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Chapter Text

“A gentleman is simply a patient wolf.” –Lana Turner

.

In this life, filled with decadence and fine clothes and the occasional dosage of opium, there are many notions that are universally considered true. Harry Hart, as a rule, abides by absolutely none of them.

It’s not an entirely incidental quirk if he is being honest—a quality he rarely strives for—but rebelliousness not only comes quite naturally but rather suits him in point of fact.  

While other defiant children found themselves at the mercy of the rod, Harry’s caretakers struggled to hide their laughter behind pressed hands and well-placed coughs. Their scoldings came out soft with poorly subdued amusement, a fact which never failed to encourage their young charge. He was nothing if not ostentatious.

The first time he realizes there is something truly deviant lurking within him, however, is when he finally crests from childhood into that tender age when boys become men and girls become hazards to their family’s good name.

It comes swift and sure yet somehow gradual, like the tide. All of his playmates begin whispering in their tight little circles about what lurks beneath the chamber maid’s skirt and petticoat or of Colonel Thorpe’s scandalously flirtatious second wife and the way her ivory breasts bubble up over swooping necklines.

Harry, for his part, is utterly flummoxed by the entire phenomenon. While aesthetically pleasing, feminine curves do little to attract his shrewd eye.

However—

However, he thinks, perhaps he understands their curiosity—their full bodied and vibrating obsession—when he thinks of the flat planes that must lie beneath Henry Abbott’s waistcoat or the jump of an Adam’s apple oft hidden under collar and cravat or the small triangle of stubble on the stable hand’s tanned jaw, perpetually missed during his morning shave.

He finds that he wants to place his tongue against that rough patch, feel the scratch of it on his lips with the same voracity that his comrades seem to wish they could lift the skirts of any willing female in their presence.

Harry doesn’t struggle over such realizations. He doesn’t disabuse this proclivity as though it is an error in need of correction. It is not a splinter of glass in his character, but a part of the whole. He would no more remove it than he would cut a hole in his cup and continue to fill it with drink.  He lives in utter assurance of his own being even in this “perversion of nature” as he has heard it called by the church, though he struggles to decipher why it would be so.

(“Self-confident,” his mother had called him on more than one occasion, “and frighteningly intelligent.”

“Too cock-sure for his own good,” was always his father’s retort.)

Harry never takes a wife, though he feigns interest toward a few young ladies in the name of discretion. There is, he silently sustains, little honor in using another human being’s life as a shield from gossip, as a womb to be filled, as gilding on one’s cage. Essential as they may be, his masks will be of his own making.

It’s not as though he is alone in this venture after all. Harry discovers quickly that he’s far from the only man of his particular persuasion.

For a time, he takes up with the stable hand who had plagued his earliest fantasies, lets the servant ride him in his four poster bed and silken sheets. He learns how to use oils in order to enter another man’s body as he would a woman’s, how to use his mouth and hands to give pleasure, how to receive the same euphoria by those means from another. All things that would likely cause his mother to shriek and faint if she knew they had occurred just down the hall from where she slept.

(All things that would get him hung if anyone else did.)

But it is because of this, instead of looking for a wife, he finds himself educated too much on medicine for a man not interested in becoming a physician, consuming too much of the law for one without need to become one of its practitioners, and mulling too much over philosophy for anyone uninterested in the clergy. He learns to fence better than even his instructor, to shoot with an unmatched eye, to fight—although done mostly in secret—until his knuckles are as bloody as his opponent’s face.

In the end, he supposes, he was destined for Kingsman. He was destined for it in the same way some were destined for greatness or another’s love or the noose.

.

“Merlin, you ought to use your vast resources in order to discover a reliable method of removing blood from white linen,” Harry begins loudly with eyes fixed on his own, frankly, unseemly looking cuffs. The blood on them has begun to go brown. He would never be accepted into polite society looking so out of sorts. “I’ve grown rather tired of explaining to my tailor why I’m so often need of new shirts.”

His voice echoes off the walls of the cavernous laboratory as he comes around the hallway’s bend. 'Merlin’s Cave'—as most of those in Kingsman’s service have taken to calling it—is set off from the rest of manor, only able to be entered if one knows to pass through the servants’ corridor and down a winding set of steps into the bowels of the estate.

Although 'bowels' seems a bit inappropriate with the way Merlin keeps house. Stone walls are lined with bottles of various shapes and sizes, all neatly ordered with labels facing outward. The varying colors of liquid within them gleam in the golden light of the setting sun as it streams through small, vertically slit windows near the top of the wall.  In the far corner of the room, a large, slatted board is suspended from the ceiling with various plants hung to dry and beside it an open archway leads to a secondary room outfitted with a wide furnace and tools for metal work.

The oven is—blissfully—unlit. On days when a fire rages in its mouth, the laboratory is near unbearable in its heat.

The rest of the area—somehow tidy even in its clutter—is laden with vaguely scientific looking paraphernalia, some of which Harry could not identify even if asked. Others he doubts even have names.

And at the center of it all is Merlin’s throne in the form of a stone workbench where the man himself is currently hunched over a fixed magnifying glass.

The space never seems to carry the same scent. Today it smells of gunpowder.

“Ah,” Merlin sighs, “how I miss the days when you bothered to greet me before you began placing your demands.”

“Was that ever something I did?” he replies casually as he rounds the workspace to stand across from his colleague.

The response is an affirmative hum.

Harry clutches his hands together behind his back and bends at the waist—posture still impeccable—to gain a closer look at Merlin’s project, “What are you working on?”

“A gun,” he answers simply. “My turn: whose blood is that?”

Even with cuffs decidedly out of sight, Harry is acutely aware of the stains in question. “The Viscount’s.”

The corners of Merlin’s lips twitch at this easy admission.

“And that’s why you seem a bit sullen, is it?” His hazel eyes flick up to meet Harry’s, amusement naked and dancing in his gaze. “Come now, we all know you couldn’t stand the man. There is no need to pretend for our sake.”

“He had,” Harry pauses here despite himself, “amiable enough qualities.”

“What?” his friend laughs. “His cock?

Harry does his utmost to look unimpressed and replies mulishly, “Do speak a little louder. I don’t think the magistrate heard you.”

“Dinnae be maudlin, Galahad. A magistrate loose within Kingsman would be as happy a wolf in the hen house.”

“Or as dead as a hen that stumbled upon a hungry pack of wolves,” he grumbles, straightening back to stand and tilting the glass flask closest to his hand in feigned interest of its contents.

“Perhaps,” Merlin concedes easily. “My point was that as appealing as the image of you swinging from the gallows may be, you are very likely to be overlooked by any civil officer in the company we keep. There is always fresher meat about.”

“Or sharper teeth.”

“Yes, yes I get it.” Merlin bats Harry away from his continued investigation of the glassware. “You’re all very dangerous.”

Harry pulls at his soiled cuffs and carries on, unperturbed, “I would think you at least would have a little more respect for the dead, my friend.”

“Oh of course,” the man replies with obvious false sincerity. “Where have my manners gone.”

They fall silent for a moment. The kettle Merlin has set out to boil on his small stove releases a low hum that crescendos into full blown whistle. Harry is relatively certain the burner is there for heating chemicals and not the satiating of his friend’s rabid tea addiction.

