I’m so proud of how the POV swap/flashbacks come together in These Old Lies, but as storyteller, one of the big downsides is that I didn’t always get to tell a scene from the perspective that I wanted to. The visit to the Country House in 1923 was a prime example, when I had originally envisioned that moment in the story, it was from Charlie’s eyes, which then couldn’t work because 1920’s were always with Ned.
This bonus scene doesn’t retell that chapter, but adds in a moment that we didn’t see when we are just in Ned’s brain.
Enjoy!! (And please don’t judge my typos!)
The country house of Viscount and Lady Pinsent, September 1923
(Several hours after the events of Chapter 13)
Charlie threw off the heavy brocade bedding. He had been staring up at the ceiling since Ned had crept out a few hours earlier, yet sleep was no closer.
After the tears had dried in the chapel, he and Ned snuck into Charlie’s room together, gentle touches quickly turning to urgent need to get each other off. Normally having to be quiet would have annoyed Charlie, but after all of the emotion of the evening, the silence had been its own release.
Then Charlie did the responsible thing and sent a emotionally empty and fucked out Ned back to his own room.
Leaving himself wide awake, alone and his mind a merry-go-round. Spinning, spinning, and not going anywhere.
I love him. The words had spilled out of Charlie as much as the stories of Frank had flowed from Ned. He’d been thinking of saying something along those lines for Ned for a while, and a declaration in a memorial chapel hadn’t really been planned, but he had no regrets.
Which didn’t explain why he felt hot and cold at the same time, and heart thundering as if the whistle had just blown for him to go over the top. Charlie gripped the bedding, the embroidery pressing patterns of vines and flowers into his palms. He needed to pull himself together. He needed to fall asleep. He needed to get out of this damn bed that smelt of his lover.
Grabbing a robe that had been left out for him with the cotton pajamas, he yanked open the door to the room. If he couldn’t sleep then he might as well distract his mind, and from his brief glance earlier, the library looked decent.
As he walked down the hall, his slippers sinking into the plush carpet, he couldn’t help but feel like a fraud creeping around in the night. Would Ned mind if he went the library? No one had told him he couldn’t, but that didn’t mean he was a welcome guest.
“Not able to sleep, Mr Villiers?” Charlie almost jumped out his skin when the warm husky voice of Ned’s mother wafted down the darkened hall.
“I’m afraid not, my lady.” He found himself doing a bit of a servant’s bow to Ned’s mother. He had been slightly awed by her at dinner, the controlled yet casual way she had steered the conversation exactly as she wanted.
Even wrapped in her housecoat, white hair undone down her shoulders, Lady Emily was elegant. Charlie wondered if Ned would age in the same graceful way, becoming more and more refined with each passing year. “Must have been something at dinner, I couldn’t sleep either.” She paused and examined him, as if considering the mettle of the man in front of her. “I know where the cook keeps the milk. Would you like a glass?”
Lady Emily’s tone didn’t bear protest. So Charlie nodded and found himself following her along the carpeted corridors, down a back staircase, and into a large surprisingly modern kitchen.
The milk jug left out in the middle of the large wooden work table made Charlie think this wasn’t her first time trying to find a sleep remedy here. “Shall I heat the milk, my lady?” The stove in the kitchen was similar to the one his mother used at home, if twice as large.
“If you would like.” She passed him the jug with a slight incline of the head.
He grabbed a copper pot, lit the burner and poured the milk. Behind him he heard the scrape and swish of Lady Emily sitting down in one of the stools at the table.
“The library is very impressive.” Why did he feel the need to make conversation? Was it politeness or not wanting this woman to mistake him for one of her dozens of servants?
“It was always one of Edmund’s favourite places. The nanny would loose him, only to find him hours later curled up in a chair lost in a book.”
“Ned mentioned playing pirates after Treasure Island.” Charlie smiled to himself at the memory, Ned’s peace offering at the V&A.
The silence that followed was not comfortable. Charlie glared at the milk, as if he could intimidate it into heating faster.
Then, almost whispered, “It’s been a very long time since I heard anyone call him Ned.”
