So – I think I promised you all Chapter 14 sometime today, and here it is, polished and ready for reading! Here’s hoping that those of you celebrating Christmas today got all the things you wanted and that you get to celebrate with people you care about.

As per usual, the chapter has been posted on Ao3 and comments, kudos, likes, and reblogs are much appreciated!

To the Upper Air: Chapter 14 – Truce and Truth

He was getting too old to be running about London, but Hennessey
would never be too old, he thought privately, to be amused at the look
on James’ face when Hennessey startled him.

Both men in the room
had jumped to their feet when the Admiral entered the room. It was
instinct on James’ part, ingrained in him after over twenty years in the
Navy, though Hennessey noticed that he was slow in doing so, not out of
laziness but out of pain. He winced as he stood, Hennessey noticed –
the left knee if he was any judge, and he waved a hand.

“Sit down,” he snorted. “We’re not on the parade ground. James -” He stopped, looking James up and down. The Boy –

Well,
it wasn’t the worst bruising he had ever seen but that was hardly a
recommendation.  Hennessey felt a sinking sensation in his stomach as he
looked at his injured protegé. He barely restrained the urge to rake a
hand over his hair, amusement fading to worry and slight irritation, and
sighed instead.

“Please tell me,” he said in a patient, if somewhat exasperated tone, “that you have not been brawling again?”

James shook his head.  

“No, sir. Not this time,” he answered, and Hennessey looked him up and down again skeptically.

“A runaway carriage, then?” he demanded, and James shook his head.

“No, sir.”

“Well something has clearly gone wrong,” Hennessey said. “Christ, Boy – what the blazes happened?”

“Someone tried to kill him.” The sentence came from the shorter man in the room, and Hennessey turned his attention to him.

“What?”

“I was there, fortunately. You know, Admiral – I’d assumed you’d be taller, somehow.”

Hennessey raised an eyebrow, staring at the walking head of curls that had just spoken.

“I’m sorry to disappoint, Mr. -?”

“His name is John,” James said, interrupting the conversation. “And he needs to give us the room. If you would, please?”

“Oh, I don’t know,” John No-Name replied. “I thought I’d -”

“Come
with me?” Another voice sounded from behind Hennessey, and he turned to
find Thomas Hamilton standing in the doorway. “Yes, I couldn’t possibly
agree more. Admiral – a pleasure seeing you. I believe you have
business to resolve with James, correct?”

“I believe I have
business with both of you, and you in particular, Lord Hamilton, if I
find that you are in any way responsible for whatever mess Captain
McGraw has managed to land in this time,” Hennessey answered, and heard
James snort behind him. “Don’t laugh,” he warned. “I may not have the
heart to charge you with disturbing the peace, but so help me -”

“We won’t go far,” Thomas promised.

“We
won’t go anywhere,” John argued. “I’ve just told you someone tried to
kill him, and you want to threaten him? What the fuck -?”

He was
cut off mid-sentence as Lord Hamilton grabbed hold of his sleeve firmly,
towing him out of the room. He’d clapped one hand over the shorter
man’s mouth, Hennessey noticed, and the look in John’s eyes turned
indignant. He struggled a bit as he was dragged away. He turned his head
backward and forward in an attempt to escape Thomas’ hand, and
Hennessey distinctly heard a disgusted noise pass the young Governor’s
lips the moment the door thumped shut.

“Silver -!”

“Try
that again and I’ll do worse than lick,” Silver’s voice said, and the
argument faded away. Hennessey looked at James with one eyebrow raised,
and James gave him a stern expression by way of answer. There would be
no argument on this score, clearly, and Hennessey gave it up with a
shake of his head.

“You had best hope you’re right about him,” he said, coming closer.

“I
am,” James answered, his voice caught somewhere between resolve and
pleasant surprise. Hennessey nodded. Whatever cause he had given James
to doubt him, he would not reinforce it by questioning him any further
about his choice of partner.

