"I assume you've heard the news," Oliver said, tugging at his cravat.
Diggle confirmed his suspicions by raising a small slip of paper Oliver guessed was a missive. "The shooter has been apprehended," he said. "A man by the name of John Bellingham."
"I need to return to Queene House posthaste. My mother will want to see me safe at home and I don't want a fuss made when I keep late hours tomorrow. Tell Roy's associate not to let Felicity Smoak out of her sight – I've already said this to you before dinner, but she's the one the Arrow's been looking for."
Diggle nodded, handing to him the change of clothes he required for his journey back to London. Oliver raised a brow in question as he stepped out of his shoes and pulled on a riding boot.
"Speak freely, Diggle. This wouldn't be much of a partnership if we kept our thoughts from each other. You should probably also just address me by my given name when we're not with company." He had thought about allowing Diggle to call him 'Starling', as was common among other peers, but the full implication of having assumed his father's title was especially poignant when addressed by it.
He had no right to be the Duke of Starling.
Diggle shot him a skeptical look, letting out a sigh and saying, "I've just been thinking that it really wears me out no end the way you refer to yourself in the third person like that."
Oliver paused and lifted his eyes from his other boot to meet Diggle's for a moment, before uttering a single, "Well."
"Bags will be ready in an hour," Diggle said quickly, putting away the discarded shoes. "Will your grace be requiring anything else?"
Oliver rubbed his fingers together in habitual instinct, thinking. There was still the matter of confronting Slade about the dates in his 'Starling' file, something that he had to do before he left the premises, because there was no saying when he would have the opportunity to do so again. After all, Slade was not a frequent inhabitant of London.
But how did one begin to question one's friend about their father's murder? Oliver was not sure if he wanted to lose the connection completely through forcible cross-examination or do a less than thorough job of questioning. His last abortive attempt had been ham-fisted, born out of a compulsion to find the truth quickly rather than methodically.
"I have to ask an old friend a potentially awkward question," he said quietly, running his index finger over the pad of his thumb. "Slade Wilson may or may not know have something to do with my first attack and my father's murder."
Diggle reached into his coat and produced a pistol, holding it out to Oliver hilt-first in an offer. "You probably already know I served in the Flanders Campaign from ninety-three."
Oliver nodded.
"You probably also know that my brother Andy served in the West Indies. We joined the military around the same time, having been recommended by Sir George Yonge, whose estate in Colyton was where my parents were serving."
The baronet had been Secretary at War and head of the War Department from eighty-three to ninety-four, Oliver thought. Sir George Yonge had on several occasions joined Robert and Moira for dinners at Queene House when Oliver was young enough to dine in the nursery. He could scarcely recall how the man looked or sounded.
Diggle's face had grown solemn, his tone approaching the funereal as he stated, "I…wanted Andy to go to Flanders. It was the Duke of York and Albany that was in command of the British contingent there; it was always going to be safer. I told Sir George that Andy had to be safe, right before he helped draft the letters that spoke of our volunteering."
There was a long-drawn silence before Oliver prompted him with, "What happened?"
Diggle looked at his hand, which still held his offered pistol. His hold was tight, the blood rushing to the tips of his fingers.
"Sir George has always been a servant of the state first, and everything else second. The West Indies required a boy younger and of smaller stature than I was, and so I went to Flanders while Andy went to Guadeloupe under General Charles Grey's command. He came back in ninety-eight a broken man having watched his friends die of disease or desertion; I returned in 1806 with the military record her grace saw after serving under General Arthur Wellesley in Flanders and India. Needless to say it was General Wellesley who arranged for my current occupation, though Sir George too played a part by turning up in Ripon when I first sought to turn it down."
Flanders had ended in disaster, while the Anglo-Mysore War had made a hero of Wellesley. It was the reason Moira always gave when questioned on why she had hired such a man to serve the duchy – Arthur Wellesley's reputation on the battlefields in Argaum and Gawilghur alone were enough to silence whomever had the audacity to question her hiring decisions.
Oliver held the barrel of the pistol loosely, pushing it gently back to Diggle, whose voice was hard as he finished, "I have never asked Sir George why he made that decision back in ninety-three, not the time when I first returned to Colyton six years ago, nor when Andy died a week after in Ripon.
"My point is, Oliver, that sometimes you need to ask yourself if you really want to know the answer to your questions first. If your friend, whom we both know was a mercenary in Crimea, was given an assignment he took, can you afford to turn him completely against you when his client is still giving him instructions?"
