17 April, 1891 — Henri's COB, London

Henrietta thought she'd started off fairly well, all things considered, but her performance had only been going downhill as the night had progressed. There was just so much. So many gentleman she was supposed to impress, so many women she had no desire to meet, so many names she had already forgotten, so many dances she had to concentrate so hard on to keep from forgetting the steps. She was tired, and the primroses bunched at her wrist were itching, and someone had stepped on the train of her dress and left a dirty footprint on it and Henri was sure that if her mother saw, she would think this was Henrietta's fault for having been in the way to begin with. How had she managed to find herself in the way, an afterthought, at her very own ball? How had a gentleman just walked past her and trod on her dress instead of looking at her? Thinking about it made her want to cry, but obviously she could not do that. She couldn't even slip away for a moment to try and collect herself, because this was her night, and she was meant to stay in the center of it.

She wanted her brother to step in and give her at least a minute of peace. She had expected him to be a little more present tonight, but that had been perhaps too big of an ask even before he'd gone and gotten distracted by shipwrecks. Holden didn't really care about her, or her debut, as he'd made abundantly clear when she'd written to ask him about the date for her Coming Out and he hadn't even bothered to have an opinion. He was a rubbish older brother, really, but he was the only one she had — the only one she had left — so she was looking for him all the same.

She'd thought she'd caught sight of him at the other edge of the ballroom, but by the time she'd picked her way across, avoiding the dance floor, he was already gone. A man she recognized vaguely as one of his friends was left in the space where he'd been. Taking a deep breath and trying her best not to look too put out, Henrietta approached him. "Did you see where my brother's gotten away to?" she asked, her tone light and sugary sweet. She smiled at him, and she tried to make it seem perfect — the sort of smile everyone would have expected of her. Not frantic or desperate or hiding the fact that she was holding back tears at all.

  

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Rune made this! <3

This was a little out of Noble's usual comfort zone because it was very upper class, but he'd been happy to bring Verity (who would thrive at something like this,) and it was easy enough for him to flit about talking to people he and Holden had known in school. At least Grace's Coming Out would involve less — flower theming. It was a nice event overall, though, and presumably there were no boggarts at all.

Noble was mostly hanging out with the other men who were too young to seriously dance with women, chatting and occasionally taking a sip from his champagne flute. He was surprised when Miss Cartwright — Miss Henrietta Cartwright, the center of attention for the evening — spoke to him, if only because she very far out of his fiscal league even if one ignored his age.

But, oh, she was looking for Holden. That made sense. Noble glanced around for a moment as if his friend would appear as summoned.

"Congratulations on your debut, Miss Cartwright," Noble said, because it seemed like the Thing to Say, even though he had likely said it earlier when he first arrived. "I just lost track of your brother, actually."

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set by Bee

"Thank you," Henrietta replied, again all smiles. Hopefully her voice didn't sound as tight as her chest suddenly felt, now that she knew her brother was out of reach and she'd have to start her search for him all over again. Was it really too much to ask that he come and shield her from attention for thirty seconds? She had been doing this all night, and surely he must have known how exhausting it was? But no, she supposed maybe he didn't have the faintest idea. Holden had never been a debutante, and he had never taken any interest in her or any of their sisters whatsoever. Sometimes she thought if he could disappear in the middle of the night like Hector had, he would.

Not that she really blamed him. Sometimes Henrietta fantasized about it, too.

So what was she supposed to do now? Just wander the ballroom looking for him? Put on a brave face and dance with someone else? Surely the dancing must come to an end at some point. Her feet hurt and she wanted to sit down, but there was no place to sit in this ballroom tonight, even if she thought her mother might have allowed it. She scratched at her wrist beneath the primrose corsage and made one of the petals fall to the floor, but paid no attention to it. She was scanning the ballroom for any sign of Holden, who might as well have disapparated for all she knew. He was nowhere to be found.

"What time is it?" she asked abruptly, turning back to the gentleman (whose name she also did not know). The clock that normally adorned the far end of the ballroom had been removed for the evening, replaced, of course, with more blasted primroses. Surely they were nearing the end of the evening? Maybe if it was already after midnight, she could just take a few deep breaths and steel herself and get through without her brother's assistance, since it seemed so unlikely she would have it.

  

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Rune made this! <3

Noble watched the petal fall before his gaze returned to her face. Holden's sister was a lot shorter than he would have expected, and her eyes were giant — she looked so dissimilar to Holden that he never would have identified them as siblings if he hadn't known already.

