Rating:

Explicit

Archive Warning:

No Archive Warnings Apply

Category:

M/M

Fandom:

Game Changers | Heated Rivalry - All Media Types

Relationships:

Shane Hollander/Ilya Rozanov, Shane Hollander & Ilya Rozanov, Shane Hollander & Rose Landry

Characters:

Ilya Rozanov, Shane Hollander, Rose Landry, David Hollander, Yuna Hollander, Cliff Marlow | Cliff Marleau, Hayden Pike

Additional Tags:

Alternate Universe, Regency Romance, historical hollanov, Historical AU, Lord Hollander, Duke of Ottawa, Alternate Universe - Royalty, Shane and Ilya are competitive, Competition, Found Family, descendents of Shane Hollandar and Ilya Rozanov, original characters that I hope you enjoy

Language:

English

Stats:

Published: 2026-04-19 Completed: 2026-07-20 Words: 35,912 Chapters: 14/14

A Gentleman's Rivalry

Summary

Shane, Lord Hollander, heir to the Duke of Ottawa, has a plan for everything. He knows the right parties to go to, the right things to say, and the right woman to marry. But Prince Ilya Grigoryevitch has crashed into the London Season with his seafoam green eyes and incessant winking, and Shane finds himself on one side of a rivalry that threatens to take on a life of its own.

Notes

teaser! i am dropping this and then immediately going on vacation for one week, so chapter 2 might take a minute!

Chapter 1: quite the introduction

Shane slipped out to the empty terrace and slumped against the balustrade. It was chilly, and damp, but the cool air was refreshing after the heavy, perfume-laden miasma of the ballroom.

He checked his watch; he had allowed himself a two-minute break before he returned. His name was written on three dance cards, and of course he had promised the supper set to Rose.

Branches rustled below. An animal, perhaps. But then he heard a murmur, and a gasp. A woman’s voice.

Shane stood up straight and listened. There it was again—another whimper. Was someone hurt? Perhaps one of the ladies had stepped out for a walk in the garden and turned her ankle.

He jogged down the stairs and paused again to listen. More rustling, and a strangled little cry, to his left. The noises grew louder as he stalked down the path. But just as he rounded the next corner, he heard something else—a giggle. Another whimper, but this one dissolved into more of a moan.

A low chuckle, not a lady’s voice.

He skidded to a stop, but it was too late. He’d rounded the bend and there they were, pressed against the wall. A tall man with curly, light hair, caging a woman against the stone. Her skirts were up around her waist, the man’s hand buried underneath.

Shane slammed his eyes shut and swiveled on his heel. As he rounded the corner again, back toward the stairs, he heard the woman’s voice again: “no, Prince, don’t stop.”

*

Shane danced with three young ladies. He had no illusions about his grace on the dance floor, but the steps were easy enough to learn, and it required less in the way of conversation than mingling, like Rose often did.

Shane had long envied her ability to make easy conversation.

When we’re married, I will do all the talking, she said.

They often made a game of listing all the reasons they should be happy about their betrothal. 

Our fathers will be happy (Shane).

My mother won’t be able to pick my gowns (Rose).

We will have a peaceful life (Shane).

I will throw grand parties (Rose).

Though now that their parents were pressing them to set a date for the wedding, the game was growing sadder.

Shane loved Rose and Rose loved Shane, and they had loved one another since they were children playing hide and seek in the portrait gallery at Rose’s family seat. But they were not in love.

Frankly, the last part didn’t bother Shane. But Rose was a true romantic, and Shane regretted that he couldn’t give her what she craved.

He found her easily for their dance, surrounded by a dozen ladies and a few gentlemen, making everyone laugh with a story about how she had accidentally kicked her new slipper into the Serpentine while walking in Hyde Park.

“I stumbled on a couple in the garden,” he said as he escorted her to the floor.

She grinned; Rose loved gossip. “That’s delightful. Who was it?”

“I couldn’t see. The man was tall, with curly hair. She called him prince.”

Rose gasped. “Shane! Do you think it was Prince Ilya?”

Shane frowned. “The visitor from Russia? I don’t know, I haven’t met him yet.”

“I’ve heard he’s very handsome, and very charming.”

“Ladies always say that about princes, even when they’re thickheaded and chinless.”

She patted him on the shoulder as the music began. “Don’t worry, they say that you’re handsome, too.”

“Not charming?” Shane said. He knew his reputation as well as Rose did, but it didn’t bother him. He was Shane, Lord Hollander, heir to the Duke of Ottawa—if he didn’t act with honor, properly, who would?

Rose smiled back, her expression sympathetic. “They say you have very fine manners.”

After they danced, he took Rose into supper and they ate together with his parents. Just as Shane had hoped, his father asked for his company in the card room. They made their bows to Rose and Shane’s mother, and headed down the hall.

The room was smoky, which Shane didn’t enjoy, but at least it was quieter than the ballroom. Shane found it easier to make conversation when he had the game to focus on, too. Though Shane took mostly after his mother, in both appearance and reserve, he and his father shared a talent for cards and were fearsome enough to deter a few possible partners once they arrived.

“Lord Hayden, come. We need a challenger.”

Hayden Pike was the third son of an earl, and Shane’s closest friend. Hayden was average in most things, but he was friendly and sensitive and always knew when to push Shane and when to step back. At the duke’s summons, Hayden’s froze, eyes wide, like a hare that had been spotted by a wolf.

“Your Grace, I must beg off. I’m afraid I’ve run through my allowance for the month already.”

“Nonsense!” Shane’s father said, slapping Hayden on the back. “We’ll play for ha’pennies. Come.”

“Don’t we need a fourth?” Hayden said weakly. 

The duke peered over Hayden’s shoulder and spotted someone.

“Ah! Prince Ilya! You can join us, too!”

Shane turned as the man approached. He was tall, with broad shoulders and light, curly hair that was beginning to escape the confines of its pomade, particularly where it flopped over his forehead in front. His eyes glistened behind a heavy brow, a light color Shane couldn’t entirely pinpoint in the lamp light.

“Your Grace,” he answered. His voice was a low rumble, his accent blurring the edges between words. “How good to see you again.”

The hair, the voice, the height—this had to be the man from the garden. Shane felt his cheeks warm, but why? Prince Ilya was far from the first gentleman to take liberties in a private moment.

“Prince Ilya, allow me to introduce my son. Prince Ilya Grigoryevich, Shane, Lord Hollander.”

Shane bowed, and the prince did so in response. “An honor to meet you,” Shane murmured. The Duke introduced Hayden next, but the prince’s eyes remained on Shane.

“Prince Ilya is here with his father on state business,” Shane’s father explained.

“Discussing how to stop Napoleon?” Shane said.

“Russia will stop Napoleon,” the prince said smugly, “and you will thank us for it.”

“Many have said the same thing,” Hayden broke in.

“Perhaps, but they do not have our might, or our will.”

“For the sake of Europe, I hope you are correct,” Shane said.

“Enough of this gloom,” the duke said. “Let us play.”

“Shane, you’re on my team tonight,” Hayden said.

“I was going to play with my father—”

“Yes but we all know that’s not fair. Your father and Prince Ilya versus you and me.”

They arranged themselves at the small, square table, and Shane dealt the cards. He could feel the prince’s gaze on him as they began, which was unsettling. He made two foolish mistakes, earning a questioning look from Hayden, before he was able to focus adequately on the game. It was a well-matched contest, and the teams were in a dead heat when a footman came in and whispered something in the Duke’s ear.

“Gentleman, I’m afraid I must depart.”

“Not a problem, I hope?” the prince asked.

Shane’s father smiled. “No, no. Quite the opposite: my duchess is requesting an escort home.”

The prince grinned as they stood to make their bows. “Enjoy your evening, Your Grace.”

“And you as well. You gentlemen don’t get in to too much trouble!”

Hayden snorted.

“Let me guess,” the prince said, once it was just the three of them. “Lord Hollander is not the type for trouble?”

“Trouble is bad, is it not? I’ve never understood those who choose to seek it out.” Shane said, pulling his gloves back on.

“Ah, but trouble can be so very fun,” the prince said. “Sometimes I quite enjoy it.”

They left the room together. Shane would find Rose to say goodnight, and then make his way to his club for a little. He shook Hayden’s hand, but when he turned to bid the prince good evening, he noticed that his hands were bare. “You aren’t wearing gloves.”

The prince smirked. “I lost them earlier. In the garden.”

Then he winked, and walked away.

Chapter 2: the challenge

Chapter Summary

the gauntlet is thrown

Chapter Notes

For a man in London on essential business, Prince Ilya managed to attend a great number of parties.

Every party that Shane attended, in fact.

This was odd on its own, because Shane selected his social engagements very carefully. He was the son of a duke, well-groomed and well-mannered, and he was in high demand in Society. He received dozens of invitations a week during the Season, and on Monday afternoons he sat in the library with a cup of tea and sorted through them with his mother. They made three piles: no, yes, and pending further review. For the latter category, his mother would spend the next few days making discreet inquiries about who else would be in attendance, and then they would decide how to respond during their weekly luncheon, which was always on Thursday.

Hayden was of the opinion that Shane was too rigid about his schedule. But he preferred to know what to expect from his days. Many of the men he’d befriended at Oxford tore about Town in a drunken whirlwind, waking mid-afternoon and stumbling about until the course of the day (or evening) revealed itself. They drank to excess and gambled away their allowances, and the only project to which they applied any amount of focus or diligence was the pursuit of unsuitable women.

You must try to be less proud, Shane, Rose would scold. There is no harm in someone having fun.

Shane wasn’t entirely sure he agreed, especially as some of these men had made somewhat of a game of trying to convince Rose to jilt him.

Which she would never do, of course.

They’re just jesting, Shane, she would say. They like to tease about passion and romance. 

Perhaps it wouldn’t be the most exciting existence she could fathom, but he and Rose had a nice life awaiting them. One day, he would be the Duke of Ottawa, and Rose would be his duchess.

As such, it didn’t bother him to see Prince Ilya speaking with Rose at length at Lady Sherbourne’s garden party. Nor did it bother him when Prince Ilya said something that  made her laugh so hard she sprayed her recent sip of champagne out onto the grass.

He trusted Rose completely.

He watched as Prince Ilya produced a handkerchief and held it out for Rose. She took it at dabbed lightly at her lips.

Shane approached the pair, only to hear Prince Ilya say won’t you be terribly bored, when he was a few feet away. He stopped short, and tried to ignore the creeping feeling that they had been talking about him.

Rose spotted Shane, and smiled. He loved when Rose smiled at him.

“Shane, Prince Ilya doesn’t think I will enjoy reading the Wealth of Nations.”

“Didn’t you read it last month?”

“I was going to, but then I read the Castle of Otranto instead.”

“Does your mother know that?” Shane asked.

“Absolutely not, and you will not tell her.”

Shane turned to Prince Ilya, whose mouth was set in a tense line. Served him right, trying to flirt with Rose.

“Have you read Adam Smith, Prince Ilya?”

“I have, Lord Hollander. I found his ideas intriguing.”

“Yet Russia continues in the old ways.”

The prince nodded his head solemnly. “It’s what Russia does best.”

“Oh!” Rose squeaked; when Shane turned back toward her, she was waving maniacally at someone across the garden. “It’s Helen, back from her wedding trip. I simply must say ‘hello.’ Shane, would you mind?” She handed Shane her half empty glass of champagne and hustled across the grass. He looked down into the pale liquid, a few final bubbles limping to the surface.

“Shane?”

“That is my given name, yes,” he snapped back at the prince. He surprised himself with his tone; his mother would be horrified.

“She is very familiar, yes?”

“Well, we are engaged to be married. And we have been friends since we were children. It would be odd for her to call me Hollander after all these years.”

“Ah,” the prince said, his tone growing somewhat snide. “That is very sweet, I suppose.”

“Sorry to disappoint you,” Shane said.

The prince raised an eyebrow. “What do you mean?”

“Because Rose is spoken for?”

“Ah, yes. Well, the best ones usually are.”

Prince llya seemed softer today than he had at the ball, perhaps because he wasn’t wearing the formal coat, or the regalia. His hair was not slicked back, and in the sunlight, his eyes were the same color as ocean surf as it crashed down on the beach in Devon, kicking up sand and foam into the pale green waves.

Shane should not be thinking about the prince’s eye color.

Thankfully, Hayden approached from his right. “Hollander, come. Archery on the lawn.”

Shane blushed. “I don’t need to—”

“You do, because I’ve put five pounds on you to trounce the competition.”

“Are you skilled with a bow, Lord Hollander?” Prince Ilya asked. 

The sound of his name rolling off the prince’s tongue, the vowels thick and round, sent a shiver up his spine. Shane’s blush burned even hotter. 

“I am adequate.”

Hayden slapped him on the back. “He is entirely too modest. Lord Hollander hasn’t lost an archery contest in years.”

“You must be very talented,” Prince Ilya said. Were they still talking about archery? Something about the prince’s face suggested otherwise. Or perhaps Shane had finally reached the limits of his self-control, and the years of deprivation were finally driving him insane.

Hayden grinned. “Have you not heard? Hollander is good at everything.”

Hayden had succeeded in herding them toward the lawn. “Perhaps you have not had adequate competition.”

Shane scoffed. “I assume you would consider yourself adequate.”

“Oh, I am better than adequate.” The prince’s eyes met his, pale and burning, and Shane had to look away.

Maybe he wasn’t going mad, after all. But this was the only thing that might be more devastating, and more dangerous.

“Are you good with a bow, Prince Ilya?” Hayden asked, oblivious.

“I had a bow in my hands before my fourth birthday.”

“Well, then you will need to join the contest. Perhaps Shane’s reign will come to an end.”

They arrived at a table where five bows in various sizes were laid out on a table. A pair of footmen were setting up targets about twenty yards away, an easy target.

“Lady Cecilia first!”

Lady Cecilia had been out for years, and though she was handsome and accomplished, she remained adamantly uninterested in marriage. Shane expected her to come in second, as she often did.

Her first arrow hit barely an inch from the bullseye, and the second landed right next to it.

Lord Marlow and Lord St. Simon followed, both of them landing their arrows near the outer edge of the target. Perhaps Prince Ilya was right about Shane’s competition.

“So you do smile,” Prince Ilya said, his voice low and close.

Shane pulled back. “Of course I smile.”

“You pretend to smile, usually. Just now, when St. Simon’s arrow bounced off the target—that was a real smile.”

“I would never. That would be unsporting,” he answered, even as he felt the corners of his lips twitch again.

“Hollander!” Hayden shouted. “Show them how it’s done.”

Shane picked his bow and took a moment to settle his stance. He closed his eyes and forced his focus onto the target. It was foolish to think he could feel the prince’s eyes on him, even more foolish to think that it would be nice to impress him with his skill.

The first arrow hit the bullseye dead on; the second landed just next to it, sending both vibrating with a satisfying thwunk.

“Impessive.”

“Your turn, Prince Ilya,” Lord Marlow said, grinning at Shane.

The prince cut quite a figure with the bow in his hand. Shane watched as he pulled back on the string, shoulders bunching and pulling at the seams of his coat. He released the arrow, and Shane saw the smile spread across his face before he heard the telltale thus of the arrow on the target.

A gasp went up from the small crowd, followed by Marlow’s booming laugh.

The prince’s arrow had lodged between Shane’s two, spreading them wide.

“Seems that Lord Hollander has met his match,” Lady Cecilia said smugly.

Shane pasted on a rueful smile. He was heir to one the oldest, most powerful titles in England. Whether he was the best at garden party amusements was of no consequence.

“Tell me, Prince Ilya, are you a good shot?” Marlow prodded.

“What about swords?” St. Simon added.

“Or riding?”

The prince held out his hands to stop the onslaught of questions. “This is a very demanding audience.”

“Forgive me, Your Highness,” Hayden said, shooting a mischievous smirk in Shane’s direction. “But you do recall when I said that Lord Hollander is good at everything?”

Shane knew he should make some modest rejoinder, but instead he let himself preen a little. It wasn’t that he had set out to be the best at so many things. But he did apply himself to the things gentlemen were expected to be good at, like riding, and shooting, and where he applied himself, he usually excelled.

“It’s quite irritating, really,” Marlow grumbled.

“Since we were at Eton, practically, he’s bested us at everything,” St. Simon moaned. “Riding, shooting, fencing, chess—everything.”

The group was still clamoring for the Prince’s attention, but his eyes remained firmly set on Shane’s face. “Everything, you say?”

Chapter End Notes

I know in my brain that the audience for historical romance is shrinking, but it still makes me sad to see how low the engagement here is compared to my other fics. I hope this finds the few of us left who still love this sort of thing - and if any of you have stumbled over here unwittingly and are thinking to yourself "hm i could be into this," please say so in the comments and i will bombard you with histrom recommendations!

Chapter 3: the first contest

Chapter Notes

No more than ten people had watched Prince Ilya win the archery contest at the garden party, but there were at least three times that milling about the park, despite the early morning chill in the air.

Their little series of competitions wouldn’t have garnered so much attention if Marlow hadn’t taken it upon himself to put a wager down in the betting book at White’s. Now there were hundreds, if not thousands, of pounds riding on the outcome of a series of silly games.

“Lord Hollander! So many people have woken up early to watch me best you,” Prince Ilya said. It always seemed that the prince was standing just a few inches closer than he should have been. Not so close that they were touching, but close enough that Shane couldn’t help but be aware of every little shift of the man’s broad shoulders, and couldn’t help but hear the extra little puff of breath behind the H when he said Hollander.

Shane sucked a long breath in through his nose, and kept on inspecting his pistol. “Lord Marlow is to blame.”

“Yes, the wagers! He showed me the book.”

“You and Marlow are friends?” Shane asked, wondering why his voice sounded so clipped and tight. Prince Ilya could be friends with whoever he wanted, even a…a…carouser like Marlow.

“He is fun. I enjoy his company very much. Shows me all the best things to see in London.”

“All the best brothels you mean,” Shane muttered under his breath, before he could stop himself.

Prince Ilya burst out laughing. “A joke! You are full of surprises, Lord Hollander.”

Shane finally forced himself to look at the prince, but it was a mistake. Prince Ilya was gleeful, his face completely overtaken with a huge, guileless smile that made him look…sweet.

Goddammit.

“I never liked surprises,” Shane grumbled. 

For some reason, this only made the prince smile wider. “I do.”

“Gentlemen, are you ready?” Marlow approached with his arms spread wide. Shane had to admit that Marlow made a fine ringmaster of this circus, with his booming voice and barely contained glee. He swayed a little to the right, and upon closer inspection Shane noticed his rumpled lapels and the dark shadow of a beard on his chin.

“Has Marlow been up all night?” Shane asked.

“Perhaps he had a particularly stimulating engagement,” Prince Ilya said. His eyebrow was creeping up again, a subtle lift that seemed to be made, somehow, in specifically in Shane’s direction.

Shane cleared his throat. “We’re ready.”

“Pistols, please.” Marlow held out his large hands, and inspected the pistols one at a time. “The targets are fifty feet away, and each contestant gets three shots. The smallest average distance to the bullseye wins.”

Shane was never one for hunting. He occasionally found himself laden with a rifle and standing in the cold, waiting for the dogs to flush the birds from the underbrush, but that was only because hunting was one of the things gentlemen did, and Shane didn’t want to make a spectacle of himself by declining every invitation.

But he did enjoy target shooting. Just as with archery, the center of the target drew him like a beacon, the temptation of perfection being one of Shane’s few vices.

“We flip to see who shoots first,” Marlow announced, producing a guinea. The heavy gold coin gleamed even in the weak, cloudy light; Shane had to appreciate the showmanship.

Shane chose heads, and won the flip. He chose to shoot second.

Prince Ilya stood with his hips open to the side, and drew his weapon up slowly. Shane smiled to himself. The stance was dramatic, but unstable; there was no way he could aim properly with his weight distributed so unevenly.

The first shot punched through the quiet morning, a clap of thunder followed by the solid pfft of the bullet hitting the target, three or four inches off the bullseye. To the left, just as Shane suspected.

The second shot hit about an inch closer, on the same side. An approving murmur rustled among the spectators.

Shane took his place next. He stood more square toward the target, his stance a little wider than his hips, and held his pistol with both hands as he raised it in front of him. He paused, breathed, and narrowed his eyes until the target came into focus down the field.

His first shot hovered just to the right of the target, less than an inch. The crowd oohed, and Shane soaked up their admiration like a sponge. Again he aimed, and fired. The bullet hit in a mirror image to his first shot, less than an inch to the left of center. A polite, hushed applause followed.

Marlow made a show of pulling out a measuring tape and reading off the results to some other young buck, who wrote them down in a little leatherbound book. They huddled together for much longer than it should have taken to calculate two simple averages, then turned back toward the waiting group.

“Lord Hollander wins!” Marlow announced.

Shane should have kept his expression neutral; she should have turned to Prince Ilya and shaken his hand and complimented his shooting. Instead, he turned toward his opponent and made no effort to hide the smile on his face.

He was expecting to find Prince Ilya scowling, or perhaps ready with a sharp retort. But the prince was smiling nearly as broadly as Shane.

“This is fun, yes? We are tied. What is next?”

“Fencing. Tomorrow at Angelo’s.”

“Ah, I see. Unfortunate for you. I am very good with a blade.”

“We’ll see about that,” Shane said.

Shane accepted his congratulations from the crowd, but a nagging feeling of embarrassment grew with every hand he shook. He shouldn’t have agreed to this silly contest. It was petty at best, and at worst—well, at worst, it was little more than an excuse to stand next to Prince Ilya at least three more times.

