Fic: Nothing Gold Can Stay
Title: Nothing Gold Can Stay
Author: lareinenoire
Play: Richard II
Characters / Pairings: Aumerle, Henry, Richard; Richard/Aumerle, Richard/Isabel
Rating: PG13
Summary: Edward York makes a deal with the devil.
Warnings: Epic Legal Fail (Chancery), gratuitous quotation, references to drug use, bad life choices,
Wordcount: 2844
NB: For angevin2, because no birthday in Histories Fandom is complete without some Aumerle-torture, right? Many, many thanks to rosamund for beta-reading and forcing me to finish this on time.
The one thing Edward York knew for certain was that he desperately wanted a cigarette. Unfortunately, even if they didn't frown on such things in Chancery, his father abhorred the habit and had been watching him like the proverbial hawk. My whole world's gone topsy-turvy and I can't even have a bloody cigarette.
This also meant that his hands were fluttering uselessly about, to the point where his father jabbed him sharply in the side. "Stop fidgeting, damn you. You're not a child."
Edmund York had been notoriously bad-tempered ever since he'd had to give his consent to sending Richard to Yorkshire for his health. Edward had laughed humourlessly at the wording Henry had used. "Don't you remember what he looked like the last time they sent him to Pomfrey House? I don't think Richard's health is what concerns Cousin Henry."
That had earned him another cuff, this time on the back of his head. "You've done bloody well enough."
Not that it mattered now, since the doors to the courtroom were opening. The horror dawned slowly, when for a brief second he realised that he did not recognise Richard in the gaunt, ragged figure flanked by two men who better resembled undertakers.
The first thing he noticed was Richard's hair, and he could feel his fingers twitch instinctively, as if galvanised to action by the memory of golden curls tangled in his hand. Richard had always been inordinately vain about his hair, to the point that Edward had even ventured to tease him once or twice---
("I've never heard you complain about it." Grey eyes wicked yet oddly vacant from the opium, Richard sweeps a snatch of gold back behind his ear. "Is it not a golden mesh to entrap the hearts of men?"
Shakespeare, again, and the offending line is smothered beneath Edward's lips. It is only later, as Edward's fingers twine idly in his hair, that Richard looks at him with as much lucidity as Edward's seen in his eyes since Shene burned, and says, "I'm very bad for you, you know.")
---but never again. Richard's skin was grey beneath the gaslamps and his eyes met Edward's just as he tried to wrench them away. It was all Edward could do not to sink to his knees and beg forgiveness then and there, save that Richard--in an infinitesimal gesture that made Edward love him all the more--shook his head.
I'm very bad for you, you know.
"Oh, Christ." Edward muttered through his teeth. "You would go like a bloody martyr, wouldn't you?" Not for the first time was he grateful that Lancaster was seated on the other side of the room. There was only so much humiliation Edward could take.
It hadn't surprised him when Lancaster took him aside after the closed coach had drawn away from Carnarvon, bearing Richard to Pomfrey House. He still seemed out of place in Richard's study, too solid somehow.
"I'll be frank with you, Cousin Edward."
"When were you ever anything else, Cousin?" Leaning on the title for all it was worth--blood hadn't saved Richard from the madhouse, after all.
Henry did not return Edward's smile, brief as it was. "You know what must be done."
"No, cousin," Edward retorted, trying for Richard's barbed sweetness and instead sounding only petulant, "I'm quite certain I don't. Why don't you tell me what must be done?"
"I was hoping you wouldn't be difficult about this." Henry's lips had thinned to a pale line and Edward tried to remember the last time he'd seen the other man smile. "Richard cannot be trusted."
Edward shrugged. "So you say."
"He's all but bankrupted the estate, not to mention the fact that he waltzed into Lancaster House and helped himself to my father's assets after he died--"
"That wasn't what happened!" He knew how frail his denials sounded. Even he didn't entirely know what Richard had been thinking, had never thought to ask. "He didn't take anything."
"He would have mortgaged my inheritance," Henry spat. "Do you deny that?"
Edward couldn't. Nor could he meet Henry's eyes.
"To pay for those...I don't even know what to call them. Bushy and Greene, Bagot." And you. The last was unspoken but no less present, hanging between them. "Isabelle." He at least had the grace to sound reluctant.