He pulled his pocketwatch out to check the time when she asked. (Sometimes Noble thought about selling the thing — it wasn't worth a lot, but it was worth something, and he'd gotten it from his father and felt a little spiteful about it accordingly — but the watch was too useful to have for him to get rid of it.)

"Quarter to eleven," Noble said, slipping the watch back into his trouser pocket.That was early, wasn't it? These things tended to go until midnight or later and Verity would surely want to stay until some of the men stopped leaving. Ugh.

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set by Bee

Quarter to eleven. Quarter to eleven. That wasn’t what Henrietta had been expecting at all. How could it still be so early? How were balls so long? Were young women participating in the season really expected to do this every week? Multiple times a week, if they were popular enough to receive multiple invitations? No wonder married women never woke up for breakfast, if they were expected to be out socializing at these horrid things all the time. Of course Henrietta had known about what hours balls typically occurred and how long they lasted, but it was one thing to know it academically from being taught in finishing school and another matter to feel it, when her feet were already aching and there was a dirty footprint on the train of her white gown.

The idea that she might just soldier through was ridiculous, if it was only quarter to eleven. She had over an hour to go before people even started leaving, and she would be expected to be here, in the middle of everything, looking and acting perfect, until the last guest had departed. She needed an escape route, but she couldn’t go anywhere when all eyes were meant to be on her. Her mother would never let her hear the end of it if she so much as slipped out on the pretense of powdering her nose, she expected. She was trapped, then, and without even a brother for refuge.

Henri glanced at the gentleman she’d been talking to and briefly considered asking him for some form of support. He was Holden’s friend, so perhaps he would be so kind? But she wasn’t even sure what to ask him. She could ask him to talk to her for a few minutes so that she didn’t have to talk to anyone else, but at the end of the day he was still a strange man and talking to him would not be any less exhausting than talking to anyone else, regardless of him being young and friends with her brother. Even if she somehow managed to convince him to do all the talking she would still need to school her features into appropriate reactions, laughing at the right moments and smiling and exerting so much energy into just existing.

Perhaps she could convince him to add his name to her dance card, and then stand her up. Then she would be able to sit a dance out, and it wouldn’t be her fault — her mother could not fault her for being undesireable, or push her off on someone else at the last minute, and she’d be allowed to just stand for a few minutes. This would reflect poorly on him, though, particularly if he wasn’t the sort who typically flirted with young women and then left them in the lurch, so it was too much of a favor to ask. Too much of a favor to ask, anyway, given that she didn’t even know his name.

She probably should have left, but at the moment this was easier — she didn’t know him and wasn’t going to be any good at making conversation with him, but at least she had already started this conversation and didn’t need to manage an introduction, so it was the safest way to tread water while she looked for Holden. Henri stood on her tip-toes and scanned the ballroom again, then flashed another superficial smile at the gentleman. “I hope you’ve enjoyed the evening so far?”

  

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Rune made this! <3

Noble hadn't expected Miss Cartwright to stay talking to him; between his sisters and the girl he secretly saw, he was fairly comfortable conversing with women in her age group, but Holden had never given him the impression that his youngest sister was particularly chatty. Also, Noble was one of the least eligible men here, being both very close to her in age and also significantly poorer even if one didn't know the Greengrass family situation. So — he was sort of a waste of her time, and he knew it. But he wasn't going to be rude, either, that wasn't in his nature; and with her on her toes, maybe she was just being polite when she looked for Holden-or-an-actually-eligible-man.

"Oh, certainly," Noble said easily, because that was what you said when you were at a girl's Coming Out Ball, and also because he was having fun. He scanned the crowd briefly just so he could re-identify Verity's location in the crowd. Noble's height was a real benefit her. "My sister seems to be enjoying herself, as well." He gave a vague indication of his head in her direction.

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set by Bee

Oh no — his sister. In order to respond to a comment like that, she really needed to know who his sister was. Which meant that she needed to know who he was, which she didn't. It was going to be obvious now, no matter what she said. If she asked who his sister was it would turn out that she was someone Henri knew well and had probably gone to school with, because that was just her luck with these sorts of things. If she tried to make some pleasant but vague remark about his sister, she might get caught saying something that didn't make any sense in context and give herself away that way. No, there was no way forward, and this conversation had ceased to be easier than striking out on her own. It was time to leave.

