Not like in France where the age of royalty and nobility is dead and gone, beheaded even, they made sure it would never rise again, didn't they, the revolutionaries? If Sylvie cared for politics and ideologies (only she doesn't), she would think it symbolic that by doing away with one Queen in France, they've stalled women's rights there for years and years, whereas in England, now ruled by another Queen, the English women have the vote and they have the opportunity to inherit on the same terms as men. Perhaps Marie Antoinette should have been allowed to stay at Versailles after all. Sylvie doesn't wonder.
She marvels.
Lord Melbourne doesn't question her implications, or her motives, or any of it. Instead he asks her whether she wishes to sit, pulling out a chair for her at the abandoned table, inviting more intimate conversation and Sylvie's fingers finally halt their fidgeting, instead she looks up at him, beaming brightly, all blue eyes and golden hair. "Thank you," she says, sitting down as primly as she can manage, which - if she's honest - isn't much in her current, slightly shaken state, her daydress at least not cutting at the knee like a flapper-style dress would do. She's not here to dance the Charleston with him. No, theirs is going to be another dance entirely.
She hopes.
"Just some water would be nice." She suppresses the second thank you, meeting his eyes when he asks the question, the completely logical thing to ask, because by all accounts, Sylvie is old enough to do as she pleases, except there is legislation and laws and money doesn't travel the straight way along those lines. And it isn't that she's afraid of losing her inheritance or her allowance, she isn't afraid of being poor, it's that she doesn't find it very fair that she should be!
So, she raises her chin a bit, lips pursing, her first show of angry defiance today, and tells him, "I'm twenty-three, Lord Melbourne. Nothing is mine until I'm thirty and even so." A brief pause. She chews her lip and shakes her head and her voice turns a little bit shrill, though she keeps it down, dutifully. "At my age, seven years are an eternity, I could as well be dead and gone by then!"
It isn't fair, she means. It isn't fair, is what she is really saying. I don't want to, I don't want to, I don't want to.
What she is really saying, begging of him, is, don't make me.
no subject
Not like in France where the age of royalty and nobility is dead and gone, beheaded even, they made sure it would never rise again, didn't they, the revolutionaries? If Sylvie cared for politics and ideologies (only she doesn't), she would think it symbolic that by doing away with one Queen in France, they've stalled women's rights there for years and years, whereas in England, now ruled by another Queen, the English women have the vote and they have the opportunity to inherit on the same terms as men. Perhaps Marie Antoinette should have been allowed to stay at Versailles after all. Sylvie doesn't wonder.
She marvels.
Lord Melbourne doesn't question her implications, or her motives, or any of it. Instead he asks her whether she wishes to sit, pulling out a chair for her at the abandoned table, inviting more intimate conversation and Sylvie's fingers finally halt their fidgeting, instead she looks up at him, beaming brightly, all blue eyes and golden hair. "Thank you," she says, sitting down as primly as she can manage, which - if she's honest - isn't much in her current, slightly shaken state, her daydress at least not cutting at the knee like a flapper-style dress would do. She's not here to dance the Charleston with him. No, theirs is going to be another dance entirely.
She hopes.
"Just some water would be nice." She suppresses the second thank you, meeting his eyes when he asks the question, the completely logical thing to ask, because by all accounts, Sylvie is old enough to do as she pleases, except there is legislation and laws and money doesn't travel the straight way along those lines. And it isn't that she's afraid of losing her inheritance or her allowance, she isn't afraid of being poor, it's that she doesn't find it very fair that she should be!
So, she raises her chin a bit, lips pursing, her first show of angry defiance today, and tells him, "I'm twenty-three, Lord Melbourne. Nothing is mine until I'm thirty and even so." A brief pause. She chews her lip and shakes her head and her voice turns a little bit shrill, though she keeps it down, dutifully. "At my age, seven years are an eternity, I could as well be dead and gone by then!"
It isn't fair, she means. It isn't fair, is what she is really saying. I don't want to, I don't want to, I don't want to.
What she is really saying, begging of him, is, don't make me.