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Description
England x Reader
Clemency

1793.

The past fortnight had rushed by in the most frenzied ferment of your life. Entirely too much had been smashed together for your complete comprehension. After years of seclusion in the Pacific, you had elected to join society at last—you said elected; really, it had been at Spain’s—Antonio’s, as he had told you to call him—ardent persuasion that you leave your life of isolation, and, under his circumspect instruction, you had poorly memorised the fundamentals of Georgian society. Antonio could have hardly taught you everything in two weeks, a term that would have been much, much longer if not for the imminent World Conference in four days’ time. Your lessons would have gone uninterrupted if not for an invitation from one of the prominent empires.

Antonio had lightly snatched it from the attendant and had broken the seal with his index finger, explaining to you after a brief perusal that you had an admirer. You, after setting down what may or may not have been the right fork, had expressed your astonishment and your refusal to go out in public. Antonio had held your hand between both of his, the lower one slowly stroking your palm, and had explained what an honour it was to be summoned for such a private meeting before a formal introduction at a conference, and you had reluctantly agreed to attend.

With a lump in your throat, you watched as Antonio’s carriage drove off down the road, the wheels spurring up the dirt that so reflected the quiddity of the musty, late October, and he was leaving you alone in a potentially parlous place, much to your displeasure.

With any luck, you would not have to talk much to anyone.

You, wincing, heaved open the creaking, iron gates to the manor and shut them behind you as quietly as possible and began to meander your way to the front doors, which were opened for you by a lanky, ginger manservant who confoundedly told you his name was Scotland after you surprisingly asked after it. He led you through an extensive system of corridors whilst you trailed behind him and gaped at the intricately designed ceilings with your mouth hanging slightly open in a particularly idiotic way.

Scotland walked across the florally carpeted threshold of a spacious dining room, holding his hand up to you before crossing to the opposite wall to address a jaded man with his back to the door, his hands clasped behind his back and his stance wide. He turned swiftly at Scotland’s murmured words, and upon seeing you, he strengthened his military air by puffing out his chest and lifting his chin slightly and strode towards you.

After he quietly told you he was England and Scotland introduced you as Galápagos, England bowed deeply over your hand and kissed it, and the heat rose to your face in such a rush that you starting sweating at your hairline. Quickly hiding your hand behind your back as soon as he dropped it, you wilfully held your tongue as you were led to the table.

As soon as you were seated, you thankfully exhibited the prudence not to denote your complete lack of fortitude and will to end the evening on pleasant terms. You forced yourself to make eye contact, keep an attentive expression, and react cordially. Antonio had not thoroughly prepared you for proper, verbal responses; he had merely told you to keep your mouth shut, lest something uncouth come out of it. You, being content with sitting still and appearing winsome for the night, listened on to England’s one-sided conversation as you picked at an unidentifiable food.

England spoke briskly but gently. He began with the usual enquiries after acquaintances; oh, are they well? He nodded at your brief, broken replies and, gathering that Georgian society was virtually unknown to you after the retrospectively recognisable test of whether or not you knew of his issuing the first five-pound note earlier that year, took the initiative to speak about topics that required little confabulator participation save for the occasional smile or appreciative interjection.

Throughout his stories, the fact that he still held himself as a military hero despite his recent losing of a war shone through them. England, recounting recycled tales with a strange emptiness in his eyes, portrayed himself as the superior, cogent power, always doing the right thing even if he ultimately came off worse than his opponent, claiming he always had the higher moral ground.

Narrowing your eyes, you spoke against his assertion, immediately slapping your hand over your mouth after you said it: your naturally gallinaceous nature had begun to leak through the interstices. England raised an eyebrow at your actions, and the side of his mouth twitched up into a smile—the first one of the evening.

From then on, you conversed with no desire to appease him, saying the most outrageously tactless things, yet the less you tried to constrain yourself, the more he dropped his formal façade. England informed you completely of a background of a matter before discussing it, and thus you could comprehend on a shallow level but could never dare to attempt to match his erudition.

After regaling you with less than noble stories of the Revolution and of his time in the colonies—states, he corrected himself—he moved on to more recent things, praising the newly released Westminster Quarters in the Church of St. Mary the Great—written by a professor England had met briefly, Joseph Jowett—and being entirely positive that this short tune was on the brink of something incredible. England mentioned in passing the whorehouse riot in October, and, when you said that you had heard of it whilst with Antonio, he brought it around to a mildly rollicking discussion eventually transcending the riot in favour of the morality—does one justifiably punish or have mercy for sin?

In October of that year, lower-class men of all ages had destroyed at the least two brothels in New York, demolishing them, complete with ripping apart the feather beds. Muskets were shot, mortally wounding some, but even then none of the gathered crowd bothered to repress the riot, simply watching on as the ransacking and violence continued. The so-called reason for the riot concerned a man charged with the rape of a prostitute. The parlous tensions between the classes had already spiked before the uprising because of the outbreak of Yellow Fever in the states, and the rioters acted out with the claim that they were preserving the general health of the citizens and that the brothel was infected with Yellow Fever—a presumably false statement. Beneath the layers of apparent care for the welfare of the public, ultimately the primary cause of the riot was for the safety of a rapist and his protecting a righteous reputation. Witnesses question whether such reforms should be left to the magistrates, and others indicate that the magistrates have not taken care of things such as this, even though they have had years to address them.

Yes, this had been in America, where the Riot Act has not been passed, but what if it had been in Britain? Would the outcome have been the same, or would the act be put into effect, inflicting capital punishment upon the rioters? It depends, you told him, on whether you find fault within the rioters or their victims.

If persons only follow the pathways of sin that they have known since birth and then are punished for the only pathways they have ever known, England argued, it can only be concluded that sinners are created before they are punished. But can sinners help themselves? You brought up the concept of original sin, the fact that people are born sinful, that they, overall, are specifically not good and cannot be good, no matter how hard they try—but, you said, they can be forgiven.

But, he asked, should they be?

The discussion unfolded from there, beginning with your fervent insistence that forgiveness is irrevocably essential and descending into the delving into a part of your mind that you had not visited in too long a time, and, after a considerable amount of time had passed, as you lifted a critical finger, leaning on the table and preparing to raise a strong argument to counter his own that condoned the death penalty, England gestured off to the doorway, dismissing the servants with a warning not to return. When Scotland expressed doubts about the order, England strode over to him to speak to him firmly.

