“Thankgoodnessyou’re here,” the girl said, pressing back to look at Aurelie. “There are so many boys! Miles, why didn’t you make your sister come tonight? We’re disastrously outnumbered.”
Mr. Applebaum raised his eyebrows at Aurelie. “What did I tell you? Lavender, give Miss Blake a moment to breathe, will you?” he asked, laughing.
Aurelie was about to thank him for the intervention when Lavender ignored Mr. Applebaum’s request entirely, took Aurelie’s hand, and pulled her toward another room.
She hurried after Lavender, who walked at a pace Aurelie would have assumed was not appropriate in polite society, a pace Aurelie had spent most of her life restraining. The girl was rosy-cheeked beneath her mane of dark curls, and her fuchsia long-sleeved dress was perfectly tailored to her curves. Most of the girls at university dressed in somber colors and kept their hair neatly tied back, like Aurelie.
There was nothing restrained about Lavender.
They entered an elegant dining hall, where candlelight reflected off a thousand gleaming surfaces. “Aurelie, these are my brothers, Lawrence, Leonhard, and Lex,” Lavender recited, her voice flat with disinterest. “Ignore them, they’re all worthless.”
Aurelie couldn’t help smiling to herself. She’d assumed that a young woman like Lavender would be the pinnacle of propriety, but perhaps she’d been wrong.
They took their seats and soon the room was buzzing with conversation. For once, Aurelie decided to sit back and listen. That was what her uncle would want: for Aurelie to experience what Wisterian society had to offer, to spend a few hours in the life he envisioned for her. And honestly, how hard could that be?
This is how I die, Aurelie thought as she pushed a pea across her plate with a fork.From extreme and unrelenting boredom.
Miles and the Applebaum brothers had been arguing about military history for the better part of an hour. Who cared if the Battle of Green Point or the Morning Glory Rebellion had been the more strategic success? All of this had happened two hundred years ago. Why were they deliberating over battles that had taken place at a time when most commoners didn’t have running water? Why not discuss the benefits ofrunning waterinstead?
Twice she had attempted to get a word in edgewise at this demons-cursed dinner, and twice she’d had her words trampled over by the herd of young men she found herself surrounded by. Lavender, who to her credit had declared all of them as bland as old porridge, had retired to bed early, complaining of a headache that Aurelie resented because now she couldn’t use that asherexcuse.
One more hour. She could make it one more hour. Then it would be nine o’clock, and she’d be able to tell Uncle Leo that she had truly given it her best attempt with Miles, but they were simply not meant to be. It wasn’t because he was boring. It wasn’t because he was backward, closed-minded, and an appallingly loud chewer, although those were all perfectly adequate reasons for never spending another moment with the man.
It was that now that they were around other men, he clearly had no interest whatsoever in what Aurelie had to say. She’d tried to ask him to pass the salt at dinner and he’d pinched his thumb and forefinger together in a gesture that indicated she should be quiet. She had the impression that if he could, he’d be doing that to her lips, but as they were in polite company, he restrained himself. In that moment, she’d had to press her hands to her thighs to keep her feet on the ground, because her every fiber was straining to kick him under the table.
“I’m simply saying that the use of the star-cluster formation by Admiral Bittern was the most brilliant example of that tactic in the history of warfare, and anyone who says otherwise is a fool.”
Ughhhh.
“Excuse me?”
Aurelie looked up from the poor napkin she’d folded into pleats—it would require a very hot, very firm iron to press them out later—to find all of the men looking at her with expressions of utter contempt on their faces. “Yes?”
“If you find our conversations so terribly tedious, please, illuminate us with your vast wisdom, Miss Blake.”
It was Leonhard, the oldest Applebaum brother, who wasspeaking, and Aurelie realized that she had actually groaned aloud. Good gravy. She really did need to get a better handle on her internal monologue.
She was of two minds now. Theeasyroad would be to apologize, explain that she’d simply remembered something she needed to do back at school and was groaning at her own forgetfulness.
Naturally, Aurelie chose the other road.
“All right. You say that the use of the star-cluster formation was so utterly brilliant. But I would counter that if that’s the case, why didn’t he use smokeless powder for his cannons?”
Miles flashed a pitying smile that Aurelie wanted to smack off his smug face. “Smokeless powder wasn’t invented prior to the First War of Wisteria.” His voice was gentle as he shifted a slightly apologetic glance to the men in the room on her behalf.
The other men chuckled behind their fists as though she’d been caught in some humiliating misstep.
“Actually,” Aurelie said, hating the way her voice tipped up on the first syllable but unable to stop herself, “smokeless powder was invented two years prior to the start of the First War of Wisteria. It was brought to Admiral Bittern’s attention by a scientist named Charlotte Brown, who discovered it while conducting experiments on nitrocellulose. Alas, because she was a woman, Bittern decided not to use her new smokeless powder, thus costing the Wisterians the war. Yes, they won at Green Hill, but they suffered so many losses amid the smoke-filled chaos that they never recovered.”
As she spoke, Aurelie had noticed that Miles’s face had transmogrified from its usual pale white to a startling shade of purple. Some small, distant part of her had wondered if he might not bechoking, but once Aurelie got going on a subject she was passionate about, it would have taken more than an asphyxiating dunderhead to get her to stop.
The other men, who had slowly shrunk in on themselves like an escargatoire of timid snails, exchanged pitying glances with Miles. She knew each one of them would have stated the same misinformation as Miles if they’d only spoken up first, and they were now rather relieved they hadn’t. Still, she could feel no pity for Miles, even if she’d humiliated him in front of his friends. One shouldn’t state something as fact if one wasn’t correct.
“Well, shall we move to the library for some port?” Leonhard said, breaking the tension, and Aurelie watched as Miles stood, his face only starting to fade back to a less unsettling pink, nodded curtly to her, and left the room.
Aurelie rose and stretched, more than ready to head home, as the invitation to drink port had clearly not been extended to her.Fine, she thought.I don’t even like port.Probably.
“You really shouldn’t talk to him like that.”