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Peter wore a half-smile, bemusement mixed with something vaguely more serious. Nothing so queer and intense as the look that would overcome his face when he’d look at Harriet, but a depth of emotion, nonetheless, that Honoria found herself turning slightly from. It was too…exposed, perhaps for the carefully cultivated frivolity her son normally sported.
It wasn’t that she didn’t know of his depth of feeling, the ways in which the more passionate emotions – love, anger, fear, need – ran through him, full of eddies and currents, as pulling as the rivers of Oxford that he’d punted during his student days. It was simply that Peter was not a man to wear such emotion with the same steady ease as he wore boiled shirts and that absurd monocle.
And now he had turned that gaze to the handle of the flat’s pantry door.
“They are clever little beasts, aren’t they?” he said to his mother, before putting his chin in his hand. The amusement outweighed the gravity, by certain, but there was still a hint of something that made her feel aflutter, even at her age: wanting to soothe this favored son, knowing that he was well past the age of needing maternal succor.
Honoria, daughter, widow, mother, dowager duchess, shook her head. The boys had been with her all day. She adored them, but they were far too clever to have been left unsupervised for the length of time that they’d been running higglety-pigglety through her house. She simply lacked the heart, the gravitas, to do more than encourage them. They were SO like Peter, with Harriet’s dark eyes and rich humor. She couldn’t have spared them any indulgence even if she’d been so inclined.
Besides, the rousing mid-afternoon game of hide and seek had done wonders for Franklin and for Aheuserus the younger, even if it had involved Bredon hiding Roger somewhere and conveniently forgetting to let anyone know where for a period of time.
“It’ll clean, dear,” she said to her son with another glance at the pantry door, surprised that he’d be worried about smudges and stains on anything these days.
“Yes,” he said, and then smiled widely, absurdly, at her. “Of course it will. Clean as a soul on Sunday. And they’ll clean it.”
He paused, darted up an eyebrow at her. “Have you sussed yet what they’ve stolen this time?”
Honoria considered the clues – smudged palm prints on doors, dusty tracks through the library, blotter paper in the wastebasket. “Yes, my dear,” she replied. “You aren’t the only detective in the family.”
*
Peter found his heir holding court in the breakfast room, underneath the sideboard. Or rather, Bredon was sitting cross-legged in a chair while his younger brother lolled underneath, awaiting orders. Bredon held a rather ornate silver ladle in his hand, and wore a look on his face that suggested he was relishing the role of tyrant, having forsaken benevolent despot some time ago.
His younger son spotted him first, eyes alight with the fervor of the saved. “Papa!” Roger wriggled out from under the sideboard, and careened across the expanse of informal dining room to present himself to his sire.
Bredon gave the sigh of royalty deeply inconvenienced, but willing to be martyred and made his way to the both of them.
“Father,” he said, gravely and waved the ladle dangerously close to his younger brother’s tender pate.
As a sceptor, the ladle was doing a remarkably admirable job, but Peter felt it was in everyone’s best interest to not have to explain the braining of the youngest of his offspring to his lady wife. He reached down and plucked the offending object from his son’s hand.
The same hands were covered in a film remarkably similar to that coating the outside of the kitchen pantry.
“I suppose the ink stand is in the flour bin next to the stove,” he said with deliberate casualness. Roger’s giggle confirmed the theory, but he was far more proud of his firstborn, who showed admirable restraint in not stamping his small foot, nor taking aim at his younger brother.
“Yes,” he said.
“Excellent hiding place,” Peter replied, “and a very good job with the red herring of fingerprints on the pantry. But next time, make certain that you wipe the flour off your hands completely.”
Bredon glared at his brother, and Roger held up his far grubbier paws. “I left clues,” he said, gleeful and deliberate.
Peter reached forward, putting his hands on the silky heads of his children, overwhelmed.
*
“It does seem,” Harriet said to him as she curled up in the settee, smoking a cigarette deliberately, “that your mother is completely unflappable.”
Peter gave her a distant half-smile and she stood, making her way to where he sat on the ottoman, staring at his slippers. She put her hand on the back of his neck, amazed as always at the solid curve of his skull, the warm thin skin, and brush of hair against her hand. She was awed by his tangibility, his vulnerability.
“After the instance with the Duchess of Wales and the boiler, I suspect that mother feels that everything can be addressed with a smile, black tea or strong sherry, and sheer good breeding. And the well-chosen application of a French curse and possible a pipe wrench.”
"It isn’t ink in the biscuits, or even serving them to Helen, it’s that…” Harriet’s smile felt devilish even to her own face. “Well, they’re so unrepentant. Although it’s not that she’s got anything to be superior over, considering the things Gerry got up to at a far more advanced age.”
“What’ve they to be penitent for?” Peter said, allowing his hand to caress her calf. She had yet to undress and the silk against her skin was sleek and endearing both, such a subtle barrier and yet so sweetly specific. “They’ll inherit the ink and the flour, and the damned pantry door which may be marked for life.”
