"Fredrick!"
"My Lord!"
"Leave the 'my Lord'ing to Drake. And don't even start with the Earl buisness..."
"I'm so sorry about the hour. It rained last night and the roads were muddy, so..."
"Never mind! are you hungry? Let me call Suzanna..."
Sir Fredrick mumbled something about an inn and a dinner, so instead Lord Damier said,"How is London? Still full of mamas hungry to make a Lady Arnold out of their daughters?"
Sir Fredrick laughed. "They have little chance of that now!"
"I'm engaged, my Lord. I'm on my way to my wedding..."
Lord Damien was quite surprised. He had somehow always imagined Fredrick as a bachelor. Of course, he had always imagined himself as a bachelor, until he met Evangeline.
"Congratulations!" he declared after a moment. "No wonder you're so well dressed! Or perhaps the London lifestyle is wearing off on you?"
"Just because the clothes you first saw me in were my tattered uniform doesn't mean I haven't aquired any fashion sense since then, my Lord. "
"Of course..." Good heavens, a married man!
They were old freinds. Lord Damier was likely to call anyone he met three times his freind, but he and Fredrick really were freinds, despite their differences. They had met in London, 17 years ago. Fredrick was newly knighted then, the son of a sea captain who had joined the navy in search of excitement at sixteen. He'd come back at eighteen in the "tattered uniform" and was promptly knighted for being one of the few capable men fighting in that disastrous war. Lord Alexander Damier was young, bored, and in search of the most exciting people as his freinds. Spruced up, Sir Fredrick Arnold the war hero certainly qualified. They saw each other whenever they were both in London for many years, until Alexander went to France and came back with The Countess Evangeline in tow. He hadn't been to London since then.
"My Lord..."
"Alexander."
"Could I beg a great favor of you?"
"Anything."
"I--thing is--her parents have a house in mind for us, and it's no strain on the purse, but I kind of would like--"
"To escape her parents? I can't blame you." So that was what Fredrick wanted. He had half expected it after he said he was engaged. "I have some untilled land and some lazy farmers, yes. Would you like being a gentleman farmer?"
"If it meant my own house with Henrietta and your Lordships' company, I would."
"Kind of you to flatter me. Then it's agreed. Shall we drink to the bargain?"
"It's rather late..."
"I suppose so. We would never have said that all those years ago, would we?"
"Oh no. It was never too late to drink then!"
2 comments:
I just followed the link from your comments on my site, and even created a blogger account just so I could comment. (But now Dre has something to do besides harass Vash.)
So, I love what you have so far. I can see there is a lot of untold backstory, including a broken heart it seems.
And being a fan of Jane Austen & Co., I love this time period, and would have chosen it for my RKC if I hadn't gone early medieval. Do you read about Georgian/Regency history or do you simply absorb it from novels as I did?
Also are you doing a challenge or simply storytelling? Just curious. :-)
Looking forward to seeing some ladies and some pretty Empire dresses. ;-)
Neat little forgotten corner. I'm so glad you like the story so far!
Regency is definately one of my favorite time periods. A lot of the culture and society part I got from novels, especially from Jane Austen, who is maybe my favorite author. But I also find I have to go looking up lots of things, like when little boys started to wear pants and how long mourning periods were.
The story isn't part of any challenge, mainly because I haven't got any royals and I always find myself obsessed over one character or another pretty quickly and want to just focus the story on them.
And of yes, there's a lady in the very next entry. You can tell me what you think of her... ;-)
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