send us a quiet night • 2016 • aukestrel
the genre is slash
the fandom is georgette heyer - the quiet gentleman
the pairing is gervase/lucy
Soundtrack: Send Us A Quiet Night, June Tabor
This was written for coyotegestalt for Yuletide 2016. She said, "I'd really like to know more about Ger & Lucy – their adventures together in the war, or in politics in the future. They definitely read to me like they were very intimate on campaign, but I'm open to either slashy or just-friends interpretations."
Title from Send Us a Quiet Night, written by Christopher Somerville, performed by June Tabor.
I believe there are only minor spoilers contained herein. The ending is not spoiled.
Thanks to TheAmusedOne, Kalena, and dine for read-through. All mistakes are, of course, mine.
Since the Morvilles were expected back that afternoon, and Miss Morville's filial obligations were clear, she had driven over to welcome them. It was therefore no coincidence, Lucy felt, that Ger decided—when Turvey delivered the medicine that Miss Morville customarily brought—he would venture to spend some time out of bed to have his nuncheon. Thus it fell to Lucy to look after him, although of course he called it no such thing, instead telling Ger how curst boring it was when it rained at Stanyon, and if Ger didn’t take pity on him by giving him a hand or two of piquet, his imminent decline would be on Ger’s conscience.
Ger, being Ger, knew exactly what Lucy was doing, but—being Ger—smiled and expressed a desire for some brandy and cigarillos, if they were to have an afternoon of dissipation. Turvey closed his eyes briefly, as if in pain, but shortly thereafter a bottle of wine had been opened to breathe and two glasses set beside it on the small table between their wing-backed chairs, where a deck of cards already lay, waiting; and then Ger dismissed him.
Ger’s mind was not on the cards, but neither had Lucy’s been, and he was disinclined to rehash Martin again, not least because Ger had his own ideas on the subject, that much was clear; and Lucy knew from long experience that not a word would pass Ger’s lips until he was ready—and perhaps not even then. After two hands, they left the cards where they’d fallen, by mutual if unspoken agreement, and finished their wine. Rousing himself after a while, he offered to set up the chess board, but Ger shook his head, his eyelids drooping. So there he sat, listening to the steady rain pour down outside, watching the fire flicker, letting his own eyes fall closed.
He awoke with a start, not so very much later. Ger was dozing, his head at an uncomfortable angle against one wing of the chair. He was clad in only a dressing gown over his nightshirt; if he hadn’t been so dashed stubborn he’d have lain down after they’d finished the wine. So he turned down the sheets and then stooped alongside Ger’s chair. “Come along, dear boy,” he heard himself saying, getting an arm around him, with a care for his shoulder.
He’d had to do the same when he’d finally learned of the saber cut (it was considerate of Ger, he thought with a small grin, to be injured on the same side he was used to having a care for), just as Ger had had to do for him when the bay had baulked outside Tarbes that winter, and he’d been laid up for days with a skull he was lucky, the sawbones said, hadn’t cracked open like an eggshell.
“No, never mind,” Ger said, but Lucy only laughed at him, and that made Ger smile sleepily as they manoeuvred towards the bed.
He disposed Ger tidily in the bed, dispensing with the dressing gown, helping swing his legs up—“it’s not a leg injury, my dear fellow,” Ger murmured, not opening his eyes—and then pulling the coverlet up. His hand was stopped at Ger’s chest by Ger’s fingers around his wrist; and then Ger’s uninjured arm snaked up around his neck and pulled him down close.
Feverish; Lucy had had a suspicion of it. The lips pressed against his own were soft and warm. The rain fell outside, not letting up for a moment. Had there been fleas, and a straw mattress, and a creaking wooden floor, he would have thought himself back in time: the unceasing downpour was the same. Only that time it had been Lucy on the bed, and Ger tucking him up, and Lucy’s arm around Ger’s neck.
Ger had returned that embrace whole-heartedly; just as Lucy was returning Ger’s embrace now, despite the danger—where had Turvey gone?—when would Miss Morville return? Thank God Chard had locked up that damned secret staircase, because—at this juncture—Lucy expected anyone at all to jump out, Martin at a guess, since he had a manifest talent for being de trop.
