Oz jumped at the sound of the door opening, for a fraction of a second concerned that Christa would have heard him open the window and stormed downstairs to give him a piece of her mind on the subject of her privacy. But of course she was otherwise preoccupied, and instead it was his youngest sister at the door. She was coming in so hot on the heels of the disturbance that had just occurred on the stair that he knew she must have heard it, or at least parts of it, so he didn't bother trying to explain anything to her. Instead, he held up a finger to his mouth in a gesture for her to be quiet, then gestured at the open window. Sound would carry both ways, after all, if the upstairs window was open. But he hadn't actually heard anything from the other room yet, so this was probably a moot point. He frowned at the window, then a thought occurred to him and he turned eagerly to his sister.

"Do you have a spell for this? They're upstairs," he said. He'd been impressed with the spell she used to amplify the noise from the glass held to the wall, the last time they'd been spying on Christa and Victor Daphnel — a veritable lifetime ago. A glass wouldn't work in this case, unless they wanted to press it to the ceiling and hope to hear the footsteps of Chris in the room above, but perhaps Lycoris had another trick up her sleeve.

"I'm afraid he's going to talk her out of it," he admitted. "She's too romantic for her own good."

(Not that she was the only one — Lycoris was a close second for family romantic, and only placed behind Christabel because she had not, yet, knowingly married a man who didn't care for her because she fancied she loved him).

---

Well what good are you, then? he might have quipped, but he didn't want to say it more than he wanted to hear whatever was going on above them. It was a spot of luck that the window had been left open, but it still wasn't easy to make out exactly what was being said. It was easier to make out the emotion in the tone than the words themselves. Christabel had laughed, mirthlessly, and then she sounded close to tears. And had he heard her say something about a drug? That was a rather uncomfortable turn of events. Oz had indulged in his fair share of party drugs in his day — during his tour of the continent, the years that followed where he lived as a rake, and during evenings out with Locke here and there — but that didn't mean he was ready to condone that sort of behavior when his siblings were involved. (Don Juan was an exception; Oz rather expected that he was under the influence of something most of the time).

"Don't get any ideas," he muttered to Lycoris.

---

"Don't get any ideas," he warned again, more vehemently. He had heard a vague rumor about this drug before, he thought, but he hadn't bothered to pursue it and didn't know much about it. Being spectral didn't hold any appeal for him, and it did sound dangerous, even on the surface of things. He somehow doubted that Christabel had done any significant research into the subject before she'd tried it. She'd always been a hothead — passionate to a fault, and spontaneous. And now she was engaging in dangerous drugs for the sake of a man who didn't even care for her.

"Bloody hell, Chris," he mumbled. He hadn't needed to say it, but couldn't hold the sentiment back. What a mess this was — what a mess she was. He'd always known she was a romantic, of course; that had been clear from the first day of her debut. But he'd thought that she'd also had at least a thimble full of sense. Their parents hadn't raised any of their children to be so thoughtless with their well being. The only saving grace here was that it didn't seem as though Daphnel had put her up to it — he seemed angry about it, in fact — so hopefully that meant she wouldn't be inclined to do it again in a week.

And then Christabel was yelling, and it was no longer necessary for either Oz or Lycoris to lean out the window in order to overhear. She confirmed what Oz had already suspected about her motivation to taking the untested drug, and then accused Daphnel of yelling about not wanting her there. That seemed perhaps hyperbolic, Oz thought — mostly because he couldn't follow the narrative of the supposed interaction. Seeing her doing drugs had caused him to spontaneously yell about how much he hated her? Oz's main critique of Daphnel when he was courting her was that the man seemed to have no strong feelings in any direction, so it would have been a surprise to hear him express an emotion like hate, and it seemed even more out of character for him to yell about it.

But then Daphnel did yell, so Oz supposed he had to eat his words on that front. He was a little stunned by the progress upstairs, to be honest. Christabel might have yelled and raged and thrown things through him, and he would have just nodded and said yes, that's how she is, but the heat from Daphnel was unexpected. Oz had been thinking he would grovel, beg, try to win her back. He'd been worried about Daphnel winning her back. This was about as far removed from his expectations as anything could have been.

"Well," he said, dropping into the chair. "I suppose there's no reason to worry he'll talk her 'round."

---

"What I think," Oz started in, though no one had asked for his opinion. He had always had a knack for offering opinions no one had asked for. "— is that she shouldn't have married him in the first place. I told her so," he said. Of course he'd never imagined this exact chain of events when he'd advised his sister not to marry Daphnel; he'd been picturing more mundane misery, nothing so acute, but he would take credit for the premonition all the same. He didn't know exactly how this situation would have been different with two people who loved each other (contemplating it required him to think of Thomasina dying, which he refused to consider for any longer than a quarter of a second at a time), but he doubted his sister would have been quite so miserable for the past six months if the feelings in their marriage had been equivalent. As it was Christabel's were dramatic (and perhaps overblown, though he wouldn't accuse her of as much to her face) and Daphnel's were — prior to this he would have said nonexistent, but he'd cared enough to come here and fight with her, so apparently that wasn't true.

