Title: Pharo
Author: tigersilver
Prompt: #100; Draco Malfoy is a 17th C. rake.
Pairing(s): H/D, R/Hr, BZ/GW, TN/PP, LM/NM, implied SB/RL
Summary: It is some years after the Battle of Waterloo and peace settles leerily over Muggle England and the Continent. The Beau Monde is a glittering chandelier at which all the lights of the world gather, Wizard and Muggle, and for a gentleman of means and perhaps also title, there's only a few items of importance to consider: the Season, the gossip and the perfect construction of one's cravat,not necessarily in that order. However, the Viscount Malfoy's papa has just been cruelly ruined, his fortune lost in a game of Pharo to the scurrilous Lord Voldemort, an elder rake with an eye toward rapid political advancement. The Viscount, darling of the Ton, faces a loss of face in the world of Polite Society, on par with the unfortunate Beau Brummell's, and feels he must serve comeuppance to the villain, plus settle a few old scores along the way. Harry Potter, fellow veteran of Wizarding Waterloo and Malfoy's longtime compatriot from their schooldays at Hogwarts, is of the decided opinion the Viscount goes much too far when he sets up a Pharo-Banque in his own drawing room, scheming to reverse his endangered fortunes.
Rating: NC-17
Disclaimer: The recognizable characters are the property of J.K. Rowling and legal assigns; no profit is intended or made via this work of fiction. Credit is also duly attributed to the collected works of Georgette Heyer, specifically the novel 'Faro'.
Warning(s): Explicit descriptions of sexually-oriented male-on-male behavour. Entirely AU & EWE. Bottom Draco.
Word Count: 34,000+/- [Posted as part of the bottom_draco* 2010 Fest]
Author's Notes: This fic requires that your suspension of disbelief be left firmly at the coat check. In fact, don't bother with any sorts of canon expectations or requirements: they do not apply here, except for in one specific case only (I hope): character. Literally, I've lifted the characters from HP and set them down wholesale and as I saw fit, right in the midst of the insular, extravagant world of the British Regency period and squarely amongst the Muggle Upper Ten Thousand. I've rearranged their pasts, their timelines (as well as a few Muggle events) and their futures to suit my nefarious purposes.
Further, this owes a great debt to the Muggle author Georgette Heyer, author of Faro. Heyer was the acknowledged Queen of the Regency Romance; this is my homage, as I teethed on her as a cub. Not literally, of course! Prompter, I owe you an immediate apology: this is set approximately fifteen years after the end of the Georgian era. My excuse is that I cannot, for my life, write convincing late 17th C. dialogue, forsooth, and the fic would've suffered. Please forgive me. I hope this suits as a replacement.
Lastly, I owe an incredible debt of gratitude to the wonderful, patient Mods and my more-than-amazing, equally patient betas: My Patient Built-In Beta, the Demi-Goddess, the Wicked One and my Darling Spice Girl, Nutmeg (lonerofthepack , demicus , eevilalice* and megyal* ), for their feedback, comments, and willingness to romp with me unimpeded through Almack's and private gaming hells, Bond Street and Vauxhall. I cannot thank you sufficiently, ever.
NOTE: Pharo (aka Pharoah; Faro) is a card game in which much advantage is perceived to the players (or 'punters'). The dealer (or Banquer, Banker, Tailliure) deals two cards at a turn from a closed box after shuffling, and bets (cheques) are placed and paid on those two cards dealt: one the punter's favour and one the Banquer's. The cards are kept track of by a cardkeeper, who ably wields an abacus-like device and also by individual tally cards, but there is much room for cheating on both sides of the baize-cloth table.
The game was immensely popular with the nobility of France in the 17th and 18th centuries, and then spread throughout Europe and the Americas. Fortunes were lost and won on a turn of a card, and passions ran high and feverish. For more information on Pharo, please consult the sources listed at the end. Chapter titles used here are based on terms from the game, as appropriate. It is not necessary to be conversant in Pharo to read this piece; one only needs accept that gambling, particularly with card games, was perfectly acceptable and expected in the Regency Era.

0O0

One: Soda (Introducing Viscount Malfoy)

Draco Lucifer Regulus Malfoy, Sixth Viscount Malfoy, scrawled his initials across the parchment bill of lading, directing the charge be paid out against his running tab.

"I'm afraid, milord, we are unable." The tradesman's protest was jittery 'round the edges, as if he fully expected to be hexed within an inch of his miserable life. "To—to accept!"