Oliver considered Diggle's words as he watched him replace his pistol where he usually kept it hidden in his coat, and gather up Oliver's evening dress to put it away. He was aware that John Diggle was a private man and that the details of that account were likely known to few men, particularly given the nature of his recent work for the War Office. It was a vote of support for Oliver himself, as emphasised by Diggle's use of his first name, and so he made the decision he had to with confidence, stepping forward to exit the room.
"John?" Oliver called, just before he passed the mahogany door to his guest chamber.
Diggle looked up in surprise at being addressed by his first name.
"Thank you, partner."
Oliver left in search of Slade Wilson.
The entire affair, from its outset to its current development, was efficiently producing in her an acute realisation of her flaws and shortcomings. These were not the musings of a woman lacking in self-esteem, but the logical conclusions drawn through scientific observation.
The evidence was chronological. Slade had begun his sustained exertion of pressure a month ago by sending a man to every house she owned, the message clear: there was no place in England she could run to.
When she wrote him a strongly-worded letter that she would not comply with their initial agreement, complete with the maxim ex turpi causa non oritur actio, Slade responded swiftly as well. The following day all enquiries originating from his extensive list of contacts in the criminal underworld sent to number twenty-four were addressed not to 'Felix Sherwood', the persona she had worked hard for close to a decade to establish, but 'F. M. Smoak'. Again the message was clear: he possessed more clout in the underworld than she ever did. And he could ruin her chances at employment easily.
She had sought to pay him back quickly then, sending out politely worded enquiries to all manner of past clients, as well as a not-so-politely worded message to Anatoli Knyazev about his Arrow friend – in her defense, that particular missive was the culmination of a fortnight's worth of unvented stress. She received a total of no replies from anyone involved in shady business, though the War Office was more than happy to have a problem solved at top speed for a premium, and that took care of the interest for the two hundred pound debt she owed for breaching her initial covenant. The rest she reckoned she could earn in a high-stakes game of faro or hazard.
Or so Felicity thought.
Slade was a master in cornering his victims, she conceded. One day he showed up at her home in Ely, bearing papers that were written by a very familiar hand.
"I'm afraid I must inform you that my friends are worried at your ability to continue playing such games, Miss Smoak," he had drawled in his husky voice, the cadence of his speech betraying his glee as he presented evidence of Donna's one indulgence, a vestige of her courtesan-days. His posture was lazy as he dealt the finishing blow, "As your friend I cannot but speak truthfully, and I fear that my offer of employment may be your only option in repaying me, a debt that I have kindly refrained from calling in up till now. What do you say, my dear Felicity – that is, I hope you don't mind my taking the liberty of addressing you by your first name?"
She crumpled the silk net of her skirt now as she thought of all the letters testifying to her mother's debts he held in his possession. Slade Wilson had bought up all of Donna's debts, which gave him the legal right to send her mother to debtor's prison. Felicity could imitate anyone's hand upon reading it once and was literate in twelve languages, but this was not a problem she could forge or translate her way out of. She did not have a sample of Slade's own handwriting so as to forge a discharge of all debts letter, try as she might to inquire about it. She could not teach her mother how to change her script, and so defend herself in a court of law by pleading that the notes were false. She could not even bring herself to tell her mother about the gravity of their situation, because she was terrified that Donna would go to confront Slade about the morality of his actions.
There was also the problem where Donna had absolutely no idea that Felicity's 'translation' trade was more accurately described as codebreaking, with an occasional dabbling in forging. Donna believed Felicity merely a linguistic genius who helped other people write letters to their foreign loves.
As she paced the corner of the parlour she had occupied ever since Slade's party of guests were sent there in the wake of the prime minister's assassination, she found herself admitting one more of her inadequacies: linguistic genius or not, Felicity Smoak was not much good at practical escapes.
Even a fool could recognise that this was an opportune time to bolt. But she could not think of how to effect a successful disappearance from Slade's purview beyond slipping into another person's carriage, a plan which would work if not for the fact that two fully-grown women could not fit into the compartment under the seat.
Felicity needed more time. She wanted to hide behind a text she could work with, to cover herself with words and syntax and to spend hours mulling over punctuation placement, instead of improvising a spontaneous escape plan and thinking about what she could not do. She raised her eyes to the painted plaster of the ceiling, resisting an urge to wring her hands.
