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Chapter Text

My Dearest James,

I hope this letter finds you in good Spirits, at least as much as can be had during your long Convalescence. It pained me so to hear of your terrible Wound and indeed the entirety of our Circle, I believe, grieved for you. But I pray that you will be well in Spirit if not yet in Body, and that you will not begrudge me the great Favour I must ask of you.

I have sent this letter by the hand of a young man I hope you will take into your Household. He has become unwelcome here due in part to his own Belligerence, and in part due to the low bullying from some amongst my Husband’s men. In spite of this, he is as clean and modest in his habits and holds his Honour as dear as any Gentleman. The confines of the City do not suit him, therefore I hope he will find more Happiness in the country. 

I mean it as a compliment to say that he might be compared Favourably to a young colt, high-spirited and sensitive, quick to take offence but as equally quick to laugh. He respects strength and honesty and has promised me that he will do his utmost to curb his temper. I cannot blame the boy too harshly for his mercurial mien. Heaven never saw fit to favour him with a Father, and his mother, a sempstress of some regard, died when he was only a boy, leaving him indentured to her Debtors.

He has a way with horses and hounds, and you will find him fleet of foot, though not Coarse as one might expect of a Stablehand. He has taken well to household duties and might make a fine Companion and body servant for you should his looks and temperament suit you. He has some Letters also and can write a fair hand fit for Use as a secretary. 

I hope you will not Neglect your London friends next Season, nor allow yourself to be Consumed by melancholy. You are yet Young, with many prospects, and with many who Love you, not the least of whom is, for I am sure I remain

Your Favourite Cousin,

Natalia Rushman, Viscountess Barton

Chapter Text

It seemed just then a chiefest affront that the pillars of Society had decided the receiving and reading of correspondence was a matter that required breeches and a collar. Though on this particular morn stretching into early afternoon, he’d only truly managed the latter. And only when finally badgered from the sanctuary of his bed and its heavy curtains by the promise of a letter from one of the few old friends, a relation besides, that he could bear to engage with anymore. 

Her handwriting was a comforting sight. Elegant, slanted forward, with little flourishes in the script present solely so the reader might appreciate their intricacy and skill, yet not to such a degree as to make the missive unreadable, or even particularly trying on the eyes when parsed. 

His own eyes, a hazy, muddled blue-grey presently bagged with deep shadows beneath, appreciated the neatness of the script. The notions it outlined, far less so. 

“Good spirits.” 

A low snort echoed from him around the otherwise empty chamber, as the man who had been Major James Barnes, eldest son and scion of the Barony of Buchanan, skimmed the text once more. For all his favourite cousin’s earnest wishes, to even approach near the thing would be a stretch. But if he could not lift his Spirits as she desired, he could, or would have to, willing or otherwise, manage to attend the Favour she’d requested of him. 

After all. He had apparently left its courier and object out on his stoop for an hour already. Perhaps approaching two now that his reading and rereading were complete, and moreover, his composure at least largely recovered after having a quiet, only somewhat hysteric giggle to himself at the nature of the whole absurd situation. He could hardly just ignore a Guest. Even if this was less a Guest as much as an Imposition. He had once possessed manners. And their lingering remnant itched, just enough to stir him from his brooding over the missive. Grunting, he wobbled to his feet, with gritted teeth clutching at the needful offence that was nigh permanent companion to him now, a finely crafted whalebone and hickory cane. 

So be it, then. On to the matter of dress. 

By the time it was finished, indignity, exhaustion and agony had all indulged in a full measure of nipping at him. Yet the looking glass confirmed that he did, indeed, almost look like the man who owned the Estate and all it contained. Almost. 

For all he had worked his fingers for the better part of a half hour in the labour of fiddling with buttons and ties, there was no method to manage them perfectly with only one hand, regardless of the contortion he engaged in. It was guesswork at best, the business of pinning one sleeve before he started, and this particular attempt appeared now in the glass to have been miscalculated by nearly two inches, leaving far too much flopping around uselessly beneath the abbreviation of what once had been a perfectly functional and finely formed limb and extremity. The sweat of it all had the starch of his collar and disposition already wilting in equal measure and his breathing heavy and unseemly uneven. His hair, he left loose and ruffled rather than neatly tied back with a ribbon, because just then? The man could nowhere within himself find to give a damn otherwise.

He would see worse, this uninvited Belligerance, provided James could concoct no other manner to dispose of him to another household, first, and preferably one with the requisite excess time and energy to train new staff.

Hell, but he ached for another spoon of the draught already, hours too early. It was meant to be a day to sleep through the agony of it all, as long as he could manage to, at any rate. But it was not to be, for now, there was a Favour to which he was obliged to attend, instead. 

And he was no stranger to gritting his teeth through pain. 

No amount of dotting with a kerchief was going to get the better of the sweat beading liberally at his brow and temples from the exertion of readying himself, so James made no attempt to bother. Only pushed his hair back out of his way, checked his appearance over once more in the glass, before deciding himself good enough for meeting with a mere sempstress’ boy, even one who had earned Natalia’s favour. It would spare him the grief of summoning aid yet one more instance, and just then, that was more than good enough. 

“Have someone get him clean enough to come in, if he is too travel worn yet. I will receive him in my study.” 

The instruction came husking and in a tone taut with discomfort, but crisp for it and far more lucid than he had allowed himself to suffer through in days. Letter tucked between two fingers and the rest of their company wrapped tightly around the handle of his cane, James limped the distance from his suite to the large office. Where the comforting smell of old wooden shelves and older books filling the space, warm sunlight cast over a leather armchair, stacks of paper high as his head, his inkwell and desk. The last a bulwark to erect between himself and this Unknown, in the shadow of which he could hide the cane initially, and in part shield his deformity behind, hidden by the pile of ledgers, all work needing his attention. It was a fleeting defence at best. Yet still preferable to nothing at all, this imperfect attempt to try and feel a little more like the Lord and Master of a noble estate, rather than an exhausted Cripple in over his head. 

She had written that he was good with horses and hounds. It was a tiny glimmer of hope, as a cruel man or a stupid one rarely managed to win the approval of either. It would be easy to test the truth of for himself; his dear Bay, a last bastion of Truth and Sense in a world presently in sore lack of both, would tell him no lie in the matter. And if she and the other horses refused to take to him and the chamber and scullerymaids neither, a young man unfit for the House yet in need of employment could find plenty to lay hand to on a working estate like Buchanan. 

Tired already, James drew out fresh paper and a blotting sheet, and dipped his quill, resolved to attempt some manner of response while he had the moment of awareness to spare for it. 

He had managed as far as, 

Little Shrike, best of my cousins,

I have received your Letter and the man, and gratefully, your Condolence and graces. He will be given a place, in my House or another suitable to his nature within Buchanan.

I make no promise of London. But know I miss you, and perhaps even the lout you call Husband. If

And then there were footsteps at the door, enough to stir his attention for being foreign, and to cause alertness to prickle through the lingering fog, raised skin and unease arising in its wake. He sat up and rested his quill in favour of brushing his hand along the underside of the desk, where he had caused a knife sheath to be nailed into the wood, a secret kept by only himself and his most trusted.

Clearing his throat, James pushed his hair back once more and fought the urge to tug at his collar like a child. One errand. And then he could crawl back to bed. Yes. 

“Enter.” 

—

Five days walk from London to the countryside, a baulky little jenny in tow, had left Steve dusty and footsore, weary of everything in the world and without much hope for his prospects in it. Before him was a strange house and a strange Master, with only a letter to recommend him and only himself and his temper to blame for the predicament. Lady Barton had been kind, directing her maids to fill his valises with clean linen and put new boots on his feet. She herself had filled his pockets with five gold guineas, a new handkerchief, and a watch that kept time when it suited it. 

Steve fingered it now as he shifted from foot to foot by the back stoop and watched the bees buzzing around the kitchen garden. It was well-tended, like the rest of the manor house and grounds he’d seen. The servants who received him had been polite but wary, taking his letter and vanishing into the depth of the house without asking him in. One of the scullery girls had taken pity on him a hour later and brought him a piece of bread and cheese with one of last autumn’s apples, only slightly withered. 

She had also directed him to the pump where he could wash, so Steve had cleaned the worst of the dust from his boots and removed his sweaty cravat, putting his entire head under the stream of water until he felt somewhat refreshed and his hair hung in damp tendrils around his face. Steve wrung it out and tied it back, jamming his hat hastily onto to his head and wrapping his neckcloth as the scullery door opened again. 

It was no maid who emerged, but one of the upstairs men, an under-butler or head footman by his dress, cravat spotlessly white over dark skin. He frowned at Steve’s damp, travelworn state, and Steve scowled right back, though he followed when the fellow gestured curtly at him. 

“Will the Baron see me?” he asked quietly, doing his best to keep his tone solicitous. “Did he read the letter of introduction I brought?”

“He will, and he did,” the man replied, leading the way upstairs and down a long hallway set with small windows. “But you must not appear to notice his condition or anything out of the ordinary in his appearance.”

“What is it I must not notice?” Steve wondered aloud. “Or not seem to notice?” He’d never been good at keeping his feelings off of his face, and it had caused him trouble more than once. 

“His lack of a left arm and general ill health. They render him surly and snappish, though I remember when he was as merry as any young gentleman with prospects. He made a handsome officer, though the war ruined him.” A shake of his head, and he gestured toward the great doors at the end of the hall. “Tell me your name, or you’ll have to make your own introduction.”

“Rogers,” said Steve hastily. “Stephen is my Christian name.” He wiped his hand on his breeches before putting it out to shake. 

“Wilson. Mister Wilson to you.” He knocked twice on the wood, waiting until he heard a low voice echoing permission to enter.

Steve followed behind, eyes on his boots, still mud-spattered in spite of his best efforts, and listened to his name announced as though it were a stranger’s. Then Wilson slipped out the doors behind him with only a touch to his shoulder by way of farewell, leaving him alone with his new master.

He advanced a few paces before remembering to snatch his hat off and make a hasty bow that left his spine creaking. Steve stared at the man behind the desk, who could scarcely be ten years older than himself, dark eyes sunk in a sallow face, the left sleeve of his coat flopping gracelessly beside him. 

Ruined, Wilson had said, but the shadow of the merry young lord did linger in shoulders that were still broad, if stooped, and a fine head of hair that only wanted combing and dressing.

Realising that he was staring impertinently into silence that had stretched far too long, Steve said, broad Irish vowels smoothed into the careful precision of the City: “Thank you for seeing me, my Lord. The Viscountess told me I must give you her fond regards, but, er , not kiss your cheek as she would. Sir.” 

Steve forced his lips shut before anything else stupid could escape. He was just going to be thrown out before he’d even been received, he decided, and would wander back out down the roads where his feet carried him. Being robbed and beaten would probably be less painful than trying to do anything in front of the grim, sullen figure in front of him.

—

In her letter, his most beloved and greatly to be feared and respected cousin, a sister as much as his own in all but name, had written that she hoped this man would please him in form as well as function. 

Staring down at the artfully whorled script, James Barnes could only narrow his eyes, wondering just how much subtlety had been layered into that particular stretch of ink, allowing himself the respite, before once more daring to glance at the “Stephen Rogers” that Sam had just presented to him. He had touched the stranger, which boded just as well as the note regarding the man’s popularity with animals, but a scant few hours was hardly time enough to make more than surface judgement. 

...Though, what a surface to judge. 

Even with his kerchief sweat-stained and dusty, hair damp and frizzing for it, the young man before him was objectively handsome, comely as any of his little soldiers, boys becoming men, brothers, and beloved for it. Really, it was a relief to find him so awkward and discomfited, otherwise the piercing pale eyes and freckled cream complexion and strong jaw might have wholly distracted him, the first time his eyes had sought to wander since his return— and considering who this man was, pure folly if he were to let them. 

But while he had been looking the young man had also, and James tensed instinctively as the other’s gaze found his sleeve, his unkempt hair. Gah, would he ever become accustomed to the Staring? 

For it, he offered no immediate welcome, let the silence hang in silent retribution for the gawking, even as his sharp, hooded gaze took in how the man stumbled over his bow, nearly forgot his hat, seemingly as ill-suited to fine manners as James found himself these days. Only for a stumbled attempt at a start to reward his contemplation, one that had a dark brow arching, his lips pulling into that much thinner a line (though only his own counsel would know it was for attempt to keep from smiling, as a dry, awful amusement at seeing a poor soul even worse off than his own state just then set in). 

“While the barony is my inheritance, I am hardly a Lord at present. My sister’s husband holds the family Seat in London in my place. Thus, in our own company, Sir will do.” 

His commission had been sold back some months ago. If he had been only a Gentleman rather than a peer, the rank might still now have followed him in polite company out of respect. He thought he would have preferred that, even if he had barely held the thing long enough after his promotion for Major rather than Captain to feel like his own address when he heard it. But now that, too, was lost to him. 

Instead, he was left to muddle through the matter of what a man was when his Lord Father’s death mere weeks after his own meant all titles and their duties and honours had legally passed to a relation, all whilst their true heir was not, as presumed and reported, in fact a casualty of the Crown waging foreign wars, after all. Half the letters piled beside him were from solicitors trying to unwind the very same quandary, even now. And while it had been simple enough to return to his own home and the surrounding estate, there was no argument to be made that given his current status, James was in fit shape to sit in the House of Lords. 

By all rights, the title belonged to him just the same as the seat and the barony itself. But it hardly settled comfortable against his skin these days, not when his brother-in-law was yet fulfiling its office due to his own inadequacy. Thus, he had, where able, retreated to the vastly more bearable, though improper, use of military rather than noble honourific. His staff could look at him askance for it all they pleased, but in his own Home, surely in this like all the rest, he ought to be allowed time to reaccustom himself. Before his cousin or some other forced him to endure jarring reentry to and confrontation with society at large and the expectations and formalities thereof.  

Pushing those familiar brooding contemplations aside, he eyed the other man, idly wondering just exactly what Natalia had spun into Rogers’ ear upon her farewell, and thereafter wondering just what it would feel like to have lips that plush and pretty against his own stubbled cheek. 

...No. That was most certainly the dregs of his tincture voicing the thought, and he could not under any circumstance allow himself to pursue it further. 

Clearing his throat, he laid the blotting sheet over his half-penned letter, suddenly discontent with remaining seated, albeit his right. A man’s business ought to be done with a straight spine and clear eyes, on his feet. And while he could, these days, manage only one out of those three at once, all but the best days he had, something about the creature before him seemed to demand it. 

A scrape of wood announced his intent as the Baron pushed back his chair, calloused fingers wrapping around carved bone and gripping, white-knuckled, as he levered himself up from the chair onto his feet. Standing, their eyelines were near horizontal, which felt far more natural than looking up at a man standing over him. He rounded the desk, moving slowly less to intimidate and more to ensure he did not take a sudden spill, leaning heavily on the cane until he could come to stand in front of Rogers, and exert himself enough to roll his spine into alignment. He grit his teeth against the little pull of discomfort it took to settle his shoulders back, until they were once more settled properly into the full posture of a military man, one who had commanded men. Leaving the desperate clutch of his hand around the cane and the flopping, half-pinned sleeve the only detractors from the power inherent in the Major’s posture. 

Tilting his chin up faintly, he locked eyes with his new Guest, summoning what he could scrape together of what had been a Baron and Officer. 

“Welcome to Lehigh Park, Mister Rogers.” 

Unless given reason to do otherwise, Natalia had asked him to make this man part of his Household properly. He could at least try the fellow, and shuffle him elsewhere if no satisfactory arrangement could be made. Planting his weight in his heels as surely as he could, James leaned his cane against his hip and offered out a warm, ungloved hand for a simple but purposeful shake. 

“I suspect you’ve been as much amusement as headache to my dear Cousin, for how she writes of you,” he said, picking his words but not with overmuch care. Fingers still warm from another’s touch, he took his cane once more, teeth gritting subtly at the effort of returning to his seat and retaking it. Then gestured with the curving bone of his cane at the seat across his desk once he was settled. 

“I don’t care for being loomed over,” James informed him bluntly. “Sit.” 

It came as an order, ungentled. His thumb smoothed rhythmically over the textured surface of the handle, contemplative, as the Baron considered several questions he might ask, all of which he wanted answers to. But the order of the asking mattered. 

“Tell me what you did, to so displease the Viscount and his men such that she sent you here to me. My cousin names you Belligerent in one line, and hopes I will find your temperment to my satisfaction in the next. As though my fondness for her mischief making were the rule, not the exception. I would hear of the conduct, or lack thereof, in full, which gave rise to your travel and reallocation here.” 

There was a balance point to it, the centre of the pendulum between lucidity and relief, numbed haze and anguish, where the pain was perfect enough to sharpen him into his very best self. Hard to reach, costly on either end for the obtaining of. But just then, he could feel it, clutching at whalebone as if to keep himself from physically scrabbling for the echoes of what he’d once been, the keenness that had for so long been second nature, fiercest pride. 

“Spare no detail, and report yourself honestly. She says you will, and I will know if you fail to.”

—

Steve wasn’t sure what London had anything to do with it, as the Viscountess had by name charged him to the Baron, James Barnes the Lord Buchanan, but he knew better than to ask. Sir he could remember. It wouldn’t rankle him so much to use, either. 

His eyes widened as Barnes rose, perhaps lessened by the loss of the limb but not wizened. They were of a height, and there were muscles beneath the ill-pinned coatsleeve. Steve kept still at his approach, fingers crumpling the brim of his hat before he remembered to hold it behind his back and stand upright at attention. It was difficult to fix his eyes respectfully in the distance when all they wanted to do was take the measure of the cane in Barnes’ hand, lest it be raised against him. 

As the Baron approached, though, Steve became convinced that it was no more than an unwanted aid, for support and not cruelty. He tensed nonetheless and stared down at the extended hand for several seconds before he understood why it was being offered. 

“Thank you, sir,” he said quickly, wondering what had prompted Barnes to call him Mister and to shake his hand as though he were a friend, even an equal. But there was no mockery in those keen grey eyes. Steve shook his hand once firmly and let it fall. 

The warmth and pressure lingered after the Baron returned to his desk and Steve sat gingerly in the chair indicated, doing his best not to sink into the well-stuffed leather, more comfortable than any bed he’d ever slept in. 

What a welcome, he thought. And what a strange contradiction of a man.

As courteous as his treatment had been, the question that followed had Steve’s spine stiffening and his hat brim suffering further in his tense fingers. 

“I don’t know what belligerent means,” he started slowly, refusing to be held to an account he couldn’t answer, though the meaning was easy enough to guess from the rest of the words. 

“But it wasn’t one occasion they thrust me out for. It’s that I don’t like to be called filthy names and shamed for bein’ Irish or a Papist or cack—excuse me, left -handed. I don’t like to hear insults against my mother, God rest her, or be told I’m indecent over a misunderstanding. My temper gets the better of me when I’m put down, and I forget manners and good sense altogether.”

Steve paused to smooth out his expression and his accent before he continued, hoping that his explanation would be enough and that it would square with whatever the Viscountess had put in her letter. 

“Fighting is what it was. Words and blows. But I never started any of it, Sir, on my honour I didn’t. A man’s got to defend himself when he’s spoken against and slandered, hasn’t he? Or what kind of a man is he?” Steve fell silent, brows drawn together, a flush high on his cheeks, hoping he hadn’t said too much in his zeal to explain himself.

—

It was quite the answer. More than he would have been able to follow, any more drugged. More than he’d have been willing to hear, any less. 

He listened, eyes intent, features neutral save for the ever-present tightness around the eyes and mouth, sternness masking discomfort. And waited, patient, until the young man had been allowed the full breadth of his thoughts. Watching, considering, and judging for himself the manner of young man who was sat before him. 

Two years ago, and this man would have been strung up and flogged likely more than any in his regiment. But that was hardly an option, needed or otherwise, now. He hummed quietly, and sat up a little as Rogers finished, finally speaking in a quiet yet authoritative tone. 

“Belligerent is a word used to convey the sense that someone is prideful, and prone to getting in fights over it. Willing to take the slightest provocation for conflict, willing to cause provocation lightly. Somewhere between argumentative and aggressive.” His eyebrow twitched up again. “So by your own account, applicable, though perhaps not to its strongest degree.” 

James let go of his cane long enough to hold his hand palm out, cut off any argument to his declaration. “My mother was not born one of the Crown’s own. And I find that War has much dampened my appreciation for matters of church and clergy, such as they ever were.”

He paused, and for a singular moment, there was a glitter of humour lurking at the corner of his tight grimace, bitterly-self aware tilting to sly as he wriggled his fingers midair. “These halls and those within have the sense not to make conversation on the matter of hands, as a general rule, these days, moreover.” Quiet, albeit roundabout reassurances, delivered by keen eyes and a low, even tone. 

But then at once, he shifted again, hand dropping to wrap firmly around the arm of his chair so he could gingerly push up, sit taller, and look across to lock eyes sharply with the younger man. 

“Under my roof, a man is judged for his conduct alone, not the things about himself he cannot change. Temper, manners, and sense, fall under the former category, not the latter.” 

It was a warning, and the sternest he had been yet. The man before him was young, coltish, just as Natalia had advised him. Not yet schooled by hard enough lessons to learn how to find and walk the line between pride and honour, and swallow the former when needed. He tilted his chin up, gaze stormy, an intensity crackling within his presence to ensure his words were heard, and dutifully considered. 

“A man decides what kind of man he is by the conduct he engages in and the manner he comports himself in, Stephen Rogers. He is not decided by the words of others, nor will you be. If another slanders you, the only ill-mark against your honour is to respond to it poorly. I anticipate no such thing. My seneschal runs a more orderly estate than even I could, and is not a man any do cross lightly.” He paused, and cocked his head a little to one side. 

“However, should you feel unfairly spoken of in my Household, my expectation is that you will by deed and your own word prove such slander baseless, rather than engaging in pointless conflict for the sake of pride alone. If you have that or any other grievance, you may bring it to your immediate superior, or to Mister Wilson, and perhaps he will see fit that it be brought to me. But I will not tolerate Fighting. And if I hear of you trading blows with any one else on this Estate, I will discipline you personally on account of it, regardless of who started what or did not. Do I make my expectations of you clear?” 

It was, he thought, watching the young man’s stricken expression in response and the flush of displeasure that followed it, the most he had spoken in maybe three days. If Sam was eavesdropping outside the door, James himself would be in for a lecture, over having had the capacity and not used it. Though he could feel in his body already, summoninging the strength for this encounter would cost him, and dearly. 

“My cousin indicated in her letter that you were under indenture. If you’ve your papers with you, I shall need to see them, otherwise tell me who to send to for them, so that I may know what manner of compensation must be made, and to whom, while I hold custody of you and any labour you carry out, as well as the remaining term of the arrangement. I would review those, before finalising your probationary assignment, and then from there Mister Wilson will see to getting you settled in and shown through the duties of your assumed role in the house or greater estate.”

—

Steve sat stock still, the comfort of the chair forgotten, as Barnes explained to him in detail the word he hadn’t understood. Steve could own to it now, though he thought himself only quick to give offence in others’ eyes. And he almost never provoked fights on purpose or threw the first punch. Speaking up in his own defence seemed useless, though, with a hand in the air to stop him.

Barnes seemed to be making an attempt at reassurance, though, perhaps even consolation, and Steve did his best to take the words as such. To be expected to tattle instead of coming to his own defence didn’t sit well with him, though. Perhaps things would be different here in the country, he thought. Or perhaps he’d have to look after himself as he always had, even if it meant catching the sturdy cane in Barnes’ hand as payment. He wasn’t being asked to obey, after all, only if he understood. 

“Very clear, sir,” he said, barely audible. Steve didn’t think that he could bring himself to repeat the statement, though. 

Barnes seemed to consider the matter settled, though, willing to move on to other mundane matters. The mention of indenture was enough to bring Steve’s chin up. 

“I worked my time out. Five years. I’m my own man now, sir, with my own wages.” 

It was on the tip of Steve’s tongue to ask what those wages might be, to beg for a position that would make use of the skills he’d tried to learn. Barnes seemed weary, though, perhaps at the end of his ability to tolerate conversation. Steve decided it would be better to try his luck with Wilson instead. He stood and made another bow, better this time, but still a little stiff, awaiting dismissal.

—

“That makes things simple enough.” And he was glad for it. 

James gave no attention to the prideful lilt of the young man’s head,  made no attempt to pick apart his words. He had looked down at his papers, only to twitch at the sound of movement in front of him, stiffening and scowling instinctively, because now the young man was looming again. Or rather, fidgeting, in some strange mix of presumptive belief they were done, or attempted pity on account of how tight his new employer’s features had been growing with pain. 

“One more question, and then I’ll dismiss you.” 

He was going to do this right, damn it, he had been dragged from bed and Dressed for this, and it was for Natalia. And even with the crawling, prickling ache setting into his st— to the residual on his left, his only course was see this through. 

“I am informed I may find you capable of several different types of work, suitable for assignment downstairs or out of doors.”

Because, capable of writing or not, correspondence and record keeping of his estate were a task he refused to abandon entirely, and dictation to a man he could not yet trust seemed a waste of time. Upstairs work was reserved for those he trusted and could bear around himself, and so far while this young man had the potential to be both, he had achieved neither. 

“Before I deliver you to Mister Wilson… do you have a preference, between the two?” 

He reached for his cane again, to have something to hold, squeezing it in time with the little cramping waves of discomfort settling in and setting his jaw firmly at a right angle to attempt to disguise just how the delay in resolving this matter was beginning to pain him. 

“It is no question of wage; only where we might put you so that you are content with your tasks and willing to carry them out quietly. I have little patience for unnecessary trouble, particularly within my own Home, and, to my knowledge, the mares will not insult your parentage or take issue with which hand grooms them.” 

—

The minute signs of distress in the Baron’s posture and movements were enough to cause Steve alarm, though he did his best to hide it, remembering the warning from Wilson. Downstairs or out of doors. No chance of a position upstairs, then, no doubt. Steve hid a grimace behind his hand as he pretended to think the matter over. 

