The Priory School: The Duchess Returns

[scfrankles.livejournal.com]

Canon Story: The Priory School
Title: The Duchess Returns
Author: scfrankles
Rating: G
Author's Notes: "...I would suggest that you make such amends as you can to the Duchess, and that you try to resume those relations which have been so unhappily interrupted." "That also I have arranged, Mr. Holmes. I wrote to the Duchess this morning."


The Fates were mocking her.

On the ferry she’d spotted George. Still handsome…

Thankfully she’d escaped unseen.

The Duchess shivered.

She’d been a fool all those years ago. But her marriage had been so unhappy from the start.

She looked again at her husband’s letter and almost laughed. His illegitimate child banished forever, and his legitimate heir… wasn’t his son.

Comments

[okapi1895.livejournal.com]

Ooo! Very nice. I do wonder what the Duchess thinks of all this. Once again, we have only the word of her estranged husband her opinion/stance and I do think it's odd that Holmes pointedly wants them back together.

[thesmallhobbit.livejournal.com]

Serves him right!

[scfrankles.livejournal.com]

Life's little ironies... ^_^

[scfrankles.livejournal.com]

Maybe Holmes is hopeful that the couple will be happy now that Wilder is finally out of the way. And perhaps he wants the Duchess to come back for Arthur's sake?

But, yes - we don't really know what the Duchess thinks about her marriage. And even if there had been a chance of happiness before, how is she going to feel when her son tells her his father came to visit him where he was being held - and then left him there?

[debriswoman]

Oh...nice twist:-)

[scfrankles.livejournal.com]

Thank you ^_^ I thought it made for a darkly humorous parallel ^^"

[gardnerhill.livejournal.com]

How aristocratic of both of them.

[lindahoyland.livejournal.com]

What a great twist!

[scfrankles.livejournal.com]

Indeed, indeed ^^"

[scfrankles.livejournal.com]

Thank you - I was pleased with the idea ^_^

[sanguinity]

That was a shocking, shocking detail. Did the Duke honestly value his family name over his son's life? Because his son's captor already hated the Duke, had already broken faith with his employer (both employers, really!), and had already committed murder. Like, what was the Duke even thinking, leaving the child there??

For that matter, I was somewhat confounded when Holmes and Watson left the child there!

(Sorry, I'm not actually asking you to explain any of that, just... I was all outraged question marks through that bit.)

[sanguinity]

May you have a long and happy life, Duchess, well away from what's-his-face!

[scfrankles.livejournal.com]

I have a feeling she will continue to live with the Duke (though not in any kind of intimate sense) for the sake of her son. Then once Arthur is grown up there will be another discreet and more permanent separation.

[scfrankles.livejournal.com]

Like, what was the Duke even thinking, leaving the child there?? I don't think it was his family name he was thinking of. It's just that he loved his older son beyond reason - and was prepared to gamble with his younger son's life in order to protect the elder from the police. Pretty terrible behaviour whichever his motivation was.

For that matter, I was somewhat confounded when Holmes and Watson left the child there! Looking at the bit of the story again, I suppose in Holmes' defence, he knew Reuben Hayes had run away before he definitely saw the child was there: Then, in the gloom, we saw the two side-lamps of a trap light up in the stable-yard of the inn, and shortly afterwards heard the rattle of hoofs, as it wheeled out into the road and tore off at a furious pace in the direction of Chesterfield. "What do you make of that, Watson?" Holmes whispered. "It looks like a flight."

Holmes apparently works it out that the man in the cart was Hayes because he manages to have him arrested in Chesterfield the same night. So he knew the boy's life was unlikely to be in danger if he left him where he was in the care of Mrs. Hayes. But yes - why leave the boy there a moment longer? It could be argued that the Duke's household was an equally unsafe place for the boy to be if Wilder was still part of it, but Arthur could have been returned to the safety of the school while Holmes confronted the Duke.