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Apr. 17th, 2005 03:29 pm![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
essayelRainy Sundays - what a joy.
Thank goodness for a fertile imagination, a red hot laptop and an absorbing RPG, eh?
Oh, and here's some more hist fic for![[livejournal.com profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/external/lj-userinfo.gif)
casfic just because I can ~
Seated, thankfully, in a well appointed but less idiosyncratic room some distance from the Chinese Salon, Cicely sipped her lemonade and listened, awed, to the tumble of words that was spilling out of Gerald.
He had, she reflected, been talking for a very long time and during that time had changed quite noticeably. At first he had commented embarrassingly upon the circumstances of her engagement, which had led him to digress upon Patrick’s other recent misadventures. Feeling a little put out at being classed as a misadventure but unwilling to offend, Cicely had struck upon the notion of asking Gerald about the FitzRoy family, pleading that Patrick had not yet found the time to acquaint her with his family’s history. This, it appeared, was extensive, starting in the mists of prehistory with the Fomor and progressing slowly to the Battle of Clontarf, where an early FitzRoy had won much renown, though not, of course, by that name. Intermarriage with the Norman conquerors brought them the patronym FitzHugh, which endured until the 16th century when the FitzHugh of the day, in danger of foundering upon the rocks of poverty, had struck upon the notion of presenting himself at court in hope that he might win monetary assistance with a mixture of Irish charm and fast talking. Luckily for the success of his plan, he took with him his exquisite half gypsy daughter, Sinead, and with unconscious but vital timing braved the winter storms to arrive in mid January, 1540.
“Sinead,” Gerald sighed, “was dark and slender and quick-witted and vivacious – everything that the King’s new bride was not.” He paused to take snuff and continued with his story. “I do not wish to shock you, you understand. Customs were different then and behaviour that today would be considered scandalous was accepted if not approved.”
Catching a glimpse of Lady Melbourne sweeping past amidst a group of admirers, Cicely wondered just how much times had changed.
“Suffice it to say,” Gerald said with an expansive gesture, “that, by the time they returned home after Easter, all the financial problems were solved and in November, when Sinead’s regard for his Majesty bore fruit, the King was pleased to create the Earldom of Innisidhe, legitimising his infant son with the name Gerald FitzRoy, the first Earl.”
He paused again, beaming at Cicely, who felt that some response was required.
“Most interesting,” she said. “I had not realised the – the antiquity of your family.”
“We have long memories in Ireland,” Gerald told her, “and our ancestors are important to us. I count it a privilege to be descended from the FitzRoys and to bear the family name. Gerald FitzRoy is a name found throughout Irish history. The fourth Earl died in Dublin Castle at the hand’s of Cromwell’s troops and his son, also a Gerald, had to take to the heather but the family survived in an unbroken line, eldest son to eldest son, until,” he added sadly, “last year.”
“Last year? Oh, Patrick’s brother. A tragic accident, was it not?”
“A tragic misjudgement,” Gerald corrected her gently. “He should never have put his horse to that wall, not in thick mud and the beast already tired. He was a Gerald, too, the sixth and seventh Earls were Geralds and he would have been the ninth of that name.” He laughed suddenly. “’Tis a shame, so it is, to spoil the neatness of the thing with a Patrick, it confuses the tenants.”
He took more snuff and, looking over her shoulder, smiled and waved. “And here’s the man himself and just in time to take you in to supper.”
As Patrick approached, Cicely sensed that he was in some way disturbed. There was a deep line between his brows but this eased as his eyes met hers and disappeared completely when he took her hand.
“Thank you, Gerald, for caring for my lady so well in my absence,” he said with a grin. “Have you formed an opinion on the snuff yet?”
Gerald produced the elegant little box with a flourish. “I’m impressed, most impressed,” he admitted. “In fact, I may change to this sort in preference to my own. True the grain is a little coarse, the colour less pleasing and the perfume a trifle harsh, but the effect – quite outstanding! Give me the receipt and I will have some more made up.”
“Oh no, you won’t,” Patrick protested. “There is a secret ingredient. If you would really like some more, I’ll send a quarter of a pound round tomorrow. No, I insist. It does my soul good to think of you enjoying it.”
Gerald thanked him and glancing round asked what had become of Euphemia.
“When last seen, she was in hot pursuit of the Duke of York. Yoicks, tally ho, along the Upper Gallery. If you hurry,” Patrick advised soberly, “you may be in at the kill.”
“Lord, I hope not,” said Gerald, ruefully, bowed to Cicely and departed in search of his sister.
