June 30th, 1891 — Selwyn Manor during the Wedding Reception

At the wedding itself Emrys had been intending to make only as long of an appearance at the reception as was necessary so as not to start any rumors about family troubles, but sometime after it had begun he'd changed his mind. He'd had a few flippant conversations with other partygoers, which was actually sort of fun — he spent so much time at social events being purposefully charming that he didn't often have the chance to be openly sarcastic. And he'd been drinking quite a bit. He hadn't exactly planned that, but he'd seen Professor Vorona mingling with the guests and that had set his mood from bad to worse. It had occurred to him that if Mr. and Mrs. Fawley were the loquacious sort, people might hear that he'd asked to court their daughter and that he'd been rejected (it was this idea that stung, moreso than the loss of Miss Fawley as a potential wife), but it hadn't occurred to him until this moment that she might hear about it. He didn't like the idea of anyone talking about him at all, unless it was to laud praise on one of his parties, but he particularly hated the notion that Angelica might hear about someone else's determination that he was unsuitable, undesireable, and it had driven him to drink.

And if he was going to drink, he was not going to restrict himself to champagne. Luckily, he knew where Trystan's liquor cabinet was. He likely wasn't supposed to go raid it during the wedding reception, but with his mood the way it was presently the fact that his brother might be annoyed by his actions seemed more like a bonus than a detriment to this plan. He'd found a bottle of excellent brandy that appeared to be unopened and was making his way back towards the reception when he encountered his brother.

"Oh, you've caught me," Emrys said, though he didn't sound at all as though he regretted this turn of events. "I thought you'd be busy doing some sickly-sweet father-daughter dance with Liliana, or something."

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Trystan Selwyn Elias Grimstone

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   Angelica Selwyn

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“Oh no, we couldn’t have anyone missing that moment,” Trystan joked easily enough. Besides Ambrosia, of course, who had refused to come down at all - but that was neither unexpected nor terribly unpleasant for him, in truth. (She ought to be pleased, at least, that Liliana’s surprising success would see her out from under their roof entirely. Maybe she would even be in a good mood for the next week or two.)

But his wife was clearly not the only member of the family unenthusiastic about today’s affair, and although Trystan had scoffed a laugh at his brother’s remark his eyes were narrowed, hoping he didn’t happen to be in an unhelpfully irritable mood too. Emrys had always been aloof enough to reliably not care about the rest of them, so Liliana’s wedding should hardly have affected him one way or the other.

But here he was, skulking around off by himself with a bottle of brandy. Expensive brandy. “Yes, and when I came to catch the thief in my house, I didn’t think it’d be my own brother,” Trystan continued, and though he rolled his eyes he held out an expectant hand for his bottle of brandy back. He couldn’t have Emrys sauntering around giving the other guests - or, more likely, his nieces and nephews - ideas about getting into his liquor cabinet.

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Emrys watched his brother extend his hand for the bottle. He seemed to consider it a moment, then sat heavily in one of the armchairs and opened the bottle instead of returning it. This was petty and he knew it — it was nice brandy but it was hardly out of Emrys' own capabilities to purchase it. Still, after his set back that morning, he was more than in the mood to be petty. He cast about for a glass and found one on a nearby table (clean or not, he didn't bother to look) and poured himself a healthy glass. Sitting back in the chair, he used his free hand to wave magnanimously in Trystan's direction, as though they were sitting in Emrys' parlor, drinking his liquor, and he had just generously offered to share.

"It's come off without a hitch, hasn't it?" Emrys said as he took a sip. "The coup of the season, some would say. You must be proud."

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Lou made this! <3

Trystan was used to his younger brothers both being shits from time to time, but it didn’t mean he didn’t find it grating. Honestly, they did pick their moments: it was clearly too much to ask that all the family could get through a day on the same grounds as one another without someone being a pain.

Maybe this meant Trystan had actually matured at last? (That, or the more he tried, the more everyone around him had decided to be childish.)

He folded his arms, but sat himself on the arm of a chair and just shot his brother a cynical look as he surveyed him. “Of course,” he returned, raising his eyebrows. “I hope you’re not jealous that she got there first?” Trystan wasn’t sure if Emrys was even still off on his belated thinking-of-marrying lark, but perhaps it stung a little to see one’s niece (– illegitimate niece, to boot –) making it all look easy.