"One of those things isn't like the others, cousin. Surely you can't begrudge Richard's indulging his wife, whatever you feel about his friends?"
"Friends!" Henry snorted. "I'm not the idiot you take me for, York. I know what he is."
"Do you?" Edward lit a much-needed cigarette on reflex. "What the hell do you want, Lancaster? Out with it."
Henry told him. If Edward were braver or stronger or foolhardy like dead Robbie Vere, he would have done something horribly gallant, like throw himself across the burnished wood desk and attempt to strangle Henry Lancaster. As it stood, Edward was none of those things. It was, according to Richard, one of his good qualities.
Not that those qualities were doing Richard much good now. Edward tried to concentrate on the acrid smoke coiling inside his mouth, found himself choking instead. The coughing fit finally subsided, but the tears still pooled in his eyes and he hated himself for that.
"And if I say no?"
He already knew the answer, but there was some part of him that needed to hear Lancaster say it. "I tell your father everything about your...relations," a twist of his lip at that word, as if it pained him somehow, "with Richard."
"You have no proof."
"The entire staff knows. Cousin Richard is many things, but discreet is not one of them." He crossed his arms. "You won't say no."
Edward did consider it, briefly. He could see the look on his father's face, the horror and disgust writ plain. And, somewhere, the small voice of reason wondered aloud what use it would be to Richard if they were both confined for gross indecency. At least, if he were free, Edward could...
Damned if he knew.
"York?" Lancaster hadn't started tapping his foot yet--a habit of his late father's, to be certain--but Edward suspected he was likely to start any moment. "I'd like an answer today, if you please."
Edward swallowed once. Twice. "Very well, Lancaster. I don't think you've left me a choice."
He hadn't even given him the courtesy of a triumphant smile. But Henry Lancaster didn't deal in smiles; he ought to have known that.
And so, two weeks later, they convened to discuss the formal transfer of all assets belonging to Richard Perrivale to his cousin Henry Lancaster. The meeting, much to Lancaster's visible chagrin, was in London, and it had perhaps been on a tip of Edward's that no fewer than twenty newspapermen were waiting in front of Chancery when they arrived.
That malicious joy, however, was short-lived when he remembered exactly what he'd agreed to do today. That Richard seemed to know--as, of course, he would; he could read Edward like one of his much-thumbed copies of Donne--did not help one bit.
***
He remembered little of the Chancery session itself. Witness after witness rising to testify to Richard's incompetence, his overindulgent, spendthrift ways. Hints, always hints, of something else, something too sordid to speak aloud. He did remember Will Bagot, though Richard's former lover at least had the courtesy not to meet his eyes when he spoke of his compatriots, John Bushy and Henry Greene. Fled to France, it seemed, and not a moment too soon. Bagot too had offered himself to Henry Lancaster to save his own skin.
He remembered, too, the young doctor from Pomfrey House. It was Richard's gaze he did not meet as he told the story of a young man who had always been unstable, whose inheritance had been thrust upon him too young, whose...indiscretions could no longer be ignored. Edward wondered, as he watched the others in the room nod in agreement, when his family had turned hypocrite.
It wasn't until afterward that he realised he wasn't alone in this opinion.
Isabelle. He had forgotten her until she emerged from the crowd, graceful as a dancer even now as her black-gloved fingers fluttered and twisted at her wedding ring. How on earth was it, Edward wondered, that she always looked younger, each time he saw her?
The first time had been at Carnarvon just after their clandestine marriage in Paris. Uncle John had been furious--not that anything short of an act of God could have undone Richard's impulsive actions--but even Edward had admitted to Will Bagot that one could never have guessed it from the man's impeccable greeting of the new Mrs Perrivale.
It was young Harry Lancaster whose brave face had collapsed halfway through the evening. An evening Edward had spent nursing admittedly potent punch and watching Richard dance with his new, disgustingly graceful French wife.
"She loves to dance." Edward glanced sideways at the sound of Harry Lancaster's voice. "He doesn't seem to mind it, though."
"Anne hated it," Edward heard himself saying. The name he normally found so difficult to say seemed to trip off his tongue of its own accord. A pity Richard couldn't hear them from here. The moment the thought occurred to him, Edward felt the inward lash of guilt. "I suppose it's nice to dance with someone who enjoys it," he finally allowed, staring at his shoes.
