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Hours passed, and Teddy did not ring for her. 

Her back, her shoulders were primed for it, that familiar call of the bell, because he was off somewhere tonight with his wife, which meant at any minute, that fucking bell was going to ring, and she’d have to go and help him preen and adorn himself for the evening. After which, she could either choose to go and stand politely at his shoulder all night, or else stay home and entertain herself.

Some bloody chance. 

The papers on her desk loomed, pale and imposing. Was it even worth it, trying to sort through them, if Teddy was just going suspect her, and blame her if his fucking letters went astray? 

No. Better to give it up as a bad job. There was plenty of other stuff she needed to be getting on with. She set the iron on the fire, and put herself to work pressing a few of Teddy’s neckties, but only succeeded in scalding her hand twice, and almost burning a hole in some Valenciennes lace. 

She was good for nothing today.

She was good nothing at all. 

She wished she was back in Town in a gin house, not stuck in France, valeting. Worse than that, she missed bloody Forthenby – missed having a port in Berrin’s pantry, missed winding up Lucas and James, making them blush, missed Turning most of all. 

Teddy’s Senior Valet was an old, soft-spoken, country man who – for some reason Peaches could never fathom – had taken a real shine to her. When he caught her in a mood like this, he’d teach her some ancient valet’s trick to do a job better and in half the time, or make her smile with stories of serving the seventh Earl, back when even the dreaded Hedge had been a green lad, prone to slacking off and stealing apples. 

But Turning wasn’t here, and Forthenby was a whole country away, and what the hell was she but a bunter with a record book all spotted with crimes and debts she’d run out on? 

She’d lived on little more than her wits and her cunny for near enough a decade – and now here she was in Paris, trying to fool people that she was Milord Forthenby’s personal valet. Trying to pretend she had a home in one of the first houses in England? 

People like her weren’t made for service. Hedge had told her as much when first they met, but it hadn’t exactly been a surprise. Bad character and no morals, that was Peaches Waghorn, feckless and idle. Maybe she hadn’t been born in the gutter, not quite, but she sure as hell belonged there. 

Sniffing hard over the cooling iron, the singed cloth, she asked herself well, if that was the case, what was the point in trying to make a good fist of it? She might as well just slack off until Teddy lost patience with her. Until he saw her for what she really was.

Peaches tugged off her shirt, and took off her stays, threw herself down on the hard little bed, and slept.

She was woken by a hand on her shoulder. It paused there a moment, then travelled lightly across her chest, up the little slope of one breast, where it lingered again.

Peaches opened her eyes to see Teddy sitting on the bed beside her. He was watching her, all soppy and lost, but the even as she opened her eyes his expression changed, becoming closed, and hard, and bright. 

He said, “I say, do you remember those sweet buns you used to like?”

She nodded, not sure what this had to do with anything. 

Still, they were good. They were one of the fancy breads special to a bakery that had been a couple of streets up from her doss, where the houses were smarter, and were just what you wanted on your way home after a night on your feet, or your back.

They only made them on a Saturday, but if you walked brisk enough, you could buy one fresh, and it would still be warm when you got back to your room - so long as no mumper stopped you to gnaw your ear off about something. 

“Some mornings when we were at yours,” Teddy was stroking her neck now, ruffling the bristles of her hair, “you’d go out for one.” He touched her cheek, her lips. “I remember the smell, all spices and sugar. But… only when you were in funds. When there was something to spare.”

“Well, they cost enough,” she said.

“I know. Sweet, white bread for special days. When things were tight, you’d go without, week after week. Do you remember that?”

She nodded again, wondering what damn foolishness he was after now.

“Lord, I had nothing in the world but my debts and you were–”

“I was getting by.”

“Yes. Yes, you were. You always do. But we… we were poor, back then.” 

She saw it now, what he was getting at – only swells managed to be sentimental about poverty. 

“But I remember one day… we were both lying low, because the rent was due, and Sharp Rick was after me, and we had no firewood, and had eaten the last of last week’s bread, and I don’t know if there was so much as a shilling between us and Tangier… And then, you come up those dark, narrow stairs, smelling of sweet bread and spices. Because you’d walked all that way and spent the last of your coin on one little roll, and when you got back, you got between the sheets, and shared it half with me.” He smiled, then. “Do you remember that day, Peaches?”

“Yeah,” she said, because she could. 

She could also remember the cold and supperless evening that had followed, and the way she’d needed to go back on the game to make up the back-rent. 

All the same, it had been a good morning, lying just like this, on another narrow, hard bed.

“Do you reckon,” Teddy said, “that with what I pay you, you could buy one of those rolls every week?”

She could. 

She generally did, when they were in Town. 

“I suppose you could probably buy one every day, if the fancy took you.”

“They only make ‘em Saturday.”

“Very well. I stand corrected. But I could certainly put in a special order for you.  I mean, I could make sure there was a basket of them on your table every breakfast time. Lord, I could probably even persuade the baker to come and work at Forthenby, so that everyone there could have sweet rolls four times a day, and do you know something?” His voice was light, but there was a tension behind it, a depth that threatened to catch at her. “It wouldn’t mean a damn thing at all.” 

“It’d mean…” But she could not make her tongue form the attack, could not make the usual joke about Hedge. It was all too raw. “It would mean you was acting dafter than usual,” she said, lamely.

