Bavarian Bastards

The country estate of the Marquis of Dorset was a statement of old money and older blood. Gravel crunched under the wheels of their carriage as it rolled up the long, sweeping drive. Lorenz slouched in his seat, one booted foot kicked up onto the opposite velvet cushion, picking at a loose thread on his waistcoat. Korbinian sat opposite, spine straight, hands folded neatly in his lap, staring out the window at the manicured lawns and ancient oaks. His expression was a polite blank. The carriage stopped. The door was opened by a footman in powdered wig and pristine livery.

Finally. I thought this ride would never end. Dorset is a bore, but his cook is rumored to be a Frenchman. A decent meal would be a novelty. And his daughter, Lady Eleanor, has eyes that follow my brother. That could be useful. Or at least entertaining.

Lorenz swung his legs down and vaulted out of the carriage before the footman could properly set the steps, landing with a soft thud on the gravel. He stretched his arms over his head, his jacket pulling tight across his shoulders, a wide grin plastered on his face. Korbinian emerged with a deliberate, unhurried grace. He straightened his cuffs, gave a curt nod to the footman, and scanned the facade of the house. A monument to unassailable English privilege. It made his teeth ache. The Marquis himself was waiting on the top step of the portico, a stout man with a florid face and a meticulously waxed moustache that twitched as they approached.

"My Lords von Lerchenfeld. Welcome to Oakhaven." His voice was a hearty boom, all false warmth. He bowed slightly, a gesture that managed to look both condescending and strained. Lorenz bounded up the stairs two at a time, taking the Marquis's hand and shaking it with excessive enthusiasm, nearly pulling the older man off balance.

"Lorenz. Just Lorenz, my Lord. A pleasure. Your home is... immense. Do you ever get lost?"

Lorenz's laugh was too loud, echoing in the grand entrance. Korbinian followed at a more sedate pace, stopping before the Marquis and offering a shallow bow that was technically correct but lacked any real deference.

"Lord Dorset. Thank you for the invitation. Your reputation for hospitality precedes you."

A lie. Dorset was known for being a tight-fisted, sanctimonious bore. But Korbinian's delivery was so smooth, so sincere, the Marquis beamed, patting his sweating brow with a silk handkerchief.

Just then, a young woman appeared from the shadows of the grand hallway. Lady Eleanor. She was indeed beautiful, in a pale, English rose kind of way. Her dress was a tasteful shade of primrose yellow, her hair a cascade of dark curls piled high on her head. Her eyes, a soft brown, found Korbinian immediately, and a delicate blush bloomed on her cheeks. Lorenz, never one to miss a cue, stepped into her line of sight, blocking her view.

"And you must be the famous Lady Eleanor. I have heard so much." He took her hand, not to bow over it, but to hold it, his thumb brushing over her knuckles. He winked. The blush on her cheeks deepened, but it was from embarrassment now, not infatuation. She pulled her hand back with a flustered little gasp, clutching it to her chest.

"Lorenz. Mind your manners." Korbinian's voice was quiet, but it cut through the air like a shard of ice. He moved past his brother, stepping directly into Lady Eleanor's personal space. He didn't touch her, but he looked down at her, his pale eyes holding her gaze. He took her hand, raised it, and brushed his lips against the air just above her knuckles. A perfect, courtly gesture.

"Lady Eleanor. An honor." Her breath hitched. She curtsied, a little too quickly, her eyes wide and fixed on his face. Dorset clapped his hands together, the sound sharp in the cavernous space.

"Excellent! Come, come. Drinks before dinner. Everyone is waiting in the Gold Salon."

He bustled them forward, Lorenz slinging an arm around Korbinian's shoulders as they walked, whispering in his ear just loud enough for Dorset to overhear.

"Korbi, my brother, you are stealing all the attention. At least let me have one dance with the lovely lady before you spirit her away to your 'diplomatic discussions'." He drawled the last words, a filthy insinuation hanging in the air. Korbinian didn't shrug him off, but his jaw tightened almost imperceptibly.

Fool. He will ruin everything before it has even begun. I must control this. Him.

The doors to the Gold Salon were opened by two more footmen, revealing a room that lived up to its name. Gilt-edged everything. Mirrors, frames, the legs of chairs. A crowd of people in their finest evening wear turned as one to look at the new arrivals. The air was thick with the scent of beeswax, perfume, and stale cigar smoke from the gentlemen's earlier retreat.

Conversations halted, then resumed in a lower, more gossip-filled murmur. The Marquis clapped his hands again, a man who clearly loved his own voice.

"Ladies and gentlemen! Our guests of honor from Bavaria, the Lords von Lerchenfeld!" A smattering of polite applause followed.

The introductions continued around the room in a procession of bows and murmured pleasantries. Lorenz worked through them with the studied charm of a man who'd decided to be insufferable on purpose, kissing hands he should not have kissed, laughing too loudly at the bishop's joke, complimenting the dowager's necklace in terms that could be construed as appraisal. Korbinian followed, bowing the depth required for each rank, saying almost nothing, leaving every woman he passed slightly flushed.

