31 December, 1891 — Morgan House, London

Eldritch Morgan was sharply dressed in a crisp white suit, with a golden chain for his watch visible in one pocket and a gold-threadded pocket square peeking out on his breast. The color scheme for tonight's party suited him, and he supposed he ought to thank his mother for it at some point; he relished any chance he had to ditch the typical black suits for something more interesting. The only catch now would be keeping it reasonably clean throughout the evening — some debutantes had a habit of being so clumsy with wine glasses, so it wasn't unreasonable to expect that he would have to dodge a spill at some point. At least champagne would be easier to clean out than red wine.

Speaking of avoiding black, though: this was Annie's first night back in society, whatever that was meant to mean. Of course Morgan knew what it meant, but anytime someone mentioned it he was being purposefully obtuse about it to demonstrate how silly he found the concept. She'd more than mourned her husband by this point — she'd mourned him longer than she'd known him, which was ridiculous. And it wasn't as though she'd been shuttered away in the house doing nothing ever since she became a widow. She'd had friends visit, and had gone places and done things, and even been involved in parties when they were being thrown here in the house or by close friends and family. The only difference with tonight was the color of her clothes — and, of course, what the color of her clothes signaled to potential eligible gentleman. Hopefully she'd have better luck this time than with her first marriage (if she remarried; Icarus, charming as he was, probably wasn't a great selling point for some of these gents).

"Nervous?" he asked her as he wandered into her room (after knocking to ensure she was properly dressed first, of course). He was genuinely curious — he didn't know how much his sister had built tonight up in her mind, for all that he'd been downplaying it in his.

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Rhiannon Cameron but open to other family members also!

  

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Why society expected women to mourn so much was beyond her. Men could get away with just a black armband and a black ribbon on their hats and be done with it after a couple years. Meanwhile, here Annie stood, in her new white gown trimmed with silver pearls, staring at the wardrobe still chock full of mourning clothes that had yet to be thrown out. Grey and mauve dotted the wardrobe, but it was predominantly black as midnight. She'd known him less than a year, and yet society demanded she mourn him at least two of her life. If she were in charge of her own life, properly, she'd've mourned him throughout her emotional pregnancy (because that's about how long she felt she had mourned him) and have had done with it.

Yes, yes, he'd given her a son, but what good was a son when he had no father to guide him through life? He'd inherit his father's fortune, maybe marry...that is, if his spectacular failure wasn't to be an absolute ass to every eligible woman he ever met.

But she was getting ahead of herself. Icarus was four years old. His failure was guaranteed to be a long way off, unless he failed out of Hogwarts.

Merlin, what if he failed out of Hogwarts?

Tonight was her return to society, and she was woefully underprepared. The only new piece of wardrobe that was finished was this gown! Sure, she was prepared for tonight, but tomorrow? The days, weeks, months after? Unprepared.

"Of course I'm nervous," she replied, slamming the door to the wardrobe shut and turning to her brother. "I've nothing to wear if any gentlemen decide to pay a call tomorrow."

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Morgan shot a glance at her open wardrobe and shrugged. "Well, if it's any consolation, that's not likely to happen." Morgan had nothing against his sister and wasn't trying to make any remarks about her desirability as a potential wife, but the first of January was hardly the prime season for gentleman callers. Men who were on a dedicated wife hunt scheduled their hunts during the season, because it had the biggest return on investment; meet a lot of people very quickly, get to know each of them in short order, and make decisions without much delay. Nothing moved that quickly in winter, and particularly not in January. People who were paying calls and starting to court and getting engaged in winter were people who were really in love. Again, nothing against Annie, but it seemed unlikely she'd manage to get someone so besotted with her over the course of the next eight hours. Besides, any man who could hold his liquor would be nursing a hangover tomorrow, anyway. Morgan certainly planned to be.

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   Rhiannon Cameron

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It didn't matter that the odds weren't in favor of a gentleman caller here in the winter; they still happened to girls who were lucky, didn't they? She'd been lucky once. And then it all came crashing down around her. Maybe she didn't want to be lucky anymore.

But she had a name to live up to. "Great queen." She presumed it meant she would be a queen of society, holding court over her own ballroom, with children to marry off into that society. That meant marrying (again) and having more children than just little Icarus. More boys, and maybe some girls to boot. And maybe, just maybe, she wouldn't go to a naming seer for them. Maybe she would, but maybe she wouldn't.

"I suppose the first thing in the new year will be a new wardrobe, though," she sighed, moving away from the wardrobe towards the full length mirror. Sweeping her left hand down her side, she picked off some unseen dust and flicked it away. "And what about you, Ritchie? What are your plans in the new year?"

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Oh, a new wardrobe, you must be so disappointed, Morgan thought sarcastically. He would have teased her out loud, but she'd already moved on to a much less favorable topic of conversation: his plans for the new year. Eldritch did his best not to have grand, sweeping plans for any part of his life. He had enough trouble living up to the expectations from his parents and his name; he didn't need to go disappointing himself as well.

"Oh, the usual," he said with a shrug. "Lawsuits and parties and avoiding whatever the next magical catastrophe to hit Hogsmeade is."

