Yu-Gi-Oh is the property of Konami and Kazuki Takahashi, and this work is only a very appreciative celebration, from which we hope to derive no profit of any kind.

It had rained earlier in the day, but by the time Yami left the Jardine house to go pick up his supposed "brother" from school, the rain had stopped. A breeze had come up and blown the clouds apart, and he rode down to the village under a mix of bright sunshine, and looming, dark clouds, in a little pony-cart the Countess had offered him use of. "Harry usually drives him to and from school," she said, not bothering to take the time to say who that was, "but I am very sure Yuugi would rather his brother come get him for a change."

The lives of these rich people always amazed Yami a little. "Harry", it turned out, was the groom, but not the only groom; he caught sight of three or four at least, when he went down to the stables that afternoon, to get the cart. And there was someone older in there as well, telling them what to do. Add that to all the servants who crowded everywhere inside the main house: Who needed that many people just to do for them? He also wondered a little at a boy of 18, who needed a cart, because he couldn't manage to walk to school by himself, although that one explained itself, as drove down the hill toward the village, and was reminded again, just how long a drive it was.

The school was located across the street from the village church. Pegasus would probably have exclaimed over it, and how "picturesque" and "historic" it was, but to Yami, it just looked old, and he liked the looks of the brand new, red-brick school building better. It was a nice big school, he thought, and he liked the looks of the grassy playing field beyond (the grass still green, even this late in the year), with nice, sturdy swings and a roundabout too, for the younger children to enjoy during their breaks. It made him wish there'd been something like this for the children in his own neighborhood when he was growing up. He'd have liked to come here, he thought, and learn and play with other children, instead of having been given Egyptian history and bits of the Quran to study when his father or his friends had been about, and just having been left alone to run wild in the streets, the rest of the time.

He arrived just as the church bell sounded four o'clock, and the doors of the school building opened. Children poured out, most of them heading straight for homes in the village (Yami noted that his was the only cart waiting), and after them, smaller groups of teens, walking more slowly, chatting in groups as they left the building. Yami caught sight of Yuugi easily enough, the unruly spikes of his hair only slightly controlled by the cap he put on as he left the building. There were a couple of other boys with his "brother", he saw, and an attractive girl, her sailor hat resting on top of gleaming, red-brown hair, who must have been the Tea he was talking so fondly about, the day before.

At first, they walked toward the cart too busy talking to even look at it, as if this were a daily routine for them. It was only when they were right upon it, and Yuugi put his hand up to step up and take a seat, that he noticed who was meeting him today. "Donald," he cried, with a happy smile, and then, turning to his friends, "look who's driving me home today!"

"This has got to be the brother you were talking about, right Yuug'?" It was a blond boy, about a head taller than Yuugi (not that that took much doing), who spoke. He looked up at Yami in the driver's position and put out his hand. "The name's Joey Wheeler," he said with a grin. "I'm the one that's got some know-how in this group. I tell the others how things are done." He jerked a thumb over his shoulder toward the other boy, who's dark hair was slicked back in an attempt to be stylish. "That's Tristan," he said. "He's the teacher's pet."

"I'm not, you know," Tristan said, although he didn't seem to mind the description much. He came forward and shook Yami's hand cordially, then he turned, ushering the girl closer. "I'm pleased to introduce Miss Gardiner," he said.

"She's the grind," Jou put in, as Miss Gardiner put out her hand. "We let her hang around so we can copy from her lessons."

Yami took Tea's outstretched hand, bringing it to his lips continental-style, instead of shaking it as he'd done with the boys. Instantly, the girl went bright red. "I am very pleased to meet you, Miss Gardiner," he said.

"Oh, please, call me Tea," she responded, hiding a giggle behind her hand.

"I wish we didn't have to go straight home," Yuugi said from his seat next to Yami in the cart. "I'd love for you to be able to get to know my friends some more, Donald."

"I'd like that too," Yami responded. He looked down at his "brother's" three friends. "There's room in the cart," he said. "Is there someplace in the village where we can go get something to eat?"

"There's the pub," Joey began.

"Which we can't take a lady to," Tristan put in at once.

The boys subsided into silence, with Tea silent as well. Maybe there wasn't anyplace else available, Yami was just thinking, and he'd have to just drive everyone home. Then Yuugi spoke:

"There's the ABC that just opened," he said.

