Fic: Blood Roses - Chapter One
Title: Blood Roses, a Velvet Petals sequel (Prologue+1/20)
Media: Fic
Author: a_glass_parade
Beta: idoltina and Riah
Rating: Rated R to NC-17
Pairing: Kurt Hummel and Blaine Anderson (Primary), Sebastian Smythe and OFC(!!), Rory Flanagan and OFC
Genre: Romance, AU, Historical Fiction
Warnings: Violence, intrigue, death, kidnapping, blackmail, sex, blackmail involving sex, and sexual congress between characters you won't like. The usual, as it's me. Sorry?
Spoilers: Will include characters up through season four.
Word Count: 5000+ thus far.
Summary: Kurt and Blaine are happy in their French idyll, but back home in England, there are those who await their return with a malevolent eagerness, determined to bring the newly minted Earl of Kellsworth down. They have been through so much already - can their love, rooted in blood and espionage, survive the tests ahead? And more importantly...can they?
Additional Notes: This is a sequel to 'Velvet Petals, Piercing Thorns' and so should only be read if you have first read that story! Further, this is a historical romance set in a violent time rife with misogyny and homophobia, please keep that in mind should you decide to read. For all that it is indeed a romance (I promise) it is absolutely not fluffy.
~~oOo~~oOo~~oOo~~oOo~~oOo~~oOo~~oOo~~
Chapter One
September, 1486
Steady hands, deep breaths. Concentrate on the task before you.
Smoke swirled through the massive stable, impairing Kurt's vision and making him cough. The good news was that it was just as much an impediment to the people who had trapped him up here, leaving him tied to a post in the hayloft while an inferno straight out of Hell's own heart raged below. He could hear the flames crackling through the dry straw, the terrified whinnies of horses trying to stampede out of the fire.
He could hear Elizabeth's screams, horrible shrieks that brought to mind terrifying memories that he could never put far enough behind him. Memories of a streak of white lace and golden hair tumbling violently out of the door of Dalton's prison tower, his last sight of Amelia Freville alive. Her younger sister's screams of protest were what were freezing him in place now, trapped in reliving the night Amelia had died.
Wood creaked under Kurt's feet as the heat from the raging fire began to reach the floorboards of the hayloft, and it was this that jolted him out of his gruesome reverie, this and the smoke creeping into his lungs. His eyes focused through the gray fog on his hands tied before him, a knot that he could undo with his teeth if he could just hold his panic at bay long enough to concentrate.
And if he couldn't...
...he refused to consider failure as an option. Not with Elizabeth still in danger, not with Blaine at risk.
Pressing his face into his arm, Kurt took a deep breath through the filter of his voluminous shirt sleeve, one and then another slowly, trying to limit the amount of smoke he inhaled, until his head felt as clear as he thought it would get. Holding the last precious breaths in his lungs, Kurt leaned forward and applied his teeth to the rough rope, ignoring how it cut at his lips and drew blood.
He would get out of this. He would get out, and he would save Elizabeth and he would clear Blaine's name, and he would get answers for just how the hell all of them had gotten to this juncture in the first place.
If only they had never received Alice's letter.
If only they could go back to where this had all begun...
Two Months Earlier...
“We've had messages.” Blaine stepped into the library, head down as he scanned the letter he'd received from his aunt Alice. “One from your fath - what on earth are you doing, Kurt?”
One round blue-green eye lazily opened and trained its gaze on Blaine. “I'm resting.”
Tilting his head, Blaine examined the tableau before him. “With no shirt or doublet on, and on the hearth?” It was a tempting picture, if somewhat nonsensical.
“It's hot.” Kurt didn't even bother to sit up. He lay reclined on the gray stones of the fireplace hearth, head pillowed by his crumpled up blue doublet and linen shirt. One long arm was flung over his forehead, the other tracing aimless patterns on the wooden floor. Clad only in a pair of blue hose and close fitting breeches, he was something of a mouthwatering sight to Blaine, who could only stand in the doorway, completely transfixed. “The hearthstones are cool and out of the sunlight. I pledge you, Blaine, the cook said she dropped an egg on the ground earlier and it cooked itself!”
Only the crumpling of the parchment in his tightening fist tore Blaine's thoughts away from the terrifically naughty place they'd gone. “I expect she was exaggerating,” he rasped out, taking deep breaths. Incredible how it had been well over a year and a half since they'd first met, and Kurt was still capable of reducing Blaine to a pile of stuttering lust simply by being his own delicious self. “Ah. Letters. Messages. Here. You -”
Grudgingly, Kurt sat up, opening both eyes and blinking until he could focus, a lopsided smile tilting up his mouth as he looked Blaine over. “Oh, my. Someone's enjoying the view. Shall I...tend to you, first?”
Yes, please, Blaine thought, and then squeezed his eyes shut, willing himself to get under control. “Would that we could, lover. But my letter is from Aunt Alice and yours is from your father and I feel that perhaps we should behave as responsible adults and tend to our familial correspondence first.”
He heard a sigh, and then the rustle of velvet on skin as Kurt picked up his doublet and slid it back on. “Very well.” Warm, soft lips pressed a kiss to Blaine's cheek and when he opened his eyes, it was to see Kurt smiling at him for just a moment before he brushed Blaine's nose with the tip of his own. He had not bothered with his shirt, nor with fastening the doublet. Blaine didn't much mind. “May I have mine, please?”
“In exchange for a kiss.” He'd never get enough of Kurt's kisses, and couldn't stop himself from smiling as their lips met in a chaste peck that quickly deepened into something that threatened to get entirely out of control rather swiftly. With great reluctance, Blaine slipped his hands up under Kurt's still unfastened doublet and pushed him gently away, handing him the letter from his father Burt as he did so. “Letters first.”