You ducked your head, pushing the cold food around on your plate with what was definitely the wrong fork, and stiffly crossed your ankles, taking up the least amount of space possible. Setting down the fork, you sneaked a glance at England, who had reverted to his militarist posture. He was so full of ideas—ideas you had never fathomed—and you had to hear them all; it did not matter how long it took for him to tell you. Spending forever with him wouldn’t be so bad.

You shook your head. England had charmed you this far, yes, but who would not be courteous to newly discovered islands? Who was to say he did not do this to everyone? The negatives far outweighed the positives—the conflicting morals, the class differences, the age gap, his despicable narcissism, his gentle anger, his high cheekbones, the way he looked at you with a crooked grin… You smirked. Antonio had mentioned a time when he had suffered from erotomania—you had never thought it would affect you.

England looked over his shoulder at you, and you hastily dropped your gaze, seemingly entranced by your reflection in a glass vase on the table. You heard him laugh, and its sound bounced off of the walls. You swallowed. Erotomania or not—you had to be with him.

At last, Scotland nodded, pointed towards the end of the table, and left the room. England came back to you, and he lifted your hand to his lips again; your heart’s pounding in your ears drowned out his words, but as he produced a bottle of elderberry wine from the chair at the head of the table and tucked it under his arm, you caught a few words: that you two were to go upstairs, that you might converse on more intimate terms.

England, after grabbing two glasses, took your hand again and led you out of the dining room and through a narrow corridor, at the end of which was a spindly staircase. As you strained to climb each steep step, you kept your eyes only on the faint outline of the hand that assuredly pulled you through the darkness despite the sound of scuffled footing and the clink of the glasses against the stone wall as he felt his way upwards.

Arched windows let into the capacious hall at the top of the stairwell the entirety of the quickly fading sunlight, the crepuscular rays leaking through the panes. England jogged across the room to the fireplace as you, ensuring the latch caught, pulled the door behind you shut. Briefly examining the elaborate design on the thick carpet of the otherwise empty hall, you walked past the folded blanket onto which England had dropped the wine and glasses to kneel next to him at the fireplace, where he was struggling with the matches. You, shaking your head at him, managed to produce a spark from the flint lying on the side of the hearth.

As he sputtered off an excuse for his ineptitude, you pushed yourself backwards to sit on the edge of the rug. He puffed out his cheeks and slid over to you, his palms slipping on the floor. You rolled the bottle of elderberry wine behind your back to England, who poured the indigo liquid into the glasses. When you held yours up to the firelight, it glinted to turn more like red-violet, and you choked on it when Arthur nonchalantly told you that it was only four years ago when Britain stopped burning people at the stake.

Most of the victims were burnt for a crime which they did not commit—witchcraft—but, he asked, even if they had done something that the populace would equate to witchcraft, why then would it culminate in being burnt alive? Burning, after all, is especially inhumane—you rolled your eyes, expressing your complete and utter surprise at this comment; you thought you were going to drop dead from that surprise—why, what do you think the most humane method of capital punishment? Arthur pushed back his dry hair, prying some of it out of his neatly combed part, and asked you how you would like to die.

You leant your head back, scratching your neck with the tips of your third and fourth fingers. Death. Okay. The most controversial method of the day was beheading, what with the growing popularity of the guillotine in France in their little uprising, but Arthur assured you that it would die down quickly; it would surely be inconsequential. Your fingers skated across the underside of your chin. Avoiding anything involving your neck would be encouraged, so no guillotine or hanging for you.

As Galápagos, drowning would be next to impossible: you had grown up on islands; ocean water practically pulsed in your veins.

The neck of the wine bottle chinked again the rim of your glass as Arthur refilled it. You rubbed one of your eyes, blinking the fire back into focus.

If you were shot, you would not be able to stop panicking and thus let anyone obviate your bleeding to death. Not the quickest method, but not the slowest, either—but altogether unpleasant. Too scared.

Arthur had laugh lines around his eyes, and his smile revealed one tooth slightly sharper than the others. The bowl of his glass hit the corner of the brick leading into the hearth.

Poison, then, you told him, just as he was pressing the bottle to his lips. After gagging, he wiped off his mouth with his sleeve, handed you the bottle, and enquired after the type. Gathering at your silence your ignorance, Arthur rattled off a few poisons and their effects on the human body. Hemlock and its comatose properties, wolfsbane with suffocation, oleander and its paralysis… Releasing the empty wine bottle from your grasp, you lifted a finger and shook your head, telling him you did not care as you edged towards him.

He had poison on his lips.

The sour taste of elderberries diffused to consume all of your senses, thickening the air and numbing everything except for the warmth of his calloused hands on your cheeks. Sour—too sour to be true, to be good, to be pure; too sour not to worry.

Wincing, you pulled away, forced a sigh, and before he could confirm your contentment, asked what deserved death. You tilted your head, squinting at the small gap in the cartilage of his ear, and you hesitantly reached out to touch it, brushing part of his hair behind his ear as an excuse. He grimaced. Sin, yes, but what is sin?

As he dismissed the question, you shifted towards him until your knee was between both of his, and for the first time you noticed the thin scars on his face and neck: slits just above the left eye, across the left cheekbone, and one rectilinear trailing into his shirt—and green, green eyes that had been empty earlier this evening but now surged with a visceral light. You slowly dragged your middle finger in a path from just underneath his left eye and down the scar on his cheekbone, wondering aloud if this were sin. If he were.

Arthur shook his head, closing his eyes, and said that you would be forgiven.

A breath hitched in your throat—you hadn’t known that could happen to you—and you took his words as all the invitation in the world to close the torturous space between you. You untied the knot in his cravat, with his leaning back, his eyebrows raised, at the force your vehemence, and with a soft sough in the break of a kiss, he fumbled behind him to unfold the blanket, sweeping it around to wrap about you.

Tilting your neck back for him to kiss, you laughed as he struggled to undo the lacing of your corset, and he smiled, too, edging his head upwards to fit in the crook of your neck. You weren’t much help; you still struggled with Georgian clothing yourself, so the two of you bumbled along in your maudlin states. You fought to unbutton his waistcoat; you would have ripped them off if you could have—feeble but rapacious—Arthur slid his fingers under the edge of a sleeve of your chemise—gentle, illecebrous—hard to imagine that it was all extempore.

