Content warnings can be found here

Teddy swung into the room and extend his hands before him with fingers interlocked until his knuckles cracked. 

Peaches looked up from the hat she was brushing and said, “Well, his nibs gave me a right bollocking.”

“Oh dear,” said Teddy with his wicked, crooked smile. “Not keeping things up to requisite standards, Peach?”

“Your fucking linen was on the horse, Teddy. Your boots were shined. I was up two sodding hours getting things straight, and I looked smart. You’re the one who wanted a lay before they turned up.”

“Not so loud, sweet Peach. Lucas will hear you.”

Peaches raised the hat ready to throw it.

“Would it be any consolation if I told you that they were frightfully tedious people?” He dodged out of the way as the beaver brushed past his ear. Teddy tutted, “You’ll have ruined the nap on that, Peaches.”

She glared.

He picked it up from the floor and looked a little more shamefaced. “Suppose I should get into the habit of brushing my own hats, eh?”

Peaches nodded.

“Well, if you must know, I didn’t entirely escape the disappointed patriarch routine. Lord, Peach, I fear that man more than I ever was in awe of my own pater. One look at me, and you would have thought he’d swallowed an egg whole.” He shook his head, “I should have introduced him to Tooting maman. Not entirely sure she was taken with yours truly, either. Probably for the best.”

“What about the daughter?” she said, relenting a little.
“Well, she detests me quite cordially, which in temperaments like hers, means she’s only a hairsbreadth away from ripping off my shirt and britches.”

“Maybe I should let her.”

“Well, no, because then we’d have a terrible mess on our hands.” He came over and ran his hands through her hair, knocking off the bloody periwig. Long, cool, shivers went down her neck and spine at the touch of him upon her scalp, but she wasn’t forgiving him. Not just yet. “Still, I’m sorry old Hedge gave you a rough time of it. What can I do to make it up to you, eh?”

“I need to sort your hat if you’re out tonight.”

“You always love me to look the swell.” He spoke gently, and brought his fingers down, under the line of her collar. “I’d be an undeniable scarecrow without you.”

She smiled.

“We’ve time,” he said.

“Take the robe off, Teddy.” 

He shrugged out of it, letting it fall to the ground in a rich, shining cascade of royal blue and gold thread. It puddled about his feet, like a pool of expensive water. His legs rose from it, thin and strong in his britches, high, hard arse, and the soft billows of his shirt. Beneath that, the shadows of his chest moved with his breath. He adjusted his cock. 

She stared at that, not his face. “You should get that pierced, Teddy,” she said. “That’s what a lot of the swells do to stop them walking round with their pegos sticking out half a mile.”

“I should be so lucky.”

“I could do it for you.”

“You’re coming nowhere near that with a needle, Peaches.”

She grinned, and put one hand on it, possessive. “You’d stop me, Valance?”

Teddy shrugged and looked away. She felt him twitch against her hand. 

“Oh, I’ll bear that in mind,” she said. “That could be fun. But don’t worry. I ain’t going to let no harm come a special friend of mine.”

“Bloody hell, you’re awful, Peaches.” She could feel him straining against her.

“Shirt off, Teddy.”

“Bank up the fire, then, would you? It’s freezing in here.”

“If you want it done, do it yourself.” He took half a step as she said that, so she gripped the bulge in his trousers a little harder, “After you’ve taken the shirt off.”

“I’m not actually your fag.”

“I’m waiting, Valance.”

He made a low, helpless moan and drew the thin fabric up and over his head, his body rising like a long, muscled expanse of white gold, softened by traces of glistening down, the odd curl of darker hair. His nipples were small and pink, standing pinched and upright. 

“Might put rings in those, as well,” she said and pinched one.

Teddy gasped and looked down, smiling a bashful, willing smile. He always glowed when she admired him. “You would not.”

“I’ve seen gents with it done,” she said. “Some of the girls, too. Nice to bite.” She grinned, “Now. Are you going to sort that fire out or do I get my toy now?”

He glanced at her from under lowered lashes, then across at the embers in the hearth. His chest was moving in a slow, steady rhythm, his lips slightly parted. His skin was glazed with the hard ripples of goosepimples, but he was white and bronze and gold. The loose waves of his hair fell on to his temples as he shook his head. “Forget the fire.”

“Then go and stand at the foot of the bed.” 

There he went, obedient, never knowing that he made such movement of his hips as he walked that her eyes couldn’t help but follow them, or how his bones tapered down into his britches so that anyone would want to run the ball of their thumb along the curve. 

“Here?” he said.

“Arms up. Hold on to the posts.”

He glanced back at her, his eyes a flash of blue, the lines of his neck stark and vulnerable. 

“Right up,” she said. “High as you can get them.”

So he stretched out like a man crucified, his hands grasping the pale wood, all the bones and tendons in his wrist writhing. The hair on his arms was thicker, the skin darkened by riding, hunting, being out in the sun. 

“This is a touch uncomfortable.” 

“Good. Keep them there.” She stepped across the room, swinging her hips herself to see him so, to watch those low shallow breaths of his become a little longer, to see his head hanging down, then coming up again, as though not entirely sure of whether he wanted what came next, as though he should try to keep her in his sights. 

Peaches was behind him, though. 

