Sir Ianto and The Unconventional Earl
Title: Sir Ianto and The Unconventional Earl
Rating: R or adult
Spoilers: In a twisted AU way, for "Captain Jack Harkness" and "End of Days," with implicit spoilers for the entire first season.
Pairing: Ianto/Jack
Challenge: Double or Nothing
Author’s note: This is an AU riff on the last part of Torchwood season one, taken out of the 21st century and transmogrified into a Regency-period comedy of manners (for a broad definition of "manners"). It's around 6500 words.
# # #
Jack looked rather defenseless and pensive in the early mornings, before he woke and assumed the mantle of Captain Harkness, Earl of Torchwood and Most Eccentric Peer of the Realm, in Ianto's estimation, with the possible exceptions of the barking mad His Majesty George III and the merely silly Regent the Prince of Wales.
The Earl's eccentricity included the huge library and scientific archives at Torchwood House. He claimed these were necessary for the peace and prosperity of the British Realm, but he never explained how. Jack maintained an air of serene detachment while sponsoring astronomical and medical research, and a few projects even Ianto never understood. Ianto also had no idea how Jack achieved a reputation for fashion while maintaining an air of sartorial negligence, or kept his respectability while bedding any male or female persons who took his fancy.
Nevertheless, Jack's fancy had fallen on him, and Ianto was grateful when he was with Jack, and hotly ashamed the rest of the time. Jack, perplexingly, could not be brought to see the sin and shame inherent in the matter, but that was his only failing. Ianto preferred to be sinful and ashamed in his illicit liaisons. It made the secretive pleasure more intense.
Jack's lushly appointed mouth twitched and his eyes opened, all quite silently, in the well-used, linen-sheeted bed he currently shared with Ianto.
"Good morning, my lord."
"Is it morning?" The bedroom's heavy velvet curtains could dim even full June sunlight into dusk.
"It's ten thirty-two and a half ante meridiem."
"I shouldn't sleep. It disturbs me." Jack appeared, as ever, serene rather than in any way disturbed.
"Do you prefer not to sleep?"
Jack looked at Ianto's neck, and Ianto abruptly became aware of several tender spots on his person that hadn't been there the night before. "We could refrain from sleeping for a time, before we get up. Would that suit you?"
Ianto said, primly. "I should be quite shocked that you suggest such a thing, my lord."
"So you should. You should also call me 'Jack,' shouldn't you?"
"Yes, my lord."
"I'll have to work on that, Ianto. You called me 'Jack' last night. Very loudly."
"I, ah, would be gratified to do so again."
Jack reached for him. "Here, Ianto." The long-fingered hands captured a generous portion of Ianto's nether assets. "You seemed to enjoy being spanked. Rather too much."
"I deserve it, my lord."
"No, you don't. I believe we'll do something else this morning. Something far more difficult, but enjoyable if it's done well."
There followed pinching and tickling and other indignities upon Ianto's person, culminating in slow intimacies of deep-seated sensation only recently made imaginable in Ianto's narrow world. Ianto moaned and sobbed at being so nakedly opened to pleasure, and only when it was over could he speak again.
Jack was momentarily comatose when Ianto said "Jack. You were right, Jack." And it's worth it.
The wide-set eyes blinked open and Jack smiled, but he had the grace not to say anything, as if he understood the whole of Ianto's thoughts.
They lay side by side on the disarrayed bedding in Jack's large bed, in his otherwise Spartan bedroom bare of canopy or bed curtains. Ianto allowed himself to lie still for another moment before he rolled out of the bed. Feet planted on Jack's polished wooden floor, he stretched himself luxuriously, once, before he went through the dressing-room and into his own room to make himself ready for the day. After the tumultuous night and morning, he felt glowing, well-used, and unaccustomedly peaceful.
They came downstairs into the sprawling warren of rooms that made up the new Torchwood House, recently built on the site of the ancient edifice occupied in London by the Earls of Torchwood from time immemorial. The previous house had been destroyed in a disastrous fire at Christmas of '07. The rebuilt library had been much expanded and Ianto had come to London principally to set the neglected collection there in order. Lisa's recent death in Cardiff had nothing to do with his sudden willingness to travel. Nothing at all.
In the breakfast parlor, Boyd offered the Earl a small tray with a folded, sealed square of thick, heavy paper. "This was delivered for you earlier, my lord."
Jack unfolded it and glanced at it, all expression instantly leaving his face. "Who delivered this? When?"
"It was left on the card-tray in the front hall, my lord, between half past eleven and noon. None of the servants can say who brought it. I did not wish to disturb your lordship's rest until you indicated that you were awake."
Ianto translated this as Jack's butler of many years knowing better than to enter Jack's bedchamber, lest he find Jack with a companion, whether asleep or otherwise engaged.
"Excellent Boyd, to know when to be deaf," commented Jack, still expressionless. "Ianto, we'll have to move quickly."
Ianto recalled himself to his role as Lord Torchwood's archivist and factotum in the peculiar mischief that seemed to follow Torchwood everywhere. "Certainly, my lord. What do you want done?"
Jack refolded the note and clenched his fist around it. "Who's here at Torchwood? Now?"
"Owen spent the night with his telescope, so he'll be abed now. Toshi and Lady Satoe are expected later today, to make use of the library's manuscripts on phrenology. Gwen will be at her uncle's house, of course."
"Of course. Ianto, wake Owen, no matter what he says, and then go ask for Gwen. I'll talk to all of you later."
"Where are you going?"
"I'll go to meet Toshi. She has something I need." At a gesture from Jack, Boyd draped a perfectly tailored great-coat over Jack's severely perfect turn-out and mathematical cravat. Not a thread was out of place. His eyes were intent on something invisible, and he did not look at Ianto.
Ianto swallowed the last of his coffee and rose to join the daylight world.
# # #
Breakfast at the house the Coopers and Fitzmores had taken for the Season started only slightly before noon. They kept fashionable London hours while they lived in the wedge-shaped house crammed into a corner of a Mayfair square. Like their neighbors in fashionable London, they burned scores of candles and barrels of lamp-oil, wasting sunlight in sleep and occupying the night with balls and card-parties and amusements of all sorts. Gwen wasn't tired of parties and amusements yet, but she would have liked to see the early morning again.
Yesterday she'd had to rise in time to dress and go out before noon, and Gwen had surprised herself by yawning.
"You've become a town lady," Rhys had said, laughing at her yawn the same way he'd laughed at her French-cut spencer and her absurd little hat with the striped ribbons.
"Much you'd know about it," said Gwen. "It took you four weeks to follow us to London. I'm thinking you were lost half that time."
"I never!"
"You'd lose your way from Aberbargod to Gilfach." This was unsporting, since Rhys had in fact once turned in the wrong direction and taken the road to Bedwellty instead. Gwen suspected that ale had been involved.
"I shan't lose us on the way to the museum," said Rhys, unperturbed. "I want to see these marble things that Lord Elgin paid so much for."
They had seen the Marbles yesterday, Gwen all the time frowning in the back of her mind because she'd seen a piece that was like them, among the Torchwood House things, and she couldn't now think what it was or how it was different. It had woken her during the night, knowing she should remember something she didn't.
"Do tell me about the Marbles," said Aunt Elyned, who had not been on the expedition yesterday. "Mellie has repeated everything Baron Satoe said about them, and vastly interesting it was, but what do young eyes see?" Both aunts had chocolate instead of tea, and Gwen wished she'd asked for it as well. At Torchwood House there was coffee, and she'd learned to drink it in spite of Father's opinion that coffee was fit only for foreigners and intellectuals.
"Oh, they were remarkable enough. The stone was all nearly white, as if they were ghosts." Gwen didn't want to say that she'd been distracted by her thoughts, particularly the thoughts of Torchwood House.
"What other color should marble be, pray tell?"
"When Lord Satoe spoke of them as being lifelike, I thought they must be pink or perhaps browned by sun, as living humans are. They had blank eyes, even when they had heads."
"Nearly none of the figures had feet left," put in Rhys, devastatingly practical as always, but then he went on, "One doesn't notice it, because they seem to move. They're caught in a single moment, and look as if they'll move in the next moment."
They'd been accompanied by Lord and Lady Satoe, and Toshi and Owen. Unfortunately, this had led to Owen and Rhys nearly coming to blows because of Owen's stupid jealousy that Rhys had a larger estate than the Harpers could claim. It was only more provoking when Owen would turn around and say that, as an educated man, he had no need to envy a Mr Williams with little Latin and less Greek.