Then, of course, they hadn’t had to worry about interruptions of any kind. Their billet belonged to a shoemaker who had either run off or been conscripted—his wife had been understandably vague, so clearly it was the former, to avoid the latter, no doubt—and, once Ger had decided it would do, off she’d gone to stay with her daughter. Chard and Rodrigo had disposed themselves comfortably in the makeshift stable, the horses being of far more importance, Chard had said indulgently, than two green officers, especially one who let go the reins when he fell. That had made Lucy laugh, then wince as his head pounded; Chard had tracked down his bay, after all, and that was much more important than any dozen heads.
So when he’d opened his eyes and seen Ger leaning over him, he had smiled, just as Ger was doing now, and he’d pulled Ger down for a kiss, soft, easy. It hadn’t been very much longer before Ger had joined him on the pallet, nor much longer after that that they’d both been divested of any remaining clothing.
Eton had prepared Lucy for many things; what it hadn’t prepared him for was Ger’s mouth, on his own, or on his neck, or on his chest—or further down even than that. He’d spent rapidly, with a choke and then a sigh, and when he’d blinked his eyes open again, he’d only been in time to see Ger, alongside him again, his hand moving steadily at his own groin, his eyes squeezed tight. There had been a warm splash along Lucy’s thigh, but he’d paid no attention to it at all, only watched Ger’s face move from angelic to ecstatic.
That hadn’t been the first time they’d shared a pallet, either, but it had been the first time Ger pulled him close, tucked up behind him, his face in Lucy’s neck; and it was the most comfortable rest Lucy had had during the entire campaign thus far, aching head, fleas, and smoking chimneys notwithstanding.
The next morning—which had not dawned bright and clear—Ger had gone off with Chard, leaving him in Rodrigo’s charge to be shaved and dressed and fed. It wasn’t until much later, after he’d had some soup and sat gloomily listening to the steady rainfall outside, that Ger had put in an appearance. Wiping the mud from his boots—a pointless courtesy—he’d ducked back through the doorway, low even for men of their height, followed by three green-jacketed soldiers of the 95th, a captain and a lieutenant, followed by a sergeant, who was probably the captain’s own version of Chard.
“Will it suit?” Ger said after a few moments, and the captain had nodded, while the lieutenant smiled broadly. Then introductions were made. Dashed if Ger hadn’t found them another billet and, what’s more, had offered theirs to these fellows in return for helping move him.
“It’s further from town,” Ger had said, a hand on Lucy’s shoulder as Chard packed up his chest—Ger’s own was already closed and bound. “Further from mud.”
Ger had found an old mill, dusty and, more to the point, dry. Chard had been approving: the mill had a stable, one that was also dry, with ample space for their horses and gear. It was within hailing distance of the village, but Chard had set it with Rodrigo to keep an eye out; the last thing anyone needed was for the horses to be stolen even though the natives were bien dispuesto, as Chard said, being that the British army, unlike the French army, paid for their requisitions.
Lucy had had nothing to do with any of the arrangements; the move had jostled him so much, despite the aid from the soldiers of the 95th, that he’d stripped out of his wet clothes and tumbled into the (much more comfortable) bed, and slept for the rest of the afternoon and into the evening. He’d woken only when Ger had put a hand on his shoulder, telling him that if he wanted to use the necessary, he and Chard stood by to help him. He’d availed himself of the offer; Chard was as strong as the horses he looked after. After they returned, Ger stood over him while he finished the foul-smelling—and worse-tasting—draught he’d brewed. But after a few minutes his head had stopped pounding and he’d been able to eat some of the stew and bread. The wine had been red, just like this afternoon’s, and Ger’s mouth had tasted the same that evening as it does at this moment.
“I thought the rain would never stop,” Ger said against his mouth, and Lucy felt his lips curve into a smile; he’d known somehow that Ger was remembering that billet, the same as him.
“It very nearly didn’t,” he said against Ger’s mouth; and Ger chuckled. It had rained, stormed too, for two solid months; they’d all been bogged down, landslides to the right of them, rockfalls to the left. But Kempt and Barnard, as befit Wellington’s command staff, had seen to the supply lines, along with Kerrison; there’d been naught to trouble them there. Training was another matter; all that could be done was to keep the Rifles’ precious powder dry. When he’d been well enough, later, to go into the village and pay a call on the men who’d helped them move, he’d discovered them sitting gloomily in their billet, having some kind of wager on how quickly they could disassemble, clean, and reassemble their rifles. He and Ger had joined in, under their expert tutelage, and Sharpe had said if the damned weather would only clear, they’d have a shooting contest too.