In his experience it was always a question of wage. And the longer Barnes went on—maybe he was trying to be funny, Steve thought—the harder grew the set in his jaw. 

Of course the horses weren’t the ones he was worried about. The grooms and stableboys, though. But perhaps a Baron wouldn’t be aware of their coarseness. 

“Wherever I might be of use and better myself, sir,” he said stiffly, unwilling to commit himself to a choice that might later be held against him.

—

The minutes while the young man was cogitating were the worst of it, all the more so because his hand was no longer steady enough to work on his letter or to fulfil its office in any other manner that might pass the time. Leaving him without recourse save the clench of his teeth and internal reminder that he was trying to do this right. 

Regrettably, what was meant as comfort had been taken as a taunt, he could tell just from the younger man’s countenance. And just then, finding a way to apologise to a servant was nothing James had internal fortitude and capacity to see through. 

So when he received no answer— or rather, did, though an unsatisfactory one, James bit back the urge to scold his new servant for any of it. Instead, he stood, leaving his half finished letter abandoned, and leaning hard on his cane as he shuffled irregularly around the desk and for the door first. He rapped at it sharply, whalebone against cedar, and was unsurprised when it opened to the concerned features of his oldest and most trusted aide. 

“Put him where you can make use of him. Standard employment contract and kit. Give him the rest of today to settle and set him to work in the morning.” 

Sam’s eyebrows had twitched up, but the older man’s professionalism smoothed over any startlement near immediately after, just as it always did when James was slightly too close to the line, even for matters strictly between the two of them. 

“I have the contract prepared and waiting for you, sir. I shall bring up shortly, for your seal.” 

Thank the divine for the man: Sam Wilson always did have a knack for managing things exactly as they ought to be. James nodded, turning in the doorway to look over his shoulder. 

“Rogers. To Mister Wilson, now. Do as he says, and I have every confidence you will yet make a fine addition to Lehigh Park.” 

With that and no other farewell, the Baron shifted, brushing past Sam with a familiarity that spoke of years spent in shared company, his cane thudding heavy and uneven against the floor while he as good as fled down the hallway toward his own chambers and the relief that waited for him there within them. 

Dark eyes followed him, though only long enough to ensure himself the Baron would indeed make it to his room without collapse, before Wilson turned to eye their company’s newest member. 

Well. He’d survived without his head bitten off, at any rate, or appeared to have.

“Walk with me, and tell me the tasks you performed to the Household’s satisfaction at your former place of employment.” 

He had managed to nip off long enough to see to a bed in the servant’s quarters and at least one set of clean, mostly fitting clothes arranged before it became necessary to return quickly enough to manage being at the door when his Lord knocked for him. Perfunctory, but less stiff now that the new man was in his charge rather than an unknown at the door, Wilson led the way back downstairs, while keeping a sharp eye on Rogers and listening for indication of what where he can be of use might resolve to be.

—

Steve kept his eyes on the buckles of his boots while the other two men conversed, audibly and otherwise, until the Baron said his name. Sure enough, the Mister had disappeared. Steve sighed a little, wishing he knew Barnes well enough to tell if he meant his well wishes sincerely or not. 

Time would out, he supposed, trotting after Wilson down the corridor and resisting the urge to look after the Baron as he disappeared hastily. He’d been asked a question, and if he didn’t answer he had a feeling he’d find himself scrubbing burned pots in the scullery soon enough.

“I was only there half a year, and they put me in the stables, feedin’ and muckin’. Filled in if one of the footmen took ill, beat the bushes for shooting. I can do better than that, though. Been put to all kinds of work. Tailoring and millinery and cobbling, in the High Street, too. Was a printer’s devil for near two year. Learned my letters that way and how to write out proofs for handbills. I can do sums, too.” 

Steve was pretty sure the Baron didn’t need a chimney sweep or a bobbin boy, and he was too big for those tasks now, anyway. What needed doing at the Manor he didn’t know, but Steve dearly hoped that he would not be relegated to the grounds or the stables directly without a chance to prove himself at more genteel work. 

— 

As he listened, Sam led them through the manor home, eyes tracking Rogers largely, but his head tipped in greeting at the other members of the staff they passed. He paused only once, and it was to shoot Rogers a long, contemplative look at the list of skills named, specifically the first, his eyes snapping to big, calloused hands as if trying to spot the ability there before they could even do anything. 

Tailoring and cobbling and writing and sums. Of course the Baron had dismissed him with orders as if he was meant to put this man right back in a stable. He was young, though. Perhaps that was why. Sam Wilson was in no way a man of rash decisions, however, and for all his carelessness in the last year, their Lord had once been an exceedingly keen man. The present afternoon Rogers had unappointed save to settle in, meet the other staff, and learn his way around would also give Sam time to consider exactly what might be done with him, now that their employer had washed his hands— had excused himself from the matter.

“Be ready to display your level of aptitude with those skills,” he warned bluntly. Every man deserved a chance to prove himself, after all, and if their new addition truly was capable, it would be unwise to waste talent due to disbelief or laziness too great to provide a simple opportunity to obtain proof. Besides. Tall, handsome, and young? Rough around the edges or not, those were raw materials needed for valuable house staff, at least amongst the men.  

“Tomorrow, perhaps, for letters and sums, not longer than the end of the week for tailoring and the like. It’s been a while since we Hosted or had staff turnover; settling new arrivals is a process with room for improvement.” 

Decision made, Sam turned his eyes forward again as he navigated the service corridors and back stairwells to bring them from upstairs in the Baron’s study to the downstairs, and then out the back to a pair of small, segregated buildings with a little garden between them. 

“Junior staff quarters. Mrs. Parker, the housekeeper, myself, and a few other senior staff are within the manor. The young ladies have the quarters on the left, the young men on the right. I am sure I’ve no need to tell you that the consequences of attempting to sneak into housing quarters you’re not meant to be in, for anyone, are unpleasant enough to be incentive not to attempt it. You’ll have the furthest bed from the door, a small chest for your belongings that stays with the bed, and has a key. There’s a set of clothes, and if you ask nicely, one of the girls will stitch your name on a little tag and fasten it somewhere discrete to ensure nothing is lost in the laundry. Or let you borrow her supplies to do it yourself.  We’ll introduce you at staff dinner tonight, but for now, your bags are on the bed waiting to be unpacked, and one of the boys has the jenny settled in the stable. I’ll sketch out an outline of the Manor’s schedule for you. We run early, on account of Lord Buchanan tends to run late, at least with regard to meals and bathing and laundry and the cleaning best done when he’s not moving about the manor. It’s a small staff for a house of this size; everyone fills in as able, regardless of their skill, myself included, without room for indolence. But not so small there are no allowances for a few personal hours here and there, and Sunday Mornings free for chapel.” 

Stopping in front of the neatly made up little bed tucked into one corner in a room of a dozen similar, Sam gestured Steve forward to his things.

“Questions as relate to this afternoon and tonight?” 

—

In spite of his mild inquiry, Wilson’s eyes were shrewd, barely flickering from Steve as they descended through the manor house. Try as he might to discern skepticism in the man’s voice, though, Steve couldn’t find any. The opportunity to prove himself in different ways felt like the best chance he’d had in a long time. Steve nodded quickly, unable to keep eager hope from flitting across his face. He would never be a Gentleman: fate had seen to that, but he could be Accomplished, perhaps. Proud of his place and work and the skill with which he did it. Could learn , even, to be sober-minded and temperate. 

He looked around the staff quarters with interest, aware that the building was small and carried the faint odor of bodies, but to have his own bed and a lock to guard his things were luxuries he’d rarely been afforded. Even if he ended in the stables, he wouldn’t be sleeping in the haymow. “I don’t intend to disturb the young ladies,” Steve said hastily, “not even for sewing notions.” There was a little kit with a needle and thread in his saddlebag. Enough to do small mending jobs and reaffix buttons with. “And you will not find me indolent.”

The open opportunity to ask questions caught Steve off guard. He’d planned to ferret out his own answers, and probably still would when it came to where he might wash more thoroughly and put on a clean shirt before dinner, as well as whether the chapel came with a priest or if he’d have to walk into the village to hear Mass on Sundays. There was one thing that his inquisitive nature had been fretting over that Sam could answer, though, and Steve found himself blurting out: 

“Is he always like that? The Baron, I mean? Pained and weary… and surly for it? Is there no Doctor here to ease him?

—

The insistence that he wouldn’t make trouble was hasty, but fervent enough. Wilson nodded, and then seemed to pause and look once more, before deciding to drop the matter and push on. The young man would keep his word or he wouldn’t; judgment and discipline could wait until the latter, and until then unfounded suspicion would do him no favours. 

He waited patiently, allowing Rogers time to marshal his thoughts, while He thought back through his introductions for anything that had been missed. The question asked, though not wholly unexpected, was just as welcome as every opinion he’d had to field from those who’d just met Barnes.

“That is not a question about your afternoon.” The rebuke was quiet, but unyielding enough. Wilson paused, and frowned, as if attempting to discern how much he would have to say to put the matter to rest— or rather, how little could be said, lest further gossip spring up from dissatisfied curiosity. 

“He has a physician. One by the name of Banner. You will see the man come and go, but do not trouble him; if you take ill or are injured you will see Mrs. Parker and she will decide what may be done or if it warrants placing a call.” Wilson hesitated, and finally allowed, tone stiff:

“It was…a deeply grievous wound. His medicines ease the pain but steal his mind. When he is required for tasks that need him clearheaded, yes. He is often as you saw him. You do not need fear bodily harm or severance merely by proximity to his black moods, but neither should you linger if you should someday catch him while he is unwell. And I will not hear gossip about him within this Household, so whatever further inquiries on the matter you may have, I’ll thank you to keep your own counsel on the matter, Rogers. He fought well for the Crown, and more than that, is your lord and mine. Now. Do you have questions about your afternoon, or shall I leave you to your hours of personal time before dinner?”

—

If allowed, Steve was certain he could’ve assembled a very convincing argument about how the Baron’s health was entirely germane to the afternoon in front of him, since Steve was to be his man, and it was only Christian charity that prompted his concern, after all. Well, perhaps not only charity, Steve had to admit to himself. A genuine smile would transform that hollow, worn face, and perhaps fewer cares would ease the painful stoop in the Baron’s shoulders. To indulge in fantasies where he was the one who provoked such responses in his master would have to wait until Steve wasn’t being stared down by his Seneschal’s sharp brown eyes, though.

“I don’t take part in gossip,” Steve said, drawing himself up. “And I intend to keep to myself this afternoon. You will find me at your service tomorrow morning, Mr. Wilson.” Not a dismissal, for the man was hardly his to dismiss, but an end to the questions being put to him, Steve hoped. He was dusty and bone-weary, with much to think about and few faculties at his disposal. The sooner he was left to them, likely the better.

Chapter Text

“—utterly unacceptable in this Household, and—” 

The tone was the thing which caught his attention, even more so than the actual words. Vexed to the point of speaking through gritted teeth was a state in which James was only accustomed to seeing Samuel Wilson when it had been caused by himself, in general when he was being especially mule-headed. With certainty, it was abnormal to hear emanating out of his right hand and steward’s office where the little room sat neatly tucked down the hall from James’ own study before they’d so much as exchanged words for the day. 

He paused, considering himself up and down. Resultant from a late start after a largely sleepless night, he had only bothered with the effort of being Mostly Dressed, a warm crimson dressing gown draped over his shoulders and loosely belted atop his waistcoat in place of a proper jacket. Sam had seen him in far worse shape. Thus, he had given no second thought to his intent to barge into the other man’s chamber in search of the documents he needed. But whatever was going on within…

Doubling back to his rooms for proper attire chanced the risk of missing something vital. So instead, James simply rapped his cane tip sharply against the mostly closed door and striding beneath the lintel before he could doubt his course. 

For a long moment thereafter, he merely took in the scene. 

Wilson, expression hard with disappointment, which flickered only briefly with surprised displeasure at the sight of James himself. Likely as much because he was there as for the state he was in, but the man’s professionalism got the better of him and it smoothed back out. Much to James’ own disappointment and weary conclusion that he should have listened to his initial instinct, across from Sam, Stephen Rogers was there too, face swollen and nose bloodied, though not quite so much as the fellow beside him. 

Rumlow, James decided, after a brief squint. What the devil was that man doing in his house? Grimly, he regarded each of them in turn, gripping the whalebone in his hand white-knuckled so he could stand to his full height and level his very best glare of Abject Officerial Displeasure at the sorry pair before him. 

“Mister Wilson.”

“My Lord.” 

Sam did not so much as flinch, good man, shifting his posture subtly to ensure that he was at James’ shoulder, a proper second. 

Listening to stumbled explanations and blame was more than he had care to deal with just then. Instead, James locked eyes with the newest member of his household, his own expression dour at the realisation he was presently to be made to make good on a promise sworn to the young man not even a full fortnight prior. 

“Rogers. With me. Mister Wilson, I trust you to attend the rest of the matter. And if you would be so kind as to drop by my study at, say, half-past the hour, I shall require your assistance with my ledger.” 

—

On the whole, things had been going very well, Steve thought. He’d felt cautiously optimistic about his reception and future at the manor of Lehigh Park. Food at meals was plentiful and tasty, and no one gave him looks when he took seconds. The work Wilson set him was interesting and for the most part within his purview. He didn’t mind sewing or running to the village with letters or to fetch the mail. The ledger pages he turned in with the practice accounts Wilson had dictated to him were neat, the additions and deductions carefully tallied. Steve fell asleep in his own bed at night, exhausted from useful work and with his belly full, which was more than he could say for many of his previous positions. 

Only one thing rankled his spirit, conspicuous by its absence: he saw plenty of the other servants and even spoke to them a little, but received scarcely a glimpse of their master. His master, as Steve had come to think of the man inwardly. And he thought often of the gaunt, pained figure, imagined that he could smell him on the coats whose sleeves he trimmed and turned. Perhaps he would smile at the fit of them, Steve thought, or give a pleased nod when Wilson made a report of the new boy’s progress. 

Steve had amused himself privately with these thoughts while he worked, daydreaming while he lay in bed as the sun rose and the other junior servants stirred around him. They were good fellows on the whole, he thought, though he was careful to keep his eyes down as they dressed or undressed, having learnt that lesson the hard way. One of the hostlers, Rumlow, seemed to have taken a particular shine to him, and never failed to thump Steve heartily on the back when he came to fetch a horse or return one to the stables. He had cautiously begun to think of the man as a friend, only to have him turn to Steve after breakfast one morning and ask him how the fare had suited him, not being the fresh babies he’d no doubt been used to at home.

Steve’s jaw had dropped open in disbelief while the fellow leered at him, as though he’d made the best joke in the world and couldn’t see why on earth Steve was turning red and fuming at him. He’d taken a running tackle and caught Rumlow around the middle. They’d rolled around beneath the scullery stairs until Mrs. Parker, summoned by the thumping and groans, poured a tumbler of water over them. She’d scolded them and sent them up to Mr. Wilson’s office for further reprimand. It was only as he hung his head and hoped that the Baron couldn’t hear from his own study that Steve remembered the promise the man had made him. 

Perhaps, he thought wildly, Wilson would not disturb the Baron with such petty matters. Perhaps he was asleep in a drugged stupor, insensate to the lecture being delivered. Steve was just offering a wretched, desperate prayer to Saint Dismas, who would surely take pity on him, when he heard the sharp rap of a cane at the door.

Frozen, unable to do so much as dab at his still sluggishly bleeding nose, Steve watched as the Baron eyed them, shrewd and far from being drugged and stupefied. He quailed under the sharp grey eyes but forced himself to bear up, acutely aware of his torn shirt and entirely missing neckcloth. Where his hat was, Steve didn’t know, and the seams of his breeches had been sorely tested, as they were a touch too small to begin with. 

As if from deep under water, Steve heard his surname and found his traitorous feet falling into step behind his master, whose beautiful brocade dressing gown Steve longed to stroke. 

Unable to meet those eyes again and utterly, miserably resigned to his fate, Steve limped into the office behind him and from thence directly to the great carved desk in its centre. He would offer no excuse, for he had none to make. The Baron’s bargain had been clear. 

Trembling hands fumbled with the placket of Steve’s trousers as hot, angry tears sprung to his eyes. He forced them back, willing himself to take his punishment stoically, to prove that at least in this he would not disappoint. 

Teeth gritted, Steve shoved his breeches and smallclothes down to his knees, one of which had begun to swell slightly from Rumlow’s boot. He twitched up his shirt enough to bare his rump and thighs, bracing his forearms on the desk. It was a position Steve had found himself in many times, but never had he regretted it so bitterly.

—

He had warned the man. He had most explicitly cautioned him, and Rogers had promised him he understood. Clearly, the little knave had not truly cared. Which infuriated just as fiercely as sudden knowing; when this was done, James himself would likewise be in pain, all for the sake of a shortsighted threat that now bound him to an unwanted oath. 

But of the two of them, there would only be one unfaithful, James resolved fiercely, trying to marshal his thoughts into a blistering enough lecture to stick this time. 

Only to have his new servant silently, humbly shift to his desk and—

—and before he could react with more than a low, startled noise, bare a seemingly endless expanse of creamy, youthful skin, marred only by sweet freckles and a spattered score of ugly bruises. None of the scarring his own body carried. No wrinkle, no imperfection. Between spread thighs he could just make out the promise of something impressive, and if he just… coaxed, he would see more besides. Things no man was meant to look at in regard to another man, much less anything else he had formerly done to and with them, cane laid upon Abel in far more pleasant manner than he was about to lay into Stephen Rogers.

But the boy was waiting, position assumed, skin bared. And if James was honest with himself, it was not unlike what he had pictured when the bargain was struck to begin with. 

Grim and silent, he paced forward, rounding the desk just long enough to pointedly scoot his inkwell and blotting sheets and half-finished scribblings out of the way so that the work might not come to harm.

Fine . If that was what his new servant expected of him, if This was what it took to keep him in line such that there would be no further violence in these halls to stir troubled memory further… so be it then.

“If you have anything to say for yourself, you may do so afterward. I told you I did not care who was at fault. Whatever justification you have to offer shan’t change your due.” 

James spared a moment to scowl at his servant while Rogers’ head was bowed and the boy could not see him to take any further offence. Then, he shifted to the coatstand in the corner, performing a complicated shimmy to get the dressing gown off and hung up, out of harm’s way. His teeth and a bit of pure stubbornness got the button at his remaining sleeve undone, which he let flop rather than humiliating himself with an attempt to roll it up. But then that, too, was done, and finally there was nothing more for it than to draw in a deep breath and steel himself against the memories, the pain he knew was coming. 

Wordlessly, James took position behind the young man and gave him no order to draw his clothing back up. It would only undermine his authority and power over the situation to do so. And as much as he was going to have to suffer for this… Rogers damn well could likewise. 

He planted both feet, bent at the knees, and sank his weight low. Held the cane firmly, even as his grip shifted around the head of it to hold at a new angle. Then let the tip of it brush up the back of one pale thigh, before pressing the flat length of the rod against both at once.

“I warned you, and you disobeyed me. I expected better.”

Simple yet cutting words. On their heels followed near immediately the whistle of the cane through the air, striking harshly against the soft joining place where perfect arse met sculpted thighs. 

They would both be nigh useless when it was done. He could feel the strain put to his balance, and therefore his left side in turn. But he had given his word. 

There was no warning before each. Nothing to soften the ordeal. No practice taps or building intensity. Just the heavy, ugly wooden walking cane, as each powerful swing brought it down with a loud crack against unprotected skin, quivering legs catching the worst of it and backside the rest. Even as he watched the skin start to purple, James grit his teeth and carried on. Until his own breathing began to betray the steadily rising agony accumulating within his own body in turn. Until pale skin split for the first time, a thin trickle of blood down one leg enough to put an end to the entire terrible affair. 

Rogers had taken it as a stoic, enough. That was a tiny mark in his favour. And yet. None of it should ever have happened. And James immediately loathed the idea it ever might again. 

“Fix your dress,” he commanded, panting softly with the effort of summoning words. If anything, the strain left him more furious than when he had started. “And then sit. At the desk: in my chair. If you have something to say for yourself, speak. Otherwise we shall complete the last portion of your chastisement and you will return to Mister Wilson for orders thereafter.”

—

Much might be discovered about a master by the way he administered a beating, Steve had learned. He did his best to focus on that, to be curious about what he might learn from the encounter, instead of giving way to anger and fear. He wouldn’t be able to keep his control and what little self-possession remained to him if he didn’t hold onto his faculties as long as he could. The Baron, at least, did not appear to be in a wild, storming rage. 

Cold anger was his way, Steve thought. This man wasn’t one to go on and on with a questioning lecture, either, which Steve appreciated. The terms had been clear, the agreement settled. He would not argue, so there was no need for his master to convince him. 

The words Barnes did deliver cut to the quick, but still Steve could make no argument against them. All his successes of the previous week paled next to this chiefest of sins. The Baron did not adjust Steve’s position by word or hand, nor fondle, nor tease. A touch for a warning, no order to count, and the smooth wood struck, sending a tremor down Steve’s legs. He had seen men loose their bladders during a beating, and had always scoffed at their weakness. But he understood, now, how they had been brought low. A shock of pain that had him clenching desperately. Another soon followed, lower. Barnes did not bash randomly about, though the finesse must have cost him dearly. He was being as careful as he could, striking where it could best be borne.

The thought left Steve reeling as much as the blows, wondering why, but abjectly grateful that he might be able to walk in the morning. He had broken faith with the Baron, forgetful, and yet the man saw fit to show him a kind of mercy. The realisation drew the first audible groan from Steve, quickly stifled by the cuff of his shirt jammed between his teeth. He couldn’t count, only endure as the searing ache bled down his thighs by slow inches, with a few strikes laid on the curve of his rump. Terrible, but not savage and not random. No blows laid over already bruising skin, at least not that Steve could tell. 

In the silence after what must have been the last stroke, Steve could hear only the Baron’s harsh breathing behind him, hitching with pain. He’d wager it had cost the man nearly as much to beat him as it had Steve to receive it. He had kept his word when he could’ve easily passed the duty to Wilson or the senior footman. 

Steve registered the order after the words had hung in the air between them for some seconds. He was just steeling himself to rise when the rest of it came. Steve’s brow furrowed in confusion. It would be painful to sit, the reason for that he understood, but in the Baron’s own chair, at his desk? But the words were furious for all their softness. Perhaps the man had lost his care, Steve thought, still puzzled as he pulled his shirt down, hoping it would catch what blood there was and would be when the welts split under the pressure of his weight. His trousers were dark, but not so dark as to bear those stains. 

The soft linen was agony, and the pressure of movement and thick wool worse still. Steve’s fingers shook as he did up his fly. He stumbled once, rounding the desk, but kept a hand on it for support, unwilling to endure the indignity of falling. He lowered himself into the upholstered chair by slow inches, holding his weight as long as he could on his feet. 

Steve looked up, pale and trembling as the likely reason for the orders struck him. He had had his palms struck before, to break him of the sin of self-abuse. It had worked, because even as his mother dressed and bound the welts he’d brought home, she’d told him that a man could not work with crippled hands any more than he could walk with crippled legs. So ever after Steve had taken care to avoid any crime that might mean his hands suffered. 

And Barnes, of all men, should understand the threat he offered now, Steve thought. The cane was certainly thick enough to fracture bone against the heavy desk. So perhaps he knew and did not care. Perhaps he was far gone with rage and did not understand, being a lord who had never had to earn his bread with the skill of his hands.

Steve determined that he would not resist, nor beg, but he had been given leave to speak. Forearms stretched out, palms up on the desk as much in supplication as submission to the punishment no doubt to come, Steve straightened his spine and raised his eyes from the mess of snot and blood that marred the desk between his arms. His face was equally sticky, blue eyes wide and wet with fear as he met hooded grey ones. 

“Do not, I pray you,” Steve whispered, “lose me my livelihood, sir.” 

In the short term as much as the long, his work would suffer, his stitches and his letters. But perhaps the Baron was too far gone in his rage to either understand or care. Steve could not bring himself to hope the man sufficiently weakened as to lighten his blows. He had made his appeal, each word costly. Either it would stand, or it would not.

—

No explanation. No apology. But no proffering of blubbered excuses either. 

It would do. 

He was obeyed without question, which helped him in mind if not in body, where James stood panting. Sweat dripped down the bridge of his nose as he bowed his head to hide behind a curtain of hair, seeking respite just long enough to understand and make some manner of peace with the radiating agony in his left hand. It was imagined up suffering, pure weakness, not anything he would speak of, to anyone. But knowing that did not cause any of its anguish to lessen in intensity.

It was what distracted him so, that he realised not how he had terrified the young man before him until the quiet, gutted plea split the humid air between them. But even as he begged for clemency, Rogers had his hands laid out, unmoving, ready to accept what had been decided for him should his supplication go ignored.

It did nothing for the pain. Not for the frustration either. Where was this submissiveness, this restraint and humility, when it was needed to obey the only order James had promised the man discipline for breaking? 

Newly incensed by the thought, he could at once no longer bear holding the implement. James raised the rod one time more, only to set it down with a firm thudding noise along the front edge of his desk, parallel and out of the way, save for the wretch to stare at. To see his own blood glistening, just barely, on the tip, evidence of penance already sorely paid.

“I will not touch your hands.”

One sentence, a promise, and hissed out in abject indignation. Furious temper stirred by the intolerable insult that this beautiful little idiot could take one look at him and still think he would, could even, subject a man to that. It stung, nearly as bad as knifesblade agony wracking through the hand he himself had lost. And whatever grace or poise he normally attempted was lost as the Baron lurched, limping off-balance and hissing wordless oaths between locked teeth while he rummaged around the desk to find what he was after. 

Several extra sheets of blotting paper laid out to protect against the fluids on the front of his desk. A clean sheet of writing paper. A new quill. And then he rounded the desk and stood before it, glaring fiercely down at Stephen Rogers. 

