April 6th, 1891 - The Cruise Ship Santa Antonina

Camilla had thought it not -unlikely that Mr. Prewett would make an escape before Matilda came back — maybe he ought to be Fitzroy now that he had seen her naked, but she had not come around to it yet — and took advantage of the moment to put on her robe. She wasn’t sure he could get it together enough to put her corset back on — where Mr. Prewett was clearly freaking out, Camilla was actually fairly calm about the situation. If she pretended pregnancy was no risk at all, then she did not think this would end up in any sort of way that reflected badly on her, if only because everyone would be hesitant to have another scandal in the family. (Also, well — she had never really been held responsible for her own actions.)

Matilda and Domitian had more urgency than she thought, because Mr. Prewett had not successfully made an escape before the door to her room with Bellona opened again. Camilla looked up from where she was — on the edge of her bed and re-tying her hair. She stopped, finished the tie, lowered her hands.

”Hello,” she said, although she had the sense that it was inappropriate — that anything she might say in this case would be inappropriate. Hm.

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   Harriet Prewett

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There was nowhere to go. This cursed vessel was large, but nothing shy of an entire continent would be enough to hide Fitzroy Prewett from Matilda’s husband whose sister’s virtue he had just plucked and they were far too far from shore—and further still from a familiar shore—for the wizard to be even vaguely comfortable apparating. Instead, though he dressed hurriedly, once clothed he was practically vibrating with nerves and a need to be elsewhere but no means to make it so.

And then it was too late.

Any blood left in Fitz’s face drained altogether as he locked eyes with Domitian Zabini.

  

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When Domitian had agreed to chaperone his two sisters for the duration of the cruise, he had expected the role to be merely perfunctory. He had almost welcomed it, because it would be someone to talk to except just Matilda (not that he disliked her company, most of the time, but they did not talk so often that he thought it at all likely they would be able to find something to say to each other every day for two weeks). He had not expected that he would have to expend much energy actually looking after them — it was a boat, and there was nowhere to go, and they both had enough sense not to fall overboard. So when his wife had pulled him out of the ballroom to inform him that she had caught Camilla in bed with Mr. Fitzroy Prewett that evening, he was unpleasantly surprised, to say the least.

Obviously this needed to be dealt with immediately, but Domitian wasn’t yet sure how it ought to be handled. He thought he knew what his father would do, had he been aboard — but this entire mess was his father’s fault to begin with, so he wasn’t sure the absent patriarch should really have any say in what Domitian did about it. It was his father’s desire to desperately cling to the notion of blood purity as a stand-in for value that had seen Camilla unmarried at twenty-five in the first place. Had he encouraged her to marry a halfblood, she might have had a man twice as worthy as Mr. Prewett by the time she was twenty-one. Had he involved himself a little more in the matter and arranged something for her, as he had done for Domitian and Lavinia, she may not have had a worthy match but at least she would have been married, and they would not have been in this position. It was Cosmo’s inability to decide whether or not he considered them his children that had created this mess — he wanted to hold them all to the same standards they had been raised with, but provided no support to allow them to do so. Now they were here, and both of Dom’s youngest sisters were a little out of touch with reality as far as their prospects were concerned, and one of them was ruined.

On entering the room his eyes met Mr. Prewett’s, but Domitian was not interested in dealing with him — not yet. He surveyed the rest of the scene, noting his sister in a robe at the edge of the bed. She wasn’t dressed enough for him to pull her outside without potentially making a scene if anyone happened to be wandering by, but he wanted a moment alone with her. Obviously, it would not do to allow Mr. Prewett a chance to escape — he might do something desperate, and it would do none of them any favors for him to end up splinched on the sun deck.

“Have a seat, Mr. Prewett,” Domitian ordered coolly. He glanced back at his wife and raised an eyebrow — watch him — before returning his attention to his sister. “Camilla,” he said, more gently but with no additional warmth. “A word.” For lack of any better options he gestured towards the ensuite bathroom, which would make a poor war room but would have to serve.

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   Camilla Prewett

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Bree made this!

Matilda was still pink in the cheeks from having encountered her sister-in-law in bed with her cousin, but it could have easily been mistaken for residual anger as she re-entered the room with her husband, her arms crossed over her chest and her eyes narrowed. She did not speak—there was no need to when Domitian was here—but at her husband's glance she narrowed her gaze in on her cousin and raised her brows, making her meaning clear. You're no going anywhere.