“Is Euphemia really chasing the Duke of York along the Upper Gallery?” Cicely asked as soon as Gerald was out of earshot.
“No,” Patrick’s frown made a brief reappearance. “It is difficult to chase somebody who is perfectly willing to be caught. Would you care to accompany me to the supper room? I give you fair warning that tonight I intend that you shall dance your pretty blue slippers into holes, so you will need all your energy. And you can put that card away. If you say that you’ll put me down for a gavotte I’ll not be responsible for my actions!”
“I will come with you because I am hungry,” Cicely told him severely, “and, as for the dancing, I am afraid that as my card is filling rapidly, you will have to be content with what remains.”
“So fair to be so cruel. I wonder that poor Gerald stayed with you."
“Gerald is a gentleman with excellent manners,” Cicely commented mildly, taking his arm. “He entertained me most pleasantly by telling me all about the FitzRoys.”
“He can’t have done that or you would be beating me off with your reticule and calling for assistance.”
“One thing I did notice,” Cicely murmured, glancing shyly up at her companion, “was his accent. At first he did not seem to have one at all but he gradually became more and more – Irish.”
Patrick expressed no surprise. “The thing about the FitzRoys is that we were all brought up in two tongues. My father used to leather us if he heard any of us speaking the Gaelic but, on the other hand, there was no point asking the cook for another potato cake in English. Since we only saw Father for ten minutes before bedtime or if we were in disgrace, the Gaelic had rather more use. It still comes through if we are drunk or in the grip of some strong emotion. You haven’t been slipping brandy into Gerald’s negus, have you, because that would explain it.”
“I most certainly have not,” Cicely assured him, “all he had was snuff.”
“Ah, then he must have been intoxicated by your presence.”
Cicely smiled at the compliment. “All the same,” she said, tentatively, “when we first met and again, when I was talking to Mr FitzRoy, I rather had the impression that you don’t quite see eye to eye.”
“You mean, we cannot stand the sight of each other,” Pat corrected her cheerfully. “Oh, Gerald’s all right if you like that kind of thing. We fought like stoats when we were young and in out teens we each loathed the ground the other walked upon. Now we snap and bristle but that is mostly habit, though Gerald is still smarting over my return from the dead. When Gerald, my brother, died, I hadn’t been heard of for three years, so poor Gerald had two wonderful months to imagine himself heir to an Earldom before I tumbled off the boat at Dover. It still rankles.”
“And Euphemia?”
Patrick hesitated then shrugged. “The man who claimed that there are no snakes in Ireland had never met my cousin.” He met Cicely’s shocked gaze for a moment or two then his grim expression faded to be replaced by one of astonishing tenderness. Gently he raised his hand to run one fingertip across Cicely’s cheek to the corner of her mouth.
“’Tis a rough lot we are, the FitzRoys,” he purred, in a soft brogue as sweet as heather honey, “but I’ll gladly take the whole unlovely lot of them to my heart if it will just bring a smile to those sweet lips.”
Unable to resist, Cicely did smile.
“Tell me, sir,” she asked, saucily, “which are you? Drunk or in the grip of some strong emotion?”
“There now,” Patrick’s smile made her heart bound, “that’d be telling, wouldn’t it.”
*
After an excellent supper and dancing until her blue slippers were distinctly shabby-looking, if not actually in holes, Cicely took the opportunity to join Sarah in sitting upon a very comfortable couch. She was enjoying a gossip with a group of old friends from their school days when she heard a trace of Irish creeping into Patrick’s voice again. He had been an entertaining and attentive companion but now, cornered by a chattering group of matrons, he was showing signs of restlessness.
Mrs Mary de Vere, the first married of all Cicely’s friends and self-appointed spokeswoman for the group, was expressing her regrets for Patrick’s sad loss and quizzing him about the circumstances of his late distant cousin’s demise.
Horrified, Cicely realised that her fiancé was about to embark upon yet another “Fintan story”.
“Not a bit of it,” Patrick was saying. “Fintan O’Reilly had scarcely forty two years to his age and him as fit as a spring lamb with it. Indeed, it was a tragic accident, so it was.”
“Not another one,” Sarah whispered, stifling a giggle. “No, don’t stop him. I haven’t heard this one.”
“The monograph,” Patrick was saying, soberly, “was to have been entitled “A Study of Shellfish Populations in the Irish Sea with Specific Reference to the Regional Variations and Anomalies Thereof”. Some of these are quite famous.” He paused. “The Porlock cockle, for instance.”
