Chapter Text
1: Friday 16th December, 1904.
Sir Maurice Vaizey prided himself on being unperturbable. He was annoyed at how perturbed he was currently feeling. The Bureau was attempting to wind down for Christmas, with just one weekend before the holiday, and a quiet break was much more likely now that they had uncovered the traitor in the office, so he could not blame work for how he was, but equally he no longer had the distraction of an urgent blackmailer hunt. He had not made firm plans for the festive season — between being a long term widower and the ever present possibility of national emergencies requiring him to work he generally didn’t bother — but had thought he might arrange some social time with his nephew, when Archie was not with his other uncle. Now that idea brought with it a tide of thoughts that were very central to his disturbed emotional state. It would not do! People depended on him, and he was both distracted and bad tempered at the moment. No-one had said anything, but his staff were tiptoeing around in a way that was thoroughly irritating.
It was not simply — or if he was strictly honest with himself even mostly — the actual revelation that his nephew was queer that had him so off balance. It was not something he had wanted for the lad, God no, and the potential legal and social repercussions were awful — but Archie was plainly and straightforwardly happy. He was surprised just how much that seemed to counterbalance his own opinion of the whole — thing. No, the biggest issue was that it brought into question his own judgement. He served his country partly as an administrator, but more as someone who knew people — who could discern the truth that they were trying to hide, ferret out secrets, uncover their true loyalties — and he had been totally blindsided by something so fundamental about a man he had helped raise from infancy. He had realised, soon after that fraught meeting about the blackmail letter, that he had been surprised about how vehemently Archie had defended da Silva at his recruitment interview, had wondered, and had instantly dismissed the possibility that there was anything but loyalty to someone he had been in danger with. He had allowed his feelings about what gentlemen did, what his family did, to completely override his professional skills. What else had he missed because he was making unwarranted assumptions?
He could not afford this level of uncertainty, of incompetence. People would notice, and it would undermine their confidence in the Bureau. So far he was fairly sure the staff were blaming his mood on there being a traitor in their midst, but now he had been found and removed they would —quite reasonably — be expecting a return to more normal levels of irritability on his part. What he needed was someone to talk to, someone whose discretion and sense he could utterly rely on. Someone to help him determine if this was a single aberration or a bigger problem that he needed to address. He missed his Amelia, suddenly, more than he had in a long time.
He sat in silence in his office, listening to the staff finishing their day and leaving. His secretary came in and collected the post, asked if there was anything else, went out. Who could he possibly trust — not, obviously, with anything about Archie but with his own uncertainty? He ran through names in his head, dismissing most immediately. Men he knew through his club? He was not truly close to any of them — their friendship was situational, based in superficial common interests. He lived for his work, on the whole, but talking to colleagues about this would be unprofessional as well as unwise. Eventually he decided that — while it would in some ways be hard to discuss his problems without breaching Archie’s privacy — the person he could most trust, outside the Bureau, was Sir Henry Curtis. He reached for the telephone.