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Camilla hadn’t expected Domitian to summon her, although really she had not decided what to expect. Her brother would handle this — or handle her, she guessed — however he wanted to, and she did not know what to predict. Maybe she ought to be concerned — but she still didn’t think that anything really bad could happen to her. The worst had happened when she had been outed as a halfblood. Everything else was just snowflakes.

Camilla nodded. ”Of course, Domitian,” she said, a vague nervous tinge in her voice for all that she was trying to project calm surety, like this was the sort of thing that happened to people every day. She stepped into the ensuite bathroom and waited for her brother with a generally expectant expression.

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Domitian waited for the door to close behind them, then drew a breath. There was no need to rush this conversation, he thought. Delay would only serve to make Mr. Prewett more nervous, which would be better for all of them — a man who was nervous was more malleable. Domitian hadn’t decided yet what he wanted to do with Mr. Prewett, but malleable was a good trait regardless of which direction he ended up pushing.

“What were you thinking?” he asked Camilla quietly. His eyes were on her and his mouth was set in a thin line, though not quite a frown.

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Bree made this!

This was a question she should have expected, and one she had not entirely reconciled with herself. It would have been easy to say that she wasn’t thinking, that she had no idea what she was doing until she had done it, but — that was not entirely true, and she knew it. There had been all of those moments before, and even during, where she had a stark realization that she was acting in a way that she was never, ever supposed to.

She had no real qualms about lying, especially to protect herself — but with Matilda and Domitian already aware of what had actually happened, there was no point to lying. And she truly did not think that Domitian would out her as a whore; not on a boat, and not with their family history.

Camilla brought her hands together in front of her and leaned against the sink. ”I was thinking,” she admitted, meeting his eyes even though this was far more vulnerable than she ever liked to be, ”That it was better to be a whore than to be nothing.”

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   Angelica Selwyn

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Dom was trying hard to keep his expression as neutral as possible, but at her response he could not help how the muscles in his face tightened. Nothing. Cosmo Zabini was a fool, and this scenario was one that he had built himself. Domitian had the utmost respect for his sister — she was intelligent, a witty conversationalist, a magnanimous hostess and occasionally when one of her creative projects really suited her, a visionary — and somehow living with their father had reduced her own self-image to this. The distinction was between whore and nothing, as though there was nothing else left to her. It would have been better for all of them if Cosmo Zabini had just disowned them all the moment the news had come out, instead of pretending to love them and holding out his regard and respect as though it was something they would be able to earn — as though he was even capable of bestowing it upon them, after the revelation about their blood status. At least then they might have been freed from his expectations.

“You might at least have chosen a better man for it,” he responded, anger evident in his tone. He was not angry at her, of course, because this was all their father’s fault — but Domitian knew he was never going to be able to tell his father that, just as he hadn’t said a single sincere word to the man since the scandal ten years ago. Maybe if he lingered around as a ghost after he was dead, Dom could tell him what a fool he was… until then, he was still playing nice, for Nico’s sake more than for his own.

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   Angelica Selwyn, Camilla Prewett, Nicodemus Zabini

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Bree made this!

It was his tone, more than the look on his face, that had her breath catch in her throat — Camilla did not see Domitian emote particularly often, and his anger felt real and shocking to her in a way that Matilda’s hadn’t. He hadn’t even done anything with it yet, and she was still surprised, and her eyebrows arched despite herself.

Whether Mr. Prewett was a bad man or not seemed immaterial — he was at least an attractive man — and Camilla took a steady breath before she spoke again. ”What’s next?” she asked. She was, she knew, at Domitian’s mercy — although she expected that the consequences may just involve a lot of quiet threatening of Mr. Prewett and perhaps a shorter leash for herself. (Or — maybe the hasty arrangement from her father she had hoped for.)

As long as she wasn’t pregnant, there didn’t have to be anything.

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set by bee

Indeed, what was next? It was up to him to decide, but Domitian didn’t know what to do with this unwanted responsibility. He hadn’t been expected to be making these sorts of decisions about his sisters, and as long as they were under his father’s care he’d been able to distance himself from the weight of this whole mess. Camilla probably thought that the best case scenario was marrying Mr. Prewett, but Dom knew what lay down that road, and he was hesitant to doom her to it.

“I hope you don’t think there’s any chance he would have given you a second thought if you hadn’t been caught,” he said thickly. “You’re not stupid enough to think this is romantic.”

That was really the only viable option, though, wasn’t it? Any chances Camilla had at making a respectable marriage would be ruined the moment Mr. Prewett conveyed the tale of his conquest to someone else, and Dom had no doubt he was the sort to brag about it at the first opportunity. Even if he only told one or two of his close friends, these things had a tendency to travel. So she was finished in English society, and their father was unlikely to fund her if she tried to be transplanted somewhere else — besides, they’d burned bridges with most of their foreign family, so it wasn’t as though they had a wide social safety net abroad to fall back on. Now that she’d made this decision, then, it was essentially Mr. Prewett or spinsterdom, and Dom knew the latter wouldn’t suit Camilla.

