#sorry for my ignorance i am but a STEM person who encountered the smallest bit of a genre and was swept away

[wereshrew-admirer]

......Regency Era AU 

Duvall came to Eastern Folly as a student, but though he comes from a good family the high society of Sangfielle paralleled the common folk in their disdain for the old dominion. struggling to keep his place among the nobles, he regularly took long walks in the countryside to avoid doing anything rash in response to the taunting of his peers. 

On one such walk in the spring he met a young farmer wandering far from home and restless despite the season’s usually bone-wearying work of plowing and planting. they’d been forbidden from working the fields until the crops emerged, having been caught the year prior attempting to plant unearthly seeds in the soil. 

The farmer had never met a nobleman and their suspicion of Duvall was no different from their hesitancy to trust any of his class. Duvall, well accustomed to hostility by now, found this a refreshing change from the sneering of his supposed peers. 

The farmer, for their part, was pleasantly surprised first when instead of taking offense Duvall shared in their complaints of the local ruling class, and second when he reacted with genuine (and even enthusiastic) interest when they mentioned their theories on unorthodox methods for increasing crop yield. 

The two formed a habit, unintentional at first, of meeting along the shore of the large lake to the west of town, laughing together until the suns hung low on the horizon. they became close that summer, but when the weather cooled and harvesting began the farmer was called back to work, their size and strength appreciated by their family even when their mind was not. 

Duvall continued his afternoon walks until the frosts fell over the land and chilled his feet, but his friend did not return. All winter he sat at his bedroom window looking out at the low hills surrounding Eastern Folly, dreaming of the day he might hear the farmer’s laughter and forget, if only briefly, the strict world in which he lived his daily life. 

He got his wish the following spring, before even the first of the year’s new leaves unfurled -he found his farmer working among a construction crew near the marketplace Duvall frequented. At first he was overjoyed, but when the farmer caught his eye and called to him from the scaffolding of a new building, Duvall realized at once that they were not alone, and that any number of his enemies might witness his association with this commoner and use it to their advantage. 

Still, his desire to speak to his friend was strong, and he managed to pass word to the farmer of a time and place for them to meet in private. 

The farmer, blind to Duvall’s concerns and new to both urban life in general and the vulgar stories passed among their new coworkers, misinterpreted this request and arrived at the proposed meeting place with expectations well beyond those Duvall had intended. 

Surprised but far from offended, Duvall found himself drawn into the farmer’s arms and an affair of the sort he’d thought only possible in the most frivolous of fictions. But unlike his clothes, the farmer was unable to strip from him the true reasons for his discretion. 

Duvall was a scholar. To access his studies he must remain in the good graces of his family, and to do so meant that though he was allowed to fly far from the nest, he was to remain a respected member of high society wherever he landed. And the farmer was far below his station in both class and temperament. To be seen together would ruin him. 

And so when they met, they did so in secret, and only with great caution on Duvall’s part.

This would prove disastrous for any love that may have grown between them when Duvall received a scholarship that took him far from Eastern Folly on such short notice that he was unable to find the time away from watchful eyes to inform the farmer of his departure. 

Though he tried to write, his letters were returned to him undelivered. In desperation he wrote to the farmer’s parents under the guise of a business owner seeking work owed, and to his horror, this was the only letter that received a response: his lover had been conscripted and was soon thereafter killed in battle. 

Years later, Duvall returned to Eastern Folly in time to see its change into Blackwick county, and established himself there as a humble professor. Finally tolerated by the local gentry, if only, he suspected, as a source of entertainment. Still, this afforded him the freedoms he had originally sought in his flight from Aldomina - to study as he saw fit, and to research first hand those subjects that caught his interest. 

And he was not altogether as lonely as he seemed - he made what he thought were genuine friends in a rival scholar whose humor was all that saved him from constant scandal, and in a lady who shared Duvall’s foreign tongue and whom would have faced similar trials if not for her cool demeanor that allowed insults to roll off of her like beads of water off a duck’s back (unlike Duvall, who continued to struggle to control himself when sufficiently frustrated well beyond the years of when such things are expected of young men). Others, too, were kind enough to him that he felt at ease in Blackwick, if not at home. 