"Aren't there Italian marbles of pink and gold and such colors?" asked Gwen. "I wonder if similar figures might be carved from them?"
"Oh, Gwenevra, think of the expense!"
"I'm sure I've seen such a thing."
"Something from Torchwood House?" asked Aunt Mellie. "Is it possible that Lord Torchwood has a marble piece of his own? What is it like?"
"Perhaps he does," said Gwen, not wanting to talk about it at home. Torchwood House and Lord Torchwood himself were simply not in the same frame of reference as ordinary people, not even in the extraordinary bustle of the ton in London during the Season.
# # #
Ianto had little trouble waking up Owen, who mumbled sleepy curses at various German scientists for taking credit for astronomical discoveries and naming them all for dusty Roman figments of bygone superstition.
"If you mean the recent addition of Pallas to the sky, sir, I believe she's a Greek deity."
"Bugger off, Ianto. I was up all night."
"Pursuing yet another new planet through the heavens? What will you name it? Harpy?"
"If we must keep to bygone superstitions for dignity's sake, I'll call it Arawn."
"The Royal Society will never permit a Welsh death god into the English sky."
"Then it'll have to be Harperia, won't it?"
"You'll have to find it first. Look, it's not your stars we've to worry about today. Jack's had a message that put him out of countenance. He wants us to follow him."
"Jack's never out of countenance. Where?"
Ianto still wondered why Jack hadn't shown him the note. "Ah. He didn't say what the trouble was. He went to fetch Toshi."
"What's Toshi got that I haven't got?" This was evidently a rhetorical question, for Owen catapulted himself out of the bed, revealing yesterday's crumpled afternoon clothes. "Blast it, where's the man Boyd sends up to do for me? Go have someone bring me hot water!"
"I have to fetch Gwen."
"All the better. I'll dress and come downstairs and be ready to panic with you by the time you've winkled the respectable Miss Cooper away from her Gorgon aunts."
"You'd like that, you lecher. If Toshi's gone ahead with Jack, Gwen will want a chaperone. I'll bring an aunt or two back with me, shall I? If they turn you to stone, all the better."
"You can chaperone her, grieving widower. You're above reproach." The sneer was audible. "Besides, if Jack hasn't come back to tell us what it's about by then, we'll have an obligation to panic, and Gwen's best at keeping her head while we lose ours."
Ianto set his lips together, as was necessary when anyone (but Jack) mentioned Lisa in any way, and left the room.
# # #
As it happened, Gwenevra's aunt Miss Fitzmore permitted the correct and restrained Sir Ianto to take Miss Cooper out for an afternoon ride. If Miss Fitzmore gave Ianto's somber but well-tailored jacket and close-fitting pale buckskins an openly admiring glance or two, and another glance to Jack's extremely dashing gray phaeton and matching gray pair, it did not delay them on their way.
"She knows you're taking me to see Jack," said Gwen, as they drove toward Hyde Park, which fortunately was also the way back to Torchwood House. "She hopes he'll have to offer for me if I spend enough time with him."
Ianto was familiar with the ins and outs of the ton. It would be no unexpected thing if a gentleman offered marriage to a young lady with whom he'd been keeping close company during a whole Season. Perhaps Jack would, indeed, do well to marry someone who shared the curious mental quirks of the Torchwood House Set, since he would have to marry some women eventually. Even so, the thought of Jack with someone else gave Ianto a strangely uncomfortable feeling. "Do you want him to offer for you?" he asked, in the smooth, polite voice that disguised all his feelings.
"I never wanted that, not the way Aunt Mellie thinks," said Gwen. "Jack is too much of a rake. Perhaps I'd like to be a rake myself, and have some fellow-feeling for him, but I know quite well better than to marry one."
Ianto managed not to choke. "You can't be a rake!"
"No, but I think I'd have liked to. Is it fun?" Gwen's tone was wistful. "Jack likes it."
"I wouldn't know," said Ianto in the same polite tone, thinking of this morning's coupling, his arse full and his bones melting and Jack groaning behind him. "I, ah, there's something going on and Jack's asked for all of us."
"Oh. What is it, Ianto?"
"Jack's had a message. He has to go somewhere, in a hurry, and we've got to follow him."
"Do you see," said Gwen, "that that's the strangest thing? I don't want to marry him at all, but I love these mad scrapes he gets us into. They're all riddles, and he's the biggest riddle of all."
"I do see," said Ianto, because he did. Jack had a very curious air of not belonging to anything, not even to Torchwood. That made it almost bearable that there was no way in the world that he would ever belong to Ianto.
Ianto signalled the grays to turn, rounded the corner neatly, and let the phaeton stop at the front door to Torchwood House.
They discovered Owen in the entrance hall staring at an unfolded square of vellum, its sealing-wax broken. He looked up as they entered, something flickering in his dark eyes. "We've -- Jack's had another message."
"You shouldn't have opened it!" said Ianto sharply, even though there was nothing else to be done, and he knew it already.
"Well, I did," drawled Owen in answer, but then he went back to staring vaguely at the heavy paper.
"What does it say?" asked Gwen, from the doorway, still wearing her pelisse and her very smart hat and gloves.
"It's in Jack's handwriting," said Owen in a flat voice. "It reads, 'Vauxhall at the small north pavilion, 8 p.m. Bring the hand.' It's signed, 'Torchwood.'"
Ianto plucked the vellum out of Owen's hands, looked at the outer direction, Captain Jack Harkness, and then at the side with the cryptic words. "That's Jack's signature."
"Too bloody right."
"Is this message like the one Jack received earlier?" asked Gwen.
Ianto cast his mind back to the insignificant portion of the morning after lust had been satisfied and before Jack, preoccupied already with this new affair, had left the house. "The note Jack received was similar as to paper and sealing-wax. I didn't see the handwriting."
Owen said, "Jack left orders that his barouche be harnessed and brought round, and Joseph has been walking the horses this past half-hour."
"No, he's not," said Gwen. "Not now. I've been standing here watching since we arrived, and there's no sign of the barouche. Boyd had to send out someone else to walk our horses. Joseph's not here."
Ianto went cold. Where was Jack?
"We'll follow whether he means us to or not," said Owen.
Quick footsteps pounded up the stone entrance stairs. "Miss? Sirs?" Joseph, the groom Jack liked to have the handling of his horses, looked around at the three of them. "His lordship gave me a message for you."
"For all of us?"
"For any of you, even Miss Cooper. He said, you're to follow him to the Vauxhall Gardens, as Lady Satoe and Miss Satoe desired him to take them there most particularly."
Owen said, dryly, "How very fortunate, for I suddenly have a great fancy to see Vauxhall again."
"So do I," said Ianto. What else was there to say?
Gwen was already starting down the front steps. "We can take the phaeton. It's faster, and I'll wager we can catch them up before too long."
They squeezed into the open phaeton's high-perch seat, Owen and Gwen on either side of Ianto, and were off to follow Jack.
# # #
Jack handled the reins of the barouche with practiced ease while Toshi held the glass case with the marble hand that was as life-like as anything Lord Elgin had collected. Lady Satoe sat very upright in her crimson-trimmed bonnet and cloak.
"I'm sorry to deprive you of the marble piece," said Jack, from the driver's seat. He'd set a calm pace down Grosvenor street, as if their only purpose was to take the air in Lady Satoe's decorous company. "You see, it was sent to me by someone else, and now I've to meet the original owner and bring it to him."
Toshi puzzled at this for a moment. "The original owner?"
"I can't name him. It arrived at Torchwood House in Cardiff one day, addressed to me. I... promised myself to keep it safely."
"I suppose that's why you brought it from Cardiff when you moved to London."
"I never know what to expect," said Jack, shrugging
Toshi never knew what to expect from Jack, so she supposed that might follow.
Lady Satoe spoke up. "Torchwood, pause a moment, if you will. I see Dorothea Lieven, and it would not do to pass her by."
Jack pulled carefully at the reins, and the matched blacks slowed to a walk, allowing Lady Satoe to wave at her friend, who raised a modishly yellow-gloved hand to wave back as her equipage, picked out in yellow, passed them on the street.
"There," said Lady Satoe. "Now she knows we have nothing to hide. Toshi, I've let you run free at Torchwood House because a woman needs to develop her mind if she is to survive the boredom of society. All the same, we must observe the forms."
"So we must," said Jack.
"And now we have," said Toshi. "Jack, what do you know about this person?"
"He knows about the hand."
"That could be interesting. Do you know much of phrenology? That a personality can be measured in the cranial features?"