His name was like perfume poured out; you said it into his hair, onto his marred skin, on the arêtes at which his bones stuck out at disheartening angles. Arthur was starving but not for comestibles; he looked like he had gained five pounds and then lost twenty too quickly. You tapped your fingers on one of his bare hipbones, biting your lip. It was if he had been stretched, like butter spread too thinly across toast.

But Arthur’s lips dripped with sweetness; his love was more delightful than elderberry wine. He never let on that his past damaged him so—or perhaps his delitescent past was the reason for acting in the way he was. You found it difficult to give this more than a second’s thought; you cared only for the moment, for the selcouth present that you did not deserve, and you would deliciate it all to the best of your ability. The losing night, the amaranthine feelings that were whirling about in both of your heads—surely they would last forever; they would endure after the day breaks and the shadows flee.

And in that fear of ending, you surged forth with new voracity, biting his lower lip as one of his hands slid between your thighs, prepared to let him consume you entirely and to rest in his pure quiddity. Thinking—clarion thought no longer mattered. Words and actions flashed across your mind, blurring together as they left you. To give. To feel; to act. To be his demesne. To love. To be loved. Foggy. Can’t think. Languishing. But this. This is good. He is good.

Arthur, in the middle of it all, shone through the miasma, a beacon in a stormy bay and your own personal poison. Grinning. Endearingly refractory. Too sweet and too sour—oh, this man would be the death of you.

When the light of dawn with its cruel aubade seeped into the room, you awoke in a torpid, lethargic manner, your head heavy as you briefly contemplated your location. Arthur’s arms were tightly wrapped around you, his head nestled just below your ribcage, which was heavily vitiated with small, red splotches. Shivering, you pulled the blanket over yourself the best you could without disturbing him, and he continued his stalwart breathing. Arthur was asleep, but his heart was awake.

You shifted to lie on your side to relieve the horrible paraesthesia in your right arm as quietly as possible, scrunching up your face as the invisible pins pricked your arm as the blood returned to it. Turning your head to stare into the losing glow of the faintly glinting ashes in the fireplace, you rested your hand in his hair until he woke up, at which point he still had soft words for you. You laughed with relief and spoke in deliciously voluptuous susurrus until responsibility knocked on the windowpane.

The two of you gathered your scattered raiment, which you had flung across the room in the prurient heat of the night, and dressed phlegmatically, not making eye contact, and when Georgian society recognised you as one of its own, Arthur offered his arm to escort you downstairs. You descended to an empty, taciturn house, an estate that could have burnt in the night with no fatalities.

As you reached the door, the laughter subsided into solemnity. Arthur curtly explained his stratagem. The previous night, he told you, is to have never occurred as soon as you were out of the door. Looking down, you took one of his hands, rubbing the back of it with your thumb and waiting for a fracture in his ultimatum, but it never came. Acknowledging the tryst happened would result in severe castigation and social suicide. Permanence would be impossible.

Arthur cleared his throat and once again reverted to his regal posture, puffing out his chest and dropping your hand. He shallowly nodded, the finifugality clear in his stiff movements, detaching himself from the situation already. The growing unease in your stomach warned you to do the same, so you, swallowing, lifted your chin, narrowed your eyes, and faced the door—you had to turn away; his eyes overwhelmed you.

Would you mean nothing to him as soon as you went through the door? Exhaling, you knew right now that you could forever search the globe for the one your heart loves, and he would be right here. Why were you leaving? Why couldn’t you stay? Every step you took farther away from him would be a dagger in you.

But you could not ruin him. You had just started in society; Arthur had built up his reputation for years. To think that he would stoop to this just after he had lost a war would be intolerable; other countries would shun him—stoop. That was it. That was the truth. Stoop to your level.

You turned the doorknob, squinting as the sunshine blinded you, whiting out your vision for a couple of seconds, and you took a step out into the light, immediately stumbling as your ankle curled in. Arthur grabbed your arm, obviating you from falling completely, and smiled sheepishly. He denoted your left foot, which was still inside the doorframe. You beamed as he pulled you back inside, and you closed the door behind you so that the two of you could spend a few more precious minutes against the darkened wall in sybaritic silence.

***

“Chuck these into the rubbish bin, will you?” you asked as you tossed crumpled envelopes to Scotland, “This place is disgusting. I don’t think it’s been cleaned in centuries.” You bent over the desk, picking up a few letters. “Figures they’d shove the job off to minor countries, yeah?”

“Yeah,” he said, throwing them the few extra feet into the already overflowing wastebasket, “It just intensifies the unfairness of the situation. Not only can we not attend world meetings, no; we’ve got to clean up as well. Wisha unfair.”

You covered your mouth as you let out an ungainly laugh. “What did you say? Been hanging out with Ireland?”

You and Scotland had been assigned to clean out one of the old, dank mailrooms during the world conference. Work just to keep you busy and out of the major countries’ way chafed against your already wounded ego at being labelled as a minor country, a country subservient to a more powerful one—in your case, Ecuador. The other minors no doubt worked in other half-deserted rooms with pointless tasks.

The two of you had had to force the door to the minuscule room that morning because of the sheer amount of rubbish on the floor—paperwork, logbooks, and letters that spilled out of the mailboxes and covered the tile in a rebarbative, silverfish-eaten carpet. An ancient cup of some brown liquid rested on an unstable desk, and a few of the safes on the far wall had been ransacked, their keys still in the locks. Electric lights had yet to be installed in the mailroom, so the kerosene lamps would have to do. You had groaned, running your hands through your hair and turning to leave, but Scotland spun you around, saying that he was not doing it alone.

Scotland scowled. “Yes. Don’t you go poking fun; it’s not like I want to,” he said as he knelt to gather the aging papers into a pile, “It’s been a while since you’ve seen him, though, right?”

“Not in the last few decades. But then, I haven’t seen much of anybody in the last few decades,” you said, flipping through the letters, “Being a recluse was fantastic, but Ecuador finally convinced me to return to the world of the living.”

“More like dragged,” Scotland said, smirking, “We heard about the fight. Spain had to step in.”

“Shut up,” you said, setting aside a stack of letters to open one with your index finger. “Hey,” you said, edging the letter out of the envelope and unfolding it, “This one’s dated July 1903.”

“Then I want to know who was in charge of this place last year and kick him for letting this place spiral downwards at this pace within ten months. Responsibility. Come on.” Scotland scrunched the papers at his feet and began to throw them at the wastebasket, leaning backwards as he did so. “I don’t believe this place was in use last year.”