"I'm so pleased to hear it," she said, with a too-wide smile. "Well, thank you for the well-wishes. I'll be off to —" find my brother is how she intended to finish that sentence, but she had decided to start walking before she'd finished it and someone had apparently stepped on the train of her dress again without her noticing, which meant when she tried to take a step she found herself instead pitching forward towards this stranger, in probably the least graceful way anyone could ever have managed.

  

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Rune made this! <3

Noble had some generic goodbye pleasantries on the tip of his tongue when Miss Cartwright tumbled towards him rather ungracefully. Oh, shit — this was the only thought he had time to have before he reached out to catch her by the shoulders; he was hoping to stop her from fully falling on top of him.

(Hopefully Verity could not see this; he would never hear the end of it if she did, even if it wasn't his fault.)

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set by Bee

Henri had thrown her arms up on instinct to catch her fall, and now she found herself tangled up with this man she had been trying to say goodbye to, and — oh, no. Before she could process anything else she heard the sound of fabric ripping. Her train! Her gown was going to be ruined. Her beautiful coming out ball gown, the only thing about tonight that she had really enjoyed, and it was ruined.

Henrietta felt tears welling in her eyes, but she couldn't cry. Not in the middle of a ballroom, when everyone was supposed to be looking at her (only no one was — no one cared about her, as evidenced by the fact that some man had just walked on her hem without even noticing it). Not when she was very nearly being held by a man whose name she didn't even know. She needed to get out of here, to see what could be done about her hem and maybe to just sit and cry on her own for ten minutes or so. There was no need to stand on pretense at this point and pretend the ball was going well. It was a miserable failure, and no one would begrudge her slipping away for a few minutes. In fact, perhaps they wouldn't even notice!

She pushed back on the gentleman's arms until she was in a standing position, and would have turned to go except — except the primroses, the primroses that she hated, that she hadn't wanted to wear on her wrist at all and which she had never, ever expressed any interest in despite what everyone was certain to think from all of these decorations — the primrose corsage was caught on his cufflink. With a noise of exasperation, Henrietta began clawing at her wrist, trying to get the thing off. She didn't want it, and she had never wanted it, and although she knew vaguely that it was not this man's fault that she was so utterly forgettable at her own debut she wanted nothing more at the moment than to hurl it against his chest and storm out of the ballroom, never to be seen again. At a table nearby, one of the primrose bouquets burst into flames — followed by three others, and then two more, and then it was every table in the ballroom whose centerpieces were going off like fireworks, spewing angry sparks and little puffs of smoke. Henri failed to notice, fighting as she was to get the corsage pin off of her wrist and mangling the flowers in the process.

  

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Rune made this! <3

Noble winced at the sound of fabric ripping, and her eyes looked a little watery, and his first instinct was to try to comfort her like he would have tried to comfort Grace. Except he couldn't do that because he didn't actually know her at all, and also her corsage was stuck to her cufflinks, and Noble gave a tug of his own wrist to try to free them both. But when he was doing that, the primroses on the tables started going up in little explosions of fame. Noble stilled.

"Shit," he said, never mind that she was a lady, never mind that she was sort of having a moment — the primroses were on fire and that had fully caught his attention. He gave another experimental tug of his wrist to free it, less because he was concerned with her and more because he was trying to spot Verity — if she caught on fire on Noble's watch, Ford was never going to forgive him.

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set by Bee

Henrietta had just managed to get the pin undone (somehow; she could barely see through the curtain of tears threatening to spill out of her eyes at any moment) when she heard him swear. Henrietta was not the sort of person people tended to use profanity around, ever, so this startled her enough to look up at him, and then to follow his eyes towards the nearest table. She felt a flash of panic as she saw sparks and flames, then a sinking feeling of dread as she realized it was the primrose centerpiece that had caught fire.

As if trying to distance herself from anything that might connect her to the primroses, Henrietta slipped her wrist out of the corsage, which was still hooked onto the man's shirt sleeve. Taking a moment to gather her skirt up as high as she could (this might result in her flashing her ankles at someone, but it was a necessary evil to avoid putting her dangling train in the way of anyone's feet as she fled — and hopefully everyone would be too distracted by the fires to pay her ankles any mind, anyway), Henrietta turned and made her way as quickly as possible out of the ballroom, intending to disappear into her bedroom for the rest of the evening, or perhaps for the rest of her life.

  

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Rune made this! <3