Chapter One

Content notes can be found here

Edward Valance, Lord Forthenby, ducked as the cut-crystal decanter sailed past his head and shattered into a thousand fragments against the carved marble of the fireplace. 

Shards of glass scored his bare neck, stinging, and thin lines of blood seeped in to his immaculate white shirt. The room filled with the stench of brandy.

“If you’d just let me -” he said, but the decanter was followed by the little bust of Achilles, which caught him square in the chest. 

“Ow,” Edward said, as the Greek hero tumbled to the floor, his crest shattering. “Peaches, look…” one hand guarding the developing bruise, he watched the dark-eyed stunner who was busy casting about for something else to throw at him. “It was a mistake. I didn’t mean to-”

“And just how do you propose marriage by mistake, Teddy?”

With that reasonable question, she hurled the elegant little table upon which her two previous missiles had been sitting peacefully a scant minute before. Her periwig had fallen off in her fury, along with whatever polish the last year had put upon her voice. She sounded like a fishwife berating a dog for pissing on the catch, all slurred words, missed consonants and unpredictable cadence.

Edward had missed her like this.

And he would have answered – fully intended to answer – and what was more explain and even apologise, but he was a bit too busy being surrounded by shattering wood. A passing table leg caught him across the mouth, and the rest of the table tumbled downwards.  Some of it fell in the brandy. Some of it fell in the grate. 

A carved satyr sustained damage to its manhood.

Ouch. 

“Look,” he said, “how about sorry? I’m sorry. Does sorry cover it?”

She was just opening her mouth to detail all the ways in which sorry did not, in fact, cover it, when there was a knock at the chamber door. Both of them froze, Edward dabbing at the gash on his lip, probing for loose teeth, and Peaches on the verge of full vitriol and looking, frankly, terrifying. 

Neither of them spoke.

“My Lord,” enquired a grave, provincial voice.

Edward pressed his lips together, winced, and fought an absurd urge to laugh. Hedge. 

Of course it was bloody Hedge. 

“What is it now?” he managed in the appropriate tone.

“Sorry to trouble you, my Lord, but Lucas reported that he heard,” a pause, in which the disapproval was as heavy as cosh to the back of the head, “disturbances.”

“Disturbances, Hedge?”

Peaches, bless her, had gone ashen and was looking at the nice little mess she had made of his fireplace. 

“Untoward noises, my Lord.”

“Good god, Hedge,” Edward exclaimed, “Can a gentleman not practice his Mazurka in his own apartments without you fellows raising the hue and cry?”

There was a rather amusing pause, before Hedge said, “His Mazurka, my Lord?”

“Naturally. I can’t go cutting a poor figure in the ballroom, now, can I?” 

He glanced at Peaches, who was now staring in the way that said she was halfway between kissing him, or slapping some sense into him.

“My Lord, would not the-”

“That will be all, Hedge.”

“Is your man in attendance upon you, my Lord?”

“I said, that will be all.” 

Edward wiped the blood off his lip and closed his eyes, listening as the Dragon of Forthenby did not make a proper retreat across the hallway and down the stairs. He managed to catch Peaches’ eye. She put her hand over her mouth and shook her head.

He nodded, and together, they waited until at last, the sound of his blasted steward’s footsteps receded.
 
Peaches wrung her hands through her hair, finally knocking off that blasted periwig altogether. “The Mazurka?” she said.

He shrugged, “I thought the kicking might…” he gestured to the mess, then put his hand to his lip again, giving an exaggerated wince.

“Don’t try your luck, Teddy.” 

He made eyes at her. “Every kind of sorry, my darling girl.”  

Then, at last, she relented and crossed the room, putting her hands on his shoulders, massaging them. “Just tell me how you managed this one, then.”

“I got a bit... well. A bit carried away.”

“Nothing new there.”

“Well, yes. It’s just… The truth is, I’d been thinking about what you’d said.”

“What? About how you’d behaved like a fucking whoreson in regards to that poor girl?”

He nodded, “Something along those lines, yes.” He paused.
She waited while he paused. 

“In essence, sweet Peach, I went to make my humblest.”
Peaches arched black brows.

“No, that was my intention. Honestly, it was. I listened to what you said, Peaches, and you were right, like you always are. Therefore, I presented myself to the Tooting household out of character, and as nothing more than harmless old Teddy. My intention was to beg pardon in an abject fashion and, frankly, do what I could to make amends.”

“So, how did you end up engaged, then?”

“It appears that my plan contained a minor miscalculation.”
 
She said nothing.

“Namely, that, as I’ve said, you were right.” 