But this little infatuation was of no consequence. It didn’t matter what Prince Ilya’s smile looked like, or how much Shane was enjoying competing with such a competent opponent, or how appealing said competent was in general. Or how appealing Prince Ilya was in general.

Or whether Prince Ilya truly was flirting with Shane.

Surely a prince wouldn’t be so reckless. No, that was absurd—perhaps only a prince could be so reckless. He would hardly be the only nobleman in London to flaunt his desires, regardless of how taboo they were.

There were plenty of clubs and brothels for men like Shane, and more than a few gentlemen who made no effort to hide their attendance. But though certain entertainments had been easy to come by at school—Shane had hardly been at Oxford for two weeks before one of his classmates had offered to suck his cock in the library—he had resolved not to indulge when he left university. It was against the law, after all. Shane was going to be a duke one day, and just because he could likely get away with flouting those laws, he wouldn’t feel right doing it. 

It had been four years since Shane took his degree at Oxford. Four years of self-control and self-denial, and nothing in the way of intimate touch besides a few halting, unfortunate attempts at exploration with Rose.

Poor Rose, who knew exactly what Shane was about and had made a point to tell him that she understood. Poor Rose, who was entering a marriage with a man she knew would never enjoy their marital bed.

Rose, who deserved Shane’s loyalty and care, even if she couldn’t have his passion.

And yet it was Prince Ilya who continued to occupy his mind. Prince Ilya who drew his eye so often that Shane could probably draw from memory the line of his jaw, or the taper of his waist. Prince Ilya who had appeared out of nowhere, and looked at Shane like he knew.

It should have frightened him, but that was the worst part—Shane wasn’t frightened at all.

Chapter End Notes

I know nothing about pistols from this era, or the proper way to shoot them. Please set aside any expertise in these topics you may have for the time being.

Chapter 4: Crossing Swords

Chapter Notes

lol this is not a slow burn I guess.

Also, apologies to anyone who knows anything about fencing.

Angelo’s School of Arms was packed. Gentlemen were wedged shoulder-to-shoulder in the SoHo building, even spilling onto the sidewalk, standing on their tip-toes and craning their necks in an effort to catch a glimpse of the match.

Shane was the least confident about this contest. He had been an excellent fencer at university, but hadn’t practiced in years. Not only that, but the sight of Prince Ilya in his fencing kit was an unfortunate distraction, the vest drawn tightly across the broad muscles of the prince’s chest.

He was already sweating, and they hadn’t even started.

“You are nervous, da?” the prince asked.

“I am not,” Shane snapped. “It is warm in here. Too crowded.”

“Yes, everyone has come to watch me beat you.”

Shane scoffed. “They only care about their wagers.”

Most of them, at least. He’d seen a few men in the crowd who were likely eager to see Shane lose, men who liked to taunt him about his priggishness, they would say, even though Shane preferred to use the word honorable because why should a man apologize for his lack of interest in rampant drunkenness and womanizing? 

There were also the boys at Eton who had crooned about his pretty face and which of his features were Chinese—no matter that his mother’s family wasn’t even from China—and the men who had caught on to his preferences at Oxford and continued to whisper about it behind potted trees in ballrooms. 

The more admired you are, the more fervently some will wish to knock you down, his mother would say. She would know, as she suffered from a similar affliction.

Angelo approached and explained the rules. First to three touches would win.

They slipped their masks on. Shane could still see the prince’s pale eyes gleaming playfully from behind the cage.

Angelo barked allez, and Shane knew he was in trouble immediately. The archery and the shooting had been tests of skill and focus, but now Prince Ilya’s athleticism was on full display. His feet were so swift that Shane could barely catch him, and when he did attack, the prince seemed to anticipate his every thrust and riposte.

But Shane was good at this, too, and it took less than a minute for his muscle memory to kick in. The murmurs and gasps from the crowd faded in his ears, replaced by the shuffling of their feet on the piste and the clang and scrape of the blades during engagement. Shane attacked and the prince parried, but before Prince Ilya could riposte, Shane counter-parried, sliding his blade low and around for a touch on the prince’s left.

They broke apart, and Shane saw that the prince was grinning at him from behind his mask. “I knew that this would be fun,” he said.

En garde, Angelo said as they readied themselves again. 

Pret

Allez

They began again in a flurry. Prince Ilya advanced, creeping toward Shane like a panther in the jungle, then lunged. In the span of only a few minutes, he had assessed Shane’s strategy and adjusted his own attack, and Shane desperately fought off a barrage of thrusts and counter-ripostes. Within seconds, he felt the prince’s blade snap on the top of his right shoulder.

He glared, and the prince smiled again.

En garde

Pret

Allez

Shane fought the urge to launch an immediate attack. Patience was one of his best qualities, at least his mother said, and he forced himself to absorb three more onslaughts from the prince, watching carefully and cataloging his tells and feints. Finally, when he saw an opening, he lunged and they engaged. Shane’s strategy was unfolding just as he had planned, and he only had to slip his blade in beside the prince’s elbow—

But the prince did not oblige. Rather than retreat a step, as Shane had expected, he came forward with a small hop. Shane parried, but it was sloppy, and as he tried to riposte, the prince countered, his blade flicking toward Shane’s right arm and, improbably, into the gap between his glove and the sleeve of his vest.

A touch. The prince retreated and pulled off his mask, grinning.

Shane did the same.

He’d lost, but it didn’t bother him as much as it should have.

It wasn’t until Angelo was lifting the prince’s arm and announcing him the victor that Shane saw the blood blooming on the white of his sleeve.

The crowd was swarming the prince, so he slipped off to the adjoining changing room to clean himself up and, hopefully, find a bandage for his cut. He didn’t like being fussed over, and hoped no one had noticed the cut.

He stripped off his vest and linen as soon as the door closed behind him. The cut was longer than he had realized, maybe four inches, but not particularly deep. It barely even hurt. He tore a strip from his ruined shirt, folded it into a rectangle, and pressed it against his forearm while he looked around the room for bandages.

He was digging through the drawer of a small dressing table in the corner when the door opened behind him. He swung around and found himself face to face with the Prince.

“Here you are,” Prince Ilya said simply. He did not seem at all embarrassed or apologetic for having burst in on Shane in this state of undress.

But Shane couldn’t seem to summon a scold. He swallowed. “Good match,” was all he could manage to say.

Now Ilya’s gaze was drifting down his torso, slow and lazy and interested, in a way that should have been concerning but instead was only very, very enticing. His eyes caught on Shane’s arm, where his makeshift bandage was becoming saturated with blood.

“You are hurt,” the Prince muttered.

“It’s just a small cut. Not very deep,” Shane answered. He was still winded from the contest, and his voice was breathy. The door was closed, and he was bare from the waist up, and Prince Ilya was drawing closer and closer and there should be alarm bells screaming in his head and yet he couldn’t hear anything except the matching puff of the Prince’s breath as he bent his head to inspect Shane’s wound.

He peeled Shane’s hand away with his own gentle fingers, gingerly plucking up the soiled linen and tossing it to the side. He traced a path down Shane’s forearm, about an inch alongside the cut, a slow, slight touch that made the hair on the back of Shane’s neck stand at attention.

“I think the bleeding has mostly stopped,” Shane said.

Prince Ilya didn’t answer. He bent quickly to grab Shane’s discarded shirt and tore another strip off with his teeth—good God—then he held Shane’s forearm with one strond and, with great concentration, used the other to wrap the linen strip neatly around Shane’s forearm. When he had covered the cut completely, he tucked in the end of the cloth, but did not let go of Shane’s arm.

“I enjoy these little contests, Lord Hollander,” the Prince said. 

The teasing was gone from his voice, and the gleam in his eyes had changed from something playful to something much heavier. Something intentional. Shane knew he should step back, put on a new shirt, decline and deny and run as far as he possibly could, but his feet were stuck firmly to the ground. The prince’s thumb was moving now, brushing slowly back and forth at the base of Shane’s wrist, and just that light caress was threatening to render Shane boneless.

Except in one very specific place.

He wondered if his breeches would do anything to hide his growing erection. But a part of him hoped they wouldn’t—he wanted the prince to see.

Come closer, Shane wanted to say.

Instead, Prince Ilya tugged gently on his arms until Shane stumbled toward him, landing so that only a few inches separated his still-bare chest from the cloth of the prince’s vest.

“You are a very beautiful man,” the prince murmured. Shane’s face must have done something, because the prince’s expression changed. “Is a good thing, da?”

The prince’s hand slid up, past the bandage and past Shane’s elbow, lingering on his bicep, then he touched his other hand lightly to Shane’s waist. The prince paused and looked him dead in the eye, waiting for Shane to stop him, but he didn’t—he couldn’t, no matter that he knew how much he should—and the prince let his hand settle, firm and warm just above Shane’s hip.

It had been so long since he had allowed himself this. He had begun to think he might survive without it, but now it was all rushing back. The pull of someone else’s warmth, solid muscle and the tickle of chest hair under his palms, the few moments of peace when there was nothing in his head except the bright flash of pleasure.

Shane let his shoulders drift forward, far enough that his nose nudged the base of the prince’s jaw, where he caught a piney hint of aftershave underneath the musk of Prince Ilya’s sweat. The prince’s grip tightened on his hip, and he made a little catching sound in his throat, and Shane could not stop himself from pursing his lips and letting them brush over the prince’s neck.

He pulled back, tasting salt on his lips, wondering if another few seconds might be enough for either of them to recognize this for the mad recklessness that it once. But instead, the prince lifted his hand to Shane’s jaw and turned his face so he had to look the prince in the eye. 

Prince Ilya’s expression was fierce, his eyes blazing. “Yes?” he asked simply.

A wave of desire crashed into Shane, obliterating any remaining reason from his brain. He was adrift in a sea of want. He closed his eyes and nodded, helpless against the tide.

The first touch of the prince’s lips was featherlight, and so brief that it left Shane disappointed. But then he returned with a gentle press, then again, firmer, teasing relentlessly until Shane swung a hand around the back of the prince’s neck and pulled him in. Prince Ilya responded to Shane’s show of force with his own, driving his tongue deep into Shane’s mouth and walking him backward until his shoulders hit the panelled wall with a thud.

Shane surrendered with a long, deep shudder. His mind was empty of everything except the press of the prince’s body along the length of his own, and the hot slide of the prince’s tongue in his mouth. He kissed back deeply, desperately, his hands running from the prince’s shoulders down the front of his vest, clutching and pulling at the fasteners marching down one side until the garment was loose and the prince shook it impatiently off his arms.

The linen beneath was damp with sweat, but fine enough that Shane could feel the warmth rolling off the prince’s body. He grabbed at the fabric until he found the hem, and slipped his hand underneath to find searing hot skin and a solid wall of muscle.

One of them made a thick grunting noise at the contact, but Shane wasn’t sure which one it had been.

The prince’s grip tightened at Shane’s waist, then his hands slid around to Shane’s back and down to the globes of his arse, squeezing then pulling him close, until Shane could feel the ridge of the prince’s hardness in his breeches, and until the smallest bit of movement generated a white hot burst of friction against his own aching cock.

He moaned into the prince’s mouth, and started grappling with the fall of his breeches. The prince pulled away abruptly, panting and chuckling, and said, “So eager.”

“Shut up,” Shane muttered, finally loosening the fall successfully. He just as he was about to slip his hand inside. “Can I?”

“God, yes,” the prince answered.

The first thing Shane felt as his fingers closed around the length of Prince Ilya’s thick shaft was relief. This—the fact that the sensation of holding another man’s cock in his hand felt natural and right, far more than it had ever felt to kiss his own fiance on the lips—was why Shane had sworn off his one and only vice so many years ago. But he was too far gone to think better of it now, not while the prince was groaning through his clenched teeth and nudging his hips into Shane’s tightening fist.

“Hollander,” Prince Ilya gasped.

He wouldn’t do this again. Couldn’t do it again. But Prince Ilya was here, and he seemed to want Shane nearly as bad as Shane wanted him, and someday soon he would disappear back across the Continent and Shane would be married and he would never have a man’s cock in his hand again—

He dropped to his knees, drawing another tortured groan from the prince. He tugged the fall of the breeches aside and took in the sight of Prince Ilya’s cock, long and red and large, and he licked his lips.

When he glanced up, the prince was looking down at him with a disconcertingly soft expression. He placed a hand gently on the back of Shane’s head, curling his long fingers gently to push through his hair. “See? Beautiful. Krasivyy.”

Shane’s lips brushed against the tip once, then twice, savoring the salt hardness, before he took the shaft in his mouth, as deeply as he could. He pulled deep, drawing his tongue slowly along the underside, sucking in his cheeks. The prince’s fist closed around Shane’s hair, spurring him to swallow the last of the prince’s length so he was nestled deep into the back of Shane’s throat.

“Pizdets,” the prince gasped. “Hollander.”

Shane looked up through his lashes and saw that the Prince Ilya had his head thrown back, the thick tendons of his throat pulling taut. The sight made Shane moan around Prince Ilya’s cock, pushing deeper even though there were already tears in the corners of his eyes. The prince’s fingers clenched even tighter around Shane’s hair, and his other hand nudged against his shoulder, trying to push him away in a warning. But Shane held on, and the prince doubled over with a cry, coming in waves down Shane’s throat.

The prince pulled him up gently, his chest heaving. “As I said,” he said thickly, “full of surprises.”

The prince leaned in and kissed Shane hard, yanking at Shane’s breeches until the fall opened. His lips traced hot up Shane’s jaw, and then he was whispering close in his ear. “Look at you. You need it badly, da?” Shane could only whimper in response as the prince’s hand closed tight around his cock, his touch searingly hot and just firm enough. “Next time I will suck you. Show you how it is done.”

Shane nipped at the prince’s jaw, and Prince Ilya tightened his grip, stroking harder and faster.

“Yes kotik, show me your teeth.”

The pleasure surged, and he came with a groan, burying his face deep into the prince’s neck to muffle the sound. When the last wave of his orgasm had passed, he forced himself to raise his head and look at the prince, bracing himself for the onslaught of shame that he fully deserved. But the prince’s eyes were clear and bright, a crooked smile creeping up his left cheek, and the regret did not come.

This was a disaster. Shane the heir to the Duke of Ottawa, highly respected and engaged to be married to one of the most well-regarded ladies of the ton. Prince Ilya was a walking catastrophe, six feet and fourteen stone’s worth of the temptation, and he was standing inches away and cleaning Shane’s come from his hand with the remnants of Shane’s ruined shirt.

This was by far the stupidest thing Shane had ever done. Even worse, he desperately wanted to do it again.

They did not speak as they went about dressing. When they were both decent again, the prince nodded at him and charged straight toward the door. Shane lunged to stop him, but it was too late - the door swung into the hall, and the prince came face to face with Hayden.

“Your Highness,” Hayden stuttered. “I was looking for Lord Hollander.”

“Here, Hayden.”

Hayden was looking at them curiously. “The prince came to compliment me on a good match.”

“Of course,” Prince Ilya said. “Lord Hollander is quite skilled. Very disciplined, excellent form.”

Shane gave a little bow in the prince’s direction. “Too predictable, though. Next time I hope you will surprise me.”

The prince bade his goodbyes to both, and winked at Shane before he turned to leave.

“I think I don’t like him,” Hayden said.

Chapter End Notes

While I'm only addressing Shane's Japanese heritage here obliquely through the racist ignorance of punk school bullies, in my head, Yuna was the daughter of a rich Japanese merchant (because Japan did continue to trade internationally during the period of closed borders) and maybe David was forced to marry her to save an insolvent dukedom and then they fell in love.

Chapter 5: rarely pure and never simple

Shane slept like a dead man, better and longer than he had in months, and awoke in a state of utter panic.

How could he have been so spectacularly foolish? He’d managed just fine for so many years, even when faced with temptation. Yet Shane had ended up on his knees in Angelo’s dressing room barely a fortnight after Prince Ilya set foot in England.

It was worth it, a voice said, somewhere inside his head. Then he was remembering—the taste of salt on the prince’s skin, the guttural groans that escaped from his throat, the heavy, throbbing mass of him in Shane’s—

Christ, he was getting hard again.

He threw his arm over his eyes and waited for the crisis to subside.

He had to speak to Rose, to confess what he had done. It was Tuesday, which was not a day she usually received callers, but this was a good thing—she would still see him, he was sure of fit, and they would be able to speak alone.

It was still far too early to pay a visit, so he took a long ride in Hyde Park, instead. The morning was misty, and cool enough that his cheeks were stiff with cold by the time he returned. He ate breakfast with his father, who asked Shane’s opinion on the shortage of farm labor at one of their northern estates, where the cotton mills and looms were competing for workers.

He arrived at Rose’s townhouse at eleven; she would still scold him for visiting early, but he knew she would be awake.

“Shane, my love, is everything alright?” she said as she rushed into the front hall. “I know you awaken at dawn or some such but your manners usually prevent you from calling so early.”

“I have to tell you something, and was hoping we could speak in private.”

“Oh! My.” Anticipation gleamed in her eyes, and he thought again about how much he cared for her. “Let’s sit in the library then, Mama is still asleep but just in case, she never goes in there.”

They settled in a pair of worn armchairs at the back of the room, near the window. Rose offered tea and refreshment, but he declined. Servants had ears.

“Now, what has you in such a state?” she asked.

“You know what we talked about when I came home from university?” he asked.

A line formed between her eyebrows. “You mean about—our marriage?”

He nodded. “And my….preferences.”

“I remember.”

“I—” he began, but then he realized he didn’t know exactly how to go on. Rose had made it clear that Shane was free to pursue his interests. He had no reason to confess every tryst. And Prince Ilya was hardly the first man Shane had touched, but he’d never felt so panicked about those encounters, even though the same laws and taboos applied. “There is a man…” he tried again.

Her eyes lit up. “Who is he?”

“I shouldn’t—I’m being reckless, Rose. I haven’t, since Oxford, you deserve better—” He was stumbling all about, hardly making sense, but, as always, she seemed to understand perfectly.

“Lord Hollander, are you telling me that you haven’t…enjoyed yourself a single time since you left university? Until this person?”

He nodded, and her face fell. She reached over and squeezed Shane’s hand where it lay on the arm of the chair.

“You know how I feel .You shouldn’t deny yourself because of me.”

“I don’t want to embarrass you.”

Rose scrunched her nose and waived her other hand. “This is not embarrassing. It would be embarrassing if you had a mistress and four children tucked away in Bloomsbury.”

Shane thought for a minute. “You think Lady Davenport is embarrassed by her husband?”

“See—everyone knows! But actually, no, I don’t think she is personally embarrassed.”

“Why not?”

Rose raised her eyebrows at Shane. “Becaues I think you and Lady Davenport have something in common.”

“Oh! Well, I—I suppose I hadn’t thought that it might be….like this for a woman.”

She snorted. “So are you going to tell me who it is?”

Shane ran his other hand over his mouth and chin. “Prince Ilya.”

Rose’s brows shot up again. “Lord Hollander, I am impressed. Is that what these little contests are all about?”

“Well, now they are, I suppose. But nothing happened until the fencing.”

“And you’re…having fun?”

Shane blushed. “You’re very bold, you know that?”

“You enjoy it, I think,” she said.

He smiled. “I do.

A few quiet moments passed. This is what it would be like with them for all the years to come, the easy comfort of friendship, and Shane told himself again that this would be enough. The desire that had overtaken him with the prince at Angelo’s was a mirage luring him from the right path with a false promise of satiety. If he thought he’d felt even a moment of true connection in the white hot burst of pleasure between them, he was a fool. Some cruel trick of fate had made his body want these things, and he had succumbed to a handsome man with a clever tongue and strong fingers, no different than the woman who had trysted with the prince in the garden.

“Shane, I just want you to be happy,” Rose said quietly.

And he just wanted her to be happy. He’d thought the right way to go about it was to marry her as planned, make her a duchess and give her children and treat her kindly for the rest of their lives. Most ladies of the ton would jump at such a bargain, especially if they could be assured that their husband would visit their bed no more than strictly necessary. 

But he worried. Rose was bold, and passionate, and she was making the same sacrifice as Shane in continuing with their betrothal. She deserved a man who would love her mind, body, and soul, yet she would settle for two of three.

“I want the same for you. You deserve more than what I have to give you,” he said.

“We will do this together,” she said, and for the first time Shane heard an echo of resignation in her voice. “I was going to have to do this anyway, wasn’t I? It’s rare that a lady in my position truly gets to choose. You are a good man, and we will have a good life together.”

It sounded to Shane’s ears like she had made this argument to herself before, and found it just as inadequate as he did.

“Rose, you have been so generous with me,” he began, not entirely sure how to phrase such a thing delicately. “I hope you know that I will also be generous.”

Her brows furrowed, quizzical.

“You will have your own needs, and as long as you’re discreet, I would not seek to prevent you from—”

“Oh, Shane,” she said, squeezing his hand again. “You really are the most wonderful man.” She was smiling, but her voice was tight. “I truly couldn’t ask for a better fiance.”

He wasn’t sure he believed her, but he squeezed her hand in return, anyway.

*

On Tuesday afternoons, he and Hayden went riding on Rotten Row. It wasn’t Shane’s preferred way to pass two hours, but Hayden greatly enjoyed ambling down the crowded thoroughfare, chatting up dowagers and craning his neck to see if Lady Jacqueline was walking that day.

The sun was shining and a light breeze riffled through the trees, which meant the road was even more crowded than usual. After only a few minutes, Shanr and Hayden gave up on riding, and Shane paid an idling coachman a shilling to watch their horses alongside his own cattle.

Nearly all the young ladies were dressed in a version of the same pale muslin gown, but it still didn’t take Hayden long to find Lady Jacqueline. Hayden flirted ostentatiously with the lady’s mother, while Shane made an attempt to converse with Lady Jacqueline about the fine weather.