"I haven't said I told you so," he added. "That's her Christmas gift from me this year."

He leaned back towards the window, to listen. He had to stain his ears to follow it now that they were no longer shouting, but he did catch his sister say that Daphnel had barely spoken to her in a year (he had to assume she meant since the fellow died — presumably he had spoken to her during their honeymoon, because she had shown no sign of being unhappy on her return. And presumably if he'd stopped speaking to her before her marriage, she really wouldn't have gone through with it). He shot Lycoris a distasteful look. "Is that true?" he whispered. He assumed she would know; there was a persistent stereotype that sisters talked about everything. In any case, it seemed more likely that Christabel would have confided in Lycoris than in him.

---

Oz pondered over Lycoris' choice of phrasing. Not connecting any more. When they'd talked about the matter prior to her wedding, Christabel had been prepared to commit herself to a lifetime with him despite suspecting he didn't love her, because she thought she did love him. What had changed from November of last year to January of this year wasn't the sentiment on either side, but now they weren't connecting.

"I think he kissed her once and she supposed herself in love with him," he said. He'd suspected something along these lines when Daphnel had first entered their lives last August. He might have even said so to Lycoris, but he couldn't remember. Christabel, romantic that she was, had developed an immediate and violent crush on the first bloke who had managed to kiss her, and now they weren't connecting. If Daphnel had been corporeal Ozymandias suspected this argument would have ended differently, if it had even started at all. Not that he was necessarily faulting Christabel for this. He'd been a rake in his youth; he knew how naive so many women could be and how persuasive a well-placed touch was.

"I expect they are over for good then," he continued. "As that part isn't likely to change. Dangerous drug cocktails aside. Don't take unregulated potions," he emphasized again. "And don't marry the first man who kisses you, Lycoris."

---

Oz may have had a severe double standard when it came to his own consideration of party drugs compared to his siblings', but on this count at least he couldn't be so hypocritical. Everyone knew he'd been a rake before marrying Thomasina, so he suspected even if he'd tried to warn Lycoris off of that sort of thing it would have had the opposite effect; it would have discredited all his advice, rather than being effective at keeping her chaste. And she was twenty-four; at a certain point holding up chastity as the ideal would have just been willfully naive. By twenty-four young women ought to have enough sense to have fun without getting themselves into trouble. (Oz would have felt not the least bit guilty fooling around with a twenty-four year old debutante, in his day; he wasn't in the business of corrupting youth, but at a certain point someone had to).

"Kiss the usual number of men," he said with a shrug. Hell if he knew what the usual number was, for young women. Expectations were different for men, and even among men Oz had been something of an outlier. "Ask Thomasina about it; I don't know. But don't marry the first man you kiss, and don't marry one who tries to kiss you before he's proposed."

Thomasina was a better reference point for this than any of the other Dempsey women, he determined. She wasn't violently romantic or Romantic, the way the rest of them were. She didn't suffer from the particular ailment of having been raised by poets.

---

Was it confusing? Oz thought he'd been fairly easy to follow with his explanations, but it was something of a boon that Lycoris couldn't follow it. He could take it as a testament to her innocence, which Oz preferred to think was still entirely unmolested; he would have found it at least a little unsettling if she'd simply nodded and said you know, I think you have a point. (And yes, he realized the contradiction in preferring to think of his sister as innocent and advising her not to marry the first man she kissed; but sometimes the world had contradictions).

"It's fine," he said, reaching for the desk drawer where the tobacco was kept so that he could get himself something to smoke. "If you want to marry someone, you can come ask me about it and I'll tell you whether they're cads or not. But only if you promise to follow my advice," he said, shaking his head. There was a pattern forming in the Dempsey family of siblings attempting to make last minute interventions to prevent terrible marriages, and being ignored. Endymion had tried to keep Oz from marrying Thomasina — a gesture that was as heartfelt as it was misguided — and Oz had done the same for Christabel, last year. Two of the seven Dempseys married, and two potential interventions ignored. He oughtn't to be surprised, really; they all had stubbornness in common. But if Lycoris was going to outsource her evaluation of men's characters to him, he would be much obliged if she would actually follow his recommendations on the subject.

"Do you want a cigarette?" he asked, as he fished the case out of the drawer and opened it. "The show's over, it seems."

---

Oz bared his teeth at his younger sister playfully, then leaned back in the chair and took another puff of the cigarette. As to the question of why she ought to come to him for marriage advice — fair enough. He'd intentionally eroded any confidence his siblings had in his ability to pick a suitable life partner; why should they seek out his advice?

"Christabel ignored my advice and now she's throwing things through her ghost husband while they fight," Oz said with a shrug. He didn't know if Chris was actually throwing things, but it seemed likely enough that he didn't feel like a liar claiming it. "And I pulled Endymion off another veela this year. So I'm at least a strong sixty-six percent."

---