Chapter Text
"Oi!" Jack elbowed him in the side and Matthew sat up straight for once. "Perk up, we're out of the city today!"
Matthew smacked his brother's elbows off and Jack let him, good-naturedly ducking and sitting back at his own chair. His sleeve must have caught the table clothes because all of a sudden the entire platter of deviled kippers was halfway off the table.
"Goddamn it, Jack," Matt barely caught the fucking thing and shoved it back to safety.
"Oops, sorry!" He rolled his cuffs up, flicked back brown hair and Matthew sighed. Hopeless, absolutely hopeless.
"You're just keen to waste your allowance at the races, " Zee said from the doorway. She looked grumpy, scowling and tugging at the sash of her dressing gown and pulling her braid over her shoulder in a last-ditch attempt to look presentable.
If she ever wanted, Father would have allowed her to take breakfast in bed as was fashionable with other wealthy men's daughters but she always made the march to the breakfast table as if to make a point of it. Even when it was clear she didn't want to be up. She crossed the space and tugged the tablecloth to rights.
"Course I am," Jack said, bypassing the kippers he'd nearly upended for sausage and munching on one as if he needed something in his belly that very moment or he'd die before he even got toast on his plate.
"You lose every time," Zee sighed, sitting down to breakfast across from them and reaching for the teapot. White porcelain with little sprays of blue flowers to match the plates and cups and saucers, the set matched the newly repainted room and the blue velvet upholstery under them.
"So? It's spending the old man's money," Jack said. "If he's got to drag us to England, I'm getting something out of it. Toss up some eggs, would ya?" He raised his voice and lifted his plate to where Eleanor could reach the cups of softboiled eggs. Matthew buried his face into his arm as a spike of pain throbbed through his brain.
"Get 'em yourself, bludger," She said and stuck out her tongue.
"Aww, Kiwi," Jack slapped his plate back onto the table and another surge of ache knocked into Matthew's brain like a rail spike to the skull as what must have been the entire collection of eggs came down on their end of the table. The sound was an assault and he pressed the back of his hand to his mouth so the jolt didn't send the aspirin he'd managed to swallow that morning back up and onto the table.
"Thank you!" Jack said enthusiastically. Loudly. Matthew moaned and wished he hadn't been born.
"Oi," Zee said, poking him with a fork in the shoulder. "How much absinth did you get into last night?"
"Too much," He said and glanced up when he felt a mist of something on his forearm. Jack gestured violently at him with a spear of toast soldiers he hadn't yet dunked into the small army of soft boiled egg soldiers in front of him.
"Did you try to keep up with Uncle Alasdair?"
"Quit that," Matthew said, brushing him off and sitting up to brush crumbs from his hair. "You're not five,"
"Well did you?" Zee asked lightly, smearing marmalade on brown toast with one of the good pewter knives.
"I can keep up fine," Matthew replied and massaged his temples.
"Until the next morning," Jack snorted. He'd arranged himself much more neatly now, awake enough to finally get some coordination. Matthew groaned. The headache washed over him anew and he was so very tempted to smash his entire skull into the good mahogany cabinet that lined the wall beyond his sister's back.
"Are you going to be sick?" Zee asked.
"No," Matthew said. "So long as someone doesn't keep shouting the roof down," He glared at his brother and Jack carried on eating, oblivious. Glancing up he saw Zee pulling the cuffs of her dressing gown back over her wrists and shoving the stack of toast at him.
"Well I suppose it's better than last time," Zee said, pointing at the two of them with a well-aimed stab of her fork. "The last time either of you went to those ghastly 'gentlemen's clubs' with Father you were kneeling over the toilet for a week,"
"Reckon that was the point," Jack returned, petulant. "Let us go wild so we wouldn't do it again,"
"Fine job that did," Zee laughed and her laugh, like a properly tuned piano, didn't normally grate on him like the rasps he would normally use to smooth out a particularly nice piece of oak but today he wished they'd all shut up. She peered over her cup of tea at him, brow drawn low in thought. "You seem more hungover than usual, even for you. Is everything all right?"
"Economic panic," Matthew grunted.