The ABC was a company that ran a chain of tea shops. They'd been in London ever since Yami could remember, since way before he'd had the money to even venture inside their doors. Pegasus said they were hopelessly middle-class, and you could tell funds were dipping dangerously low when he'd condescend to even go into one, but Yami had fond memories of standing outside the door and inhaling the sweet baking smells as a boy. He brightened a little now, at hearing there was one here in remote Dumfries. "Very good," he said, trying for the proper upper-class casual tone. "That'll do for a snack, won't it?"

A chorus of eager agreement from Yuugi and his friends told him he'd made the right choice. The others were so pleased by his invitation, that Yami could tell they weren't going to care, or even notice, if he wasn't upper-class and casual-sounding. He followed Yuugi's directions, and drove the little cart over two streets to where the tea shop stood, glittering in its newness, between a greengrocer and an apothecary.

"We're here," Yami halted the little pony-cart in front of the ABC, a fancy building, with large, plate-glass windows, that looked out of place among the rest of the older buildings. Yuugi and friends climbed down quickly enough, and Yami offered a hand to help the young lady, Téa, down as well. They were all looking at him, he noticed, discrete, covert glances when they thought he wasn't looking – A man didn't stay successful in the con game for long unless he got to where he noticed these things. – but Téa was doing it the most. He wondered what it was she was curious about. Was it his olive skin, that the rest of Yuugi's friends had accepted easily enough as being the tan of someone who'd lived in tropical climes for several years? Was it something else, perhaps? Maybe she was the one who found is suspect, that the long-lost Donald would just happen to show up, right when his family had an expensive piece of jewelry to give him.

At any rate, he told himself, Téa was the one he'd need to convince that he was who he said he was, as he followed Yuugi and the other boys into the ABC. They were no sooner inside, than the proprietor of the ABC, Angus Grier, rushed to greet them. He recognized his guests, no doubt about it, and he was delighted, understandably enough, to have the Earl's two sons in his establishment.

"My Lord, young Master Jardine," he said, rubbing his hands, and scuttling them eagerly to the best table in the house. "What do you desire? How can I be of service to you? My store is your store, young sirs."

"Bring some of everything," Joey said, flopping down into a chair right away.

"Yeah," Tristan echoed, "that sounds… Ah," he faltered, as he caught sight of Téa glaring at them, "I should say, we appreciate your generosity, Donald, and will have whatever you care for."

"Oh, some of everything, definitely." Yami was a little vague on what "everything" consisted of, at an ABC, not having gotten to visit nearly as many of them as he would have liked. It would be good though, he was sure of that from the delicious fragrances that filled the place, and, more importantly, it would please his "brother" and his friends.

Yuugi and his friends were an odd group, he couldn't help thinking. There was the blond, bumptious Joey, tieless, and with his shirt half-untucked from his trousers. He did everything enthusiastically; he even sat down, with such vigor that Yami feared for the fragile-looking teashop-chair. Across the table from him, Tristan was like a study in contrasts: His suit was a new, spruce-looking ready-made; his hair was smooth and tidy. Only his manners kept him from being the perfect young gentleman, as he kept forgetting himself and lapsing into boyish silliness. Téa Gardiner seemed rather superior to either of them, cleverer, and more mature. She sat down tidily, and immediately placed her napkin in her lap and folded her hands on the tabletop. And in the corner sitting next to Yami, was Yuugi himself. He seemed younger than his friends, innocent, enthusiastic, and disturbingly, dangerously trusting.

"I love the ABC," he was saying now cheerfully. "Their buns are as good as Cook's, and there's always so many choices." He laughed. "Last time we were here, Joey said he was going to eat one of everything. - Remember what happened, Joey?"

The blond boy laughed as well. "Well, I did eat 'em all," he said, "or I would have done if I hadn't started with those darn rock cakes first. They call 'em rock cakes for a reason, I guess. They sit just like a rock in your stomach."

Tristan grinned, looking up as the proprietor carried a tray over and started setting dishes of cakes and buns on the table. "Look what's here, Joey." He pointed at a dish of raisin-filled biscuits, frosted pink. "It's your favorite," he said. "Rock cakes!"

There was a general laugh at the blond boy's expense, and then they all fell to, serving themselves generously, from the excellent tea and the variety of delicious baked goods that the ABC provided. Yami for his part, piled his plate as high as any of them, delighted by the presence on the table of a pot of honey, which gave an unnecessary, but very pleasurable, added sweetness, to the fruitcake and sultana biscuits.

"So you're the famous Donald." Téa nibbled a scone spread with butter and honey, and looked at Yami from under her sailor hat. "He hasn't stopped talking about you all day," she said. "It drove Headmaster Sutherland to distraction. He ended up threatening him with the strap during Geometry." She laughed. "Yuugi never gets the strap."