"Miss Smoak, are you quite all right?"
It took a moment for her to identify the speaker. It was the doctor, she thought, a Raymond Palmer who had studied medicine despite hailing from a wealthy gentry family, and who spoke passionately of the sciences. They had played chess together on the second night of the party, and Felicity faintly remembered thinking then that he was the evidence of how eclectic Slade's guest list was.
His dark, expressive eyes were kind now, sympathetic even, as he indicated her hands with a nod of his head. "You've been…rubbing your index finger and thumb together since we've stepped into the room."
Felicity's attention followed his direction and sure enough, her fingers had been involuntarily engaged in a fidgeting motion, in mimicry of her idiosyncratic tendency to rub the pages of the dictionary she was utilising when thinking before an open book. She let out a mirthless laugh.
"I had not noticed, Dr Palmer."
"As I said, Miss Smoak, are you all right? Is it…the news about the late prime minister that has upset you?"
She stared into his expectant expression, his visage most patient and concerned. Then a wild idea appeared in her mind. The Palmers would take care of my mother if I asked, Felicity thought, possessing the wherewithal to keep a patient away from Slade Wilson's clutches. If she claimed that her mother had a longstanding malady, a slight tendency towards hysteria that a calm environment would cure, it was possible to appeal to Dr Palmer's Asclepiad oath while keeping her mother in the dark about the direness of their circumstances. All in time for Felicity to clear up the mess and then forge her mother out of the bed rest Dr Palmer would prescribe.
"Dr Palmer," Felicity began, allowing herself to sound distraught even as she lowered her tone. "Your concern is most appreciated. I confess the…recent revelations have unsettled me somewhat, but my disquiet stems from a more longstanding malady."
He cocked his head to the side, intrigued. She bit her lip, dismay merging with the ever mounting panic in her as she realised she could not carry out the only concrete plan that had come to her mind thus far. Dr Palmer was a good man she would have to lie to, and what she would be doing to Donna was unfair and wrong.
"I've just never been fond of house parties," she said instead, despising how silly she sounded. "They can be too long-drawn and with the current news…"
Embarrassment and understanding reached his gaze, and he replied, as was required of good manners, "Of course. Naturally."
"Will you escort me to my mother's side?" she asked, holding out a hand to the crook of his elbow. He complied dutifully, before volunteering to read out a passage from the bible to the general company, while their host finished making arrangements for dinner to be served with less pomp than originally intended.
Felicity squeezed her mother's hand as she sank into the seat next to her.
"Posture," Donna hissed from the corner of her mouth, helping Felicity smooth over her skirts and patting her knee gently before returning her hands to the confines of her lap. Felicity paid little attention to Ray Palmer's reading, appropriate as it was for the occasion, instead letting her eyes wander up to the plaster relief behind his head. It was a depiction of Orpheus holding his beloved Eurydice's hand, both attempting to flee the clutches of Hades.
She felt Donna shift her position slightly and Felicity found herself watching the way her mother's neck curved into her shoulder, a spot that she had often leaned her head on in her childhood when weary while they waited at the stairwell for her father to return home.
This was her mother. She deserved to know the truth, even if she had no solutions to their current conundrum herself.
Ray had finished his reading, and the other guests restarted their conversations about the murder and their plans, Felicity's ears pricked in anticipation of any mention of leaving the house. There was a general sense of uncertainty as to how to behave. Partaking in revelry seemed gauche, but clinging to the somber and maudlin in conversation and demeanour was downright unnatural.
She tilted her head briefly in the direction of the doors, just in time to see the Duke of Starling enter and join the party. As always, his presence had the effect of curtailing her tendency to run through monologues in her mind, and drawing all of her focus towards him, away from the tribulations of her sojourn in this house.
He had changed, and he appeared to be looking for someone amongst them, barely giving any acknowledgement of his presence a similar courtesy in return. "I am looking for our host," she heard him say in interruption of the Countess' questions about where he intended to go.
Felicity stood, an abrupt movement that drew everyone's attention.
"I know where Mr Wilson is," she said. "I could show you, your grace. It's just down the hallway."
A pause followed, as if he needed time to consider her words. "I would be most grateful," he finally said. Felicity took that as her cue and headed right for the door on the other side of the parlour, throwing it open before she waited for him to follow.