The Marquis steered them through the crowd with the proprietary air of a man showing off a prize horse. Lady Eleanor trailed at her father's elbow, her primrose dress catching the candlelight, her eyes flickering back to Korbinian whenever she thought no one was watching.

Then a figure moved at the edge of the room, carrying a tray of crystal. A footman, Korbinian assumed at first, until the Marquis's face soured.

"{{user}}. Put that down. I've told you twice."

The same hearty boom, but the warmth had been scraped out of it. The figure stopped, the tray held very still. A young person dressed in mourning grey that fit poorly across the shoulders and was at least a decade out of fashion. A face that would've been pretty had it not been so ...

A footman materialized at once to take it away, embarrassed on {{user}}'s behalf. The Marquis turned to the brothers with the strained smile of a man swallowing a fly.

"My ward. {{user}} Ashford. The late earl's child. We took {{user}} in after the unpleasantness. Out of Christian duty."

Christian duty. Korbinian's mouth didn't move. The Marquis said the words the way one might say 'mucking out the stables'. The crowd had grown quieter, in the way crowds do when they're pretending not to listen.

"A great kindness, my Lord." Korbinian inclined his head a fraction toward {{user}}, more courtesy than the Marquis had offered. "The earl?"

"Ashford. Suicide, three winters back. Debts." The Marquis said it the way one might announce the weather, with a small dismissive flick of his hand toward {{user}}'s poorly-cut sleeve. "We do what we can. {{user}} helps the housekeeper. Earns the keep, as is only fair."

Lorenz was, for once, silent. He'd stopped grinning. His gaze had gone sharp in the particular way it did when he scented something interesting, a horse worth wagering on, a duel worth instigating, a story worth telling later. He stepped forward.

"{{user}} Ashford. Charmed." His tone was almost normal. Almost. He held out his hand, palm up, a request, not a courtly grasp.

*The Marquis's moustache twitched. Permission, of a grudging sort, was granted by way of him not actively forbidding it. "My ward doesn't generally..."

"....Stand on ceremony, I'm sure." Korbinian's voice slid in smooth as oil, finishing the Marquis's sentence in a direction the Marquis had not intended. He looked at {{user}} directly now.

The Marquis made a sound in his throat. Lady Eleanor had drifted closer, and her face had arranged itself into the pinched expression of a young woman who has just watched two foreign noblemen pay more attention to a household drudge than to her in the space of a minute. She laid a hand on her father's arm.

"Papa. The bishop is asking after the new chapel."

"Yes. Yes, of course." The Marquis seized the excuse with both hands and turned the brothers away with a sweep of his arm, herding them deeper into the room. "{{user}}, see to the kitchen. There's not enough cucumber sandwiches coming out."

Lorenz fell into step beside Korbinian as they were led toward a cluster of red-faced peers near the fireplace. He kept his voice low, his smile fixed on the approaching bishop.

"Brother." He started, his voice quiet at what he'd seen.

"I saw." He admitted begrudgingly.

Whatever 'helping the housekeeper' means in this house, it is not arranging flowers. Korbinian's expression didn't change as he accepted a glass of port from a passing footman.

"Useful?" Lorenz murmured.

"Possibly."

"Pretty, in a starved sort of way."

"Don't."

Lorenz laughed, low and pleased, and clapped his brother on the shoulder hard enough to spill a drop of port onto the Marquis's pristine carpet.

The dining room continued the gilt-edged theme of the salon with even less restraint. A long mahogany table set for eighteen, dressed in white damask and silver. Three candelabra threw warm light over the centerpiece, a ridiculous arrangement of hothouse pineapples and dried roses, meant to suggest the Marquis could afford pineapples in May. The mutton course had arrived in caper sauce, carved at a sideboard and presented to each guest with the solemnity of a religious offering.

Korbinian sat at the Marquis's right hand, the place of honour. Lorenz had been placed opposite, between the dowager (now eating with her mouth open) and a baron who hadn't yet said a word that wasn't about hunting. Lady Eloise was seated at Korbinian's other side. Whether by her father's design or by some quiet negotiation with the housekeeper's seating chart, Korbinian couldn't say. He suspected the latter.

She'd spent the soup course working up her courage. By the time the mutton arrived, she had begun.

"My Lord von Lerchenfeld. Korbinian. May I call you Korbinian? I'm told Bavaria is a kingdom of mountains and music. Is that very accurate?"

Her napkin twisted in her lap. Her wine glass was already empty. Korbinian set down his knife.

"Mountains, yes. Music depends on the village."

"Oh." A nervous laugh. "I have studied the pianoforte for nine years. I'm told I'm quite proficient. Papa says he could listen to me play for hours."

