lead out to the terrace. He leaves behind an odd, unsteady feeling in Alex’s gut. He knows he spoke out of turn, but he can’t quite bring himself to regret it. He’d meant it.

The few stragglers left at the party have all congregated around the pianoforte and seem not to have noticed anything amiss. Sir Percy is plucking at notes, bringing out something that is not quite a song but is enough to send June, Nora and Bea into peals of laughter, the three women draped around him unselfconsciously.

Alex drifts quietly to the French doors and steps out into the night.

It’s refreshingly cool outside, a marked improvement from the thick atmosphere in the drawing room. The sky is clear, but there’s no moon, the stars bright and plentiful. As soon as the door shuts behind him the noises are completely stifled.

He spins. Looking for Henry.

He finds him at the far edge of the terrace, walking down steps that lead to the lawn and the path that runs all along the walls of the house. Alex sets a fast pace and hurries up to catch him. By the time he does, Henry’s already rounded a corner and reached the lawn. He turns when he hears Alex’s hurried steps.

“Hey,” Alex says. His voice, still used to the volume of the party, comes out far too loud for how quiet the country night is. He reins it in. “What are you doing all the way out here?” he half-whispers.

“Oh. Like I said, cooling down. It’s a pleasant night,” Henry answers, a touch stilted.

“Did you have to come out all the way to the lawn for that?”

Henry gives him a half shrug. “Wanted to step away from the house a bit. It’s always better to look at the stars away from any lights.”

They’re still walking, stepping into the shadow of a gnarled oak tree that rules over one edge of the lawn, the trunk of it wider than four men linking hands could encircle.

“You like stargazing?”

“I do, when I get the chance. London and Oxford are not that well suited, but Foxden is. Insomnia means I often find myself awake and roaming the place when I’d rather not be, but at least I get to enjoy this.” He tips his head up to the sky and Alex watches the lines of his face: the high cheekbones, the sharp nose. The way his throat looks to be miles long like this, pale and vulnerable. Inside, in the candlelight, he was golden, but out here under the stars he is cast silver, smooth lines and intricate details that beg to be touched with reverent fingertips.

Henry leans against the trunk of the tree, one foot coming up to support himself, and Alex walks up next to him. Their shoulders brush as Alex imitates his posture, but neither of them moves away.

“I get insomnia too sometimes,” Alex offers. And then, because he wants to know, “What keeps you up?” Henry lets off a little huff but says nothing. “Your studies? I know it cannot be the marriage mart, so…”

He feels the air around them shift as Henry shakes his head. “Well, yes and no, I suppose.”

Alex doesn’t get it. “What does that mean?” Henry shoots him a sharp look before turning back up to the sky. “No, I’m serious, Henry. What does that mean? I thought you didn’t care for all the matchmaking and scheming. Why does it keep you up?”

Henry sighs. “I suppose… wishing I could escape from it all.”

Alex can’t help himself. He keeps poking. “Why do you want to escape from it? You don’t want to find yourself a pretty wife?”

Henry shakes his head again. “Alex,” he says, soft and lilting—asking Alex for something he’s too dumb, or too drunk to understand.

Alex’s voice drops to a matching whisper. “What?”

Henry turns towards him and Alex copies without consciously deciding to, the tree bark rough against his shoulder even through the fabric of his clothes. They’re so close he can feel the warmth of Henry’s breath floating against his cheek.

“We don’t talk about it, Alex.”

One of Alex’s knees bends and grazes Henry’s. It feels hot and electric and good and Alex doesn’t pull it back.

“What don’t you talk about?”

“Christ, you really don’t know how to let things go, do you?” Sparing one last, despairing look at the sky, Henry drags a long breath in through his nose. Then everything seems to slow down as he raises both hands, curls them around Alex’s jaw and brings his face close. Alex has a fraction of a second to recognise what’s happening before Henry presses their lips together and the whole world dips and rises, like a carriage that’s gone over a hollow on the road too quickly.

Henry kisses him under an ancient oak tree and all Alex can think is that Henry’s lips are soft, so soft. He hadn’t known he was expecting this—hoping for it, even—until the very second before it happened, and it takes him a moment to get used to it. But one thing shines clear in the fog of it all: Alex likes it. 

He likes the way Henry’s hands fit around his face, so large, making him feel almost dainty. Likes the way he has to tip his chin up to meet Henry, the way his body instinctively rises up onto the tips of his toes. There’s a hint of stubble where Henry’s jaw is pressing into his, the roughness completely new—and not at all unpleasant, nor unwelcome.

He sucks in a ragged breath as Henry’s lips slide against his, intuitively opening up, finally finding the warmth beneath the exterior cold, already hungry for more. But when he licks along Henry’s bottom lip, wanting to taste even more of him, Henry pulls back with a sharp movement, abrupt enough to leave Alex off-balance.

He puts a hand out to lean against the tree for some support, cold swooping over the front of his body where Henry’s absence feels as large as it is sudden.

“Christ, Alex, I’m sorry.”

Alex wills his eyelids to rise, to see what Henry is apologising for—because Alex himself thinks the kiss was actually pretty great and maybe they could give it another go if Henry isn’t feeling too sure about it—but he’s too slow. 

There’s the soft crack of a twig being trod on, acorns being crushed and he finally opens his eyes, only to catch Henry’s back moving away from him, his long strides leading him swiftly around the corner to the rear of the house as Alex stands under a tree, lips tingling, hands shaking.

Chapter Text

For someone whose brain is usually lightning fast, always ten steps ahead, Alex rues how slow it was last night. He rues taking so long to kiss Henry back, and rues taking so long to call out “Henry, wait.” Rues having just stood there as Henry walked away. 

By the time he’d gotten back into the drawing room Henry had already rushed through and gone off to bed—or at least that’s what Bea’d told him. Sneaking upstairs himself, Alex had poked his head into the hallway leading to the family wing of the house, but there’d been no footsteps in the distance, no doors shutting softly. No signs of Henry.

Not that he knows for sure what he would’ve said to Henry, even if he’d managed to find him. Spending most of the night awake, thinking about it, hasn’t helped bring any clarity, but there’s a growing pressure in his chest, an ache that tastes of the night air as Henry’s lips had left his. As soon as Alex tries to tell himself to forget about it all, to say never mind, slap a piece of paper over it to cover up the whole thing and pretend it never happened, he knows that it’s impossible. That kiss is not something he can forget.

He dresses in the morning with very little peace of mind gained. The only thing he knows is that he needs to find Henry, his whole body begging for just a little bit more of what he got last night. His fingers float up to his lips every once in a while, sliding over them featherlight—a pale imitation of how kissing Henry felt.

Henry proves elusive. He’s not at the breakfast table, and Alex lingers long after everyone else has finished eating, waiting for him, only giving up when Howard—the butler—comes in and asks politely if there’s anything else sir needs. There’s a maid and a footman hovering just outside the door, clearly waiting to get started with clean-up and Alex feels like a dick for getting in their way. He apologises and leaves.

His first stop is the library, but it’s empty, the chairs by the fireplace looking forlorn, the book Henry’d been reading yesterday abandoned on the little table. He roams the halls, poking his head into every room with an open door, but finds only Bea and Nora, talking in a settee in the morning room, and June and Sir Percy, sat on one of the window seats, heads tipped over a book neither of them is looking at. He walks out into the garden, does a lap around the whole house—which is a lot fucking bigger than he realised—past branching wings and extensions to the ancient core of the building; past a large structure at the back of the manor erected out of ornate metalwork and lined with glass which must be some sort of greenhouse for it is visibly filled with plant life; then around the kitchens and through courtyards he knows perfectly well he should be nowhere near, eventually finding his way back to the oak tree. There’s no evidence here of what happened last night, and it feels wrong somehow—Alex is so fundamentally affected by it, how is the whole world still carrying on as if nothing had changed? The earth beneath his feet should be scorched, charr marks on the tree trunk from where he and Henry had pressed against it.

Building blocks inside him have toppled to the ground and Alex is trying to rebuild up, but he knows whatever shape he pulls himself into now will be something new. He’s not the same man he was before Henry’s lips pressed against his.

He should probably sit down, give it some time, wait for Henry to come to him. But with twenty-one years of working on it, Alex has still not managed to develop patience and this situation is certainly not conducive to it.

Henry—Lord Henry, impossibly posh, impossibly tall, overall impossible man—kissed him, and Alex liked it. All through the last few days he’d been trying to ignore how much he enjoyed about Henry. Spending time with him, talking to him: Henry and his witty comebacks, Henry and his constant challenges, Henry and his ridiculously long legs and unbelievably blue eyes that crinkled at the corners when he was pleased. Henry, it turned out, was fun to be around, and though Alex hadn’t been plotting to kiss him when he followed him into the darkened garden, there’s something in the back of his mind that tells him maybe that’s what he’d been aiming for with his pushing and his questions and his not leaving Henry alone.

It’s an answer to a question Alex had been steadfastly not asking himself for a long time: Is the way he looks at other men something outside of the norm, or is it just how all men feel about each other? Do they all spend their teenage years covertly watching their male friends as they frolic naked in the lake, or is it a him thing? Do they all flip-flop between picturing a woman and a man when they touch themselves in private?

Henry’s kiss means Alex can’t bury the question anymore. There’s no answer to the is this normal?, is this how everyone feels? of it all, but this is how he feels. Alex is interested in men as well as in women. He had wanted this, and he hadn’t even known it.

And now Henry’s fucking vanished.

When he finally gives up the search and skulks back to the morning room, sweaty and out of breath, with fresh blisters on his heels and in an even fouler mood than he was before, he finds the entire house party there—with the glaring exception of Henry—discussing the day’s forthcoming activities.

“Arthur and Amelia are desperate to go out on the boating pond,” the duchess is saying. She turns to Sir Percy. “Apparently you played a very amusing game the last time you visited, and they’ve been asking for it ever since they heard you would be here this week.”

Percy grins indulgently and tips his head at her. “Oh, those two love a bit of trouble, don’t they? It would be my pleasure. As long as the little rascals don’t try and tip me into the drink again.”

It’s a good day for it. The sun had been fierce on Alex’s back as he roamed the garden looking for Henry, the air still and hot. Getting out of the house with a distraction will do him some good.

Henry finally deigns to make an appearance when they’re all sitting around the table for luncheon. Alex fights the impulse to get up and rush over, shake him, make him talk, and instead sits there, one knee bouncing up and down constantly, and stares furiously across the table. 

He hopes his gaze on Henry burns.

But Henry never looks up. He makes intense eye contact with the cold meats on his plate, fingers his piece of bread until the thing is no more than crumbs and gross little balls of dough. He fiddles with his cutlery, spins his glass of water around by the foot, answers questions from his brother with mumbling monosyllables and keeps his head down for the whole meal.

It’s like their first night at Foxden all over again.

Henry sticks to Bea like a burr when they finish eating, taking her arm and clutching it close to his body as if her tiny form was a protective barrier for Alex’s growing outrage. As if.

“Good morning, Lord Henry,” Alex says, running to catch up to them as they walk out of the house. “Though I suppose ‘good afternoon’ is more appropriate. We’ve seen hide nor hair of you today.”

“Uh, yes. Good afternoon, Mr. Claremont-Diaz. I suppose I’ve been… busy. Lots to do out on, uh… estate business.”

“Yes. I can see the estate is a hive of activity.” There’s one lone gardener knelt at a flower bed, working on the plants with a metal bucket by his side. Not a single other member of staff is visible across the lawn and the fields ahead of them, the landscape as still as a lake on a stifling, breezeless day. 

Henry says nothing, but his and Bea’s combined steps speed up.

“In a hurry or something, Hen?” Bea says.

“Uh, not. Just… keen to get boating.”

She turns to him, one corner of her mouth rising up. “You are?”

“Yes.”

“But I thought you didn—”

“Yes, well I’m looking forward to it today,” Henry hisses at his sister. If Alex wasn’t so annoyed, he might’ve been inclined to laugh at his pitiful attempts to move the conversation along. “Now stop questioning me, will you?” 

“Alright,” Bea snaps. “See if I care next time you’re begging me to get you out of country activities.”

The pond is no more than a ten minute walk from the house, a long path worn into the grass guiding their way, curving around the croquet lawn and behind the little copse of trees. It’s bigger than Alex was expecting—he certainly couldn’t hit a croquet ball all the way across it. There is a small, picturesque boathouse nearby, red brick and white woodwork, and two little rowboats already floating in the water, presumably brought out by the young men who are standing at attention on the little pier. Not far from it, there are a few sunshades and some tables and chairs set up on the grassy shore, a maid laying out plates of dainty cakes and pitchers of lemonade. Alex holds back an eye roll at just how grand these people have to make even the simplest of things like going for a turn about the pond.

The duke starts talking loudly about boat groups and just how many people should be on a single boat at any given moment, but Henry is a man on a mission. He steps past the group decisively and onto the pier with Bea at his side. They climb into the first boat, push off, and Alex can tell Henry is trying to run from him and he’s had enough of it.

He ignores the duke’s confused murmurings and dashes forward, with Nora—clearly sensing something amiss—running up behind him.

“What are you doing? I can tell by your whole—” she gestures at his entire body, as if that explained anything “—that you’re about to make trouble.” And then, “Can I come with?”

“Fine, but hurry up. I need to get on that second boat.”

“Aye, aye, cap’n,” she says with a mock salute. She then pushes forward with single-minded focus, elbowing children, aristocrats and servants out of her way indiscriminately, until finally they’re at the edge of the pier, watching Henry’s boat as it glides away. Henry’s eyes flick up to Alex for a minute and there’s a clear note of alarm there as he sees Alex about to get onto his own boat in pursuit.

Alex takes a brief moment to appreciate how good Henry looks pulling on the oars, how easy the movement of his shoulders is, how fucking competent he is. Then he shakes it off and climbs on before Nora, ignoring the faintly scandalised looks of those left in their wake, and holds his hand out to her, waiting for her to settle—sprawl, since this is Nora—on her seat before taking up the oars and pushing off from the little pier. The breeze whips through his hair and he swings around, trying to find Henry, off and rowing to the other side of the pond like it’s his job and he’s being paid to get away from Alex as fast as he can.

There’s a surprised grunt from Nora’s end of the boat as the whole thing wobbles under his efforts. 

“Okay, Alejandro, what the hell is wrong with you?”

“Uh—what?”

“What do you mean what? You’ve been in this strange mood the whole day. You spent the morning wandering the house like a haunting, except you couldn’t find a victim to spook so instead you came back and sat there, jiggling your knee at about a thousand beats per minute. Then you spent all of lunch glaring at Lord Henry while he steadfastly looked anywhere but at you, and now you’re dragging me on some sort of rowboat chase. If I’m about to drown in this man-made pond, I think I at least deserve to know why, my friend.”

As much as he doesn’t want to get into it, Nora might be his best option. She’s never hidden the way her preferences swing wildly, just as she has never hidden her complete lack of interest in a long term attachment—or, God forbid, marriage.

“I—” He looks up at Henry, determinedly rowing away from him. There’s no way he can fix this on his own. “Something happened last night.”

“Did it now? Are you planning on telling me what or am I guessing? How many questions do I get?”

“I will, just… fuck, give me a minute. Okay, so after dinner, and after we were all dancing…”

“You and Henry went outside, yeah, I remember.”

Crap. He was sure he’d staggered his exit enough that no one had noticed them.

“Right, okay, so. We were talking outside and then, well, I’m not sure how it happened, except that I do, but I didn’t see it coming and then—”

“Get to it, will you? I’m about to perish of old age here and I have not yet seen the Egyptian pyramids—”

“He kissed me.”

Her eyebrows climb most of the way to her hairline. She blinks twice and then her face splits into a lewd grin.

“Nice.” She leans far back into the boat, resting her elbows against the seat and crossing her legs. Not a care in the world.

“What, that’s it?”

She shrugs one shoulder. “Anything else you want to tell me?”

“I don’t know. He kissed me and then ran away, so. Not much to tell there. I’m pretty sure he’s been hiding from me all day.”

“What, did you do it wrong?” She looks at him shrewdly. “Did you go in teeth first and bite him like you did with me that one time?”

“You know I tripped that time!” he squeals. Will the aspersions on his kissing abilities ever cease? “I wasn’t going for you teeth first, Jesus Christ, Nora!”

“Well, did you trip yesterday?”

“No. I don’t know what happened, I was just like… warming up to it, you know?” She wiggles her eyebrows and grins, then nods. “And then he pulled away and apologised, which was so unnecessary, by the way, and then he ran off.”

She turns in Henry’s direction and Alex copies her. He just catches the flicker of Henry’s eyes shifting quickly away from him. Caught in the act.

“He got scared?” she says.

“Yeah, maybe.”

“I guess then it’s up to you to let him know there’s nothing to be scared of. So you can do it again—unless you don’t want to?”

“No, I want to,” he says grudgingly. “Though I could do without all this having to chase after him. Anyway, why would he get scared? He’s the one who kissed me in the first place!”

“I dunno. Can’t be easy in a family like his. Always going on about the marriage mart and their heirs and the bloodline. Maybe he’s not sure if he can trust you, or maybe he’s worried other people will find out.”

Right. That all sounds plausible. And now Alex has just told someone, with his big, stupid mouth.

“You won’t tell anyone, will you?”

She frowns at him. “What do you take me for?”

“I don’t know. You never seem to worry about these things.”

“True, but that’s when it affects only me. I won’t say anything about you, and about him. I promise.”

He nods. “Thanks, Nor.” And then he watches her closely. Even for Nora, she seems remarkably unfazed by the whole thing. “You’re not… surprised?”

“What, about you or about him?”

“Uh, either, I guess. Both.”

She shrugs one shoulder. Trust Nora to take what’s been one of the most life-changing experiences of his life and absorb it like it’s nothing more than a faint change in wind direction.

“Not really. From what I know of your—no, I’m not exactly surprised. And from what I don’t know of him… Well, I know he and Bea are fiercely united in their resistance against the duchess’ attempts at marrying them off; I know he’s not a rake, despite his family’s position and wealth; I know he went to boarding school and now spends his days in his all-male college. If I wanted to jump to conclusions, well. It would be more like a tiny step. An inching forward, if you will.”

“Right,” Alex sighs.

“Is this the plan, then? To chase him in a boat, surrounded by his family, until he speaks to you?”

When she puts it like that. “I—well. Maybe not.” He lets his hands go lax on the oars.

“Great. Now be a dear and deliver me back to firm land, will you? Windsor is shooting daggers our way and I think one of his children may be crying for the boats.”

Alex does as asked, and she’s not wrong. Little Lady Amelia is red-faced and sniffling, wiping her nose on her mother’s skirt, and though the duchess thanks him merrily for bringing the boat back, the young girl’s hate-filled glare in his direction is one only a lifetime of rich living and never being told ‘no’ can breed in someone.

He walks up to the lawn, where Sir Percy is bringing down a large frame for playing quoits and setting it down on the edge of the pier. The children jump up and down with excitement and push their father onto the empty boat, clambering on behind him, followed by Percy, several wooden rings slung over his wrist like oversized bracelets. The duke rows off and Alex watches as what seems like a completely inadvisable game of quoits on the lake starts.

Little Arthur kneels onto the side of the rowboat, leans over and launches his ring up. The whole boat lurches and dips with the movement and he nearly tips into the water.

“That looks like a terrible idea,” June says, walking up to Alex. He has to agree, but none of the family seem bothered. Windsor laughs, one hand gripping the boy’s waistband firmly, and the duchess stands up on the pier, shouting advice at them on how to get the best shot. Alex quickly decides it’s not his place to worry.

Almost as soon as the game starts, they begin losing rings into the water. Henry is called back by his brother to be in charge of fetching the rings up. Bea clambers out of his boat looking faintly miffed at her brother, and a stone-faced footman wordlessly hands Henry a long pole with a net stuck on one end, the stoic bearing of a man who’s not new to the sort of unusual activities this family comes up with.

