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The food – when it came - could have done with the attentions of a French chef, and the wine was barely tolerable. Edward tried draining his glass in one to see if that made it any better, and it almost did. 

“So,” he began, charming conversation not generally being his brother’s forte, “been up to Town much this last season, old boy?”

Charles replied that he was too much occupied with his estate, only he did it gravely, and at length. 

Edward glanced at the decanter. “Oh, yes,” he admitted, “frightfully tedious stuff, business. You know, up at Forthenby, I’ve got a man who does all that for me.”

Charles replied that he preferred to oversee such matters for himself. Then, after an awkward pause, suggested that his brother refill his glass.

Edward drank it off again and wondered if he was trying to use it to kill the taste of the soup, or whether the soup might spare him from the wine.

“I am also much occupied with the improvements, you see,” Charles said, with emphasis, staring at Edward’s empty glass. “They take up most of my leisure, leaving me with little time for frivolous pursuits. And it is not merely in matters of design that I am required, where the architects have required my constant assistance. I must also oversee matters more personally – one cannot simply hire the builders, and expect them to get on with it, not unless one wishes to be robbed blind. Why, just yesterday morning, I was...”

“Mmm, but surely Julia would welcome the odd jaunt up to town. Clever girl like her must be bored stiff in a place like this.” Edward smiled his wickedest smile before his brother could interrupt him. “I mean, when her dear husband is so occupied with the improvements.”

“We may live very quietly by the standards of Forthenby,” Charles said with just a hint of venom, “but I can assure you Julia finds quite enough amusement. As I was saying, the improvements that I...”

“Oh, but the winters were always so very long here, and there were hardly ever balls. She always did so love dancing.” Edward ploughed on before Charles could get a word in edgeways. “If she fancies a change of air,” a laugh, “if either of you fancy a change of air, you’re quite welcome to my town house, you know? Fraternal affection being what it is. No sense in rooms standing idle, is there Charlie?” 

He glanced at the decanter again, just subtly. 

“While I must thank my Lord for his offer, when we do chose to visit town, Lady Julia and I are in the habit of taking a perfectly acceptable house on...”

“The unfashionable side of Grovesner Square, I know. And charming it is, really, Charlie, but mine is so much more convenient for the opera, and much nearer all the first-rate shops. It seems folly to take your own place when you’re welcome to mine. Really, I insist,” Edward said, refilling his glass unasked, “it would be no trouble at all.”

And so they proceeded through bland soup, wet fish and dry fowl. With each course, Charles’ face grew redder, his sentences more clipped. Meanwhile, Edward was forced to make it clear that he was broadly uninterested in feckless tenants, radical preachers, or those damned improvements, and instead concerned himself only with trivialities, duelling and fornication. To make the whole thing bearable, he drank an inadvisable amount of subpar claret, ignoring the increasingly reluctant and disapproving suggestions that he refresh his glass. 

For the real problem with Charles was that Edward had always known how to play him like a flute. By the time they were relaxing with brandy and their pipes, Charles Valance had lost his awareness of his baronetcy, his pretty wife, and comfortable living. No, by that point in the evening, he was in fact nothing more than an unattractive new-bug with the misfortune of being the younger brother of the notorious Teddy Valance. He was, in fact, nothing more than a bad-tempered little boy unable to live up to his sibling’s beauty, recklessness, and unchallenged position as the most famous tart in the whole of the fifth. 

Therefore, the anger positively burned under his skin, coming out in nasty little barbs which would have been devastating had they been hurled at a man of his own temperament. 

It was quite disgraceful that it was so easy. It was certainly dishonourable that it was this much fun.

When the poor, little idiot was ready to explode, Edward headed him off with a show of affability, venturing, “I suppose you’re wondering why I dropped by.”

Charles looked as though he had just bitten into a rotten apple, as though the taste of putrescence was running over his tongue, “My Lord Forthenby is always welcome, of course.”

“Well, naturally, but after poor pater was so explicit in his instructions,” Edward said lightly, knowing that nowhere in old Sir Charles’ will had there been any prohibition against – for example – rescuing a disgraced son from vicious, ear-severing creditors. 