He laughed, and that was his own laugh, damn him. “Well, if you want to talk daft, Peaches, how about I buy you the whole sodding bakery and make you the boss of it? How about I sign over all the titles, land and moneys attending to the Forthenby estate and keep just enough to live in modest retirement for the rest of my life?”

She opened her mouth to interrupt this nonsense.

“I mean it, Peaches. I could do all of that, but it would never repay you. Nothing I can give you will ever be worth the bigger half of a little white roll, when you weren’t sure you could ever buy another.”

He wasn’t laughing any more, not teasing, or at least, no more than was necessary to stop this being an argument.

“Just hear me,” he said. “You will never be in my debt. However much I give you, I will never be able pay you back for that.”

“I don’t want paying.”

“Never thought I’d live to hear Peaches Waghorn say that.”

That made her smile, at last.

“Look, sweet thing, I’m sorry I mistrusted you. I’m sorry I hurt your pride.”

She nodded.

“But will you do something for me?” 

“Depends on what you’re asking.”

“Fair. Very well. All I ask is that you let me finish what I’m about to say before you drop the portcullis on my head.”

“The what?”

“What I mean is,” he raised her hand to his lips, kissed it, “if I cross some sort of line, then you don’t go all fierce, and monosyllabic, and give me the impression that you’re about to use my face for target practice.” 

“Right.”

“Ah, yes, yes, just like that. I’ve done it already. Portcullis down, drawbridge up. Castle Peaches is unassailable.”

She shook him off, folded her arms. 

“Please, darling girl? Just hear me out. I ride under the flag of truce. No weapons. None of my temper, and I’ll try to be as little of a fool as I know how. What do you say? Will you just listen for a moment?”

“Alright.”

“Peaches, I should never have employed you as my servant. Not...” He shook his head at her attempted interruption. “Please? Not because I don’t want you by my side – I always want that. Because I never want you to feel bound to me. I never want you to feel as though you can’t leave. If you grow sick of me, or if we quarrel, or–”

“You planning to quarrel with me, Teddy?”

“I rarely plan to quarrel with anyone, yet it seems to happen rather often, doesn’t it?”

He had a point. 

“Whatever happens, whatever you choose, I want you to be secure. I need you to feel safe. Not only between us, but in the real world. So, I’ve been thinking about it, and… well, Hedge would definitely throw a fit, but with as little as… say, five thousand pounds in the four percents, you’d–”

“You what?”

“I know, it would only be about two hundred pounds a year, but–”

“You think I want your money?”

“It wouldn’t be mine, though, would it? It–”

“It would be your damned money and you know it.” She wanted to hit him. “I ain’t your mistress. I don’t need some gent to set me up. If you want to send me away, then–”

He held up both hands, “Pax?”

“What?”

“Pax. What I mean is… I’m sorry. It was only an offer. You’ve said no. No is fine.” he sighed. “We’ll think of something else.”

“If I wanted to leave, I’d be fine without any of that.” 

“I don’t doubt it. What I wanted to show was a little bit of gratitude.”

“I don’t need your gratitude.”

“But what if–”

“No. No, I listened to you, so shut your mouth and hark to me a bit.”

He nodded, with that awful, calm look on his face. “Very well.”
 
Peaches rubbed her temples, wondering how to say it. “You don’t owe me nothing, alright? No – don’t start getting poetic about fucking rolls, that ain’t how it works. You don’t have to give me nothing. Not me, nor anyone. People ain’t something you have to buy, or bargain for.” 

He passed his hand over his face, and looked away. 

“Can’t you get that through your head, Teddy? If you ain’t enough for someone of yourself, then they ain’t your friend, and you don’t need to be grateful to ‘em. Caring about someone… it don’t cost nothing.” Or not money, anyway. “It don’t need paying off.”

“I don’t like being the one who holds the purse strings.” He said to the sheets, to mess she’d made with her boots on them. “I’ve been on the other side of that for too long to want it for anyone else. If someone else can cut off your funds, you aren’t… you aren’t free. I can’t inflict that on someone… Someone I…” He touched his ear, the one where Dandy Pete had left his scar. 

“Don’t apply to me. If I want to leave, I’ll go.”

“You asked me once not to die,” Teddy said, in that low, rough voice of his that sounded like it came from somewhere dark and broken in him. “I can’t promise that, you know.” He touched his chest, where his heart was. Or else the pocket where he’d put that letter.

“You don’t owe no-one your life,” she told him. “Not even me. I won’t have you beholden.”

“And I won’t have you destitute.”

“I won’t take charity.”

He gave a little breath of laugh, but it was sad, so very sad. “So that’s that, then. You won’t take anything from me as gratitude, or repayment, or charity, so I can’t give you anything at all.” He smiled at her, like someone lost, like someone far away. “But maybe I just want to give something to you, because it’s you. Maybe it’s just that you’re enough, of yourself.” 

And he reached out to her again, but before his fingers touched her cheek, she saw his jaw clench, the blankness descend once more. 

“But you don’t like it when I get maudlin like this.” With a deep breath, he cleared it all away from his face, like a brisk wind chasing clouds from the sun. “Well, evening beckons. It seems I’m of a mind to go to the opera drunk.” 

He leant over and kissed her, and if, when their faces brushed against each other, they were both hot and wet with tears, then both of them were too kind to mention it.