The party drifts and floats around the pond. A lawn tennis net is strung up and June and Bea take the first match, eventually doubling-up with Nora and Percy when the children get bored of pond quoits. The little ones rush to the tables and grab a handful of cakes each, their mother following close behind and urging moderation. Having retrieved all the stray rings, Henry is finally allowed to climb out of his boat and Alex watches him—watches him wipe his hands on his pants, pivot towards the lawn and then turn statue under Alex’s gaze, clearly reconsidering the direction he’s headed in. They stare at each other for a brief second before Henry bolts for the sunshades instead.

Alex is beyond fed-up with this. He starts in Henry’s direction with quick, determined steps, intent on pulling Henry aside for, at the very least, a word. 

There’s a flash of panic on Henry’s face and a small cake shoved wholly into his mouth as he turns to flee again. But Alex is too fast for him.

“Your lordship,” he says with a sarcastic tip of his head. 

Henry attempts to move closer to his sister-in-law. “Oh, you don’t have to call me that,” he mumbles through his mouthful, crumbs falling onto his lapels. The duchess stares at him, a partly confused, partly horrified grin on her face.

“Enjoy your time out on the water?”

“Uh, yes, very much so.”

“Good, good. I feared you’d been called away too soon. I wouldn’t want to think your fun was cut disappointingly short or anything like that, as I know that can be so frustrating.” 

Henry looks faintly horrified and the duchess spares both of them another baffled look before visibly deciding she does not want to know what this is all about. She takes her children by the hand and walks off towards the game of lawn tennis.

Alex looks around to make sure no one else is within earshot and crosses his arms in front of his chest, bracing. “Anything to say for yourself?”

Henry at least has the decency to look abashed. “I—I’m not sure what, I mean—” he fumbles and tries to step around Alex. Alex does not budge. “Do you mind?”

He firms his feet on the squishy grass. “No, I do not mind, in fact. I’m going to stand right here until you—”

Alex’s attempt at indignant fury is interrupted by a loud shout from the lawn behind them, Sir Percy’s deep voice carrying through air: “Ball!” They both turn and watch as an errant tennis ball flies over everyone’s heads and starts to dip. It bounces once off the end of the pier and into the water with a final, fatal splash.

“Oh no! I better go retrieve that,” Henry cries out with exaggerated concern, then rushes away.

Huffing his annoyance at having been dodged yet again, Alex follows, shouting, “Wait up, my lord! I’ll help you!”

Henry flings an alarmed look his way and speeds up his escape. Alex is faintly aware that most of the adults around them are now interestedly watching this display, his second ill-advised chase of the day. He shoves the thought away and keeps moving forward.

He’s not fast enough to catch Henry and by the time he’s on the pier Henry is already rowing fiercely towards where they saw the ball splash in. Alex does the only thing he can think of.

He climbs back into his own rowboat.

“That’s truly not necessary, I’m sure Henry is more than capable—” Windsor interjects from somewhere nearby. Alex keeps going.

Facing backwards as he moves away, Henry looks at him, horrified.

“Alex, what are you doing?” he says in something that is half-shout, half-whisper.

“I’m going to talk to you. You can’t keep avoiding me forever,” Alex hisses.

“What do you mean avoiding you? I’ve done no such thing.”

Alex lets out a loud “Ha!” and pulls harder on his oars, feeling the skin of his hands start to chafe. “Nooo, of course not. You’ve just been conveniently absent or otherwise occupied all day.” He’s actually succeeding in getting closer, Henry’s boat only a few feet away. “You can’t get away from me now, and we’re going to talk about it.”

“Talk about it? What is there to talk about?” Henry says, with a look of fear thrown back to the shore. Alex almost pities him—or he would, if it wasn’t for the fact that Henry has been messing him around since last night. Truly, Henry’s brought this upon himself.

With a final burst of energy that he’s pretty sure rips some skin off his already grazed palms, Alex surges forward and the two boats bump together with a hollow thunk. Henry picks up the net on a stick and starts ineffectually dragging it through the water, acting the part of unconcerned man searching for a lost ball who is not at all being hounded by someone he kissed and then deserted less than twenty-four hours ago with admirable commitment. 

Alex doesn’t even think. He hooks one of his oars into Henry’s boat for stability then stands up and swings one leg over the side to board him. His own rowboat is shoved away by his movements, the whole conjunction of things—Alex, Henry, boats, oars—nowhere near holding steady, making Alex’s legs spread way beyond what is comfortable until the muscles start to strain and burn, until he finally has no choice but to topple bodily into Henry’s boat, knees soaking in the small puddle on the bottom.

Shocked gasps float through the afternoon air from the grown-up bystanders over on the shore. The children giggle.

“Alex!” Henry screeches. The little rowboat rocks dangerously under them.

“Stop avoiding me!” Alex growls.

“I’m not! I’m merely trying to fetch a tennis ball!”

“Oh, yeah? Hand me the net then and I’ll get it for you and then. You’ll. Talk. To. Me.”

He lunges forward and he’s not even thinking about where he is. He just wants to get through to Henry.

But the tiny rowboat is merciless and it will not stand for wrestling. It wobbles even more dramatically under him, once, twice, and still half-standing Alex puts his weight onto the side to try and find his balance. Henry reaches forward to grab him, but he must overcompensate because the whole thing dips even further to his right ominously, and Alex is afforded half a second of absolute horror as the water comes closer and closer and then the whole boat flips over, tipping both of them bodily into the water.

It’s fucking cold.

His lungs squeeze tight and Alex allows himself one moment of serious regret before it is pushed away by survival instinct. He kicks up, trying and failing to find the ground beneath his feet, and emerges back into the afternoon with an utterly undignified shriek. Henry is also resurfacing, only a few feet away from him, a look of unmitigated rage on his face, which—okay, maybe this time, might be earned.

“Fuck, fuck, are you okay?” Alex tries.

Henry, it turns out, is not okay. He is incandescent. “What the devil do you think you’re doing?” he shouts.

“I didn’t mean to! I’m sorry, I just got off-balance and then—”

“Yes, because you couldn’t leave well enough alone!” He bobs closer and for the first time since last night Alex actually thinks he might be better off getting away from Henry. His back hits up against wood—the hull of the not-upturned-boat, he realises, wedged into the reeds, and he can’t move any further. Henry’s hands curl around his sopping lapels, yanking Alex closer. “Why in the world did you think throwing me into the lake would help? Have you lost your mind?”

“I didn’t mean to, I already said,” Alex matches Henry for volume.

“Gentlemen!” Philip shouts from the shore, faintly alarmed. “Some decorum, please!” He’s got one arm slung around little Arthur’s waist, and the boy is doing something akin to running on the spot, feet dangling in the air, displaying every sign of having tried to jump in after Alex and Henry and join in with the early summer fun. There’s unabashed glee on his face and it’s clear it’s taking most of his father’s strength to hold him back.

The raw anger on Henry’s face morphs into visible fear and it manages to pull Alex to a halt.

Henry releases his coat and Alex sinks back into the water.

“I’m sorry, Henry,” he tries again.

“Yes. You’ve said,” Henry replies coldly. He turns away and back towards his boat, hooks both hands under the edges of the hull and flips it over in one move, making it look easy even as the fabric across his back strains over his muscles. Honestly, if Alex wasn’t so cold that his balls have shrunk to the size of grapes and pulled up tight against his body, he would be aroused. 

There’s nothing left to do here but drag the rowboats back to the pier and try to emerge from the water with a tiny shred of dignity. He’s clearly not having any sort of conversation with Henry now.

“Sorry about that,” he mumbles in Windsor’s direction as he climbs the slope back to the shore, a harassed footman stepping into the reeds to finish dealing with the rowboat. “Miscalculated the balance.” Alex’s shoes, his clothes, his entire person squelches unforgivably as he moves and he realises dignity’s definitely flown away like a bird whose cage was accidentally left open. At speed. Irreversibly. 

June and Nora rush to his side.

“Alex! Are you alright? What happened?” His sister fusses with him, helping strip his jacket off, making sure he’s unhurt. Which—other than a bruised ego and maybe a bruised heart too, he is.

“Smooth move, Alejandro. If I’d known you had that planned I’d have let you at it earlier.”

“Shut up, Nora,” he hisses.

“What are you talking about?” June interjects.

“Nothing. Just Alex’s little rivalry with Lord Henry. What a coup, eh? Dunking him in the pond! They’ll be talking about this for years, I should think.”

“Fuck this, I’m going back up,” Alex hisses. His boots are so full of water he can barely drag them, so he stops to yank them off and starts moving away again on socked feet. He spares one last look behind himself, only to see Henry climbing out of the water, tugging the other boat along as he goes. He too has shed his jacket and his soaked shirt is transparent, clinging to his body like skin, not leaving a single line of his muscles up to the imagination.

Through the rage and the embarrassment, in a blazing flash of clarity, Alex cannot believe he didn’t realise he was interested in men until Henry kissed him. How fucking stupid was he?

It physically hurts to pull his eyes away from Henry, to stop from investigating the lines of his collarbones and the dusky shade of his nipples so he can go back to the house and think this through. His next move is certainly going to have to be more considered. 

Also, possibly, he should carry a shield of some sort. If the murderous look on Henry’s face is anything to go by, he might need it.

Chapter Text

Being drawn his second bath in forty-eight hours feels too indulgent, almost unethical. Wasteful in ways Alex doesn’t normally allow himself to be, despite the fact that his family now has more money than they know what to do with. But then he remembers he’s in a duke’s house, that the towels are embroidered with gold thread and that there were as many different types of meat as there were people around the table for dinner on their first evening here—most of which had probably been left uneaten as they’d departed—and all his bath-based regrets are washed away together with the earthy scent of pond water.

His non-bath-based regrets very much still linger, the memory of the glare Henry had thrown his way clinging to his skin as if insoluble. But even so, Alex finds himself relishing the moment when he’d finally cracked past Henry’s restraint, when he’d forced Henry to show some of the emotions he clearly keeps under reins much tighter than those he would ever have allowed on Marigold, for fear of hurting her.

Holding himself close, Alex realises, is probably hurting Henry on a daily basis. And he endures it nonetheless. This has to be what Lady Beatrice had been speaking of when she said Henry would never marry. That his preferences—combined with admirable strength of character—would never allow him to take a wife. The fear on Henry’s face that night had been the fear of being found out.

Impulsiveness is the main driving force of Alex’s life, always has been. He cannot fathom what it is like to be like Henry: someone who can hold his tongue, someone who has the capacity to not voice a desire, not act on an urge.

Alex’s fingertips are still faintly thrumming with the need to do something. To fix this, but also to move it along. To get some sort of resolution.

Dried and dressed, he makes his way to the Green Parlour, a slightly less grand room adjacent to the dining room, where aperitifs are being served tonight. Only Sir Percival is there, along with the obligatory footman standing in one corner. He’s pouring himself a gin, tonight’s suit a deep green silk that gives the impression of having been chosen to match the shades of the room.

“Mr. Claremont-Diaz, good evening! And may I just say, wonderful match today, dear. Top sport, truly.”

Wrong-footed, Alex stammers. “Do you—are you talking about the… pond incident?”

Sir Percy dismisses his nerves with a flick of the wrist. “I don’t know what you mean by incident. To me that was as fine a display of gentlemanly engagement as I’ve ever had the pleasure of witnessing.”

“Right,” Alex mutters, pouring out a drink of his own. Henry’s best friend is such an odd character, Alex often cannot tell if he is being mocked or simply appreciated in a completely unexpected way. Or if Sir Percy just finds it all so completely unremarkable as to not shake a single pebble loose in his own oddly-shaped edifice of propriety.

“You know,” Sir Percy says casually, eyes roaming over a painting hanging a few feet away: a pastoral scene featuring a pair of hunters in pursuit of something that is just disappearing off canvas, nothing but wisps of disturbed leaves and twigs indicating it had been there at all. “Sometimes the hunt may seem… futile. A battle lost before it’s even started. But I always feel like the best things in life, those truly worthy of pursuing, take that little bit of extra effort. Wouldn’t you agree?” Baffled, Alex looks around, not entirely sure of what Sir Percy is talking about, or if he even is talking to him. Sir Percy finally turns back and claps a hand to his shoulder. “Next time you’re planning on a swim, do let me know beforehand, won’t you? I’d love to join, given time to get into more appropriate attire, of course.” And with that he wafts over towards the door, which is just opening to admit Lady Beatrice.

The rest of the party joins them soon, and this time Henry does not try to hide. He appears, impeccably dressed as usual, and when he too walks over to the drinks cart, Alex tenses, expecting either retaliation or worse—silence. Instead, he is greeted by a polite nod and a quiet “Mr. Claremont-Diaz,” and when Henry bends to reach for a tumbler on the lower shelf, the scent of clean linen and freshly washed skin wafts his way, so pure as to cause Alex to lean closer, breathing in deeply just to get a little bit more of it.

They both startle apart, Alex’s cheeks flushing hot.

“Uh. Excuse me,” he mumbles, walking quickly to stand by June’s side, still perfectly aware of Henry’s eyes tracking him as he goes. The way Henry looks at him has changed and changed and changed again since he arrived at Foxden. From terrified, to apologetic, to challenging and then friendly, and then back to terrified again—and then sopping wet, dripping anger. But tonight, there’s something else there. Something the small shard of hope in Alex’s chest wants to call… wistful. It lingers throughout dinner, in glances Alex catches for a fraction of a second before they skitter away, in the patterns Henry’s fingertips draw over the tablecloth that Alex tries and fails to read. 

Henry again excuses himself immediately after the port is drunk, and Alex is only able to resist the restless itch bothering the soles of his feet for a few minutes before he too leaves the room and sets out in search of him.

His first impulse is the garden, the oak tree—but it’s a cloudy night, the stars hidden and a thin drizzle falling, and there is no one outside. Back in the house, he runs around all the parlours and halls downstairs, and hesitates only briefly before venturing upstairs and into the family wing, but Henry is not there. Another attempt outside then, a circuit of the house—a route that is becoming uncomfortably familiar to him—and Alex is starting to fear he’s missed something, that Henry has taken a horse or a carriage and left for lodgings in the village or even the dower house, when he walks by the looming glass-and-metal structure of the greenhouse and catches the flicker of candlelight.

There.

A dim orange glow to one corner, leaves and branches casting faint shadows over the lawn.

A set of stone steps leads up from the garden to a pair of wide doors, and Alex runs up them, only to take hold of the handle and find that it does not budge under his hand. It’s locked. He rattles it and tries to force it down in the faint hope that the lock is less than sturdy or merely stuck shut with rust, growing increasingly desperate until he notices the light inside, shifting and then growing closer. 

And then Henry is there, on the other side of the glass, body criss-crossed by the metalwork and the shadows like a caged bird.

He blinks down at Alex, open mouthed for a second before turning the key inside. A rush of warm air blows out of the greenhouse.

“Alex.”

“Uh. Hi.”

“Are you alright? In need of assistance? Did you lose track of the way into the house?” Henry looks faintly concerned.

“I—no.” Now that it’s just the two of them and the darkened silence of this strange place, Alex finds the words jumble in his brain, all trying to rush forth at once and catching on each other before managing to come out. “I’m not lost. I was looking for you.”

Henry sighs, runs a hand through his hair and turns around, walking back through the trees and deeper into the indoor forest. Now that Alex is actually looking at it, the sight is slightly perplexing. 

In all his wanderings through the house, he’d not actually been in here before. The space is much larger than he’d realised; warm and humid, clearly artificially heated and dense with plant life. There are long raised beds with flowers growing in them, ornamental rockeries and a thick canopy of leaves rising over head-height and above. Several neatly-trimmed lemon trees grow in huge pots, heavy with fruit, and behind them even taller orange ones. Further back, he can make out the thick, wide blades of banana trees, planted directly into patches of exposed ground dug into the stone flooring. 

An entire army of fruit trees, standing at attention, providing just enough cover for Henry to duck and hide behind them. But the dancing shadows cast by his candle do not allow him to disappear completely.

The rain outside picks up, the pattering growing insistent against the glass of the roof and slowly filling the air around them with a thick hum. Alex reaches for the leaves of a nearby orange tree, crushing one slightly between his fingers, the scent of the citrus rising up and surrounding him, clean and sharp.

“What is this place?” he asks, momentarily distracted from his pursuit.

“The Orangerie,” comes Henry’s voice from somewhere in the depths. Alex moves towards it.

“What? What d’y’all need one of those for?”

Henry lets out a wisp of a laugh and Alex finally manages to find him among the aisles of greenery, a tall, straight shadow in the distance. “For growing oranges, I suppose. And other fruits. The English weather is not always friendly to them.”

“Huh.”

Henry’s walked as far as the stone wall opposite the doors Alex came in through, a wall that must be shared with the house proper. He turns, and something in his posture makes Alex slow down, take a moment. It’s been a day-long game of cat-and-mouse, chasing Henry, trying to get near him, and now it’s finally over, the urge to push yields. A trickle of longed-for patience.

“You know, this whole thing makes no sense,” Alex starts. “You’re the one who… well, the one who stuck his tongue in my mouth.” Henry flinches. “And then you ran from me, you ran all day long, in fact, and now you’re cowering in the corner like you’re a maiden and I’ve come to steal your virtue. Doesn’t that strike you as unfair?”

Henry looks up at the glass roof, as if it could possibly provide the answers he’s looking for.

“I—yes. I can see that.” Finally, finally, he looks at Alex. “I’m sorry, Alex. I shouldn’t have done that.”

“Which part of it?” Alex tilts his chin up and inches towards him. Henry doesn’t move to run again.

“The—all of it, I suppose,” Henry says hesitantly.

“I didn’t mind the first bit,” Alex murmurs. “I wasn’t actually trying to get you to apologise, you know? Well—not for the kiss anyway.”

Something in Henry steadies and straightens, and Alex realises a part of him already knew this. That Alex hasn’t been gunning for a fight all day—or not just a fight. That he’d recognised Alex’s desire, maybe even before Alex himself, seen the heat in his eyes, and sought to take shelter lest he get caught in the flames.

Alex is only a foot away from him now, sparks flying. Ready to ignite.

He raises one hand, lets his fingertips land on Henry’s cravat and drags them down, stopping at the centre of his chest. Henry’s breath catches and stutters.

“You truly don’t know how to leave things alone, do you?” Henry says quietly, breath fluttering against Alex’s cheeks. The candle held between them flickers and goes out, pitching them into sudden darkness—followed by the tinkle of metal against stone as Henry drops the candlestick to the floor.

“Do you want me to leave it alone?” Alex asks in the sudden darkness, all bravado and confidence he’s not sure he truly feels.

Henry’s answer comes not in the form of words, but, instead, in a rush of movement. He closes the final inch between them and crushes their mouths together, lips and teeth and tongue and a sharp intake of breath, all at once. Pressing into Alex, Henry is hot and slick and as intoxicating as an entire bottle of brandy, and in a heady instant this kiss is already completely different from the last one. There’s no tentativeness. Henry claims Alex’s mouth with a demanding hunger and Alex can only yield to it, welcome it gladly. He wraps his strong hands around Alex’s upper arms and turns him bodily, pushing Alex against the stone wall, not rough, but hard enough that he feels the pressure everywhere. It should be cold, but there’s nothing getting through to Alex’s brain beyond the heat of Henry, his mouth, his hands, his chest against Alex’s, his—oh God, his cock, growing hard against Alex’s thigh. 

A ragged moan rips through Alex’s throat. This isn’t just different from last night. It’s unlike any kiss Alex has ever had before. It’s all surge and movement and flowing electricity that Alex wants to chase, but it’s shooting off in so many directions, so many parts of Alex’s body that he can’t keep up. He pulls away from Henry’s mouth and sucks at the sharp lines of his jaw, finds a small patch he must have missed when shaving for dinner and licks across the grain of the stubble, relishing the newness of it. He pulls Henry’s bottom lip between his teeth and is rewarded with blown-wide eyes and something akin to a whimper—and Henry’s large hands, grabbing his ass with greedy strength. Henry’s hardness continues to press up against him and Alex can’t get over it. He’s kissing Henry, a man—a man!—and it is undoubtedly the hottest thing that’s ever happened to him.