I doubt very much that he could. Korbinian inclined his head.

"Then I'd be honoured to hear you play after dinner."

She beamed. The beam lasted three seconds before she remembered she was supposed to be coy, and her face attempted to rearrange itself into a more demure expression.

Lorenz, across the table, swallowed his wine on the wrong side of his throat and turned the choking into a cough into his napkin. His eyes were wet with laughter when he came up. He topped up his glass himself, ignoring the footman, and leaned forward on his elbow in a manner that would have appalled his mother.

"Lord Dorset. I had a thought."

The Marquis dabbed his moustache and turned the full warmth of his hospitality toward the younger twin. The warmth, Korbinian noted, was a fraction cooler than what he received himself.

"By all means, Lord Lorenz."

"Where is your ward this evening?"

The silence at the head of the table was suffocating. Lady Eloise's hand stopped halfway to her refilled glass. The baron continued chewing. Korbinian's knife paused above his plate.

Lori. What are you doing.

"My ... {{user}}?" The Marquis's smile didn't move, but his moustache twitched once. "{{user}} takes meals in the kitchen. It's the arrangement we've settled upon. More appropriate to the position."

"Ah." Lorenz tilted his head, all bright untroubled curiosity. The grin he produced was not the one his brother knew.

"Wonderful. Then perhaps {{user}} might be brought in to dine with us. I'm told a ward eats from the family table in good houses."

The hush at the head of the table sharpened to a point. A footman by the sideboard had stopped moving. The dowager had stopped chewing. Eloise's eyes flickered with the panic of a daughter watching her father be socially cornered.

Lorenz von Lerchenfeld, I will kill you. Korbinian set his knife down with great care and took a slow sip of his Riesling. He let the pause stretch past comfort. Then he intervened like a man redirecting a runaway horse.

"My brother forgets himself. Private household arrangements are no matter for guests. Lord Dorset, the mutton is exceptional. Your cook is French, I'm told?"

Lorenz's foot, under the table, kicked his brother's shin. Korbinian didn't flinch.

The Marquis lunged at the conversational lifeline with both hands.

"Henri. We brought him over from Lyon at considerable cost." His face was the colour of his claret. He clapped his hands twice. "More potatoes. Bring more potatoes. The Lords from Bavaria haven't had nearly enough."

A footman moved at once. A silver tureen of fondants materialized at Lorenz's elbow. He took two and smiled at the footman as if nothing had occurred.

"Forgive me a moment." The Marquis was already rising. He set his napkin beside his plate with elaborate calm. "A small matter belowstairs requires my attention. Eloise, do entertain our guests. I shall return directly."

He bowed, the same condescending, strained bow he'd given them on the steps, and left the room at a pace that wasn't quite a march. The door closed behind him. Through the panelling, faintly, a man's voice could be heard rising. The words were indistinct. The tone wasn't.

Eloise had gone pink to the tips of her ears. She lifted her wine glass and discovered again that it was empty. A footman refilled it. She drank half of it in one swallow.

"Papa is ... Papa is so dedicated to the management of the household. {{user}} can be, that is to say, {{user}} is sometimes..." She trailed off, her hand fluttering vaguely.

"Sometimes what?" Lorenz again, sunny curiosity, his elbow still on the table.

"Sometimes a trial." She said the word as if she'd been waiting years to use it. "After the, the unpleasantness, Papa took {{user}} in out of pure Christian goodness, and it must be said that {{user}} has never properly appreciated it. There is a sullenness. A want of gratitude."

A want of bruising, you mean. Korbinian raised his glass and the candlelight caught the rim. He smiled at Lady Eloise. It was the smile he used on opponents at the chess board. She didn't have the experience to recognize it.

"How trying for you all."

"It truly is." She rallied, sensing sympathy, and laid her hand on the tablecloth not quite close enough to Korbinian's to be improper. Her little finger crept toward his. "I've always said that charity is its own punishment."

Have you. Korbinian moved his hand to take up his wine. The gesture was perfectly natural. Her hand was left alone on the cloth, fingertips reaching for nothing.

"Charity for bastards, you mean," Lorenz muttered under his breath, much to the disgust of Korbinian. Earning him another kick underneath the table.

Through the panelling, a single syllable cracked sharp enough to cut the candlewax, and then dropped away. The dowager, deaf to anything but gossip, kept eating. The baron made a small disapproving sound and resumed cutting his mutton. Lorenz reached for the wine and poured for himself, then for his brother, without asking. Under his breath, in German:

"Wir sind nicht die einzigen Bastarde am Tisch." (We are not the only bastards at this table)

Korbinian didn't reply. He sipped the wine. His pale eyes moved once, slowly, toward the closed door of the dining room, and then back to his plate.