“He was rather insufferable though, was he not?” he finally concedes in lieu of commenting on the misuse of lab equipment. Merlin sets out three cups, one of which Harry is certain is meant for him. He wishes it wasn’t. For all his skill in chemistry, Merlin makes shite tea. “If I had to hear another word about muslin, I think I might have actually done myself harm instead of him.”

“I’m sure I speak for all of us when I say I’m glad such drastic measures were not reached.”

He pours water over the tea leaves without even warming the pot. Like an animal. Harry grimaces.

A new set of voices steadily build from down the hallway, tone low and jovial and a bit of laughter from one bouncing off the stone walls as they round the corner. Harry hadn’t noticed anyone ride in alongside him so he would wager they had already been hidden away in one of the manor’s many rooms when he’d arrived. Perhaps necking in the corridor if it is who he thinks it is.

“Galahad!” Lancelot exclaims, quickening his pace minutely as he spots the other man. His companion—Percival, as always—trails behind at a more subdued pace. “I thought I heard the sultry timbre of your voice.”

Harry extends his hand to accept a brief, two handed shake in greeting before returning it to his trouser pocket. To Percival, he simply tilts his head and receives a nod in return. “I was wondering for whom Merlin’s third cup of tea was prepared.”

“Yes, although I see he didn’t account for Percival joining me,” Lancelot punctuates the statement with a wink directed Merlin’s way. The man on its receiving end looks decidedly unimpressed.

“He ought to have. Quite the oversight from our personal ‘magician’.”

In fact, ‘oversight’ might be considered a gross understatement by some. It is widely known amongst the Kingsmen that their own Percival and Lancelot are nigh inseparable when not under orders from one of their prestigious leaders. There are no delusions as to why. The organization attracts what some might consider the ‘sexual immoral’ like rock pools collect nearshore fish when the tide is out.  

“No matter though. Percival is more than welcome to have mine,” Harry continues. Lancelot’s companion catches his eye just beyond Merlin’s peripheral. He sends a pointed glare Harry’s way, knowing that manners prevent him from declining such an offer.  Harry looks on in feigned innocence though he is acutely aware that the illusion is lost on someone who knows him quite so well as Percival.

“I did call you here for a reason, gentlemen,” Merlin interjects, sounding rather huffy. Likely from being called out on his misstep. He loathes being wrong.

“You did not call for me at all,” Harry points out, his urge to exacerbate winning out against better judgement.

“Yes well I knew you might be popping by about this time.”

“How could you possibly have guessed such a thing?” he asks incredulous, for Harry himself hadn’t even known when his mission would be completed. He can’t imagine Merlin could have been privy to such fluctuating details.

“Guessing has nothing to do with it. It’s no concern of yours regardless, Galahad.” He sounds rather proud of his own omnipotence regained. “Carrying on. Guinevere has a task she would like the two of you to carry out, the details of which she desires to be handled with the utmost discretion. If you could give us a moment, Percival. You may take your tea. Lancelot will rejoin you in the parlour.”

“Of course,” Percival agrees with a nod. He presses an open palm briefly to the small of Lancelot’s back in silent farewell. It’s a kind of kiss which only longtime lovers can partake, not given with the lips but with familiar touches and gestures received without hesitation or uncertainty.  

Harry’s eyes catch the movement and hold for just a moment.

As Percival retreats, Merlin hands the two remaining Kingman each a letter. They are closed with wax seals bearing the Kingsman crest—an encircled ‘K’ sitting sideways like the profile of a table. Harry breaks his open with a soft crack and skims its contents.

“Roxanne Morton, heretofore referred to as Bors,” Merlin continues once Percival’s footsteps have receded down the hallway completely, “will also be joining you as will Tristan and Iseult. Their presence is for interference only and back up as needed. They will not be briefed on the specifics of this venture.”

“Such secrecy for a…country village?” Lancelot asks skeptically, dragging eyes up from the contents of Guinevere’s correspondence.

“Arthur has shown a particular interest in the area. Guinevere wants to know why. It is possible that your investigation will turn up nothing of interest. It is also possible, however, that you could be entering into a very dangerous situation almost entirely blind.”

“Guinevere is investigating Arthur?”

“Hence the clandestine airs. She has suspected him of something nefarious for some time though she’ll not tell me what.”

“Perhaps she herself does not know,” Harry interjects, his eyes still flitting across the page. “Our lady has always had excellent intuition.”

“Indeed.” Merlin observes him warily. “And she has chosen the two of you, not only because you feels you are most suited for the task, but because she knows you are more loyal to her than Arthur.”

“Well look at that, Galahad,” Lancelot says with a smirk. “Some good’s finally come of your tendency toward pandering to Guinevere after all.”

Harry’s reply is dry as ever, “I might be defensive if the statement was coming from someone not in the same position as myself.”

“The both of you are wildly sycophantic,” their magician cuts in easily. “You needn’t compete.”

“You wound me, Merlin,” Lancelot simpers.

“Then I’ve done my job admirably. Off with you then. All else you need know is written in Guinevere’s correspondence. As usual, burn them once you’ve made yourself familiar with their contents.”

Lancelot nods and bends a little at the waist, theatrical and playful but ultimately sincere. When he turns to leave, Harry pulls the papers detailing his last assignment from the inside pocket of his tailcoat and sets them on the corner of Merlin’s workbench. The pages are folded but unsealed and his writing is shaky in places from attempting to pen it on the journey over. It’s no matter though. Merlin is skilled at reading the near illegible writing only Kingman agents can occasionally provide.

Having completed the task he set out to do upon arriving, Harry moves to follow Lancelot out of the laboratory with only a hot bath and a well-made tea with splash of scotch on his mind. He avoids thinking of the hours he will be spending in his carriage in order to partake in such indulgences.  

“Harry,” Merlin’s voice stops him before he can reach the hallway’s bend. “You know what this means, do you not?”

“That Arthur is likely every bit the prick I had suspected him?” He tucks his thumb into waistcoat pocket and drifts lazily in Merlin’s direction. Even so, he is anchored to the exit. Attentive, but ultimately ready to depart at the first given opportunity. “I gathered as much.”

“No, Harry,” his friend continues gravely. “Guinevere wants you as Arthur.”

Harry opens his mouth twice—like a damn fish, he thinks—and then straightens. “You can’t know that,” he states firmly.

“I do, in fact. Not only have you proven to be one of the most capable in her employ, but your financial and political position are apt as well.” He speaks as if in warning. There can be no doubt of his sincerity. Harry cannot be sure if his methods of coming by this information are reliable, but Merlin’s belief in its truth certainly is. “She wants Chester out and you in. If you find something—if you find anything, those wheels will be put into motion.”

The idea rolls around in Harry’s skull like a marble. He cannot say he has never thought of it before, but it certainly was not often. The position of Arthur—as well as that of Guinevere—is far and away from that of a knight like Galahad. His life as Arthur would be much more…sedentary.

“I—,” he breaks off to check his words. “I will keep it under advisement.”

“See that you do.”

.