Charlie was tempted to create his own uncomfortable silence, but the loss in her voice was too familiar. “Ned asked me to call him that when we were in the trenches together.”
Lady Emily looked away, blinking quickly. At least the milk had begun to bubble, and Charlie quickly went about the business of pouring two cups.
“Hopefully it is not too hot.” Charlie passed Lady Emily a mug and slid into the seat across from her.
She took a sip, somehow finding the appropriate manners for the occasion. “I’ve always wondered if warm milk is effective because the bland taste bores one to sleep.”
“Brandy helps with that.” The quip was out before Charlie could think better of himself.
To his surprise, Lady Emily responded with a small smile over the rim of her cup. He knew that knowing smirk, had seen it just this afternoon while eating strawberries.
She reached into the pocket of her robe, pulled out a small hip flask and poured a generous splash of amber liquid in his mug and then hers. “It’s very cheap.”
Charlie raised his cup. “Cheers.”
Silence again. Not a companionable quiet but no longer a mute standoff. A ceasefire perhaps.
”What do you want from Edmund?”
Charlie would have been insulted if the question wasn’t so predictable. He would liked to have had this woman’s good opinion, but he wasn’t surprised that he wasn’t offered the chance.
“Do you have a preference?”
“It would be convenient if you wanted money. Influence is always trickier to agree a price.”
“And his conversation?”
“The cheapest of all.”
This exchange was a phony war and they both knew it. Charlie could protest, scandalized at the accusation. Hell, he could flee and go to Ned. None of which would change her mind or answer her question satisfactorily.
That grated at him. Not for himself, he knew he had no business being in this house, but for Ned. Lady Emily had dismissed her own son as an idiot who wouldn’t realise when the wool was being pulled over his eyes. Ned, who’d be so fearless in bringing Charlie here, who’d told him that there was nothing he could do to fail to make him proud. Who’d shared his grief and loss. He deserved better. Of his mother. Of his lover.
Charlie had to correct her, for Ned’s honour as much as his own.
“Ned’s not some fragile flower blown around by the force of others.” Charlie met Lady Emily’s eyes, deliberately defiant. “I am honoured to have the gift of his friendship. I won’t pretend to be his peer, but I will be his equal in all the ways that matter.”
The echo of Lady Emily’s mug hitting the table rung through the kitchen. “I know exactly who my son is. He's a stubborn fool that wanted to die like the heroes he read about in books, and came back so broken we thought we had lost him forever. Then tonight he arrives out of the blue, with an old friend we never knew anything about, animated and happy like he hasn’t been in years. I know the heights he can sail to, but I don’t know if we will be able to put the pieces back together if he crashes again.”
“I’d never let him fall.” His hand was clenched around his own mug. Charlie would do anything to protect Ned. He’d wipe away the tears, shield him from anything that made him worry, punch anyone who threatened him…
Oh bugger.
There was a line in between defending Ned and keeping up appearances of being merely old war friends, and Charlie was pretty sure he’d just blown past it. Hopefully, Ned’s mother didn’t know what two men could get up to with a bit of privacy and time.
For the first time since he arrived in Heyworth House, Lady Emily met his eye straight on. In the gaslight, Charlie realised they were like Ned’s, a mix of colours and as hard as steel. “I assume you don’t have any children? If you do one day, you will learn that the things you thought you would care about pale in comparison to the real worries you have about them. Whatever you think, I have only one real wish for Edmund, and is for him to be content. I think he thinks you can give him that.”
Did she know the implications of her words? Did it matter?
“And I can.” We love each other. And there was that thundering again, but this time Charlie realised it wasn’t panic. It was joy.
He’d get offended on Ned’s behalf, and Ned would have an irrational belief in Charlie, and they would have each other’s back at weird dinner conversations and awkwardly talk to each others’ parents and eat strawberries and get wet in the rain.
The magnitude of it all was wondrous and Charlie let himself bask in it.
Lady Emily stood up front the table. “I think that should be enough to help me sleep now.” She paused as she stood. “And Mr Villiers?”
“Yes, my lady?”
“I meant what I said at dinner, you should come to more of our dinner parties.”
Charlie couldn’t help but think there was a complement buried somewhere in there.
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