Just like his lips, Alex’s hands move constantly, feeling across the wide span of Henry’s shoulders and the way they dip and narrow into the soft curves of his waist, drinking in the little hitch Henry lets out when he tugs the fabric out from his waistband and finds smooth, warm skin beneath it, and pushes up and up, palms flat against him and needing more, more, an amount he cannot quantify.

Henry wrenches his mouth away.

“This is such a bad idea,” he rasps. In the near-dark, Alex can make out the glistening of his lips.

“I really don’t fucking care. Do you?”

Henry answers by rocking his hips up against Alex’s thigh, creating pressure and friction where he wants it. “I wish I did.” Alex kisses under his ear. “Feel like I should.” Henry leans sideways, offering up more of his neck. His body continues to ripple and roll.

“Well, which is it, your lordship? Are we doing this or what?”

With an eye roll and one last, final groan, Henry drops to his knees, hands flying to the fastenings of Alex’s pants. In a rush of arousal, Alex’s dick twitches up hard, dangerously close to being overcome.

“May I?” Henry asks, the blue of his eyes turned to shadow as they lift up to Alex.

“I’m going to need you to stop talking, like, yesterday.”

Henry smirks, one side of his mouth quirking up. His hands still. “I thought you’d spent all day trying to get me to talk.”

“I will walk out of here right now,” Alex threatens breathily, a lot less bite in it than he’d like. His traitorous hips twitch into Henry’s hands.

But Henry only laughs and finishes opening up his fly, curling his fingers around Alex’s dick.

The touch is searing hot, and Alex feels it all the way to his bones, suddenly seeming a lot less solid than they’d done before Henry’d taken hold of him. Henry keeps him in place, grinning, then lifts his hand up to his mouth, fucking spits into it, and takes hold of Alex again, clutching him tightly and then moving up. 

A muffled thud sounds as Alex’s head hits the stone wall behind him, but at least the pain manages to push back the threat of his orgasm bursting out of him before he’s even had the time to enjoy this.

Henry lets out a small, pleased laugh as he works his fist up and down, again and again and again. “You’re so gorgeous, you know?” Words flee from Alex along with the drops of fluid spilling from him without his say-so. He looks down to see Henry licking his lips and oh God, oh God— “I knew that already, but like this…” Henry shuts up and finally curls his tongue around the crown of Alex’s dick, licking the droplets, sucking them into his mouth and using his lips to gather more, before finally closing his lips over the whole head, hot-wet-pressure and a devastating burst of pleasure.

Alex feels like molten lead: heavy, unable to hold his own shape. It’s only the press of Henry’s hands—one gripping his hip, the other the base of his cock—and the way Henry sucks him off with his entire body, moving, always moving, that keeps him upright. 

Long flat strokes against his length, insistent pushing of the tip of his tongue into Alex’s slit, and the constant tugging of his fist, and everything is so wet, so slippery, and so fucking good, Alex falls over the edge before he even notices its approach.

It surges hot and fast and inexorable inside him and spills before he can call out a warning. Under his own loud moan, Alex hears a surprised gasp from Henry beneath him. He thinks faintly to apologise but the fire is still raging inside him and then Henry’s got both hands curled around his hips, pulling him closer, deeper, so that Alex finishes spilling not on Henry’s tongue but down his throat, and Henry takes it, takes it, moans lowly under it.

Like a wisp of wind, the thought drifts through his head that nothing in his life, ever, has felt like this before—this good, this right, this important—and then the thought is gone, too big to be grasped in a moment of borderline consciousness.

Alex holds steady with one hand buried into Henry’s hair and then gives up, collapsing down to the ground, landing half in Henry’s lap, unable to direct his legs into any sort of graceful position. His head finds a place to rest in the crook between Henry’s shoulder and his neck and Alex pants into his skin and holds on to him, clothes crushed into his fists, trembling like a spiderweb in a harsh breeze. Henry kisses his temple and strokes his hair, soothing him through it. 

“Oh my God,” he manages to say eventually, still sounding as stable as a pile of sticks.

“Are you alright there?” Henry asks with a soft little laugh.

“Ugh, don’t ask tough questions right now.” He looks up at Henry, smiling down at him, visibly pleased with himself. Which—fair. He’s earned it. Alex can be a big man and admit it. “Hang on, I just gotta…” and with no further words—because that would be too hard—he shifts until he’s out of his own way, reaches for the fastenings of Henry’s pants, and pulls out his dick. 

Closing his fingers around it comes naturally, though the feeling is like nothing else. Warm and smooth and so, so delicate, like something to fucking treasure. As is the pleased little mewl that falls from Henry’s lips.

“I’m just… this is new to me, so like, feel free to tell me if I’m doing it wrong,” Alex says in a half-whisper.

Henry’s hand closes around his.

“You don’t have to, Alex. There’s no expectation.” Alex arches an eyebrow at him and Henry chuckles softly. “Okay, there may be… hope. But truly, I will not be upset if you need to take it slowly.”

“No, it’s fine. I want to, just… I’m learning.”

“Well, you’re doing very well,” Henry says with a sharp exhale and a series of nods. Then he tightens his hand around Alex’s and moves them both up.

Slowly, he guides Alex into motion. He lets Alex build confidence for a few strokes until the gestures get easier, and Henry’s breaths start to come faster, becoming more ragged. His eyes drop closed and his hand finally releases Alex’s. Alex picks up the pace, finds Henry’s mouth with his own and licks deeply into it. Having forgotten to expect it, he’s surprised to find a taste that can only be his own in there, and he moans and rises up to his knees, fisting Henry’s cock even faster as he continues to drag out every drop of himself he can find in Henry’s mouth.

With an urgent shift of the legs beneath him and a sharp, breathy sound that Alex eats up wholly, Henry comes, hot and messy, all over Alex’s hand and the stone floor below, hips fucking up into his fist in desperate throes.

When Henry’s mouth finally goes lax, Alex pulls back and falls to the ground with legs sprawled, breaths still coming fast as he recovers. The hard stone floor offers little in the way of steadiness. 

He holds up his sticky hand, examining it with awe. 

He did that. Henry’s pleasure, messy, dripping down to his cuffs, clear to see even in the faint starlight. Alex did it.

A handkerchief flutters across his eyeline.

“Thanks.”

“Don’t mention it,” Henry says with a quirk of his mouth. He flops back against the wall and Alex moves to sit next to him, making sure to skip over the wet spot on the floor. Should he use the handkerchief on it, wipe away the evidence despite the dust? Would its origin be obvious if anyone were to find it in the morning?

Their shoulders press together, but it’s not enough.

“Hey,” he says, turning his whole body sideways to kiss Henry. He swings his legs over Henry’s stretched out ones, and they kiss and kiss for a long time, soft and less urgent now, but still just as deep, just as full of something. Though they’ve both found release, it doesn’t seem to have done much to abate this want.

Alex pulls back and looks at Henry, the darkened lips, visibly slick even with the scant light.

“What are you looking at?” Henry asks uncertainly.

“Just… you. You’re such a surprise.” He runs his fingertips over the lines of Henry’s face, the pale eyebrows, the straight nose, the sharp cheekbones. The sweet little dip at the top of his lip, into which Alex tries each of his fingertips in turn until he finds, like Cinderella, a perfect fit with the smallest one.

“A good one, I hope?”

“Oh, for sure. Not that I know what to do with it. Or you.”

Henry pauses and looks at Alex and some unexpected humour rises in him, the corners of his mouth creasing as he holds back a smile.

“What? What are you smiling about?”

“Just… You didn’t have to throw me in the pond, you know?” Henry says, the laugh finally bursting out of him. 

Alex chuckles in his throat. What happened in the pond seems an era away, though it was only this afternoon. 

“First of all, I’m not sure that’s true,” he says, pausing the movement of his fingertips along Henry’s jawline. “Second, I would’ve thrown you in the fucking Thames if it would have gotten you to stop being so obtuse and talk to me.”

Henry’s full laughter rings out in the echoing room, an enchanted forest risen out of stone and glass and metal which now houses a most singular memory for Alex.

“That seems truly unwise.”

“I don’t think either of us can stake a claim to wisdom in this, my lord.” He takes his teeth to Henry’s throat and pulls the soft skin there between his lips.

“Good point. Ah—well made.”

Alex grins to himself, and then remembers.

He closes a fist around the fabric of Henry’s shirt. “You better not try the vanishing act on me again.”

Henry at least has the decency to look contrite. “I—yes. Again, I cannot apologise enough. I was… overcome.”

It’s such an easy target. “I know. I mean, I have often had ladies swoon at my feet at the mere sight of my handsome face and my well-built body. It’s no wonder you lost control of your faculties when you kissed me. Could’ve happened to the best among us, I suppose.”

Henry shoves him away and laughs, starts to push off from the ground. “Well, this was a jolly good time, old boy, but I have some incredibly interesting reports on estate management and maximising yield to read and…”

Alex clutches at his hands and laughs right back. “Okay, okay, I’ll stop. Don’t go.”

Henry flops back next to him, one arm slung over Alex’s shoulders. He buries his nose in Alex’s curls, pulls in a deep breath and holds him tighter.

“I’m not going.”

Chapter Text

The first thing—the only thing—Alex sees when he walks into the breakfast room the next morning, is Henry. Flushing a lovely shade of pink, eyes dropping demurely to the toast on his plate in an attempt to hide whatever emotion is there even as the corners of his mouth turn up irrepressibly, he is so fucking gorgeous. Alex’s stomach makes a valiant attempt at a full somersault and he has no idea how he’s meant to keep his composure in the face of all that.

As if it were a long-trained reaction rather than a brand new one, his mind is instantly pulled back into the memories of last night, while at the same time wishing they’d been able to keep a candle lit, so he could’ve tracked the way Henry’s skin responded to his touches, his kisses; found out if this is as pink as Henry goes or if Alex can make it an even more vibrant shade.

Maybe next time.

“Mr. Claremont-Diaz. Good morning,” Henry mutters, his eyes finally meeting Alex’s and twitching with mischief. 

“Lord Henry. Good morning.” Alex has no clue if he succeeds at feigning indifference.

Standing at the buffet near him, Sir Percy clears his throat loudly, a subtle reminder that there are, in fact, other people in the room. Alex hadn’t noticed them in the face of Henry’s pretty blush and the way he’d looked up at him through his eyelashes.

“Uh, yes. Good morning, all.” He tips his head politely at each of their breakfast companions, not missing the wicked knowing smile on Nora’s face, nor June’s look of someone who is putting things together in her mind without needing any additional information from him. He gives her less than an hour to have worked it all out.

“Unfortunate weather this morning, is it not?” Sir Percy says. 

Last night’s drizzle has only intensified. He and Henry had sat on the stone floor of the Orangerie until Alex’s ass had gone numb from both the hardness and the cold, while his lips had toed the line between pleasantly tingling and achingly raw from so much kissing. The light outside the Orangerie had started to change, the sky slowly fading into a hazy grey-orange colour, the rain pattering heavily on the glass—and still Alex had not wanted to say goodbye.

They had torn their bodies apart at the doors back into the house, and walked the hallways side-by-side, keeping some distance between them—the distant sounds floating up from downstairs a clear warning to keep modesty. For the household staff, a new day had already begun.

Now, seeing Henry again for the first time since he altered Alex’s world so completely, Alex can only think of one thing: where and how and how fucking soon to get Henry all to himself again.

From one end of the table, the duchess gazes out of the window and sighs at the rain. “Well, I suppose today’s plan for a picnic and a ramble is out of the question.” Alex exchanges a look with Henry. Though he supposes it is her job, as their hostess, to keep them entertained, he was hoping they’d be able to slip away unnoticed for some time. “I suppose we can do card games and such,” she finished dejectedly.

“I know Arthur and Amelia will have some ideas for fun to be had indoors, if you’ll allow them to be pulled away from the schoolroom,” Lady Beatrice says. Maybe she also would like a buffer from her sister-in-law’s inevitable attempts to pair her up with Alex in a game of whist.

“That is true. It does feel cruel to keep them cooped up when we’re out here in the country. Why should we have all the fun and not them?”

No more than half an hour later—just enough time for Alex to skirt around an odd fish and rice dish this household favours for breakfast and instead quickly work through a few slices of buttered toast and scrambled eggs, washing it all down with an amount of tea that never quite seems to hit the spot (plus trade turns with Henry at staring wistfully at each other)—finds the entire house party congregated in the Games Room.

It’s a large space on the ground floor, not far from the site of Alex and Henry’s late night escapade. A parlour like many of the others he’s been in at Foxden, but this one furnished with specific intent, and not a lot of room given over to frilly décor. There are several sets of tables and chairs for card games, a pair of low chess tables with the checkerboard pattern inlaid into the wood and drawers for the pieces and—what is instantly Alex’s favourite feature of the room—a large billiards table in one corner. The baize is pristine and free of damage, the wood shining with polish, and on the wall nearby hangs a special board for score-keeping, next to the frame holding the cues. Alex eyes it hungrily, the whole set-up immediately making him think back to his childhood, to afternoons spent playing with his mother and grandmother back in Texas. His fingers itch, already feeling the phantom smoothness of a cue held in their grip.

He’s not allowed to just yet, though. Chairs and couches are shifted to form a semi-circle in front of a fireplace and a wide-bottomed vase becomes the vessel for charades: each of the participants asked to write down an animal, person or object onto a scrap of paper, so that one of the other players can be tasked with acting it out for the others to guess, points earned for those who succeed.

Amelia’s first turn—a duck, instantly guessed by her brother—is rather successful, setting up high expectations. Arthur proceeds to act out ‘old man’, followed by Sir Percy and ‘an elephant’, and Nora, very successfully—if slightly undignified—acting out the role of ‘a kangaroo’. When Henry’s turn comes around, Alex wishes fiercely to be able to imprint to memory the sight of all six-feet-something of him, lying down on the hearthrug, wriggling sinuously in all directions, taking short breaks to huff in frustration at the group’s inability to guess what he’s doing. After all variations of ‘snake’ and ‘worm’ and ‘fish on dry land’ have been exhausted, he finally jumps up and exasperatedly announces he’d been ‘a river’, then proceeds to stalk off to an armchair in a corner, where he sits pouting adorably. The only thing that relieves Henry’s embarrassment is that Alex then follows with—and utterly fails at—the task of interpreting the concept of ‘life’ with his entire physical self.

The fact of his failure—something that would have stung Alex in the not so distant past—is made irrelevant by the way Henry breaks into bright, open laughter at his performance; the way Arthur and Amelia gravitate towards him and join in, all three doubled over and draped across each other in unrestrained joy. Alex might be willing to humiliate himself more often for the chance of seeing Henry as happy as that.

After charades, a game of chess is set up and Sir Percy takes the first turn with Arthur, while the ladies set up a watercolouring station on one of the other tables. The duke leads Alex and Henry to the billiards table, where he sets up a game, and Alex lets his knuckles drag across the back of Henry’s hand as he goes to collect his cue, the warm thrill of it seeming too large for so small a touch.

It’s strange, after everything they did last night, to have to be so restrained around each other, being able to do little more than steal glances that last a touch too long. Alex longs to be able to slip away with Henry, to find a quiet corner or an empty room and press their mouths and bodies together again, and yet he enjoys this, the fizzing excitement of having to wait, of knowing he has Henry’s attentions, and trying to earn even more of them. He knows—without having to look—that Henry is staring at his ass as he leans over the billiards table to line up his cue, and he bends his knee a little further, arches his back more than strictly necessary. He sinks a particularly showy shot and is rewarded with an impressed gasp from Henry—but then Henry repays him by eating a sugared biscuit and proceeding to lick his long fingers with unnecessary zeal, under the guise of cleaning up crumbs, all while holding Alex’s gaze.

They’re very lucky the rest of the group is too distracted by their own pursuits to pay any attention to them.

Lady Beatrice has the brilliant—as declared by Arthur and Amelia—idea to set up a game of skittles in the Long Gallery, and despite the duke’s brief look of hesitation they all file out, collecting what turns out to be a set of small bowling pins and balls on their way, and lining them up on the parquet floor among the priceless old paintings and sculptures upon plinths. 

It seems like a bad idea, a recipe for disaster—or, at least, sizeable financial damage—but none of the household look worried. When Alex puts too much strength behind his first shot and it hits the fireplace at the far end of the room, leaving a red mark on the imposing white marble surround, no one seems to mind. When Windsor himself manages to get an odd bounce on his ball and it flies up to hit a picture on the rear wall, they all watch with bated breaths as it sways on its wires, a low, humming ‘ooh’ rising through the group as it nearly falls off before finally steadying again, hanging only slightly lopsided as a result. And when Lady Bea walks into a Chinese vase that looks to be worth quite a lot of money, Henry is there with his quick reflexes just in time to catch it and stop it from shattering on the floor, setting it back upright to a round of applause and whoops from his family. It is, if Alex is being honest, a lot more fun than he’d expected a rainy day spent stuck inside a stuffy country home to be.

And through it all, as Henry stealthily runs a hand over his lower back, as his smiles grow bigger and more open, Alex starts to feel like he might expire if he doesn’t get his mouth on Henry’s soon.

After luncheon—despite his hopes that the games might be finished for the day—someone suggests a round of hide-and-go-seek. Sir Percy is picked first to seek, and as the children depart the entrance hall in fits of giggles—Arthur tugging Nora along, Amelia dragging her aunt with her—Alex suddenly realises they have a chance. He looks over to Henry, makes sure to catch his eye, and tips his head in the direction of the library. Then he walks off determinedly, without looking back—even when he thinks he hears Henry stop to whisper something to Sir Percy before following him.

Alex is still standing by the library doors when Henry walks in.

“What took you so fucking long?” He shoves the door shut behind Henry and takes hold of his lapels, pulling him close. Henry laughs into his mouth and, oh God, Alex is going to explode.

“Well, I thought it would be best if I didn’t sprint after you, though believe me, I wanted to. Thought it might attract unwanted attention.”

“Good thinking,” Alex says, and then shuts the hell up and kisses Henry.

Stepping forward so that Henry is pressed into the wood of the door, Alex licks into him and feels Henry’s smile vanish instantly as he opens up for it, mouth ravenous for Alex’s, one hand curled firmly around his waist, the other on the back of his neck, encouraging Alex to tip up, open further.

And though Alex’s dick reacts instantly, he finds himself slowing down, taking a moment to savour the lingering sweetness of dessert in Henry’s mouth, to appreciate how smooth his tongue feels, how easily the slide between them finds its rhythm.

Kissing Henry slowly, thoroughly, is just as heady as kissing him hungry and desperate, it turns out. It’s something different: one a ravaging blaze, the other a calm sea. Both just as liable to have Alex disappear completely into them if he allows it.

“Hi,” he says when they finally pull away for air. It takes a few moments for his eyes to find their focus again, for him to relocate himself in his body—ah yes, here’s one foot, flat on solid wooden flooring; here is the other, raised on tiptoes so he can push one knee between Henry’s, pressing his thigh to the space between his legs. Here are his hands, clutching tight fists of fabric and hair; here is his heart, the pounding drum that fills his ears.

Long fingers come up to brush curls away from his temples.

“Hello. How have you been this morning?”

“Oh, you know,” Alex says, dragging a fingernail down the side of Henry’s neck, lips following in its wake. “Harder than Nelson’s Column, but otherwise good.”

Henry laughs, and Alex shushes him. They are supposed to be hiding after all. He certainly doesn’t want to be found by anyone who isn’t Henry. 

“Really?”

“Yes. What did you think would happen when you kept doing shit like bend down to fix the skittles and… I don’t know, sitting there, looking up at me all pretty? I’m only human, Henry.”

Henry looks down bashfully. “I wasn’t trying to, you know.”

“I know. That’s what makes it so aggravating.”

“Well, you didn’t make it easy either. I have to tell you, I think maybe your tailor’s been cheating you,” Henry says, biting his bottom lip.

Alex is thrown by the swerve in the conversation. “What?”