He tries not to think of it that evening, standing at his window in nightshirt and breaches. The empty tumbler in his hand—a dribble of amber liquid still pooled within the crease—grants him no assistance in this venture.

The very idea of being Arthur both exhilarates and frightens him to his core.

The truth is, while the Viscount had been a deplorable sort as well as deplorably dull, he had provided Harry with something he rarely had the chance to experience. He could blame Kingsman of course. He could say that the organization afforded him with little time for the comfort that another’s presence could provide.  

Percival and Lancelot were proof enough that it wouldn’t be entirely true though, weren’t they?

As Galahad, however, he can easily find himself in the facsimile of companionship that people like the Viscount could provide. As Arthur, he would have no such creature comforts.

“Have you ever been married, Mr. Bridgmont?” Harry asks suddenly, a strange curiosity coming over him in a rush. The butler doesn’t even look up as he pulls a copper warming pan from the fire. Not that Harry would be able to tell if he did. His eyes are firmly fixed on a gaggle of geese bobbing in the reflection pool out front.

“Once sir,” Bridgemont replies steadily as he pulls up the corner of his master’s bedding and tucks the pan securely beneath. The implication is clear. He was married once and now he is not. The odds that they had simply parted ways are slim indeed.

“How did she die?”

“In childbirth. Neither she nor the child survived.” His voice betrays none of the emotion that absolutely must be lurking beneath the surface. “But I suspect you know that, m'lord.”

Of course he is correct. Harry knows everything about his servants. He knows that Miss Ashworth’s young charge is not in fact the product of a sister with too many children to care for but that of her own indiscretions out of wedlock. He knows that young Mr. Reed is not actually Mr. Reed but Mr. Johnson who escaped a mistress that had quite cruelly taken things from him that he was in no way ready to give.

And he knows that Mr. Bridgemont had once been rather terribly in love and instead of that love creating something wonderful, it had instead turned inward and eaten itself whole.

Harry pulls his eyes away from the window, catching sight of the butler’s salt and peppered hair in his peripheral as Bridgemont turns down the bed.

“Nearly two decades have passed since then. Do you ever feel—” Harry stops here, vision cast down to the glass in his hand as he strokes its rim with his thumb. “Do you ever feel rather lonely?”

“I suppose so sir.” The servant pats down the bedding in completion and straightens. He casts a pointed look at his master’s form. “Do you?”

Silence reigns for a moment before Harry drains his cup of the last remnants of liquid within it. It’s so scant that he can barely even taste it on his tongue.

“I rather think I’d like another glass of scotch if you please,” he says finally. “I’m feeling a mite chilled."

.

“Who ought we be,” Lancelot had asked Harry as the latter was setting off from the manor earlier that day, “do you think? Two wealthy rogues come to sweep the ladies off their feet.”

Harry had raised an amused brow at the mere idea, “Certainly not. Not very efficient in a quaint town like Meryton.”

“Quite right, Galahad,” he replied with that smirking tone as if he had known all along. Perhaps he had. “Then maybe simply two kind gentlemen, the type who might make someone’s daughter a very satisfactory prospect.”

“A fine plan. Although, I would make one adjustment to it.”

“And what would that be?”

Harry arrived at the bottom of the manor’s stone steps and turned to face his companion, shoes crackling on gravel, “Only one kind gentleman. The second, though, ought to be a right ponce of whose company no one is ever desirous.”

Lancelot had clasped his hands firmly behind his back and looked positively eager, as always, to see parts and plans unfold, “One man that everyone pays far too much attention to and the other not enough.”

“Precisely.”

“And which character might you be playing?” he inquired curiously.

Harry had barely been able to contain the upward twitch of his lips at his own witticism as he responded, “Oh the ponce of course,” and stepped up into awaiting carriage, leaving Lancelot grinning madly in his wake.

Chapter Text

“Is it true?” a familiar voice asks Eggsy, grasping hold of the crook of his arm without introduction or preamble. Her voice is lilted with enthusiasm.

Eggsy is, of course, immediately aware of exactly what the question must be referring to. As if he doesn’t know that half the village is in a tizzy over the new rumors surrounding the estate. Instead of giving way to immediate recognition, however, Eggsy opts for casual ignorance. He hands the shopkeeper—Mr. Jameson of A. N. Jameson, Cook and Confectioner—the folded up list of items that Mrs. Nichols has sent him into town to retrieve.    

“S’what true, Miss Lydia?”

Lydia Bennet looks absolutely scandalized by the question. One would think he’d requested the color of her underthings instead of innocent elaboration. “About Netherfield of course! Has it really been let?”

“Don’t seem like the sort of thing people would make up, does it?” he counters with teasing confusion.

The girl’s blue eyes light up and teeth bare in a charmingly youthful grin as though this is an admission. To be fair, it’s probably as good as such.

“What’s he like?” She draws him closer by the elbow still grasped in her long fingers. “Is he handsome? Amiable?”

“Couldn’t say to be honest,” Eggsy replies, unperturbed by her closeness. Lydia’s flirtation is often subject to rumor in Meryton though he argues it is nearly always inadvertent. “He came to see the place ‘fore settling on it, but I were out helpin’ pull up a tree that got all rotted through with mold. Mrs. Nichols seemed to think he was a nice enough bloke, but then that old lady could charm the sin out the devil so...who knows?”

“Eggsy you’re no help at all!” Lydia pouts. Her bottom lip pushes itself out like a sulking child. “Is there at least any news about whether he’ll be bringing a party with him? I’ll be so cross if he turns out to be one of those boring, solitary types.”

“Oi, wha’s wrong with being solitary?”

“Eggsy,” she whines and pulls out the ‘y’ for at least a syllable longer than necessary.

Eggsy gives a single breathy chuckle, “I don’t know, Lydia. Lot of these types bring small parties with ‘em. Some ladies and a few gents, maybe. Nothin’ specific.”

“If Kitty gathers more gossip than me because I wasted my time with you, I will be very cross.” Despite this however, she laces her arm through Eggsy’s and hugs tightly to his side.

He replies, more fond than reprimanding, “I’d expect nothin’ less from a bratty child the likes of you.”

“I’m not a brat,” she contradicts, vaguely indignant, but without even a beat between one statement and the next cries out, “Oh Eggsy! They have pear drops!”

Mr. Jameson, who is just settling the first bag of Eggsy’s purchases onto the counter, meets the other man’s eyes with contained amusement. Eggsy silently begs the good Lord for strength.

A few moments later, Lydia skips happily from the shop with little new information but a bag of sweets that didn’t even cost her a pretty penny.  With any luck her elder sister, Kitty, will be suitably green-eyed in her envy.   

.

When Eggsy’s mother had been alive, she used to call him ‘the most eligible boy in the county’. It wasn’t true of course. He doesn’t fool himself into believing that he is what anyone would consider ‘eligible’ except by the barest of definition of the word, within the county or otherwise. Such a phrase would imply the possession of things that Eggsy himself has never known: some wealth, a little land, maybe even position. Of these, Eggsy has none.

He wouldn’t call himself poor however. Low in class, but not poor.