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When he didn't mention what they both had to know Mother would want on that list, Annie shook her head and fussed with her updo a little. But she wouldn't say anything about that. Instead, she pivoted the subject again. "Why did it have to be New Year's?" she griped, dropping her hands dramatically to her waist. "Why must my return to society be heralded with fireworks?" Because your mother is dramatic, Annie, that's the answer.

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Eldritch tilted his head at his sister, a bit befuddled by her tone. She seemed to think that if she'd been relaunched into society at any other time of the year there wouldn't have been fireworks, and first of all he wasn't sure that was a valid assumption to make. Their family had plenty of money and their mother cared a good deal about things like this. She would have taken steps to make the party that reintroduced Annie to society as elegant and extravagant was possible, no matter when it happened. The other piece that confused him was her apparent reticence to step into the lime light. He would have thought that after so long in mourning, she'd be eager to take the spotlight. The timing was actually fairly nice, since she'd have a few full season as the only eligible Morgan daughter before Rachel debuted (longer if Rachel went off to be Finished).

"Don't you think you deserve fireworks?" he asked with a curious half-frown.

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"It's not about deserving them, brother," Annie sighed, turning back to her brother with raised eyebrows. "It's about holiday parties. Have you ever noticed that holiday parties are some of the most boring? Not that I really have much to gauge it by beyond childhood. Remember, before I went off to finishing school? Mother let me attend Christmas and Valentine's parties, and they were so boring." Because that was the gauge she had to go by. The children's party attendance schedule — attend for a couple hours and head off upstairs to bed whilst everyone else danced the night away.

Not very much experience to judge by.

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Morgan made a tsk noise with his mouth. He didn't personally think holiday parties were any more or less interesting than parties during the season, at least intrinsically. He had certainly been to boring holiday parties, but that depended more on the host (and primarily the hostess) than on the date, in his experience. A phenomenal hostess could throw a bash any day of the year, on almost any theme, and make it interesting and engaging. A poor hostess could botch even the most intriguing occasion.

"You shouldn't judge everything by your impressions from when you were sixteen," he pointed out. It wasn't so much that the events themselves had changed since then, but he imagined her perception of things might. Teenagers had very little in common with the adults they would eventually become, in his experience.

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Ritchie needed to stop making sense.

Annie rolled her eyes, fidgetting with the fingers of her left glove. "Perhaps you're right," she did concede. "But perhaps part of me wishes I were still sixteen. Still...young. I had such hopes for my life, for marriage, for children, and instead I got four years in mourning and now I'm....damaged goods."

Slowly, she sank to the sit on the corner of her bed, eyes downcast, looking for all the world like she might just be about to cry — but she knew, and she hoped her brother knew, that she'd cried herself out over this very subject three years ago.

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She wasn't wrong, but Morgan had the feeling he was supposed to tell her that she was. The comforting, brotherly thing to do would probably to pretend naivete about her prospects, or to tell her she was so glowingly special that she would certainly overcome the odds to find love and everything else she wanted from life. He wasn't optimistic enough to sell something like that, though. It wasn't that he doubted his sister, but rather that he doubted men, as a general group. He'd been involved in two many conversations in gentleman's clubs to think their class was full of genteel dreamers ready to overlook what society deemed a woman's flaws in the pursuit of kinship and affection.

"You also got Icarus," he pointed out. He wasn't sure if that was a bright spot in her mind or not. Ritch was fond of his nephew, but when they were considering Annie's future marriage prospects, his existence did complicate matters somewhat. Well, maybe not so much as it could have, due to his gender; Icarus would have money of his own and need no debut balls or particular care from his future step-father.

He moved to the bed and dropped down next to her, gently putting his arm around her shoulders. "Hey, cheer up," he chided gently. "It's a party."

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Annie didn't expect him to tell her she was wrong, or that someone would look past her perceived flaws and Icarus's very existence to see that she was a worthy prospect. She wasn't, and she knew it. Her flaws were too many, her previous marriage too quick. Yet she hungered to be more than a widow, and desired all that she could not truly have.

"Yes, I know," she muttered, in response to both of his comments, as she leaned her head onto his arm. He was her big brother, after all, and if she couldn't take comfort from her brother at this point, who could she get it from? Certainly not Mother. "If only I didn't need what a marriage offers."

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Morgan didn't know how to respond to that, because he wasn't exactly sure what she meant. He understood that the rules of society were dramatically different for never-married, married, and widowed women, but the intricacies of it had never particularly been his business. What did she need from a marriage that she couldn't get just as well at home? If she was hoping for society connections, their parents were viable avenues for that. The fact that she had a child of her own meant she'd never be the spinster aunt stuck raising someone else's children when her siblings married. She had done away with the requirements of chaperones. Why did she need to marry at all?

Maybe she was referring to love. If she was, Morgan didn't really want to bring it up; the idea of talking romance with his siblings made him uncomfortable. He loosely hugged her back and shrugged. "Let's just see how tonight goes before you get too fatalist about it, hm?"

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Annie listened to her brother, smiling weakly before sitting up straight once more. "You're right," she admitted. "Let's see what this night holds for me. And this upcoming season." Slowly, she stood, brushing off her white dress — why was it always white? She'd go shopping sometime in the next few days with Mother and Rachel, and then she'd have a whole new wardrobe. "We'll deal with my wardrobe later on. For now, it's a party. And it's high time I made my way downstairs, isn't it?"

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(I think we can wrap here?)