"I've heard of it."
"Of a hand, the term would be cheirology. When I experiment with it, I think I am measuring something of the person's abilities and habits."
Jack tossed a devil-may-care grin over his shoulder at her. "What sort of habits did a Greek person who lived thousands of years ago have?"
"The odd thing is that it shouldn't have habits, if it was carved by an artist, should it? Yet it is amazingly lifelike, and amazingly unblemished for stone that has survived the centuries."
"Perhaps it was done recently, then."
"I might think so," said Toshi. "I saw the Elgin Marbles yesterday for comparison. Some of those hands or heads might repay measurement, but some are less individual hands than artistic representations of a hand."
Lady Satoe said, peering at the hand in the glass case, "This is the wrong color marble to been found in Greece. One buys this tawny marble from Italy."
"Is that where it comes from?" asked Jack, sounding idle. He spent the next few minutes maneuvering the barouche through every-which-way traffic where streets converged until they were trotting, still not hurrying, on Vauxhall Bridge Road. Far behind, Toshi could see a tiny gray phaeton emerge from the knot of traffic leading onto the road.
# # #
In front of Torchwood House, Ianto took the phaeton's reins over Owen's protests. "It's Jack's phaeton," said Ianto. "He prefers that I handle his cattle." He twitched the reins and the grays started forward, smoothly and sedately.
"Oh, he does, does he?"
Ianto merely spared Owen a prim sideways glance.
"That's not all he likes you to handle, is it?"
Gwen said from Ianto's left, "You two may row as much as you like, as long as it doesn't slow the horses." Ianto wondered if her presence would succeed in stopping Owen from saying anything not normally voiced before a young lady. Country-bred Gwen had happily ignored a great deal of vulgar language over the past few months, and Owen was careless of his tongue at the best of times.
Owen, manifestly, had become too angry to guard his words. "You're his dirty little secret, aren't you? It's disgusting, the two of you behaving like schoolboys!"
"You went to those schools, Owen. I didn't."
"Then where did a mild-mannered cleric's son find the taste for such things?"
"You might consider," said Ianto, forcing himself to cool restraint lest he burst into a screaming fit which would frighten the grays, "that Jack will prefer that his various pasttimes remain secret." Owen might have no respect for proprieties, but he needed the Torchwood backing for his astronomical researches.
"I knew one could comfort widows, but Jack comforting the recent widower is a bit overdoing it, wouldn't you say?"
Ianto, knowing his ground now and relieved, said, "We all grieve in different ways. Perhaps it's better than being his pet gentleman-astronomer."
Gwen made a stifled giggling sound.
"At least I'm a gentleman born and bred, Sir Saved-A-Hundred-Lives-At-Corunna. I've saved scores of lives without lifting a sword!"
"You've lost some too, I hear."
"God takes them. Sometimes I save them for a while, but God takes them all in the end!"
"Or the Devil," said Ianto
"I suppose you mean the Devil will take me."
"You said it, not I."
Owen threw himself as far as possible into his corner of the seat, imperilling the vehicle's balance. Ianto corrected for it with a shift of weight, and felt Gwen doing the same, and then all shifted again as they turned into a curve that led to the road out to Vauxhall.
After an interval of impolite silence, Owen took advantage of the close quarters to reach around Ianto and tickle Gwen's ear with a fingertip. "You said you'd wager we could catch up with Jack. What's your stake?"
Gwen said, voice cool, "Nothing that would interest you, Doctor Harper. Not today."
Owen did not withdraw his arm, and Gwen's air of reserve deepened almost audibly.
"Stop that," said Ianto, without looking round from his concentration on the reins. Galloping the horses was faster, but trotting saved their energy.
"Gwen likes a bit of excitement as much as any girl."
"She might not like it in an open carriage on the Vauxhall road, where we could easily encounter ton traffic," said Ianto. "Unless, perhaps, she wants her father and uncle and that hothead brother of hers to insist that you marry her forthwith. I don't think she's as much of a Bedlamite as that, myself."
"I've decided to marry Rhys. Later. When he asks me." Gwen sat up stiffly on her side of the phaeton.
"That oaf!" Owen settled back into his corner, scowling, and then gave a sly grin. "So Captain Jack is out of luck too, is he?"
"I might have considered his suit," said Gwen, still very stiff, "if he'd ever come to the point. I don't think it's truly crossed his mind. He's full of books and beasts and stars and animal electricity, instead."
Ianto twitched, the reins jigged, and the horses went from trot to gallop again. Animal electricity was quite enough for him.
Owen shrugged. "It's on your head, sweetheart. You don't know what you're missing." He elbowed Ianto as if to add, But you do, don't you. Ianto elbowed back, hard enough to make Owen drop the subject.
"I'm sure Rhys will be just as happy that I don't."
Owen sniggered. "As Jack would say, how quaint. But I'll wish you happy when we're out of this scrape of Jack's, whatever it is."
"Thank you." Ianto reflected that Gwen was about as far from besotted by new love as a female could be. Perhaps she'd known Rhys too long for such transports. In any case, she sounded like a miss who'd decided on her course and was not uncertain.
# # #
The black barouche with its doors inset with the somber-toned Torchwood coat of arms brought Toshi, Jack and Lady Satoe to the entrance to Vauxhall Pleasure Gardens in the long shadows of early twilight before sunset.
Toshi was saying, "Jack this is all a hare's chase. You don't know what you're doing."
"I never know what I'm doing. I just follow my instincts."
"That," said Lady Satoe as he handed her down to the pavement, "is as good a recipe for disaster as I've ever heard. No good will come of it."
"Yet, here you are," pointed out Jack, taking the glass case from Toshi so she could climb down, and tucking it securely under his arm instead of giving it back afterward.
"Here we are," agreed Toshi. "What are we looking for, Jack?"
"I don't know. A man, maybe."
"Are we to wait for Owen and Gwen and Ianto?" She turned to look to where a phaeton bearing three figures could be seen crossing the Vauxhall Bridge.
"I think not," said Lady Satoe, suddenly decisive. "Vauxhall isn't what it was, but I should like to see it again." She took Jack's unoccupied arm. "Let us go in, and Torchwood shall engage us a supper-booth, and presently we shall see fireworks out of the dark. If Antoshica must go there, so be it. We shall all go."
"Mother?" When Lady Satoe spoke in that tone, things happened.
Jack heard it too. "Nori-- my lady, your word in my command."
Toshi trailed after them. "Jack!" She collected herself. "Lord Torchwood?"
"I'll take care of you," said Jack, as she followed him into the pleasure garden of a previous generation's fashionable London.
# # #
Gwen had heard of Vauxhall, of course, and though it was now considered somewhat tawdry, it was still a garden of entertainments. An early concert was already in progress in one pavilion, and the lanterns among the trees were being lit by boys on ladders.
She took Owen on one side and Ianto on the other, and the three of them strolled the pathways in search of Jack, or Jack's mysterious message-sender. The hour grew later and twilight deepened around the northernmost pavilion before they finally saw a tall, great-coated figure striding out of the dark, his smile and loose-limbed grace proclaiming him Jack Harkness.
"Jack?" said Gwen, "Where have you been?"
"I'm here," said a voice from behind, and Jack -- indisputably the Jack Harkness she knew -- stood there with Toshi and Toshi's mother.
"I brought the hand," said Jack, to the new Jack, ignoring all the rest of them. He was, indeed, carrying the glass case with the uncommonly life-like marble hand.
"I hoped you had it."
"I hoped you'd come back for it."
The two Jacks approached and, very slowly, embraced each other, the marble hand clutched between them. Their living hands clasped and they kissed, lovingly and almost passionately. Gwen did not wonder overmuch at long-separated brothers, for so they must be, in an ardent greeting, but she heard a stifled sound from Ianto. When she looked at him, his face was an unaccustomed study of longing and loss.
The entwined pair separated a little, looked into each other's eyes, and fell back into an embrace that seemingly sought to meld the two of them into one swaying figure.
There was a burst of white light and a confused, rhythmic whining noise, perhaps from the fireworks, and more light. Gwen's eyes were so dazzled that the center of the pavilion might have been empty, amid the overlapping colored shadows cast by gold and pink fireworks and the Vauxhall lanterns. Then the two Jacks were visible again, holding each other for a last moment before they turned to face the others, still arm in arm.
"Jack Harkness?" asked Gwen, wondering what she hoped to learn.
Both of them started to answer.