“They must’ve been scrimping on fabrics, if I’m going by the way those trousers fit you.” Henry runs his hands down along his sides, until they both curl around Alex’s ass. Alex arches into them and almost misses Henry’s meaning. “Borderline scandalous, I would say.”

A startled laugh bursts out of Alex. “You’ve been looking at my trousers, have you?”

“They leave very little to the imagination. Though, today, as I had to keep my hands off you for so many long, torturous hours, I was quite thankful for them. Not so much when I had to watch you on the back of a horse for a whole afternoon and I wasn’t even allowed to touch you.”

Alex’s brain stutters. “You wanted to touch me then?”

Henry ducks and mouths behind Alex’s ear, the rasp of teeth followed by the slide of his tongue and lips, making Alex clutch onto the fabric of his jacket, pulling himself upright.

“Hm,” Henry says noncommittally. “Hang on, I want to show you something.”

“Is it a book?” Alex replies impatiently. He tilts his head and offers his neck up to Henry, hoping he’ll get back to what he’d been doing. “Because I’ve seen those before, and I’ve been waiting all day to get my mouth on you.”

Henry chuckles. “It’s not a book. Come here.” 

He takes Alex’s hand and pulls him towards the shelves—doing nothing to assuage his fears of being shown more books—but then he pulls a small brass key out of his pocket and slips it into a lock Alex had not even noticed was there. It is nestled into the shelves, masking as a book, but surrounded by real volumes so that if one hadn’t known it was there they might never have spotted it.

The key turns with a soft, well-oiled click and an entire section of shelving swings out.

“What is this?” Alex asks.

“A study,” Henry says, leading him in and pulling the door shut behind them.

It’s a small space, only a few paces across; a desk and chair pushed up against the far wall, both sides lined with more books. A disguised window set above the pivoting bookcase allows in light from the library proper, though if Alex had wanted to read in here he’d certainly have needed to light a few candles. A small portrait hangs over the desk: a man and a woman, her on a chair, him standing beside her, one arm around her shoulders; a tapestry of a woodland scene hung behind them. The man has Henry’s same blond hair and Alex can’t quite be sure but—

“My parents,” Henry answers the unasked question. 

“Oh.” Alex steps closer to take a good look. The picture is too small and the artist’s hand maybe not proficient enough, but he thinks he sees something of Henry’s bearing on the man, a mimicry of the blue of his eyes in the woman’s.

“He put this secret study in for her. She liked the whimsy of it, and he was happy to indulge. Now, family rules say this is strictly off-limits during hide-and-go-seek, because it can be locked from the inside and that wouldn’t be fair, but I thought I could make an exception today,” Henry says, walking up to Alex and slipping both hands around his waist.

“Fuck, you have the best ideas,” Alex breathes, then claims Henry’s mouth in another kiss, this one full bodied, limbs and chests all getting eagerly involved. “Wait, did you say it locks?”

“I did,” Henry replies with a grin. He turns back to the door and slips the key in, turning it smoothly. Alex follows instinctively, pressing his chest into Henry’s back, pushing his nose into his collar to catch a whiff of the intoxicating scent of Henry.

“Fuck, you smell so good,” he rasps into Henry’s skin.

A small shiver runs down Henry’s body and he arches with one hand against the wood panel, his ass sticking out and pressing into Alex’s dick. Alex wants him so bad, it morphs into the urge to scream, to rip books off shelves and clothes off bodies until the floor is covered with detritus and there’s nothing left in one piece but the two of them, sated and panting, the epicentre of an earthquake.

He might get sent back home if he destroys a duke’s library, but he spins Henry around and starts on his buttons anyway.

The skin he uncovers is pale, milky white. Freckles and moles everywhere, a light dusting of blond hair and the faint blue lines that carry Henry’s blood shining through it. Henry’s blood is currently—glaringly—pooling somewhere under his waistband and Alex slips his hand inside, finding the warmth and the soft skin and stroking it, curling his fingers around Henry’s dick, bringing up a low, slow, moan that starts in Henry’s stomach and rises and rises until Alex licks it from his mouth and then swallows it whole.

He can’t decide what to do first. He wants everything at the same time—Henry’s mouth, his hands, his dick—and he keeps moving like a man possessed, straddling one of Henry’s slightly stretched-out legs and canting his hips into it, fucking into air and fabric and just-barely-enough pressure, but unwilling to give up the feel of Henry’s cock in his hand, or the way his kisses are growing sloppy, uncoordinated, broken up by rushed, heavy breathing.

It’s fast and messy and it goes on for what could be one minute or one hour, a liminal, unquantifiable—yet utterly insufficient—time.

He’s applying himself to rubbing his thumb into the sticky slit at the top of Henry’s dick and relishing the answering twitches that travel up Henry’s body, when he hears noises coming through from the other side of the concealed door. 

Alex freezes—or most of him does, anyway. His hand instinctively keeps moving, the mild panic not nearly enough to push away the need to watch Henry’s face respond as he touches him.

He knows for a fact this door is locked.

Muffled voices drift in, past the layers of wood and paper that separate them from the library proper.

“See, Amelia dear—” Sir Percy, it turns out, “—the library is empty. Uncle Henry is not in here. He must be somewhere else.”

“But we’ve looked everywhere!” the little girl whines.

“I know.” Alex notices a certain affectation in Sir Percy’s voice. As if he’s being purposefully loud. Enunciating very clearly. “We have looked everywhere, dear. And it has been an awfully long time.”

Alex’s slightly tacky hand shoots up to cover Henry’s rising laugh.

“Does he know we’re in here?” he hisses.

Henry nods and Alex deems it safe to remove his hand. 

“I asked him to keep people away for as long as possible,” Henry says in a whisper.

The implication of this hits Alex square in the face. “Wait, does that mean… Does he know? About you? And me?”

Henry confirms this with a nod and offers up a slightly apologetic expression. “He does. I hope you don’t mind. He’s my oldest friend, and to be completely honest, I am hopeless at keeping secrets from him. He was halfway to knowing before he even saw us together, when he heard about… Well, about your first night here. And after he did see us at croquet, well. Even though nothing had happened then, he knew precisely the kinds of thoughts that were running through my mind. I’m afraid breakfast this morning was as much evidence as he needed to figure out the you part of it all.”

“Oh.” Alex searches Henry’s face for the panic he’d seen a few days ago at the possibility of being exposed, but finds nothing. “And you don’t mind? He doesn’t mind?”

“No,” Henry says with a shrug. “I’m not sure exactly how it came to be, but we knew each other at school, and then we went to Oxford together and he… he’s somehow always let me know I did not have to hide from him. And I never have.”

“Wow,” Alex breathes.

“Well, I supposed we’d better keep looking, darling,” Sir Percy again, even louder this time. “But yes, you are absolutely right. It is time for tea and your mother is starting to worry.” Alex buries his face into the bare skin of Henry’s shoulder to stifle his own laugh. “I’m sure uncle Henry will turn up in no time at all.”

“And I hope Mr. Claremont-Diaz is alright too,” Amelia says with a note of concern.

“Yes, him too, dear. Wherever he finds himself, I hope he’s making the most of it.”

Alex bites his lip as Henry presses a thigh up against his still mostly hard dick.

“Is he, or is he not, Mr. Claremont-Diaz?” he asks with a flourish and a flick of his eyebrows.

“Oh, he most certainly is, Lord Henry.” Alex tries for a very gentlemanly nod, and then presses a hard kiss on Henry’s lips. “Though he wishes he had a touch more privacy, and a lot more time.”

The laughter fades from Henry’s eyes and they turn heated, focused fiercely on Alex. Alex feels the sear of the look all the way to the tips of his toes.

“Me too. Maybe later tonight, we could…”

“What, the Orangerie again?”

“Hm. I was thinking, actually, we both have perfectly decent bedrooms here. It might be slightly more comfortable with, well… Padding, and soft furnishings and the like. If you’re at all interested.”

A frisson of expectation rushes through Alex again. His hands have not even left Henry’s body, and yet he’s already buzzing for more, longing to know when the next time will be.

“I’m interested. I’m very, very interested. Though I’m not sure how I’ll be able to go back into the house and be all… respectable, now that I have that to look forward to.”

Henry smirks. “Maybe another dip in the pond is in order, then? It did wonders for me yesterday.”

Alex shoves him away, but only for a second before he pulls him back and presses another hard kiss on his smart mouth.

They fix their clothing, and attempt to tidy each other’s hair into their usual shape, but there’s nothing to be done about the way Henry’s lips are all red and swollen, his entire face flushed.

“God, you just look…” Alex makes an ineffectual gesture in the general area of Henry’s wrecked person.

“What?” Henry pats himself, searching for some form of damage he can fix.

“Like… like, fuck, like you’ve just been ravaged—but also like you need more of it.” Alex tries not to dwell on how deliciously fuckable Henry looks. They’d never leave this room if he did. 

Henry swallows hard and curls a hand around Alex’s forearm. “I’ll come to you later, after everyone has gone to bed. If I’m seen, I can just put my nose in the air and say this is my ancestral home and I have the right to roam whichever halls I like. Not so easy for you if you’re found in the family wing.”

A faint laugh tries to bubble up inside Alex, but dies in the face of his overwhelming arousal. “The duchess would think I’d befouled your sister and obtain a marriage licence on the spot, I think.” And then, “I’m in the Red Room.”

It’s a protracted form of torture, spending the day around Henry and not being allowed to touch him—hours long, stretched out by the sheer force of social expectations. Tea leads to more games, which carry on until it’s time for the whole party to go up to their rooms and change for dinner. Alex is able to sneak in one quick kiss as he comes down for aperitifs and finds Henry alone in the Green Parlour, but he doesn’t dare anything more than that, doesn’t chance ruining this.

He does, however, excuse himself as early as he deems polite from after-dinner drinks, claiming fatigue from the exertions of the day.

He paces his bedroom. Starts to undress then decides that might be too presumptuous, does his nighttime ablutions anyway, sheds his shoes but not his jacket, and frets, and waits. He hears the sounds of June and Nora coming up to their bedrooms down the hall from him, their chatter as they say goodnight, the soft clicks of their doors.

Then he sits on the edge of his bed and waits, one knee bouncing incessantly up and down.

It must take over an hour before Henry’s quiet knock sounds on his door, and Alex is on his feet instantly, rushing and nearly tripping over nothing to open it.

Henry’s uncertain smile on the other side of it is the sweetest thing he’s ever seen.

“Oh my God, fucking get in here already,” Alex says, grabbing Henry’s lapels and pulling him into the room. “Did it really take this long for everyone to go to bed?”

“Well, Percy tried to drag it out, but he was only doing it to tease me. Philip wanted to discuss my opinions on crop rotation, though, so that was hard to get away from as he knows I’ve recently been reading a—”

“You know what, I don’t fucking care,” Alex cuts him off—with his words, and then his mouth, and then his whole body, pressing Henry into the back of the door. He kisses the teasing laughter from Henry’s mouth and instantly they’re back where they were in the afternoon. He’s pulling Henry’s shirt out from his waistband, struggling with his buttons, moving with intent.

“Eager, are we?” Henry says in between kisses.

“You have no fucking clue. At this point, I’m worried the ache in my…” he gestures over the lower part of his body, the shape of his hard cock clearly visible as it pushes against the fabric of his pants, “…is about to become permanent. I might struggle to walk upright in the near future if I can’t do anything about it.”

Henry’s eyes twinkle and he cocks a thumb, pointing it back to the hallway. “Shall I leave you to it, then?” 

Alex huffs and spins him around, walking him backwards towards the bed. “No, you fucking shan’t, thank you very much.”

Henry’s answering laugh is cut off when his back hits the mattress, and he looks up with those blue eyes blown wide, thighs spread open, ready for Alex to step between them, his yanked-open collar giving Alex a hint of what lies beneath.

Fuck, he wants this man so much. 

It is starting to become a problem.

Alex clambers up above him, slips one thigh between Henry’s and presses it firmly to his centre, makes his intentions clear. Henry sucks in a breath and pushes his hips up towards him.

“I’m going to take your clothes off now, alright?”

“Yes. Good. Carry on,” Henry rasps.

Alex takes his time with it. He starts on Henry’s jacket, waistcoat and shirt, the top buttons already partly undone by his eagerness over by the door. He’d lit several candles while he waited, and Henry’s skin glows now, faint shadows where his muscles dip into grooves Alex wants to run his tongue into. He remembers he’s allowed now, that they have time for this, and so he does, tasting the bend of Henry’s elbow, the sweet curve of his waist. He licks up to one nipple, and learns the texture of it, the puckered skin in the slightly chilled room, and the way Henry gasps as he pulls it into his mouth and sucks. He catalogues it all, making a list in his mind—nipple, clavicle, belly button; the fuzzy patch of skin just below his waistband with its waymarks that lead Alex lower. All the things that seem to affect Henry the most, that make his back arch and his hips move against Alex’s thigh, that make him writhe and moan.

When he reaches to undo the fastenings of his pants, Henry takes hold of his hand and then flips their positions over in one easy move.

“I want to see you too,” he pants. Alex’s cock twitches at his tone.

Henry must view this as some sort of revenge for the way Alex had moved so slowly with him, because he takes his time and explores him just as thoroughly. He gets rid of Alex’s pants and runs his hands up his legs, fingernails dragging through the coarse hairs as they get higher, pushing his drawers up until he’s almost where Alex wants him—and then stops to press a kiss to the soft skin at the crease where thigh meets hip before moving on to another area of Alex’s body with a wicked grin.

He looks… he looks confident. Like he knows what he’s doing, like he’s done it before, and Alex sends up a prayer of thanks to gods his fuzzy brain can’t quite recall right now that Henry has decided to share his talents with him of all people. Because he is talented. Not just at horse riding, or at playing the pianoforte, but at this. He knows when to let his touch go lax, and when to press harder when the feeling starts to fade; knows when to use his tongue and when to exchange it for his teeth, just enough to make Alex arch off the bed and raise a hand to his own mouth, biting at the fleshy base of his thumb to stifle a moan that is sure to be too loud.

When Henry finally rids Alex of the last of his clothes, he kneels up at the foot of the bed, staring down at him with a look that makes every hair on Alex’s body stand up. Henry looks hungry, ravenous, but also like Alex is the tastiest meal he’s ever seen, exactly what he’d ordered. Alex squirms under his gaze, and Henry steps back for a brief second to shed the last of his own garments and finally stands naked before him, man carved out of marble, all perfect curves and lines that lead into each other, building up to something that is so much more than the sum of his parts.

He crawls on his knees between Alex’s legs and settles his hips down, pressing their hard cores together.

“Fucking fuck,” Alex moans. “Do that again.”

Henry grins and rolls his entire body, delicious friction pressing and sliding right where Alex needs it—and so close to other areas where he didn’t know he needed it, but maybe, now…

One of Henry’s obscenely large hands—were they always this large? Alex isn’t sure anymore—comes up between them and wraps around Alex’s dick, and then Henry adjusts his position and slides his own cock right next to it, closing his fist around both of them together and—

Oh my God, oh my God, oh my God, oh my God, oh my God. 

Alex’s brain is a rush of feelings, all thoughts shoved bodily away by the heavenly sensation of Henry so twined to him. Henry’s hand stays still and holds him in place, and what moves instead are his hips, cock fucking against the tight ring of his fingers and Alex’s dick and Alex feels fucked, debauched in the best possible way. Slickness materialises between them, and he can’t tell if it’s his own or Henry’s or both, mingled together, paving the way and making everything glide. Henry kisses him deeply, his tongue wrestling enthusiastically with Alex’s and it’s all so good, so much, so fast, and—

He gasps and shoots both hands out to Henry’s ass, squeezing the muscle hard, fingernails digging in. Henry understands his warning and stops moving. 

He pulls away from Alex’s mouth with a wet, sucking sound that should be gross but absolutely isn’t. “What?” he murmurs, eyes hazy.

“I just… I was going to—” he nods vaguely between their bodies “—and I don’t want to. Not yet.”

Henry’s face unfurls into a slow, lazy grin. “Alright. What do you want, then?”

“To get my mouth on you,” Alex blurts out, not a second thought spared.

Henry releases his fingers and pulls away, sitting back on his heels. His dick rests across the crease of one thick thigh, tip glistening, and Alex licks his lips. 

He has no clue what it tastes like. 

He can’t wait to find out. 

“Where do you want me?” Henry asks.

“Just… fuck, just lie down, I guess?”

Henry does, scooting back on the bed until he’s reclining against the pillows, the bright red flush of his cheeks running down to the centre of his chest, all of it made even more intense against the red of the covers and the light that comes in past the bed hangings. His legs fall open and Alex crawls between them, sliding his hands up the soft insides.

He starts with his fingers, testing out the deep crease of Henry’s thigh, sliding it to his balls and cupping them, making note of the shiver that runs through Henry—and the way he spreads a little wider—as Alex’s fingertips dip lower for a heartbeat. He takes hold of Henry’s dick as he’d done yesterday, but tonight he has the luxury of light and space and of having no clothes between them. He gets to see it all: the way his dark fingers look against Henry’s impossibly pale skin, the way the head of his cock is a deep shade of red, as if tailor-made to be displayed here, in this room where Alex’s own shade of red exists in perfect harmony with his, along with the bedspread, the drapes, the rugs, Henry’s kiss-bitten lips.

He pulls Henry’s foreskin back all the way and bends down, licking along the thin line of skin at the back of the head, all the way up into Henry’s slit.

Henry moans.

The taste of him is intoxicating, salty and new, and Alex wraps his lips fully around the head and pulls him into his mouth. And in. And in. And in, until Henry is pressing against the back of his throat, threatening to overwhelm his reflexes, and all Alex can think of is that he wants him to, wants him to push deeper, because the weight across his tongue might just be the most overwhelmingly wonderful thing he’s ever had in his mouth.

Henry cries out then, calling to deities and demons, swearing at Alex’s eyelashes, slinging one arm across his eyes as his hips twitch up and Alex bobs his head, faster and deeper, swirling his tongue, pulling more and more nonsense from that beautiful pink mouth.

It’s a faint, raspy voice that delivers an urgent warning. “Alex, I’m—I have to—” and Alex has never been one to back down in the face of a challenge, so he looks up and nods firmly, all while humming lowly in his throat and hoping that Henry understands.

He must, because he removes the arm that’s covering his face, leans up on his elbows and looks down as if making sure, before letting his hips move up into Alex’s mouth, once, twice, thrice and Alex loses count and then Henry is coming, spilling deep over his tongue and Alex swallows instinctively, and almost loses his grip on himself at the realisation of this: Henry’s pleasure, running hot down his throat, seeping deep within him and making its home there.

Alex sucks him through to the end, and doesn’t want to let go, doesn’t want to lose the perfect feel of Henry’s dick in his mouth. He only does so reluctantly.

“Holy fuck,” he says as he flops back onto the bed. His voice is all weird and raspy, and it sends a little thrill through him—the evidence that he’s done this. Another Rubicon crossed, irreversibly.

It takes a few moments for Henry to recover, but then he’s rolling over and pressing his body into the side of Alex’s, one thick thigh slung over both of his. He finds Alex’s mouth and licks into it, kisses him with a hunger and enthusiasm that are possibly even greater than what he’d shown earlier. 

He likes tasting himself, Alex realises. 

He kisses Henry even more fiercely then.

Eventually, Henry rolls on top of him completely and then finally breaks the kiss, making his way down Alex’s body with languid licks that drag over his skin, new pleasure points uncovered wherever Henry touches him.

Henry throws one of Alex’s thighs over his shoulder and moves in even closer before taking Alex into his mouth and it feels like being transported onto another plane. Somewhere where Alex is pure hedonism, where there are no worries, no pressure from the outside world. Where all there is in the soft mattress at his back, Henry’s body pressing onto him in so many different ways, and the wet, slick heat of his mouth bringing Alex to a brink almost instantly.

It shatters for a moment as Henry pulls off and rasps, “You can let go,” and then it’s back, a blanket of sensation all over him, and Alex is trembling, vision gone white as his body releases and he floats away, a hundred miles into the sky, surrounded by nothing but clouds and rarified air and Henry, Henry, Henry.

