Chapter Text
The daring. The scandal. In daylight! The curtains were open, even! What would Grandmother think, if the improbable happened and she walked by at this very moment?
Byleth didn’t care. While her father had very little use for propriety, even this would be beyond the pale for him; would he feel the same if he knew how it made her feel like herself again? She tired of being hemmed in by a thousand and ten rules, and perhaps a few of them deserved to be smashed. This particular one was ripe for breaking, especially considering how lovely it felt.
Claude seemed to agree, considering how his Grace’s mouth curled against her own as she leaned in. They didn’t press against one another, and there wasn’t even an affectionate stroke on the cheek, they only stayed there for a long moment, hardly daring to breathe. But she supposed it had to end sometime, and he pulled away first, his eyes crinkled with what she assumed was more mischief. “I’m shocked, Miss Eisner. I wasn’t expecting you to kiss me back.”
What a strange man. Still, she liked him, at least enough to not smack him into the next county over. “Then why did you kiss me?”
“You tell a man that your deceased father would approve of him, can you really blame him for pushing his luck a little?”
Was he flirting? Byleth had never flirted before, but she felt like she should have had a fan to snap in his direction; alas, riding habits didn’t really have the sleeves necessary to store one. “Yes. Now I think I might have been incorrect.”
She must have been doing something right, because he winked at her. “Then why did you kiss me back?”
That, Byleth didn’t quite know. She found herself wanting to free herself from the restrained life her grandmother wished upon her, but that was a generality, not specific. To pinpoint the first moment when she understand her attraction, that was more difficult, and she picked up her tea to take a moment to consider her answer; his mouth had tasted of it, Byleth understood now, damn it all. She would never be able to drink this blend without thinking of the kiss. “Because my grandmother would hate it.”
He burst out laughing, warm in a way that made her toes curl in her riding boots. He reached for a sandwich, still chuckling. “I can tell she cares for you, Miss Eisner, but I do wonder about putting you out in public so soon after your half-mourning began. And if you aren’t used to society, I can understand how that might have been especially daunting.” He rested one of his elbows on a knee, eating his sandwich as he studied her. “Can I tell you a secret?”
“I can’t really stop you, can I? I think it would cause a stir if I ran out of the room with my hands clasped over my ears.”
He leaned in, conspiratorial. “I’m not very comfortable in public, either.” Of all the things Byleth expected, this was not one of them, and Claude chuckled. “All these rules are confounding, and I don’t even think they make the society all that polite, just sneaky.”
It was sound reasoning, even if she wasn’t about to let him off that easily, and she waved a hand. “You’re a duke, you can do what you like and come off as charmingly eccentric.”
His eyes lit up from within, and it was only then she understood how cold his demeanor had been in moments in the past; a facade he no doubt had perfected over the course of many months of study. “So you find me charming?”
“Not right now, I don’t.” Her put-on stuffiness only lasted a moment and she giggled; it felt good to laugh again. “Well, what do we do from here?”
“Well, I assume another kiss is off the table for now,” he replied, eyes still sparkling with that endearing earnestness. “I promised you a dancing master, and my dear friend Miss Goneril is just the one to teach you. I’ll make the suggestion that she come visit you at Garreg Mach, and from there Lady Seiros should have no issue with a dinner invitation.”
“I have difficulty believing that you’re inventing this plot in the moment,” she replied, meaning to be teasing yet surprised when that provoked a faint blush; perhaps that comment was closer to the mark than she intended, and Byleth considered him seriously. “Are you only interested in my fortune, your Grace? A plan like this, without knowing much about me, seems suspect.”
“My dear Miss Eisner, I have more money than I know what to do with. While every gentleman is generally cognizant of the need to marry well, as you said, I could easily be written off as eccentric if I married someone of lower financial status.” It was difficult to tell how sincere his smile was in the moment; Byleth would table that for later. “I understand all the benefits of marrying you would bring me financially, but to me, that’s secondary to the other comforts of marriage, if you catch my meaning.”
She did indeed; difficult not to when his eyes flickered southward down her frame, and Byleth decided it was past time to end this, at least for the moment. “I’ll be expecting Miss Goneril, then.”
He followed her no further than the door at her insistence, but Byleth knew he watched her go around the corner to the stables; she would be a liar if she didn’t feel a lightness in her step at the knowledge.