“I appreciate the effort, Lord Hollander, but this is unnecessary. I’m perfectly happy to watch Lord Hayden make a fool of himself, again.”

Shane smiled. “Will you not put him out of his misery?”

“Sadly I cannot. He’s brought Mama ‘round, but Papa is not convinced.”

“Lord Hayden is an honorable man, with an adequate income,” Shane said. He was being rather blunt, perhaps, but Lady Jacqueline had long insisted that she preferred him to be such.

“Alas, I’ve argued the same many times.”

“Would it help if my father were to vouch for him, somehow?”

Lady Jacqueline’s eyes lit up. “Oh, would he? Papa would never disagree with your father. Frankly, between the two of us, sometimes I worry that he thinks I might be able to lure you away from Lady Rose.”

Shane’s face must have betrayed his shock, because Lady Jacqueline laughed. “Only a jest, Lord Hollander. We all know that you are immovable on the subject of your betrothal.”

Well, that wasn’t a particularly romantic way to put it. Accurate, though.

They made their bows and went on their way, only to be stopped a few feet down the road by a trio of friends from their Oxford days.

Mr. Wyatt Hayes was an amiable man, mostly known for trapping many a gentleman in unwinnable games of chess at White’s. Today he was in the company of Lord Boodram and Mr. Hunter. Shane liked Lord Boodram, as well, and his only issue with Mr. Hunter was that the two of them had frequently slaked their shared desires with one another at Oxford. Hunter had attempted to maintain a friendship of sorts after university, but Shane had avoided him instead, not wanting to invite gossip.

“Have you and Lady Rose set a date?” Hunter asked. His tone made no suggestion of anything, but Shane still narrowed his eyes, searching the other man’s face for some sort of reprimand. It wasn’t there. Hunter knew well enough about the world they lived in; he was half way to proposing to a nice young woman himself, if the gossips were correct.

“Not quite,” he said. “Her mother wants to wait until her father returns from Canada.”

“Gentlemen,” an accented voice said.

Prince Ilya was standing a foot or two behind Shane’s left side, and it felt nearly as if he was purring directly into his ear. Shane could feel the pink heat creeping up his neck already.

Hayden made introductions while Shane tried not to panic about how close the prince was standing. They were packed tightly on a crowded roadway, it wasn’t as if it would be unusual for their shoulders to be touching. Only it was difficult for Shane not to, well, lean. He was a moth to the prince’s flame, far too aware of the corded muscle and hot skin that hid underneath the finely fitted clothes and stiff, royal posture.

Regrettably, he was too distracted in the first few minutes to notice Hunter’s eyes on them, or even to hear when Hunter asked about their remaining contest—a race, on horseback, yet to be scheduled.

“Are you a chess player, Prince Ilya? Lord Hollander has given me a run for my money, a few times.”

“That’s generous, Mr. Hayes,” Shane said.

“A chess match would take forever. No fun to watch!” Hayden chimed in.

“Is it true you were injured in the fencing match, Lord Hollander?” Hunter asked. Once, Shane had admired his hazel eyes, but now he found the mischievous gleam in them to be profoundly nerve-wracking.

“Just a scratch,” he said.

“Unnecessary to draw blood, don’t you think, Your Highness?” he asked the prince.

The prince’s eyes flicked toward Shane. “Lord Hollander is a very strong competitor.”

“Yes, he’s a talented man,” Hunter said. This earned a sharp glare from the prince, but Hunter only answered with a satisfied grin.

Throughout this strange showdown, Lord Boodram had been describing his new phaeton in great detail to Hayden and Mr. Hayes. Hayden asked if it was nearby, and Boodram invited the whole group for an inspection.

“I was hoping to walk along the Serpentine,” the prince said. 

It was such a flimsy excuse that it might have been rude, but Hunter chimed in right away. “I’m sure Lord Hollander can show you.”

Before Shane could answer, the other three men had disappeared into the crowd.

He sighed. “Shall we?”

“You and Mr. Hunter are good friends?” Prince Ilya asked, with no preamble. 

“I suppose,” Shane said. 

The shore near the lake was never as crowded as the road, because the ladies preferred not to get their slippers muddy. They turned and walked along the water, toward a tree with one large branch that hovered over the water. Though the throngs were only twenty or thirty feet away, the clatter of the carriage wheels and drone of conversation seemed muffled by the warm air and the surrounding trees. They reached the tree, and the prince leaned one shoulder against the trunk.

“Has he sucked your cock?” he asked quietly, looking at his fingernails.

Shane’s mouth dropped open.

“Yes, that’s what I mean,” Ilya said.

“You can’t just say things like that,” Shane hissed. “Someone could have heard you!”

Ilya gestured to the empty space around them.

“Are you going to answer my question?” the prince asked. He continued to lean against the tree, but he didn’t seem relaxed. His lips were set tightly, so much so that it made the deep cupid’s bow at the top nearly disappear.

“Yes, but it was a long time ago,” Shane said, blushing immediately. Why on earth had he admitted such a thing? It was none of the prince’s business who had or had not sucked Shane’s cock five years ago.

“I would do better,” Prince Ilya said.

Who the hell did the prince think he was? He drifts in from Russia with his fancy title and his godforsaken cheekbones and acts like Shane is some silly plaything, available for his amusement?

Shane narrowed his eyes. “Are you jealous?”

“How long ago?” the prince said, because apparently neither of them were in the mood to answer any questions.

“When we were at university.”

The prince’s eyebrows lifted. “But he is very old, no? Ah, I see, he was your teacher.”

Shane did his best to swallow a laugh. “He’s only two or three years older than I.”

“Impossible,” Prince Ilya said. “I am surprised he could even get on his knees for you. Did he ask for a pillow?”

Shane couldn’t help it this time, he snickered. And at the sound of his laugh, the prince’s face lit up with a bright, joyful smile.

“Perhaps he doesn’t do this at all,” the prince continued. ”Maybe he was too old to learn by the time it was invented?”

Shane had to cover his face with his hands. “Stop,” he said, through his laughter. “Someone will ask us what’s so funny.”

“Ah,” the prince answered, his expression questioning. “You are a very private man.”

“Well, yes. And there are some things you just don’t talk about, regardless.”

“Like sucking another man’s cock?”

“Stop. There are laws against it here, you know.”

“And they would throw you in jail?”

Almost definitely not.

“It’s the principle,” Shane said, because he did believe that.

“There are places you can go, you know,” Prince Ilya said. 

He was looking at Shane with what he might describe as tenderness, but Shane balked at the suggestion that the prince might feel bad for him. He knew all the places a man like him could go, but he didn’t want to. He didn’t want tense, anonymous encounters, much less if they came with a risk of blackmail, or robbery, or worse. The powers that be had played a cruel joke on Shane, giving him such desires without the recklessness to satiate them. Why couldn’t some other man, some daredevil who gambled too much and drove his phaeton too fast, be gifted with yet another vice, while Shane was left to follow the rules?

“I am well aware.”

“Meet me tonight.”

Shane was shaking his head before the prince even finished talking. “I can’t—I’m engaged. You know that.”

“Lady Rose isn’t aware of your proclivities?”

“I will not embarrass her,” Shane said through gritted teeth.

“Which is why you will go somewhere private, where everyone has the same secret. Da?”

“I—” He was going to say no. He had to say no. But the words would not leave his mouth. Every time he went to say them, he could feel the pulsing weight of the prince in his mouth, the pull of his fist in Shane’s hair. He had told himself he would indulge just the once, but the joke was on him: now he could only imagine more. More of the princes hands, and tongue, more of him on Shane, inside Shane.

Good God, inside. When had he become such a weak man?

“A friend gave me this,” the prince said, holding a thick card engraved with only an address on one side. “Do you know this place?”

Shane looked at it and nodded. He had a card just like this, tucked away in a drawer in his bedchamber, lurking just within reach like a warning or a talisman or perhaps an escape hatch. It was an invitation to a club where all sorts could address their less conventional needs. Shane had lost count of the number of times he’d crept from his bed on a particularly restless night, retrieved the card and traced the address with his fingers, only to sigh and shove it back in the drawer and spend the rest of the night staring at the canopy over his bed.

“I will go tonight, I think,” the prince said.

Shane nodded silently.

“Perhaps I will see you there?” he added. “Say, midnight?”

He didn’t nod his head again. But he didn’t shake it, either.

Chapter 6: dangerous liaison

Chapter Summary

the cravats are coming off! you've been warned: this chapter is smut all the way through

Shane had imagined the club on Wimpole Street countless times. In his mind’s eye it was garish, with wine-colored velvet on the walls and an abundance of gilded chandeliers. But his carriage was stopped on a quiet road, a few doors down from a nondescript brick house. There were no revelers spilling from the door or hanging out the windows, no music or laughter or shouting drifting from inside.

He could forget all about the prince’s invitation, and turn around and go home. That was certainly what he should do and what he had done more than once over the past few years. But even though he had told himself definitively that he wouldn’t go, he had still found himself summoning his valet after dinner, dressing carefully, and lying about going to his usual club to play cards.

All the while he had waited for the customary guilt to set in, but it hadn’t come. Whatever there was between himself and the prince seemed to exist separate from Shane’s real life and the many standards of behavior and ethics to which he held himself. Perhaps it was because the prince was only visiting; perhaps it was because Shane’s body had reached its limit of deprivation, and was staging a mutiny inside his poor, tired mind.

He told his driver he would make his own way home and hopped down from the carriage.

At the door, he knocked and was received by a silent footman who inspected his card carefully and then opened the door to admit him. The front hall was panelled in dark wood and still very quiet. Another footman appeared and led him through a hallway to a parlor of sorts, where a couple dozen people were milling about and talking quietly.

A few were sipping wine or champagne; everyone was fully clothed. Shane began to feel silly for expecting anything more Bacchanalian—this was still England, after all. Of course they would pursue their perversions efficiently, and with nice manners.

“Lord Hollander,” a voice said over his shoulder. He whirled around and found a tall woman with brown skin and hazel eyes staring back at him. “I’m so glad you have finally decided to join us.”

He looked around the room, spotting one or two familiar faces, and grew slightly panicked. “I was under the impression this would be more…anonymous.”

She smiled patiently. “Our patrons understand the importance of confidentiality. You needn’t worry about your privacy, I assure you.” There was a hint of a threat in her tone, which Shane found encouraging.

“I am Lana,” she said, holding out her hand. There was a trace of an accent in her voice, perhaps something Slavic.

He shook her hand. “Is this your establishment?”

She grinned. “It is. Now, there are no rules here except that you will not speak of anything that happens here outside of these walls, and you will treat all patrons with care and respect.”

“Of course,” he said.

“This room is for general socializing. Many spend the entire evening here, with no expectations for….anything else. Should you wish for a more boisterous environment, one of my staff can escort you to a space where patrons are more free with their affections. And of course, we can provide private spaces for you and a friend—or two, or three—as well.”

He felt himself blush, and Lana smiled back at him.

“Enjoy your evening, my Lord.”

He bowed, and she drifted away. A footman appeared with a glass of port, which Shane had not asked for but took anyway. He took a sip at the very same moment Prince Ilya walked into the room, coughing and nearly spilling the deep red wine all over his gloves.

The prince approached him, smiling wide. “Good evening, Lord Hollander.”

“Your Highness,” he said.

“I’ll admit, I wasn’t sure I would see you here tonight.”

“I wasn’t sure I would come.”

The prince lifted his eyebrows, and Shane rolled his eyes in response.

“You have a bit of wine—just here,” the prince said, gesturing at the corner of Shane’s lip. He snuck the tip of his tongue out to lick it clean, and savored the way the prince’s eyes darkened as he watched.

“Did you meet Lana?” the prince asked.

“I did. I wonder how she came to own such an establishment as this.”

The prince smiled fondly. “She has always been undeterred by convention.”

“Have you known her her for a long time?” Shane asked.

“Since we were children, actually. But Russia was not kind to her parents, and they took her away many years ago.”

“I see,” Shane muttered.

He believed what Lana had said about confidentiality, but he couldn’t help but scan around the room to see whether anyone was watching him and the prince speak. He understood that they would all keep one another’s secrets. But the idea of acquaintances knowing about him—not just in the general gossip sense, but in the Lord Hollander likes to get fucked by other men, and did so the other night at a special club on Wimpole Street sense—made him squirm.

“You would prefer more privacy, yes?” the prince asked.

Shane nodded, slightly embarrassed by his own skittishness.

Prince Ilya signalled to a footman, who led them through another dim hallway to a corridor lined with doors. He showed Shane and the prince into what could be a sitting room in any well-appointed house. The carpets were thick wool, and there was a settee and two fine-legged chairs set in front of a roaring fire.

When the latch of the door clicked shut behind them, Shane felt as if he could finally breathe again.

“Better, yes?” the prince said.

Shane nodded.

The prince plopped down inelegantly on the settee, his legs spreading wide enough that his trouser legs pulled across a conspicuous bulge. Shane averted his gaze and placed himself more carefully in one of the chairs.

“When did you know that you liked men?”

Shane let out a surprised laugh. “You are very nosy.”

“I am curious about you,” the prince said. 

His openness was disarming, and Shane found himself answering the question before he could scold the prince about its inappropriateness. “When I was younger. At school, you know. Lots of other boys around.”

“But you like women, too?” the prince asked.

Shane looked down at his feet, his eyes tracing the intricate pattern woven into the deep blue wool.

“Ah. No, then?” the prince pressed.

Shane could remember clearly the day he had realized. His friends had been passing around a sketch of a naked woman. In the drawing, her skirts were hiked up and her breasts were spilling from her bodice. He had felt nothing but an appreciation for the craft—so lifelike, he had thought.

The other boys had been interested for a different reason.

Shane sighed. “I hoped for a long time that the right woman would spark my desire,” he said. “But…no.”

The prince propped one ankle on the opposite knee, then set about taking off his gloves. Shane was rapt by the sight of him tugging gently at the tip of each finger, working the close-fitting silk off patiently. Finally, he pulled the glove off and started on the other hand. Shane swallowed hard.

“Does your fiance know?” the prince said.

Suddenly his own hands felt tight and itchy inside his gloves. He squeezed his fingers into a fist, but that only made the sensation worse. Now his coat felt too tight about his shoulders, too, and his cravat was tickling his jaw.

Shane nodded. “She is very understanding. I am a lucky man.”

“I like women, also,” the prince announced.

Shane rolled his eyes. “Yes, I am aware.”

“You saw me in the garden.”

“I didn’t see, really,” Shane said, his cheeks warming again. For heaven’s sake, he’d been blushing practically since he walked in the door.

“You are very cute when you blush,” the prince said.

“I am not,” Shane answered.

“Yes. I see your freckles better. Is warm in here, yes?” the prince asked.

It probably wasn’t—it was hardly ever warm in London—but Shane’s skin was still growing hot under his many layers of clothes.

“May I?” the prince asked, already pulling on the ends of his cravat. The silk knot loosened as he worked it apart patiently with graceful fingers. Shane could not tear his gaze away as he watched the fine fabric slide across the prince’s neck, falling away and exposing the pale skin of his throat bit by bit. “Now you,” he said.

Shane didn’t even argue. He yanked off his gloves and reached up and made quick work of the elaborate knot his valet had tied, tugging impatiently and far less elegantly than the prince, until he could finally pull the strip of silk away.

“Why did you come here tonight?” The prince asked.

“You invited me, didn’t you?”

“I’m surely not the first,” Prince Ilya said.

Shane swallowed. “I don’t often…feel free,”

“You are afraid,” the prince said.

“I’m not afraid,” he spat. But of course he was afraid. Afraid of getting caught, of being judged and found lacking, or being whispered about and mocked and shunned.

“No, you were brave tonight,” the prince said. Shane had finally become accustomed to the prince’s teasing, but this didn’t feel quite the same. The prince’s eyes were blazing, both colorless and colorful in the warm glow of the fire.

“I wanted to see you,” Shane said softly, the confession slipping through his lips before he was able to stop it.

“You have been thinking about me,” the prince purred.

Shane bit his lip and nodded his head.

“Tell me what it is that you think about.”

Shane’s cheeks burned. “I can’t.”

Prince Ilya leaned forward and rested his elbows on his knees. Without the cravat wrapped around his neck, Shane could see the thick cords of his neck drawn taut, and the hint of pale chest hair beneath his linen shirt.

“Let us come to terms,” the prince said. “You tell me what it was you thought about, and I will do these things for you.”

A strangled noise escaped Shane’s throat. “I thought about your chest,” he whispered. “That I wanted to see it.”

The prince lifted an eyebrow, and for a moment Shane thought he might laugh at him. But Prince Ilya sat up and began to shrug out of the sleeves of his coat. It took some time working the finely tailored cloth over his shoulders, and when he was finally freed of the garment he draped it carelessly over the arm of the settee and began immediately on the buttons of his waistcoat. As he stripped that off, too, the neck of his linen shirt fell open, exposing a vee of pale, curly hair.

Shane swallowed and shifted in his seat.

“Like this?” the prince asked, his tone playful.

Shane shook his head. “All of it.”

The prince smiled. “Very demanding.” Then he stood, his long legs unfolding right in front of Shane, and tugged his shirt from where it was tucked into his breeches. When the cloth was free, he pulled it over his head.

Shane had been thinking about the prince’s bare chest, certainly more than was healthy. But for the moment he was distracted by the considerable bulge in the prince’s trousers, hovering barely a foot from his face. He fought the urge to lean toward it and bury his face in the fine-woven wool.

In a heroic effort to maintain at least one shred of his dignity, he wrenched his gaze upward, craning his neck. Prince Ilya’s chest was as impressive as Shane had imagined, alone in the dark, a great expanse of pale skin ridged with muscle and dotted with beauty marks. There was a loose triangle of hair between his pectoral muscles and another dusting lower down, which formed a rough line under his belly button that snaked underneath his trouser fall.

Shane stood slowly and brought his hands to rest on the prince’s chest. He was warm—hot, even—and solid, smooth skin tight across a solid wall of muscle. Shane let his fingers drift outward, across the prince’s tight, brown nipples, eliciting a sharp hiss. The prince’s breath was fast and hot in his ear.

“Is this all?” Prince Ilya murmured in Shane’s ear.

“I thought about your mouth,” he whispered back. “You said next time.”

“I did,” he said, leaning in to brush his lips along Shane’s jaw. His mouth traced torturously down the bone, then up again, then across Shane’s cheek, searching until their lips met. Shane groaned and wrapped his arms around Prince Ilya’s bare torso, pulling him hard to his chest while he deepened the kiss.

The prince took a halting step backward, dragging Shane with him, then another, then spun them around and pressed Shane backward another step. The prince pulled away from the kiss and gave Shane a gentle shove so that his knees hit the back of the settee, and he fell to sit.

“I’ve thought of this, too,” Prince Ilya said as he sank to his knees. “Will you take it out for me?”

The gentle instruction coursed through Shane like lightning, setting his skin ablaze. He unbuttoned his fall slowly, watching as the prince stared. He spread the fabric side, exposing the ridge of his erection where it strained against his smalls.

“More. I want to see it in your hand,” the prince said.

Shane reached into the folds of linen and wrapped his fingers around the aching shaft. He lifted it from the fabric, his hips thrusting up into his own touch, and wondered for a moment if he might embarrass himself terribly. He wasn’t sure he had ever been this hard; he was already leaking from the tip.

The prince licked his lips.

Shane must have closed his eyes for a moment, because he felt Prince Ilya’s mouth before he saw it, the warm, wet haven enveloping fully in one swift motion. On instinct, he thrust upward again, eliciting a choked sound, but when he muttered an apology Prince Ilya only took him deeper into his throat, swallowing around him.

The prince’s hands ran up his thighs and then began to paw and scrabble at his coat. Shane took over, spreading the edges of his coat aside and working the buttons of his waistcoat open. Prince Ilya slid one hand up the leg of Shane’s trousers and under the loosened hem of his linen shirt, stretching until his heavy palm reached up to Shane’s chest and squeezed.

Meanwhile, the prince worked his other hand into Shane’s smalls and cupped him, long fingers grazing against the creases of his thigh and behind his balls, and Shane must have made some sort of sound because he could feel the prince smiling around him.

Though it might come as a surprise to some, Shane was not prudish. He knew fair well what he liked and allowed himself a time in which to indulge. But he had never felt anything like this. The prince pressed his tongue along the underside of his shaft, squeezing and sucking in when he reached the head, and a white hot shot of pleasure shot through every nerve in Shane’s body.

He was going to come. He didn’t want to come.

“Christ,” he groaned, pushing at one of the prince’s shoulders. “I can’t—”

The prince pulled off abruptly. “You can call me Ilya.”

Shane barked out a surprised laugh. “Ilya.”

He had the odd sensation for a moment that he was looking at himself from the doorway of the room: splayed on the settee, on display with his trousers and coat and waistcoat flung open and his shirt shoved halfway up his chest. His cheeks were pink, surely, his whole face probably glistening with a sheen of sweat. He had raked a hand through his hair more than once.

He had never felt so debauched.

And there was Ilya, still on the floor between Shane’s legs, his face painted with raw desire.

“I thought about you fucking me,” Shane said.

A muscle ticked in Ilya’s jaw, and he swallowed. He offered his hand to Shane, and Shane took it and let himself be drawn down to the floor so that he and Ilya were kneeling in front of one another. Ilya took Shane’s jaw in his hand and held his face while he kissed him, softly at first, then harder, his tongue sliding deep into Shane’s mouth, wet and obscene.

“You have done this before?” the prince murmured as he pressed a series of hot, open-mouthed kisses down Shane’s neck.

“Yes.”

“You are sure you want to—”

“Yes, Ilya. Please.”