She laughed, drawing upon the cigarette and pulling his head close to her chest. “At least they’ve left off stealing Bunter’s photography equipment or those glass eggs Helen gave your mother.”
“They always leave clues,” Peter replied, fingers idling on his wife’s skin. “They’d never let anyone be unjustly punished for their crimes.” His voice carried an odd sort of pride, and Harriet tilted his face up to hers.
“They want to give you something to solve,” she said softly. “Something to keep you at home.”
He was never distant from her. He never had been – deeper, darker, richer, truer – all of those things, so much more than she’d ever assumed, but since his first declaration of love, he’d never been distant. But his eyes were far away now, as far as Cairo, deepest Congo, further than the coming storm of war.
“I…my dear…”
Harriet moved away from him to put out the cigarette, and then rejoined him, sitting upon his knee, feeling absurd and girlish. “We don’t begrudge you your duty, my heart,” she said, “But I understand now the way those women in the village look, hard and lost and frightened, waiting for their sailors and soldiers. I feel the same when you’re gone. And so do they.”
“Domina,” he looked at her, and she was acutely conscious of his age in the moment, of the silver infusing the gold of his hair, the tiredness around his mouth.
She leaned against him, allowing her weight to count. “They are part of us both,” she said, surprising even herself. She’d never suspected that she’d have the sort of maternal understanding that Peter’s sister seemed so easy with, and perhaps this was different - less a type of sentiment, and more a sharp, practical understanding.
“They don’t want to waste a moment of our lives together,” she said. “And they are so deeply themselves. The only way they can show you how they feel is to give you something to keep you here.”
“I’m not gone so terribly often,” he said softly, aware of the truth behind that truth.
She felt foolish, exposed in a way that only her love for him had ever provoked in her, but it was accompanied by the same sense of possessiveness, of ferocity that he’d equally provoked since their wedding day.
She pressed her mouth to the top of his head and didn’t answer him.
*
The local tobacconist had decent paper and two heavy silver pens that had no need of ink wells.
When presented to his children, they took them solemnly, giving them the weight of their regard. Within moments, Bredon had pulled his apart to see how the ink got from reservoir to tip and Roger was drawing in the dirt outside the shop.
“It isn’t about the inkwells,” Honoria said at tea, and her son gave her the broad, understanding smile that declared he knew far more than she did. Adored he certainly was, but she relished the day when his own children would present him with that expression and mean it.
“I didn’t know,” he began, startling her with his honesty in the face of that superior look, “that it would feel like God’s own creation, like all the power in the universe resting in my hands. That it would be so…”
“Astonishing?” his mother asked.
“Terrifying.” he said.
Harriet nodded at him across the table. “Little monsters,” she said gravely, “Our small monsters, full of sweets and savories and bites. Ours.”
“I’ve held the thoughts of men,” he said. “I’ve held their secrets and their gazes and witnessed their last breaths, but I’ve never felt so deeply…aware of…” he shook his head, at a rare loss for words.
“It never stops feeling that way,” Honoria said, and looked meanly at the butter ration. “But it stops being terrifying, starts to be glorious.” She put the muffin to her mouth, and decided to stick with honesty. “It’s also deadly dull, and odd, and funny, and thrilling. But mostly glorious.”
*
The ink on Roger’s cheek ran all the way into his shirt collar, wrapped around the inside of his arm. Either the inkwell had finally given up the ghost, or his brother had poured it over him. The nursemaid was struggling to get the small boy into his pyjamas when Peter as Peter looked on. Bredon was sitting up in his bed, hair standing on end looking remarkably clean if a little ill-tempered.
“Madame said bathing one of them tonight was enough,” the nursemaid said, mildly aggrieved, and by the looks of it, Peter silently agreed.
“Well boys,” he said, “I’ve yet to find the inkwell tonight. You’ve lead me a merry chase.”
Bredon’s sulks melted away. “I’ll give you more clues in the morning,” he said.
Peter glanced at the crib in the corner, noticed suspiciously black staining of the sheets, let the love and pride swell in his chest, feeling like a puffer fish, a proud papa. “I look forward to it mes fils.”
He stood in the hallway while the nursemaid extinguished lamps and lights, wondering at his own domesticity – the way in which all he thought of was these warm, vulnerable creatures who had become more important to him than the ills of the world; of his wife and partner. The foreign office telegram lay heavy in his pocket, and he wanted to ignore it, desperately wanted to ignore it, but domesticity or not, there was a war brewing, and he had skills that could offer others the retention of the same joys he’d found himself this evening.
“Blast,” he muttered to himself, “no man should be allowed to look at himself as a savior of others, as anything more than a man doing what he should. It creates martyrdom, savagery and proselytizing.”
He caught the warm scent of Harriet before he saw her in the dark of the hall, and she didn’t say anything, just took his hand in hers.