“And the Wicklow Whelk?” Cicely’s tone was severe.
“Just so,” Patrick beamed at her. “Well, Fintan, poor soul, had just finished his studies in Devon and took ship for South Wales.”
“The Manorbier Mussel?” suggested Sarah.
“Not on this trip. He was in search of the notorious Caerfai winkle. It has got a left-hand thread, you know,” he told Mrs de Vere, who apparently didn’t. “They were just rounding Lundy when a squall blew up and a freak wave washed poor Fintan over the side. Ochone!” Patrick heaved a sigh of Celtic lamentation. “The saddest part is that the wave took all his samples and the only copy of his monograph with him, so we are even denied the comfort of posthumous publication.”
Cicely hastily intervened, attracting Patrick’s attention away from the ladies, who were clucking sympathetically around him, and manoeuvring him out of earshot. With this accomplished, she took him to task.
“The Porlock cockle, indeed,” she said. “I’m ashamed of you. If you don’t settle on one story soon, you will be caught out. You told Sir Rodney Taylor that the ship foundered on some rocks and Lady Hartlebury that Fintan drowned trying to save the ship’s cat!”
Patrick grinned like a small boy caught with his fingers in the jam pot. “But that was the truth! Oh, I’m sorry, I’ll mind my tongue in future,” he promised, adding, “Since we have had our first tiff, may I make it up to you with some trifling service? The moon on a velvet cushion, perhaps?”
“A glass of lemonade would be nice,” Cicely suggested, “and, at the same time perhaps you could find Sir Anthony? He went to fetch Sarah a drink half an hour ago and the poor dear is feeling the heat.”
“To hear is to obey,” Patrick assured her and departed in search of refreshments.
As Cicely resumed her seat, Mary de Vere leaned across and complimented her upon her engagement.
“I must admit that rumour had led me to expect something very different,” she smiled, “but he is most prettily behaved.”
“He is on his best behaviour tonight,” Cicely agreed. “I believe that he prefers a less formal setting, but rumour surely exaggerates. I have yet to witness any less attractive trait than an occasional excess of high spirits.”
“High spirits in one might well be classed as lassitude in another,” Sarah interrupted quickly. “It depends entirely upon what one has been used to.”
“Exactly. Occasional high spirits are to be expected in a bachelor but husbands do grow out of them.” Mary patted Cicely’s hand reassuringly. “Marriage brings home a sense of duty and responsibility to a man. I am sure that you, dear Cicely, will eradicate Lord Patrick’s regrettable tendencies just as readily as I eradicated those of my dear de Vere.”
“Mary,” Sarah’s gentle voice was alive with mirth, “would you care to make a small wager? Because, and I’m sure that Cicely will agree with me, Patrick is Patrick and it will take more than marriage to change him.”
“Oh, surely not, Sarah,” Cicely protested. “Look at the progress we have made already.”
*
Sir Anthony Duberley, helping himself to an excellent rum punch, saw Patrick approaching and hastily filled another glass.
“At our ropes end are we?” he asked as the glass emptied. He plied the ladle again and watched, grinning, until Patrick sighed with relief and set the empty glass down.
“Precious close to it,” Patrick replied. “I’d forgotten, if I ever knew, what a terrible strain it is to be respectable.”
“You’re a sadly rackety character,” Sir Anthony agreed. “I’m damned if I’d let any daughter of mine marry you but since that dear girl seems likely to take you despite your failings, why not try to reform?”
“I’m trying to, blast you, Tony? When was the last time you saw me in my cups? There, you cannot remember, can you?”
“Oh, aye, you’ve been a paragon, no doubt, but if you don’t relieve that tension soon, you’ll be clapped up in Bedlam with a brain fever. There’s no need to over do it! Just half a bottle of brandy, then tip up a watchman or two on the way home.”
“You are a great help,” Patrick grumbled. “I came to you expecting moral support, not an incitement to let the worst side of my nature run riot.” He sighed deeply and dipped into the punchbowl again. “I can see no other remedy. The weather is improving and Bray Grange needs some work before I can entertain there. If I go down to Brighton now I can talk to Nash without any interference, sell some pots and pepper, perhaps, and work off some of my excess energy. There’s a chance of a proper gallop and I can get out with a gun.” He smiled. “And there’s precious little chance I’ll get into trouble.” He paused and his smile broadened into a manic grin. “It’s not as much fun as boxing the watch, though, so, Tony, where shall we go for the brandy?”