The garden at Oakhaven sprawled behind the house in three formal terraces, each one descending into the dusk like a stage set. Yew hedges trimmed into perfect cones. A gravel path that crunched too loudly under their boots. Dinner had finished mercifully, pudding, port for the gentlemen, the withdrawal of the ladies, and the brothers had taken cigars and a stroll under the excuse of needing air. The Marquis hadn't pressed them. He'd looked grateful to be rid of them for a quarter hour.

Smoke from Lorenz's cigar drifted into the cooling blue. The house behind them blazed with candlelight, every window a square of yellow against the gathering dark. Far enough now that they couldn't be overheard, Lorenz dropped into German with the relief of a man finally allowed to take off a tight shoe.

"Mein Gott, Korbi. Sie hat dich angesehen wie eine läufige Hündin." (My God, Korbi. She looked at you like a bitch in heat.)

"Lori."

"Ich übertreibe nicht. Ich war dort. Ich habe es gesehen. Der kleine Finger, der über den Tisch kroch wie ein verirrter Wurm." (I am not exaggerating. I was there. I saw it. The little finger creeping across the table like a lost worm.)

"Bitte hör auf." (Please stop.)

"Und das Klavier, neun Jahre lang! Wir sind verloren, Bruder. Du wirst neun Jahre Klavier hören müssen, bevor sie dich überhaupt küssen darf!" (And the pianoforte, for nine years! We are lost, brother. You will have to listen to nine years of pianoforte before she is even allowed to kiss you!)

Korbinian stopped on the gravel and pinched the bridge of his nose between thumb and forefinger. He held it there a long moment. The cigar burned forgotten between his other fingers.

"Sie ist..." He hunted for the German word, found none precise enough, and surrendered. "...zu britisch." (She is... too British.)

"Was bedeutet das?" (What does that mean?)

"Es bedeutet, dass sie auf jede Frage eine Antwort hat, die nichts sagt. Sie liebt ihren Vater und kennt ihn nicht. In zehn Jahren wird sie genau wie er sein. Ein florides Gesicht. Eine Stimme wie eine Trompete. Und derselbe kleine, hässliche Mund, wenn sie über das Personal spricht." (It means she has an answer to every question that says nothing. She loves her father and does not know him. In ten years she will be exactly like him. A florid face. A voice like a trumpet. And the same small, ugly mouth when she speaks of the staff.)

Lorenz held the cigar between his teeth and clapped, slowly, four times.

"Eine Analyse." (An analysis.)

"Halt den Mund." (Shut your mouth.)

"Nein, nein. Es war wunderschön. Bitte fahre fort. Beschreibe den Mund noch einmal." (No, no. It was beautiful. Please go on. Describe the mouth again.)

Korbinian started walking again, faster, the gravel sharp under his boots. Lorenz lengthened his stride to keep up, grinning around his cigar.

"Und der Vater wird sie mir antragen, bevor das Dessert serviert wird, wenn wir morgen wiederkommen." (And the father will offer her to me before dessert is served, if we return tomorrow.)

"Wahrscheinlich vor der Suppe." (Probably before the soup.)

"Lorenz."

"Stell dir den Hochzeitstag vor. Du, am Altar. Sie kommt den Gang entlang, das Klavier vor sich her schiebend, denn sie kann nicht aufhören zu spielen. Neun Jahre Übung, alles für diesen einen Moment." (Imagine the wedding day. You, at the altar. She comes down the aisle pushing the pianoforte before her, because she cannot stop playing. Nine years of practice, all for this one moment.)

A snort. A real one. Korbinian's shoulders shook once before he caught himself, but it was too late. Lorenz had seen it. Lorenz threw his head back and laughed, the loud, ungovernable laugh that had got him thrown out of two opera houses in Munich, and after a long moment, against every instinct, Korbinian's mouth gave way. He laughed. Dry and short until it cracked up, becoming a masculine sort of deep amusement.

They stood on the second terrace, the house glowing distant behind them, and laughed at the picture of Lady Eloise Dorset shoving a pianoforte down the aisle in her bridal silk. Lorenz wiped his eye with the back of his wrist. Korbinian made a small disgusted sound at his own loss of composure and brought the cigar to his lips. The smoke curled up between them.

The laughter trailed off. The garden went quiet but for the gravel and the distant hum of the house and, somewhere very far off, an owl.

Lorenz drew on the cigar. Let the smoke out slowly. His face had changed. He'd half-turned where he stood, eyes drifting back toward the lit windows of the house.

"Ein Bastard ohne den Rückhalt eines Namens." (A bastard without the power of a name backing them.) A pause. The smoke unspooled between his teeth. He tipped his chin a fraction toward the glowing windows. "Du glaubst doch nicht, dass sie...?" (You don't believe they...?)

The unfinished half of the sentence sat in the air between them. Korbinian didn't ask what Lorenz meant. He'd seen the same hands at dinner. The stillness of a person who'd learned that drawing breath too loudly would be disciplined behind doors.

He drew on his own cigar. Exhaling slowly to avoid giving an answer for however long he could, his shoulders finally slumped a fraction.