Looking back now, it had been a curious interlude, almost dreamlike in memory: he’d felt caught out of time, and dashed if he’d ever been so contented before or since, even though they were waiting only for the weather, and terrain, to clear so they could plunge back into the morass of blood and death that he could taste at the back of his throat some nights, during the witching hour. The worst was when the mud tasted like blood; but that had been later, at Genappe, when they’d fought through a haze of mud and rain and blood that had made him wonder if he’d ever see anything without that haze over his eyes again.
He’d thought he’d lost Ger there, too; but that time it had only been a spent ball, a graze that unaccountably bled like the dickens; nothing like this shoulder wound, that had bled sluggishly but seemingly unceasingly until Miss Morville had packed it tight and bound it tighter while Ger lay unconscious. After Genappe, he’d tossed up his accounts at the sight of Ger, white and unmoving and soaked in blood all down his right side, and even Chard had been pale under all the mud, and unwontedly gentle. Chard had looked just the same a week ago, white as a sheet, rattling up to the front steps, his voice ringing through Ger’s great Gothick pile like the duty trumpeter’s bugle at Mont St. Jean, and, as soon as Miss Morville had taken charge of Ger, Chard had been off like a shot, riding hell for leather for the sawbones.
But there in Tarbes, while it rained, and stormed, and rained some more, they’d merely had duty patrols, and some communication with Headquarters, of course; but mostly they were settled in at their great stone mill, warm and dry, with cards, and dice, and even a chess set Ger brought home one day. And every night their amusements encompassed still more: silken flesh, hot to hand, trembling muscles, cries stifled by dint of teeth buried in shoulders while they moved, grunting, then spent, sometimes together, often more than once.
Ger never spoke of it; he hadn’t needed to. The dry, peaceful mill he’d found meant more than any words could. And so Lucy hadn’t spoken of it either; instead he’d answered Ger’s unspoken invitation each night with a fire he could feel in his own eyes.
He could see that fire reflected in Ger’s eyes, just now, although they both knew—had to know—any of it was inadvisable under the circumstances. But when he opened his mouth, Ger shook his head, a minute, precise denial, and pulled him back down with his one good hand. No harm indulging him, Lucy thought dimly, not if the dear boy was feverish; and he slid one hand around the back of Ger’s neck and carefully stretched himself alongside. Ger murmured in satisfaction; their kiss grew deeper, Ger demanding still more with his mouth and then his hand, sent roaming down beneath Lucy’s coat so that he could feel its heat through the fine lawn of his shirt. He murmured his own satisfaction, shifting enough—carefully!—so he was able to press himself against one of Ger’s thighs.
“My very dear Lucy,” Ger whispered, feathering kisses across Lucy’s jaw, “I’m not so fragile as all that.” He punctuated his words by pressing that muscular thigh up, making Lucy bite back a moan; a moment later, it was a gasp, as Ger found the buttons at his waist flap, unfastening them deftly.
“Ger—!”
But he knew, even as those fingers found their way to bared, naked flesh, that Ger wouldn’t answer. He never had; not with words. There was naught but to reciprocate, pushing Ger’s nightshirt up, feeling the silky hair, that he knew was as golden as the hair on Ger’s head, and still more silken flesh, hot and hard against his palm once more.
Had it only been a year? It felt like yesterday that they’d lain in bed in Paris, taking a risk that wasn’t much of one, not with all the hubbub the Army of Occupation got up to on a daily basis; and then he’d had the letter from his father, and the Continent, and Ger, had swirled away, and so had he, back to England for nigh on a full year, a year filled with tactics and strategies of a different sort: how to manage his estates, how to act for his father, how to understand settlements and entails and dovetails and dovecotes and anything else one might imagine; and it would have been impossible for anyone to have imagined that he missed, with a fire in his breast, even their damp little shoemaker’s cottage. The mill itself—those memories had been buried; they’d surfaced now for the first time since he’d left Paris.
