Fights Like The Devil, Dressed As A Man

Why couldn’t Edward be happy with her? Caroline had asked. But Edward was happy with her. Why couldn’t Edward be happy with his life? she’d asked. No, Edward wasn’t happy with his life.

He tried. He begged and pleaded with her. Pointed out that he was still her husband, that he was doing this for her. But his pleas fell on deaf ears.

She was worried about Edward being hurt. Edward replied that he would be careful; that he would return with coin or send for her. He told her he needed her faith, but it helped him none.

( It was the day Edward was due to leave... )

“Poison. That’s what you are,” Father said through clenched teeth, “poison. The ruin of our lives.”

“Father . . .”

“Get out of here,” he spat. “Get out of here. I never want to see you again.”

Mother stirred as though she was about to protest, and rather than face more upset — rather than be the cause of more upset — Edward mounted his horse and left.

[[ i finally remembered to do this. taken from the Assassin's Creed IV: Black Flag novelization ]]

One morning, Edward awoke from a drunken stupor, blinking in the morning light, only to find Caroline already dressed for the day ahead.

“I don’t want you to go,” she said, then turned and left the room.

---

One night Edward sat in the Livid Brews. ( He'd like to say he was not his usual self, but the sad fact of the matter was that he was. )

[[ nfi, nfb, taken from the Black Flag novelization. tw for alcoholism. ]]

What a scandal it had been: Caroline Scott marrying beneath her would have been cause for gossip enough. That she had spurned Matthew Hague in the process constituted quite a stir, and some time after, Edward wondered if that scandal might ultimately have worked in their favour, because while he steeld himself for retribution, for over a month, he saw nothing of Wilson, heard nothing of Matthew Hague.

In the end, the threat to their marriage came not from outside — not from the Cobleighs, Emmett Scott, Matthew Hague or Wilson. It came from the inside. It came from Edward.

The problem was that he kept returning to his meeting with Dylan Wallace and his promises of riches in the West Indies. He wanted to go and return to Caroline a rich man. He had begun to see it as his only chance of making a success of himself. His only chance of being worthy of her. For, of course, yes, there was the immediate glory, or perhaps stature, of having made Caroline Scott his wife, taking her from beneath the nose of Matthew Hague, but that was soon followed by a kind of... stagnation.

Emmett Scott delivered his cutting blow at the wedding. They should have been grateful, Edward supposed, that he and Caroline’s mother had deigned to attend. But Edward was not at all grateful and he would have preferred it if the pair of them had stayed away. He hated to see his father, cap in hand, bowing and scraping to Emmett Scott, hardly a nobleman after all, just a merchant, separated from them, not by any aristocratic leanings but by money alone.

For Caroline, though, he was glad they came. It wasn’t as if they approved of the marriage, far from it; but at the very least, they weren’t prepared to lose their daughter over it.

Edward overheard her mother — “We just want you to be happy, Caroline” — and knew that she was speaking for herself alone. In the eyes of Emmett Scott he saw no such desire. He saw the look of a man who had been denied his chance to clamber so much higher up the social ladder, a man whose dreams of great influence had been dashed. He came to the wedding under sufferance, or perhaps for the pleasure of delivering his pronouncement in the churchyard after the vows were made.

Emmett Scott had black hair brushed forward, dark, sunken cheeks and a mouth pinched permanently into a shape like a cat’s anus. His face, in fact, wore the permanent expression of a man biting deep into the flesh of a lemon.

Except for this one occasion, when his lips pressed into a thin smile and he said, “There will be no dowry.”

His wife, Caroline’s mother, closed her eyes tightly as though it was a moment she’d dreaded, had hoped might not happen. Words had been exchanged, Edward could guess, and the last of them had belonged to Emmett Scott.

So Edward and Caroline moved into an outhouse on his father’s farm, the day after the wedding. They had appointed it as best they could, but it was still, at the end of the day, an outhouse: packed mud and sticks for the walls, their roof thatch badly in need of repair.