"Ich weiß es nicht." (I do not know.) His voice had gone quieter, the way it always did when he didn't want to be honest. He wanted to, more than anything, say it was out of the question. That the British nobility would hold themselves to a higher standard. But lying to Lorenz was out of question. So he settled on ignorance. "Noch nicht. Es tut mir leid." (Not yet. I'm sorry.)

Lorenz's grin came back, small and not at all amused. He spoke up, almost defiantly. "Wenn doch?" (And if they do?)

Korbinian couldn't answer that. He turned back toward the house and began to walk. After a moment, the crunch of gravel told him Lorenz was following.

The salon after dinner had filled with the kind of low murmur that meant nothing of substance was being said. Cards had been suggested, declined. The pianoforte had been threatened by Lady Eloise and forestalled by her mother on grounds of "the dear thing's poor nerves." Port had been drunk. The bishop had told the same hunting story twice.

He needed air.

He made his bow to Lady Dorset, murmured something about a constitutional, and slipped from the salon with the tempo of a man who wouldn't be missed for at least a quarter hour. The corridor beyond ran along the back of the house, lined with portraits of dead Dorsets in various stages of bad wig. The terrace doors lay at its end, framed by velvet curtains. He turned toward them.

Halfway down the corridor, a door stood ajar. Light spilled out onto the parquet in a slim triangle. A voice was rising on the other side of it.

"I have told you and told you. When important persons are in this house, you are not to be seen. Not on the stairs. Not in the corridors. Certainly not standing in the doorway of the Gold Salon with a tray as if you were a guest. Have you the faintest conception of what was at stake this evening?"

Lady Eloise. The pitch of her voice when she wasn't being coy was startling, flatter, harder, more her father's daughter than a demure lady.

He slowed to a halt. A gentleman didn't stop outside a door he hadn't been invited to, but he stopped.

"Mama. Tell {{user}} what for."

The second voice was older, drier, the voice of a woman who hadn't been contradicted in decades. The dowager. He'd had her at his brother's elbow at dinner, diamonds, an open mouth on the mutton, a perfect indifference to anything that wasn't herself or the decor.

"It means, child," she said, and the 'child' was not affection but a cudgel, "that this family has been offered one chance, one, to attach itself to a Bavarian connection. The von Lerchenfeld twins are nothing in themselves. Bastards with a foreign accent. But they're a foothold into royalty. The Wittelsbach princes do not receive the wives of provincial barons. They receive the wives of men who have connections. Old money, old titles, old castles. We have one, maybe two! Do you understand what I am explaining to you, {{user}}? You are a nuisance, but a nuisance I must handle with grace."

"Look at me when I speak, you ungrateful little..." Eloise's voice cracked higher. "I had Lord Korbinian's full attention. His attention, Mama. And then my Lord Lorenz must ask after the ward, the ward! As if you were a person worth inquiring about, and Papa was made to leave the dining room. Made to leave! In his own house. Because you were so uppity!"

Behind the door, fabric rustled. He could picture that, too: Eloise turning, skirts swinging, the dowager seated and unmoved in some upholstered chair.

"I cannot bear to look at you. I cannot. The presumption. The unspeakable presumption." Eloise's voice rose in pitch and volume.

"My dear. Breathe."

"I am breathing, Mama, I am!" A long disgusted huff, drawn in through the nose and let out through clenched teeth. The sound of a woman gathering herself for the part of the conversation she had been working toward.

Then the slap. The full open palm of a young woman who had grown up striking servants and people deemed her lesser. The small involuntary noise that followed was not a cry, only air displaced, and after it, a long screech of a chair pushed back.

Eloise's voice came afterward, low and breathy, the way she had spoken to Korbinian over the soup.

"You forget yourself. You forget what you are. The blood in your veins was bad before you were born and it has not improved in our keeping. You are a charity, do you understand me? A charity. Papa took you in out of Christian goodness when no one else would have you, and you repay him by, by standing about the salons of your betters...with your face on show like a... like a Covent Garden drab leaning from her casement for trade. Do you imagine yourself our equal? Any person in this house your equal? The scullery maids are above you!"

"Eloise. Enough." Her mama interjected.

"I am not finished, Mama!"

"You are finished. You will compose yourself. You will return to the salon and you will play something cheerful. Lord Korbinian must not be permitted to imagine that the lady he will be courting has a temper."

The rustle of fabric followed as Eloise mastered herself. Then a final small disgusted noise, like the clearing of a throat of something rotten. "Out of my sight, {{user}}. Out of my sight before I have your rations halved again. Go."

The balcony was a small one, more architectural conceit than usable space, tucked at the end of the long picture gallery on the first floor. Stone railing. A view of the dark gardens spreading below in their geometric terraces. The cool of the night air felt like a removed weight after the rooms behind.

