December 10th, 1892 — Flint Institute Soiree

In years previous Ford may have given this event a miss — aspiring scholars were not necessarily the types of people who might be well-disposed to become suitors for his sisters — but one of Clem’s close friends was a student here, so Clementine had been invited, and of course that meant she needed a chaperone. He could have shuffled it off to Noble or Mama and stayed home, but it wasn’t as though there were many social engagement vying for his calendar space in the middle of winter, anyway. This was the first event he’d attended in the last week — the first since Noble had found his old letters. Ford was very aware of it. He didn’t know whether Noble was actually watching him or if he was just so paranoid about Noble watching him that he felt watched regardless, but it didn’t much matter; the end state was the same. He’d felt a little manic all night, hyper aware of every interaction he had with another person and how they might be perceived. Every conversational turn, every facial expression, every gesture and obviously every touch, however brief or respectable, was dropped into a category in his brain immediately after it happened: interactions with men that were probably safe; interactions with men which might be seen as damning; interactions with women that seemed too superficial; interactions with women that might provide a counterpoint to whatever narrative Noble had built up in his head.

He didn’t even know what he was trying to convince his brother of, at the end of the day. He’d admitted to having had a relationship with a man. There hadn’t been any room to equivocate on that point, given that Noble had already seen the letters. Was he trying to convince Noble that he could pass as normal, so to speak? That he wasn’t a liability? Was he trying to convince him that he was attracted to women as well? Was the end goal here that Noble would become less suspicious of Ford’s interactions with other men, to convince him it wasn’t much of a problem even if he couldn’t deny the past? He didn’t know, but he was still convinced that the attention to every action was necessary. Treating this like any other night at any other party would have been a mistake.

(At least Tycho wasn’t here tonight. Thank Merlin for small mercies).

“Oh, sorry, I think we’ve already been introduced, but I’m afraid I’ve forgotten the name,” Ford said to a young woman who he’d found himself in the vicinity of during a conversational break between dances. It was the sort of situation where he might just as easily have moved past her with a quick smile as saying anything, but tonight he thought the latter would score him more points in the invisible tally he was keeping. “You know my sister Clementine, don’t you? I saw you talking with her earlier.”

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