December 2nd, 1892 - Greengrass House, Ford's room

Noble snooped, sometimes. He liked to have a sense of what was happening in the house, and if he bothered justifying it to himself, it was usually because this had been his house first. Usually he did not find anything interesting. Today, though — today he had, and he'd snatched the letters and fled to his own room before he could even really think about them. Noble read through them twice, and then dawdled — Mama was chaperoning the girls tonight, so the Greengrass boys had the house to themselves, or would if Ford ever came home. He scurried over to Ford's room and left the letters on the desk, although he wasn't sure they were in order, and they were a little more wrinkled than they had been before from when he'd pressed them under his jacket between their rooms.

Noble was drinking gin in the parlor when Ford came home in the green firelight rush of the floo. "Hey," he said, leaning forward in his seat — he couldn't help but look nervous, his hair was askew and he'd been working at his cufflinks for ages, one was buttoned and the other wasn't. "Where've you been?"

---

Ford had no reason to assume today was special in any sense. An average day at work, followed by a drink with someone from the Ministry — half to drop hints about the girls' eligibility, though he didn't think it would do any good, and half to kill time so that he didn't seem too eager to show up at Tycho's house for dinner. Not that being perceived as too eager was a problem anymore, he supposed, but — old habits died hard, and the revelation that they really did feel the same way was still fresh enough in his mind that he didn't take it for granted yet. Dinner had led to kisses and stargazing in Ty's upstairs observatory, and the only reason Ford had broken off and come home at all was that he wanted to grab a chance of clothes. Normally he wouldn't have bothered, because he'd have to be back at the house early enough the next morning that no one else would be awake to see him returning rumpled at five in the morning to shave and change, but tomorrow was Saturday — he could reasonably sleep in at Tycho's house and pretend to everyone else he'd just gone out early that morning to run errands, provided he was wearing different clothes when he showed up again.

So he was expecting to be home for maybe twenty minutes at most, but when he came in through the floo he immediately reevaluated that estimate. Noble looked like there was something up, and while he recognized the signs of anxiety in his brother at once, he had no idea what could have caused it. The girls were out with Mama tonight, so what had happened?

"Dinner," he offered, dropping into the chair nearest Noble. "What's up?"

---

Noble had been thinking about this for hours, but he still had not come up with any way to introduce the question. He shouldn't have read them. Or at least — he shouldn't have read all of them. "I found something," Noble said, after a pause that felt weighted. He took another sip of his drink. "I don't think I was meant to."

---

Ford's brow furrowed. He had no idea what Noble might have meant, but whatever it was, it was clearly serious. Something one of the girls had left out in the living room, maybe? Something of Mama's? Ford had a hard time imagining what could have left his brother in such a state. Noble hadn't reacted this strongly when Ford had told him all the money was gone, after Papa's death. Had whatever he'd found been more jarring than that?

(Did it have something to do with Verity's panic attacks?)

"What was it?" he said, leaning forward and tensing slightly as if preemptively bracing himself would lessen the impact of whatever Noble was going to say.

---

Noble swallowed, and his throat felt dry even though that wasn't really possible given how he'd been nursing the gin. "Letters," he admitted, "You wrote them." Even if they hadn't been signed, Noble knew his brother's handwriting, would have known it anywhere, and they had been on his desk. Noble was nosy, but he wasn't as nosy as Clem was, and what if she'd read those?

---

It took Ford only half a second to understand which letters Noble meant. If he had been having this conversation with Grace or Clementine it still could have been any number of things; Ford exchanged letters with various creditors that would have been damning enough to someone who didn't know their situation. But Noble did know their situation, which meant it was something else.

The only reason they'd been out in the first place was that he was planning to get rid of them. Keeping them in the first place — even writing them in the first place — had been self-indulgent, since he never intended to send them. Back when he'd been aching over the loss of Macnair he'd re-read them on occasion, because there was some relief in just allowing himself to wallow in an emotion for a while — particularly when he couldn't talk to anyone about it. He hadn't thought about them in months, though; certainly not since his relationship with Ty had changed that summer. After the Halloween party, feeling newly secure that this wasn't something that might blow away at the slightest change in the wind, he'd remembered them and thought it was finally time to cut the last tie. No more relics of self-pity.

But he couldn't just throw them away, for obvious reasons, and when he'd fished them out the parlor downstairs had been occupied and he couldn't sneak down to burn them. They were on his desk because he was waiting for the opportunity to burn them, to finally get rid of them... and apparently Noble had seen them.

Ford's face was deeply flushed, but otherwise he hadn't moved after his brother had spoken. His throat was dry and he felt paralyzed. "Those were in my room," he pointed out, because a part of him was still hung up on the betrayal of Noble having looked at something in the only private place Ford had in the entire world.