Kurt heaved another sigh, this one noisier and a touch more exasperated than the first. “Oh, if we must. I do enjoy hearing from my father.” He wandered over to a crimson brocaded chair and collapsed down into it, breaking the seal on his letter as he flung one long leg over the arm of the chair. Blaine moved out of the doorway at last, closing the door behind him and moving to make himself comfortable on the floor in front of Kurt's chair, picking up a cushion for sitting on his way over. By the time he settled in, leaning his head against Kurt's knee, Kurt was already making noises of disbelief over his letter.
Blaine knew that when Kurt was getting that agitated, he wasn't going to be able to speak coherently for some time, so there was no sense asking him about the contents of his letter now. Instead, Blaine broke the seal on his own letter and unfolded the parchment, blinking a bit at the shortness of the missive. He was used to Alice Beaufort writing pages and pages of news in her tidy, tiny hand, paragraphs of text on the health of Dalton's orchards, on how Emma seemed quite lost without Wes to feud with, even the weather was not too insignificant to mention. And of course no letter closed without a veiled, yet pointed request that he return home. Requests which he generally found easy to ignore - but a creeping chill up his spine told him it wasn't going to be easy at all, this time. Perhaps not even possible.
For before him, Alice's writing barely filled half the page, and there was a sloppy urgency blurring the lettering that he had never seen from his aunt in his life. Dread clogged his throat as he began to read.
Dearest Nephew,
I hope this letter finds you as well as ever.
I realize that you are used to much longer letters from me, and indeed I wish this were something more usual. Unfortunately, though I do have the usual reports of status, I must forgo them this time and come directly to the point: Edward, you really must come home.
The most innocuous of reasons is that you are, of course, a cousin of His Grace the King. As you know, Queen Elizabeth is expecting their first child, and they are in high hopes that it will be a son. As the first scion of a new dynasty, this child will be so important, Edward. You, as a relative of the Royal Family, will be expected to make an appearance at court once he is born. They are expecting that the child should arrive within a handful of weeks, and so you do have some time, at least. But you cannot think to escape this obligation entirely.
Unfortunately, the other reason I must insist on calling you home is one I dare not detail to you in a letter, for it could be intercepted - though I shall do my very best to ensure this gets to you safely. Suffice it to say, Edward, that you absolutely must return home now. The very future of Dalton and indeed of yourself may be at stake.
Your loving aunt,
A. Beaufort
Frowning, Blaine re-read the letter again, and a third time, looking for anything between the lines that might explain Alice's fears. But there was nothing, no coded message or surreptitious telling phrase that revealed the true source of Alice's summons. And that, in and of itself, was more ominous than any clear explanation could have been.
She was truly in fear of something. And the indomitable Lady Alice Beaufort, Baroness Linwood, was not a woman that scared easily, if at all.
Pushing down his unease, Blaine tilted his head up to look at Kurt, who still looked as though someone had smacked the back of his head with the pommel of a sword. Blaine twisted around and placed his hand on Kurt's knee. “Love?”
“My father...” Kurt shook his head, then the parchment, then laughed, throwing his head back to let loose a purely joyous peal of laughter that bounced around the stone room. “My father has remarried!”
“What?” Blaine had never met Burt Hummel, but he knew from Kurt's stories that the hardworking Austrian stableman of Raglan Castle was a widower who had deeply loved his English bride, and had been heartbroken when she had passed away in Kurt's childhood. He had never, according to Kurt, even looked at another woman since then. And now...married?
Well, that news was a great deal cheerier than his own. And so, in an effort to put off having to tell Kurt they would have to leave, Blaine fixed a smile onto his face and jostled his beloved's knee. “Well, tell! What of the woman who captivated Burt Hummel?”
“It's my music teacher.” Darkness touched on Kurt's eyes, and it had to be from the memory of being forced into the music lessons that had led him to Blaine in the first place. Still, that had not been the woman's doing - she had only been a teacher, and one he knew Kurt respected a very great deal - and so Blaine was unsurprised when the darkness was but a momentary flash, in the next instant clearing away and shifting back to joy at the news. “Mistress Corcoran. She writes all of my father's letters to me, as you know.”
Blaine nodded. “I see. And so love has grown out of the time they have spent together?” The smile that stretched across his face at this felt a good deal more genuine. “Well. You and I do know a thing or two about that.”
“So we do.” Kurt's mouth was still curved in a lovely sunlight smile as he leaned down to tug Blaine up to kneel so that they could kiss. The warmth and love of it stole Blaine's breath, spreading through his chest and nearly making him forget his more somber missive, at least until Kurt pulled back and sighed. “I wish I could see him.”
Inspiration twinkled at the back of Blaine's mind. He still didn't want to go home, especially not if misfortune awaited, but perhaps he could make leaving their idyllic refuge a bit less painful. Perhaps he need not tell Kurt of Alice's concerns until they were safely back in England. “We could,” he began slowly, crumpling the parchment in his hand. “If you like.”
A frown creased Kurt's smooth brow. “How do you mean?”
Blaine held up the crumpled letter. “Aunt Alice has called me home.”
A flash of surprise. “Again?” But of course Kurt wasn't stupid; Blaine could see immediately that he had guessed something was wrong. “What's happening? What's wrong?”
“Nothing.” Blaine opened up the letter again to show Kurt, worrying at his lower lip with his teeth. “The Queen is going to give birth somewhat soon. As family, I am expected to attend Court for the christening.”
“That's not what's putting that worry in your eyes.” Kurt's hand brushed the letter aside and moved to tilt Blaine's chin up, concern clear in his gaze. “It's only enough to account for the need to go home. Blaine, what's wrong?”
