12 January, 1895 — Wellingtonshire

House parties were hit or miss, but even when they were a miss Don Juan was starting to think he preferred them to larger balls. There were fewer guests but in a much more constrained space, and without the structure provided by a set rotation of dances. They had the potential to be electric when the right people were involved, when the momentum kept building and there was the potential for anything to happen. Then there were those with the wrong people involved, and forced to interact by virtue of the venue, and tension building until it boiled over somewhere. This was one of those sorts of parties. Someone was here with their wife and in close quarters with their mistress, and it seemed everyone knew it except perhaps the host. Separately, there was a woman who was quite aggressively flirting with everyone — obviously for the express purpose of making someone else jealous, though Don Juan hadn't yet pinned down who (which meant it probably wasn't working very well). A third ongoing ordeal was the woman drowning her sorrows — sorrows unenumerated, but she was on her fifth drink and had been looking miserable all night.

Don Juan was had just gotten a fresh cup of punch for himself and taken a few steps away from the table when the woman who'd had too much to drink stumbled into it, upsetting the punch bowl onto a crowd of conversationalists. Don Juan raised his eyebrows and edged away from the spectacle, accidentally running his elbow into another woman as he did. "Oh, sorry," he muttered. "Just making way for the cleaning crew. You weren't hoping for punch, were you?" He supposed the chivalrous thing would have been to offer her his glass, since he hadn't managed a drink from it yet and it seemed unlikely the refreshments table would be restored any time soon. He would have to ponder whether or not he was feeling chivalrous. He was mostly just enjoying watching the chaos unfold.

---