Captive Hearts

A BBC Sherlock Medieval Romance AU Story

By

Nana

Chapter 35

Special Thanks: To wearitcounts (Sher_locked_up) for her excellent beta, as always.

And to you guys, for being there to cheer this story on! Happy Holidays! Series three is almost upon us!

More author's notes at the end.

The heart is deceitful above all things, and desperately wicked: who can know it?

- Jeremiah 17:9

Long after John left him, Monseigneur stood in the center of the room, his thoughts a whirlwind in his head.

Four days.

He had not seen John for four days and it had felt like dying. That thing pumping blood inside his chest had felt tight as a fist— a heavy, twisting knot of misery and anguish, heedless of all reason as it raged over John's absence.

It had been most disconcerting, not to mention wholly unwelcome.

Alone is what I have— what I've always had, Monseigneur had angrily reminded himself, over and over, as though he needed to remember one of the basic principles he'd lived by all his life. Alone protects me.

Much to Monseigneur's annoyance, the words had not achieved their desired effect. They had always worked like a charm before and now they were suddenly, completely useless when set against John Watson. Monseigneur's heart was an alien thing inside his body, newly born and already a prisoner of its own desires. Distressingly, it refused to heed the stern dictates of his mind as it stubbornly chanted its own mantra: John, John, John…

Monseigneur had always thought of himself as a solitary being and those rare occasions when he had felt something like loneliness were an anomaly— something nameless and impersonal— which he had been able to dismiss from his consciousness with very little effort.

Now, to his horror, he realized that that loneliness had never gone away; instead, it had taken root inside him, blossoming to something monstrous seemingly overnight and, even worse, it had a name: John.

Was this what the entire wretched business of being in love meant? He'd not been disappointed— it was truly a dangerous disadvantage. At the very least, it was appallingly silly to find himself pining for John. At most, the situation was a perfect gift to his enemies— a golden opportunity not to be wasted.

This was how it felt to walk on quicksand.

With no immediate solution in mind, he'd hoped that the problem would solve itself when he saw John again. Well, John was here now and he'd brought no relief— if anything, Monseigneur felt even worse after seeing him.

Perhaps it had something to do with being seen with a certain princess hanging onto his arm. Monseigneur would rather die than admit it, but the thought of seeing John alone again had filled him with something suspiciously like panic and for once, his steely self-confidence had deserted him. Needless to say, that had not sat well with him at all. Neither had the humiliating memory of his weeping into John's shoulder after sex. As always, on these occasions when he'd been shoved into a corner, he'd turned vicious, resorting to vile tactics honed from an entire childhood of defending himself from a wasp-tongued brother. He had decided to make John suffer by showing him that he, Monseigneur, had not been much affected by him and their lovemaking.

Of course, it was all a lie, heaped like cards, one on top of the other, and, like a house of cards, it all fell down around him when John kissed him. So much for his desperately wicked ploy. He had even responded blindly to John for an instant instead of turning away, thus allowing John a precious opportunity to wound him with that gesture of breaking off the kiss first and deliberately wiping his mouth, as though John had tasted something deeply unsavory. It was crude but highly effective, even brilliant. Why hadn't he thought of it?

What is this? Monseigneur thought, not for the first time, his hand clutching hard at the front of his chest, fingers crushing the fine silk of his surcoat as he felt fresh pain surge through him at the memory of John disgusted, of John walking away from him.

He was losing the game—losing to John, and all because of his goddamned heart. He had heard frequently enough from various people that he did not have one. It was deeply distressing to realize otherwise, because it meant that he was no different from anyone else, as it turned out.

His heart felt so new and already it was broken- a thing of lies and deceit, never to be trusted. If he only could, he would have gladly torn it out before it started to beat irrevocably within him because, for God's sake, couldn't anyone see it would be dangerous for someone like him to acquire one?

It was absolutely ridiculous for him to feel so much for another human being, and all at once: intense pleasure and that familiar hunger, admixed with a deep, lacerating pain whenever he looked at John. It crushed him to note that John's clear gaze— angry and hurt, deeply contemptuous— was like that of a fierce bird of prey through the close-set bars of his cage; a vivid, restless, untamed captive. Were he but free, he would soar cloud high and leave Monseigneur behind.