At the feel of Ger’s legs parting beneath him, Lucy was brought back to the present with a bang, and a whimper, as Ger pressed up against him, lifting one leg to nudge Lucy into position. “Ger!” he expostulated again; this wasn’t what he’d intended at all. Nor had he the first time, in the mill. Ger had paused in his ministrations—he’d been stroking oil, almost leisurely, all along Lucy’s straining length—and quirked a half-smile at him in the light from the waning fire. “I fagged for Harry Winston,” was all he’d said, and Lucy had gasped and pushed into Ger’s fingers, and then, a few moments later, into the tight, warm clasp of Ger’s body.
He’d felt the rush begin, and lowered his forehead to Ger’s shoulder, trying to wait it out, grasping for words: “Dash it, I always knew I was in the wrong house,” he’d said, and Ger had shaken with silent laughter all around him. That had been entirely the wrong thing to do, and so deliciously right that Lucy had driven forward, again and again, until Ger was shaking from something else entirely. He hadn’t felt that he’d quite distinguished himself that time, but Ger hadn’t seemed to mind; and it hadn’t taken many more lessons at all for Lucy to learn exactly what drove Ger up to the edge—and over—and how to outlast him, at least sometimes.
But this—this was madness, and not least because they hadn’t any oil, or anything at all this time, to ease the way. He opened his mouth to remonstrate once more, but Ger’s hand was between them, guiding him home. He squeezed his eyes shut—it was often the only way he’d found to resist Ger, even momentarily—and whispered, in a voice that sounded hoarser than hoarse, “Wait.” He had a dim memory of Ger, trimming his nails at his dressing table; and a dimmer memory of a jar, and a bottle—
He rolled off Ger, too swiftly for Ger to stop him, and reached the dressing table in two strides. A jar, another—there! There was the bottle. His man wouldn’t have tolerated it, but Turvey seemed to have made his peace with Ger’s military idiosyncrasies: neatsfoot oil, no doubt for the top leathers of those serviceable riding boots of pebbled leather that, again, Lucy’s man wouldn’t have tolerated for a moment.
The smell was pungent, but then, they were already risking so much; in the grand scheme of things, a smear of neatsfoot oil would hardly be noticed. He stroked himself, up and down, slathering it on: it had been a year. He tipped the bottle again, smearing some on his fingertips, crooking them to keep the oil from dripping, then replaced the stopper—or tried to—with the unoiled, shaky fingers of his right hand.
He glanced over at Ger and nearly dropped the stopper: Ger was staring at him, his lips parted, a dazed look in his eyes Lucy’d seen only a bare number of times; his tumescence seemed to pulse, there where it rested, flushed dark, against the paler skin of his belly. Two strides brought him back to Ger’s side; and he pressed the crooked fingers in, just far enough. Ger’s sigh dissolved into a moan as he turned his head blindly on the pillow, offering his throat up to Lucy; his hand was reaching out, grasping blindly—his knee was drawn up—
Lucy wasn’t made of stone, he’d never been made of stone, not when it came to Ger; he knelt between Ger’s legs, kneeing his thighs apart. Ger was tight, tighter than he remembered; and he pressed in slowly, pulling out between times to try to open him.
“I’m not made of china,” Ger whispered, his eyes shut tight, his body straining beneath Lucy’s, his neck a taut expanse that begged for Lucy’s hand, fitting just at the base, his thumb nestling into the hollow there, seeking and pressing on the soft skin, provoking a choked murmur, then a sigh. He pushed his fingers up Ger’s neck to his face, then into his hair, tangling them into Ger’s curls and holding him tight to brace himself as he pushed again.
“It’s a—dashed sight more comfortable—than china,” he managed, but his hips were stuttering just as much as his voice. A soft burble of laughter escaped Ger, and then he arched, and then Lucy was home, snugged in tight, Ger’s length pressed between their bellies in a way that Lucy had forgotten until just now: if he rocked, Ger would moan. And so he did, taking the precaution of leaning down to capture Ger’s moan in his mouth.
