Fic: An Exchange of Favours
Title: An Exchange of Favours
Author: lareinenoire
Play: Henry VI trilogy
Characters / Pairings: The York family
Rating: PG13
Wordcount: 3090
Warnings: Animal death (not explicit), references to character deaths.
Summary: Richard was fifteen years old when he realised there were things that money could not buy.
NB: Originally written for the_alchemist for Yuletide Madness 2008. Many, many thanks to rosamund for her infinite patience and help, and to gileonnen for the last-minute beta.
Richard was fifteen years old when he realised there were things that money could not buy.
He had grown up with a keen awareness of its power, had thought it limitless. His father handed off briefcases he knew were filled with unmarked bills, and in exchange, things appeared. A new painting in the front hall, diamonds sparkling around his mother's neck, a train set for George, or a set of fencing foils for Ned. Hospital beds, metal braces, and crutches. A perfect house where all the mirrors were carefully set high on the walls or hidden in dressing rooms to which Richard had no access, and servants whose loyalties and discretion were unquestionable.
It was a sort of magic. Richard had lost track of the number of afternoons he had spent huddled in the corner of his father's book-lined office, dark even in the middle of the day, watching and listening. There was an escritoire that Father only rarely used that was just the right size for a ten-year-old boy who was too small for his age. Neither Ned nor George would have been able to fit beneath it, but Richard could. Although, when he bragged about it to them the next year at Christmas, they just looked at him in puzzlement.
"Why would you want to do that?" George gasped as Ned, taking advantage of his distraction, scored a particularly good hit at the centre of his stomach. "Ned, are you finished yet?"
"Ten more minutes," their eldest brother informed him. "Really, Dickon. Who wants to listen to old men chatter about nothing?"
"But they don't chatter about nothing," Richard protested. "Things happen, Ned."
"Of course they do. Father's an important man." Ned landed another hit, causing George to yelp in pain. "George, stop being a baby. You're not even trying."
"You're supposed to be teaching me. Not beating me up."
"May I try?" Richard jumped to his feet, ignoring the twinge of pain in his leg as he did so. "Please, Ned? Please?"
Ned lifted the fencing mask to study him dubiously. "If you get hurt, it's your own fault."
"I won't get hurt." He limped to the mat. The doctor had finally declared that he no longer needed his crutches, and he had no intention of using them ever again. "Promise."
George threw the rest of the kit at him. "I'm going to have tea. Enjoy yourselves."
Richard struggled into the jacket and forced the second glove onto his left hand, whose fingers did not quite move properly. He had been practising secretly with the target while Ned was away at school, and his grip on the foil was steady.
Ned was quick. Richard knew that well from having watched him for years. But he was also overconfident and careless. They began slowly, the foils circling. Richard kept his parries deliberately uncertain, letting Ned get just close enough before slipping away. Then, when Ned thrust forward, he charged beneath, shoving the other's foil upward and slamming the tip of his own into Ned's chest. "Hit!"
Ned took several steps back and lifted his mask to study Richard. "Not bad. Beginner's luck?"
"Want to find out?" Richard challenged, grinning.
Three hits later, Ned set down his foil and laughed. "You're full of surprises, Dickon. I had no idea you'd been watching."
"I always watch," Richard said. "It's the best way to learn. It's why I like to watch Father."
Ned just shrugged, ignoring Richard's unasked question. "I'll ask Father to let you have lessons."
It had seemed simple enough at the time. But as Richard sat in his shadows in Father's study, watching the discussion between Father and Ned's old fencing master, he began to wonder.
"The cripple? Isn't that a waste of time, sir?"
Father's fingers drummed on the table. "You will not refer to my son in that manner. My eldest tells me he has potential, and you have told me Edward was one of your best pupils."
"But, sir, he is--"
"Double your fee." He could imagine the expression on his father's face, the cold, measuring grey gaze.
The other swallowed. "Very well. But I can make you no promises."
"I think you might be surprised." The door closed behind the fencing master and Father did not turn. "Richard, I know you're under there."
Richard caught his breath, wishing he could disappear.
"Come out, Richard. I'm not angry." He crawled out and crept slowly toward the desk, only to find, to his surprise, that Father was smiling. "You come here every day, Richard, don't you?"
He nodded. "You're truly not angry?"
"Does it interest you, what happens here?" He was studying Richard carefully now, an odd expression on his face. At Richard's emphatic nod the smile returned. "Your brothers show little interest in what I do."
