"Madness is something rare in individuals — but in groups, parties, peoples, and ages, it is the rule." 

― Friedrich Nietzsche, Beyond Good and Evil

Harry's true legacy wasn't the Dukedom, it wasn't Somerset, nor the rich farmland he'd inherited. His true legacy was charity.

His father was devoted to many causes, but chief among them was helping the sick and infirm.

Harry was determined to honor this legacy and prepared for his visit to Our Lady of Perpetual Sorrow, the sanatorium his father founded.

He tried to convince himself that he was going for selfless reasons, but the truth was he needed to get away from Warwick and clear his head. Perhaps Charles was right and the Duke was beginning to corrupt him. Or perhaps Harry was already corrupt and the Duke was the only one who could see it?

He climbed into the carriage and smoothed the tails of his coat beneath him, adjusting his hat in the window.

The coachman snapped the leather reins and the carriage rolled away from the house, the view of Warwick swallowed up by trees and shadow.

They picked up speed once they cleared the gate. He was about to draw the curtains when he heard a tap on the glass.

Someone was clinging to the outside of the carriage.

Harry screamed.

Suddenly the door opened and Louis swung inside, his injured arm hanging stiffly by his side. "Pardon me, coming through."

"What are you doing here!?"

"Joining you on your trip to Our Lady of Eternal Misery," said Louis as he collapsed on the seat across from him.

"Perpetual Sorrow," Harry corrected. "And I don't need an escort. I'm Duke, not a child."

Louis crossed one leg over the other and retrieved his monogrammed lighter from his breast pocket. "Let me ask you something. Have you ever seen the inside of a sanatorium?"

"No," said Harry petulantly.

"Then you need an escort." He tapped a cigarette against its silver case before bringing it to his lips and lighting it.

The carriage wheels skipped over rocks and pebbles.

The two Dukes didn't say much on the ride there, the awkwardness of their encounter the previous night hung between them like the smoke from Louis' French cigarettes.

Louis cradled his wounded arm but didn't complain. Harry wanted to ask if he was in pain but was afraid it would rouse last night's feelings. He couldn't risk it.

They arrived at the sanatorium in the afternoon. The Franco-Gothic structure stood on twenty-two acres of parkland. It had a bell tower and pointed arches flanked by weeping stone angels. It reminded him of the architecture on his family's estate. His father had constructed this place in Somerset's image. It felt like home.

Father Michael met them at the gates. The priest was in black robes, a heavy wooden rosary hanging from his hip.

Harry greeted him warmly. "It's good to see you again, Father."

"Welcome! I did not know the Duke of Warwick would be joining us. Two Dukes, what a blessing!"

Louis extended his hand limply. "I've been told my presence is more of a curse."

The balding priest laughed nervously.

They walked around the property and Father Michael gestured to a group of patients outside in grey smocks getting their daily exercise.

"As you can see the patients are quite happy here."

"We'll be the judge of that," Louis snapped.

Harry pinched his arm. "Don't be unkind!"

He pinched back. "Don't be naïve!"

Just then a little girl, no older than ten, wandered up to them, blonde plaits down her back and a bright smile on her lips. She looked like the picture of health. Harry wondered what someone like her was doing in such a place.

She stuck her tiny hands into the pockets of her smock. "Beautiful day isn't it."

Harry removed his hat and went down on one knee. "Yes, it is!"

Then he pulled a coin from behind his ear, a magic trick his governess taught him.

The girl blinked. "Beautiful day isn't it."

"Yes," he said slowly. "What's your name?"

"Beautiful day isn't it."

Harry furrowed his brow in confusion. "Tell me, girl, are you happy here?"

"Beautiful day isn't—"

Father Michael put a hand on her shoulder. "You'll have to excuse Mary. She's recently been treated for hysteria."

Harry rose to his feet. "Hysteria? She's just a little girl."

"And what was the treatment?" Louis asked drily.

The priest clasped his hands together excitedly. "Psychosurgery, one of the latest advancements in medicine from Switzerland. They cure madness by removing parts of the brain."

"I knew it," Louis hissed.

"When will she be back to normal?" Harry looked into her vacant gaze.

"This is her new normal," said Father Michael. "We've cured her of all unpleasant thoughts."

"You mean you've cured her of thinking. Is she going to utter the same words for the rest of her life?" Louis was incredulous.

"Yes, but they are happy words, aren't they?"

The girl smiled up at the priest. "Beautiful day isn't it."

The inside of the sanatorium looked more like a grand home than an institution. There was fine furniture and women knitting and sewing ragdolls by the fireplace. A man was hunched over the piano striking the same key over and over, his broken song echoing down the empty corridors.

They were escorted to a ward on the first floor.

Harry read the brass plate on the wall: Tuberculosis.

Consumption.

The White Plague.

He tied on his mask.

While he'd read countless articles about the disease in medical journals, he'd never come face to face with it.

They could not go inside but peered at the ward through a glass partition. It was worse than he'd imagined. Patients were violently coughing up blood: on their smocks, the white bed linen, the nurses, and the waxed floors. Every surface was stained with sickness.

As Father Michael described the recent renovations to the ward, a patient wandered out the double doors, mad with fever.