"You don't approve." There was a strange sort of disbelief in Harry's voice, and a visible wrinkling of his nose. "Or did you just not expect him to remarry?"
"I don't know her. How can I approve or disapprove?"
"Father says that Grandfather's in a tearing rage. Because Richard didn't ask permission. But it's surely none of Grandfather's business who Richard marries." A frown sat firmly between Harry's brows. "Do you think he's happy?"
"Your grandfather?"
"Richard."
Edward was forced to look at them again--Harry's accursedly innocuous question reminding him that he had no right, none whatsoever, to be jealous of Richard. When had Richard ever promised him anything?
Isabelle formerly-Vaillant was head-over-heels in love with him and didn't give a wink who noticed. Edward supposed it shouldn't have surprised him; Richard did tend to have that effect on people, after all. Perhaps the knowledge that someone adored one was enough to breed something in return. Edward certainly couldn't have claimed any authority on that front.
He'd asked Richard a few weeks later, keeping his attention firmly focused on buttoning his shirt so he didn't have to look at the other's face.
"Are you jealous, Edward?" There wasn't any accusation in the question. Rather, he could have sworn Richard was smiling, damn him. "Surely you know you've nothing to worry about."
"Who said I was worried?" Edward could hear the tension in his voice and cursed himself. "She's half your age. It's..."
"If you spoke to her for more than five seconds about something that wasn't the weather, you'd see that she's hardly a typical debutante."
"Just because she understands your going on about Shakespeare..." muttered Edward, glaring down at the button he'd missed. He didn't realise Richard had moved until his arm slipped round Edward's waist, fingers expertly twisting buttons from their loops. "Richard--"
"Shut up."
Edward wasn't altogether certain why he always obeyed Richard, and yet it seemed ingrained in him. Still, he never quite reached anything past polite acquaintance with Isabelle, who always seemed to see far more than she let on. In that way, at least, she resembled Cousin Anne. He tried not to admit the strange sort of relief that surged every time Richard looked at Isabelle as one might look at a treasured child to be protected from the world. He did not love her back.
Edward wished his relief did not make him feel like such a cad. Least of all now, as Isabelle stepped forward, raising the veil on her hat to reveal eyes shadowed from lack of sleep and too many tears. With a sob, she flung herself into Richard’s arms, and Edward could see at the corner of his eye a solitary photographer’s bulb go off.
The first words out of her mouth were a torrent of French that Edward couldn't have followed to save his life. Then, steeling herself visibly, she turned to face Henry Lancaster, whose face had taken on a distinctly greyish tinge.
"For God's sake, Henry, let him come with me. We'll go to France; we won't trouble you any further." She swallowed. "Look at him. You cannot, you must not, send him back to that place." The last word had all the weight and bite of an epithet.
"Isabelle, not here--"
"And why not here, Cousin Henry?" Richard spoke softly and Edward could have sworn he saw the brief glimmer of a smile. "It is, after all, a valid proposition."
Of course it wasn't. Henry would let Richard out of his custody on the day the earth spun backwards.
"He'll die if you send him back there." She was no longer looking at Henry, her gaze now fixed on her husband with a piteous expression Edward suspected some newspaperman was now no doubt likening to the heroine of a melodrama. After one, long, lingering kiss, she turned back to Henry, her voice implacable as Judgement day, "Are you a murderer, Henry Lancaster?"
He could not hide his reaction to that, flinching visibly. The room had fallen silent, the kind of silence that coils, waiting, ravenous. "Cousin Isabelle, that is unfair."
"Do not speak to me of fair," she spat. Edward could see her shaking, could see Richard's arm curl protectively around her. "You have what you want, don't you?"
"What you've always wanted, cousin," Richard added, malice sparkling in the words. "Or is that not enough?"
"You know why, Richard."
"Oh, I do, my dear." Edward recognised his smile, the vicious curl of his lips as though he were a cat sharpening his claws. "But I'd like to see you explain it."
"That's quite enough!" Beside Henry, Edward's father's face had gone very red. "I suggest we finish this someplace private."
"No, Uncle, it's quite all right." Henry's words were barely audible from where Edward stood. "I think we're quite finished here. My decision stands. Cousin Edward," he looked at Edward for the first time since his testimony, "please see that Cousin Isabelle is cared for."