“I don't know,” Blaine admitted, knowing he had been foolish to think even for a moment that he could have hidden the ill tidings from Kurt. “Aunt Alice wouldn't say. Only that there was something wrong and that she feared saying more in case her letter was intercepted.” It felt as though an iron vise were squeezing his chest, filling him with foreboding and panic. “I can't imagine what could have gone so terribly wrong, Kurt. In...in her last letter she was talking about how the chickens all started hiding their nests and how Emma had an entire batch of strawberry jam that refused to set so they were eating strawberry sauce on everything for weeks...that was merely a month ago.”
Now he saw his fear mirrored on his lover's face, felt Kurt's fingers slip down to clutch at the front of Blaine's doublet. “Alice is never frightened of saying anything at all, ever.”
“Which may be the greatest portent of doom in the world.” Blaine tried to force out a laugh, to lighten the heavy air in the room, but knew they both heard it was a nervous laugh, a false cheer, and it did nothing. He closed his eyes and breathed in, slow and steady, willing himself to calm down. There was no sense in both of them getting upset when they knew virtually nothing. Better to turn their energies to things more uplifting. Swallowing hard, Blaine opened his eyes again and straightened up, pulling his shoulders back and locking gazes with Kurt. “We can't let it consume us now, though. There's too much to do. I think we need to speak to Wes, to begin organizing our passage home now, so that we can spend quite a number of days in Wales. I want you to visit your father and his new wife. Let us concentrate on that, on happy tidings, for now.”
A sigh lifted Kurt's shoulders and Blaine could see reluctance warring with elation in every line of his graceful body. “I do want to see my father. It's been so long.”
“Almost two years. Too long.” Turning, Blaine caught Kurt's hand and pressed a kiss into the palm. “I'm sorry. I should never have kept you here...we have been here for much too great a time.”
“But it has been a good time,” Kurt countered wistfully, sliding his hand around to cup Blaine's jawline. “A time needed, though I resented you sending me away at first.”
“I resented being away from you.” Blaine leaned into Kurt's hand and lay his own over the back of it, curling his fingers around the strong, fine bones and smooth skin that he so loved. “I don't entirely wish this to end, Kurt. I have my duties, my obligations, and you know everything must change when we go home.”
Kurt cast aside the letter in his other hand and reached out to grab a fistful of Blaine's dark green doublet, moving forward in his chair as he pulled Blaine to nestle in between his strong thighs. “I remember. Your duties, your obligations, they will always take you from me,” he breathed, dipping his head to claim Blaine's mouth in a heated kiss. His fingers tangled in Blaine's curls, the tight ache dragging a groan out of Blaine's chest that slipped hot over his tongue and filled Kurt's mouth. It seemed in an instant all fear was burned away with the heat of the desire that always simmered between them. “And even if they didn't...”
“We won't have the freedom there that we do here.” The ache of premature loss filled Blaine's heart and made it hurt. Still, he resolutely shoved it aside in favor of memorizing the slip of Kurt's tongue alongside his own, the rasp of breath through Kurt's nose, the feel of Kurt's thighs under his palms. They would just have to spend as much time together as they could now, to offset the pain of the forced distance they faced. “I love you so much,” he mumbled against Kurt's lips. “So much. Too much.”
“Show me,” was Kurt's reply as he grabbed Blaine's hand and slid it under his open doublet, against the bare skin of his chest and the strong, steady thump of his heart. “Show me all, in the time left.”
Before everything changes, taunted one last dark premonition in Blaine's mind before he gave over entirely to desire, and to Kurt, and to his love.
James Freville, Earl of Crawford, was a man who had fought and clawed his way to where he stood this day.
Born as the eldest son of the Duke of Sheldrake, he should rightfully have inherited the title upon his father's death. Had indeed expected it; they all had. He had been raised to it and his marriage to the pretty, golden-haired daughter of the Marquess of Faredale had been contingent on it.
But when James was eighteen and newly wed, Robert Freville passed away after being thrown from his horse and cracking his skull open. To their surprise, the only just crowned King Edward IV had declared the Dukedom of Sheldrake extinct and had claimed the lands for his embattled throne. Left with a new wife and soon after that the first of six daughters, James found himself shocked, humiliated, and nearly penniless, with only a minor baronetcy left to his name.
Ambition had driven him into the King's service, then, determined to earn a lands and a title of his own, to support his rapidly growing family. He battled hard alongside the very king who had humiliated him so, earned titles and accolades and land, and he did not grieve when Edward died.
When the opportunity for a final revenge arose, James threw his lot in with the House of Lancaster, helping to bring down the last scion of the House of York, cementing his place in England's nobility and burying the last of his burning humiliation deep in the blood-soaked ground of Bosworth Field.
Yes, James Freville had worked hard for what he now claimed as his own.
And so he had little respect for the young man before him, twenty-two and also an Earl, but only by the merest chance of fate and through no work of his own. It was difficult for James to prevent his mouth from twisting up into a scowl.
“Have some wine,” he advised his daughter's all but useless husband as he passed the pitcher across the table, fighting to control the impulse to douse the boy with the contents of it instead. “We've just imported it from France. Marvelous stuff.”
“Thank you.” Somehow, Sebastian managed to insert the barest trace of insolence into the polite response. “I hope it can measure up to the excellent English vintage that Jane and I had the good fortune to taste recently at one of His Grace the King's banquets.”
Insufferable, jumped-up lackwit, James seethed, forcing as amiable a smile as he could manage onto his face. “Well, we can but hope,” he replied, hoping the blandness of his tone suitably masked his utter contempt.