Edward did not touch the nick that was still there against his lobe, although he had not forgotten how it had felt to be trapped there, the knife slicing into his flesh, as he said, “So it feels somehow disloyal to descend upon you here without invitation.”

“Perhaps if you had concerned yourself more with such niceties in our father’s lifetime, you would not need to consider them now.”

Oh, it was to be pure oil of vitriol, now, was it? His little brother really did deserve the worst Edward could muster.

“Still,” he shrugged, knowing that was the most infuriating thing that he could do, “seems that everything came out for the best, eh?”

“If you can feel that way with the fifth commandment so violated.”

“Actually, now you mention it, I happened to drop in on mater earlier.”

Sir Charles stiffened.

“I was wondering if she might benefit from a little trip abroad. Not Town, I quite understand, but we have plenty of guest rooms at Forthenby.”

“Absolutely not.”

Edward smiled vaguely over the rim of his glass.

“The terms of father’s will,” Charles covered himself, going for a cloying solicitous tone. “You understand.”

“It must be a terrible responsibility for you,” he said, without any sincerity whatsoever. “I can’t imagine having to enforce such brutal strictures against my own dear mama. I could never have brought myself to it. I would have felt an utter, ungracious beast to even to try. All the same, surely you’ll be able to make some exception later in the year. What with the celebrations, and suchlike.”

Charles grew stiffer still. He was like a shirt, packed full of starch until it could stand independently. Edward wished that Peaches was there to witness this, but she had been packed off to the servants’ quarters, where no doubt she was seducing half the maids. “Celebrations, my Lord?”

“Oh, didn’t I mention? I’m to be married.”

Charles looked as though half a pint of Peaches’ special gin had been poured down his throat. He coughed on the smoke of his pipe. “You?” he exclaimed. “Married?”

He nodded.

“To a gentlewoman?”

“Well, one can hardly remain a model of Grecian purity one’s whole life, brother of mine.”

More spluttering.

“I mean, a bachelor’s life grows tedious after a few years. One just runs out of things to do in the company of other men.” 

And he sat there with his glass, watching as Charlie seemed about to choke to death on the mere suggestion. 

“I say, do you need a slap on the back, old man?”

When, at last, his brother recovered himself, he said, between gasps, “Well, one hopes it might steady you a little.”

“I expect Dickie shares that sentiment.” He couldn’t resist it.

Charles collapsed into another apoplexy. 

“But she’s quite a charmer, you know, my Miss Tooting,” he sipped his brandy, as though his brother were not coughing out his guts in the armchair on the other side of the hearth. “You’d like her, I think. Reminds me of Julia.”

Upstairs, in his old room - which was damp, dusty, and unchanged, as though Charles could not bear to look inside it, even in order to clear all of Edward’s detritus from the house - he fell back on his bed and welcomed Peaches into his arms. 

He had once – hungover and very close to broken – tried to hang himself from the rails of this same bed. You could still see where it had been repaired.

Years before that, he had lain here, sweating in a fever from a gun-shot wound, deep in disgrace, and pining for his Dickie.

Charles would never understand the way that flippancy could be raised between yourself and the world like armour. Would never see that being unbreakable was the greatest part of not permitting oneself to be broken.

Charles was like Dickie in that respect, for all that he lacked the latter’s charm, magnetism, and general aura of authority. 

Edward pressed his face into Peaches sleeping shoulder and breathed deep of the scent of her – sweat, and horses, and clean linen. He had known her perfumed out on the game, tousled with sleep and alcohol, or else impoverished and desperate, had known her wrapped in stiff livery, but all along and underneath it all, she kept a fragrance entirely her own, and it was home for him.

Knowing that she was here cleared all the old ghosts from the air of this room. She was solid in his arms, as strong as a boy, but with high, round breasts and a tight, welcoming cunt. She would turn all his nightmares away – not that he would own that he suffered them, not ever. Clasping her tighter in his arms, she stirred a little, her brown eyes flickering open. Edward kissed her eyelids, first one, then the other. 

“Mmmm,” she said, “Been talking to the staff about you. Sounds like you was a right terror as a boy. I wish I’d known you then. Back when you was here.”

I’m glad you didn’t, he thought, but he said nothing, only kissed her cheek and her shoulder and her neck, and snuggled closer to her, ready for sleep.