Author's Note: This is in no way meant to denigrate the love that Duke and Duchess of Kent had for each other, this is simply me responding to the incredible chemistry between Blake Riston and Keely Hawes. Also, the possible heroin and alcohol addictions of Prince George are purely speculation.
This kind of got away from me, so the end bit is very different from the first part. This may or may not be continued in some form.
I do not love you as if you were a salt rose, or topaz
Or the arrow of carnations the fire shoots off.
I love you as certain dark things are to be loved,
In secret, between the shadow and the soul.
-Love Sonnet XVII, Pablo Neruda
He figures it out, it's not hard, the secretiveness, the long lunches, tension so thick you could cut it with a knife. It fills him with rage simply to look at the man who's been his best friend for as long as he can recall. Mostly though it just makes him sad.
He loved her. Loves her. She'd chosen Hallam over him. It'd stung, he's not ashamed to admit. Whether it was just the fact that, purely in rank, he was the better choice or that he was truly, madly, deeply in love with her (Which he'll never admit to anyone.) he's never been quite strong enough to say, despite his frequent and deep broodings on the subject. It turns into a vicious ache when the man she chose over him treats her like nothing. He has a slightly disturbing glee when Agnes goes to stay at his country house. To have the woman he'd been enamoured with since university living under his roof (Even if she's in his country house and he's several thousand kilometres away in London) fed hours of daydreaming of things that can never be. He tells Hallam to go back, to make things right, but secretly he imagines her leaving Hallam and running into his open arms. Taking the children and running away to Paris or Morocco, where nobody would know them and nobody can find them. But these are just idle fantasies that fill the monotony of his day-to-day life.
Marina is a good woman, he has no illusions about that, and he loves her. They have three beautiful children that he would move heaven and earth for and he does not need to be told that they have a fantastic life together, yet there would always be something missing. With Marina it was more a companionable friendship but with Agnes it was a violently passionate (At least on his part) love.
She was his first love and his last. He was disgusted to watch Hallam go around Agnes' back with her sister. She wasn't even a cheap whore (Though she wasn't much better). She was his wife's sister, practically blood. But he helped in any way he can because no matter how hard he tries his fantasies will never happen, so he tries to make her happy with the man he knows she loves so well.
They kiss once. It's at a university party when they were younger and he and Hallam were both in the navy, before marriage and children and and titles and houses and responsibilities. She was sitting on a settee in the corner, a champagne glass perched on one knee and a cigarette balanced between two fingers in the other. Hallam's dancing with somebody else, Agnes having desired to sit out a round and Hallam having no desire to do so. He sat down next to her, somewhat dramatically he admits (He's always had a flair for theatrics), and casually draped his arm across the back.
'Now why on earth is a beautiful woman such as yourself not dancing?' His tone was light and teasing but there's an undercurrent of sadness which he knows for the sake of his friend should not be there.
'Just tired I guess.' He smiled slightly at that and they lapsed into silence.
'You know, when I was younger I always wanted to go to parties like mama did. I though it would be fantastic. And it is, I guess, but it's not what I though it would be.' He nodded and smiled at her comment.
'I had to go to these dreadful tea parties of my mother's. It was horrible, all these old ladies would pinch my cheeks and tell me how adorable I was. Completely cured me of the desire. Well, until I discovered real parties.' She tipped her head to the side.
'I would imagine you were the sweetest little boy.' He laughed.
'So they told me.' She tossed her head back and let out a full-bodied laugh that he sees so rarely now. It's all red lips, white teeth, pale skin, and chocolate hair and it is glorious. Impulsively, brought on, he will say later, by a combination of her magnificence and slightly too much alcohol, he kisses her.
She tastes like cigarettes, champagne, and strawberries. He's kissing her and she's kissing back. And, for several wonderful seconds he thinks she might love him back and that they're the only two people in the world.
But then she stops kissing him. She pulled her head back and they turned awkwardly away from each other, then the song stops and Hallam pulls her away and he's left alone on the settee, clutching her glass of champagne and a slowly burning cigarette.
He sits and watches her for the rest of the night as she and Hallam dance about each other. All he can think of his the feeling of her lips on his.
Six months later they announce their engagement and George is the best man at the wedding. (He finds others to keep him warm at night and after a while, he finds that he doesn't even notice when the needle slides into his arm.)
It still hurts. Ten years later it still hurts just as much as it did.