“My dearest cousin made you a Favour. But my patience, even for her sake, is limited.” His voice was taut with pain, the words low and gravelled out, but lucid for it, agonisingly shrewd. 

“You said you had letters. Prove it. Pick up that quill. You are to write a letter to the Viscountess, which says thusly. That you were accepted into my home one week prior. That you were given one rule, chiefest of any, and confirmed to my face that you understood it was not to be broken. That, even so, you have done just that. You will write her and apologise most fervently for ever having to write it. And you will write to her that should such an offence recur twice further, you will appear back on her door carrying this along with two other such letters to deliver. And then you will go your own way in the world, and will not be received into her home, or mine, or that of any close to either of us. You will sign it in your own hand, and I will read it after to ensure your obedience. Do you understand?”

—

Steve started as wood clattered on wood. His hands flinched back in spite of everything, and one treacherous tear slid down his nose. The promise should have been a relief, but the disgust as Barnes spat the words cut as deeply as any of his blows. Steve’s chin came up as he dug in his pocket for the handkerchief he hoped he still had. The Baron might find him contemptible, but that didn’t mean that he had to behave like a wastrel. Steve mopped his face up as best he could and forced himself to sit straight and look attentively to the Baron, resolutely ignoring the bloody cane and the agonising pressure on his beaten skin.

He kept his hands folded in his lap as Barnes rummaged and laid out the items in front of him. Was he to waste expensive paper writing lines, Steve wondered. The explanation when it came had his mouth opening in silent horror, and he quailed under the threat made very clear. There was so much pain and fury in each word, each movement, that if Steve had not known better he would have expected a slap or a box on the ear.

The Baron had not said he must use the proper hand, so Steve moved the quill and the ink bottle to the left side of the paper. He kept accounts and took notes in lead-pencil or charcoal so that he wouldn’t blot his letters and figures so badly by dragging his hand through it as he wrote. Ink was harder to manage, but Steve would be damned if he ruined a single stroke with his hand or his tears or by any other means. That meant writing slowly and considering the words carefully. Barnes had told him what he must write, and Steve’s memory was unfortunately very good.

To her Ladyship Viscountess Barton, greetings.

 

Your Cousin the Baron bade me write to you with news that he received me generously into his Home and Service a week hence, upon the Condition that I refrain from the Bellygerense you wrote him of and make no rude and violent Disturbances in his home should I feel any Offence given me by Another. I must regretfully now confess that the Trust he placed in me was Unfounded. I promised you upon my honour that I would be temperate and slow to wrath, so I find myself doubly Pergered. 

 

I will make this Confession now before him and before God when I have leave to go to a proper Church. I am heartily Sorry that I must do so. This is the first of three Marks against my Character, and should I reach the third, I shall be compelled to carry this Letter and two more to you in London and thense afterward consider myself Undeserving of your Hospitality and indeed any of your Family’s. 

 

I must tell you that I already feel I am such, and have felt so since I first came here, though I have been Happy. It pains me to see my Master pained, and to know that I have further Grieved him with my Inconstansy. Even the trouble he took in Chastising me I fear caused him more Hurt than the blows did me, I being accustomed to such Punishment and deserving, while he is neither. I have not words to convey my Gratitude for the Hospitality he has shown me and indeed dare not after my Greivious Fault. I must therefore in Deed and not Word prove my Use and hope that when next I write it will be under Happier Conditions. I remain

 

Your obedient Servant,

 

Stephen Rogers

Steve read back through the letter twice, considering the merits of striking through one or two things that seemed impertinent. Deciding that he could hardly be in more trouble than he already was, he blotted the few remaining wet spots and offered the paper up for the Baron’s approval. The care that writing required had directed his thoughts away from the soreness and humiliation of the beating, leaving instead a strange, numbed calm. Steve ached from top to toe, but he had at least fulfilled this office as he had been directed, even if his intended audience had been the man who happened to be reading the letter instead of the woman Steve was determined that it should never reach.

—

He had waited, observing with hooded eyes and gritted teeth, until he was satisfied Rogers had taken the task seriously and was carrying it out as ordered. That done, James turned, allowing himself to be distracted with the decanter discreetly tucked into one corner of his study, pouring and draining several fingers of the strong whiskey it contained. Liquor would numb the worst of the pain and his temper besides, yet perhaps not send him to bed such that he could do no further work that day. Far from a good solution. But the only one he would allow himself for the moment. 

When the sound of a quill scratching stopped, he returned, a faint flush on his cheeks and the familiar wooze of strong drink on an empty stomach rapidly taking him. Still. He read the offered page, silent and still frowning, though satisfied at least to see he had been obeyed, even if he took offence at several portions of the missive. 

“Would that you could remain so dutiful and stoic in obedience when I am not standing in your sight.” James made no attempt to bridle his tongue, letting the snide, irritated little comment slip out and strike true. Because it had vexed him, deeply, that the young man would play so pristinely well-behaved beneath his Master’s eye, only to turn and make trouble nearly the moment he was left unsupervised. It was cold comfort only that the man seemed suitably nervous, if not as grieved as he portrayed in his pen strokes. Neat though they were, James mused, given they had been written by someone in so much pain and shock to the body and soul alike. 

“I will not be pitied.”

It was the only other statement he refused to leave unaddressed. Rounding the desk, his remaining hand reached, firm fingers taking the younger man’s chin in hand, exerting upward pressure to force eye contact. 

“And especially not by the likes of You. Concern yourself with your own affairs, and not mine, and do not force me to bring you here like this again. If you were Happy here, I would have you remain so. Be Peaceable. Do the work given to you. Make a life. But I will not stand for violence in my place of respite. And if you are so concerned with Grieving me— do not make me do violence against you as discipline for bad faith, ever again.”

Breathless from the force of the declaration, James dug his fingers in that much harsher to steady his balance. And then studied the young man, the blood and tears, how docile he sat under a bruising grip. Before letting go of tear-damp skin and reaching to smooth his hand over and through pretty blond curls. Like the last caress given to one of his little soldiers, dying on the field of battle. Soothing. Almost a benediction. And all the more so for it as he bent, and placed a single kiss on Stephen Rogers’ forehead, before pulling away from him entirely.

“Get up. You will take a note from me to Mister Wilson. When I have written and sealed it, you are dismissed to take it to him, and may consider this matter between us settled.”

—

Steve bit his lip hard to stifle a retort about how the Baron was never present to see how obedient he was, and how that if he had been, Rumlow would have kept quiet with his taunt in the first place. At the insinuation of his pity, though, Steve lifted his head, open-mouthed to set that matter straight, only to find himself arrested by trembling fingers. He braced himself for a blow before he realised that the Baron could either hold him or hit him, but not both. Steve felt shamefully grateful as he listened, but decided that he would far rather have been struck than have those words thrown at him. 

Setting his jaw firmly against any reply, Steve waited for dismissal, eyes lowered demurely until he felt the hand leave his chin and rise to stroke through his hair, loosed from its neat queue by the fight. It fell around his face like he seldom allowed it to, but why the Baron should straighten it instead of ordering him to marshal it he didn’t know. Steve stared slack-jawed, eyes damp again from the sheer gentleness of the caress, watching in a daze as his master bent to kiss him as no one had since his mother died. A mute, punched-out little groan escaped him. 

The words that followed the benediction were anything but gentle. Steve forced himself to rise shakily to his feet, stumbling over them little as abraded skin rubbed and stretched. He could not bring himself to take the few steps to the other chair, nor could he loom over the Baron, so it seemed best to fold to his knees facing the side of the desk chair, head bowed so that he could not be accused of spying on the letter.

“I do not pity you,” Steve said softly without looking up. “I could not. It is regard and charity—love, nothing more. May I not wish you happiness as you have wished me? You didn’t want to do me violence—it gave you no pleasure. I forced you to it. We’ll both ache tonight, and only one of us will deserve to.” He sighed, a sad, wet little sound, and reached out to touch the houseshoe peeking out from the hem of the Baron’s dressing gown. It was the only gesture he could think to make in response to the one that had been made to him. “I won’t raise my hand in your house again, on my mother’s grave I won’t. I’m so very sorry.”

Steve’s voice hitched and broke on the last word, and the tears he’d thought mastered spilled silently down his cheeks. Miserably overcome, he hid his face in his hands without much hope that he could avoid the notice of the sharp grey eyes above him.

—

When was the last time his fingers had willingly caressed another’s skin? 

The gesture had been rash, instinct rather than thought, and his lips burned from the heat of his servant’s misery-fevered brow. Unconsciously, James licked his lips, and suddenly could taste nothing but another man’s sweat. Between that and the low, anguished groan, and the vivid new memory of just how finely shaped were the most intimate curves of the other man’s body, he found himself suddenly preoccupied much differently than with his own pains. 

It was no help at all that rather than rising to stand and wait by the door, his wayward favour had instead chosen, unbidden, to drop to his knees beside the chair, broad shoulders and mussed blond hair and little streaks of brilliant, coppery blood leaving him the very image of a debased, fallen seraph. 

Knees abruptly weak for none of the usual reasons, James sat abruptly, absentmindedly moving the inkwell and quill back to the proper side of a fresh sheet of paper. Only to freeze at the quiet words offered to him, spoken freely for the first time, as if in spilling ink across a page he had also forced Rogers to unlock his tongue. Or perhaps the beating had simply put him through such pain and piercing judgement that he had no strength left to silence himself. 

Regard and love and a desire for his happiness. 

Utterly out of line, none of it this man’s place to say. And yet… what benefit was there to be had from artifice? The words sounded as their own confessional. Ashamed. Humble. And far more genuine than most of the regards he fended off these days. The touch had his breathing stuttering behind his ribs, a brush so soft he saw more than felt it given how intently he had been watching the man. Only for the Baron to sigh, heavy and abrupt, at the vow offered to him a second time, with only time to prove out if it would be as faithless as its predecessor.

“I accept your promise.” 

His voice was just as soft, lacking all of the razor-sharp ice and steel of earlier. The quiet confessions of the dying, sacred by their very nature, were something he knew well. And it was those which this reminded him of. 

“For your mother’s sake and your own, keep it this time, that she may have the peace of her eternal rest and you may have the peace of a good, quiet life.” 

James paused, and then laid his quill down to reach out, the most hesitant his hand had been yet. Cupping the warm flat of his palm against the crown of the boy’s head, it coaxed him to bow forward until his brow was laid delicately against James’ own thigh. 

“I forgive you,” he said. “For your disobedience. And for the hurt resolving it caused me. Please don’t fight any further.” 

Those words dispensed, he turned back to his page, shaking hand scratching out his wishes as quickly as he could manage.

Sam,

 

Kindly send for Doctor Banner at the man’s earliest Convenience. Have him see to Rogers, and see that no effort is spared in the treatment of his wounds. When they have been cared for, I require the doctor’s Attentions for myself. Please instruct him to come to my room when he is done with Rogers. 

 

I have Chastised the man to my Satisfaction. Instruct him that he will do no work and receive no pay for the next two days, but is to attend meals. And should retire himself to the church and the Grace therein to be found, to spend the time in contemplation of better behaviour to be maintained hereafter. 

 

When you have a moment, also, I was originally seeking your aid in obtaining the land tax ledger from four years prior, specifically the sum assessed against the eastern regions of the Estate, as I was unable to locate them in the Library archives. If you would be so kind as to leave them on my desk, and to see that a maid stops by to clean, I would be most obliged. 

 

Please also accept my sincerest apologies for intruding on a matter you were handling with perfectly satisfactory aplomb. I was fulfilling a previous obligation and had no desire to undermine you. 

 

Gratefully, 

 

James Barnes

Shifting, he reached for a taper, lighting it off the oil lamp and sticking the other end between his teeth so that he could settle a chunk of wax in a spoon and hold it above the flame until it was molten enough to pour on the page. He set the spoon down and blew out the flame, before wriggling the signet off his pinky with his teeth and impressing it into the wax to seal the missive closed. 

There. That was handled then. Good, because his hand had been shaking near severely enough to burn himself in the process of sealing the note. James blew out a weary sigh, and dropped his hand to indulge in one more caress of sweat-dampened curls. One more, which became a second and third for how calming the motion was. 

“You are to take this to Mister Wilson for me. He will instruct you further when he has read it.” 

The words betrayed his exhaustion just as much as the tremors running through him as the once-soldier grimly considered exactly how the effort would cost, simply for the act of getting a traitorously feeble body back to his bed. There, he could curl up and wait to discuss with his physician why exertion with his right arm had made the left one feel as if someone was taking a hammer to every bone within his wrist and forearm. But the journey down the hall felt like one of miles rather than mere yards, even to consider. James closed his eyes, playing with a delicate blond lock to let the texture distract himself from the pain. Before all at once it got the better of him, left him blundering, tempted into unwise further entanglement in the form of a soft inquiry. 

“Did you have Just Cause for what you did?”

—

Steve had not allowed himself to weep freely in more years than he could remember, but now he couldn’t seem to stop. It took the surprise of the soft words to startle him into lifting his head and looking up with tearful awe. It was not the happiness he’d longed to see on his master’s face, still drawn and weary, but it was kindness enough, and about his mother . He nodded, unable to speak, and screwed his face up to try and regain a little composure. This proved futile. Steve watched the hand descend, uncaring of the reason, only to shiver as it came to rest on his hair. He managed a damp little smile before bowing his head obediently against the broad thigh. 

Through the velvet and wool, the heat of the flesh beneath warmed and soothed him. Were his nose not swollen and clogged, Steve would be able to smell him. With a little adjustment of their positions and clothing, he could press close enough to taste … 

Forcefully, Steve shook the thoughts from his mind, put there no doubt as they had been by the Devil. He would not allow his master’s kindness to be tainted with thoughts of carnal matters, not when the Baron was extending to him the most Christian of forgiveness. Steve nodded fervently in response to the request, not trusting himself to speak. 

The soft scratch of the quill lulled him in spite of the discomfort of the position, and Steve allowed himself to breathe deeply and drift, taking the ease that he could and treasuring the closeness. He didn’t notice that the man had finished until the hand descended again, this time to stroke gently as though he were a favoured pet. Or a lover , whispered a traitorous voice in the back of his mind. Steve reached up to take the letter without lifting his head, unwilling to risk losing a moment of the touch. 

He nodded against the Baron’s thigh in response to the order, tucking the letter into what remained of his waistcoat, and then again in response to the question. “I don’t like doin’ violence m’self,” he murmured, quiet and lilting. “I thought him a friend.” 

Steve tried to sniff and realised that he couldn’t. Reaching for his handkerchief reminded him that it was sodden and bloody. Tears, the Baron might permit on his trousers, but snot was out of the question. Steve made to wipe his nose on his sleeve and then stopped himself. He wasn’t a country lout, but if he lifted his head, something would surely make a mess of them both. 

“May I trouble you for a handkerchief, please, sir?” he asked quietly, well aware that he had no right to be asking anything of the man in the chair. But if the Baron would be kind, would touch him and soothe him at his most wretched, perhaps he would not begrudge Steve another small favour. 

—

“If I ask you a direct question, I would prefer a direct answer.” The warning was faint, for he was too weary to put any steel in it, though it was sincerely meant.

James went silent, contemplating the answer he had been given. The sting of being betrayed. He could pursue his proof of the matter elsewhere, likely. But not right now. Exhaling shakily, he drew his hand away from Stephen as his fingers clenched along with his jaw and squeezed-shut eyes. Because another wave of shattering pain had overwhelmed him, too much to speak past for a moment as he panted shallowly through his nose. When it had ebbed enough to do anything other than bear it, he drew a visibly shaking hand to the pocket of his waistcoat, drawing out a neatly embroidered kerchief to drape across his thigh next to Rogers’ bruised, bloody cheek. 

“I was very good at it,” he said, whisper soft and strained by the agony radiating up and down his left side. “Violence. Purchased commission or not… I spent the latter years of my service on the very front, not in a snug officers’ tent behind the line. I inflicted my share, and suffered it as well. I want nothing to do with it anywhere near me, never again, even some other party’s conflict. It takes my mind back, which takes my body back, and causes pain from the resulting tension.” 

White-faced and shaking was in no way the state he would have preferred to be in, to handle the business of dismissing the servant. But the pain was swiftly worsening rather than improving, the stress and exertion and time lapsed since his last dose of medicine all combining to leave him sweat-soaked and wasted. 

“You should go now,” the Baron said, abrupt, and through gritted teeth as he panted unevenly. It would be a small miracle if he could hold his composure long enough to get privacy. Saying anything unnecessary to the man had been a mistake. This whole damn thing had been a mistake. But there was nothing for it now, as ever, save to endure until the pain finally saw fit to leave him. 

—

Steve fumbled gratefully for the handkerchief and blew his nose as quietly as he could, resolving to treat the stains and have it laundered and returned swiftly. He lifted his head to make the direct answer required of him without slander, but fell silent as the Baron spoke. It was easy to imagine him astride a horse, sabre in hand, young and dashing. His current state, though, was far from that. Steve’s eyes widened in alarm even before the curt dismissal. 

He hauled himself to his feet, the Baron’s pains enough to distract him from his own. “I will go,” he promised fervently. “I will deliver your letter to Mister Wilson straight away, sir, I swear it, only….” Stooped against the desk, Steve considered the shaking, pale figure before him, who was still his lord and master. 

“I beg that you will allow me to he—to accompany you to your chamber first, sir. For the sake of charity. I could not leave you alone like this and have my conscience clear. Please do not ask that of me.” 

Arranging his face in the most abject, beseeching manner he could, Steve snatched up the cane from the desk and steadied it within the Baron’s reach so that he could take hold of it if he wished.

Steve knew better than to touch the man in any way he had not been given leave to or to go to the door and call for aid. But neither could he leave his lord to suffer and perhaps fall or faint in the hallway or worse, alone in his room. Torn, all he could do was to straighten himself painfully, holding out the aid as well as his free hand to let Barnes choose which might be the most acceptable to him.

—

The request earned a scowl, but it was eclipsed by another grimace of pain as he finally gave in and reached across his body, shaking fingers wrapping around remaining meat, a portion only of what had been the upper half of his left arm. It was there he squeezed tightly, bracing himself for the struggle against this fit of sudden, invisible agony. 

The Doctor would not manage to come for hours yet, and when he did, he would see to the man bleeding and bruised first, not the one physically sound but tormented by imaginary pain. As distasteful a prospect as accepting help seemed, just then, they both knew the truth. Even after being beaten for disobedience, his servant dared stand before him, risking further discipline if only to offer the assistance, so great was his need of it. 

“You may walk beside me,” he allowed, gritting the words through clenched teeth when the waves of it paused enough to speak. 

Grimacing, James reached for the hand, clasping it in an iron grip and using it to leverage himself out of the chair. On his feet, he swayed dangerously for a matter of heartbeats, before he found his off-centre balance enough to let go and snatch the cane, and get his weight braced between its steady, still-bloodied tip, and his right leg, the stronger of the two. 

Lurching forward, he forced himself past the desk, settling into a stumbling, swaying gait. For all it most resembled a drunkard’s grace, it was clearly practised, structured such to ensure that when he faltered, the momentum carried him forward rather than bringing him down entirely. Even so, the man at his elbow was a reassurance, particularly as he stopped before the door, and realised he would, for once, have no need of fumbling with the latch and his cane both at once. 

“Get the doors,” he ordered, and when Rogers had, swayed forward once more to step through it and down the hallway, agonising procession that could not end swiftly enough.

The change, once they’d passed the second threshold, was immediate. As if he had held himself together only enough to reach the room. As if, once in the privacy of his own space all stoicism was stolen from him no matter how he tried to cling to it.

The manor lord’s suite itself was meticulously tidy, save for a clotheshorse with a decent handful of garments tossed over it and the bed, which was unmade and looked like three men had tussled in it. And despite how otherwise orderly and well cared for the possessions and furniture remained, the stench of illness – sweat and bitter medication and stale misery – hung just as thick as the dreary dimness from the heavy, fully drawn curtains. 

Cane clattering messily in between his steps, James made a stumbling beeline to his beside table, impatiently wresting the cork from the dark bottle sitting there with a low pop. A spoon clenched between his teeth, he measured out the droplets, focus wholly narrowed to the difficulty of doing so without spilling. Until he could set the bottle down and swallow a spoonful of the tincture, which made him shake as violently as a newly wet dog from the bitter displeasure of its taste. 

It would help, though, and only with that promise of relief did James remember he had an unwanted audience. He turned and frowned deeply at having been observed in his weakness, shooting an attempt at a glare that ended up just looking like exhausted dismay. 

“There. I am to my room. I have had medicine. You may go.” 

He did not wait to be obeyed, not even bothering to turn, as shaking hands scrabbled at his cravat and buttons as if to claw himself free of the clothing. Dropping each piece in a hasty pile by the bedside, his back to the man in clear dismissal, the Baron let out a hiccupy, frustrated noise of pain, wrestling with his waistcoat buttons so that he could get his shirt off, get away anything touching his skin which made it so horrifically sensitive and prone to summoning up suffering that was not truly there. 

—

Steve found himself watching the pale hand strong in his own instead of the face grimacing in pain at the necessity of it. The clammy pressure was gone far too soon, leaving Steve to stumble to the office door and hold it open. Teeth gritted against his own pains, Steve stuck close to his master’s left side, hands behind his back, making no move to offer support where it wasn’t welcome, no matter how he might want to. 

He was allowed to open doors, it seemed, and no more. Careful to keep his eyes down to allow the Baron the privacy of his own chamber, Steve nevertheless found himself reeling as the stale, sour odour of the place invaded his nostrils, bringing with it a wave of memory. He fetched up against the lintel, grasping it to stay upright as his face screwed up in a desperate attempt to prevent more tears from falling. 

Scrabbling sounds from the bed told him that the Baron must be making haste to undress, something he had no business being present for. He had been dismissed, in any case. Had a letter to carry and a doctor to fetch. This was no time to be sliding down the wall feeling like he was fourteen again and had a different doctor to fetch, one he had no means to pay, who might not come. Who hadn’t come in the end until it was far too late. 

“Oh, God,” Steve muttered against the painful pressure on his welts and the far more painful regression to the bitterest misery he’d ever felt. “Oh, Jesu.” 

He covered his face with his hands once more and fought for any scraps of composure that might be within his grasp. He needed to be on his feet, up and walking to Mister Wilson’s office and then to the village to fetch Doctor Banner, but whether it was his mind or his sore limbs that refused to cooperate, Steve could not say. Perhaps they had both betrayed him, leaving him slumped in a miserable, gasping huddle beside his master’s bedroom door. 

—

Cravat and collar were off, and none too soon for how he hated the bloody things, able to breathe so much easier without them. The waistcoat was shucked easily next. Stepping around the scarlet fabric of his dressing gown where it popped around his feet, he had just reached for his shirt to yank it from his breeches when he heard a low, agonised noise from behind him, and was immediately taken back to a half dozen battlefields, holding a score of his little soldiers as they suffered and bled and died.

There was a boy behind him, on the ground and sobbing out utter misery, and he had no idea why. The wounds maybe, finally having the better of the sorry lad. But when he turned, the look of devastation on that beautiful face— 

Turning, a little wildly, the Major’s gaze scored dizzily across his room, trying to figure out what the devil had gone so wrong as to trip this off. Finding no immediate source of help or further understanding, he took a half-step closer, only to gasp at the suddenly returned awareness of his own discomfort as the fabric of the shirt he wore rubbed at his remnant unbearably. 

Well, if nothing else, maybe the shock of seeing his Master Undressed would do it. 

Having just swallowed the stuff moments earlier, he had only a little time before the full spoon’s dose got the better of him. But perhaps it would be enough, to do this, at least. He needed to. 

Summoning memories of prior trials, how he had summoned up from the deepest reaches of himself the capacity to push through agony and fatigue alike, the Major reached and yanked the thin shirt the remainder of the way over his head and off. Then limped clumsily over to Stephen Rogers, roughly dropping to his knees in front of the young man to place himself abruptly right in his face. To speak, with an officer’s bark softened into velvet with an iron core. 

“You aren’t there.”

The words were absolute. A statement of unquestionable reality, though low, and forced out past the pain choking up his throat and leaving him unsteadier by the moment. 

“Wherever you went, you are no longer there. You’re here, in Lehigh Park, and that trial is over.” 

Fumbling, James reached and took the young man’s left hand, pressing it flat and firm against his breast, over his heart, fingers extended at such an angle as to allow the other to feel his blood beating through his veins rapidly beneath the soft hollow of his throat. 

“Do you feel that? This is real. You’re here with me now. I’m real. Not any of the rest. Take a deep breath now, come on, breathe in for me.” 

Following his own advice sent anguish flaring through the muscles of his chest and back where he had earlier overexerted himself wielding the cane. It left James lolling forward, his forehead brushing an equally sweat-slick brow as he forced them both through slow, deep breaths, his hand clamped over Rogers’ own to hold it in place. 

“Stephen. You’ll be alright now, that’s it. Breathe with me, there’s a good lad. It’s over, all done with, and this here now is real. You’re doing so well, darling, just like that.” 

He could feel the drug pulling at him, gentling the shakes rattling his hand where it lay clasped atop a work-roughened one. The familiar haze was there, now, oblivion’s relief nipping at the tattered edges of his mind, wrenching a low grunt from him. Pale eyes closed as he leaned that much harder into the places they were joined, the hand bracing his chest and the brow sweat slick against his own. The endearment had slipped out for it, but no dying soldier had ever complained, and perhaps this boy wouldn’t either. 

“You’re alright, there you go. Tell me now, you can do that, mm? Tell me where you are, Stephen. Tell me what’s real.”

—

Steve gasped, overtaken by memory and the smell in his nostrils, utterly at the end of his faculties mental and physical. One hand scrabbled up the wall in a desperate attempt to pull himself up, but it could find no purchase, and his legs had no strength left in them after the beating. Steve tried to gather them under himself to no avail, stopping his twitching only when a soft thud came in front of him. 

