Work Text:
He leans his head back against the armchair, stares at the shadows flickering on the ceiling through half closed eyes. The brandy, a 1795, is most certainly deserving of a more discerning palate, but he has no taste for delicacy tonight. If only the drink would wash away his own words that will persist in choking his throat.
So long as he had kept the words hidden. So long as he had avoided sounding them, even in his own heart, it had been feasible to pretend – nay, even believe - that the snide remarks, tongue in cheek comments and whispers dropping half formed upon his arrival in a room were merely the product of an over-active imagination of the toryite gossips. The usual attempts to stir up scandal that every politician must face at times. As he himself had weathered before.
Is it still the work of gossip when the words are true?
My feelings. Your feelings. My devotion…
Naturally, it is only right that a minister and a lord should be devoted to the monarch; and of course, such allegiance manifests in many guises, dependant on the humour of the one who bears the crown. However, he doubts that, when William summonsed him, he ever felt a devotion that claws in the heart, the way this does, when he hears his name on her lips; or one that presents as a gnawing in the gut in quite such a fashion every time the little Queen turns her eyes to him, whenever he faced the old King.
He has recognised, for some time, the look in her face; there is no guile in her and a fool could read the story laid bare to him. Many fools, it is probable, have done just that. Of course, he admitted his fondness for her – seeing in her the daughter that Caroline and he laid to rest after less than twenty four hours of life. Seeing in her the bright vivacious teenager that his son might have been were it not for his condition. A fatherly love for his charge; for she was that, in some senses. It was his duty, after all, and he had shouldered that yoke and found it lighter than expected.
All the worse for his own words to betray his heart, then. It is not beyond the realms of impossibility that a girl so sheltered, so robustly controlled, would feel great affection for the first person to treat her with regard and inherent respect. But for him to respond with anything but the most honourable, loving dignity that her position demands? Unthinkable.
Another mouthful. He swirls it round, feels his tongue numb. Since he cannot apply said numbness retrospectively, perhaps it could instead be a treatment for his heart's most ardent inclinations.
His feelings. Her feelings. His devotion.
It can never be.
He would wish that, perhaps, she had not noticed; perhaps, taken up with concerns for her own immediate worries, she did not hear the words as they slipped out and hovered in the air – but he knows that such a wish is without foundation. He saw the glow in her eyes as the words slipped from his mouth into her heart.
It can never be.
And yet.
He closes his eyes.