The thrill of the kill is in the chase

"I am happy," Patrick lied. "Well, most of the time, anyway. I only feel..."

Ambience from the party filled the void. Patrick continued to twine his fingers together, although he forced himself to stop, and instead flattened his palms against his thighs. He gazed towards the conservatory. Odd, how when one felt on the outside there was a desperation to be included. For once, Patrick felt no such compulsion. He was content enough to be here, in the muggy summer air, with Edwin. For them to be adrift a little while longer.

"I disagree with you." At length, Patrick looked at Edwin. "I'm sorry, but I do. All my life is, really, is one big waiting room. I'm waiting to get married, I'm waiting to be heir. I'm waiting to be old. I don't want to be old! There's so much of life that I haven't yet experienced, and..."

Exasperated, Patrick leaned his head back against the railing and huffed. "I hope you understand what I mean. At least war had some sort of point to it. I felt like I was... making a difference. Now, I'm sat around waiting for my father to die."

After a beat, he added: "It's macabre, really. I've never said it before, but it is."

“You sound ridiculous.”

Actually, to be precise, Patrick sounded like one of those women who wrote into magazines about how bored and endless their days were, and some man writing back as Aunt Merryweather advised them to spend some more of their husbands’ money. He sounded like Caroline.

Yet, Patrick was inclined to be honest with Edwin. Despite their barbarity to one another, there was always a degree of truth to their interactions. Didn't it take truth to hate someone so deeply? To harm and forgive them? Didn't such things take a depth of feeling that defied description? Wasn't there an honesty in loathing someone so much you ended up, in some twisted way, loving them again?

Was that not what God suffered with his creation?

The silence stretched between them. Patrick listened to the jazz quartet. A rich, warbling female voice drifted through the tinkling party. Trouble, trouble, I've had it all my days...

"Sometimes I think that it's obvious," Patrick whispered, linking his fingers atop his knees. "Like it's branded on me. I'm so- What I mean to say is that, well, I'm..."

Patrick swallowed and carefully kept his face turned away, pretending interest in his neatly cut nails. He smoothed a thumb over the place where a wedding ring ought to sit.

"I don't have anyone. And I don't mean... like that." Although he did. "I mean that I don't have any, um, friends." Patrick's expression creased again and he resisted the urge to shift in his seat. "I do what it's expected of me. At least, I try. But it doesn't feel... it's nothing like how I remember life being. I know it's sick," Patrick added, glancing at Edwin. "I don't valorise the war, but I don't regret it either. How could I? It was the only time I ever really felt..."

This time, the corner of his lips jerked downwards reflexively, and he propped a hand up to his mouth as if to shield himself from Edwin's scrutiny.

Feeling Patrick trying to avoid his eye, Edwin picked up the mask that he'd tossed to the ground. Ribbons trailed; a satiny corner had gotten creased but flattened until the ministration of his thumb. And through the inanity of each careful motion, Patrick went on talking. Confidence after dreadful confidence. Things they both knew Edwin couldn't unhear. Why are you telling me this would have been a stupid question to ask. Patrick was obviously not expecting him to say, I'll be your friend, Giles. He simply had no one else to tell.

And yet... Edwin was suddenly bereft of the urge to mock him either. This isn't how I remember life being. The memory of Patrick saying that would rise up and haunt Edwin on his dying day.

"Of course it were a man. I live with 'em, don't I? That were a man's hand, and Lady Prudence had replied to him. Many times. I don't know a thing more. You ask her. Sounds like a family matter to me."

And this time, because she couldn't help herself, she grinned.

Evans's words sank through Edwin like a stone. For a benighted moment, he stood there in the boiler room, realising just what was happening. What he had set into motion. This man of Pru's could be anyone, and he didn't know what was worse: a nobody or somebody of standing. Married or unmarried. Forty-seven years old and riddled with gout, or some anonymous fool who nursed an infatuation for her.

Whoever it was, it was unlikely someone the Earl of Grantham would want his eldest daughter to marry.

"You thought I was flirting with you," Maud retorted, crossing her arms. "Which is preposterous, as it happens. I'm a married woman." Here, she would ordinarily flash the Mexican fire opal, but she kept her hand hidden. Her arms shifted until she was hugging herself, her shoulders hunching into her frizzy hair.

