Love and Other Rituals

November is going to be totally nuts for me this year, but I want to at least do a little! I am admittedly starting the month on travel at a dance competition, so we'll see if I even really get started. Hahaha. Work hard play hard I guess.

Love and Other Rituals

The Elevator Pitch
Lord Gilbert Massey keeps blowing up his house. He thought, after a few months running his family estate, that he'd figured it all out, but when his magic spirals out of control, he wrecks not just his house, but his farmland, his finances, and his shot at marriage. At least there's some hope -- both in the ritual magic expert his mentor recommends he write to, and in the baffling Ms. Eustasia Roche, a cheerful but painfully awkward woman he knows he shouldn't pursue, but who seems to save him at every turn.

Character List
Ms. Eustasia Roche
Lord Gilbert Massey
Mrs. Theodora Hooper neé Roche
Ms. Patricia Roche
Sir Elmer Roche
Sir Alexander Thorton
Mr. William Wentworth
(And more)

I guess maybe I'll do the rest of the challenges tonight and tomorrow haha.

I am in the airport at 4 am thinking about my novel instead of thinking about the competition I'm about to go to lol. Also I outlined out like ten chapters... see if I stick to the plan or not haha.

Main Character 1: Ms. Eustasia Roche
Eustasia is the chatty, cheerful, but generally overlooked middle child of three girls. Her older sister just eloped, and the younger just ran off to medical school (in disguise, no less), and now Eustasia, who had thought she could just sort of coast by and keep working on her academic papers, is suddenly the only daughter left to fulfill her father’s dream that his girls will be well-looked-after, in the same or higher station as they have been living.

Eustasia is not a boat-rocker (or at least not on purpose). She enjoys a level of respect in academic circles (by posing as a man, yes, which does make her a bit of a hypocrite with regards to the younger sister), but is mostly respected in a quiet, underwhelming way, and is known as a bit of an eccentric even in those circles, which lets her get out of meetings and presentations. Simultaneously, she greatly enjoys specific “feminine” hobbies, like embroidery and fashion, and thus is able to pretend very well at the kind of unassuming character she thinks is most likely to land her an engagement.

And she does mostly want to get married! Where her sisters are impulsive and liable to do as they please no matter the consequences (or the happiness they achieve - see the older sister), Eustasia is a go-with-the-flow type who, because her father’s goals do not prevent her from achieving what she wants, is happy to go along to make him feel secure in at least one daughter’s future. Besides… she would like to design a house, and landing a wealthy husband might allow that for her.

Omg. I need to read this book NOW.

AHHHH thank you Snoink!

Anyway. I did write a bit yesterday, but I was so tired lol. Dance competition results? Me and my buddy took fourth place in the Waltz/Tango/Foxtrot multi-dance, third place in Viennese Waltz, second in the Cha-Cha/Rumba/Swing multi-dance, and second again in Bolero by itself... but dang there was not a lot of space between us and first place in those rhythm dances. We regret not adding the Mambo to our list.

Now onto some make-up prep and also Actual Novel Stuff.

Main Character 2: Lord Gilbert Massey
The only son (and only child) of a wealthy estate (I haven’t decided exactly what title to give him… probably the lowest English noble one just to be safe. A count, maybe), Lord Gilbert Massey has always lived life knowing his destiny. He has always known he would inherit his house. He has always known he would become a great mage. He has always known he would marry some nice girl with a reasonably large dowry, and he has always known exactly how he will live his life.

At the beginning of the story, we definitely find him here, obediently following the destiny he knows awaits him. I haven’t figured out exactly what kind of person he will become when he flubs it all up in an extraordinary magical accident, but I hope he becomes desperate and a little stupid. I also intend for him to remain kind and compassionate, regardless of what comes his way.

On the topic of magic, though… Gil specializes in something like elemental invocation (am I borrowing from DnD? Yes), and is an expert on influencing and predicting the weather, specifically.


11/1 Update: 290 Words
Lord Gilbert Massey’s day has been capital-P-Perfect.

It hasn’t been his ideal day, no. His ideal day would involve more sleeping, more magecraft experiments, and more sausages at breakfast. But at least everything has gone to plan, which is the important thing. The Massey estate is about to host a Very Important hunting party, and Gil is going to ask the father of the nicest girl this season if he has permission to court her. And then of course at dinner, maybe he will find the guts to ask the girl herself if he can court her. And then in several months, they will get married, and Gil will have accomplished all the things he’s supposed to do as the newly minted Baron Massey.

He paces about his sitting room, heart thudding in his chest, as he waits for all his guests to arrive. What if the father says no? What if she says no? Gil is mostly certain Lady Olivia likes him, but as with many of the women he’s met over the course of the season, it can be hard to tell. She smiles at him, and he isn’t quite sure if it’s because she really does find joy talking and dancing with him, or if it’s because she’s supposed to smile at him. And that isn’t even bringing money into the equation.

The grandfather clock in the corner of the room shows Gil still has an hour before even his earliest, most punctual guests begin arriving. Maybe he should go back up to his magecraft room. He hasn’t had time for his research, what with all the preparations, and looking at diagrams and thinking magical theory will at least take his mind off the here and now.

About to hop on the plane home, so another abbreviated writing session today.

11/2 Update: 765 words (total 1055)
His workroom, thankfully, is just as he left it. He takes a deep breath as the door shuts behind him, relishing the smell of his paper and ink, of the tomes and magazines and journals that fill his bookshelves. One even lies open on his desk, right where he left it–oh god, six months ago? Gil hadn’t even done magic last time he stepped foot in this room. He’d just come out of the year-long mourning of his parents, and had needed to make sure nothing valuable had walked away in that time. And then, well.

After the mourning, he’d finally pulled his head out of the sand and realized he had So Much to do. And another six months had passed.

Gil creeps up to the open journal on his desk and glances at the title. “Sun Angles and Astronomical, Meteorological, and Geological Invocation,” it reads. Gil can’t remember if he’d actually read the article or not. The title is so bland he might never remember.

Nevermind that, though. Gil is just performing magecraft today, not reading an esoteric article on sun angles. He clears the article from his desk, and then realizes the entire workroom is a mess and sets that all to rights as well. When he has at last reset everything to its proper place, the clock on the fireplace mantle reads close to noon. His earliest guests are due soon. He only has a half hour to get a bit of magecraft done.

What to do, what to do? It’s been so long, Gil barely even remembers what he can do. He could predict the weather for tomorrow? It would be useful for the hunt–but no, while he’s adept at weather divination, the mere fact of it being divinatory in nature means it will take him too long. Oh! He can try for clear skies this evening. It won’t do to have rain drizzling down as the last of his guests arrive, or as supper is piled high on his dining room table. Not that they’ll be eating outside, but who likes a dreary dinner party?

Time has taken enough of Gil’s rote memory that he finds himself performing the spell for sunny skies with more intention than he would have a year ago. He has to think about where he stores his best paper, and his best ink. He scribbles his channeling circle out with more precision, since he can’t remember quickly enough to be slapdash about it. He double-checks it even, to verify that he scaled the power output correctly, that he didn’t forget to dot any I’s or cross any T’s.

And then, with barely five minutes to noon, Gil marches to the dead center of his workroom–marked on the floor by a metal plate inset in the wood. He holds his channeling circle out over it, faces out the enormously expensive windows, and slowly, deliberately, pronounces the incantation.

It feels right, at first. The swell of magic is like coming home, like a hot meal on a rainy day in the company of friends, like sunlight warming through his skin. He urges it up and up, in him and through him, and the words start to come easier as he falls back into his memory, and as magic–his old friend–surges to meet his request.

And then it starts to get warm. Gil muscles his way through the incantation, pushing down the feeling that something might be a little wrong. He’s calling for sunny skies; of course he feels warm. But then the last words of the spell burst through his lips. His skin heats like he’s standing in an inferno. He hears the whoosh of air wheezing through the tiny hole of his chimney, all in one strange, hot gust.

A crack like lightning thunders outside. Gil turns to look and sees the pond in his garden dried up. His plants look terrible. The sky, for one second, is so crystal-clear blue he might be in southern France. Odd, he thinks, that things would feel so different, only to turn out mostly the same.

And then a gust of wind like a hurricane rattles the windows, pulling up and up, and then in and in–his house the center of a terrible vortex of hot air spiraling up and away, and cold, cloudy, newly wettened air bursting in to fill the space. Gil’s heart sinks. He sees the Lyall family’s carriage rounding the bend to approach the estate just as the cloudy sky grows impossibly dark. Then the mother of all storms rains hell upon his house.

My flight home was delayed and I didn't get home until 2 am! I had to stop working after lunch for a nap. Needless to say, it was another short writing day.

11/3 Update: 428 words (1483 total)
Patricia’s atrocious penmanship is all Eustasia can think about. The words written in her horrid, awful, no-good handwriting are swept to the wayside. The lock of beautiful, rich brown hair–nearly three feet long!–also fades into the background. Eustasia just doesn’t have the energy to think of anything other than her sister’s tragically over-slanted, over-looped, oddly jagged penmanship.

“I took third cousin Patrick’s place at medical college,” says the note. And that’s it. That’s the whole note. There is no “don’t worry about me,” or “I have a plan to not get caught,” or even “and this is what happened to third cousin Patrick.” (Though in all fairness, Eustasia doesn’t fully care what happened to third cousin Patrick. She’s not even sure who he is.)

Eustasia stares at the note for another few second, blankly noticing that Pat has dotted exactly zero of her I’s, and that despite the war crimes of her handwriting, the descender on her P forms almost a golden ratio compared to the length of the head. Maybe, Eustasia thinks, if she had been more a stickler on her younger sister’s penmanship, Pat wouldn’t have run away. After all, Pat’s reasoning for never learning good penmanship was always that she would become a doctor, and “doctors have famously bad handwriting.”