After his mother’s death, he’d been taken under the sheltering wing of one of his late father’s oldest friends. Mr. Crawford was—is—the steward at Netherfield Park and because of it, Eggsy benefited immediately from his favoritism. Crawford took care of Eggsy. He paid him well and made sure to give him enough duties—even outside of those expected of his position as undergardener—so that the rest of the staff would not grow resentful because of it.

Crawford had swooped into that decrepit little flat in London, looking so far removed from his surroundings in all that proper attire of his and with his top hat swept off to be clasped in anxious hands. Only his fingerless, woolen gloves had grounded him there.

The air smelled of copper and rot. A baby was screaming.

He had taken one look at Eggsy Unwin, the boy’s eyes swollen and wet as he stared unfocused at the body of Michelle Baker whose blood was cooled and congealing in a pool between her thighs, and removed him from the room.

Removed him from the flat.

Removed him from London.

He delivered Eggsy to his own home in Meryton where a doctor had been called straightaway to treat the bruises littering his new charge’s body. Crawford hadn’t even mentioned noticing them, and he never asked how they had gotten there. For this small kindness, amongst all the larger ones, Eggsy would be eternally grateful.

.

Eggsy picks up a cloth doll before taking the road back to Netherfield. Its features are painted on with thin strokes: little downturned eyes and the small moue of a mouth framed by rosy cheeks. A tight auburn bun is covered by tan and floral bonnet to complement the pretty dress just below.

He hopes the color of the hair will match that of its intended. He can’t recall well enough to know for sure.  

.

Mr. Bingley and his servants—along with two sisters and the husband of the eldest—finally make their appearance on the Monday before Michaelmas. Eggsy, having found himself rather caught up in all the excitement, is suitably unimpressed.

Bingley is handsome but rather unremarkably so and kind but in that overt way that makes Eggsy feel as though he’s had a treat far too decadent for his own constitution.

Their new master greets each of the scant six servants kept on at Netherfield with an overzealous handshake and too wide smile and Eggsy can’t help but feel some insincerity in the man though he resolves not to voice the matter for lack of evidence to support it.

 As for staff they bring a total of seventeen servants, five of which are actually Miss Bingley’s rather that the Mister’s.     

Eggsy gets on immediately with one of the new gamekeepers. Jamal is his name and he likes bareknuckle boxing and a good pint, and Eggsy is almost certain that those are the makings of the best friend he’s ever had outside of Crawford’s boy. Ryan is in the militia now though. Eggsy would be remiss in not finding a suitable replacement.  

As much as they might all like to loiter about in the servants' quarters, however, there are a few tasks to be completed before the night crawls upon them. Most of the house is prepared but a few chores are still left to be done. Eggsy immediately attaches himself to Jamal’s sister, Ester, who has been given the duty of preparing all the beds as the linens have only just finished drying. Comparatively hers is the largest task, so it only seems fair.  

She is slight besides—small boned and only tall enough to reach as high as his chin—and while he’s certain this has no bearing on her capability, he can’t imagine it would be easy to lug about thick stacks of bedding when they may very well pile high enough to impede one's vision at such a short height.

“You supposed to be helpin’ me?” she asks curiously as they each pull the last of the blankets down from where they have been fluttering in the autumn air. They’re gaudy green and gold and smell of soaps. “Seein’ as you’re an undergardener, I mean.”

“Officially, yeah. Unofficial though, I does a lot more. The steward—that’s the tall bloke with a sorta hook nose and recedin’ hairline—he takes care of me.” A little huff escapes him as he hefts a full basket up onto his hip. He tacks on a cheeky wink at the end and says, “Got to earn my keep, I do.”

Ester smiles, half amusement at his brass and half vicarious gratitude. “Tha’s kind of him,”

“He’s a nice bloke,” Eggsy agrees with a nod. Chuckling though, he adds, “Real awkward, but he’s got a kind heart.”

The conversation quickly tapers into silence—a mixture of uncomfortable and relaxed—as they travel from room to room, to open air and back again. Ester isn’t as loquacious as her brother. She’s a soft, quiet sort of girl. Maybe even shy under the right circumstances.  

And despite his disillusionment with the entire situation surrounding Mr. Bingley, Eggsy still finds himself achingly curious about the man. His thoughts keep circling back as though it’s an itch that refuses to fade until it has been scratched. The tether on his self-control is only so long.

He asks Ester about Bingley once they’ve gone through two rooms and are starting in on the third. How long has she been working under him? Is he attached to any young ladies back in London? Is he really that nice or is it just a mask he puts on to hide something ugly lurking beneath? That sort of thing.

Ester seems wholly unprepared to answer any of them really. Her responses are stilted and vague and when he comes to the end of his inquiry, she looks strangely relieved.  

Eggsy eyes her thoughtfully, feeling a mite intrigued by this reaction despite his better judgement.

“So wha’ about his sisters then?” he carries on after a moment.

Ester lets out a subdued little sigh, and Eggsy cannot help the overwhelming sensation that he’s giving her some sort of test for which she wasn’t quite prepared.

.

The sun is setting now, and the gold accents threaded into the thick linen of the bed hangings have taken on a deeper shade in warm light. The pale orange pouring through the windows finds Eggsy here once again, several hours having past and kneeling before the same bedding he had applied so carefully only a short while previous.

He is absolutely certain it must be here. It’s the last place he remembers having felt its heavy weight in his waistcoat pocket. Eggsy rises from his exploration beneath the bed’s skirts and instead pats at the surface of the blankets in hopes of locating his lost item without disrupting the even line of the sheets.

“May I be of assistance?”

He startles to attention immediately, a hot wash of shame prickling up his neck and into the meat of his cheeks. The accent and cadence of speech are unmistakably upper class, and Eggsy is trained to the point of reflex to fall into the defensive when caught in this section of the house.

The sight of the man who owns the voice, standing several steps inside the door now, makes any doubt of his position in society nonexistent. If his clothing were not damning enough—embroidered gold waistcoat peering out from beneath a burgundy jacket, still buttoned and fitted like a second skin over trim waist—, his bearing would have given the final proof. It’s something about that confident stance which all men like him possess, a loosely self-assured but well trained posture.

He is handsome as well, though Eggsy takes little notice outside of the immediate comprehension that comes with a perfunctory glance.

(There’s something else in the sinews of the trespasser’s figure that sets Eggsy’s teeth on edge, but the quality is undefinable and too foreign to recognize.)  

Eggsy straightens himself to full height, defenses and hackles rising, “Who the hell are you then?”

The stranger blinks once, his brows rising only a fraction higher on his brow. “I’m sorry?”

“Ya heard me. You know you can’t just come into someone else’s house right? Not ‘less Mrs. Nichols is guiding you about and certainly not at this time a’day.” He crosses his arms over his chest. A part of him—the rational part he assumes— is screaming that someone of his station does not speak with such candor to one so clearly above him in rank. That he might be condemning himself to a scathingly harsh winter of unemployment. But the words have already escaped him, and he pushes any regrets he might feel aside with a practiced hand.  

“It would be rather rude of me to barge in, I suppose,” the gentleman tells him. His tone is humoring and even, though Eggsy can’t tell if this is honest indulgence or simply restraint that will fall away shortly after. “Except that I have, in fact, been invited to stay in this room for an undetermined amount of time by the master of the house. I’m simply a little later than I had intended is all.”