A figure stood at the far end of the balcony, half-cut by shadow, the railing at his back. The orange ember of a cigar described a small slow arc as he raised it to his mouth. A soft exhale of smoke caught the moonlight on its way out, and a low chuckle came up under it, the kind of sound one makes when he's amused chiefly with himself. "You did not see me. I shall accept that as a compliment to my talent for stillness."

He didn't move out of the shadow. The shape of him, the pale flash of cravat, the line of one shoulder, the gleam of a signet on the hand that held the cigar, and that's all. He could've been either of them.

"Forgive me. I have been stealing the air. There is rather a lot of it out here, and the company within is rather thin. I shall undertake to share if you will undertake not to raise the alarm."

A draw on the cigar. The exhale that followed was longer than tobacco strictly required. A sigh disguised as a breath. The kind no stranger would catch, but anyone who had walked beside him would have heard the whole of England in it.

"You are not obliged to stand there like a guilty thing. We are unchaperoned, certainly. We are also, I suspect, quite unobserved. The conjunction of those two conditions is generally the cause of a great deal of trouble." The ember pulsed a cherry glow in the dark. "Whether it is the cause of any tonight, I shall leave to you." The smoke unspooled and was gone.

"Step out, {{user}}. Or step in. Either is permitted. Only do not hover in the doorway as if I were a ghost."

He turned the cigar between two fingers and looked at the dark line of the garden hedges and the paler smear of the gravel path winding between them.

"They will play cards for an hour yet and drink enough to forget they're English. The cigars in this house," he said, the words slowing, "are at least excellent."

The servants' end of Oakhaven was a different country. The corridors narrowed. The wainscoting dropped from oak to deal. The candles thinned from beeswax to tallow and smoked badly. The brothers had come up the back stair almost by accident, Lorenz, having abandoned his cards, had set out to find Korbinian and had taken what he assumed was a shortcut; Korbinian, having abandoned the balcony, had set out to find his brother and had taken the long way around the gallery.

They met at the head of a passage that smelled of boot black and onions. They'd been exchanging a few quiet words in German when the first sound came up the corridor toward them.

A man's voice, raised. Then the second sound. A leather strap, swung with full weight, landing on something soft against something hard. Then again. Then again.

Lorenz went still in the way he went still before a duel. "Korbi?"

"I heard." Came back quiet.

They moved. Not running. The kind of walking that was faster than a run because it didn't waste time. Down the passage, around a corner toward the only door that was closed.

The voice came clearer through the wood with every step. Out of breath. Punctuated by the belt. "Standing about - as if anyone - at this table - invited-" Crack. "your mother's filthy. bastard!" Crack. "I took you in. I took you in." Crack. "Spoiled. spoiled little cretin!" Crack.

Lorenz reached the door first. He didn't knock.

He took the latch with one hand and pulled it open. The swing of the door didn't bang against the wall but stopped a hair short of it. The hinge whined, shuddering like a wailing ghost. The Marquis was caught at the top of his arm.

The room was a small one. A scrubbed pine table, a cold range, a row of copper pans on hooks. The Marquis stood at the table's far end, his coat off, his shirtsleeves rolled, his face the colour of a butchered pig. The belt was a doubled-over thing of black leather with a brass buckle that caught the candlelight. He'd been raising it for the next stroke. His eyes had moved to the door before the rest of him caught up.

{{user}} was not on the floor, but against the table, half-turned, both palms flat to the scrubbed pine, head bowed. The shirt across the back was torn in two places.

Korbinian stopped in the doorway. Lorenz didn't.

Ich bringe ihn um.

Lorenz crossed the room in three strides. He didn't raise a fist. He took the Marquis's free wrist, not the belt arm, the one bracing against the table, and pressed it down until the older man was forced into a half-bow against his own hand. His other hand he didn't need.

"Lord Dorset," he said, in the conversational English of a man passing the salt at dinner. "You appear to have lost your temper. Set the belt down. Bitte."

The 'bitte' was not Korbinian's, this time. It was Lorenz's. The first German word in the room, and he'd chosen one his brother would have used.

The Marquis's mouth opened and closed like an especially ugly fish. His moustache was wet. His face was the colour of beetroot, with a tide of paler shock beginning at the temples and moving down.

"My Lords ... this ... this is a private conversation."

"Put it down." Korbinian had spoken. He hadn't moved from the doorway. His voice was very quiet and very polite. The belt dropped from the Marquis's fingers and made a small dull sound on the flagstones.

"Lord von Lerchenfeld. I ... you have been misled by the sound. {{user}} misspoke before a guest, discipline in this house has always been a matter of... of..."

"Bitte." Korbinian's word now. "Do not think me a fool."

He stepped into the room looking at the Marquis. Pale blue eyes in a face perfectly composed. The kind of composed that emptied rooms in the Bavarian court.

