31st October, 1890 - Selwyn House, Before the ball

Preparations for the evening’s event were well in hand by the time Ambrosia conducted her afternoon inspection of the ballroom. Downstairs the kitchen staff were following her strict instructions with regards the food, the footmen were being fitted into their costumes for the party, the housemaids were taking great delight in adding cobwebs for once and the strongest of their stableboys were diligently mastering the use of a punting pole while wearing a heavy black cape.

All that was left were her own personal preparations and the orchestra. The former she did not need to attend to for another hour at least which left her standing stock still in the ballroom, arms folded with dwindling patience as she waited for the orchestra to warm up and strike a note that did not set her teeth on edge.

“I asked for the Blue Danube Waltz gentlemen - I trust I am not asking for the moon?” Disdain dripped from her tone but it seemed to produce the required effect and the leader of the band acted with a little more haste: and immediately prompted his violinist to produce another dull note. Rolling her eyes Ambrosia sighed with long-suffering ennui, quite aware that she was no longer alone in the ballroom and also fairly confident that only one person would dare to interrupt her preparations today of all days. “At this rate we may have to open the dancing to the metronome.”

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Elias Grimstone Trystan Selwyn

  

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Ambrosia's got 99 problems but this hot af set from MJ ain't 1 of them

Everyone in the household knew well enough to keep out of the way until the party started, keeping safe to their bedrooms or the drawing room in order that Ambrosia might get on with her plans without help or hindrance. Trystan excepted, of course. He had never had that kind of sensible self-preservation. It might be his wife’s party in all but name, but it was his house.

Not that it looked much like the Selwyn house this afternoon, looming and gothic as it had become. He had taken a wandering tour of it, adding a few touch-ups here and there when he felt he could do a little better (though he would not tell her; she would no doubt disagree). Eventually, he turned into the ballroom, where it seemed Ambrosia had turned orchestra conductor.

“You’ve found more people to whip into shape, I see,” Trystan remarked in greeting, offering his wife a knowing roll of his eyes as he sauntered up to her. Of course she had: criticism was one of her most supreme talents, after all. He really ought to warn the stableboys that if their steering was subpar, Ambrosia would, quite without qualm, be punting them right into the moat. (In truth, he probably would not warn them.) For that matter, if he seemed to be on the band’s side for a split-second - he had offered an amused grimace (from over Ambrosia’s shoulder, where she couldn’t see) to the suffering musicians - it did not mean he was particularly worried for their shame, embarrassment or panic, any more than he was worried for their own. No, a party was a party, and Trystan wasn’t worried, so this was an issue that could be treated, clearly, with nothing more taxing than idle nonchalance. 

“That would be a talking point,” he said, stifling a snort at the metronome remark, as if their family did not have plenty of society gossip angled their way without any added quirks like that. (The more serious talking points were not usually Ambrosia’s fault... although, if you looked a little deeper into motivations and personalities, that really was debatable.) Nevertheless, some ball it would be without the music. And they were quite the oddest bunch of musicians he had ever seen. On the other hand... he grinned. “Though I suppose it might give it a more grisly air if they can’t hold a tune.”

Either way, if the chamber orchestra did not start conducting themselves better (- conducting themselves, ha -) they would almost certainly find themselves doomed to having Ambrosia breathing down their necks all night.

That would also be a talking point.

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   Elladora Black

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A whip might have been a good idea. Ambrosia was an unapologetic proponent of the stick and carrot method of getting things done, albeit one who tended to scrimp when it came to distributing the earned root vegetables, and there was an especially gormless looking bassoonist her fingers were itching to take to task but, inadvertently, as was usually his way, her husband had said something sensible.

It was one thing to be talked about, quite another to be notorious and Ambrosia had spent her entire married life willing thee family onto the course of the former as they skidded closer and closer to the latter with each passing year. One illegitimate child was bad enough, the two hidden away were worse and if Trystan thought for a moment she couldn’t see the resemblance between him and the twins he was very much mistaken. With the current trajectory she fully expected that one of their number – and honestly she’d be lying if she didn’t think it would be Cadawalader – would soon commit a murder and another – Emyrs or possibly Anthea – to be exposed as a sexual deviant.