Sebastian Smythe represented everything James Freville loathed, an opportunist and scoundrel who had everything handed to him on plates of gold and silver. When Sebastian's father Randolph, the Earl of Berwick, had approached with an offer to marry his second son to James' second daughter Jane, Crawford's first instinct had been to immediately refuse. His daughters were renowned for their beauty, their uncommonly thorough educations, and their perfect manners. And Jane out of all of them had been unusually sharp, her mind and temperament excellently suited for a very good marriage, one that promised much time spent at court. She deserved to marry into a title, not simply into a titled family.
And she certainly deserved better than what James had heard of the spoiled and lazy Sebastian, who seemed little better than a promiscuous rake and ne'er do well. After all, her elder sister Mary had been wed to the eldest son of the Earl of Kendal. In time, she would be a Countess. If Jane were wed to Sebastian, she would never be that, nor anything close to it, for the young man seemingly had no ambition beyond spending as much of his father's money as he could get his hands on.
But the Earl of Berwick had persisted, being a man accustomed to getting what he wanted. What he wanted was for his son to have an accomplished, clever wife from a notable family, he explained, someone who could, as a bonus, perhaps be a maturing influence on Sebastian. And so he had invited James to a masked ball and asked him to bring his daughters.
When Jane had met Sebastian that night, it was all over. She immediately wanted Sebastian, and was determined to have him, and James Freville found himself on the receiving end of the formidable intellect he had fostered in his daughter. Jane never cried, and never begged. She simply persisted, presenting reasonable arguments and an unwavering certainty that this was what she wanted and what she intended to have. James had to admire his spirited offspring, even as she drove him mad.
Jane would have what Jane wanted, and so at the tender age of sixteen, Lady Jane Freville was married to Lord Sebastian Smythe. James reasoned that he did not have to like his daughter's husbands, only to enjoy the benefits of being linked with other powerful families, and it had to be admitted that the Smythes were certainly powerful. Besides, Jane, for whatever reason, loved Sebastian. James resolved to make the best of the situation. After all, he had four remaining unmarried daughters.
No one could have foreseen that he would lose one of them. Lovely, funny, sweet Amelia, the next to be married, hopefully more advantageously than Jane. When it became clear that war was on the horizon, James had placed her in the care of Edward Anderson, trusting in the young Viscount's promise to keep her safe, for why should he not have done? Edward loved Amelia like a sister. Beyond that, he was fierce and loyal and intelligent. He had been selected to lead the lesser nobles in the battle that would ultimately unseat Richard III for all these reasons and more.
But Edward had failed in his promise to protect Amelia, and now she was gone, dead, the innocent victim of a conspiracy that had targeted the young Viscount Dalton, a conspiracy that for some reason Edward had never seen coming. Amelia had suffered for that shortsightedness.
Even less foreseeable had been that Randolph Smythe would lose his life at Bosworth Field. And his heir Stephen would reign as the new Earl of Berwick for all of three days before he succumbed to the traumatic head wound that had toppled him from his mount.
All unanticipated, the young, spoiled, feckless Sebastian became the Earl of Berwick in one fell swoop. James reeled from the shock of it - Amelia gone, but Jane elevated to an unexpected title. It was a bittersweet moment, one he found difficult to manage.
And then, out of some misplaced sense of guilt, Henry had granted Sebastian the place on the Privy Council that would have been his father's, an honor the King had never accorded James. Further, instead of penalizing Edward Anderson for his complicity in Amelia's death, Henry had given his young cousin the Earldom of Kellsworth in recognition of his work coordinating his peers amongst the lesser nobles to support the Lancastrian fight for the throne of England.
Sebastian and Edward had been elevated, not James Freville. James, who had come up with the notion of organizing the lesser nobles and rallying them in support of Henry in the first place. James, who had defended Henry on the field and suffered the most grievous wounds of his long war career. James, who had lost a daughter as a consequence of these war games. James, who had been all but forgotten in the aftermath of the end of the war.
It was an insult that cut deep, that the two young men be handed everything after all James' hard work and planning and blood spilt. He felt as though he had been slapped in the face, that all of his own hard work throughout his life was meaningless, for no matter how hard he fought and worked, others would be promoted above him. Salt in the wound had been the monetary compensation from the Earl of Huntingdon who had orchestrated the conspiracy that resulted in Amelia's violent death.
As if money could replace his poor darling. But at least Huntingdon had suffered some penalty for his perfidy. Edward Anderson's horrific lack of attention had merited no such punishment.
“My Lord?” Sebastian's mock deference broke through the murky fog of James' thoughts, disrupting the blackness and barely suppressed rage of a thwarted man. “My Lord, I expect you had a reason to call me into your company this day, did you not?”
James shook his head to rouse himself to awareness. “Yes, actually. I did.”
And such a reason it is, he thought, allowing the smallest smile of triumph to cross his lips.
For if nothing else, James Freville was a pragmatic man. Sebastian's placement meant Jane too was indeed elevated, was in fact a lady in waiting to the new Queen Elizabeth. Jane, who had already been a darling of the court on her infrequent visits, was now an influential courtier, lauded for her gracious manners and impeccable dress, respected by everyone she charmed with her pretty smile and perfect carriage. The accidental Countess was fulfilling the promise of her unexpectedly advantageous marriage with aplomb, exactly as she had been raised to do.
It was now time to capitalize on that. Now was the time to use the tool that fate had placed before the Earl of Crawford, his loathed but excellently placed son-in-law and his lovely, highly regarded daughter. To wield them against a greater foe.
“My young Lord Berwick,” James Freville began, steepling his fingers before his face and resting his elbows on his desk. “Have you ever had the occasion to meet with my neighbor, the Earl of Kellsworth?”