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Emrys let out a snort and shook his head. "Jealousy would necessitate something to be jealous of, and her groom is hardly my type," he joked dryly before taking another drink. It wasn't a lie, though his objections to Chester Parkinson were mostly on the grounds of his being a lovesick dolt with exceptionally poor taste in event planning and interior design and not to do with anything of substance. Presumably he had all of the assets that made him desirable on the marriage market, though at this point Emrys wasn't sure he could list what those assets were. A lack of wayward brothers seemed to be the chief on the list if Mr. and Mrs. Fawley were to be believed.

(If he'd had any reason to believe that it was only a matter of timing, Trystan's guess might not have been far off. As it was, he had the impression that Liliana had 'got there first' the day she'd been born, or at least on the day Trystan had taken her in as his own, and even now he wasn't in such glum spirits that he might wish himself married seventeen years in the past).

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Lou made this! <3

He snorted. “Glad to hear it,” Trystan shot back in the same dry tone, at the joke about Liliana’s husband. Not his type. Funny.

“Then why exactly are you sitting here, drowning your sorrows in my best brandy?” This was half a joke as well, but Trystan snatched up the bottle his brother had offered him before and summoned himself a glass as well, pouring out a hefty measure. If Emrys was sulking – and this wasn’t just him swanning off, thinking himself above mingling at an average society party, as he did – Trystan supposed he may as well have a taste of it before he blinked and the rest of the brandy was gone.

And he could probably get away with just a moment of being away from Liliana’s barely-sincere society well-wishers.

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"It's not as though you were using it," Emrys sniped, only half in response to Trystan's remark and half in protest at having the brandy bottle liberated from his side. He might have left it at that, except that he expected Trystan would only keep needling him about it, particularly since he'd gone and made himself comfortable with a drink. It was probably better to explain it than to sit in sulky silence under a barrage of questions. Probably.

"Your reputation has sullied mine, apparently," he supplied, with a roll of his eyes. He personally found this quite ridiculous, because he didn't think his brother had the wits to get up to half the things Emrys had been getting away with for years. He'd never minded his brother's bad reputation in the past, and he might have even found it a little funny that Trystan had all of these rumors only because he had the misfortune (or the ineptitude) to get caught (repeatedly), but that had been before it impacted him personally.

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Lou made this! <3

Trystan raised his eyebrows in mock-horror – although, honestly, he was a little surprised to hear it. His reputation was still fine, really – Liliana had managed an advantageous marriage; their family were still an accepted part of society, it could be worse – and the only thing that separated Trystan from every other upper class gentleman and his bastards was that he’d had the audacity to acknowledge one. (Privately, Trystan thought this a rather noble move. A pity no one else agreed.)

“Really?” Trystan echoed. Whoever had told him that? “And have I done something new to tarnish the Selwyn name, or is it still my old sins?” Surely none of his other secrets had come to light (Anthea, the twins, or perhaps another of the bastards raised beyond the household?); indeed, he trusted there wasn’t another somewhere that even he didn’t know about. Even then, it was one thing for it to adversely affect Ambrosia’s life, or the children’s; but what impact should his mistakes have on Emrys nowadays, who was a grown man with his own life, and presumably his own secrets?

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"The old ones," Emrys said as he shook his head. He couldn't pretend to understand the logic of it. Certainly he'd never anticipated that his brother's reputation would cause any problems for him, or else he might have done something differently to prevent this problem. Perhaps he could have made the acquaintance of Miss Fawley's parents earlier and more firmly, and put in a little legwork to ensure they thought he was a nice, respectable sort instead of projecting his brother's bad behavior onto him. He couldn't do that now, though, and the sting of rejection was still too fresh for him to even properly want to. It seemed an awful lot of effort to go through for a girl he only had a mild interest in. She wasn't the love of his life; she was the lesser of all evils he'd found so far, and wooing parents as well as women seemed... tedious.

"Apparently a proclivity towards bastards is a familial trait," he said dryly, with a roll of his eyes. "Though you'd think it that was true someone else would have some. We've all had plenty of time," he pointed out. Both his sisters being unmarried at rather advanced ages meant that if they were having affairs it would be rather obvious. Granted, it was harder to say definitively that he and Daniel didn't have bastards lurking somewhere — since neither of them would have been quite so foolish as Trystan to acknowledge them — but on the balance, Emrys still thought he ought to get the benefit of the doubt. One wayward brother and two obviously chaste sisters should have worked out in his favor, but it clearly hadn't.