"Boys a dear!" Maud drawled, defensive. "All I wanted was some fun! Are you not familiar with that term, milord, or shall I remind you?"

Whatever coolness came upon her at first was rapidly subsiding. Maud began walking around the other side of the billiards table, intending to find Felix and to screw his brains out.

Too fucking late, reminded the voice at the back of his head, considering how much he'd already ill-advisedly said.

This sensation was not unlike being drunk, when one was so far gone that all that was left was to ride it out. The world continued to spin, but slowly, as if he had inadvertently discovered some anchor.

The voice that filtered through to him was not the hectoring, irritated tone that Edwin enjoyed. This one was brisk - Patrick suspected that even on his death bed Edwin would be brisk with him - but there was a kindliness there. Perhaps he was imagining it. Perhaps he only wanted there to be kindness. Patrick wanted kindess so badly it made him want to die.

"I should have waved back," Patrick mumbled. After a beat, his expression creased, and he drew his knees up to his chest and looped his arms around them. He breathed in the scent of sandalwood and honeysuckle and soap flakes. Comforting smells of childhood and home... So why did he long for gunpowder and blood?

Patrick opened his eyes slowly. When he looked up at Edwin, he felt like a small boy.

"I can't be here," Patrick whispered, clinging to the vestige of a memory. They could be anywhere: a dugout, lamplight, maps. A captain and his lieutenant. Cosy beneath the dirt.

"I never... I never felt like my life mattered anywhere than when I was at war. And I come back and..." They looked up at Montmere, the facade illuminated with gruesome excess.

"What's it all for?" Patrick's voice splintered. "What does it matter, when I'm so terribly, terribly..."

Not for the first time he thought how unlucky they'd been that Patrick hadn't died overseas.

Fucking waste of human life, he thought as he hauled aside the great whacking flower pot and wedged himself into the little bit of space next to Patrick. There was no way Edwin was letting him loose in the house in his current state. The beautiful plausible deniability of He must have been drunk would quickly turn into You plied him with drink.

"How am I supposed to know who you do or don't like?" Rosie retorted, uncrossing one arm so that she could twine some hair that straggled from her cap. "Besides, it's none of my business, isn't that what you said to me?" Without waiting for a reply, Rosie pursed her lips and momentarily enjoyed the feeling of power. It was nice to have the scales tip her way for once.

Clearing his throat, he added a little more respectably, "By which I mean are you sure it wasn't letters from the, I don't know, tailor or bookseller or the nearest MP?" But he knew it wasn't. He could tell from the glint in Evans's eye and the telltale uptick of his heartbeat.

"I don't want you to say... For goodness' sake, Ed, it's not like I need you to beg on your knees -" Patrick looked away quickly, his skin prickling with heat. He continued to fidget with his hat.

"All I mean is that I don't need you to do anything," Patrick continued, forcing himself to sound measured and reasonable. His heart beat hard and fast in his throat, so much so that he was convinced Edwin could see his jugular jump. They looked at each other.

"All I want is for you to be authentic, I suppose. I feel as if we've been here so many times, Ed. You can't blame a man for being sick of old promises."

At least Edwin had the wherewithal to close his needling before it grew too dangerous, yet he could not hide the derision that curled his lip. Patrick regarded his cousin and, in a flash of recognition, realised that he might not need true contrition. Edwin was haunted by bitterness; hadn't Patrick once characterised Edwin as being consumed by envy? Could he reasonable be expected to change that? Could anyone?

Softening, Patrick's mouth twisted in sympathy and he put his hat on. With his hands free, he could clasp Edwin's upper arm. The motion brought him back to another scene of forgiveness. Dappled sunlight through the pea-green boughs.

"Granny wouldn't kill me," Patrick remarked, still smiling. "You might, though. I'm kidding."

Her predominant emotion was disappointment. Lord Balfour had been such good fun, and now he was all damp and annoyed. She registered the way his lips twitched and wondered whether he used his fists or settled for breakable objects.

In fact, his reaction made her long for Felix. Darling Felix. Her loving man. Felix would stand there dripping, comically sedate, before tossing his own drink over her. She'd shriek, he'd pounce... Wrestling on the billiards table; breathless kissing.

"I'm not after anything but fun," Maud replied honestly. "I thought you were different. More fool me." She hopped down from the table, the beads on her dress catching the light and clicking with the movement. She swayed slightly - that was the third martini - and studied Lord Balfour.

