Chapter One – The First of Many Balls. Turn Five....Get up to Mr."Regular" Arbury and explain myself!
In Miss Villar's splendid ballroom, Miss Alessa Thain came to a sudden and, considering her age, rather belated realisation.
I have wings she noticed, before coming to the logical conclusion:
English or not, I don't need a chin!Miss Thain waddled gracefully after Mr Arbury and his lovely floppy red hair, unafraid to deepen the terribly profound hole that she was barely aware she had already excavated. He turned upon hearing the lovely pitter patter of her tiny feet, and she took a deep breath. She didn't know if this was the man towards which divine providence had pointed her, or with which divine providence intended her to spend her life, but she did know that this awful situation was not entirely her fault. He was just as appallingly indifferent at dancing as she; it was not only her fault that Mr Pinkerton-Smythe's jacket had been lightly touched.
"Mr Arbury! I'm sorry for what I've done." she started, and it was a good start. There was also a good start to her speech's reception, for Mr Arbury stood and listened, with a sad compassion wincing at the back of his eye like an imprisoned eel.
"Please come back! You don't dance well, but that doesn't matter! You do know how to apologise!"…"Miss Thain," he began, though so beset by the emotion of this apparent miracle was Miss Thain that she barely heard him speak,
"Miss Thain, I am terribly sorry. I have also been most irregular. Let me take it upon myself to right this monstrous wrong-doing. I should perhaps offer to beat myself senseless like yon wretched peasant, but, instead of what might be right, when we have the pleasure of meeting again at such a splendid ball, please, I beg you, do me the honour of giving me the first dance?"And then, without a further word, he walked over to one of Miss Villar's astonishingly expensive
bureaux, thumped it discreetly with a frightful force and, grimacing in pain as he did so, left the ball.
It had, he thought, looking back, been quite a success.
Mr Arbury likes you more!sitting down at the pianoforte to play a jolly waltz.
Leaving so precipitously, Mr Arbury was not afforded the unique pleasure of hearing Miss Catherine Fantail's attempt at enlivening the mood following Mr Arcy's apparent passing.
"Oh," she cooed, in her stiffest voice,
"You simply must hear me play!" …She sat down at Miss Villar’s pianoforte, and confidently gave several keys a surprisingly deft
plonk with her lovely wingtips. A rather dreadful sound escaped, and Miss Villar rushed up, fanning herself urgently and apologising for the poor quality of the pianoforte and, in particular, of the awful eejit that must have tuned it last.
Shouting with the great natural authority inherent to the English lady, she summoned a nearby peasant, and administered a quick beating in the absence of the piano tuner who, it soon transpired, had returned to the bleak North to care for his exceedingly ill mother. Miss Villar promised to herself that she would deliver a thorough beating to the felon once the wretched mother had finished passing away and the imbecile son returned.
Luckily much of the gossip that this poorly tuned pianoforte had spawned was rapidly nipped in the bud, for nearby a ladypigeon was, it seemed, having some kind of ungodly fit.
succumbing to a timely fit of the vapours.
"Oh my goodness,” cried Lady Katherine Montagu, feeling a little tired from her own peasant beating, and somewhat unwilling to commit herself to the step of a second dance with Mr Pinkerton-Smythe. Doing so would have been tantamount, in the eyes of the other handsome young men about, to a provisional acceptance of marriage, the violation of which would most probably have led to hopefully bloody and violent duels.
"It seems the exertion of that peasant-beating has quite overcome me!" she continued, glowing inside at the attention the entire ballroom was showering upon her this evening.
"I fear I may faint!"…It was at this unfortunate moment that Lady Katherine forgot how to feign fainting, remaining steadfastly on her feet, unable to close her eyes or collapse to the floor. She did, indeed, look so puzzled that those nearest her thought that she might be suffering from a – it was well-known – extremely dangerous and often explosive pigeonstroke, but she soon regained her senses, if not her ability to fall over, and instead started blushing.
”Oh. Or perhaps not. I say!"Mr Arbury likes you slightly more!Miss Arcy likes you slightly more!Miss Villar likes you slightly more!Reverend Halfton likes you slightly less!Then, uh, run after Mr. Arcy, and pay him some respects out of shock.
There was some tut-tutting, there was some congratulating: the reactions of a roomful of English gentlefolk to a ladypigeon resisting a fit of the vapours is a difficult thing to predict. Some admire the phlegmatic stoicism; others feel a proxy shame that a lady of breeding is not able to freely express herself via that most ladylike of procedures: the faint.
It seemed that Lady Rosanne Meyerschmidt-Cripeton was one of the latter types. As soon as Lady Montagu failed in her attempt to collapse to the ground, Lady Rosanne fled the room, obviously and enormously moved.
She ran out, feet tipping and tapping through the undergrowth, rushing after there from whence it seemed a gunshot had so recently echoed.
…Lady Rosanne Meyerschmidt-Cripeton, stumbling through the undergrowth, came across a nearby wood, and searched for a nearby corpse; alas, she was unsuccessful, and after several minutes’ hunting she sat down on a nearby rock, and wept a little.
CHOOSE YOUR LADYLIKE ACTIVITIES FOR THE WEEK!
...Hope you're doing ok la! D:
Just massively overworked!