“You look as if you’ve not slept in
days,” he said gruffly. “I’m pleased that you’ve decided to contact me,
but I won’t deny that I would have preferred it if you had chosen to do
so before someone elected to attempt using your face as a punching bag,
and I would further have preferred not receiving a message that simply
said, ‘come quickly, Wapping Street, will explain everything upon
arrival, J.’”

James sighed.

“I’m sorry if I startled you with my message,” he apologized, and Hennessey raised the other eyebrow.

“Apologies
are all well and good, but I believe I deserve an explanation to go
with it,” he said dryly. “Son, may I remind you that when last we spoke
-”

“I accused you of hating me. Yes. I’m -” James swallowed. “I’m sorry for that as well. Sir -”

He stopped again, looking at Hennessey, something both hopeful and slightly apprehensive in his expression.

“Sir,” he started again, “I’m aware that we need to have a conversation – a long one, but not at this moment. Right now -”

Hennessey
normally did not make a practice of cutting off his ward’s sentences.
He had always believed that reasoned discourse was the result of both
parties listening to one another, but on this occasion, he could not
contain his impatience, or the irritation that welled up in him at his
son’s attempts to dodge the question. This was not like James, and he
was going to get to the root of the matter, here and now, before they
could further damage their relationship through lack of communication.  

“This
may be the only time we have where neither of us are surrounded by
those who would seek to use who you are and what you are against us.
Furthermore, you are scheduled to sail for the Bahamas any day. If we
are going to have a conversation, then I would say that we had better
have it now.”

James did not quite wince, but the look on his face
told Hennessey that his point had been made, and that James had indeed
been trying to dodge the underlying issue that still lay between them.

“James,” Hennessey said quietly, “talk to me, lad. Where is all this coming from?”

James
looked at him for another moment, and then swallowed hard. He had come
to a decision of some kind, although what decision Hennessey was not
certain.

“It’s going to sound mad,” he warned, and Hennessey rolled his eyes.

“Worse,
I suppose, than you telling me that I’ve betrayed your trust in some
way and then refusing all contact for weeks on end and contacting me
when you’ve apparently been set upon?”

James sighed.

“Yes,” he answered, and Hennessey raised an eyebrow.

“I somehow doubt it. Say on. Let’s have it out in the open and be done.”

“Alright, but don’t say I didn’t warn you.”

***************************************
Windsor:

Mama was proving hard to find.

Abigail
sighed, foiled once again. Her mother was not in her rooms. She was not
in the study, or the parlor, or the drawing room. She was not in the
library, or the kitchens. She was not even in Papa’s study, empty though
it had been for the past weeks.

Aunt Miranda was still in the
house. Abigail knew that much. There would have been some kind of
goodbye – at least a hug and a kiss before she left. If Mama was not in
her own rooms – perhaps she was in Aunt Miranda’s room?

The little
girl turned, her short legs taking her down the corridor with
surprising speed. Aunt Miranda would know where Mama was, and if she
didn’t, Abigail could always ask her for a story, or convince her to
play. Aunt Miranda was –

“-you’re certain about this?”

Mama’s
voice came around the corner, and Abigail smiled. There they were! She
hurried along, and stopped at the door, preparing to knock.

“Yes, Kitty.” Aunt Miranda’s voice issued from the room, but she did not sound happy. “I’m sure.”

“Well,” Mama said, “you certainly look the part. I only hope no one in the house recognizes your face.”

“They won’t,” Miranda assured her. Abigail frowned. The part? What part? She rose to her tiptoes and looked through the keyhole.

Mama and Aunt Miranda were standing in front of a mirror. Mama looked perfectly normal, but Aunt Miranda –

Abigail
wrinkled her nose. What was Aunt Miranda wearing? It looked all frumpy
and boring, not at all like her normal finery. Was she playing dress-up?
Aunt Miranda was too grown-up to be playing, surely?

Mama did not look happy. Abigail could see her face, complete with furrowed brows and pursed lips.

“Kitty,” Aunt Miranda tried. “I realize that you are not pleased about this. I will be careful, I promise you.”