With ceremony, she reached into her tiny glittering bag and pulled out another handkerchief and handed it to him. M&F. Also, coincidentally, remniscent of mother-fucker.

Edwin stared at the handkerchief for the longest time before finally accepting it. He used it to dab at the smallest, most imaginary droplet of martini that might have landed on his lapel, and handed it back to Mrs. Lombard.

Still, the guns boomed, although no longer could he hear the men screaming. There were always men screaming. Men, left on their own in the mud to die. They'd survive for days sometimes: moaning, pleading, calling for their friends. More than once Patrick had had to stop himself from climbing the ladder with his pistol cocked. More than once, he'd stopped himself from giving mercy. Only God could do such a thing.

Patrick closed his eyes and promptly swayed in place. He gripped the railing of the terrace and focused on his breathing. Once steadier, he turned his head to regard the man beside him. How did he...

"Captain," Patrick realised. He went to salute but realised that a cigarette still burned low in his knuckles. Patrick dropped it over the railing: the orange glow vanished in an instant.

"I saw you." His voice was still little more than a murmur. "In Cairo. Our ships... they passed each other. I waved. Didn't you see me wave to you?" Sadness bruised the memory. Edwin, always upright, always distant. No time for Giles. No time.

"I... I don't... No. Not... not them." Patrick squeezed his eyes shut as nausea tilted the world sideways. His knuckles whitened on the railing. "I can't... I don't want to worry them. Captain..."

The world swam into focus. Patrick looked at Edwin.

"I can't be here," he whispered hoarsely, "please. Take me somewhere. Take me..."

No one had called Edwin Captain in nearly five years, not the way Patrick said it. It was the kind of voice they used on him in the hospital, the nurses harried and sunken-eyed. Still so handsome, they assured him, the compliment sounding rehearsed, but Edwin's head had been ringing so much he had not thought to ask What do you mean 'still'? What had happened to him that might have taken that away?

He was gripping Patrick by the arm, the sleeve of his dress uniform clean and soft as if it had gone through many washes in peacetime. Preserved carefully in a cupboard by someone who had thought Patrick might want it to show his children someday, someone who thought this was the only real service anyone from Montmere House had ever done in their lives. He was lowering Patrick to the cold tile of the terrace, crouching down between the planters himself. There were bits of ash from the cigarette Patrick had been smoking and the heavy drip of honeysuckle in the air.

Was it... could it be that easy? Was that all Edwin needed from her: honesty? The concept seemed rather foreign. Topsy held his gaze for a beat before shifting away, her shoulders doing a funny shuffling shrug that she used to rely upon as a shy adolescent.

"It's nothing," Topsy replied briskly, though her eyes flicked back to Edwin for a sign of his approval. Her son. Her eldest boy. She gave him a small, affectionate smile.

He was handsome. Too much like his father, perhaps, but handsome all the same. He had Topsy's noble bearing and his father's angularity that had, in his youth, made him so arresting. She admired Edwin discreetly, then flushed when she realised the silence had grown protracted.

"Goodness," she remarked, flustered, "look at the time. I'll miss the mail train." Topsy picked up her pen and fidgeted with it. The next words were difficult.

"Thank you, Eddy. You can be so tender when you wish to be. I pray that you recognise how attractive and good that makes you."

Topsy struggled. A stutter fluttered on her tongue.

"Perry! Mr. Alderman!"

Still, the secret she had for Lord Balfour was anything but inhuman. If anything, it turned the frigid statue of Lady Pru into something with a livin', beatin' heart - a heart that was plump and juicy as a peach.

Oh dear. Oh, dear. Laughter, mad and uninhibited, swelled in Maud's throat, and it was all she could do to remain entirely impassive. If she suspected it before, Lord Balfour had all but confirmed it: he hadn't a clue who she was. More importantly, he perceived her to be the sort of woman that she'd given up the moment Felix had placed a ring on her finger: a harlot.

But there was another feeling that lurked beneath the hilarity. A dark, murky swamp of a feeling that wrinkled Maud's expression - and this she did not stifle.

What did Lord Balfour want, precisely? A peek up her skirt? More ribauld conversation? Once, she might have done both, but now only one was on offer. His eyes prickled over her skin and she looked away quickly, her cloud of wiry hair whipping around her face.