The weight of his regard was almost palpable. He was watching her every movement, his face guarded and his own comportment growing more cautious as he came closer to her.
She left the door open and they both stepped into the unlit corridor. Felicity took care to ensure that she could be seen by all the inhabitants of the parlour, but the duke walked to a position before her that would obscure his form from them, illuminated only by the chiaroscuro of candle-light from the parlour dappling the angled planes of his face.
Felicity had never read any of those torrid novels reputed to give women a most horrid imagination but it behooved her to describe him at that moment as nothing other than with the tired cliché that he exuded danger.
"Where is he, Felicity?" he urged, his voice at a register lower and more menacing than it had been during their badinage earlier that afternoon.
This was barely an idea, much less a plan, just the mere inkling of a hope. It was uncharacteristic - she hated blindly gambling on possibilities and much preferred to decide on probabilities, but the few snatches of time she had shared with the Duke of Starling told her that he would not betray her to Slade Wilson, and his current disposition strongly suggested that he himself had a private vendetta against their host. That was all she could ask for to act upon.
"Meet me at the library in two hours' time," she uttered as quietly as she could, clasping her hands together as she did so. Two hours would have to be enough for her to impress upon her mother the exigencies of their circumstances. "I believe Slade Wilson is still talking to his butler in the dining room."
The duke perused her face for a long instant, his own expression inscrutable. Then he turned and entered the shroud-like fold of the darkness.
This was the hardest chapter I've had to write thus far - Felicity's section alone took three revisions, each of which involved completely different events occurring. I sinseriously hope you enjoyed it and would appreciate if you could comment on any of the following if you review this:
Characterisation - I find Felicity and Diggle the hardest characters to write, in that order. Please let me know if you think I've misunderstood their essence and function and am writing them OOC, if they are fleshed out characters or just cardboards bearing the names and reciting the show's lines where appropriate, or if I'm writing them (especially Felicity) inconsistently within the timeline of the story. Do let me know if you think I got their relationship dynamics with other characters wrong as well. Do the characters sound different?
Plot - We've been in Slade's house (which will soon acquire a name as part of the plot) for quite some time and this entire chapter takes place within an hour. Do you think the pacing is too slow/unnecessarily uneven compared to the previous stories? I took a risk in throwing out what I initially planned, and instead spent this chapter strengthening the Oliver/Diggle bond and giving Felicity more impetus as her own character. Right now at Chapter 10 all the groundwork is more or less laid down for the main characters but I would love to know what you thought about the balance I struck between characterisation and pace, particularly given that I have chosen to present things in a less linear fashion in the previous chapter and this one. Lastly I tried very hard to ensure this chapter was thematically sound and the title of the chapter didn't seem like a random word I just picked but something that ran through the whole of it. Did you pick up on that or was it wishful thinking?
Language - This is the second main thing that slowed down my update here. I will say in advance I will take more time to write the next chapter, because I need to read more fiction to polish my sense of the time and my writing in general. I was afraid my writing choices were becoming predictable, and I spent a lot of time rewriting this chapter in the hopes that it would not sound like I was trotting out the same few phrases again and again. Because of the pacing, I am aware that the language in this particular chapter may come off as overwrought. Do let me know if you felt it affected your enjoyment, as well if I need to be careful about the balance between describing surroundings and interior monologue.
I'm really sorry for how long this is - especially after I said I would move this section to my blog to shorten it! I'm still going to blog about the process but I just really want to ensure that the quality of the story rises as you read it and so your feedback is very important to me. There are comparatively fewer easter eggs in this chapter, and the references are mostly historical or fictional rather than comic-book related. The reading on 1st Duke of Wellington, Arthur Wellesley was the most interesting part of my research. I am aware that Diggle references a colonel in Chapter 3 rather than a general - that will be explained later. The real Sir George had no issue so Lyla is the daughter he never had and I am very happy I don't have to worry about why she doesn't mention her siblings. Slade's house is based on Haddon Hall even though that's actually in Derbyshire, though I was unable to find the real image of Haddon Hall so I used Edward Poynter's version of Orpheus and Eurydice as my pictorial prompt, even though it didn't exist in 1812. I've tried to be deliberate about my art references in this and I hope you enjoy them as part of the reading.
Now if you will forgive me I need to (1) go read a novel, (2) figure out how is Felicity going to save herself (3) probably find a beta reader instead of inflicting this section on you.