“Well, apparently it was,” you said with a flash of your eyebrows, “You ever get any mail?” You crushed the letter and aimed your toss towards one of the open safe boxes.

“Nah. It all goes to England. Missed,” he said, pursing his lips and sticking out his jaw, “And I know you didn’t, little Miss Hermit.” He threw another, this one at a higher arc.

You opened your mouth and then closed it. Sighing, you nudged the cup of archaic coffee over a few inches. “I, er, actually did. Once. In 1835.” You jerked your head to the side. “It was nothing, really. Nothing really important. But it was even addressed to me instead of Ecuador. It was in my mailbox. Just there,” you said, pointing towards one of the smaller boxes near the bottom of the shelf.

“Who sent it?”

“It was, er,” you said, picking up the stack of envelopes again, “It was a love letter from England. Sent in by means of a bloke named Charles Darwin, of all people.” The heels of your shoes clunked against the desk drawers as you examined an impression of a z on a stamp of Benjamin Franklin.

Scotland snorted. “You aren’t kidding? That’s ridiculous. England couldn’t be romantic if he tried—though I suppose at one point he was,” Scotland said, hastily looking away from you as you set the envelopes aside.

“And we’ve arrived at that. How did I know this was coming?” you asked flatly, gesturing loosely towards him, “Why can’t you leave a shy misanthrope alone?”

“Because,” Scotland said, shifting around to face you and propping his chin on his fist, “no one else knows about it. I know you were with England, but no one else does.”

“Oh! Shut up,” you said, dragging your hands down your face, “I mean, thank you for keeping it a secret, and all, but I really, really don’t care to talk about it.” You closed your eyes. “And Antonio knows. Antonio knows everything. He scared me to death when I got back that morning. I thought he’d be cross, but he wasn’t. He was pleased,” you said, poking your tongue into the side of your cheek, “It was as if he had planned it. And in retrospect, he probably did. I mean, he didn’t come back that evening. Arthur might have planned it, too. Believe me, I’ve analysed my memories of that night too many times.”

Scotland grinned and reverted to his position facing the rubbish bin. “I thought you didn’t want to talk—”

“Aaah, stop. I’ve been away from society too long,” you said, sliding off of the desk with an armful of papers and the coffee mug to throw them away.

“And did you miss it?”

“Absolutely not.” You dropped the paper into the garbage. “There a sink in that back room?” When he shrugged, you grabbed a lamp and trudged into the adjacent room. Placing the lamp on the counter, you twisted the tap of a musty sink until a trickle of water drizzled into the drain. “I mean, I don’t regret sleeping with Arthur—well, okay, maybe a little,” you called over the sound, “but what really vexes me is that it ended right then. I know we agreed to—” You poured the tainted coffee down the drain. “—but I figured we’d break the rules and get back together. Romantic, you know? But then, I guess, we didn’t set out to be romantic,” you said, watching the cup overflow with brown water and tipping it over again, “Our attempt at seduction was talking about death.”

“That’s very romantic, I say,” Scotland said, “Crikey, I’d do it if I knew that I was guaranteed to get into bed with someone. No harm done.”

Flicking the water off of your hands, you switched off the tap. “Are you saying I was easy?”

He bit his tongue. “Er. No? No,” Scotland said, missing the wastebasket again. “I, er…”

“Whatever. I was. I was vulnerable. Worse, I was desperate. But the thing is,” you said, returning to the main room, stepping around the piles of books that you and he had organised, and setting the kerosene lamp on the desk, “I’m fine. I’m just extremely upset that it ended there. I wish we could’ve had something sempiternal.” You plopped down on the floor next to Scotland. “I know we couldn’t have.” You flung a letter into the bin. “But it would’ve been nice.”

“Nice shot,” he said, “but if we stood a few metres back—”

The stentorian ringing of a bell cut through the crack underneath the door, and you stood, brushing off yourself. “That’ll be the end of the meeting.” You offered your hand to him.

“Where you going?” Scotland asked as you yanked him up, “We didn’t finish.”

“Like you care.”

“Eh. True.”

“I’m going to go find Arthur,” you said, your hand on the doorknob. He clamped his hand on your shoulder and tried to dissuade you from chasing after him, but you shook him off and forced open the door.

Scotland called out to you as you followed the distant sounds of voices at the end of a connecting corridor, but you shook your head, smiling. “I’m tired of waiting. He’s not going to act, so I will. He won’t expect it, so I’ve the advantage. Honestly, Scotland,” you said, turning around and walking down the hallway, “I’ve been dead for too long.”

Absurd confidence pulsed through your veins as you strode through the solitary hall, and you quickened your pace the less you thought about what you were going to do. The clicking of your shoes echoed slightly, and you narrowed your eyes, lifting your chin, and grinned.

Arthur stood at the end of the corridor just outside the conference room with three other countries—Antonio one of them—and handed them pamphlets before brusquely saluting and purposefully walking away down the right-hand hallway.

You jogged to catch up with him before he disappeared, disregarding the appalled expressions of the countries you passed as you turned the corner. Antonio said something to you, but you paid him no mind. Biting your lip, you slid to a stop halfway down the hall. Arthur had turned too quickly. Hesitating for a beat, you shook your head and turned down the left hallway.

Too empty, even at the midway point. Clicking your tongue, you made to go back to the other way, but by chance you glanced down a narrow hallway to see Arthur going down it, his head tilted up towards the ceiling. Lifting a finger, you began to call out to him, but all you managed was blithering balbutiation, complete with your voice cracking.

Cringing, you retreated to the wall just beside the archway, holding your breath. The sound of his footsteps no longer echoed down the hallway, but after a moment, they started up again. Deeming it safe to steal a glance, you peeked around the arch. Arthur smiled at you before vanishing behind the far corner.

Spluttering, you clapped a hand over your mouth, holding back a sob whose true emotions you could not identify. Gorgonised, you stood at the end of the corridor, your heart threatening to break out of your chest. You coughed, letting your head drop, only to blush at the flimsy, pigeon-toed form of your feet, so you closed your watering eyes and tilted your head up instead. When opened your eyes to wipe off your tears, you paused, transfixed at the ceiling. On it, someone had painted stars.

When you returned to the mailroom not an hour later, you found a bottle of elderberry wine in your mailbox.