"I'm a good boy," Yuugi said, joining her laugh, "unlike some of us."

Joey's grin told everything that needed to be known about who he was talking about. "I'm not bad," he said. "There's just something about me that Headmasters can't resist. Mr. Wallace was worse. I used to never leave school but what I'd have gotten five or ten licks." His hand went to his seat, as though he could still feel those long-ago lashings, and then picked up his slice of fruitcake and took another bite.

Téa for her part, just smiled politely at the byplay. Her gaze was still on Yami. "He said you had ever so many stories to tell about India," she told him, "but no presents or pictures at all. He said he thought maybe the trunk with the presents just hadn't arrived yet, because last time you visited, you brought loads of them. He said your mother wouldn't speak to you for three days, that time, because she saw some of the pictures in the book you brought your father. - The Kama...something. I don't remember the title, but he said it your father still hasn't let him look at it."

Presents, were something Pegasus had wanted to bring, when they went up to Scotland, but they'd been so tight on time. It hadn't been until the 25th that he'd even seen the article about the Jardines in the paper, and then there'd been the time it had taken for them to get to London and pick up their things from the tailor, and for Pegasus to research the family at the British Museum. And it wasn't like you could buy convincingly Indian-looking items at every shop you went to. They'd found a moth-eaten tiger skin at one curiosity shop in Lambeth, a faded sari with half the sequins fallen off, and some brass trays (but those were too common, Pegasus said; every Tom, Dick and Harry had one, these days), at another place. Finally when it got to be December fifth and they hadn't found anything better, they'd just given up and gone on without them.

"It's worse than that," he lied now, smoothly. "The trunk got lost. The steamship company can't find it at all. I ought to have said something to Yuugi and my parents, but you know how it is. I didn't want to draw attention to the fact that I didn't have anything for them."

"I can understand that," Tristan said, nodding.

"Yeah," said Joey, and he glared at Téa, adding, "it's kind of a sensitive subject."

"I'll make it up with the presents I buy for Christmas," Yami began.

And, "I'd rather have you here, than all the presents in the world," Yuugi interrupted him.

"It's not all about presents," Tristan said, "the company of friends and family are the greatest gift of all."

"Says the teacher's pet," Joey interrupted.

And, at the same time, "I totally agree," said Yuugi. "Material things don't hug, don't love, don't care."

"But they also don't talk back, don't tell you how to eat your spinach, and don't comment on everything you do," Joey said. He was by far the rowdiest of them all, and he looked like he could barely afford school. His clothes were a little worn. How did a kid like Joey Wheeler end up as a friend of Yuugi Jardine? It didn't matter. The fact was, they were friends, all of them, and Yami could feel the warmth of their bond. He'd never had many friends growing up; it was hard to make friends with other kids, when you were competing with them for every crust you could get, and it made him a little jealous, seeing the closeness between his "brother" and the others. He tried not to let it show and took the tea pot, turning, to fill Téa's cup.

"Here you are, miss," he said, as always the polite charmer.

"I do like the tea they serve here," the girl murmured. "Would you pass the lemon slices please?" She looked up at Yami with blue eyes that were cool, not outright doubting, but not really friendly either. Taking a lemon, she squeezed the juice into her cup, then dropped the rind in as well. "Did you drink much tea in India?" she said.

Well-prepared by Pegasus, Yami knew how to answer this question. "You don't think a few thousand miles are enough to separate a Briton from his tea," he said. "We expatriates used to have tea just the way it's had here. We'd drink it in the afternoons, and we'd eat cake and muffins." He smiled. "My native cook made muffins that would compare with anything you can get here," he said. "And I'd eat them with butter and some of the local honey."

Téa just smiled and nibbled her scone in silence. "You had to be careful what you drank away from home though," Yami continued. "My job called for a lot of travel in the interior, and there were native tea-wallahs at all the railway stations. Some of what they sold smelled awfully good," he said, "but I never dared buy any. You had no idea where they got the water to make it with, you know."

He was talking too much, he knew, Téa's silence making him uncomfortable. With an effort, he stopped himself long enough to finish his own cup of tea.

"Yuugi's a very good friend of mine." Téa had finished her scone, and she eyed Yami over the rim of her cup.

"Indeed," Yami responded, his mind working overtime as he tried to discern the undertones of the conversation. "He speaks warmly of you," he said.