"Pardon?" Malfoy blinked, angled pale eyebrow cocked and at the ready.

"We-we cannot honour your note, milord! I'm so sorry!"

"What!" hissed Viscount Malfoy. He rose from the seat the merchant had set for him, practically levitating on ill temper alone. "How dare you, you cretin? Of course you may! My credit is in excellent standing! Excellent, I tell you!"

"Malfoy—Draco!"

"Oh, Goyle, you're here? Wait but a moment, will you?" The Viscount flapped a white hand toward his lifelong hanger-on and friend-cum-minion, Baron Lord Goyle. ""I've a need to settle with this ruffian, whether it by short swords or wands makes not the slightest difference—"

"Milord," twittered the unfortunate tailor, whose aging viz was a positive study in fear and consternation, "Milord, in the papers this morning, there was—"

"Malfoy!" Goyle said again, more urgently, his voice a bass rumble. "It's crucial, Malfoy-y'see—"

"Goyle," the Viscount bit out, "dear chap, be silent."

"But—but!" Goyle sputtered, until the Viscount's heavy glare had him silent again.

"Now, then, my very dear fellow," the Viscount turned back to his tailor, and spoke through gritted teeth, "perhaps you'd care to lay out for me precisely why you feel you cannot—"

"Draco, listen!" It burst out of the larger man's lungs with all the force of a Sonorous. Goyle's nagging voice was beginning to prove quite irksome; young Lord Malfoy pinched his brow with gloved fingertips. "You must not have seen it in the papers-!"

"-accept the standing commission for my garb and be grateful to have it," the Viscount went right on, despite his growing headache, "before I take all my custom elsewhere, you slag—"

"-in the papers, milord, concerning the Earl, milord, and it's most unfortunate, I agree, but—" Bagshotte, the tailor, babbled.

"Draco!" Goyle barked, his deep chest rumbling. "You're bloody father's gone and lost his fortune at Pharo! You're—"

"—and I'm sure another reputable establishment would be more than grateful to recive my custom—" the Viscount soldiered on, pinching his gathered brow tightly between two gloved fingertips.

"Ruined!" squeaked the squirming individual, the pincushion attached to his arm flopping about like a puppet. He was so very downcast, Malfoy spared a very brief moment to wondering if he'd sink through the floorboards in shame.

"Ruined!" blared Goyle at the same moment, in stentorian tones worthy of the battlefield they'd most recently returned from as heroes: Waterloo. "You're ruined, Draco!"

"Er—ruined?" echoed young Lord Malfoy, and promptly turned as snowy white as his intricate cravat. "Pardon?"

"They're all saying as how the keeping box was gaffed, Draco, but your pater—he's gone and legged it to the Continent, the Earl has! It's in the ruddy Prophet!"

The tailor's cramped quarters fell deathly quiet. One could only hear the eerie snap of the young Lord's white teeth as they clamped together. One could've heard a pin drop, mayhap, but they were securely attached to the tailor's wristlet cushion.

"Er—" the tradesman ventured after a long and quite uncomfortable moment. "Ah, Milord. I...perhaps. Um."

"Draco—" Lord Goyle began, apparently also of the feeling the extended silence emanating from the stricken Viscount was ominous. "Your lady mother—"

"Bagshotte!" Lord Malfoy turned on his boot heel and regarded the tailor with a steely glare. Apparently, he'd arrived at a course of reasonable action in that overlong pause. "Precisely how long have you and yours done business with the Malfoys?"

"Er, um, ah—thirty years, Milord?" the tailor quavered, trembling with nervous palsy. "Ever since the Earl that is now was but a wee lad, Milord; your age, like—"

"And do you honestly believe a Malfoy—a Malfoy, Bagshotte!-would cheat you of your proper due for services rendered?" Viscount Malfoy demanded, his left brow twitching upward ever so faintly. "Do you, Bagshotte?"

"No, sir!" the tailor replied hastily, bowing and scraping. "Of course not, sir!"

"Then you shall have no further objection to providing me my hunting coat, Bagshotte, and forwarding the lading as per usual, shall you?"

"Malfoy?" Lord Goyle, red-faced and gawping, had meanwhile stepped back a pace and assumed an air of high puzzlement. His somewhat grim and meaty face was tentatively accepting, though. He, of all people, was well aware of the Viscount's vissicitudes and airs. "Are you certain—"

"Bagshotte?" The grey eyes were calmly intent and never strayed from the tailor's faded blue ones. "What do you say, sirrah?"