“Oh,” Eggsy utters. He feels the fight fall out of his shoulders marginally and a deep blush curl hot about his ears. Nevertheless, his voice retains some element of confidence in his earlier discourtesy simply for the sake of it. “You a friend of that Bingley fellow then?”

The man smiles indulgently as if he can see directly through this defensive façade. Eggsy is taken off guard by the appearance of a matching set of dimples, reminding him for just a moment that his companion is not at all that difficult to look at.

“Oldest and dearest. Mr. Darcy, at your service,” he introduces with the imitation of a bow in the form of a single nod.

“Gary Unwin,” Eggsy answers. His leftover coldness is trickling away like melting ice. “Though Eggsy is preferred, thanks.”

“A pleasure, Eggsy,” the man—Mr. Darcy—says with honeyed voice.

“Sorry for, uh—” Eggy feels suddenly over-conscious of himself. From his worn and fraying jacket to his scuffed boots. He lifts the tweed flat-cap from his head for long enough to futilely pet down hair still damp with cooling sweat before replacing it again. He continues, “For cursin’ at ya. Took me by surprise is all.”

“Understandable.” Darcy eyes him probingly. His gaze is sharp and steady but not unkind. Just curious and worryingly perceptive. “Though I do find myself at quite a loss as to why you’re up here at all to be honest. Are you…a valet?”

“Nah guv. Official title’s s’posed to be undergardener, but I’m sort of...versatile.” He could swear he sees the barest twitch at the corner of Darcy’s lips, but then perhaps he is mistaken. “Anyway, I was helpin’ one of them scullery maids get the bed ready for you’s to be sleepin’ in, and I sort of…lost summat of mine.”

“Helping one of the maids, was it?” Darcy asks, brows lifted slightly.

Eggsy doesn’t understand the implication immediately but when he does, a smoldering ember stirs within his belly once again, “Oi! That ain’t what I meant. Don’t be makin’ no nasty insinuation. I may not be a gentleman like yourself, but me mum raised me right, thanks. I wouldn’t be besmirchin’ Miss Lawrence’s name like that for nothin’.”

“My apologies, Eggsy. On my word, I was only teasing. I meant no offense,” and he seems honest enough that Eggsy nods in acceptance of this assurance. “What is it that you’ve lost then? Perhaps I could keep an eye out for it during my stay.”

“S’a pocket watch. Nothin’ fancy, course. Just some initials on the front, L.W.U. Lots of swirls. Real elaborate type cursive, you know? It don’t even work if I’m being honest.” Eggsy shrugs and stuffs his hands deep into his trouser pockets. “Was my da’s.”

“Ah,” Darcy sighs empathetically. “I’m sure it will turn up.”

“Well. Even if it don’t, you know, thanks all the same.”

“It’s my pleasure.”

And since Eggsy feels awkward and mute and incredibly insecure next to the perfectly put together lines of his other, he decides that the best course of action is to leave Darcy to the solitude of his temporary room. He circles around the foot of the four poster bed once he’s patted down its blankets where he had mussed them earlier and moves to pass by the gentleman with a murmured, “I’ll leave you to it, I s’pose.”   

“Actually,” Darcy continues just as Eggsy has come to his side, “you present me with the answer to quite the conundrum. You see, I’ve only brought my butler with me, and though I’m sure I could ask one of Bingley’s staff, I would certainly prefer not to bother them.”

Eggsy smirks, “You got no problem bovverin’ me though I take it?”

“You’re versatile,” he reminds him mellifluously. “Remember?”

The words pool oddly in Eggsy’s gut, though he can’t put his finger on why exactly. This close, he can make out more prominent details about the man. Like the few silver hairs beginning to snake through his well coifed wave of brunet hair right at the temples. Or the way his eyes, likely a deep brown on most occasions, are proper amber in the strip of fading light that has stretched all the way from the window in order to grace his face. Or the smell of Eau de Cologne wafting ever so slightly from his person, notes of musk and citrus and jasmine interwoven with the clinging scent of sunlight from the journey here.

“Need t’learn to keep my mouth shut, me,” he mutters instead of dwelling on his desire to follow where that aroma lures.

“Nonsense. I’ll offer you £25 a month for the duration of my stay. The first upfront, of course.”

That snaps him out of his odd musings easily enough. “Cor! What you need my help with! I ain’t doin’ nuffing shady if that’s what you’re after. I’m an upstanding man of the law, I is.”

“I don’t doubt it. What imaginative venues your mind must wander down,” Darcy chuckles. “It’s nothing like that, I assure you. I simply need an errand boy, someone who knows the town and can accomplish menial tasks of which I’d prefer not to trouble my butler. Not to mention he’ll be traversing back and forth from London—and further—quite often. I’ll need someone to work in his stead. I think an unsolicited favor such as this is worth a little extra investment.”

Darcy reaches into his jacket and pulls out a fold of pound notes. He thumbs through them under his companion’s wary gazy.

“Extra investment my arse; that’s half what I make all year,” Eggsy grumbles, though there’s no real malice behind it. “You high class folk sure do love to throw your money about, don’t you?”

“Are you turning it down?” He holds out what Eggsy can only assume is the correct number of bills, refolded at their bend, between his index and middle finger.

“Hells nah. I ain’t simple.” Eggsy snatches the notes from Darcy’s hand and immediately uses to them to gesture toward the other man’s face warningly. “But I reserve the right to say no at any point, ya get me? You start asking for any shady shite and I’ll be out’a here faster than you can says, ‘It’s only jus’ the once,’ we clear?”

“You are rather fond of toeing that line, aren’t you?” Darcy retorts. The words send a spike of fear through Eggsy, like a fistful of snow shoved down the back of his shirt after he’d just grown comfortably warm. He’s far too used to statements of the like being punctuated with anger and physical retaliation. Darcy must notice that his words have caused an unwanted effect because he easily carries on, “Fortunately, I find it strangely endearing. But yes, we are understood.”

“Right,” Eggsy recovers himself clumsily, “good.” He clears his throat with some awkwardness and tells Darcy, “Can’t believe you just carry pounds around like this. Ain’t seen one of these in my life.”

“And now you’ve seen twenty-five.” Darcy smiles warmly. “I’ll speak with the steward, make sure he knows to expect a lack of availability from you on occasion.”

“I’m sure you won’t hear no arguments from ‘im.” Eggsy’s gaze skitters down the tall line of Mr. Darcy’s form. “You don’t seem like the type of bloke no stewards gonna pick a fight with.”

“I’m certainly not that,” he says lowly, half to himself.

As the servants begin filtering in with Mr. Darcy’s chests, Eggsy officially takes his leave of the room.

He lies in bed that night, mind traversing back to the discussion in the bedroom. Back to Darcy. Back to long, lean legs and tapered waist and well-manicured hands held out in offering. It makes something within him stir, something wild and untamable, something that he knows quite well but likes very much to pretend does not exist.

He is of an odd persuasion, of that he’s certain. For as enticing as he may find a lady’s breasts or the idea of pushing into slick heat, he is equally as entranced by that of his own thighs bracketing the lesser curves of a man’s hips.