Media: Fic
Author: a_glass_parade
Beta: idoltina and Riah
Rating: Rated R to NC-17
Pairing: Kurt Hummel and Blaine Anderson (Primary), Sebastian Smythe and OFC(!!), Rory Flanagan and OFC
Genre: Romance, AU, Historical Fiction
Warnings: Violence, intrigue, death, kidnapping, blackmail, sex, blackmail involving sex, and sexual congress between characters you won't like. The usual, as it's me. Sorry?
Spoilers: Will include characters up through season four.
Word Count: 5000+ thus far.
Summary: Kurt and Blaine are happy in their French idyll, but back home in England, there are those who await their return with a malevolent eagerness, determined to bring the newly minted Earl of Kellsworth down. They have been through so much already - can their love, rooted in blood and espionage, survive the tests ahead? And more importantly...can they?
Additional Notes: This is a sequel to 'Velvet Petals, Piercing Thorns' and so should only be read if you have first read that story! Further, this is a historical romance set in a violent time rife with misogyny and homophobia, please keep that in mind should you decide to read. For all that it is indeed a romance (I promise) it is absolutely not fluffy.
~~oOo~~oOo~~oOo~~oOo~~oOo~~oOo~~oOo~~
Chapter One
September, 1486
Steady hands, deep breaths. Concentrate on the task before you.
Smoke swirled through the massive stable, impairing Kurt's vision and making him cough. The good news was that it was just as much an impediment to the people who had trapped him up here, leaving him tied to a post in the hayloft while an inferno straight out of Hell's own heart raged below. He could hear the flames crackling through the dry straw, the terrified whinnies of horses trying to stampede out of the fire.
He could hear Elizabeth's screams, horrible shrieks that brought to mind terrifying memories that he could never put far enough behind him. Memories of a streak of white lace and golden hair tumbling violently out of the door of Dalton's prison tower, his last sight of Amelia Freville alive. Her younger sister's screams of protest were what were freezing him in place now, trapped in reliving the night Amelia had died.
Wood creaked under Kurt's feet as the heat from the raging fire began to reach the floorboards of the hayloft, and it was this that jolted him out of his gruesome reverie, this and the smoke creeping into his lungs. His eyes focused through the gray fog on his hands tied before him, a knot that he could undo with his teeth if he could just hold his panic at bay long enough to concentrate.
And if he couldn't...
...he refused to consider failure as an option. Not with Elizabeth still in danger, not with Blaine at risk.
Pressing his face into his arm, Kurt took a deep breath through the filter of his voluminous shirt sleeve, one and then another slowly, trying to limit the amount of smoke he inhaled, until his head felt as clear as he thought it would get. Holding the last precious breaths in his lungs, Kurt leaned forward and applied his teeth to the rough rope, ignoring how it cut at his lips and drew blood.
He would get out of this. He would get out, and he would save Elizabeth and he would clear Blaine's name, and he would get answers for just how the hell all of them had gotten to this juncture in the first place.
If only they had never received Alice's letter.
If only they could go back to where this had all begun...
Two Months Earlier...
“We've had messages.” Blaine stepped into the library, head down as he scanned the letter he'd received from his aunt Alice. “One from your fath - what on earth are you doing, Kurt?”
One round blue-green eye lazily opened and trained its gaze on Blaine. “I'm resting.”
Tilting his head, Blaine examined the tableau before him. “With no shirt or doublet on, and on the hearth?” It was a tempting picture, if somewhat nonsensical.
“It's hot.” Kurt didn't even bother to sit up. He lay reclined on the gray stones of the fireplace hearth, head pillowed by his crumpled up blue doublet and linen shirt. One long arm was flung over his forehead, the other tracing aimless patterns on the wooden floor. Clad only in a pair of blue hose and close fitting breeches, he was something of a mouthwatering sight to Blaine, who could only stand in the doorway, completely transfixed. “The hearthstones are cool and out of the sunlight. I pledge you, Blaine, the cook said she dropped an egg on the ground earlier and it cooked itself!”
Only the crumpling of the parchment in his tightening fist tore Blaine's thoughts away from the terrifically naughty place they'd gone. “I expect she was exaggerating,” he rasped out, taking deep breaths. Incredible how it had been well over a year and a half since they'd first met, and Kurt was still capable of reducing Blaine to a pile of stuttering lust simply by being his own delicious self. “Ah. Letters. Messages. Here. You -”
Grudgingly, Kurt sat up, opening both eyes and blinking until he could focus, a lopsided smile tilting up his mouth as he looked Blaine over. “Oh, my. Someone's enjoying the view. Shall I...tend to you, first?”
Yes, please, Blaine thought, and then squeezed his eyes shut, willing himself to get under control. “Would that we could, lover. But my letter is from Aunt Alice and yours is from your father and I feel that perhaps we should behave as responsible adults and tend to our familial correspondence first.”
He heard a sigh, and then the rustle of velvet on skin as Kurt picked up his doublet and slid it back on. “Very well.” Warm, soft lips pressed a kiss to Blaine's cheek and when he opened his eyes, it was to see Kurt smiling at him for just a moment before he brushed Blaine's nose with the tip of his own. He had not bothered with his shirt, nor with fastening the doublet. Blaine didn't much mind. “May I have mine, please?”
“In exchange for a kiss.” He'd never get enough of Kurt's kisses, and couldn't stop himself from smiling as their lips met in a chaste peck that quickly deepened into something that threatened to get entirely out of control rather swiftly. With great reluctance, Blaine slipped his hands up under Kurt's still unfastened doublet and pushed him gently away, handing him the letter from his father Burt as he did so. “Letters first.”