"Ned and George don't understand, Father. But I do." He pulled himself into the dark leather armchair opposite, and took a deep breath. "You exchange favours with people. Sometimes they bring you money and sometimes you give it to them. Everything should be all right, but it isn't because of someone named Henry."
"Henry is my cousin, Richard. You've met him, though it was a long time ago." Father sighed. "He is not a bad man. But he should not be in charge. Do you understand?"
"He's not clever enough?"
"No. And his advisors are ruining us. Not to mention his wife." He muttered several words under his breath that Richard would have been reprimanded for using. "Which is why this must all be kept secret, Richard. Can you keep secrets?"
"Of course I can, Father." His heart was racing. "Does this mean I can stay?"
Father nodded. "Although you're a bit big to hide under the desk these days. If you promise to stay quiet and listen carefully, you can stay. And I want you to tell me anything you notice that doesn't seem quite right. Understand?"
And so Richard spent most of his days observing the men who came in and out of his father's study. Even seated at the escritoire, they barely seemed to notice him, so intent were they on his father. And they had secrets. Richard could almost smell them. So he told his father everything after each one left, and basked in the smiles as he would have in the sunlight if he ever went out.
He was cleverer than both Ned and George. Father never said so, but Richard knew it somehow. He could see things they could not, could read faces and connect what seemed like disparate events. He guessed, for instance, that when he read in the newspaper--hiding it from his mother, who disapproved of vulgar news-sheets--about an actress named Eleanor Cobham who had paid someone off to poison Henry Lancaster, that it had less to do with her and more to do with the fact that she was married to one of Henry's uncles and that if Henry were dead, she and her husband would be in charge. But now, they said she'd been packed off to an institution for the rest of her life. He could not help but overhear a murmured discussion between two of his father's friends after, though he did not know then what it meant.
"I've wondered for years why York didn't do the same with--" That was Warwick, who Richard thought must have been very much like Ned when he was younger. He was always friendly, but Richard had begun to notice that he rarely looked at him, that his eyes always scuttled away like the rats in the cellar.
"He's a capable boy." He did not quite recognise the other voice, but he suspected it was Warwick's father. "It's a shame, really. But they've done all they can."
"Poor Cecily," murmured Warwick. "George tells me she can't stand the sight of him. Not that I can blame her, really."
Richard did not hear the rest as the words rang in his ears. Can't stand the sight of him. He found George in his room, feeding the canary their mother had given him as a birthday gift.
"You're a liar! Mother doesn't hate me!"
"You've been eavesdropping again, haven't you?" George didn't even turn.
"What does that matter? You're lying." But even as he said it, Richard had begun to wonder. He rarely saw his mother except from a distance, a remote, beautiful figure at the far end of the table. But she never looked at him. Though she smiled and laughed with Ned and George, she never looked at him. His voice was shaking. "She can't hate me."
George laughed, but it was not a pleasant sound. "You think you're so very special, don't you? Just because Father listens to you sometimes. It's only out of pity."
"You shut up," Richard snapped. "I'm cleverer than you and Ned put together."
"You'd like to think that. But it's because you can't do anything else. You can't even leave the house, you little freak. And, do you know why?" He started forward, lips curled in a sneer. "They're ashamed of you."
Richard's mouth opened and shut several times. But then something occurred to him, something that made him smile. "You're jealous, George. Because Father knows I'm cleverer than you. And because you'll never be Ned."
"You don't know anything about anything." But George's face had turned red. "Go away."
"Take it back, George. Take back everything you said about me."
"Never will. Now get out!'
Richard paused next to the door. "You'll wish you never said those things."
George did not answer. Richard felt his hands shaking as he made his way back to his own room, slamming the door behind him. George was lying. He had to be lying.
But, came the small voice from the back of his mind, what if he wasn't? He'd never seen other boys' mothers, had assumed his was normal. And yet she never spoke to him as she did to Ned and George. He'd heard enough whispers over the past few years, though he had managed to ignore them till now. After all, Father wanted useful secrets, not silly rumours.
Well. If Mother hated him, what did it matter? It was Father whose good opinion he wanted. But George still needed to be punished; after all, he'd given his word. Through the open window, he could hear the birds in the garden. Richard smiled.