He stared wretchedly at the figure in front of him, surprised enough to choke on a sob. He’d scarce covered his mouth with one hand only to find the other seized and held to the warm, bare chest of the man in front of him. His master, kneeling before him, half-naked.

Steve blinked hard at his tears and struggled to speak, to say that he was well and the Baron must not trouble himself, but no words came. They were so close, touching bare skin at two points. The shock of it, together with the quiet commands, startled Steve out of his misery enough to have him sucking in deep breaths as ordered. To be called a good lad and darling , to have his Christian name used as though they were intimates while they breathed each other’s air—it was unthinkable, all of it. And yet there the Baron was, prompting him to speak.

“I am…in your home, your chamber. My mother is dead, not dying. I am—I must beg your pardon, sir. What came over me— may I trouble you to open the windows, please?” 

One word choked out after another as Steve trembled and stilled and recovered himself enough to realise that he’d asked a one-armed man in great pain to struggle with heavy curtains and shutters.

“Don’t!” he whispered quickly. “It makes no matter. I will—the air—” 

Steve fumbled for his borrowed handkerchief to clean himself up once more until he could blink at the Baron with shame-faced, reddened eyes, recognising the smell of laudanum bittersweet on his breath. 

“You are so kind. I thought you must be. Kind and sad and so lovely.” He stroked his hand a little down the thin, scarred chest, and then withdrew it reluctantly. “I am well, or will be, and you are not. Let me help you to your bed, sir, and there ease you however I can, as you have eased me.”

—

“I could not, even if I desired.” 

The admission was blunt, weighed down by deep fatigue over just how many things it was true of. He had made no move to indulge the request, not even a twitch. 

“Shh , it’s alright. You went somewhere else. It would be hypocritical to fault you for it.” 

The hand released Stephen’s own in order to once more gently soothe damp curls out of his face, sweep over his brow in a practised gesture: an officer’s best attempt to send a dying boy off with an echo of his mother’s love. 

“You’ll be alright. It… this is no place to linger. I should never have let you near it. Just get yourself together and then you can go.” 

The distress, ironically enough, was easy to handle, bleakly familiar. The compliments, by contrast, earned a sharp flinch from him, and the touch no reaction at all in comparison to how utterly he recoiled at the gentle praise. It had been enough to pull him out of Stephen’s space entirely, wobbling back on his knees and yanking his hand to himself as if burned. 

For a moment, suspended, he stared across at the young man, stricken. And let slip his thought audibly, purely unintended. 

“You remind me of them so much. All my little soldiers…the boys I couldn’t bring home.” 

As if only then realising what he had said, and aloud at that, all at once, some core of steel seemed to snap. A last impulse out of sheer self-defence, and tragic for it as he tried to shut up his face and heart and body all, find the cold, unfeeling mask that was the Baron and don it once more. An effort that failed nigh completely for how the drug stripped him of composure and sense both. 

“Go.” 

Little tears had welled, shame brightest of all the myriad emotions on his face, the fear and residual pain battling for second. 

“There is nothing that eases me,” came as another accidental admission, tinged with deep bitterness that flickered once, brilliant as lightning, and then was gone, buried under sheer exhaustion and the sedation of the drug. 

“So please. Just go. Deliver my letter… let them tend you.” He could see the fomenting argument, and it was enough to inspire a flash of temper, as in his spite James found strength to scramble, woozy and anguished, to his feet. 

“I said go. Get out!” 

It was a command, snapped like thunderclap to cut off what had turned out to be a plea, not an argument, even as he took a handful of stumbling steps back to collapse in the bed. Curtains undrawn around it, feet still skippered, his hand sealed over his face as he curled in a ball on one corner of the large bed and offered his servant nothing more than a pale, scarred back, the knobs of his spine pressing visibly under the skin to adorn it. 

He had done all he could and then some, and was losing the fight against the soporific haze that disconnected him from bodily agony and reality both, left him wandering a reality comprised of illusions and nightmares he could only half-feel in the twilight gloom of his chamber. Until it finally would drag him all the way under and allow the too-brief respite of velvet oblivion, loathsomely beloved, for as long as possible. Until he woke to the disappointment of waking and was left once more to shoulder his burdens and try to carry on. 

—

He had said the wrong thing entirely, and too much of it to boot, Steve thought, watching the Baron recoil. He made haste to stuff his hands into his pockets so that the man need fear no further advance, and vowed silence to himself. The memory of the soft touch and softer words still lingered, though. Steve forced himself to set them aside so that he might gather what remained of his faculties and strength as ordered.

He pushed himself up to his knees first and then to his feet slowly and painfully, feeling stiff cloth pull over broken skin where blood had dried, never taking his eyes from the Baron’s stricken, tearful face. A promise to return, to help, to do something useful was forming on the tip of Steve’s tongue when the thundered order came. 

Steve quailed under the words as he never had under the blows the Baron had delivered, dropping his eyes and making the best bow that he could with stiffened limbs. Backing toward the door, Steve dared a glance at the huddled figure in the bed who would allow himself no comfort and felt no hope of peace. Exhausted resolve rose up in him, and he stumbled down the seemingly endless corridor to Mr. Wilson’s office. He rapped sharply on the door, and without waiting for it to open called, “Sir, the Baron required me to deliver you a letter, and then I must beg your leave to go and fetch the Doctor for him.”

—

Damn , but it had been such a terrible day. The Baron had been late to rise though stable enough when he did, enough that there had for a little while been the promise of a rather good day, actually. Then, there had been commotion downstairs during the servants’ lunch, which he had been summoned to just in time to watch the newest man in the house lay a weighty fist full into the face of one of the most troublesome. And from there, things had just gotten increasingly more complex and sordid and headache-inducing. 

Rumlow’s mien had held surliness, no apology at all, and a full measure of resentment at hearing he’d take assignment of the estate’s least pleasant duties for the next two weeks, the first of them without pay, and have a formal Mark put on his record. But even after he had finished sorting all such arrangements and dismissed the one perpetrator, the other and their Lord were still tucked away in the Baron’s study, leaving Sam increasingly ill at ease as time stretched on into late afternoon and he saw neither of them. 

Until the sight of Rogers all at once,  eyes red rimmed, face bruising deeply, his garments even further mussed and stained red around the thighs had alarm flashing bright and blaring across Sam’s face as he stood, snatching the letter the moment it appeared, and looking at the fellow with a glare so thunderous that it may as well have been borrowed from the Baron himself on his worst days. 

“Lang was dispatched to fetch Doctor Banner nearly an hour ago, and he will be here shortly,” Sam informed stiffly, eyeing the wax seal and resisting the urge to roll his eyes at Lord Buchanan’s disposition for the melodramatic. A sealed letter, as if they didn’t near live in each other’s coat pockets, and frequently yell back and forth between their studies rather than bother with any more proper communication. Any amusement there was to be found, however, disappeared as he read the contents of the missive. All the more so as he saw the state the Baron’s handwriting had been in, coupled with the sight of Rogers before him. 

“You are going to explain to me what has just transpired between you and Lord Buchanan, and what you’ve done to leave him in sorry enough shape to write this. And then you are going to wait here, until I can deal with him, and then you.” 

Why James had insisted his servant be treated first, Sam didn’t know. But it was a bullshit order, and the Baron could harangue him for ignoring it later, because Sam was going to treat it like one. No matter how alarming Rogers’ condition was, their employer came first. 

“I will send Doctor Banner to him first,” he said, in hopes of perhaps removing the wild look from the young man’s eyes. Perhaps their lord had been stricken by one of his fits. Perhaps it was not truly as terrible as it looked. But ignoring the sour feeling in his gut had never ended well for him, and Samuel Wilson was by no means about to start it up now. Sighing, he poured a little cup of water and offered it, eyeing Rogers sternly. 

“Speak. Just the facts. What did he do to you, and what state did you leave him in?”

—

Steve was fast reaching the end of his ability to withstand harsh words and looks, even from those men he respected. There was no temper left in him, only a weary sadness and a sense that he had been found wanting so often that day as to have very little hope of being thought of otherwise in the future. And his legs disliked being stood on so much that he could scarcely argue with them. 

The accusation from Wilson hurt, since Steve had grown to respect the man deeply and felt deeply grateful to him for the variety of work he’d been set to. The man was unfailingly fair, and to ask what Steve had done to the Baron seemed quite unfair. 

Eyes down, Steve did his best to stand erect as he was questioned, nodding dully at the decisions made, and raising his eyes only to look at the cup offered to him. Gingerly he took it and drank, wetting his dry throat enough to say quietly: “He struck me, he bade me write a letter to the Lady who sent me here, and when I had done that he offered me his forgiveness. I helped him to his chamber and from there came directly to you, sir. He is unwell in body, strained from punishing me. In his room he drank a spoonful of tincture of laudanum, then took to his bed.” Steve considered what else he might say carefully, weighing the Baron’s trust against that of the man who stood in front of him, remembering that he had been asked for facts, not opinions. 

“He is very unwell,” Steve finished, weighting the words. “Please go to him, sir. I will not stir. I cannot.” 

—

Sam had stood, taut and accusatory, only for the first statement to replace suspicion with shock and even perhaps a little horror, though it was quickly shuffled behind a blank mask. Less because it was unusual for a military man to resort to physical discipline, and more because the Baron was in no fit shape to be striking anyone. The more he listened, glancing at the young man’s body, pieces of half-knowledge began to fit together into a grim picture, and by the time Rogers made his soft, plaintive request, it was clear that the hostility of earlier had been a thin cover for sheer concern, on behalf of both of them. 

“All right,” Sam said, finally, and did not swear the way he deeply wished to be able to. He exhaled, gathering himself, and then looked at the miserable fellow before him. “All right. We’ll sort it then.” 

If James Barnes had granted forgiveness that explicitly (something that his head almost ached to consider from how strange an action it seemed compared to what he knew of his employer’s nature, namely, to say very little of what counsel he kept with himself), then Sam could not in good conscience treat this man as a transgressor further. Not when, by accounts, he had come humbly and obediently despite his own suffering out of concern for the man who was his duty to serve and Sam’s, alike. 

“All right,” he said once more, and shifted, opening a little discrete door off the side of his study. “Come here. I have a little cot, which you may lie and rest on until Doctor Banner is able to attend you. I will go and see to the Baron right now.” 

Swift, but not unkind, Sam herded Rogers into the little closet he occasionally napped in, offering his hand out as aide until the young man could lie on his belly. He brought the cup of water, once more filled, then unfolded a blanket and draped it over Rogers’ shoulders, before simply laying the letter by him. “You may as well read it, save me the time.”

With a mild pat on the shoulder, Sam left, leaving the young man to lie still and recover a little, even as the sound of his footsteps broke into an ungentlemanly sprint down the hall to the Baron’s room, where Sam knocked once and then let himself in without waiting for a reply.

The next noise in the hall was a commotion some half-hour later, bags brought up and a new voice giving quiet, firm directions, then conversing with Wilson, the exact words not quite carrying into the steward’s office. Finally, some time later, Sam led the two senior footmen through, opening the door to where  the latter of the two objects of his present vexation lay languishing, the first having finally been dealt with. 

“—in here. Help get him to the Doctor’s suite, and Hoskins, if you could retrieve a spare set of clothing for him after.” He rapped his knuckles against the lintel, to summon what attention the penitent could be roused to offer. 

“Rogers. We’re going to move you now. Walker and Hoskins will help you walk. Doctor Banner has finished with Lord Buchanan for the moment and has time to attend you and Rumlow, and will see you, first. Come now, up you get.”

—

Steve dared search the steward’s face as it softened, reassured of the man’s kindness and care for his Master, though he deeply envied the friendship the two men shared. 

“Thank you, sir,” he whispered, barely audible, and made no protest as he was herded into the alcove. There had never been a more welcome sight than the little bed, though Steve looked to Wilson for approval before easing stiffly into it. Bending to remove his boots was out of the question, but he did his best to keep them off of the coverlet. 

Wilson’s touch was so gentle as to bring tears springing again to Steve’s eyes, though he hid them in the pillow until he heard the man’s hasty footsteps recede. Being tended to, covered and brought water, and trusted to read a letter that had not been written to him, these were courtesies that Steve hardly understood in his daze of pain and exhaustion. 

He took the paper and peered at it in the dim light, managing only the first few lines before he had to stop and dash at his eyes. The Baron had ordered that no effort be spared in his treatment, and that the doctor see him even before his master. Two days off, even without pay, was more a luxury than a punishment, since he was still allowed meals and not confined to the servant’s quarters. Steve sighed and tucked the letter away in his waistcoat. 

In spite of all his efforts to remain vigilant, he was snoring quietly in a light doze when the sound of voices and footsteps woke him. He started up off the cot, landing in a tangle of stiff limbs in the floor. Steve was making a resolute attempt to stand when the three men found him scowling more at his own weakness than the intrusion.

“I can walk,” he protested, in spite of all evidence being to the contrary. Steve had previously found the two senior footmen aloof but not overtly discourteous. They usually kept their own company in the evening, but had won two shillings off of Steve in a game of whist one night. This was more due, he thought in hindsight, to having Rumlow as his partner, not to any cheating on the part of the two older men. Steve allowed them to haul him to his feet with a reluctant scowl and a red face at being seen in such a state. He didn’t much like the smirk Walker gave him as he was being hauled down the corridor, but Steve was too tired and too chastened to make anything of it. He reluctantly gave up the key to his chest to Hoskins, asking that his sewing kit and commonplace book be brought as well.

The doctor, as it happened, was a broad, rumpled man a head shorter than Steve and by his guess about twice his age, who seemed to take no notice of his scowling, only ordering Steve to strip that he might be examined. Steve, who had never had a fondness for doctors or apothecaries, and indeed held a very dim view of most as quacks and charlatans, protested that if he might only have a dash of spirits on a clean cloth and a jar of leeches he might tend to himself.

Banner appeared unmoved by these protests and responded only by reaching out and setting Steve’s nose to rights firmly enough that he howled. Furious but able to breathe properly again, Steve peeled off his clothes and bent over for the second time that day.

When Hoskins returned with his things an hour later, he found Steve lying on his front, his nose in one of the doctor’s medical texts, given to him by Banner in an attempt to put an end to his patient’s pestiferous questions. 

Steve accepted the parcel gratefully, waiting until Hoskins had gone to be sure that his five gold guineas were still safely stitched into the lining of his spare waistcoat where he’d put them. He went back to puzzling over the Latin-labelled diagrams in the book to distract himself from the pain of wrapped joints and stinging welts until he could no longer keep his eyes open. Woken only long enough to drink two pints of broth, Steve slept fitfully through the night and late into the next morning.

Chapter Text

Screams of horses and dying boys. Cannon fire and half-frozen fingers fumbling musket balls and the ring of blades clashing. The perpetually-accumulating bruise at the soft join of his shoulder where his rifle kicked violently into it with every shot. 

“—don’t know. He said he was keeping a promise. But I agree. The man had no business—”

Hands, not unfamiliar or unkind but still unwanted. The sensation of his body being carefully lifted and unfurled from how he’d balled himself up to instead lie on his back like a proper invalid. And then, cool fingers, probing at the nasty mess of scarring where his left arm ended. 

The black of night, creeping across frigid wastes where the land had been ruined by mortars a half-dozen times over already, insufficient treeline and bright moon leaving his skin crawling wherever the light touched it. 

“—inflammation, but no injury worse than that. Nothing split open, and the stump is dry and clean. We won’t know until he wakes, either way. You said there was anoth—” 

Knowing he wouldn’t come back with the full company he’d set out with, but that those losses would cease to matter to everyone but him if they could just get the packet of letters bound up in oilskin and cradled to his breast beneath his plainclothes back to the men who could use the intelligence it contained to change the course of the battle in their favour. 

A brief swell of nausea, that now-familiar companion, followed by stumbling effort to make it into the bin in time. The soup he had earlier forced down for a light luncheon reappearing as bile scorched the back of his throat, a singular and shockingly real sensation amid the haze of numb, cottony disconnect. 

The emanating reek from the bin lessened at once, through no effort of his own, the sound of footsteps half-registering as someone took it away. As another someone pressed a cup of water to his lips that he refused for fear of the retching starting right back up again. And then there was just the stale sweat of his body and the residual needle-prick sensation all through his left forearm and hand and fingers that not even the laudanum could chase away fully, until the dreams dragged him under once more.

Bones in his fingers, freshly shattered, and pain racing all up and down his arm and into his chest, horrific enough to enmesh itself into his memory and marrow alike, still haunting him even once those fingers were long since lost somewhere amoungst the fields of war. 

Oppressive and surrounding, the air was thick and rank with blood and tar and newly flamed steel, and the insensate haze of pain more than the mind could bear as he became one of the crying, helpless lost boys in a noisy surgeon’s tent begging for his mother, who could not, and never would again, come to him with comfort. 

Chapter Text

All at once he woke, consciousness crashing upon him like being doused in frigid water as he gasped and sat up in his bed, only to groan out loud as aching stiffness assaulted his right side and prickling discomfort his left. They left him flopping back amidst the freshly bitter awareness that he was awake, himself once more, with the drugs worn off enough for him to both think and feel Everything. 

Time had passed, he could feel that in his body, too, though how much was hard to say. A day, perhaps, or most of one, given the nature of the light. He had taken too great a dose in his haste, and slept overlong for it. 

Now, though, came the reset. A clockwork rewound and ticking down once more, timing the race between his need to have his own mind and ability to act and his need for relief from the pain. A vicious, inescapable cycle. 

Bruce Banner was there beside him.

The realisation kept him from sinking back down into the familiar morass of self-pity and frustration waiting just on the periphery of his awareness. Moments of clarity, especially while he was just sedated just enough that the pain did not impair his mind either, could scarcely afford to be wasted. 

“It grows worse,” he croaked. “The pain that is not truly there.” 

As if the more his body healed, the more he was able to do without a debilitating sear of pain from the healing scarring where the lower half of his left arm had been lost to him, the more the divine had to send torment to ensure he was suffering apropriately despite the end of his proper Convalescence. 

“It felt like hammers again. That was why I—” 

“You beat a clerk severely enough to turn his legs black.” 

From anyone else, the words might have earned a flinch at the weight of condemnation levied. Yet judgement was absent from his physician’s voice, which instead bore a note of terrible curiosity, audible enough to drown out any attempt to scold. 

“How long were you on your feet? Did it not set your balance askew? How did the pain differ in each half, and when did each begin?” 

For a moment, the Baron stared. And then began answering each question as best he could remember, blinking through the realisations even as he gave voice to them. He had been moving around for nearly an hour. Varying levels of physical exertion and feats of balance he would ordinarily shy far away from. All with the cane in hand, but not wielded to support his body that it might remain upright. It was… progress. Notably so. And yet. 

“What does it matter that my body heals, when I cannot escape this torment without reason?”  A burden he deserved no reprieve from, for his failings, yes, but still one he grew loathesome of as it sat, chieftain of all his present woes. “You said it would get better.” 

“No. I said it would become easier to understand its nature and source as the other reasons for your pains healed, were you to survive them. Which is true. If you can clearly separate the ache from wielding a cane from when the other sensation started, then perhaps muscular tension in general is not always the source.” 

It was precisely the conversation he had summoned the physician to himself to have. But just then, it was enough to earn a stare of pure ire from James, frustration radiating at how the other man saw him as medical curiosity nearly more than a patient or friend and benefactor. How Banner could be so detatched, infinitely calm and unflappable in the face of the sheer degree of confoundedness and distress it caused James to know at any moment he might be taken by another fit and reduced to nothingness by it. 

“...You said I was to learn to take less of it, the tincture. It has been nearly a year, and if anything, I must take more. Pain I can endure, but this—” He shuddered, and shook his head. “Find me some other way to bear it. Or what good am I? I’ll waste away in this bed of poppy dreams, and may as well give the Estate to my sister’s husband now.” 

“As you are aware, my Lord, I continue to seek your highest good. It benefits no one to see you in such a state. Those I have consulted with, similar to my recommendations to you already, suggest hot compresses or cold water on the site of the removal, so as to offer distraction. And I have further prepared an aide for you to try: a cap, so as to protect the scarring, with fine silk inside and a treated cotton which has some ability to offer compression and thereby encourage circulation where the veins were rejoined, in hopes of preventing physical discomfort from exacerbating the fits.” 

“...”

“You must keep record for me, if the use of it aids you.”

“Very well. Then I will wash, and you may show me this cap, and any other notes to be given on the preparation of the compresses my staff should know,” he hesitated again, and eyed the doctor with gaunt features unsubtly drawn with fresh guilt. 

“The boy… he will recover well?” 

The Baron’s features tightened further at the look of inquiry that earned him. But after a moment his physician nodded, contemplatively. 

“The wounds were left with care,” Banner said, and locked eyes with the Baron a long moment even as the soldier refused to answer the question being silently asked of him. 

“I sterilized them, and applied leeches to drain away the bruising. Your man, Wilson, informed me you gave him two days, but by my recommendation, he ought to have four, perhaps five, if the injuries are to heal with no lasting detriment. With rest and the compresses I have left for him, he will be well enough, provided he can avoid such injuries recurring in his future. Wilson has him convalescing in the suite you provided for me, where I recommend he remain through the end of the week.”  

Scowling briefly, the Baron nodded, ill-able to conceal his relief. “The man’s conduct is his own, and I have given him every opportunity to avoid them. It is my fervent hope we shall not trouble you with such a matter, ever again, Doctor.” 

After that, the conclusion of their business was simple enough. Banner had done all he could for both the Baron and his young man, leaving instructions to the kitchen for the herbs and nature of the water to be heated, and to Wilson and the few staff with some training in care of minor hurts to apply them as needed. It would have to be enough. 

And as for James… his hourglass had yet to to wholly run dry of sandgrains. 

A hot bath called for and the cleansing of sweat and illness from his body during it were almost worth the effort of having to undress and once more dress fully after. The little sleeve, more delicate than the starched linen and rasping wool of Clothes, pressed almost comfortably around his remnant how his physician had settled it there. But it was then that memory caught, finally, as he stared at himself in the looking glass reflection, and when looking down saw a sleeve that had already been neatly sewn up, his shirt and coat both. Leaving no need for pins or struggling or flapping, useless, empty sleeves. 

After a long moment’s pause, he brought the garment to his nose and inhaled deeply. Only to freeze as suspicion gave way to certainty, sense memory clicking into place to confirm; he knew that scent. Knew exactly what hands had so nimbly mended his things, and eased his beloathed daily task of dressing. Long fingered, calloused, pale hands. That had mere days prior been laid out on his desk, should he wish to shatter the bones in them for—

And there went another round of nausea, heading off any willingness to attempt another meal. He had records to find, if Sam had thusly received his letter, and likely judgemental stares from the man himself to fend off. But perhaps… perhaps he would spare a moment to confirm. So when he was dressed and steady enough to, the Baron gathered up his cane and limped quietly down the hall to a familiar suite, rapping on the door lightly, and then letting himself in before an answer could be given to see for his own eyes the state of the wounds he had created. 

—

Steve started at the knock on the door, not one of those he’d become familiar with over the past two days, and reached to twitch his shirtail over as much of his lower body as he could reach. He couldn’t remember ever having spent so long in bed, but the Doctor had silenced his protests about being able to walk by taking the bone saw out of his surgical kit and asking whether Steve thought it was better to have one leg or none at all. He’d subsided into sullen silence after that until he’d finished the first slim volume of anatomy and had to ask if the doctor had any in English. Steve had been left three in exchange for a promise that he would neither stand nor put pressure on his bruises for three full days, which he had given without very much fuss.

The books were slow going, though, even in English, so Steve had propped one up against the headboard to study, open to a well-labelled diagram of musculature that he wanted to commit to memory, and was busying his hands with sewing, both his own mending and the project that he hid beneath his pillows whenever anyone else was in the room. 

Craning his head around to see who had come in, an expression equal parts surprise and pleasure crossed his face, though he felt caught out, half-naked and indolent in bed while his master stood. There was no help for it, Steve decided, but to be as mannerly as he could and hope that the Baron would not take offence.

“Good morning, sir,” he said cheerfully. “You must forgive me for not rising or making my obedience. I have given the good doctor my word of honour that I will not before Sunday unless the house catches fire, and even then he said I must walk very slowly.” 

Giving an expressive shrug, he indicated the chair next to the bed that Mrs. Parker had brought in and left when she departed, satisfied that he was mending as well as could be expected. 

“You may sit if you like. Mister Wilson gave me the letter you sent him by me to read, and I must confess I have not gone to the chapel yet, but I have prayed.” He pulled the rosary out from beneath his shirt and showed it, realising as he did so that it was hardly good manners to prattle on about himself instead of asking after his visitor. 

“Are you well today, sir? Doctor Banner would not tell me.”

—

For a long moment upon his entrance to the room, the Baron had been momentarily struck still and dumb, arrested by the sight of the young man. Specifically, the sight of long, bare legs stretched out atop the quilt, sudden certainty that Stephen Rogers was naked from the shirt down so as to allow his wounds to heal. 

It was the way of things. And yet, for the millenia contained within those few stuttered heartbeats, he could no more tear his eyes away from acres of freckled, milk-white skin than he could undo the mottled purple bruising staining it, just visible beneath the thin shirt. Leaving him torn between his current vision and memory of the one he had been presented with when Rogers dropped his trousers and bent over some days prior, how the position had offered a little flash of everything, far more even than the man’s current state. 

Bugger and bother it, he really was a mess over this. 

The polite greeting went ignored even as James snapped out of his daze to instead stare intensely. Now-sharp eyes took in the sight of the medical textbook with confusion, only to then latch onto the sight of thread and a needle, confirmation enough to cause him to prowl closer and perch lightly on the edge of the chair. So as to sniff, briefly, and validate for himself once and for all that it had been no mere  trick of the laudanum or his imagination alone. 

“It was you, then, after all,” the Baron said without preamble, accusatory, but lacking the cold rage that he had allowed to reign him during their last meeting. Leaving him presently landed somewhere betwixt indignance and confusion.