If he were to admit it, it was a thought that had passed through his mind several times before, and each time had not lessened its power to leave a cold, nauseous feeling inside Monseigneur. How was it, that all those months of being with John in the Lair had reduced him to this? It was as if, by knowing John, a burning string had been attached to that accursed organ in his chest. It was knotted tightly, inexorably, to that same place in John and if that cord were to be severed between them now, Monseigneur thought he might take to bleeding deep inside. As for John, he would forget all about him in no time. John had promised him that much, with his savage kiss and his searing words: That's the last time I'm kissing you.

If John were to make good on his promise and leave him, Monseigneur did not know to what depths he could sink. He'd always prided himself as an immensely capable man; there was no knowing what he was capable of doing if John were to go away. He'd merely to look at the man and all he could ever think about was the perfect fit of John's body as he sheathed himself fully inside that wonderful, warm tightness; and John, taking him in as he lost himself in his lover's arms, as though he truly belonged there and nowhere else. Pure madness, but Monseigneur had never known anything so potent and sweet, so dangerously addictive. Monseigneur knew he must have John again soon, and at the same time, it was all he could do not to lay his hands on John to thrust the man farther away from him.

How can something feel so right and so wrong at the same time? How could ordinary people stand this without going mad? Why would they even want to endure it at all? Questions— there were so many of them and not a single answer was in sight.

It took a moment for Monseigneur to realize that he was breathing erratically, mouth clamped down so hard that his jaw was starting to ache as he felt his heart beat out a violent, staccato rhythm in his chest. Breathlessly, he waited to see if it would stop.

It would not.

Enough!

Ruthlessly sweeping all the unwanted thoughts away until they were bolted behind one of the iron doors inside his mind palace, Monseigneur gave a terse, impatient toss of his head as he straightened and gathered himself.

And not a moment too soon.

The small door to the side of the room opened, and in glided the Princess Irene. She took her customary place beside Monseigneur and threaded her arm around his once more.

"He's gone then," she said, glancing about at the empty room before looking up at Monseigneur's pale, shuttered face. "Come, my lord, and let's have supper."

She'd been saying that since they first met two days ago.

Before meeting her, the King had given him specific instructions: he was willing to receive Exinia's envoys for the wedding but he would leave the princess to Monseigneur to do with as he saw fit. Before that, however, the King had asked Monseigneur to investigate how the Woman had managed to get herself to Gaaldine with her country's envoys. Since the queen regent, her stepmother, had assumed power for her young brother, Mycroft had thought the princess was done for.

"Why bother knowing when it is obvious that she poses no threat at all to your wedding plans?" Monseigneur had drawled. By then, he had been presented to the Angrian queen over a formal dinner, and one glance at his future sister-in-law had told him she would not call off the wedding just because another woman had entered the scene. In fact, she would be no trouble at all as she was far too busy securing her own survival by making sure she got properly married to the King of Gaaldine.

Upon their meeting, the dark-haired, light-voiced Anna Thea had presented a nervously pleasant, if slightly blank façade. Boring, except for Monseigneur's deductions backed by reports from the King's spies that told a different story: of a woman almost at her wits' end, seeking to hold on to her crown by any means possible. She had refused Mycroft's offers of an alliance until she could no longer do so. Yet this marriage— hugely unpopular in her native land— may just be the catalyst to set off a full-scale war between their nations.

She had nearly been kidnapped by one of her own noblemen months before. He had managed to flee court before she could get him arrested and thrown into prison. Now, seizing this royal marriage as an excuse, that same nobleman had gone on to raise an army against her by declaring that she had given Angria away to the Gaaldinian King, and on her marriage bed, no less. According to the spies' reports, several Angrian high lords opposed to the Gaaldinian match had already flocked to join him. Mycroft was the only one who stood between her and a powerful rebel faction back home. Monseigneur was sure that the King was only too aware that he had the little queen in the palm of his hand.

The King himself had been under a lot of strain these last months. Still, Mycroft had lost none of his suave diplomacy as he graciously welcomed his future bride and her small entourage to Glasstown. During the sumptuous dinner, she had sat stiffly to one side of the King while he leaned over on his other side to tell Monseigneur, in Gondalian, to get rid of the Woman as soon as he was finished with her.

"The Exinians know it is in bad taste for us to turn anyone away during a wedding," Mycroft had told him, "and I do not wish to have any scenes from that Woman that will make a mockery of it. We only have a few days before the ceremony. I am only asking you for a few days to hold off any disaster, and you shall have anything you desire that it is within my power to grant."

