Fic: Gold In Physic
Title: Gold in Physic
Authors: gileonnen and speak_me_fair
Fandom: Richard II
Pairings: Richard II/Robert de Vere, Robert de Vere/Edward of Norwich (Aumerle), Richard II/Anne of Bohemia
Rating/Warnings: R (sexuality, medieval swearing, dormouse imitations)
Summary: Richard II has a very peculiar way of arranging alliances.
Author's note: Written for angevin2 on the successful defence of her dissertation.
Thanne is it wysdom, as thynketh me,
To maken vertu of necessite,
And take it weel, that we may not eschu,
And namely that that to us alle is due.
**
It is, thinks Robert, a lamentable habit of his king's--that is, to begin having thoughts halfway through a perfectly serviceable bout of intercourse. "I was thinking--" Richard begins, mouth against his courtier's hip, and Robert groans and pushes him away. "Nothing good ever comes of your thinking."
This is, sadly, true. Richard thinking leads to Richard doing things about his thoughts, and events immediately following are never what Richard has in mind, what anyone else likes, or actually what the world is prepared for. Robert feels he has a right and bounden duty to point this out, but he seriously can't think of a way to do it without stopping what was, up until then, very good foreplay, thank you so much.
"I was thinking," continues Richard, now trailing his fingers insistently up Robert's sternum and letting them rest against his collarbone, "That I ought to introduce you to my cousin Edward."
"I've met Edward," answers Robert. "If you mean Langley's young hothead, who hasn't the grace God gave a bear."
Richard's blinking could be construed as amusing, and possibly endearing, and definitely sexy, if it weren't so bloody-mindedly deliberate -- and it usually makes Robert want to kiss him. Right now it makes him think of just how nice it would be to re-institute smacking the Royal arse in a not particularly pleasant way.
"Um..." Richard says thoughtfully, and then, because he has never been able to leave things alone, even when the situation is actually begging him to do just that, "well. That depends."
Robert, who likes to think of himself as a man of sense, has nevertheless apparently lost that sense somewhere around Richard's finger tracing around the hollow of his throat and the fact his mouth has now moved up to the side of his shoulder. "On what?" he asks. He is pathetic. Really.
"He's really quite a gentleman, when he's unlaced a bit," says Richard, and that nip at Robert's collar makes it absolutely impossible to misconstrue his meaning. "And it's not as though you couldn't use a few friends at court --"
Robert lets his head fall back against the blankets. He should have recognized at once where this conversation was going. "No, Richard."
"It's true, you really could --"
"If we're going to talk about your uncle, I'm putting my damn clothes back on."
"We're not talking about old Woodstock, though," Richard answers, with infuriating poise. "Just your social circles. Your friendships, if you will."
"A king's favourite has no friends," answers Robert, although he has to smile at His Majesty's persistence. Not only is he still pursuing the conversation, he's also managing to debate what passes for policy with his lips still practically latched beneath Robert's ear.
"So...don't you think it's time that changed?" And how Richard manages to sound that clear when he is in fact acting like a very determined leech in need of a substantial breakfast is beyond Robert, but he likes to think of himself as an adaptable man. He just keeps forgetting what he needs to remember to adapt to, and if he goes on like this he is going to have to genuinely claim a headache.
"And by changed you mean be nice to Langley's get?" He sounds a bit despairing. It's only fair. He feels a bit despairing. Actually, he feels a lot despairing, but that's because he was half-way there anyway, and this is just the sexually-frustrating marchpane fantasy illuminating his state of mind.
"I would be very happy if you would try to be --" and his teeth scrape briefly over the lobe of Robert's ear "-- nice."
He shivers. This sort of treatment is patently unfair.
"Why him in particular? Why not, oh, your cousin Henry?" If Richard has manipulated his body into complaisance, the least Robert can do is try to keep hold of the conversation. "A friendship with him would be of some advantage; his father is --"
"Not going to be discussed in this bed," says Richard firmly. "He'd have you skinned like a rabbit inside a minute, and then he'd throw you to the pigs."
"I see," answers Robert. "And you want to build a -- Christ's balls, that's good --"
"You needn't be vulgar," says Richard, but since his hands are currently probing a very similar area, he has little room to talk of vulgarity. "I'm building a what?"
"A sort of --" It's really very hard to think of politics in this state. "An alliance -- against the house of Gaunt."
"And in your favour; I'll thank you to recognize that I'm doing this for your sake."
"Richard..." A horrible, horrible thought is making its sluggish way through the fogged remnants of what used to pass for Robert's brain. "Just how.....nice...are you expecting me to be?"
Richard's smile is entirely unreassuring and completely reminiscent of what Robert generally associates with a cat left to its own devices in an aviary. He resists the urge to check for feathers.
