FLUKE

FLUKE: a surprising occurrence, achieved by luck, rather than skill

Brancaster, 1924

"I don't even like shooting."

The Honourable Mr Charles Rodgers rolled his eyes. Stretching out like a Roman emperor across the passenger seat, he tapped his cigarette over the side of the motor, releasing a long stream of ash. His driver, catching him from the corner of his eye, scowled further.

"Lord sakes' Charlie, you'll ruin the damn paintwork."

"Puff up, old boy." Charlie brushed off the grumbling with the ease of one long accustomed to its tones. "It's already busted half to Bedlam from the gravel. As for your shooting, I seem to remember you were quite a hand with the rifles back in the day."

"Four years of shooting human beings- damn it all!"

The Sunbeam racer leapt across the road like a startled deer with one wrench of the wheel. An astonished carter, tucked into the tight bend of the road, dragged his old horse up to a screaming halt. His jaw to the earth, he stared at the car roaring past, the driver's curse ringing in his ears.

"Bloody fool!" Strangely, the brush with death acted as an opiate on the driver. The dark eyes were easier as they glanced at his friend. Charlie examined the tip of his cigarette and hid his grin.

Henry Ignatius Talbot let out a reluctant chuckle. His foot eased up on the throttle, settling the car down to an easy lope along the Northumbrian backroads. "You shouldn't have insisted I come."

"Rubbish. You've been moping around London like a bally raincloud ever since we got back from Germany. What with Engelbach pushing testing out until February and the racing season not for months, what else do you have to do?"

"Oh, I don't know. Play the gentleman. Sip port and expound on my opinions in Parliament. Puff noxious cigars."

"It's a cigarette, thank you, and I enjoy the smell of Woodbines now. Besides, you leave the opinionating to your father. Unless he's pushing you to take his seat again?"

"Rather." The clipped answer sent a sympathetic grimace across Charlie's face. "Fortunately, my views are more Liberal than Conservative and therefore out of step with the county set who elect the old boy every sitting."

"Well, a word of warning…" Charlie gripped the safety strap of the car as Henry took the next corner on a hairpin turn. "We're heading to conservative country now. You might want to mind your Ps and Qs if you don't want your head mounted alongside the grouse and pheasants."

"Some kind of friend of yours, isn't it? Banker?"

"Rather more than a banker!" Flicking the butt of his first Woodbine to the verge, Charlie reached down to the pockets of his greatcoat for another. "Lord Sinderby- and don't you dare forget the title- governs Aldridge's, that banking house in London. Could buy and sell the Empire before breakfast and still have enough left over for a small European state or two. He's rented out Brancaster castle for the grouse and his son, Atticus, invited us for a shoot."

"Invited you. Friend of yours?"

"More Frank's cut than mine. They were in school together. Stayed at our house once or twice in the holidays." Charlie fell silent for a moment, the way he always did at the mention of his younger brother. "He wrote to our mother after… well."

He bent his head, the better to locate his cigarette case. When he spoke, the words came out muffled. "Decent chap. Decent thing to do."

Even though it was pointless, Charlie's head still being bent over his pockets for that elusive cigarette, Henry nodded.

The twisting country road widened out into a small green, bounded by stone walls. A black and white signpost pointed in several directions. The point north, the one Charlie indicated, simply read "Castle". It was another five miles.

Henry had slowed as they came into the green. Now, he accelerated again, grateful that the wide, well-tended toll road was the one they had to travel. "Not too many other castles in these parts I take it?"

"See for yourself. There's a viewpoint coming up on the left."

"Where? Ah."

The car drew in to the side of the road in a swirl and clatter of tiny stones. Charlie leant back in his seat and waved the unlit Woodbine through the gap in the trees. "Perceive the ancient seat of Hexham."

Henry twisted his head around, leaving the ignition purring in the car. With a low whistle, he tilted back the brim of his cap, the better to take in the sprawling edifice dominating the hillside opposite. "Lord."

Charlie shook his head, a small smile on his face. "Bastion of Englishness against the Scottish hordes. Hexhams were Border scrappers and bullyboys since the Conqueror."

"Some bastion." Henry followed the long line of the curtain wall from edge to edge. The buttresses and outbuildings, tacked on to the side willy-nilly to accommodate the overspill of past generations, were too numerous to count. In the centre, squat and square with a set of battlements like the hunched shoulders of a bare-fist boxer, rose the main tower. "They don't build these kinds of chateaux in France."

"Don't have to deal with screaming hordes of Scotsmen in France. It will no doubt surprise you to discover," Charlie swung his arm around and grinned. "That every man-jack of the Hexham brood has a tendency to be short and square."

Henry laughed. It came out a little rusty, something he refused to consider too deeply at that moment. "Not in the least. Haven't you read that Austrian chap, Freud? Overcompensation."

"Leave the funny business to you, old chap. You can weave your spell on the ladies with your Freuds and Fredericks. I'm happy just to let off a few rounds and bag a bird or two for my supper."