---

Noble flushed, because — as much as he did it only sometimes, as much as he could manage to justify it, he knew it was wrong to look in other people's rooms. But he couldn't help it, and — and the really terrible thing here was the letters, that they physically existed, and what they meant. "Sorry," he said, and his tone may have sounded genuine. (Although even Noble was not sure if he was more sorry for looking or for what he had found.)

---

Ford swallowed. He didn't know what to say. The apology didn't feel sufficient, and it certainly didn't erase the betrayal, but he wasn't sure he had the option to be angry about it. He wanted to be — both because he was hurt and because clinging to this meant avoiding what was in the letters themselves — but to what end? What was he going to do, try and lay down some sort of ultimatum on Noble now, after he'd just read what he had? Ford didn't know if he'd read them all, but he knew whatever Noble had read must have been enough for him to know what they were about. He wouldn't have looked so askew if he'd only glanced some copied poetry and not pieced together what it meant. And Ford knew they were inescapably damning: they were all addressed to V Macnair, a name that only belonged to one person in society that he was aware of, and they were signed F Greengrass. They were dated. They referenced times they'd talked, and times they'd kissed. There was a line, Ford recalled, about how empty his bed felt compared to Macnair's. There was little they left to the imagination.

He shifted, leaned back in the chair. He didn't want to be here but he didn't trust himself to leave. His legs would shake when he stood and tried to walk. And Noble would probably follow him anyway. Or maybe he wouldn't, and that would be worse.

"Well," he said, at a loss. He did not look at Noble.

---

This just didn't get any easier. "A man," Noble said, tone falling more as a statement than a question. Ford had written love letters to a man, and had apparently — acted on things, with the man, too. Noble couldn't wrap his brain around it, even though he was sure he was right. He'd never heard of people he actually knew engaging in things like this, and apparently Ford had managed to carry on a whole love affair under his nose, without Noble ever noticing? He'd known Ford did weird things, went to London at odd hours, was sometimes out all night — but he'd never, not once, suspected this.

---

Ford swallowed again, but it didn't help anything. He shifted again so that his hand was covering the bottom half of his face, shielding his expressions from view, at least partially. He felt exposed, and wanted to regain any meager shelter from observation that he could. Noble had been in his room and had read his letters, and that was bad enough. The fact that they had been so deeply personal was even worse. The fact that it was a man may have been at the forefront of Noble's mind, but it had barely registered to Ford. Noble having looked in on something intimate would have mortified him even if it hadn't been a man.

"Yeah," he managed, though his voice was hollow. There was no point in denying it, if Noble had paid any attention to the name at the top of the letters. Ford was staring at one of the embers in the fireplace and did not intend to look anywhere else for the foreseeable future. "Did you... read all of them?"

---

Noble shrugged his shoulders. "I think so," he managed. Ford hadn't even come up with an excuse, or an explanation — leaving Noble to keep on trying to wrangle this. He shifted uncomfortably in his seat.

---

The answer Noble gave was somehow more damning than yes, because of the uncertainty it betrayed. As if Noble suspected Ford might have half a dozen stashes of stale love letters secreted around his room, all from different illicit affairs; as if Noble didn't know what to think and couldn't even extend Ford the benefit of the doubt. Maybe that was what was happening here. Ford's thoughts scrambled for something he could say that would rebuild lost credibility. All the while there was something bitter deep inside him that recognized the injustice of the fact that Noble had been going through his things and somehow it was Ford who needed to regain trust.

"They were all in the same pile," he said, though he wasn't sure whether Noble would believe him. Then: "I only had them out in the first place because I was looking for an opportunity to burn them." He was sure Noble wouldn't believe that, but he'd wanted to say it anyway. His tone as he did was dark but laced with something almost like humor. The letters were over a year old, and they'd avoided detection up until their final moments. It was such a maddening coincidence that he'd gotten the letters out this week and Noble had been through his things that he almost had to laugh to keep from crying. (Maybe it wasn't a coincidence, of course — maybe Noble did this all the time. Something that did not bear thinking about at the moment; nursing the anger in the back of his brain until it swelled into something bigger would only have made it harder to get through this conversation. Though... what did getting through this conversation even mean, exactly? What did the resolution entail, and what did life look like on the other side of it? He didn't know, which was making it all the harder to determine how to navigate it).

Ford took a breath and blinked at the fireplace, letting his gaze refocus on the ember. It felt like he had the mythical Gordian knot in his head, and he was turning it over and over looking for any loose end he could find so that he even knew where to start. After a long pause he began tentatively, "If you read them you saw they were dated. It was a long time ago. And I was... in a rough place."

