December 4, 1891 — Sanditon Resort

Amity had been feeling rather hollow these days. She could hardly believe that her father was gone, casting her into the blacks of mourning. Was it really only a few months ago that she had been giggling with Holliday and her other friends about the upcoming season? Of the beau's they would have and the parties they would go to? Of the fact they were now fully seen as adult women?

And now here she was. Her giggles silenced, no thoughts of fun at all in the fun-loving Gryffindors mind. She had not been able to stand the silence currently in her home as her family members walked on eggshells around each other. Everything was all wrong and she was also angry. But with no one to direct her anger at, she could do nothing but walk along the pier.

  

Time. It would take some time, apparently, to execute Edmund Rosewood’s will and verify all else that needed verifying before the legal legwork was finished; for all that time, Frank was supposed to be in the country at the solicitor’s beck and call and, as such, was stuck here.

It had not been very long since his brother’s death, of course, but it was strange to be here with Edmund Rosewood’s family, none of whom he knew well, and none of whom he suspected would remember much about the Frank Rosewood of fifteen years ago, either. So when his niece had quitted the house, Frank had decided being outside as well was probably the best plan to be had (– had there ever been so gloomy a household, and had anyone ever been in more awkward a position, hovering like a vulture, than he? –) and, pausing only to straighten his coatsleeves, Frank stepped out after her.

“Miss— Amity,” he called when he was a few paces away from her on the pier, with a little wave; to give her some warning she wasn’t alone, as much as anything. He caught up to her, just about, and lowered his tone. “A little suffocating in there, isn’t it?”

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Amity looked back at her uncle as he called out to her. She resisted the urge to stomp down on his foot and storm off just because, well, he was there. "Yes, well. A house in mourning tends to be that way," she said cattily, vaguely aware she was taking things that were in neither of their control out on him. She softened a little after a moment and regarded him curiously. "It cannot be comfortable being among all of us when we barely remember you."

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   Frank Rosewood

Whether or not Frank was accustomed to wealthy young ladies making snide remarks to him, he offered no expression of surprise in it. He had expected no better. (But, since sitting around a stranger’s house with a family in mourning was objectively dreadful, wandering about with a sharp-tongued niece was probably more interesting an activity, regardless.)

“Well, you were very young, the last I saw of you,” Frank replied – in all honesty he was too uncertain of her age to say for sure, but it sounded true enough – “so I don’t blame you. Besides, the house is still more comfortable than anything I’ve been used to,” he added, with a shrug and a wry smile. “But I realise it’s the very worst timing to have a visitor.” She had it worse than him, clearly – it was her father who’d died – but there was nothing to be said or done to ease that, and he was stuck here in the meantime, whether he liked it or not.

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"Where have you been slumbering? Don't they have reasonable lodgings abroad?" Amity asked curiously with a little wrinkle of her nose. For some reason she was imagining him sleeping on the ground in random places though she couldn't say why. "It's unfair. We were all having such fun and just like that - he was gone."

  

He couldn’t help but laugh at her question: she really had no idea. “Maybe they do, but I wouldn’t know,” Frank explained with a wry smile. “When you’re halfway up a mountain in search of some odd-leafed, rare-flowering plant, you take the accommodation you can get.” His step forwards along the pier was cheerful; too cheerful for her mood, that was clear.

Another side-effect of being quite so focused on his work for the last fifteen years, however, was that Frank was quite out of his depth when it came to comforting anyone. “Well,” he added lamely, glancing out across the seaside sights and hoping he didn’t sound too glib, “I'm sure he wouldn’t want you to stop having fun, even without him.” (As if he could say that; as if he even knew the man.)

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".. So, where do you sleep? Just on the ground?" The concept was intriguing but Amity had never known anything like that. While she was not adverse to adventure, it did not quite extend to traipsing up mountains.

"Well, we will never know what he wants now. And what about when I have a serious suitor. Are they supposed to come to you now or what? Are you our new patriarch? "