He didn't see her as a lady. He didn't see her at all.

Patrick had never conceptualised his life as monotonous. But now, standing on the terrace as the opening strings of a party sounded behind him, he realised that he had been here before: in some other uniform, smoking another cigarette, listening to the same music. The whine of an early summer evening. Honeysuckle and champagne. Here he was again.

The cigarette burned low between his knuckles. Patrick gazed out into the bruising darkness, the lawn illuminated by long streaks of yellow light from the chandeliers inside. Guests buzzed in the conservatory, their shadows mingling with those cast by the array of tropical plants, laughter and conversation fragmented by the enormous, floor-to-ceiling windows.

Dully, from very far away, the guns sounded.

Patrick barely stirred as someone arrived alongside. He was on the edge of an ocean; he was on the edge of No-Man's-Land. You-Know-Where. Mud and emerald grass. His left ear was ringing.

He greeted them - he must have done. Mind your manners, Giles. Patrick misheard and glanced down at his costume in a distracted, fuzzy way, as if moving underwater. His man had dressed him in his lieutenant's uniform, had burnished the brass buttons especially. Good man, good man.

"I didn't know it was themed," he muttered in response. Where was his batman, John? "I thought it was a formal... Gosh." Patrick's hand shook as he brought his cigarette to his mouth.

"Sorry, I... I'm sorry. I don't feel... myself."

Then: "Where am I?"

Corks. Bottles being sliced open judiciously far away from the horses, men leaning victoriously on their polo sticks as Edwin pulled off the stifling mask that went with the halfway literal Demon Lover costume.

Of all the would-be flappers, sophisticates, and drunks breezing through the house tonight, Caro surely qualified as the most excited. Parties at Montmere were, in her opinion, as rare as a sparrow's teeth. Real, actual parties, with the potential for thrills, for a whisper of danger, were something she hadn't experienced, since . . .she couldn't pinpoint just when, but she was positive that her new family had most definitely not been present at the time.

Plentiful alcohol, sleek attire – even a hint of anonymity, if you choose!

Her thoughts buzzed with elaborate fantasies. Perhaps someone below stairs would be caught in a nasty affair and sacked without ceremony. Perhaps some drapes would be set ablaze by a tipsy guest, and she'd watch the whole thing dissolve into ash.

She may have been getting ahead of herself, there. Surely, at the very least, the champagne tower would shower someone or other, at least.

As she took a sip of her drink (her second already, because her hostess didn't want everyone sober, did she?), her eyes widened.

Another drag from her cigarette as she began to recall the saga. "That's not it," Prudence replied confidently, although she wasn't so sure anymore. "She just looked so..." Surprised? "Guilty." Another drag from her cigarette.

Yet Patrick had to suppress the involuntary flinch moments before Edwin's hand was on his face, in his hair. The library flashed before him and Patrick turned his head away quickly, standing up as he did so. Edwin's touch lingered like burn and he stifled the animal instinct to run.

Edwin meant well. He was making amends. All men were sinners, before they found God.

Patrick put on a smile and flashed it in Edwin's general direction. "We ought to get on," he prompted, catching sight of the priest as he lurked in the background. "Are you going back up to the house? I'll come with you."

They filed out of the pew. Patrick wrung his hat as they commenced down the aisle, apprehension mounting to an unavoidable climax.

"Edwin," Patrick blurted, stopping him with a brush on the shoulder. This time, he met Edwin's gaze: a summer sky, mirrored, yet Edwin's eyes held an icy flint that Patrick doubted he could melt.

"A while ago I asked you whether you wanted to make up. Putting - putting aside our- altercation the other evening, are you... That is to say, do you mean all this?"

"What do you want me to say?" he asked Patrick. There was no display of contritition Edwin could make that Patrick would believe. Not after their altercation the other evening anyway. Patrick had seen too much of, too deep into Edwin. Things people didn't see. Things Edwin wanted no one to be knowing, and yet here they were. Just the two of them and a secret so unspeakable they weren't talking to each other about it. "Montmere's been my life as much as it's been yours. It's why..."

Edwin's lip curled, his expression momentarily collapsing into the bitterness he tried so hard to hide. And then it was blandness all over again, a shrug to smooth things over.