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“I would very much like to purchase some horses, Liam.”
Liam sighs. It is a deep, heartfelt, beleaguered sigh. “Sire,” he says. “Your gathering starts in only a few hours.”
Louis— the Duke— scoffs. “That’s plenty of time,” he says.
It’s really, really not.
“I was simply thinking that we only have the few old horses for riding and for the carriage— surely we need some fresh young blood to liven up the stables?”
The centre of town is so close that Liam knows Louis himself rarely rides. Plus, their groundskeeper has doubled as their stablehand for the last few years after the previous one quit in a huff when Louis suggested that they try to breed for spots, to make a herd of cow-horses.
“I will have a look at the books,” Liam hedges, diplomatically. “We will need to make arrangements. One cannot adopt a new animal without clearing a proper home for it, of course.”
Louis nods. “Like the hermit’s house,” he says. “Yes, I understand. How is our hermit doing, by the by? I hope he will be attending this evening.”
Liam stops himself from pinching the bridge of his nose. “Yes, sire,” he says. “He is happy that you find his art satisfactory enough to hold a dinner party around it, and he has said that he would love to be in attendance.”
Louis nods. “Excellent, excellent. I cannot wait to show him off.”
Many times Liam has questioned why the Lord has seen fit to place him in this position, a manservant to the most… eccentric duke this side of London.
He is counting down the hours until the last houseguest leaves.
—
“You’re in a terrible rotten mood,” says Zayn. The hermit. The hermit named Zayn, former duke who refuses to return to dukedom and would rather live out his days wearing artful sacks and leaves.
“I am in no worse a mood than I have ever been before,” Liam snaps, knowing full well how nonsensical that sounds. He collects himself. “The Duke would like you to be aware that guests will be arriving at six and he requests your presence in the parlour, but that he would love it if you would bring that walking stick you have and stoop a little.”
Zayn, reclining on his nest of blankets in his artfully rundown cottage, grins in a way that wrinkles his nose and his eyes. “I can play the part,” he says. “What if I shave off my beard, though? I could paste it together and put it back on, but then halfway through the night I’ll tear it off and rise to my full height, and maybe I’ll say something about angels in disguise and helping the least of these.”
Liam’s arms are full of portraits that Zayn has sketched in charcoal or painted in oils. Most of the portraits are of Liam in increasingly ridiculous poses and increasingly less clothes. Liam is tired. “If you do that,” he says, “I will throw you into the bog and hold you down until peat moss grows out your ears.”
“Ooh you are in a mood,” Zayn laughs. His teeth pinch the sides of his tongue when he does a real, true laugh. Liam hates that he knows that. He hates that he likes it. Zayn doesn’t bathe.
(He uses oil and a strigil, because he says that that’s how it should be done, but Liam argues that as they are not in Rome, olive oil is not as plentiful as Zayn would like and he does have a budget to think of).
“Please,” Liam sighs. “Please just be at the manor at the appropriate hour and look appropriately dishevelled.”
“As you wish,” Zayn says, leaning back and running his fingers through his beard. “But only because i do not wish you to suffer angina if I were to do anything worse.”
“I will take what I can get,” mutters Liam.
—
If there is one thing, just one thing, that Liam is eternally grateful for, it is that Harry Styles, tailor, has never offered to dress Liam up the way he does Louis. The few outfits that Liam has are simple, comfortable, and black. They are not flamboyant. They are not garish.
“Oh this is just so fitting, don’t you think, Liam?”
Louis turns this way and that in front of the mirror, admiring the flamboyant and garish monstrosity that Liam knows he absolutely loves. It has six coattails. It has ruffles on the sleeves and at the neck. The cuffs of the trousers are disturbingly high, showing off his ankles as if he is a modern maiden.
“Yes, he seems to have tailored it to fit you perfectly, sire,” Liam says. With the amount of suits that Harry has made for Louis, that is a given at this point.
Louis scoffs. “You know what I mean,” he says. “It’s so— it’s so—”
“Colourful,” Liam supplies.
“Colourful,” Louis says. He smiles. It’s such a ridiculously contented, happy smile. Like this terrible monstrosity he has donned really is everything he has ever wanted.
“I am glad it satisfies you,” Liam says.
“Of course it does,” Louis nods. “I would expect nothing less from my future husband.”
“Please remember your plans,” Liam sighs. “Sire. Please remember to actually ask him tonight.”
“Of course I will,” Louis says, affronted.
“As opposed to merely telling him that you are engaged. Again.”
Scoffing, Louis walks over to his wardrobe and pulls out the cushion with the ring. “This is how they do it in Austria,” he says. “With a ring, you know.”
Liam does know. Louis has told him. Many times.
“I would suggest you pull him aside and do it in private later on in the evening,” he says slowly. “He may not like a show.”
Louis nods. “Yes,” he says. “It will at least be after dinner, you’re right.”
Liam thinks that Louis took in very little of what he just said. “In private,” he tries again.
Louis blinks at him.
“Okay,” says Liam.