When Manuela von Aegir, neé Casagranda, was ushered into Duke Claude von Riegan’s sitting room that afternoon, she found him laid out on the same sofa where he had kissed Miss Eisner with one foot on a cushion and the other on the floor. She set her doctor's bag down with a thunk behind his head, no doubt hoping to elicit some sort of reaction out of him. “Are you drunk? You bleed more when you are, you know.”
He grinned; he felt drunk, hence the foot on the floor, but Manuela might decline to inject him if he didn’t prove his sobriety, so he pulled himself upright with vigor. “I’m fit as a fiddle, and you know I hardly drink even during a ball. I’m almost insulted you think I would be drunk at midday.”
“Why would you be insulted about that? I frequently have a tipple or three at lunch,” she replied with an edge to her voice. Her bag snapped open, and she began to set various instruments down on the side table, including two large syringes. “Draw the curtains, would you? Unless you want the neighborhood to see your backend.”
He all but floated to the windows to pull the curtains shut tight. “You were an opera singer, that’s expected.” More things had come out of her bag by the time he turned around, including an empty vial. “Why do you need to draw blood today?”
“My colleague wants to examine your blood under a microscope and run some other tests for what appears in your body before each injection.” Manuela uncapped a bottle made of brown glass, and even from a distance he caught a faint whiff of iodine solution. “This is a new science, after all.”
“Lucky me,” he replied, loosening buttons. “Arm first, then?”
“I can take it out of your ass, if you prefer.” He laughed when Manuela winked at him. “Sit, please, and I’ll be quick.”
Claude knew the drill well enough: Manuela would pour iodine onto a bit of cotton gauze and rub it over the crook of his elbow to ward off infection, and then she would stick the needle into the pulse she found with a finger. He liked to watch the blood fill the vial as she drew back the syringe’s plunger; it was so much darker than the bright stuff that would ooze out of a wound, and he wondered at the difference. It didn’t hurt much, not like the second needle stick of her visit.
If anyone walked into the room now, what a scene they would come across! Claude with his trousers pulled down below his hips, Manuela again with the iodine before drawing out a measure of a clear liquid that she would inject into the solid muscle of his right buttock. “Please don’t hit a nerve this time,” he said as he waited for her to be satisfied with her draw.
He laughed when she made a disgusted noise. “It was one time, your Grace.” He hardly felt the prick, though the slow push of liquid into his muscle took some fortitude to bear without a whimper. “All done,” she said as he felt the press of her fingers holding more gauze against his skin.
“Thanks, Manuela.” He helped her secure the gauze against the injection site with tape, and then he pulled up his pants as she began to pack her instruments. It had been pure luck that he had come to live in the same neighborhood as the woman who had first gave him the hope of being seen as a man; even more so, she gave him hope of being loved. “Can I ask you a question?”
She may have been a bit of a lush, a disaster that baffled the neighborhood at times, but Manuela was nobody’s fool, and she laughed. “This is about your crush on Miss Eisner? Everyone’s talking about how you wouldn’t leave her side at your own ball. It’s borderline scandal at the moment, and if you care for your reputation you might consider being more careful around her.”
He leaned forward, resting his chin on the heel of his hand. “It’s a little late for that. I sent her Godiva as a gift.”
Claude didn’t expect Manuela to stop packing, and she turned to him with the stoppered vial of his blood in her hand. “You gave her a horse? And Lady Seiros let her keep it? You are committed to ensnaring her before anyone else can.” She turned back to her bag, and he thought he heard her mutter something about Ferdinand wanting to make him an offer for the mare.
He swallowed, hoping the motion would work his salivary glands enough to cure his dry tongue; it seemed silly to be nervous around the woman who was intimately aware of how hairy he’d become with the help of her medical expertise, and yet it was thus. “Do you ever wonder if Mr. Aegir wholeheartedly accepts you? Are there ever moments when—“
“Stop.” Her bag clicked shut, and she came to sit beside him. “Never, not once. But that’s just how Ferdinand is,” she said with a fond laugh. “He hardly has an unkind word for anyone he meets.” She took his hand and patted the top of it with a motherly affection. “Your reputation could most likely weather an affair, but the other? I hate to say it, but I doubt most of our neighbors would want to dine with you, title be damned.”