Harry threw Louis up against the wall. "Cover your face! Do it now!"

"What?"

Harry took a handkerchief out of his pocket and held it over Louis' mouth and nose until one of the nurses guided the sick man back to bed.

He slid off of Louis' chest, panting.

"Harry, had I known you'd react this way I would have exposed myself to tuberculosis much sooner." Louis smirked.

He dabbed his brow with the handkerchief. "That is not even remotely amusing."

Next, they viewed the mental ward.

In one room a man was bound by the head and wrists to a wooden chair. The doctor put a rag in his mouth, and retrieved a metal prong attached by a wire to a whirring machine at his feet.

"We're at the forefront of technology when it comes mental health. Here our doctors and nurses perform something called Electroshock Therapy, a new treatment devised by the French neurologist Duchenne de Boulogne."

"You shock your patients with... electricity?" Harry asked.

Louis lit a cigarette. "That doesn't sound horrifying at all."

"I assure you it's perfectly safe, your grace."

They viewed the laboratory next and were then guided to the offices.

Harry clasped his hands behind his back as he examined the portraits of doctors, scientists and philanthropists that lined the stone walls.

"Are we ever going to discuss what happened last night?" Louis asked gently.

"I think not," Harry answered, cleaning a smudge on the plaque beneath his father's portrait.

"I apologize. I got carried away. It was the Laudanum! I know you're not a—like me. You hated it. Forgive me."

Before he could respond, Father Michael took him aside and began to introduce him to the staff. Harry carefully memorized the names of all the administrators and doctors so he could write to them once he was back at Somerset. In his naivety he hadn't realized that patients were being mutilated, and he certainly could not have guessed that they were being electrocuted! He was interested in the progress of patients like Mary who was convalescing and wanted monthly reports on the condition of all patients.

As they discussed which research needed funding, a new patient was being admitted a few feet away.

He was short and extremely thin with clubbed fingers. He began to wheeze suddenly and his mother patted his back to loosen the mucus in his chest.

Once the admission papers were signed, two orderlies put him in restraints.

The young man panicked. "Why am I being restrained? Where are you taking me?"

"The ice baths."

"Mother! Mother!"

He began to struggle. His mother was weeping but instead of helping him, she walked away.

Harry turned to Louis. He was already running down the corridor. "Let this man go!"

"Stay back. He may be contagious."

"No, he isn't! My brother suffered from the same ailment. Do NOT put him in an ice bath, you'll make his condition worse."

Louis tried to free him from their grip and another orderly came between them.

"He is diseased. Stay back! It's for your own good."

"No, he's not contagious! Do you hear me! You'll kill him if you send him to the baths!"

Harry's heart was pounding. The sound of the sick man's wheezing crept into his bones making him shudder with fear and disgust. But something about the desperation in Louis' voice struck a chord.

Louis lunged for the man and one of the orderlies grabbed his shoulders and held him back.

Harry pulled off his mask. "This is the Duke of Warwick," he boomed. "Unhand him at once!"

"We're sorry, your grace—" the doctor interjected meekly.

"My father founded this place and if you'd like to continue receiving donations from our estate, you'll obey me. Now," he demanded, his walking stick striking the travertine floor like a clap of thunder.

They released Louis and he swiftly untied the sick man from his straitjacket.

The Duke shocked Harry further when he embraced the man.

No donation or grand institution could compare to the gesture. Human kindness was the purest act of charity.

♞

They were very quiet on the journey back to Warwick. The sun was setting over the glen and dusk's gold light spilled through the windows bathing the carriage with warmth.

Louis broke the silence. "Thank you for helping me help that man."

"Anyone would have done the same in my place. It was nothing. But you—"

"You removed your mask, that's not nothing."

Louis' hand gripped his walking stick with discomfort. Harry moved to the other side of the carriage and glanced at the Duke's injured arm.

"Does it still hurt?"

The sun made his eyelashes appear almost white, and his blue eyes clear as water.

"No," he lied.

Harry's gloved hand fell between them. "I didn't hate it."

"The sanatorium?" Louis asked.

"No, what happened last night. You said I hated it. I didn't."

The words sounded small when they escaped his lips but it was the boldest thing he'd ever said to anyone.

Louis picked up Harry's hand and finger-by-finger removed his leather glove.

Harry drew a breath and waited anxiously for Louis to bring it to his lips like he did the previous night. Instead, Louis placed it on his lap.

Harry was touching the Duke's thigh.

Louis then removed his own glove and placed his hand atop Harry's with affection. "You're as difficult as Achilles and no less sweet," he whispered into Harry's ear.

Harry felt a familiar stirring in his breeches, only this time he didn't try to stop it. He let it happen. It felt good. Better than good. He wanted to sit like this forever, aching and touching the Duke's shapely thigh for all eternity.

The carriage rocked back and forth as they crossed the marsh.

Louis' lips parted. His expression might have been one of agony or bliss. Harry looked down and saw that his hand was just inches away from the most tender part of him. Was Louis aching too?

Harry did not know what would happen next, but he was desperate for Louis to guide him there. Oh Duke, guide my hand! My lips! My heart!