—
A dinner party needs a number of guests, or else it is simply a gathering. Louis does not travel to London as much as he used to, but he does still have connections that would make a lesser man dizzy. Liam stands at the entrance to the manor and bows again and again, greeting faces that he has to wrack his brain to remember the names that match. Sir Nicholas Grimshaw, Miss Perrie Edwards, Sir Scottland Mills, Madam Bebebe Rex. The faces continue. The names continue. Sir Stephen Aoki, Miss Josette Masking—
Sir Simon Cowell. Louis’ social enemy. Liam gives him a bow of greeting and makes note. How did he get here? Louis surely didn’t send him an invitation.
The guests mill about the entryway and say polite things to each other and, to Liam’s abject horror, are immediately drawn to the various pieces of art put up around the hall. Louis flits between the groups, his laugh a beacon like that of a lighthouse as he greets old friends and catches up and shows off the works of his very… special hermit.
“This man looks familiar,” one of the guests says, gazing up at a charcoal piece where Zayn had insisted Liam pose doing the splits— or something akin to them at least. Liam is simply not made to be that sort of flexible.
“Yes, he does…” Another guest says. For a moment Liam fears that they will turn to him— honestly, Zayn does have his likeness down— but then the second guest continues. “I think he’s the same one in that painting over there!”
Well.
Liam is the one in every painting, so. They’re not incorrect.
He breathes a sigh of relief.
Harry Styles is one of the last guests to arrive, and it is very apparent that he has made an outfit that perfectly complements the one he has given to Louis. They’re both atrocious. Liam has never seen material that bright or polka dots that… vibrant. How did he get these textiles? Why did he decide to do frills at the waist when the coat goes down to his thighs?
“Hello Liam,” Harry says, nodding to him. “Have you seen… Niall, anywhere? Niall, my Irish friend?”
Liam blinks. “I have not,” he says. And then, tactfully, “I don’t… believe I remember him getting an invitation.”
Harry shakes his head. “Oh, he didn’t,” he says. “That’s why I’m concerned. I’ve not seen him for most of the day and when I was on my way here earlier I saw someone I thought could be him— but surely it’s nothing.”
Liam has never been more sure that something is not nothing in his life, but he chooses to put that thought out of his mind. Louis is walking around with a suspiciously cushion-shaped bulge in his trousers and his social enemy Simon Cowell has shown up. Also, Zayn has at the last minute added a drawing of Liam with his ass in the air that Liam is fairly sure he did not pose for, so all in all, Harry’s friend Niall doing suspicious things is low on his list. “I’m sure he’ll turn up having done nothing of substance,” he tells Harry.
Harry purses his lips. “Yes…” he agrees. “I’m sure you’re correct.”
“HARRY!”
Turning, they are both met with the streak of gaudy colours sprinting across the hall to them. “You are here!”
“I am, yes,” Harry says. His voices sounds guarded but Liam sees the smile he’s trying not to share. Disgusting. “I see the outfit fits well.”
“Perfectly,” Louis says. “I especially love the stitching at the back!”
He turns around to display his six tailcoats and Harry makes a gurgling sort of groan. “Duke,” he hisses. “You’re supposed to have connected those with the chain I sent along!”
Louis’ eyes grow wide. “Oh no,” he says, “I have made a faux pax!” He grabs Harry’s hand in a way that cannot be appropriate, they are not married, and starts pulling him through the crowd. “You must help me fix this immediately!’
Liam helplessly watches them go. He tries not to heave the put-upon sigh that he feels. He tries to remain the emotionless manservant he is supposed to be.
It becomes harder to remain that way when the face blatantly staring in through a window on the far side of the hall catches his eye.
Ah. Niall.
—
Louis and Harry do not reappear for nearly an hour.
Zayn, on the other hand, appears exactly when it was requested that he do so. He is stopped and walks with a gnarled old walking stick that has a duck face carved into the top.
The crowds of onlookers around the hall gaze at him in wonder. They gossip amongst themselves. Zayn mutters some things under his breath that Liam thinks are meant to make him seem more mad and unkempt, but it sounds more like he’s an old man complaining about the state of the world.
Really, the beard does a lot to age him. Liam thinks he’s put some white remnants from the hearth into it to dye it a bit grey. It’s a convincing look.
Eventually, still with no sign of Louis (or Harry), Zayn sidles over to him. “Your keep flown the coop?”
“He’s having a fashion emergency,” Liam says, low enough that the prying eyes of the guests are not drawn to them. “I think he’s either making love to the tailor or getting his ass kicked by him.”
Zayn nods, shifting his weight and losing some of his stoop. “Ah, young love,” he says.
“...Yes,” Liam says. Louis is older than Liam. Liam would not consider his own love to be young.
“You know,” says Zayn. “There’s quite a few delightfully empty rooms in this manor right now.”
Liam looks askance at him. “I am working, he hisses. “And so are you!”
Zayn shrugs. “You’re not turning me down,” he says, a glint in his eye. “After the party, then.”