Of course that particular headache was only an outlying possibility and the current throb at her temples was being caused by a conductor who was being very cavalier about his future employability.

“And very grisly you and I shall look dancing to this,” Ambrosia replied with a dismissive gesture towards the musicians, pondering for a moment whether she would get away with placing all of them under the Imperius Curse and orchestrating the whole thing herself. She didn’t actually have to play – just ensure they were doing their very best work.

Glancing over her shoulder, feeling slightly better with her half-formed potential plan in mind, she smirked coyly at her husband. “You have difficulty leading me at the best of times.”

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   Trystan Selwyn

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Ambrosia's got 99 problems but this hot af set from MJ ain't 1 of them

Ah. He had forgotten, in the midst of an orchestra who didn’t know how to warm up and the house transformed to a sea of cobwebs, that hosting, much like any party but yet more obvious, would require that he danced with his wife. 

He didn’t mind dancing. Sometimes he didn’t even mind his wife. But there were certainly innumerable other women with whom he would rather dance first. A pity that Ambrosia had probably fiddled with the guestlist to weed out anyone she didn’t approve of... not that he would have been so indiscreet as to dally quite so close to home, at their own party, or right under her nose. Usually. He’d learned his lesson since that maid of hers.

His mind on the coming evening, already picturing the ballroom full of people, Ambrosia’s last comment surprised him; the laugh he barked out was loud enough that a distracted cellist looked over and quickly away. “Ridiculous,” he said, his tone lower than his laugh, rounding on her so she would not return her attentions too soon to the problem of the music. “I could lead armies! I could lead a hag with two left feet around this ballroom in my sleep.” He shook his head at her. “Can you blame me, when you’re as bad as a horse who hates to be bridled?”

He was teasing, mostly. Even the proudest horses were broken in eventually, once one worked out the right tack to take with them. Trystan wasn’t blind to her, after all this time - if this workshop with the orchestra didn’t make it patently obvious, Ambrosia liked to operate under the assumption she was in control. He was amused by it as often as he was irked by it - and he had his parents to thank, dead and buried and lucky for them, for having found him for a wife possibly the most impossibly wilful creature in Britain.

That said, if waltzing was to be the battleground, she could not win at it.

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   Elladora Black

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Ambrosia, contrary to popular opinion, was not entirely averse to the concept of enjoying herself and, also a little known nugget, usually preferred to partake of said enjoyment with her husband. After a morning of alternating between her artistic vision coming to fruition and wrangling other people into doing her exact bidding she was in comparatively – for her – high spirits. And then her husband had to go and compare her to a horse and the proverbial, and almost forgotten, other shoe dropped.

“You flatter me,” she deadpanned, immediately questioning her own sanity at bothering to try flirting with her husband. It was a fruitless endeavour when his idea of flirting, as far as she could tell, involved the woman in question to be young and stupid enough to giggle, blush and push forward her chest without too much need for a reply. Was it that her husband hated nuance? Or just that he hated her?

The orchestra were struggling to find their rhythm and the symbolism was a little too much for Ambrosia to contemplate. She refused to make quite as woeful a showing and despite having limited time left she felt compelled, and suitably disgusted at her own need, to command her husband’s attention for just a little longer.

“I trust you remember how to waltz? It seems like years since we last danced with one another – perhaps I’ll buck you off midway through.”

There she went again. Sanity temporarily forgotten in the face of a treacherous desire to actually want to mean something to her husband when the evidence overwhelmingly suggested that she did not. It was perverse of her but still she prodded again and again, expecting disappointment but craving the possibility that one day she might find the elusive answer to the need that sometimes threatened to burst out of her permanently tensed body.

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Ambrosia's got 99 problems but this hot af set from MJ ain't 1 of them

It took all he had to suppress his amusement at her state of total unimpressedness, but he thought he had just about managed to keep a straight face. Instead, Trystan merely raised his eyebrows in mock surprise. “Oh, you mean to say flattery would work on you?”