Parties, unfortunately, were still an uncomfortable necessity to remain in good favor with the patrons he had managed to acquire on his own, and to satisfy his now-distant family who continued to send him financial support from time to time with the hope that he might someday marry and expand the reach of their line into the heartland. 

And so every few weeks he’d spend an evening suffering the ignorant questions of those attempting to stave off their own boredom. He was painfully aware that most attending these social events had no genuine interest in his research, and so when the gaggle of dull-witted gentry abandoned him for some new amusement, Duvall felt nothing but gratitude to the unfortunate newcomer whose mysterious origin drew their attention.

It was a general, he found out later, having “returned” to Blackwick after a successful campaign in the bloodfields absolutely dripping in awards and medals and tales of gloriously violent exploits. Duvall’s gratitude for the distraction they posed did not extend to his curiosity, as not much turned his stomach quicker than did the glorification of military men who stood on the backs of soldiers who had no choice but to die fighting under their heel - a sensitivity that he did his best to hide, lest someone inquire as to how he picked it up.  

It was this that kept Duvall far from the circles that grew around the general, though the rumors were impossible to escape: Chine should died when a bullet tore through his face and took one of his eyes, but he had fought on to lead his men to victory as if unaffected by pain or blood loss. The list of battles they’d won was long, and they had become well known for their ferocity and willingness to face death alongside his soldiers. It was said that the very sight of their snarling face sometimes inspired their foes to surrender - The tales of their exploits nearly bore Duvall to tears. 

The only interesting line of gossip was the officer’s mysterious background. They were said to have come from Eastern Folly, but no local house claimed them. They spoke with the local accent, though, and bore features similar to those whose lines ran deep as the mines in these mountains. 

More curious yet, he would not identify the benefactor that sponsored their commission. Claiming again that they had ties to the land of Blackwick itself. What might have been a controversy that ruined a lesser man, Chine thrived on it. Equally fearsome on the ballroom floor, it was said, as they were in battle. 

This set Duvall off laughing whenever he heard it and so his friend and rival Lye Lychen took to announcing dance partners as though they had stepped into a boxing ring with the general, assigning points to potential suitors as they struggled to catch Chine’s attention through the normal means of flattery and sex appeal and over-practiced wit. 

While this often successfully got his shoulders shaking, Duvall managed to not so much as glance in the general’s direction. Lye’s obvious exaggeration of the situation became something of a game between the two of them and the Lady Es. She acted as a referee, confirming the truth or lie of Mr. Lychen’s claims whenever Duvall called it, saving him from actually looking himself - which added to the challenge for Lye, who was determined to craft a story just extravagant enough to draw Duvall’s curiosity without being flagged as false. Lady Es, in all fairness, never contradicted Lye until Duvall asked for her word. 

But Blackwick was not populous enough for such a game to continue forever. It was inevitable that eventually Duvall would look upon the general by accident, on or off of the dance floor. It happened late one evening after Duvall had drunk just enough to doubt himself - across the room a large group of people shifted, opening just enough to reveal at their center the figure that Duvall had thus far avoided. 

And fate would have it that the general, in that moment, also glanced in his direction. Duvall was frozen in place, staring with eyes so wide that he was sure to draw attention by his expression alone -  there across the hall stood his farmer, rendered nearly unrecognizable by the scars that cut bright lines through their freckles and dug deep pits into their face, but alive. He half-stumbled forward only to realize that a sea of party goers still blocked the path between them, and then recognition seemed to spark in the general’s eye and instead of reflecting the intensity of joy that Duvall felt for the briefest, sweetest moment, their expression shifted into a cold glare that seemed to take the floor out from below Duvall’s feet. 

Lyke was near enough to catch him, exclaiming, “woa now, you alright buddy? You look like you’ve seen a ghost”

Duvall grasped his friend’s arm for dear life, staring at the space where his farmer had been a moment before, replaced now by the ever-shifting crowd, and grateful for it, too - for a moment more of that hateful glare would surely have sent him to his own grave. He shook his head as if to clear it, blinking up at Lye and forcing a grin that he knew wouldn’t fool the man for a second, “you know - i - i might have”