That recalled him, not to his senses—those had fled, unheeded and unmourned, almost three years ago, and he counted them and the world itself well lost—but to their position. He let memory and experience drive him, then, to bring Ger off as quickly as possible, even sneaking his hand between them, at the last, as he came to one knee and pulled Ger up against him, his other hand across Ger’s mouth. That was no precaution at all; Ger liked to bite the fleshy part of Lucy’s palm when they did it like this, arching and crying out soundlessly as his seed shot in an arc between them. Then Lucy could, and did, finish; he’d been on the bare edge of control for the past four minutes, or for a year: as his release found him, he couldn’t have told one from the other.
He retained just enough sense to fall to one side; Ger’s part could be hidden with a cloth and a nightshirt, pulled back down, but there’d be no way to conceal a stain from Ger’s seed on his own coat. Ger lay, beautiful and quiescent, all of him relaxed, soft once more—until one looked up and saw the firm chin under the delicious mouth, the decided cheekbone covered by a sweep of thick golden lashes. After his breath returned to him, he leaned over to kiss Ger there, on the cheek where his lashes lay, and then he rolled off the other side of Ger’s immense bed, standing to tuck himself away behind his flap. A smile hovered at the corner of Ger’s mouth but he didn't open his eyes until Lucy returned with a damp cloth to wipe his stomach down, and minister to the rest of it. He watched in silence, that same smile at the edges of Lucy’s vision as he worked. “Now you’ll sleep,” Lucy said gruffly, pulling Ger’s nightshirt down in place, and pulling the coverlet up once more.
And once more Lucy’s hand was caught at the wrist by Ger’s fingers. When Lucy looked up, the smile, gentle and intimate, had taken possession of Ger’s entire mouth. “I shall,” he said, and there was meaning behind those words that Lucy couldn’t begin to guess; only he knew it, in his heart, so it wasn’t necessary to guess at all.
“An afternoon of dissipation, after all,” he said meaninglessly, turning his hand to clasp Ger’s fingers.
“A lifetime of it,” Ger said, not loosening his grip on Lucy’s hand; and had his eyes always been that blue? His gaze always that direct? The smile was gone from his lips now; he looked entirely too serious. Lucy stared back at him, somewhat at a loss, no very good idea as to Ger’s meaning except the one that he seemed to mean yet was nigh impossible: Lucy was as good as leg-shackled, and, unless he missed his guess, Ger himself was on his way to the altar, even if Miss Morville wasn’t aware of it yet. Her feelings in the matter were plain to Lucy, and if Lucy could see them, Ger had tumbled to them already—days ago, perhaps even weeks. He’d lay a monkey the only one to whom Ger’s intentions might come as a shock would be Miss Morville herself. Well, and that parrot-faced mother-in-law of his, but then she couldn’t see her only son was a cold-blooded—or hot-blooded, for that matter—murderer. But they none of them—not even the stolid Theo Frant—not a one of them knew Ger the way he did, not even the perspicacious Miss Morville.
“The one doesn’t preclude the other,” Ger said then; and only Lucy would have known that was Ger asking, watching him still with that keen gaze, that knew all the words left unspoken, that knew all the meanings behind the gestures. Ger, manifestly, lacked neither courage nor tactical strength; but beyond that, Lucy had often thought—particularly after Ger had led them to victory at Orthes—that Ger might have made a career of it, all the way to general, because he had a peculiar understanding of strategy as well. Not that that path lay open to him, the eldest son of an earl, or to either of them, for that matter, and certainly not now with Boney rompéd; but Ger had always had a knack for seeing the disposition of the troops—and everything else—in a way that couldn’t be compared but to any of Wellington’s command staff.
Lucy tried then, and failed, to imagine Miss Bolderwood—Marianne!—even in bed with him; he tried again, and failed, to imagine her reaction to any of the acts that took place between him and Ger. Miss Morville was a different picture altogether; having seen her phlegmatic reaction not only to Ger, covered in blood, deposited at her very feet, but knowing she’d helped remove the bullet from his shoulder while Lucy stood staring at the fire, unseeing, because casting up his accounts yet again at the sight of still more of Ger’s blood wasn’t going to help matters at all—he could just imagine an eyebrow, raised, and then the little nod she might give, as if to say it was all perfectly understandable.
Anyone, knowing Ger—loving Ger—would have to feel that way; he did himself, after all. “No,” he said, because it was all he could say. “I don’t suppose it does.”