When George had left to meet a friend at the picturehouse, Richard crept back into his room. The canary chirped cheerfully at him as he opened the cage and took it out. It continued chirping until he heard the delicate bones snap beneath his fingers. Tossing it back into the cage, he wiped his hands on the coverlet and closed the door behind him.
Father just assumed George had been careless. Richard blinked back tears and hugged little sobbing Edmund when they buried the bird in the garden, and contented himself with the fact that George never said anything about their mother again.
Sometimes Father would leave for days, even weeks at a time. This was happening more and more often as Richard neared his fifteenth birthday. Then, one night, he crept down from his room at the sound of voices in the front hall.
"...Richard, are you mad? You can't possibly trust her." It was his mother, her bright hair gleaming beneath the gaslamps. "And Suffolk? Truly?"
"No, I don't trust either of them," Father replied, his voice weighed down with weariness. "But they want Humphrey Lancaster dead, of that I have no doubt, and I have my own plans for them once he's out of the way. We should stay away from here for a few weeks, I think. What do you say to a holiday?"
Humphrey Lancaster. Richard mouthed the name to himself. It was Eleanor Cobham's husband, the one Father didn't like.
"Richard, what are you planning?"
"Just trust me, darling. It will all turn out well."
When they arrived in Ireland, the news greeted them, splashed across lurid headlines all over the papers. Anarchists had attacked every piece of property owned by Henry Lancaster and burned down his house, supposedly as some sort of protest. The family themselves had been elsewhere at the time, but the body of Henry's personal solicitor, Suffolk, had been found in a nearby skip. Without a head. When she caught him reading about that, Richard's mother had snatched away the paper.
Richard settled himself on the window seat in Ned's room to sulk. During their journey, Father had begun to pay far more attention to Ned. Ned, who had just finished school and was almost as tall as Father, who could make their mother smile and everyone else laugh. Who could go out wherever and whenever he wanted, as Richard could not.
He had never questioned the way things were before. Richard had always stayed inside. Even when on holiday, it was always the same. He did not go to school; tutors came to him, their eyes downcast and their pockets heavy with extra funds. He never spoke to the men who served his father; his job was to observe and remember. And, most importantly, whenever they had visitors, Richard stayed upstairs, out of sight.
"But why?" he demanded now, hurling the question at Ned as he finished knotting his tie. "Why can't I go out?"
"Why can't you just do as you're told?"
"Is it because I can't walk properly? I'm doing better now. Maître Foucauld told me I might even be better than you," he added smugly. "He says I'm good at spotting weaknesses."
"That's not surprising," Ned said absently. He was fiddling with his cufflinks. "Look, Dickon, it's nothing serious. I'm just going out to have a bit of fun."
"Ned."
His brother glanced at him, and Richard had the impression that Ned was seeing him for the first time. "How old are you, Dickon?"
"Fifteen," Richard said, frowning. "Why?"
"I think I've got a birthday gift for you." His smile was mischievous, all sweetness and charm. "We're going to sneak you out of the house."
Richard raised his eyebrows. "How?"
"You'll see."
In the end, it was no more complicated than slipping down the servants' staircase and through the garden. Richard wondered briefly if it had always been that easy. There was a black car waiting in the street, and Ned pushed him inside before giving the driver an address that Richard did not catch. Just as he had when they arrived from the docks, he gazed raptly from the window, as if trying to memorise everything he saw.
"Father will kill us both," he said, almost to himself. "But," glancing at Ned with a smile, "I think it's worth it."
"You shouldn't be cooped up like that," Ned told him with a shrug. "Mother's just being old-fashioned, and Father's indulging her."
They drew up to a house on a small, quiet street and Ned stepped out. "Wait here. I'll come back for you."
Richard wondered if he was imagining the sound of the driver snickering. He peered from the window again as Ned's shadow blocked his view briefly. "Ned, where are we?" he whispered.
"You'll see," his brother said with a smile.
The door opened into a haze of scent and cigarette smoke, white skin gleaming against pink velvet. The candelabras and chandeliers were garishly painted, and mirrors lined the walls. Richard's eyes flickered round in sudden fear, aware of the eyes that had begun to follow them. Ned was deep in conversation with a woman he could not quite see, and Richard moved closer to him, nerves causing his fingers to twitch spasmodically.
Ned could have taken him anywhere. To a music-hall or a ballroom, to a lecture or the theatre. Someplace dark, isolated, where he could see without being seen. But Ned had brought him here. To a brothel.