Ilya whimpered against the curve of Shane’s neck, then nudged him around and pressed gently between his shoulder blades until bent forward and rested his chest on the firm cushion of the settee. Ilya was gone for a moment, a few steps toward the edge of the room, something clattering on one of the bookshelves before he returned and knelt again on the carpet behind Shane.

Shane pressed his face to his forearm as Ilya tugged his trousers down. He heard the clink of glass, something small, and then Ilya’s fingers were on him, slick with oil, drawing careful circles around the pucker of his hole.

God, it had been so long. He tried to swallow the needy noise that emerged from his throat.

The prince worked slowly but relentlessly to open him, and soon Shane was writhing, desperate, pushing back against the gentle incursions of one finger, then two.

“Ilya, please,” he moaned.

Ilya leaned over, his solid chest pressed into Shane’s back and for God’s sake, he should have taken off his coat. Ilya’s lips traced the shell of Shane’s ear briefly before he answered, “please what?”

“Please fuck me,” he ground out.

“LIke this?” The prince pushed a third finger inside and thrust them forward.

“No, more,” he begged.

“Say it, Lord Hollander,” Ilya insisted.

“Shane, call me Shane,”

“Tell me what you want, Shane.”

“You, your cock. I need you.” Christ, he was begging. Ilya would never let him live that down. But when Shane felt the thick press of Ilya’s hardness against his entrance, he didn’t care.

The stretch was searing, white hot, beautiful. Shane surrendered to the heaven of being so full, and Ilya leaned forward again.

“Is good?” he said.

“So good,” Shane answered on a gasp. But Ilya was still going so torturously slow. Shane wriggled and writhed and pressed backward, seeking more until Ilya pushed more and grazed that place inside Shane that set his whole body on fire, rolling in great, hot waves of pleasure. “Harder,” he croaked.

“You are so hungry for me,” Ilya purred, and then proceeded to—thank God—set a relentless pace.

Shane couldn’t be bothered to respond, not when he was so full, stretched just to the right side of pain, with Ilya’s thick length insistent inside him. He could feel his release building, too fast but Shane was too far gone to pull back from the brink. When it hit him he cried into the cushion underneath his head, the thick pulse of his cock coursing through his whole body. 

Behind him, Ilya’s pace faltered, his hands clawing into Shane’s sides. Surely the pressure would leave a bruise, something Shane would see in the mirror of his dressing, maybe even press his fingers to, when he was alone, as a reminder.

“Blyat, Shane,” Ilya groaned, curling in, his long arms winding around Shane’s middle and pulling in and up, until Ilya’s nose was buried in his hair. They stayed still, pressed front to back and hovering over the settee, their breath slowing together in the quiet room.

Eventually, Ilya collapsed onto the floor behind them. Shane winced as he felt the dampness on his backside.

“There is a washroom through there,” Ilya said, gesturing toward a door tucked subtly between two bookshelves.

Shane straighted, and caught sight of the mess they had made on the floor in front of the settee.

“I think we ruined this carpet.”

Ilya shrugged. “I’m sure Svetlana has secret method of cleaning. This won’t be the only rug with spend all over it tonight.”

“Ugh, disgusting.” He stood up gingerly and made his way to the hidden washroom. He managed to clean himself up to an acceptable degree. Unfortunately, it would be too late to ask for a bath when he returned home.

When he returned to the sitting room, Ilya was mostly dressed again, but struggling to put his coat on. Shane stepped behind his back and held the garment steady while Ilya shrugged into the sleeves, admiring the bunch of his shoulders all the while. He had done up his shirt and waistcoat in the washroom, but still had to retrieve his cravat from the floor beside the chair. It was a useless pile of wrinkled silk; there was no point in trying to retie the knot.

“Good thing our horse race is not tomorrow, yes?” Ilya said with a wink.

“Vulgar, even for you,” Shane said, though he couldn’t help but smile back.

“You are glad you came tonight?”

Shane raised an eyebrow and let his eyes sink to Ilya’s crotch. Ilya let out a startled laugh.

“I am, though,” Shane said softly.

This had always been a weakness of his, the way that physical intimacy bled out into the moments after. This is what he would lose when he married Rose, and what she would lose as well. They could love one another, and perhaps they could manage their other desires neatly and discreetly, but there would be none of the liminal tenderness that tied two bodies together, along with two minds.

“Pardon?” Ilya said. He was fussing with his own discarded cravat, trying to untangle the cloth and wind it around his fingers.

“I am glad that I came here tonight,” Shane said.

Ilya’s eyes softened. He crammed the yet-unwound wad of silk into his coat pocket and took two long steps toward Shane. As Ilya’s large hands came up to cup his face, Shane sighed and closed his eyes. Just a few more moments, he thought to himself. Ilya kissed him softly on the lips, and Shane fought mightily against the sting of oncoming tears.

Chapter 7: the fall

Chapter Notes

The club was a mistake.

One that Shane continued to make, night after night,

He spent most of every day counting down the minutes, and then most of the rest of the night dreaming of Ilya’s breath in his ear, or the strength of his forearm lashed around Shane’s hips.

He had told himself that Ilya was temporary, that they could sequester their passion at the club, let the flames roar where they couldn’t burn anything that mattered. But he had been a fool.

He could not keep the fire contained. Things were getting….singed.

One evening, he ventured to White’s with Hayden to pass a few hours before he went to Lana’s. But then Ilya strode in, sat down next to them, and proceeded to bicker endlessly with Hayden about the merits of Voltaire, and whether the United States of America was doomed to failure. Shane had found himself grinning at every silly jab, obviously enough that Hayden kicked him under the table.

At Mrs. Fortesque-Smythe’s charity luncheon, Ilya flirted outrageously with Rose, so Shane retaliated by seeking out Mr. Hunter for a chat. Ilya had spent the rest of the luncheon, and a dinner party later that evening, staring daggers at Shane, and when they finally met at the club that night, Ilya had tortured Shane ruthlessly, bringing him to the brink of climax over and over again before finally allowing him to come.

Then, at Lady Montbonne’s ball, Ilya had followed Shane down a corridor, toward the card room.

“We will still meet tonight, yes?”

“Sssh! Someone might hear, your highness.”

“Don’t worry, there is no one nearby to hear how hungry you are for cock.”

“Ilya, for Christ’s sake! Stop it!”

“Sorry, moy lyubov, I did not mean to make you angry. You will punish me later, maybe? I will get on my knees and you will fuck my—”

Shane had slapped his hand over Ilya’s mouth and shoved him against the wall, only to succumb to temptation a split second later and kiss him desperately, lips and tongues and teeth tangling right there next to the first earl of Montbonne’s suit of armor.

Rose was delighted by these displays, and insisted that she was the only one who would notice. Shane’s father thought it was nice that he and the prince were becoming such good friends, and asked Shane if he might be interested in joining in some of their diplomatic discussions at Westminster.

His mother said nothing, but he caught her staring more than once, her gaze cool and assessing. It didn’t not escape his notice, either, that the duchess had stopped asking about the wedding plans.

The last of their silly contests, the horse race, was finally upon them. But Shane didn’t want to convene in the park amidst a horde of over-excited wagerers. He wanted to amble side-by-side through the greenery, just the two of them, easy and quiet. Lately, seeing Ilya in public brought on a subtle ache in Shane’s chest.

This is exactly what Shane had meant to avoid. He had suffered through so many years of self-denial because the risk of forging a connection was too great. Deprivation now had been acceptable because it would prevent the devastating loss that could follow. And it was exactly as he’d feared: he had allowed himself a week or two of bliss, for which he would inevitably pay with a lifetime of loneliness and longing.

He had not wanted to know what he might be missing.

“I hope you are ready for a humiliating loss, Lord Hollander,” Ilya said to him as they met on the grass. His eyes were gray and cool in the morning light.

When he’d last seen Ilya, less than twelve hours before, those eyes had been glowing with fire, golden and blazing as Ilya had fucked him senseless on the floor in front of the fireplace. After, Ilya had been quiet, his expression unusually hard, but Shane had hesitated to ask him what was wrong. He had been reckless enough already; chasing this damned closeness that was hounding them would do neither of them any favors. Ilya would return to Moscow soon, wouldn’t he?

“Pride goeth before the fall, Your Highness.”

Lord Marlow gathered the crowd and announced the rules and the route of the course. Shane barely listened. For the first time in his life, he didn’t care a whit whether he won.

They rode to the starting line, their horses standing six or eight feet apart. Shane looked over to find Ilya grinning, unguarded and eager, and felt his own answering smile spread across his face. For the next few minutes, at least, they could leave the onlookers behind and Shane could pretend that this was his life: Ilya’s teasing smile, and the way he made Shane feel he had permission to do something only because it was fun; the possibility of friendship and affection and desire all wrapped up into one.

They were neck and neck across the green and into a small patch of trees at the far end of the set course. They were to take the walking path, which curved through the thicket, then bear right at the fork which would bend them back to the clearing for the final leg. Shane’s shirt was soaked through with sweat, and his waistcoat was well on its way, and his legs burned where they squeezed like hell at the horse’s flanks. But he didn’t care about the heat, or the ache in his muscles—all he cared about was the music of Ilya’s laugh just over his shoulder.

He didn’t see what startled Ilya’s horse. But one second Ilya was coming up alongside Shane, just as they rounded the bend into the woods, and the next he was shouting in Russian and yanking at the reins as his mount bucked and swerved. They did not collide, but the frantic wrenching of the other horse was enough to spook Shane’s gelding. Mercutio reared and twisted toward the forest path, Shane pulling desperately on the reins against the torque, but he wasn’t strong enough. Before he could right them, the mount skidded left, slamming into a tree along his flank and sending Shane hard into the trunk. Pain erupted along Shane’s side and in his shoulder just as a thick branch snapped back into his face. He tasted the iron tang of blood on his lips just before the world tilted and went black.

*

He woke up on the path. At first, the only sensations that registered were that of the cool damp seeping into the back of his coat, and the throbbing stab of pain at his temple. He cracked an eye open, but everything was blurry, and all he could see was a haze of green, blue, and gold. He blinked a few more times, squinting until everything came into focus: Ilya was leaning over him, one hand resting on his cheek. Above him, the afternoon sun winked out from behind the green canopy of the trees.

“Shane, slava bogu. Can you hear me?”

He nodded his head, which sent a fresh stab of pain through his skull. He pushed himself up on his elbow slowly, assessing for further damage. Gingerly, he bent his knees, and let out a sigh of relief when his legs moved at his command.

“Mercutio—is he?”

“Your horse is fine. He has a scrape where he hit the tree.” Ilya brushed his hand down Shane’s cheek, and Shane leaned into the caress. “You scared me, moya lyubimiy.”

“What does that mean?” Shane asked.

Ilya blinked at him, something sad moving across his face. He opened his mouth to speak, but was interrupted by the thunder of footsteps approaching. Ilya pulled his hand away.

“Good God, what did you do to him!?” Hayden shouted as he skidded to a stop in the dirt.”

“Something spooked Mercutio,” Shane said. “I’m all right.”

Hayden extended his hand down. Shane stared at it for a long moment—Ilya’s face loomed just behind it, his expression stony—then reached out and grabbed it, and let Hayden hoist him to his feet.

He stumbled at first, the world blurring a little along the edges, and he thought he saw Ilya lurch forward just before he was able to regain his footing.

“All in working order then?” Marlow said, though most of the joviality had drained from his voice.

“Yes, no harm done.”

“Except for the blood all over your face,” Hayden said. He turned to glare at Ilya pointedly.

“Hayden, Prince Ilya had nothing to do with my falling. Mercutio just got startled as I was going ‘round the bend.”

“With the race unfinished, he is still ahead in the contest,” Hayden said.

Shane’s head was still throbbing. He wanted little more than to be out of his damp, torn clothes, and to have a cup or two of strong tea.

“Perhaps this is a sign we should set this silly rivalry business aside,” Shane said.

Hayden and Marlow had the decency to look cowed; behind them, Ilya’s gaze bore a hole through Shane’s chest, his eyes a steely blue against the rich afternoon sky.

*

It had been nearly an hour, and Shane was nearly ready to admit to himself that Ilya wasn’t going to come.

Ilya probably assumed that Shane would stay home to nurse his injuries, as he likely should have. But his mother had fussed over him, and his valet had put three neat stitches in the cut on his temple and cleaned up the rest of his cuts and scrapes quite nicely, and Shane had been left alone, staring into the fire with an empty teacup in his hand.

He didn’t want to be tucked in like an ailing child. When his shoulder had hit that tree trunk, and he’d felt Mercutio twisting and bucking underneath him, he had not been thinking about a nice cup of tea and crisp linen sheets.

When he had seen Ilya’s face hovering over him, he had not thought to himself, I had better go home and lie down.

If the branch had hit him a little bit harder, a few inches over, if he had landed just a little differently, if Mercutio had fallen on top of him—a hundred things could have gone just slightly worse today and Shane might have lost the use of his legs, or his eyes, or died. He had told everyone hovering about that he felt fine, that he’d been lucky, that all he was worried about was a headache. But the whole time, still, his heart had been thudding so hard against his ribs he thought they might crack. It was as if he could feel his blood rushing through his veins. Everything was more, and he was gripped with an increasingly desperate need to do something with this second chance.

He had just drained the last bit of brandy from his glass when the latch snicked. The door pushed in slowly, the footsteps behind it tentative and light, almost entirely muffled by the thick carpet.

Shane set his glass down and stood as Ilya closed the door softly behind him. He paused, his body unusually still as he stared at Shane from across the room.

“I didn’t know if you were coming,” Shane said.

“I didn’t think you would be here. Lana sent a messenger, I came as soon as I could.”

“Lana sent…?”

Before Shane could sort out why Lana would have bothered to send someone, Ilya strode across the room in three determined strides and crashed into Shane at full speed. His hands were at Shane’s face, then his shoulders, then wrapping around him and squeezing hard enough against his bruised ribs to draw a pained cough from Shane.

Ilya didn’t seem to care. “The noises,” he mumbled into Shane’s hair. “”When you hit the tree, and your horse cried when he fell—by the time I turned around you were on the ground. I thought—”

“It’s all right,” Shane whispered. “I’m all right.” Ilya’s frantic embrace lit something aflame inside Shane, too, and he began kissing along Ilya’s jaw, seeking any list taste of him he could find. Finally their lips met, and suddenly everything was so slow. Ilya’s tongue swept into Shane’s mouth, searching and languid, and Shane threw his arms shamelessly around Ilya’s neck to pull him in as close as he could come.

This is all he wanted, since the moment he’d blinked his eyes open into the fuzzy aftermath of his fall. 

“I need you,” he gasped into Ilya’s mouth.

“You have me,” he groaned back, already working through the buttons on Shane’s waistcoat.

They always succumbed to impatience, removing clothes until they couldn’t stand it anymore and working around the rest. But Shane realized soon that Ilya intended to strip him entirely bare. He allowed himself to be nudged here and there, and watched as Ilya carefully draped his stockings over the arm of one of the chairs, and when he was down to his skin and Ilya was looking at him like a starving man might look upon a ten-course feast, he stopped fretting about how long it would take to put all the pieces back in place.

“Your turn,” he said, nodding at Ilya. “Should I—?” he offered, but Ilya shook his head quietly.

“I will. You watch.”

Ilya began with his cravat, unwinding it slow enough that for the first excruciating minute, Shane could only catch fleeting glimpses of the golden skin on his neck, winking out from the strips of silk. Then he shrugged smoothly out of his coat, and moved methodically through his waistcoat and shirt.

By the time Ilya reached for his trouser fall, Shane was rock hard. When Ilya had shed his trousers and stockings, Shane allowed his hands to float him and brush across Ilya’s torso, where solid plates of muscle were dusted in pale brown hair. He stepped forward and let his forehead fall into Ilya’s chest.

“I wasn’t supposed to want you like this,” he mumbled. “It was supposed to be easy.”

He felt Ilya’s chuckle reverberate through his chest. Ilya placed a finger under Shane’s chin, and lifted his face up. Something heavy weighed on his expression, perhaps even made those seashore eyes glassy with tears, but before Shane could ask Ilya surged forward and captured Shane’s lips again, and all Shane could feel was the warm press of Ilya’s skin all along his own.

Everything was different, everything was more. Ilya touched Shane with a reverence that he’d never had the patience for during their other frenzies trysts. He laid him down by the fire, atop their discarded shirts, pinned Shane’s wrists to the floor and ordered him to stay so sternly that Shane nearly came right then and there, and then proceeded to caress every inch of Shane’s body with his fingers or his tongue, or both. It was bliss, and the worst torture Shane had ever endured. By the time Ilya had one finger inside, working lazily while he dragged the other fingertip up the underside of Shane’s shaft, he was vibrating head to toe with need.

“Please, please Ilya. I need you inside me. Please—” he begged. When he opened his eyes to look at Ilya, Shane expected to see his teasing expression, one eyebrow raised provocatively and his lips smirking. But the storm in his eyes had not eased: his jaw was set, drawing his lips into a taut line. It was regal, and terrifying, and it only made Shane ache for him more.

“Ilya,” he said, one more time.

It wasn’t long before pleasure surged through him and he toppled over into the abyss, every nerve in body alight with sensation. Ilya followed him down not long after, buried deep inside Shane and scraping his teeth across Shane’s neck, and it was at this moment that the thought that had been haunting Shane for days returned: there would be no one else. This was no longer a rivalry, or a brief affair; this was something far more formidable, which Shane could not afford to name.

Ilya withdrew and kissed Shane hard on the mouth before he stood. Shane made his way to the washroom and they cleaned and dressed in a silence that made Shane more anxious by the minute. Ilya was rarely quiet like this, particularly after, when the fog of desire had lifted and he was relaxed and playful.

Shane watched as Ilya fumbled with his cravat, his graceful fingers uncharacteristically clumsy as they twisted and tangled the fine linen. 

Eventually he stepped over and said, “let me,” pulling Ilya’s hands gently down and tying the knot himself. When he was finished, he began to draw his hands away, but Ilya grasped them in his own.

“I must return to Moscow,” he said.

Shane felt the impact of the words as if he had taken a punch to the stomach. “When?”

Ilya closed his eyes. “Tomorrow.”

Shane bit his lip, and nodded. He had known this was coming, but this was far too soon. Tears gathered in his eyes, and he squeezed them shut in hopes that he could keep them at bay.

“Shane, I—”

Shane opened his eyes to look back at Ilya, and let the tears fall. Ilya didn’t say more, only leaned in and pressed his lips lightly to the wet tracks on Shane’s face, until they were kissing and Shane couldn’t tell whether the salt on his lips was from his own tears or Ilya’s. Then Ilya gathered him close, and Shane buried his face in the crook of Ilya’s neck. They held each other while the mantle clock ticked away in the dark, until a scratch at the door roused them and a soft spoken servant summoned Ilya into the hall.

Chapter End Notes

don't worry, we're headed for an HEA! just had to think a little harder about what this might look like in this time and place, but I was hit with some inspiration recently and now I've got momentum. for anyone here enjoying this who hasn't read cat sebastian or kj charles: run to them, now. my little story will wait.

Chapter 8: across the sea

Chapter Notes

Dearest Shane,

By the time you are reading this, we will have left Oslo for St. Petersburg. The weather has been favorable, and we are making fast progress. My father’s illness has worsened, and I hope to reach the summer palace before he passes. He is not a good man, like your father, and does not care much for me, but I want to be a good son. There will be much to attend to upon his death; though he is the elder, my brother has little interest in the running of our estates, or even in the threat of Napoleon. He cares only for his vodka and his women most days.

I know we didn’t speak of such things when we were together. I did not want to poison our time together with my sad stories.

For many nights on the ship, I have dreamt that you are with me. I wish I knew what it was like to awaken with you within arm’s reach.

I am not a fool, I know which things can and cannot be. I know you will be a good husband to Lady Rose and that you will do well by your father’s title. You are one of the only truly kind people I have ever known, and you deserve happiness. Perhaps it won’t matter greatly to you, but our time together brought me much joy.

I was wrong, I think. I am a fool—my direction is below, should you wish to write to me.

Yours,

Ilya

*

Dear Ilya,

We received news of your father’s passing.

You wrote that I was a kind person, but I don’t feel kind at the moment—when I heard that he had died, my only care was that it gave me an excuse to write to you.

I should have written earlier, or I shouldn’t be writing now. Both of those things may be true at once.

I read your letter every night. Sometimes, I tell myself that I must stop and I hide the letter away in some cabinet, or between the pages of a book, but I always find myself digging around in the dark to find it again. I cannot bring myself to throw it in the fire.

I have been warned that winter will fall there soon, and this letter may take an age to make its way to you. Some nights, I wonder if you have been waiting for my response. On others, I tell myself that you are back at court, charming the ladies in the garden just like you did here. 

Tell me what the winter is like in Moscow. I hear tales of snow drifts taller than a man. In London, winter is mostly wet, a chilly damp that sets in your bones sometime in November and stays for months, no matter how many fires are lit. In Devon, where I have my estate, it isn’t quite so cold, but the wind and rain howl in from the sea, raging so loudly sometimes that I cannot sleep.

Rose and I have agreed to a Christmas wedding. She says that we will be happy together in one way or another, but I don’t know that I see it in her eyes. I think she wishes she could have more, just as I wish I could give it to her.

After you left London, I told myself it was for the best that we didn’t have more time. That it only would have been worse if you had stayed.

I am a fool, it seems, as well.

Yours,

Shane

*

Dearest Shane,

Winter in Moscow is brutal and beautiful all at the same time. The snow falls forever, and it is true that it often piles up to the height of a man. It is beautiful for a day or two, white and soft, blanketing the city with quiet. But then they clear the roads, and it becomes overtaken with filth. Outside the city, we ride in sleds across the snow drifts, and it feels like flying.