Kurt heaved another sigh, this one noisier and a touch more exasperated than the first. “Oh, if we must. I do enjoy hearing from my father.” He wandered over to a crimson brocaded chair and collapsed down into it, breaking the seal on his letter as he flung one long leg over the arm of the chair. Blaine moved out of the doorway at last, closing the door behind him and moving to make himself comfortable on the floor in front of Kurt's chair, picking up a cushion for sitting on his way over. By the time he settled in, leaning his head against Kurt's knee, Kurt was already making noises of disbelief over his letter.
Blaine knew that when Kurt was getting that agitated, he wasn't going to be able to speak coherently for some time, so there was no sense asking him about the contents of his letter now. Instead, Blaine broke the seal on his own letter and unfolded the parchment, blinking a bit at the shortness of the missive. He was used to Alice Beaufort writing pages and pages of news in her tidy, tiny hand, paragraphs of text on the health of Dalton's orchards, on how Emma seemed quite lost without Wes to feud with, even the weather was not too insignificant to mention. And of course no letter closed without a veiled, yet pointed request that he return home. Requests which he generally found easy to ignore - but a creeping chill up his spine told him it wasn't going to be easy at all, this time. Perhaps not even possible.
For before him, Alice's writing barely filled half the page, and there was a sloppy urgency blurring the lettering that he had never seen from his aunt in his life. Dread clogged his throat as he began to read.
Dearest Nephew,
I hope this letter finds you as well as ever.
I realize that you are used to much longer letters from me, and indeed I wish this were something more usual. Unfortunately, though I do have the usual reports of status, I must forgo them this time and come directly to the point: Edward, you really must come home.
The most innocuous of reasons is that you are, of course, a cousin of His Grace the King. As you know, Queen Elizabeth is expecting their first child, and they are in high hopes that it will be a son. As the first scion of a new dynasty, this child will be so important, Edward. You, as a relative of the Royal Family, will be expected to make an appearance at court once he is born. They are expecting that the child should arrive within a handful of weeks, and so you do have some time, at least. But you cannot think to escape this obligation entirely.
Unfortunately, the other reason I must insist on calling you home is one I dare not detail to you in a letter, for it could be intercepted - though I shall do my very best to ensure this gets to you safely. Suffice it to say, Edward, that you absolutely must return home now. The very future of Dalton and indeed of yourself may be at stake.
Your loving aunt,
A. Beaufort
Frowning, Blaine re-read the letter again, and a third time, looking for anything between the lines that might explain Alice's fears. But there was nothing, no coded message or surreptitious telling phrase that revealed the true source of Alice's summons. And that, in and of itself, was more ominous than any clear explanation could have been.
She was truly in fear of something. And the indomitable Lady Alice Beaufort, Baroness Linwood, was not a woman that scared easily, if at all.
Pushing down his unease, Blaine tilted his head up to look at Kurt, who still looked as though someone had smacked the back of his head with the pommel of a sword. Blaine twisted around and placed his hand on Kurt's knee. “Love?”
“My father...” Kurt shook his head, then the parchment, then laughed, throwing his head back to let loose a purely joyous peal of laughter that bounced around the stone room. “My father has remarried!”
“What?” Blaine had never met Burt Hummel, but he knew from Kurt's stories that the hardworking Austrian stableman of Raglan Castle was a widower who had deeply loved his English bride, and had been heartbroken when she had passed away in Kurt's childhood. He had never, according to Kurt, even looked at another woman since then. And now...married?
Well, that news was a great deal cheerier than his own. And so, in an effort to put off having to tell Kurt they would have to leave, Blaine fixed a smile onto his face and jostled his beloved's knee. “Well, tell! What of the woman who captivated Burt Hummel?”
“It's my music teacher.” Darkness touched on Kurt's eyes, and it had to be from the memory of being forced into the music lessons that had led him to Blaine in the first place. Still, that had not been the woman's doing - she had only been a teacher, and one he knew Kurt respected a very great deal - and so Blaine was unsurprised when the darkness was but a momentary flash, in the next instant clearing away and shifting back to joy at the news. “Mistress Corcoran. She writes all of my father's letters to me, as you know.”
Blaine nodded. “I see. And so love has grown out of the time they have spent together?” The smile that stretched across his face at this felt a good deal more genuine. “Well. You and I do know a thing or two about that.”
“So we do.” Kurt's mouth was still curved in a lovely sunlight smile as he leaned down to tug Blaine up to kneel so that they could kiss. The warmth and love of it stole Blaine's breath, spreading through his chest and nearly making him forget his more somber missive, at least until Kurt pulled back and sighed. “I wish I could see him.”
Inspiration twinkled at the back of Blaine's mind. He still didn't want to go home, especially not if misfortune awaited, but perhaps he could make leaving their idyllic refuge a bit less painful. Perhaps he need not tell Kurt of Alice's concerns until they were safely back in England. “We could,” he began slowly, crumpling the parchment in his hand. “If you like.”
A frown creased Kurt's smooth brow. “How do you mean?”
Blaine held up the crumpled letter. “Aunt Alice has called me home.”
A flash of surprise. “Again?” But of course Kurt wasn't stupid; Blaine could see immediately that he had guessed something was wrong. “What's happening? What's wrong?”
“Nothing.” Blaine opened up the letter again to show Kurt, worrying at his lower lip with his teeth. “The Queen is going to give birth somewhat soon. As family, I am expected to attend Court for the christening.”
“That's not what's putting that worry in your eyes.” Kurt's hand brushed the letter aside and moved to tilt Blaine's chin up, concern clear in his gaze. “It's only enough to account for the need to go home. Blaine, what's wrong?”