“After the party I’m going to sleep,” Liam argues. “And anyway, I don’t— I mean, I’m not that kind of— Not just for a night—”
The smile that paints Zayn’s face makes Liam’s knees go traitorously weak. “Of course you’re not,” Zayn coos. “I’m just a lonely hermit who makes art for his benefactor. When I find a subject that I’m inspired by, don’t worry— I latch onto it for life.”
That’s. Terrifying? Why is Liam getting turned on by that?
“I have to direct everyone to dinner soon,” is what Liam ends up saying.
Zayn laughs. His eyes are sparkly. “I’ll be around,” he says, turning and shuffling off into the throng of guests, who part like the Red Sea for him.
Liam cannot wait for today to be over. Traitorous emotions cannot get to him in his sleep.
—
When Louis and Harry reappear, they are…
Dishevelled.
But no one would dare say anything, after all Louis is a duke. Liam knows full well that Louis will be the talk of the city for the next week, though. As he has everyone file into the dining hall for dinner, Louis catches Liam’s eye and from across the room gives Liam two thumbs up.
Then he grabs Harry’s wrist and pulls it up and Liam sees the ring on his finger.
Harry looks remarkably more dishevelled than Louis, honestly. He seems sort of dazed. In shock. Louis happily presses them together and pulls him by the wrist into the dining hall.
Louis sits at the head of the table, with Harry on his right and Zayn at his left. Zayn is sitting on a stool rather than a chair, which leads him to look comically shorter than everyone else. The guests seem to love this. They titter about it.
The first course is served— bread and soup. Louis goes on about the bread. He always has been oddly particular about bread. The second course a salad (Liam watches from his corner as Louis eats around the onions— even though Liam has told him many times that he can just request that Lewis make it without onions— but Louis insists that Lewis must not be hampered in his culinary prowess).
It’s the third course where things go, oddly, to shit.
“I showed our cook how to make this one,” Louis is bragging to Harry. “We had to get the mozzarella imported, you know, and the mash is from our own potatoes—”
As he’s going on about this and most of the guests are wrapped up in stories of their own, Liam watches as Zayn sits up a little straighter to attempt to grab the serving bowl of mash. As he does, his ridiculous hermit outfit slips down his shoulders a bit, giving everyone a clear view of his face that has, to this point, been hidden behind a bit of a cloak-like outfit.
This is, of course, when Sir Simon Cowell, noted not-invited-guest of the party, stands up and points accusingly. “I knew it! You’re no hermit! You’re the missing Duke of Yarrow! The one wanted for murder!”
Zayn looks at him unimpressed. Louis, however, is livid.
“How dare you!” He screeches. “How dare you sneak into my dinner party and accuse my hermit of being a— an aristocrat!”
“He’s the duke!” Simon yells. “The duke, I tell you!”
Zayn slowly sinks lower in his seat. Then, as Simon continues to yell and all the other guests break out in furious whispers, Zayn simply slips below the table.
“Get out!” Louis yells. “Out! Out of my dinner party! My hermit is an upstanding creature! He makes art!”
Liam steps forward. “Sorry about this,” he says, putting his hand gently on Simon’s shoulder.
Then he reaches down and hefts Simon up from beneath his elbows, flings him over his shoulder, and leaves the dining hall.
Simon is heavy. It’s been a while since Louis was regularly getting Liam to carry guests out. He’s getting out of practice.
The good news is Simon seems too shocked to struggle, so Liam is able to carry him through the front hall, outside, and then deposit him in the bushes. “Please do not return,” he says brightly. “Our hermit is, as the Duke has said, an upstanding creature.”
He’s about to go inside (because Simon does not seem to have much of a response) when he spots their cook and Niall also in the bushes. They look caught out. Lewis’ shirt is rucked up.
“Please tell me you’ve already finished baking dessert,” Liam says.
Lewis salutes, although he has to get his hands out from Niall’s shirt to do so. “Of course I have,” he says.
“Fine,” Liam says. “Carry on.”
They do.
—
The dinner party has returned to normal by the time Liam returns.
Besides the fact that Zayn is still mostly under the table.
“He feels safer there,” Louis says.
Harry nods.
Liam sighs. “Dessert will be served shortly,” he says.
—
When everyone leaves, at the end of the night, that includes Louis. Louis insists on walking Harry back to his home, which is especially ridiculous because came here on horseback.
But it’s nice to have a moment of peace.
…Sort of peace.
“Hello,” says Zayn.
“Ah,” says Liam. “You’ve finally come out from under the table.”
Zayn smiles. “Would you like to take the rest of the night off? I’ll clear the spiders out of the cottage just for you.”
Liam is so, so very tired. “I will not step foot in that horrid place tonight,” he says. Then pauses. “But if you would like to accompany me to my own clean and warm quarters, I suppose no one will know the difference.”
Zayn makes a small noise that sounds suspiciously like a quiet yay! and shucks off his horrid hermit cloak, revealing an almost normal looking outfit underneath. “Lead the way,” he says.
Liam thinks Lewis and Niall might still be somewhere out in the bushes.
He decides that that’s an issue for another day.
He’s going to bed. A hermit might be there as well.