"Very nice," he says. "I like to see your talents put to...good use, after all."
And then his mouth moves downwards to join his hands, and it is a very long time before Robert remembers that damn it all to hell, silence always gives consent with Richard.
Which means, not to put too fine a point on it, his next royal order is to seduce Edward of bloody Norwich.
**
Robert's first opportunity comes at the close of Mass, when he manages to catch Edward's sleeve as they leave the chapel (and it's an unfashionably close-fitting sleeve, but he supposes that Edward has not been at court long enough to have caught onto the fashion). "Might I have a word?" he asks, pleasantly.
He can practically see all the possible responses flicker behind Edward's eyes, and has time to think -- damn, this one's going to be good when he gets a bit of experience on him -- and to appreciate why Richard bothers keeping him around, because if anger is this boy's default state of being, then it's not a bad one, before Edward's politely inclining his head and moving to the side at Robert's urging. His readiness catches Robert off-guard; he had expected protests, derisive remarks, or perhaps even a bracing spot of violence, and he had readied appropriately barbed retorts. Edward's willingness leaves him a bit tongue-tied.
The young man's brows go up as he waits. He's a surprisingly fresh-looking boy, his chin scattered with the beginnings of a beard (no doubt a proud feature, although it wants maintenance) and his broad shoulders squared; the effect is rather like seeing a child swimming in his father's houppelande, and Robert can't help smirking. "My, you have grown," he says, for want of anything better to say.
The raised brows do something complicated that looks as though they're trying very hard to tie themselves in a knot. Edward, apparently, is deciding whether to be annoyed or amused, before settling on trying to look bland and waiting for Robert to get on with it. It's almost impressive, even if he does end up looking constipated and a little deranged.
Not for the first time in his rather chequered career, Robert thinks wistfully about just how nice Richard would look gagged with his own pointy shoes - which leads him to think about how the chains might be pleasantly utilised, which makes him stop thinking about Edward altogether, and oh, God's sanctified teeth, but he needs to chain his brain up.
"Yes?" Edward asks, breaking in on his increasingly tangled state of mind, and Robert gives a little jerk that replaces the murderous attempt at pleasantry on Edward's face with real amusement.
Abandoning the effort to communicate via expression alone, Robert leaps straight to the point. "His Majesty has told me that I should make your acquaintance," he says, "And he didn't seem terribly deterred when I told him I'd already made it. Therefore, let me introduce myself: Robert de Vere, Duke of Ireland."
"Yes, I'd heard you were planning to depart for Ireland any day now," muses Edward, with an inflection just neutral enough that Robert could not reasonably claim insult and issue challenge.
"That's quite right," Robert agrees instead. "Any day now." With immense self-control, he manages not to add that he would bet a quite substantial amount of money that he doesn't have that Edward can't wait.
Nice,, he reminds himself grimly, and promises himself that he is, somehow, going to get this made up to him. It takes a mental effort which he recognises as heroic not to pursue the thought of how this might be achieved.
"You wanted to say goodbye?" Edward offers unhelpfully and with enough bite to his tone that Robert finds himself revising his opinion of 'going to be good when he grows up a bit' upwards rather rapidly.
"I wanted to invite you home with me, actually," answers Robert, never mind that he has no intention of taking the boy anywhere near Oxford. "We appear to have gotten off on the wrong foot, given each other unflattering impressions --"
"Then I was mistaken in thinking that you've been sharing a bed with my cousin?" asks Edward.
"Which cousin?" he asks, although they both know which he means.
For a moment, a complicated expression crosses Edward's face, appearing to make its first assault upon his hairline and then advancing downward. His brows draw together; his nose wrinkles; his lips quirk -- and then, quite unexpectedly, he smiles. "God's breath, he put you up to this, didn't he."
There have got to be any number of scintillating put-downs to this, but Robert's damned if he can think of any that aren't going to wreck the start of...being nice, seriously, he is going to do something horrible to whoever invented that phrase as soon as possible - and he settles for a rueful little smile and a lowering of his eyelids that he knows has a rather devastating effect on people when he looks up again through his eyelashes.
"Possibly?" he says, wryly inviting, and Edward's lips part in an oddly charming grin.
"Then tell him that I was grateful for the overture," he says, clearly choosing his words carefully. "But you've clearly got enough to occupy you, what with leaving for Ireland any day now."
Robert recognizes a rebuff when he hears it, and it's as good an excuse as any to stop trying; he has accomplished his mission, played nicely with Langley's whelp, and made a token effort at facilitating whatever feverish fantasies Richard might dream up for his lovers. He could turn around at once and report his qualified success, and no one could think less of him for it.
He clasps Edward's hand in parting, though, and finds himself vowing to redouble his efforts.
