5th June, 1895 — Flint Garden Ball, English Countryside

Callista didn’t know if the pool of eligible, suitable men was actually getting smaller by the season, or just the pool of eligible, suitable men wanting to dance with her. Perhaps it was just that this affair was more exclusive compared to some; perhaps it was just that she felt oddly desperate, already wondering if the newly returned Mr. Flint, who had had two wives before, was in search of another.

(And was that more or less desperate than wishing she could go back and accept Mr. Echelon-Arnost’s offer, in spite of herself? Callista knew the answer to that; though for an evident impossibility, she had certainly wasted a great deal of thought on it.)

But she had exhausted her last dance partners in this set, so she supposed she may as well have a break in the next – her feet were tired enough. There were a few chairs and tables dotted about the gardens, but most were already occupied; Callista spotted an open seat that was in good view of the dancefloor, but was also situated conveniently close to some flowering shrubs she wanted a closer look at, and made a beeline for it, most of her attention already on the bushes.

Until she had just about reached the chair, and knocked into someone’s cane with her foot. “Oh!” Callista exclaimed in apology; her tone altered as she met his gaze, now more wrong-footed than before. “Oh – sorry – please –” she gestured lamely to the chair, take it.

She looked around for another, but didn’t see one; all she noticed was someone already looking this way, at them, in interest.

---

In the pressure of the moment, she couldn’t make a decision on the etiquette – was it more polite to accept and let Mr. Echelon-Arnost be a gentleman, or to refuse and insist that he sat, because he might be tired of standing? Callista had wronged him once before, and badly: the last thing she wanted to do was, even in a small way, wrong him again.

So she had made an acquiescent move towards the single chair, but paused there, settling a hesitant hand on the back of it and glancing uncertainly at him again. “...If you’re sure?”

He seemed oddly wrought with tension, in his stance and his expression. She had knocked his cane. Did he need to sit, or was it just the fact of her presence all to blame? Or – was she looking too much at him, and inventing a hurt that wasn’t there?

Callista bit her lip. (And then realised that she had, and so hurriedly un-bit her lip, trying to find a lightness and composure she didn’t feel.) “Are you – I mean, have you been well?”

---

He hadn’t taken the chair, so she sank into it for a moment, nodding at his been well and convincing herself it was probably true. After all, bruised pride probably made for an easier recovery than shooting oneself in the foot.

His knee must be aching, though, if he had made a remark like that; considering it, she answered his latter question in response with a quick, “oh, yes!”. (So well, of course, and not at all flustered or disheartened to see him, no.)

“An uncanny ability, predicting the weather,” Callista said sympathetically, springing up from the single chair only a few moments after taking it and leaving it purposefully free for him instead, as she stepped around it to admire the flower bushes just behind it. “I had wanted a closer look at these flowers, actually –” she explained, half-convinced she was spouting nonsense just for show as she mused aloud, “for I am sure they usually follow the sun, but they seem to be blooming even at this hour.” At night: it certainly was not in their nature. She glanced sideways, furtively hoping he had taken the seat. “Perhaps there is something to be said for a change in the weather.”

---

He hadn’t taken the seat in her absence, so she only felt more foolish for getting up. Everything about this made her feel a little foolish, the chair, the weather, the flower bushes, dancing around him this way – but at least she had put a step or two’s distance between them in doing so, to try and clear her flustered feeling.

She hummed in possible agreement. Enchanted, yes. “No, I confess I have scarcely spoken to the Flints yet tonight,” Callista admitted – though she knew full well that ought to be her whole purpose for being here. Mr. Flint (the returned son, the widower) must be eligible; and Callista ought to make a good impression on him, or on his mother. She was, after all, supposed to be trying harder than she had ever before. She should ask them about the flowers. It would be a useful opening.

Of course she was flustered again at the mere thought, the whole mercenary objective of it all – or the fact she would rather torture herself here, uselessly, in Mr. Echelon-Arnost’s vicinity. She had never used to hate society this way. Callista had bent her face into one of the flowers for a moment to inhale its perfume, and when she straightened up her only object was doing away with the foolish small talk, and asking him something proper, at least while her courage or his patience with her held up. “I suppose you will be quite busy this summer,” she asked (also in trying to find someone to court, probably, she thought glumly, but that was not what she had meant here), “with your Lysander off to Hogwarts this year?” She had heard a little about his ward, back when they had been speaking on friendly terms – and she really ought to curb her curiosity now, but she hoped she could still get away with some good wishes.

---

She didn’t know Lysander, but it was no stretch to imagine that a boy raised by someone as intelligent as Mr. Echelon-Arnost would be clever and particular, and eager to go for his schooling, to gather all the information he could.

And either the discomfort she had imagined from his leg had passed, or the subject change had changed his expression – and given she had not supposed they would ever be capable of any sincere conversation again, Callista was not at all inclined to relinquish the opportunity too soon.

“Quite right; as he should,” she said, with as wide a smile as she dared. He did not have siblings’ experience to rely upon, so anyone’s testimony would surely do. Callista had been the first in her family to attend Hogwarts in particularly, so her brothers hadn’t any knowledge with which to terrorise her; she remembered well the fear and excitement of first stepping on board the Hogwarts Express, first seeing the castle, undergoing the sorting...

She ought to have hesitated before asking this, but her mind had been too faraway to censor herself: “Did his parents go to Hogwarts?” (She didn’t mean to pry, and it may be impolite to speak of his parentage at all, perhaps, when rumour had it... but if his own parents had been to school in Europe, he may be following in August’s footsteps instead.)

---

She had to give him the benefit of the doubt – whatever people said, whatever made most sense – it was only polite. And politeness, not truthfulness, after all, was an enduring bastion of society. “But that leaves him quite at liberty to find his own path there,” she countered optimistically, sure that that was truer of Lysander’s case than her own. She could not imagine that August – mentally, she shook her head; Mr. Echelon-Arnost – would impress too many gross expectations on the boy that would stifle him. (Not that her family had done so, at least not knowingly – but Callista had taken the weight of everything they said onto her shoulders too readily anyway, and had felt a growing failure, a disappointment in the family, all the same.) “Although I’m sure he looks up to you more than anyone, so perhaps he will follow in your footsteps?”

She did not know the boy enough to judge the chances of that, or how alike they were, whether he would be in the same house his guardian had been, or would graduate one day with an interest in the law, but she could only imagine they shared the same core principles.

Her face might have gone wistful without her noticing, with a slight pang in her stomach at this conversation – if only because Callista had always looked forward to the idea of having children of her own and watching them grow up. It was one thing she felt that she might actually be good at, and a safe kind of love to have, except... well, clearly, she still had a few major hurdles to overcome before she got there. If she got there.)

---