Work Text:
No one ever remembers to invite Niall to their dinner parties.
It’s honestly rude. Niall’s the sort of guy who would do very well at a dinner party. He’s got stories. He has a sympathetic ear. He could charm all the aristocracy who for some reason have nothing better to do with their time than eat five courses of poorly seasoned food.
Niall loves poorly seasoned food. The less seasoning, the better.
But no. Once again, invitations have been given out and yet Niall has been left wanting.
“I don’t want to go to this terrible dinner party,” Harry moans.
Niall sighs. He rolls his eyes. “And yet,” he says. “You have to. Your betrothed will be there.”
“My accidental betrothed!” Harry yelps. “That doesn’t even count!” Throwing himself back onto the sofa, he purses his lips. “He hasn’t even given me a ring.”
“I’m sure he has some grand ceremony in the works,” Niall says, dismissively. “He’s probably going to have his hermit paint you in the nude or something.”
“Ew,” says Harry. “No thank you.”
“You can’t just tell a rich guy’s hermit what to do.”
“I can if the rich guy has specifically asked me to tailor the hermit’s outfits,” Harry says. He sighs dramatically. “I have to be careful though, I have to make sure they look significantly worse than whatever I make for anyone in town or else I might hurt their feelings.”
Niall has seen the hermit outfit Harry has been working on. It includes a fair amount of moss and twigs. Somehow, he does not think that Harry is in danger of hurting anyone’s feelings. If anything, he’s in danger of hurting the hermit’s backside. With the twigs.
“Well if you would rather, I can always attend the dinner party in your place,” he ventures.
“I’m fairly certain that the Duke would be rather upset about that,” Harry says. But he says it slowly, like he’s seriously considering it. Sometimes Niall thinks that Harry and the Duke are two sides of the same brain and neither of them are working at full capacity. “Plus, Niall, you don’t want to go to a stuffy dinner party! You don’t like that sort of thing!”
“You are, once again, confusing what I like with what you like,” Niall points out. “But nice try. Now show me the matching outfits I know you’re making for yourself and the Duke.”
“I’m not making us matching outfits,” Harry immediately argues, his cheeks tinting pink. “They’re complimentary.”
“Yuh-huh,” Niall says. “Come on, I don’t have all night.”
He really does have all night, but it’s better to let an air of mystery settle around him. Harry definitely thinks that he’s very mysterious by now.
—
The thing about Niall is that he has a lot of free time on his hands, and a need to make it everyone’s problem. Harry’s sister getting married had been a godsend because it meant more free time for Niall to spend bugging him. Harry’s acquiring an accidental suitor, on the other hand, has had the opposite effect and he’s suddenly found himself in need of creating more of a spectacle to satisfy his need for attention.
A suitor who can’t even be bothered to invite Harry’s closet compatriot to their dinner party. Incredibly rude and selfish on his part. How dare he.
No one can blame Niall, then, for simply doing a bit of skulking around the bushes outside of the Duke’s manor and scoping out the place. It’s not like anyone would notice him out here; the grounds are huge and the gardener seems to be slacking a bit on his pruning duties, especially near the hermit’s cottage.
“You know, most people enter a dinner party through the front door.”
Niall glances up from where he is expertly crouched among the begonias. A man with messy sandy hair and cheeks that look very squeezable stands behind him. “You have a point,” says Niall. “Most people are into that sort of thing. I, however, like to do things at my own pace.”
The man behind him nods. “Yes, I rather think that it’s easier to join a gathering after getting the lay of the land. Especially if you’re prone to bouts of bowel issues. Good to know what dark corners you can drop trou in without being on display.”
Niall stands, dusting off his clothes. “Yes, you understand perfectly,” he says. “I simply like knowing what I’m walking into.”
“I’m sure it has nothing to do with the fact that Louis didn’t invite you or nothing,” the man says.
Niall scoffs. “Who the Duke did or didn’t invite is none of my business,” he says.
“Mine neither. Just making casual conversation.”
“Yes. Expertly casual. Excellent weather we’re having, what a nice hermit hut that is.”
“The weather’s threatening rain and the hermit hut is a little low on spiders for my taste. How about I give you, esteemed guest of the Duke himself, a tour of the kitchens? Since who the Duke did and didn’t invite is none of your or my business.”
Niall looks back at the tall windows of the manor. A few familiar faces have begun to appear inside, although Harry has yet to arrive. “I suppose I could get a tour of the kitchens—” he pauses. “Unless you are the type who doesn’t actually work for the Duke and instead lures people who may or may not be guests into the kitchens in order to bake them into meat pies.”
