23 December 1894 — Dempsey Estate

The hour was imminent. The curtains had been hung with precision and Sophie had just put the final touches on Lowri’s evening dress. She’d spared no expense with the Christmas party, even going as far as having the staff dress accordingly, though their outfits still identified them as such. In addition to her standard lady’s maid black with a white apron and cap, Sophie’s had been modified to include dark velvet seventeenth century stays decorated with gold trim, and even a small ruffle at the back of her dress invoking a medici collar. Some of the male servants even wore floppy ruffs in place of their collars. From her gathering in the servant’s hall, everyone seemed to be having good fun with it all. Those who worked for the Dempseys weren’t strangers to the eccentricities of the family.

Having completed the majority of the work necessary before the doors opened, Sophie wandered down to the main ballroom where people were still milling about getting everything ready and putting final touches on the decor. Her eyes scanned the crowd, though it didn’t take long to find him. It was as if she had known where he would be. She couldn’t help the smile that played at her lips as she moved forward; gingerly, as her hip had still been bothering her from yesterday’s walk around the grounds.

His back was to her, but she could tell by the wild curls that it was Endymion. She could see where his gaze was directed though; at a passing mirror that John and William were carrying past to bring to the main foyer. Laughing to herself, she reached him and teased, “Mr. Dempsey, your reflection is never going to respond back, you know, no matter how hard you stare.” Of course she couldn’t blame him. He was - in her opinion - the more handsome of the brothers (though at one time or another, she’d harbored a crush on all of them, not that she’d ever tell).

Endymion Dempsey - Elias Grimstone

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   Endymion Dempsey

He’d been caught out, then, while he glanced at himself in the mirror and readjusting his mask and his hair and the jerkin of his costume – but Endymion blushed only slightly. At least it was only Millie, and not one of his siblings. If Millie gave him trouble for it, it was still a kinder calibre of teasing than one of the other Dempseys might have made him endure.

“You think me quite as foolish as Narcissus?” Endymion said, ruining all the perfecting he had just done by shoving his mask up onto his head, and upsetting the curls he had carefully arranged. Instead, he clutched a hand to his heart and turned towards her, as though utterly wounded by it. Cruel of her to say – although he didn’t hate the rest of the comparison. (Narcissus had been exceptionally good-looking, after all.) But Sophie had given him the opening, and he was already in the pose for it, so he couldn’t stop himself from quoting Ovid’s poor idiot boy: “Has anyone ever loved more cruelly than I?”

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Having stayed with the family as long as she had, Sophie was not unaccustomed to their habit of quoting poems. In fact, when she realized that was a regular occurrence, she made herself a quick study of them. And of course, becoming Lowri’s lady’s maid and assistant had it’s own learning curve. But somehow, when it came to Endymion, her tongue was well and truly tied. Especially after seeing him in his regalia for the masquerade. But she laughed nervously and tried to make do of what rebuttal she could.

“Never quite as foolish as that, Mr. Dempsey!” She cried. “Never quite as foolish as that.”

She laughed at her own implication. Of course, she was unable to say that Mr. Dempsey hadn’t been foolish at one time or another. In fact, that seemed to be the moniker of this family from time to time if Sophie’s observations had any weight. “I only hope you aren’t expecting an Echo to accompany you tonight?” She grinned again at the running joke. “The poor girl would hardly be able to enjoy herself unless she was spoken to first.”

  

“Generous praise indeed,” Endymion answered, shaking his lightly at not quite as foolish. Given Narcissus had drowned himself of hopeless lovesickness in the end, he had to hope he was a little better off.

But lacking an Echo, Sophie was right. He quirked a smile at her, because Sophie was an exception where most of the staff was concerned – she had adopted some of their idiosyncrasies, indulged them more than most. Which made conversation terribly easy with her.

“I haven’t invited one,” Endymion said with a laugh, since they were joking. But Sophie was dressed to work the masquerade, it seemed (and staff were generally supposed not to speak before they were spoken to, though Millie was an exception to the rule), so he added – “Although you could always wander over tonight and repeat my last word if you suppose I’m getting too full of myself.”

Hopefully she didn’t think he was getting too full of himself, but.

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He hadn’t invited anyone! The corners of Sophie’s mouth ticked up a fraction. Not one for being an expert at hiding her emotions, she hoped he would chalk it up to her merely being excited. While the conversation wasn’t meant to deliberately parse out the information of whether or not he’d invited someone, it served its purpose anyways and Sophie felt a little swoop of joy in her stomach. But, of course, he would be dancing that night with other women. As the unmarried son of the hostess, it would be practically rude for him not to. This would, perhaps, give her the excuse she needed to avoid being too near the dance floor when the time came for her to bring Lowri something, which her mistress would undoubtedly make her do.

And while the thought of Endymion dancing with other beautiful women cause her stomach to turn uncomfortably, the thought of interrupting him whilst he was talking to his friends, and laughing…why her cheeks burned at just imagining it! Oh Merlin, was the room suddenly incredibly warm? Reaching up to tug on her collar, she gave a decidedly nervous giggle. “Oh, I d-don’t think I could do that,” she stammered, feeling the blush work its way down her neck. She frantically searched the space above Mr. Dempsey’s head for something to focus on; a tip she’d been told to work on by Mrs. Dempsey when she got too nervous. Except she couldn’t rest her gaze anywhere near Mr. Dempsey’s form without her eyes automatically going back to his face so…she focused on the tip of his right eyebrow instead. It worked. Sort of. She swallowed. Then had the horrid thought; what if he misunderstood her reasoning and thought she was acquiescing to his being too full of himself? At the same time, her eye caught something over his shoulder: the movement of a woman’s gown. Guests were starting to arrive. Which meant she had to make haste. So all the words came tumbling out of her mouth at once:

“I - not to say that I think you’d get t-too full of yourself! I just - I think that even a lady’s maid coming up to you in the middle of a ball, it would be far too impertinent, even for Mrs. Dempsey. Actually, I don’t think she would mind that much you know, but all the same I d-don’t think I would be able to get away with it, and I shouldn’t want to offend any of your friends either…”