"Ianto, Gwen, Owen, Toshi, Lady Satoe, this is, ahhh, James, my brother. My twin." Jack sounded more elated -- more alive -- than she'd ever heard him. "After Waterloo he went travelling. I didn't know if he would ever come back, and I'm more glad to see him than I can say."
Gwen stared at Jack, and then at James who was indefinably older and more knowing, as lamplight and fireworks continued to play over his face, but not otherwise different from Jack.
"Damnation," said Owen, "I'll never know which of you is Jack."
James said, "Speak of the devil. I've never been sure myself."
"We, ahhh, both like to use 'Jack.'"
"Right," said the simulacrum, glancing at Jack and then around the group of them. Fire exploded green and white above the trees, and faded with a muffled report while shadows swirled over them and subsided.
"Right. May we complete the introductions back in London? By your leave, Lady Satoe?"
"I will look forward to it," said Lady Satoe. "Although fireworks do seem a singularly suitable accompaniment to the reappearance of a Torchwood heir."
James suddenly looked stricken. "The fire that destroyed Torchwood House--"
"I've rebuilt," said Jack, "for my own convenience. You'll have to tell me if you like it."
"I'll be very surprised if I don't."
They chuckled together in eerie twin-laughter, before the familiar Jack took charge. "Ianto, you had the phaeton, did you not?" Ianto, his face now set in its usual pleasantly neutral expression, nodded. "Good. Can you drive the barouche back to Torchwood House with everyone else? James and I would like to talk." The two Jacks led their procession out of Vauxhall, still arm in arm.
Gwen wondered where the marble hand had gone.
# # #
The sky was fully dark, and the city's lamps and a thin half-moon furnished barely enough light to see by, when Ianto guided the barouche and the tired pair of blacks to a halt outside Torchwood House. He was glad to note a shadowy phaeton just disappearing down the alley that led to the Torchwood House stables.
Inside, despite a blaze of candles and lamps through the house, only one Jack was visible, speaking to Mrs Boyd and asking, Ianto was glad to hear, for food and drink to satisfy at least seven appetites. The six of them were brought ale and wine in the drawing-room immediately, with a promise of hot soups and numerous side dishes to follow shortly.
The elder brother appeared in very correct evening clothes which Ianto recognized as Jack's own, and instantly his imagination presented him with a picture of himself plastered between two naked Jacks in an extremity of carnal pleasure. It was with some difficulty that he refrained from dropping his wineglass on the Turkey carpet.
Once the servants had withdrawn and the drawing room doors were closed, Jack said, "I owe all of you an apology, perhaps even you." He nodded toward his brother. "James and I both fought in the final part of the war against Napoleon. He is the elder twin, and would have inherited the title. When he didn't come back from Waterloo, he was presumed dead."
"I sent you a marble piece," protested James.
"Without so much as a name on it, let alone a return address!"
"You knew I might come back for it."
"Yes," said Jack, "when you returned, I knew." He turned away, and Ianto was finally able to see something other than the mesmerizing spectacle of twin Harkness profiles outlining an empty space. "It's yours. You're the rightful owner of everything here."
"I appreciate your keeping it for me."
Jack slammed down his mug of ale on the table. "Take it. Take it all. Be Torchwood. Let me go!"
James picked up the mug, holding it like a gift received. "As you will, Brother." Ianto noted the hands, identical to Jack's.
Jack nodded, and at last seemed to see the rest of them. "You'll need these people, to keep on with the work I've established at Torchwood House. Let me present first Lady Satoe, who has remarkable foresight, and Miss Antoshica Satoe, with talents in art and mathematics."
"I'm always pleased to meet formidable women," said James.
"Owen Harper is about to discover yet another planet beyond Urania. I believe he intends to name it Cerebus, or Styx, or more likely, Harpy."
"Very funny," said Owen, but then he gave a sly grin. "If it were to bring me any advantage, I could name it Gwenevra."
Gwen raised her brows in confusion and then lowered them in a frown. "That's not funny!"
"Gwen may appear a hoyden when she shares our disreputable adventures, but she isn't a lightskirt, Owen." Jack took her by the hand. "James, Miss Gwenevra Cooper, a very estimable young lady."
James gave Gwen an admiring look. "That's obvious. What does she do?"
"I'm in London for the Season, my lord."
James nodded. "The Season. Of course. I'd nearly forgotten."
Jack said, "I've squired Miss Cooper about lately, and she has a number of excellent qualities that put her outside the ordinary run of debutants."
Not fainting at the sight of blood, thought Ianto. Lying like a diplomat. Learning a bit of Latin. Never saying more than she should.
"It wouldn't have been the thing for me to propose to her, however, when I was only holding the title for you."
"Are you saying I'd marry you for a title?" asked Gwen.
"I'm sure you know it weighs with your father and your aunts."
"So it might, but I have other concerns."
Owen crowed a laugh. "She wants the Welsh bumpkin after all. I suppose that does mean she'll go back to Wales with us instead of marrying some worthless rake and staying in London."
"But--" said James Harkness, "weren't you--"
"Not any more. Later."
James glanced around at the interested circle of Torchwood habitués. "Ah, you're quite right." His eyes moved to Ianto, skimming to the no-longer-pristine buckskins and back up to Ianto's face. "I see you're leaving the best for last."
"This is Sir Ianto Jones, Torchwood's archivist."
James leaned toward Jack, but his low tone nevertheless carried to Ianto. "I don't need to ask what the attraction is, do I?"
"It might be wise to do so, my lord," said Ianto stiffly.
"Ianto has excellent hearing, and a mind as well-developed as his person."
"Even better."
Ianto found himself smiling back at the elder brother and thinking of unspeakably sinful lusts. His own, and Jack's, and... Harkness's. "Shall we dine, my lord? I believe the food is ready."
Even the informal supper Mrs Boyd supplied seemed to last forever, to Ianto's fevered mind, before Lady Satoe removed herself and Misses Satoe and Cooper at the close of the meal. Owen left shortly afterward, saying that after moonset he planned to seek, as always, Harperia.
As soon as the Torchwood House front door was closed and locked, Jack looked from Ianto to his brother, raised his eyebrows, and got a nod in response. When he looked back at Ianto and smiled, Ianto could only say, heart beating, "To what am I being invited?"
"To bed between us." Jack pulled Ianto close and leaned in for a kiss, and Ianto was unable not to react to the sensual press of Jack's strong lips and invading tongue. Shaking with need, he returned the salute, all the time aware of a second Harkness -- suddenly both men were Jack to him -- behind him, ready to do the same again.
Jack's mouth released him, and whispered against his lips, "Dear, sweet, conventional Ianto. Do we shock you? Do you truly want both of us? Or one, or neither? Tonight is my goodbye to you. What do you want?"
"Double or nothing," whispered Ianto. "Please."
He could feel Jack's smile before their faces parted, and Jack said, one arm still holding him, "Brother, you weren't wrong. Ianto has a passion for Captains Jack Harkness. Don't you, Ianto?"
Mouth suddenly dry, Ianto nodded. "For both of you. I'm unfit for decent company."
Head cocked in amusement, the older Jack said, "I hope that means I'm indecent company."
Ianto flushed, feeling it from hairline to groin.
"Oh, excellent! I must be," crowed that Jack, his eyes quite indecently lingering on portions of Ianto that were particularly affected by the heat.
"I know exactly how indecent you are," said Jack, leading the way up the stairs, still hand-in-hand with Ianto. "We have, after all, similar tastes."
"Perhaps I've learned something on my travels," said Jack behind them. It occured to Ianto that from a few steps below, he would have a splendid view of both their derrieres. He wondered whose arse that Jack was looking at.
"You'll have to show me," said the Jack holding Ianto's hand, squeezing in response to Ianto's wriggle of excitement.
"That would never do. You'll have to find them out for yourself." His voice went lower. "I can show Ianto, instead."
Ianto shivered.
"Would you like that, Ianto?" asked the voice behind them. "I'd like you to stay with me, when Jack has to leave. Not just with Torchwood. With me."
"Show me," said Ianto, hoarse with doubly shameful desire. "Let me say goodbye to Jack."
They were at the landing, and proceeded all three down the hallway to Jack's room, each Jack with an arm around Ianto. What the two Jacks said to each other with their eyes over his head, he didn't want to know.
Not so long later, his new Jack's mouth played a fleshly song upon him -- low, circling, returning, rising, peaking and holding at the climax -- and he played it in turn on his first lover Jack and heard cries of passion lift and peak and hold, felt the deep shuddering in Jack that he'd only felt a few times in himself.
Afterward, while Jack slept in satiated exhaustion, Ianto said, to the man still awake with him, "Jack. I'll stay."