"Well, why are we just chipper-di-do then?" Jack asked, and cleared his throat to cough. "Boody smog aside,"
"I didn't say it was my economic panic," Matt snapped back. "Alfred's the one who went and tanked his economy,"
"What's that got to do with you?" Jack asked and Matt wanted to snap at him to go look at a fucking map before he shoved an entire maritime atlas up his ass, but Jack was the sweeter of his brothers and he never quite could snap like that. He was saved from responding by their father marching in for breakfast like he meant to capture the pile of deviled kidneys they never touched with a whole charge of the light brigade. Seeing Father already dressed in a full three-piece green checked suit rather than his usual dressing gown and a hangover they each straightened up and automatically set their shoulders back. The movement sent another spike of pain up his neck like someone was using his spine like a fucking ramrod into the base of his skull. His vision swam.
Father swooped to give Zee a kiss on the cheek.
"Good morning," Father said before he straightened and gave Jack and Matt matching nods. "Boys,"
"Father," Matt responded dimly.
"Good morning, Papa," Zee said dutifully though her face twisted when father turned to collect his preferred breakfast. Jack rolled his eyes at her. She stuck out her tongue and Jack had to swallow a snort that turned into another brief round of coughing. Matt glared at him as Zee resumed her act, swinging her braid to her other shoulder and standing.
"Tea, Papa?"
"Please," He said, distantly taking his place at the head of the table with the mail and newspaper as Zee poured Darjeeling and milk into a delicate blue and white teacup and scooped in as much sugar as she could get to dissolve before setting the tea in front of him.
"There you are,"
"Thank you, darling," Their father said, distractedly. Jack made silent gagging motions and waved his hands about pretending to simper with a cup of tea, pinky out as he took a false sip. "Tea with her majesty," He mouthed at them.
Matt kicked him under the table, in no mood for his father's half-hour lecture on proper behaviour if he saw. Zee, god bless her, had the good grace to shove the eggs between her brothers. Matt was contemplating the wisdom of a cup when the pounding in his skull began its assault on him anew.
"Not eating, lad?" Father nodded to him.
"What?" Matt blinked at him
"You've not any breakfast before you, Matthew," He nodded through the teacup at the bare table before Matt.
"Haven't properly woken up yet, sir," He responded dully.
"Want anything in your tea?" Jack said. He'd somehow teleported across the room to the breakfast board.
"No," Matt said. He always took it black.
"At least begin on some eggs, Matthew, goodness. I want all of you well fed today," Arthur said, and for once, looked to be in a good mood. "We're off to the Coventry house today! Much to do," He stabbed his deviled kidneys and returned to his stack of mail.
"Of course, Papa," Zee said. Matt wasn't really listening, he was watching Jack fuss with a second teacup after he'd dumped milk and sugar into his own. Jack could eat sugar cubes by the handful like one of the horses. But Matt couldn't see anything suspicious when Jack set it before him
"That'll cure what ails ya," Jack clapped him on the back and Zee shovelled eggs onto his plate.
"At least pretend," She hissed.
He took a sip of tea and burst into coughing. Whatever it was Jack had dumped into it was at least ninety proof.
Father looked up, irritated with the interruption.
"Good God," He said, scowling into the letter. "It's control yourself unless you've come down consumptive. Really, for Christ's sake, you lot are in fine form today!"
"Sorry— wrong pipe," Matt choked out and swallowed another gulp, suddenly loving the warm sensation in his toes. Hair of the dog didn't seem to hurt much.
"Is that rum? You put in that?" Zee hissed at them. Oh right, she was into temperance these days.
"Right you are," Jack grinned and slapped Matt on the back again. "Bleedin' cold around here,"
"It's May." Matthew pointed out, now much perkier, if slightly lightheaded.
"As I said, cold!"
Father suddenly was moving, slamming the post down onto the table. "Which of you ingrates spent nigh five hundred pounds at a Parisian flesh monger?"
Jack stared at Matt as Matt stared back. Usually, that would be him. But he hadn't been to Paris in months since checking in on Father's accounts. And he'd been wasted the night before but in the company of their uncle, not any
"Father?" Matthew swallowed and ventured. "Which Parisian flesh monger?"
"Maison Anglais!" Arthur declared. "Four hundred and 90 pounds. Good LORD,"
"That must be a mistake it wasn't—" Matt said before he felt something make a bruising impact on his shins. Zee was staring intently at him.
Seriously? Matt thought and it must have shown on his face because she was mouthing Please, at him. He scowled at her and took another sip.