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Lou made this! <3

Trystan raised his eyebrows, mildly amused at that last. Granted, he couldn’t picture Daniel having bastards – it was a miracle enough he’d managed to find a wife; he certainly didn’t have the demeanour for more – but Emrys might well have done it. Trystan was sure he had gotten up to plenty in his years abroad in youth of which their parents would not have approved. Even now, unmarried and publicly unattached...

“And who’s been telling you all this, anyway?” Trystan asked, instead of probing further on that matter. Either he had just picked up recent whispers on the grapevine or someone had had the audacity to mention it to Emrys’ face, to lecture him about his own family or his reputation as if they had any right to remark upon it – Trystan folded his arms in something like derision at whoever had the time or inclination for that. Merlin, some people.

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This was hardly the sort of story Emrys wanted spread around about him, since it was particularly damaging to his pride. He would have hesitated to say anything about it to someone like Ester, who regularly talked to people he wanted to sleep with. He wouldn't have wanted it spread around in society, either, but that was a bit out of his hands — the Fawleys might be out telling the world as he sat here drinking his brother's liquor. In the grand scheme of things, Trystan probably was unlikely to say much to anyone who mattered, so Emrys hardly hesitated before answering the question.

"My prospective in-laws," he said, taking another drink. "They were concerned I might run around on their daughter. Which I probably would have," Emrys admitted with a shrug. "But I don't see how it's any of their business."

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Lou made this! <3

Trystan snorted in sheer surprise, but hurriedly swept his shock aside to pull an expression of sympathy best described as oof. He took a sip of his drink and eyed his brother in the meantime, as if by discerning how cut up Emrys was about this turn, he could decide how guilty he ought to feel for it.

As it was, Emrys had shrugged – so he must be over it already? And whoever their daughter was, it sounded like he hadn’t particularly cared for her – but this meant he had been making moves towards marriage, didn’t it? (And what if – Trystan would really rather ignore the thought – that family was not the only who thought themselves above the Selwyn name, and Trystan really had single-handedly dragged them into the gutter? That would be – impressive of him.)

But other families in high society had stains of their own; rash elopements and insipid children and murderers for relatives, even the best of them. “Well, I’m sorry,” Trystan said, perhaps sounding a touch more languid than he should; but he shot Emrys another sympathetic look all the same. “If it’s any consolation, they sound like tedious people,” he joked, probing again at the depth of Emrys’ disappointment on the matter. “You’ve probably spared yourself some misery there.”

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"Most people are tedious," Emrys responded with a shrug. He couldn't really argue it, but he hadn't ever expected to like his in-laws, so he also couldn't take it as much consolation. He viewed the parents of any potential bride more as business connections than friends or family. It seemed unnecessary to enjoy spending time with them when one of his chief goals was to arrange the entire thing so that he spent as little time with them as possible. If he could manage to marry someone who spent every other weekend gallivanting around with her natal family while he 'attended to business matters,' that would have been ideal; it would give him plenty of time to keep up with everything else he wanted to do.

"I set the bar rather low for in-laws," he continued. "Having observed Daniel's example." The Fawleys didn't seem particularly likely to invite themselves over for extended periods of time, so they could hardly be much worse than Deanna Benwick. Not that the comparison mattered much now, of course, when marriage (at least to Miss Fawley) was firmly off the table.

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Lou made this! <3

Emrys really had the most sense of the Selwyn brothers, Trystan freely acknowledged it. (He felt as if Emrys would have been a good successor to his father’s legacy and demands for his firstborn in a law career – not because Emrys had any interest in working, but because he seemed a better fit for doing absolutely nothing except sitting in judgement of other people.)

But Daniel really had no sense at all. “Oh, well,” Trystan said, happy to take an easy shot there, “he really made a deal with the devil there.” And this, from him, who had to put up with Ambrosia and all her family – her sister, who seemed to hate him with a fervour he could scarcely explain. (Trystan put it down to envy, actually.)

“Still,” he said carelessly, stretching out in his chair and deciding that he really ought to go back to making nice with Liliana’s new in-laws, so that yet another family did not resent them for the rest of time, “perhaps you’ll happen to find yourself a new bride today. You know, if you come back to the reception.” He rolled his eyes. Otherwise Trystan would have to leave Emrys to his own devices and hope for the best for his liquor stores.

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