Red Queen Pride and Prejudice AU (part 3)
Part 1
Part 2
Masterlist
@lilyharvord sorry for the long waiting but life got in the way, as always. I hope you like this chapter and stay tuned for the fourth (which, I swear, won’t take that long)
Words: 2335
Wren wasn’t feeling any better. On hearing this, Miss Samos and Lady Haven repeated three or four times how terrible it was to have a bad cold, and how much they themselves hated being sick, but after that, they thought of it no more, and their indifference toward their guest when they weren’t directly around her confirmed to Mare all her previous feelings toward the party, including the satisfaction with Mr. Samos’ ways, since his anxiety for Wren was evident. On her side, Mare received very little attention from everyone: the ladies were attracted to the General like flies with honey, and Lucas Samos, beside whom Mare sat for lunch, wasn’t much of a conversationalist, and when he discovered that Mare preferred simple dishes to elaborate ones, he had nothing more to add until the end of the meal, when Mare apologized and immediately returned to Wren. As soon as the door closed behind her back, Miss Samos began to speak ill of her manners, which were declared very bad, a mixture of pride and impertinence.
“She has neither style, nor taste or beauty,” added Lady Haven. “In short, she has nothing that does her honour but to be an excellent walker. I’ll never forget her appearance this morning. She really looked like a savage.”
“I just managed to contain myself!” exclaimed the other. “What nonsense to go all that way through the mud for a simple cold. Besides, I would never have shown myself around with such sloppy, dishevelled hair.”
“Miss Barrow may not be a great conversationalist, and I guess your description may be correct,” replied the cousin, “but not only did I miss the muddy slip and the simple hairstyle, I can also say that I justify her little desire to chat, when her friend, for whom she feels a palpable affection, is in those conditions.”
“I am afraid, General, “observed Miss Samos, almost whispering, "that this adventure has somewhat shaken your admiration for her beautiful eyes.”
“Not at all,” he replied, “they were enlightened by the exercise.”
A short pause followed, and it was Lady Haven who began again: “I have a lot of respect for Miss Wren, she really is one of the sweetest girls I had the pleasure to know, and with all my heart I would like for her to settle down well, but with such parents and modest kinship, I fear there’s no chance of that happening.”
"I seem to have heard you say her uncle is a scholar,” said Mr. Samos, who didn’t seem to have any objection to the words his sister and friend had addressed to Mare, but didn’t like those harsh comments towards of the other guest and wanted to end the topic quickly.
“Yes, and they have another one, who lives somewhere close to Cheapside,” replied his sister, unleashing her friend’s laughter.
“If she had enough uncles to fill all Cheapside”, exclaimed Ptolemus, who was starting to get really irritated, “that wouldn’t make her less nice.”
“But that actually diminishes her chance of marrying a man of some importance in society,” Cal replied quietly, hoping to be able to be a peacemaker now as he always did when they were children. Obviously Ptolemus didn’t like his words, and left the room in great strides, slamming the door behind him. Everything would be back to normal by tea time, he was sure, and in this way he had also managed to dispel, at least for a moment, from Evangeline’s mind the thought that he was in turn interested in one of their guests. After lingering for a while to amuse themselves at the expense of their dear friend’s vulgar kinship, with a surge of tenderness, they went to her room, and stayed with her until they were called for tea. Wren was still very unwell, and Mare absolutely didn’t want to leave her until late evening, when she had the comfort of seeing her asleep, and judged it correct, more than pleasant, to go downstairs. Entering the living room, she found them all playing cards and she was immediately invited to join, but suspecting they were playing hard she refused but decided to watch and listen to their conversation about Whitefire, General Calore’s estate, and his grandmother, a woman whose manners was widely praised by Miss Samos.
“It’s surprising to me,” said Mr. Samos, “ how many women have the patience to get to be so well educated as they all are; they can paint, play the piano, dance, sing and even embroider. I don’t know any who can’t do all this things, and I’m sure I’ve never heard of a woman before without being made aware of how well educated she was.”
"Your list of things commonly defined as education is all too true,” said the General. “The world is applied to many women who doesn’t deserve it and I can say it with certainty, after getting to know them better. I have to admit that, sadly, in my entire range of acquaintances, there are no more than half a dozen of really educated women.”
"Neither am I, I’m sure,” said Miss Samos. The more she knew her, the more it was evident that she was trying in every way to create bridges between her meagre personal ideas and those of the General, and Mare was ready to bet, even if she hated it, that she would be willing to trample any friendship or ideal in order to achieve her goal to marry him. If only their descriptions of what was a truly educated woman had been more alike, Mare would’ve said they were meant for each other, but their words were so diametrically opposed that she almost had to restrain herself from laughing, a task in which she was aided by the fact that General Calore described someone who was also very distant from both her, her family and her friends, a mixture of talent, good taste, elegance and commitment that didn’t even reflect the other two young ladies in the room, who began to protest so much that Lucas Samos had to impose some order on them so they could finish the game. Since the conversation had ended so bitterly, Mare left the room shortly after.
“Miss Barrow,” said Miss Samos, once the door closed, “is one of those young ladies who try to make a good impression with the opposite sex by underestimating their own, and I am convinced that with many men the thing is successful but, in my opinion, it’s a petty system, a squalid artifice.”
“No doubt,” replied Cal, who was the main recipient of this remark, “there is some meanness in all the tricks that ladies sometimes deign to use to seduce. Anything that has an affinity for cunning is despicable.”
