"The pain we inflict upon ourselves hurt most of all."

― Sophocles, Oedipus the King

The air was stale and thick as molasses inside Louis' fox den, the earth moist from the recent rainfall. Harry picked up the box of matches on the small mud shelf and tried to light a candle, but the matches were damp and splintered between his fingers.

He felt around for the pile of journals. He took the first one he touched, remembering that the volume in question rested on top. He grabbed it and crawled back outside. He could barely make out the title in the moonlight: Bulletin de l'Académie Imperiale de Médecine, Vol. 8. He was about to open it when he stopped himself.

Thunder clapped overhead and rain began to patter on the fallen leaves at his feet. The storm was back like an orchestra returning for its encore.

He couldn't risk getting the journal wet if it was to be evidence, so he tucked it inside his cloak and ran back to the house, the heels of boots stabbing the wet earth like daggers with each step.

Above him he saw the silhouette of Louis standing by his window.

The door to the house was heavy and creaked open. His eyes adjusted to the darkness and he looked upon the burned faces in the Warwick family portrait. The face of Louis' brother James was completely burned, a simulacrum of the real James who lay burned in the earth. Eyeless, the image watched him as he ran across the rotunda and up the staircase.

He quietly crept to his bedchamber, cold still clinging to the wool of his cloak.

As he turned the corner of the east wing, past the painting of The Battle of Thermopylae, one of the doors opened a sliver. The shadowed face peering through the crack was unmistakably that of William. He was staying in one of the guest bedrooms? This stung almost as much as seeing him with Louis. William, a servant, was given his own room in the upper part of the house near his master. He had won the Duke's favor and likely his heart.

Once inside his bedchamber, Harry sat at the vanity and, hand quivering, lit a candle. The orange flame blossomed on the wick and the room flickered into view. This room had once belonged to James but after Louis' restoration bared no mark of its previous owner. Even still Harry felt James' presence in the walls, the floorboards and the very air he breathed.

Harry didn't drink but he craved a finger of brandy to steady his nerves. He swallowed and placed a hand on the journal's tattered cover, touching the square typeface and imperial coat of arms.

The pages used as the catalyst for the fire were numbered six to eleven.

Harry opened the journal.

One. Two. Three.

He skimmed past illustrations of anatomy, medical equipment and detailed descriptions of disease. His stomach churned.

Four. Five.

On the fifth page was a description of a disease that very much sounded like what James suffered from: une respiration sifflante, une toux persistante, essoufflement...

Harry held his breath.

Six.

The sixth page was there. And so was the seventh, the eighth, ninth, tenth and eleventh.

The journal was intact.

More than that, the margins of each page were filled with Louis' handwritten notes. In the inky, lopsided cursive of a child he had marked beside each symptom the degree to which his brother was affected in a tone that precociously mimicked the journal's scientific rhetoric:

The patient's cough worsens in the cold, even when I bring him an extra blanket.

Patient cannot finish his supper, including the potatoes, which happen to be his favorite.

Patient is too weak to take me riding even though it is sunny and I asked him very nicely.

Patient is too tired to shoot rabbits with me but not too tired to call me a holy terror and return to his book!

Patient has difficulty breathing but feels better when I pat his back.

Patient asks for my help up the steps.

Patient is older than I am but smaller and light as a feather.

The paper was inconclusive about whether the disease was contagious, but Louis wrote a definitive, No. I hug the patient every day.

He loved James. He was telling the truth. Louis really did want to find a cure for his brother.

Harry had to bring this information to Clarence. They had to return the confidential letters to Louis' barrister in London and stop this investigation at once. He opened his vanity to retrieve the letters when he noticed that they were missing.

Had Clarence taken them? Had one of the servants?

His eyes roamed over Louis' note, See you soon, dearest one, which he had torn to pieces, and the bottle of rosewater on the rug. Reluctantly the answer came to him. Louis had found the letters. That's why Harry's vanity was in disarray earlier that evening, the note carelessly strewn beside the mirror and the rosewater on the floor. That was why Louis was so vicious, why he said those hurtful things and why he bedded his footman.