It is also cold. Cold enough that we cover ourselves in fur and swansdown and the chill still sets in after ten minutes or so. When the wind picks up, it burns your cheeks just as if someone put a hot iron to your skin. The sun sets halfway through the afternoon and doesn’t rise until nearly nine in the morning; my mother hated winter, she said there wasn’t enough light.

I do not want to write about charming ladies in gardens. All I will say about it is that I end every meeting reading your letter, often more than once. 

Tell me about your wedding. Perhaps if I can picture it, I will be able to forget you I will stop being such a fool for you. 

Yours always, Ilya

*

Dear Ilya,

There was no Christmas wedding. Rose eloped with another man.

The truth is that I felt nothing but relief when I read the note she left for me. I wish she had told me earlier, and perhaps we could have avoided such a public scene. As it stands I am famously jilted, all of the ton mourns for me, and I dread the upcoming season as the matchmaking mothers will no doubt descend upon me in droves.

Rose fell in love with one of her father’s solicitors, a young man named George Peyton. She is quite convinced that he is the most wonderful man in the world, and they seem to have made reasonable arrangements for living. Her father, however, is furious, and has refused to offer any support. Do you think it would be odd if I were to help them procure a modest cottage, as a wedding gift?

As you can likely tell, I am not particularly upset by this turn of events. I am actually quite happy for Rose, and free from the guilt that has plagued me throughout my engagement. But I do find that I envy her boldness and spirit. I suppose I have become too accustomed to ignoring the things that I want for myself.

In her note she said that I should go find you in Russia. I am, perhaps unfortunately, not reckless enough to make such a gesture, but I will admit to having ordered a primer in the Russian language. 

I have also told my father I would like to join him in his diplomatic endeavors—I will need something to pass the time, after all, and sometimes I even allow myself to think that maybe we might meet in Warsaw or Stockholm or Amsterdam one day. I would smile politely and shake your hand, and perhaps we would joke about the silly games we played in London. Even if that were all we were allowed, it would be enough just to see your face again.

Yours Truly,

Shane

*

My Shanya,

I did not have a chance to teach you about Russian names. Many names have shorter, sweeter versions that we use with friends and loved ones. Lana, whom you know, was Svetlana in Russia, and I called her Sveta. My mother called me Ilyushka. I hope you will allow me to call you Shanya, at least in these pages, when we are alone.

I will not pretend to be sad about your jilting. I hope you were not embarrassed, even if you are relieved to avoid the marriage. I like Rose very much and I hope she will be happy as Mrs. Peyton—I think a cottage is a very fine wedding gift.

My mother married my father because she was expected to; he was older, and not kind to her, and she was very unhappy. Rose is a brave woman.

Our sources have warned us that Napoleon is planning an invasion of Russia, even as he continues to fight in Spain. I will travel west again soon, likely to Warsaw, to discuss how we can prevent him from pushing north. Personally, I think we should let him come—he has little chance against our armies with his own troops stretched thin across the Continent. But I will not refuse the chance to be closer to you. A part of me wishes you had not told me of your interest in diplomacy, I will spend many sleepless nights praying you will be there when I arrive.

Yours,

Ilya

*

Dear Shane,

I know you said I must stop thanking you for your entirely too generous, preposterous gift. While we would have been very well in the rooms above the office, I am exceedingly happy to have a garden at my disposal, and the extra funds to hire a cook.

I wonder if I might tell George more of the circumstances of our engagement? He is an exceedingly trustworthy man, and I think it might alleviate some of his discomfort with your generosity. He hasn’t said anything, of course, because he is such a dear, but I can tell it makes him anxious. Much like you, he hates to feel that there is something he doesn’t understand.

We received the most remarkable gift from Prince Ilya, as well, a swan carved in jasper. I can only hope this means that you and he are corresponding. I worried so much for you in the weeks after his departure.

I know well that your situation is far more complicated than my own. I will only say that I did something ‘exceedingly stupid’ (in the words of my father) and ‘perhaps a bit rash’ (my mother), and I have never been happier. 

All my love,

Rose

*

Ilya,

My father and I have arrived in Warsaw, and have word that you are staying with the Countess Dembinski. You and your host should receive an invitation to dine from Baron Hadziewicz tomorrow evening. I hope to see you there, perhaps you can help me with the proper Polish pronunciations.

Yours,

Shane

*

Shane,

Why do you write to me like a business associate? No one is reading our correspondence, and if they are, I am certain Napoleon’s spies do not care about your or my perversions. Of course I will dine with you and your host, please find a spacious closet or darkened library in which I can kiss you senseless. It has been far too long since I had your lovely cock in my mouth.

Ilya

*

Ilya,

Do you want to be blackmailed?

Third door on the left in the south corridor.

Shane

*

Shane,

We are attending the theater tonight; I hope you will join us in the Countess’s box.

Did you bite me yesterday? I have a bruise shaped like your mouth on my shoulder. My valet disapproves.

Ilya

*

Ilya,

I don’t remember, I was hardly in my right mind with you touching me like that. We must be more careful at the theater.

How am I supposed to discuss Napoleon with you sitting across from me?

Shane

*

мой любимый

I am in St. Petersburg finally, after a miserable journey across the Baltic Sea. Late spring storms tumbled our poor ship for days on end. I was never a wonderful sailor, and the seasickness brought me down quite low, but at least I was distracted from your absence.

But I am on dry land again, and I wonder in my worst moments if the days we stole in Warsaw were a mistake. I only miss you more now, the way you remember every thing that is said one evening and use it to steer conversation the following day, the way you scold me for being flippant about Napoleon’s obsession with Josephine, the way you moan so sweetly for me when you spend.

Spring is only just making itself known in St. Petersburg. There are patches of snowdrops pushing up through the cold mud, and soon the sakura trees from Japan will bloom and their pink petals will rain down on everything—Mama used to call it her favorite kind of storm. Next month, I will join Alexei at our dacha for the summer, where I can only hope there is a long list of things to take care of that might occupy my mind, so I don’t go mad without you.

Love,

Ilya

*

Илья,

I know my Cyrillic is terrible, I promise I am working on my handwriting.

I think you called me your beloved - is this correct? Russian is a terrible, torturous language and I am learning very slowly. But when I try to sleep, I can hear your voice in my ear, murmuring whatever sweet nothings as you touch me, and I am desperate to know what they mean. Perhaps if I know your language, you won’t feel quite so far away.

There is a globe in my father’s office. Too often I get lost staring at the expanse of blue and green between us.. I believe it is nearly 2,000 miles, but I find I cannot fathom such a distance when I so often think I can still smell your cologne, or hear your voice in a crowded room. Perhaps you have settled somewhere in your heart—I haven’t yet decided whether such permanence would be a blessing or torture. Both, I suppose.

In better news, I am finding diplomatic work to be highly satisfying. Being a busy man is also a fine excuse to avoid the balls and soirees where the ladies line up to introduce me to their daughters. Many of them are sweet, some are clever, too, and they are all quite pretty, but I feel nothing. One day I must consider the need for an heir—my mother has already started with gentle reminders—but not yet.

My father is certain Napoleon will launch his Russian campaign this year or next. Will you be safe? Will they send you to fight? Many second sons here are officers in the army, but I loathe the thought of you at the front lines more than anything. Perhaps if you must go you shouldn’t tell me.

Yours always,

Your beloved

Chapter End Notes

I have no idea how long it would have taken for a letter to travel from London to Russia. Probably many months. As such I've declined to include any actual dates here, but let's assume about a year between London and Warsaw.

Chapter 9: come back to me

Chapter Notes

the difference in engagement on this vs my couple other pieces here is wild. thank you to all the histrom lovers who are hanging in with me, I hope you're enjoying it here.

1812 was a terrible year.

In June, Napoleon invaded Russia, and Ilya’s letters, which had already grown sporadic over a brutal winter, ceased entirely as he took command of his family’s militia. Shane scrounged desperately for information about the fight on the eastern front, and badgered anyone who would listen about the need for England to send financial support to Russia.

When Napoleon took Moscow in September, Shane fled to Devon. He knew he would not be able to hide his fear and grief. He stayed for three weeks, and spent most days alone on the beach, staring at the horizon and begging the powers at be to keep Ilya safe.

He was drawn from his vigil only by more bad news: a letter from Rose telling him that George was terribly ill. He left immediately for Plymouth. 

By the time he arrived, it seemed that Russia’s brutal winter and even more brutal battle tactics might be Napoleon’s undoing. But where Russia stood strong, George Peyton was failing. When Shane had first met Rose’s husband, he had been brimming with energy, much like Rose, and had talked Shane through a very well-plotted ten-year plan to be elected as to a seat in the House of Commons, and to bear at least three children with his wife.

The man Shane encountered in the sick room had lost at least three stone, and was thin enough that his collarbone protruded from the collar of his pajamas like a broken branch. The physician told Shane that a wasting disease had taken hold of Peyton’s lungs, and that the end was near. Rose was stoic, but pale and exhausted. She told Shane she had done all of her crying already.

When Peyton asked to speak to Shane alone, he went in without question. The ailing man spoke so softly Shane could hardly hear him, and eventually Peyton clawed desperately for Shane’s lapel and pulled him close with spindly fingers. “Please take care of her. You could marry her after all. You need an heir, don’t you? She deserves a child, and I failed her.”

Shane comforted him as best he could, and eventually Peyton drifted off to sleep. Shane set Peyton’s plea aside to be considered later.

Rose’s mother arrived the day before George died, and she and Shane held Rose while she wept.

After the funeral, she and Shane walked to the shore, where rocky cliffs dropped off into a roiling green ocean.

“How do you do it, Shane? How do you live without him?”

Shane shook his head. “I don’t. I know that he is somewhere. That’s not the same.”

They had received word just a few days before that Napoleon was in retreat. Shane had cried that evening, alone in his chamber at the inn, great heaving sobs of relief so strong they made his chest hurt, even though he didn’t yet know whether Ilya was safe.

“I was so sorry for you after George and I married. Not only because you might have been embarrassed, but because you weren’t able to spend your life with the person you love. I suppose I shouldn’t have been so smug.”

“Will you come back to Town with me?”

She shook her head hard. “Mama wants me to go to Lincolnshire with them. But I will stay here for the winter, at least. We had enough saved. I want to be in a place where he was, at least for a while.”

Shane wrapped her in a hug as the wind whipped around them, cool and salty as it came off the water.

*

My love,

I know I have written you too many letters. Perhaps some burned in Moscow, perhaps some are waiting at your dacha. I fear they will all remain unopened; that I lost you on some godforsaken battlefield this summer. I tell myself I would have known, that something would have shifted in the air if you were truly gone from this world.

Please write me if you can.

Love, Shane

*

мой любимый,

I am alive and well. Perhaps not entirely well, actually—though my body is unharmed, I fear it will be sometime before I can sleep without dreaming of the horrors that I saw. They tell you that war will be your glory, that we fought for the Tsar and Russia and our place in history, but all I see when I close my eyes is serfs and soldiers lying the mud, bodies torn asunder, at the whim of our great leaders.

Your letters did burn in Moscow—our house is a pile of ashes, and I set it ablaze myself so the French would not take it. I have few fond memories there, thankfully, and took only a few things from my mother’s room. One I have enclosed for you; it is nothing but an embroidered bookmark, but I am desperate to be with you in any way I can.

At the dacha, your letters were waiting for me. Unfortunately Alexei found them first. We fought terribly, but I succeeded in provoking him to banish me to Copenhagen to see after our family’s shipping interests. It is a dreary, gray place, but at least I will be closer to you—less than a thousand of your miles, if my math is correct.

Every night I spent on the battlefield, I spent thinking of you. You were the only bright star in the longest night of my life.

Love, Ilya

*

Илья,

I have been practicing—are my letters better?

This is my third draft of this letter; the first two were stained and smudged with tears. That is all I will write about my relief, otherwise I will no doubt begin to cry again.

I am sorry to hear about your brother and your argument, but I cannot be sorry that you will be in Copenhagen. Please come back to England. We will go to my estate in Devon, on the southern coast. We can be alone. I need to be with you and no one else.

Love,

Shane

*

My dearest Shanya,

I am settled in Copenhagen, finally, and will depart for Plymouth within the week.

Love, Ilyusha

Chapter End Notes

I have done scant little research for this one (as I'm sure any history lovers hanging around have very much noticed), but I did learn that apparently England and Russia were "at war" before Napoleon's invasion? Not a war with actual battles, but a war on paper to freeze trade/etc. Homosexual acts weren't broadly illegal in Russia until the 1830s, and some sources suggest that it wasn't considered all that big a deal, especially for the nobility, so in my head Alexei is threatening to use Ilya's letters to Shane as evidence of treason, rather than gayness.

Chapter 10: refuge

Chapter Notes

it's the cottage!

Ilya’s letter arrived in the beginning of March, and Shane set out immediately for Devon. His father hid his confusion well, and his mother made him promise he would be back before the Season started in earnest.

His first action upon arriving was to grant three quarters of the staff three weeks off, with full wages. He then sat down with the butler, Jameson, and the housekeeper, Mrs. Wainwright, and told them he was having a guest from overseas and would require near total privacy.

A week later, Ilya spilled out of a carriage in Shane’s front drive, his face tinged gray but still smiling. Jameson took Ilya’s trunks himself and shuffled into the house while Shane greeted his guest with a painfully reserved handshake, all too aware of the carriage lingering just a few feet away. It had been nearly two years since Warsaw, and Ilya was leaner, rangy in his travelling clothes, his jaw and cheekbones jagged on his face. There was a new small, v-shaped scar about the size of Shane’s pinky nail an inch or so above one eyebrow.

Shane could hardly believe he was standing here. Just a few months ago, he had been preparing himself to never see Ilya again.

“How was your trip?

“I told you, I am not a good sailor. And the roads from Plymouth were not good.”

“We’ll ask Cook for some ginger tea.”

The carriage rattled to life, headed for the stables. As soon as the horses rounded the bend, they fell into each other, each pulling the other as close as he could, until Shane’s lungs were burning. Ilya slumped against him a little and Shane took the weight with ease.

“I can’t believe you’re really here,” he whispered in Ilya’s ear.

Ilya mumbled something incoherent into the shoulder of Shane’s coat.

“Ginger tea, then a nap, I think,” he chuckled.

Ilya didn’t protest as Shane took him by the hand and led him into the house. They stopped in the kitchen, where Cook dismissed the idea of tea entirely. She retrieved a small glass vial from the stillroom, a ginger tincture that she brewed for a village midwife to give to her pregnant patients. Ilya tossed it back, and within moments his skin was warming back to its usual pale gold.

Ilya’s trunks had been delivered to a guest room two doors down from Shane’s own bed chamber. Two maids were unpacking when they arrived in the corridor and Shane shooed them gently away, promising that they could finish their task after their guest had recovered from his travels.

As soon as the door closed behind the maids, they crashed into each other again, this time in a bruising kiss. Two years of longing poured out between them, until there were tears in Shane’s eyes and Ilya was gasping for breath.

“You’re here,” Shane murmured.

“Shanya,” Ilya answered as he began to paw at the lapels of Shane’s coat. They yanked and tugged out of their clothes, a long and clumsy process made more difficult by the frequent interruptions of kisses and caresses as new expanses of skin were uncovered. Eventually, finally, they tumbled naked together onto the bed, lying on their sides, nose to nose.

“You’re tired,” Shane said, watching as Ilya’s eyelids fluttered shut.

“I do not want to waste time sleeping,” Ilya whispered back. “It’s been so long.”

Shane rolled over and reached into the drawer of the bedside table. He came back with another small glass vial, and dabbed a few drops of fragrant oil onto his palms.

“Let me,” he said. “You relax.”

He reached between them and took Ilya’s length in his hand, stroking slowly, revelling in the relief flooding through his body. He felt right when he touched Ilya, like all his oddly-shaped pieces were falling cleanly into place. Ilya let out a whimper, then curled his large hand around the back of Shane’s neck and pulled him into a lazy, wandering kiss. Shane luxuriated in the slowness, in the light slicing in through the curtains, in the unhurried brush of Ilya’s lips on his face, his neck, his ear.

After some time, Ilya hooked one ankle over Shane’s and pulled Shane’s leg in between his own, and Shane couldn’t stop himself from grinding into Ilya’s hip. Ilya reached between them and peeled Shane’s fingers away, then wrapped his own hand around both of them, hard and hot and slick. Shane closed his eyes, but Ilya growled no, open and he did, staring straight into the summer storm of Ilya’s gaze until Ilya came all over their fists, and Shane followed only seconds after.

“You should eat,” Shane said, after he caught his breath.

“I come a thousand miles to see you and you will to put me to work?”

It took Shane a few moments to hear the innuendo through his lovesick haze.

“That can wait. I mean you need to eat food.”

Shane swung his legs over the side of the bed and reached for his trousers.

“Should I put on my evening clothes? Will the butler serve us on opposite ends of your dining table?”

Shane snorted. “No, I asked the cook to leave our meals in the kitchen.”

They shuffled downstairs in their shirtsleeves, barefoot, and Shane felt like a child getting away with being naughty. A platter of cold chicken awaited them under a cloche, along with a hunk of sturdy bread and a wedge of cheese. They ate at the servants’ table with their shoulders touching, and Ilya’s foot resting atop Shane’s underneath.

After, they sat by the fire in Shane’s bedchamber and talked until long after the flames had dwindled into embers. When Ilya’s eyelids began to droop, Shane nudged him toward the bed, where they slept together until narrow slats of late morning sun sliced across the counterpane.

The days passed in a blur. They woke together slowly, always touching, and it was often another hour at least before they managed to leave the bed. They played cards and chess, though more games than not ended with Shane bent over the nearest piece of furniture, gasping while Ilya delivered his reward, or consolation prize. If the few remaining staff were whispering, Shane found that he didn’t care. He hadn’t felt so free since he was in short pants; it was as if and Ilya had wandered into a faerie kingdom where nothing could touch them.

Besides, if the staff gossiped, it wouldn’t be anything that hadn’t floated around about him before, especially in the wake of Rose’s elopement with George Peyton. Why had he worried so much about the rumors? He was going to be a duke one day, they were hardly going to march him to the gallows for buggery. 

He still wanted to uphold his family’s good name. He still wanted to serve well as the future Duke of Ottawa. But, setting the matter of an heir aside, there was no reason he couldn’t do these things while he was in love with Ilya. 

They walked for hours on the beach, and one day sat on a huge boulder that cut into the surf while Ilya told him about the long, agonizing march to meet Napoleon, and the terrified, angry serfs in his militia who would have welcomed Napoleon with open arms if it meant they could return to their farms unscathed. More often than not, they would join another militia or a military regiment in the aftermath of a ‘victory’ only to find unspeakable carnage: hundreds dead or maimed, the earth scorched and puddled with blood. Ilya acquired the scar on his brow when they were finally caught in a skirmish and his horse was shot out from under him; he hit his head on a rock when he landed on the ground, and woke up staring into the dead eyes of one of his officers just a few inches away. Shane held Ilya’s hand as he recounted the horrors, and imagined them spilling from Ilya’s mouth into the sea, where the green-gray waves would carry them from far shore, to be buried in the ocean’s unfathomable depths.

On the ninth day, Shane asked if they could visit Rose in Plymouth. She was nervous about returning to London for the season, and Shane knew that Ilya’s clandestine visit and Shane’s irrepressible glee about the same would help to buoy her spirits. Ilya agreed on the condition that they ride rather than take the carriage.

Rose shrieked when she opened the door, and shrieked again when she saw Ilya hovering behind Shane’s shoulder.

“I can’t believe you didn’t tell me,” she said to Shane, glaring.

Shane glanced over at Ilya. “I’m not sure I believe it was really happening until he arrived at my door.”

Rose looked to Ilya. “He was terribly cross during Napoleon’s campaign. Nearly punched the prime minister in the face.”

“I did not,” he objected.

“You did! At the Grenier’s dinner, when he said that England would be better off spending its money on canals.”

“I wasn’t going to punch him,” Shane mumbled, feeling his cheeks go pink. “Perhaps just…firmly inform him of the faults in his position.”

“I was very sorry to hear about your husband,” Ilya said. “Shane told me that you were very much in love.”

“I was. I am. I still miss him a great deal,” she answered, her voice growing increasingly tight.

Ilya listened as Rose told him about George; he laughed when she recounted his struggle to repair the roof of their cottage on his own, and reached for her hand when she recounted the cough that never waned, and the spots of blood that began to litter his handkerchief. Rose listened in turn as Ilya described the chaos in Moscow before they fled Napoleon’s army, the ash hanging in the cold autumn air, and the crunch of charred wood underfoot. After a few hours, Rose was looking tired. Shane got her to agree that they could travel to Town together in his carriage when he returned in a few weeks, and they departed with hugs and kisses on their cheeks.

The sun was low in the sky as they rode east, toward Shane’s house, casting long shadows ahead of them on the road.

They ambled quietly. A tangle of thoughts hovered on the outskirts of Shane’s mind—Rose’s grief, the start of the Season and the inevitable matchmaking that would follow, the relentless rain in the north that was causing rot on the fields at one of the family’s estates.

Ilya leaving in ten short days.

He warded them off as best he could, letting his gaze follow the birds as they soared overhead.

“You should marry Rose,” Ilya said.

Shane whipped his head around so fast he nearly lost his seat. “What?”

“She is so sad. And her father is still angry, yes? And her standing in Society is less than it was, I’m sure. She needs you.”

“Her husband asked me to,” Shane said quietly. “But I don’t want to marry her, and she doesn’t want to marry me.”