“You’re the one that’s been fixing my shirts.” 

The evidence was there before both their eyes, undeniable. He braced his cane between his knees and reached to snatch the sewing project, careful not to disturb anything around it, comparing neat lines of stitching there to the little line holding his jacket sleeve together, neatly tailored around the stump of his left arm. Plain proof, heading off any sort of denial. 

“Why?” 

That was what he had come seeking after, anyhow. The Baron’s face betrayed the intensity of his interest, bright even as confusion flickered in equal pace beside it. For all he wanted to be displeased about the pity, he could not seem to quite manage it. Or to look away from how neatly the garment fit. 

There had been no sight nor sound of the young man in his room. Those things which had come back mended were articles recently worn, those he had sent to have the sweat and bile and worse washed from them. Only a few pieces, for it had only been a week and some spare days. Yet those few had near immediately caught his notice. He paused, and then held up his hand, brow furrowing as he answered his own question. 

“Sam—” with a cough, he corrected himself, “Mister Wilson put you up to this, did he not? Or, aided you, somehow? I told him it was no matter. But you’ve made no measure of me.” Which was the precise business he had desired to avoid by his refusal to have a tailor come to him. Someone taking precise notation with tape and pins of the exact dimensions of the fragment of his arm that remained in contrast to what it should have been… had sounded miserable. And yet his garments were corrected near perfectly, as if his body had been like this all along. And for all that he had come in meaning to put an end to it, as he parted his lips to voice the words… they would not come. 

Because. It was nice not to have to worry about the pins. To have shirts that fit him. When combined with the sleeve from Banner, the lack of fabric flopping about beneath the remnant left him nearly forgetting, for some moments while he read letters earlier, that anything was amiss or missing at all. 

“You look better,” he said, again cutting off any response without a care for manners.  His gaze skimmed down, once, before jerking back to Stephen’s face like a rake caught out, to observe his featuresonce more, before the Baron’s own lit with a new expression. 

Humour. Tinted faintly bitter at the corners but not cold, his smile slowly emerged from hiding and unfolded into sly, sharp-edged wit, all slanted mouth and flash of white, cunning teeth. 

“Well. If the pain alone does not deter you, perhaps the boredom of Convalescence will make the lesson stick, hm?” The words carried a knowing sort of air, as if they were sharing the joke together, for having both had the experience of being bedbound. “I ought to take your books and entertainments that you experience it fully, or else we shall find ourselves here again.” 

Despite the snorted little threat, he made no move for either, instead neatly handing back the sewing project and rising, as if having ascertained his answer and determined there was no changing the state of things, he had determined the investigation sufficient then and there. 

“No more plotting behind my back with my seneschal,” the Baron ordered, pointing at Steve lightly with the handle of his cane, before leaning his full weight back on it and surveying the room and the set-up of the cot for his servant’s recovery, giving a nod of satisfaction. 

“Only mind that you let alone the sleeve of my dressing gown. That fabric does not bother like the others, and I shall not be parted from it long enough for mending. And bring your measurement down just a finger. Doctor Banner has given me a cap to wear beneath my shirt, which an additional margin would better conceal.” 

Turning, the Baron’s feet took a step to the door, and then halted as he realised he could not just leave without addressing the other matter between them, hesitating on a breath to steel himself before adding, low and rueful, “I did not comport myself well, when I last dismissed you. It was kind of you to offer me aid despite your own suffering. Ensure someone else fetches the garments such that you do not enter my room again. The smell has permeated now, and I fear it will not ever clear. There is no point in you being near it when you need not. No reason to give a man’s demons more ammunition to raise up against him, hm?” 

—

Steve had hoped desperately that his well-wishes would be met in kind, that he would have some news of the Baron’s health, and that they might converse even it were about something as inconsequential as the weather. Half a dozen members of the household had been to visit him the morning before, and most had stayed as long as Doctor Banner would let them. Steve had been happy to receive them, but he hadn’t longed for them to return, nor had they occupied his thoughts as had the man before him. 

As the Baron looked him over with such a strange, inscrutable expression, though, and put questions to him without allowing him the chance to answer, the cheerful expression that Steve had valiantly conjured up deflated somewhat, congealing into one of nervous misery as the Baron seated himself. Try as he might to keep from looking down to see if the cane’s tip was still bloody, Steve couldn’t help darting a few apprehensive glances at it, though he held himself back from flinching outright until the Baron’s hand darted out to take the waistcoat that Steve was trying to repair from him.

He forced his eyes back up to the Baron’s face only to see it draw into something like the way that Rumlow had eyed him after his cruel, bigoted joke. It hurt to watch nearly as much as the insinuations that he had learned nothing or would not unless he forfeited his pastimes. Steve scarcely heard the instructions about the mending or the Baron’s room, occupied with clutching the remains of his best waistcoat and following the movement of the cane’s whalebone head, lest the next time it strike instead of merely point. 

“Please don’t —” he blurted desperately, seeing the Baron’s steps once more turn toward the door. Could the man not see how terribly unfair it was to make taunts and accusations without giving him leave to answer them, to simply depart when he knew that Steve couldn’t get up? Never mind that it was his right. It was wrong . 

Lips shut tight on whatever other abject pleas might escape, Steve pushed himself up on his arms and twisted in bed enough to draw lines of tension and pain on his brow, but when he spoke his voice was soft. “If you will give me leave to answer, sir, I will, and truthfully. I have not plotted , only done the work that I was set to, nor entertained myself, only tried not to be idle. And we will not find ourselves here again, because I gave my word that we would not, and you gave me your forgiveness, though perhaps you don’t remember, having been very much aggrieved at the time. What is wrong with your sleeves? I told Mr. Wilson that I could guess by having looked at you, and I did my best to.” He had been so sure, too, and turned the seams as well as the Baron’s tailor had, Steve thought, and put his best, tiniest stitches in.

Unable to manage both the position and speaking at once, Steve fell silent and reached hastily to tug his shirt down where the movement had uncovered himself. He could not truthfully apologise for his words, because he wasn’t sorry for them, but he could be still and drop his eyes in what he hoped was an appropriately regretful, hangdog expression that the Baron would accept after the torrent of words.

—

Unhappiness was no stranger to him, and fear neither. But just then, for all his aim was not precisely to offer his servant comfort, whilst coming to hunt down an answer for himself, it had not been cruelty either. And to hear desperation, to hear a young man he knew to be prideful in his honour and stoic in his pain and discomfort cry out like that froze the Baron at once, near comical for how swiftly he stilled, motionless save to look back at his servant, and stunned at the vehemence of his plea. 

The movement kept his eyes in place, and it was then, only, searching for an answer as to why he had been delayed rather than bound up in his own contemplations and curiosities, that he began to notice previously overlooked details. The tremor in the young man's hands, white knuckled, protective, clinging to the garment James had torn from him. The way his eyes could barely stray from the cane that had beaten him so severely as to land him here in the first place. The wounded, accusatory look he could not keep from his eyes, like the man himself had just been done some great wrong, rather than asked a handful of questions, apologised to, and teased lightly. 

As if... harm had been done, the Baron thought abruptly, realisation enough to keep him silent as Rogers spoke his piece, defended himself softly yet intently against accusations wholly other than what James had meant to imply. He listened, until the young man was done and turning away to fix his garments for some scrap of modesty, taut and pained and unhappy... and not at all how James had meant to leave him. 

Right, then.

“Here now, you’re all right.” 

The words were softer, chosen, rather than simply allowed to spill from his tongue. Like a man might speak to a startled horse. 

Very slowly, James twisted his fingers to manoeuvre his cane a little, watching, and for the first time understanding, as the young man’s eyes snapped to it. Silent, solemn with intent, he limped two paces back, laid the implement at rest by the door, and then returned to seat himself in the chair so he would not tax his balance, staying on his feet without it. 

“...I should have used something different,” he said finally. “A thing you would not have cause to see so often. I may have a second, somewhere, but even if not;  you will not be struck without fair warning and just cause, by that or anything else. Not by my hand, at least. I give you my word, as a Peer of the Realm and an officer. Lie down now, please. It will stay there, where I cannot reach, and I will stay here, and I shan’t reach for your things again. I should not have threatened to confiscate them, even in jest. It was poorly done, ill-conceived. Please accept this sincere apology for my thoughtlessness.” 

Clearing his throat, to rid himself of the faint bitter taste of apologising, particularly to a servant, James lifted his hand and plainly set it on his knee where Rogers could keep it within sight even if he settled back on his pillows. 

“I did offer you forgiveness, and I meant it. I should not doubt your ability to keep faith when you have already paid your penance for the break in it and promised to do better. Memory is… not always as dependable as I would have it, for me, these days. But I did not forget that. Please also accept my apology for speaking to you so poorly.”  

He studied the young man, and then shook his head, gentling his voice a little after clearing his throat so as to make an explanation for himself, because this servant was new, and did not know him yet, and was still recovering from terrible injury. It would be, had been , cruel to treat him like any other, accustomed to his Lord’s brashness and temper when James was clearheaded enough to treat his time as precious. 

“There is nothing wrong with my sleeves. Or rather, with the sleeves you have tailored for me. More precisely said, all my sleeves have been wrong. Until abruptly, their defect began to appear corrected, without my order or consent or knowledge of who corrected them. The mystery has weighed on me, and I desired to know who had so well sewn them, as to be able to guess my measurements without a single touch. I can find no fault in your work. And I would see that it continue. So, as I said. Would you please add a finger worth of extra fabric when you make your measure going forward, now that you have my leave to keep correcting them, on account of I newly have a cap to wear beneath my sleeve which you did not previously have the knowledge or need to adjust for.”

Much slower, he reached, twisting his fingers to gently tuck a lock of blond hair behind the young man’s ear for him, and to give him a light pat on the shoulder before withdrawing. 

“Thank you for tailoring my shirts,” James concluded simply. “Please exclude my dressing gown from your labours. I am gladdened to see you healing well, and to know that Doctor Banner has cared for you, and you have obediently paid mind to his words to lie and rest. I suspect by comparison, I would make any patient appear an angel, but he surely has been pleased to have one in this house that did not give him a fuss. Let someone know if you run out of things to read or keep busy with. There is a small library here: additional volumes could be brought to you. I do not keep the room locked or the books forbidden from those who can read them and will care for them with appropriate concern. I envy you a convalescence where avoiding idleness is possible. The Boredom was most intolerable to me, and remains so, and I am glad to see you spared the worst of it.” 

—

If Steve’s face had fallen into a series of more and more abject expressions after the Baron first spoke, it underwent an equally drastic and opposite transformation during his reply to what even Steve had to admit had been gross impertinence on his part, the epitome of speaking out of turn. And yet the Baron had replied to it with the same soft, kind voice he’d comforted Steve with two nights previous, had discomfited himself by abandoning his cane to ease Steve’s fears, had made him not one but two apologies, which was two more than he’d had from any other master in his memory. 

Arranging himself as comfortably as he could, Steve watched the Baron watching him, saw clearly the decision made to speak with even more gentleness, to compliment and request where it was his right to order and demand. He tracked the hand stretched out toward him and let his eyes drift closed at the pleasure of the remembered touch here repeated in the light of day. But it was gone too soon, and Steve did his best to compose himself and listen attentively to the unspeakably generous offer of the estate’s library. 

He couldn’t stare wide-eyed with drawn-together, puzzled brows any longer, not when any slight that might have been offered him by the Baron had been covered so readily a hundred times over. Steve reached out with equal slowness and lightly touched the brocade gown where it covered his master’s knee. 

“You’re very kind,” he murmured. “I knew you were. I was only startled when you spoke to me at first. And…you said I was to give direct answers to questions. It is a terrible fault of mine, answering back, though. Perhaps you regret the order already, sir.” 

Smiling faintly at his own attempt at humour, Steve put his mending aside and closed his book, to show that he was happy to give the Baron his full attention. “I’m glad to turn your sleeves. I like sewing. I came to it so young that I scarcely remember learning it. I’m sorry that you’re bored still, sir. I would offer to try and amuse you, but you’d beg me to stop for being so dull at it. I do know one joke, though. Would you like to hear it?”

—

It was done slowly enough for him to see it coming, and so he managed to not flinch when the boy touched him. Only dragged in a very deep inhale and reminded himself there was fabric between his skin and the foreign hand, that he had pressed that very same hand to his own breast mere days earlier, and that if the man had wanted to hurt him, he would have surely done it when James threatened him with a cane the first time in order to spare himself the beating, and that he had not. James himself had nearly decided to settle his own hand atop the interloper, only for the words to startle sudden attention from him, eyes locking with those fixed on him, mismatched shoulders cringing a little as the description was repeated. He was sober, now, though, rather than out of his mind with agony and emotion. And it was therefore only a little flinch, rather than the recoil and harshness he had met the compliment with, the first time it was offered to him.

“I suspect it won’t take long for me to disabuse you of that notion, lad. Ask anyone in the house.” Kind was not a word he was known by, nor had it ever really been, save perhaps by the old women downstairs, back when he was truly a young boy, still tender-hearted. 

James scoffed lightly, adding. “I have many regrets. A mouthy clerk in my Household cannot come anywhere close to the top of that list. Better that you answer and I Know, rather than making assumptions. Only that,” he paused, grimaced, and then smiled humourlessly, “—my time in my right mind is limited. It leaves me with thin patience. You may commiserate with Mister Wilson over being asked for answers and cut off before you can give them, as he suffers it from me entirely more often than any should have to, entirely undeserving.” 

That should have been the end of it, truly. But the young man was putting away his things, and James could hardly leave right after being so clearly made object of the whole of the other man’s attention. And if Rogers preferred company to isolation in his healing, opposite to James himself… he could spare a little said precious time, perhaps. Moreover, the Baron was so taken aback by being offered a jest in return of all things, and curious as to what the nature of it might be, that he could scarcely go before hearing the remainder. 

“I would caution you that I was an officer; if you would attempt to scandalise me for amusement’s sake, there is very little I’ve not heard already.” 

The warning was good natured, though, and wry despite himself rather than mistrustful or accusatory. Sitting back a little, the Baron let the hand on his knee linger, arching an eyebrow at Stephen in silent invitation to speak what he desired, have his attempt at making amusement heard out in full.

—

“My mother taught me better than to repeat lewd jests,” Steve said archly, as though he’d never listened to any told by his fellows and done his fair share of snickering. He screwed his face up in concentration to try and remember the joke exactly as it had been told to him, even though it had made him furious at the time, being at his own expense.

Clearing his throat several times for effect, he began: “There was a priest reading the service once over the body of an Irishman, only the box being closed and the priest being from another village, he didn’t know if it was a man or a woman. So the priest leaned over to the fellow nearest him—all the Irish fellows in jokes are called either Mick or Pat, which is not strictly accurate, because some of them are called Sean, too— in any case, the priest leans over and asks Pat whether the dead person was his brother or his sister. And Pat replies—” 

Here Steve paused for the full effect of the comedy and put on a broad, lilting brogue so that he could say very slowly: “Oh, Father, sure and it’s only a relation.” 

He grinned triumphantly at having remembered the entire thing in the correct order and having told the punchline right, at that, then hastily composed himself so that he could watch the Baron’s reaction.

—

For all that he had no obligation to, the Baron still sat up and paid Steve his full attention, listening attentive and grateful he was presently able to be such. The first line had his eyes widening a little at realising the subject matter of the joke, and the longer it went on, the higher his brows climbed, only for the applied accent to startle a twitch out of him at hearing a now-familiar voice speak in such an unfamiliar way. 

And then it was done, apparently, the young man staring at him expectantly and the Baron left trying to figure out if he had been so distracted by the accent as to overlook the point where humour turned, or if he simply… had heard it but did not understand. Blinking down at Rogers, James cleared his throat, ears flushed at the tips with sudden embarrassment at not being able to give the reaction expected of him. 

“I, ah—”  James cut off, not certain what to say. Shy of admitting…either it was simply not a funny joke, or that if it was, his own mind had betrayed him once more such that he could not discern the humour in it. He cleared his throat and dropped his gaze for a beat before looking back up. And refused his urge to attempt the sort of polite smile and hollow laugh he would in Fine Company, were the man before him a blowhard Gentleman rather than one of his own clerks. 

“...I really don’t care, you know. About you being what you are.” 

They were on the topic of parentage already. And perhaps it was how disoriented he felt in general, lingering effects from a high dose of medicine and more polite conversation than his mouth had made in weeks, but he found the blasted thing continuing without permission, his own eyes wide and a little white at the edges with keen awareness that of all the men to admit to, this one was not a wise choice to take into such a confidence. Even so– 

“My mother was a Jewess. Father went to great pains to conceal it; no one in Lehigh Park will speak of it, those handful that knew. But I used to light candles with her. And she taught me one or two of the prayers that she said I had to know, being half, and full by their law because of her blood. And I served with all sorts...Irishmen amongst them.” 

Mouth pursing, James shrugged, and then added softly, “The blood all looks the same at the end, once it spills. A man’s birth alone makes him no more or less of any good or ill thing. I am sorry you catch such grief for it, though. And I meant what I said. I will not have such things in my House. A joke told to laugh alongside a man is a far different matter than one meant laughing at him. I… miss things, in my absence. I fear I miss far more than I know. But as often as I am bound to my Convalescence, I cannot know to make changes, unless someone tells me.” 

He sighed, abruptly weary. “But perhaps that is a foolish request. An absent master is just as bad as none at all, mm? For all the good he does.” 

—

Steve had known it wasn’t a very good joke, but he hadn’t been able to think of anything else remotely amusing to entertain the Baron with. Barnes was polite enough not to malign the attempt, though, and then to go so far as to reassure Steve by turning the conversation to more serious matters. His eyes widened at the revelation, aware of the confidence extended to him. Steve had heard even more nasty things said about the Jews than he had the Irish, but the Baron clearly had neither horns nor hooves. 

Steve wasn’t certain what he’d done to earn trust enough to hear what he was being told, but he listened anyway, becoming acutely aware as the Baron spoke that his hand still rested on the man’s knee. Steve dared to stroke the knobby bone beneath the plush cloth lightly before he withdrew it carefully and said, after some thought: “My mother taught me prayers, too, so that’s alright. And she taught me to treat everyone alike, because God is no respecter of persons.” The subject and the company made it easier to fall back into the accent he’d learned to speak in at home, not the polished, clipped sounds he’d been taught he must speak to his betters.

Steve did his best to puzzle out what request it was that the Baron had made of him. “You are not…ill-thought of downstairs,” he said after a moment. “I would not stand to hear you slandered in my hearing, sir, but I won’t carry tales, either. And regarding those in your employ, no one has said anything to my face but well….” 

Surely by now the Baron had heard what Rumlow had said and how Mister Wilson had seen fit to punish him, which Steve had privately been very pleased to hear about. 

The general thought in the house seemed to be that Rumlow had caused the worst of the fight yet received the lightest of the punishment, which Steve had argued with when he heard it. Rumlow had likely made the Baron no promise about fighting, after all. 

“They are all a good lot, I think, sir, the men at least. I have not been introduced to many of the young ladies, save Mrs. Parker and Peg-I mean, the cook.” 

—

Well. His servant had not recoiled in horror at the revelation. Which was not out of the realm of possibility, even if it would have been hypocritical. James exhaled heavily as he was petted at, and then the man in the bed next to him settled quietly, and let his voice lilt into something that sounded far less artificially proper, and was not at all unpleasant. 

“You are not to go about getting into fights to defend my honour, understood?” James charged, a laugh hiding somewhere underneath the exhortation, before he shook his head and sighed it away.

“I do not doubt your honesty, only that I am thoroughly convinced I must be. And I could not fault them for it. How many times already have I been rude or harsh with you, in mere matter of days? And that, after I have improved somewhat. I was awful when first they brought me home. Whatever complaints about me the Household has, trust that they are well deserved. My concern is more that my House be kind one to another, and that ill-treatment of any on account of things one cannot change about oneself not be stood for.” 

He shook his head, hand waving a little to brush off complaints before they could be made. “I am not asking you to compromise your Honour by telling on your fellows. Only that if something is severely wrong, and nothing is done… I ask that you give me the benefit of the doubt, that perhaps I simply do not know, rather than do not care enough to step in and correct it. I suppose I must do my own work to correct that, though, rather than just seeking reports from others.”

The Baron’s mouth twitched up at the corners once more, finally, at the mention of the ladies who ran his household. 

“Formidable women,” James declared, respect clear in his voice. “I would caution you not to get yourself out of their good graces, either of them, and certainly not both at once.” He winced, and tacked on wryly, “Trust that I speak from experience, there.” 

His amusement left soft and swift as it had come, then. It was much longer than he had intended to sit and converse, and it had left him Tired. Absently, he brushed his fingers through his own long curls, trying to push them out of his face, and blinking as the little throb in his shoulder made him aware of just how much of his time lucid he had lost while sitting with the young man, wasting the better part of an hour that he might have spent clear-minded and able to work.

“I mean it, about the books. And that I desire your speedy and easy recovery.” 

Clearing his throat, James drew himself up, gripping the chair arm and pushing to stand gingerly. “For now, though, I believe Mister Wilson is waiting to have some number of words with me, that I likely ought to listen to while I am still myself properly. Rest, and mind what I said about fetching someone else to help you acquire your needlework, once you resume amending my things. And I suppose… perhaps I shall see you around the upstairs, in the course of your other duties here.” 

He blinked down at Stephen, and inclined his head in a quiet nod. “Unless there is more you need my time for, Mister Rogers?” he asked, mouth twitching wryly again at the notion of waiting for his own servant to bid him permission to go. 

—

Glad that the Baron had not pressed him for details and particulars of the servants and their misdeeds, Steve shrugged, more than happy not to lay the blame for household upset at the feet of a man who was clearly struggling to manage his own needs, much less those of others. Before his wound, no doubt he had been abler in many ways, and now he was more in need of assistance from his household, even though by all reports he was loathe to accept much of it. 

Privately, Steve had no intention of letting anyone go to the Baron’s room for him, because he didn’t intend to give up any chance of the man’s company for the sake of his own sensibilities. When he had his wits about him, Steve thought that the smell would not bother him overly much, and in any case, he had some ideas about what might be done for it that he had broached delicately with Mrs. Parker and not been too badly rebuffed. 

“Thank you for the well wishes, sir,” Steve said, with a bright if tired smile, “and for the company. If I may be of any service to you as I am, you may find me here. Please speak kindly to Mister Wilson. He has been very worried for you.” 

Steve thought that he could hardly dismiss the man, nor rise to do anything as courteous as hold open the door, but he did dare put his hand out, palm down, in case the Baron might indulge him by clasping it in farewell, and was not disappointed. Leaving him with the unexpected warmth of fingers that still recalled their own strength, and a last flash of brocade bright and fluttering in the doorway to evidence the scene which had just occurred. 

Chapter Text

It was odd that the arrival of a singular man to his Household could bring with it so much change. And yet, it seemed every time he looked there was some new indication of a silent presence, one intent on interfering with the previous state of things and seemingly concerned with easing him, wanted or otherwise. 

Hell, even in just the first week, he had touched Stephen Rogers more than any other body, willingly at that, in months. Even if it was just the caress of soft curls, or the brand of a hot, calloused palm sealed to his own when he had shaken the man’s hand farewell, last they spoke. 

The touch lingered in his memory, just as the faint yet pervasive evidences of the clerk’s presence in his household nipped at the edge of his awareness. Whether it be the perfect fit of a newly tailored left sleeve, or the tinge of unusually fresh yet earthen scent clinging to his linens when they came back washed, or the fact that he had walked into his suite one morning and found the windows opened, with not one of the staff willing to own up to it, nor to the closing of them before he crawled into his bed to sleep. All that, and exceedingly, how his seneschal’s general countenance had brightened, Samuel Wilson’s generally inscrutable professionalism insufficient to forestall revelation, clear now only in its absence, how frayed at the edges the man had been of late, what a great relief of that burden was the provision of an assistant to aid with his work.

Or even….

The slippers. The pair of simple, strangely constructed house shoes that had appeared by his bedside one morning. Neatly embroidered on the top with tiny, repetitive patterns, and the rest of the stitching so fine he’d not have known it there, save for the patchwork fabric highlighting that multiple pieces had been sewn together. They were warm, fit to his feet perfectly, offering a better shank than his old pair and thusly comfortable enough to stand in for some time if needed. 

It had been known to him from the moment they appeared, exactly from whence– from whom - they’d come, even with no tangible provenance. He had left them sitting where they were delivered for the majority of an afternoon, sitting across the room to stare at the strange gift. Wholly impuissant to draw his mind away from memories of the little barn cat he had worked so hard as a small boy to befriend. One that, once won over with soft words and careful hands, had habitually brought him mice when he stole away from his tutelage to visit it. Not unlike the little tom, it was curiosity which ultimately had done him in. And once his feet had first been slid gingerly into the shoes in test, he had scarce removed them since. 

It kept him off-balance, though not in his usual manner. With his right arm aching and his left still occasionally buzzing with imagined pain, the after-effects of a high dose haunting his body even days after, the Baron would normally have remained in a foul temper, and had indeed woken up thus irate on several days. Yet each morn, some unusual alteration of the state of his surroundings startled him out of the state. Replaced conniption with confusion, his usual cannon-fire-thunderous-recoiling displeasure at being offered help cut short by the fact that help had simply...happened to him, without any offer or request or permission. 

He had nearly worked up the nerve to confront Wilson about it, regardless of how, subsequent to their confrontation over his discipline of Rogers and the accidentally high dosage he’d taken for it, he was hesitant to provoke his second lightly. Not when the whole House, the Estate, and the Baron himself,  ran based on the man’s grace and skill. 

But the slippers, really, were the last straw. 