Edward bit back the several dozen curses he longed to fling in Henry's direction and nodded tightly. When he laid one hand on Isabelle's arm to lead her away, however, she jerked away from him as though burned.
"Don't you touch me, traitor," she hissed.
Richard leant toward her and murmured something Edward could not hear. Isabelle's tears were spilling unchecked now and she clung to him desperately, as Edward stood by, hands frozen half-reaching for her and aware that he looked utterly ridiculous. "Go with him, chérie," he said, looking at Edward. "Ned."
"Richard." Even the single word emerged in trembling tones. "I'm--"
"Don't, Ned. There isn't time. See that Isabelle gets to Paris safely, will you?" The carelessness, he knew, was feigned, even though they all knew Henry could not hear anything from where he stood. "I trust you, Ned." That last, with a crooked smile. "I told you I was bad for you."
There were a thousand retorts Edward could have made to that, but he settled for taking Isabelle's arm--silently obedient now, though he could tell she was avoiding his touch. They both watched in silence as Richard was led away. He did not look back.
Isabelle twisted free of him as soon as Richard had turned the corner. "Why did you do it, Édouard? I don't understand. I cannot understand."
To that, he had no answer. Not surrounded by witnesses. Richard could have told her, but Richard was gone. As if she'd heard his thought, her eyes too flickered back to the door through which he'd been led.
"I will never see him again, will I?"
Christ, she was so young. He ought to comfort her, to tell her all would be well, but she already knew, didn't she?"
Isabelle straightened, dabbed at her eyes with her handkerchief. "I will return to Carnarvon tonight," she announced, her eyes on Henry. "I trust you will not stop me, cousin?"
Henry had the grace to look embarrassed. "Of course not. It is your home."
"Is it?" The words seemed to linger in the air. "Did you not just take it from my husband?"
There was a faint crackle of laughter from where the newspapermen were clustered. Henry flushed deep red. "You may stay, Cousin Isabelle, as long as you wish."
She curtsied, low and mocking. "You are generous indeed." Slipping her arm through Edward's, she let him lead her past Henry and the rest into the glorious October sunlight.
It was the last time he saw Isabelle, a small, black shadow against glowing autumn leaves.
Author: lareinenoire
Play: Richard II
Characters / Pairings: Aumerle, Henry, Richard; Richard/Aumerle, Richard/Isabel
Rating: PG13
Summary: Edward York makes a deal with the devil.
Warnings: Epic Legal Fail (Chancery), gratuitous quotation, references to drug use, bad life choices,
Wordcount: 2844
NB: For angevin2, because no birthday in Histories Fandom is complete without some Aumerle-torture, right? Many, many thanks to rosamund for beta-reading and forcing me to finish this on time.
The one thing Edward York knew for certain was that he desperately wanted a cigarette. Unfortunately, even if they didn't frown on such things in Chancery, his father abhorred the habit and had been watching him like the proverbial hawk. My whole world's gone topsy-turvy and I can't even have a bloody cigarette.
This also meant that his hands were fluttering uselessly about, to the point where his father jabbed him sharply in the side. "Stop fidgeting, damn you. You're not a child."
Edmund York had been notoriously bad-tempered ever since he'd had to give his consent to sending Richard to Yorkshire for his health. Edward had laughed humourlessly at the wording Henry had used. "Don't you remember what he looked like the last time they sent him to Pomfrey House? I don't think Richard's health is what concerns Cousin Henry."
That had earned him another cuff, this time on the back of his head. "You've done bloody well enough."
Not that it mattered now, since the doors to the courtroom were opening. The horror dawned slowly, when for a brief second he realised that he did not recognise Richard in the gaunt, ragged figure flanked by two men who better resembled undertakers.
The first thing he noticed was Richard's hair, and he could feel his fingers twitch instinctively, as if galvanised to action by the memory of golden curls tangled in his hand. Richard had always been inordinately vain about his hair, to the point that Edward had even ventured to tease him once or twice---
("I've never heard you complain about it." Grey eyes wicked yet oddly vacant from the opium, Richard sweeps a snatch of gold back behind his ear. "Is it not a golden mesh to entrap the hearts of men?"
Shakespeare, again, and the offending line is smothered beneath Edward's lips. It is only later, as Edward's fingers twine idly in his hair, that Richard looks at him with as much lucidity as Edward's seen in his eyes since Shene burned, and says, "I'm very bad for you, you know.")