He leaned back against the sofa with a groan. “Couldn’t you have said something encouraging instead? Honeyed words, all that poetic nonsense.” She had to know he meant in jest; her bucket of cool water dumped over his head was just the thing he needed, honestly.
She must have, because Manuela rolled her eyes. “Oh, Claude, it’s not entirely hopeless. After all, don’t you know anything about her family?”
This gave him pause as she stood to pick up her bag; he frowned. “You mean Lady Seiros? Miss Eisner told me about her father a little, he seemed an interesting man.”
“Well, if you can do it discreetly, I recommend asking her about her mother, Lady Seiros’ daughter. You might find the circumstances in which she became married to Jeralt Eisner of interest. But I don’t want to ruin the surprise.” She stepped out of the room to leave him to speculate on just what she could have possibly meant.
Hilda Valentine Goneril looked like a frosted confection as she sat primly on a settee, and she took her tea with the same sort of perfection as her clothes. “My brother is a most upstanding man, Lady Seiros,” she said over a plate of powdered buns. “He won’t allow anyone of ill repute in while we have these lessons. It’ll be dinner and then a little dancing lesson, and my friend Marianne Edmund will play for us, so there won’t even be any men there beyond my brother and perhaps the Duke.”
Byleth turned toward her grandmother, hands folded in her lap; she hoped she looked somewhat composed, even if she felt a fluttery feeling at the idea of Duke Riegan being in attendance for her lessons, even more so when she considered the idea that he might be the ideal person to teach her the steps. “If I’m to be out in society more, Grandmother, it would probably be for the best if I knew how to dance a little.” Especially if Grandmother wanted her to find a suitable match; that part she left unsaid.
Byleth held her breath as Grandmother sipped her tea, her mouth pursed in thought. Her teacup came down on the saucer with the lightest clink, and she turned toward Byleth to put her hand over her granddaughter’s. “General Goneril is a trustworthy man, this is true. He will take care that nothing untoward happens to you, dear.”
“That is unless, of course,” Hilda said later as they walked around the lawn with their arms linked, “you want something untoward to happen.” Byleth blinked, and Hilda laughed. “Not that my brother would ever be anything less than trustworthy or an upstanding individual, but I can easily ensure Holst is elsewhere when we have dinner.”
Byleth blushed, turning her head away; there could only be one explanation for such conversation, and she felt a rare flash of irritation. “I didn’t know his Grace would be indiscreet.”
Hilda giggled, but it didn’t seem unkind. “Claude’s never been able to keep any information from me, but don’t fret, your secret is safe with me.” She squeezed her elbow in what Byleth assumed was some sort of affection. “Being friends with Duke Riegan has some benefits, including keeping certain neighborhood rakes at bay when I need them to be. Mr. Gautier,” she said when Byleth tilted her head. “He can be fun, but sometimes he’s a little too pushy. Claude puts him in his place when I need him to.”
They made it another quarter of the garden in silence as Byleth considered this; if he was so free with kissing her, perhaps he was such with other ladies. Well, despite her country upbringing, she could pride herself on having picked up some nuances of speech since moving to Garreg Mach. “Sounds like you have Duke Riegan wrapped around your finger.”
It seemed to have worked, and Hilda gave her a bracing smile. “Oh, don’t worry about that. I have no interest in him. Claude’s far too high maintenance for me. He’s just a dear friend, that’s all. Even though he acts the dandy, he’s a surprisingly steady man underneath. You’ll see if you get to know him better.” Her carriage waited at the end of the lane, and Hilda allowed herself to be handed in by one of the footmen, and then she leaned over to peek out the door. “I’ll send you an invitation once I have it all settled.”
Byleth watched her go, feeling a lump in her throat; Grandmother didn’t need to know all, but she still felt a sorrow at keeping it secret. She smoothed down her skirt, considering how delicate the lavender ribbons looked in the sunlight. Father would approve of some innocent mischief, and Byleth promised to put some distance between herself and the Duke until she understood her feelings better. She gestured at a passing stableboy. “Would you let them know to prepare Godiva for me?” Solitude and a hard ride could cure her of her most complicated emotions, and the goddess knew she needed that in this moment.