Rating: R or adult
Spoilers: In a twisted AU way, for "Captain Jack Harkness" and "End of Days," with implicit spoilers for the entire first season.
Pairing: Ianto/Jack
Challenge: Double or Nothing
Author’s note: This is an AU riff on the last part of Torchwood season one, taken out of the 21st century and transmogrified into a Regency-period comedy of manners (for a broad definition of "manners"). It's around 6500 words.
# # #
Jack looked rather defenseless and pensive in the early mornings, before he woke and assumed the mantle of Captain Harkness, Earl of Torchwood and Most Eccentric Peer of the Realm, in Ianto's estimation, with the possible exceptions of the barking mad His Majesty George III and the merely silly Regent the Prince of Wales.
The Earl's eccentricity included the huge library and scientific archives at Torchwood House. He claimed these were necessary for the peace and prosperity of the British Realm, but he never explained how. Jack maintained an air of serene detachment while sponsoring astronomical and medical research, and a few projects even Ianto never understood. Ianto also had no idea how Jack achieved a reputation for fashion while maintaining an air of sartorial negligence, or kept his respectability while bedding any male or female persons who took his fancy.
Nevertheless, Jack's fancy had fallen on him, and Ianto was grateful when he was with Jack, and hotly ashamed the rest of the time. Jack, perplexingly, could not be brought to see the sin and shame inherent in the matter, but that was his only failing. Ianto preferred to be sinful and ashamed in his illicit liaisons. It made the secretive pleasure more intense.
Jack's lushly appointed mouth twitched and his eyes opened, all quite silently, in the well-used, linen-sheeted bed he currently shared with Ianto.
"Good morning, my lord."
"Is it morning?" The bedroom's heavy velvet curtains could dim even full June sunlight into dusk.
"It's ten thirty-two and a half ante meridiem."
"I shouldn't sleep. It disturbs me." Jack appeared, as ever, serene rather than in any way disturbed.
"Do you prefer not to sleep?"
Jack looked at Ianto's neck, and Ianto abruptly became aware of several tender spots on his person that hadn't been there the night before. "We could refrain from sleeping for a time, before we get up. Would that suit you?"
Ianto said, primly. "I should be quite shocked that you suggest such a thing, my lord."
"So you should. You should also call me 'Jack,' shouldn't you?"
"Yes, my lord."
"I'll have to work on that, Ianto. You called me 'Jack' last night. Very loudly."
"I, ah, would be gratified to do so again."
Jack reached for him. "Here, Ianto." The long-fingered hands captured a generous portion of Ianto's nether assets. "You seemed to enjoy being spanked. Rather too much."
"I deserve it, my lord."
"No, you don't. I believe we'll do something else this morning. Something far more difficult, but enjoyable if it's done well."
There followed pinching and tickling and other indignities upon Ianto's person, culminating in slow intimacies of deep-seated sensation only recently made imaginable in Ianto's narrow world. Ianto moaned and sobbed at being so nakedly opened to pleasure, and only when it was over could he speak again.
Jack was momentarily comatose when Ianto said "Jack. You were right, Jack." And it's worth it.
The wide-set eyes blinked open and Jack smiled, but he had the grace not to say anything, as if he understood the whole of Ianto's thoughts.
They lay side by side on the disarrayed bedding in Jack's large bed, in his otherwise Spartan bedroom bare of canopy or bed curtains. Ianto allowed himself to lie still for another moment before he rolled out of the bed. Feet planted on Jack's polished wooden floor, he stretched himself luxuriously, once, before he went through the dressing-room and into his own room to make himself ready for the day. After the tumultuous night and morning, he felt glowing, well-used, and unaccustomedly peaceful.
They came downstairs into the sprawling warren of rooms that made up the new Torchwood House, recently built on the site of the ancient edifice occupied in London by the Earls of Torchwood from time immemorial. The previous house had been destroyed in a disastrous fire at Christmas of '07. The rebuilt library had been much expanded and Ianto had come to London principally to set the neglected collection there in order. Lisa's recent death in Cardiff had nothing to do with his sudden willingness to travel. Nothing at all.
In the breakfast parlor, Boyd offered the Earl a small tray with a folded, sealed square of thick, heavy paper. "This was delivered for you earlier, my lord."
Jack unfolded it and glanced at it, all expression instantly leaving his face. "Who delivered this? When?"
"It was left on the card-tray in the front hall, my lord, between half past eleven and noon. None of the servants can say who brought it. I did not wish to disturb your lordship's rest until you indicated that you were awake."
Ianto translated this as Jack's butler of many years knowing better than to enter Jack's bedchamber, lest he find Jack with a companion, whether asleep or otherwise engaged.
"Excellent Boyd, to know when to be deaf," commented Jack, still expressionless. "Ianto, we'll have to move quickly."
Ianto recalled himself to his role as Lord Torchwood's archivist and factotum in the peculiar mischief that seemed to follow Torchwood everywhere. "Certainly, my lord. What do you want done?"
Jack refolded the note and clenched his fist around it. "Who's here at Torchwood? Now?"
"Owen spent the night with his telescope, so he'll be abed now. Toshi and Lady Satoe are expected later today, to make use of the library's manuscripts on phrenology. Gwen will be at her uncle's house, of course."
"Of course. Ianto, wake Owen, no matter what he says, and then go ask for Gwen. I'll talk to all of you later."
"Where are you going?"
"I'll go to meet Toshi. She has something I need." At a gesture from Jack, Boyd draped a perfectly tailored great-coat over Jack's severely perfect turn-out and mathematical cravat. Not a thread was out of place. His eyes were intent on something invisible, and he did not look at Ianto.
Ianto swallowed the last of his coffee and rose to join the daylight world.
# # #
Breakfast at the house the Coopers and Fitzmores had taken for the Season started only slightly before noon. They kept fashionable London hours while they lived in the wedge-shaped house crammed into a corner of a Mayfair square. Like their neighbors in fashionable London, they burned scores of candles and barrels of lamp-oil, wasting sunlight in sleep and occupying the night with balls and card-parties and amusements of all sorts. Gwen wasn't tired of parties and amusements yet, but she would have liked to see the early morning again.
Yesterday she'd had to rise in time to dress and go out before noon, and Gwen had surprised herself by yawning.
"You've become a town lady," Rhys had said, laughing at her yawn the same way he'd laughed at her French-cut spencer and her absurd little hat with the striped ribbons.
"Much you'd know about it," said Gwen. "It took you four weeks to follow us to London. I'm thinking you were lost half that time."
"I never!"
"You'd lose your way from Aberbargod to Gilfach." This was unsporting, since Rhys had in fact once turned in the wrong direction and taken the road to Bedwellty instead. Gwen suspected that ale had been involved.
"I shan't lose us on the way to the museum," said Rhys, unperturbed. "I want to see these marble things that Lord Elgin paid so much for."
They had seen the Marbles yesterday, Gwen all the time frowning in the back of her mind because she'd seen a piece that was like them, among the Torchwood House things, and she couldn't now think what it was or how it was different. It had woken her during the night, knowing she should remember something she didn't.
"Do tell me about the Marbles," said Aunt Elyned, who had not been on the expedition yesterday. "Mellie has repeated everything Baron Satoe said about them, and vastly interesting it was, but what do young eyes see?" Both aunts had chocolate instead of tea, and Gwen wished she'd asked for it as well. At Torchwood House there was coffee, and she'd learned to drink it in spite of Father's opinion that coffee was fit only for foreigners and intellectuals.
"Oh, they were remarkable enough. The stone was all nearly white, as if they were ghosts." Gwen didn't want to say that she'd been distracted by her thoughts, particularly the thoughts of Torchwood House.
"What other color should marble be, pray tell?"
"When Lord Satoe spoke of them as being lifelike, I thought they must be pink or perhaps browned by sun, as living humans are. They had blank eyes, even when they had heads."
"Nearly none of the figures had feet left," put in Rhys, devastatingly practical as always, but then he went on, "One doesn't notice it, because they seem to move. They're caught in a single moment, and look as if they'll move in the next moment."
They'd been accompanied by Lord and Lady Satoe, and Toshi and Owen. Unfortunately, this had led to Owen and Rhys nearly coming to blows because of Owen's stupid jealousy that Rhys had a larger estate than the Harpers could claim. It was only more provoking when Owen would turn around and say that, as an educated man, he had no need to envy a Mr Williams with little Latin and less Greek.