“‘Want’ does not always matter. You will need to marry one day.”

“Are you going to marry one day?” Shane snapped. He was baffled and irritated by how calm Ilya sounded. Did Ilya not—would he not—

“I don’t have to marry,” he said. “I am second son. Alexei is betrothed to an heiress and will produce the next Prince for the Rozanovs.” He did not look at Shane, only stared straight ahead toward the horizon. “You are the next Duke of Ottawa. You must have an heir.”

“I don’t—I can’t think about this right now. I have time! We have time.”

Ilya tipped his head to one side. “Maybe. But Rose has less time, yes? She would be a good mother, and she would understand.”

Shane looked over at Ilya, slack-jawed. “You really want me to marry her?” A feeling of unease crept through him like a rotten vine. But what other reason could there be for Ilya to suggest such a thing so casually? “Because I thought—all these years, it has only been you. Did you not know that? Is it not the same for you?”

Ilya drew his horse to a stop, and Shane followed suit. They were alone as far as his eyes could see, on a narrow path that led through a meadow, toward the shallow creek that marked the beginning of Shane’s land. The light was warm and gold where it filtered through the stalks of tall grass; the sun would set in an hour or so, and they shouldn’t dally.

“You love her,” Ilya said softly. “You loved her first. I know that. I can…you could marry her, and I would understand and she would understand. If it were someone else, I think—” Ilya stammered, swallowing the next word. He took a breath, and started again. “I think that would be worse. To wonder if she knew about you, if she might tell you not to…not to see me, or even write to me. Or I would have to wonder if you might grow to love her, too.”

Shane fell silent for a minute. Ilya accepted Rose’s place in Shane’s life, but he didn’t want to make room for anyone else. Shane understood that, didn’t he? He would be heartbroken if Ilya decided to marry Lana, but less heartbroken than if he went and found a debutante full of expectations and questions, someone new who would require more of his attention and care.

Rose knew. She had been generous with him before, wouldn’t she still?

“She might not want a marriage like that anymore,” Shane wondered aloud.

“You could ask her,” Ilya said. His voice was flat, and tight, and Shane hated to hear the strain that simmered underneath.

It would always be like this with them. Striking devil’s bargains, looking for the least terrible solution.

“I will think about it,” Shane said. “I promise.”

Ilya rolled his shoulders and nodded, and they rode in silence back to the house. Shane asked Ilya if he wanted to eat, but Ilya said nothing, only took Shane’s hand and led up the stairs. They reached Shane’s bedchamber and Ilya undressed him piece by piece, then took him apart meticulously with his hands and lips until Shane was gasping and begging underneath him. When they were both shaking with need, Shane took Ilya’s slick shaft in his hands and guided it to his entrance and begged Ilya to fill him where he was empty, and Ilya stared down at him and said ya tebya lyublyu before he thrust himself inside. Shane said it back, I love you, again and again, as they found oblivion together.

*

Ilya’s last week in Devon passed quietly. It rained for three days straight, and they spent hours in the library while Ilya helped Shane with his Russian. Two letters arrived from Shane’s mother, one reminding him that he had promised to be home for the Haverford ball, the unofficial start of the season and the other full of strategically chosen tidbits on the most desirable young ladies out in Society. Lady Jane is said to be too serious, but her mother says she is only shy, and that she enjoys puzzles and word games; Lady Sophia insists on daily exercise; Miss Hillsdale-Smythe is an accomplished mathematician.

He could picture telling his mother about himself, and about Ilya: she would listen quietly, take a long pause, and recalibrate her search accordingly. She would certainly remind him, once more, of his responsibilities to his title, and the foolishness of allowing his second cousin to inherit.

Marrying Rose would stop the matchmaking.

Ilya wrote a flurry of letters to Copenhagen, and one to Lana. 

“She’ll be cross that I didn’t stop in London,” he said, smiling. 

“Next time,” Shane said.

As Ilya’s departure approached, they slept less and less, having come to a silent agreement that the hours could be better spent. But they didn’t speak of the end of his visit, not until the last night.

“I want to visit you in Copenhagen,” Shane blurted. They were naked, pressed close to each other near the lamp beside Shane’s bed. Shane had been attempting to read a book, though he had hardly gotten through one page, and Ilya was busying himself drawing a finger slowly across each of Shane’s ribs.

Ilya lifted his head. “When?”

Shane frowned. “I will need to think of an excuse to go. September?”

“You should invest in our shipping company,” Ilya said, sitting up straight. “It is very profitable.”

Shane closed his book. “That’s a brilliant idea. I could visit every year, and no one would wonder at all.”

“I told my secretary I no longer wanted to accept routes to and from the Gold Coast. We will need to find more business to replace this. The Mediterranean, perhaps?”

Shane smiled. “A long winter in Italy does sound nice.”

Ilya grinned back at him.

“I told Jameson we will ride to Plymouth tomorrow, and that the carriage can follow with your trunks.”

Ilya leaned forward and kissed him. “Thank you.”

“I’m sorry I cannot save you from the ship, too.”

“It was worth it,” Ilya whispered, leaning in again.

They didn’t sleep until dawn, and it was only another or two before they had to awake and dress. When it was time to depart, Shane reached for the doorknob but Ilya pulled him back and drew him into a crushing embrace, where they stayed, murmuring into one another’s ears, until Jameson knocked softly on the door.

Shane pressed one last kiss to Ilya’s lips, then pulled away and wiped the tears from his eyes. Ilya followed a polite distance behind as Shane exited the room, and they left their sanctuary behind, together and apart in the cool light of day.

Chapter 11: near and far

Chapter Notes

more letters! honestly I could write these all day.

My lovely Shane,

It is worse than I feared. Mama insists that the whispers will die down and everything will be as it was, butI can only assume she is in thrall to wishful thinking. Helen—one of my dreaest friends!—nearly gave me the cut direct on Rotten Row yesterday. I’ve never seen a nod of the head so infinitesimally small; truly, it was a feat. I may send her a note of congratulations.

But even if an offer from a decent gentleman were a possibility (and I am quite sure that it is not), I find myself bereft at the thought of keeping house with anyone but George. Am I truly supposed to take the life we were supposed to live together and give it to someone else? Someone who does not read aloud to me the interesting sections of the newspaper, someone who does not giggle at his own silly puns, someone who does not look at me hungrily in the mornings, when there is sleep in my eyes and my hair is askew?

I shouldn’t burden you so. What a monster I am, to regale you with how much I loved the man I left you for. And yet worse, when you’ve so recently watched your own love sail away, albeit not so permanently as my George.

Aren’t we two peas in a pod? Subjected to such teasing by the universe, allowed to believe for these brief, shining moments that we might live our lives in the throes of a great romance. Am I being terribly unfair? You must tell me if I have become hideously selfish.

Mama is forcing me to go to Lady Betancourt’s ball. Will you be there?

Love, Rose

*

Мой дорогой Илья,

I hope your journey home wasn’t too trying. Is there someone in Copenhagen to give you a ginger tincture and rub your back? Perhaps I am a jealous fool, but I hope the answer is ‘no.’ 

Rose and I arrived in Town two weeks ago. I hoped to have some time to settle, but the Season is in full swing as Parliament was called into session earlier than planned. Rose’s reception has been even worse than she feared; her mother insists that rehabilitation is possible but there are few who are willing to overlook her elopement with a mere solicitor, besides myself, and Hayden and his new wife, Lady Jacqueline.

I asked my mother to lend her support, but she was hesitant and I made my disappointment in her clear. We had a bit of an argument, which is a rarity. I always thought she knew about Rose and I, and the nature of our betrothal, but she remains insulted on my behalf by Rose’s marriage to George Peyton. I was so frustrated, I nearly told her all about you. I suppose it has been easier for me to assume that she knows about me, but I see now how childish this was. We do not have a quiet understanding; she cannot know the many things I don’t say out loud only because she is my mother. I have instead been lying to her, over and over again, all this time.

The truth is that I don’t know what she would say. Since I was a young boy, she has been adamant that my conduct must be unimpeachable at all times: I was to be unfailingly deserving of our title, no matter how furiously the ton whispered behind our backs about her parents and the degradation of the Hollander bloodlines. I am doomed to disappoint her, or to lie to her, and I cannot decide which one is worse.

In better news, I’ve written to your manager at the shipping company with a formal request to discuss an investment. I will begin to make arrangements for travel in the fall soon. We will have much to discuss, among other things—I think that you were likely right about Rose, but I need you to tell me again why it wouldn’t lead to all three of us with broken hearts.

All my love,

Shane

*

My dearest Shanya,

You are finally coming to see that I am right about you and Rose, and I am glad to hear it. I hope she doesn’t suffer too much at the hands of her former friends; my own mother was ostracized at Court and I believe it caused her considerable pain. I know you will do what is right, because you always do.

Your solicitors should have the final papers related to your investment shortly. I’ve written to my brother’s secretary with a scheme to divest his shares ‘while we reorganize the routes,’ though I do not intend to sell them back to him. His marriage is set for next spring, and I expect him to burn through the money that comes with his bride in a year, two at most.

I wish you did not have to lie to your mother, but if she cares for you as a mother should—and I am certain she does, for I have seen the tender way she looks at you when your attention is elsewhere—she would understand. Perhaps I am overly sentimental about mothers, having lost mine at the age of twelve. I wonder if this was the worst moment to find myself motherless, and stranded in a house among cruel, cold men. My mother was a gentle person—too gentle, her heart too easily bruised. I think perhaps she showed her softness for me, so my father wouldn’t succeed in making me hard the way he did my brother, even if she knew it might be too much for her to bear, in the end.

Perhaps your mother does the same—she is tough for you, because she knows how much you need it.

I’ve counted, and it’s one-hundred twenty one days until you arrive. I worry how you will survive without me. Who will drag you away from your many boring obligations? Who will make you laugh? Not Mr. Hayden Pike, I’m sure.

I’m sending this letter with a gift. By the time you read this, I will have spent many joyful hours imagining your face when you realize what it is, and many more joyful hours imagining you using it. When I see you next you will tell me all about it, and I will burn with the pleasure of hearing these words on your lips.

Your servant always,

Ilya

*

Dearest Ilya,

My VALET opened your package, and I have not been able to look him in the eye since. I would dismiss him with a generous bonus and a glowing reference, but it took years for me to find someone acceptable and I cannot go through such an ordeal again. When I see you next, I MIGHT deign to tell you that I used it, and what it was like, but only if you beg very sweetly. You are in my debt, forever, until the end of time.

Also, thank you.

Rose continues to struggle. I danced with her at a ball last night and was her only partner; this morning, the gossip pages were already agog about her ‘crawling back’ to me, and my ‘falling prey to her wiles’ once again. Rose’s mother has come to accept that there will be no good matches for Rose, and she is bereft, but I believe Rose herself is quite relieved. She has confided in me that she cannot fathom being married to someone besides George. I believe my mother has come to the same conclusion as you and I; she has disinvited three members of her sewing circle because of their cruelty toward Rose, and suggested I dance with her on three separate occasions.

Has your manager at the shipping firm been exploring steam? I saw a remarkable demonstration at Dover, and wondered if they were suitable for coastal Baltic routes.

Ninety-four days to go. I have enclosed a gift of my own, for turnabout is fair play.

Love, Shane

*

My beloved,

These letters are not for business; please direct your boring questions to Mr. Dalgaard. But yes of course we have discussed steam, we are working with a shipbuilder on a vessel for river travel already.

It wasn’t half as difficult as I thought to get my brother to release his shares in the shipping company: the father of his betrothed expressed some concerns about his debts, and he immediately wrote me begging to sell. This will be very enraging for him when you and I are very rich and he is still trading my grandmother’s jewels to pay his tailor.

I should not complain about him so much. He is my only family left in the world. Is that not sad? I know many find your mother terrifying, but in my weaker moments I am terribly envious of you. She protects you so fiercely, and your father does, as well, in his own way, and I don’t know that I was ever so precious to anyone.

I was thinking that once we are business partners, it will not be so unusual for us to be friends. Friends might make longer visits, yes? I could stay with you all summer in town, and in Devon. We could travel together to Greece to see the ruins. My father had a cousin who never went anywhere without his dearest friend, a man named Mikhail, and now I wonder. Are there men like us everywhere? I think probably.

I know that you are reading all these words and worrying yourself sick over your gift to me. You wonder whether you slipped it in the wrong envelope, or if it fell out into a stack of papers that went back to your solicitors’ office. Do not worry your beautiful freckles over it: I have it. I spend most of each day trying not to sneak up to my bedchamber to look at it, your beautiful body rendered so finely in charcoal, naked and wanting me.

Who drew you like this? I will confess that there are moments when I’m nearly driven mad by jealousy, thinking of someone else watching while you make use of my gift. I cannot fathom how anyone could be near to you in such a state without succumbing to his desire. Did you let him touch you? Did he touch himself? I close my eyes and I think of it, but then in my visions it is I who is holding the sketchpad and pencil, and I am close enough to reach out and feel the heat of your skin under my fingers again.

When I next come to London, this artist will draw us together I think, and I will show him who you belong to.

Love,

Ilya

*

My beautiful, jealous Ilya,

The artist is a woman. Lana found her for me. If she was driven mad by her desire for me, it was at some point after we parted ways. But I would like her to sketch us together, too. One day perhaps we will have a collection.

Your brother continues to sound terrible, and I am sorry for it. But you are precious to me, you fool. You so enjoy teasing me about my many boring obligations yet you don’t realize you are one of them now. I take excellent care of the things and people that matter to me, and no one matters as much as you.

My father has invited me to join a series of meetings with Louis XVIII, to establish diplomatic relations. I thought perhaps you could join us in Paris for some weeks, and we could travel to Copenhagen together?

Love,

Shane

Chapter 12: love and marriage

Chapter Notes

“Your Highness!” Rose exclaimed. She threw her arms around Ilya, and he squeezed back, lifting her off the ground. Ilya was only two or three inches taller than Shane, but he looked enormous as he engulfed her. He had gained back the weight he lost during the war, and a little more, shedding any last hint of a young man’s gangliness. His shoulders stretched against his coat as he swung Rose in a tight circle, and Shane wondered how bad it would be, really, to sneak to Ilya’s room when Shane and Rose were to be married in only a few days.

“You are more beautiful than ever,” he said when he finally set her down.

“Flatterer,” she said, with a wink.

Shane kissed her on both cheeks. “I am happy to see that you survived yesterday’s exertions.”

“What exertions?” Ilya said. He wiggled his eyebrows, and Rose snorted in response.

“Nothing so interesting as that. I went with my mother and Her Grace for the final fitting of my wedding clothes. They argued for thirty minutes about whether I should wear pearls or diamonds in my hair.”

“And?” Ilya asked.

“I told them I would wear the lapis combs that Shane brought back from Paris for me.” Ilya gasped, but Rose interrupted, “I know they were from you, of course. But I can’t very well tell my mother that I accepted a gift of jewelry from an unattached man who is not my betrothed. Again.”

Shane raised an eyebrow. “What did George give you?”

She looked fondly at Shane. “The tiniest gold locket you’ve ever seen, engraved on the outside with a rose. He meant it to be a parting gift.”

“Parting gift?” Shane asked. “But—”

“But instead I took a hackney to his rooms above the solicitors’ office in the middle of the night and demanded that he take me to Scotland.”

“This is very romantic,” Ilya said. He was smiling, but his voice was wistful.

When Shane had visited Ilya in Copenhagen the previous autumn, Ilya had practically ordered him to marry Rose. You will not abandon her, he had said. What if she is forced to marry someone too old, or who is cruel, or is ridden with the pox?

Shane knew that the undertone of panic in Ilya’s voice was inspired by Ilya’s mother, who had been married off to a brutal old man when she was barely seventeen.

“Yes, well,” Rose said, sitting down so abruptly on a Hepplewhite chair that the front legs creaked in protest. “We have much to discuss, I believe.”

“We do?” Shane asked. “I know my mother was concerned about the flowers—”

“Not about the wedding. If I say one more word about this blasted wedding I will expire on the spot. Which I suppose would also address our problem, as well, but it’s not my preferred solution.”

“I don’t understand,” Shane said, sitting across from Rose on a butter yellow settee. “What problem?”

Ilya sat down next to him and patted him on the knee. “The problem of Rose’s shunning and our forbidden love, my love.”

“Precisely,” Rose said with a nod.

Shane looked at Ilya. “‘Forbidden love,’ really? Isn’t that slightly overwrought?”

Ilya shrugged. “I am Russian.”

“I thought it would be wise for the three of us to speak before the wedding, so that there were no misunderstandings.”

“Oh, I don’t think we—” Shane said.

“Yes, very good,” Ilya said. “You are an intelligent woman.”

“I know,” Rose answered. “And Shane, I know you prefer when expectations are made clear.”

“Yes, but—”

“For example, I have no expectation that we will share a bed.”

Shane’s face immediately reddened, but Ilya nodded along.

“And I don’t expect you to, ah, abstain.”

Shane’s blush deepened.

“Ah, мой помидор. Is Rose, yes? Did you not…” Ilya trailed off, gesturing at Shane and Rose’s previous attempts at intimacy. “You do not need to be embarrassed.”

Shane blinked at him. “Did you just call me a tomato?”

“My tomato.”

“Oh, the two of you are just revolting,” Rose said, grinning. “We do need to talk about children, though.”

Shane shifted in his seat. “I cannot ask you to—”

“Shane, I want children.”

“Oh.” He glanced at Ilya, slightly panicked.

She barrelled on, unfazed. “Set aside for the moment the problem of acquisition—” she paused briefly as Shane sputtered. “I promise, we’ll address that next. But first, setting aside the problem of acquisition, would you want children, also?”

He bit his lip. “It is my responsibility.”

Ilya set his hand on Shane’s leg and squeezed. “That’s not what she asked.”

Shane swallowed. “Yes, I would.” He looked nervously at Ilya, and Ilya smiled back.

“Lovely. We’re in agreement. Now, there are a few ways we could go about this.”

“A few? Are you sure?” Shane asked, which made Ilya chuckle.

“Yes, Shane. I am sure. One: we could go about it the usual way, even though it might not be very pleasant.”

Ilya put a hand over his mouth, but still couldn’t contain his laughter. Shane blushed again, and elbowed him.

“Ilya! It’s not funny!”

“Oh, yes it is,” Rose said. “Don’t be such a stick, Shane. As I was saying, it wouldn’t be very pleasant, but it would be the most, uh, direct route. But Ilya would have to agree.”

Ilya’s face softened, and he looked at Shane. “I would not mind in this case.”

Shane minded, however. He hated the thought of being intimate with someone other than Ilya, even Rose, and he hated the thought of Rose having to be intimate with him when she didn’t particularly want to, and when she knew that Shane didn’t want to, either. Though it was clearly the most pragmatic solution, Shane could hardly stomach it.

“What are the other ways?”

“Two: you could, erm, delegate. To a man of my choosing.”

Shane drummed his fingers on the velvet upholstery. He wasn’t personally bothered by the thought of Rose drumming up another man to father her child. If they were married, that child would be legitimate and the rightful heir to the dukedom regardless of his true parentage. But he could not shake the feeling that this would be a dereliction of his duty as the future Duke of Ottawa. It was dishonest, and Shane hated that.

“You do not like this,” Ilya said.

“I would prefer not to have to lie. But is there another option?

“I have spoken with a midwife who has helped to get at least two gentlewomen of my acquaintance with child in unusual circumstances. She has assured me that there are methods that don’t require intercourse.”

Shane blinked at her. “I can’t possibly imagine what those might be.”

“It would require me to track my courses closely, and for you to provide your, shall we say, contribution, when the time is right.”

“I see.” He still had no idea how any of this would produce a child, but he chose not to ask any further questions. “We could try that first, I suppose.”

Rose nodded. “I was thinking the same. And if it turns out that the woman is a crackpot, we can move on to one of the other two options. We’re agreed, then?”

“Agreed,” Shane said.

“Lovely,” she said, smiling wide. “Just a few more points of order: residences. Are you opposed to living together?”

“Of course not,” Shane huffed.

“Excellent. We’ll keep separate bedrooms, of course, and Ilya will be welcome at any time. Shall I presume that Devon will be our primary residence until you inherit?”

“Yes, if that is acceptable to you.”

“Very much so. I might make the occasional visit to Town during the season, but I hope you won’t mind if I don’t stay for the entire Season”

“Not at all.”

“Alright, your turn,” she said, setting her hands primly in her lap.

“My turn for what?”

“Stipulations.”

“I don’t—I haven’t.—”

She leveled him with a look, and Ilya took up his hand and squeezed. “Shane, it is better to be clear, yes?”

Shane thought for a moment and nodded. “Yes, you’re right. Well.” He chewed on his lip for a moment. “I do not mind at all if you want other companionship, I just ask that you be discreet.”

“And we will be discreet as well,” Ilya added.

“Of course,” she said.

“And if you do meet someone that you care for, you can share with him that we married for pragmatic reasons, and I would hope to have the opportunity to know him and be friendly.”

She tilted her head to the said. “Oh, Shane. That’s very sweet.”

“I will travel for several months most years to see Ilya. I’ve invested in his shipping company and our business partnership will be the premise for our travelling together. You are welcome to join us, of course.”

“A very kind offer, which I will likely accept if you are going somewhere warm and beautiful.”

“And I have one more, regarding our children. Regardless of how…how they come about, I wish to be a real father to them, like my father was to me. And I wish them to know Ilya in some capacity, as someone I care about.”

Ilya made a surprised little noise. Shane looked over at him, and found that Ilya’s eyes had grown glassy. “Shane,” he muttered, and took Shane’s hand and squeezed tightly.