Which was why, after carefully securing them tucked into a wardrobe drawer, he had gone to the effort of fully Dressing, leaving his brocade robe behind in favour of a proper jacket, collar, and the fuss of a mostly-finessed cravat. Had even condescended to quietly ask Sam to take a ribbon and bind his hair back for him, before seeking out the man’s clerk. And taken the trouble to see whalebone swapped out for polished brass, one of his Father’s old canes, one not quite measured at the right height for him, and ungainly as such. Still better than falling over or exhausting himself just to walk across the Upstairs without support, though. Far better than coming to the youth in question with a weapon of chastisement in hand that had already once been used to hurt him. 

Wilson had seen fit to set the new addition up in a little adjoining room to his own study, and it was there that James looked first, though with mental note to check Downstairs next if he had to rather than summoning his suspected benefactor outright. Walking as quietly as he was able between the cane and his limp, the Baron poked his head past the lintel, peeking into the room to investigate while reminding himself most sternly not to frighten the young man again, just because he was confounded and feeling cantankerous for it. 

“Rogers?”

—

Steve looked up from adjusting the point on his pencil with a penknife, unable to keep his mouth from turning up in a grin when he realised who had disturbed him. He straightened, having already been standing at his desk, which he’d raised with a brick under each of the legs so that he could work standing up. The broken skin on his ass and thighs had healed over well, with no infection, and the bruises had faded to an ugly yellow, at least what he could see of them in the mirror. That didn’t mean that he wanted to spend any more time sitting on them than he had to, though. 

A week lying on his belly had been too long to suit him, even though he’d availed himself of the contents of the library and challenged himself in piecing together the Baron’s new slippers, trying to turn scraps of broadcloth and harness leather into something Steve would be proud to see on his master’s feet. Even as the Baron entered, Steve’s eyes couldn’t help straying downward to see if he wore them, though the soft shoes would hardly have suited his current dress.

He’d made up for his time in bed by stretching his legs around the house and grounds as much as he could comfortably do so, insinuating himself where he thought he could be of service when not engaged in a specific errand or task for Mr. Wilson. Steve had done his best to achieve the aim he’d privately set himself even before the Baron’s last visit, though the kindnesses and confidence then had solidified it Steve’s mind: to do what he could to ease his master in body and perhaps also in spirit, even if it meant climbing through windows and secreting bunches of herbs into the linen once it had dried. 

During this well-meant mischief, he was fairly certain that he’d managed to avoid the Baron’s immediate notice, and was torn between the hope that he might take an interest eventually and the knowledge that many aristocrats did not question why pains had been taken to make them comfortable and simple accepted it as their due.

“Hello, sir,” Steve said, “Mister Wilson has stepped out to go and see about something that is amiss in the kitchen to do with the grocer’s bill, but I will tell him you came looking for him when he returns.” 

For surely that must be why the Baron had emerged from his private quarters dressed as well as Steve had ever seen him: with some charge for Mister Wilson. It could not possibly be, Steve thought, that his master had come specifically to speak to him.

—

Was it merely his fate, now, to be perpetually transfixed by some new aspect of the young man to the point of near paralysis the moment he entered a room with him? Previously, it had been the bruised, milky skin of his thighs and calves. Now, it was the radiance of his smile: unique for the fact that very few people smiled upon the sight of him, but also for how brilliant and genuine a grin it was. 

What the deuce?

Brows furrowed in response to the innocent little greeting and offer, the Baron stepped fully into the room, drawing the door closed behind himself as he pinned him with another intense stare. An officer’s capacity for sensing utter nonsense when one of his men attempted to convince him of its veracity.

Whereas before, he had sought the clerk out in a flurry of impatience tinged by disbelief and rushing through the evidence before him as he came to unthinkable conclusion, this attempt was all slow calculation and patience. Eyes scanning sharply, posture steady, words deliberate rather than tumbled out in a bustle of thoughts the minute he thought them. 

“You made me slippers.” 

It wasn’t a question. As before, he made no attempt to address the little greeting and pleasantries, far too distracted by watching the play of emotion over the young man’s face as he made the indictment. And then, by the realisation all over again that they were of a height, and once, would have stood nearly the same breadth as well before he himself had grown slight in his Convalescence. 

Pale eyes narrowed, he prowled forth with footsteps and cane alike quiet, his chin tipping up as he cocked his head and added, intent and deliberate, 

“And you opened my window, though how, I cannot guess. The bloody thing’s been stuck for years, and I was told more than once that it would not budge. And you’ve done something to my bedding. Haven’t you, Stephen?”

—

The Baron was looking at him strangely as he had before, if not even more so. Steve’s eyes went wide as the man stepped closer and went so far as to close the door behind him. The little office was scarcely larger than a closet and not much more furnished, and neither of the men in it was small. 

He took an unsteady half-step backwards as his master closed the distance between them, and in doing so fetched up against his little writing desk, which wobbled precariously on its makeshift risers. Steve reached behind himself to steady it, glad that he had been using lead-pencil to tally and therefore had no ink bottle to spill. 

The words dropped like coins in a bucket as Steve flushed from his loosened cravat up to his hairline. He nodded dumbly, forcing himself to meet the Baron’s eyes instead of darting down to worry about what his cane might be doing. His master was a man of his word. That didn’t quell the apprehension rising in Steve’s belly as the other man continued speaking.

 At the ultimate use of his Christian name, Steve’s lips rounded into an O of surprise until he remembered that direct questions required direct answers. 

“I did, sir,” he replied hoarsely. “Though I did not enter your room as you forbade me to. Have I given offence?”

—

That, if anything, drew him up short. Or, taller, rather, as the Major’s spine straightened in time with his eyebrows lifting. Because if it were true (and he could tell from his eyes the man wasn’t lying), it was even more impressive a feat. To have worked so many little adjustments, possibly more, even, that he had yet to notice, all without setting foot in the room. The slippers had appeared within its confines, after all. He blinked, contemplating the defence, and then refocused on the man before him, pleased both to have his full attention and at how flustered the boy looked. 

Good. He deserved a little of his own confusion, after the sheer perplexities he had subjected James to, in his… it wasn’t even mischief, really. 

“No. You’ve not,” he said, slower, and with his features twitching together pensively. “I gave you no directives against any act you’ve carried out. And I have heard no complaint of shirked duties or insufficient work.” 

Everything that had been done had been done atop his assigned labours. That the Baron himself had been at sixes and sevens over it all was nothing he could rightly blame the clerk for, as such.

“Was there more done, other than what I have noticed?” he  inquired, unable to dampen the sheer curiosity needling at him. Still within the other man’s space, standing a mere handsbreadth from him, they were close enough he could imagine the heat of Stephen’s blush soaking into his own skin. 

“Were you tasked to these things? Put up to them as a gamble or a challenge? Or were they done of your own accord only?” 

Answers. That was what he sought after. And that was what he would get. The fellow seemed to have taken to heart his earlier order regarding offering them. So for now… he’d simply take his time and see what truths could be teased from the little miscreant, flushing and fidgety, before him. 

“And— if you didn’t enter… how the blazes did you get the slippers by my bed?”

—

Steve found his spine straightening and his chin lifting to mirror the Baron’s, though he took care to keep his eyes lowered while the man was speaking. His face was so inscrutable that it would have done Steve no good to look anyway, though he sorely wanted to. 

The Baron understood that he had not disobeyed or prevaricated to effect what he had, and he said that Steve had not offended him. But he neither looked nor sounded pleased, either, leaving Steve as off-balance as his desk.

“I don’t know what you’ve noticed, sir,” Steve said, the words as steady and soft as he could make them. “I told the laundresses that I would help them beat the curtains on your bed and windows if they would gather them, and I asked Mister Wilson’s leave to help in the washing that day. Mrs. Parker let me plant some herbs in the kitchen garden, wild ones from the heath, and I told her what my mother taught me of their uses. Laudanum is expensive, and leaves one costive besides.” Steve swallowed hard, wishing for something to hand to wet his throat or perhaps to drown himself for the sheer impertinence of having guessed at the habits of his master’s bowels.

“I gave the slippers to one of the chambermaids and asked her to set them in your room, because they were yours. And they are, made from your sleeves. I unstuck the window from the outside, sir. The gasket had rusted in the weather, I think. It wasn’t hard to pry free, and I enjoyed the climb.” Steve grimaced, aware that he was probably giving too many of the wrong answers and too little of what the Baron wanted to hear. 

“No one put me to them, sir. They needed doing, and no one was. It wasn’t my intent to intrude or skulk about or to violate your privacy, it truly wasn’t. And if the slippers do not fit properly, I will alter them.” 

Falling silent, Steve gazed intently at his own shoes, aware that he had mistepped somehow, that much was clear, in execution if not in intent, but if the Baron would not make it plain to him, then he could hardly begin to make amends.

—

He did not interrupt. Only leaned back slightly, a half-step in reverse, to give the man leave to defend his actions and provide the requested answers. 

And raise perhaps fourscore new questions in doing so, though that was perhaps unfair to find fault in him for.

The Baron’s face had remained generally impassive if not slightly bemused throughout the reply, right up until the younger man made his observation on the nature of the medication he had become so dependent upon, willingly or otherwise. That provoked a flush just as scarlet as his old uniform jacket, spreading up from his throat to burn hottest at the tips of his ears. 

But it was not inaccurate. And with abrupt reflection over the last few days, did explain why his tea had tasted different, why the soups brought had carried a foreign flavour when he choked them down. Why his steps had come lighter, the pain in his lower back eased, and his temper likewise. 

For all his questions, he had only come with one of real import. And the young man had answered it, before he could even ask. Because he thought the things needed done. Incentive, intellect. Bravery. Everything he would have desired in a junior officer. Everything he would never have looked to see so displayed in a mere clerk … that he might have condemned to merely grooming horses and mucking stalls, had Wilson not intervened. 

Potential, just as his cousin had promised him. Humility more than he had initially assumed of the boy, to stand and be questioned and answer quietly despite the intentional provocation and affront of it. Quiet perception and attentiveness. And a soft heart. This young man would not have laughed at him for the kitten he’d so desperately wanted to bring in from the rain, only five and three-quarters and missing half his teeth. Not like some had.

...Though, disconcertingly, he rather had the sense at this point, this man may have looked at him and thought his Lord indeed the kitten to be rescued. 

“I have not taken them off, scarcely, since I first placed foot in them,” he admitted finally after a long stretch of silent contemplation. The words were quiet but sincere, and for him, near effusive praise. 

“They fit perfectly and are both comfortable and warm, and elegant in their own strange little way.” He stepped back, exhaling, and pursing his lips as he leaned his weight on his cane and surveyed the man before him. 

“You’ve caused no offence, and done no wrong,” James repeated. Caused thorough embarrassment, perhaps, but it had come with the enlightenment he had sought after. And paled compared to the degree of relief from a number of small troubles which had by the intervention been eased without his asking. As if his grim, bitter comment to the young man (even in the hour immediately following the beating he’d dispensed to him), had been taken as a personal challenge. To prove that he could indeed be eased, were a man both clever and intent enough on seeing to it. 

...And zounds, but this one was clever. Nearly as much as he was beautiful. The Baron cleared his throat lightly, stepping back a pace to give himself room to think and gather his composure as he did. 

“Thank you.”

It was simple, and much overdue. But sincerely meant as anything to ever leave his lips. He blinked, again, slowly and quietly at the young man, then cocked his head to one side. 

“Though I would ask you make no further attempts at climbing. Banner has no need of additional reason to make the journey here, and even with good care, mending a fractured leg takes far longer than you would care to Convalesce.” He arched an eyebrow, dry amusement flickering at the corner of his mouth. ‘’Seeing as you have taken it upon yourself to relieve the worst of the malaise which so distressed you, I suppose perhaps there is no further reason to forbid you step foot, anyhow, should you find yourself with more projects to deliver… or some other task needing done.”  

And then, because he’d never been good at not pushing just a hair too far when given the chance— 

“You do want something, though. More than just… doing for its own sake. Hm?” 

It was the only sensible conclusion. They were still near as strangers. And he had beaten the man severely for a mere first infraction. Been generally rude and short-tempered and harsh with him. That after all of it, Rogers would go to such lengths solely to ease him out of charity alone seemed… unrealistic, no matter how brave or clever or soft-hearted the lad might be. 

“You’ve done me kindnesses. If you’ve a request to make, I suppose hearing it out would be fair gratitude in kind.” 

—

The blush on the Baron’s face looked as painful as the one fading from Steve’s own cheeks, and he regretted having provoked it, but there was nothing that could be done for it after the fact. And in spite of the embarrassment that he had caused, his master seemed to have heard him and understood, and more than that, he seemed to be giving Steve’s words and actions serious consideration. Steve clasped his hands behind his back and did his best not to fidget.

He had not expected the praise and compliments for the slippers, and they drew a soft, shy smile from him that did not falter as the Baron continued his reassurance, breaking into a bright grin at the heartfelt thanks. 

Steve didn’t even think to argue at the injunction against climbing, because the roof had been very slippery, and he wasn’t nine anymore. The Baron had phrased it in terms of his concern for Steve’s own wellbeing, after all, not any kind of censure, and then had as much as given permission for Steve to come and go as necessary through his rooms. 

What he was to say to all that, Steve wasn’t sure, but the Baron saved him the trouble of having to stammer something out by asking a question that drew Steve up short enough to have his smile slipping away. Barnes softened it somewhat afterward, but it still felt perilously close to being asked to speak freely, which had always been a Trap in Steve’s experience. 

“I ought to have done it for its own sake, and I tried to, sir, but in truth...I felt in your debt,” he began haltingly, finding his words as he went along and warming gradually to his subject, perhaps a little too much. 

“You have given me a place here, and as fair a Chance as anyone could wish for. You eased me, when I’d lost my faculties, you touched me and comforted me when you could scarcely walk for being pained. I will forever remember your kindness to me, on your knees while I wept, calling me Stephen, and the way you wished me cared for before yourself, how you made me apologies when I felt slighted. And so I did my best to repay you in kind, without asking your permission because I knew you would not give it. You are as proud as I am and as loathe to admit your needs, but...to see you take your ease eases me. And in any case, I cannot sit and do sums all day.” 

Here Steve paused and grimaced, certain that he had nearly reached the end of his audience and that the Baron was likely regretting having offered it to him in the first place. But he had not been bridled, so Steve dared to withdraw from his waistcoat pocket two folded pages torn carefully from his commonplace book and covered in lead pencil. It was not a proper letter, because he had lacked the means to write one in bed and had been loathe to ask for them, lest he be questioned as to his intent. But he had thought carefully about the words and written them neatly, though up until that moment he had been of two minds about whether he ought to deliver it and if so, how to go about the thing. 

He would likely have no better chance than this, though, Steve decided resolutely, holding the letter out in a hand that trembled only slightly. 

“I’ve said too much, when I should have just given you this. You need not read it right away, sir, but I beg that you do read it.”

—

One warning to this man, that he should not to answer questions put to him. And since, Rogers had not. Whether that was a good thing or not— well. As the young man himself had noted, his obedience to the directive was likely going to be a cause for regret on the part of his employer. Still. There was a satisfaction in the confirmation that his senses had not entirely taken leave of him, insight had not betrayed him to the point of mistaking when someone wanted something from him. That first and most costly lesson was impressed upon him long before he was sent to War, one vital for the scion of a noble house set to inherit an Estate worth a pretty sum per year, just as much as for anything he’d become since. 

It was not wholly startling, given that a sense of debt had indeed been one possible motive identified by his ruminations. Only that, if said possibilities were listed in order of likeliness, indebted sense of honour would certainly have been far from preeminence.   

And yet he could not help himself, staring with wide grey eyes at the young man, his mouth softly falling open as Rogers continued further with his quiet, earnest reply. It snapped shut with a little click of teeth a near penniless young man he had spoken to on few enough occasions to be counted on his remaining hand dared to look him in the eye and outrightly call him both Prideful and Loathe to Accept Help. 

...Which was not untrue. Or even the first time such accusations had touched his ears, though mainly former occasions had been incidental, and due to Wilson muttering as much under his breath. Yet to hear it so bluntly was a shock, one which silenced him long enough that Rogers could say the remainder of his piece. 

Blinking, James stared down at the humble slip offered him, hand gripping the brass head of his Father’s cane instinctively at the realisation that he would have to let go of it to take the note. 

Rogers had made no denial of wanting something from him. But also had avoided stating just what it was— and there was something, more than just a sense of debt owed, or even the charity he’d professed inspiry by, James was sure of it. And now he offered a humble little letter, and begged the Baron should read it. 

The Baron, whose curiosity was going to get the damned better of him all over again. 

Dash it all to hell. 

Exhaling, James leaned the cane against his hip long enough to pluck the pages from the young man’s hand and tuck them in his coat pocket before his fingers found warm brass once more to steady himself. He squinted contemplatively for a long moment at the young man, before nodding once. 

What else could be said to that, after all? Nothing, not without making a greater laughingstock of himself, or worse, risking the boy’s further terror or upset. Better to retire himself to his study, to a cup of the new tea Mrs. Parker had started making for him, where there would be privacy to read it over and decide what on earth to do about it all. 

Clearing his throat brusquely, James decided he had gotten what he came for and then some. He turned to fumble the door open and step through it, pausing with one foot over the threshold to look back over his shoulder at the and looking over at his shoulder at Rogers. 

“...We will discuss once I have read your request in full. Good day to you.” 

With that, he swept out of the little closet, ignoring Wilson where he nearly bumped into the man in the doorway and beating his retreat while the man was left staring between the little closet and the Baron’s swiftly exited wake, poking his head in with a frown and an arched eyebrow. 

“Do I even want to know what that was about?” 

—

Steve had been able to make only the flimsiest excuse to Mister Wilson about a conversation of a private nature that he need not worry over before he had hastily begged to be excused himself. 

Seeking the only privacy that might be found on a busy estate in the middle of the day, Steve had snuck into the haymow above the stables, huddled within the warm darkness in a nest of sweet smelling straw, and wondering if he’d made a terrible mistake. He had spoken impertinently, that much he knew. It would have been better, perhaps, to be solicitous and questioning, to have invited the Baron into conversation about how Steve might continue in his work in the Household. 

In hindsight the strategy seemed very clear. In the moment, though, he’d thought only about answering the question put to him: explaining, because the Baron seemed utterly unaware, how much his actions had meant. Somewhere Steve had taken a wrong turn in his search for clarity and seen his master’s mouth snap shut at the insult offered him. He had taken the letter, though, and said he would read it. He reminded himself that the Baron was a man of his word, although Steve now wished heartily that he had never proffered the pitiful little missive at all. 

Only the bell calling him to dinner disturbed his reverie, and he hastily clambered down to wash his face and hands before the meal. Steve ate and returned to his ledger with as much zeal as he could muster to make up for his unexplained flight, doing his best to put his fretting aside. 

What he’d done couldn’t be undone. He could not hurry the Baron in his response nor influence it in his favour. Impatience was also a fault of his, Steve decided, something to be addressed with great seriousness as soon as he had an answer to the matter at hand.

Chapter Text

Dear Sir,

I have taken the liberty of writing to you, because I feared I could not convey myself properly to you by Speaking, and because this is a Private matter, one I beg you will consider at your Laysure and not Hastily. 

First, I must thank you for your many Kindnesses to me this past fortnight. Although you have told me I should not find you so, I must disagree most respectfully, with my Evidence your own Example. I told you once of my Regard for you, and I must tell you now that you have only Grown in my estimation since then. 

But I do not know you Well, nor is it my place to suggest to you what Course you ought to take. I must try to examine myself, as is the Duty of any Man, and remedy my Faults. 

Chiefly among them, I am Proud, and Quick to Anger, and consider my own Counsel before that of others. We have spoken of this, and you have held me closely to Account, taking care even in that and keeping your Word as a man must. I would be remiss in my Duty if I did not Oblige myself to You in Kind. You wished me Happyness and so I feel I may wish for yours in turn, and do more than merely Wish, but take pains to Effect it where I can. To be your Man, if you will have me.

You have kept faith with me even at great personal Cost, and so I hope always to remain,

Your faithful servant,

S. R.

Chapter Text

The next day held too many errands to allow much worrying, and the day after that the Baron did not emerge from his bedchamber at all, prompting an entirely other kind of worry. Had he upset the man so, Steve wondered, trying to remember the words exactly as he’d written them. He slept fitfully that night, turning over so often that someone he could not discern in the darkness threw a balled up stocking and hit the back of his head, sparking silent, impotent rage that festered until dawn.

Steve was nodding over his copy-book after breakfast when he was summoned by one of the maids, a pretty girl whose name he did not know, but whose dark eyes and slanting, sly mouth seemed to miss very little even from under the shock of thick, frizzing curls that habitually escaped one side of her cap. She’d poked her head in at the door to say he was wanted in the conservatory. Steve had scowled, wondering who might require him there, and asked as much sharply. The answer he received, though, had him up off of his stool and hastening back to the servants’ quarters as fast as his feet could carry him to wash his face, run a comb through his hair, and change into the less shabby of his two waistcoats. He had not cleaned his boots properly the night before, which Steve now bitterly regretted, because there was no time to do more than wipe off the leather. To keep the Baron waiting further seemed very unwise.

Steve had not ventured inside the conservatory before, only hurried by its glass walls and glanced curiously at the exotic foliage within. The air, he found, was cool and damp, scented with a dozen things he could not name. He closed the door behind himself as quietly as he could and advanced toward the man seated within, careful to arrange his face in an appropriately inquisitive expression as he made his bow and waited to be given leave to come closer.

—

The little chaise had a table to the side of it, which held in waiting most of a cup of tea and a book. It was Stephen’s letter that instead occupied his hand where the Baron sat, hair loose and mussed, dressing gown draped over a shirt and waistcoat and present in name only cravat. A far cry from the crisp intensity of the Baron when he’d tracked Stephen down on a mission for answers. He made no move to get up, nodding at the bow and gesturing quietly at the little seat brought in on the other side of the table, where he could speak with the other man and study him. And he pointedly did not let himself think about his clerk kneeling, close enough to touch, that day in his study. 

“Good morning,” the Baron greeted quietly. There was a layer of tension in the corners of his eyes and his brow, but it was pain, not anger or upset. “I thank you for your patience; my intentions to discuss with you earlier were delayed by a difficult night and resulting difficult day. You will forbear me that the last of the medication lingers, wearing off still. I thought it imprudent to leave you waiting further.” Some of the sharpness was absent, softened into hazy, quiet curiosity as he lay his head back, fingers petting over the by now well-worn pages in his lap in absentminded rhythm. 

“It is no wise habit to make for yourself,” he said finally, looking over with just a ghost of humour lurking around his mouth, “telling people their faults so plainly. Hardly invites popularity upon a man. And yet I find myself struck by the fact that you spoke Honestly to me, invalid or not, when most refuse to these days. When you had nothing to gain from it and quite a bit to lose. Perhaps it is a matter of one proud man to another, hm?” He closed his eyes momentarily and, when he opened them, looked away at the hothouse flowers, rather than the lovely young man awaiting his judgement. 

“If it troubled you, have peace about the matter. I will not take you to task for earnest words spoken with good intent, regardless of how irritable I found myself with them in the moment.” He paused, and then added, “You are perhaps one of the most Opinionated creatures I have ever encountered, Stephen Rogers, and when considering what manner of women my sister and cousin are, ‘tis a feat indeed. And yet, your request to me is very plain, but vague enough I cannot quite capture the measure of it.” He shifted the page, indicating with his finger the line, “To be your Man, if you will have me.” 

“My Cousin wished I should take you as a Companion. A body servant. Though I kept none before my Commission nor during. I fear Mister Wilson would indeed leave my service on the spot were I to take you from him fully, wanting for aid as he has been, in taking on so many duties I cannot, currently, but should fulfill. And yet. I promised to hear your request… and find myself in need of clarification, as, for all your opinions, you have left the key part of your missive abbreviated.” 

The Baron tilted his head, studying the younger man’s reaction to his words for a long moment. “I have not yet made up my mind. But were I to grant your request… tell me in your own words what would become of us. Seeing as how you are so keen to concern yourself with exactly what I, in your estimation, Need.” 

—

Steve seated himself, spine erect and hands folded around each other in his lap so tightly that the knuckles turned white. He needn’t do more than listen and accept the Baron’s decision, he reminded himself, eyes fixed resolutely on the man’s cup of tea as he spoke, instead of on the charming disarray of his dress or the small lines of pain around his eyes and mouth. 

“Good morning, sir,” he echoed, inclining his head to the explanation as the Baron did not quite beg his pardon. The man had made an effort to see him, and Steve determined that he would be quiet and attentive in turn.

It was no news to learn that he was too free with his opinions and therefore unpopular, but the Baron seemed neither angry nor even very grieved. Steve privately thought that he had been far plainer than he ought to in his letter and, since the Baron had no valet or secretary, had imagined being given one or both of those roles. But he could not give such a glib answer, one that would insult the Baron’s understanding. Nor could Steve truthfully say that he had meant anything so simple in his letter. 

He had imagined belonging body and soul to the man before him, bound to his needs and wishes, certain in the knowledge that he would be provided for but not indulged. To better himself through service, as his mother had wished, to a man wholly deserving of it, one who would treat him fairly. But the Baron had not asked what Steve had imagined, but what he thought his Master needed.

The question felt like a trap, an invitation to be honest and in return receive correction and perhaps mockery. That he could not endure, Steve knew. So he could hedge and turn the question back to Baron, or he could prevaricate, or he could be honest and hope to keep his temper during the resultant response. 

Steve cleared his throat and pushed his hair back, uncertain of where his ribbon had abandoned him, only that it had. “Her Ladyship is very generous,” he began, because no one could argue with that. “I’ve never been anyone’s companion or body servant, being too opinionated and liable to tell people their faults, sir.” Steve managed a tiny little grin at that and forced himself onward:

“Even I would not presume to tell you what you Need, sir, nor would I discomfit Mister Wilson by abandoning my post. But I truly cannot do sums all day. I’m not fit for it. He will tell you so himself, that if he does not send me out on some errand or other every few hours I become as dull as my pencil.” Steve cleared his throat again, aware that he was straying away from answering directly as he had vowed. 