"Aren't there Italian marbles of pink and gold and such colors?" asked Gwen. "I wonder if similar figures might be carved from them?"
"Oh, Gwenevra, think of the expense!"
"I'm sure I've seen such a thing."
"Something from Torchwood House?" asked Aunt Mellie. "Is it possible that Lord Torchwood has a marble piece of his own? What is it like?"
"Perhaps he does," said Gwen, not wanting to talk about it at home. Torchwood House and Lord Torchwood himself were simply not in the same frame of reference as ordinary people, not even in the extraordinary bustle of the ton in London during the Season.
# # #
Ianto had little trouble waking up Owen, who mumbled sleepy curses at various German scientists for taking credit for astronomical discoveries and naming them all for dusty Roman figments of bygone superstition.
"If you mean the recent addition of Pallas to the sky, sir, I believe she's a Greek deity."
"Bugger off, Ianto. I was up all night."
"Pursuing yet another new planet through the heavens? What will you name it? Harpy?"
"If we must keep to bygone superstitions for dignity's sake, I'll call it Arawn."
"The Royal Society will never permit a Welsh death god into the English sky."
"Then it'll have to be Harperia, won't it?"
"You'll have to find it first. Look, it's not your stars we've to worry about today. Jack's had a message that put him out of countenance. He wants us to follow him."
"Jack's never out of countenance. Where?"
Ianto still wondered why Jack hadn't shown him the note. "Ah. He didn't say what the trouble was. He went to fetch Toshi."
"What's Toshi got that I haven't got?" This was evidently a rhetorical question, for Owen catapulted himself out of the bed, revealing yesterday's crumpled afternoon clothes. "Blast it, where's the man Boyd sends up to do for me? Go have someone bring me hot water!"
"I have to fetch Gwen."
"All the better. I'll dress and come downstairs and be ready to panic with you by the time you've winkled the respectable Miss Cooper away from her Gorgon aunts."
"You'd like that, you lecher. If Toshi's gone ahead with Jack, Gwen will want a chaperone. I'll bring an aunt or two back with me, shall I? If they turn you to stone, all the better."
"You can chaperone her, grieving widower. You're above reproach." The sneer was audible. "Besides, if Jack hasn't come back to tell us what it's about by then, we'll have an obligation to panic, and Gwen's best at keeping her head while we lose ours."
Ianto set his lips together, as was necessary when anyone (but Jack) mentioned Lisa in any way, and left the room.
# # #
As it happened, Gwenevra's aunt Miss Fitzmore permitted the correct and restrained Sir Ianto to take Miss Cooper out for an afternoon ride. If Miss Fitzmore gave Ianto's somber but well-tailored jacket and close-fitting pale buckskins an openly admiring glance or two, and another glance to Jack's extremely dashing gray phaeton and matching gray pair, it did not delay them on their way.
"She knows you're taking me to see Jack," said Gwen, as they drove toward Hyde Park, which fortunately was also the way back to Torchwood House. "She hopes he'll have to offer for me if I spend enough time with him."
Ianto was familiar with the ins and outs of the ton. It would be no unexpected thing if a gentleman offered marriage to a young lady with whom he'd been keeping close company during a whole Season. Perhaps Jack would, indeed, do well to marry someone who shared the curious mental quirks of the Torchwood House Set, since he would have to marry some women eventually. Even so, the thought of Jack with someone else gave Ianto a strangely uncomfortable feeling. "Do you want him to offer for you?" he asked, in the smooth, polite voice that disguised all his feelings.
"I never wanted that, not the way Aunt Mellie thinks," said Gwen. "Jack is too much of a rake. Perhaps I'd like to be a rake myself, and have some fellow-feeling for him, but I know quite well better than to marry one."
Ianto managed not to choke. "You can't be a rake!"
"No, but I think I'd have liked to. Is it fun?" Gwen's tone was wistful. "Jack likes it."
"I wouldn't know," said Ianto in the same polite tone, thinking of this morning's coupling, his arse full and his bones melting and Jack groaning behind him. "I, ah, there's something going on and Jack's asked for all of us."
"Oh. What is it, Ianto?"
"Jack's had a message. He has to go somewhere, in a hurry, and we've got to follow him."
"Do you see," said Gwen, "that that's the strangest thing? I don't want to marry him at all, but I love these mad scrapes he gets us into. They're all riddles, and he's the biggest riddle of all."
"I do see," said Ianto, because he did. Jack had a very curious air of not belonging to anything, not even to Torchwood. That made it almost bearable that there was no way in the world that he would ever belong to Ianto.
Ianto signalled the grays to turn, rounded the corner neatly, and let the phaeton stop at the front door to Torchwood House.
They discovered Owen in the entrance hall staring at an unfolded square of vellum, its sealing-wax broken. He looked up as they entered, something flickering in his dark eyes. "We've -- Jack's had another message."
"You shouldn't have opened it!" said Ianto sharply, even though there was nothing else to be done, and he knew it already.
"Well, I did," drawled Owen in answer, but then he went back to staring vaguely at the heavy paper.
"What does it say?" asked Gwen, from the doorway, still wearing her pelisse and her very smart hat and gloves.
"It's in Jack's handwriting," said Owen in a flat voice. "It reads, 'Vauxhall at the small north pavilion, 8 p.m. Bring the hand.' It's signed, 'Torchwood.'"
Ianto plucked the vellum out of Owen's hands, looked at the outer direction, Captain Jack Harkness, and then at the side with the cryptic words. "That's Jack's signature."
"Too bloody right."
"Is this message like the one Jack received earlier?" asked Gwen.
Ianto cast his mind back to the insignificant portion of the morning after lust had been satisfied and before Jack, preoccupied already with this new affair, had left the house. "The note Jack received was similar as to paper and sealing-wax. I didn't see the handwriting."
Owen said, "Jack left orders that his barouche be harnessed and brought round, and Joseph has been walking the horses this past half-hour."
"No, he's not," said Gwen. "Not now. I've been standing here watching since we arrived, and there's no sign of the barouche. Boyd had to send out someone else to walk our horses. Joseph's not here."
Ianto went cold. Where was Jack?
"We'll follow whether he means us to or not," said Owen.
Quick footsteps pounded up the stone entrance stairs. "Miss? Sirs?" Joseph, the groom Jack liked to have the handling of his horses, looked around at the three of them. "His lordship gave me a message for you."
"For all of us?"
"For any of you, even Miss Cooper. He said, you're to follow him to the Vauxhall Gardens, as Lady Satoe and Miss Satoe desired him to take them there most particularly."
Owen said, dryly, "How very fortunate, for I suddenly have a great fancy to see Vauxhall again."
"So do I," said Ianto. What else was there to say?
Gwen was already starting down the front steps. "We can take the phaeton. It's faster, and I'll wager we can catch them up before too long."
They squeezed into the open phaeton's high-perch seat, Owen and Gwen on either side of Ianto, and were off to follow Jack.
# # #
Jack handled the reins of the barouche with practiced ease while Toshi held the glass case with the marble hand that was as life-like as anything Lord Elgin had collected. Lady Satoe sat very upright in her crimson-trimmed bonnet and cloak.
"I'm sorry to deprive you of the marble piece," said Jack, from the driver's seat. He'd set a calm pace down Grosvenor street, as if their only purpose was to take the air in Lady Satoe's decorous company. "You see, it was sent to me by someone else, and now I've to meet the original owner and bring it to him."
Toshi puzzled at this for a moment. "The original owner?"
"I can't name him. It arrived at Torchwood House in Cardiff one day, addressed to me. I... promised myself to keep it safely."
"I suppose that's why you brought it from Cardiff when you moved to London."
"I never know what to expect," said Jack, shrugging
Toshi never knew what to expect from Jack, so she supposed that might follow.
Lady Satoe spoke up. "Torchwood, pause a moment, if you will. I see Dorothea Lieven, and it would not do to pass her by."
Jack pulled carefully at the reins, and the matched blacks slowed to a walk, allowing Lady Satoe to wave at her friend, who raised a modishly yellow-gloved hand to wave back as her equipage, picked out in yellow, passed them on the street.
"There," said Lady Satoe. "Now she knows we have nothing to hide. Toshi, I've let you run free at Torchwood House because a woman needs to develop her mind if she is to survive the boredom of society. All the same, we must observe the forms."
"So we must," said Jack.
"And now we have," said Toshi. "Jack, what do you know about this person?"
"He knows about the hand."
"That could be interesting. Do you know much of phrenology? That a personality can be measured in the cranial features?"
"I've heard of it."