It was this promise that had clinched the deal between the brothers. Casting the assembled Angrian congregation a fleeting look of disdain, he had known as surely as the sun rose and set each day that somewhere within this crowd of unrefined northern nobility lurked the reason that might take John Watson away from him. Monseigneur knew he would need his brother to fulfill his word by the time this entire debacle was over.

So he had given in with as good a grace as he could muster and had murmured, "agreed."

Yet, the Princess Irene had proven to be a force to be reckoned with when he'd finally met her.

Upon arrival, the Exinian delegation had been waylaid to the White Tower, that most infamous of Gaaldinian fortresses that was part palace and mostly prison. Monseigneur's reception had been brief and to the point. Dressed splendidly in black silk and a heavy velvet cape adorned with his coat of arms, Monseigneur had delivered his scripted lines of welcome with a chilling formality that had silenced the outraged tones of the Exinian envoys who had expected better quarters for their stay.

"Ladies and gentlemen, we are all busy people," Monseigneur had drawled quite pleasantly as he drew to a close. "Let us get on with dinner but before we do so, I understand that there is a royal personage amongst you to whom I have not yet given my proper respects. Why suffer me this discourtesy by hiding her from me?"

She had come forward then, stepping away from her ladies and drawing away the heavy hood that hid her head. A shocked murmur had risen from the crowd as she advanced boldly, hair uncovered and unbound, spilling about her shoulders— inappropriately regnant and falsely virginal. Her wide eyes were at least her own: they were hard and agleam with sharp interest as she fixed her gaze on Monseigneur.

A fellow from her entourage— a large man with the chest and limbs of a Hercules— made to stop her. "Princess—"

He had got no farther. The Princess Irene had turned upon him in an instant, that slender arm extended, swinging in a wide arc before she brought her palm down savagely across the man's face. In the stunned silence and the echoing hall, the slap of her hand had cracked like a whip.

"Don't ever think to touch me again," she had hissed. "You're done now."

Seemingly undeterred by the sudden distraction, the Princess Irene had turned back to Monseigneur nonchalantly and swept him a deep curtsey.

If the turn of events had surprised Monseigneur he had been excellent at hiding it. "Your Highness," he had murmured, bowing deeply in return before extending a hand out to her. "It has been a while. I imagine we will have quite a few things to talk about."

The Princess Irene had smiled. "Oh, quite, your Highness," she had said as she took Monseigneur's proffered hand.

Once they had been alone in one of the Tower chambers, the Princess Irene had said without preamble, "For my safety, I want separate lodgings for myself and a few of my ladies immediately and as far away from Count von Ormstein as possible."

Monseigneur had been briefed on the tangled relations that existed in the Exinian court and he was ready: "Your stepmother's representative and, if reports are accurate, her unofficial chief adviser and bed warmer as well. He's going up the rungs of the ladder rather quickly and may soon even gain the post of Secretary of State."

"All in a night's work for him, I assure you, your Highness," the princess had replied as she met Monseigneur's impassive gaze unflinchingly. "As you can see, he's here as my watchdog."

Monseigneur had begun to circle the princess slowly, hands behind his back, as she got more and more interesting. Ten years had brought about quite a change in her appearance, but not her demeanor. "And you, I believe, are part and parcel of his work, too. He's to accomplish it here," he had said. "Why not just lock you up in an Exinian nunnery where you'll never be heard from again? That would have saved everyone a lot of trouble, and I seem to remember you'd had a fondness for nunneries when you were much younger."

The princess had smiled widely. "Believe you me, my lord, I've had a lot of growing up to do in all the years we've not seen each other. I can assure you that I've not managed to get here by behaving like a nun. I think you already know that I am not expected to return to Exinia alive. That was the only reason why I was allowed to come here."

"So that you can be dispatched amid the pomp and pageantry of my brother's royal wedding," Monseigneur had murmured, growing more interested despite himself. "A murder far from the shores of Exinia where blame can never reach your stepmother. How convenient. Still, what has that got to do with me?"

"Obviously you can stop it, my lord."

"Why should I?" Monseigneur's voice had been coldly indifferent. "If you've come hoping to snag a husband here, or a knight in shining armor to rescue you, I will advise you now of its futility. I'm not interested in gaining a wife and it would be useless for you to try and seduce me into marriage. You've been stripped of your wealth; you've nothing to your person except your title. Now stop boring me and think: what have you to offer that will interest me or my brother enough to help you?"