Caroline had been used to a brick-built town house with the life of Bristol all around, servants to boot, her washing, her cooking, every whim attended to. Here she was not rich. She was poor and her husband was poor. With no prospects.

It ate at Edward.

And it kept eating.

[[ nfi, adapted from the Assassin's Creed IV novelization. ]]

Edward was starting to drift away into sleep when he heard it, coming from the window. A tapping.

He looked out with no little trepidation. What did he expect to see? He wasn’t sure, but memories of the Cobleighs were still fresh in his mind. Instead what he saw, sitting astride her horse in the pale moonlight of the yard, as though God himself were shining his lantern upon her beauty, was Caroline Scott.

( She was dressed as if for riding school. )

They parted, with arrangements made to meet again, and after that, their relationship began in earnest. They were able to keep it a secret. For some months, in fact. Their meetings were held entirely in secret, snatched moments spent wandering the lanes between Bristol and Hatherton, riding in the pastures.

[[ nfb, nfi, taken and tweaked from the ACIV novelization. ]]

Edward woke up to the sound of screaming.

In a rush he dragged his breeches on and hopped out of the room with his shirt unbuttoned, still pulling his boots on over bare feet. He knew that scream. It was his mother. Moments later her screams had died down to a sob, replaced by his father’s cursing. The soft cursing of a man who had been proved correct.

After Edward's fight at the Auld Shillelagh he had returned inside the tavern in order to do something about his cuts and bruises. To numb the pain, so to speak. What better way of doing that than with a drink or two? Thus, when he’d eventually arrived home he’d been in a bit of a state. By which he meant “state,” as in a man who looked as though he’d been in the wars — which he had, with bruises to his face and his neck, and his clothes ragged and torn. But also “state,” as in a man who had had far too much to drink.

( The Silence of the Lambs, 18th century edition. )

[[ nfb, nfi, taken and adapted from the novelization of Assassin's Creed IV: Black Flag. mentions of animal cruelty and death under the cut. ]]

Edward's mother Linette had been pleased as anything to see him alive again, and while his father Bernard's reaction had been rather more muted, the first few weeks after his return had been bliss. Everyone in Hatherton, the nearby town - a bit closer than Bristol, though not by much - had been chattering about it, and many congratulations had been heard at the farm. But such relief could not last long, especially not in lambing season. There was work to be done.

Once, Edward may have felt a deep longing for next month, when shearing season began - his time to shine. Now even the chance to ply his trade as a salesman felt lesser, next to the memories he had of Fandom Island. Not that he had a great deal of time to think about it. Life during lambing season was harsh. He'd find himself in the barns by sun-up, sore head and all, needing to see if any ewes had lambed during the night.

It was the case again this morning, and Edward led the ewe and her child across the way to one of the smaller pens. His father was already waiting there, guiding the ewe into the lambing jug. There, the most mind-numbing part of Edward's work took over: cleaning feeders, filling them up again, changing the hay and the water.

Only one thing had changed. His mother was no longer the only one of them who had any letters. Every now and again, Edward would get a break, picking up their ledger and dutifully writing down the details of the recent births in small terms, so his mother could understand it. There was one small joy about it all, which was watching his parents go about the work together. He'd never seen another two people so in love who had such little need to make a display of the fact. It was good for the soul.

But by the time evening rolled about, Edward was grateful to get out of it. The work numbed his mind, and after two years of schooling, it left him with a greater pit in his innards than he'd ever imagined he'd have.

He missed Cosette, as well, but he had no way to contact her. Sometimes he'd take a moment to settle and work on a letter, but never for long. Other things awaited: to be specific, the tavern. It was his only distraction, and after the day's work, he was more than pleased to be heading down the path into town again.

Jaysus, but he missed Fandom Island.

[[ establishy. some of the above taken from the novelization of Assassin's Creed: Black Flag. ]]