"I feel warmly about him," Téa said. "We're just friends of course," she said, "what with him being nobility and all, and me just a shopkeeper's daughter. And besides, Yuugi's much too young to think of marrying" she added with a fond smile. "He's just a boy, really," she said.

"That's why I worry about him." As she continued, Téa looked directly into Yami's eyes. "He's sweeter and more innocent than a lot of boys his age," - Here she glanced quickly at Tristan and Joey, who were laughing boisterously about some joke or another. - "I don't know what I'd do if I found out someone was hurting him, or cheating him in some way," she said. Yami wondered if he was imagining the implications he heard in her voice.

In his life as a... conniving gentleman, Yami had faced doubters before. Each one was a new challenge, and he never stopped feeling a little tension, as he'd try to work out the best way of convincing them. Téa was fond of Yuugi - Who wasn't, as kind and as loveable as he was? - and she didn't want anyone messing with him. Was it written on his forehead, that he was out to rob Yuugi and his family? What clues was she picking up on? Yami tried to swallow down his nervousness along with a sip of tea, and then continued the conversation.

"My brother has good taste in friends," he said suavely. "Loyalty is a wonderful virtue, and I'm glad Yuugi can count on you. Though I must say, Miss Gardiner, if I found out someone wanted to hurt my brother, I wouldn't stand for it myself either."

"And yet you went off to India for so many years," Téa gave back. "What prompted you to come home now?"

"I knew my brother was in good hands, with my parents." Yami sounded defensive; he knew he sounded defensive. The explanation he and Pegasus had planned going in, was that he'd come home this year because he wanted to show his home off to the Colonel. He hadn't known anything about Yuugi, he certainly hadn't known he'd come to care for him …like the brother he'd never had.

Finally Téa nodded, her lips a little pursed, as if she (still?) didn't quite believe him. Yami let it go, and took another drink of tea.

"Donald, you're barely eating," Yuugi said, shoving the plate with cake and scones towards him. "You're so fond of almond cake! Don't let Joey eat it all!"

"Almond cake, is it?" Yami smiled, turning his attention away from Téa, and back toward Yuugi and the others. So Donald liked almond cake, did he? Compared with the minefield he'd been negotiating with Téa, keeping up this pretense was going to be a piece of cake. ...Literally. He had to scan the table a little before he found the plateful of golden wedges, covered lavishly with almonds; the ABC had provided such a variety of treats, that it was hard to find anything specific, and he'd just been eating from whatever plates happened to be nearest him, so far. Now when he saw it, he took a wedge, and bit into it with gusto, almonds falling to sprinkle his jacket and the tablecloth below.

Yuugi laughed a pleased-sounding laugh. "You can fill up on muffins," he told Joey. "Almond cake's always been Donald's favorite." Looking toward Yami, "Cook used to make it special for you when you'd come home for the summer, remember?" he said. "She'd always send me out to pick all the ripe berries I could find for it." He grinned. "Remember the time I gave you a garter snake for a coming home present? I found him under the raspberry vines, and I tore my jacket trying to catch him. Mother was so angry."

This almond cake was filled with jam, not ripe berries. A little of it had managed to fall onto his lapel, and Yami was trying to wipe it off, not wanting to hear what Pegasus would say when he saw he'd gotten his new suit dirty so soon. He looked up though, and smiled at Yuugi's story as if it was one of his fondest memories. "I remember that snake," was all he said though. One of the things he'd had to learn as a conman, was to avoid saying too much. Given any encouragement, a mark was likely to tell you everything you needed to know. And enthusiastic as he was, Yuugi was the perfect mark.

Even as he thought that, Yami felt a twinge of guilt at the thought. But he didn't let it get in the way of listening, as his "brother" went on to re-tell the whole story: "We kept him all summer, remember?" he said happily. "We had that box with the lid made of glass, - Where did we get it? Wasn't it the box your architectural blocks came in? - and we were going to poke holes so it could breathe, but there were already some holes in the sides. - Oh I remember," he added. "The box came with the bug-catching kit I got for my birthday that year. Only I hated bugs. You were the one that caught them so we could feed Snakey."

Snakey and the bugs, and other family stories, happily re-told by Yuugi, made up much of the conversation during tea, and during the time afterward, when Yami was driving Joey, Tristan, and Téa to their homes in the village. If Yuugi was the one doing most of the talking, no one seemed to question it, although now and then Yami looked Téa's way, and found the girl watching him. She made him uncomfortable, and he was relieved when he reached the seed shop (Téa's father was a seed-merchant) and dropped her out. The girl descended gracefully from the pony cart. At the shop-door, she looked back, calling, "see you at school tomorrow," to Yuugi, and then she was gone, and Yami was alone with his "brother".