---but never again. Richard's skin was grey beneath the gaslamps and his eyes met Edward's just as he tried to wrench them away. It was all Edward could do not to sink to his knees and beg forgiveness then and there, save that Richard--in an infinitesimal gesture that made Edward love him all the more--shook his head.
I'm very bad for you, you know.
"Oh, Christ." Edward muttered through his teeth. "You would go like a bloody martyr, wouldn't you?" Not for the first time was he grateful that Lancaster was seated on the other side of the room. There was only so much humiliation Edward could take.
It hadn't surprised him when Lancaster took him aside after the closed coach had drawn away from Carnarvon, bearing Richard to Pomfrey House. He still seemed out of place in Richard's study, too solid somehow.
"I'll be frank with you, Cousin Edward."
"When were you ever anything else, Cousin?" Leaning on the title for all it was worth--blood hadn't saved Richard from the madhouse, after all.
Henry did not return Edward's smile, brief as it was. "You know what must be done."
"No, cousin," Edward retorted, trying for Richard's barbed sweetness and instead sounding only petulant, "I'm quite certain I don't. Why don't you tell me what must be done?"
"I was hoping you wouldn't be difficult about this." Henry's lips had thinned to a pale line and Edward tried to remember the last time he'd seen the other man smile. "Richard cannot be trusted."
Edward shrugged. "So you say."
"He's all but bankrupted the estate, not to mention the fact that he waltzed into Lancaster House and helped himself to my father's assets after he died--"
"That wasn't what happened!" He knew how frail his denials sounded. Even he didn't entirely know what Richard had been thinking, had never thought to ask. "He didn't take anything."
"He would have mortgaged my inheritance," Henry spat. "Do you deny that?"
Edward couldn't. Nor could he meet Henry's eyes.
"To pay for those...I don't even know what to call them. Bushy and Greene, Bagot." And you. The last was unspoken but no less present, hanging between them. "Isabelle." He at least had the grace to sound reluctant.
"One of those things isn't like the others, cousin. Surely you can't begrudge Richard's indulging his wife, whatever you feel about his friends?"
"Friends!" Henry snorted. "I'm not the idiot you take me for, York. I know what he is."
"Do you?" Edward lit a much-needed cigarette on reflex. "What the hell do you want, Lancaster? Out with it."
Henry told him. If Edward were braver or stronger or foolhardy like dead Robbie Vere, he would have done something horribly gallant, like throw himself across the burnished wood desk and attempt to strangle Henry Lancaster. As it stood, Edward was none of those things. It was, according to Richard, one of his good qualities.
Not that those qualities were doing Richard much good now. Edward tried to concentrate on the acrid smoke coiling inside his mouth, found himself choking instead. The coughing fit finally subsided, but the tears still pooled in his eyes and he hated himself for that.
"And if I say no?"
He already knew the answer, but there was some part of him that needed to hear Lancaster say it. "I tell your father everything about your...relations," a twist of his lip at that word, as if it pained him somehow, "with Richard."
"You have no proof."
"The entire staff knows. Cousin Richard is many things, but discreet is not one of them." He crossed his arms. "You won't say no."
Edward did consider it, briefly. He could see the look on his father's face, the horror and disgust writ plain. And, somewhere, the small voice of reason wondered aloud what use it would be to Richard if they were both confined for gross indecency. At least, if he were free, Edward could...
Damned if he knew.
"York?" Lancaster hadn't started tapping his foot yet--a habit of his late father's, to be certain--but Edward suspected he was likely to start any moment. "I'd like an answer today, if you please."
Edward swallowed once. Twice. "Very well, Lancaster. I don't think you've left me a choice."
He hadn't even given him the courtesy of a triumphant smile. But Henry Lancaster didn't deal in smiles; he ought to have known that.
And so, two weeks later, they convened to discuss the formal transfer of all assets belonging to Richard Perrivale to his cousin Henry Lancaster. The meeting, much to Lancaster's visible chagrin, was in London, and it had perhaps been on a tip of Edward's that no fewer than twenty newspapermen were waiting in front of Chancery when they arrived.