"Milord! No…of course not," the tailor replied finally, his thin shoulders slumping in defeat. "it will be exactly as you say, sir. Delivery tomorrow, first thing, and a pleasant day to you." He bowed low, as was customary. "Milord."

"Thank you, Bagshotte," the Viscount replied softly, and smiled, his full lower lip thin withal. "You shall not be disappointed, naturally; you may rely on that. Come, Goyle. I must doubtless see to my mother, as you've said. I fear there will be any number of groundless rumours to be squashed forthwith. Hah! As if a Malfoy was ever truly ruined!"

"Oh—er! Right, Draco! Hah! Exactly so!" Goyle burbled, backing his bulk 'round in the tiny confines of the shop. He gained the exit, politely allowing his friend to sally forth first. "Of course! Yes, yes—let's be off, shall we, old man?"

0O0

Two: Punters (Those Who Play)

"Maman," the Viscount said, taking up his mother's parchment-pale hand, "my honoured sire, the extant Earl, appears to be residing semi-permanently on the Continent. Are you desirous of joining him there? I believe the most recent missive related that he was dallying in Calais, eagerly awaiting your presence."

"Dear boy," Narcissa, Countess Malfoy, Viscountess Black and, in her own right and through hereditary matrilineal act, also the Comtesse Rosier, inclined her patrician and very dainty nose. "I should imagine he is, the sad rapscallion," she sighed, and rose in a sweep of ice-blue watered silks, releasing her son's long fingers in order to rest her hand on his arm. "No matter."

She huffed, also daintily, expressing a faint degree of ladylike annoyance, and allowed a tiny frown to cloud her fair brow.

"Though I'll find it vastly inconvenient, no doubt, removing abruptly to France. The Season has just now begun, dear boy, with the Prewitt's bal masque. How tiresome you father is! Come, walk the gardens with me, yes?" she urged and her dutiful son made a slight leg and proceeded to lead her out the French doors and into the nearby Knot Garden. "I'll be most pleased to introduce you to my newest roses, instead."

"Of course, Maman," Draco replied, instantly, as befitted the 'good son'. It was a role he'd been fulfilling ably, ever since the fateful day his father the Earl had used a leather strap to instill the fear of Merlin in him, over the unfortunate ramifications of his minor brangle with a titleless, charity-case, country-bred cretin by the name of Potter, well back in his boarding school days.

Her only child, Narcissa Malfoy mused idly, was in particularly fine spirits this morning, despite the rumours of their sad state of ruinment. Her husband's recent disastrous downturn at the tables seemed to have not affected him in the slightest. Perhaps, Narcissa Malfoy pondered, just p'rhaps that was due to the certain knowledge his most beloved mother was possessed of her own considerable fortune, and also that the main estate was nicely entailed and thus completely unassailable by an irresponsible paters familias, and further. It could be, too, Draco's certain knowledge that Great Grandpere Rosier had willed him a sizeable portion of his own to spend as he so pleased, as well as the small favour of a possibly useless French title of Vicomte. Her darling boy's air of feckless bonhomie was quite understandable, then. One could never be quite entirely downcast unless one was pockets-to-let.

Too, and not of small import at all, Narcissa had heard some intriguing whispers, to the effect that that Potter boy had emerged at last from his self-enforced rustication.

"Will you go, Maman?" her son queried dutifully, stopping at her gesture before her most recent favourite rose bush, a violet-hued beauty studded with copious blooms. The scent was of lavender and vanilla, and Narcissa was fond of scenting her toilette waters with the dried petals; she smiled at both her delights with equal measure of pleasure. "I should wager the estate in Champagne would be most delightful in the spring," the Viscount continued, flapping a careless hand, "and Father does seem bound and determined to give the whole Season a miss, this year. I'm sure he has his reasons."

"True, true." Narcissa bent her swan-like neck to sniff daintily at a rosebud. "France is not the same, though, as it was in my salad days, darling. The Muggles there are still quite unsettled, poor things, after that little contretemps with the horrid Boney person. But you, darling…do tell, what might your plans be for this Season? I confess, I am curious."