Mama waved her hand.

“It’s
not that,” she said. “Let’s be truthful – this isn’t even the most
insane plan you’ve ever had. Just -” She shook her head. “God, if I get
my hands on Peter, I’ll have his head,” she murmured. “To get caught up
in all of this and not tell me -” Mama shook her head. “I’m sorry, Miranda.”

Miranda turned and gave Abigail’s mother a smile.

“It wasn’t your fault,” she answered. “I’m sorry to have dragged you into all this, but -”

“It’s
the least I could do,” Kitty said firmly. “We had better get you on
your way. Her Grace will have repaired the damage to her wardrobe by now
and be on her way to the Admiral’s residence. What are you planning on
doing if they are keeping Captain McGraw as a prisoner?”

Miranda shook her head.

“I’ll
decide that when I come to it,” she answered. “I want to hear their
conversation, and then I would like a look at the Admiral’s papers if I
can manage it.”

“Millie is waiting – the carriage will drop you both off a street or so away. If I can help at all -”

“I’ll be certain to tell you. If you haven’t heard from me by tonight -”

“I’ll contact Thomas.”

Abigail
started. They were coming toward the door – toward her, and she was now
very certain that this had been a conversation that was not meant for
the ears of little girls. She backed away along the hall, taking to her
heels and running the moment she was out of eyesight, but as she ran,
she could not help remembering what she had just overheard and be
worried. Mama and Aunt Miranda had been afraid, she thought. They had
both had those funny looks on their faces like Mama often did when
someone important was coming and Father hadn’t warned her, and she had
never seen such a look on Aunt Miranda’s face before, all hard and
determined and still scared underneath it. What if -?

Mama and
Aunt Miranda, she told herself, were adults. They could handle anything –
anything at all, just like Father, and besides, Aunt Miranda was smart.
She could take care of herself.

Except that she hadn’t, had she?
Abigail had seen her aunt’s face when she had arrived, and now it
sounded as if other people were in trouble. And Mama had looked so
worried, as if –

“If you haven’t heard from me by tonight,” Aunt
Miranda had said, but what if she got in trouble and needed help
immediately? What if -?

She turned directions abruptly. Mama would
not approve, she thought, but Mama had a lot on her mind at the moment,
and if Aunt Miranda needed her, then Abigail would go. She had helped
once already. She could do it again. She took off running, heading for
the carriage. There was not much room under the carriage seat, but
Abigail was not that much bigger than a picnic basket, and she could
surely still fit, for Aunt Miranda.

**************************************
London, Lodging House on Wapping Street:

He was shaking when he emerged from the room.

He closed the door behind himself, still breathing hard. He had to think. He had to have space to –

“Admiral?”
Thomas Hamilton’s voice sounded, worried, from across the room, and
Hennessey ignored it. Dear God – what he had just heard –

“Admiral?”
The voice sounded closer, and Hennessey looked up, finding the younger
man standing by him now, his expression full of concern. “Are you well?”

Hennessey shook his head. No. No he was not alright. He might
never be alright again after what he had just been told. God’s bones, he
–

“He’s told him,” the voice of the shorter man – Silver – said grimly. “Get him a glass of water or something. Quickly!”

Silver
sat down next to him, and Hennessey realized quite suddenly that he
was, in fact, sitting. When the hell had that happened?

“It’s a kick in the teeth, I know,” Silver said quietly. “Do you need a moment?”

Hennessey laughed shakily.

“I may need an entirely new lifetime, Mr. Silver.” He laughed again, hollow and mirthless, and Silver sighed.

“I was afraid you might take it like this,” he said.

Hennessey
closed his eyes. This, as Silver had put it, was too much. It was too
great and too terrible to contemplate – too much to comprehend. This was
nothing short of impossibility. It was – it was –

He shuddered, his mind swimming. God and Saint Brighid, how could it be?

