Chapter Twenty One

This chapter contains scenes some readers may find upsetting.

Detailed content notes can be found here.

Your tie is crooked, Valance.

Edward fell backwards, out of Serafina’s room and into the wall behind him, before pitching down to his knees. 

His skin was clammy and cold, his fingers shaking so hard they seemed to flutter before his eyes. Bile rushed from his stomach into his mouth, and he retched, swallowing it back. His arms crossed over his chest. He was going to cry, could feel it heaving in his chest like the sour, alcoholic vomit that was there, too. 

Lord, you’re not snivelling again, are you?

“No. No, I’m not.” He hauled himself to his feet, trying not to think of Serafina, hunched on the floor, stripped bare and sobbing. 

Oh, God, he’d left her. He should get back to her and... Edward ground his fists into his eyes, and stumbled up. What had he done? What had he...?

Do I have to teach you how a gentleman behaves?

He staggered to his own apartments, where Peaches was lying full length on his bed, her feet bare and her jacket open. Her fingers were moving idly, unlacing her shirt, her red mouth pouting at him.

He was going to be sick.

And there she was, sitting upright, alert, about to ask him what had happened, what had gone wrong.

“Serafina,” he said. “Peaches…” He was gasping, his words broken from him, “I...”

And she was crossing the room, was trying to hold on to his arms, to say something to him, to comfort him. She was speaking, but it was as though he were under water, and her voice came to him, broken and distorted.

“No. It’s Serafina,” he said. “She’s hurt. I–”

“Teddy?”

“Go to her?”

Something like stubbornness, like refusal on her face.

“Please. Oh, God. Please go to her. I–”

“You hurt her?”

He nodded, and there were already tears streaking down his face, and he could barely stand.

Peaches swore, and gripped him hard, as though she wanted to say something, as though she would comfort him, or strike him, or scream.

Your tie is crooked, Valance. 

No. No. 

“Please,” he said again.

She nodded, her gaze not leaving his face, even as she moved to leave the room. Teddy put his hands over his face, hiding from her. 

No. He mustn’t cry. He must not snivel or sob. 

“Teddy?” she said, but when he did not answer, she left him.

Alone.

Clenching hands to fists he pressed them against his mouth, grinding knuckles into his lips until the pain started to build.

Your tie is crooked...

He was kneeling on the floor, staring at the lace around his wrists, the busy intricacy of it, layer on layer, so very fine. His coat was bottle green, the embroidery on it silver, tumbling, cascading. He remembered hands at his throat, yanking open his waistcoat, What on earth is this, Valance? What do you look like? 

The cloth weighed on his skin like filth. Frantic, he started to pull it off, his jacket and his jabot, his waistcoat, and dear Lord, what sort of gentleman wore this kind of thing anymore? Who, exactly, did he think he was?

What did he think he was?

On his hands and knees, Edward closed his eyes, but could only see the soft roundness of Serafina’s belly, the wet, helpless O of her mouth, only feel how desperately wet and tight she had been, how small. 

She would have bled. If he had fucked her, she would have bled.

A hand on his neck, clamped hard around the tendons, sound of breath through gritted teeth, the sense of being ripped open, of being torn apart. 

Please, he had said, and stop, Thornton, please, and then the hand had been over his mouth, yanking his head back, smothering him. 

Edward brought his forehead down to the floor and ground his teeth into his cheeks, shaking with the tears he would not cry. 

He thought of Thornton’s prick inside him, merciless and deep. 

Hadn’t it been what he wanted? Hadn’t it been what he had dreamed about for more months than he cared to count? Hadn’t it been everything to him, Thornton’s prick inside him and Thornton’s hands on his sides, the sound of his breath, of his pleasure setting the air around them on fire.

Edward retched again, and choked back the hot vomit that filled his mouth. Your tie is crooked, Valance. 

Dickie’s voice – no, Thornton’s voice. He hadn’t been Dickie, not then, not yet. And Edward had still been Teddy.

And Teddy had been halfway through giving it the perfunctory tug when his mind, his whole body, registered that it was Thornton speaking. 

The quad was full of boys, passing each other, walking-not-running between lessons, and the prefects were watching like cats beside mouse holes, ready to pounce at any suggestion that someone was out of line. 

The prefects, every bastard one of them. Which meant Thornton. 

Teddy had frozen in place, his hand still halfway through straightening it, looking aside to where Thornton was watching him. The other boys in Teddy’s form strode briskly onwards, keen to be out of it. 

He’d be late. He’d be late and he’d get himself birched again, and Thornton did not give a damn. 

Cold, suddenly, his fingers unpicked the knot and fumbled to re-tie it. The scabs on his back split apart and wept as he moved. His heart seemed to flutter in his throat, and he glanced about, searching through the thinning crowds, hoping for some rescue, some escape.

Fat chance of that. 

“Honestly,” Thornton said, and strode over to him. Never a swagger on him, no, but something just as arrogant, something just as complaisant about its own worth. “Is something even this simple beyond you, Valance?” And he knocked Teddy’s hands away, seizing the tie himself, knotting it with vicious ease. “I suppose you expect us to have servants to do it for you. Like you would at home?”

Teddy forced himself to keep his eyes down, not to look up to the cold sneer on a sculpted mouth mere inches from his own, or those jade eyes, or that impeccably tied stock. Though Thornton never troubled himself with fashion, but he was always every inch the gentleman. “No, Thornton,” he said.

A casual backhanded caught him across the mouth, and Teddy tasted blood. “Did I ask you to speak, Valance?”

“No, Thornton.”

“Well, I’ll have you in my study for that,” Thornton said, getting closer, giving a little yank on Teddy’s tie, whispering in his ear. “Unless you want me to tell the Masters you were out of bounds?”

Teddy said nothing, only looked down. Thornton’s hand, with its white, knuckley fingers were still at his throat, just below his chin, within reach of his lips.

“There’s a good dog,” Thornton said, and brought his hand up, knocking Teddy’s chin backwards, forcing him to look into his tormentor’s face. “What do you say, Teddy?”

“Thank you, Thornton.”

A little nod, and the gloating look of those eyes that seemed to crackle over Teddy’s skin like lightning at the end of a summer afternoon’s swelter. “During prep,” Thornton said, keeping his voice low. “I do not expect to be kept waiting. Off you go.”