All combined, it’s almost too much for him to take, but then there’s the shy-but-pleased look on Henry’s face as he wipes his mouth with the back of one hand, the dainty kiss he presses to the tip of Alex’s dick as he moves away, and suddenly it’s just him again, the shy, slightly overwhelmed boy with the beautiful smile and the pink cheeks and Alex’s heart in his hands.

Alex is so, so out of his depth.

“That was… Uh, you’re very good at that.” His tongue feels thick in his mouth, slow to form words.

“Why, thank you,” Henry says with a half-smirk.

Alex lies quietly for a while. “Am I right in assuming… you’d done it before?”

“Before last night, you mean?”

“Obviously.”

Henry huffs a little laugh. “Yes. I had.”

Alex mulls it over. The easy, confident way in which Henry took charge of their encounters contrasting with the enormity of the bumbling realisation it had been for him.

“Do you… do you only like men, then?”

Henry clears his throat quietly. “Yes. I’m afraid I’ve never seen the appeal of the fairer sex, as much as I can admit some of them are lovely, and delightful company, too.”

“What, even Nora?” Alex says with a smirk.

Henry laughs softly, his chest shaking under Alex’s cheek. “Even Miss Holleran. Delightful wit. Handy with a croquet mallet.” Alex snorts. After a thoughtful pause, Henry continues. “I take it the same is not true for you?”

Alex gives him a half shrug. “Not really. Though it’s not like I’ve had lasting, uh…” He’s not sure how to describe it. Passing affections, fumbled encounters. Feelings that never ran deep, never lingered. His past romantic entanglements seem insignificant here, in the face of Henry’s naked body and the afterglow of what they’ve just done. He can still smell it in the air, taste it in his own mouth, for God’s sake.

Henry stands up and walks to the ewer by the basin, pours out a tumbler of water and brings it over. It soothes Alex’s dry throat, though it does very little in the way of cooling the heat in his gut. 

He pulls Henry back down onto the bed, curls into his body and drags the covers over both of them. Henry’s so warm, so warm, his skin so perfect against Alex’s. He can’t get enough of it.

“Uh, I should probably not get too comfortable,” Henry says hesitantly. “It would be a bad idea to fall asleep here.”

“Yeah, but you can stay a little longer, right?”

“Yes. I can stay a bit longer,” Henry murmurs, pressing a kiss to the corner of his mouth.

Alex is unaware of drifting off to sleep, but comes back into his body with a soft kiss pressed to his cheek, followed by a quiet “Shh.”

“Wha?” he gruffs.

A low-rumbling chuckle. “I have to go back to my room,” Henry says. “But I’ll see you in the morning, alright?”

Alex lets out a grumpy little sound and snakes his arm tighter around Henry. Henry, who’s already fully dressed again. Henry, who’s leaving.

He sits up and opens his eyes, looks at him properly. 

“You have to?” he asks with a pout.

Henry gives him a sad little smile. “You know that I do. But I’ll see you at breakfast.” 

Alex can faintly hear birds chirping outside, and though the room is no lighter, morning must be nearing. “Yeah. Okay. Wish y’didn’t,” he mumbles, smooshing his face into the pillow.

Henry rewards him with one more kiss.

“Good night, Alex. Sleep well.”

“’Night, Henry.”

Chapter Text

Several consecutive nights of insufficient sleep have started to take their toll. Alex’s eyes feel heavy and gritty when he awakes again—a far too short amount of time after falling asleep for the second time. But his insides are like a hot-air balloon, ready to take flight. Full of a giddiness he knows has one source only: the time he’s spent with Henry.

It’s a revelation of huge proportions.

Not just that he can be attracted to men, but that being with someone, anyone, can feel like this. Joyful and fulfilling and challenging in just the right way. That when they’re alone together he doesn’t feel like he needs to act the part of someone else, at ease to just be himself. That moments of deep, explosive pleasure can be followed almost instantly by the need for more—whether it is in the form of talking or playing or kissing or simply pressing their skin together and soaking in the warmth. His need for Henry is a pit in which the bottom keeps moving further and further away. The wanting never seems to abate.

Running his hands down his own body, Alex lingers between the warm, soft sheets, one palm flat against his abdomen, the other drifting lightly over his hips, his thighs. A body that feels as if it’s been discovered anew. He doesn’t take hold of his cock, already demanding attention simply because he’d been thinking about Henry, reliving what they did last night. He wants to save it for later.

That’s new too. Being able to delay gratification because he knows there’s something better to be had if he can just wait.

His thoughts drift away and around Henry, moving out but tethered to him. Thoughts of the past and the future; of what he left behind, of vague plans made in America. Of what he wants for his life, and if that could possibly be translated into a life here.

There’s a bounce in his step when he walks into breakfast, and it’s matched by a wide grin on Henry’s face.

“Good morning, Mr. Claremont-Diaz,” the duchess greets him. “Well, you certainly look jolly! Did you sleep well?”

“I did indeed. I must say, the bed in my room is one of the most comfortable I’ve ever had the pleasure of availing myself of,” he says, throwing a wink Henry’s way as he walks towards the buffet where the food is laid out.

“I’m very glad to hear that,” she replies. “We’ve just been discussing the plans for the day. It looks like the rain might keep at bay, so we thought of taking the carriages into the village. It’s only a short distance away.”

From across the table, Henry interjects. “Actually, I said I would take Mr. Claremont-Diaz on a tour of the north side of the estate today, if you don’t mind, Martha?” This is news to Alex, but he’s not about to say no to any plan Henry’s come up with. “He has a special interest in wheat farming, you see. So I’m afraid we can’t join you.”

June and Nora throw searching looks his way. They both know perfectly well he’s never shown an interest in wheat unless it comes in the shape of a loaf of bread or a glass of beer.

“Oh. No, of course not.” The duchess looks a little thrown, but she rallies quickly. “I suppose if you’re going that way you must make sure you show him the stream, and the orchard.” She pauses, thinking. “Perhaps we should all go. Miss Claremont-Diaz and Miss Holleran haven’t been that way yet and this is their last full day here.” 

Just as Alex is starting to worry that Henry’s plans for them are about to be ruined, Nora throws a sly look his way and steps in.

“You know, your grace, you made the village sound so utterly delightful, I fear I’d be missing out if we didn’t go. And I do need a new ribbon too.” 

Alex hides a grin behind his cup of tea. Nora has never before voiced even the smallest enthusiasm for ribbons.

If it would be anything less than scandalous, he would lunge across the table and drop a sloppy kiss on her face.

“Yes, I agree,” Bea adds. Her chirpy tone, plus the look on her face and the way she’s enthusiastically joining in with Nora give Alex pause. Does she know too? “And I believe Mrs. Brown might have received a book I requested at her shop.”

“Oh, well, I suppose that’s settled then,” the duchess acquiesces with a diminutive sigh. She turns back to Henry. “Would you like me to have Cook prepare you a picnic?”

“Uh, yes. That would be most pleasant, Martha, thank you.”

She beams, clearly pleased at still being able to play the hostess.

The sound of footsteps echoes softly from outside the room, and a footman walks in, whispers something in Howard’s ear. The butler shifts on his feet, clears his throat and turns to the duke.

“Your grace. The dowager duchess is here.”

Windsor looks up. “What?”

Henry pushes his chair back abruptly. “Mum?”

“Show her in, Howard, please,” the duke says urgently.

Every eye in the room turns to watch the door, and Alex doesn’t miss the way the members of the Fox-Mountchristen family have tensed, brows creased, jaws clenched. He realises that though he’s heard a lot about Henry’s father, very little has been said about his mother, other than the stories Henry shared in the library and a few snippets from Bea.

When she finally walks in, the dowager duchess is a complete surprise. The title had given Alex the impression of a grand, imposing dame; jewels and lace and enormous black dresses. In reality, she is the complete opposite. For starters, she’s small, shorter than Bea, though Alex can see so many other similarities between the two of them. And his suspicions of where Henry got his eyes are certainly confirmed: hers are the very same shade of blue, the same shape, though more thickly surrounded by wrinkles. But where the current duchess is always immaculately dressed in light, brightly-coloured fabrics, her mother-in-law is wearing a loose frock in dove grey that seems far too informal for the setting, the fabric too worn for a woman of her station. Her hair is coming loose from its bun, tendrils floating over her face and neck.

She stops a couple of steps past the doorway, surveying the group, visibly surprised to find so many faces around the table. 

“Oh. I did not realise you had company.”

“We do, but please join us, Catherine,” Martha says, walking around the table to greet her, pulling out a chair. She nods to Howard and the butler immediately steps into action, setting a place for the dowager.

“Mother,” the duke says, walking around to kiss her cheek. He is followed quickly by Henry and Bea, who copy his gesture, but they all look the picture of confusion. Henry’s complexion has gone even paler than normal, slightly ashen. “What a delightful surprise. May I introduce our guests. Mr. Claremont-Diaz,” Alex, already standing, does a neat little bow, “Miss Claremont-Diaz and Miss Holleran.” They both stand and curtsey. The dowager duchess dips, still looking quite uncertain. “They are new arrivals from America, and have been spending the week with us.”

“That is lovely. I—should I go, darling? I fear I am intruding on the party.”

“Nonsense!” Windsor exclaims.

“The children will be delighted to see you, Catherine,” Martha says. She turns to the butler. “Howard, would you have Nurse bring them down, please?” Howard nods and steps out of the room.

“What brings you out today, Mum?” Bea asks.

“Oh, I just… The weather, and…” she says vaguely, then sighs. “I suppose with the sun having been out all this week, I have been missing my library. The library, the Foxden one, I mean. I thought I could come over and spend some time there, that’s all.” At this, there are vague nods of understanding around the table, though Alex feels like it was barely an explanation.

She’s an odd one, the dowager. For all her children are lively and energetic—even, on occasion, giving the appearance of arrogance—she is quiet and soft-spoken. She fidgets with the hem of her sleeve, and on occasion stares out of the window mid-speech, as if pulled away by a thought that cannot be ignored. She shows no interest in the food and when Howard places cup of tea in front of her she thanks him vacantly then ignores it completely. She seems to exist in her own world. 

The family sit around awkwardly, eating their breakfast as she picks at the tablecloth, contributing to the conversation only at random intervals—though to Alex it seems clear she’s making an effort to engage, even if she fails from time to time. 

She gives the impression of someone who’s been out of things for too long, and now isn’t quite sure how to join in again. And her three children give the impression of three people who want this very badly—and who are not at all sure what to do with it now that they have it.

When they’ve all finished eating and it’s clear the dowager duchess has had as much tea as she is going to have, Henry stands up and clears his throat. “Why don’t I go with you to the library, Mum?”

“I’ll come too,” Bea says, standing up to join him.

A small part of Alex deflates, realising this means whatever Henry had planned for the two of them is unlikely to happen now. But then Henry tilts his head in Alex’s direction, indicating that he should come with them.

Henry offers his arm to his mother and leads their little group out. Her steps falter as he opens the door to the library and she looks in, a squeezed-out exhale passing through her lips, hesitating before walking into the room. Bea follows her in, and even though Alex is not sure exactly what is going on, why this moment feels so loaded, he obeys his instincts and squeezes Henry’s hand briefly as he passes. Henry repays him with a soft grimace and a squeeze back.

“It looks just the same,” Catherine says, head swivelling as she takes it all in.

Henry hums in agreement. “It does. Philip prefers the upstairs study these days, so he doesn’t use it much, but I do, when I’m down here from Oxford.”

She turns to Henry, face softening in a smile. “That’s good, darling. I always liked it when you were in here with me when you were little.” A little twitch to the corners of her lips. “Or not so little.” She pats the top of Henry’s head, having to straighten her arm to nearly its full length to reach it. Henry blinks repeatedly, and Alex looks over at Bea to distract himself from this feeling of being an interloper, intruding into the moment between them.

“Do you have the…” Henry’s mother gestures in the direction where Alex now knows the secret study lies hidden, and Henry pats his pockets, pulling the key out and handing it over. As she walks into the little room and Henry and Bea follow, Alex moves over to the windows and looks out at the garden. The little study is too small for all four of them, plus whatever they are saying to each other in quiet, muffled tones, he doesn’t feel like it’s his place to listen in.

Henry comes back out after a few minutes and walks up to him. He sits alongside Alex on the window ledge, shoulders sagging, and smiles softly down at him. The gentle sounds of female voices continue from the study as Bea and her mother talk.

“Hey. You alright?” Alex asks.

“I—yes. It’s just a bit…” He gestures vaguely with one hand, searching for words, and Alex waits. “Well, I’m not used to it, to be honest.”

“You’re not used to what?”

“To seeing her like this. Not outside of her house and certainly not… showing an interest.”

“Oh?”

Henry gives him a searching look, but whatever he’s looking for on Alex’s face he must find, because he keeps talking. “She’s not been well. Since my father passed, I mean. It’s been over four years, and she’s not really come back to herself. She insisted on moving to the dower house back then, even though Philip and Martha would’ve been happy to have her here, and since then she’s been a bit of a recluse. We are the ones who have to invite ourselves over to visit her, and even when we do, she… Well, she’s quiet. Doesn’t pay much attention.” Henry takes a long pause. “Everything we’ve been through with Dad, and it was almost as if…” his voice hitches and Alex’s chest squeezes tight. “As if we’d lost her too.”

“Shit,” Alex says. He prays the ladies won’t come back out right now and takes Henry’s hand.

Henry lets out a rueful little laugh. “Quite.”

“So this isn’t… normal, is it? Her being here today?”

“No. If I’m not mistaken, this is the first time she’s been back in this house since she moved out.”

More discernible sounds float over from within the study: the chair dragging, thumps of books getting pulled out and set down, the chatter getting louder.

“What are they up to in there?”

“She said she wants to take some books over to her house. That she’s missed them.” Henry looks over towards the opened shelf and smiles. “She asked if I would come over and help her turn one of her parlours into a library. Make some improvements.”

“Oh. That’s good, right?”

Henry laughs softly and pushes his face into Alex’s shoulder. “Yes. It’s good. She… she seems a lot more like her old self.”

The sound of children’s laughter comes through from beyond the library door. Henry pulls away with one last smile thrown Alex’s way before his niece and nephew come barging in, followed by their parents.

“Granny’s here?” Arthur says.

“She is,” Henry answers. “Just in there.” He leads the kids in and there’s a lot of animated chatter, a few shrieks, all underscored by the low rumble of Henry’s laugh, a sound that instantly makes Alex feel steadier. Henry’s brother and sister-in-law stand near the door, both listening to the happy sounds from the secret study and looking slightly stunned—but definitely pleased.

They reappear a few minutes later, the dowager with arms full of books and grandchildren clinging to her skirts, a smile on her face. The one on Henry’s is even bigger.

“Well, I have been told about something called… What was it, darling? ‘Skittles in the Gallery’?” she asks, turning to her grandson. Arthur nods. “And that I simply must have a go.” Her children all look between each other, and Alex can tell this feels like uncharted territory to them. But they’re still ready to brave it.

The duke chuckles, then beams at his family. “Indeed. I suppose I’ll go fetch the skittles, then.”

The other members of the house party are collected and brought to the Long Gallery for the game. Skittles are organised, balls laid out. All throughout it, Henry watches his mother, and Alex watches Henry.

It’s so tentative, the way Henry looks at her. With hope, but also a thick protective barrier in front of it, shades of disappointment of someone who’s been burned before. Alex can see it in the way he leans slightly towards her whenever she’s near, the way he watches closely when she speaks to others. He can see how much Henry wants this, and how much he’s afraid to let himself want it too much, lest it get taken away from him again.

When Catherine cheers over a particularly good shot of Bea’s, Henry joins in, clapping enthusiastically, eyes never leaving his mother. When she laughs out, bright and crisp at Amelia’s antics with the skittles, Henry’s eyes cover with a film of moisture, and Alex has a sudden realisation that this must indeed be a rare sight. He stands by Henry’s side and wishes he was allowed to touch him, to offer up some support.

Catherine walks over to them partway through the game, leans against the wall with a sigh as if shedding a heavy weight.

“Well, this is a splendid game. Whose idea was it?”

“Bea’s, I believe,” Henry says. “Something to idle away the rain yesterday.”

“Trust Beatrice to have such delightful disdain for decorum,” she says with a small laugh.

“Indeed,” Henry chuckles along with her. “Are you going to stay for luncheon, Mum? We’d love to have you.”

She looks around at her family, their friends, the gay antics. There’s a happy expression on her face, but it’s also a little weary. “I think not today, dear. This has been lovely, but I do feel rather tired.” 

Henry gives her hand a quick squeeze.

“Would you like to stop for a rest? I’m sure we can have a room made up.”

“No, thank you. I do think I’d better rest at home. Plus, you had plans for today, didn’t you? I don’t want to get in the way.” She looks between Henry and Alex.

“No, it’s fine, Mum,” Henry says.

“Truly, darling. I want you to enjoy your friends while they’re still here.” She turns her eyes to Alex. “I understand you’ll be leaving Foxden tomorrow, Mr. Claremont-Diaz?”

“Uh, yes,” Alex answers. “That’s right.”

“Well, then. Why don’t you two boys do what you were planning to and go out and enjoy the return of the sun—and I’ll see you sometime next week, Henry? I’ll get some books sorted today and have them brought over to me. We can set to organising.”

Henry’s tentative grin makes Alex think of someone who’s been handed a truly precious gift. Desperate to have it; terrified of breaking it.

“Yes, alright. I’d love that, Mum.”

When Alex and Henry reach the stables, there’s already saddlebags filled with food awaiting them, and two stable boys standing by to saddle their horses. It’s Marigold again for Alex, her having been such a good girl with him last time, and Henry heads straight for the same tall chestnut, runs his hand softly along his neck.

“This is Byron, by the way,” he says to Alex.

“Byron?”

“Hm. He’s mine. He’s stabled here, as I didn’t want to bring him to Oxford with me. But it’s nice to get to ride him again.”

Henry chooses to do the saddling himself, the stable boys at his side to hand him the equipment while he murmurs softly, soothing the animals as he goes. He feeds the horses apples before and after, and makes sure to pack a small sack of them into the saddlebags. He’s so tender with them, Alex can’t stop watching him. He’s been catching all these glimpses of this side of Henry today—the tender, caring side—and in return it makes him want to do the same for Henry. To look after him, to make sure he is alright. To make sure that someone is looking after him.

Alex has no clue what to do with the feeling, so he tucks it into his pocket and climbs onto his horse.

They head out in the opposite direction from the other day, away from the house. Side-by-side, at a slow pace, they ride over hills and down into a valley, following along the edges of a stream. Henry points out interesting sights to Alex—here is the spot where his father used to bring them fishing, here is where Henry attempted a jump over a log and fell off his horse for the first time. Over a bridge, through woods, the land of Foxden opening itself up for Alex, just as Henry does. Here are the remnants of a den in the trees, still not quite turned to mulch by the elements; here is where Henry was formed, moulded by this place into the man riding next to Alex, who speaks softly and turns his face up to the sun and allows small glimpses of how wonderful it is to be loved by him, and Alex… Alex drenches himself in it.

When he deems they’ve moved far enough away from the house, Henry dismounts and has Alex do the same, leading him into a small clump of trees, where he ties the horses up and then, finally, presses his body into Alex’s.

“Oh God,” he breathes into Alex’s neck.

“What?” Alex asks, voice shaking slightly.

“I just… It’s been hard, keeping my hands off you all day.”

“Tell me about it,” Alex says—but Henry doesn’t. Instead he kisses him.

It almost hurts, how much Alex wants this. How much he wants him. The pressure of Henry’s body, the slick slide of his lips. The way he makes everything else in the world fade away.

“I had a thought,” Henry says after a long time.

“Yeah? I myself haven’t been able to form a new one in quite a while, but well done to you,” Alex says with a smirk.