Description
England x Reader
Clemency

1793.

The past fortnight had rushed by in the most frenzied ferment of your life. Entirely too much had been smashed together for your complete comprehension. After years of seclusion in the Pacific, you had elected to join society at last—you said elected; really, it had been at Spain’s—Antonio’s, as he had told you to call him—ardent persuasion that you leave your life of isolation, and, under his circumspect instruction, you had poorly memorised the fundamentals of Georgian society. Antonio could have hardly taught you everything in two weeks, a term that would have been much, much longer if not for the imminent World Conference in four days’ time. Your lessons would have gone uninterrupted if not for an invitation from one of the prominent empires.

Antonio had lightly snatched it from the attendant and had broken the seal with his index finger, explaining to you after a brief perusal that you had an admirer. You, after setting down what may or may not have been the right fork, had expressed your astonishment and your refusal to go out in public. Antonio had held your hand between both of his, the lower one slowly stroking your palm, and had explained what an honour it was to be summoned for such a private meeting before a formal introduction at a conference, and you had reluctantly agreed to attend.

With a lump in your throat, you watched as Antonio’s carriage drove off down the road, the wheels spurring up the dirt that so reflected the quiddity of the musty, late October, and he was leaving you alone in a potentially parlous place, much to your displeasure.

With any luck, you would not have to talk much to anyone.

You, wincing, heaved open the creaking, iron gates to the manor and shut them behind you as quietly as possible and began to meander your way to the front doors, which were opened for you by a lanky, ginger manservant who confoundedly told you his name was Scotland after you surprisingly asked after it. He led you through an extensive system of corridors whilst you trailed behind him and gaped at the intricately designed ceilings with your mouth hanging slightly open in a particularly idiotic way.

Scotland walked across the florally carpeted threshold of a spacious dining room, holding his hand up to you before crossing to the opposite wall to address a jaded man with his back to the door, his hands clasped behind his back and his stance wide. He turned swiftly at Scotland’s murmured words, and upon seeing you, he strengthened his military air by puffing out his chest and lifting his chin slightly and strode towards you.

After he quietly told you he was England and Scotland introduced you as Galápagos, England bowed deeply over your hand and kissed it, and the heat rose to your face in such a rush that you starting sweating at your hairline. Quickly hiding your hand behind your back as soon as he dropped it, you wilfully held your tongue as you were led to the table.

As soon as you were seated, you thankfully exhibited the prudence not to denote your complete lack of fortitude and will to end the evening on pleasant terms. You forced yourself to make eye contact, keep an attentive expression, and react cordially. Antonio had not thoroughly prepared you for proper, verbal responses; he had merely told you to keep your mouth shut, lest something uncouth come out of it. You, being content with sitting still and appearing winsome for the night, listened on to England’s one-sided conversation as you picked at an unidentifiable food.

England spoke briskly but gently. He began with the usual enquiries after acquaintances; oh, are they well? He nodded at your brief, broken replies and, gathering that Georgian society was virtually unknown to you after the retrospectively recognisable test of whether or not you knew of his issuing the first five-pound note earlier that year, took the initiative to speak about topics that required little confabulator participation save for the occasional smile or appreciative interjection.

Throughout his stories, the fact that he still held himself as a military hero despite his recent losing of a war shone through them. England, recounting recycled tales with a strange emptiness in his eyes, portrayed himself as the superior, cogent power, always doing the right thing even if he ultimately came off worse than his opponent, claiming he always had the higher moral ground.

Narrowing your eyes, you spoke against his assertion, immediately slapping your hand over your mouth after you said it: your naturally gallinaceous nature had begun to leak through the interstices. England raised an eyebrow at your actions, and the side of his mouth twitched up into a smile—the first one of the evening.

From then on, you conversed with no desire to appease him, saying the most outrageously tactless things, yet the less you tried to constrain yourself, the more he dropped his formal façade. England informed you completely of a background of a matter before discussing it, and thus you could comprehend on a shallow level but could never dare to attempt to match his erudition.

After regaling you with less than noble stories of the Revolution and of his time in the colonies—states, he corrected himself—he moved on to more recent things, praising the newly released Westminster Quarters in the Church of St. Mary the Great—written by a professor England had met briefly, Joseph Jowett—and being entirely positive that this short tune was on the brink of something incredible. England mentioned in passing the whorehouse riot in October, and, when you said that you had heard of it whilst with Antonio, he brought it around to a mildly rollicking discussion eventually transcending the riot in favour of the morality—does one justifiably punish or have mercy for sin?

In October of that year, lower-class men of all ages had destroyed at the least two brothels in New York, demolishing them, complete with ripping apart the feather beds. Muskets were shot, mortally wounding some, but even then none of the gathered crowd bothered to repress the riot, simply watching on as the ransacking and violence continued. The so-called reason for the riot concerned a man charged with the rape of a prostitute. The parlous tensions between the classes had already spiked before the uprising because of the outbreak of Yellow Fever in the states, and the rioters acted out with the claim that they were preserving the general health of the citizens and that the brothel was infected with Yellow Fever—a presumably false statement. Beneath the layers of apparent care for the welfare of the public, ultimately the primary cause of the riot was for the safety of a rapist and his protecting a righteous reputation. Witnesses question whether such reforms should be left to the magistrates, and others indicate that the magistrates have not taken care of things such as this, even though they have had years to address them.

Yes, this had been in America, where the Riot Act has not been passed, but what if it had been in Britain? Would the outcome have been the same, or would the act be put into effect, inflicting capital punishment upon the rioters? It depends, you told him, on whether you find fault within the rioters or their victims.

If persons only follow the pathways of sin that they have known since birth and then are punished for the only pathways they have ever known, England argued, it can only be concluded that sinners are created before they are punished. But can sinners help themselves? You brought up the concept of original sin, the fact that people are born sinful, that they, overall, are specifically not good and cannot be good, no matter how hard they try—but, you said, they can be forgiven.

But, he asked, should they be?

The discussion unfolded from there, beginning with your fervent insistence that forgiveness is irrevocably essential and descending into the delving into a part of your mind that you had not visited in too long a time, and, after a considerable amount of time had passed, as you lifted a critical finger, leaning on the table and preparing to raise a strong argument to counter his own that condoned the death penalty, England gestured off to the doorway, dismissing the servants with a warning not to return. When Scotland expressed doubts about the order, England strode over to him to speak to him firmly.