**
Because Edward's life can safely be said to have a terrible similarity to, if not a vale of tears, then at least a vale of permanent confusion, it takes him some time after his truly odd encounter with Robert de Vere to sort out what he's feeling.
Mostly, he discovers, it's annoyance. Annoyance with Richard, for thinking this is a solution; annoyance with de Vere for thinking he can be manipulated like that; and annoyance with himself for almost succumbing to the manipulation.
He has also, to his chagrin, added a healthy amount of random speculation to his annoyance, which truly is not helping matters - but instead is rather overriding his justifiable and comprehensible and familiar irritation with everyone to the point of feeling as though he has wandered into a bramble carpet, and his ankles are thoroughly caught. As the Duke of Ireland continues not to depart for Ireland, though, he finds himself continually reconsidering their parting words. I wanted to invite you home with me, de Vere had said, and he wonders how much of the want had been genuine.
The whole matter is vexing enough to put him off of his dinner, and his mother looks askance at him. Her expression plainly informs him that it is not good manners to ignore one's food, particularly when they have the good fortune to be dining with the king.
"Don't glare at him so," his father whispers carryingly. "It's not your business any longer whether he feeds himself like a charger or a dormouse."
Richard, who has been watching the Duke of York and his wife with some amusement, casts Edward a glance laced with commiseration.
Edward looks back at him in an attempt to convey amusement, and suspects his eyes say nothing more than a rather desperate 'help me, please,' which Richard has never been inclined to do in his life if amusement can be gained from someone else's excruciatingly embarrassed misery, and seems unlikely to do so now, if the fact his nose is slowly and deliberately twitching in what Edward sorrowfully imagines to be a terrible impression of said dormouse is anything to go by.
He vows that if Richard does anything along the lines of squeaking or cleaning imaginary whiskers, he will deliver him over wholesale to the infuriating and misplaced maternal concern that is apparently his own lot in life.
Queen Anne's muffled laughter suggests that there will be no help from that quarter.
Once they have finished their final course and adjourned from the table, Edward attempts to catch Richard's eye and suggest that they have a private conversation in an adjoining chamber. Unfortunately, Richard's attention is entirely taken up by the young musician whom he is currently attempting to seduce (and he might protest his innocence, but Edward knows very well what that expression means).
Instead, he finds himself accosted rather rudely by the very man whom he has been trying so ardently to avoid.
"If I'd known your inexperience was such an issue," Robert says with every appearance of mildly inebriated concern, which Edward knows is entirely feigned, because not even Robert would be so stupid as to drink too much in public these days, and the thought of his feeling concern ever in his life is perfectly laughable, "I promise, I'd have told Richard no." He peers earnestly into Edward's face, looking innocent and worried and downright fake, and idiotic with it, and that on top of the dormouse and Anne's contagious stifled giggling is just the last straw.
Edward's laughter, with a great sense of the inappropriate and no apparent heed for timing, snorts in a most undignified manner straight out of his nose.
At least he's not drinking anything.
Robert makes a great show of stepping back a pace, as though he expects to be sprayed nonetheless. "You're like a wild dog," he observes, with that maddening grin that Richard sometimes gets when he's trying to have Edward on. "A boor -- absolutely no -- no decorum at all."
"You're hardly a model of civilized conduct," Edward retorts, but if he keeps talking he can tell that he'll only dissolve into laughter again; he can feel it bubbling up in his chest like a new spring. It is, he allows, entirely possible that he has had more to drink than to eat. "The sorts of conversations that you start, and where you start them --"
"I have a fine eye for appropriate contexts," answers Robert, with the same innocent smile (and it is, Edward has to admit, at least a little charming).
"And the fact you make statements that make sentences go somewhere else," Edward says, exasperated, and Robert, who has all the gall he's accused of possessing and then some to spare, actually looks proud of himself.
"But appropriately," he says in a murmured undertone that means Edward has to lean in a little closer to make out the words, and then smiles a little, the tip of his tongue curled just visibly in the corner of his mouth.
Edward steps back in a hurry, feeling his entire body go red, his face heating last of all, so that he is blazing out embarrassed heat long before he can possibly be showing it, and knowing that Robert is, damnably, close enough to feel it anyway.
"My lord the Duke of Ireland." Edward and Robert turn their heads at once at those clipped words, and they make their obeisances to the queen nearly at once; when they've straightened, she smiles. "And Edward of Norwich," she continues. She has a strong accent, although she speaks court French quite well -- it makes her every word sound incredibly deliberate. "I could not help but overhear you."
"I hope you liked what you heard, my lady," Robert answers, smiling in return. When he puts on that familiar expression, carries himself with such ease in the queen's company, Edward cannot quite forget the rumors that the Duke of Ireland has been swiving the queen's lady in waiting.