“I don't know,” Blaine admitted, knowing he had been foolish to think even for a moment that he could have hidden the ill tidings from Kurt. “Aunt Alice wouldn't say. Only that there was something wrong and that she feared saying more in case her letter was intercepted.” It felt as though an iron vise were squeezing his chest, filling him with foreboding and panic. “I can't imagine what could have gone so terribly wrong, Kurt. In...in her last letter she was talking about how the chickens all started hiding their nests and how Emma had an entire batch of strawberry jam that refused to set so they were eating strawberry sauce on everything for weeks...that was merely a month ago.”
Now he saw his fear mirrored on his lover's face, felt Kurt's fingers slip down to clutch at the front of Blaine's doublet. “Alice is never frightened of saying anything at all, ever.”
“Which may be the greatest portent of doom in the world.” Blaine tried to force out a laugh, to lighten the heavy air in the room, but knew they both heard it was a nervous laugh, a false cheer, and it did nothing. He closed his eyes and breathed in, slow and steady, willing himself to calm down. There was no sense in both of them getting upset when they knew virtually nothing. Better to turn their energies to things more uplifting. Swallowing hard, Blaine opened his eyes again and straightened up, pulling his shoulders back and locking gazes with Kurt. “We can't let it consume us now, though. There's too much to do. I think we need to speak to Wes, to begin organizing our passage home now, so that we can spend quite a number of days in Wales. I want you to visit your father and his new wife. Let us concentrate on that, on happy tidings, for now.”
A sigh lifted Kurt's shoulders and Blaine could see reluctance warring with elation in every line of his graceful body. “I do want to see my father. It's been so long.”
“Almost two years. Too long.” Turning, Blaine caught Kurt's hand and pressed a kiss into the palm. “I'm sorry. I should never have kept you here...we have been here for much too great a time.”
“But it has been a good time,” Kurt countered wistfully, sliding his hand around to cup Blaine's jawline. “A time needed, though I resented you sending me away at first.”
“I resented being away from you.” Blaine leaned into Kurt's hand and lay his own over the back of it, curling his fingers around the strong, fine bones and smooth skin that he so loved. “I don't entirely wish this to end, Kurt. I have my duties, my obligations, and you know everything must change when we go home.”
Kurt cast aside the letter in his other hand and reached out to grab a fistful of Blaine's dark green doublet, moving forward in his chair as he pulled Blaine to nestle in between his strong thighs. “I remember. Your duties, your obligations, they will always take you from me,” he breathed, dipping his head to claim Blaine's mouth in a heated kiss. His fingers tangled in Blaine's curls, the tight ache dragging a groan out of Blaine's chest that slipped hot over his tongue and filled Kurt's mouth. It seemed in an instant all fear was burned away with the heat of the desire that always simmered between them. “And even if they didn't...”
“We won't have the freedom there that we do here.” The ache of premature loss filled Blaine's heart and made it hurt. Still, he resolutely shoved it aside in favor of memorizing the slip of Kurt's tongue alongside his own, the rasp of breath through Kurt's nose, the feel of Kurt's thighs under his palms. They would just have to spend as much time together as they could now, to offset the pain of the forced distance they faced. “I love you so much,” he mumbled against Kurt's lips. “So much. Too much.”
“Show me,” was Kurt's reply as he grabbed Blaine's hand and slid it under his open doublet, against the bare skin of his chest and the strong, steady thump of his heart. “Show me all, in the time left.”
Before everything changes, taunted one last dark premonition in Blaine's mind before he gave over entirely to desire, and to Kurt, and to his love.
James Freville, Earl of Crawford, was a man who had fought and clawed his way to where he stood this day.
Born as the eldest son of the Duke of Sheldrake, he should rightfully have inherited the title upon his father's death. Had indeed expected it; they all had. He had been raised to it and his marriage to the pretty, golden-haired daughter of the Marquess of Faredale had been contingent on it.
But when James was eighteen and newly wed, Robert Freville passed away after being thrown from his horse and cracking his skull open. To their surprise, the only just crowned King Edward IV had declared the Dukedom of Sheldrake extinct and had claimed the lands for his embattled throne. Left with a new wife and soon after that the first of six daughters, James found himself shocked, humiliated, and nearly penniless, with only a minor baronetcy left to his name.
Ambition had driven him into the King's service, then, determined to earn a lands and a title of his own, to support his rapidly growing family. He battled hard alongside the very king who had humiliated him so, earned titles and accolades and land, and he did not grieve when Edward died.
When the opportunity for a final revenge arose, James threw his lot in with the House of Lancaster, helping to bring down the last scion of the House of York, cementing his place in England's nobility and burying the last of his burning humiliation deep in the blood-soaked ground of Bosworth Field.
Yes, James Freville had worked hard for what he now claimed as his own.
And so he had little respect for the young man before him, twenty-two and also an Earl, but only by the merest chance of fate and through no work of his own. It was difficult for James to prevent his mouth from twisting up into a scowl.
“Have some wine,” he advised his daughter's all but useless husband as he passed the pitcher across the table, fighting to control the impulse to douse the boy with the contents of it instead. “We've just imported it from France. Marvelous stuff.”
“Thank you.” Somehow, Sebastian managed to insert the barest trace of insolence into the polite response. “I hope it can measure up to the excellent English vintage that Jane and I had the good fortune to taste recently at one of His Grace the King's banquets.”
Insufferable, jumped-up lackwit, James seethed, forcing as amiable a smile as he could manage onto his face. “Well, we can but hope,” he replied, hoping the blandness of his tone suitably masked his utter contempt.