You ducked your head, pushing the cold food around on your plate with what was definitely the wrong fork, and stiffly crossed your ankles, taking up the least amount of space possible. Setting down the fork, you sneaked a glance at England, who had reverted to his militarist posture. He was so full of ideas—ideas you had never fathomed—and you had to hear them all; it did not matter how long it took for him to tell you. Spending forever with him wouldn’t be so bad.

You shook your head. England had charmed you this far, yes, but who would not be courteous to newly discovered islands? Who was to say he did not do this to everyone? The negatives far outweighed the positives—the conflicting morals, the class differences, the age gap, his despicable narcissism, his gentle anger, his high cheekbones, the way he looked at you with a crooked grin… You smirked. Antonio had mentioned a time when he had suffered from erotomania—you had never thought it would affect you.

England looked over his shoulder at you, and you hastily dropped your gaze, seemingly entranced by your reflection in a glass vase on the table. You heard him laugh, and its sound bounced off of the walls. You swallowed. Erotomania or not—you had to be with him.

At last, Scotland nodded, pointed towards the end of the table, and left the room. England came back to you, and he lifted your hand to his lips again; your heart’s pounding in your ears drowned out his words, but as he produced a bottle of elderberry wine from the chair at the head of the table and tucked it under his arm, you caught a few words: that you two were to go upstairs, that you might converse on more intimate terms.

England, after grabbing two glasses, took your hand again and led you out of the dining room and through a narrow corridor, at the end of which was a spindly staircase. As you strained to climb each steep step, you kept your eyes only on the faint outline of the hand that assuredly pulled you through the darkness despite the sound of scuffled footing and the clink of the glasses against the stone wall as he felt his way upwards.

Arched windows let into the capacious hall at the top of the stairwell the entirety of the quickly fading sunlight, the crepuscular rays leaking through the panes. England jogged across the room to the fireplace as you, ensuring the latch caught, pulled the door behind you shut. Briefly examining the elaborate design on the thick carpet of the otherwise empty hall, you walked past the folded blanket onto which England had dropped the wine and glasses to kneel next to him at the fireplace, where he was struggling with the matches. You, shaking your head at him, managed to produce a spark from the flint lying on the side of the hearth.

As he sputtered off an excuse for his ineptitude, you pushed yourself backwards to sit on the edge of the rug. He puffed out his cheeks and slid over to you, his palms slipping on the floor. You rolled the bottle of elderberry wine behind your back to England, who poured the indigo liquid into the glasses. When you held yours up to the firelight, it glinted to turn more like red-violet, and you choked on it when Arthur nonchalantly told you that it was only four years ago when Britain stopped burning people at the stake.

Most of the victims were burnt for a crime which they did not commit—witchcraft—but, he asked, even if they had done something that the populace would equate to witchcraft, why then would it culminate in being burnt alive? Burning, after all, is especially inhumane—you rolled your eyes, expressing your complete and utter surprise at this comment; you thought you were going to drop dead from that surprise—why, what do you think the most humane method of capital punishment? Arthur pushed back his dry hair, prying some of it out of his neatly combed part, and asked you how you would like to die.

You leant your head back, scratching your neck with the tips of your third and fourth fingers. Death. Okay. The most controversial method of the day was beheading, what with the growing popularity of the guillotine in France in their little uprising, but Arthur assured you that it would die down quickly; it would surely be inconsequential. Your fingers skated across the underside of your chin. Avoiding anything involving your neck would be encouraged, so no guillotine or hanging for you.

As Galápagos, drowning would be next to impossible: you had grown up on islands; ocean water practically pulsed in your veins.

The neck of the wine bottle chinked again the rim of your glass as Arthur refilled it. You rubbed one of your eyes, blinking the fire back into focus.

If you were shot, you would not be able to stop panicking and thus let anyone obviate your bleeding to death. Not the quickest method, but not the slowest, either—but altogether unpleasant. Too scared.

Arthur had laugh lines around his eyes, and his smile revealed one tooth slightly sharper than the others. The bowl of his glass hit the corner of the brick leading into the hearth.

Poison, then, you told him, just as he was pressing the bottle to his lips. After gagging, he wiped off his mouth with his sleeve, handed you the bottle, and enquired after the type. Gathering at your silence your ignorance, Arthur rattled off a few poisons and their effects on the human body. Hemlock and its comatose properties, wolfsbane with suffocation, oleander and its paralysis… Releasing the empty wine bottle from your grasp, you lifted a finger and shook your head, telling him you did not care as you edged towards him.

He had poison on his lips.

The sour taste of elderberries diffused to consume all of your senses, thickening the air and numbing everything except for the warmth of his calloused hands on your cheeks. Sour—too sour to be true, to be good, to be pure; too sour not to worry.

Wincing, you pulled away, forced a sigh, and before he could confirm your contentment, asked what deserved death. You tilted your head, squinting at the small gap in the cartilage of his ear, and you hesitantly reached out to touch it, brushing part of his hair behind his ear as an excuse. He grimaced. Sin, yes, but what is sin?

As he dismissed the question, you shifted towards him until your knee was between both of his, and for the first time you noticed the thin scars on his face and neck: slits just above the left eye, across the left cheekbone, and one rectilinear trailing into his shirt—and green, green eyes that had been empty earlier this evening but now surged with a visceral light. You slowly dragged your middle finger in a path from just underneath his left eye and down the scar on his cheekbone, wondering aloud if this were sin. If he were.

Arthur shook his head, closing his eyes, and said that you would be forgiven.

A breath hitched in your throat—you hadn’t known that could happen to you—and you took his words as all the invitation in the world to close the torturous space between you. You untied the knot in his cravat, with his leaning back, his eyebrows raised, at the force your vehemence, and with a soft sough in the break of a kiss, he fumbled behind him to unfold the blanket, sweeping it around to wrap about you.

Tilting your neck back for him to kiss, you laughed as he struggled to undo the lacing of your corset, and he smiled, too, edging his head upwards to fit in the crook of your neck. You weren’t much help; you still struggled with Georgian clothing yourself, so the two of you bumbled along in your maudlin states. You fought to unbutton his waistcoat; you would have ripped them off if you could have—feeble but rapacious—Arthur slid his fingers under the edge of a sleeve of your chemise—gentle, illecebrous—hard to imagine that it was all extempore.

