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Chapter Seventeen

There were, of course, some people who cut Edward the next time they met. He could not blame them.

Still, Hedge and Jackson told their lies, and Stevens - blessed, honest Stevens - stood by him, and told anyone who would listen about how Lord Forthenby had lent Thornton his own gun, how he had refused to believe any harm of his assailant, and how furious he had been that the Watch had been summoned in the first place. Whether it was that, or the creeping whispers that began to spread through town that the new Earl was really the famous Teddy Valance - who had been winging men in duels since he’d been barely out of school  - or if it was merely the armour of the Forthenby fortune, people seemed inclined to believe that version of events. 

Or if they did not believe it, they kept it to themselves.

Dickie never had been any good at keeping friends, so the only men willing to speak of him were his employers, or a handful of bloodless colleagues, who praised his hard work, steadiness, and his reliability – but for every one of those was another who would tell just as cheerfully of his coldness and occasional presumption. Besides, he had killed a man, and had fled justice; even Sir L— could not defend him in the face of that.

No wonder, then, that the court of public opinion came down on the side of wealth, position, and affable manner. Hedge was hailed, widely, as a hero, Jackson as a true friend and Edward’s own fury at the pair widely put down to fitting hauteur, a respect for the proprieties of a duel, and a refusal to think ill of an old friend. 

Edward could not really own himself surprised by it, and hated that almost as much as the situation itself. So it was that two weeks later, he stood before the mirror as Peaches tied his jabot.

He was not speaking to Peaches.

In fact, he was not entirely sure that Peaches was speaking to him. At night, he slept, foot-cold and lonely in his bed, hearing her shift and pace until the small hours on the other side of the wall, unable to forget the way she’d held her hand up as she had answered him, the whisper she had dropped into his ears?

Because hadn’t she known that he had done it all and entirely for her? 

Or near enough. 

For all Thornton had insulted him so many times over the years, had whipped him and punched him, threatened and humiliated, Edward had borne it, setting his honour set it aside in the name of... love, he supposed. 

He watched her strong, brown hands tie the jabot, and thought that, by now, he might have been free of all that. But no - Thornton was a fugitive and Edward’s name was cleared. Oh, there would always be those who believed him guilty of the lowest of blows, but they would be silent about it. 

And Dickie was a fugitive.

Peaches came towards him with his waistcoat, sliding it over his arms, her eyes dark with judgement. 

Edward had quarrelled with Hedge, had wrangled and shouted and even threatened until the bastard had agreed to settle a pension on Dickie’s aged mother - and fair-sized dowry for his unmarried sister, too - and agreed to do it on the quiet. 

As Peaches stepped away from him, he grabbed her wrist, desperate to say… something, anything. But with a sharp shake of her head, she pulled her hand away and began to fasten his buttons. 

Part of him wanted to kiss her, to pull her to his chest and hear her laugh, because they would have been laughing, if bloody Thornton hadn’t turned and...

No. He did not believe that. Would not believe it. Stevens, at the least, Stevens out of all of them would not have lied to him - but Stevens refused to say one way of the other.

So much for foolish, good-hearted Stevens. Jackson was a villain, of course, however likeable a rogue he could be, and Edward expected nothing else from Hedge - but Peaches? His Peaches? His one, sweet Peach.

Her back was turned to him, and she was fussing with something. His jacket, maybe, or his hat. 

“Why?” he asked, his voice so soft that he did not expect her to hear him.

But she stiffened. 

Edward looked down at the floor.  “I would have left it,” he said. “I would have let it go.”

“Not until after you’d shot each other.” Her voice was as quiet and hoarse as though she had wept herself to sleep every evening that past se’nnight. 

“After that, I mean.” He crossed the room to her, where she stood with her back turned and her fingertips resting on the embroidered beauty of his coat as though she would lose herself in the pattern of it. “After that, I would have left it. We could have gone back to Forthenby and...” 

He put his hand upon her shoulder, but she stiffened at the touch.

“Peaches, I’m sorry I spoke to you that way. That morning.”

“And that makes it all well again, does it?”  

He could feel the warmth of her flesh through her livery. “I suppose not.”

She made a sound that might have been a sob.

“But why Hedge, Peaches? Why did you have to take it to Hedge?”

Beneath his hand, her whole body convulsed, but whatever pain, whatever injury she was suffering, she would not show it to him. He closed his hand to a grip, massaging the muscle above her collar bone, offering comfort as you would to a cat half-drenched by rain, but she stood motionless, as though she did not feel it - or worse, as though she suffered him to do it, but took no pleasure from it.

“Darling girl,” he said, and heard the condescension in his own voice, and hated it. “Sweet Peach, you know you can tell me. You know that I won’t mock you. You know that -”

“Serafina,” she said, in the kind of cold, dead voice that emerged from between teeth clamped closed and tight.

“What?”

“Serafina Tooting.” 

The breath of a laugh burst out from his lips, before he could stop it and she wheeled about, furious.

“You gave him that gun. You needled him to that state, and now he’s getting done for murder and she has to deal with - ”

“Steady on, Peaches. I didn’t - ”

“This … This poor, green, sweet girl, and you’ve shafted her whole life because you and another swell had some fucking history.” She turned, her face full of anger, and grief, and despair. “And you ain’t even had the courage to face her about it.”

 “If I can have her?” Dickie’s voice. The memory of his fingers on Edward’s face, “Well, really? Why would I still want you?” 

“It was Hedge,” he said, in a cold, blunt voice, “who summoned the Watch. It was the Watch who got that man killed. Without that, all would be well. Are you pretending that I informed him where Dickie and I were to meet? Was it me who gave the law some account of what happened at the tavern?” His voice was rising, anger mastering him, “And, yes, I gave Thornton a decent gun because I am not a man who likes underhand dealing. Indeed, if we’d all been so scrupulous, your precious Miss Tooting would have her bloody Upright and there would not be a corpse going to the grave by his hand.”

“Very good, my Lord. Is there anything else you’d like me to take the blame for?” She did not say it in Peaches’ voice. She spoke as she did when propriety was a strict requirement, when she would use all of her vowels and consonants and bow to the right depth. 

Just like she was bowing now.

“I do not believe that I was blaming you,” and it was not Edward that spoke. It was Lord Forthenby who said that thing.

“Do you not, my Lord? And is this the coat that you wished for? Or did I get that wrong as well?”

“That will do, Peach.”

She shook it out and came behind him. And, as she wrapped it about his shoulders, as he looked at himself in the glass, he almost took her hand again.
 
She gave another stiff, furious bow. “Will that be all, my Lord?” 

Within himself, Teddy wept, sobbing out this misunderstanding, reaching across this breach of failure, of unrealised love. But he was Edward Valance, Lord Forthenby, and all he did was give the curt nod which sent her from the room. 

She closed the door behind her, not slamming it as she would have done in happier times. On a lacquered table beside it, in a silver box, lay one of his Forthenby Ladies. The other was wherever Dickie was, God knew where that might be. For a long time, Edward stood, dressed in his finery, looking at the closed door, the single, lonely gun. 

He did not allow himself to weep.