*
Thank goodness for a fertile imagination, a red hot laptop and an absorbing RPG, eh?
Oh, and here's some more hist fic for
casfic just because I can ~ Seated, thankfully, in a well appointed but less idiosyncratic room some distance from the Chinese Salon, Cicely sipped her lemonade and listened, awed, to the tumble of words that was spilling out of Gerald.
He had, she reflected, been talking for a very long time and during that time had changed quite noticeably. At first he had commented embarrassingly upon the circumstances of her engagement, which had led him to digress upon Patrick’s other recent misadventures. Feeling a little put out at being classed as a misadventure but unwilling to offend, Cicely had struck upon the notion of asking Gerald about the FitzRoy family, pleading that Patrick had not yet found the time to acquaint her with his family’s history. This, it appeared, was extensive, starting in the mists of prehistory with the Fomor and progressing slowly to the Battle of Clontarf, where an early FitzRoy had won much renown, though not, of course, by that name. Intermarriage with the Norman conquerors brought them the patronym FitzHugh, which endured until the 16th century when the FitzHugh of the day, in danger of foundering upon the rocks of poverty, had struck upon the notion of presenting himself at court in hope that he might win monetary assistance with a mixture of Irish charm and fast talking. Luckily for the success of his plan, he took with him his exquisite half gypsy daughter, Sinead, and with unconscious but vital timing braved the winter storms to arrive in mid January, 1540.
“Sinead,” Gerald sighed, “was dark and slender and quick-witted and vivacious – everything that the King’s new bride was not.” He paused to take snuff and continued with his story. “I do not wish to shock you, you understand. Customs were different then and behaviour that today would be considered scandalous was accepted if not approved.”
Catching a glimpse of Lady Melbourne sweeping past amidst a group of admirers, Cicely wondered just how much times had changed.
“Suffice it to say,” Gerald said with an expansive gesture, “that, by the time they returned home after Easter, all the financial problems were solved and in November, when Sinead’s regard for his Majesty bore fruit, the King was pleased to create the Earldom of Innisidhe, legitimising his infant son with the name Gerald FitzRoy, the first Earl.”
He paused again, beaming at Cicely, who felt that some response was required.
“Most interesting,” she said. “I had not realised the – the antiquity of your family.”
“We have long memories in Ireland,” Gerald told her, “and our ancestors are important to us. I count it a privilege to be descended from the FitzRoys and to bear the family name. Gerald FitzRoy is a name found throughout Irish history. The fourth Earl died in Dublin Castle at the hand’s of Cromwell’s troops and his son, also a Gerald, had to take to the heather but the family survived in an unbroken line, eldest son to eldest son, until,” he added sadly, “last year.”
“Last year? Oh, Patrick’s brother. A tragic accident, was it not?”
“A tragic misjudgement,” Gerald corrected her gently. “He should never have put his horse to that wall, not in thick mud and the beast already tired. He was a Gerald, too, the sixth and seventh Earls were Geralds and he would have been the ninth of that name.” He laughed suddenly. “’Tis a shame, so it is, to spoil the neatness of the thing with a Patrick, it confuses the tenants.”
He took more snuff and, looking over her shoulder, smiled and waved. “And here’s the man himself and just in time to take you in to supper.”
As Patrick approached, Cicely sensed that he was in some way disturbed. There was a deep line between his brows but this eased as his eyes met hers and disappeared completely when he took her hand.
“Thank you, Gerald, for caring for my lady so well in my absence,” he said with a grin. “Have you formed an opinion on the snuff yet?”
Gerald produced the elegant little box with a flourish. “I’m impressed, most impressed,” he admitted. “In fact, I may change to this sort in preference to my own. True the grain is a little coarse, the colour less pleasing and the perfume a trifle harsh, but the effect – quite outstanding! Give me the receipt and I will have some more made up.”
“Oh no, you won’t,” Patrick protested. “There is a secret ingredient. If you would really like some more, I’ll send a quarter of a pound round tomorrow. No, I insist. It does my soul good to think of you enjoying it.”
Gerald thanked him and glancing round asked what had become of Euphemia.
“When last seen, she was in hot pursuit of the Duke of York. Yoicks, tally ho, along the Upper Gallery. If you hurry,” Patrick advised soberly, “you may be in at the kill.”
“Lord, I hope not,” said Gerald, ruefully, bowed to Cicely and departed in search of his sister.
“Is Euphemia really chasing the Duke of York along the Upper Gallery?” Cicely asked as soon as Gerald was out of earshot.