Cruel fate! Oedipus! Antigone! Love wasn't a Greek battle it was a Greek tragedy. Too late, too late you see the path of wisdom, Sophocles warned. Harry was the catalyst of his own heartbreak and Louis' anger the fire that consumed their love and turned it to ash.

He could not wait another moment. He had to bring this information to Clarence and right the wrong that had been done. He stood up, the candleholder in one hand and the journal in the other.

His door was open ajar and he stepped outside.

Louis was leaning in the hallway fully dressed in his red tailcoat smoking a cigarette.

"I saw you out my window."

Harry couldn't lie anymore and blurted out, "You're not a murderer."

"How kind of you," Louis said sharply.

That did not come out the way Harry intended. "I can prove that you're not a murderer."

This piqued his interest.

As Harry extended the journal toward him and was about to explain, the floorboards creaked.

Louis looked over his shoulder and said, "Not here. Library."

In the library they sat across from one another at the large cherrywood partners desk, Louis in red and Harry in black, just like the day Harry had arrived at Warwick. Cold gaze scrutinizing cold gaze. They had turned back the clock. The affection that they had so tenderly nurtured was gone, as though it had happened to two different young men.

"Cigarette?" Louis offered stiffly.

Harry declined.

"Brandy?"

He accepted and watched as Louis poured the amber liquid into his glass. It looked like dark honey, though it was anything but sweet. Appearances could be deceiving.

The embers of a dying fire glowed in the hearth. Louis grabbed a poker, stirred them and added another log.

Harry explained that Clarence was in possession of pieces of paper that were the catalyst of the fire. He explained that they were pages from a medical journal, and that since Louis possessed the same volume, and the pages were intact, it was unlikely that he was responsible.

"How did it start?" Louis asked as he flipped through the journal and tapped his cigarette on a crystal ashtray, the cut crystal like a kaleidoscope reflecting Louis' red cuff.

"The fire?"

"No. Your partnership with my cousin."

Harry placed his hands shamefully on his lap beneath the desk.

"The night you teased me during the card game. I was angry. I agreed to help him build his case out of spite."

Louis drummed his fingers on the desk's leather top.

Harry continued with his confession.

"As my feelings for you deepened, I continued to meet with him every day here in the library and each time it was to discuss his case. Even after you held my hand in the carriage... I told you he and I were translating Latin. It was a lie. I lied to you every day."

Louis couldn't stand to hear another word. "Harry—"

But Harry didn't stop there. He bowed his head, curls veiling his guilty gaze, like he was confessing to a priest.

"When I made the connection that the pages Clarence possessed were from the same journal and volume as the one in your fox den, I knew I had to retrieve it and find out if they were from the same copy. Only, I couldn't remember where your fox den was. That's why I asked you to take me back there. The day we kissed, which I treasure still, is tainted by my lie."

Louis' blue eyes were glassy, as though he wanted to cry but his anger had turned his tears to ice.

"There's more. I broke into your bureau to search for evidence."

"You what?"

"I asked Lady Silcox to pick the lock. But don't blame her! It was I who implicated her in my diabolical scheme."

Harry was sweating and he had not yet come to the worst of it. He took a sip of brandy.

"When Clarence handed me your barrister's letters I knew it was wrong and though I had no intention of reading them, I took them anyway. I didn't expose his wrongdoing for fear of exposing my own. I'm a coward."

There, that was all of it he thought miserably. There were no longer any secrets between them.

Looking at the fire, Harry thought about Louis—not the Louis sitting across from him but the sweet little boy who'd written in the journal, who watched his family burn to death. He thought about the rumors and innuendo he had to endure since. Louis trusted Harry and Harry was no different than that mob taunting him in the village. No, he was different, he was worse because he concealed his doubt and suspicions. He deceived the Duke.

Then he asked Louis to confirm what he already knew: "You found the letters in my vanity?"