The idea of those hips being the crest of legs that go on for miles flickers through his thoughts for the briefest of moments.   

“Fuck,” he grouses aloud and promptly blows out the candle.  

Chapter Text

The village seemed to have unanimously agreed to give their new neighbor a full two days to recover from his travels before descending like ravenous vultures on fallen livestock. Once the last sands of the hourglass have fallen, though, all bets are off.

Sir William Lucas is the first to call, and judging by his bearing he must be a pseudo leader in the community. A medium sized fish in a very small pond. He is clearly unaccustomed to dealing with people of Bingley or Darcy’s caliber, but instead of being unsure of himself, he appears completely oblivious to their unequal footing.

A man like Darcy would find it rather disparaging. Harry, on the other hand, is tempted to call it ‘quaint’. His father would have despised such unassuming bravado, and anything that hypothetically could have angered the former Lord Hart is more than agreeable to the current.

His father may be dead, but Harry’s vitriolic rebellion will live on in him until his final breath.

After an appropriate length of just under half an hour, Sir Lucas ends his visit and directly on his heels is Mr. Watson of Purvis Lodge. Harry and James have barely found their way back to billiards room before the butler returns with a new card from the caller downstairs.

Roxanne has gleefully challenged Elaine Caldwell—Iseult to Kingsman and Mrs. Hurst to the village of Meryton—to a game of eight-ball and Harry opts for friendly observation here over the tacit variety he would be forced to exude upon greeting their visitor. It’s not as though decorum demands it anyway. He is, after all, meant to be a guest of the house and not its master.

James examines the card briefly before placing it back on the serving tray and sending the butler with a message that he will be down shortly.

“What if he doesn’t come?” Roxanne inquires while casually chalking her pool cue.

“He will,” James replies, rather coldly. His tone is so uncharacteristically flat that it peaks Harry’s attention. Elaine and her husband, Edgar, do not look taken aback in the slightest.  

Roxanne’s posture falls into a decidedly military stance in response to James’ address (child of a sailor, Harry recalls absently) and continues, “How do you know for sure?”

“The man has five daughters, no sons, and not nearly enough income to ensure that they will be properly taken care of on the event of his death. He has very little choice in the matter,” he tells her, as clean cut as Harry has ever heard him. “Now, if you’ll excuse me.”

His departure is so abrupt that Harry can barely contain the full force of his confusion and curiosity. Roxanne seems to notice and, to her credit, appears more resigned than abashed at all. Elaine lines up for her first shot at the billiard table. The grouping of cue balls breaks with a crack and goes scattering across the table, but none of them pocket.

“James is not particularly warmed to me,” Roxanne tells Harry—or perhaps simply the room at large—as she circles the table with a calculated look. Strangely, that’s all it takes for understanding to settle into Harry. Not bit by bit but all at once.

“Ah,” he begins, feeling amused by the dramatics of the situation. How had he expected any less of James. “You’re diddling Percival then I take it.”

“God no,” she says, quick and defensive and likely a little shocked by Harry’s unexpected of vulgarity. People usually are. It ruins her shot. “Matthew is like a brother to me.”

“A brother you married, darling,” Elaine reasons from the opposite side of the table as she looks on coyly from beneath thick, dark brows.

“In name only,” Roxanne says and wrinkles her nose ever so slightly as her opponent sinks two striped balls in one go, “and partially for James’ own sake. The family was bearing down on Matthew. In order to protect his relationship with James, my cousin needed to marry, and who better than someone who could benefit from such a sham as well. James knows this. It’s hardly sensible for him to be angry at me for it.”

“Love is rarely sensible, my dear girl,” Edgar finally speaks up, pushing himself away from the wall where he’s been leaning. Harry braces himself for the inevitable banality with which they are about to be graced. “Love is merely a madness. Love is,” he waves a hand loftily as though searching for the words, “a sickness of the mind.”

“Love is apparently quoting Shakespeare and Plato in one breath,” Harry replies, barely even attempting the pretense of a mutter.

Elaine’s lovely lips curl at the corners, “Far more than a single breath, I dare say. But Edgar, really? It was terribly trite of you.”

“I thought it rather poetic,” he defends staunchly. Elaine turns toward him and strokes his greying, red hair sweetly with the tips of her fingers and pushes up on her toes to grant a light kiss to his cheek. The black curls around her forehead brush his skin.  

“And what do you think, Lord Hart?” Roxanne asks after her turn is up.

“I think that I know little about love outside of hypotheticals and passing infatuation,” Harry tells her with ease. “I do know James though, and you won’t have to live with his cold shoulder forever. He will come to his senses eventually, love or no.”

She seems to accept this answer easily enough, though Harry is certain it doesn’t ease her anxiety by much.

James returns just as Roxanne and Elaine finish their game of billiards, the former reining victorious. Harry suspects Elaine’s loss is more calculated than it appears though, and when she shares a look with him from across the room, Harry becomes sure of it.

The object of their party’s particular interest, Mr. Bennet of Longbourn Estate, comes to introduce himself a respectable amount of time after Mr. Watson has left. He gives the tenants of Netherfield a wide berth between his visit and the last—unlike his predecessor—but makes sure to arrive too early for Mr. Bingley to be required to invite him to dinner.

When Bennet’s card is delivered to him, James looks at Roxanne with the superiority of a victor, as though Roxanne had doubted his opinion for even a moment.

Which of course she had not.

.

Harry has always been a bit of an early riser. It’s to such a capacity, in fact, that he has gotten quite used to catching new valets unprepared when he calls on them first thing in the morning or starling scullery maids as they clean the fireplace of a room he’s decided to occupy.

So it isn’t too much of a surprise to hear scurrying footsteps shuffling up the hallway several minutes after having sent Bridgemont down to find Eggsy, followed by a heavily accented, “You know what time it is, mate?”

The sun has barely risen, and the boy already has insubordination on his breath. He could not be more charming.

“No,” Harry lies, “but I am absolutely certain you will tell me.”

“Seven in the mornin’, innit?” Eggsy saunters toward the grand piano on the far end of the room. The instrument is situated with the keys facing the window and there is a chill on the back of Harry’s neck from where the morning cool is seeping through the panes. He keeps Eggsy in his peripheral but doesn’t look up as his fingers continue sliding over ivory. “What’s the point in all this money if you ain’t gonna at least wake up natural?”

At the widest point of the piano, Eggsy stops and leans his hip against the wood’s glossy finish.

“What makes you think I don’t ‘wake up natural’ as you put it?” Harry asks, glancing up for the first time. Eggsy looks mostly the same, though he’s softer with the early morning hour and his tweed cap is conspicuously absent. He has rather lovely golden hair beneath it. “I’m rarely capable of sleeping past six, and it’s a terrible bore lounging about in bed for hours with no one to keep me company.”

The statement flusters Eggsy for a moment. His ears flush a wonderful shade of red and Harry has the sudden, inexplicable urge to feel the warmth of them beneath his fingertips.

Eggsy clears his throat in an effort to collect himself, “S’pose you ought to be finding yourself a wife then.”