There came a smile again, one Lucy had never seen before, breaking across Ger’s face like dawn in the Pyrenees; and he lifted Lucy’s hand to his mouth and kissed his palm.
~ f ~
Note the first
Good call, coyotegestalt: you definitely picked up on a very close and somewhat atypical M/M relationship in Heyer (I’m thinking of Avon and Davenant in These Old Shades as the only other example that springs to mind offhand). Although I’ve been reading, and re-reading, Heyer for 20+ years, I wish my Regency language was more sure-footed. I apologize in advance for any errors I made. They don’t lie at Heyer’s door, needless to say.
Note the second
One of the most delightful parts of writing Heyer fanfiction is being secure in the knowledge that if she said it, it must be so. Thus: if Gervase had two horses shot out from under him at the battle of Orthes, and if Lucy took a toss at Tarbes, there is simply no question that the 7th Hussars were in southern France at the tail end of the Peninsular Campaign, and, moreover, on the ground via the Pyrenees, not involved in the siege of Bayonne. Those who have read Cornwell’s Sharpe series know, as well, that the 95th was there. They were all mired in two months of rain; that is also true. All I had to do was find some slippage in the text and match it up to what I’d learned of the situation and the battle conduct.
I’m inferring, therefore—since this is Heyer and she did more research than any ten historians on the Peninsular campaign—that Lucy and Gervase were among the few cavalry troops that came through the Pyrenees with the infantry; otherwise Lucy would not have been at Tarbes, with a concussion, two months before Orthes. “Wellington had 64,000 Anglo-Portuguese infantry and artillery, plus 25,000 Spanish soldiers from the Army of Galicia. Since cavalry was of little use in the mountains, Wellington sent most of his horse regiments to the rear, keeping a few light dragoons for patrolling.” (Emphasis mine.)
Note the third
Heyer makes slippage difficult. It was almost as if she’d realized how close Lucy and Gervase were (Gervase becomes loquacious only three times in the book, and two are Lucy-related; and let’s notice how they call each other not only by their first names but by almost pet names, which was atypical for both the time and for Heyer men), and tried to forestall every possibility of them spending any time together, especially in intimate and vulnerable circumstances during the Peninsular campaign, which was, of course, the slash fodder for which I was searching. I had had the notion of setting the flashback portion during the time they were billeted in southern France, where Gervase thinks he is for a moment when he comes to after being shot—that was indeed canonical, and I could see it working with Gervase’s injury. But then it turned out that Gervase had not been injured very much in the course of his military career—he’d led a “charmed life,” having had only a graze from a spent ball, a saber cut, and two horses shot out from under him at Orthes.
(By the by, I chose to believe Gervase didn’t get a graze from a spent ball at Orthes; that was a cavalry charge (or charges) up a muddy wet hill where he lost two horses, so I imagined he’d have been shot outright; therefore I placed the spent ball at Genappe, which took place just before Mont St. Jean [Waterloo, to us]; and, indeed, the 7th Hussars were at both. I’m also guessing the saber cut came during Orthes (i.e., after Tarbes), since the 7th is explicitly mentioned in the battle in the context of saber charges: “It was, by then, after 3pm. The British cavalry was in pursuit of the French and the 7th Hussars first overtook Harispe's division. During one of the charges, 300 soldiers were sabred and 2000 threw down their weapons. Further on, the 7th Hussars took 17 officers and 700 men near Sault de Navailles.”)
At any rate, back to the search for slippage. So then I thought perhaps Ger had gotten a saber cut, and was convalescing at that aforementioned billet. No: not only was the timing wrong—they moved on from Orthes to pursue Soult to Toulouse almost immediately and the Peninsular campaign/invasion of France was over soon thereafter—but also, a few chapters later, we learned from Lucy that while Gervase had indeed been injured, he’d had the cut sewn up and none of them had found out about it until later. Foiled again!
Somewhere, Heyer was chuckling evilly, a gleam of mordant humour in her eye.
But then—as I started researching the end of the Peninsular campaign, those two sodden months they spent after crossing the Pyrenees, waiting to attack Soult—I realized where Tarbes was; and I realized that another reason Gervase might have been in a billet in southern France was because Lucy was injured.