He was not taking this well – he knew it. James deserved so much better from him, and yet –

“You’re not going to like hearing this,”
his son had said to him, and oh, how right James had been! He had not
liked hearing it – not one bit, not when James had first told him what
had happened. He had liked it still less when James had started on his
tale, and the telling had not gotten any better, not when he described
the events of 1705 as he remembered them, nor when he described his
return from Nassau –

Not when he described the night his life had changed forever. The night Hennessey had betrayed him in the worst way possible.

It
was not possible, was it? For Hennessey to have done something so
utterly reprehensible – for James to have lived another life, entirely
separate from this one? And yet, he could not deny the change in his
son’s demeanor. In the space of a month, the boy he had known had
changed. There was no denying it. The set of his shoulders, the
difference in the way he reacted to Hennessey himself – the very fact
that he had contacted Hennessey, where before he would blithely have
bulled his way through this latest setback, offending nobles left and
right and causing trouble rather than exhibiting behavior suited to his
rank. No – it was not possible for such drastic change to have been
effected solely through a change in scenery over such a short time. Such
adjustments took years – or, the part of Hennessey’s mind that had
already accepted the notion whispered, decades. It had happened – all of
it, which meant –

He was going to be ill. He could not control
the roiling of his stomach, or the way that his mind flitted from one
thing to the next like a confused moth, lighting against lit torches
with each attempt at landing. He had betrayed James – had told him he
was a monster, and then forced him from the city he called home, from
the life that Hennessey had built for him with his own two hands, and
James had still –

 “It wasn’t you, sir,” he had said quietly. “I can see that now. I
don’t know what you were thinking then – the other you, but you’re not
him. I’m sorry I -”

 “Sorry?” Hennessey had choked. “You are -?” He stared at his son. “James -”

 “It wasn’t you,” James repeated, and Hennessey had felt some part
of him shake apart. He understood. He knew, now, why James had looked at
him with such reproach. This – this atrocity-

“Here – take this.” Silver was handing him a glass, and Hennessey looked up, startled.

“Water,” the younger man said. “Drink it, it’ll help.”

He
was still shaking – too hard, as a matter of fact, to drink. He closed
his eyes again, taking a deep breath. He could not afford to do this –
not here, not now. He needed to –

“You said it was loathsome,”
James’ voice said, his tone quiet and still injured, still horrified.
“I stood there, and I heard you say it, and I -”  

Hennessey set the drink down, the glass clinking against the table as he did so. He could not do this. He could not –

“Dear
God,” he murmured. “Dear God on High.” He was nearly weeping, he
realized. There were tears welling in his eyes, and a lump in his
throat, immovable, threatening to choke him even as he tried to swallow,
tried to force his spinning mind to order.  He took a deep breath, and
then another, and when he opened his eyes, Silver was still sitting next
to him, his young face concerned, and his eyes –

Hennessey shook his head.

“Christ,
that is uncanny,” he said. He had not seen it before, but John Silver’s
eyes did not belong to a young man. They were older, wiser, and well
they should have been, for Silver was, if James’ estimate was to be
trusted, older than Hennessey himself.

“I know,” Silver said with a half smile. “Trust me, it took me off guard the first time I caught sight of myself too.”

“I’m sure it did,” Hennessey murmured. “My God!”

Silver nodded.

“You believe us, then?” he asked, and Hennessey gave a minute shake of his head.

“I don’t know what to believe, Mr. Silver. I’ve heard James’ tale and I -”

Silver’s eyes narrowed.

“You what?” he asked, and Hennessey shook his head again.

“I
have little option but to trust him,” he answered at last. “Whatever he
has seen – whatever you have seen – your mutual conviction in the
matter renders the question academic. You believe in what you have seen,
and so I must either declare you both delusional, which I find highly
unlikely, or I must believe what you both tell me – that you have
returned from the near future through means unknown to presumably alter
the past – is true, in which case -”

Silver’s expression shifted
subtly. He was watching Hennessey – watching, the Admiral realized, the
same way a cat would watch a large dog, not in fear of its life, but
with a view to taking it down a peg or two if necessary.

“I would hope,” he said quietly, “that the trust your son has just shown you will be repaid.”