God I hope not, Harry wants to say.

He is not like Percival. He doesn’t have a family bearing down on him to marry, watching him with impatient eyes every time the young lady he is speaking to at dinner doesn’t become the young lady he is courting. His father had passed away when Harry was sixteen of a rather nasty strain of influenza, leaving a steward in charge of the estate until Harry came of age. Which of course left Harry to his mother, who did not survive her husband by a terribly long number of years. Only seven had passed and she was just starting in on Harry about marriage before she cinched her corset too tightly about the waist and fell dead right in the middle of church.

After her, Harry only had his sister left to pressure him, and—though he loves her dearly—he knows she would be much happier to see her own son inherit in the inevitable instance of Harry’s death.

He doesn’t mind. George is a good lad, and his mother and father will groom him to be an excellent duke one day.  

So, no. A wife is decidedly not what Harry needs.

“Well,” he says instead, “I suppose only time will tell.”

“Right.” Eggsy rubs the back of his neck awkwardly and with what Harry would like to read as some mild disappointment. If he’s honestly though, he cannot tell for certain. “Um…I—why’d ya call me up here again? Must’a been a reason, yeah?”

“Yes,” Harry begins, picking up his fingers from the keys. He slides over on the piano bench in offering, and Eggsy takes the seat with only a little hesitation. Their shoulders sit snuggly together as they settle side by side on the small ottoman. “I was wondering if you might tell me a bit about the families that came to call on us yesterday. My friend is more open to the idea of a paramour, you see, and I’d very much hate to see him swindled or fallen in with the wrong sort.” Harry motions to the instrument before them and tacks on, “Do you play?”

Eggsy shakes his head, “You know how much a piano costs, guv?”

Harry is not entirely certain that counts as an excuse these days. He’s seen people far worse off than Eggsy play far better than anyone in high society, but he refrains from mentioning it.

“Come on then,” he instructs instead and tilts his head to where Eggsy’s hands are resting on his thighs. “I could at least attempt a lesson.”

There must be some previous interest in the venture as Eggsy only falters for a moment and otherwise doesn’t look reluctant at all to raise his hands to the keys. He follows the silent command to mimic his partner’s hand placement, but inexperience makes his fingers unsure. Harry reaches over and readjusts them gently, taking care not to linger too long despite the way Eggsy leans ever so slightly against his shoulder and his hands tense and relax under the attention. They are much smaller than Harry’s and cool to the touch, likely not quite warmed yet after being inside for so short a time.  

“You said people stopped by or summat,” Eggsy says, picking up the threads of their primary conversation. His voice is oddly pitched.

He is, as it turns out, remarkably loyal as well. It takes quite a bit of convincing—interspersed with instrumental instructions—to make him feel as though he’s not being somehow unfaithful by revealing a few details about the families.

Harry respects the quality despite the frustration it provides.

He files away a few details that are not of the utmost importance to his purpose here, but may come in handy later. Sir Lucas is a pillar of the community as was Harry’s initial impression. Highly respected. Spoken of in elevated regard.

Mr. Watson has a gambling problem and a wandering eye and it takes every fiber of Harry’s self-control not to smile when Eggsy implies that he ought to keep an eye out for Miss Bingley and, more potentially scandalous, Mrs. Hurst.

Roxanne Morton and Elaine Caldwell needing to be protected from Mr. Watson of Purvis Lodge. Roxanne would be offended by the very idea. Elaine would have a great laugh.

“Wouldn’t worry much ‘bout them though,” Eggsy tells him in regards to the Lucas and Watson families.

“Why is that?” Harry asks, letting Eggsy one handedly prod at the keys for a moment.

“It’s that eldest Bennet girl everyone’ll be talking up, I guarantee. I bet none of the other girls are even gettin’ their hopes up.”

“I take it she’s considered a local beauty then?” Harry infers. He examines Eggsy’s profile, ceasing all pretenses of playing or teaching the piano for a moment in order to hedonistically observe. It is a rather lovely view after all, with Eggsy’s brow furrowed a bit in concentration and that shadow of pale stubble still dusted along his jaw from whatever inferior razor he must be using. Harry didn’t hire him as an errand boy because he enjoyed looking at him, but he certainly isn’t going to complain.

“I s’pose she is,” Eggsy answers. He seems to find his own apparent understatement a touch amusing and looks up at Harry with a smile and sparkling green eyes as he amends, “I mean yeah. Yeah she’s…she’s nice to look at. Pretty.”

“Will they be trying to foist her off on me do you think?”

“Nah,” he denies without hesitation. “She’s sweet. Right up someone like Bingley’s alley. You, though?” Eggsy pauses here, his eyes trailing over Harry’s torso. “Don’t think she’d appeal to the likes of you.”

Harry smiles and humors the boy, “And why ever not?”

“Dunno,” Eggsy says with a shrug. “You seem like the type of bloke who’d like someone with a mouth on ‘em.”

Harry’s eyes fall automatically to Eggsy’s lips at this. Pink and small but plump, always blurring his ending th’s into f’s, nearly never closing even when he’s not speaking.

“I suppose you’re right,” he concedes. Eggsy's gaze is fixed on the keys of the piano, whatever charming mirth had bubbled up within him beginning to fade.

“Like...like maybe Miss Elizabeth,” he continues, tone completely opposed to the previously jovial rapport. “She’s the Bennet’s second eldest. Near as pretty and twice the gumption. Bet you’ll take a liking to her.” Eggsy smiles again, but he doesn’t look like his heart is quite in it. “People says she’s got nice eyes.”

“I doubt it,” Harry reassures, more in reference to him becoming attached to her than the idea of her having lovely features. He doesn’t mind if Eggsy misunderstands. Harry’s got a nice enough pair of eyes looking at him already.

He nods to the piano again in a quick change of subject. “Is there anything in particular of which you’d like to try a few lines? A folk or party song perhaps.” Harry lists a couple he knows are popular with the younger generation, particularly within the working class. Eggsy looks on with a complete lack of recognition.

“What ‘bout the one you was playing when I came in, yeah?” Eggsy suggests eventually. “Mozart right? Concerto Number 21 or summat.”

“Well,” Harry begins, taken aback by the response. He blinks blankly at Eggsy a couple times in astonishment. “You are full of surprises aren’t you?”

“Mr. Darcy,” Roxanne’s voice cuts in. The ‘Bingleys’ and ‘Darcys’ have all taken to calling each other by their false names when they are not secluded off to themselves, a precaution established because of the small number of staff affiliated with the house and not Kingsman.

The sudden intrusion rips Harry and Eggsy’s attention away from one another and refocuses it toward the lady entering the other end of the room

Eggsy stands up so suddenly that he might have sent the stool toppling over if Harry had not been sitting on it as well. He leaps away from the piano. His posture is stiff as a board and rather guilty, like he’s a child caught in the sweets. Harry watches in amusement before slowly rising himself.

“Oh hello,” Roxanne says, having just noticed Eggsy’s presence. Her concentration must have been fixed on fastening her riding gloves when she first entered. “And who might this be?”

“Caroline this is Eggsy Unwin. Eggsy this is Miss Caroline Bingley.”

“‘Eggy’?” Roxanne asks curiously.