His name was like perfume poured out; you said it into his hair, onto his marred skin, on the arêtes at which his bones stuck out at disheartening angles. Arthur was starving but not for comestibles; he looked like he had gained five pounds and then lost twenty too quickly. You tapped your fingers on one of his bare hipbones, biting your lip. It was if he had been stretched, like butter spread too thinly across toast.

But Arthur’s lips dripped with sweetness; his love was more delightful than elderberry wine. He never let on that his past damaged him so—or perhaps his delitescent past was the reason for acting in the way he was. You found it difficult to give this more than a second’s thought; you cared only for the moment, for the selcouth present that you did not deserve, and you would deliciate it all to the best of your ability. The losing night, the amaranthine feelings that were whirling about in both of your heads—surely they would last forever; they would endure after the day breaks and the shadows flee.

And in that fear of ending, you surged forth with new voracity, biting his lower lip as one of his hands slid between your thighs, prepared to let him consume you entirely and to rest in his pure quiddity. Thinking—clarion thought no longer mattered. Words and actions flashed across your mind, blurring together as they left you. To give. To feel; to act. To be his demesne. To love. To be loved. Foggy. Can’t think. Languishing. But this. This is good. He is good.

Arthur, in the middle of it all, shone through the miasma, a beacon in a stormy bay and your own personal poison. Grinning. Endearingly refractory. Too sweet and too sour—oh, this man would be the death of you.

When the light of dawn with its cruel aubade seeped into the room, you awoke in a torpid, lethargic manner, your head heavy as you briefly contemplated your location. Arthur’s arms were tightly wrapped around you, his head nestled just below your ribcage, which was heavily vitiated with small, red splotches. Shivering, you pulled the blanket over yourself the best you could without disturbing him, and he continued his stalwart breathing. Arthur was asleep, but his heart was awake.

You shifted to lie on your side to relieve the horrible paraesthesia in your right arm as quietly as possible, scrunching up your face as the invisible pins pricked your arm as the blood returned to it. Turning your head to stare into the losing glow of the faintly glinting ashes in the fireplace, you rested your hand in his hair until he woke up, at which point he still had soft words for you. You laughed with relief and spoke in deliciously voluptuous susurrus until responsibility knocked on the windowpane.

The two of you gathered your scattered raiment, which you had flung across the room in the prurient heat of the night, and dressed phlegmatically, not making eye contact, and when Georgian society recognised you as one of its own, Arthur offered his arm to escort you downstairs. You descended to an empty, taciturn house, an estate that could have burnt in the night with no fatalities.

As you reached the door, the laughter subsided into solemnity. Arthur curtly explained his stratagem. The previous night, he told you, is to have never occurred as soon as you were out of the door. Looking down, you took one of his hands, rubbing the back of it with your thumb and waiting for a fracture in his ultimatum, but it never came. Acknowledging the tryst happened would result in severe castigation and social suicide. Permanence would be impossible.

Arthur cleared his throat and once again reverted to his regal posture, puffing out his chest and dropping your hand. He shallowly nodded, the finifugality clear in his stiff movements, detaching himself from the situation already. The growing unease in your stomach warned you to do the same, so you, swallowing, lifted your chin, narrowed your eyes, and faced the door—you had to turn away; his eyes overwhelmed you.

Would you mean nothing to him as soon as you went through the door? Exhaling, you knew right now that you could forever search the globe for the one your heart loves, and he would be right here. Why were you leaving? Why couldn’t you stay? Every step you took farther away from him would be a dagger in you.

But you could not ruin him. You had just started in society; Arthur had built up his reputation for years. To think that he would stoop to this just after he had lost a war would be intolerable; other countries would shun him—stoop. That was it. That was the truth. Stoop to your level.

You turned the doorknob, squinting as the sunshine blinded you, whiting out your vision for a couple of seconds, and you took a step out into the light, immediately stumbling as your ankle curled in. Arthur grabbed your arm, obviating you from falling completely, and smiled sheepishly. He denoted your left foot, which was still inside the doorframe. You beamed as he pulled you back inside, and you closed the door behind you so that the two of you could spend a few more precious minutes against the darkened wall in sybaritic silence.

***

“Chuck these into the rubbish bin, will you?” you asked as you tossed crumpled envelopes to Scotland, “This place is disgusting. I don’t think it’s been cleaned in centuries.” You bent over the desk, picking up a few letters. “Figures they’d shove the job off to minor countries, yeah?”

“Yeah,” he said, throwing them the few extra feet into the already overflowing wastebasket, “It just intensifies the unfairness of the situation. Not only can we not attend world meetings, no; we’ve got to clean up as well. Wisha unfair.”

You covered your mouth as you let out an ungainly laugh. “What did you say? Been hanging out with Ireland?”

You and Scotland had been assigned to clean out one of the old, dank mailrooms during the world conference. Work just to keep you busy and out of the major countries’ way chafed against your already wounded ego at being labelled as a minor country, a country subservient to a more powerful one—in your case, Ecuador. The other minors no doubt worked in other half-deserted rooms with pointless tasks.

The two of you had had to force the door to the minuscule room that morning because of the sheer amount of rubbish on the floor—paperwork, logbooks, and letters that spilled out of the mailboxes and covered the tile in a rebarbative, silverfish-eaten carpet. An ancient cup of some brown liquid rested on an unstable desk, and a few of the safes on the far wall had been ransacked, their keys still in the locks. Electric lights had yet to be installed in the mailroom, so the kerosene lamps would have to do. You had groaned, running your hands through your hair and turning to leave, but Scotland spun you around, saying that he was not doing it alone.

Scotland scowled. “Yes. Don’t you go poking fun; it’s not like I want to,” he said as he knelt to gather the aging papers into a pile, “It’s been a while since you’ve seen him, though, right?”

“Not in the last few decades. But then, I haven’t seen much of anybody in the last few decades,” you said, flipping through the letters, “Being a recluse was fantastic, but Ecuador finally convinced me to return to the world of the living.”

“More like dragged,” Scotland said, smirking, “We heard about the fight. Spain had to step in.”

“Shut up,” you said, setting aside a stack of letters to open one with your index finger. “Hey,” you said, edging the letter out of the envelope and unfolding it, “This one’s dated July 1903.”

“Then I want to know who was in charge of this place last year and kick him for letting this place spiral downwards at this pace within ten months. Responsibility. Come on.” Scotland scrunched the papers at his feet and began to throw them at the wastebasket, leaning backwards as he did so. “I don’t believe this place was in use last year.”