Sebastian Smythe represented everything James Freville loathed, an opportunist and scoundrel who had everything handed to him on plates of gold and silver. When Sebastian's father Randolph, the Earl of Berwick, had approached with an offer to marry his second son to James' second daughter Jane, Crawford's first instinct had been to immediately refuse. His daughters were renowned for their beauty, their uncommonly thorough educations, and their perfect manners. And Jane out of all of them had been unusually sharp, her mind and temperament excellently suited for a very good marriage, one that promised much time spent at court. She deserved to marry into a title, not simply into a titled family.
And she certainly deserved better than what James had heard of the spoiled and lazy Sebastian, who seemed little better than a promiscuous rake and ne'er do well. After all, her elder sister Mary had been wed to the eldest son of the Earl of Kendal. In time, she would be a Countess. If Jane were wed to Sebastian, she would never be that, nor anything close to it, for the young man seemingly had no ambition beyond spending as much of his father's money as he could get his hands on.
But the Earl of Berwick had persisted, being a man accustomed to getting what he wanted. What he wanted was for his son to have an accomplished, clever wife from a notable family, he explained, someone who could, as a bonus, perhaps be a maturing influence on Sebastian. And so he had invited James to a masked ball and asked him to bring his daughters.
When Jane had met Sebastian that night, it was all over. She immediately wanted Sebastian, and was determined to have him, and James Freville found himself on the receiving end of the formidable intellect he had fostered in his daughter. Jane never cried, and never begged. She simply persisted, presenting reasonable arguments and an unwavering certainty that this was what she wanted and what she intended to have. James had to admire his spirited offspring, even as she drove him mad.
Jane would have what Jane wanted, and so at the tender age of sixteen, Lady Jane Freville was married to Lord Sebastian Smythe. James reasoned that he did not have to like his daughter's husbands, only to enjoy the benefits of being linked with other powerful families, and it had to be admitted that the Smythes were certainly powerful. Besides, Jane, for whatever reason, loved Sebastian. James resolved to make the best of the situation. After all, he had four remaining unmarried daughters.
No one could have foreseen that he would lose one of them. Lovely, funny, sweet Amelia, the next to be married, hopefully more advantageously than Jane. When it became clear that war was on the horizon, James had placed her in the care of Edward Anderson, trusting in the young Viscount's promise to keep her safe, for why should he not have done? Edward loved Amelia like a sister. Beyond that, he was fierce and loyal and intelligent. He had been selected to lead the lesser nobles in the battle that would ultimately unseat Richard III for all these reasons and more.
But Edward had failed in his promise to protect Amelia, and now she was gone, dead, the innocent victim of a conspiracy that had targeted the young Viscount Dalton, a conspiracy that for some reason Edward had never seen coming. Amelia had suffered for that shortsightedness.
Even less foreseeable had been that Randolph Smythe would lose his life at Bosworth Field. And his heir Stephen would reign as the new Earl of Berwick for all of three days before he succumbed to the traumatic head wound that had toppled him from his mount.
All unanticipated, the young, spoiled, feckless Sebastian became the Earl of Berwick in one fell swoop. James reeled from the shock of it - Amelia gone, but Jane elevated to an unexpected title. It was a bittersweet moment, one he found difficult to manage.
And then, out of some misplaced sense of guilt, Henry had granted Sebastian the place on the Privy Council that would have been his father's, an honor the King had never accorded James. Further, instead of penalizing Edward Anderson for his complicity in Amelia's death, Henry had given his young cousin the Earldom of Kellsworth in recognition of his work coordinating his peers amongst the lesser nobles to support the Lancastrian fight for the throne of England.
Sebastian and Edward had been elevated, not James Freville. James, who had come up with the notion of organizing the lesser nobles and rallying them in support of Henry in the first place. James, who had defended Henry on the field and suffered the most grievous wounds of his long war career. James, who had lost a daughter as a consequence of these war games. James, who had been all but forgotten in the aftermath of the end of the war.
It was an insult that cut deep, that the two young men be handed everything after all James' hard work and planning and blood spilt. He felt as though he had been slapped in the face, that all of his own hard work throughout his life was meaningless, for no matter how hard he fought and worked, others would be promoted above him. Salt in the wound had been the monetary compensation from the Earl of Huntingdon who had orchestrated the conspiracy that resulted in Amelia's violent death.
As if money could replace his poor darling. But at least Huntingdon had suffered some penalty for his perfidy. Edward Anderson's horrific lack of attention had merited no such punishment.
“My Lord?” Sebastian's mock deference broke through the murky fog of James' thoughts, disrupting the blackness and barely suppressed rage of a thwarted man. “My Lord, I expect you had a reason to call me into your company this day, did you not?”
James shook his head to rouse himself to awareness. “Yes, actually. I did.”
And such a reason it is, he thought, allowing the smallest smile of triumph to cross his lips.
For if nothing else, James Freville was a pragmatic man. Sebastian's placement meant Jane too was indeed elevated, was in fact a lady in waiting to the new Queen Elizabeth. Jane, who had already been a darling of the court on her infrequent visits, was now an influential courtier, lauded for her gracious manners and impeccable dress, respected by everyone she charmed with her pretty smile and perfect carriage. The accidental Countess was fulfilling the promise of her unexpectedly advantageous marriage with aplomb, exactly as she had been raised to do.
It was now time to capitalize on that. Now was the time to use the tool that fate had placed before the Earl of Crawford, his loathed but excellently placed son-in-law and his lovely, highly regarded daughter. To wield them against a greater foe.
“My young Lord Berwick,” James Freville began, steepling his fingers before his face and resting his elbows on his desk. “Have you ever had the occasion to meet with my neighbor, the Earl of Kellsworth?”