He sighed heavily, but it was the sort of sigh that didn’t relieve any tension from his body; his shoulders remained stiff. “I suppose what’s next is that you’ll become another Zabini with a spouse who resents them for the rest of their life,” he said, voice full of venom that was, again, not directed at her. “Welcome to the club.”

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   Angelica Selwyn, Camilla Prewett

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Bree made this!

Camilla frowned faintly, although she also supposed that Domitian was right — Mr. Prewett was a known flirt, not a known romantic, and none of his behavior this evening had made her think he was a stranger to intercourse. So — he did not need her to defend him, and she could let it go.

Her eyebrows arched again at the next thing her brother said; more emotion she had not expected from him. The club. She had known about Lavinia’s husband — (it was readily apparent) — but Matilda?

“There are worse things, aren’t there?” Camilla said, sounding a little concerned and a little worried for the first time. She had no idea how Domitian would persuade Mr. Prewett to the altar, but it seemed like an inevitability if he was convinced — and perhaps Mr. Prewett would come around eventually? He could not hold this against her forever, it was not as if she’d planned it; (although, Camilla thought — if she had planned it, things would have been going swimmingly.)

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“Are there?” Domitian replied dryly. He crossed his arms over his chest and looked off towards the wall for a moment before glancing back towards her face. There were worse things, of course, as he’d just been thinking — spinsterhood after being outed through whispers as a fallen woman would have been worse, at least for Camilla. Still, he could see no way this played out where she would be happy with the way events had unfolded, and were he a betting man he would have wagered that she’d live to regret the events that followed even more than she regretted allowing Mr. Prewett into her bed in the first place.

“You can tell me what you think about it five years from now,” he said coolly, then in a slightly more hesitant tone he continued, “If you think this is what you want.”

He could not imagine that she would say no, but for the sake of his conscious he had to at least give her the opportunity to escape this before he locked her into it.

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   Camilla Prewett

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Bree made this!

Camilla swallowed, and frowned again. It was very starkly obvious to her all of a sudden, in a way that she had not predicted or anticipated, that Domitian and Matilda were unhappy. Was she stupid, for not seeing this coming? Did Bellona know about it?

(Oh, Merlin — she was going to have to relay all of this to Bellona later. When she had expected to be telling her sister about a kiss, it had all seemed just sort of fun and funny, like what happened on the boat didn’t count. Now it was all very real, and if Domitian had his way she would be married.)

Was this what she wanted? Were all of them — the halfblood Zabinis, the ones who were unfortunate and whispered about and maybe-doomed by Calliope’s baby — doomed to end up tied to people who wanted to cut them loose?

It was the thought of Calliope’s baby that decided her. She could find a way to wear Mr. Prewett down, if he hated her. She could not find a way to live in that house forever with Calliope and Calliope’s baby.

“This is what I want,” she said, “This is the best solution.”

This was a way out, if it worked.

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   Domitian Zabini

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Dom took a deep breath. He felt as though he was standing on the shore and watching her push off into a stormy sea in a rowboat filled with holes, insisting she would reach the other side. She’d never been to sea, though, and she didn’t have a map. She had no idea what she was agreeing to. It wasn’t as though he could tell her, though, because it wasn’t the sort of thing one could just describe, even if Domitian had been a man of many words.

Don’t have children, he considered telling her, but stopped himself. It wasn’t as though she would have any say in the matter, practically speaking. And a statement like that would raise too many questions, besides. They didn’t have time to get into any of that, with Mr. Prewett still waiting mere feet away.

With a frown, Domitian stepped away from the door, then nodded for Camilla to return to the room ahead of him.

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Bree made this!

Fitz decidedly did not take a seat, having always resented being told what to do. As the Zabinis disappeared into the toilet, however, he was left with little to do but perch (not sitting!) on the narrow writing desk and cast occasional, uncomfortable glances in Matilda’s direction.

He had always been lucky—but it seemed now as though that luck was fast running out.

  

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— graphics by lady ❤ —

Camilla stepped into the room and found herself unsure of where to stand; she settled for standing next to Matilda. She was trying to project calm, with her hands folded in front of her and the sense that no matter what happened, she was about to do something irreversible and perhaps dire — she could not refrain from worrying at the cuticle of her thumb.

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