Not that his teasing her was likely do much good, either, but... The truth was Ambrosia had known him too long now; she would not believe his compliments if he were honest. In fact, he suspected she would see straight through him, whatever he said or did or didn’t say. (He eyed her musingly for a moment, deciding there were a good few things for which he could flatter her, if he had been in the habit.) But flattery itself - flattery was so often in its nature just a little too insincere, even when he was consciously inclined to be charming. A means to an end, but an instrument better used in the early days of a relationship, when the other party would not trust it too far, attach to it too much weight.

It did speak to his wife’s good mood this afternoon though, that one careless comment had not flared her temper or seen her swan away, back to her current occupation with the band; he shook his head with a huff of laughter at her counter. (Fondly, almost.)

And then stepped up to her, almost too close for waltzing. “Come on, then,” Trystan declared, taking no notice of the musicians’ murmuring, or odd stops of an instrument for a little extra tuning. They could make the most of the music all the same. He plucked up her hand and pulled her into position, tucking his other firmly around her waist. Before she could protest, he might have said - but in spite of all he had joked, he did not think she would. He smiled, almost without guile, almost in defeat. No harm in a private trial run, to iron out all the kinks between them. “Put me through my paces.”

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Had Ambrosia been the sort of woman prone to demoralising self-deprecation then the thrill that shot through her body when her husband took her in his arms might have been the cause of furious contemplation when she was alone. She tried valiantly to ignore it as best she could – it was maddening that the first thing her mind conjured up was putting him through his paces in quite a different way – but still she felt her body soften, lean in to Trystan’s hold, otherwise become his.

She only hoped he was oblivious: it was bad enough that every maid that received a smile immediately went weak at the knees the very last thing she wanted was to boost his ego to further heights of uncontrollable arrogance by letting him know he sometimes had the same effect on her.

“If you insist,” she said with feigned reluctance, raising an eyebrow at him. “The first move is usually yours, my dear.”

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Ambrosia's got 99 problems but this hot af set from MJ ain't 1 of them

He would hardly say he insisted... but she had not protested, verbally or otherwise, and that was plenty. It was her night, after all - or it would be, when the guests arrived later and the ballroom was full of people, and that meant there was no sense in threatening her good mood. No, he might as well enjoy it while it lasted.

And, dismissive as he often was of his wife’s attentions, the thought of her spending the evening surrounded by so many acquaintances and admirers - he would not particularly call them her friends; did Ambrosia even do friends? - did spark some strange little petulant feeling in him, some misplaced stroke of jealousy. It made no sense, of course; hadn’t he just been rolling his eyes at the mere thought of having to dance with her tonight? And yet for some reason he had no desire to see her dancing with anyone else.

Nor did Trystan have any particular care for the musicians’ plight as they made what they could of the music, picking up the waltz steps for a while; he had even less care for the musicians there, when, having led Ambrosia in a rotation, he made no move to change direction as the dance dictated and instead, halting there, leant in to kiss her. Just briefly; perhaps because holding her in such close proximity was too much temptation - or was just halfway there already.

The music had carried on without them. “I seem to have forgotten what comes next,” he supplied, innocently.

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Ambrosia allowed herself a moment to simply breath in the ease that they might have had in another reality. They were physically quite compatible and they certainly suited each other socially; they had precisely the right amount of children to have done their duty without it putting too much of a strain on her figure and they were free to indulge themselves with whatever fashion, food or fancy took their attention.

All would have been perfect but for the fact Trystan had made a fool of her even before they were married and was utterly incapable of keeping his cock to himself.

“Perhaps I ought to remind you?” She replied in the same innocent, teasing tone. She was in a good mood, she decided, despite the terrible band and she was going to allow herself to ignore her husband’s shortcomings.

(The shrieking tones of the violins, she reasoned, could be explained away as an affectation of Halloween and she intended to think no more about them.)

“Shall we retire upstairs?” She suggested quietly in her husband’s ear. “I have a little time before I need to put another dress on.”

  

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Ambrosia's got 99 problems but this hot af set from MJ ain't 1 of them