"...Dickon?" Ned's voice, from just behind him. "Come on, now."
The painted faces had been no more than a blur at first, but he now began to read them, watch the calculation in the eyes, the thoughtful pursing of the lips. Ned, he observed, was offering familiar smiles to no small number of them. Richard wondered briefly if Ned cared for anything more than a warm body and came to the negative conclusion. "Ned, I'm not sure about this."
"Nonsense. It's about time." Ned took him by the arm--his good arm--and marched him through the corridors behind the woman. He found himself thrust into a small room mostly filled with a bed. The woman lying there started, eyes widening. "Who are you?"
"I'm..." he trailed off, throwing a panicked glance at the door, "I don't know what's going on."
She charged past him into the corridor to where Ned was flirting with a blonde woman in green, and dealt him a stinging slap. "What sort of joke is this?"
"Joke?" Ned glared, rubbing his cheek. "That's my younger brother. You'd do well to treat him properly."
"You can't be serious." The woman turned and stared. "He doesn't look a thing like you. For one thing, he's a--"
"Go ahead, say it!" Richard heard himself speak the words aloud, lit with bitter laughter. "A cripple. A freak. A monster, maybe?"
"Dickon--"
He shoved Ned aside and heard him curse as his leg slammed into a nearby table. "That's right," he pitched his voice to the entire room, limping forward until he reached the centre. "Look your fill. Isn't it marvellous? Just grand? You--" he pointed to the woman from the bedroom, "--how much would you charge? Every man has his price, why not every woman? What's yours?"
"Dickon, stop this." Ned was pulling on his bad arm, and Richard pushed him hard.
"Get the hell away from me!"
Ned was staring at him now, shock and hurt writ large across his face. He didn't know. God help him, he didn't know. Richard turned away from him and strode through the door.
Waiting just outside was Warwick. "Ah, Richard. Your father requests your presence. Both of you. There's been a complication in London, and you're to leave immediately."
Richard gazed back at the door for a moment. Then, turning back to Warwick, he said, "Ned's vanished, I'm afraid. I haven't seen him in nearly an hour."
Warwick muttered several choice phrases under his breath as Richard hid his smile. Then, turning, they made their way into the darkness of the alley.
Author: lareinenoire
Play: Henry VI trilogy
Characters / Pairings: The York family
Rating: PG13
Wordcount: 3090
Warnings: Animal death (not explicit), references to character deaths.
Summary: Richard was fifteen years old when he realised there were things that money could not buy.
NB: Originally written for the_alchemist for Yuletide Madness 2008. Many, many thanks to rosamund for her infinite patience and help, and to gileonnen for the last-minute beta.
Richard was fifteen years old when he realised there were things that money could not buy.
He had grown up with a keen awareness of its power, had thought it limitless. His father handed off briefcases he knew were filled with unmarked bills, and in exchange, things appeared. A new painting in the front hall, diamonds sparkling around his mother's neck, a train set for George, or a set of fencing foils for Ned. Hospital beds, metal braces, and crutches. A perfect house where all the mirrors were carefully set high on the walls or hidden in dressing rooms to which Richard had no access, and servants whose loyalties and discretion were unquestionable.
It was a sort of magic. Richard had lost track of the number of afternoons he had spent huddled in the corner of his father's book-lined office, dark even in the middle of the day, watching and listening. There was an escritoire that Father only rarely used that was just the right size for a ten-year-old boy who was too small for his age. Neither Ned nor George would have been able to fit beneath it, but Richard could. Although, when he bragged about it to them the next year at Christmas, they just looked at him in puzzlement.
"Why would you want to do that?" George gasped as Ned, taking advantage of his distraction, scored a particularly good hit at the centre of his stomach. "Ned, are you finished yet?"
"Ten more minutes," their eldest brother informed him. "Really, Dickon. Who wants to listen to old men chatter about nothing?"
"But they don't chatter about nothing," Richard protested. "Things happen, Ned."
"Of course they do. Father's an important man." Ned landed another hit, causing George to yelp in pain. "George, stop being a baby. You're not even trying."
"You're supposed to be teaching me. Not beating me up."
"May I try?" Richard jumped to his feet, ignoring the twinge of pain in his leg as he did so. "Please, Ned? Please?"
Ned lifted the fencing mask to study him dubiously. "If you get hurt, it's your own fault."