The pony cart started moving, back up the high street and out of the village, toward the Jardine house, set in the hills, a good hour's drive away or more. If it were someone else he was driving with, Yami might have been worried. - An hour of one-in-one conversation had undone more than a few cons, even some of his. It wasn't easy, posing as someone you weren't, uninterrupted, for that long. - If it were that Téa Gardiner, for instance, with her penetrating gaze and her awkward questions, he might almost have rather gotten out of the cart and walked back to Kirkconnell Castle, and let her and Yuugi have the cart to themselves. But this was just Yuugi, and he... Well, he loved his brother, was what. And he was too innocent, or too trusting maybe, to have any doubts at all, about this "Donald" who had shown up on the doorstep all unexpected. It was convenient, for Yami, but it also made him feel a little ashamed of himself. He didn't like to think of how Yuugi's innocence would be destroyed, when he found out how he'd been lied to.

Yami had seen Yuugi watching, as Téa got down out of the cart. He'd seen how his "brother's" face pinked, as the girl's skirts flipped up for a moment, showing a flash of ankle. "She's quite pretty, isn't she?" he commented.

"Téa?" Yami didn't like the feelings that went through him as he saw Yuugi blush, when he said her name. The boy was just a mark, nothing more. Why should it matter who he did or didn't love? Why should Yami feel jealous about it? "She knows how to stand up for herself, that's for sure," Yuugi said, "but she has a good heart, Donald. She's a good friend."

"A special friend?" It was the right conman's question, the natural one for "Donald" to ask in the circumstances. So why did Yami hate asking it? And why did he hate it even more, when he saw how it made Yuugi's blush deepen?

"She's very nice," was all said, "and she's been my friend for ages, since I started school, I think. She's always been there for me."

"For you, or for Master Jardine, son of the Earl of Kirkconnell?" Again, Yami tried to think what Donald would say at this moment. It was hard thinking as a conman though, when what he wanted was just to be free for a while, and able to get to know Yuugi on his own, without always having to pull strings and pretend.

"Donald!" Yuugi sounded more shocked than he'd expected. "How can you say that? Téa's not like that at all!"

He looked angry, and more than that, he looked hurt. Yami hadn't just gone too far, he'd gone way too far. But for some reason it was getting hard for him to think like a conman around Yuugi. His natural impulses kept getting in the way, and then when he reversed them, he overcorrected the other way. Now, thinking just to comfort his "brother", he, put his arm around Yuugi's and pulled him close for a hug.

It started out as a brotherly hug, but Yuugi's hair smelled nice against his face, and his body felt warm in Yami's arms, very warm, and very soft, and it was all Yami could do to pull away again as "Donald" ought to do. "'Forgive me, brother," he murmured, trying to push back the memory of Yuugi's soft, fragrant hair, of his warm body... "I don't know your friends well yet.
And I really wouldn't want anything bad to happen to you. There are people in the world, who have bad intentions, Yuugi."

Yuugi smiled warmly, having forgiven Yami's faux-pas already. "It's all right, Donald," he said. "I know you want the best for me. But you can count on Téa, Joey and Tristan to have my best interest in mind. They don't care for nobility, they care for me."

"It's good to have such loyal friends," Yami said. He thought about his own life. He'd never had loyal friends, or any friends ...except for Pegasus, and weren't they really more like partners? It was past time for him to meet with his partner, Yami thought. A con game like theirs wouldn't work, if they didn't discuss each of their progress. The prospect was less appealing than he liked, and he told himself he didn't know why. What was there to be hesitant about, he asked himself. This was just a job, like any other job. He was just going to pay the part of Donald Jardine for another couple of weeks, and give Pegasus time to enjoy the splendid British, country-house Christmas he'd been hoping for. Then they'd "leave for India", with the Lochmaben Emerald tucked away safely in his luggage. They'd sell it, and use the proceeds to pay for a nice long stay someplace warm. Naples, maybe, or the South of France.

"I know," Yuugi's chatter cut into his thoughts. "I'm a very lucky boy," he said. "I have good friends, and a good family." He leaned against his "brother's" shoulder, and Yami found himself inhaling the fragrance of his hair again.

"You deserve it, Yuugi," was all he could manage to say in response, while he tried to block out any guilt he might have been feeling, and focus his mind on his upcoming meeting with Pegasus.