“I would expect nothing less,” Rose said quietly.

*

The wedding was, for many reasons, the event of the Season. The renewal of Shane and Rose’s engagement, along with his mother’s expert maneuvering, had lessened the overall condemnation of Rose. Even those who continued to whisper behind their fans attended the ceremony, for it would have been foolish to forego such a sought-after invitation.

Ilya sat in the second row and smiled the whole time. Shane knew that he wasn’t nearly as generous with his own heart: he wouldn’t have made through a single minute of Ilya’s wedding to another. 

The wedding breakfast was a more intimate affair, just forty or so of their closer friends and family. Shane was watching Ilya flirt joyfully with his great aunt Cecile when Hayden sat down next to him.

“You are happier this time,” Hayden said.

“What do you mean?” Shane asked, even though he knew exactly what Hayden meant.

“You didn’t seem particularly excited to be married, before.”

“Well, not all of us are so lovesick,” he said teasingly.

“Aren’t we?” Hayden said.

Shane had never lied to Hayden, and he knew it was likely that Hayden had heard a rumor here or there while they were at university. But he had never once considered telling him about Ilya; that was a lot to ask of even the closest of friends.

Shane cleared his throat. “If you have any questions, I will answer them honestly.”

Hayden followed Shane’s eyes across the room, to where Cecile was doubled over laughing, and Ilya’s blue eyes were sparkling with mischief.

“Rose seems happy, too,” Hayden continued. “Considering.”

“She is a good woman, and I’m a lucky man,” Shane said honestly.

“We can talk when you get back from your trip,” Hayden said. “I know you’re very…private. About things. But we can talk, if you want.”

Shane nodded. “I would like that. Thank you.”

*

Rose and Shane sailed for Greece the following day. Rose had insisted she didn’t need a wedding trip, but Her Grace had pointed out that it would make their reunion seem all that much more romantic. They spent weeks touring the ruins and eating olives and fresh fish in the September sun.

After a month, Rose travelled to Paris to visit an older cousin who had decamped to France less than a week after the signing of the Second Treaty of Paris, and Ilya met Shane in Rome. They worked, establishing partnerships and mapping routes along the Mediterranean coast. They eventually settled at a villa outside Naples for the month of January, and read aloud the letters they received from Lana, Rose, and Mr. Dalgaard in Copenhagen, complaining of the wet, frigid winter in the northern climes.

In early February, before each sailed on his own ship back to his own life, they visited a jeweler. Ilya went home with a copy of Shane’s signet ring, which joined his mother’s cross on the chain around his neck, and Shane with an engraved charm for his watch fob.

That night on the terrace, with the sun setting over the Tyrhennian Sea, Ilya pressed the gold disc into Shane’s palm and told him that his love would never waiver; Shane brought Ilya’s new ring to his lips, and said the same.

Chapter End Notes

1. In any other context, I doubt Shane would mind at all if Rose outsourced the conception of their children, but given the stakes (the title/dukedom), I couldn't imagine he would be comfortable with that sort of deception.

2. I have no historical basis whatsoever for my genius midwife who has singlehandedly discovered assisted reproductive technologies BUT there are accounts of artificial insemination attempts in humans as early as the 15th century. Sperm were observed by a Dutch scientist in the 17th century, and there is a recorded case of a surgeon names John Hunter recommending insemination to a patient in the 1770s. A physician named J Marion Sims performed 55 inseminations in America in the mid-1800s, with only one pregnancy occuring, but it's believed that his project was less successful because he was wrong about the timing of ovulation (an error I don't believe our fake midwife would have made).

Doing my very best to create a happy ending for these lovebirds in a hostile time and place!

Chapter 13

Chapter Notes

for my epistolary fiction lovers: this is a LOT of letters!

We're moving through a lot of years. so heads up that we're going to encounter some of the naturally occurring losses that come with the passage of time. I've also added some date tags, to help track how much time is passing between letters.

March 1816

My love,

Rose’s midwife will visit this evening. I can hardly believe we are attempting such a preposterous thing, but Rose continues to say she is determined to produce a “Hollander child.” I hope it works, of course, but there are also days when I wish I could look forward to a Rozanov child, with unruly curls and mischievous eyes of indeterminate color. 

I don’t want to take this from you, if it is something you want as well. Perhaps you could marry Lana, or perhaps you will be lonely in Copenhagen, and meet a woman who strikes your fancy. I should not be selfish. I would only ask that she be kind, and understanding.

At luncheon the other day, it was just my mother and I, and she asked why I had married Rose. I was surprised by the question, given that my mother was one of those who encouraged me to step in to protect her reputation. When I pointed this out, she responded, “yes but you never do anything without your own reason, as well.” I didn’t plan to confess, but I couldn’t bring myself to continue lying. I told her that Rose is my dearest friend, and that I could not marry the person I wanted to and she had generously offered to step in. She looked at me for a long while without saying anything and then asked, quite bluntly, “is it a man?” and I said yes. She said nothing else, and stood to leave shortly after, but she kissed the top of my head on her way out like she used to do when I was a boy. I feel a great weight has been lifted from my shoulders.

She will no doubt tell my father, as well, because they have no secrets. But I think he already knows. He asks after you frequently, and complimented my watch fob the very day I returned from Italy. I feel extremely lucky in my family at the moment, and wish that you could be so in yours. The only consolation I can offer is that we may share His and Her Grace, as you are certainly family from now on.

Will you still arrive at the end of June? I thought you might want to be in London for more of the Season.

Yours always,

Shane

*

April 1816

Beloved,

I certainly will not marry a nice woman from Copenhagen. This is something we should discuss face to face, but I can assure you now I have no desire to perpetuate the Rozanov line. My father has done enough damage, I can only hope that his reign of terror on the earth will be curtailed as I’ve just received word that Alexei’s wife has borne a daughter. If my mother’s essence persists, perhaps we will all be spared a new generation of Rozanov men.

As I read your letter, I hope dearly that the midwife’s scheme has succeeded. I look forward to a world populated by tiny, freckled Hollanders.

I am happy for you that your mother was kind. I am jealous too, I think, but you are very generous to share. I have already received a letter from your father, in fact, containing nothing but friendly questions about Copenhagen, and news of the trout pond he is digging at the family estate. He insists that I come to fish it when I am next in England.

I have decided to leave two weeks earlier, and will arrive on 14 June. I will dance with Rose at many balls before we depart for Devon.

All my love,

Ilya

*

December 1816

Ilya,

For the second time, I am bewitched (before you begin to panic—yes, the first time was you.) Our little Henry is the most precious thing I have ever laid eyes on. He has brown eyes and a wispy patch of reddish-brown hair, and fusses and squirms quite incessantly. His nursemaid has nearly given up on keeping him swaddled, as he only wriggles out of the blankets as if seeking the winter chill on his baby-soft skin.

I tell myself that somehow, through some alchemy, he has picked up your Moscovite’s imperviousness to cold. But Rose frets terribly about him getting ill, so the fires are roaring and it is hot as Hades in half the rooms in the house. 

I miss you terribly, of course, but I am quite excited for you to meet him in the spring. For the first few weeks, he did little except sleep and eat. Lately his eyes are open more, and he has quite a penetrating stare for such a scrunched, tiny thing. My mother has dissolved into a doting grandmama, and insists he is the smartest infant she has ever encountered.

I still cannot believe this worked. It is a shame they can’t put us in the medical books.

Rose has refused to use a wet nurse, and is thoroughly exhausted. I am sleepless sometimes as well, but only when I miss you especially badly, and spend too many hours of the night daydreaming of our month in Naples. On these nights, I hear the baby’s wails, and the shuffling and muttering as Rose wakes to feed him, and sometimes I sneak across the hall and hold him for an hour or so, so she can sleep a little longer. 

Lady Jacqueline Pike will visit again tomorrow. The twins are just nearly one, and you would be shocked at the damage they are able to do now that they can walk. They especially like it when Hayden tosses them in the air, even though Jackie scolds him every time.

Perhaps you can come early this year? April is a mere four months away.

Love, Shane

*

April 1817

My dear, wonderful Ilya,

First of all, you must stop sending gifts for Henry. Not only is the nursery full, but his nursemaid does not speak Russian and is quite distressed about her inability to decipher the Russian storybooks. He has yet to sit up under his own power, you have plenty of time to spoil him.

Secondly, thank you for the lovely beads. I’ve never seen a gemstone like this before! I attempted to wear them yesterday, but Henry was gnawing on them and I didn’t want the strand to break.

Shane tells me you are arriving a few weeks early. He would never say as much to me, but it’s been quite hard for him to go nearly a year without seeing you. I hope we can manage better timing for the next one, so she doesn’t arrive in the midst of your and Shane’s autumn travel.

Lastly, I will say thank you again—not for the trinkets you like to send, but for your patience and generosity. When George died, I was certain that my happiness had died with him. I still don’t think I’ll ever love another man the way I loved him (truly, I still can’t believe that I jilted Shane and dragged poor George to Scotland), but now I look down at Henry in my arms and I know that there will be a great deal of love in my life, regardless.

I know you will love him as we do, and that he will love his Uncle Ilya in return.

Looking forward to your visit, as always,

Rose

May 1817

My beautiful flower,

I have asked my friend Lana to find a Russian-speaking nursemaid to join your household. I know Shane agrees that the study of languages is important, and I insist that at least one Hollander is fluent in my mother tongue.

The beads are орлец, or ‘eagle stone.’ They find them in the mountains, great pink seams rippling through the black rock. The stone reminds me of you, because they are just as beautiful as a diamond or ruby, but far more interesting. Perhaps you shouldn’t show Shane this letter—he can be quite jealous, I’m afraid, and I don’t want him to worry that I believe anyone to be quite as beautiful as he.

I find myself quite exasperated with Copenhagen lately. The majority of our shipping routes are to the south now, and Mr. Dalgaard has the Baltic traffic well in hand. I’ve been wondering if it might be wise to set up a London office for the company—but don’t tell Shane yet, if you please. I want this to be a surprise.

Love,

Uncle Ilya

*

April 1818

Dearest Ilya,

I can hardly believe that I will address this letter to London, rather than Copenhagen. This time last year, I thought I might die from missing you, and now I can be with you in just a few days’ travel, should I find your absence unbearable (as I often do).

I hope you didn’t run away because Hayden discovered us in the library. He knew about us already, he insists that he was only surprised to stumble on us in the midst of such an intimate embrace. (I told you to lock the door, if you recall.) It would make me very happy if you would make some effort with him; he’s a rather conventional man and I can imagine he finds our situation highly unusual. He is also quite tired; Lady Hayden is expecting again and they’ve had yet another nanny resign. I believe Hayden has been sleeping on the floor of the nursery to keep Arthur and the twins quiet, so that his wife can get a full night’s rest.

On this topic, will you please speak to Lyudmilla when we see you next? She has not stopped muttering blessings over me in Russian whenever we pass in the hall, ever since she saw us kissing in the garden last summer. I appreciate her concern for my soul, but you may tell her that I’ve long made peace with my sins. If she were any other staff member I would move her to another household, but Henry is quite attached.

Reading this back, we really should be more careful in public areas of the house and grounds.

We will be coming up to Town in a few weeks so that Rose can visit the modiste before the Season. She has announced that she will summon the midwife again in the summer, though I refuse to believe that we will strike such fabulous luck twice in two attempts.

One last thing—please no more gifts for Henry. He is the heir to a dukedom, and terribly spoiled by definition. No child needs an entire menagerie carved from jasper.

Love, Shane

*

Dear Shane,

May 1819

I am sorry that I departed so abruptly. I was honored to meet the newest Hollander, and I am ashamed that I allowed my emotions to overtake me in such a precious moment.

She is beautiful, of course, and you named her after my mama. No one has ever done something so wonderful for me.

I’ll return tomorrow when I have regained my composure.

Love, Ilya

*

July 1821

My dearest, most wonderful friend,

Ilya, you know that I love you dearly. But enough is enough. Irene is barely two years old and does not need one single pony, much less three.

Love, Rose

July 1821

Dearest Rose,

It is never too early to cultivate a love of animals, and skill in the saddle.

I’m afraid I must insist the ponies come together; my good friend Lana has recently begun a breeding and training business, and accepted these three ponies after they spent years neglected on an abandoned estate in Northumberland. Apparently they whine all night if they are separated.

Love, Ilya

*

May 1824

Ilya,

I feel as if I’m losing my mind. Am I the only person who thinks five years old is far too young for Irene to be riding? Lana and Rose are ganging up on me; I want to be happy that they have become such close friends but I do feel outnumbered, especially since you so often side with them.

Love, Shane

P.S. When are you coming to town? I thought your business in Copenhagen was only supposed to take a week.

May 1824

My beloved,

Difficult news awaited me in Copenhagen. Alexei’s wife died in childbirth, along with their son. I must travel to the dacha, to pay my respects, and to check on my niece. Alexei spared little care for her in his letters, and I fear she will be all alone in her grief, as I was.

Love,

Ilya

P.S. you are wrong about Irene, she will be fine riding her ponies with a careful instructor

July 1824

Dearest Shane,

I depart tomorrow for England, and my niece, Ekaterina, will accompany me. I know you will call me impulsive, and perhaps I am, but Alexei would barely look at her. I could not leave her there alone. This may be the most foolish thing I have ever done.

Please ask Lyudmilla and Lana if they can help find another Russian-speaking nursemaid for my household. Perhaps Rose can also help assemble a nursery? There is space on the top floor.

Barring any difficult weather, we will arrive in two weeks.

Love,

Ilya

July 1824

My wonderful, soft-hearted love,

Since I have no hope of catching you in St Petersburg, I’ve sent this letter to your London residence.

This is not a foolish thing that you have done, it is a good thing. You are a good man, and you prove it to all of us day over day. I am proud of how easily you choose to do the right thing.

We will take care of the nursery, and all else. I look forward to meeting Ekaterina.

Love,

Shane

*

August 1825

Dear Ilya,

I’ve had the most wonderful idea. Next month, when you and Shane leave for Italy, little Katya should come to Devon with us! Henry and Reenie adore her, and I think she would have so much fun playing with them on the beach. Lana is visiting as well, in October. We will be a happy little matriarchy.

Your servant,

Rose

*

September 1827

Ilya,

Please come, my father has suffered an apoplexy.

Shane

October 1827

Your Grace,

I hope I do not overstep in writing to you. But you have been unfailingly kind to me over the many years of my friendship with your son, and I feel compelled to attempt the same generosity of spirit in the wake of this terrible loss.

My father was a hard, cruel man, who wanted me to be the same. I thought this was what men were—hard and cruel—until I met your son, and your husband.

His Grace began writing to me nearly ten years ago. I received one to two letters each month from him, up until the day of his death. I have kept them all, wrapped in ribbon in a box in my chamber, lest I ever forget that a man draws strength, not weakness, from kindness and generosity. 

I will mourn him deeply, as I’m sure many others will, as well.

Please do not hesitate to call on me should you need anything—I am at your service in this difficult time.

With my condolences,

Prince Ilya

November 1827

Prince Ilya,

Thank you for your note, and I apologize for this delayed reply. I find I’m quite at sea without David. Did you know that was his Christian name? David? It suited him, I thought. He wasn’t fussy enough to be an Aloysius or a Beauregard.

When my father told me I would marry the future Duke of Ottawa, I was livid. I railed at him, and threatened to run away. He made me a bargain: that I would agree to meet Lord Hollander once, and then I could decide for myself. As I’m sure you have already deduced, my father knew me very well—I was instantly enamored with David, and his obvious gentleness. 

I imagine this is an experience that we have in common. My son has inherited some of my sharp edges, which is probably for the best, but I have been happy to see him surround himself with people who love him for his good heart. 

On an unrelated note, Rose tells me that Lady Irene has been adamant that she has outgrown her ponies, and that you have suggested that she might receive a new horse for her eighth birthday. Shane cannot properly refuse you so I will do it in his stead: no.

Yours,

Yuna Hollander

*

February 1831

Dearest Ilya,

Henry has been sent down from Eton for the rest of the term. Apparently, there was an altercation that began after another student said some unkind things to Henry about his mother and me. He won’t tell me what was said, only that he ‘couldn’t let it stand.’

I hoped he might be spared this—he is likeable, like his mother (a great relief to me), and athletic, and if that failed to protect him I thought my title, and his, would be enough. What if they are saying what I fear they are saying? Have we not been discreet? I cannot bear the thought that in my selfishness, I have caused him pain.

Love, Shane

February 1831,

My love,

I will come down from London right away; perhaps he will tell me more of what happened.

You have not been selfish. I can assure you that your children are growing up well-loved, certainly moreso than many of their peers. We cannot control what comes out of the mouths of the mean and foolish, but you should be proud that Henry stood up for the people that he loves.

I will be there soon, try not to fret.

Ilya

*

December 1834

Ilya,

I am very cross with you. Just an hour ago I arrived home early from my week in Town and stumbled on Rose and Lana in a very delicate position. They have been laughing at me for thirty minutes now because I didn’t know.

Why didn’t you tell me?!

Shane

December 1834

Oh my beloved. My beautiful, oblivious beloved.

I didn’t tell you because it isn’t a secret. YOU must tell ME how it is you didn’t notice? It’s been nearly two years. YEARS!

I will be there for Christmas in a few days and I will tell you what happens when two beautiful ladies love one another very much.

Yours always,

Ilya

*

April 1838

Dear Ilya,

I’ve had the most wonderful thought. I was just speaking with Her Grace about Irene’s debut this Season, and we both remembered that dear Katya never had a proper coming out, since she chose to travel on the continent with her grandmother these last two years instead. Would you be amenable to having a joint ball for the two of them?

Please say yes.

With love,

Rose

April 1838,

Dearest Rose,

Even if I wanted to say no, I can imagine that you have already been to the engraver’s to order the invitations. Fair warning though, Katya was grumbling to me just last night that she is too old, and too foreign, and will never find a suitable match in England. I’m sure this will be an enticement for her to stay, especially if I can promise that Henry will bring Arthur Pike when he comes down from Oxford.

Love, Ilya

May 1838,

Dear Shane,

Enclosed you will find an invoice from the modiste. Have I done something to anger your lovely wife? The debuts will bankrupt us all.

Love, Ilya

May 1838

Ilya,

If you are uncomfortable with the costs of seeing your niece properly attired for her own coming out, I suggest you recall the many years during which Rose and I were begging you to stop spoiling our children rotten. Turnabout is fair play—if your coffers are so empty, which would be a surprise given the new carriage that you expect to be ready for you next week, I will of course make a gift of the gown.

Love,

Shane

*

March 1843

Dear Shane,

Katya and I have arrived in Moscow; Alexei’s funeral service is tomorrow. I was hoping we could return within the month, but my brother’s affairs are disastrous. Alexei’s widow is terribly young (she can’t be much older than twenty), and though she doesn’t pretend to grieve for Alexei, she is clearly concerned for her son. He is a quiet little thing, watchful and dark-eyed. I see little Rozanov in him, which perhaps will be a good thing.

Katya has been subdued; I believe she is troubled by how little she mourns her father. I’ve told her that she isn’t obligated to miss him, not when he could barely be bothered to write to her more than once or twice a year. 

I know she misses Arthur, as well. On the ship, she confided to me they have an understanding of sorts, but that he has refused to propose properly until he is called up to the bar. She seemed very nervous to tell me, and begged me not to refuse him when he comes to me to ask for her hand, and it made me wonder if I have made too much of a game of teasing his father all these years. Arthur is a fine young man, in my opinion, and an excellent match for Katya.

Write to me, please, even though I hope we will be able to leave here before a return letter can arrive. Each minute I pass here, I remember another thing I love and another thing I hate about this country. I remember that I miss the way we prepare tea, and the briny bite of pickles made correctly; I remember that I hate the way that people speak French even after Napoleon marched on Moscow, and that people insist on using my patronymic address and I have to hear my father’s name attached to my own over and over again. I feel my mother here, and I miss her all over again.

Perhaps my real fear is of the hold that Russia still has on me, the way I cannot cut this thread of “home” cleanly, no matter how cruel and hostile she was to me. Next time—if there is a next time—you will have to come with me, so I know I won’t forget where my real home is. 

March 1843

Ilya,

Irene and I argued the other day.

I discovered that she has been writing under a pen name for a newspaper, venturing into all sorts of dangerous places without even a single footman for protection. When I confronted her, she told me that she is bored, and feels trapped, and that she never wants to see the inside of a ballroom for the rest of her life. She said she hates being the daughter of a duke (I know she didn’t say she hates being my daughter, not literally, but it was very hard not to hear it as such), and wants to leave England forever. She said she would go to America if she could. America! Across an ocean, to God knows what sort of chaos.

I am telling you this now, even though you’re so far away and have so many troubles of your own, because I think you will understand better than I can. I read your letter again after she stormed out of the library, and it made me wonder if Irene might be right. Maybe it’s all a matter of luck if we’re born to the places and things that make sense for us, and those who aren’t are meant to strike out and find something new.

Russia is a part of you still, a part that I love along with all the others—if it were not for the ‘thread of home,’ as you call it, you wouldn’t be you, so I cannot encourage you to abandon her completely. But I also believe you were meant to end up here, with me, and Rose and Lana, and the children.

My heart aches for you, my love, and I wish I had insisted that I come with you. I will be waiting here with my arms open, as always.

Yours forever,

Shane

Chapter 14: fast forward

Chapter Notes

This really wasn't supposed to be this long, nor was I supposed to finish it and think to myself "this would make a good sequel."

Content warnings: we've jumped forward in time, and there are mentions of aging and references to dementia for our beloved heroes. I am not tagging MCD because it's been 200+ years and though I love myself some vampire fics, this is not one.