"I won't get hurt." He limped to the mat. The doctor had finally declared that he no longer needed his crutches, and he had no intention of using them ever again. "Promise."
George threw the rest of the kit at him. "I'm going to have tea. Enjoy yourselves."
Richard struggled into the jacket and forced the second glove onto his left hand, whose fingers did not quite move properly. He had been practising secretly with the target while Ned was away at school, and his grip on the foil was steady.
Ned was quick. Richard knew that well from having watched him for years. But he was also overconfident and careless. They began slowly, the foils circling. Richard kept his parries deliberately uncertain, letting Ned get just close enough before slipping away. Then, when Ned thrust forward, he charged beneath, shoving the other's foil upward and slamming the tip of his own into Ned's chest. "Hit!"
Ned took several steps back and lifted his mask to study Richard. "Not bad. Beginner's luck?"
"Want to find out?" Richard challenged, grinning.
Three hits later, Ned set down his foil and laughed. "You're full of surprises, Dickon. I had no idea you'd been watching."
"I always watch," Richard said. "It's the best way to learn. It's why I like to watch Father."
Ned just shrugged, ignoring Richard's unasked question. "I'll ask Father to let you have lessons."
It had seemed simple enough at the time. But as Richard sat in his shadows in Father's study, watching the discussion between Father and Ned's old fencing master, he began to wonder.
"The cripple? Isn't that a waste of time, sir?"
Father's fingers drummed on the table. "You will not refer to my son in that manner. My eldest tells me he has potential, and you have told me Edward was one of your best pupils."
"But, sir, he is--"
"Double your fee." He could imagine the expression on his father's face, the cold, measuring grey gaze.
The other swallowed. "Very well. But I can make you no promises."
"I think you might be surprised." The door closed behind the fencing master and Father did not turn. "Richard, I know you're under there."
Richard caught his breath, wishing he could disappear.
"Come out, Richard. I'm not angry." He crawled out and crept slowly toward the desk, only to find, to his surprise, that Father was smiling. "You come here every day, Richard, don't you?"
He nodded. "You're truly not angry?"
"Does it interest you, what happens here?" He was studying Richard carefully now, an odd expression on his face. At Richard's emphatic nod the smile returned. "Your brothers show little interest in what I do."
"Ned and George don't understand, Father. But I do." He pulled himself into the dark leather armchair opposite, and took a deep breath. "You exchange favours with people. Sometimes they bring you money and sometimes you give it to them. Everything should be all right, but it isn't because of someone named Henry."
"Henry is my cousin, Richard. You've met him, though it was a long time ago." Father sighed. "He is not a bad man. But he should not be in charge. Do you understand?"
"He's not clever enough?"
"No. And his advisors are ruining us. Not to mention his wife." He muttered several words under his breath that Richard would have been reprimanded for using. "Which is why this must all be kept secret, Richard. Can you keep secrets?"
"Of course I can, Father." His heart was racing. "Does this mean I can stay?"
Father nodded. "Although you're a bit big to hide under the desk these days. If you promise to stay quiet and listen carefully, you can stay. And I want you to tell me anything you notice that doesn't seem quite right. Understand?"
And so Richard spent most of his days observing the men who came in and out of his father's study. Even seated at the escritoire, they barely seemed to notice him, so intent were they on his father. And they had secrets. Richard could almost smell them. So he told his father everything after each one left, and basked in the smiles as he would have in the sunlight if he ever went out.
He was cleverer than both Ned and George. Father never said so, but Richard knew it somehow. He could see things they could not, could read faces and connect what seemed like disparate events. He guessed, for instance, that when he read in the newspaper--hiding it from his mother, who disapproved of vulgar news-sheets--about an actress named Eleanor Cobham who had paid someone off to poison Henry Lancaster, that it had less to do with her and more to do with the fact that she was married to one of Henry's uncles and that if Henry were dead, she and her husband would be in charge. But now, they said she'd been packed off to an institution for the rest of her life. He could not help but overhear a murmured discussion between two of his father's friends after, though he did not know then what it meant.
"I've wondered for years why York didn't do the same with--" That was Warwick, who Richard thought must have been very much like Ned when he was younger. He was always friendly, but Richard had begun to notice that he rarely looked at him, that his eyes always scuttled away like the rats in the cellar.
"He's a capable boy." He did not quite recognise the other voice, but he suspected it was Warwick's father. "It's a shame, really. But they've done all they can."