“I know I was right. How is that a problem?”

Edward sighed, all of it rushing back in a horribly vivid fashion. 

“It was a problem, my darling, because I truly had behaved abominably. Unquestionably so. As a result, the poor girl’s opinion of me was... well, she seemed convinced that I was a villain escaped from the pages of some sort of sensational novel. And given that events have transpired in the way that…” 

He let the weight of her own blame waiver in the air for a moment.

“Let us say that, circumstances being as they are, her poor opinion is much supported by the facts available to her. In short, she did not want my apologies and, in truth, I had no right to force them on her.”

“Right,” said Peaches, in the tone that let you know she was wondering how you had managed to make your thirtieth year without succumbing entirely to your own stupidity. “So you didn’t beg pardon?”

“Not quite.”

“Teddy. What did you do?”

“I… I played the villain for her.” 

A spark of rage in those dark, brown eyes.

Edward moved to cover himself his vulnerable parts, “No, no, not like that. I swear it. It’s only… you didn’t see the state she was in. The poor girl has a brute for a father and a harpy for a mother and –”

“And you just had to go and make it that bit worse for her?”

“No. No, of course not,” he said, “I wouldn’t… Well, not on purpose, I… I mean… Oh, you know what I am. But Serafina? She’s a Romantic sort of girl. Likes her narrative highly coloured. And that sort, they want a life like a novel, the need passionate speeches and over-done characters. Don’t see how a girl like that fell for…” 

But thinking that meant that he was thinking about Dickie, which was more than he could manage just yet. 

“Anyway, with parents like that hers, I doubted she’s even had her chance to say her piece after all I’d put her through, let alone really let her temper go.” He did not gesture to the bright jewels of shattered glass, the splintered wood, and poor Achilles, lying on his nose. “I’ve heard that can help a lady work through things.”

“I ain’t no lady, Teddy.”

“I wouldn’t love you if you were,” the words slipped out before he could stop them, before she could stop him. 

They hung between them for a moment, and the Edward charged on, before Peaches could turn on him again, before she make this about that old quarrel.
 
“So,  thought it would be better if I played the villain for her, gave her chance to get it off her chest. Got myself called some rather unpleasant names and was told I deserved to be struck by lightning, and made it clear to her that I truly was dreadfully, unredeemably wicked, so that she was justified in hating me without any shadow of guilt whatsoever. Really encouraged her to let me have it, you know?” He shrugged again, “Least I deserved really. From both of you.”

Peaches shook her head, and touched his ribs where the bust had bruised them, even looking a little shamefaced. “None of this adds up to a betrothal, Teddy.” 

“No. No.” It had seemed to straightforward at the time. “Well, I suppose what happened was that the conversation got a little heated and, it rather got to the point where I was required either to accost the girl, or say something that would induce her to slap me and storm off.”

“And?”

“She didn’t storm off.”

“Oh, for crying out loud.”

“Is this the bit where you hit me again?”

She let out a long, despairing sort of breath. “I ain’t going to hit you.”

“I don’t mind if you do. In fact, feel free. There’s a poker just -”

Peaches put her arms around him and pulled him tight. His bruised rib protested, but he didn’t make a sound, just gave himself up to her long, wiry arms and the hardness of her chest where her little breasts were bound flat. “Are you trying to make me cross again?”

“No,” he said, and “God, no.” Then he tilted her head up towards his face and kissed her mouth, long and deep, telling himself that the wetness he felt upon her cheeks were her tears, not his own. “Although if you fancied punishing me more thoroughly...?”

Peaches’ fingers pulled at the ties of his shirt, and the buttons on his britches. Her hands were greedy and hot at his chest, tugging the sparse, golden hair there, finding his nipples and pinching. 

So he, swift, sure, undid the buckles and buttons of her livery, peeling it back and baring her slim shoulders and strong arms, marvelling at the heat of skin, at its softness. His prick got hard - harder - urgent for her. To think that he had been at odds with her, that he’d let his damnable pride keep him at odds with her...

“I’ve missed you,” she said, between deep kisses, pulling back for a moment, looking deep into his eyes. And there they were, Teddy and Peaches, back together again, “you bloody fool.”

He lifted her up, lithe and long limbed as she was, and carried her across the room to the bed, plunging her down on to the soft, wide covers. For far too many weeks, it had been too wide, too cold, but now it was the right size and cosy once again. It was home.

Edward laid his hands on tall, stiff corset she wore, stark against her dark skin. “Do you want me to...?”

“Nah, you prefer me as a boy.”