Louis nodded slowly.

"And William..."

"He was standing outside my bedchamber. I was in tears and he comforted me." Louis held Harry's gaze. "He kissed me."

Harry's stomach twisted with a jealousy so fierce he thought he might burn down Warwick himself in a fit of rage.

"And you kissed him back?" Harry spat. "How could you? I suppose I shouldn't be surprised. He is your favorite after all. He accompanied you to Moscow, and you made him first footman when he's barely come of age."

Louis didn't answer.

But Harry was consumed by thoughts of them together. He could think of nothing else and would not stop obsessing.

"Did he enjoy it? Did you? What am I saying, of course you did! It's written all over your face! Is he your companion now? Your concubine? I see he's been given a room in the east wing. The servant's hall is no place for the lover of the Duke."

Louis lifted his hand. "That's enough."

Harry's cheeks were hot, his heart pounding. He couldn't believe the words that began to tumble out of his mouth.

"Did you kiss him between his legs like you did to me? Was he wet? Did you let him do it to you? Were you inside him or was he inside you? Did he moan with pleasure? Did it happen more than once? Did you speak sweetly to each other afterwards? Did you hold him and call him dearest one?"

Harry was crying now. Had he been crying this whole time? Possibly. There was no sense stopping it. He had nothing left to lose. Not a shred of dignity.

Louis handed him a handkerchief. How pitying and impersonal, Harry thought. They'd gone from love notes and clandestine meetings in the Duke's bedchamber to handkerchiefs and formalities in the dusty library. He couldn't help but think of Frederick receiving Roy's pin and how something like that could never happen to him. He had been raised to be alone and alone he would always be. Doomed to romantic failure forever.

"I'm leaving tomorrow," Harry said, more to the linen handkerchief than to Louis. "I can't bear to stay for the hunt. I can't bear to be near you. I'll explain everything to Sir Clarence before I go."

He reached for the journal, when Louis placed a hand on his. "No, I'll deal with my cousin."

Dear God. Harry still craved Louis' touch. How horrifying after everything that happened! But the body is not privy to what's in the mind, it keeps craving long after love is lost.

And perhaps because he would be going back to Somerset in the morning and because he might never have this experience again, perhaps because he wanted something to hold onto in the long lonely years ahead, he asked one last desperate question:

"Do you think we were in love?"

For the first time during their meeting the Duke averted his cold aristocratic gaze and his voice broke, "I believe we were."

♞

Charles was surprised to find Harry in his bedchamber the next morning. The young Duke didn't ring for him. His valet had come to hang freshly pressed tailcoats and shirts in the wardrobe and was startled when his master sat up in bed.

When Harry told him sleepily that he would not stay for the hunt the following day, that they were to leave for Somerset at once, Charles naturally assumed the worst: that Harry had been brutalized by the depraved Duke the night before and clutched the bedpost lest he faint.

"It was nothing like that," Harry assured him weakly. "We didn't..."

A sigh of relief. Charles could hardly contain his happiness. He asked no more questions and ran circles around his master to pack his trunk for the long journey ahead.

He stopped suddenly when he saw how despondent Harry had become sitting in bed with his knees drawn to his chest.

"Can I fetch you anything for the journey, your grace. Some sweets perhaps?"

Harry had no appetite and thought he might be falling ill.

"Bring me my mask."

♞

No one was less pleased that they were leaving Warwick than Achilles. He had to be strong-armed into the crate by two grooms, whom he kicked and stomped on as they led him screaming into the enclosure sliding the deadbolt behind him with a fearful slam. Perhaps Harry hadn't made much progress with the stallion after all.

The carriage was nearly loaded and the windows washed so that the glass was as transparent as air. The windows on a closed carriage were called quarter lights, which Harry used to think sounded whimsical, but there wouldn't be much sunshine on their journey south and even if there was he would probably draw the tasseled curtains shut.