Queen Anne turns her head just slightly, her chin indicating the Duchess of York even as her eyes meet Edward's. "I am always pleased by my husband's friends," she says, with such exaggeratedly formal diction that Edward can feel another snort of laughter threatening to escape.
Robert's eyes are wide and limpid and utterly brimming with the same hysterical laughter, and it is a sudden, sobering realisation to Edward, looking between them, that these two disparate people are not just bound by love of Richard, but, unwillingly or no, like each other.
And have each other's full measure, as well, judging by the look Anne is giving Robert - not quite a judgement or a warning, but something more deep-lying, a perfect understanding that defies any poor attempts of Edward's rattled thoughts to describe.
"And we are delighted to please," Robert agrees, and how he manages to keep that laughter out of his voice is a complete mystery to Edward, but one which begets in him the first faint traces of unwilling admiration. If it had been him upon whom that serene look was turned, he suspects he would have been left unable to say anything at all.
"You may beg your leave of us," says Anne; "I beg our leave," answers Robert at once. "Young Edward and I have much to discuss, and we wouldn't want to bore such splendid company."
"You are never a bore," the queen answers, her fair cheeks dimpling a little as she smiles. "But do entertain our guest well. He must always find ours a joyous court, and himself a welcome guest."
"I doubt I would feel other at a court of yours," Edward finds himself saying, quite involuntarily, and, surprised at his own words, realises as Anne's dimpled cheeks pinken a little that he has been waiting a long time to say that, that whatever his rivalries are with Richard's court, they are not and never will be with her; that he knows perhaps better than insouciant, brilliant, self-absorbed Robbie how deep and enduring Richard's love is for her, and he would not take that away from either of them for the wide world.
"As who could?" Robbie asks lightly, but his fingers on Edward's elbow, urging him to make his farewell, are shaking a little, and there is something of strain in his voice.
Very unwilling, this liking,, Edward realises, and respects Robert that little bit more for allowing himself to feel it.
At last, having spoken their formal parting phrases, they leave the mingling crowd; perhaps a dance will be beginning as they go, and perhaps Richard will reward his favourite minstrel well, but it is no concern of theirs. Robert's hand is firm against Edward's elbow, and he guides him to the guest-chamber where (Edward supposes) he habitually resides.
"The queen has given me strict orders," Robert confides in the antechamber, "That I must entertain you as well as I'm able. And the king has asked that I be --" and he pauses just long enough to make his meaning inescapably clear "--nice."
Edward wants to ask him why; he wants to know whether this is something to do with the way the lords have been grumbling into their cups and Uncle Thomas has been keeping himself carefully apart from even his family ... but as he meets Robert's eyes, all he can hear is If I'd known your inexperience was such an issue --
He is not as green as anyone thinks.
When Robert's hand finds his shoulder, he catches the older man by the hip and kisses him soundly.
It is not that he is expecting mockery, though perhaps some raw part of him, still stinging from that unexpected jibe, is prepared for it - it is simply that he is expecting Richard, who will be possessed only temporarily and even then only as an implicit understanding that this claim is made by the truly owned.
But Robert melts, as though his very bones were cleaving towards Edward's body, and it is not surrender, that little movement of dissolving need, but demand.
**
"-- and then I tell him that he should be nice to Edward, and of course by this point he's so distracted that he can hardly say no." By this point, not only have the servants dispersed to leave their majesties to their own devices, but Anne has begun tracing patterns like vines on Richard's upper arm; it's her way of showing that he has her full attention, and being sure that she has his. "It was only the faintest, gentlest nudge, but of course they hardly needed more than that, did they?"
There might, perhaps, be a look in Anne's eyes that suggests she does not entirely agree with this assessment, but just as Richard has never believed complete acquiescing adoration, nor will he brook direct refutation, and her murmured agreement suffices to be neither.
"And now they'll be -- well, I don't actually know what they'll be doing, but I'm sure they'll have a few things to try. You know Robert's quite creative with his hands."
"You'd mentioned it," Anne replies, leaning in to kiss his shoulder lightly. "And this will help them? A ... political alliance?" She does not bother to conceal her doubt, but neither does she conceal her willingness to hope.
"If things should go bad," says Richard (and if he says that much, then he truly believes that things will go bad), "Then I'd like for Robert to have someone. Other than myself."
Anne does not say that in such a case, perhaps Edward, loving and loyal and heart-spoken though he is, can never help in any way that might avert Robert's own personal, fast-falling disaster; nor does she wonder aloud why it seems to Richard that this alliance will be of any use in any arena save that of a curtained, pleasured bed. There is a great deal that she will never say, and Richard knows it; there are conversations that they may not have, however open they might be with one another; there are things she might wonder that she will never confess, though Richard will always tell her more and less of her wonderings than she had ever imagined when she put foot in this land as its frightened consort.
"Then you chose well," she says, and it is only truth, limited though it may be.