Hennessey
nodded. Ordinarily, he might have bristled. He most definitely would
have resented the threat implicit in the other man’s words, but not
today. Not after what James had just told him – what that other version
of himself had done. This –

This had to change. He took one more
deep breath, closed his eyes, and when he opened them again, he had
regained his balance. James had been given ample reason to distrust him,
as had Silver and Lord Hamilton, and now he at least knew where James’
fear of him stemmed from. He had not caused this, but he would need to
prove himself, regardless. He stood, and felt every bit of his age as he
did so.

“Mr. Silver,” he said, “how long has it been since any of you slept or ate?”

Silver gave him a considering look.

“Yesterday,” he answered, and Hennessey nodded.

“I
suspected as much,” he answered. “I’ve a carriage waiting outside which
should fit the four of us, given that neither you nor Lord Hamilton
have any more substance to you than the stair railing. I will speak to
my driver, and then you will all accompany me to my home, since Lord
Marlborough and his brother have eyes and ears everywhere else. You will
all rest and be fed and I will see if I can contact Ned Russell, whom I
suspect will be very interested in Lord Alfred’s business dealings.”

“Russell?”
Thomas asked from behind them, and Hennessey turned to find both Thomas
and James standing in the doorway, Thomas looking both surprised and
considering, and James simply looking at him apprehensively, clearly
still not certain as the reception of his news.

“He’s hated the
Churchills for years,” Hennessey answered. “George in particular edged
him out of his position with the Navy, and he’s always suspected that
Marlborough helped frame him for the 1696 attempt on the King’s life. If
anyone will be willing to act, it is he.”  

“I – thank you, sir. I hardly dared ask -”

“You’re welcome,” the Admiral answered quietly.

Thomas
looked surprised, and Hennessey heaved a sigh. Here was yet another
thing that would need to be mended, and quickly. He looked at the young
lord again – at Thomas again, and allowed himself to see the boy
properly for the first time. If what James told him was true –

Hennessey
could not quite suppress the shame that washed over him at looking at
Thomas Hamilton. His reasons for suspecting the young lord’s motives had
been valid ones, but standing here, in a lodging house that was as far
removed from his normal milieu as it was possible to be, the boy looked
less like a young noble and more like a man full-grown – one that, in
another life, had walked into hell willingly to save James and his wife,
one who now stood, tired and rumpled, quite obviously worried for Lady
Miranda and James and fully involved in handling this latest mess, not
ensconced in his study or holding a salon, feigning a lack of concern to
avoid appearing weak, as his father would have done. One hand rested on
James’ shoulder reassuringly, and the other seemed to be helping to
keep him upright, firmly clenched on the doorframe, his entire form
conveying the sort of weariness that Hennessey was well familiar with,
having handled it himself too many times to count. This was not Alfred’s
eldest son and heir, but a different breed altogether, and Hennessey –

He had an apology to make. A rather large one.

“Lord Hamilton – we have much to discuss,” Hennessey said. “For now, I will simply say that I am sorry. I’ve misjudged you.”

James’ eyes widened. Thomas startled, and the older man gave them both a rueful smile.

“I
still have two eyes in my head and I am not deaf yet, despite all the
cannonfire,” he said. “When I sent James to you, it was in the hope that
the responsibility and the honor of the position would steady him.
Whatever else has gone between you, he seems to have gotten it into his
head that he is not without the option of calling for reinforcements,
and I gather I have you to thank for that, at least in part. So, for
whatever it is worth – my thanks, and I hope that we may learn to work
together if not perhaps like one another just yet. Truce?”

He extended a hand, and Thomas came forward, his face still a study in shock as he took the proferred olive branch.

“Truce,” he agreed.

“Now.
Let us go and see what may be done to aid your lady wife and put George
Churchill back in his proper place on the dungheap.”

He turned,
heading for the stairwell, and could not quite help the smile that
spread across his face at the look of shock and dawning relief on James’
face that he caught out of the corner of his eye as he walked away.