“No,” Patrick’s frown made a brief reappearance. “It is difficult to chase somebody who is perfectly willing to be caught. Would you care to accompany me to the supper room? I give you fair warning that tonight I intend that you shall dance your pretty blue slippers into holes, so you will need all your energy. And you can put that card away. If you say that you’ll put me down for a gavotte I’ll not be responsible for my actions!”
“I will come with you because I am hungry,” Cicely told him severely, “and, as for the dancing, I am afraid that as my card is filling rapidly, you will have to be content with what remains.”
“So fair to be so cruel. I wonder that poor Gerald stayed with you."
“Gerald is a gentleman with excellent manners,” Cicely commented mildly, taking his arm. “He entertained me most pleasantly by telling me all about the FitzRoys.”
“He can’t have done that or you would be beating me off with your reticule and calling for assistance.”
“One thing I did notice,” Cicely murmured, glancing shyly up at her companion, “was his accent. At first he did not seem to have one at all but he gradually became more and more – Irish.”
Patrick expressed no surprise. “The thing about the FitzRoys is that we were all brought up in two tongues. My father used to leather us if he heard any of us speaking the Gaelic but, on the other hand, there was no point asking the cook for another potato cake in English. Since we only saw Father for ten minutes before bedtime or if we were in disgrace, the Gaelic had rather more use. It still comes through if we are drunk or in the grip of some strong emotion. You haven’t been slipping brandy into Gerald’s negus, have you, because that would explain it.”
“I most certainly have not,” Cicely assured him, “all he had was snuff.”
“Ah, then he must have been intoxicated by your presence.”
Cicely smiled at the compliment. “All the same,” she said, tentatively, “when we first met and again, when I was talking to Mr FitzRoy, I rather had the impression that you don’t quite see eye to eye.”
“You mean, we cannot stand the sight of each other,” Pat corrected her cheerfully. “Oh, Gerald’s all right if you like that kind of thing. We fought like stoats when we were young and in out teens we each loathed the ground the other walked upon. Now we snap and bristle but that is mostly habit, though Gerald is still smarting over my return from the dead. When Gerald, my brother, died, I hadn’t been heard of for three years, so poor Gerald had two wonderful months to imagine himself heir to an Earldom before I tumbled off the boat at Dover. It still rankles.”
“And Euphemia?”
Patrick hesitated then shrugged. “The man who claimed that there are no snakes in Ireland had never met my cousin.” He met Cicely’s shocked gaze for a moment or two then his grim expression faded to be replaced by one of astonishing tenderness. Gently he raised his hand to run one fingertip across Cicely’s cheek to the corner of her mouth.
“’Tis a rough lot we are, the FitzRoys,” he purred, in a soft brogue as sweet as heather honey, “but I’ll gladly take the whole unlovely lot of them to my heart if it will just bring a smile to those sweet lips.”
Unable to resist, Cicely did smile.
“Tell me, sir,” she asked, saucily, “which are you? Drunk or in the grip of some strong emotion?”
“There now,” Patrick’s smile made her heart bound, “that’d be telling, wouldn’t it.”
*
After an excellent supper and dancing until her blue slippers were distinctly shabby-looking, if not actually in holes, Cicely took the opportunity to join Sarah in sitting upon a very comfortable couch. She was enjoying a gossip with a group of old friends from their school days when she heard a trace of Irish creeping into Patrick’s voice again. He had been an entertaining and attentive companion but now, cornered by a chattering group of matrons, he was showing signs of restlessness.
Mrs Mary de Vere, the first married of all Cicely’s friends and self-appointed spokeswoman for the group, was expressing her regrets for Patrick’s sad loss and quizzing him about the circumstances of his late distant cousin’s demise.
Horrified, Cicely realised that her fiancé was about to embark upon yet another “Fintan story”.
“Not a bit of it,” Patrick was saying. “Fintan O’Reilly had scarcely forty two years to his age and him as fit as a spring lamb with it. Indeed, it was a tragic accident, so it was.”
“Not another one,” Sarah whispered, stifling a giggle. “No, don’t stop him. I haven’t heard this one.”
“The monograph,” Patrick was saying, soberly, “was to have been entitled “A Study of Shellfish Populations in the Irish Sea with Specific Reference to the Regional Variations and Anomalies Thereof”. Some of these are quite famous.” He paused. “The Porlock cockle, for instance.”
“And the Wicklow Whelk?” Cicely’s tone was severe.
“Just so,” Patrick beamed at her. “Well, Fintan, poor soul, had just finished his studies in Devon and took ship for South Wales.”