For all that, she strode as though she had an audience of thousands, as though the whole world were watching, and in that moment she wanted all of them to see this. Not her in command of Lord Forthenby, not the power she was wielding, no. She wanted them to see him stretched like that, waiting for her, helpless. Not to shame him, not to undermine him, but so that everyone who saw him ever again would know how sublimely beautiful he could be. 

“Now,” she said, “the carriage whip’s in here, or I could use my belt. What’s it to be?”

He gasped, “I…”

“I want an answer, Valance.”

“Oh, God, Peaches. Whatever… whatever you like.”

“That’s going to make it both, then.”

He moaned, and his arms twisted, but he did not let go of the posts.

“That alright with you, my Lord?”

“Christ,” he said, “oh Christ.”

Peaches unbuckled her belt drew out the long, supple leather of it between her hands, feeling the rough underside, the smooth hardness of the top, her eyes fixed of Teddy’s strong, white shoulders. She put the buckle into the centre of her palm, closing her fingers about it, wrapping it around her knuckles once and drawing a deep, satisfied breath before raising her arm and bringing it down in a crack across his naked skin. 

Teddy made a short sound, somewhere between a grunt and exhalation of air. She brought the belt up and down again in a backhand across his other shoulder, watching as the long stripe of sore red streaked down where she had laid the first blow. His body gave a shudder and he flexed his hips forward. She brought the belt down on his right side again, just below where the red mark was becoming a welt. Again, again, again. 

What she wanted was to watch it shatter, that schoolboy endurance of his, wanted to leave his back stripped and bloody and him crying out with the pain - but he was a much older hand at this than her. She knew the pride to be found in not singing when someone was trying to hurt you, but it had never been trained into her flesh the way it had been into his. She brought the belt down again, once, twice, faster, harder, but he gave only the hiss of breath drawn in over his teeth and hung forward, his arms stretched, his knuckles white with the grip. 

It was the tip of the belt that did the damage. It left a little flat v of bruise, spotted the skin with livid purple and red. She swung it back, bringing it down with the full force of her arm, knowing she would never tire of seeing him like this, of the way the bite of leather on his body was like her name, branded across his pale skin. 

You’re mine, Teddy, she thought. Not Forthenby’s, not Hedge’s, not Miss Tooting’s, and certainly not Dickie fucking Thornton’s. You’re mine, and you’re going to cry out for me.

And she brought the belt down again, letting it swing and fall, screaming through the air to land with so loud a crack that his head came back, and his chest arched forwards and his hands clenched so tight that his nails must have bitten into the flesh of his hands. When she pulled the belt back again, there was a thin stripe of broken skin across him, an edge of blood.

He still did not cry out.

Frustrated, she slashed down, again, again, again, but for all he bled, for all he bruised and shook and flinched, he kept his mouth tight closed and did not resist her. 

Stretched so, it was easy to think that he was not Lord Forthenby, but Teddy; sweet, and honourable and kind. The most beautiful man she had ever known, the only one she could ever have fallen for. He stood, upright and unbroken, his body trembling, but not crying out. 

Peaches closed her fist until the stiff leather bent in her hand, pressing her palm against the metal of the buckle, and was torn between desire and annoyance. It was futile, trying to overcome him. She knew that. He would bow to her, but he would never take this seriously. After all, he was Lord Forthenby, for all she might tell herself otherwise, and Lord Forthenby didn’t belong to some little slattern who crawled out of a dead-end village to sell her cunny on London’s streets. Peaches remembered poverty and hunger and exhaustion, remembered men who had hurt her and men who had tried, the ones who had tried to take from her something more precious than any possession.

And she thought of Teddy Valance.

She brought the belt hard across his back, and did not even expect to hear him scream.

“Good,” she said. “Very good. I’ll get that whip then, shall I?” 

With bitter steps backwards, she walked to the walking cane stand where she had slipped it in a half-hearted attempt to tidy up. As she did, she looked at Teddy, leaning hard against the post, his head nearly upon his chest, his shoulders shaking, his grip slipping. There was blood running down his back. Peaches took the whip from the stand, ran her thumb over the handle with its plaited leather, felt the hard silver of the pommel. The long lash hung down by her legs, but she remembered her childhood well enough to bring it up and snap it in the air.

Hearing that, a rippling stiffness went through Teddy’s body, starting in his calves, clenching his buttocks, then his chest, shoulders, arms, and ending in his face as his lips came together, his eyes closed. The whole of him trembled. There was something shining on his face. 

Peaches went close to him and raised the handle of the whip, running the first inch of the lash softly over the skin of his cheek. She watched his throat as he swallowed, saw the tension in his jaw as he clenched his teeth together and did not open his eyes. His nostrils flared as he drew in a shaking breath. 

And she knew that she could beat him, that she could flog him, and that he would eventually cry out, that he would fall in to broken pieces on the bed and never make a move to stop her. His hands still held the posts of the bed and his chest heaved in small convulsions, his pretty face was screwed up and closed and covered in tears, but he did not flinch away from the touch of the whip on his face. Something washed through her, sweet and strong and dangerous.

“Teddy,” she said.

He gave a tiny, flinching nod.

Peaches brought her hand up and touched his lips. They were hot and wet with tears. “Are you alright?”