Not completely satisfied with that answer, Evangeline dropped the subject. How dare he throw digs at her when he knew perfectly well what had pushed her this far? Not even Ptolemus intervened, and Elane gave her a sideways glance, to make sure she wasn’t making one of her scenes. It was probably the possibility that Miss Barrow or Miss Skonos might hear it that stopped her, but that didn’t prevented her, that very evening, from consoling herself in the privacy of her room with the one that everyone would forever call her dear friend. As always after Elane’s loving care, all tension was smoothed out, and the following morning, when Mare had the pleasure of being able to give a fairly positive response to the request for information she had received very early in the morning from Mr. Samos through a waitress, it was proposed that a note could be sent to Mrs Skonos to ask her to visit her daughter and see for herself the situation, inviting her to take Mrs Barrow and the younger Miss Barrow with her too. If she had found Wren visibly in danger, Mrs. Skonos would certainly have despaired, but felt satisfied to see that the disease didn’t cause any alarm, she didn’t wish she would recover immediately, given that a healing would probably have taken her out of the Hall of the Sun. Therefore, she didn’t want to listen to her daughter, whom proposed to be brought home, and also the pharmacist, who had almost reached the house at the same time, thought it was definitely inadvisable. After spending some time with Wren, the four women were invited by Miss Samos to join her and her brother in the breakfast room, where he welcomed them hoping that Mrs. Skonos hadn’t found her daughter worse than what she had expected, but his hopes were partly dashed, although the woman later took care to compliment them profusely both on their kindness and on the wonderful estate they had rented.
“I hope you’re not going to leave us too quickly, even if the lease is short,” said Mrs. Barrow, who hadn’t yet uttered a word except for the customary greetings.
“Whatever I do, I do it quickly,” he replied, “and so if I had to decide to leave the Hall, I would probably leave in five minutes. For the moment, however, I consider it a stable accommodation.”
"That’s exactly what I would’ve imagined from you,” Mare said.
“I didn’t know,” Miss Samos interjected, “you were a student of characters. ”
“It must be a fun study,” noted her cousin, who had recently joined them along with General Calore.
“Yes, but the intricate characters are the funniest. At least they have that advantage,” she replied, casting a quick glance at Tiberias, who, feeling drawn into question, reminded her that the countryside wasn’t exactly the best testing ground for studies like that.
“In a countryside area one moves within a restricted and uniform social environment.”
“But people change so much that there is always something new to observe,” replied Mare, always ready to change his mind about his prejudices on simple people. If she had addressed any other gentleman like that, her mother would’ve reminded her of her place in the world but since it was General Calore, she was happy to take her daughter’s side, although not in the best of ways, to the point that her interlocutor, after giving her a long puzzled look, walked away in silence and even Lucas Samos found himself embarrassed.
“You have completely misunderstood my friend: he only meant that in the countryside there certainly can’t be the same amount of people you can find in town.”
“Nobody says otherwise, but as for not frequenting so many people in these parts, I think there are few places richer in neighbours. All I know is that we know twenty-four families.”
Nothing but the regard towards Mare allowed Lucas to keep himself serious. The cousin was less delicate, and gave her brother a very expressive smile. Mare, in order to divert her mother’s thoughts, asked her if Diana Farley had been visiting them since she was at the Hall.
“Yes, she came yesterday with her father, but she didn’t stop for lunch because her mother was waiting for her at home to make apple pie for her little sister’s birthday. The Farleys are really good girls, I assure you, and they are also very nice, but if they are with Wren or my daughters… they inevitably end up taking a back seat. That’s what everyone says, I don’t just trust my partiality.”
“When Wren was only fifteen,” Lady Skonos added, “there was a gentleman at my sister’s so in love with her that my brother-in-law was sure he would’ve declared himself before we could leave. Instead nothing came of it. Maybe he thought that she was too young. However, he wrote some verses about her, and they were very pretty.”
“And so his love ended,” Mare said impatiently. “There were more than one, I guess, that ended up like this. I often ask myself who was the first to discover the effectiveness of poem in chasing love away!”
Obviously the General didn’t share her idea, and was more than happy to point this out, interrupting his conversation with Miss Samos. Mare too had the answer ready, and their quarrel was followed by a long silence, which forced Mrs Skonos to thank the homeowner again for the kindness showed to her daughter, and Mrs Barrow to apologize for the inconvenience caused by Mare, who still didn’t have the slightest intention of leaving. Mr. Samos gave a spontaneous and courteous reply, and also forced his sister to behave in the same way, although she didn’t play her part gracefully enough not to allow Mare to notice that hers was all fiction. The two older women, however, seemed to be content and when Mrs Skonos ordered the carriage, Gisa stepped forward as if on command and asked Mr. Samos when he intended to give the ball his cousin had promised he would tell him about when they arrived in the countryside. Gisa was a strong and well-developed girl of fifteen, with a beautiful complexion and a cheerful expression; it was her mother’s favourite, whose affection had led her to make her entry into society at a very early age. She had a bursting vitality, a kind of innate self-confidence, that the officers’ attentions had turned into cheekiness, making her the perfect candidate to address Mr. Samos about a ball which, if not given, would’ve been the worst of shame on his honour, at least in her words.
"I’m perfectly ready,” he reassured her, “and when your friend has recovered, you will set the date of the party, if you please.”
Gisa looked satisfied, and began to fantasize about what other events she would be able to organize and continued to do so even when they were gone and Mare returned to Wren, leaving her and her relatives behaviour at the mercy of the two ladies and the General, who nevertheless didn’t allow himself to be persuaded to join in the criticism despite all the jokes Evangeline made about beautiful eyes.