A Tender Kiss Could End A War 🕰️(MxM ›1840s)

||Three||-›The Brute

“Madame Marian seems fond of you, do you know her personally?” came another.

And just like that, questions upon question were thrown his way, leaving him overwhelmed. He however managed to answer most of them till everyone was satisfied enough to let him be.

A maid named Rebekah decided to approach Julius when he was now seated alone and munching on an apple. Julius usually appreciated the company of others, but at the moment, he simply wanted to eat his apple in peace. There was surely more time for socializing.

“Hello there, I am Miss Rebekah Smith. My apologies on their behalf,” the kitchen maid tilted her head towards the group of men and women huddled about the dining bench. “They get quite exuberant whenever someone new comes along.” Her words and her puckish tone caught his attention.

“It doesn't bother me, I liked the attention,” he smiled, earning a matey grin from her in return.

Anyone could notice Rebekah's beauty and Julius wasn't an exception. Her light brown skin was luminescent and her dimpled smile enticing.

“Ah! I see you are conversing with the man whom I had to carry his heavy trunk all the way from the main entrance to the quarter,” the young man Julius had seen yesterday remarked, clasping his hand behind Rebekah's shoulders, then gripping it firmly as he stood behind her. His action almost possessive.

“Get off of me Fergus!” she flinched and shrugged away from his touch.

“Oh, so I see you are also swooning over trunk boy.”

“Trunk boy?” Julius asked, wondering if he should take offence at the nickname.

“Was he the one you were yapping about yesterday afternoon?”

“Yes, yes he was.”

“Not to intervene, but why am I being referred to as trunk boy?”

“Well fellow, it is because I fractured my back carrying your trunk yesterday,” Ferguson pouted, dramatically rubbing his lower back.

“Oh, Fergus, please just shut it,” Rebekah teased, and Julius could not help but chuckle softly at their banter.

❦︎

☘︎The Next Day☘︎

“Julius!” Ferguson Sawyer jogged towards Julius, who was asleep under an oak tree with his tweed cap over his face. The brushing of horses' mane, as well as the back and forth of fetching buckets of water and carrying heavy heaps of hay at the stable, had left Julius rather fatigued.

“Yes ...,” Julius slurred when he was awoken, sloppily wiping the drool wetting the sides of his pink lips.

“We are needed at the manor.”

“Needed, what for?”

“To carry the new chaise lounge the woodworker brought into the manor. In truth, I am the one needed, but since you strained my back with your trunk, I believe it is only just for you to come assist,” the red-haired young man's grin was one of a playful taunt, which Julius decided not to counter because he was relatively new here. Ferguson should just wait till it was Julius's turn to tease, which he was convinced would be shortly.

“You truly are something else,” Julius muttered instead.

♛

Walking into the manor with Ferguson, Julius was evidently tensed up, as if something was weighing him down and it had nothing to do with the chaise lounge they were carrying.