"Oh, I believe I shall first remove to the townhouse and set up a Pharo-banque," Draco smiled sweetly, as if he were announcing something far less shocking for a gentleman of antique title and consequence than the establishment of a gambling hell in his own parlour. "It seems fitting, don't you agree? I am Father's heir; I must step up to these small...provocations"

"Ah…." Narcissa—or Cissy as she was known to her family—snapped open her gilded Chinese ivory fan, a gift from the gadabout Muggle Regent-before he became quite so portly, of course. "Hmm. I see. You shall be entertaining punters at home, my love, in place of seeking them out? How droll. Do mind Great-Great Aunt Hesper's silver cauldrons."

"Of course, Maman," Draco nodded, and the sun turned his distinctive hair to a cap of silver-gilt brightness, undeniably Malfoy. "The existing wards are more than sufficient, I believe, but I shall take every precaution. There are scoundrels about, and even in broad daylight."

"Oh, yes," Narcissa reached the center of the Garden and they took a sultry turn as she flapped her fan lazily, "that does remind me, dearest. Your father has expressed a wish that you cultivate both the Parkinsons and the Greengrasses most assiduously this Season. They've marriageable daughters on the market."

Draco wrinkled his Norman nose. "The Parkinson's still stink ever so, so faintly of trade yet, Maman, despite our numerous connections with them and the passage of three full centuries, and the Greengrasses have always been vastly rustic and hidebound in their views. 'Bovine' is the proper descriptor, I believe. Whatever is he thinking, matching me up to either of those families? Not that I wish to be matched."

"No doubt that you'll hasten to shore up the reduced Malfoy fortunes by way of a marriage of convenience, dear one," Narcissa twinkled, "but you must do as you please, my lovely son. I wouldn't endanger your future happiness with your father's erumpentine scheming, not if I were to tread even a pace in those glorious Hobys of yours. To each, as they say, his very own."

"Precisely so."

A nodding Draco took up his mother's hand and pressed a kiss to its back, where the skin was still as lily-white as in her youth. She was sans the requisite lacy half-gloves this morning—a sin, really, in the Muggle Ton, and tantamount to traipsing about half-unclothed—but she'd such lovely skin, she'd no doubt be forgiven. The Viscount blessed his lucky constellation, for he'd inherited that attribute, along with his sainted mother's well-disguised but vibrant sense of the ridiculous.

"I rejoice that we fully understand each other, Maman, at last," he grinned slyly. "No other parent is as admirable as you—nor anywhere near as supremely fair."

A quick flick of her fan to his greenglass-hued superfine sleeve let Draco know his mother was vastly pleased with the unsolicited compliment.

"Oh, you!" she chuckled, fondly. "Be off with you, my little love. Go and charm some pretty young ladies—or p'raps some prettier young gentlemen, as the case may be. That should serve to put a damper on the gossip just as well as your foolish scheme of Pharo. And, too-the Earl," Narcissa winked merrily at her heir.

"I'll take my leave, then," Draco bowed, grinning. "An arm back to the breakfasting room, Maman?"

Lady Malfoy shook her head slightly, waving her fan with a swish and watching as it transformed into a lovely, delicate wand. She pointed it smartly at a nearby yew bush, trimmed to within an inch of its life by zealous house elves, which promptly Transfigured itself into a comfortable bench, well-padded with tasseled cushions.

"No, love, I am more than content, right here. I shall sit and enjoy the scent of my lovely French roses. Your father has just forwarded me a new variety. Scorby has the gardeners settling them in, even now."

"Then, fare well in my absence, dearest Maman," Draco smiled and leant forward to clasp her free hand once more. A quick brush of lips across the tips of her buffed fingernails avowed his eternal affection. "I'll take my leave, if I may? No doubt I'll be dining in Town this evening. Don't allow poor old Scorby to wait up for me, please."

"Of course, Draco; as you will," his mother nodded. "Oh, and Draco—my son," she added quickly, just as her eldest and only was on the verge of Disapparation.

"Maman?" The Viscount paused, a step away from his standing appointment with the Lords Nott and Goyle. "Yes? Something more?"

"Did you wish to know who won the game played with your father, Draco? The banquer? Or would you rather discover that for yourself?"

Draco smile turned grim in a heartbeat; he shook his perfectly coiffed head sharply.

"No…I believe I may guess the culprit, Maman, easily. There are really only the three possibilities, are there not?"

"That is so, darling," Narcissa nodded. "Only the three. Do take care. Town is full of ruffians."