There was a beat of silence or two, and then Irene, never batting an eyelash, had said, "All right. I do happen to know something that might interest you. Somebody else wants you dead, my lord, and I have been tasked to kill you in order to save my own neck."

She had looked at him from beneath her lashes and murmured, "that got your attention now, didn't it?"

Indeed, Monseigneur had stopped moving. He had stood stock still, back ramrod straight, as he looked at this creature before him— really looked, for the first time.

Was she bluffing or wasn't she? Monseigneur had realized with a start that he did not know. He had not been able to read her.

She had continued to gaze at him with her cat's eyes, coolly calculating, before saying, "don't think I did not realize the intentions of my stepmother and her lover before leaving Exinia, and have not made certain arrangements of my own. Somebody managed to contact me to offer a way out, but there is a hefty price to be paid for his service."

"My life."

"None other, your Highness."

"Obviously you do not trust him."

"Of course not. The moment you're dead, I may as well be, in his hands. I will no longer be of any use to him or anyone else."

"And you think you can trust me?" Monseigneur had given her a coldly amused look from the corner of his eyes.

"You'll need me alive if you want to get to him, my lord," she had said, smiling. "Of course, you may throw me in the dungeons and have me over the rack to pry a name out of me, but I promise you this, Monseigneur: my lips will be sealed and I will never let slip a word even under torture. Besides, once he finds out the game is up, he'll probably scuttle away to devise another plan and you may never catch him the next time."

"I already know who he is."

"Oh, I don't doubt that you may already know who he is. Your massive intellect is known far and wide after all, my dear Prince. That ought to simplify things. I need not tell you who it is, then. But to catch him— ah! That's a different game altogether, wouldn't you say, my lord? It won't be easy at all, but surely it has also occurred to you that I am the most direct way to him. I can save you a great deal of time and effort."

"You're proposing to betray the very person who's helping you?" Monseigneur had murmured. "No: this person knows about the plot to get rid of you. He's probably been asked to plan your murder but he's chosen to blackmail you instead and use you to toy with me. He's brought you here to play his little games. Novel."

The princess gave a nod of approval and she had continued, "he's had the count believe he's working for him and my stepmother. He's got me out of Exinia and he's promised to get me all the way out and to provide money and protection after I've done his bidding. I don't believe him. Not after what he's done to the two villages in the north."

Monseigneur's voice had been very still: "You know about those."

"I know a great many things besides," the Princess Irene had said engagingly; she had never stopped smiling. "All in due time, my lord, and I will need your pledge that you shall carry out the rest of our bargain after we are done."

"What makes you think I can trust you?"

The princess had shrugged prettily. "Perhaps you never will, but then, that's already a given, isn't it? You'll constantly have to be on your guard against me then."

"And you think you can trust me to carry out our so-called bargain to the very end?"

The princess had tilted her head to regard him beseechingly. "You are a man of your word, your Highness, are you not? That is what all Gaaldinians far and wide will readily attest to, anyway. They believe in you, their ange noir, and so must I. There's nothing like summoning a dark angel to thwart the devil's work."

When Monseigneur had said nothing to that, she had pressed on, "I have a list of my requests and some ideas about my protection once they've been granted. We can talk about it later, if you wish. For now, my lord, let us have dinner. I'm starving."

Author's Notes: Count von Ormstein, he with the chest and limbs of a Hercules, is lifted from the description of the King of Bohemia, Irene Adler's tormentor, in ACD's A Scandal in Bohemia.

During Medieval times, only queens (and usually only during their coronation) and very young girls were allowed to wear their hair loose. All other women were required to wear caps and elaborate headdresses.

In Jewish, Islamic and Early Christian mythology, dark angels are angels of death and destruction, different from fallen angels in that they are messengers of God and their obedience to Him is absolute. In some holy texts, they are regarded as avengers of God's justice, the takers of life and terrible to behold but without actually being evil.

And yes, a part of Monseigneur's thoughts on John are lifted directly from one of the most famous passages in Charlotte Brönte's Jane Eyre, wherein Mr. Rochester declared to Jane, "I sometimes have a queer feeling with regard to you — especially when you are near me, as now: it is as if I had a string somewhere under my left ribs, tightly and inextricably knotted to a similar string situated in the corresponding quarter of your little frame. And if that boisterous Channel, and two hundred miles or so of land come broad between us, I am afraid that cord of communion will be snapt; and then I've a nervous notion I should take to bleeding inwardly. As for you, — you'd forget me."