Henry laughs. “There’s a cottage near here that’s unoccupied. The old gamekeeper used to live there until his retirement about a year ago. The new fellow, Smith, he’s the one who led the shooting party the other day. Well, he’s still unmarried, so he lives with his family in the village. I believe he’s expected to move in once he has someone to keep house for him but as of yet…”

“It’s empty.”

“It’s empty. And I thought if you’d like to, we could—”

Alex curls his hands into fists at Henry’s waist, tugs him closer by the fabric of his clothes. “Fucking lead the way, baby.”

Henry ducks his head, looking pleased. “Yes?”

“Oh, absolutely.”

He presses a bruising kiss on Alex’s lips and then pulls away, leaving him breathless.

“Come on, then. The sky is darkening, we might get caught in the rain if we’re not quick.”

Henry leads the horses into a canter until they arrive at the side of some woods where a small, stone-built house stands behind a neat front garden, enclosed by a low fence. There’s a few outbuildings dotted around it, and one of them must be stables, Alex realises, because that’s where Henry heads.

Fat droplets of rain land on Alex’s forehead, the earlier sun having given way to thick, heavy clouds.

“I can’t believe even you people’s servants have stables,” he says, looking around the space, which is a well-made miniature of the one near the main house. “That’s wild.”

Henry laughs. “Well, the gamekeepers need to—”

Alex holds his hand up. “You don’t need to explain it to me, Henry. I’ve made my peace with the fact that the way you live here is very, very different.”

Henry frowns. “But you’re not—your family has money, right? Sorry, I don’t mean to be indelicate, but…”

“Since I was talking about it?”

“Exactly.”

“My mom’s husband has money. That’s sort of new to us. Plus, we lived in town back in Texas. All these country things are definitely new.”

Henry dismounts and Alex copies him, both leading the horses by their reins into stalls.

“Let me show you how to do it, then,” Henry says.

He starts by removing the saddle from his horse, and then helping Alex do the same for Marigold. Then the bridle and the bit, everything handled with care, hung neatly onto hooks on the walls. Henry then roots around until he finds a brush, which he uses to wipe the animals down, and some not-exactly-fresh hay, which he puts into the stalls. Finally, he removes his jacket, rolls his sleeves up and grabs a bucket, walks it over to a pump and fills up the water troughs. 

By the time he’s done, his cheeks are flushed, his brow covered in a thin sheen of sweat and Alex’s body can barely stand watching him without being overcome with the need to touch him.

He turns to Alex with a satisfied smile on his face and Alex slams him bodily into the side of a stall, pushing their hips together. Henry groans and pulls him closer with a grin, but they’re interrupted by Marigold, stepping closer to them, blowing air out of her mouth and then nosing into the space between them.

They come apart laughing.

“Yes, girl, yes, alright,” Henry coos. He walks over to the saddlebags and fishes out a couple of apples, feeds them to both horses. Then he picks up the bags and turns to Alex. “Come on. I’ll show you inside.”

The rain has started in earnest when they emerge from the stables. They rush across to the cottage, laughing as they futilely attempt to escape before getting soaked. 

There’s a key hung on a hook by the front door and Henry lets them both into the house, locking it behind them. There’s dust underfoot, not too thick, but enough that it’s obvious no one’s been here in a while. No footprints.

“Oh, good,” Henry says, examining the entrance hall. “I wasn’t sure if maybe other people had been using this place for, uh… secret assignations. But I think it’s safe, given the dust and cobwebs.”

Alex laughs. “So this brilliant idea is all your own?”

Henry quirks up one corner of his mouth. “I suppose so. As you can imagine, I’ve often had to be creative in my…”

“Socialising?” Alex says with a smirk.

Henry laughs. “Quite.”

It’s a decently large cottage—a sitting room with a fireplace to the left of the hall, and a kitchen with a big table in the middle of it to the right, stairs leading up from the centre. Despite the dusty smell, there’s still furniture, rugs underfoot, logs in the basket by the unlit fire. No personal items have been left behind, but it still looks fit for habitation.

Henry looks down at the saddlebags. “Are you hungry?”

Alex steps up to him, runs both hands through his wet hair, pushing it back. Rainwater drips down his wrists, along the side of Henry’s neck, and Alex leans forward and licks up a rivulet.

“I’m not hungry for anything in those bags,” he says into the shell of Henry’s ear.

Henry turns to him with a wicked grin. “Actually, there’s something…” He bends down, picks the bags up and heads decisively up the stairs.

There are two bedrooms and Henry pokes his head into both doors before picking the one that has a large bed in the middle of it. The shutters are closed and it’s dark, so Alex goes to open them as Henry checks the bed. Grey daylight floods in as Henry shakes out the cover, dust glittering through the air. 

He walks over to a trunk at the foot of the bed, opens the lid and pulls out a couple of blankets.

“You’re shivering,” he says, walking up to Alex and working his sodden jacket off his shoulders. It’s true—and Alex hadn’t even noticed, brain too fixated on the need to get his hands on Henry. He lets Henry undress him completely, with caring fingers as opposed to greedy ones, lets himself be led to the bed and tucked under heavy woollen blankets until only his head is peeking out. Henry runs a hand along the side of Alex’s face with concern. “You are looking slightly purple around the edges there. Maybe I should light the fire,” he mutters to himself, spinning on his heel to look around the room for the things he might need.

Alex needs one thing only.

“I’ll be fine. I was only out in the rain for thirty seconds, Henry. Now get in here and warm me up yourself.”

Henry turns back to him and grins. “I would never forgive myself if you fell ill, though,” he says, dragging the words out with an exaggerated frown, the unmitigated tease.

Alex glares. “Then you best get in here, sweetheart. I can feel my toes turning to ice as we speak.”

Henry laughs, bright and clear and beautiful, and starts to shed his own clothes. “Well. When you put it like that.”

When he’s finally naked, bathed in light and shadow, Alex reaches a hand out from under the blankets and runs it along the side of his thigh. He does it thoughtfully, feeling along the lines of hard muscle, relishing the contrast with the soft covering of golden hair. Henry shivers beneath his cold fingers, but doesn’t move away. In fact, he steps closer, legs parting for Alex’s exploring hand.

Near eye-level, Alex watches Henry’s dick grow and fill out as his hand drifts to the delicate skin between his thighs, hears Henry’s breath hitch as he moves it higher and higher.

By the time he reaches the place where Henry’s legs meet, Henry is fully hard. His stomach draws in, a full breath held as Alex’s fingers drift past his cock, graze over his balls and then beyond, dipping into the space between his ass cheeks. 

With a gaze that burns down over Alex, Henry nods minutely and adjusts his stance, legs spreading even further as one of his hands shoots out and takes hold of the headboard, the bed creaking as he leans his weight into it.

Alex is barely aware of where he’s going with this. He didn’t have a plan when he started running his hand all over Henry. All he knows is that Henry is here, and he wants Alex, and Alex wants to know all of him—head to toe, elbows and knees, fingers and mouth. Inside and outside and inside again. He’s hardly allowed himself to think of the possibilities between them, but.

He wants them all.

“Is this…?” he asks as his fingers meet differently textured skin.

“Yes. It’s good.” Henry breathes. He lets out a low, quiet moan as Alex touches more enthusiastically, seeks to learn his way around. 

“Fuck. Okay.”

Henry steps forward to let Alex get in closer, and, like this, the way Alex’s brain moves is barely a leap. He sits up slightly, lets the covers fall off his chest and reaches for Henry’s dick with his tongue just as the tip of his finger finds an opening and pushes in gently—receiving as a reward Henry’s breathy gasp. He sucks the head of Henry’s cock into his mouth and looks up, finding Henry’s face turned up to the ceiling, mouth dropped open in pleasure as Alex starts to suck him. His fingers circle Henry’s opening, the muscle softening for him, loosening up.

He’s got Henry all the way to the back of his throat—and a few fingers searching for a way in—when Henry speaks up. “Hang on, I… I have something.”

Alex pops off his dick. “Oh?”

Henry smiles and steps back, Alex’s hand slipping reluctantly out from between his legs. He pouts, but Henry only laughs.

“Just a moment, love.” He walks over to the saddlebags Alex had completely forgotten about, bends forward to slip his hand into a side pocket, giving Alex a truly fantastic view of his backside.

“Fuck, hurry up,” Alex grumbles.

Henry straightens and walks back to the bed, still laughing. There’s a small corked bottle clutched in his hand and he hands it to Alex.

“This is for you. To, uh… ease the way, I suppose.”

Alex curls his fingers around the glass, feeling it warm under his touch.

It’s only a little bottle, it could have come from any apothecary he’s ever been to, and yet it feels like something completely alien to him. Something he never knew existed, something he never knew he might have the need for.

“Show me how?”

Henry smiles and climbs onto the bed, slotting into place on Alex’s lap, spreading open against Alex’s dick and making him moan. He curls one hand around the back of Alex’s neck and bends down to meet him. 

Henry’s whole body moves as he kisses Alex. His tongue is ravenous, relentless. One thumb finds Alex’s nipple while the other hand fists his curls, closing up within them and tugging just enough to feed something primal inside Alex, a hook that lands right behind his navel. And meanwhile, Henry grinds onto Alex’s cock, sliding with the moisture Alex provides, wriggling until Henry has him right up against where he wants him.

Until it’s not enough.

“Get some on your fingers,” Henry says breathlessly, tilting his head in the direction of the bottle, forgotten among the bedding. Alex does, obediently, and waits for his next instruction. “You need to use them to open me up. It makes it…” He stutters over a particularly hard grind into Alex’s erection. “It makes it better, if you do that first.” 

And if there’s anything Alex wants from this, it’s to make it good for Henry. To watch him fall to pieces so beautifully and thoroughly, and then put him back together with his lips and his hands and whatever else Henry might need. 

Alex moves his hand behind him, searching for that same way in again. 

“One at a time. Shallowly at first,” Henry pants. Alex pushes the first slippery fingertip in, to the first knuckle, feeling Henry’s tightness around him, in awe of the blissed-out expression on his face. Then further in, to the second knuckle, where the tightness releases and his fingertip finds skin that is impossibly smooth, delicate enough to feel sacred, and Henry moans into it, sinking down into Alex’s hand, his whole body begging for more. 

Alex draws his finger out and presses in again, and again, and Henry is done with verbal instructions.

He leads with his body, hips circling against Alex’s hand, pushing down hard when he needs more, before rising up and starting again. Alex watches Henry fuck himself on his hand, putting his whole body into it, as beautiful and straight-backed as he’d been upon a horse, those powerful thighs moving like it’s no effort to take what he wants.

“Another one,” he manages to grind out after Alex’s finger reaches its full depth, his other knuckles pressing firmly around the outside of Henry’s entrance.

“Yeah?” Alex checks, already getting himself into position. Henry answers with a quick, impatient huff.

His middle finger joins the first one against the outside of Henry’s hole, and it’s an even tighter fit this time, an even more surprising yield when he pushes past the resistance. And when Henry hisses into his ear to move his fingers, to open them up, to curl them, Alex does so immediately, watching him closely for a reaction.

It’s a full bodied shiver, and a large drop of fluid rolling off the tip of Henry’s cock; it’s even more insistent grinding into Alex’s hand and sharp little cries of “There. There!” that Alex doesn’t fully understand, but it must feel really good, because Henry’s moans pick up speed, as do his hip movements, his upper body flopping forward and supporting himself with hands pressed into the mattress by Alex’s torso.

Alex cannot stop watching Henry. The prophecy fulfilled, he’s falling to pieces before Alex’s very eyes and it is without a doubt the most beautiful thing he has ever seen.

Thunder cracks outside, and Alex looks to the window to see lightning lining the sky, followed by even more thunder. It’s not night-time yet, but it’s gone dark enough as to appear so.

The sound shocks Henry out of his pleasure-seeking trance.

“That’s—I’m ready.” He rises up, pulling himself off of Alex’s fingers, only to take hold of his dick and coat it in the same preparation Alex had used before. Alex hisses, the warm slipperiness of Henry’s hand the first purposeful touch he’s had there this afternoon.

Henry holds him upright and positions himself just above the head of his dick, looks down at Alex to confirm he can go ahead. Alex puts both hands on Henry’s thighs and nods firmly.

And then Henry sinks down and it is like nothing, nothing in the whole wide world.

Deep-sea trenches, faraway planets, the core of a volcano. Their mysteries have nothing on the wonder that is Henry, showing Alex what their bodies are made for.

It’s a tight, slow slide, Henry’s hole sucking Alex in at the same time as it grips him incredibly firmly; all-encompassing heat as he moves down and down and down until finally he’s fully seated in Alex’s lap and they are joined completely.

Alex feels like he’s ascended. He sits up, wraps his arms around Henry’s back, wanting to be even closer, to press their chests and stomachs together however awkwardly, to cradle Henry the way he deserves to be.

Henry pants out soft little breaths, does a gentle wriggle with his hips which Alex recognises as his body adjusting, then slides both arms around Alex’s shoulders and starts to move. 

It’s a sinuous circling of hips going round and round and round, broken up by rising up and down as Henry fucks himself, and Alex doesn’t know how he’s meant to go on with his life after this. How he’s supposed to exist in a world where he doesn’t get to have Henry in his bed every day. Is he supposed to have this once and then give it up? He’s nowhere near strong enough.

But the way Henry’s body moves doesn’t give his brain space to spiral out of control. Henry seeks his pleasure like he was made for this, like he knows exactly what he’s doing, moving faster and faster. His thigh muscles must be burning, Alex thinks distantly, but he does not let up. The tip of his dick pushes against Alex’s stomach in their tight embrace, producing its own slickness, and as Alex vaguely recognises that he can’t be far from his climax he thinks of maybe taking hold of it—but then something else happens that completely shatters everything he thought knew about what they’re doing.

Henry lets out a series of high-pitched gasps and then a soft, breathy sound, almost like a laugh—and then clenches fiercely around Alex. His arms, his legs, the place where they’re joined, all forming a vice of pleasure, all clutching him, and Alex looks up, awed, only to realise by the blissed-out look on his face that Henry is coming. He feels, then, the hot spurts issuing from the tip of Henry’s cock and onto his chest and stomach, and he doesn’t even understand how, how Henry’s managed to come without his dick even being touched, what kind of sorcery he’s playing at. Alex has never seen anything like it.

He half-sits there, mesmerised, his abdominal muscles burning from holding the position for so long, but unwilling to let go of Henry. The spurts from Henry’s dick finally slow down and he puts both hands on Alex’s shoulders and presses down, until Alex is flat on the bed again.

“Take what you need,” Henry says, voice nothing more than a broken wisp. “Do it Alex. I want it.”

Alex follows his instincts and bends his knees up, putting his feet flat on the mattress, curling his hands into the dips of Henry’s hipbones and holding tight. He starts thrusting up into Henry, fucking him, finally, and Henry flops forward, limp like a rag doll, moaning into his ear, low and low and then high, like Alex has done something really right, and then it’s all over.

The wave rises to a final peak and crashes in the space between two breaths, washing over him until there’s nothing left but gasping rubble, broken shards of whoever he used to be.

He fills Henry up and Henry just takes it, moans for it, and when Alex is completely emptied he doesn’t move to get off him, but instead lies atop him, with Alex’s dick still buried inside.

Alex wonders if Henry is feeling the same way he is—that he’d take up residence there if he could. Sign a life-long lease, buy the whole plot of land, move in with all of his worldly possessions.

God, he hopes Henry feels the same.

He rubs his hand up and down Henry’s sweaty back, kisses his temple where the hair is all damp and stuck down and waits for whatever comes next, listening to the storm outside, lightning brightening up the room at random intervals, the speed with which the cracks of thunder follow getting faster.

Eventually, Alex softens enough that he just slips out of Henry and Henry gets up with a sigh and one last kiss to Alex’s chest. He walks naked to a window and stares out at the rain.

“It’s getting worse out there,” Alex says from the bed.

“It is. I think it might be best if we stay here for a bit longer.”

“Yeah. Sure,” Alex answers. He doesn’t say that there’s nowhere else he’d rather be right now.

Henry walks around the room, finds his drawers and uses the edge of them to wipe quickly between his legs before pulling them back on, then moves to the saddlebags. “We might as well have that picnic indoors, I suppose.”

He starts pulling things out. A thick woollen blanket, which he stretches out on the floor in front of the fireplace. A couple of bottles, one of wine and the other of cordial. A pair of game pies, each as big as one of Alex’s hands, ornate golden pastry wrapped in waxed paper. Oranges that Alex suspects have been plucked from the same Orangerie he is now most familiar with. A sturdy fruit loaf—“The only cake that will survive a day in the saddlebags,” Henry says as he unwraps it—as well as a loaf of bread, a thick wedge of cheese and a pat of butter in a small lidded pot.

It’s an entire feast.

“Well, at least we won’t starve,” Alex says with a chuckle.

Henry laughs back. “Never let it be said that the Duke of Windsor underfeeds his guests.”

The room starts to grow chilly as night falls, and Alex slips his shirt back on, while Henry works on lighting the fire. They sit on the picnic blanket and tuck into the food.

Alex can’t help but sit right up against Henry. He can’t help the way he’s constantly seeking out Henry’s skin, the way he can’t bear to leave Henry’s space for more than the moment it takes to reach for another morsel. He can’t help but watch Henry’s forearm flex as he uses a big knife to cut a wedge out of a pie, his chest muscles rippling as he goes, his tongue flicking as he licks crumbs off his fingertips.

Henry’s beauty has so many facets. There’s the poised, haughty aristocrat, not a hair or thread out of place—imposing, unattainable. The confident horseman, mesmerising in his competence—at ease, in total control of his body. The undone man Alex has seen in bed—fully surrendered to pleasure. And now this—bared, domestic Henry. One leg crossed under the other, shoulders slouching a little, hair still damp and curling up at the ends. He’s so different from the man who’d first treated Alex so rudely, and yet Alex is starting to understand how, and why, all those different sides of him need to coexist.

“Hey, can I ask you something?”

Henry looks up with only a faint twitch of surprise. “Of course.”

“Why did you, uh… That first night here. Why did you—”

A soft sigh passes Henry’s lips. “Give you the cut?”

Alex lets out a faintly uncomfortable laugh. “Yes. I’m glad you’re owning up to it.”

Henry leans closer, runs his fingers along the side of Alex’s bare thigh. “I am ever so sorry about that, you know.” 

Alex had figured as much. “Yeah, yeah. Why did you do it, though?”

Henry pulls in a breath, deep into his chest, and lets it rattle his lips on the way out. “Well—the truth is, that night in the Gold Parlour… it wasn’t the first time I saw you.”

“It wasn’t?”

“No. There was this ball in town, a few months ago, at Viscountess Marlowe’s. I think your family had just arrived from America.” Alex knows the night he’s talking about. It was the night when June and Nora met Bea. He doesn’t remember Henry being there. “And I spotted you through the crowd, and you were just… the most entrancing thing I’d ever seen.” Henry’s hand comes up to Alex’s temple, brushes curls off to the side with a delicate touch Alex can’t help but lean into. “You were talking to June and Nora, and your eyes shone as if they had their own candles lit within them, your smile so wide as if you had nothing to fear.” Henry sounds wistful, almost sad. “You were everything, you were alive, and I—I was so afraid.”

“What were you afraid of?” Alex asks in a faint whisper.

Henry lets out a sharp little sound, an angry laugh, and leans his body away from him. “What am I not afraid of?” He picks crumbs off the blanket, tosses them into the fire. “Afraid of never being allowed to live a life that makes me happy. Afraid of trying and losing everything I have right now. Seeing you that night, another wondrous thing I could never have—and I did want you, oh God, did I want you—just reminded me of it, fierce as a dagger through the heart. I turned and fled, then and there.”

He turns a rueful look Alex’s way, half apology, half challenge.

Alex takes Henry’s hand in his, twines their fingers, runs his thumb over the side of it. He doesn’t know what to say. Henry has lived with this knowledge of himself his whole life, as well as the knowledge of what his position in society means—and how easy it can be to lose it. Alex grew up in another world, with nothing to lose. He grew up thinking one day he’d find a nice girl and marry her and build a life. He’s gone through life knowing he was charming and bright, that people flocked to him, listened to him. Being told the world was his for the taking—if only he made the right moves. Henry’s existence has been the direct opposite—thinking himself to be something unforgivable, and knowing one wrong step would cost him everything.

