Content warnings can be found here.

It had been at Oxford that Richard first felt the shame of what he had done to the boy. Or, not shame precisely, but a faint tremor of appalled wonder at his youthful recklessness. Out in the world at last, among other men, it was more embarrassing than anything else, to think of what he had done in the claustrophobic, rarefied atmosphere of School. 

It helped that the troubling wilfulness of his excitement fell away as his voice found its adult pitch, and the itchy, inconstant growth of hair upon his body and face established itself more comfortably. He ceased practicing onanism with such frequency and, thereby, his imaginings became less wild, less troubling. Put simply, it was the civilising process of growing up. Richard embraced it, as he began to plan his future and - although he scarcely noticed any of the young gentlewomen around him - began to compile a list of the qualities he would wish for in a wife. 

Thus, surrounded by new acquaintances, new interests, Teddy became nothing more than a memory: fond, but irrelevant. He knew, of course, that the Westlehill Valances favoured Oxford, expected that he would soon be joined by the boy, who - too - would be transformed by the year they had spent apart. 

Teddy would be older, wiser, calmer. His face might still show the same sweet aspect, perhaps he would still be prone to that same complete devotion, but - free from the restraints and hierarchies of the school - they would renew their acquaintance, become friends.
This was how he imagined it, when he imagined it at all - distant and warm with nostalgia. 

Then, in eighth week Trinity, he received a missive. 

Too short to be called a letter, it was made out in a hand he did not recognise. 

Dickie, it read, had hoped to join you come Michaelmas, but mightn’t make it after all. See there’s a glass raised for an absent pal. 

Beneath that, the shaking scrawl of a signature with – almost illegible – a single smudged word: Teddy.

In his rooms, Richard read it over and again, trying to wrangle some sense from it. The hand in which the note was written was not Teddy’s own - had a brusque, clear quality to it, an almost military clarity. The signature, though, that was him, as was the name made out beside it. But those two parts wavered across the page, as though Teddy’s fingers had been barely able to hold the pen for trembling. 

Richard found himself sitting on the floor with no memory of how he had got there. In his hand, the paper shaking and damp, his knuckles showing stark. There was a bitterness in his mouth, a feeling as though the beating of his heart could no longer be relied upon. 

It had taken everything in him, everything, not to run for his curricle and go thundering down to Westlehill that very night. Careful, very careful, Richard rose, set the note down upon his desk and stood looking at it. 

He would help neither of them by making himself ridiculous. 

There were a hundred possible constructions that could be put upon the words. Teddy might have been detained at School another year, have elected to take a walking tour of the Continent before coming to ‘varsity, have chosen seek a career in the military. 

Perhaps he was to be married, and had ended his education all together. 

The words themselves were no cause for worry, Dickie told himself, they were a courtesy, unexpected and somehow touching.

But they were not in Teddy’s hand. 

They were not in Teddy’s hand and the weakness of the signature screamed of injury, of illness, pain. For the whole of that summer, Richard fretted, looked over every announcement in every newspaper that came into his hands until the more waggish of his acquaintance began to ask if he was looking for the death notice of a wealthy aunt, or perhaps the ransom notice for some heiress he had abducted.
 
He found nothing that would aid him. There was no smallpox near Westlehill, or any other illness of that sort. Sir Charles made no announcements, and nor did any other of the Valance kin. 

Unintroduced, he could hardly ride up to their gate and demand information on the well-being of the son and heir. 

For months, he slept badly, woken by racing pulses, by melancholy, and a sense of emptiness. And so the summer passed. Riding with his father, dancing at the local assembly rooms. For moments at a time, sometimes even an hour, occupation let the anxiety slip from his mind, but then it would come back to him, the low nag of it tainting every enjoyment, spoiling any hope of joy, or rest. 

 His father joshed him for his lack of spirits, but assumed that he was merely missing the excitement of ‘varsity life. His mother, and Mr Rainworth, proved more difficult to deceive. It was the first time he had ever had to conceal a thing from his family, and he found he was poorly practiced at falsehood. But how, how to explain this overriding concern for a boy he had not seen in a twelvemonth, whom his parents had never met, whose name he had scarcely mentioned in their hearing?

In noughth week, Richard returned to his College, hoping that way to get some news of Valance, but there was nothing. When first week had passed without either word nor sight of him, Richard resigned himself, and thus he mourned. 

Imagine, then, how he had felt at the beginning of fourth week Michaelmas, to hear himself hallooed across the quad, only to turn and to see Valance blazing from the crowd, surrounded by some of the very cronies who had first led him astray. 

Valance was alive. It was impossible to mistake him for some apparition or ghost. Among the soberly dressed students in their academic gowns, he positively screamed colour. 

Refusing, apparently, to take his cue from Beau Brummel, Valance had abandoned the scruffiness of his schoolboy attire only to seize upon embroidery, brocade and lace. For all the modernity, indeed stylishness, of the cut it made him appear less the fop than some resurrection of the savage and dissolute days of Charles II.

“What on earth is that?” One of Richard’s acquaintances asked, amused and distasteful. “And why is it addressing you, Thornton?”

For a handful of heartbeats, Richard said nothing. Then, “That is the Honourable Edward Valance,” and in the words he caught a shadow of his old, scornful Prefects’ tone. “We were at school together.”

A snort of laughter from the other man, “I’d cut him if I were you.”

But Valance was already making his way over to them, his smile easier than it had ever been in the past, his swagger more confident. 

Gone was the hair-ruffling diffidence, the slouching furtiveness. He shone, and all the world around him seemed to dim. 

“Dickie,” he had said, his hand already extended, “old man. I wondered when I’d be running in to you.” 

He was whole. His movements fluid and comfortable. His skin was, perhaps, a little paler than its usual gold, but that could easily have been powder, or this newly adopted vanity making his shun the sunlight. 

Richard stared at the hand for one moment, two, three, before he took it. His throat and chest felt tight, the backs of his eyes itching, his very breath too shallow. “Valance,” he said. 

“I’m having a few pals by this evening, for some drinks,” Valance said, “You must come along.”

Richard said nothing. 

“If you’d like it, I mean ” Valance said, with just a shade less confidence, “I’m at,” and named his College, one older, more famous than Richard’s own. “Come by at nine, and stay late – don’t worry about the porter, I know a way out.” He glanced at the sober students who had stood on Richard’s left and right, “Your friends are welcome, too.” Another smile, slightly, so slightly, less brilliant than the last. “More the merrier, really.”

“Perhaps,” Richard conceded, at last.

“It is good to see you again, old man,” Teddy said, as though trying to convince himself.

“Likewise,” Richard inclined his head, “Good day.”

Teddy nodded, bowed a little, “Good day, Mr Thornton.” 

Richard watched him the whole way back across the quad. His crimson jacket was like a sunspot on his eyes. 

“I say, Thornton, are you quite well?”

Richard continued to stare after Valance, aware that his hands were stiff by his sides, his arms were beginning to ache from being held in one posture. 

He said, “Yes. I’m quite well.”