Welcome to Charming, where swirling petticoats, the language of flowers, and old-fashioned duels are only the beginning of what is lying underneath…
After a magical attempt on her life in 1877, Queen Victoria launched a crusade against magic that, while tidied up by the Ministry of Magic, saw the Wizarding community exiled to Hogsmeade, previously little more than a crossroad near the Hogwarts School of Witchcraft and Wizardry. In the years that have passed since, Hogsmeade has suffered plagues, fires, and Victorian hypocrisy but is still standing firm.
Thethe year is now 1894. It’s time to join us and immerse yourself in scandal and drama interlaced with magic both light and dark.
Ford shrugged; he was annoyed by Cash's tone but couldn't have said exactly why. "I drank," he pointed out. Cash had said this like it was some big secret, like Ford was admitting to petty crime... and admitting to loving their father was worse than petty crime if he were talking to Noble about it, but Ford felt like it shouldn't have had to.
"Lots of people love their fathers," he pointed out, defensive. "It's normal to love your father." It wasn't normal for fathers to leave their families in financial ruin, but Cash didn't know about that part — he shouldn't have been acting like this was some big gotcha moment.
"I never said I was the normal one, Ford," Cash pointed out mildly. This would have, he thought, been a good time to tell Ford what Ford had told him years ago about the Greengrass finances — but Cash had decided almost immediately to spare Ford's dignity by keeping that a secret.
Ford ground his teeth. This was impossible to argue with, but he was still feeling annoyed; if there was a fight to pick here he might have picked one, and nevermind that he couldn't really afford to be alienating any of his friends right before the wedding. Still — if they were in a picking at scabs sort of mood now, Ford knew Cash well enough to poke at a few.
"Never have I ever been unfaithful to someone," he blurted, before he could talk himself out of it. He didn't know whether this would get a drink out of Cash or not, but he expected it to sting either way; he knew Cash had been in love with someone else when he married.
Cash blinked and took a sip of a drink, remembering the pressure of Theo's body under his translucent one. Feeling suddenly sharp, he said, "You haven't had the chance to. Give it a month."
If Cash taking a drink hadn't already given away the answer, his expression and tone when he spoke again would have. Ford had aimed well if he'd been intending to hurt. He could have taken this and gloated, because this was more or less exactly what he'd said before Cash had married — that he wasn't capable of really being there for a wife, and here was proof. In a kinder moment he might have knitted this information into what he knew of Cash's overall well-being and responded with empathy. He did neither of those things before what Cash said hit him like a train.
"Fuck you," he said. He wanted a drink, something to break up the sudden oppressive heat that had surged in the center of his chest, but given the veneer of the game still hanging over their heads he didn't want to raise his glass and risk the gesture being taken as acknowledgement or agreement.
Cash shrugged his shoulders. He appeared to have hit a mark; if Ford didn't think cheating was a possibility, he wouldn't have responded that way. It was a hollow satisfaction, and he took another sip of his gin. "Fair enough," he said.
Somehow, Cash responding mildly didn't ease his irritation at all. Maybe he did want to fight about something. (Because Cash had brought up his father? That didn't seem enough on its own. Accumulated stress from the upcoming wedding, maybe — or maybe it was the shadow of Tycho that had been danced around, even though Ford had started it).
"It's different," he insisted. He was looking down at his drink. His eyes hurt, the way eyes hurt when you hadn't slept in over a day or had spent too much time crying, though neither of those were true. "I didn't choose this."
"You chose her," Ford argued. He still thought that Cash's woe is me, I had no choice but to do everything my father ever wanted was at least partially an overblown excuse for him to avoid doing anything difficult, but he didn't even have to get into that for his point to be valid. Cash had decided marrying Adrienne Selwyn was the lesser of several evils — whatever his feelings on all the various evils involved, he'd still decided. Ford had just been found in a coatroom with Jemima Farley; he hadn't even remembered her name in the heat of the moment.
He shrugged his shoulders. "And you chose to marry her instead of letting her take the scandal," he said, without any real heat to it. Ford might not think he had a choice, but he did — or, at least, he had just as much of a choice as Cash did.
"Didn't feel like much of a choice with her father in my parlor," he returned, surly. Cash's point probably still stood — Mr. Farley couldn't really have forced Ford to do anything, at the end of the day. He didn't seem like the sort to threaten actual violence if Ford had just flatly refused. And he had been planning to let her take the scandal — he'd said as much to Verity on the walk back home from the party that night. But two days later, with Mr. Farley in his parlor talking about consequences, it turned out he hadn't had the stomach for it after all. (If he had not spent so much of the intervening time thinking about what he might do if Grace had ended up in circumstances similar to Miss Farley's, things might have gone differently).
He felt a little on-edge that he was having to defend himself at all, on this point — he'd done the right thing. People weren't supposed to blame him for it. People weren't supposed to question it. Cash was making him have a conversation that was never supposed to occur.
Her father in the parlor, Cash's father in his office — Cash did not see a particular difference between the two. He shrugged. Ford was determined to think that he didn't have a choice, or that this was the only right one, while he maintained that Cash had. A line of worry appeared between Cash's eyebrows as he considered: this would probably continue to impact their friendship, forever.
He exhaled. "You're going to be alright," Cash said, trying for something that was not argumentative.
The shift in Cash's tone took at least half the tension out of Ford's shoulders.
"I thought I would," he admitted. "Let her take it." He shifted his weight, pulled one knee up to hug his chest, nearly knocked his glass over and had to scoot it off to the side to be clear of his foot. He shrugged diffidently; the next thing he said somehow felt like he was admitting to a character defect, although it was supposedly the opposite: "I just couldn't. I can't explain." Not to Cash, not to Noble, not to Tycho.
Cash tilted his head, considering. What would he have done in the same place? (Well — he would have died, for bringing scandal to the family.) If he ignored the Vow, he could see it both ways — especially because there was a time where, had Angie landed in scandal, Cash would have married her in a heartbeat.
"You're giving her a life," he said, slowly, "She would have been — ruined forever."
This way, she had the scraps of something, even if it wouldn't feel like much at first.
Not much of one, he thought. She was coming to live in a house which had no room for her, amongst people who didn't trust her, with no money to speak of to provide for her future. But he couldn't have admitted that to her, and he couldn't say it to Cash. When he'd gone to see her last week they'd agreed to try and make the best of things, and that was just what he would have to do — even if the best of things wasn't much at all.
He picked up his glass, tilted it back and swallowed half the drink. "I think you're up," he said, as though either of them still wanted to play.