“Well, apparently it was,” you said with a flash of your eyebrows, “You ever get any mail?” You crushed the letter and aimed your toss towards one of the open safe boxes.

“Nah. It all goes to England. Missed,” he said, pursing his lips and sticking out his jaw, “And I know you didn’t, little Miss Hermit.” He threw another, this one at a higher arc.

You opened your mouth and then closed it. Sighing, you nudged the cup of archaic coffee over a few inches. “I, er, actually did. Once. In 1835.” You jerked your head to the side. “It was nothing, really. Nothing really important. But it was even addressed to me instead of Ecuador. It was in my mailbox. Just there,” you said, pointing towards one of the smaller boxes near the bottom of the shelf.

“Who sent it?”

“It was, er,” you said, picking up the stack of envelopes again, “It was a love letter from England. Sent in by means of a bloke named Charles Darwin, of all people.” The heels of your shoes clunked against the desk drawers as you examined an impression of a z on a stamp of Benjamin Franklin.

Scotland snorted. “You aren’t kidding? That’s ridiculous. England couldn’t be romantic if he tried—though I suppose at one point he was,” Scotland said, hastily looking away from you as you set the envelopes aside.

“And we’ve arrived at that. How did I know this was coming?” you asked flatly, gesturing loosely towards him, “Why can’t you leave a shy misanthrope alone?”

“Because,” Scotland said, shifting around to face you and propping his chin on his fist, “no one else knows about it. I know you were with England, but no one else does.”

“Oh! Shut up,” you said, dragging your hands down your face, “I mean, thank you for keeping it a secret, and all, but I really, really don’t care to talk about it.” You closed your eyes. “And Antonio knows. Antonio knows everything. He scared me to death when I got back that morning. I thought he’d be cross, but he wasn’t. He was pleased,” you said, poking your tongue into the side of your cheek, “It was as if he had planned it. And in retrospect, he probably did. I mean, he didn’t come back that evening. Arthur might have planned it, too. Believe me, I’ve analysed my memories of that night too many times.”

Scotland grinned and reverted to his position facing the rubbish bin. “I thought you didn’t want to talk—”

“Aaah, stop. I’ve been away from society too long,” you said, sliding off of the desk with an armful of papers and the coffee mug to throw them away.

“And did you miss it?”

“Absolutely not.” You dropped the paper into the garbage. “There a sink in that back room?” When he shrugged, you grabbed a lamp and trudged into the adjacent room. Placing the lamp on the counter, you twisted the tap of a musty sink until a trickle of water drizzled into the drain. “I mean, I don’t regret sleeping with Arthur—well, okay, maybe a little,” you called over the sound, “but what really vexes me is that it ended right then. I know we agreed to—” You poured the tainted coffee down the drain. “—but I figured we’d break the rules and get back together. Romantic, you know? But then, I guess, we didn’t set out to be romantic,” you said, watching the cup overflow with brown water and tipping it over again, “Our attempt at seduction was talking about death.”

“That’s very romantic, I say,” Scotland said, “Crikey, I’d do it if I knew that I was guaranteed to get into bed with someone. No harm done.”

Flicking the water off of your hands, you switched off the tap. “Are you saying I was easy?”

He bit his tongue. “Er. No? No,” Scotland said, missing the wastebasket again. “I, er…”

“Whatever. I was. I was vulnerable. Worse, I was desperate. But the thing is,” you said, returning to the main room, stepping around the piles of books that you and he had organised, and setting the kerosene lamp on the desk, “I’m fine. I’m just extremely upset that it ended there. I wish we could’ve had something sempiternal.” You plopped down on the floor next to Scotland. “I know we couldn’t have.” You flung a letter into the bin. “But it would’ve been nice.”

“Nice shot,” he said, “but if we stood a few metres back—”

The stentorian ringing of a bell cut through the crack underneath the door, and you stood, brushing off yourself. “That’ll be the end of the meeting.” You offered your hand to him.

“Where you going?” Scotland asked as you yanked him up, “We didn’t finish.”

“Like you care.”

“Eh. True.”

“I’m going to go find Arthur,” you said, your hand on the doorknob. He clamped his hand on your shoulder and tried to dissuade you from chasing after him, but you shook him off and forced open the door.

Scotland called out to you as you followed the distant sounds of voices at the end of a connecting corridor, but you shook your head, smiling. “I’m tired of waiting. He’s not going to act, so I will. He won’t expect it, so I’ve the advantage. Honestly, Scotland,” you said, turning around and walking down the hallway, “I’ve been dead for too long.”

Absurd confidence pulsed through your veins as you strode through the solitary hall, and you quickened your pace the less you thought about what you were going to do. The clicking of your shoes echoed slightly, and you narrowed your eyes, lifting your chin, and grinned.

Arthur stood at the end of the corridor just outside the conference room with three other countries—Antonio one of them—and handed them pamphlets before brusquely saluting and purposefully walking away down the right-hand hallway.

You jogged to catch up with him before he disappeared, disregarding the appalled expressions of the countries you passed as you turned the corner. Antonio said something to you, but you paid him no mind. Biting your lip, you slid to a stop halfway down the hall. Arthur had turned too quickly. Hesitating for a beat, you shook your head and turned down the left hallway.

Too empty, even at the midway point. Clicking your tongue, you made to go back to the other way, but by chance you glanced down a narrow hallway to see Arthur going down it, his head tilted up towards the ceiling. Lifting a finger, you began to call out to him, but all you managed was blithering balbutiation, complete with your voice cracking.

Cringing, you retreated to the wall just beside the archway, holding your breath. The sound of his footsteps no longer echoed down the hallway, but after a moment, they started up again. Deeming it safe to steal a glance, you peeked around the arch. Arthur smiled at you before vanishing behind the far corner.

Spluttering, you clapped a hand over your mouth, holding back a sob whose true emotions you could not identify. Gorgonised, you stood at the end of the corridor, your heart threatening to break out of your chest. You coughed, letting your head drop, only to blush at the flimsy, pigeon-toed form of your feet, so you closed your watering eyes and tilted your head up instead. When opened your eyes to wipe off your tears, you paused, transfixed at the ceiling. On it, someone had painted stars.

When you returned to the mailroom not an hour later, you found a bottle of elderberry wine in your mailbox.