While both of these were true, neither were exactly related to Noble's primary point of concern — that he'd been writing them to a man. Ford had planned to spend the night with a man right now, before this conversation had derailed his evening. Maybe he was trying to imply to Noble that this didn't happen anymore, though — Ford wasn't really sure what he was trying to imply, yet. This didn't seem like the type of conversation where he could just set out in a direction and hope for the best; he needed to gauge Noble's reaction to everything as he went, feeling it out as surely as though he were taking small steps onto thin ice on a frozen lake. If Noble seemed to want to believe that this had been some sort of one-time thing, spurred on by — stress, or pressure, or something — and that Ford had since gotten over it... that was an easier way out of this conversation than many that Ford could imagine. He didn't want to actively lie to Noble, but... he could certainly seem himself neglecting to correct a convenient misconception.

In any case, he didn't think Noble would have wanted to hear the truth. And Ford lied to the girls all the time, about so many things. He didn't lie to Noble, not before tonight, but — maybe it would be for the best. Even if Noble did press for details, Ford couldn't imagine actually admitting to some of it — that he'd gone back to seeing Macnair after he'd been married to a woman, for instance. Ford knew he couldn't escape this conversation without Noble's perception of him being changed, but that didn't mean he was eager to see it absolutely destroyed.

And maybe that was part of why he'd said the bit about the letters being a long time ago, and while he was upset. He couldn't take back the knowledge about the nature of his relationship from Noble's mind, now that he knew, but maybe he could add some context to make the fact of the letters themselves, with all the copied poetry and self-pity, at least slightly less pathetic.

---

Noble's eyebrows drew together; he wasn't sure he believed Ford, at least not that he'd meant to burn the letters. Noble kept mementos, after all — nothing as damning as letters, but little things that Daff had gotten him, and he was not even in love with her any more. Maybe Ford wasn't in love with Macnair anymore, either. Noble couldn't say. But there had been something so plaintive and desperate about the letters that he just wasn't convinced, even though they made him uncomfortable to think about.

"So you're not still with — him," Noble said, stumbling over the words as if they were pulled out of him. It was also hard to believe that Ford had managed to hide this from him for so long; their financial situation had turned both of them into better liars.

---

The question startled Ford enough to pull his eyes away from the fireplace and look at Noble, the first time he'd done so for more than just a furtive glance since his brother had brought up the letters. "No. Of course not." Ford was surprised that this needed to be clarified — the most pathetic thing about the letters was that they were all in past tense, clearly written without any intention to be sent.

"He has a son," Ford said with something like exasperation — not over the fact that Macnair had a child, but rather that he apparently needed to clarify to his brother that he wasn't the sort of person who would actively destroy someone's family. The fact that they'd seen each other after Macnair was married was bad enough, and something Ford still felt guilty about every time he thought about it, but he never could have been selfish enough to have taken Macnair away from a child who needed him, who was innocent, who had not made a decision of its own volition to join a loveless family. It hurt that Noble didn't already know that, without having to clarify.

"This doesn't — I'm the same person," he added desperately. "I'm not — not some crazy degenerate or something."

---

Noble's forehead crinkled; Macnair was into men, but had a son, and that just didn't make any sense to him. Macnair also seemed like a relatively normal person. But so did Ford, and — maybe Noble was just terrible at reading people?

He was cut short by Ford's next sentence, and looked up at his brother, wide-eyed. "I didn't say — I never said that," he said. Underneath his thoughts he'd certainly been thinking it, but he'd never said it. "I just don't — understand — why." Why would men — rational men, men that Noble talked to every day — choose that? Especially when they had a wife, like Macnair did.

---

Noble's response did little to soothe the knot in Ford's stomach. It could have been worse; Noble could have said aren't you? or well... or even said nothing at all and just given Ford a look that said it instead. This was better, because at least he'd looked abashed at the implication, but it wasn't as though he'd denied thinking it. He just didn't understand why.

"What do you mean, why?" Ford returned with a skeptical look. If Noble was asking why a relationship, surely that part was obvious. Ford wasn't the only one of them that had done it; Noble had admitted to there being a girl. If he was asking why Macnair... did he really want to know? If he'd already read through all the letters, surely the last thing he needed was more details. And why would it have mattered, anyway, when it was already over now?

He sighed. "Because he was everything I wanted to be, I guess. He was confident and always seemed like he had everything under control, and when he looked at me he — he knew what he wanted. I did it because he wanted me," Ford admitted. His cheeks flushed again, but now that he'd begun part of him wanted to just continue and get through it all, so that he never needed to say any of this again. "And I wanted someone to love me."

Ford looked at the fire for another second, before he'd accumulated too much restless energy to sit still any longer and instead propelled himself up out of the chair and towards the sideboard. The drink he poured himself was heavier than his usual. "We had rules," he continued, once he'd finished making the drink and had turned back in Noble's general direction. He still wasn't looking at him directly. "We were careful. So that no one would find out." He took a drink, then let out a short, mirthless laugh. "Guess I got sloppy, though, a year later."

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