And then there’s the hair. It feels wrong to leave it out, and also wrong to hold on to it in a drawer somewhere. And they aren’t in such dire financial straights that Eustasia needs to sell it–though she’s sure Pat’s hair would fetch a good price at a wig-maker’s. Not sure what to do, she grabs it up with the letter and bustles downstairs to show her father.

The main staircase has exactly twenty-three steps, and Eustasia’s mind absently counts them as she patters down. Twenty-three is a good number. It doesn’t have special properties other than being prime, and so it never caused her sisters’ magic to do strange things when they used to run up and down them shouting spells at each other. Of course, stairs alone probably weren’t enough to have an impact. Most likely, someone would have to go up or down them at exactly the right time, on a regular basis, for there to be any noticeable impact.

Not that it will ever matter for Eustasia. Of the three girls, she is the only one without the talent for magecraft. And yet here she is, the only one left to fulfill her duty to go find a husband… one who would probably like her to be magically inclined.

Maybe my goal is just to write at least a little bit every day? That seems achievable haha.

11/4 Update: 1185 words (2668 total)
She finds her father halfway asleep in his breakfast, a faraway look in his eyes as he stares down at a spot just past the edge of his plate, fork in one hand, knife falling out of the other. He sits at the head of the table in his usual place, but where Eustasia remembers him straight-backed and smiling, always joyous at the sight of his three daughters, she finds him now hunched and small and sad.

“Father?” she says quietly.

He snaps to attention, bones creaking. He’s frailer than he should be at his age, but Eustasia doesn’t know why. Even Pat, the most brilliant of the girls, had no idea why their father kept getting sicker, even when other men his age were still hale and hearty. When his eyes land on Eustasia, his tired face sags into something like relief.

“Ah, Eustasia. Good, good. Sit down, have a bite.”

She sits, plucks a roll out of the basket set between them, and sets to buttering it. How can she bring up Pat without giving her father a heart attack?

Her father just sighs and rubs at his temples. “I heard your sister leave last night.”

So he already knows. At least now Eustasia doesn’t have to be the one to break the bad news. She breaks off a chunk of buttered bread and stuffs it in her mouth. She takes her time chewing, stewing on what to say next. “Well. Yes. She says she took third cousin Pat’s place at medical school.”

“Third cousin Pat? Hm. That’s an interesting choice.” When Eustasia prompts him to continue with a quirked eyebrow, he obliges with another long-suffering sigh. “He’s not exactly the medical school type.”

“I’m sensing a ‘but’ in here somewhere.”

“But,” Eustasia’s father continues, his wizened face lifting somewhat, “he is the relation meant to take over the estate when I pass on.”

Well. That will either turn out marvelously or horribly. “I just hope she didn’t kill him,” Eustasia says. At least, since his name is so similar to Patricia’s, and he could conceivably go by the same nickname, Pat will have an easier time pretending to be third cousin Patrick than she would someone else. It’s a small comfort, though not enough to dispel the heavy weight of worry that still sits upon Eustasia’s chest.

This isn’t how she thought her life would go at all. She’d always thought Theodora would marry some bafflingly wealthy lord, as eldest daughters are wont to do, and leave Eustasia and Pat to do whatever they liked. She hadn’t thought Theo would run off with the master of a brewery, or that Pat (despite the clear signs) would actually run off to medical school.

Eustasia stares glumly at the spread of breakfast in front of them before bunching up her napkin and leaving it on the table. “I suppose I should start altering Pat’s gowns so I can wear them this season.”

Her father glances at her, and through the weariness and sickness that clouds his eyes, she can still see the glimmer of hope at her words. “You’re still going to have one? Not going to run off like your sisters?”

Where would Eustasia run off to? She has no secret lover, no university ambitions. She writes abstract nonsense about the ideal sizing of window shades for buildings at a given latitude and embroiders pretty handkerchiefs. Her only choice is to find a suitable husband and get married so she can continue life as it is. Or mostly as it is. She supposes she’ll probably have to have children, which is daunting, but maybe could be fun under the right circumstances.

“What’s the first event we should attend?” she asks, pivoting away from any sisterly blame to focus on action instead. “I think maybe something relatively small. Are any of your old friends hosting early balls or poetry readings soon? Do you feel up to coming with, or do I need to find a party to join?”

Her father scoffs, insulted, though the scoff quickly turns into a cough, and then a fit of coughs. When it subsides, he gives Eustasia a warning glance and continues as if nothing had been wrong. “I can at least attend your first event of the season. I’m not that frail.”

Instead of pointing out that her father had been out of commission the latter half of last year’s season, and that the girls had been forced to accompany another family, during which time Theodora had fallen head-over-heels in love with a brewer, Eustasia thinks about how the dining table sits exactly six feet away from the walls on its long sides, seven-foot two-and-three-sixteenths inches away from the wall on the far short side, and five-foot eight-and-one-quarter inches from the wall on the near short side. This fact has driven Eustasia to distraction since she was a child, but it’s a convenient thing to think about when she’s avoiding something else.

“Mr. Wentworth usually hosts something early in the season, right?” she asks. “Have you received any invitations?”

With their mother long gone, it has unfortunately fallen on their father to handle these kinds of things for Eustasia and her sisters. More unfortunately, Eustasia’s father is not good at managing events. He furrows his brows in thought, looking like the effort might make him violently ill.

Eustasia sighs. “I’ll check your letters for you, Father. No need to worry.”

At that, her father lets out a long breath, relieved to be relieved of this task. Eustasia suddenly misses her older sister. Before running off, it had been Theodora who managed invitations and events and outings. Now, without her reliable older sister, it felt like all matters of household management were suddenly on her unprepared shoulders.

Appetite gone, Eustasia excuses herself, leaving her father to continue gnawing his way through whatever breakfast he can stomach today. She lets herself into his office–recently moved downstairs to prevent his needing to stairclimb–and crosses the carpeted floor to tie back the heavy drapes at the windows. At this time of year, the morning sun paints a long, lovely line across the room, spilling over so that it laps up at the seam between the floor and the opposite wall. The golden light turns everything warm, and the long, obtuse angle turns the shadows dreamy and dramatic.

Her father’s letters lay in a shallow box at the corner of his desk and look like they haven’t been touched in days. An empty outgoing box sits next to the mail, and as Eustasia pokes through the various letters and invitations to see if any look interesting from the envelope, she takes a second to peer over her shoulder at the door. It’s empty, the corridor beyond silent and serene.

Eustasia pulls a tidy, nondescript envelope from a hidden pocket in her skirt and drops it into her father’s outgoing mail box. Then she selects a few envelopes with seals she knows belong to her favorites of her father’s friends, and sits down to painstakingly copy her father’s handwriting into a series of replies.

ahhh it's a Vento story!!! and it looks FABULOUS so far (also great job at the dance competition! :O )

my fav lines:

Spoiler

Lord Gilbert Massey keeps blowing up his house.

unfortunate, my dude :pensive:

His ideal day would involve more sleeping, more magecraft experiments, and more sausages at breakfast.

always love how you smoothly weave in magic and humor :]

There is no “don’t worry about me,” or “I have a plan to not get caught,” or even “and this is what happened to third cousin Patrick.”

rip third cousin Patrick :')

despite the war crimes of her handwriting, the descender on her P forms almost a golden ratio compared to the length of the head.

lovely detail about Eustasia's character :3

looking forward to following along this NovMo!!

OMG Thanks Mint!!!! It's good to be back writing stuff again : D

11/5 Update: 1439 words (4107 total)
Dinner is already going poorly. The sudden humidity of the afternoon made all of Cook’s dinner rolls proof into wet, bulbous blobs. The guests, despite having bathed and changed and primped and preened, are bedraggled. Rain and wind rattle the dining room windows, pounding against the manor’s stone walls. The howling weather outside makes low chatter impossible.

Still, one magically induced rainstorm shouldn’t ruin Gil’s whole day. He tries for a smile at the two guests closest to him: Lord Lyall on his right, and his old friend Wentworth on his left.

Lord Lyall grimaces. Wentworth raises a glass and shoots Gil an amused grin.

“Probabilities didn’t work out today, eh?” Wentworth is an old school friend. He knows full well where Gil’s magical specialities lie. As Gil surreptitiously glares, Wentworth takes a lazy sip of his wine and tucks back into his meal, his manners perfect, even as Gil knows his friend is plotting something, scoping out the rest of the diners, sniffing out a good joke or scandal.

“I’ll tell you about it later,” Gil mutters. Then he plasters on something almost like a smile and addresses the young Lady Lyall, seated across from him, as he’d requested earlier that afternoon. “Lady Lyall, does everything suit your taste?”

The thing about women, Gil thinks, is that it’s hard to know what they really think. He understands this is something of a survival tactic, but it doesn’t make it easier. Lady Lyall bats her eyes at him and nibbles so delicately at a morsel of mushroom on her fork that he half wonders if she doesn’t like it. But then she says, “Oh, it’s all wonderful. My compliments to your chef,” which in theory implies she finds his staff’s cuisine acceptable. He hopes she does. Gil likes his cook and doesn’t fancy the idea of firing him to hire one that Lady Lyall likes.

“I’ll have Emory pass it along,” Gil says. He gulps as another nasty gust of wind rattles the windows. He’s about to continue along the script–ask Lady Lyall what her favorite foods are, or if there is any particular dish that caught her eye–when the dining room doors fly open.

All conversation in the room stops. The wind howls like a lone wolf. Gil is suddenly sick in his stomach.

He snaps to the doorway, where his head of staff stands silhouetted in the hallway lights. Even from afar, Gil can see the man’s shoulders heaving, the water dripping off his clothes and rolling from his hairline down his forehead. It feels like they make eye contact in slow motion, like all the water outside has flooded, and its weight bogs down not just Gil’s limbs, but his eyes, his heart, and his head.

Gil laughs, heart thudding, and bids the most awkward, ungracious ‘excuse me’ of his life before striding (not running! A gentleman never runs) along the entire length of his dining room table, past all his guests, and out the door.

When it groans shut behind him, he swears he can hear the whispers he’s leaving behind. He takes a long, shaking breath. “Emory,” he says, a hysterical laugh bubbling out of him, “please tell me there isn’t an emergency.” Of course there’s an emergency. Gil’s staff wouldn’t interrupt the most important dinner party of his life for just anything.

Emory, still dripping, wrings his gloved hands, and a small stream of water patters to the floor. “Well. Ah. I hate to say it.”

“I don’t know that either of us has a choice in whether to say or hear it,” Gil mumbles, “not if we’re being decent people.”

“Suppose you could choose to be just another ignorant nobleman.”

He could! Gil could choose not to hear the horrible news his head of staff is about to break. But alas, there is no sand to bury his head in. There is only mud. “Oh, out with it. How bad can it possibly be?”

Emory makes a pinched-lemon face. “Quite bad, milord. Nearly all the farmland you’ve rented out this year has flooded.”

“Oh, god.”

“Also your tenant residences”-

“Please, no.”

“The new farming equipment you purchased? All the ones with the fancy engines?”

Gil squeezes his eyes shut, knowing it won’t stop the deluge of bad news from reaching his ears. “I don’t want to know.”

“All ruined by the floodwaters, milord.”

Gil slaps his hands over his eyes. If he cries, he’ll both look like a fool and potentially make the sky cry even harder. “Is that the end of it?”

Emory makes a sad, wet, aborted shrug. “For now.”

“Tell me the roads haven’t washed out.” It will be a horrible faux pas, but Gil may have to cancel his hunting party. He may have to send all his guests away first thing tomorrow, despite the fact that they all just arrived and were supposed to stay almost a fortnight. Maybe, if the damage isn’t too bad in the morning, he can have Wentworth lead the festivities while Gil tries not to drown amid all the catastrophes erupting around his estates.

“The night is still young,” Emory replies.

Gil glances up, vaguely in the direction of his magecraft room. His last spell went so horribly wrong. He could try to rectify it with another, but that seems like a last resort. And besides, he doesn’t even know why his first spell turned out this way! He can’t fix something he doesn’t understand. If only his mentor had been able to make it for this event, then maybe Gil would have someone to bounce a few ideas off of. Wentworth may practice magecraft, but his specialty lies in metals and machines, not in finicky things like the weather. He’d be useless as a sounding board.

“I did a spell for sunny skies, and it rained,” Gil says. “If I pray for rain, will it be sunny again?”

Emory rolls his eyes. “Milord, you know full well my magical knowledge extends to fine-tuning fireplaces.”

“Not so different from weather, in the grand scheme of things.”

Gil knows he shouldn’t do it. He can hear his mentor’s voice in his mind, reprimanding him for attempting to perform large magic when he has no idea what the consequences may be. But this is the most important party he may ever host. He is supposed to get engaged sometime in the next two weeks. He cannot let it all drain away in the stormwater.

“Continue to monitor the situation,” Gil says to Emory. “If we need to evacuate tenants into the manor, let it be done. I’m going to try one more thing.” Then, before his staff can advise him otherwise, he dashes up the grand staircase to his workroom. He slams the door shut behind him and mutters a quick incantation to set his lamps ablaze. His fireplace roars to life in addition, sputtering through the drip of rain down the chimney, but Gil hardly notices.

Gil acts on instinct. After his little spell this afternoon, the mage parts of his brain are already starting to wake back up. He takes the same paper and ink from before, draws a slightly adjusted diagram, and rushes back to the marker at the center of his workroom.

“Please work,” he mutters. “Please, please work.” Dully, Gil wonders what time sunset is today, and then his mouth moves automatically, his spell flowing from his lips like water. The paper in his hand smokes, burns, evaporates. For a moment, nothing happens. Rain continues to pound against the walls of his house. Wind continues to blow, like what Gil imagines a New World hurricane might be like.

And then, miracle of miracles, it all stops. Gil collapses to the floor, chest heaving, and watches through his workroom windows as the clouds dissipate in seconds, revealing the last dredges of the red sunset. He closes his eyes to give himself a moment of peaceful relief. He still has no idea why his magic doesn’t behave as it used to, but at least he fixed his hunting party. Tomorrow, he will take his intended’s father out to survey his lands, prove that he will make a good husband, that he can provide for Lady Lyall. He’s fine. He’s good, even.

Gil opens his eyes, and in the dying light sees that his muddy lands are bone-dry and cracked, a desert where they had been flooded only seconds before. The exhaustion of his magecraft hits him. The dread of what he’s done hits him harder. Lord Gilbert Massey lets out a strangled, dying goose sound and faints onto his workroom floor.

Did I do most of this at work? Yes.

11/6 Update: 2039 words (total 6146)
“How about Sir Renvelt?”

Eustasia looks up from her embroidery with a sniff. She invited Zenia over to help strategize about which events to attend, and to hopefully secure a decent companion in case her father fell ill again this season, not to look at the men in the society pages.

“Don’t give me that look,” Zenia says, holding up the society magazine with Sir Renvelt’s picture. His illustration hardly matches the man Eustasia remembers. For one, the illustrator has done a great disservice to his ears, which are large but not that large. Second, Eustasia remembers his cheekbones being so severe she wondered if he had space in his mouth to chew. The illustrator has filled him out instead, or simply forgotten to shade the deep shadows of his cheeks.

“If you’re going to strategize about events,” Zenia continues, “you have to know which gentlemen you want, and who’s going to be where. This is where you failed last year. You just tagged along with your sisters wherever they went without thinking about how best to capture the man you want.”

Eustasia hates this part. She doesn’t need the best man of the season. She just wants one who will leave her alone. That’s not something she can judge from the society pages.

“Sir Renvelt is rumored to have ten thousand a year,” Zenia adds. “You’d be quite comfortable.”

Sir Renvelt, as Eustasia remembers him from last year, is sweet, attentive, and prone to dramatics. He seems like the kind of man who might notice her sending letters–academic though they might be–and question her fidelity. Also, he’s too tall. Most of what Eustasia remembers from seeing him is that he’d been six-foot-one-and-five-eighths inches tall, which was just distracting enough that she had a hard time remembering her prancing technique when she danced with him.

“Ugh! You’re hopeless! Will you stop poking at your embroidery and just look at these magazines with me for five minutes?”

Eustasia eyes the clock on the mantle–a charming thing with inlaid pottery and tidy wooden scrolls carved into the body–and notes the time. Then she sets her embroidery in her lap and makes a show of removing her hands from it. “Behold me not poking at my embroidery.”

“Thank you,” Zenia sniffs. Then she shakes out the magazine with all the seriousness of the king about to read a military report. “If Sir Renvelt doesn’t suit you, perhaps you’ll like Mr. Alban. He doesn’t have the knightage like your father, but he makes a little more money. And he isn’t so bad to look at.” Zenia shoves the paper under Eustasia’s nose. “Here, have a look.”

The illustrator has, yet again, done a poor job replicating Mr. Alban’s features. He’d turned up at the very last events of the previous season, always flushed with the kind of desperation that Eustasia figured came from either nerves or need. Kindly, the illustrator has not painted his cheeks bright pink. Unkindly, his portrait makes his hairline look like it’s receding. Eustasia is fairly certain he’d had a healthy ratio of skin to hair on his forehead. She wrinkles her nose and glances balefully at Zenia. “I could meet him.” He hadn’t been around long enough last year for her to gauge how convenient of a husband he’d make.

“Picky, picky. Here, how about Sir Dewellyn?”

Here is a gentleman Eustasia hadn’t seen last year. She’s sure the illustrator has done him both dirty and kind in his picture, so she takes it with a healthy teaspoon of salt, but his eyes are nicely spaced from his nose, and his smile lines carve a broad isoceles triangle down to his mouth. “I assume you’ll tell me now how much money he makes, and where his estate is?”

Zenia rolls her eyes. “Eight thousand, so I’m told. His estate is all the way out by Penzance, though. Quite a trek.”

With her father in poor shape, Eustasia can’t possibly marry a man who lives so far away. “Maybe not him then.”

They flip through a few more pages before the titles and incomes start to grow beyond what Eustasia can reasonably hope to achieve. And then, with a long-suffering huff, Zenia allows Eustasia to pick her embroidery back up. The other girl watches, one eyebrow raised, twirling a lock of honey-brown hair around one finger, and peers over Eustasia’s shoulder to watch.

“Constellations again? Goodness, I never understand how you manage to get them so perfect every time. Flowers are much easier, you know. No one notices if your curves are slightly off, or you do one extra stitch in the wrong color.”

“It’s not hard,” Eustasia says. She doesn’t understand how other people can not find constellations easy. The stars stay a relatively consistent distance from each other, and once the scale comes down to that of a handkerchief corner, all the minute changes and rounding errors hardly matter. When Eustasia embroiders the Great Bear in the corner of a twelve-inch by twelve-inch square, Alkaid is always exactly one quarter of an inch from Alcor. The tiny zodiac set she stitched across the bodice of her favorite gown is perfectly proportioned, though few people notice it, since she used thread almost the same color as the gown.

Zenia just purses her lips, dubious. “Say what you will. No one else I know can guess a man’s inseam just by looking at him. My husband still asks me to have you guess all his friends’ measurements.”

It’s all habit and proportion. Bricks are standardized, so stand a man next to a brick wall, and Eustasia will know his height. She knows her own outseam, so when she stands next to a sideboard table and feels where its tabletop digs into her side, she knows how tall that table is.

“Are you and your husband coming to Mr. Wentworth’s dinner party?” Eustasia asks. She can guess a few measurements there, if the ask is genuine and not just a means of making jokes about specific kinds of length and girth.

Zenia scowls. “Yes. Unfortunately. Why do you even go to those? I know Mr. Wentworth’s company has distribution rights for your father’s patents, but he’s such a bore.”

That stings a bit. Eustasia likes Mr. Wentworth. He’s fun, and he’s good to her father, and the conversation at his dinner table tends to stray into the minutiae and esoterica of magecraft. He has unfortunately declared, however, that he will only marry for a “deep, true, all-consuming love,” which puts him solidly out of her rankings. Still, any friend of his is at least worth considering.

“I like listening to everyone talk about magic,” Eustasia says, which sends Zenia’s eyebrows sky-high.

“You’re one of the… what, hundred people in the country with absolutely no talent for magecraft, and you enjoy listening to them ramble on and on about the stuff? Good grief.”

Eustasia likes listening to them because it gives her so many ideas. Once, Mr. Wentworth remarked that he could never skip coffee at breakfast, because he couldn’t shape metal as fast without it. Then she’d had Pat drink a rigorously ceremonious cup of tea every day for a month to see if her sister could achieve a similar jump in power. It did. Pat still drinks tea, with great pomp, every morning. Or she does as far as Eustasia knows. Maybe there’s no time for tea at medical school.

She’d also heard one of Mr. Wentworth’s university professors remark that ancient temples were built on superstitions, that their belief in magic numbers influenced how many steps they climbed to a dias, or how many candles they lit in a ritual. And so Eustasia had fumbled through architectural history journals for every scrap of information she could find, constructed a temple in a corner of her family estate, and made Theodora try ritual after ritual to see if she could get her plant magic to work faster.

“It’s lovely to hear people speak so passionately,” Eustasia says, instead of explaining her fascination with all the external forces on magecraft.

Zenia sighs and plops her head onto Eustasia’s shoulder. “You’re adorable. I don’t know how you didn’t land a husband last season. I’ll go to Mr. Wentworth’s with you. Maybe without Theodora and Pat around, you’ll actually catch someone’s attention.”

---

By the time Gil’s mentor, the honorable Sir Alexander Thorton, arrives at the estate, Gil has sent away all but one of his many houseguests. His manor is a wreck. Dying trees sway like ghosts over the long drive through his front gardens, and the early blooms of spring that had so eagerly started popping up are now grey and shriveled. In the now-open stretches of sky left behind by all his fallen forestry, Gil can see the ruins of his tenants’ homes, of his brand new farming equipment, and of the once-tidy farmland they’d just cleaned up to get ready for spring.

And his one remaining houseguest? It’s not the Lyall family.

Sir Thorton, looking pleasantly pink-cheeked as always, tumbles out of his carriage with all the grace of a baby giraffe. His wispy shock of grey hair is like a candle flame over his head, and his eyes light up with mirth when he lays eyes on Gil and Wentworth, side-by-side outside the manor.

“Boys, boys!” he crows, rushing forward to wrap the both of them up in a hug. When Gil had just started at university, these hugs had been bone-crushing, but ten years later, his mentor is no longer the hearty man he once was, and Gil is no longer the scrawny boy he’d been. “It’s so good to see you again! I would ask how you’re doing, but, ah.” Laughter dances in Sir Thorton’s eyes as he takes in the scenery. “I think the landscape speaks for itself.”

Gil presses his face into his hands.

“Do cheer up,” Wentworth says, slapping him on the back. “At least no one died.”

“Small miracle.”

The three men look out upon Gil’s ravaged estate for a few more minutes before Sir Thorton pipes back up. “You know, this is quite something. One would think you’d done some sort of power-inducement ritual.”

“Not that I’m aware of!” Gil cries. “If I’d known, don’t you think I would have made the necessary adjustments in output?”

“You certainly didn’t possess this sort of raw power in school.” Sir Thorton begins to walk away, fully abandoning his carriage and luggage to the machinations of his manservant and Gil’s staff. “As I recall, at full strength, you could get a rainbow out of a rainstorm, or increase your odds of a sunny afternoon when there wasn’t an immediate threat of rain.” He peers at Gil, squinting. “You said the effects were immediate and severe?”

“Very immediate,” Gil says, glum.

“And very severe,” Wentworth adds, still chipper.

“Well! We shan’t figure things out by just standing here.” Sir Thorton ushers Gil along, tugging Wentworth along behind him, and starts them all down a cracked dirt path lined on both sides by brown grass. “Show me the full extent of the damage. Was it only your lands that were impacted? Is there a measurable radius of effect? Perhaps we ought to inquire after a surveyor.”

“I know a fantastic surveyor,” Wentworth says.

Gil’s life is a dying, drowning rat, and his mentor and best friend can only think of research. He trudges along after Sir Thorton, past the broken fences and destroyed garden beds around his immediate estate, and shows them the ruined farms and washed out roads. He takes them all the way to the edge of his property, where the fence that separates his land from his neighbors is strewn about in broken pieces. His neighbor’s lands were affected too. Gil just hopes he doesn’t receive a court summons any time soon. His neighbor is a viscount and will throttle him if this comes to trial.

“I can see the damage has extended past the property line,” Sir Thorton says, inspecting the fence. “But only the water damage, and not the effects of your sudden dry spell. One might wonder if your power is increased only in the bounds of your own estate.”

11/7 Update: 2205 words (total 8351)
Wentworth’s face pinches. “I thought titular power was a myth.”

“Well, this is only one location.” Sir Thorton gestures for them to continue along the jagged line of the broken fence. “Perhaps the radius of young Massey’s magic simply coincided with his property line here.”

Vaguely, Gil knows his estate is shaped like a rectangle with a few amorphous arms stretching out from various points along its edges. His manor sits closer to the east end, which is where they all currently stand. If his magic truly just affected a radius, then a quick venture into one of the arms of his estate should prove it. He leads Wentworth and Sir Thorton to the northeastern arm of his lands, and his heart sinks.

It’s just as bad here as it was where they first looked, and Gil is positive they are a good half-mile further from his manor than before. The dry tree branches crackle in the wind overhead, and entire tree trunks sway dangerously in the loose, cracked soil. If Gil stares at the ground around his trees for too long, he can see the dirt heave, moving up and down as the roots below shift and resettle.

Sir Thorton purses his lips as he takes it all in, and Gil can see the calculations going on in his head as his mentor looks back toward the manor. “Well. There’s certainly something going on with your magic and the property.”

“Any ideas?” Gil asks. He can see Wentworth’s lips curling in distaste at the mere idea of titular magic. Hopefully that isn’t it. Maybe Gil just did something strange in his spell and somehow tied it to ownership instead of to a radius.

“Let us head back to the manor,” Sir Thorton suggests, “and you can walk me through all the steps you performed in both spells.”

Gil tries to think back as they walk. He doesn’t remember doing anything differently from how he would have in university. He is positive he spoke the same words, used the same channeling circle, and even used the same materials–despite the fact that, as Baron Massey, he can afford nicer spell components now than his father had allowed during school. Then he has to quickly shove the thought away before he can think too long on his parents. Even after the year of mourning, it still hurts to remember them, to remember that he was supposed to get married and have children before they passed. His parents were supposed to like his wife. They were supposed to play with his children. They would have been here to keep him from doing anything stupid or impulsive ahead of the Lyalls’ arrival.

Eventually, they all return to the manor, and Gil tries not to look at the exposed foundations of his house. Generations of Masseys have lived and died here, and now he’s eroding all the earth that holds his family home together.

In his workroom, Gil walks Sir Thorton through his process. The older man picks up bottles of ink and swishes them around to check the viscosity. He holds Gil’s paper in his hands, thumbs gently scraping along the surface to check the thickness and texture. Gil watches, heart in his throat, as Sir Thorton paces all around his workroom in a baffling X pattern.

Then, after a long several minutes, Sir Thorton stops. He frowns and looks out the window, bushy grey eyebrows furrowed. “What time of day did you perform the two spells?”

Gil has heard rumor that there are optimal times of day to practice magecraft, but never put much weight behind it. He’d experimented a few times during university and found minimal impact. “Maybe noon, for the spell to make things dry… which is the one that made all the rain. And then close to sunset for the other?”

Sir Thorton stews for a moment. “Let us try something. Wentworth, would you summon a small flame for us?”

Still looking peeved about the possibility of titles affecting magical power, Wentworth mutters under his breath. He flourishes his hands in a tidy, efficient twirl and produces a well-contained, apple-sized flame in the palm of his hand. Then Sir Thorton raises an eyebrow at Gil in a silent urge for him to do the same.

Gil stares down at his hands. Please, he thinks, please let this go exactly as expected. He mutters the exact same phrase as Wentworth. His gestures have never been tidy or efficient, but he does the same flourish. He feels his magic rise to the call, warm and ready and bursting.

He turns his palm up, and fire explodes out.

Many things happen after that. Blinded by the force of his own magic, Gil raises his hands to cover his eyes. He hears Wentworth yelp and start chanting, hears Sir Thorton bellow a single word, feels the sudden, wet heat of steam wash over him. He almost mutters a spell to cool his breath so he can make his hands stop feeling like they are on fire, but feels the cool touch of Sir Thorton’s hands a moment later, and then a gush of water over his palms. He blinks, tears springing to his eyes, and tries to find light again.
“Oh dear,” Sir Thorton says.

“Ye gods!” Wentworth shouts, before Gil hears another hiss of water and steam.
Gil feels his mentor pull him away, and he knows by sound when he leaves the carpet in his workroom and passes into the hallway beyond. One of Sir Thorton’s hands comes to Gil’s shoulder and pats him in a calm, steady rhythm. Gil’s stomach is turning somersaults. His heart feels like a rock sinking to the bottom of a lake. Or the ocean, more like.

“There, there,” whispers Sir Thorton. “It’s not so bad.”

“Don’t lie,” Gil says. And god. He sounds watery. “I blew up my house!”

“Err, well.” Sir Thorton is quiet for a long moment, and Gil can still hear Wentworth putting out the fires. “I’m sure it will just look worse than it is.”

Gil tries again to open his eyes, and when he does, the world is overbright. His cream-colored hallway is blinding white. The metallic trim on his furniture shines like a hundred lighthouses. Everything is blurry with tears. “What is happening to me?” he sobs.

Sir Thorton’s very bright face wrinkles in thought. “I’m not terribly sure, my boy. I had hoped the root cause would be obvious, but this seems a bit beyond even my knowledge. I think it may be time to call in an expert in rituals.”

Squeezing his eyes shut, Gil thinks to that dry article he’d put away before doing his failed sunshine spell. Then he thinks about how much money it will cost him to fix his house, and figure out his soil problems and, support his tenants through it all.

“I’ll connect you with a wonderful young researcher,” Sir Thorton says, forging on even as Gil feels his whole world come to pieces around him. “Mr. Orland. I’m sure you’ve read some of his articles, even. A bit of a recluse, but”-

“As long as he doesn’t need me to pay him,” Gil says. And then he looks to the door of his workroom and finds it still smoldering, lit from behind by a hundred tiny, still-burning fires. Wentworth shoots another blast of water at the walls and lets out a curse as it sputters out, magic running dry. Sir Thorton presses a steady hand into Gil’s shoulder.

“My understanding of Mr. Orland is that he finds answers payment enough.”

Small miracles.

---

The letter arrives amid a swell of less-than-eager acknowledgements that Eustasia will be in attendance at various events. She almost misses it, glancing at the name of the sender and deciding he probably wants something from her father before she catches sight of the envelope again and notes that the letter is for her. Or, well. Kind of.

Carefully, Eustasia twists around to look at the doorway. No one is there. No one sees her slip the letter into the hidden pocket of her day dress, or sigh over the wording of all the letters where people are surprised she still means to attend parties, or hold her reply from Mr. Wentworth to the light of the study windows as if it’s an idol she can pray to. Then she tidies up her father’s desk and scurries out.

It isn’t until she’s in the safety of her room that she pries open the letter and pops it open. When she sees her pseudonym in perfectly curving script at the top, she almost squeals. But she can’t do that, so instead she grips the letter to her chest for a brief moment, savoring the crinkle of the paper, before scanning its full contents.

And god almighty. She really has a letter from Sir Alexander Thorton. And he’s asking for her help, no less! The foremost magecraft researcher in the whole empire, and he needs her expertise! All the snide ‘we’re so pleased you’re still attending events,’ and ‘oh but how sad your sisters won’t join you’s from her RSVP responses fly out of Eustasia’s head, chased out by the sheer joy of recognition. Biting her lip, she rereads the letter more closely.

“My student and friend is in dire need of your assistance,” she reads out loud, then giggles. “My assistance! Amazing. He has experienced an unexpected swell in magical power, and we dearly hope you may shed some light on the reason.” Eustasia can barely breathe, she’s so excited. What an opportunity! Finally, someone who might prove all her theories, someone respected and influential, who isn’t her sister being coerced into an experiment that will never see print. If only she didn’t have to stay a recluse to preserve her identity and “virtue.”

Already, she is so full of questions she can’t keep them in. After a quick dive onto her bed so she can scream delight into her pillows and kick her feet like a little girl, Eustasia tumbles to her desk. She quivers as she pulls out paper and pen and starts her address with “My esteemed colleague, Sir Thorton.” And then it all spills out of her. The ink hardly has time to dry before she starts each new line. “How old is your friend?” she writes. “Does he have any daily habits? Can you please send plans, sections, and elevations of his manor? Also a detailed family tree, including any known by-blows?”
Perhaps that last one is a bit invasive.

Still though, it’s an important thing to know, especially if Sir Thorton thinks his friend’s sudden growth has something to do with inheriting his title. Eustasia has never put stock in the idea of titular magic, but she has often wondered if the nobility’s predeliction for rules, record keeping, and regularized magical education has made certain kinds of generational magical growth more likely. And without rigorous records, how would anyone know if a non-noble family’s lineage and traditions created a similar effect in non-noble children?

“It’s perfectly fine if you do not wish to answer the previous inquiry,” Eustasia writes. “How far back does the family line go? Are there any special steps involved in inheriting the title, such as a trial or test? Does your friend’s habits mirror his father’s? Or his grandfather’s? With the difference you have described, I would guess that there are a great number of daily, weekly, or monthly small rituals that have been going on over multiple generations of lords, as well as a few major ones related specifically to inheritance.

“There is also the matter of timing and location. You mention the spells were performed near noon and sunset, and there is a slight magical gain from performing spells at astronomically significant times. What is the date the spells were performed, so I can reference a few star charts? Alone, these things have minimal impact, but compounded on others, they may raise an already powerful spell to even higher levels.”

Eustasia dips her pen back into her ink and continues on, listing every possible thing that comes to mind as a reason for Sir Thorton’s friend’s magical mishap. When she finally comes up for air, she’s filled several pages, and possibly drawn loose diagrams on some of them, and mentioned her own published articles at least seven times. Is that too much? Will Sir Thorton think about it as bragging? Will he think she’s too confident?

Eustasia signs it before she can think too hard and seals the letter shut. This is fine. The letter is fine. All she has to do is make sure it goes out with her father’s mail in the next few days, though now that the first round of event invites has come and gone, she’ll have to monitor her father’s work to see when he has a good stack of outgoing letters. Then she hides it under the stack of magecraft journals on her desk and stands from her chair.

With that out of the way though, Eustasia must return to her usual life. And with Mr. Wentworth’s party a mere week away, she has to prepare.

I took an extremely ill-advised afternoon "nap" and am all messed up now. But here's what I wrote this morning.

11/8 Update: 2687 words (total 11038)
Despite owning land and being knighted, Eustasia’s father came up in trade–had been in trade for several years of Theodora’s life, and a few of Eustasia’s and Pat’s. And since their mother had already passed by the time he inherited the estate from his brother, there had been no one to make sure the girls grew up with the right kinds of maids, performing the right kind of maid’s work. During her first season, Eustasia had been appalled to learn that most girls with her station did not alter their own gowns, tat their own lace, or embroider their own bodices.

In retrospect, Eustasia’s sisters did not do all this either. Eustasia had always done it for them.

She pads into Theodora’s old room, which still has not been cleaned out or sorted, and flings open the wardrobe, a dress already in mind. Last year, Theo had bought a splendid pale green evening gown, and she’d only worn it once before their father caught ill and left them to look after themselves the rest of the social season. And since she’d only worn it once, it is fair game for Eustasia to remake.

She holds it out so that the slightly satin weave glitters in the light and plans her alterations. A green dress might usually invite floral patterns, but Eustasia sees instead the spiderweb of cracked celadon glaze over a delftware-style scene of crumbling Classical ruins. She can bleed the cracking pattern into triglyphs around the seam between bodice and skirt, then embroider Ionic scrolls and volutes below that before slowly returning to the cracked pattern all the way down. She’ll put tiny acrolerions into the puffs of the sleeves and sew a few delicate clouds with tiny birds near the neckline.

Eustasia considers the color, and how even white thread might stand out just a little too much. She’ll have to buy new thread.

---

All Gil can think about as he stands in Wentworth’s ballroom is how he was supposed to have a fiance on his arm at this event. He was also supposed to be several thousand pounds richer, and a great deal happier, and should have been receiving all kinds of well-wishes on his great fortune in catching Lady Lyall. Instead, he mopes in the corner, nursing a glass of punch that isn’t nearly strong enough, and hopes no one notices him.

Wentworth, of course, can’t leave him alone. He ambles up to Gil all smiles and loops an arm around his shoulders. “Someone has an admirer.”

Gil scowls. He does not. How can he? He’s a wreck.

Wentworth nods his head toward someone across the ballroom–a woman in a pale green dress. Her hair is dark brown, pinned up as all women do, with neat curls framing her face, though her hair texture doesn’t seem to be suited for curls and is quickly escaping into straight, wispy flyaways. She looks like every other young woman at this event, but she’s staring straight at him, unabashed, her face an unreadable canvas of makeup.

“I’m not convinced that’s a look of admiration.”

“No?” Wentworth says. “Look harder, Massey! Her eyes are practically sparkling.”

Gil looks but doesn’t see. Unfortunately, he also makes eye contact, and the moment he feels her gaze lock with his, all his worries and nerves and anxiety come flying back. He jolts and clutches at Wentworth’s shoulder. “I’m in no state to be courting women,” he hisses. “My estate is in tatters! My magic is out of control. And I was just dumped!”

“You and Lady Lyall were hardly an item.” Wentworth extricates himself undelicately from Gil’s grip and nudges him in the back. “Besides, you can meet Miss Roche without feeling like you have to consider her for marriage. With the way her sisters act, I’ll be amazed if she ever manages to catch someone.”

“You know her?” Gil doesn’t like where this is going. If Wentworth knows that woman, they can be introduced. Gil will have to talk to her. He can’t possibly talk to anyone new today.

Wentworth beams. “Her father engineered manufacturing processes before he inherited his brother’s estate, and I have exclusive rights to several of his patents. The Roche sisters have been coming to my parties for as long as I’ve been hosting them.” He grabs Gil’s arm and drags him around the perimeter of the room. Gil can feel Miss Roche’s eyes tracking him as they move, and her gaze tingles down his back as if he’s a mouse keenly aware of a cat nearby.

All too soon, they’re on the same side of the room as Miss Roche. Gil’s heart beats like a drum as an older man stands next to her, and Wentworth steps forward to offer a hearty handshake in greeting. And Miss Roche just keeps staring at him.

“Sir Roche!” Wentworth crows. “So glad you could make it. I take it you’re feeling much better now than last I saw you.”

Gil can see elements of Miss Roche’s face in her father’s. They share the same nose and the same uncurlable hair. If Gil imagines Sir Roche without wrinkles and weariness, he can see they have the same high, soft cheeks and glittering brown eyes.

“I am, thank you,” Sir Roche says, though his eyes dart down to a nearby chair, and Gil can tell the older man is already exhausted by the evening.

Wentworth pulls Gil forward. “This is my friend, Lord Gilbert Massey. Massey, these are Sir Elmer Roche and his daughter, Miss Eustasia Roche.” Then he winks directly at Miss Roche as he pushes Gil at her. “I have a few more people to greet, Miss Roche, if you think you can spare a dance for my friend?”

And finally–finally!--Miss Roche stops staring. She pins a small, contained smile onto her lips and bestows it upon Wentworth with a quiet, “of course,” then tilts her head slightly to one side as she watches him leave. The reprieve is brief. She immediately whips around to look at Gil again.

“I wasn’t aware Mr. Wentworth had friends in the nobility,” she says to him, which elicits an embarrassed cough from her father. She looks unperturbed by the warning. “How long have you known each other?”

Gil’s throat is suddenly dry. Wentworth had said he didn’t need to talk to Miss Roche like he would speak to a girl he might marry, but Gil had spent a year in mourning, not speaking to almost anyone, and then immediately jumped into the pool of Lady Massey candidates, and now he isn’t sure how to speak to this woman at all. “We were at university together,” he says, after several gulps to try and wet his throat.

“Shall we hail someone for a glass of water?” Miss Roche asks, in a total non sequitur. “You sound parched.”

Gil finds it is his turn to stare at her. Concern is fine, but she’s not supposed to point out that he might not be feeling well, not where everyone can hear. Before he can turn her down, she hails one of Wentworth’s temporary party staff and asks for water, and it is promptly brought to them. Gil’s face is so hot he might as well be casting magic on it.

“What did you study at university?” Miss Roche asks, after Gil has taken a few sips.

“Magecraft.” It was how he’d met Wentworth, after all.

Miss Roche’s eyes gleam. “What specialization?”

“Err…” Lady Lyall had not asked questions like this. “I specialize in elemental evocation and a bit of divining. Weather, mostly.”

For a moment, Gil can sense the questions behind Miss Roche’s stare. They burn in her, lighting her so brightly from within that Gil suddenly has an idea of why Wentworth had commented on her not being marriage material. Then, all at once, she shutters it. She shifts back, perfectly vertical instead of leaning in toward him as she had been before, and glances out over the ballroom. She touches a hand to her lips. “Oh. I forgot. I think I’m supposed to say something nice about how you look.” She smiles brightly at him, all genuine again. “You have lovely proportions.”

Gil’s brain stops working. He’s never heard that one before. “I…” He searches for something to say, and his eyes land on the cracked pattern embroidered across her entire gown. Is that supposed to look like Chinese pottery? But it has Greek ruins and motifs all over it. “Your dress is also lovely,” he tries.

Miss Roche’s eyes crinkle with a kind of delight Gil can’t remember ever seeing on Lady Lyall’s face. “Thank you!” She says it like she means it. She says it with emphasis, with force. It isn’t small talk. She’s touched that he thinks her dress is pretty.

This poor girl, Gil thinks. She isn’t made for society.

Then, instead of continuing along other, normal small talk avenues, she goes right back to where they were. “If you specialized in evocation, then who was your mentor?”

“Er. Sir Thorton.”

“Oh!” Miss Roche sparkles with excitement. Or maybe it’s just the faint shimmer of her dress. “He writes the most wonderful papers. They’re so full of character, and he slips all these little jokes in. Have you published anything? I’ll have to look out for you in National Mage. We get a copy at the house every month.”

Gil had published one or two things as co-author with his mentor back in university, but he hasn’t had time for research since taking over his family estate. “Not for a while,” he admits. In all likelihood, he won’t have an opportunity to research again for a long while. He has too many things to get back in order at home. He probably shouldn’t even be here, except that he’d promised Wentworth he would come.

“Too busy being a lord?” Miss Roche asks.

He is, though she’s not supposed to say that. “Unfortunately,” Gil sighs.

Then Miss Roche gets this look. Her face is so expressive, Gil can’t miss it, and he can tell she’s looking over him again, examining him for something he doesn’t know or understand. One of her eyebrows arches up, and her lips tighten, but it isn’t unhappiness or archness, just a careful scrutinization. Then she turns away and stares at the far wall.

After a few awkward seconds, Gil offers her his arm. “I think Wentworth said something about dancing?” The orchestra has finished warming up, and he can see couples lining up for the opening dance of the night.

“I hope you keep time well,” Miss Roche says, before she takes his arm and follows him onto the floor.

---

Lord Gilbert Massey is exactly six feet tall. It is a such a round, perfect height. When he stands next to a wall, Eustasia need only estimate how many of him would fit up its length to know how tall the wall is. His face is neatly symmetrical, and he’s a baron. As Eustasia sits at breakfast with her father, she calculates how tall a perfect chair for him would be, how tall his perfect writing desk, how tall the perfect horse.

“We should host something,” she says out loud.

Her father sags in his chair. The crawl of his fork from plate to mouth slows even further.

“I’ll take care of all the arrangements!” Eustasia adds. “It will be good practice.”

“What sort of event?”

They have neither the space nor the money to host anything with dancing, but that’s fine. After Mr. Wentworth’s party, she knows exactly what sorts of people she wants to invite. “We should have a soirée!” Before her father can panic about it, she presses on. “Honestly, it’s a shame we haven’t held one before! Father, people know you dealt in invention before inheriting the estate. You were knighted for it! We should embrace it.” And also, now that Eustasia isn’t just following along with her sisters, she is finding she has opinions about the sort of man she actually wants to marry.

It doesn’t have to be Lord Massey, but definitely someone like him. He’d still danced with her after she accidentally let loose that she read all of Sir Thorton’s papers, and maybe he’d only done it because that was his mentor, and a bit of inappropriate interest in magecraft was fine if it was personally related to him. Now, all Eustasia has to do is make sure she lands a husband with enough research connections that it will be totally normal for her to read all his associates’ work.

Oh! Maybe she can convince Sir Thorton to come to their soirée. Wouldn’t that be a coup!

Eustasia’s father still looks pensive, so she clasps her hands together and tries her best at the begging puppy-dog face Pat used to use. “Please?”

He sighs. “I have to approve everything.”

“But I can plan it?”

“Yes.”

Heart leaping with joy, Eustasia sits back in her chair and tucks into breakfast with glee. She can see it already in her mind’s eye: the brightest minds in the country in her family home, in the parlor, all readying themselves to share the most groundbreaking research of the day.

Well, that might be a stretch. The Roche family home was barely big enough for the four of them, when both of Eustasia’s sisters had been at home. It feels too large for just Eustasia and her father sometimes, but with a crowd of people over for a soirée, the place might be downright packed. The Roches, after all, have rarely hosted more than a garden tea party among friends.

First, though, she’ll need to secure speakers. Full of breakfast, Eustasia excuses herself from the table and rushes to her father’s office to begin drafting letters. She really would like Sir Thorton to come. Perhaps, if Sir Thorton is Lord Massey’s mentor, and Lord Massey and Mr. Wentworth are friends, there is enough of a connection to make it happen? Maybe she can sell it harder through her pseudonym’s replies to Sir Thorton as well.

It will be good, too, if she can convince her father to speak. Not for long, but just enough to sell that this is his event, that he is still healthy and full of ideas, and thus a good candidate for a father-in-law, even though Eustasia by herself is maybe not always desirable.

Eustasia pencils together a rough lineup of speakers, with her father as the opener and Sir Thorton as the close. Mr. Wentworth may be known more for his business prowess these days than his magecraft, but he’s worth reaching out to, to see if he has anything prepared on applied magecraft. She fills in a few more slots with a handful of her father’s associates, like Mr. Pirell, a specialist in magic related to the cleansing of diseases, or Lord Everlue, who recently published a paper on the containment of magical energy.

She drafts her letters, a copy of her father’s handwriting situated in view so she can verify she is forging his hand correctly, seals them with her father’s wax and stamp, and drops them all in the outgoing mail box, along with her own reply to Sir Thorton about his friend’s magical problems. By the time she’s done with that, the sun is high in the sky, casting the office in shadow, though a wash of white light diffuses in through the windows.

Eustasia moves to stand at the window and looks out. Without Theodora’s plant magic, the garden looks less lush than it has in previous years. Even from here, she can tell the crocuses produced fewer blooms. The petals are shorter and smaller, and the daffodils look like they will wilt earlier. The peeping leaves of the tulips look wan and thin. Eustasia has never been able to do magic. She has little hope of it suddenly manifesting. But still, the garden looks sad, and she misses her older sister, and so she mutters a spell under her breath and flicks her hands out toward the garden.

I played games and then drove to the city to get Chinese groceries so uh... yeah.

11/9: 207 words (total 11245)
Obviously, nothing happens. Eustasia catches her half-grimace, half-laugh in the half-reflection from the window and has to look away. She’s so silly.

No number of rituals will ever turn Eustasia into a mage. She talked at length with her sisters as they all grew up. She has extensive notes on how they describe the feeling, the sense, and the flow of magic within themselves, on what it is like to push magic out and will it to take form. Eustasia simply doesn’t have the sense. It’s as if her sisters can taste sweet, and Eustasia is missing that part of her tongue.

And she tried. When Eustasia goaded Pat into a daily tea ritual, Eustasia did it too. She has stopped the family carriage on ley line crossings during trips and made them wait until solar noon, to see if she could eke out just a tiny, tiny spell.

Mostly, Eustasia has come to terms with her magic-less state. Or she thought she had, until both her sisters ran off and she had no one to experiment on. Now, all she has is Sir Thorton’s mystery friend, who she can’t even experiment on in person.

Perhaps, if Eustasia is very lucky, she’ll find someone at her soiree.

There is some discussion of having children outside of marriage in this bit... and some of what that entails, though in a very abstract sense. Nothing explicit!

11/10 Update: 1877 words (total 13122)
“We have a response!” Sir Thorton shouts, waving a nondescript envelope over his head. He isn’t much taller than the throngs of tenants currently living all through Gil’s manor, and if it weren’t for the sheer volume of his voice, Gil would have missed him. “I knew Orland would have something for us. Shall we open it together?”

Gil is about to ask how Sir Thorton knows they got any real information when he sees how thick Orland’s letter is. It must be six or seven pages, folded into thirds and sealed with wax that looks like it might burst at any moment. Ignoring the pitying looks from his tenants, he accepts the letter and peels it open.

The first thing Gil notices is the perfection of Mr. Orland’s handwriting. Gil is fairly certain humans are supposed to have some natural variation in their lettering. He has a hard time keeping his lines straight unless he uses paper with a strong grain. But Orland’s letter is made of dense, long paragraphs, all perfectly straight, every Y the exact same length. Every O looks like a stamp, aside from the fact that it's all in cursive.

The second thing Gil notices is that Orland's writing is dry. It's as dry as Gil’s farmland, or the great Sahara. He starts by asking every invasive question under the sun, with no explanation as to why, before segueing without proper transition into diagrams of buildings where the first and second floor form a golden ratio, where sun angles correspond to miniscule power increases, and where the alignment of the planets creates resonant magical frequencies. Gil has only skimmed it, and he's already confused and angry and very lost.

Sir Thorton leans in, grinning. “Well? Anything good?”

Gil coughs, then gulps, then feels his face grow hot. “He asked if I was a virgin!” he hisses. One of his tenants definitely hears that, and a ripple of laughter echoes through his home.

Sir Thorton hardly blinks. “The Massey men are somewhat famous for spousal loyalty… are you?”

“Am I a virgin?” Gil can see his tenants creeping in close, trying to hear the answer to that one. “I'm not going to say it out loud!”

“Knowing Orland,” Sir Thorton says, as if Gil’s answer wasn't telling enough, “it's probably not the virginity itself that matters. I remember he made quite the stir a few years ago after writing that contraceptives might alter the possibilities of ritual magic forever. Though as I recall, your father and grandfather never sought relations outside of marriage, thus sired no bastards, and thus abandoned no children.”

Just the talk of this somehow brings up a story Gil’s father had said once, about a forefather of his having sired a child out of wedlock and choosing to raise the boy as heir. That boy would become Gil’s great-grandfather, who was, on rare occasion, used as a reason for people to dislike Gil himself. When Gil’s eyes land on a line about whether there has been a test or trial for the position of Baron, he thinks back to his own father, who had needed to prove himself worthy above his siblings before inheriting the estate.

How far back does this tradition go, he wonders. Gil was spared it on virtue of being an only child, but if he looks through the family history, maybe he will find three or five or seven generations of Masseys, all adhering to these rules: never abandon a child, test the heirs and pass the estate on to the most capable, and any number of other family quirks.

He itches to start researching, but he spots Emory picking his way through the crowd of tenants to speak to him and has to fold the letter up and press it back into Sir Thorton’s hands. “Here, you have a go at it,” Gil says. “I have to speak with my head of staff.”

Sir Thorton wanders off to who-knows-where, and Gil accompanies Emory into his study–his actual, day-to-day study, not his magecraft room, which still has a gaping hole in the side that is quickly accumulating water damage. Gil’s office is just as rigorously organized as his workroom once was, though. All records from the past ten years live in neatly ordered shelves inside the office, while older ones live in a storeroom off to the side. His desk is tidy, with all his paper and writing utensils put away, leaving only the symbolic decor that sits in the corners of the tabletop: a steel paperweight shaped into the family crest, and the elegant wand his father had gifted Gil upon his graduation.

The wand is functionally useless. Gil knows other mages who use wands, staffs, and various other tools as a means of fine-tuning their control or heightening their magical output, but Gil has never needed one, and never found one that he liked. Still, his father purchased a very expensive one, and it’s a nice reminder that, one, his father was proud of him, and two, that he graduated cum laude, though not valedictorian. Alas, that distinction had gone to Wentworth.

Gil runs his fingers along the wand absently. “Well, Emory, I’m guessing the builders have made their estimates?”

Emory grimaces. “It’s… a rather unfortunate amount.”

“The Masseys have been amassing money for generations,” Gil says, though he’s about to spend it all. “I may not be in the same shape after, but I can surely afford the repairs we need right now.”

Still wearing that pinched-lemon face, Emory thinks for a moment. Gil can see the calculations running through his head as the man considers the finances of the estate from before the late Baron’s death, and then the expense of the funeral, followed by the calm of mourning. Gil had attended no parties during that time, had hosted nothing, had not been out to gamble, or drink, or buy new furnishings. His period of grief-induced thriftiness had probably balanced out all the ritual associated with his father’s passing.

“True,” Emory finally admits, though he clearly doesn’t like it. “You will have to reduce staff.”

“I’m happy to write as many recommendations as needed,” Gil says. “Just tell me the number.”

Emory starts with the tenants’ houses and community buildings. That sum alone has Gil thinking of selling off valuables. Then he rattles off the price of repairing the new farm equipment. Gil thinks he’ll need to sell the family’s jewelry collection for sure. Then there are the repairs to the manor, which is so needlessly high that Gil thinks he will also have to sell off all their paintings.

“There’s considerable structural damage,” Emory says, as if to soften the numbers.
Gil has seen his magecraft room from the outside. What is left of the floor has already begun to sag, no longer supported by the exterior wall.

“Suppose you pay for all this,” Emory says. “Yes, you can find a way to get through now, but how are you going to continue to finance anything after? Your lands, after all…”

“Are barren,” Gil finishes. “Yes. I’m aware.” And with Gil’s magic on the fritz, he has no way to control weather in such a way that he might be able to repair the damage. He needs a slow reintroduction of rain first, to soften up the ground. Then, they can plant a hardy cover crop to try to mend the cracked earth back together. After a year of that, then they might be able to plant something worth a little money. And only after that, after time and effort has returned the soil to its previous state, can they really turn a profit again.

“I don’t know that the machines are worth repairing until we know we can use them again,” Gil says. That will save him a bit, though it will be hard on his tenants, who are, in general, old enough that hard farm labor will take a toll on them. Many of the children and young adults are off in the cities, toiling in factories, trying to bring in what little they can–and while it isn’t much, at least they don’t have to pay any of it to Gil.

Emory nods. “Of course, my lord.”

“As for everything else… maybe let’s see what hope Sir Thorton’s expert can offer before we resign ourselves to the worst?”

Not convinced, Emory returns to his grimace. “I assume you’ll be off to join him again, then?”

“I suppose,” Gil sighs. “If you need my seal of approval on any more emergency food stores, you have it. Let’s get the builders started on the tenants’ housing first, so I can finally have some peace and quiet.”

And with that, Emory leaves, quiet as a whisper. Gil hardly has a moment to himself before Sir Thorton and Wentworth burst in, faces pink with glee.

“Orland asked if you’re a virgin?” Wentworth crows.

“My boy, did you know the last time there was an unclaimed but rumored bastard in your family, it was eight generations ago?” Sir Thorton says at the same time.

It clicks. If the last time a Massey abandoned a child was eight generations ago, then Gil is the seventh rule-following Baron Massey in the line. Being the seventh of anything is deeply, stupidly powerful. And while there is some truth to seventh sons getting inherent magical boosts, being the seventh rule-abiding Baron Massey might be worth a lot more. Seventh sons are simply born. Raising seven generations of obedient little rule-followers is work and effort. Gil’s own actions have made him number seven. And he’s the lucky (or unlucky) dupe who bought in and followed the traditions.

“So, what?” Gil says. “If I break one of our traditions, I’ll go back to normal?”

Wentworth snickers before catching the alarmed look on Gil’s face and sobering up. “Are they traditions you want to break? I made fun, but you’ve never struck me as a man who could just go out and sire a few bastards without caring.”

Gil could never do that. He doesn’t want to share a bed with a woman he isn’t committed to forever, and he doesn’t want to leave a child and mother to fend for themselves when he has almost every advantage available to offer them. Honestly, he hadn’t even been that interested in Lady Lyall, in the bed-sharing sense. He’d pursued her because he thought she was a good match, and they’d muddle their way through marriage later. Gil doesn’t know that he can be carnally interested in a woman until the vows are spoken.

Sensing Gil’s moral panic, Sir Thorton steps in with a cheery wave of the letter. “Well, seventh rule-abiding Baron Massey or not, I’m sure that can’t be the only thing that caused you to have such an intense magical spike. Why don’t we craft a reply and see what else Orland has to say? Maybe if you move your workroom, or try to practice at a distance instead of within your domain, you can reduce the effects?”

Gil will try anything at this point… so long as he doesn’t mess up his home further or leave an unwanted present for some poor woman to have nine months later.

We had a bunch of execs at the jobsite today, so it was hard to write at work... also I have a deadline coming up yikes.

11/11 Update: 1692 words (total 14814)
The public ballroom Eustasia and her Father are visiting tonight is full of pointed stares and whispers. She tries not to listen, looking hopefully out at the dancers on the floor, their skirts poofing out with every whirl and twirl, and focuses on the music instead. Instead of resonating, it echoes horribly off the smooth, parallel walls and smooth, painted ceiling overhead.

Lord Gilbert Massey had been an acceptable dancer. He kept good time and even steps, never crowding other dancers in the lineup or racing on ahead. Eustasia would like to try a waltz with him, if she ever gets the chance, to see if he keeps the same steadiness when he has to navigate a floor full of other people also trying to navigate.

Then, as if she summoned him by thought, he appears. Eustasia has been eyeing the entrance, waiting for the men she and Zenia picked out so that she can arrange to bump into them. She had managed a run-in with Mr. Alban, but he dodged her in favor of someone else. She’d tried Renvelt when he arrived as well, only for him to run to the card room. Right now, she’s supposed to be waiting for Sir Dewellyn, but Lord Massey is so much more appealing. He’d never consider her–Eustasia’s missing sisters have put her at the bottom of the barrel. But he’s friends with Sir Thorton and exactly six feet tall, no inches or fractions about it, and Eustasia wants to talk to him.

She loops her arm through Zenia’s and tugs her friend along with her, straight for him. She almost misses Mr. Wentworth and–oh! Oh, that’s Sir Thorton at his side.

The old mage is older than Eustasia would have thought. Admittedly, he’s been circulating the same portrait alongside his articles for as long as Eustasia has been reading them, so the picture must be out of date. His hair is white-grey where she thought he would be salt-and-pepper, and he has skin hanging loose from his jaw, wrinkled with age. He’s shorter than she thought, too. Eustasia had always imagined Sir Thorton as this larger-than-life character, but he’s only an inch taller than she is. Next to Wentworth and Lord Massey, he’s practically small.

Zenia hisses in her hear. “Eustasia! This is not subtle behavior at all.”

Eustasia doesn’t care. She skids to a stop in front of Mr. Wentworth and company, an unstoppable smile pulling across her face, and she can feel Zenia’s interest in the situation go from why-are-you-like-this to ohhhh, just from the pressure of their looped arms.

“Lord Massey,” she says. “Mr. Wentworth. It’s good to see you both again.” Her eyes flit to Sir Thorton, just obvious enough that the younger men ought to catch her meaning and introduce her.

Grinning broadly, Wentworth steps forward to make introductions–though of course, Eustasia doesn’t need him to tell her who Sir Thorton is. She nods along, wishing he would just hurry it up so she can talk to the man, but is stopped by the inexplicable expression that washes over Sir Thorton’s face when Wentworth introduces her. The moment “Ms. Eustasia Roche,” leaves Mr. Wentworth’s lips, the older man’s gaze flips from jolly to targeted. He stares at Eustasia for a long, uncomfortable second, eyebrows furrowed in either curiosity or confusion, and then looks to Wentworth.

Mr. Wentworth catches the look, glances askance at Eustasia, and quirks his lips.

And then, suddenly, both men go right back to the same happy, know-nothing expressions they’d worn before. Sir Thorton swans in to escort Eustasia, a charming, toothy grin on his face, and leaves poor Zenia to the younger men.

“Ms. Roche!” he says. “How wonderful to meet you. You know your father wrote to me? Said something about a soiree that I should give a talk at.”

Oh. Oh no. Eustasia isn’t sure how she’s supposed to act here. After all, it wasn’t her father that wrote to Sir Thorton. She’d done it. Should she pretend to be a very involved daughter? Or be pleasantly surprised?

“Young Wentworth has already started running a few ideas by me for what he’ll present. I suppose I should at least show my face to support him.”

“We’d love to have you,” Eustasia says. “The more the merrier!”

Sir Thorton pats her hand where it rests in the crook of his elbow. “I think it’s lovely he’s throwing a soiree for you this season. Very astute as well. Wentworth always told me you girls struggled at balls like this.”

“Ah, well.” What is Eustasia supposed to say to that? People don’t usually come out and say that the Roche girls aren’t good at being in polite company. It’s a rude, even though she can tell Sir Thorton might be trying to say something helpful. “We tried our best. That’s what counts.”

Sir Thorton almost says something in response, but he stops the words in his throat and chooses instead to examine Eustasia again, his wise eyes glittering with some unreadable feeling. Curiosity burns in Eustasia’s heart at that. What was he about to say? What did Wentworth say about her and her sisters?

“Have you ever met a man named Eustace Orland?” Sir Thorton says instead.

Eustasia’s heart stops. She almost trips. She smiles, as bland and blank as possible.
“I have a bit of a correspondence going with him right now. He’s an expert on the effects of various rituals and ritual elements on magecraft, and I’d love to introduce him to Lord Massey in person.” Sir Thorton lets out a belly laugh, sharp and sudden. “I’d like the meet the man in person myself, honestly! If you can extend the ranks of your soiree to include him, it would mean a lot to the three of us. Though, of course, I’m sure we’ll all be there to support Young Wentworth regardless.”

Eustasia gulps, and it feels like she is trying to swallow her own heart. “I’ve read a few of his works.” She knows Eustace Orland’s work intimately. “Isn’t he famously a recluse?” She has done exactly the same experiements. She has formed the same hypotheses. “I don’t see why he would come out of hiding for a girl like me.”

Eustasia, of course, is Eustace Orland.

For longer than she would like, Eustasia and Sir Thorton just search each other, both wearing jovial smiles, both still walking slowly along the perimeter of the ballroom. When the moment grows too long, Eustasia clears her throat. “You mentioned Lord Massey has a particular interest in meeting Mr. Orland? Why the interest? I spoke to Lord Massey a few weeks ago, and he said he studied evocation under you.”

“My dear girl, it’s not my business to say.” Sir Thorton extricates himself with a look that Eustasia can only read as mischievous and presses her right into Lord Massey. Then he whispers, with a flick of his wrist that tells Eustasia there’s magic involved, and she hears him in her head. “Perhaps you can ask him yourself.” He scoops up Mr. Wentworth and Zenia and whisks them away, as smooth as the most strategic society mother, and Eustasia finds herself looking straight at the well-folded cravat on Lord Massey’s neck.

He clears his throat. Eustasia can see his Adam’s apple bob even through the layers of fabric.

“Ms. Roche. We seem to have been abandoned.” Lord Massey’s eyes flit around the ballroom, and he wets his lips, nervous. When Eustasia remembers she has ears and not just eyes, she hears the telltale rolling beat of a quick waltz.

She can’t ask. She wants to, absolutely. Eustasia wants the opportunity to ask Lord Massey her questions without fear of being overheard. She wants to know if he is as steady a dancer in these newfangled continent styles as he is in an English country dance. In the corner of her eye, she sees his arm shift, and then he’s offering her a hand, standing stiff as a board.

He flinches when she meets his eye. “If you don’t want to”-

“I do!” Eustasia blurts. Her face heats like a furnace. “Uh. I mean”-

“Don’t worry about it,” Lord Massey says. He sweeps her up as the waltz beat begins in earnest, and with a quick check for floor traffic, pushes forward into the steps.

They don’t speak for several measures, during which time Lord Massey pulls and pushes his way through a neat series of natural turns and then a cantering pivot to get them around a very slow married couple. And then, Eustasia can’t hold it any longer. “Sir Thorton said you want to meet Eustace Orland? The magecraft researcher?”

Somehow, Lord Massey stays on time and in step, even though his face freezes in alarm. “Ah. He said that?”

“Why do you want to meet him?” Eustasia searches for something to say. “I’ve read his work. It’s very dry.” Hopefully Pat and Theo would never know that she said that. There would be an uncountable number of ‘I told you so’s. Eustasia doesn’t think her work is dry at all, but it’s something to say.

“You’ve read his articles?”

Eustasia nods.

“Sir Thorton, Mr. Orland… next you’ll tell me you even read Wentworth’s rare submissions.”

The candelabras on the walls pass in a glowing blur as they keep spinning and turning about the room. Lord Massey is a surprisingly excellent lead. He’s not very inventive, since all they’ve been doing is just natural turn after natural turn, but he keeps going, descelerating them smoothly when they come upon another pair of dancers on the floor.

“Of course I read Mr. Wentworth’s articles. He works with my father.”

Lord Massey keeps his frame and tempo through a long, drawn out sigh, and then slows down, taking smaller steps so he can look directly at Eustasia as they dance, instead of constantly scanning the floor. “Maybe you can offer me a second opinion then.”

A second opinion? That sets the alarm bells off in Eustasia’s head. She feels her grip on Lord Massey’s bicep grow just a twinge tighter as she tenses in his arms.