“I cannot say what would become of us, but what I hoped would become of me is that I might, by your leave, be allowed to concern myself chiefly with those things that you require, both of my own notice and that you tell to me, whether that be the brushing of your clothes or the carrying of your mail or the easing of your pains, that you might occupy yourself more pleasantly and ably, and perhaps resume some of the duties you spoke of that currently burden Mister Wilson. You know I can keep confidences, sir, and that I will not pity you, but you also know my faults and will not hesitate to correct me if I stray into them. That is what I need, sir, for I have no family to take notice of me if I run astray, nor any friends here. I never had a master I could hold in such ardent regard, and I do not want another.”

When he finished, Steve lifted his chin, searching the face of the man opposite him for how his answer had faired, and what was to become of him because of it.

—

The Thing about Manners which had most often vexed him was the exceeding difficulty in divining a man’s intentions when he could hide behind the veneer of civility expected of the ton. Yet to be able to force another to speak from the heart, plainly, and with no warning might be asked of them… a man with that privilege and power could indeed ascertain much. 

Clearly, Stephen Rogers had not been previously employed by those who enjoyed such an exercise, as stunned and discomfited as he appeared when pressed. The Baron only arched an eyebrow and settled back, waiting with patient expectation as his clerk stumbled first through an acceptable answer, and finally began to round his way about to the truthful one. The little aside about his opinionated nature earned a mild, answering smile, though it lingered only briefly. But it was a place to start. And then, all at once, he had the answers sought after and more besides. 

It was a good answer. Shocking most of all, a genuine one. And less shocking, a clever one. To be able to accurately predict it was pity he feared, and bait him with the notion that in accepting assistance from someone else, he might free up more of Sam’s time for his actual job, rather than tying back his Baron’s hair or assisting him in the morning after bad nights…

...He would be a fool to refuse only out of pride. And unkind to one of the men he’d most needed in the last several months, the only reason James himself or the Estate had seen through to the other side of his ordeal. His fingers abandoned the letter to flutter onto the cushion beside him, and instead drew up to absentmindedly twirl a lock of hair around one digit as he considered everything laid out for his judgement. What he could allow the young man to aid him with. What he could bear to accept. What might best alleviate himself and Wilson both, and reduce time, effort, and short-tempered bickering  between them, alike. 

Perhaps it would not be, after all, an Abject Disaster, were he to admit defeat in the face of a losing battle. Finally come to terms with the fact that never again would he tie his own cravat. Or at least, neither easily, nor well.

Pensive, and none too happy with the fact that logic and an officer’s knack for tactics and good sense all told combined to a conclusion that was distasteful to him, James indulged in just a moment of pouting, childishly, at a fern in the corner. And then exhaled out quietly, before drawing a ribbon from his pocket and offering it out. 

“Tie my hair back for me. And fix my cravat. While I consider your answer.” 

Or, more specifically, while he measured for himself if he could bear the young man’s touch enough to accept help with the tasks he most required it for. To take an actual Valet for the first time since he’d been a young boy with a harried Governess looking after him. To accept what he needed, even if he could hardly stand to need it. 

—

Steve had been so occupied with keeping still and silent, not fidgeting or blurting out anything, that when the Baron finally spoke he started a little at the words. Steve stared at the ribbon offered him as though he’d never seen such a thing in his life and certainly did not know what to do with it. Thinking hastily back through what had been asked of him, he started up from his chair with enough force that the thing would have clattered behind him if he hadn’t caught it. 

Reminding himself that these were tasks that he’d performed for himself every morning for years, often without the aid of a mirror, and he had never been called out for the state of his dress unless something happened to disturb it later in the day, Steve took the ribbon and draped it over his shoulder. For a long moment, he stood behind the Baron’s chair, considering. His hair wanted cutting, which he likely knew, and washing besides, but pointing that out would hardly help Steve’s case or the Baron’s consideration.

For lack of a comb, Steve stroked his fingers lightly from brow to nape, straightening curls and marshalling them into his right hand, taking care not to pull. With trimming and dressing, it would likely be enough to plait and club into a queue, which was not the fashion any more, but Steve still found it very useful himself and more civil than tucking it down the back of his shirt. 

The Baron wore his collars high, and so after satisfying himself that he could manage both the tasks asked of him, Steve loosened what remained of the knot and pulled the cravat free, draping it over his shoulder along with the ribbon. Finding the collar at least more properly starched than the shirt, Steve set about straightening the neck and tying it properly, careful to neither choke nor disturb the Baron’s neck, which wanted shaving. 

Steve started a list in the back of his mind, more to be acted upon than presented for approval, of things that needed to be Done concerning the Baron, to distract himself from the pressing thought that he was being allowed so close as to touch and hold the man’s hair out of the way with his arm while he frowned at the cravat, which wanted goffering. There was nothing to be done about it then. The Baron could hardly expect to him to have starch and an iron close to hand, although Steve certainly intended to have a word with the laundresses about both. 

When he had the length of linen and lace looped to his satisfaction, Steve dropped it over the Baron’s neck and held the collar in place while he knotted and fluffed the cravat around it. 

Half done with his tasks, Steve contemplated the ribbon he had been offered, finding it less than satisfactory as well. But without his own to exchange for it, there was nothing to be done but to knot it loosely, gather up the dark curls in one hand and pull them gently through. One or two escaped, and Steve tucked them in, caught between holding his breath and daring to inhale the far from unpleasant scent of the Baron’s skin. Two knots and a careful bow, and Steve stood wondering what he ought to do next, finally settling on rounding the table again to stand by his chair, anxious but cautiously pleased with the improvement in his master’s appearance.

—

It was a test for both of them, but in the privacy of his own counsel, James knew far more one to measure himself than the young man before him. He sat up a little on the chaise, enough to make himself accessible, though he tensed the moment the ribbon was taken, and then had to focus on breathing soft and very steady. 

No speech escaped his lips. No flinch was allowed to rattle his shoulders. Instead, the Baron simply grew very, very still and quiet, breathing, with his chin tilted up enough to offer his throat and his eyes half-lidded. As delicate fingers soothed through his hair to gather it out of the way, neatly fixing his cravat and then binding the long curls out of his face. Slow and careful, with deliberate gentility. And most importantly, causing none of the flaring terror that could set off one of his fits. 

That, if nothing else, was enough to pull a sigh of heavy relief from him as the young man stepped back and James found himself...largely calm. Rogers had obeyed him to the letter, nothing less, nothing more. And his touch had reeked of nothing awful, only a dutiful consideration, free of pity, bearing no unease around him. 

“You mustn’t startle me,” he said softly, and would not look at the young man. “Not when you are close like that. Even wounded like this… I was a soldier, not merely a polished piece of brass. The instinct remains, and. I do not wish to harm you, nor any other. So there must be noise made before you approach. You must not, from behind me without warning. No hands reaching for me without our agreement they may, first. If my door is shut, do not enter the room without permission. No matter what you hear.” 

Quiet pieces of advice recited, limitations he and his servants and his physician had all learned the hard way. James exhaled, then reached up, tracing the path of the young man’s hands with quiet consideration. 

“‘Tis vain indeed, yes? To keep it so long. I ought to clip it short again, like when I was still a boy. That’s come back into style now, so I’m told. All the length does is cause me grief. And yet….I cannot bring myself to be parted with it.” He closed his eyes, and nestled back down on the chaise, unable to bring himself to look over and see Rogers’ reaction to the notion. 

“Maintain your assignment with Mister Wilson. However, I will inform him that I may require, at my leisure, an hour or two of your time for help with certain small tasks in his place. Binding back the ribbon in my hair. Assisting with a cravat. Buckles, or buttons, at times, should my hand forget its office and refuse to remain steady, as it at certain times does. If you desire to take charge of brushing and tending my clothes, and have his assent to devote the time necessary to tend them as such, you may take the task as your own. I will continue to manage all my own correspondence and my own ledgers. I will grant a fortnight, as a test. And if I cannot bear it, or the work suits you less than you anticipate, you may return to your current position and work well enough that Wilson can give you something more engaging than just arithmetic.”

She had written that the boy had a way with horses. Skittish, easily spooked beasts, that needed a gentle yet sure hand. James resolved then to have words with his Cousin for the little insult he had not noticed upon first read of her letter, no matter how fondly he knew she must have meant it. 

But the lad’s work-roughened hands were kind. And they had felt good, petting through his hair, enough to leave James abruptly exhausted by the scrap of comfort. He fumbled for the letter, folding the pages away into his waistcoat and peering up through his lashes at the young man. 

“It is not a new Position. Only a reconfigurement of some of your assigned tasks… to determine if you are more suitable at my side than Mister Wilson’s. I shan’t take you from him fully, regardless, until we find a replacement. He has been less fretful, and I as well, and things have gone better for it, since your arrival.” 

—

Having not been given leave to take his seat again, Steve found it far harder not to fidget while standing and being spoken to, and harder still not to burst in with an answer or a point that perhaps the Baron had not considered. 

He instead confined himself to nodding at instructions given, although he couldn’t quite conceal the look of horror that passed over his face at the mention of so drastic a haircut. When the Baron appeared to be quite finished speaking, and as yet had given no order for Steve to either sit or take his leave, he set aside the disappointment of not being allowed to take all his master’s needs in hand straight away in favour of the more immediate concern of avoiding the charge of Looming. 

Sparing a glance at the glass panes separating the conservatory from the rest of the manor, Steve dropped to his knees in front of the chaise lounge, eyebrows slightly raised. What else had the Baron expected him to do? Steve could hardly say he minded the position, and it was far more comfortable than it had been the last time he took it up. 

“I’m grateful for your consideration, sir,” he said, quiet and truthfully. “Mister Wilson shouldn’t be put out, and it isn’t the arithmetic I mind, just the sitting. I won’t startle you or disturb you. And your hair only wants trimming.” 

Steve was just debating the merits of mentioning that he could be trusted with a pair of shears, when the Baron’s posture as observed from this new angle truly struck him, superseding other concerns. 

“I’ve tired you by going on too long, I think, sir. Shall I accompany you to your room?” 

Not help or assist or anything that might offend. A friend could offer company, after all, even if it was not usually from his knees.

—

Little soldiers had stood at attention when waiting on him, years prior. Jjust then, the presence of the boy at his shoulder did not register as anything different, distracted as he still was with ruminations over exactly how deeply he’d put Samuel Wilson out over the last year, and with the new memory of warm hands petting his hair into order with none of the stiff, perfunctory tension Sam himself carried when attempting the task. Only for the body at his shoulder to move, and then the Major was paying attention all at once, staring dumbstruck as broad shoulders and bright eyes suddenly appeared at his eye level, fantasy brought to life. 

All at once, his face flamed just as brilliantly crimson as it had when the young man made his earlier conjecture about unsavoury but necessary bodily habits, and James’ legs twitched with the instinct to cross. Because, what? Why had that been done? And also...how the hell was he meant to look away, now that the clerk was at eye level, and just as beautiful kneeling as the first time he had. He hardly registered the words spoken, eyes wide and cheeks arrested with a flush that even his distracted nod couldn’t cover, exhaustion the only thing saving him from a flinch at his own egregious lapse of propriety as to be so affected. 

“I—” 

He paused, and made himself stop and breathe once in and out to compose himself. 

“Tis no fault of yours. I tire easily, and at unforeseeable intervals,” he said, because it was true. Blinking at the offer, he stared across at the boy, something between amusement and realisation crossing his features before the weariness wiped it into acceptance. 

“Yes, All right,” he agreed, not sure where the sudden dizzy spell had taken him from, but well accustomed to their unwelcome occurrence. “Be a good lad and fetch my tea and my book for me, as you do, hm? Then I shan’t have to send for them later.” Which— ah. Well. Perhaps this having a hanger-on business would not be so entirely as useless as he’d thought, at least with regard to the carrying of things he could not due to his hand’s occupation with a cane most days. 

Speaking of:

Gingerly swinging his legs over the side of the lounge, James looked over at his…well, his Man, now, he supposed, for as long as he let it continue. And then offered out a warm, only slightly tremulous hand in mirror of the other day. Not an offer to help Stephen up. Rather a request, that he rise and help his master up instead, to spare the Baron’s body some effort getting aloft enough to walk to his chamber.

“I needed help walking for enough months to be sick of it. And Banner claims it is of import that I push myself to see how much mobility can be regained on my own. But having someone to catch the doors is all right. Or at my side, in case my balance goes suddenly. That does not happen frequently, any longer, but it is not outside the realm of possibility. Walk on my right so you can take my arm if I falter.” 

—

Why the Baron should be so flushed, Steve wasn’t sure. An effect of the fatigue, perhaps. He was fairly certain that he hadn’t actually tired the man out himself, but taking the blame had prevented any suspicion of pity very neatly, Steve thought. 

Pleased that his suggestion of both assistance and retiring had been met with approval, Steve reached out for the extended hand, lifting it gently atop the back of his own. No grasping of fingers that were likely already overtaxed from the unyielding head of the cane. He bent his head over it reverently in silent gratitude for being allowed so much of what he’d requested, and pressed his lips to the knuckles in a chaste, featherlight kiss. Nothing that could possibly be taken for impertinence, he hoped.

The Baron’s rest could not be delayed overlong, though, so Steve clambered to his feet after a moment, happy enough to allow himself to be used in helping the Baron upright, steadying him briefly with a hand at the small of his back until he seemed to have his own feet under him and a steady grip on the cane Steve had placed under his hand. Tucking the book under his arm, Steve balanced the cup and saucer on his palm, leaving the other hand free to hold the door of the Conservatory open for the Baron and afterward free to steady him should he sway or stumble.

Steve stayed obediently behind his right elbow as they traversed the corridor and the stairs that led to the Baron’s chamber, thinking about what he had seen of the man’s chest and his injuries there. 

“If I may ask, sir,” he began quietly, “is the difficulty in walking solely due to the imbalance or to a wasting of muscles or to some other injury you received? I don’t wish to pry, only to understand.”

—

He’d kissed his hand. 

It was about the only thought rattling around the Baron’s head, even as a warm, gentle hand assisted him up, gathered his things, and held the door for him in turn. He could still feel the echo of it on his knuckles, chaste and dry yet buzzing like a brand beneath his skin. Even as he tried to recall if it had ever been done to him by any of the boys he once took to fool around with, what felt like a lifetime ago, flirting at each other like he had to gain the affections of those young ladies he had coyly tempted in equal measure. 

The walk to his chamber from the conservatory was longer, and far greater effort than to merely traverse the distance between bed and study. By the time they were nearing the end of it, his palm had sweat enough to leave his grip on the smoothly rounded metal knob precarious and stain his palm with the smell of brass. James found himself sorely regretting the decision to swap out his own cane for an imperfect substitute. Going forward, he decided, he would simply continue use of his own, measured for him, and simply hope that Rogers could grow less nervous around it while he carried out his newly self-appointed duties. That matter and the mystery of the little kiss occupied him wholly, until they had stepped past the threshold of his bedchamber and the man asked him a soft, careful question, that drew him up short entirely. 

For a long moment, he was silent, shoulders bristling with a subtle line of tension that waivered before it eased. He moved to lower his body into the plush chair by the window, looking out it rather than at Stephen.  

“It results from a combination of causes,” he said finally. “I had a small limp penultimate to this loss— an old wound, where I took a sabre to the hip and never fully lost the habit of favouring it. Nothing so severe as to need a cane, but enough result in fatigue at the end of the day. But when I—” he cut off, hand gripping the chair arm tightly. “When it was lost to me, there was additional damage also. And in addressing it, the surgeons caused by their efforts a weakness of the muscle in my centre and along my leg. Combined, the extant weakness, that the wound is less than a year healed, and the dizziness that now takes me at times— to say nothing of the occasional fits I suffer, like you saw that once in my study– the limp fluctuates from day to day. Even on the good days, my balance is not what it should be, so I use the aid. Alone, perhaps, each of those things would not require it. But all told together...my gait is uneven and my body easily tired without something to aid in holding itself upright and balanced.” He sighed,  as if even the thought of his state was distasteful. 

“Banner and those other physicians who have consulted believe with time it will perhaps ease. If I practise, to the extent of how far I can push myself, with it and without. But perhaps it will not.” And he would be forever bound to helplessness, one hand gone and the other locked around whalebone, equally impotent. 

“I would have gladly done my duty, died for the crown,” James added, soft, and more than a little maudlin. “Would have been glad, even to take the place of any of my boys, if I could have saved a one of them by it. But this...life. Crippled and useless. It is to me nearly an unbearable fate to be left with. And they say bitterness of ones innermost nature poisons all the rest. Temper and healing both.  So who can say what I shall result?” 

—

Steve manoeuvred the door shut behind them with his heel, wondering if he ought to have kept his silence. The question was not a proper one, but if he was to care for the Baron, to help him if he should fall into a fit or in other way become ill, Steve thought that he ought to know such things. Doctor Banner had not been forthcoming on the matter, and Steve would not trust something so intimate, so important to mere gossip. He watched the Baron move to sit, and did not speak again, instead occupying himself with placing the book and the teacup close to hand before kneeling to remove the Baron’s shoes, which wanted polishing, and placing them by the door to be attended to later. 

He had just fetched the slippers he’d made from where they sat by the bed and knelt to slip them onto the Baron’s stocking-clad feet when the man spoke. Steve looked up, head cocked to listen to the recounting, imagining in his mind’s eye the wounds described, but taking care to keep any trace of the horror he felt off his face. At the Baron’s last words, though, he could keep silent no longer.

“You are not useless,” Steve burst out, then remembered his manners and quieted his voice, though it remained no less fervent. “That is to say, you must not imagine yourself so, sir. You have a duty to us, all of us here, as we have a duty to you. This is a good house because you are the master of it, not in spite of you. I have heard no ill word spoken of you since I came here and many ones about your fairness and leniency and good wages. Peg—I mean, Miss Carter– told me herself that she would never have been taken for more than a scullery maid elsewhere, being so young, but you offered her a trial of managing the kitchen, and she does it very ably, I think. And it would pain Mister Wilson very much to hear you speak of yourself so. You must not, sir. I beg you not to.”

Steve fell silent, looking beseechingly up at his master, filled with the desperate hope that his words would be taken in the spirit they had been mean, in spite of being impertinent and out of turn.

—

He startled bodily at the abrupt, unexpected rebuke. A little flinch that ran through the entirety of his thin frame and had his hand twitching off the chair arm and closer to his body for protection, even as the Major’s eyes locked onto his servant with abrupt intensity and did not look away. Even as Stephen gathered himself...and continued, quietly yet determinedly taking him to task in a way only his physician and his seneschal dared, these days. It earned a sharp frown, but his hand relaxed, feet unmoving where one lay in the young man’s grip. Even as he listened, throat tight at the praise. The pleading. From a beautiful young man on his knees, who once more would risk everything to try and ease him. 

“...Do not presume to lecture me on my duty.” The words were very soft. But warning, a knife hidden in velvet. “I well know it. And you know not of what you speak, what it costs me to endure in order to see it out.” 

The months of agony, disorientation, because he had a Duty, and so could not be allowed to simply go on, kept half-alive and shambling for the sake of a promise that someday he might recover enough to fulfill it. Exhaling, he pushed those dark thoughts away, scrubbing a hand over his face and adding, much gentler:

“It is the work of an officer to find good people and make the best of them, put them where they may thrive, and bring betterment to all for it. It was the best work I did, while I yet wore the red, and the habit lingers. Caring for you and all the household? I will not shirk it. But it is nearly all I can, to see it done. The rest…” 

James pursed his lips, staring out the window. “I cannot run. I can barely stand to ride. I cannot dance. I have no temperament left for social calls, no stamina enough for the London Seasons my sister and my cousin would have me attend. Even should I…. withered like this, sour-dispositioned, all I am desirable for is the Estate, now, and what hope of true Companionship is there, knowing that? When I can barely take responsibility for myself, much less the family I’m expected to sire in the name of Duty.” That thought seemed to cut him off, and he sat up a little, grimacing. 

“I have spoken imprudently. Such concerns are not yours to hear, certainly not when you only tried to offer kindness.” He paused, pinning Stephen with a firm glance. “Albeit impertinent kindness.” But there was no threat of punishment, no active displeasure. Just the black, brooding weight, settling back over his countenance as he faded back into his chair. 

“Finish… whatever it is you’re doing, then you may go. I am no fit company just now, not even for a manservant.” 

—

Steve stayed frozen where he was, spitted by the Baron’s dark gaze and the intensity of his words, feeling very small and stupid for having ever dared to speak on the subject. And yet the Baron did not move to slap him or even cuff his ear. His anger seemed more directed at himself than at Steve, who felt more and more like an unwitting audience as the Baron went on. 

When stated in such terms, it really did seem like a miserable state. Steve knew himself blessed to have the health and heartiness of limb that he did due to luck and Providence, not to any care on his part.

“I beg your pardon for the impertinence, sir,” Steve said softly, finishing with the slippers and sitting back on his knees to make his apology looking the Baron in the eye, trying to strike a balance in his tone between respect and firmness of conviction. 

“I shouldn’t lecture you. I didn’t mean to, only to remind you that no one in all of Lehigh Park thinks you useless. But I cannot put myself in your place, nor speak for you, nor imagine the pains you bear. I can only tell you that I do not find you withered or sour. I like your company. It comforted me to see you, when I was confined to bed, and your consideration—” Steve stopped and tried to swallow down the lump that had grown in his throat. 

“I am very grateful for your consideration, sir. It would make my mother very proud, I think, to know I had a position in such a house, with such a master.”

—

The swift apology finished deflating him just as thoroughly as his own regret, anger swiftly extinguished under the weight of exhaustion and remorse. Silently, he peered down at the young man kneeling at his feet, heaving a little sigh as his manservant clarified his intentions. Silent, until Stephen had said his piece, made his attempt at comfort...one that James could try to hear, a little better than the first attempt, even if it made something in his throat tight to hear the man so earnestly profess to enjoy his company, when he had been such unpleasant company on nearly every event they’d encountered each other. 

“I’ve given you no rule against impertinence,” he said finally, a quiet reminder, his lips soft and almost slanting wry as he arched an eyebrow down at the boy. “And I think, perhaps, I mustn’t, or I should always be having to take you to task for it. Seems a waste of effort, really.” 

Given that he was fairly sure impertinence was simply at the core of Stephen Rogers’ nature, that was not a battle he was willing to wage. And...it was refreshing, to be spoken to so plainly. More like the army, less like the stilted politics of the city or the various country estates neighbouring about Buchanan. The Baron sighed again, leaning his head back against his chair as he studied the man kneeling beneath him.

“Well. Then that is well enough, hm? What every young man hopes for, if he has any sense at all.” To make his mother proud. 

“Think no more of it,” he dismissed simply, waving his fingers loosely above the chair arm. He had no intent to lecture or punish or set additional rules for the young man solely because he had spoken his mind, and in his honesty, pricked a sore place. 

James sighed softly. And indulged himself, just for a moment, to reach out and tuck a soft curl behind the young man’s ear. “You’ve lost your ribbon,” he murmured, lips twitching wryly. “Take care, or you’ll be accused of collecting poor habits from me, rather than assisting in the enforcement of better ones.” 

He dropped his hand to his knee, and stared out the window again, because it was easier like that. When the body at his feet was small and patient, and he didn’t have to look into piercing, overly perceptive eyes. 

“I want...to improve,” he confessed quietly. “For a long time, I did not. But I am so, so very sick of it all. Being confined to this room. Waking, screaming, in a pool of sweat. Being— not what I would have myself be. There is so much to be done, so much I should know, that I do not. So I… I would be Better. To be what I can, if what I ought is unobtainable. You will assist with the clothes, and I shall at least manage it on the exterior. It is a place to start. For that, you have my gratitude, Mister Rogers. But I warn you now, all my progress has been slow and agonising won: a siege, not a skirmish.” 

And yet. The man before him was a most pleasant distraction from it, and not wholly unappealing company himself. Perhaps...like opening the windows, it was simply time. A welcome change, and one to be embraced. 

—

Steve had hitherto laboured under the impression that there was always a rule against impertinence, and his brow furrowed at the thought that the Baron had explicitly decided not to make one because he knew Steve couldn’t keep it. He’d decided that reprimanding Steve for it was going to be too much trouble, so he wasn’t going to do that either. It was enough to make Steve’s head hurt thinking about it, so he was happy to put it out of mind when told to, and happier still to incline his head to the Baron’s hand when it reached out to set his hair to rights. 

“I don’t presume to enforce anything with you, sir. It rather seemed like the opposite to me. You have been enforcing my good habits and curbing the bad ones. Only please don’t make me cut my hair, even though it is a vanity.” Steve had had it required of him before, and had shorn it off out of necessity himself a few times as well, but he vastly preferred his hair long enough to tie back. Steve privately thought that it suited him very well. He was just about to ask whether the Baron had other rules for him when the man spoke out of his reverie.

The quiet, resigned pledge was enough to have Steve reaching out and touching the Baron’s slipper again with the tips of his fingers, light and glancing, not to demand the man’s attention, but perhaps request it. 

“There is much to be done,” he agreed softly, “but you mustn’t do it alone. We will manage it, sir. More than simply the exterior. Slowly, perhaps, but not agonising anymore. I’m very stubborn, and I won’t ask more of you than you’re able. I am not what I would have myself be either, but you don’t ask me to do everything I ought, only what I can. And you may call me Stephen in private as you have before, sir.” 

The Baron hardly needed his permission for that, but perhaps giving it would encourage him, Steve hoped. Mister Rogers sounded terribly cold having heard the Baron’s lovely low voice curl around the softer syllables of his Christian name.

—

“Then we shall each keep our vanity. I would not bid you cut off your curls when I will not have mine taken likewise.” And especially not when they were so fetching, spun gold and angelic, curling around the sharpness of the lad’s chin to soften it and the rest of his features into youthful innocence. It was an easy request to accommodate. 