Authors: gileonnen and speak_me_fair
Fandom: Richard II
Pairings: Richard II/Robert de Vere, Robert de Vere/Edward of Norwich (Aumerle), Richard II/Anne of Bohemia
Rating/Warnings: R (sexuality, medieval swearing, dormouse imitations)
Summary: Richard II has a very peculiar way of arranging alliances.
Author's note: Written for angevin2 on the successful defence of her dissertation.
Thanne is it wysdom, as thynketh me,
To maken vertu of necessite,
And take it weel, that we may not eschu,
And namely that that to us alle is due.
**
It is, thinks Robert, a lamentable habit of his king's--that is, to begin having thoughts halfway through a perfectly serviceable bout of intercourse. "I was thinking--" Richard begins, mouth against his courtier's hip, and Robert groans and pushes him away. "Nothing good ever comes of your thinking."
This is, sadly, true. Richard thinking leads to Richard doing things about his thoughts, and events immediately following are never what Richard has in mind, what anyone else likes, or actually what the world is prepared for. Robert feels he has a right and bounden duty to point this out, but he seriously can't think of a way to do it without stopping what was, up until then, very good foreplay, thank you so much.
"I was thinking," continues Richard, now trailing his fingers insistently up Robert's sternum and letting them rest against his collarbone, "That I ought to introduce you to my cousin Edward."
"I've met Edward," answers Robert. "If you mean Langley's young hothead, who hasn't the grace God gave a bear."
Richard's blinking could be construed as amusing, and possibly endearing, and definitely sexy, if it weren't so bloody-mindedly deliberate -- and it usually makes Robert want to kiss him. Right now it makes him think of just how nice it would be to re-institute smacking the Royal arse in a not particularly pleasant way.
"Um..." Richard says thoughtfully, and then, because he has never been able to leave things alone, even when the situation is actually begging him to do just that, "well. That depends."
Robert, who likes to think of himself as a man of sense, has nevertheless apparently lost that sense somewhere around Richard's finger tracing around the hollow of his throat and the fact his mouth has now moved up to the side of his shoulder. "On what?" he asks. He is pathetic. Really.
"He's really quite a gentleman, when he's unlaced a bit," says Richard, and that nip at Robert's collar makes it absolutely impossible to misconstrue his meaning. "And it's not as though you couldn't use a few friends at court --"
Robert lets his head fall back against the blankets. He should have recognized at once where this conversation was going. "No, Richard."
"It's true, you really could --"
"If we're going to talk about your uncle, I'm putting my damn clothes back on."
"We're not talking about old Woodstock, though," Richard answers, with infuriating poise. "Just your social circles. Your friendships, if you will."
"A king's favourite has no friends," answers Robert, although he has to smile at His Majesty's persistence. Not only is he still pursuing the conversation, he's also managing to debate what passes for policy with his lips still practically latched beneath Robert's ear.
"So...don't you think it's time that changed?" And how Richard manages to sound that clear when he is in fact acting like a very determined leech in need of a substantial breakfast is beyond Robert, but he likes to think of himself as an adaptable man. He just keeps forgetting what he needs to remember to adapt to, and if he goes on like this he is going to have to genuinely claim a headache.
"And by changed you mean be nice to Langley's get?" He sounds a bit despairing. It's only fair. He feels a bit despairing. Actually, he feels a lot despairing, but that's because he was half-way there anyway, and this is just the sexually-frustrating marchpane fantasy illuminating his state of mind.
"I would be very happy if you would try to be --" and his teeth scrape briefly over the lobe of Robert's ear "-- nice."
He shivers. This sort of treatment is patently unfair.
"Why him in particular? Why not, oh, your cousin Henry?" If Richard has manipulated his body into complaisance, the least Robert can do is try to keep hold of the conversation. "A friendship with him would be of some advantage; his father is --"
"Not going to be discussed in this bed," says Richard firmly. "He'd have you skinned like a rabbit inside a minute, and then he'd throw you to the pigs."
"I see," answers Robert. "And you want to build a -- Christ's balls, that's good --"
"You needn't be vulgar," says Richard, but since his hands are currently probing a very similar area, he has little room to talk of vulgarity. "I'm building a what?"
"A sort of --" It's really very hard to think of politics in this state. "An alliance -- against the house of Gaunt."
"And in your favour; I'll thank you to recognize that I'm doing this for your sake."
"Richard..." A horrible, horrible thought is making its sluggish way through the fogged remnants of what used to pass for Robert's brain. "Just how.....nice...are you expecting me to be?"
Richard's smile is entirely unreassuring and completely reminiscent of what Robert generally associates with a cat left to its own devices in an aviary. He resists the urge to check for feathers.
"Very nice," he says. "I like to see your talents put to...good use, after all."
