Roberta’s Folly - excerpt
Just a snippet that amused me from a new scene I’m adding to chapter four. Roberta and Daniel’s father lost their family’s estate to Frederick Reeve, a new-money arriviste who took possession -- and expelled them -- the moment of the old Earl’s death. Roberta, who has gained herself a foothold on the estate by posing as a man, is determined to get everything back.
Daniel paused with his bread, halfway through spreading on a thick layer of the godawful pork crètons that he loved so much. “What’s this about?” he asked, his good mood settling into something quieter. “Something to do with the Briary?”
Roberta nodded without sitting up. “I still haven’t made it inside; they’ve blocked off the old back way with all of the leavings from Reeve’s hideous marble monstrosities. I think I know another way, but it will require some help from inside.”
“Who do you know on the inside of the house who’ll help you break and enter?” Daniel asked, looking baffled.
“There’s a girl visiting,” Roberta sighed, straightening properly on the chair and busying herself with her own breakfast, so that she wouldn’t have to look him in the eye. “She’s a cousin, companion to the wife? One of that dreadful flock of vultures. In any case she’s young and gullible, and I thought perhaps could be persuaded, through some gentle flirtation-”
“To throw wide the gates of Troy?”
“That’s not how I would have put it, but essentially… yes. Though I’ll settle for a window.” She bit into the still-warm bread and the butter melting across the top and took a moment to quietly appreciate the simple luxury. “Only I’ve no idea how to go about it,” she confessed. “Friendship is something entirely different from flirtation. How do you talk to girls? What do you say to them that makes them fall for you so quickly?”
Daniel’s lips twitched as though he were suppressing a laugh, but he had the courtesy not to actually give in. “There are the classics, of course. Tell her the sun rises and sets in her eyes, pick a feature and tell her that it is the most glorious example of the same that you’ve ever seen, pledge eternal devotion to the starlight in her hair, that sort of thing.”
Roberta arched an eyebrow. “And that actually works?” It certainly wouldn’t on her, but then men weren’t precisely appealing.
“Almost never,” he replied cheerfully.