The man nods thoughtfully. “That’s very quick thinking on your part, you’ve unraveled my dastardly plot. Since you have revealed my true plan, I will change my ways and instead take up the role of the Duke’s head cook. Come, I, Lewis, head of the kitchens, will give you a proper tour now that I have changed my ways.”
Niall holds a straight face but it takes some effort. He sees, now, that this man is just as much in the business of making trouble as he is, and oh he does appreciate that. “Certainly, since you have reformed your ways it is only good and right that I give you the benefit of the doubt. I, Niall, prospective guest, shall gladly take you up on that tour.”
He brushes leaves and dirt off of his clothes as he follows this Lewis fellow to the back entrance of the kitchens.
—
Lewis Capaldi, as he further reveals himself to be, is the head cook of the Duke’s manor, and Niall is starting to think that Duke hires people based only on whether they are the type who are brave enough to speak their mind to him.
“We made enough sticky toffy pudding to feed the whole of the kingdom,” Lewis says. “Because Louis has the taste buds of a small and angry child who can only be pacified by sweets. And dinner’s a lamb stew but the bread is all fresh from the bakery in town because when I knead bread he says it makes me too violent afterward.”
Niall nods as he wanders along behind Lewis. “And what do you do when you’re in a violent bread mood?”
“Mostly just yell at him about how Scotland needs to be its own independent land again,” Lewis says. “And then he goes and says things like, Yes, I know, but the Queen won’t let me back into her castle since I ranted to her about it last time, which I think is a poor excuse.”
“It is a poor excuse,” Niall agrees. “You should knead bread more often.”
“I’ll consider it, thank you. Anyway, if you’re looking to sneak into the dinner party, the servant’s entrance is over there and if you go through now before everybody is seated, you’ll be able to make it look like you’ve just come from the front hall.”
Niall does consider it. He was initially only here to sneak into the dinner party to worm his way into the Duke’s good graces so that he could be there to see the drama when he does make a big show of giving Harry a ring, but—
“You wouldn’t happen to know any of his plans concerning how madly in love with his tailor he is, do you?”
Lewis huffs. “He won’t shut up about the poor lad. He spent the better half of a week trying to convince me to put the ring in the tailor’s bowl of stew, and I kept saying that I was not going to do that because if the man chokes and dies it is not going to be in a way that I could be tried as treasonous for.”
“To be fair, I don’t think it’s treason to kill a tailor, I think it’s just murder.”
“It’s treason if the tailor is supposed to marry a Duke. Imagine if a man with that much sway wanted to actually use his power for something other than harassing the man he made live in the woods back there, and his poor tailor? We’d be done for.”
Niall nods. He has had that thought. “Alright, so no ring in the stew. Ring in the pudding?”
“No jewelry in any food!” Lewis shouts, throwing up his hands. “I made Liam carry the ring. His butler, you know. I don’t know anyone who’s suffered as much as he has, but Liam isn’t even here to try to climb the latter to Scottish independence! He just seems to, I don’t know, like the guy or something.”
“Rumor has it he’s fucking the hermit,” Niall points out.
“Rumor has it wrong, he’s not going to do that until Louis lets the hermit bathe.”
“Hmm.” Niall’s going to have to correct his sources. “So the Duke’s butler has the ring, then.”
“Yes. And I don’t give a rat’s ass what he does with it, although I get the feeling that Louis’ trying to get him to do a fun little dance.”
“Oh, Harry would love a fun little dance,” Niall says.
“Well better him than me. If Liam did a fun little dance in my direction, I think I’d weep. It’s like when you’re at the circus and the elephant does a little turnabout. You know it’s not natural, it just makes you sad.”
Niall nods. He does get that. “Is it happening tonight?”
“Before dessert is served, if everything goes well,” Lewis says. “Which, knowing Louis, it will not.”
Niall gets that too. “Then I think, if it’s all the same to you, I’d like to stay back here until the main event.”
“It’s all the same to me. I will be imbibing enough wine to be pleasantly pleased no matter how the night turns out, and you’re welcome to join me, but if you breathe a word of this to Louis, I’ll throw you in the river like I did Liam when he tried to suggest I under salted the pork.”
Ah. Poor lad.
“I won’t breathe a word as long as you let me have a bite of the stew. No bread, though, I like to know the man who kneaded my dough personally.”
Lewis eyes him. “I’ll keep that in mind for next time,” he says thoughtfully.