And then his mouth moves downwards to join his hands, and it is a very long time before Robert remembers that damn it all to hell, silence always gives consent with Richard.
Which means, not to put too fine a point on it, his next royal order is to seduce Edward of bloody Norwich.
**
Robert's first opportunity comes at the close of Mass, when he manages to catch Edward's sleeve as they leave the chapel (and it's an unfashionably close-fitting sleeve, but he supposes that Edward has not been at court long enough to have caught onto the fashion). "Might I have a word?" he asks, pleasantly.
He can practically see all the possible responses flicker behind Edward's eyes, and has time to think -- damn, this one's going to be good when he gets a bit of experience on him -- and to appreciate why Richard bothers keeping him around, because if anger is this boy's default state of being, then it's not a bad one, before Edward's politely inclining his head and moving to the side at Robert's urging. His readiness catches Robert off-guard; he had expected protests, derisive remarks, or perhaps even a bracing spot of violence, and he had readied appropriately barbed retorts. Edward's willingness leaves him a bit tongue-tied.
The young man's brows go up as he waits. He's a surprisingly fresh-looking boy, his chin scattered with the beginnings of a beard (no doubt a proud feature, although it wants maintenance) and his broad shoulders squared; the effect is rather like seeing a child swimming in his father's houppelande, and Robert can't help smirking. "My, you have grown," he says, for want of anything better to say.
The raised brows do something complicated that looks as though they're trying very hard to tie themselves in a knot. Edward, apparently, is deciding whether to be annoyed or amused, before settling on trying to look bland and waiting for Robert to get on with it. It's almost impressive, even if he does end up looking constipated and a little deranged.
Not for the first time in his rather chequered career, Robert thinks wistfully about just how nice Richard would look gagged with his own pointy shoes - which leads him to think about how the chains might be pleasantly utilised, which makes him stop thinking about Edward altogether, and oh, God's sanctified teeth, but he needs to chain his brain up.
"Yes?" Edward asks, breaking in on his increasingly tangled state of mind, and Robert gives a little jerk that replaces the murderous attempt at pleasantry on Edward's face with real amusement.
Abandoning the effort to communicate via expression alone, Robert leaps straight to the point. "His Majesty has told me that I should make your acquaintance," he says, "And he didn't seem terribly deterred when I told him I'd already made it. Therefore, let me introduce myself: Robert de Vere, Duke of Ireland."
"Yes, I'd heard you were planning to depart for Ireland any day now," muses Edward, with an inflection just neutral enough that Robert could not reasonably claim insult and issue challenge.
"That's quite right," Robert agrees instead. "Any day now." With immense self-control, he manages not to add that he would bet a quite substantial amount of money that he doesn't have that Edward can't wait.
Nice,, he reminds himself grimly, and promises himself that he is, somehow, going to get this made up to him. It takes a mental effort which he recognises as heroic not to pursue the thought of how this might be achieved.
"You wanted to say goodbye?" Edward offers unhelpfully and with enough bite to his tone that Robert finds himself revising his opinion of 'going to be good when he grows up a bit' upwards rather rapidly.
"I wanted to invite you home with me, actually," answers Robert, never mind that he has no intention of taking the boy anywhere near Oxford. "We appear to have gotten off on the wrong foot, given each other unflattering impressions --"
"Then I was mistaken in thinking that you've been sharing a bed with my cousin?" asks Edward.
"Which cousin?" he asks, although they both know which he means.
For a moment, a complicated expression crosses Edward's face, appearing to make its first assault upon his hairline and then advancing downward. His brows draw together; his nose wrinkles; his lips quirk -- and then, quite unexpectedly, he smiles. "God's breath, he put you up to this, didn't he."
There have got to be any number of scintillating put-downs to this, but Robert's damned if he can think of any that aren't going to wreck the start of...being nice, seriously, he is going to do something horrible to whoever invented that phrase as soon as possible - and he settles for a rueful little smile and a lowering of his eyelids that he knows has a rather devastating effect on people when he looks up again through his eyelashes.
"Possibly?" he says, wryly inviting, and Edward's lips part in an oddly charming grin.
"Then tell him that I was grateful for the overture," he says, clearly choosing his words carefully. "But you've clearly got enough to occupy you, what with leaving for Ireland any day now."
Robert recognizes a rebuff when he hears it, and it's as good an excuse as any to stop trying; he has accomplished his mission, played nicely with Langley's whelp, and made a token effort at facilitating whatever feverish fantasies Richard might dream up for his lovers. He could turn around at once and report his qualified success, and no one could think less of him for it.
He clasps Edward's hand in parting, though, and finds himself vowing to redouble his efforts.
**
Because Edward's life can safely be said to have a terrible similarity to, if not a vale of tears, then at least a vale of permanent confusion, it takes him some time after his truly odd encounter with Robert de Vere to sort out what he's feeling.
