18 August, 1892 — Daphnel House, Wellingtonshire

The Wildsmith party, at which he expected to see Miss Dempsey once again, was tomorrow. Although his developing aquaintance was far from the only thing going on in his life at the moment, it was far and away the primary thing on his mind. He could continue his work using only half his brain, in a pinch. He'd purposefully stepped away from tending Beatrice's prospects this season so that he could secure his own. He'd expected the search for a bride to be more grueling, honestly. To be sure, he'd had his fair share of awkward conversations, forced dances and stilted parlor visits; he'd paid his dues on the marriage mart. But he had always anticipated that when he married he would be choosing the lesser of many proffered evils — whoever he could stand best out of the myriad of women he had nothing in common with and no inclination to seek out of his own volition. He hadn't expected to like her, but he did like Miss Dempsey.

It almost felt like a trap, honestly. There had to be something he wasn't considering, some hidden catch. If she was really as suitable as she appeared, and good company besides, how had she made it to twenty-six without marrying? But he'd done his due diligence and had uncovered nothing. Nothing to do now but move forward, slowly and steadily, and see if he found anything to dissuade him.

He wasn't ready to tell his mother yet — not keen to get her hopes up if it ended up being a false alarm, given how much anxiety Bea routinely put her through — but he thought at this point he was ready to tell someone. After dinner that evening, then, he waved Jasper towards the study and poured them both a drink. "I think I've found her," he announced. "The future Mrs. Victor Daphnel."

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Fabulous set by Lady!

Jasper, thus far, mostly enjoyed living his life as the nondescript second son of the Daphnels. He worked, escorted his sister around when Victor could not and really, just faded into the background most days. Or so he felt anyway. Not that he shied away from social connections like Bea did but he was a little slower at it than Victor or Oscar.

Jasper had followed his older brother into the study and had just taken a sip of his drink when Victor spoke. He coughed up a bit of the liquid in his mild surprise. He had known Victor was looking, of course, so he didn't know why he was so surprised. Yet he was. "You have?" He asked as he hastily grabbed out his handkerchief to wipe himself off.

  

Victor didn't miss his brother's slip, but also didn't make much of it. He sat back in the chair behind the desk (ostensibly their father's chair, though when was the last time the old man had been here to sit in it?) with a grin and put one foot up on the edge of the wooden surface. "Should I take your surprise as a lack of faith in my ability to be decisive, or in the collective merits of the female sex, I wonder?" he asked, clearly not expecting any kind of answer. He took a sip of his drink and glanced idly towards the windows.

"But yes, I think so," he continued. "I haven't asked her yet, of course, but barring any unforeseen circumstances arising I think she's it. She's delightfully bright. Intellectually curious, yes, but exceptionally pleasant, too. Bright in every sense," he joked, "Save bioluminescence."

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Fabulous set by Lady!

Jasper figured the question was more teasing and rhetorical so didn't bother trying for an answer beyond a shrug. Though honestly, he was a little surprised. Victor had not shown an interest in a woman as far as he had been able to tell.

"You say that like intellectually curious people tend to not also be exceptionally pleasant," Jasper could not help but tease, aware that he was being a little pedantic. "Does this woman who rivals bioluminescence have a name?"

  

"They're often not," Victor contended cheekily, picturing some of the disagreements experienced healers had with each other at the hospital, or the disdain of certain scholarly authors when they discussed the work of peers who disagreed with them. The Flint Institute even hosted formal debates on occasion; being occasionally unpleasant was nearly a codified component of being intellectually curious.

This was hardly the point of the conversation, though. Victor swirled his liquor once in his glass to better aerate it before he answered. "Miss Dempsey. Miss Christabel, I mean, not the eccentric spinster Dempsey. Obviously," he said, offering his brother a look that expressed exactly how unlikely it was that Victor would ever consider a romantic relationship with Porphyria Dempsey.

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Fabulous set by Lady!

Jas simply snorted in response to the others cheek. He watched as his brother swirled the liquor in his glass. The mention of a Miss Dempsey had been a surprise enough but then Victor provided her first name as well. Jasper felt a little frozen, the glass slipping out of his hand and hitting the ground before he could stop it.

"You don't say," Jasper said, as if his world wasn't crashing down like the glass and liquor scattered at his feet. "How did you come to meet?"

  

The noise of the glass on the floor startled him. He returned Jasper's question with an incredulous look, wondering what had just happened and why his brother was apparently planning not to address it. Jasper might not have had the steady hands of a healer, but he wasn't typically known to be this clumsy, spilling drinks while they were both just sitting still on level ground.

"The usual way. Are you going to clean that up, or should I?" he asked, with a nod towards the puddle on the floor. He didn't wait for a response before retrieving his wand and vanishing the mess. Should he offer to replace the drink? He still didn't understand what had caused Jasper to drop it. An extreme reaction to something he had said, perhaps, though he couldn't imagine what would have warranted it. Had Jasper had a particularly unpleasant interaction with the spinster poet Dempsey and he'd been shocked before Victor clarified?

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Fabulous set by Lady!

What was the usual way? That told him absolutely nothing. He nodded vaguely, not really hearing the question. Was that his blood rushing through his ears? He was supposed to have more time before making his own move. "I am actually quite acquainted with Miss Christabel Dempsey. We went to school together."

  

"Oh," Victor said, at first unsure whether he cared about this information. He probably could have guessed that they'd been at school together, if he'd given the subject any thought, but to be frank his brother's estimation of how she had performed as a schoolgirl was far less impactful than his mother's or friend's thoughts about how she comported herself in society since then. Unless there was something serious that Jasper knew about her that had never come up? There had to be some reason his brother had dropped a glass when he'd heard the news.

"Oh," he said again, with a more serious frown. "Was she quite a beast when you were in school?"

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Fabulous set by Lady!

"Oh, not at all," Jasper assured his brother as Victor asked if she had been a beast in school. She had been absolute perfection. "She was great with a tendency to speak her mind. I considered her a friend so it just... surprised me to hear her name come up in this context." Did that cover up the glass shattering? He hoped so because he didn't want to have to explain that.

  

Victor frowned faintly, unsure if this fully explained Jasper's reaction or not. He didn't know how to question him further on the subject, though — since he didn't know what had sparked it, he didn't even know what to start asking about. "Oh. Well," he said, deciding to shrug it off for now. "She still does that. About Muggle politics, anyway." He would have found it considerably less charming had her avenue for passionate self-expression been wizarding politics.

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Fabulous set by Lady!

"I reckon she likely has just about as many opinions about wizarding politics as well," Jasper chuckled in fond remembrance. "Do you plan to propose soon or will you properly court her first?" Anytime was too soon for Jasper.

  

Victor was surprised that this question even needed to be asked. Miss Dempsey had piqued his interest, but she was hardly so special that he felt inclined to rush to the altar, and risk both of their reputations to some extent in the process. "Courtship, of course," he said definitively. "Gives some time for any red flags to come out of the woodwork before I've really committed to it. I haven't said anything to mother yet," he added; the unspoken request attached was so don't you bring it up either.

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Fabulous set by Lady!

And gave Jasper time to come to terms with things. Or find a way to sabotage it. But he loved both and when the time came, he would find himself unable to do anything of the sort. Not when it could mar the happiness of either his brother or the woman he was in love with.

Life was hard.

"Well, you have my congratulations, brother. You have chosen well."