Hank climbed the fourth and final staircase toward the storage room. It was August, and the sun was out on the beach, but it was nearly pitch dark in this final, cramped corridor, buried deep in the center of the great house, accessible only via the old servants’ hall.

He’d worn a facemask and brought a flashlight, at the advice of the man he’d spoken to when he arrived, and he was glad for it. The dust was decades thick up here, and he could already feel a tickle developing in the back of his throat.

We would go, of course, darling. But your father has obligations.

Yes of course. Very serious obligations to his favorite Formula One racing team.

He tried to shake off his irritation. He loved his parents, of course,, and it wasn’t as if they ever missed anything truly important for one of their little jaunts. It was only that they were so enthusiastic about the whole rich and titled thing, whereas the trappings of their family’s status had become increasingly embarrassing for Hank, especially after university.

The older he got, the more it felt bizarre that his father was a duke. It didn’t sound much better than saying oh yes my parents are wizards or my brother is a leprechaun. As for Hank’s own impending dukehood, well….perhaps they would abolish it all before that time came.

It wasn’t just that the Hollanders were just very rich. Lots of families were rich. But the Hollanders had been rich for an obscenely long time, and in England, that still mattered a lot more than it should.

The house in Devon had been a thorn in his father’s side for years. The original family seat, a great estate in Cambridgeshire, had been absorbed by the government during World War II, long after it had become a hideous drain on the family resources. As his grandfather had told it, the mansion was essentially derelict by the time it was converted to a soldier’s hospital, with vines growing through the ground floor window frames and a thriving colony of bats in the attic. 

But the Devon house was tied up in some ancient, impossible legal tangle called an entailment that barred the Duke of Ottawa from ever selling it, and no national crises had come along recently to rescue them. Hank’s father (also named Henry; they all were, going back two hundred years, ugh) had spent twenty years scheming and finally managed to pawn it off to national historic trust, who would maintain it as a museum (and, likely, as a set for period movies and TV series.)

But upon arriving for his first visit at the forgotten manor house, Hank was immediately enamored. The house was stately though not palatial, surrounded by a cottage garden that had gone fairly wild. There was a narrow path at the back of the grounds that led through a tangle of shrubs, down to a crescent-shaped beach bracketed by rocky outcroppings on either side, each stoically absorbing blows from the greenish-gray surf.

A harried-looking representative of the trust had given him a brief tour when he arrived and left him with a packet detailing the handover to the trust. The Hollanders had one final week—this week—to take any personal items from the house; anything left behind would be property of the museum, and subject to being catalogued and included in the exhibits.

Enclosed you will find a list of the rooms NHT staff have reviewed, as well as catalogs of the items contained therein. A Hollander family representative should check the two remaining storage spaces for any additional items.

Hank’s parents had identified the catalogued items that they wanted him to collect; it wasn’t much besides a few paintings and a jewelry box that had belonged to his great-grandmother. As for the storage spaces, his Mum had encouraged him to take whatever struck his fancy and leave the rest.

Thus he’d followed the map of the house to this godforsaken staircase, and now he was two steps away from an arched door that looked like something out of a Lord of the Rings adaptation. It was ajar, thank goodness (he didn’t have the energy to wrestle with some rusted, pre-modern lock), and he had to duck his head as he went inside.

The attic was dry, and, mercifully, nearly empty. There were stacks of bamboo-styled ballroom chairs along one wall, a large black trunk along the opposite wall, and an enormous wood wardrobe looming in one corner. As Hank walked forward, toward the wardrobe, the attic door swung partially closed behind him and revealed a huge, gilt-framed mirror with a crack down the middle.

The wardrobe was empty except for a pair of fur coats. Hank had no interest in bringing home the horde of moths that was no doubt lurking within, so he left them for the museum staff. The trunk was immediately more interesting. On one side, there was an intricately carved writing desk, and on the other, a pile of leatherbound journals.

He lifted the journal of the top of the stack gingerly out of the trunk. A leather cord had been wrapped around it two or three times, and Hank picked gently at the knot until it fell away. There was an engraving on the inside cover that read Henry David Edward Hollander, 1861.

Hank’s heart started to beat a little faster. Despite the job he was about to start at Barclay’s, Hank had studied history at Oxford. He’d very pointedly ignored British history, choosing instead to specialize in the history of the Russian empire, but no historian worth their salt wouldn’t be intrigued by a newly discovered primary source.

He flipped carefully to a page in the middle and squinted at the cramped script.

22 Mar 1861

We’ve gathered in Devon for Easter. Father has little interest in Town these days, and hasn’t been to Cambridgeshire in years. He says he’s too old for balls and soirees, and that the sea air is good for Uncle Ilya’s lungs. Both of those things may be true, but I have also noticed that Uncle Ilya seems most at ease here.

Two days ago, two hours passed in which Father couldn’t find him after he had gone upstairs for an afternoon respite. Mama took me aside and asked me to look down on the beach, where I found Ilya sitting on the rocks. I called for him two or three times and heard no response, so I approached him and put my hand on his shoulder to get his attention. He put his hand on top of mine and squeezed it tight, then turned around and smiled and called me “kotik,” which I believe means “cat” or perhaps “kitten.” After a few seconds he blinked and said, “you’re not Shane,” and I laughed because my father’s and my resemblance is a long-running joke amongst the family.

Mama wrote to Katya and Arthur in America, even though Uncle Ilya insisted they not be bothered with, as he put it, ‘the troubles of a silly old man.” She is coming anyway, and bringing her three girls, because they haven’t seen Uncle Ilya since he and Father, and Mama and Lana, went for a long visit in Boston the year before last.

Holly asked me today if Uncle Ilya was always so quiet. I sometimes forget that my son has never known the man who swung me up so easily on his shoulders, or chased us all across the lawn brandishing a wooden sword. I don’t know how to describe how lively and sharp he always was, the way he knew what everyone was thinking often before they did.

Mama told me that Father has finally stopped summoning physicians, and I am glad of it. They all say the same thing. 

Hank thought that Uncle Ilya must be Ilya Rozanov, the Russian prince who had founded the shipping company that to this day accounted for a great deal of the Hollander family wealth. It was well-worn family lore that the seventh Duke of Ottawa’s foresight in going into business with the Rozanovs had spared the title a subsequent hundred years of slow deterioration, as many aristocratic families saw the bounty of their rents dwindle to nearly nothing in the wake of industrialization. Apparently Shane Hollander and Prince Ilya had been great friends in addition to business partners.

He flipped to another page.

17 August 1861

Gemma and the boys have gone back up to Town so that Holly can finish packing for school. He’s nearly as tall as I am, and favors his mother. He told me that Father promised him twenty pounds if he could make it through Michaelmas term without causing any trouble, but based on the glint in his eye, I’m not sure the price is high enough.

Reenie will be here tomorrow, Mama says, with her companion, but they will only stay a week before they sail for Constantinople. Miss Thatcher is most fascinated by Homer’s epic poems, and professes to be certain that she can navigate to Troy if they find a suitable guide. Where Reenie finds this parade of bluestockings that serve as her companions, I have no idea, but she gets a great deal of joy from dragging them about the world and scandalizing them with her Bohemian friends and inappropriate lovers.

I still worry for her, and if Father has port after dinner he will sometimes confess that he wishes she would marry, but Mama always shushes us if we voice such concerns in her presence. Mama was always worried that her own history (she always refers to it obliquely, but we all know about her first husband and the elopement and the jilting) would affect Reenie’s chances of a good match, and I suspect that she was relieved when it turned out that Reenie wanted anything but a traditional life.

Earlier this afternoon, I went to the library and found Father reading to Uncle Ilya. Uncle Ilya was laying across the chesterfield, his stockinged feet in Father’s lap. His eyes were closed, and I think he was asleep. Father didn’t see me, but I lingered for a few minutes and listened to him. The book was in Russian, I assume because Uncle Ilya rarely speaks in English anymore, even though he seems to understand us well enough when he is more lucid. It feels some days as if he is letting go of things one by one, doing his best to hold on to what matters most. He asks after Katya and her girls frequently, and has never once forgotten Father’s name.

Hank was moving to turn to another page when the door swung open with an angry creak. He turned so suddenly he nearly toppled over onto the dusty floor. A man was standing in the doorway, fisting a crumpled sheet of paper in one hand and using his phone as a flashlight with the other.

“How did you get in here?” Hank said.

The man blinked at him. “By climbing about a thousand stairs.” His accent was American, and he was dressed in a pair of athletic shorts that hit in the middle of his thighs, a black tank top with a sports brand logo on it, and a backwards baseball hat.

“Who are you?” Hank tried again.

The man ran a hand through his hair—unruly, honey-colored—and smiled a little bashfully. “Oh, right, sorry. I’m Nick Pike. From Boston? I got this letter about some family stuff that might be here.”

Hank clamored off the floor and tried to brush the dust off his pants. By the time he stood up straight, Nick was standing right in front of him, holding out a crinkled stack of paper. Hank took it and saw the logo of the trust organization on the top. It was a notice that there might be items of interest to Rozanov family heirs in the house, and that there would be a window to claim them that was closing at the end of the week.

“My dad said there probably wouldn’t be anything, but I was here with some of my buddies anyway, so I thought why not, right? See if there’s, like, a suit of armor something I can take home to my new place.”

“There is,” Hank muttered, oddly discombobulated by the brightness of this strange young American man. A Rozanov descendent, of all things. Hank suddenly felt very fussy and British, in his button-down shirt and expensive linen trousers.

“A suit of armor? Really?”

“You can’t take it with you. It stays with the house, for the museum.”

“You’re British,” Nick said.

“Clearly,” Hank said.

“Is this your house?”

Hank squirmed. “Sort of. Until the end of the week.”

Nick looked back at the paper, then gasped. “Are you a duke? Like a for real duke?”

Hank stuffed his hands in his pockets. This was excruciating. “Not until my father dies.”

Nick laughed. “Holy shit, man. I’ve been in England for like thirty six hours and I’m already standing in front of a future duke.”

“It’s fine. It’s just….we don’t have to talk about that.” 

“So what’s your name?”

Oh, right. He hadn’t introduced himself. “Hank Hollander,” he answered, offering his hand.

Nick shook it, then brushed by him and headed straight to the open trunk on the floor, dropping a compact little backpack on the floor on the way. “So is there anything cool up here?”

“Just some journals. I haven’t opened that yet,” he said, gesturing at the writing desk.

“This is so awesome,” Nick said, peering inside the trunk. “I love old stuff.”

“You do?” Hank asked. He thought of Americans as being a thoroughly new people, constantly throwing things in the rubbish bin and buying the next version.

“Oh yeah. I’m always dragging people into thrift stores and stuff. I’m moving into a new apartment when I get home and they offered to furnish it for me but I said no, because I want to find my own stuff.”

“Who offered to furnish it for you?”

“Oh,” he said, suddenly blushing furiously. “My work.”

Hank raised an eyebrow. “They must be very generous.”

Hank was waltzing right into a swank job he didn’t deserve in less than a week, but Barclay’s hadn’t said a word about buying him furniture. He was suddenly deathly curious about Nick’s profession.

Nick reached a hand up and rubbed the back of his neck. “Yeah, well. We move around a lot, so they’re set up for relocations.” He looked down pointedly, obviously trying to end the conversation, and picked up the journal Hank had been reading.

His eyes scanned over the page. “Wow, cool,” he muttered. “Is this guy a relative of yours?”

“Yeah,” Hank said. “That’s the eighth Duke of Ottawa, I think. Henry. So my…great something grandfather. Six greats, maybe?”

“Oh!” he exclaimed, stabbing at the page with his index finger. “Uncle Ilya! I think he’s mine!”

“Your great-something grandfather?”

He shook his head. “No, I think great-something uncle? One of my great-something grandmothers was his niece.”

A niece. Hank’s history brain was tingling. Was it too late to defer on his offer from the bank? Mama would be annoyed, but his father wouldn’t care. He could take the journals back to London and spend a few months on a family history. It would be a very duke-ish thing to do.

“What’s in here?” Nick asked. When Hank looked up, Nick had already set the journal down and was opening the top of the writing desk. Hank sank back down to the floor and picked up the journal again, trying to find the page he had stopped on. “Oh neat, letters.”

Neat. Who said neat? Sitting cross-legged on the floor, Nick somehow looked even larger than he had standing in the doorway. His thighs strained against the hem of his shorts, which Hank absolutely should not have been noticing at all. He looked away.

He flipped to a new page in the journal and kept reading. Uncle Ilya’s decline had been fairly rapid, it seemed. By Christmas, Henry was writing that Ilya was bedridden, and rarely awake. Father is beside himself, he wrote. I worry for him.

“They must have been very close friends,” Hank muttered, mostly to himself.

But Nick sucked in a breath a few feet away. “Uh….not so sure about friends, bro.”

Bro?

“What do you mean?” Hank asked.

Nick looked up at him, a charming pink blush creeping across his cheeks, and handed him two thick pieces of yellowed paper.

Hank’s eyes settled on a paragraph in the middle.

There is a globe in my father’s office. Too often I get lost staring at the expanse of blue and green between us.. I believe it is nearly 2,000 miles, but I find I cannot fathom such a distance when I so often think I can still smell your cologne, or hear your voice in a crowded room. Perhaps you have settled somewhere in my heart—I haven’t yet decided whether such permanence would be a blessing or torture. Both, I suppose.

He checked the addressee and the signatory.

Oh. Not friends, then, as such.

“Oh my God,” Nick gasped. He was gripping folio to his chest, jaw dropped nearly to his chest and even pinker than he had been before.

“What?” Hank said, with a laugh. Nick just shook his head. “No! You have to show me now!”

“I don’t know, man. It feels like…I don’t know.”

Hank held out his hand and curled his fingers. Nick closed the folio gently, laughing and shaking his head as he handed it over.

Hank opened it, cursed, and immediately closed it again.

Nick was still laughing. “I told you!”

He cracked the folio again slowly, as if moving gingerly might make the contents less shocking. Inside was a charcoal drawing of a man. He was handsome and lean, well-muscled, especially in the thighs. He was kneeling above a…personal device of some sort, one hand wrapped around his…well. His head was thrown back, away from the artist, the tendons of his neck stretched taut.

It was pornographic. But also quite beautiful.

“Well.”

Without thinking, he lifted the sketch gingerly by one edge and turned it over gently to expose the next sheet. 

He swallowed.

This one was worse. No, not worse—perhaps just more. It was of two men locked in an embrace, one presumably the same subject as the first sketch, straddling the other’s lap with his back facing the artist and a pair of well-muscled arms wrapped tightly around him. The other man’s head peaked over his lover’s shoulder, just a shock of curly hair and the corner of one closed eye. 

Wordlessly, he handed the folio back to Nick, opened on the new page. Nick gave it one look, jerked his head away and slammed it shut.

Hank grinned. “Americans really are prudish.”

Nick’s blush intensified again. “Come on—that was obviously, like, for them. They weren’t like, oh I hope some rando finds this and looks at it in a couple hundred years.” 

Hank paused; Nick was probably right. He thought about the letter, the longing burning through the page. How much time did they have to spend apart? Was this really any different from Hank sending nudes to his boyfriend when he went to study abroad in St. Petersburg?

“Did you guys know about—?” Nick gestured to the letters.

“Definitely not,” Hank mumbled. He was thinking about the family history again, but now it was a very different project taking hold in his mind.

“So are gay dukes like, a thing?” Nick asked, tentative

“Of course they are. Gay everything is a thing.”

When Hank first brought a man home from university, his parents had been very eager to tell him that no one would mind. Once or twice, a tabloid photographer had caught him kissing a man at a party, or grinding on a man in a dance club, and a headline had appeared with the exact sort of fawning scold that they issued to the aristocratic it girls or royal hangers-on, which he supposed could be considered a win for the cause. But it hadn’t escaped him that it would be a thing when he became the first gay Duke of Ottawa.

Well, openly gay Duke of Ottawa.

Though, if Shane Hollander and his lover lived together into their old age, maybe he was as out as a man might have ventured to be in 1861.

“I mean, not gay everything,” Nick mumbled, his eyes skating across the letters again.

“What is it that you do?” Hank asked, finally succumbing to his curiosity.

Nick didn’t look up. “I play hockey.”

Hank’s eyebrows shot up. “That’s your job?”

“Yeah, as of the draft, a few months ago. I report for preseason training in a couple weeks.”

“Well, that explains the thighs,” Hank muttered, before he could stop himself.

Nick’s grin returned. “You noticed my thighs?”

Hank blushed, but pushed through. “It would be impossible not to; there’s truly not room in here for two mature oak trees.”

Nick laughed again, then gave Hank a quick once over of a type he was very familiar with.

Yes, Nick. Gay everything.

“What are you going to do with this stuff?” Nick asked.

“Take it with me, of course. Read through it all and make sure we can preserve everything appropriately.”

“Cool,” Nick whispered, mostly to himself.

“If you give me your email, I can send you updates,” Hank blurted.

Nick perked up immediately. “Really? Well, actually, uh, I never really check my email. Can I give you my number instead?”

“Sure, of course,” Hank said. He handed his phone over and tried desperately to appear casual about it.

Nick typed in his number and handed the phone back. “Now call me, so I have yours.”

Hank obeyed immediately, revelling in the gleeful little smile that flashed across Nick’s face when the number flashed on the phone screen.

“Hey, is there food here? I’m starving and I have to catch the train to meet my friends in a couple hours.”

Hank stood off the floor again. “There’s a pub by the station that makes an acceptable pasty.”

Nick looked up from the floor, his expression skeptical. “What is a pasty?”

“It’s meat and vegetables in a pastry.”

“Oh, like an empanada.”

“Precisely.”

Nick rose in one smooth motion, all power and elegance, or perhaps it was normal and Hank was just besotted with the notion of him being a professional athlete. He had always been weak for chiselled bodies and—what did the girls on TikTok call it?—golden retriever energy. 

They picked their way down the dark staircase together. 

“Did you drive here or should I get an Uber?” Nick asked.

“I have my car,” he said, wincing immediately when he remembered that he’d brought his father’s Lamborghini in protest of having to do this errand on his own.

“Is it a Bentley? That’s like, a ducal car, right?”

“No,” Hank said.

“Rolls-Royce?”

“No.”

“Aston-Martin?”

“No I don’t drive an Aston-Martin,” he snapped, even though his father had two in his London garage, one of them a vintage DB5 that had made an appearance in more than one James Bond movie.

He led Nick down a hallway toward the back of the house, where the stable had long since been converted to a garage.

“A Lambo! I knew it! I’m totally getting one of these when I get my first check.”

The man was bouncing, like a small child at the sweet shop. Good Lord, it was endearing.

“Can I drive?” he asked.

“Absolutely not,” Hank said.

“You’re right, you’re right.” He slid into the passenger seat and ran his hand over the dashboard. “Holy shit, man. My friends are going to die of jealousy, they wouldn’t come with me because they said it was boring to spend a whole day in some old house.”

Hank pulled out of the garage, and the ridiculous car rumbled over the drive as they rounded the corner to the front of the manor.

Maybe his parents would endow the trust with some sort of resident historian, and it could be Hank for the first year. He wouldn’t mind holing up in one of those little rooms, going through Henry’s journals and Shane and Ilya’s letters with a fine toothed comb. Maybe he could reach out to some friends, see if anyone else had any deeply romantic gay correspondence and/or charcoal sketch porn lying around, and write a compilation about queerness in the British aristocracy.

It was probably greedy of him to acquire yet another position for himself via nepotism and other associated privileges, but at least this one would be more interesting.

“So, hockey,” he shouted over the roar of the engine. “I guess you’re pretty good?” 

“Yeah,” Nick said, laughing.

“Who are you going to play for?”

“Montreal.”

“Montreal is a great city,” Hank said.

“Do you play any sports?”

Hank blushed again. “Not really.”

“What did you play?” Nick pressed, grinning like he knew something hilarious was coming. 

“I wasn’t very serious about it,” Hank hedged. “It was just something my parents wanted us to do.”

“Just tell me.”

“Polo.”

“No fucking way!”

Hank groaned.

“That’s it, I’m coming back here next summer, and you’re going to take me around and show me all the cool duke stuff that you do.”

Hank tried valiantly to ignore the bloom of warmth in his chest at the notion of Nick coming back to visit him. What a hideous cliche, to become infatuated with some bubbly American in a matter of minutes.

“There is no such thing as cool duke stuff, I assure you.”

Nick leveled him with a look from across the console. “Sure, everyone hates driving lambos around between mansions, and playing polo. How many horses do you have?”

“I don’t have any horses.”

“How many horses does your father have?”

Hank sighed. “Twelve.”

“This is so awesome. The guys are never going to believe this. Wait, are you busy tonight?”

Yes, he should say, because he was supposed to go back to London, as well, and go on a second date with a man he’d met at his cousin’s birthday party. Normally the thought of gossiping for ninety minutes about mutual friends over a £25 glass of wine wouldn’t be so bad, but at the moment it sounded like relative torture.

“Because my buddies and I were going to go to the London Eye, then hit up this place in SoHo.” Nick mentioned the name of a bar and Hank wrinkled his nose, because it specialized in overcharging rich tourists for weak cocktails.

“Don’t go there, let me make you a list of some places—”

“Or just come with us,” Nick suggested again. “You have to! For Ilya and Shane! They would want us to be friends, I bet.”

Hank couldn’t stop himself from smiling, or from thinking that maybe he could just drive Nick back to Town himself. It was a few hours or so on the road, a perfect day to ride through the countryside in a preposterous sports car. 

He glanced over and saw Nick with his head tilted back and his eyes closed, the wind whipping through his mop of curls. Hank’s fate was sealed. “I suppose I could change my plans.”