Content warnings can be found here

With slow movements, Edward Valance, Lord Forthenby, set his glass back upon the bar and stooped to retrieve the gage from the floor. 

In the sight of all, he stood, and brushed the sawdust from it, holding it in his hand as he might grasp a lover’s fingers - as he had once held Richard’s hand - before crushing the fingers of the glove. Valance brought back his arm and cast it so that it slapped into Richard’s chest and fell to the sawdust once again. 

“Need we trouble with delay, sir?” said Valance in the softest of voices, staring up at him with all the tenderness of school-boy love.

Richard shook his head, feeling cold.

But another voice, coarse, crass, and unwelcome, said, “Teddy…” 

“Mind yourself, Peach,” said Valance, not looking away from Thornton’s eyes.

“Sorry, my Lord, but you cannot -”

“Do no tell me what I might or might not do, Peach. I do not take it kindly.”

“My Lord -”

“No.” Valance smiled a forced, open-mouthed grin. “Mr Thornton has demanded satisfaction of me.” He spread his arms wide. “I am afraid I have no choice in the matter.”

Richard set his jaw.

“Does dawn suit you, sir?”

Richard nodded.

“And I am to assume that you have pistols at your disposal?”

Richard drew a deep breath, and again, nodded his head.

“Well, well. Dickie Upright. You astound me. Call your second, sir.”

Richard glanced about himself, realising that he knew no-one here, that there was no-one at the Treasury whom he could ask without compromising himself.

“You have no second, sir?”

He would shame himself with speech.

“Let’s keep this among school-fellows, then. Stevens. Jackson,” Valance said, with a sharp air of command that Richard had not heard from him before. With it, two dissolute young men pulled themselves to standing and straightened their clothes. “The pair of you will stand for old Thornton and me, will you not?”

“Naturally,” said one.

“You honour me, my Lord,” said the other.

Richard recognised them both. He had birched them both in his time, heard their whimpers, seen the tears of pain. Now, this moment, they both loomed, implacable. They watched him with smug satisfaction of men who had lived to see a childhood ogre cast down. 

“I’ll stand for you, Upright,” said Jackson with an unkind smile.

“Then I’m for you, my Lord,” said the other.

“Does this satisfy, sir?”

Richard tried not to choke on the sudden heat that had entered his throat. “Admirably,” he said, in the calmest voice that he could muster. 

“Excellent. Well, I’ve never been known to face the reaper without a fuck to steady myself.” Valance pinched the ear of the young man who had been kissing his neck a few moments beforehand, “Oblige me, would you, Bannerworth? I suggest you do the same, Dickie. I would offer, but I fear it wouldn’t be proper. In the circumstances.” He bowed, a more precise, respectful bow than Richard had ever seen him perform before. “Dawn, old man.”

Richard stood still and straight, not moving until Valance had left and the chatter of the tavern around him had resumed. Then he crossed the handful of steps to the bar and ignored the amused and scornful stares of those around him as he said, “Jess, is it?”

The girl nodded, eyeing him suspiciously.

“I believe I will take that pint.”

She drew it for him, and slid it over, taking his money without a word. 

Richard Thornton refused to put his head into his hands.

“I’ll stand you brandy, sir,” said a voice, “if you’re in need of it.”

He shook his head without looking up, “Thank you, no, sir.”

“Ain’t no sir about it.”

That made Richard glance up, to see a smallish, slight man in a servant’s livery. He drew himself up, ready to be affronted.

“No need to trouble yourself, sir. We don’t stand on ceremony much here. I like the girls as much as the next fellow, and my master pays me alright.”

Thornton sipped his porter, “I doubt most of the patrons here feel that way.”

“If I don’t trouble them, sir, they don’t notice me.” The man had boyish face, all delicate lines, and short, black hair where he should have been wearing a periwig.

“Then why are you troubling me, eh?”

“Thought you could do with a touch of sympathy, sir. Forgive me if I presumed.” There was so much insolence laid in to that last that Richard was staggered by it. 

“You clearly aren’t especially contrite, boy.”

“Nor are you, and you’re the one walking into a lead ball at dawn.”

“I don’t fear Teddy bloody Valance.”

“Do you not, sir?”

I’ve whipped him often enough. 

But that was not the truth, for as often as he had made Valance bleed for little wrongs, as easily as he could beat him in the ring, Richard had never even been a tolerable shot. 

“I do not believe I asked your opinion on the matter."

“All I’m saying,” the impudent rogue went on, “is let it go. You gents get to do that, don’t you?”

“Not without seeming a coward.”

The servant said nothing, but it wasn’t the blessed nothing of an orderly put in his place, but a kind of meaning, watchful nothingness.

“I am not afraid of Edward Valance,” said Richard.

“Way you’re swigging that porter says otherwise, sir.”

“You dare,” he said, turning on the man, but the lad put his hands up and shrugged.

“I ain’t the one looking for a quarrel, sir. Just making an observation.”

“I would hope that your master had beaten that out of you.”

“I ain’t in my master’s presence, though, am I, sir?”

Richard looked at the porter in his hand and saw that it was half gone. In his pocket, his pistol felt weak, insubstantial. It wasn’t a good piece, it was old and cheaply made. It veered to the left, too. He only kept it because the indignity of not having his own guns was more than he could bear. 

“Why risk it?” said the servant, “No point getting yourself killed over a handful of words. Tell him that you’re sorry, that your anger got the better of you.”

“It’s a question of honour. I wouldn’t expect you to understand.”

The man snorted, a low, dirty laugh, “You hate him?”

Richard said nothing.

“You want him to suffer? You want to hurt him?”

Another, hot flash of memory. But it would not do to show it before one such as this.

“Because if you want to anger him, then call off the duel. He ain’t going to call you out, but he wants it all the same. By meeting him you are giving him exactly what he wants.” The lad’s voice had become low, intimate, his expression softer than Richard would have expected. He added, “Sir,” almost as an afterthought.

“You know Valance,” he said.

“He’s always known how to get exactly what he wanted from you, ain’t he, sir?”

Richard’s hand shot out and caught the man by the collar, dragging him forward.

“Easy, sir,” said the lad, and his voice was gentle, although his face had taken on a strange, closed expression.

“If you were my man,” said Richard, “I would whip you bloody. How you dare even address your betters in that fashion, I-”

“I’m trying to help you, sir,” the wretch said, in that same, reasonable tone.

“You presume to think I need the help of one such as you?” He shoved the man backwards, striking the boy with the back of his hand as he fell. 

The boy hit the bar, hard, and looked up at him with a defiant expression that Richard had seen before, moments earlier, in the eyes of Edward Valance.

Then the man stood upright, and bowed, “Have it your way, Mr Thornton. You can’t say as I didn’t try.”