"Of a hand, the term would be cheirology. When I experiment with it, I think I am measuring something of the person's abilities and habits."
Jack tossed a devil-may-care grin over his shoulder at her. "What sort of habits did a Greek person who lived thousands of years ago have?"
"The odd thing is that it shouldn't have habits, if it was carved by an artist, should it? Yet it is amazingly lifelike, and amazingly unblemished for stone that has survived the centuries."
"Perhaps it was done recently, then."
"I might think so," said Toshi. "I saw the Elgin Marbles yesterday for comparison. Some of those hands or heads might repay measurement, but some are less individual hands than artistic representations of a hand."
Lady Satoe said, peering at the hand in the glass case, "This is the wrong color marble to been found in Greece. One buys this tawny marble from Italy."
"Is that where it comes from?" asked Jack, sounding idle. He spent the next few minutes maneuvering the barouche through every-which-way traffic where streets converged until they were trotting, still not hurrying, on Vauxhall Bridge Road. Far behind, Toshi could see a tiny gray phaeton emerge from the knot of traffic leading onto the road.
# # #
In front of Torchwood House, Ianto took the phaeton's reins over Owen's protests. "It's Jack's phaeton," said Ianto. "He prefers that I handle his cattle." He twitched the reins and the grays started forward, smoothly and sedately.
"Oh, he does, does he?"
Ianto merely spared Owen a prim sideways glance.
"That's not all he likes you to handle, is it?"
Gwen said from Ianto's left, "You two may row as much as you like, as long as it doesn't slow the horses." Ianto wondered if her presence would succeed in stopping Owen from saying anything not normally voiced before a young lady. Country-bred Gwen had happily ignored a great deal of vulgar language over the past few months, and Owen was careless of his tongue at the best of times.
Owen, manifestly, had become too angry to guard his words. "You're his dirty little secret, aren't you? It's disgusting, the two of you behaving like schoolboys!"
"You went to those schools, Owen. I didn't."
"Then where did a mild-mannered cleric's son find the taste for such things?"
"You might consider," said Ianto, forcing himself to cool restraint lest he burst into a screaming fit which would frighten the grays, "that Jack will prefer that his various pasttimes remain secret." Owen might have no respect for proprieties, but he needed the Torchwood backing for his astronomical researches.
"I knew one could comfort widows, but Jack comforting the recent widower is a bit overdoing it, wouldn't you say?"
Ianto, knowing his ground now and relieved, said, "We all grieve in different ways. Perhaps it's better than being his pet gentleman-astronomer."
Gwen made a stifled giggling sound.
"At least I'm a gentleman born and bred, Sir Saved-A-Hundred-Lives-At-Corunna. I've saved scores of lives without lifting a sword!"
"You've lost some too, I hear."
"God takes them. Sometimes I save them for a while, but God takes them all in the end!"
"Or the Devil," said Ianto
"I suppose you mean the Devil will take me."
"You said it, not I."
Owen threw himself as far as possible into his corner of the seat, imperilling the vehicle's balance. Ianto corrected for it with a shift of weight, and felt Gwen doing the same, and then all shifted again as they turned into a curve that led to the road out to Vauxhall.
After an interval of impolite silence, Owen took advantage of the close quarters to reach around Ianto and tickle Gwen's ear with a fingertip. "You said you'd wager we could catch up with Jack. What's your stake?"
Gwen said, voice cool, "Nothing that would interest you, Doctor Harper. Not today."
Owen did not withdraw his arm, and Gwen's air of reserve deepened almost audibly.
"Stop that," said Ianto, without looking round from his concentration on the reins. Galloping the horses was faster, but trotting saved their energy.
"Gwen likes a bit of excitement as much as any girl."
"She might not like it in an open carriage on the Vauxhall road, where we could easily encounter ton traffic," said Ianto. "Unless, perhaps, she wants her father and uncle and that hothead brother of hers to insist that you marry her forthwith. I don't think she's as much of a Bedlamite as that, myself."
"I've decided to marry Rhys. Later. When he asks me." Gwen sat up stiffly on her side of the phaeton.
"That oaf!" Owen settled back into his corner, scowling, and then gave a sly grin. "So Captain Jack is out of luck too, is he?"
"I might have considered his suit," said Gwen, still very stiff, "if he'd ever come to the point. I don't think it's truly crossed his mind. He's full of books and beasts and stars and animal electricity, instead."
Ianto twitched, the reins jigged, and the horses went from trot to gallop again. Animal electricity was quite enough for him.
Owen shrugged. "It's on your head, sweetheart. You don't know what you're missing." He elbowed Ianto as if to add, But you do, don't you. Ianto elbowed back, hard enough to make Owen drop the subject.
"I'm sure Rhys will be just as happy that I don't."
Owen sniggered. "As Jack would say, how quaint. But I'll wish you happy when we're out of this scrape of Jack's, whatever it is."
"Thank you." Ianto reflected that Gwen was about as far from besotted by new love as a female could be. Perhaps she'd known Rhys too long for such transports. In any case, she sounded like a miss who'd decided on her course and was not uncertain.
# # #
The black barouche with its doors inset with the somber-toned Torchwood coat of arms brought Toshi, Jack and Lady Satoe to the entrance to Vauxhall Pleasure Gardens in the long shadows of early twilight before sunset.
Toshi was saying, "Jack this is all a hare's chase. You don't know what you're doing."
"I never know what I'm doing. I just follow my instincts."
"That," said Lady Satoe as he handed her down to the pavement, "is as good a recipe for disaster as I've ever heard. No good will come of it."
"Yet, here you are," pointed out Jack, taking the glass case from Toshi so she could climb down, and tucking it securely under his arm instead of giving it back afterward.
"Here we are," agreed Toshi. "What are we looking for, Jack?"
"I don't know. A man, maybe."
"Are we to wait for Owen and Gwen and Ianto?" She turned to look to where a phaeton bearing three figures could be seen crossing the Vauxhall Bridge.
"I think not," said Lady Satoe, suddenly decisive. "Vauxhall isn't what it was, but I should like to see it again." She took Jack's unoccupied arm. "Let us go in, and Torchwood shall engage us a supper-booth, and presently we shall see fireworks out of the dark. If Antoshica must go there, so be it. We shall all go."
"Mother?" When Lady Satoe spoke in that tone, things happened.
Jack heard it too. "Nori-- my lady, your word in my command."
Toshi trailed after them. "Jack!" She collected herself. "Lord Torchwood?"
"I'll take care of you," said Jack, as she followed him into the pleasure garden of a previous generation's fashionable London.
# # #
Gwen had heard of Vauxhall, of course, and though it was now considered somewhat tawdry, it was still a garden of entertainments. An early concert was already in progress in one pavilion, and the lanterns among the trees were being lit by boys on ladders.
She took Owen on one side and Ianto on the other, and the three of them strolled the pathways in search of Jack, or Jack's mysterious message-sender. The hour grew later and twilight deepened around the northernmost pavilion before they finally saw a tall, great-coated figure striding out of the dark, his smile and loose-limbed grace proclaiming him Jack Harkness.
"Jack?" said Gwen, "Where have you been?"
"I'm here," said a voice from behind, and Jack -- indisputably the Jack Harkness she knew -- stood there with Toshi and Toshi's mother.
"I brought the hand," said Jack, to the new Jack, ignoring all the rest of them. He was, indeed, carrying the glass case with the uncommonly life-like marble hand.
"I hoped you had it."
"I hoped you'd come back for it."
The two Jacks approached and, very slowly, embraced each other, the marble hand clutched between them. Their living hands clasped and they kissed, lovingly and almost passionately. Gwen did not wonder overmuch at long-separated brothers, for so they must be, in an ardent greeting, but she heard a stifled sound from Ianto. When she looked at him, his face was an unaccustomed study of longing and loss.
The entwined pair separated a little, looked into each other's eyes, and fell back into an embrace that seemingly sought to meld the two of them into one swaying figure.
There was a burst of white light and a confused, rhythmic whining noise, perhaps from the fireworks, and more light. Gwen's eyes were so dazzled that the center of the pavilion might have been empty, amid the overlapping colored shadows cast by gold and pink fireworks and the Vauxhall lanterns. Then the two Jacks were visible again, holding each other for a last moment before they turned to face the others, still arm in arm.
"Jack Harkness?" asked Gwen, wondering what she hoped to learn.
Both of them started to answer.
"Ianto, Gwen, Owen, Toshi, Lady Satoe, this is, ahhh, James, my brother. My twin." Jack sounded more elated -- more alive -- than she'd ever heard him. "After Waterloo he went travelling. I didn't know if he would ever come back, and I'm more glad to see him than I can say."