"Poor Cecily," murmured Warwick. "George tells me she can't stand the sight of him. Not that I can blame her, really."
Richard did not hear the rest as the words rang in his ears. Can't stand the sight of him. He found George in his room, feeding the canary their mother had given him as a birthday gift.
"You're a liar! Mother doesn't hate me!"
"You've been eavesdropping again, haven't you?" George didn't even turn.
"What does that matter? You're lying." But even as he said it, Richard had begun to wonder. He rarely saw his mother except from a distance, a remote, beautiful figure at the far end of the table. But she never looked at him. Though she smiled and laughed with Ned and George, she never looked at him. His voice was shaking. "She can't hate me."
George laughed, but it was not a pleasant sound. "You think you're so very special, don't you? Just because Father listens to you sometimes. It's only out of pity."
"You shut up," Richard snapped. "I'm cleverer than you and Ned put together."
"You'd like to think that. But it's because you can't do anything else. You can't even leave the house, you little freak. And, do you know why?" He started forward, lips curled in a sneer. "They're ashamed of you."
Richard's mouth opened and shut several times. But then something occurred to him, something that made him smile. "You're jealous, George. Because Father knows I'm cleverer than you. And because you'll never be Ned."
"You don't know anything about anything." But George's face had turned red. "Go away."
"Take it back, George. Take back everything you said about me."
"Never will. Now get out!'
Richard paused next to the door. "You'll wish you never said those things."
George did not answer. Richard felt his hands shaking as he made his way back to his own room, slamming the door behind him. George was lying. He had to be lying.
But, came the small voice from the back of his mind, what if he wasn't? He'd never seen other boys' mothers, had assumed his was normal. And yet she never spoke to him as she did to Ned and George. He'd heard enough whispers over the past few years, though he had managed to ignore them till now. After all, Father wanted useful secrets, not silly rumours.
Well. If Mother hated him, what did it matter? It was Father whose good opinion he wanted. But George still needed to be punished; after all, he'd given his word. Through the open window, he could hear the birds in the garden. Richard smiled.
When George had left to meet a friend at the picturehouse, Richard crept back into his room. The canary chirped cheerfully at him as he opened the cage and took it out. It continued chirping until he heard the delicate bones snap beneath his fingers. Tossing it back into the cage, he wiped his hands on the coverlet and closed the door behind him.
Father just assumed George had been careless. Richard blinked back tears and hugged little sobbing Edmund when they buried the bird in the garden, and contented himself with the fact that George never said anything about their mother again.
Sometimes Father would leave for days, even weeks at a time. This was happening more and more often as Richard neared his fifteenth birthday. Then, one night, he crept down from his room at the sound of voices in the front hall.
"...Richard, are you mad? You can't possibly trust her." It was his mother, her bright hair gleaming beneath the gaslamps. "And Suffolk? Truly?"
"No, I don't trust either of them," Father replied, his voice weighed down with weariness. "But they want Humphrey Lancaster dead, of that I have no doubt, and I have my own plans for them once he's out of the way. We should stay away from here for a few weeks, I think. What do you say to a holiday?"
Humphrey Lancaster. Richard mouthed the name to himself. It was Eleanor Cobham's husband, the one Father didn't like.
"Richard, what are you planning?"
"Just trust me, darling. It will all turn out well."
When they arrived in Ireland, the news greeted them, splashed across lurid headlines all over the papers. Anarchists had attacked every piece of property owned by Henry Lancaster and burned down his house, supposedly as some sort of protest. The family themselves had been elsewhere at the time, but the body of Henry's personal solicitor, Suffolk, had been found in a nearby skip. Without a head. When she caught him reading about that, Richard's mother had snatched away the paper.
Richard settled himself on the window seat in Ned's room to sulk. During their journey, Father had begun to pay far more attention to Ned. Ned, who had just finished school and was almost as tall as Father, who could make their mother smile and everyone else laugh. Who could go out wherever and whenever he wanted, as Richard could not.
He had never questioned the way things were before. Richard had always stayed inside. Even when on holiday, it was always the same. He did not go to school; tutors came to him, their eyes downcast and their pockets heavy with extra funds. He never spoke to the men who served his father; his job was to observe and remember. And, most importantly, whenever they had visitors, Richard stayed upstairs, out of sight.
"But why?" he demanded now, hurling the question at Ned as he finished knotting his tie. "Why can't I go out?"
