Content notes can be found here

Chapter Fourteen

Peaches was used to being the first one awake, so it was a bit of a surprise that, when she opened her eyes, she saw Teddy’s French friend sitting in the armchair by the hearth, reading. 

Ah, shit. She pulled herself to sitting, her back wrenching in agony where she had slept with her stays on. She supposed they were back to daytime manners, so scrubbed the sleep from her eyes and said, clear and slow as she could, “Sorry, sir. Do you need me to get you some coffee?”

“Hmm?” Jean looked up from his book, “No, no, please do not trouble yourself, Monsieur Peach. I wake early. I’m a,” he paused, as though searching for the word, “a rural? You cannot sleep late upon a farm. Le coq?”

“Cockerels,” Peaches said. “Yeah. I remember what they were like.”

“You are full of surprises, Monsieur Peach.” To her, he did not use the stumbling gobbledegook that he sputtered through with Teddy, but a slow careful English, full of pauses. “I would have said you were a… citadin. Er, a -”

“Town girl. Yeah, I am – but I can’t help where I was born.”

“Your Edward,” said Jean, “he is surprising also.” He tapped the book. “Most debauchers keep only pornography.”

“Well, he’s got plenty of raunchy stuff, too,” she said, forgetting to speak slow and proper.

“Your pardon?”

“Er, Teddy likes poems and stuff.”

“Yes. Tell me, how long have you two been pulling off this... charade?”

She smirked, “Almost two year.”

A laugh, “Does no-one suspect?”

“I reckon people know we’re fucking,” that word she knew in French, and so said it. She could see how Jean and Teddy had come up with their little shared language. “But with Teddy’s reputation?” She shrugged, “Everyone just thinks I’m a molly, so if I seem a bit girlish at times, they ain’t expecting anything else.”

There was a long pause while Jean digested that one. “You make a very fine gentleman,” he said. “I would never have thought that you were so,” a pause, but not, she suspected to find the right word, “endowed.”

“Sorry to disappoint you.”

“Where is the disappointment, Monsieur Peach?”

“In that case, you can help me with me lacing.” She stripped off her shirt, and turned her back to him, “Reckon you know your way around a set of stays.”

Jean had gentle hands, for all the rough skin, and he helped her unbind herself. “Does this not hurt you?”

Again, she shrugged, “Not so much.” Then, at his bewildered look, said, “That’s a no. Most of the time, anyway. I shouldn’t sleep in it, though.” She stretched out her shoulders, rolled her neck, took a few deep breaths, and pulled off her shift. “I’ll leave them out for a bit, unless that offends you?”

“Not at all. They are very fine.” 

“Where d’you think I got me name?” But that one appeared to fox him. She bobbed a little curtsey, “Merci, monsieur,” she said.

Another laugh, which brought a groan from Edward on the bed. They both looked at him, with fondness and pity. 

She decided then, although she’d known it the night before, that she quite liked this one. Even if he was a Frenchie.

“He often sleeps this late?”

“It’s not unusual.” Looking at his face, she clarified, “Yes, sometimes.” Then, because she had to know: “Have you and he–?”

Jean shook his head. “No.”

“No?”

“No, Monsieur Peach. In truth, I have never been with a boy before last night. I was…” he paused, considering, “I was curious.”

“Like it?”

A laugh. “Ah, you English. You talk around a simple yes, or no, then ask a question like that with no words at all.” He closed the book and laid it carefully on the chair, then crossed to the bed, where he sat beside Teddy’s sleeping form, and ran a careful hand down his back. 

After a long time, he said, “Yes. Yes, I did, though I am unlike to do it again. I feel that, on my deathbed, I shall have thoughts of last night, and be glad of it. Although, perhaps I will not speak of it to my confessor.”

Peaches nodded. She knew what he meant. “You held a flame for him?”

“A flame?”

“I mean, you liked him. You wanted to,” and she was reduced to gestures, falling back on her limited French, “fuck.”

“I was curious,” the Frenchman repeated. “And he is very beautiful.”

He was getting no arguments from her on that front.

“Besides, he offered once before.”

“What?”

“Did Edward… has Edward not told you how we became friends?”

“You was,” ugh, she was tired. “You were second to him at a duel when he killed someone, and got him out the country.”

“Yes,” said Jean, “that is true. But that was not how we met.” He tousled affectionate fingers in Edward’s hair. “He was, how to say this? He was aflame. Aflame with grief. He was looking, maybe, for death. I do not know. Certainly, he wished to duel. He challenged many men, but they would laugh at him, the mad English boy, with his pistols and his whores.” Jean shook his head. He was speaking very slowly, careful, feeling for every word. “This… denial… it made him angrier, wilder. He became an… aggravation, wherever men gathered. So it was, when he came to challenge me, I wished to instruct, to punish...” he gestured, vague.

“To teach him a lesson?”

“Yes. I wished him to reflect. To change. More than that, I desired to make him kneel.”

“Humiliate him,” Peaches nodded. “Yeah, I get that.”

“So, I took his gage. And, knowing you Englishmen so love your pistols, asked him to face me with a sword.” A nod. “I thought he would not face me, but when he did not beg pardon, I admit to some surprise. That he seemed so serious, also, when before he had shown himself to be very little in that kind. Yet still I thought maybe I shall kill him.” He shrugged. “Some words are not things one can forgive. I liked that he did not show fear, but, I was troubled. To myself, I said that he is only nervous, that he does not know swords. I thought maybe, to kill him would be to do murder.”

“It ain’t murder if there’s a weapon apiece,” Peaches said, “believe me. ‘sides, Teddy knows how to hold a sword.”

“Yes. Though I did not know it, then, that was not what was amiss. Nor was it that he did not wish to fight; very much, he did. But he wished, I think, to lose, and losing, it is not a thing that comes easily with him. With pistols, he need only” he gestured firing in to the air, “abandon once. With a sword, it is nearer, slower. If you seek death but have skill, the fight must continue and continue, and the blood runs. It is very hard, I think, to let oneself die by the sword. I was.... Knowing this, as we fought, I thought to myself that I might like this boy, did he not make himself so very…” A pause, “what is the word?”

“Impossible,” Peaches suggested.

“Yes, but with the violence.”

“Reckless.”

“Reckless. Perhaps that is it. He fought well, better than I had thought, but he was only a boy, and he was,” Jean rubbed his temples, “After the wine? In the morning.”

“Tender,” sad Peaches. “He was pretty tender.”

“So, I gave him his lesson, and then would have him take my mercy. He wished to fight on, but, with him so... tender... and already wounded, it was easy to make the lesson go a little deeper. I made him see I would not permit myself to end his life. We are civilized, in this country. Duelling with pistols is... it is not seemly. It has no reverence, and does not end well.”

“You ain’t wrong.” 

“Then, he was wounded and without friends and I saw his quarrel was not with me, but only after life. So I took it on myself, then, to care for him, to teach him some… some sense?”

“Yeah, that’s mostly what he stands in need of.”

“Your pardon?”

“He lacks sense. Well, I don’t envy you if you had a go at getting some in to that head of his.”

A laugh, “Impossible,” the word rolled out of his mouth. “And reckless, yes?”

“Oh, yeah.”

“And also, I pity him. I say that I will be his friend, that I shall help him to... with his wound, and also his heart...”

“Help him heal.”

“Yes. So we became friends, and it helps, I think. Still, he was quarrelling, and visiting women and boys, and drinking perhaps too much, but he grew calmer, and we grew very fond.”

And Teddy is always so generous with his friends.