His fingers traced the line from the hollow of her throat, down, down, over the thick, white cloth with its lines of reeds, which pressed down her ribs, the long curve of her belly, “Not especially.” 

“Well, it’d take too long, anyway,” she said, as her hands found his prick, bared his arse, pushing his britches down and away.

“To take off,” he punctuated every word with kisses to her neck, her earlobes, her cheeks, “or to put back on again?”

“Oh, I’m well due another lecture from the pernicious Mr Hedge, what with the way I’ve been” and she slipped into her razor-sharp imitation of his accent, “encouraging your eccentricities.”

“Would you rather,” and he’d got her britches down now – just as she slipped his jacket, waistcoat, and shirt from him – had his hands between her legs, “it was for pitching a table at my head?”

She turned her head and sunk teeth into his wrist. Hard. Edward gasped, then moaned as she worked her teeth on his skin. 

“Oh, Lor’, yes. Like that, just like that.” 

Her hand reached down and pulled at the buttons of his fly, deft even without looking, and grabbed his prick, cupping his balls, tugging on them. She licked the weals left by her teeth. “Earn it,” she said. 

But his fingers were already inside her, his thumb pressed against her clit, “What, like this?”

“No, I meant-”

“Oh, not like this?” making slow circles with the rough pad of his thumb. 

She licked her wide, red lips and shifted against him. “There is glass,” she said, “all over the floor by the mantle.”

“And you want me to what?” he said, between kissing the hollow of her throat, her mouth and her cheeks, and every part of her his lips and tongue could reach, “sweep it away? Pick it up piece by piece? Crawl through it on my naked belly?”

“Don’t tempt me,” she angled his prick against the wet lips of her cunt. “Move your hand.”

“I don’t want to.”

“Do as you’re told, Valance,” she said, and the little edge of cruelty in her words seared into him, burning, tumbling every hint of resistance. 

“No,” he said all the same, and the head of his prick pressed against her, and he twitched his hips, pressing in to her.

“Ah-ah. Move your hand.”

But the feel of her, the soft, silk smooth, tender flesh. The hard point of her clit answering to his caress. 

She made a sound that was not a word, that was not anything but the cry of her little show of composure falling away. 

Once, back in the old days, when he had fallen into comfort with her, she had made all those pleasing, false sounds to chide him along. Now he had to work for every moan, every cry. 

Why call it work? Why call it work at all?

He pulled back, taking her by the thighs and pulling her to the very edge of the bed, falling to his knees upon the floor, feeling his cock twitch, deprived, eager. But, no, he could see her cunny, see the way it twitched too, and the way her hips rolled at the cool pressure of his breath against it. He could smell her, deep, intimate, and salt. He brushed his lips against the dark hair of her, working his way inwards with slow, worshipful licks. 

“I should keep you down there,” she said, “put a collar round your neck and chain you like a dog.”

One of his hands held her lips apart, the other closed around the base of his prick and started massaging it. He made a little sound, but not one that disturbed his mouth, or the careful giving of her pleasure.

“Oh, but you’re good at that,” her fingers knotted in his hair, tugging, bringing sharp little bursts of pain on his scalp. The hard muscles of her thighs pressed down on his shoulders, making him push back against her to keep his place. 

“Don’t think I’m letting you off, though, just because, ah,” and she cried out as he thrust his tongue inside her, stroked her tight arsehole with one finger. 

She shuddered for a moment and said, “And don’t you…” but then lost the thread of the thought, pulling him closer to her.

He worked his hand up and down the shaft of his prick as he tasted her, buried his face into her like a man parched, and felt his own crisis coming on, sharp and intolerably strong. 

They came together, her spending dripping across his lips, down his face, soaking his shoulders and throat, washing him clean of all the anger and the pain. 

Who cared about getting hitched to the sainted Serafina? Who cared about Dickie Thornton on the run from the law, or Hedge’s flaming disapproval? 

Because his spunk was forcing its way over his hands, and Peaches’ thighs were clamped over his ears, pressing on the bruise she’d made with the table leg and washing away all thought in a burst of glorious pain, and he could have stayed here all day, could have never moved away again from the two of them locked together in utter bliss.

But when they’d both stopped trembling, he realised that his chest was covered in goosepimples because the fire wasn’t alight, that his hand was sticky, and that she was sitting, toying with his hair like he was a favoured pet returned after a long time straying away. She pinched the top of his ear, and he turned, kissing her fingers with their blunt nails and work hardened pads. 

“Teddy,” she said, and there was no anger left in her now, it all blazed and stroked away, “what the hell are we going to do?”