"Sing for my supper, is it? Give the country misses something to twitter over?" Catching the reproachful look on his friend's face, Henry let out a puff of irritation. Even to his own ears, the acidic tone had been a little too sharp.

Jabbing the ignition in a way that would have his racing companions wincing with physical pain, he kickstarted the motor car into a roar. The wheels jackknifed to the right, spitting up grass and gravel. In the passenger seat, Charlie choked on a lungful of ash as the motor swung into the laneway and zipped onto the country lane.

"Steady on, Harry!" The last Woodbine ripped away in the tailwind of his friend's furious take-off, Charlie slapped his hand on his hat and muttered a curse against temperamental racers. "Christ, it was a joke!"

"Poor bloody taste!" The engine made it hard to distinguish the words over the rumble of oil and gears.

"Don't blame me that you've been like a poked bear since you left Berlin. And, for God's sake, don't bite at Aldridge and his brood the way you've been sniping at me." Beyond enduring his friend's unpredictable moods, Charlie hunched into the passenger seat like an old dowager counting her pearls.

"Berlin has nothing to do with it."

"Not half. Six weeks playing happy families and you've dropped yourself into a crisis of bloody faith or some sort."

"Charlie…"

"But for God's sake, buck up out of your funk before we reach the bally castle. There's some gathering of the clans going on up there with Honoured-this and Lording-that from all over the county. The last thing we need to do is toss up like a pair of ill-bred schoolboys. Sinderby will set the dogs on us. Or," Charlie finished with a morose drop in his voice. "That bally butler."

"Then, as the old saying goes, if I can say nothing nice, I will say nothing at all." Ignoring the groan from the passenger seat, Henry craned his head around the windscreen to check the oncoming corner. "So who is part of this great horde? Lord, how can people stand to holiday en famille like that?"

"What was that about saying nothing nice…"

"Get on with it, Charlie."

"The new bride, the former Lady Rose MacClare, daughter of the Marquess of Flintshire, etcetera, etcetera… Who, according to my mother's maid- don't you dare comment, Talbot, or I will kick you from this dratted motor- is 'right lovely, golden as a sunbeam and free with her pennies for the children'."

"If what you say is true about the banking, she can well afford to be generous."

"Yes, but don't interrupt. She's hauled her uncle, aunt and assorted cousins up from Yorkshire to spend a week with the birds. Presumably also to spare her too much of her father-in-law's company. Sinderby took the castle three years ago as well. The village still hasn't recovered."

"A martinet then?"

"Oh, you know the type."

Henry thought back to Berlin and grimaced. He did indeed.

"And these Yorkshire cousins? Bumpkins or bacchalians?"

"Neither, from what I can gather. The Earl of Grantham? Heard of him?"

"Come on, Charlie, don't look to me for Debrett's Peerage. Aunt Shackleton might have a clue but I certainly don't. Not unless he has a fascination for racing cars."

"More of the huntin', shootin', fishin' type, I'd say. Married an American? Three… no, two daughters. Think the eldest came out with m'sister Jane, before the war. Martha? Miriam?"

"Do you honestly expect me to know? Charlie boy, debs were never my forte, even when I wasn't old enough to father them."

"If she came out with Jane, she's no spring chicken. I'd say she's left her days whirling around Queen Charlotte's ball behind."

"A deb is always a deb until she's a dowager. And then she's a terror. If you please, I beg to be spared from both." Henry tipped the brim of his homburg towards his musing friend. The right side of his lips twisted in that sardonic smirk that, Charlie privately thought, brought to mind Cesare Borgia or Niccolo Machiavelli. One of the damned Italians anyway, hiding murder behind manners.

Charlie shrugged. Feeling the bite of another craving, he began to pat around the dashboard in vain hope. "Here I was, thinking you liked women."

"Women, yes. In their place and at the correct time."

"If Otto was here," Charlie gave the dashboard a final thump, more in wistful thinking than expectation. Part of a small smoking compartment jumped down, revealing a hidden alcove. "He would say the best women don't keep to their place and always arrive at the worst possible time."

"'Fluke, my dear Harry!'" Henry dropped into their old friend's thick German accent. For a moment, it was as though a blonde ghost hung his head between the two men, his exuberant grin beaming at the pair of them. "'A chance! Fate and destiny!' Lot of rot."

"Not always." Charlie rooted around in the compartment. He let out a shout of delight and pulled up his hand. A final packet of cigarettes, long forgotten until now, was pinched between his fingers. "Hah! Fluke!"

"Last one of the day, old boy." Henry retorted as he spun the wheel in a wide circle and swept between the arches of. Brancaster's ancient gatehouse walls.

I always think Henry Talbot gets a bit of short shrift as a love interest because the Mary/Matthew epic romance dominated the Downton world for so long. So I've been brewing over this small prequel AU fic for Henry for a long while and only recently gathered it together enough to start posting chapters. I'm still brewing over the Anthony Strallan Charles Blake fanfics... and Winter Rose will come together. Eventually. Soon...

hope you enjoy and thank you for reading!