…The rest of the young man’s words were considerably less easy to hear out. And the same strange mix of deeply impertinent and deeply kind that made it impossible to yell at him, while also provoking an immediate, instinctual urge to. To presume he would be asking things of the man he served at all. To put them on the same level enough to be a “we,” a team. And yet it was done to comfort him that he would no longer be alone in his suffering and strife. That he would not at all be mocked or pitied or chivvied along beyond what was bearable. 

“You hardly need announce to me that stubbornheadedness is in your nature. Your eyes say it well enough.” The little comment was dry with a flash of brief humour, and lack any sense of reprimand. Even as he looked down and considered being offered something that was already his right. He had called Samuel by his intimate name, a diminutive of it, even, near as long as he had known him. Outside his blood relations, though, the list of those he trusted enough to address thusly was very small. 

“…Stephen, then,”  he acquiesced, after a moment of quiet contemplation. The Baron nodded as much to himself as the other man, reaching  for the cold cup cup of tea he had started in the conservatory with intent that it not go to waste,  ignoring the saucer in favour of just getting a firm grip on the cup despite the present frailty of his hand. 

“Fetch me the quilt off the foot of the bed, and lay it over my lap.” 

He presently lacked the energy to undress and crawl in bed, or continue to read. But curling up under a blanket in the richly upholstered armchair and watching out the window in a half doze, would not be out of the ordinary from him. 

“I leave to your discretion what tasks require immediate attention with my clothing. Only alert Mister Wilson where you may be and for what purpose. Dismiss yourself when you are finished, otherwise… you may keep company. At least until I drift off, shortly.”

—

Steve sat on his knees watching the Baron attentively, a small smile playing over his mouth at the indulgence of their mutual vanity. He ducked his head a little to acknowledge that yes, the Baron must know already that he was very stubborn. Steve knew the man in front of him to be equally obstinate, only worn down by pain and long illness.

He scrambled to his feet to fetch the blanket indicated, but approached more slowly to lay it over the Baron’s lap, worrying at his lip with his teeth as he did. 

“I will help you to undress and lie in bed if you like, sir,” he offered quietly. “For my part, I wake very stiff and sore when I fall asleep upright. It would…please me to know that I had made you as comfortable as I could.”

Steve knew better than to press the matter, though, so he obeyed by spreading the quilt out over the Baron’s lap and legs, tucking it in lightly before he settled again on his knees. He had not quite been able to get a look at the title of the Baron’s book without making his interest obvious. He debated the merits of offering a further service because of that, but decided ultimately that even if he made a fool of himself the Baron might be amused. 

“I could read aloud to you, as well, sir, if the words aren’t very long.”

—

The offer was no great a surprise. It was what good sense would demand he do, even if James entirely felt unwilling to make the effort. He was always stiff and sore; a little more in new places would hardly make it that much worse. But if prompted, it was true enough that he could stand and shed his garments for nightclothes, and make himself horizontal once more. 

The trouble was relaxing enough to allow someone to aid him with it. And for all that he felt himself confident to allow Stephen Rogers to fetch a book or retrieve a quilt for him (both of which were no small matter, given how he had snapped at other footmen or chambermaids for taking similar liberties uninvited), letting the man see him, touch him, enough to carry out the proposition was a notion that left him faintly ill at ease. 

It remained just that, though. A notion, an offer. His man obeyed, and made no move to withhold the blanket until he acquiesced, or badger him into following the paths of good judgement beyond what he was willing to. It pulled a soft, quietly relieved exhale from him, even as he petted the familiar texture of the quilt and studied the young man once more indulging his master’s whims— even the unspoken ones— by kneeling at his feet. 

“Let me think on it,” he said, because it was a gracious offer, and he did not want the young man to consider himself ignored. Only to blink as he was offered a second proposition, one curious enough to pull him, even faintly, from the black despair and fatigue weighting it heavy upon his shoulders. 

“Mm.” 

For a long moment, weary eyes considered their setup, the amount of light outside the window, the rug under his manservant’s knees, and unyielding stone beneath that. The nature of the volume he had been quietly entertaining himself with, small excerpts at a time across many weeks now. 

“You may attempt it. Take what time you need. And if you do not know a word, I will assist you with it.” Reaching, his hand took the little volume, unsteady in execution but firm in its intent as he thumbed to his place and handed it down. 

“Each line must be read with a pause after, enough for a breath and a contemplation. Such is the way of things, with poetry.” To which, he assumed, this servant boy had little exposure. 

“The poet’s name is Shelley. You must read the title of each, and then the poem, and then pause a little while longer to consider it. If you like, we can discuss, such as I have strength for. Three, perhaps four sets of lines.” 

He paused, and then braced himself, because once he had been an Officer, and there were greater things to fear than a young man devoted to his service and offering to serve as he ought. “And then you may assist me in Undressing and lying down, and close the drapes before you go.  But for now…” 

Exhaling, James brushed his fingers through the young man’s hair again, coaxing him closer. 

“Your knees will ache. Sit, and put your head, here, on my own. Start with the verse entitled ‘To a Skylark’. I will not fault you if you stumble, nor take temper. We must all begin at some point...and this is one worthy of a beginning.” 

Chapter Text

The Baron liked him to kneel, Steve was fairly certain, though the man had never asked it of him, much less ordered him. It was pleasant to do of his own accord, Steve found, and for his master’s pleasure. It never had been as an order. That the Baron was hesitant to allow further, more intimate service, Steve had expected, and had hoped that being allowed to read might give him a little more time nonetheless.

He waited while his master considered the offer, eyes fixed on the book as though he might see through the pages and divine its contents.

“Oh, poetry,” Steve echoed, with interest and trepidation both. He’d seen the volumes of it in the little library and bypassed them as beyond his comprehension, looked longingly at the novels, and then chosen a book of moral philosophy instead, so that he might better himself with his time. If the Baron was willing to assist him, though, and not fault him when he stumbled, Steve was willing to attempt it. 

He looked up with pleased surprise at the decision made, only to bend his head into the gentle touch that followed it. “My knees don’t ache as much as my a—” Steve muttered, caught aback at the consideration. He caught himself, though, and made haste to settle with his back against the side of the chair, his head and shoulder leaning against the Baron’s knee.

After some searching, Steve found the poem and turned to it. Lengthy as a whole, but the lines of verse were short. Taking a deep breath, he recited the title as instructed, and then began, haltingly at first, then with more surety:

“Hail to thee, blithe Spirt! Bird thou never wert, that from Heaven, or near it, pourest thy full heart in profuse strains of—” he paused and frowned at the word, doing his best to sound it out before he held the book up so that the Baron could see the word his fingertip rested beneath, asking silently for aid.

—

The little cut-off comment pulled another half-smile from the corner of his mouth, but James gave no further indication he’d heard it. Sitting on muscle and soft tissue, albeit bruised, would be more sustainable than keeping so much weight on the bony joints of the knees and ankles. And his servant seemed to settle well enough, quiet and obedient and easy to track the movements of, curled up close at his feet. James reached out, tangling his fingers gently in Stephen’s hair, stroking the long, silky curls much the same as his fingers had petted at his blanket, and resuming watching out the window until the sound of a quiet, tentative voice reading to him halted. 

“Unpremeditated,” he said, when he finally looked down and understood the request. 

“It is a word with two prefixes; such that we take the word meditate, which means to think about something or consider a course of action, and add to it the prefix ‘pre,’ which means before in the Latin origination. So meditated becomes premeditated, meaning that one has thought about something before a certain time. And atop that, lastly, is the prefix ‘un,’ which is the opposite of a thing. So unpremeditated means that a thing has not been thought of in advance, and merely springs forth out of natural instinct, like a songbird to its music, or a young man to his stubbornness.” 

Indulgently, he scritched blunt nails along the scalp behind one of Stephen’s ears, as though the man were a pet rather than a servant, to soften his words. 

“Continue, please. You have made a very good start. And if you care to, you ought to speak in your own voice, not an affect. It will not harm the poetry overmuch, I should think, as the art of wordplay to evoke emotion and truth belongs to all of us.” He paused, and then added, soft and almost mirthful: “Even we sorry Jews and Irish.” 

Nestling a bit deeper into his chair, James kept caressing the young man’s hair, finding his soul lighter than it otherwise would have remained for the company, the lilting voice making the well-loved poem new to his ears once more. Now and then the lad paused, and the Baron in turn lifted his head to clarify a word in similar fashion, patient, and with a goal to instruct for his servant’s betterment rather than mere correction. Until they had struggled through to the end of the first poem, and he could open his eyes again to ask quietly. 

“What make you of it? I would hear your thoughts.”

—

“Unpremeditated,” whispered Steve to himself, thinking of all the scoldings he’d gotten after mischief he’d simply fallen into without planning it at all, only to be accused of plotting and scheming wickedness. The artless, gentle touches and the equally gentle instruction he was receiving might fit the definition of the word, as well, though Steve knew better than to say that aloud. 

He muddled his way through the rest of the poem, line by line, the clipped vowels becoming broader, the consonants harder as he went on. Steve wished that he’d brought his commonplace book with him so that he could write down aëreal and vernal and Hymnean, joyance and languor and harmonious, although when he would have cause to use those words he didn’t know. 

To be asked his opinion was so novel that at first Steve didn’t understand what was being put to him, much less why. 

“I never thought so much of skylarks before,” he said slowly, sure that thinking would be easier if every inch of his scalp didn’t feel alight, but unable to bear the thought of asking the Baron to stop. “At least not that they were like…all those things.” 

Privately it seemed a great many words to put around a bird whose chirping had woken him every morning on the road from London with no regard for how tired and footsore he might be. 

“That is true, I think,” Steve said, pointing to a line near the end of the verse. “The saddest songs are the sweetest ones. After that I think the fellow gives himself airs a little, for isn’t it right to scorn things like hate and pride and fear? Harmonious madness doesn’t make any sense to me, either, but perhaps that’s the trouble, sir.” He turned to crane his neck up at the Baron with an apologetic look. 

“I must be too dull to understand the merit of it all and why you enjoy it so much. I never had much to do with poetry before.”

—

It was worth the wait to hear when Stephen finally posited a conclusion. James arched an eyebrow down at the younger man, and then clicked his tongue softly in correction. 

“Lad, I would wager dull is about the last thing you might ought to be called. Only unpolished. You have read me a poem, and given me an opinion thereupon, and asked for assistance with words on far fewer instance than I thought you might have need of. It was well done, enough for a first attempt.” He withdrew his fingers from a tangle of flaxen, mussed waves, and took the volume back to rest lightly on his opposite knee, pinning it with the back of his hand so that he might run a finger along the stanzas and thusly indicate as he desired. 

“I will tell you two things both at once true of poetry, in my experience with it. To a soldier, to a servant, those busy with practical cares and ills, it is the most vexing sort of inefficiency, to say so very little while saying so very much. And yet. Given enough time to sit and meditate, even a soldier may find some comfort in the act of the meditation itself. That is to say… in parsing through so great many words that things are not clearly understood at once, a man must spend more time considering the understanding of them. And in that time, perhaps grow more intimate with the nature of his soul by the paths his contemplations incline themselves toward, and find comfort or insight into esoteric mystery or even mere innocent entertainment along the way.” 

His lips quirked, eyes crinkling faintly at the weathered corners. “Which is to say, perhaps we are all putting on airs, just a little, poets and listeners both. Yet, given enough time, poetry is a language just like any other. One simply needs taught to read it, before it can be of use, same as all the letters you’ve schooled yourself in previously. Here, look.” 

With a soft grunt of effort, James pushed himself to sit up a against the back of his chair a little so that he could lean forward and glance at the page over the handsome slope of one broad shoulder.  

“It is the nature of such poems that the poet has in mind at the start an object or phenomenon he desires to interrogate and thereby divine meaning from. So he chooses a series of other things to compare it to, that we with him might understand its nature more wholly. See, in the first handful of verses– the text all in a block with a little space beneath it— he tells us plainly what he means to write about. The skylark, and the way it sings. Only that he also takes pains to paint us a picture of the sky the bird flies along, whether it be morning or sunset or twilight, so as to bring to mind a memory of hearing the song at those various times to you and I, the readers. And when he considers the nature of the song, and he chooses things to compare it to. A young woman in love, a valley lit by glow-bugs at night, a rose, and rainfall. And then says, here, that all those things are beautiful and bring joy, yet still he finds the skylark’s song surpassing all of them for its purpose. On the journey to that point, I find it a comfort to sit and think on his remembering of pleasant things. What rain in the spring feels like, when you’re caught out in it suddenly yet have a warm hearth to go to and dry off in front of after. What the roses in my Mother’s garden smelled like when blooming under the care of her patient hands.”

In her absence, no such blossoms adorned the estate outside his window. And yet his eyes briefly strayed, cast out in search of them, reminiscence flickering a now-then-now illusion wistful enough to have him sharply looking away. 

“At any rate, at the end he finally reaches what ultimate argument he intends, I suppose, and so it’s natural that there you find your opinion, because the above is, frankly, largely window dressing for the point. He concludes here that he finds the bird and its song special because of its innocence and persistence, and compares the bird’s view of the world to ours. To consider whether it should be better or worse were we all like the bird, making noise solely because it was our nature without consideration of any further reason. Without of all the things that make us human: the good and the bad. And ultimately, he determines, as you said… that the sufferings in life which leave us less innocent than a mere lark are what gives its song such meaning to us. As if only in possession of the knowledge of good and evil can we see the garden’s true beauty, when by it such perfection is lost to us. And so, while we appreciate felicitations like the birdsong for what they are, we might also make of them teachers to ourselves. An exhortation that we might aspire to such pristine joy and sweetness, though we yet know it must be tempered with all the ills of this world.” 

At once, the Baron seemed to realise just how much he had let slip, and for how long he’d gone on with the speaking of it. He drew up and cleared his throat, accordingly. 

“Or, at least, such is the state of my current contemplations. A scholar could perhaps derive more weighty principles from it, more meaningful or precise conclusion. For my own part, I enjoy this poem because it is a meditation on things that are virtuous and lovely, and a… a sort of hope, I suppose. A reminder that there is still simple good in the world, unspoiled joys we are free to partake of, even after all the ugliness I have seen in it these last years. Either way, you’ve been most indulgent to sit and let me chunner on about the matter at such length. I rarely find myself with such a captive audience to an invalid’s ramble.”

—

Lad felt far different from boy, better even along with the soft correction. The Baron had done everything but call him clever, Steve realised, which he had to admit that he would have protested. As it was, he could only hide a pleased little smile as he bent his head to try and order his hair now that the Baron had taken his hand from it. 

Steve scooted around to face the man while he spoke, the better to attend him while he explained. Sitting up and wrapping his arms around his knees, he tilted his head to rest again against the Baron’s thigh, though the inside of it this time. He’d ended more or less between the man’s slippered feet, much too close for propriety. Doing his best to follow the train of the man’s explanation, Steve reminded himself that he ought to attend closely, and since the Baron hadn’t remarked upon his proximity, perhaps it was alright.

He ought to be learning a lesson, Steve knew, about the moral philosophy it turned out was hidden within the text, but he found the substance of the words eclipsed by the speaker so thoroughly that he feared should questions be put to him afterward. The Baron’s mouth curved so carefully around each word as he warmed to his subject, smoothing the pinched, pained lines that usually marred his handsome face. Steve had given up all pretense of minding the text, his focus solely on his master’s voice until he paused and hedged a little, perhaps fearing for Steve’s boredom in spite of all evidence to the contrary.

“It seems to me I’m the one being indulged, sir,” he said quietly, plain but unchallenging. “And it seems as though poetry is like coming at an argument from all sides, so that when you’ve finished, your opponent has no points to make against you and so must see your side of things.” This had never happened to Steve in his life, but he was certain that was only because he could not make his points clearly enough or was not properly heard out. “And also like…you might think of more things about the matter some time later, after you’ve turned the poem over in your mind some. That’s good value for money, that is.”

After some consideration of the Baron’s instruction, Steve added. “I only know one poem, if a sonnet is a poem, sir, and I only learned it off by heart from having to reset the type so many times, the printer’s handwriting being very crabbed and the light bad.” 

His ears had rung all day over the matter, but the broadsheets had come out alright in the end, Steve thought, and been dry in time for gentlemen to buy for their sweethearts on St. Valentine’s Day, too.

—

The soft rebuttal, paired with his sudden awareness of just how closely they were sat together and in what manner, had the Baron’s face hot all at once, again. He blinked, but before he could counter or apologise for just how near his lap the young man’s face was settled, much less try to figure out some polite way to shoo him off, Stephen was continuing, with another Opinion, one that turned his ears with fascination to hear. James blinked down at his servant, listening, his lips tugging to one side again at the nature of the interpretation, the little aside following. 

“Well… yes.” 

He paused, and huffed out a soft laugh. “Good value for money and time, I suppose it is. A book of poems will last a man far longer than a novel, I should think.” 

Really, truly, he ought to make the boy move. But the warm weight was comforting at his knee, and there was room enough for the boy where he sat. And Stephen had taken the place freely, seeming wholly unbothered to sit there. 

…And it did not make him feel unsafe, James realised abruptly, aching with sudden hunger the proximity and contact all the more for it. He had lost himself within his own contemplation of the matter, blinking his gaze back to Stephen’s own bright eyes as the young man proffered yet more, riches freely given. Just as unsophisticated as the larksong, and just as precious for it. 

A sonnet. 

How woefully endearing, and immediately captivating with curiosity as to its provenance. 

“Aye, a sonnet is indeed a poem. Some might say the greatest and most difficult form of one. I’ve a book of them, there, on my desk. But I thought perhaps Shelley’s words would suit you better, here at the outset, than the great Bard’s. We shall perhaps advance thus in time.” 

James settled back into the back of his chair, tilting his head indulgently down, chin propped on his palm and elbow on the arm to brace him as he gazed down attentively at the lovely creature laying so sweetly on his knee.

“Go on then,” he said, after a beat. 

“You’ve offered it, you must tell me now, you know. I would hear your recitation, and we shall see if it is a sonnet I know, or one new to me as the Skylark was to you.”

—

Steve had not considered the lasting of a book, only that there were some he wanted to get through very quickly to find out the end and some that were slow, sleepy going. 

He’d mentioned the sonnet as soon as he’d thought of it, to try and show that he knew a little about such things after all. To make much of himself, when it came down to it. And as soon as the words were out of his mouth he’d realised that it sounded like an overture, an oblique request, not merely a braggart’s announcement. The Baron had called him to account for it, and Steve flushed as he understood there was nothing for it but to do so. 

He ought to stand, to make some attempt at elocution, but then he would surely forget and stammer, making a fool of himself in the end either way. It felt safer to remain curled up at the Baron’s feet, but Steve feared for his blushes both for the warmth of their arrangement and the subject of the verse. Nevertheless, he cleared his throat several times and began. There hadn’t been a title, only a number. 

“Sonnet One Hundred and Sixteen,” Steve announced shyly. “Let me not to the marriage of true minds admit impediments. Love is not love that alters when it alteration finds, or bends with the remover to remove. O no! It is an ever-fixed mark that looks on tempests and is never shaken; it is the star to every wand’ring bark, whose worth’s unknown although his height be taken. Love’s not Time’s fool, though rosy lips and cheeks within his bending sickle’s compass come; Love alters not with his brief hours or weeks, but bears out even to the edge of doom. If this be error and upon me prov’d, I never writ, nor no man ever loved.”

He hadn’t learned it as a poem to mark the lines, but as an address, minding only the punctuation and not the rhymes, to be sure that each shard of type containing an apostrophe or comma fell where it ought to. But Steve was a little pleased that he’d remembered the entirety of the piece. He liked it still, just as much as he had then, in spite of the trouble it had caused him. 

It wasn’t the frivolous love of Saint Valentine’s Day that the poet had written of, but something longer and more trustworthy, better and hardier. A proper kind of love, Steve thought, and laid out more plainly than he had ever heard elsewhere.

—

Ah. So he did know the Bard. 

James closed his eyes again as that husky, accented voice began recounting a sonnet he did indeed know, and well, for having once been a besotted young fool aspiring to such himself. The rhythm was all wrong, but the words quiet and genuinely meant, and the young man’s head still steady and warm on his thigh. 

And just then, with no tincture to blame it on and only the desperate hope that privacy would permit them the indiscretion let lie and the blanket conceal any resultant impropriety, James could not bring himself to put a stop to a bit of it. To give up the first good thing he’d found for himself in so long: a clever hyacinth content to sit at his feet and recite poetry to him until he found solace in body, mind and soul. One who wished fervently to be an aid to him, stubbornly devoted to his betterment, and who was not being missed overmuch elsewhere in the House for his hours spent entertaining its Master with his company. 

Damn his cousin and her abominably keen sense of perceptiveness. 

When Stephen had concluded, James sat a moment in silent contemplation, eyes unseeing cast across to the hearth before he looked back down at the young man with a pleased hum. “If you were to memorise a sonnet, you could not have chosen a better one. That is by William Shakespeare, whose book I mentioned, and who is widely regarded as one of the best writers England ever bore. And that is indeed one of his best writings.” 

Quietly, he studied the young man, before rewarding him with a tired but genuine smile, crinkle-cornered eyes and upturned lips, the softest expression his features had melted into yet. “There is a sort of serenity in it, don’t you think? To the recitation and study of verse. It takes my mind away from the rest of it, even some of the pain. Makes me feel… almost a whole man again.” Sighing, he gave Stephen’s head a gentle pat, first as reward, and then to shoo him off and upward.

“That is enough for today, though, I believe. I must attend myself, and then I think perhaps I shall sleep, or try to, at least. Help me up and find me my cane, and you can turn down the bed while I am in the other room, mm? There’s a good lad, up you get— slowly now. No need to have any falling or other nonsense today.” 

He brushed the quilt off his lap carefully once Stephen had stood, untangling his feet and reaching for a steady hand that was right where he expected it, and steadfast when he took it and by its strength leveraged himself up onto his feet. He was a little woozy and aching still, but the worst of the fatigue had levelled into dull sleepiness, softened with the lingering content from a sweet hour whiled away reading and discussing poetry. 

“If Mister Wilson asks where you’ve been, you may tell him you were assisting me and I will corroborate it. And I will speak with him this evening about your schedule. I shan’t hold you with me overlong only to see you scolded for it after the fact.”  

He steadied himself, settling his spine straight and rising to his full height, before nodding across the room in the direction of the privy chamber. “I may be a moment, but I do not require assistance. Make yourself useful; there are clothes and things in the wardrobe, nightshirts in the first drawer beneath it.” 

With that he excused himself, reminding his thoughts that the young man would not make mischief just on account of being left alone in his room, and that it was no wrong done to ask as he had, not when the man had as good as begged him some duty that might provide aid to him.

—

Having dared to glance up once or twice during his recitation, Steve had wondered if he’d bored his master so much as to send to sleep or if perhaps the man was simply made overtired by pain or illness. 

But no, the Baron’s eyes opened easily enough when Steve finished and held his breath waiting for the verdict, thinking back to try and remember if he’d muddled any of the words. But pleasure, weary and warm, broke over the Baron’s tired face like summer dawn, prompting a broad, happy grin that Steve made no attempt to hide. 

He ducked his head when he could bear it no more, hiding his face against the Baron’s thigh while he fought for composure. He hadn’t studied the lines under any kind of serenity, but Steve decided privately that all his pains and ink-stained fingers had been worth it for the gently beaming praise and caress to his head. 

He expected dismissal after that, and would have scrambled to his feet, likely making a fool of himself in the process. As it was he pushed himself up with a wry little grin, a hand outstretched to help the Baron do the same while the other grasped for the cane to hold and steady it. 

“No nonsense at all, sir,” he murmured, taking the quilt to the bed after the Baron had begun limping toward the necessary. Steve would have assisted him there if asked or emptied his chamber pot, because unpleasant tasks did not handle themselves, but he was grateful to be spared them just then. As he investigated the contents of the wardrobe and chest of drawers, Steve felt equally certain that any amount of trouble he might get into would be worth the precious hour they’d spent. 

After choosing the least musty of the nightshirts he’d found, Steve opened the window and shook the garment out it for good measure. He’d wake early in the morning, he decided, and gather flowers, to persuade the laundresses to help him with washing the Baron’s linen, and herbs, to tuck within it once it was dry to keep out mice and moths and mildew. 

The window was still half open when he heard the Baron’s steps returning. Steve turned but kept his eyes down in case the man had already begun to undress. 

“I greased the window catch so that it ought to open easily, unless the weather is very cold,” he offered. Better to show than say that only one hand was needed to manage it now, and not a great deal of strength. One more thing that the Baron could do for himself if he wished.

Pulling the curtain drawn but leaving the window open just enough to carry in the smells of haying and the sounds of birds and breeze, Steve approached with the nightshirt draped over his shoulder. 

“If I might have your dressing gown and shirt first, sir?” he asked softly. “Then you can exchange it for this one and attend to your trousers beneath it.” It was the best way that Steve could think to preserve as much dignity and modesty as the process of undressing in front of another permitted. 

—

The little greeting had him stopping for a moment, studying both the window and the nightshirt both.

He’d left his waistcoat undone, pulled the ribbon from his hair and ruffled it loose, and only half-done up of his breeches, but it was nigh enough to dressed not to be outright immodest. Curiosity drawing him, James approached the window, planting his feet wide and leaning his cane against the wall so he could reach for the latch and test it. A soft noise escaping him, relief and pleasure and gratitude and surprise all a bundle at the realisation that it would move for him easily now. Not a task he could do for minutes at a time. But something he could do, now, because someone had taken the time and care to make it so. 

“Thank you, Stephen,” he said softly, and then left the young man to the business of the drapes, taking up a stance between the wardrobe and the bed and bracing himself like he was expecting a loud noise or harsh shake rather than careful hands assisting him.

The plan presented was reasonable enough, thought out rather than hasty, and gracious in its own way. He spared the young man a long look, and then nodded, reminding himself that it was consideration only, not pity, and that he had surely lived through worse than this.