"Well?" Their father exclaimed. He looked ready to flog someone. Matthew panicked, Arther slapped a palm onto the table "What on earth did you spend that much on?"
"Drinks?" Matt said, utterly at a loss. All the acts against God and decency he'd ever committed with his fly undone blanked from his mind. "Just... pounded... drinks... all night,"
"Oh, I'm sure something received a proper pounding all night," Father said, exasperated. "Well if you've got that much extra energy to spend four hundred pounds on your sinning, you can bloody well help load the luggage today, see if that tires you out enough. Really, Matthew nearly five hundred pounds! That's a fortune!"
"Yes, Father," Matt slammed his head into his hands.
"Oh, don't bloody pout. I didn't raise you too—" Matt blanked out the rest of the lecture. Zee's eyes flashed apologetically at him. Oh, she so owed him.
He hauled luggage and unpacked half the household goods that had accompanied them on the train. Banished to lunch with the servants in the country house, he was then shuffled off to the stables. Father had gone easy on him. It was a rare sunny day for May in the lake district. Here, the difference between the sky and the ground was almost nothing. Everything was always equally damp and it was warm enough he'd removed the old, grubby waistcoat with just enough life left in it to serve as shit-shovelling clothes.
He looked at the stalls and prepared himself. The nausea of the hangover had returned after the rum-laced tea wore off. If he hadn't been about to hurl, shit shovelling wasn't so foul a chore, really. Raking out the straw, flinging it into the wagon saved exactly for such purposes and putting down fresh as the horses would be returning from the races that night wasn't the worst thing he'd ever done in his life. It was lonely, the other stable hands avoided him like the plague. No other lords anyone ever worked for or heard of ever shunned their sons to heap manure as a punishment. But his father had not always been rich and still knew the value of hard work. He was about to begin when Zee appeared.
She was dressed in her good riding habit, coat over one arm. The navy serge set with the two legs of a split skirt that let her ride astride. Father didn't permit either so much as he just ignored them he ever saw the skirt or Zee riding like a man on her racer that he had originally bought for Jack. Matthew stomped the shovel into the hardpacked earthen floor of the stables and leaned on it. She hesitated, hovering in the doorway like she didn't know what to do, hanging onto the frame and stepping in and out. He waited.
"I'm sorry," She finally blurted.
"Don't be," He said softly. He wasn't angry with her. "Do you want me to saddle Waiata?" Her sweet, if somewhat quick-tempered mare, was in the last stall with the other riding horses.
"And Boreas?" She said, nodding to his own dun-coloured horse. He raised a brow at her.
"I have shit to shovel,"
"I told father I was feeling poorly and required an escort,"
"He's been reading about fresh air warding off the consumption again then?" Matt laughed shaking his head. Father got all sorts of notions about health in his mind even since some German said it was bacteria.
She grinned. "Yes,"
"But since when do you need an escort?"
"Since it gets you out of shovelling shit," She said bluntly, tugging the bodice of her jacket down.
"I don't mind shovelling shit though,"
"I want to explain myself,"
"You don't have to," He said. "It's none of my business,"
"Just help me saddle them and let's go down and ride on the beach. You look like you need fresh air. Are you still sick?"
Matt chuckled and nodded. "I think I've got gin in my pores,"
"Jesus," She shook her head, kilted up her skirts and stepped around the horse shit to bridle Waiata who nickered happily, pleased to see her.
They saddled their horses. The coat she'd held was actually his and covered up his choring clothes well enough if anyone saw them from a distance. It seemed like the entire county was off at the races though, and they didn't see anyone the entire journey down. Eleanor was silent, and Matthew wondered just what the hell had gotten into her. European flesh mongers? She was supposed to be at a finishing school when on the continent, not the Paris redlight whorehouses. But he also couldn't judge. If she'd been a boy, he wouldn't have. He'd done worse on his Grand Tour. The two followed the curve of the hills from father's property down the seashore. Ever a navy man, Father would never be far from the sea, even when selecting a country home. They rode gently, in no hurry.
"So what happened?" Matthew finally asked, patting Borea's neck. "How did you end up in Paris? Another one of your reforming initiatives? Off to spread the gospel of suffrage to the slums of Paris?"