Mostly, he discovers, it's annoyance. Annoyance with Richard, for thinking this is a solution; annoyance with de Vere for thinking he can be manipulated like that; and annoyance with himself for almost succumbing to the manipulation.
He has also, to his chagrin, added a healthy amount of random speculation to his annoyance, which truly is not helping matters - but instead is rather overriding his justifiable and comprehensible and familiar irritation with everyone to the point of feeling as though he has wandered into a bramble carpet, and his ankles are thoroughly caught. As the Duke of Ireland continues not to depart for Ireland, though, he finds himself continually reconsidering their parting words. I wanted to invite you home with me, de Vere had said, and he wonders how much of the want had been genuine.
The whole matter is vexing enough to put him off of his dinner, and his mother looks askance at him. Her expression plainly informs him that it is not good manners to ignore one's food, particularly when they have the good fortune to be dining with the king.
"Don't glare at him so," his father whispers carryingly. "It's not your business any longer whether he feeds himself like a charger or a dormouse."
Richard, who has been watching the Duke of York and his wife with some amusement, casts Edward a glance laced with commiseration.
Edward looks back at him in an attempt to convey amusement, and suspects his eyes say nothing more than a rather desperate 'help me, please,' which Richard has never been inclined to do in his life if amusement can be gained from someone else's excruciatingly embarrassed misery, and seems unlikely to do so now, if the fact his nose is slowly and deliberately twitching in what Edward sorrowfully imagines to be a terrible impression of said dormouse is anything to go by.
He vows that if Richard does anything along the lines of squeaking or cleaning imaginary whiskers, he will deliver him over wholesale to the infuriating and misplaced maternal concern that is apparently his own lot in life.
Queen Anne's muffled laughter suggests that there will be no help from that quarter.
Once they have finished their final course and adjourned from the table, Edward attempts to catch Richard's eye and suggest that they have a private conversation in an adjoining chamber. Unfortunately, Richard's attention is entirely taken up by the young musician whom he is currently attempting to seduce (and he might protest his innocence, but Edward knows very well what that expression means).
Instead, he finds himself accosted rather rudely by the very man whom he has been trying so ardently to avoid.
"If I'd known your inexperience was such an issue," Robert says with every appearance of mildly inebriated concern, which Edward knows is entirely feigned, because not even Robert would be so stupid as to drink too much in public these days, and the thought of his feeling concern ever in his life is perfectly laughable, "I promise, I'd have told Richard no." He peers earnestly into Edward's face, looking innocent and worried and downright fake, and idiotic with it, and that on top of the dormouse and Anne's contagious stifled giggling is just the last straw.
Edward's laughter, with a great sense of the inappropriate and no apparent heed for timing, snorts in a most undignified manner straight out of his nose.
At least he's not drinking anything.
Robert makes a great show of stepping back a pace, as though he expects to be sprayed nonetheless. "You're like a wild dog," he observes, with that maddening grin that Richard sometimes gets when he's trying to have Edward on. "A boor -- absolutely no -- no decorum at all."
"You're hardly a model of civilized conduct," Edward retorts, but if he keeps talking he can tell that he'll only dissolve into laughter again; he can feel it bubbling up in his chest like a new spring. It is, he allows, entirely possible that he has had more to drink than to eat. "The sorts of conversations that you start, and where you start them --"
"I have a fine eye for appropriate contexts," answers Robert, with the same innocent smile (and it is, Edward has to admit, at least a little charming).
"And the fact you make statements that make sentences go somewhere else," Edward says, exasperated, and Robert, who has all the gall he's accused of possessing and then some to spare, actually looks proud of himself.
"But appropriately," he says in a murmured undertone that means Edward has to lean in a little closer to make out the words, and then smiles a little, the tip of his tongue curled just visibly in the corner of his mouth.
Edward steps back in a hurry, feeling his entire body go red, his face heating last of all, so that he is blazing out embarrassed heat long before he can possibly be showing it, and knowing that Robert is, damnably, close enough to feel it anyway.
"My lord the Duke of Ireland." Edward and Robert turn their heads at once at those clipped words, and they make their obeisances to the queen nearly at once; when they've straightened, she smiles. "And Edward of Norwich," she continues. She has a strong accent, although she speaks court French quite well -- it makes her every word sound incredibly deliberate. "I could not help but overhear you."
"I hope you liked what you heard, my lady," Robert answers, smiling in return. When he puts on that familiar expression, carries himself with such ease in the queen's company, Edward cannot quite forget the rumors that the Duke of Ireland has been swiving the queen's lady in waiting.