Gwen stared at Jack, and then at James who was indefinably older and more knowing, as lamplight and fireworks continued to play over his face, but not otherwise different from Jack.
"Damnation," said Owen, "I'll never know which of you is Jack."
James said, "Speak of the devil. I've never been sure myself."
"We, ahhh, both like to use 'Jack.'"
"Right," said the simulacrum, glancing at Jack and then around the group of them. Fire exploded green and white above the trees, and faded with a muffled report while shadows swirled over them and subsided.
"Right. May we complete the introductions back in London? By your leave, Lady Satoe?"
"I will look forward to it," said Lady Satoe. "Although fireworks do seem a singularly suitable accompaniment to the reappearance of a Torchwood heir."
James suddenly looked stricken. "The fire that destroyed Torchwood House--"
"I've rebuilt," said Jack, "for my own convenience. You'll have to tell me if you like it."
"I'll be very surprised if I don't."
They chuckled together in eerie twin-laughter, before the familiar Jack took charge. "Ianto, you had the phaeton, did you not?" Ianto, his face now set in its usual pleasantly neutral expression, nodded. "Good. Can you drive the barouche back to Torchwood House with everyone else? James and I would like to talk." The two Jacks led their procession out of Vauxhall, still arm in arm.
Gwen wondered where the marble hand had gone.
# # #
The sky was fully dark, and the city's lamps and a thin half-moon furnished barely enough light to see by, when Ianto guided the barouche and the tired pair of blacks to a halt outside Torchwood House. He was glad to note a shadowy phaeton just disappearing down the alley that led to the Torchwood House stables.
Inside, despite a blaze of candles and lamps through the house, only one Jack was visible, speaking to Mrs Boyd and asking, Ianto was glad to hear, for food and drink to satisfy at least seven appetites. The six of them were brought ale and wine in the drawing-room immediately, with a promise of hot soups and numerous side dishes to follow shortly.
The elder brother appeared in very correct evening clothes which Ianto recognized as Jack's own, and instantly his imagination presented him with a picture of himself plastered between two naked Jacks in an extremity of carnal pleasure. It was with some difficulty that he refrained from dropping his wineglass on the Turkey carpet.
Once the servants had withdrawn and the drawing room doors were closed, Jack said, "I owe all of you an apology, perhaps even you." He nodded toward his brother. "James and I both fought in the final part of the war against Napoleon. He is the elder twin, and would have inherited the title. When he didn't come back from Waterloo, he was presumed dead."
"I sent you a marble piece," protested James.
"Without so much as a name on it, let alone a return address!"
"You knew I might come back for it."
"Yes," said Jack, "when you returned, I knew." He turned away, and Ianto was finally able to see something other than the mesmerizing spectacle of twin Harkness profiles outlining an empty space. "It's yours. You're the rightful owner of everything here."
"I appreciate your keeping it for me."
Jack slammed down his mug of ale on the table. "Take it. Take it all. Be Torchwood. Let me go!"
James picked up the mug, holding it like a gift received. "As you will, Brother." Ianto noted the hands, identical to Jack's.
Jack nodded, and at last seemed to see the rest of them. "You'll need these people, to keep on with the work I've established at Torchwood House. Let me present first Lady Satoe, who has remarkable foresight, and Miss Antoshica Satoe, with talents in art and mathematics."
"I'm always pleased to meet formidable women," said James.
"Owen Harper is about to discover yet another planet beyond Urania. I believe he intends to name it Cerebus, or Styx, or more likely, Harpy."
"Very funny," said Owen, but then he gave a sly grin. "If it were to bring me any advantage, I could name it Gwenevra."
Gwen raised her brows in confusion and then lowered them in a frown. "That's not funny!"
"Gwen may appear a hoyden when she shares our disreputable adventures, but she isn't a lightskirt, Owen." Jack took her by the hand. "James, Miss Gwenevra Cooper, a very estimable young lady."
James gave Gwen an admiring look. "That's obvious. What does she do?"
"I'm in London for the Season, my lord."
James nodded. "The Season. Of course. I'd nearly forgotten."
Jack said, "I've squired Miss Cooper about lately, and she has a number of excellent qualities that put her outside the ordinary run of debutants."
Not fainting at the sight of blood, thought Ianto. Lying like a diplomat. Learning a bit of Latin. Never saying more than she should.
"It wouldn't have been the thing for me to propose to her, however, when I was only holding the title for you."
"Are you saying I'd marry you for a title?" asked Gwen.
"I'm sure you know it weighs with your father and your aunts."
"So it might, but I have other concerns."
Owen crowed a laugh. "She wants the Welsh bumpkin after all. I suppose that does mean she'll go back to Wales with us instead of marrying some worthless rake and staying in London."
"But--" said James Harkness, "weren't you--"
"Not any more. Later."
James glanced around at the interested circle of Torchwood habitués. "Ah, you're quite right." His eyes moved to Ianto, skimming to the no-longer-pristine buckskins and back up to Ianto's face. "I see you're leaving the best for last."
"This is Sir Ianto Jones, Torchwood's archivist."
James leaned toward Jack, but his low tone nevertheless carried to Ianto. "I don't need to ask what the attraction is, do I?"
"It might be wise to do so, my lord," said Ianto stiffly.
"Ianto has excellent hearing, and a mind as well-developed as his person."
"Even better."
Ianto found himself smiling back at the elder brother and thinking of unspeakably sinful lusts. His own, and Jack's, and... Harkness's. "Shall we dine, my lord? I believe the food is ready."
Even the informal supper Mrs Boyd supplied seemed to last forever, to Ianto's fevered mind, before Lady Satoe removed herself and Misses Satoe and Cooper at the close of the meal. Owen left shortly afterward, saying that after moonset he planned to seek, as always, Harperia.
As soon as the Torchwood House front door was closed and locked, Jack looked from Ianto to his brother, raised his eyebrows, and got a nod in response. When he looked back at Ianto and smiled, Ianto could only say, heart beating, "To what am I being invited?"
"To bed between us." Jack pulled Ianto close and leaned in for a kiss, and Ianto was unable not to react to the sensual press of Jack's strong lips and invading tongue. Shaking with need, he returned the salute, all the time aware of a second Harkness -- suddenly both men were Jack to him -- behind him, ready to do the same again.
Jack's mouth released him, and whispered against his lips, "Dear, sweet, conventional Ianto. Do we shock you? Do you truly want both of us? Or one, or neither? Tonight is my goodbye to you. What do you want?"
"Double or nothing," whispered Ianto. "Please."
He could feel Jack's smile before their faces parted, and Jack said, one arm still holding him, "Brother, you weren't wrong. Ianto has a passion for Captains Jack Harkness. Don't you, Ianto?"
Mouth suddenly dry, Ianto nodded. "For both of you. I'm unfit for decent company."
Head cocked in amusement, the older Jack said, "I hope that means I'm indecent company."
Ianto flushed, feeling it from hairline to groin.
"Oh, excellent! I must be," crowed that Jack, his eyes quite indecently lingering on portions of Ianto that were particularly affected by the heat.
"I know exactly how indecent you are," said Jack, leading the way up the stairs, still hand-in-hand with Ianto. "We have, after all, similar tastes."
"Perhaps I've learned something on my travels," said Jack behind them. It occured to Ianto that from a few steps below, he would have a splendid view of both their derrieres. He wondered whose arse that Jack was looking at.
"You'll have to show me," said the Jack holding Ianto's hand, squeezing in response to Ianto's wriggle of excitement.
"That would never do. You'll have to find them out for yourself." His voice went lower. "I can show Ianto, instead."
Ianto shivered.
"Would you like that, Ianto?" asked the voice behind them. "I'd like you to stay with me, when Jack has to leave. Not just with Torchwood. With me."
"Show me," said Ianto, hoarse with doubly shameful desire. "Let me say goodbye to Jack."
They were at the landing, and proceeded all three down the hallway to Jack's room, each Jack with an arm around Ianto. What the two Jacks said to each other with their eyes over his head, he didn't want to know.
Not so long later, his new Jack's mouth played a fleshly song upon him -- low, circling, returning, rising, peaking and holding at the climax -- and he played it in turn on his first lover Jack and heard cries of passion lift and peak and hold, felt the deep shuddering in Jack that he'd only felt a few times in himself.
Afterward, while Jack slept in satiated exhaustion, Ianto said, to the man still awake with him, "Jack. I'll stay."