Alex doesn’t fully know what that is like, but he understands Henry a little better now.

Henry’s croaky voice cuts through the silence. “I’d been thinking of you since that night. Of that ravishing, unattainable man. Wondering what you were doing, if you looked that alive when you went about your day, having dreary tea parties with society ladies as you went courting; dancing with all the eligible young women in London. If they made you smile like you had that night, with your whole body, open and unafraid. I didn’t know your name, of course—which is why I was so shocked to see you in the flesh, in my family’s home. But you’d taken up residence in my mind for the last several months, you see.”

Alex is dumbstruck.

“Oh.”

“I could not form words. And so instead, I did the worst possible thing I could have done.”

“I don’t know if I would call it that…” Alex tries to make it easier, because it hurts to see Henry beating himself up.

“No, but I could have ruined everything, for you, your sister, your family.”

He presses a kiss on Henry’s bare shoulder. “You fixed it, though. You made it better. You made everything better.”

There’s an odd, restrained half-smile on Henry’s face, and he moves away, wipes his hands on his drawers and stands up. He walks around the room restlessly, straightens the bedding, tuts at the window.

“I don’t think we should try and brave the ride home in this weather.” Another bolt of lightning makes his point for him. “It looks too heavy out there.”

“Oh. Alright. You don’t think they’ll worry about us back home?”

“Maybe. But they know the direction we were heading in. They might guess we’ve chosen to take shelter.” Henry finds the rest of his clothes, slips them on. “I think I best go and make sure the horses aren’t too distressed by the storm.”

Alex starts to stand up. “Give me a sec, I’ll get dressed and come with you.”

But Henry is already at the bedroom door. “No, it’s fine. I’ll be back in a minute,” he says, and then leaves.

A little baffled, Alex starts tidying away the remnants of their dinner, packing things back into the saddlebags. He feeds another log to the fire, puts the rest of his clothes on, and finally, with nothing left to do, slips into the bed, tucking himself in under all the available covers.

When Henry finally comes back, dripping wet and shivering, Alex is warm and relaxed, heart and stomach full. He jumps out of bed again and helps Henry strip off his soaked clothes, hangs them by the fire to dry while Henry crawls under the blankets, and then undresses again, ready to share his body heat to warm Henry up. This may be their last night together at Foxden, and who knows when the next chance will be for them to spend time together like this.

Alex needs to make the most of it.

He lies flat out on the mattress and guides Henry to curl up around him, to press as much of his chilled skin into Alex’s as possible. One of Henry’s legs gets thrown over both of his, the other stretched along his length; Henry’s chest and stomach pressed into his side; Alex’s arms both reaching out for him, touching as much of Henry as he can. Henry shivers, cold toes on Alex’s calves, but after a few minutes the shivering subsides, his breathing evening out.

“Better?” Alex asks, stroking his hair.

“Much. Thank you.” Henry’s fierce grip relaxes as his body thaws out.

“Pfft. This is as much for me as it is for you, sweetheart,” Alex says, thigh pressing into the space between Henry’s legs. Henry laughs.

“You are a reprobate. Truly, I don’t know how you function in society,” he teases.

“You sound like my mom,” Alex says. “At least when I’ve messed up.” He pauses, allowing himself a second of hesitation before broaching something that’s been on his mind. “Do you think they let the likes of me into that hallowed university of yours?”

Henry pulls back a little to look at him. “What? What do you mean?”

“Well, I’ve been thinking. Back home, I was intending to study Law. But now I’m here, and I… well. I thought that might be nice. If I found a reason to stay.” His brain has been busy picturing a future all day. Creating scenarios, dreaming up possibilities. Lodgings near each other’s, perhaps even neighbouring rooms. No family, valets or butlers to intrude. More nights like this, with their bodies pressed together, and the rest of the world falling away. “Then maybe we could see each other a bit more. Or… a lot more.”

He thinks that’s clear enough, that Henry will understand what he means—that the time they’ve spent together has been life-changing, that Alex can’t bear the thought of giving it up.

Henry’s reaction is underwhelming.

He shifts under the covers, distance materialising between them, so much more solid than air.

“Oh. Well, I truthfully don’t know anything about the university’s admissions process. I’m afraid that’s way beyond my area of expertise as a student.”

“Right. Well, I suppose that’s relevant, though the main thing is… whether you would like that? If it were to happen?” Alex asks, words hitching at the end. An hour ago he would have sworn on penalty of death that Henry felt the same way about him. Now he’s not so sure anymore.

“Well, that all sounds very hypothetical to me,” Henry says, all languidness gone from his voice. It’s not cold exactly, but it’s not far off either. “I find it best not to make plans, lest disappointment follows.” He yawns then, loud—and possibly fake—and gives Alex’s hand a quick squeeze, pulls the covers up to his shoulders and rolls away. “I’m exhausted. It’s been such a busy day of riding,” he says with a slight leer, and Alex forces out a laugh. He feels as if the floor has tilted, then slipped out from under him, and he can’t quite work out what he did to make it happen. “Let’s try and get some sleep, shall we?”

Then it’s nothing but silence, except for the relentlessly hammering rain, and the sounds of Henry’s breaths—never quite evening out enough for Alex to believe he’s fallen asleep.

Chapter Text

When Alex wakes up, the sun is out again, the birds are singing—and Henry’s gone.

He sits up with a jerk, eyes darting around the bedroom. His first thought is that Henry must have just stepped out, gone to find more firewood downstairs, or to tend to the horses. But there’s only his own clothes abandoned on the dusty floors, none of Henry’s. The saddlebags, the picnic blanket, all have gone. The tiny bottle of precious oil glitters teasingly from the nightstand, refracting a ray of sunlight that pokes in through the shutters, but otherwise there’s no sign that Henry ever was here.

Except for the aching pit of dread in Alex’s chest, growing bigger and bigger with every second.

He gets dressed in a rush, pocketing the bottle and sparing a single second of regret over leaving the wrecked bed for someone else to deal with before he rushes down the stairs and out to the stables.

Marigold is there where they left her, munching on some hay, tail flicking at the tip. She blows air out of her mouth when Alex walks in, rattling her lips and sounding as impatient as a horse can. Henry’s horse is gone.

Alex spins around, tugging at his hair sharply, then walks out of the stables, looking for a shadow, a figure retreating in the distance, a dust cloud drifting. There’s nothing.

He can’t avoid the obvious interpretation of the facts. Henry’s up and left him in the middle of the night. With no goodbye, no explanation. No quickly dashed note of apology.

Henry ran, and as much as Alex had attempted to convince himself that everything was fine last night as he tried to fall asleep, in his gut he has a pretty solid idea why. The mere suggestion of them having something more long term, of Alex choosing Henry, had made him pull away. This—Henry vanishing—is nothing but the logical conclusion to that, and yet the sting of it is so much bigger.

Whatever Alex wanted, whatever he’d planned: Henry doesn’t want that, and this is how he chose to let Alex know. 

He goes through the motions of getting Marigold ready, trying to copy what Henry showed him yesterday. If this horse can sound impatient, he decides, she can also most certainly look frustrated at his lack of expertise. It takes a few attempts to get the bit in right, to slip the bridle on, and he definitely doesn’t get the saddle on tight enough on his first attempt, because it slips and spins upside-down as he puts his foot on the stirrup and tries to heave up. But he tries again, and the second time everything stays in place and Marigold seems more than eager to get going. He gives her the reins, trusting her to know the way, and she leads him home at a fast clip, blissfully ignorant of the leaden weight in his stomach. For once, Alex is thankful instead of just plain terrified.

He has never been someone to just take a knock lying down. He fully intends to corner Henry when he gets back to the house—even if he manages to find another cunning place to hide—and make him talk. If he wants to let Alex down, he’s going to have to do it to his face.

June and Nora are both in the entrance hall as he walks in, and they rush up to meet him at the door.

“Alex!” they cry in unison.

June cups his cheeks with both hands, then runs them down his shoulders, along his arms, as if checking him for damage. 

“Are you alright? We’ve been so worried!”

“I’m fine. I’m fine, June! Let go of me!” He’s got to find Henry. He doesn’t have time for sisterly fussing.

“Hey, don’t be an ass,” Nora interjects. “We spent all night worrying about you, and if it wasn’t for the fact that Henry came back a few hours ago and told Martha you’d sheltered in some cottage and that you were fine we would have already sent out a search party.” She punctuates this with a hard shove to his shoulder.

“Hey—ouch, Nora! I’m sorry! What were we supposed to do, send smoke signals? Or would you rather we rode out through the storm? Got ourselves struck by lightning?”

“Oh, that all seems incredibly reasonable…” Nora says, dragging her words, and Alex can smell a trap.

“… if it weren’t for the fact that you were probably just sucking each other’s brains off in that cottage,” June finishes

“I—what?” He glares at Nora. “What did you say?” he hisses.

June steps between them. “She didn’t have to say anything, you nitwit. I have eyes, and so do the two of you, except you were only using them to look at each other. ‘Going to show Mr. Claremont-Diaz the wheat fields’ my ass.”

“I—okay, fine. But can we talk about this later? I’ve got to find Henry now. Do you know where he is?”

A hesitant look passes between the two of them.

“He—Henry’s left, Alex. He had a carriage readied straight away, and was gone within half an hour.” There’s something pitying in June’s tone that he absolutely fucking hates, almost as much as he hates the confirmation of what Henry’s done. “He didn’t tell you?”

“No,” Alex mumbles. “Did he say why?”

“He just said he had urgent business back in town. The duke and the duchess seemed a bit confused, but… well, there was nothing they could do, really. He didn’t even stop for breakfast,” Nora says.

“Did something happen, Alex?” June asks softly.

“I—I’m not sure, really.” He has no desire to parse the last week with the two of them. He’s barely managed to make sense of it in his own head. “Just, like… give me a few minutes to wash up and then I’ll come down for breakfast, yeah?”

He can tell June is reluctant to let him go with no explanation, but she does anyway. 

The remaining members of the house party are all in the breakfast room when he comes back down, many of them sporting dark circles under their eyes.

“Good morning, Mr. Claremont-Diaz!” the duchess exclaims. “I hope you’re well. We heard you had to sleep rough last night. I’m ever so sorry for it.”

“Oh, no. It was fine, honestly. Truly not that rough at all.”

“Did Henry look after you alright?” the duke says. “I should like to think at the very least he would have offered some decent hospitality.”

“Uh, oh yes. He was a great host. There was food and blankets, and logs for the fire. Truthfully, your grace, we were fine. At least we were sheltered.” There’s a concerned frown on Lady Bea’s face, and a sympathetic grimace on Sir Percy’s. Alex would really love to ask them exactly what they know—because he has a feeling it’s a lot more than the duke and the duchess. 

“Yes, that is the most important thing,” Windsor nods solemnly.

“Uh, how was your outing yesterday? How was the village?” he asks the duchess, hoping to deflect attention from himself. He succeeds, and the rest of breakfast passes in a blur of frivolities that blow in through one of his ears and out of the other without ever making an impression. No one else mentions Henry. Nobody tells him anything new.

And then they’re done, and it’s time to pack their things and head back to London.

The whole week feels like one long, life-changing blur. Alex can’t tell where the old him went, nor at what moment he vanished, but he knows he will emerge from the gates of Foxden Park a different person.

He dismisses the footman who tries to help him and gets his cases done quickly, then sneaks off to roam the house. 

He starts at the Gold Parlour, where Henry first came in and made a mess of things. He stops at the windows to look out over the lawn, where a picnic happened, and down the slope to where the croquet lawn is hidden just beyond view. He spins on his heel to find the pianoforte, and a vivid image of Henry materialises in front of him: happy, smiling widely, cheeks flushed that pretty shade of pink as he played and everyone danced around him. He closes his eyes and pictures a moonless night, bright stars and tentative, trembling lips pressing against his. 

He walks out of the parlour and down a long hallway, his footsteps muffled by the thick rug. Among the dozens of paintings, he stops in front of one that shows a small, white boat on a pond, and for a second he can feel the cold of the water seeping through his clothes, and the heat of Henry’s furious gaze upon him. 

Further down, he finds the big glass doors to the Orangerie, and he walks into a space that is so completely different in the daylight. Gone are the shadows, the ethereal silver tinge to everything, the hushed sense of secrecy in a place that was just theirs. The colours now are bright, flowers and fruits and trees, the overt exuberance of it all being almost too much. He shuts the door behind himself and turns away.

The last stop in his heartbreak tour is the library. It’s quiet today, spotlessly tidied. But nobody seems to have thought to lock up the secret study after Catherine’s visit yesterday. He tugs on the lock-book and the door swings open under his fingertips. He doesn’t walk in though, and instead stands just outside the door peering in, as if by revealing its own secret the room could reveal Henry’s too.

But there’s no revelation, and no resolution for him. There’s only an ache, an ache, bone-deep, rib-crushing. It’s only been a few days. It shouldn’t feel like such a big loss—but it does. Alex had fully let himself believe he’d found something with Henry. He’d let old dreams slip into the sunset so new ones could rise, and now both are gone and there’s nothing but a void, a blank space where neither who he’d once thought he’d become, nor who he’d decided to be exist anymore. 

He turns to the windows, scrunches his eyes shut against angry tears, and then he hears the library door open softly.

He spins on the spot—thinking it’ll be Henry, of course, returned, regretful, apologetic—but finds instead Sir Percy, already wearing his travel cloak and hat, both in a deep shade of purple, one long peacock feather rising up from the top of his head, as if to rub salt in Alex’s wounds.

He gives Alex a half smile and walks up to stand next to him, looking out of the window.

“All packed?” Percy asks.

“Yes. All packed.” Alex doesn’t know what to say to Henry’s best friend. He wants to shake all the answers out of Pez; he wants Pez to tell him nothing and leave him with a shred of hope.

“Saying goodbye to the house, then?”

“Uh, yes, I suppose.”

“We have had a jolly good week, have we not?” he says with a sympathetic tip of the head. Alex nods politely. “I know it can be hard to leave things behind when we’ve enjoyed them so much. But you should not give up hope. You may yet get to return to Foxden.” He sighs and turns to look at the open door to the secret study, and Alex wonders if he’s thinking of the same thing he is. Though he’s sure Percy cannot bring up the vivid memory of Henry’s body, pressed hot against his; his lips on Alex’s, the joy in his stifled laughter. “Sometimes a place can be reluctant to give up all its secrets. That doesn’t mean it doesn’t want to. It just means it’s not used to it. The hinges may be creaky but… that door can still swing open, if you give it enough time, grease it up enough. You know?”

This is not the first time the man has spoken in riddles, and Alex worries he might actually be too dense for this conversation. But before he can gather the courage to ask any questions, Sir Percy squeezes his shoulder then spins on his heel, cloak billowing out widely, and strides towards the door. 

He stops with his hand on the knob. “It was an immeasurable pleasure to make your acquaintance, Mr. Claremont-Diaz. I do hope we will see each other again very soon.” And with one last wide smile he leaves, a trail of confusion and a flowery scent lingering in his wake.

Alex allows himself a few more minutes in the room, fingers dragging over the spines of the books in Henry’s corner, up and over the back of the chair he’d sat in by the fire—torn between committing it to his mind and trying to bury it with a new, innocuous memory, before he gives it up as a bad job and leaves with one final sigh.

The remaining members of the household all come down to say goodbye to them. The duke and duchess as polite as ever, if slightly less formal now, the children fulfilling their obligation as hosts with barely concealed boredom, and Bea, peering at him in a way that Alex absolutely does not understand. She seems on the edge of saying something, but in the end only manages a terse, “I hope we’ll meet again,” accompanied by a despondent head shake. She looks as full of regret as Alex feels, and Alex has honestly had enough of all the puzzles to solve in Foxden. He’s ready to go.

As the carriage pulls away from the house, up the drive, the vice around his heart only seems to tighten. He thinks he catches a glimpse of the chimney of the old gamekeeper’s cottage over the top of some trees and buries his head in his hands with a groan.

June slides up on the seat and pushes against him, one hand stroking his back.

“Alex.”

“I’m fine, June. Honestly.”

He straightens up, keeping his face firmly towards the window, and June doesn’t push.

The thing is… the thing is, he thinks he gets it. He’d listened yesterday, to the things Henry said before vanishing. He’d heard him talk about being afraid, about thinking he might lose everything in his life. He’d watched Henry around his mother, his tentativeness, the blooming of hope in him the more she came alive, inch by hard-earned inch. He’d listened to Henry, in the library, on his horse, in quiet moments, talking about his dad. He thinks he has a sense of how that affected him. He can see how someone who’s been through all of that might not want to open himself up to more hurt, more loss.

But he thinks of the joy in Henry’s eyes, the laughter on his lips, and the way he’d opened up to him, and he can see, beneath it all, the big, beating heart of someone who wants more.

If only he would allow himself to have it.

They’re not far from London when he finally speaks up.

“You two have the address of their London residence, right?”

It takes over a week for the letters to travel back and forth between June, Nora, Bea and Pez before Alex finally has an answer.

It’s a sunny day, and he walks to the address he’s been given—a distance that turns out to be so short as to be akin to torture. To know that Henry’s been less than half an hour away from him, and to have sat with the painful churning in his gut this whole time.

He runs up the steps to the gentlemen’s club, past a doorman in tails and a top hat, and up to another well-dressed man behind a tall desk in the entrance hall. He drops Pez’s letter on the desk, introduces himself, and the man leads him into the lounge swiftly.

It’s a large room, a dozen or so tables surrounded by chairs, a few couches and armchairs around fireplaces on both ends of the room. There are not many gentlemen here at this time of day,  a few eating, one reading a newspaper by the fire, and Alex tracks a bored looking waiter carrying a snifter of brandy on a tray across the room, until his eyes finally land on his quarry.

Henry sits in a deep armchair by a large window, at the far end of the room; a book opened in his hands but his gaze turned to the world on the other side of the glass. He looks… tired. Dark, purple-tinged circles under his eyes, cheeks slightly gaunt.

Alex strides straight up to him, stops a foot away, and waits until Henry looks up.

“Alex,” Henry startles. He looks around stealthily, checking the room. “Uh. I mean, Mr. Claremont-Diaz. What a pleasure to see you again.” There’s no one anywhere near them, but still Henry feels he has to put on an act.

Alex can’t fight the impulse to roll his eyes.

“Your lordship,” he dips his head.

“That’s not—” Henry attempts. Alex cuts him off.

“I fucking know, alright,” he hisses. “I don’t care.”

Henry straightens his back, and Alex sees the fight rising up in him.

“I see. Did you come here today to make a scene? To humiliate me, is that it?” His voice is very quiet, almost menacing.

All the anger flies out of Alex. The way Henry steels himself, sets his jaw, brave even when faced with possible ruin, almost as if it was inevitable. It splits Alex’s heart right down the centre.

“No. Of course not. Can we… is there somewhere we can talk?”

Henry sighs and nods, closes his book, and stands up. “I have a room, upstairs,” he says. “I’ve been staying here.”

“You know I know that, right? How do you think I found you?”

“I see. Who gave me away? Bea? Pez?”

“Both of them, actually. They both seemed to think you’re being incredibly obtuse.”

“Right.” He leads Alex out of the room and up a staircase. “See if I keep their secrets next time they need me to,” he mutters under his breath, and Alex smiles in spite of himself.

Henry’s room in the club is decorated in dark wood, and heavy, even darker fabrics. It’s sombre, an old man’s room, and Alex hates to think of Henry in here for the last week, suffocating in the aristocratic air. Henry deserves to be out in the open, laughing in the green and blue, wind blowing through his golden hair. He should never be kept locked up.

And yet, with the way he crosses the room after shutting the door, the way he leans against the mantlepiece and crosses his arms in front of his chest as if to put a barrier between himself and Alex, Alex knows he believes these walls to be immovable.