That malicious joy, however, was short-lived when he remembered exactly what he'd agreed to do today. That Richard seemed to know--as, of course, he would; he could read Edward like one of his much-thumbed copies of Donne--did not help one bit.
***
He remembered little of the Chancery session itself. Witness after witness rising to testify to Richard's incompetence, his overindulgent, spendthrift ways. Hints, always hints, of something else, something too sordid to speak aloud. He did remember Will Bagot, though Richard's former lover at least had the courtesy not to meet his eyes when he spoke of his compatriots, John Bushy and Henry Greene. Fled to France, it seemed, and not a moment too soon. Bagot too had offered himself to Henry Lancaster to save his own skin.
He remembered, too, the young doctor from Pomfrey House. It was Richard's gaze he did not meet as he told the story of a young man who had always been unstable, whose inheritance had been thrust upon him too young, whose...indiscretions could no longer be ignored. Edward wondered, as he watched the others in the room nod in agreement, when his family had turned hypocrite.
It wasn't until afterward that he realised he wasn't alone in this opinion.
Isabelle. He had forgotten her until she emerged from the crowd, graceful as a dancer even now as her black-gloved fingers fluttered and twisted at her wedding ring. How on earth was it, Edward wondered, that she always looked younger, each time he saw her?
The first time had been at Carnarvon just after their clandestine marriage in Paris. Uncle John had been furious--not that anything short of an act of God could have undone Richard's impulsive actions--but even Edward had admitted to Will Bagot that one could never have guessed it from the man's impeccable greeting of the new Mrs Perrivale.
It was young Harry Lancaster whose brave face had collapsed halfway through the evening. An evening Edward had spent nursing admittedly potent punch and watching Richard dance with his new, disgustingly graceful French wife.
"She loves to dance." Edward glanced sideways at the sound of Harry Lancaster's voice. "He doesn't seem to mind it, though."
"Anne hated it," Edward heard himself saying. The name he normally found so difficult to say seemed to trip off his tongue of its own accord. A pity Richard couldn't hear them from here. The moment the thought occurred to him, Edward felt the inward lash of guilt. "I suppose it's nice to dance with someone who enjoys it," he finally allowed, staring at his shoes.
"You don't approve." There was a strange sort of disbelief in Harry's voice, and a visible wrinkling of his nose. "Or did you just not expect him to remarry?"
"I don't know her. How can I approve or disapprove?"
"Father says that Grandfather's in a tearing rage. Because Richard didn't ask permission. But it's surely none of Grandfather's business who Richard marries." A frown sat firmly between Harry's brows. "Do you think he's happy?"
"Your grandfather?"
"Richard."
Edward was forced to look at them again--Harry's accursedly innocuous question reminding him that he had no right, none whatsoever, to be jealous of Richard. When had Richard ever promised him anything?
Isabelle formerly-Vaillant was head-over-heels in love with him and didn't give a wink who noticed. Edward supposed it shouldn't have surprised him; Richard did tend to have that effect on people, after all. Perhaps the knowledge that someone adored one was enough to breed something in return. Edward certainly couldn't have claimed any authority on that front.
He'd asked Richard a few weeks later, keeping his attention firmly focused on buttoning his shirt so he didn't have to look at the other's face.
"Are you jealous, Edward?" There wasn't any accusation in the question. Rather, he could have sworn Richard was smiling, damn him. "Surely you know you've nothing to worry about."
"Who said I was worried?" Edward could hear the tension in his voice and cursed himself. "She's half your age. It's..."
"If you spoke to her for more than five seconds about something that wasn't the weather, you'd see that she's hardly a typical debutante."
"Just because she understands your going on about Shakespeare..." muttered Edward, glaring down at the button he'd missed. He didn't realise Richard had moved until his arm slipped round Edward's waist, fingers expertly twisting buttons from their loops. "Richard--"
"Shut up."
Edward wasn't altogether certain why he always obeyed Richard, and yet it seemed ingrained in him. Still, he never quite reached anything past polite acquaintance with Isabelle, who always seemed to see far more than she let on. In that way, at least, she resembled Cousin Anne. He tried not to admit the strange sort of relief that surged every time Richard looked at Isabelle as one might look at a treasured child to be protected from the world. He did not love her back.