"Why can't you just do as you're told?"
"Is it because I can't walk properly? I'm doing better now. Maître Foucauld told me I might even be better than you," he added smugly. "He says I'm good at spotting weaknesses."
"That's not surprising," Ned said absently. He was fiddling with his cufflinks. "Look, Dickon, it's nothing serious. I'm just going out to have a bit of fun."
"Ned."
His brother glanced at him, and Richard had the impression that Ned was seeing him for the first time. "How old are you, Dickon?"
"Fifteen," Richard said, frowning. "Why?"
"I think I've got a birthday gift for you." His smile was mischievous, all sweetness and charm. "We're going to sneak you out of the house."
Richard raised his eyebrows. "How?"
"You'll see."
In the end, it was no more complicated than slipping down the servants' staircase and through the garden. Richard wondered briefly if it had always been that easy. There was a black car waiting in the street, and Ned pushed him inside before giving the driver an address that Richard did not catch. Just as he had when they arrived from the docks, he gazed raptly from the window, as if trying to memorise everything he saw.
"Father will kill us both," he said, almost to himself. "But," glancing at Ned with a smile, "I think it's worth it."
"You shouldn't be cooped up like that," Ned told him with a shrug. "Mother's just being old-fashioned, and Father's indulging her."
They drew up to a house on a small, quiet street and Ned stepped out. "Wait here. I'll come back for you."
Richard wondered if he was imagining the sound of the driver snickering. He peered from the window again as Ned's shadow blocked his view briefly. "Ned, where are we?" he whispered.
"You'll see," his brother said with a smile.
The door opened into a haze of scent and cigarette smoke, white skin gleaming against pink velvet. The candelabras and chandeliers were garishly painted, and mirrors lined the walls. Richard's eyes flickered round in sudden fear, aware of the eyes that had begun to follow them. Ned was deep in conversation with a woman he could not quite see, and Richard moved closer to him, nerves causing his fingers to twitch spasmodically.
Ned could have taken him anywhere. To a music-hall or a ballroom, to a lecture or the theatre. Someplace dark, isolated, where he could see without being seen. But Ned had brought him here. To a brothel.
"...Dickon?" Ned's voice, from just behind him. "Come on, now."
The painted faces had been no more than a blur at first, but he now began to read them, watch the calculation in the eyes, the thoughtful pursing of the lips. Ned, he observed, was offering familiar smiles to no small number of them. Richard wondered briefly if Ned cared for anything more than a warm body and came to the negative conclusion. "Ned, I'm not sure about this."
"Nonsense. It's about time." Ned took him by the arm--his good arm--and marched him through the corridors behind the woman. He found himself thrust into a small room mostly filled with a bed. The woman lying there started, eyes widening. "Who are you?"
"I'm..." he trailed off, throwing a panicked glance at the door, "I don't know what's going on."
She charged past him into the corridor to where Ned was flirting with a blonde woman in green, and dealt him a stinging slap. "What sort of joke is this?"
"Joke?" Ned glared, rubbing his cheek. "That's my younger brother. You'd do well to treat him properly."
"You can't be serious." The woman turned and stared. "He doesn't look a thing like you. For one thing, he's a--"
"Go ahead, say it!" Richard heard himself speak the words aloud, lit with bitter laughter. "A cripple. A freak. A monster, maybe?"
"Dickon--"
He shoved Ned aside and heard him curse as his leg slammed into a nearby table. "That's right," he pitched his voice to the entire room, limping forward until he reached the centre. "Look your fill. Isn't it marvellous? Just grand? You--" he pointed to the woman from the bedroom, "--how much would you charge? Every man has his price, why not every woman? What's yours?"
"Dickon, stop this." Ned was pulling on his bad arm, and Richard pushed him hard.
"Get the hell away from me!"
Ned was staring at him now, shock and hurt writ large across his face. He didn't know. God help him, he didn't know. Richard turned away from him and strode through the door.
Waiting just outside was Warwick. "Ah, Richard. Your father requests your presence. Both of you. There's been a complication in London, and you're to leave immediately."
Richard gazed back at the door for a moment. Then, turning back to Warwick, he said, "Ned's vanished, I'm afraid. I haven't seen him in nearly an hour."
Warwick muttered several choice phrases under his breath as Richard hid his smile. Then, turning, they made their way into the darkness of the alley.