“What do you want, Alex?”

“Well, I guess I’ll just start with making sure you’re not dead or gravely injured or anything? I mean, you vanished in the middle of the night without a word. I wasn’t even sure if I’d imagined you or not.”

Henry presses his lips into a thin line and doesn’t take the bait. “I am fine. Thank you for your concern. I had urgent business to attend to.”

“We both know that’s bullshit, so just cut it out.”

Henry grimaces and tries again. “I had urgent business of… Christ, Alex, I had to. I couldn’t just…” He waves an open hand vaguely in front of himself.

“You couldn’t stand to hear me talk about wanting more with you?”

Henry pulls off his stupid golden pinky ring, sets it down on the fireplace with a soft clink, then buries both hands in his hair. His whole body sags, as if he’s lost the will to fight, and Alex doesn’t want to fight—what he wants is to wrap his arms around Henry and hold him up, help him see how it can be between them. But he doesn’t know the way in.

“It seems pointless,” Henry says finally.

Alex’s restraint snaps.

“So what? You never wanted anything real with me?” He’s almost shouting, and rapidly forgetting to care about it. “You thought you’d have a couple of days’ fun sneaking around your fucking obscenely large home with me, and then ditch me and I’d fuck off back to America and that’d be it?”

Henry sighs. “Alex, I don’t know what world you think we’re living in, but from where I stand, anything more than that is impossible. You must know that. It’s not a question of wanting—” and with that he drags a look up Alex’s body, a look that burns and sears and leaves Alex feeling naked in its wake “—it’s a question of possibility, and impossibility.”

“Well, I think we can make our own possibilities, Henry. I think the world has a lot of rules, and not all of them are fair, and we can bend them, or fight to change them. We don’t just put up with unfairness and try to find tiny slices of happiness in dark cupboards and abandoned houses. That’s not a life.”

Henry shakes his head as he turns away. “It’s the only one I know, Alex,” he says sadly.

“And you don’t even want to try and build something different?”

“I don’t believe it to be possible. And as I’ve said to you, I prefer not to court disappointment.” He walks over to the window, keeping his back turned. Alex takes a few steps, reluctant to let him move any further away. “I didn’t think it would matter. I didn’t think you would…”

“Care?”

“Yes.”

“Well, I do. And you can choose this, Henry, if you want to. But you have to want to.” He reaches a tentative hand, places it on Henry’s shoulder blade. There’s the beginning of a flinch, but then Henry’s body relaxes into it, back dropping against Alex’s palm. “I mean, if this is what you want, sad empty rooms, connections that you barely let form before you break them, then I guess I can’t stop you. But I think there’s a part of you that wants more, that knows what it could be like. I saw it, Henry, I saw it at Foxden, in the Orangerie, in my bed, in that cottage, and I can see how hard you’re fighting now to keep it contained. I mean, if I’m wrong, tell me to leave, tell me to fuck off and I’ll go, I’ll find a bottle of bourbon somewhere in this fucking town and drown my whole stupid heart in it. But if I’m not wrong, then…”

Henry finally turns to him. His eyes are damp, red-rimmed, his expression one near despair. “Then what, Alex? How could you possibly see this having a happy outcome? You came in here, gunning for a fight, so I ask of you. Please, tell me, how could this work?” He steps into Alex’s space, then takes hold of Alex’s lapels and Alex has a moment of doubt where he thinks maybe he’s miscalculated, so he juts his chin out, but Henry only lets his eyes flicker over Alex’s face for a brief moment before crashing their mouths together.

Alex is taken aback, but then he’s in it, opening up for Henry, letting Henry take exactly what he wants. Henry kisses him with pure, unfiltered desperation, and Alex can’t even tell if he has decided to choose him or if he just lost his closely-held grip on himself, but he doesn’t care. He doesn’t care about the why when Henry pushes him into a wall and rolls their bodies together; he doesn’t care about the what-ifs when Henry manoeuvres them towards the bed and falls down on the mattress, pulling Alex along with him.

He takes what he’s given, takes Henry undressing himself in a rush of fury, and doing the same for him, buttons be damned. He finds the precious bottle of oil he’s been carrying around in his waistcoat pocket since the day he left Foxden and uses it on his own fingers, even though Henry is impatient, even though he huffs the whole way through as Alex patiently coaxes him open.

He stops Henry from rolling over onto his front, because he thinks he might be trying to hide, and whispers, “No, like this. I need to see you,” and something in Henry’s warrior-fierce expression softens, opening up for him at the same time as his thighs fall open, finally allowing Alex in.

It’s a mad rush of wild kisses and hungry, demanding bodies, and very few words said beyond broken versions of their names, terms of endearment Alex worries he might never hear again. Henry is so needy beneath him, Alex fucks him deeply, thoroughly, trying to sate every cell of his body and leave his imprint there, and when Henry finally comes between them, Alex follows swiftly, chests and stomach left sticky in the aftermath, his whole body trembling.

He pulls out and falls away, afraid his arms will give out under the weight of it all, but Henry groans, rolls onto his side and drags Alex back towards him so they’re facing each other. He reaches for Alex’s hand and guides it back into his body, sighing and then finally stilling with one leg thrown over Alex’s as Alex slides two fingers into the wetness he just left inside him.

Despite his surprise—and the fact that his cock is definitely trying to show an interest—Alex follows Henry’s lead and holds himself still.

“I just need…” Henry half-says by way of explanation, and though Alex isn’t sure what he means, if Henry wants his fingers, if Henry wants to keep him close for that little bit longer, then Henry is welcome to them.

They lie for long minutes, calming down, Alex pulling on his newfound store of patience to wait and hear what Henry has to say. He sends up a prayer of hope that this wasn’t the last time he got to have Henry like this.

Eventually, Henry adjusts his body, eases Alex’s fingers out, and flops back onto the mattress. 

“I just don’t see how it could work,” he finally says, voice tiny, pained.

Alex sucks in a deep breath, fights the urge to close his eyes to bring up the picture of the future he’s constructed carefully in his mind, and instead stares into the full depth of Henry’s. They’re an even more stupidly impossible blue today, this stupidly impossible, stubborn man, and he is everything Alex wants. 

“All that matters is if we want it to, Henry. The how… Well, we can work on it. My family has money, your family has money. Privacy, space, those things can be bought. There’s anonymity to be found in the city, but the countryside is big too, and America is even bigger, if needs be. There are options. But you have to want to. So, I’ll ask again.” He pushes up on one elbow and shifts forward, grazes his fingers along the soft skin at the side of Henry’s torso, the dip of his waist where his palm fits so perfectly. “Do you want to?”

There’s a moment of hesitation, where the future hangs by a thin thread, hovering between beautifully imagined nothing and concrete reality. Then Henry’s closed off expression cracks and he turns to Alex and smiles and it’s everything.

“I want to,” he says, firm. Bravery, filling his lungs.

Alex lets out a wet laugh. “Then we’ll figure it out.” He presses his forehead against Henry’s, breathes him in, feels the quiver in his inhale. “I can see us, you know? In my mind. I see us walking along leafy streets, side by side, just two students, and nobody giving a damn. I see us taking neighbouring lodgings, and going in and out of each other’s rooms. I see days in the Bodleian, sharing a table, and nights in darkened rooms, and I see… I see you, Henry.” Henry laughs against his lips, and somehow he keeps going. “And then later on, well. I see myself working in small chambers, and you spending your days in an overstuffed library, reading and writing, and then coming home to each other at the end of the day. I see a house, and a dog too, because I think you would like that—someone to keep you company.”

“I would,” Henry says, featherlight, dreamy, his eyes falling closed. Alex imagines he’s taken himself there, to that house, and he closes his own eyes, rests his cheek against Henry’s and joins him there.

“Then we’ll make it happen, baby.”

Henry laughs, and then—

“I have a place,” he says in a rush. “A small estate. Less than a day from Foxden.”

Alex thinks he might have misheard. “Excuse me?”

“It’s, well… There’s a house, and some land. The farm tenants are lovely.”

“I’m sorry, you have a house?” The world spins, and Alex’s vision of the future shifts again, morphs and grows into an even bigger and better shape. “Land? Fucking tenants?”

“Yes. That’s right,” Henry says sheepishly. 

“You own all of this outright, is that what I’m to understand? It’s not entailed or anything?”

“No. Dad built it, and left it for me, because he knew of course that most of the family’s assets would go straight to Pip. That I would have to make my own way.” He lets out a small sigh, and Alex knows he’s thinking fondly of his dad, missing him. “And I think he had an inkling that relying on marrying someone with a dowry might not have been… an option for me. Not a pleasant one, anyway.”

“Jesus fuck, Henry. Not to be blunt or anything, but if you have all of this, if it brings in an income—” he cuts his eyes to Henry and Henry nods to confirm “—if you can be independent, then why the hell are you letting society’s opinions define your future?”

Henry scrubs a hand over his own face. “Because… I don’t know, alright? It’s all I’ve ever known. I grew up like this. I had never even contemplated the possibility of anything different. Anything… more.”

Alex tilts his chin up, a small show of defiance against the societal structures trying to tell him what to do.

“And now?”

“Now, I think… I might be able to carve out some freedom for myself. Now I think I might have something that is worth doing it for.”

And with his own defiant tip of his chin, Henry finally lets him know it. That he’s in.

Alex could scream.

He leans forward and Henry meets him halfway, in a kiss that is a jumbled mixture of tentative and wanting, slow and hungry. It’s Henry’s hand stuttering on its way up to Alex’s jaw, and a pleased hum rising up from his chest, shoulders that finally loosen as Alex drapes his arms over them. It’s Henry pulling away with a small, disbelieving laugh, and Alex joining him.

“I am so bloody glad you came to find me,” Henry says.

“I should fucking hope so,” Alex brazens out.

Henry laughs and kisses him again. “No, but I mean it, truly. I’m so sorry for leaving, Alex. I thought I knew what life could be, and I thought I knew what I was walking away from. I thought walking away would be the kindest, most painless thing to do. But this—” he gestures between the two of them “—this isn’t like anything else I’ve ever known. Trying to give you up over the last week or so has been the hardest thing I’ve ever tried to do. And, if I’m being honest, I was failing miserably.”

“Well, I’m happy to hear that. I mean, not happy to hear you were unhappy, but. Well, just a tiny bit.” He sighs. “I was miserable too.”

“I’m sorry to hear you were unhappy,” Henry says, but there’s a wide smile on his face that belittles the sentiment. Alex does not give a fuck.

He knows exactly what Henry means.

Chapter Text

From the moment Henry Fox-Mountchristen understood what kind of person he was—a second son, a quiet man; a lover of books, a hater of attention; someone whose affections only ran in the direction of the same sex as his own—he’d developed a picture in his mind of how his life would go:

There would be books, of that he’d been sure of. A house, small, not nearly as big as Foxden where he’d grown up. A lot of silence, but that would be conducive to all the reading and writing he planned on doing. Maybe there would be a dog, and days out on horseback. If he were lucky, he would avoid the mirror prisons of the cloth or a wife.

And he had made his peace with that picture. Found comfort in knowing what to expect, even.

That was, until the day he met Alexander Gabriel Claremont-Diaz, and everything he thought he knew possible—and impossible—had been upended.

In all the years since, he’s still not stopped being surprised by it all.

“Henry!” the call rings out through the house. 

He sighs and listens for footsteps. Maybe Alex will come and find him himself. 

“Henry! Heeeeen!” 

Henry gives it up as hopeless, sets his pen down on his desk and pushes his chair back. David—their beagle—looks up from his spot over on the rug by the fire, ears standing up but waiting for Henry to confirm whether his guard-dog services are needed. Henry has never met a dog more ill-suited to the guard job than David. Cheese sommelier, yes. Shoe menace, absolutely. Champion recogniser of when Henry needs a cuddle—and champion cuddler, too—unequivocally. But protector of his humans? Defender of their property? Not so much.

“It’s fine, boy. You stay,” Henry says to the dog, stopping to scratch between his ears. “I’ll go see what he needs.”

David does just as told, sprawling out even further, not a care in the world. 

Henry walks out of his library and moves down the hall, in search of Alex. 

His first stop is the kitchen, where he pokes his head in to find only Amy, their housekeeper, currently working on packing a basket of food for their journey, humming softly under her breath as she goes. Amy is a compatriot of Alex’s who they met through a group of like-minded friends at Oxford, and who now keeps house for them and lives in the small cottage adjacent to the main house. She shares it with her own companion, a woman named Patricia who looks after their small flock of animals and favours breeches and men’s jackets while doing so. 

Amy rolls her eyes fondly at Alex’s squealing when she spots Henry at the kitchen door.

“You know what this is about?” he asks. 

She smiles and fights off another eye roll. “You know how he gets before trips.” 

Henry grins back at her, steals a few of the biscuits that have been left to cool on a metal rack on the kitchen table and dashes up the stairs.

“You know,” Henry says as he walks into their bedroom, “if we had any neighbours, they would be horrified by your shrieking.” He does his best to ignore the mess of clothes strewn all around and focuses on the man standing at the centre of it. Alex has a process. Henry knows this.

“Yeah, well, I think of all the things I do on a regular basis—” Alex leers, dropping his eyes down to Henry’s crotch. Henry subconsciously lowers his hands, as if to protect himself. “—they’d probably find that one of the least objectionable. So, you know. Fuck the imaginary neighbours.”

“Well put, love. Biscuit?” Henry asks, stepping up to him and offering it up to his lips. Alex opens his mouth and takes it delicately between his teeth, barely getting any crumbs down the front of his shirt as he chews.

“Oh, fuck me, that’s good,” Alex moans. “I hope she packed us some too.”

“I think that’s exactly what Amy is doing, darling, yes. Anyway, you called?”

“Oh, right. Okay, so. There’s some shooting, and croquet planned, yeah?”

“Obviously. It’s a family tradition whenever we go over to Foxden, as you well know.”

“Yes, but. Here is my question. A ball? What the hell are they throwing a ball for? And what am I supposed to pack for it? My current wardrobe has very little that’s… fuck, even ball adjacent.”

This is factually true. Life as a barrister has demanded a lot from Alex—big, broad things, like his years of schooling, as well as small, very particular ones, such as the specifics of wig-wearing over his curls. Elaborate evening wear is not one of them.

Low-hanging fruit, though.

“I’d put forth that there’s quite a lot about you that’s ball-adjacent, love, but if you say so,” Henry teases.

In one swift move, Alex spins on his heel and tackles him bodily onto the bed, landing them both on a pile of unfolded clothes. “You, love of my life, are a dirty-minded fucker,” he says with a jab to the centre of Henry’s chest. He then undermines his stern tone by pressing light, tickly kisses along the length of Henry’s neck, no intent behind them other than to make Henry laugh.

In which he succeeds greatly.

Henry’s clothes are in complete disarray and there’s a flushed, pleased smile on Alex’s face when he finally deems Henry’s been tortured enough.

“And you, sir, are a scoundrel,” Henry says, voice made rough by all the laughing. “A rogue. A complete—”

“—ly mesmerising and beautiful man and all in all the most charming person you’ve ever met?”

“Yes, Alex. All of those things. Now, come on. What’s with the wardrobe crisis? You know perfectly well why they’re throwing a ball. My mother decided she missed socialising and requested it, and then combined with Pez and June’s engagement and the fact that Martha only needs half an excuse to throw a party…”

“Yeah, yeah, alright. I know,” he dismisses Henry with a flick of his wrist.

“Is that why you called me up?” Henry asks, getting up off the bed and walking over to survey what Alex has already packed into his trunk. Other than underwear, there’s very little in there. “You need to repeat the same rant I’ve already heard at least three times in the last few weeks?”

“No,” Alex grumbles. And then, “Yes. I just wish it was just the family like always. I hate having to remember to watch what I’m saying, or what I’m doing, or, you know, having to keep my hands off you altogether. Also, your brother still hasn’t gotten rid of those damned birds, and if anything there seem to be more of them every time we visit!”

Henry turns back to him, still half-lying on the bed, picking at a seam on his waistcoat. He ignores the old complaint about the peacocks and tackles what he thinks is really bothering Alex here. “I know, love. But it’s only a few days with all the extra guests for the ball and then Foxden will be back to normal. Plus, your folks will be there for this one, so that’s nice.” He walks over, soothes Alex’s frown by brushing the curls away from his forehead.

“Yeah. I know. I’m looking forward to seeing them, and Nora too, finally coming back from her Grand Tour.”

“I wonder if we should keep calling it a Grand Tour when it’s lasted so many years now. Seems like more of a permanent state of things,” Henry muses, sitting down on the bed. “She’s only going to go back to it when the celebrations are done.”

“Do you think she’s going to follow June and Pez on their honeymoon?” Alex says, an impish smile on his lips.

“I think there’s a very strong chance, yes. That’s what started all of this, so… Anyway, at least she’s going to stay with Mum and Bea in the dower house for a few weeks first. So she’s not going to disappear straight away.”

“She better not,” Alex mumbles.

“Go on, then,” Henry pokes him on the side. “Do you need me to stay here and help you finish packing, or are you going to manage? I know it’s such a trial and…”

“Fuck off,” Alex says, shoving him away. Henry follows the momentum all the way out of the door.

“Good luck, love! I know you can do it!” he calls in an overly animated voice on his way down the hall. He walks past the guest rooms, then the spare room they have turned into Alex’s study—gladly turning a blind eye to the mess in there—and carries on laughing all the way downstairs. There’s suddenly a lot of thumping and stomping coming from the bedroom, so at least his goading seems to have worked.

Of all the unexpected things in his life—other than the man he shares it with—the sheer volume of laughter and noise and the relentless joy Henry finds in all of it are the ones he’s most surprised by on a daily basis.

He goes over to the small office downstairs where Shaan, his man of business, works. Shaan had been a close friend of his father’s, and chosen by him to run this estate, many, many years ago. His father had trusted him, and so had Henry. He’d seen no reason to rock the boat when he and Alex finally came to live here.

“Almost ready to go, sir?” Shaan asks.

“Quite,” Henry says dryly. “Nearly, I believe.” He smiles fondly, and Shaan’s answering smile, though much more restrained, he knows hides quite a lot of affection.

They talk through arrangements for the coming weeks, jobs for Shaan to do while they’re away, and by the time they’re done Alex is finally bringing his trunk out of the bedroom, the low, dragging sound vibrating through the floorboards and echoing all the way downstairs.

Henry stands at the bottom of the steps, arms crossed in front of his chest, eyes narrowed.

“You’re going to scratch the floors, love. We’ve only just had them done.”

Alex huffs. “Fucking get up here and do something about it, then.”

Henry runs up, taking the stairs two at a time.

“There you go. See? All you had to do was ask nicely.” He drops a quick kiss on Alex’s creased brow, then bends down and lifts the trunk up in his arms, carrying it down the stairs as easily as if it weighed nothing. 

“Show-off,” Alex mumbles from the landing.

And, well. If Henry flexes his biceps a little, just to get Alex going, who could blame him? He doesn’t spend all those hours rowing along the river that runs at the back of their property for nothing.

In no time, they’re ready to go. Trunks loaded onto the back of the carriage, basket of food on  the seat across from them, David settled onto the floor between their feet. They call out their goodbyes to Amy and Shaan, waving from the porch, and Henry’s heart only tugs a little at leaving their home. He knows they’ll be back soon. That their life is not going anywhere.

As the carriage moves down the drive, he turns to look back at the dun-coloured house, the thick, sturdy walls, built out of a very particular stone that is characteristic to the area. According to the builders, or so the family legend goes, his father should have expected it when he’d had it built. But he hadn’t. His surprise had been so big at the final colouring of the house, the shade so distinct, that he’d named the whole place after it, on the spot. 

They drive through the gate, the wisteria flowering bountifully over the arch, and Henry turns to take one last look at the house and the small wooden sign that’s staked into the ground by the entrance to their home—The Brownstone, written in large, swooping letters by Henry, years and years ago—before the carriage sweeps them onto the road and they’re on their way.