Edward wished his relief did not make him feel like such a cad. Least of all now, as Isabelle stepped forward, raising the veil on her hat to reveal eyes shadowed from lack of sleep and too many tears. With a sob, she flung herself into Richard’s arms, and Edward could see at the corner of his eye a solitary photographer’s bulb go off.
The first words out of her mouth were a torrent of French that Edward couldn't have followed to save his life. Then, steeling herself visibly, she turned to face Henry Lancaster, whose face had taken on a distinctly greyish tinge.
"For God's sake, Henry, let him come with me. We'll go to France; we won't trouble you any further." She swallowed. "Look at him. You cannot, you must not, send him back to that place." The last word had all the weight and bite of an epithet.
"Isabelle, not here--"
"And why not here, Cousin Henry?" Richard spoke softly and Edward could have sworn he saw the brief glimmer of a smile. "It is, after all, a valid proposition."
Of course it wasn't. Henry would let Richard out of his custody on the day the earth spun backwards.
"He'll die if you send him back there." She was no longer looking at Henry, her gaze now fixed on her husband with a piteous expression Edward suspected some newspaperman was now no doubt likening to the heroine of a melodrama. After one, long, lingering kiss, she turned back to Henry, her voice implacable as Judgement day, "Are you a murderer, Henry Lancaster?"
He could not hide his reaction to that, flinching visibly. The room had fallen silent, the kind of silence that coils, waiting, ravenous. "Cousin Isabelle, that is unfair."
"Do not speak to me of fair," she spat. Edward could see her shaking, could see Richard's arm curl protectively around her. "You have what you want, don't you?"
"What you've always wanted, cousin," Richard added, malice sparkling in the words. "Or is that not enough?"
"You know why, Richard."
"Oh, I do, my dear." Edward recognised his smile, the vicious curl of his lips as though he were a cat sharpening his claws. "But I'd like to see you explain it."
"That's quite enough!" Beside Henry, Edward's father's face had gone very red. "I suggest we finish this someplace private."
"No, Uncle, it's quite all right." Henry's words were barely audible from where Edward stood. "I think we're quite finished here. My decision stands. Cousin Edward," he looked at Edward for the first time since his testimony, "please see that Cousin Isabelle is cared for."
Edward bit back the several dozen curses he longed to fling in Henry's direction and nodded tightly. When he laid one hand on Isabelle's arm to lead her away, however, she jerked away from him as though burned.
"Don't you touch me, traitor," she hissed.
Richard leant toward her and murmured something Edward could not hear. Isabelle's tears were spilling unchecked now and she clung to him desperately, as Edward stood by, hands frozen half-reaching for her and aware that he looked utterly ridiculous. "Go with him, chérie," he said, looking at Edward. "Ned."
"Richard." Even the single word emerged in trembling tones. "I'm--"
"Don't, Ned. There isn't time. See that Isabelle gets to Paris safely, will you?" The carelessness, he knew, was feigned, even though they all knew Henry could not hear anything from where he stood. "I trust you, Ned." That last, with a crooked smile. "I told you I was bad for you."
There were a thousand retorts Edward could have made to that, but he settled for taking Isabelle's arm--silently obedient now, though he could tell she was avoiding his touch. They both watched in silence as Richard was led away. He did not look back.
Isabelle twisted free of him as soon as Richard had turned the corner. "Why did you do it, Édouard? I don't understand. I cannot understand."
To that, he had no answer. Not surrounded by witnesses. Richard could have told her, but Richard was gone. As if she'd heard his thought, her eyes too flickered back to the door through which he'd been led.
"I will never see him again, will I?"
Christ, she was so young. He ought to comfort her, to tell her all would be well, but she already knew, didn't she?"
Isabelle straightened, dabbed at her eyes with her handkerchief. "I will return to Carnarvon tonight," she announced, her eyes on Henry. "I trust you will not stop me, cousin?"
Henry had the grace to look embarrassed. "Of course not. It is your home."
"Is it?" The words seemed to linger in the air. "Did you not just take it from my husband?"
There was a faint crackle of laughter from where the newspapermen were clustered. Henry flushed deep red. "You may stay, Cousin Isabelle, as long as you wish."
She curtsied, low and mocking. "You are generous indeed." Slipping her arm through Edward's, she let him lead her past Henry and the rest into the glorious October sunlight.
It was the last time he saw Isabelle, a small, black shadow against glowing autumn leaves.