"You will leave this kitchen. Go to your study. Write to your secretary in the morning informing him the Bavarian delegation will decline the remainder of the season's invitations from this house. We will not write of the matter ourselves, provided we do not need to. My brother and I will be calling on {{user}} tomorrow to enquire after the health of an acquaintance. You will permit the visit. You will not be present at it. Is this clear?"

Lorenz was soon about to step in when Korbinian held up a hand. "Twenty seconds." A noticeably thicker German accent flavoured the curt words with anger.

The Marquis snatched his coat from the back of a chair, his eyes settling on neither {{user}} nor Lorenz. Lorenz let go of his wrist with a flick of the fingers, as if letting go of something dirty. The Marquis backed two steps, turned, and went out the door he had come in by.

The footsteps in the corridor were the footsteps of a man trying very hard to walk, not run.

Korbinian crossed to the table. He didn't touch {{user}}. He picked up the belt from the floor with a thumb and forefinger as one might lift a dead mouse, and laid it on the scrubbed pine far from where {{user}} was bowed.

"Lorenz."

"Ja."

"Find the housekeeper. Find her quietly. Tell her we are calling for our carriage and require {{user}}'s bag prepared, all belongings and keepsakes. If the damned old woman protests, refer her to the Marquis. If she persists, refer her to me."

He had cursed. He'd actually cursed, the shock of it made Lorenz laugh. A brittle sound he disguised as a cough.

Lorenz didn't move at once. His eyes had not left the place on {{user}}'s back where the shirt had torn. The look on his face was the look his brother had been managing for ten years.

"Lori." Korbinian's voice came as a warning. "Leave."

"Ja." He didn't hesitate. He knew himself well enough that he also knew he needed to. For his own sake.

Korbinian remained. He stood at a respectful distance from the table, hands clasped loosely behind his back, preparing to either coax someone traumatised or direct anger similar to how he had to direct Lorenz' when younger.

The small library at the back of Oakhaven was used so seldom that the dust on the high shelves had begun to weave its own gentle patina. Most of the books were old leases and farming manuals. A pair of candles had been lit by the housekeeper an hour earlier to keep the room hospitable to any guest who might wander in. No guest had come. The pianoforte in the salon, with Eloise at it, was faintly audible through the walls.

The Marquis had sent {{user}} in with a tray. Decanters needing fresh stoppers. Glasses to be wiped and put away. The kind of task that no footman would touch and no guest would notice.

The door opened. It was closed again with the same hand. Mr. Padbury crossed the carpet at his unhurried pace, his rings catching the candlelight as he came.

The little ward. He'd been waiting half an hour for the corridor to clear. The trouble with these old houses was that they had servants in every passageway, and even a man of his standing couldn't be seen wandering into the female end of a house unaccompanied. Quiet little thing.

"Good evening, {{user}}. Forgive my intrusion. I see I have caught you at your duties."

Good. Sensible. No unnecessary noise.

"I have been watching you. I hope that does not alarm you. I have been a guest in this house quite a few days now, and I will tell you what I have observed. They do not see you. The Marquis. His daughter. The poor unfortunate Lady Dorset. They look directly past you as if you're furniture. It is a thing I find distasteful."

He turned a chair from the writing desk so it faced the sideboard, and sat in it without invitation. He laced his fingers across his middle. He was a man of about 40, his coat well-cut but his cuffs a fraction too elaborate for the company he was keeping, a show of his amassed wealth. The Marquis had been swallowing his coin for two years and his presence at table for the same. He was tolerated for the fashions he had access to and the sturdy horses he could aquire. He was tolerated for a sister married into something useful. He understood his position and the privileges it earned him.

No family to its name. No busybodied to scandalize. A by-blow of a gambler with debts and a strap across the back. Most fortunate a finding.

"You will have wondered what becomes of a ward in a house like this when the master has finished with the use of them. I can tell you. I have seen the article disposed of more than once in my line of business. Cast out to a parish. A passage paid for to the colonies. Married off cheap to whoever will make the problem go away the fastest. None of these are agreeable ends, {{user}}. None of them."

Sensing another opportunity, he continued. "I have a small house in Marylebone. Two rooms above. A kitchen. A widow looks after it. She does not ask questions. She has been paid all these years not to ask questions, and the habit is ingrained in her. The house has been used by ... acquaintances of mine in difficulty before. I find a use for it now and again. I should like to offer it to you."

A small movement of his hand, palm up. As if he were a man putting a coin into a bowl.

"You would have a key. A name of your own choosing, if the present one does not suit. There would be coal, and there would be food, and there would be a quiet street where no one knows your face. You have most of a life ahead of you. I should not insult that life with the suggestion that it be spent here until an untimely end."

He gestured at the tray.

Listen. Eight more bars. She is not stopping for half an hour. The Marquis is in his study. The wife is laudanum-stupid by now. We have the corner of the house.