“The Manorbier Mussel?” suggested Sarah.
“Not on this trip. He was in search of the notorious Caerfai winkle. It has got a left-hand thread, you know,” he told Mrs de Vere, who apparently didn’t. “They were just rounding Lundy when a squall blew up and a freak wave washed poor Fintan over the side. Ochone!” Patrick heaved a sigh of Celtic lamentation. “The saddest part is that the wave took all his samples and the only copy of his monograph with him, so we are even denied the comfort of posthumous publication.”
Cicely hastily intervened, attracting Patrick’s attention away from the ladies, who were clucking sympathetically around him, and manoeuvring him out of earshot. With this accomplished, she took him to task.
“The Porlock cockle, indeed,” she said. “I’m ashamed of you. If you don’t settle on one story soon, you will be caught out. You told Sir Rodney Taylor that the ship foundered on some rocks and Lady Hartlebury that Fintan drowned trying to save the ship’s cat!”
Patrick grinned like a small boy caught with his fingers in the jam pot. “But that was the truth! Oh, I’m sorry, I’ll mind my tongue in future,” he promised, adding, “Since we have had our first tiff, may I make it up to you with some trifling service? The moon on a velvet cushion, perhaps?”
“A glass of lemonade would be nice,” Cicely suggested, “and, at the same time perhaps you could find Sir Anthony? He went to fetch Sarah a drink half an hour ago and the poor dear is feeling the heat.”
“To hear is to obey,” Patrick assured her and departed in search of refreshments.
As Cicely resumed her seat, Mary de Vere leaned across and complimented her upon her engagement.
“I must admit that rumour had led me to expect something very different,” she smiled, “but he is most prettily behaved.”
“He is on his best behaviour tonight,” Cicely agreed. “I believe that he prefers a less formal setting, but rumour surely exaggerates. I have yet to witness any less attractive trait than an occasional excess of high spirits.”
“High spirits in one might well be classed as lassitude in another,” Sarah interrupted quickly. “It depends entirely upon what one has been used to.”
“Exactly. Occasional high spirits are to be expected in a bachelor but husbands do grow out of them.” Mary patted Cicely’s hand reassuringly. “Marriage brings home a sense of duty and responsibility to a man. I am sure that you, dear Cicely, will eradicate Lord Patrick’s regrettable tendencies just as readily as I eradicated those of my dear de Vere.”
“Mary,” Sarah’s gentle voice was alive with mirth, “would you care to make a small wager? Because, and I’m sure that Cicely will agree with me, Patrick is Patrick and it will take more than marriage to change him.”
“Oh, surely not, Sarah,” Cicely protested. “Look at the progress we have made already.”
*
Sir Anthony Duberley, helping himself to an excellent rum punch, saw Patrick approaching and hastily filled another glass.
“At our ropes end are we?” he asked as the glass emptied. He plied the ladle again and watched, grinning, until Patrick sighed with relief and set the empty glass down.
“Precious close to it,” Patrick replied. “I’d forgotten, if I ever knew, what a terrible strain it is to be respectable.”
“You’re a sadly rackety character,” Sir Anthony agreed. “I’m damned if I’d let any daughter of mine marry you but since that dear girl seems likely to take you despite your failings, why not try to reform?”
“I’m trying to, blast you, Tony? When was the last time you saw me in my cups? There, you cannot remember, can you?”
“Oh, aye, you’ve been a paragon, no doubt, but if you don’t relieve that tension soon, you’ll be clapped up in Bedlam with a brain fever. There’s no need to over do it! Just half a bottle of brandy, then tip up a watchman or two on the way home.”
“You are a great help,” Patrick grumbled. “I came to you expecting moral support, not an incitement to let the worst side of my nature run riot.” He sighed deeply and dipped into the punchbowl again. “I can see no other remedy. The weather is improving and Bray Grange needs some work before I can entertain there. If I go down to Brighton now I can talk to Nash without any interference, sell some pots and pepper, perhaps, and work off some of my excess energy. There’s a chance of a proper gallop and I can get out with a gun.” He smiled. “And there’s precious little chance I’ll get into trouble.” He paused and his smile broadened into a manic grin. “It’s not as much fun as boxing the watch, though, so, Tony, where shall we go for the brandy?”
*
Way, way, way off topic
Date: 2005-04-26 01:33 am (UTC)Have I told you lately that I love you?
(I don't care how much fun the Manor is, you've got to write more Remus and Sirius!)