Queen Anne turns her head just slightly, her chin indicating the Duchess of York even as her eyes meet Edward's. "I am always pleased by my husband's friends," she says, with such exaggeratedly formal diction that Edward can feel another snort of laughter threatening to escape.
Robert's eyes are wide and limpid and utterly brimming with the same hysterical laughter, and it is a sudden, sobering realisation to Edward, looking between them, that these two disparate people are not just bound by love of Richard, but, unwillingly or no, like each other.
And have each other's full measure, as well, judging by the look Anne is giving Robert - not quite a judgement or a warning, but something more deep-lying, a perfect understanding that defies any poor attempts of Edward's rattled thoughts to describe.
"And we are delighted to please," Robert agrees, and how he manages to keep that laughter out of his voice is a complete mystery to Edward, but one which begets in him the first faint traces of unwilling admiration. If it had been him upon whom that serene look was turned, he suspects he would have been left unable to say anything at all.
"You may beg your leave of us," says Anne; "I beg our leave," answers Robert at once. "Young Edward and I have much to discuss, and we wouldn't want to bore such splendid company."
"You are never a bore," the queen answers, her fair cheeks dimpling a little as she smiles. "But do entertain our guest well. He must always find ours a joyous court, and himself a welcome guest."
"I doubt I would feel other at a court of yours," Edward finds himself saying, quite involuntarily, and, surprised at his own words, realises as Anne's dimpled cheeks pinken a little that he has been waiting a long time to say that, that whatever his rivalries are with Richard's court, they are not and never will be with her; that he knows perhaps better than insouciant, brilliant, self-absorbed Robbie how deep and enduring Richard's love is for her, and he would not take that away from either of them for the wide world.
"As who could?" Robbie asks lightly, but his fingers on Edward's elbow, urging him to make his farewell, are shaking a little, and there is something of strain in his voice.
Very unwilling, this liking,, Edward realises, and respects Robert that little bit more for allowing himself to feel it.
At last, having spoken their formal parting phrases, they leave the mingling crowd; perhaps a dance will be beginning as they go, and perhaps Richard will reward his favourite minstrel well, but it is no concern of theirs. Robert's hand is firm against Edward's elbow, and he guides him to the guest-chamber where (Edward supposes) he habitually resides.
"The queen has given me strict orders," Robert confides in the antechamber, "That I must entertain you as well as I'm able. And the king has asked that I be --" and he pauses just long enough to make his meaning inescapably clear "--nice."
Edward wants to ask him why; he wants to know whether this is something to do with the way the lords have been grumbling into their cups and Uncle Thomas has been keeping himself carefully apart from even his family ... but as he meets Robert's eyes, all he can hear is If I'd known your inexperience was such an issue --
He is not as green as anyone thinks.
When Robert's hand finds his shoulder, he catches the older man by the hip and kisses him soundly.
It is not that he is expecting mockery, though perhaps some raw part of him, still stinging from that unexpected jibe, is prepared for it - it is simply that he is expecting Richard, who will be possessed only temporarily and even then only as an implicit understanding that this claim is made by the truly owned.
But Robert melts, as though his very bones were cleaving towards Edward's body, and it is not surrender, that little movement of dissolving need, but demand.
**
"-- and then I tell him that he should be nice to Edward, and of course by this point he's so distracted that he can hardly say no." By this point, not only have the servants dispersed to leave their majesties to their own devices, but Anne has begun tracing patterns like vines on Richard's upper arm; it's her way of showing that he has her full attention, and being sure that she has his. "It was only the faintest, gentlest nudge, but of course they hardly needed more than that, did they?"
There might, perhaps, be a look in Anne's eyes that suggests she does not entirely agree with this assessment, but just as Richard has never believed complete acquiescing adoration, nor will he brook direct refutation, and her murmured agreement suffices to be neither.
"And now they'll be -- well, I don't actually know what they'll be doing, but I'm sure they'll have a few things to try. You know Robert's quite creative with his hands."
"You'd mentioned it," Anne replies, leaning in to kiss his shoulder lightly. "And this will help them? A ... political alliance?" She does not bother to conceal her doubt, but neither does she conceal her willingness to hope.
"If things should go bad," says Richard (and if he says that much, then he truly believes that things will go bad), "Then I'd like for Robert to have someone. Other than myself."
Anne does not say that in such a case, perhaps Edward, loving and loyal and heart-spoken though he is, can never help in any way that might avert Robert's own personal, fast-falling disaster; nor does she wonder aloud why it seems to Richard that this alliance will be of any use in any arena save that of a curtained, pleasured bed. There is a great deal that she will never say, and Richard knows it; there are conversations that they may not have, however open they might be with one another; there are things she might wonder that she will never confess, though Richard will always tell her more and less of her wonderings than she had ever imagined when she put foot in this land as its frightened consort.
"Then you chose well," she says, and it is only truth, limited though it may be.