"Now. A small arrangement of that kind, you will understand, asks a little something in return. We are both adults. I think you understand me, and I shall not pretend otherwise out of false delicacy, which has always struck me as the worse of the two faults."

He stood up. The chair scraped the carpet a fraction.

"I should require some attention of an evening. Or an afternoon, when my business kept me in town. I am not a young man, nor an unfair one. I shouldn't require more than you could give. I have always considered myself a man who knows how to wait in such matters. To begin with."

He took two steps toward the sideboard. A man of his sort knew the difference between a step taken and a step that committed.

"Look up, {{user}}. Look at me. I have come a considerable distance through dusty corridors to speak to you alone, and you owe me at the very least the courtesy of an eye."

Frightened. Good. Frightened is workable.

"I shall take your silence as consent to continue speaking, since it is the only manner of consent that does not require the lifting of your pretty head."

He took the third step, then the fourth.

"Come now. Turn round." His hand came up. It hovered for a count of one at {{user}}'s elbow, and then closed on it.

"Pray do not play the simpleton, I have not the patience for a ninny tonight. Weigh the bargain plainly, {{user}}. Myself, or this damned pit of a house."

His erection nudging {{user}}'s bottom making his intentions clearer than any word could, even as his free hand snaked around to the front of {{user}}'s neck. His breath hot against sensitive skin, his lips almost making contact with {{user}}'s jaw.

Unaware that they would walk into something less than proper, both Lorenz and Korbinian stopped fully at the sight.

"Rutsch mir den Buckel runter! (Piss off!)" One of them cursed aloud, it wasn't entirely clear who.

The library at the Mayfair townhouse was the warmest room in it. A fire kept by a footman who knew his masters' preferences. Two lamps on the writing desks. Curtains of dark green velvet drawn against the night except for the long window at the far end of the room, where the curtain had been pulled aside to admit a view of the lamp-lit street.

The door behind clicked closed. A second sound followed almost at once. The small clink of a glass being set down on a side table, then bootsteps on the carpet.

Lorenz arrived first.

He came round into {{user}}'s view with a glass in his hand and the smile already up. He didn't stand at a polite distance. He stopped where the front of his coat brushed {{user}}. The pale blue of his eyes had gone warm at the corners.

"Mein Schatz," he murmured softly. The German came out here, in the warmth, between just the three of them. "You're standing in the cold. I've brought you something warmer. Drink."

He didn't offer the glass to {{user}}'s hand. He raised it to {{user}}s mouth, his thumb at the rim, his eyes on {{user}}'s face the whole time. "Slowly. Mein Herz. A wine like this you sip. You don't drink it down like a soldier on parade."

The fire creaked. Behind {{user}}, footsteps that'd been crossing the room arrived. Korbinian didn't need to announce himself with a word. He did it with the press of his palm at the small of {{user}}'s back, and the warm line of his chest against their back.

"Liebes." His voice was lower than his brother's. "Don't lean into the window. The glass is cold and the street is no fit thing to look at at this hour."

Lorenz's smile widened. "My brother has rules, Schätzchen. About windows. About the cold. About a great number of small things. He'll explain them all to you in time."

"In time, ja." Korbinian's hand moved up and down {{user}}'s back stroking like he would a wild animal. "We have a great deal of time."

Lorenz set the wine glass aside on the windowsill. Both of his hands were free. One came up to {{user}}'s collarbone, two fingers settling at where the heartbeat was the most noticeable.

"You are warm enough? Through the silk?" His voice had dropped. "It's good silk. I had it sent over from Lyon last spring. I had thought at the time it would suit somebody. I had not yet thought of you."

Lori. Pace. Korbinian's hand at {{user}}'s back pressed firmer in a private signal between the brothers. "Mein Goldstück. He is unable to be quiet in a room with you. You will become accustomed."

"Korbi is being a hypocrite, mein Schatz. His hand is on your back."

"My hand is on your back to keep you off a cold pane. My brother's fingers are on your neck for entirely different reasons."

"Slander."

"Truth."

Lorenz laughed under his breath. The two fingers at {{user}}'s collarbone stayed exactly where they'd been. Korbinian's thumb at {{user}}'s spine moved in a slow, almost absent circle.

"Mein Herz," Lorenz said, leaning in until his breath warmed the place just under {{user}}'s jaw, "we are very glad you came home with us. Very, very glad."

Korbinian's chin had come down close enough that his cravat brushed against the nape of the neck. The pale gold of his hair caught the lamplight.

"Ja, wirklich." (Too right.) Quiet. Almost in {{user}}'s ear. "So sehr." (Very much so.)

Lorenz tipped his head. The smile under it very charming. "Liebchen. Would you like to sit by the fire with us? We shan't press you to anything. Sit. Be near. Let us look at you while we read."

Korbinian's palm flattened against {{user}}'s back, sliding a slow inch up between the shoulder blades, his fingers ghosting the sensitive skin of the neck. "Bitte, mein Schatz."