“‘Eggsy’, ma’am,” Eggsy corrects. “I’m an undergardener here at the estate.”

“Gardener, yes,” Harry tells her with teasing on his tongue, “but also flexible.”

“'Versatile' I believe was the word I used,” Eggsy mutters with a blush.

“It’s a pleasure to make you’re acquaintance Eggsy.” Here, she reaches out for his hand and Harry looks on as surprise flitters over Eggsy’s face at the firmness of her handshake. She pulls back and continues, “I’m sorry to have disturbed you, Darcy, but I had woken rather early this morning. I thought I might go into town before breakfast. Would you like to join me?”

Harry is grateful for the invitation but inclined to refuse. He has company to keep. That is if Eggsy doesn't flee immediately upon Roxanne's departure. “No, thank you Miss Bingley. I am quite content where I am.”

“Very well.” Roxanne nods to both of them, eyes lingering knowingly on Harry, “Good day, Eggsy. And to you, Mr. Darcy.”

She leaves as abruptly as she arrived, the moment she had intruded upon shattered like spun glass and a still, awkwardness resonating in her wake. Eggsy seems overly conscious of himself again.

He clears his throat to fill the silence, “Ought to be going too, I s’pose.”

“If you’d like to stay,” Harry offers, an odd little desperation clawing up his throat unexpectedly, “you are more than welcome.”

“I—nah I should get to work.” He rubs the back of his neck again. A nervous tick, Harry supposes. “Don’t want no one to think I’m lazing about, yeah?”

“Of course not. I will see you again soon I hope.”

Eggsy winks as he backs toward the door, sauntering away just as he came, “Just call if ya need anythin’.”

“Most certainly, Eggsy.”

“Ta, guv,” he finishes, and then he’s gone.

Flee it is then, Harry thinks. 

“Good day and all that,” Harry says to the large, empty room. The air between him and the window is still cold and the piano bench seems a little wide all of the sudden and there is a small but yawning disappointment just below his sternum that he steadfastly ignores.

.

Harry sees Eggsy minimally within the following week, mostly in passing or for menial (and largely invented) tasks. He tells himself it’s to keep up some illusion of a working relationship between them alive but can’t quite fool himself into believing it.

He enjoys Eggsy’s company but has yet to decide if he enjoys it more than he ought.

Sir Lucas calls again, this time to invite their party to the Meryton Assembly. He stays longer than his last visit, and helpfully warns them of a small group of petty thieves making their way about the village. They are not dangerous, Lucas assures, likely just ruffians in need of a little money. They take trivial objects mostly, minor possessions, things that won’t be missed for a while.

James and Harry share a look once the man has left and very little more need be discussed on the matter for them to come to an understanding.

Which is how Harry finds himself here: donned in dark and decidedly working class attire, his horse hidden in a copse of trees, and Harry fiddling open the window of what he is near certain is Mr. Bennet’s study.

It’s two o’clock in the morning. Harry wishes he was asleep.

He frees the latch with practiced ease and slides through the opening like water. He can’t search the entire house, so this room will have to do for now. If he’s discovered, his primary goal will be to keep his face hidden. The Bennets are much more likely to assume him a thief than their wealthy new neighbor. Let alone the wealthy neighbor’s friend.

The study, Harry notes with relief, isn’t terribly large but then neither is the house. The furniture is ill kept and arranged in a way that only serves to make the room look smaller. On one wall is an ornate cabinet and, in front of it, a chair that Bennet likely uses for lounging since a marked book rests in the center of the seat and a well-used deck of cards is stacked on a small table beside the arm. To Harry’s right is a fireplace—the mantle cluttered with ornaments and lamps and various other curios—as well as a series of shelves packed with books that make Harry sigh in resignation with the knowledge that, if all goes well, the next hour will be spent quietly leafing through them with only the moon for light.

He starts by tackling the ledgers as he has always been the type of man to slough through the mud first if sloughing is necessary.

His search grants him little more than tired eyes, a mild headache, and the knowledge that, though Mr. Bennet is obviously a man of great intelligence, he is utter shite at finances. No numbers are out of place, though. No oddly cryptic items purchased. No glaring excess of anything other than what he would expect of a man with a wife and five daughters.

Harry puts everything back where he finds it as soon as he’s finished with them individually, sliding each volume quietly back into place and mentally cataloguing his progress.

He leafs through the literature next, searches through the desk drawers, checks the cabinet. The most he finds is a marriage license from 1792, several letters from a man that Harry quickly surmises is Bennet’s brother-in-law, and an odd affinity for storing caramel chews in nearly every available hiding space.

It is half past four in the morning when Harry resorts to a quick poke through the ashen fireplace and comes up no more knowledgeable for it. Standing behind the large desk at the center of the room, he surveys the area—looking no different now than when he entered it—with a defeated stance.

Harry pensively examines a slant of moonlight streaming through the window; the way it cuts through the darkness of the small office, drapes over Bennet’s work table like a blanket, settles oddly over a spot on the wood floor underneath…

He cocks his head in interest.

Crouching onto his haunches, Harry runs the tips of his fingers along one of the slats of wood. The board is rough with age. And loose.

Odd, he thinks and pulls it up with no resistance. There’s a thin and shallow opening beneath. Only large enough to hold a bundle of letters that are worn and old and tied together with twine. The handwriting strikes Harry as rather feminine.

He begins to pull the bow that holds the stack together undone when there’s a creaking in the hallway. The sound cracks through the silence in the house. Harry freezes.

The desk that he's practically crawled beneath has a backing, so he ought to go unseen by anyone who might check the room. He huddles down further though for safety's sake.

The door groans loudly against its hinges as someone opens it. Slowly, cautiously.

Harry stops breathing and counts to ten and keeps his body as still as he can manage. Not in fear though. No, never in fear. God, he scarcely thinks there's any fear left in him. But hiding...he hates to hide. His whole life is hiding. He would prefer a fight when the threat is this tangible.  

There is no sound except for the monotone ticking of the clock on the mantelpiece. A moment passes and then two, and he thinks he hears the floorboards creak again. Whoever it is does not close the door behind.

Harry waits another few beats before replacing the letters and bolting upward. He needs to leave before whoever it was comes back.

As silently as he can manage, he pulls the window back open again and—

A cold, sharp edge slides beneath his chin, biting into the skin as its bearer—fine wrists, he notes from his peripheral, female—puts pressure on the handle. The placement is more warning than threat. Not close enough to the throat to do immediate damage, but not so far as to nullify the knowledge that they could if necessary.

Harry measures his movements carefully. His hands raise in surrender, posture straightening. His back is pressed firmly to her front and he feels the tension relax as he submits.

In one smooth motion, he sweeps his hand from where it is lifted in compliance to the inside of her arm and knocks the weapon free from his neck. The sudden motion causes his assailant to stumble back. Harry hears her knife swing and catch fabric with a loud tear.

One lunging step and he leaps out the already open window in a perfect arch and lands on his feet into the grass below.

He doesn’t look back as flees, not even to catch the face of his attacker. He darts through the outcropping of trees he came from, easily vaults onto his horse’s back, and rides off into the fading night.