Harry tightened the strings on his mask and dragged the silver tip of his walking stick along the spokes of the wheel. It sounded like a xylophone from his childhood. When he was a little boy he could entertain himself this way for hours. But the prospect of entertaining himself seemed impossible now that he had been introduced to the pleasures of society.

How could he go from kissing and dancing and games to his empty bedchamber? Perhaps there would be other invitations, other hunts, other parties, but without Louis to draw him out, Harry would be trapped inside his own head.

Two footmen loaded the final trunk. Another opened the door for him and unfolded the iron footplate so he could step inside. Harry entered the carriage with Charles following breathlessly behind him.

"Let's go!" he sang excitedly, reviewing the map and itinerary. "Let's be on our way so we can make it to Middlesbrough in time for tea. The Duke adores their cakes!"

Harry took one last look at the house from the carriage. Who would burn this place down, he thought, and why? Nothing about the case made sense: the medical journal pages, targeting James who was so vulnerable, the argument Louis' father had days before the fire, the day planner mysteriously vanishing from the bureau. Louis' innocence answered one question but it posed a million more.

As the coachman snapped the reins, Frederick skipped down the manor steps in his high-heeled boots, his golden hair like a halo in the morning sun, though the Viscount was no angel.

"WHAT HAVE YOU DONE!" he yelled.

Though Charles urged him not to, Harry opened the carriage door and stomped out to defend himself.

"If you are referring to the Duke, the matter is private."

"I know everything."

Of course he did.

Harry's face reddened and he crumbled. "I betrayed him and he betrayed me and all hope is lost."

"Surgeon, did I or did I not specifically tell you not to hurt my friend?" The Viscount ripped off Harry's mask and tossed it to the ground.

"He hurt me too!"

"You tried to implicate him in the murder of his entire family!"

"Why does it sound so much worse when you say it?"

Frederick pulled him aside by the elbow away from the prying eyes of the coachman.

"Go to him. Make amends. He says he doesn't want to see you but I know there's nothing he wants more."

In his mind's eye, Harry relived the humiliation of seeing Louis and William naked in the Duke's bedchamber while he stood trembling in the doorway. He knew he could never get past what Louis had done to him no matter how badly he wanted to.

"I can't, not after what he did. It's impossible."

Frederick narrowed his eyes. "What is it you think he did exactly?"

"He made love to his footman. I saw them together in his bedchamber."

The corners of Frederick's lips twitched into a smile.

"Why are you smiling?"

"Because he didn't tell you."

"Tell me what?"

"He really is quite wicked," the Viscount mused with his hands behind his back.

"What do you mean?"

"He didn't make love to his footman. The pretty lad spread for him but Louis couldn't go through with it."

Harry furrowed his brow. He did not understand.

"Why would he lie and say he had?"

"DO I HAVE TO EXPLAIN EVERYTHING TO YOU?"

"YES."

"He wanted to punish you."

"That's awful!"

"Well, I never said he was perfect." Frederick flipped the blonde hair out of his eyes.

No, Louis wasn't perfect. But neither was Harry.

"Where is he?"

"The stables, with Albertine. The mare became anxious when the grooms removed Achilles from the stall beside her."

Charles popped his head out the carriage window, waving the itinerary. "We really must be going, your grace."

Harry looked down the grassy knoll at the stables on the forest's edge.

"I'm going to say farewell to the Duke. I'll only be a minute."

"No!" Charles cried.

But Harry was already running down the hill to ask his friend's forgiveness and to offer his forgiveness in return.

A/N: The journal is intact! Louis (despite being an annoying little brother) loved James!  

But now Harry is more confused than ever about whom the killer might be...

And if Louis' innocent, and the day planner was moved, does that mean the killer is in the house?

Will Harry and Louis forgive each other? Should they? Would you?

Are Achilles and Albertine more than just friends???

This has been a long rough patch but I think you guys might forgive me when you read the next two chapters... I've said too much.

I had a fun time looking for an old anatomy diagram for this chapter. Here are some other cool ones I found:

And in honour of Achilles and Albertine's budding romance: