#debrett's peerage

[bookishbrigitta]

@violethunter0816, your comment made me grin! Let me talk even nerdier as a thank-you... (From the harebrained crossover scheme)

The argument started the minute they were ensconced in the privacy of the guest room.

“Is anything from that stupid book of yours still accurate?” Marion hissed. “Crawley’s dead, and that woman you were so sure was Lady Mary is actually his ex! We looked foolish, and that’s not even mentioning snubbing Lady Hexham by using her old title!”

“Hey now, it’s not my fault the Debrett’s at the library was out-of-date!”

“There’s this thing in books, the publication page? You must have heard of it.”

“I’m sorry, I wasn’t aware I needed to do citations for our itinerary,” he said icily. “Did you want them in Chicago or APA?” 

“You don’t need a full citation to realize that book is older than your B.A.!” She scoffed. “As if you’d get the punctuation right without help anyways. You used to admit you made mistakes, or don’t you remember asking me to check your citations before Abner ripped apart the rest of your papers?”

“Maybe I just wanted to spend more time together,” he said softly, suddenly sounding more like a schoolboy than a professor.

Her steely expression crumbled. “Goddamnit, Indy, you make it so hard to stay mad at you,” she sighed.

She’s not sure who reaches for who first, but the next thing she knows, his arms are around her, and her head is on his chest. 

“I do, I really do.”

They were quiet for a moment, and then Marion said, “I’m sorry I snapped at you.”

“I should’ve done some more poking around before we left. I’m sorry. I threw us into this half-cocked.”

“It wouldn’t be one of our adventures if everything went as expected. Us against the world – and not against each other.”

“Wouldn’t have it any other way.”

[oh-dear-so-queer]

She took a course of hormones and was accepted as a man, working as a driver and a fire watcher during the Second World War, undergoing breast removal and changing her birth certificate in 1944 to Laurence Michael Dillon – now the male heir to a baronetcy. His transition would be discovered by the entry in Debrett's Peerage in 1958, which was altered to show a new heir to the baronetcy. Dillon enrolled in a school of medicine at the end of the war and undertook at least 13 sex-reassignment surgeries. He wrote: 'Where the mind cannot be made to fit the body, the body should be made to fit, approximately at any rate, to the mind.'

"Normal Women: 900 Years of Making History" - Philippa Gregory

[cinematic-literature]

Enola Holmes 2 (2022) by Harry Bradbeer

Book title: Debrett's Peerage 1885