Then out the corner of his eye he saw the coachman turn his head.

Harry took his hand away and blushed furiously. "Not here."

Louis was somehow out of breath like he'd been running for miles. "Where."

"I don't know."

"Dine with me alone tonight."

"I can't. I'm dining with Sir Clarence."

"After dinner."

"Clarence and I will be in the library working on my translation."

"Latin is a dead language, Harry! We're alive, flesh and blood! What is the hold my cousin has on you?"

The carriage rolled through Warwick's thick forest, blotting out the sun.

As they approached the house Louis pleaded, "Let me come to your bedchamber tonight."

"I—"

The door to the carriage flew open. Charles was there to greet him. He saw the Duke of Warwick and frowned.

"Come along, your grace," he said as he whisked Harry away into the house.

♞

Dinner with Sir Clarence was uneventful, a blend of lukewarm soup and lukewarm conversation. In the library they turned the facts of the case over and over like a puzzle box. Clarence leaned back in the creaking leather chair with his fingers steepled beneath his pointed chin. He didn't have anything new to report and Harry still hadn't revealed what he saw in the woods. He wanted to be sure of what was there before bringing this information to light.

Instead, he tried to get Clarence to talk about his relationship with James, but the mustached lawyer was always diplomatic in his response.

Harry didn't leave it to chance. He'd put the question to Charles, who then questioned the servants.

That night, as Charles dressed him for bed, his valet relayed what he'd heard in the servant's hall:

"Politics."

"They belong to different parties?"

"You have much to learn about the world of men, your grace." Charles fastened the ribbons around his cuffs. "No, they belong to the same party."

"I don't understand."

"The fiercest political battles are not fought between parties but within them. James was a moderate and Clarence a radical. They were young men fighting for the future of the Liberal Party."

Charles tied the satin ribbon around Harry's collar.

"Their rivalry came to a head when Sir Clarence funded the rebels responsible for the Cotton Mill riots. Twenty-six people were killed. Clarence did not denounce the violence. He said it was a means to an end. James never spoke to his cousin again and all but banned him from Warwick."

This was so unlike the even-tempered man Harry spent his evenings with in the library. Could Clarence have acted violently toward James, violent enough to start the fire? If so, why build a case against Louis? It didn't make any sense.

Charles finished dressing him and Harry examined his reflection in the gilded mirror.

His nightshirt was that of a child's, white with a ruffled collar and cuffs. It had not occurred to either of them to change his nightclothes when he came of age. Now the contrast made him painfully aware of his burgeoning manhood.

"What about Louis' politics? With whom did he side? His brother? Or is he a Tory?"

Charles cleaned his spectacles with his handkerchief. "Neither. The Duke of Warwick is a monarchist. I reckon he'd burn down parliament if he got the chance."

"Charles!" Harry smiled in spite of himself and climbed into bed beneath the covers.

His valet blew out the candles. "Goodnight, your grace."

"God save the Queen."

Harry shut his eyes and replayed the day's events in his head. It was gentlemanly of Louis to apologize for the previous night. He needn't have gone to the trouble. How sweet. And he looked so dashing in the carriage with his cigarette and red jacket. The way he swept his sandy hair off his brow and gripped the gold head of his walking stick. The way he pulled Harry's hand onto his lap with confidence and removed his glove...

Harry's hand travelled guiltily down his chest and up his nightshirt, feeling for that delicious ache between his legs. He'd touched himself once before, after staring at a painting of Greek combat in his father's study. Evidently the piece had a similar effect on his mother, because his father got rid of it immediately. Harry didn't need paintings anymore. In his mind's eye he painted his own picture of his hand on Louis' thigh in the carriage.

There was a knock at the door.

He scrambled to his feet, adjusting his twisted nightshirt and combing his curls with his fingers.

The Duke tiptoed to the door and held his breath as he turned the brass key, his heart practically bursting out of his chest.

Slowly, he opened it.

"Charles."

"Forgive me, your grace. I forgot to shut the window. I wouldn't want you to catch cold again!"

His valet shut the window and left.

Harry sighed and buried his head in the pillow kicking his bare feet in frustration.

Moments passed and so had his amorous mood. He was beginning to drift off to sleep.

Then came another knock at the door.

He groaned and climbed out of bed. "What is it now!"

This time it wasn't Charles.

A/N: Who's at the door???

You'll find out soon. The next chapter is almost done.

The disease James and the man at the sanatorium suffer from is cystic fibrosis. They didn't know what it was back then, but (fun fact) historians now suspect it's what Chopin died from.

That's the Holloway Sanatorium pictured above. 

I've been thinking about casting the other boys in this fic, which I never do because 1) I'm bad at it and 2) I like people to use their imagination.

But since someone asked, I thought it would be a fun exercise. Here is a very rough approximation of what I'm picturing but please picture whomever you like!  

Frederick

Roy

William

(Full disclosure: The novel I am currently OBSESSED with, Call Me By Your Name, has been made into a film starring this cinnamon roll, Timothée Chalamet. Guys, I'm in love. Apologies in advance because I probably won't shut up about this movie until it comes out. I've never been this thirsty. Pray for me.)