Eleanor flushed spectacularly. She hadn't gotten father's fish-belly pale complexion, but had gotten his freckles and went so red they disappeared from her cheeks. She ignored the stab at her political extracurriculars. "No,"
He let her answer in her own time, looking out over the water. The Irish Sea was slightly green than grey for once, the mild day reflecting a pale grey-blue sky on the washed-out brackish green of the water. Lines of white caps frothed like lacy petticoat hems across the view and he could hear but not see an albatross.
"My roommate was a bohemian," Zee said, clearing her throat. "She wore trousers,"
"It's apparently becoming fashionable in America," He said lightly, hoping this conversation wasn't going where he thought it was.
"Not the way she did," Zee said. "Father only permits me trousers or tea gowns when he's in a panic over corsets causing consumption. Alice wore them everywhere she could get away with it. She was in Paris over our break and I went to join her. I had three months of allowance saved up and decided to make a trip out of it,"
"I'll say," Matthew said. "Thats one hell of a trip you took. Five hundred pounds? You could buy a house ten times over,"
"Father's never let me go anywhere without you or Jack or a chaperone and I was off my head," She said, ducking under her hat brim.
He sighed. "You could have told me ages ago. I would have paid it and Dad wouldn't have found out,"
"I panicked," She confessed, tugging on the reins and kicking her heels into Waiata's flanks. "It was so much money and I learned about things I think they send you to prison for here. I didn't know my body could even—" She said in awe in a tone Matthew really didn't like.
"I don't need to know," He gagged a little. "Christ,"
"You already know! and now I know just it is you do under girls' skirts for six hours at a time," Zee snapped back.
It was his turn to flush. "Eleanor!"
"What?" She said. "I thought for years you were hiding from Father down there under those bloody birdcages," She gave him a wry look. "But turns out Catholics get down on their knees for more than just the virgin,"
"Apparently Anglicans do now too,"
"Hey, I've got some Presbyterians too,"
"I'll tell Uncle Alasdair, I'm sure he'll be thrilled," He sighed tugged the reins and clicked his tongue and felt Zee hustle her own horse along to keep pace. Eventually he just shrugged. "I just get cold,"
"So does Jack," She shot back. "But I don't think it ever even occurred to him humans shag, just the sheep,"
"Jack..."
"Is distractable," She finished. "Whereas I—"
"I have heard way more about that than I ever needed to," Matt said, shuddering and cutting her off. "I don't need to know any of the details. But next time you want to go traipsing off to spend half the annual budget of the entire empire on wine women and song, just tell me first and we'll make an excuse to make a trip to Paris. New clothes or something. I don't need to know what you get up to, but Father is going to hold this against me for years and it can't happen again, all right?"
She wheeled her horse around with a click of her tongue and he tugged Borea to a halt. She stared him down, searching for something. She didn't find whatever she was looking for, or maybe she did because she nodded and heaved a breath. "You are... incredibly even-tempered for someone who's going to be on father's personal hit list for a decade,"
"Father leaves for India in a week anyway," He sighed. She'd gotten him out of most of his initial punishment, but there was nothing they could do with just how unpleasant Father would be for the next week. Constant barbs and comments and scolding and criticism. But Matthew had spent plenty of time like that with Father. "And it's not like he thinks much of me, to begin with,"
She didn't reply. The albatross cried again. Their silence was awkward. Everything was going to be unpleasant for a week so he thought he may as well appreciate the quiet. His head ached still but he didn't mind it so much as they plodded along and he listened to the waves. They sounded the same here as they did at home. Eleanor took her time and Matthew felt no need to rush her response. If she wanted to say something, she would. The wind picked up from the south, warm and at odds with the cool shore air. The salt always felt good, especially now.
"Mattie?" She said after another long moment. She sounded very young and he felt terrible for making her feel guilty. He felt sand flick against his thighs as her horse trotted slightly ahead of him.
"Yes?"
"I'm sorry about this," She said and he looked at her, shrugging. Zee was hunched over Waiata's neck, her face buried in her main. "I'm really sorry,"
"It'll be fine," Matt said. "I appreciate that, but I'd rather you asked for the cover than have been honest about it,"
She looked startled. "Why?"
"You're a girl," He shrugged. "You've got it harder than me or Jack,"
"Not that much harder," She mumbled. He remembered what it was like to be punished for things you stumbled upon without realizing it.
"Hard enough," He said. "If anything like that ever happens again, all you need do is tell me about it, all right?"
She nodded. "Thank you,"