April Snippets of Story

Good Grief! I thought I wasn't going to have anything at all to post of April Snippets with Katie, seeing as I haven't written anything all month. But today I managed to begin something. I won't promise anything (as I've learned I hate keeping writing-related promises I've made. :P) but this could possibly turn into my next project. I call it Third Time's the Charm and so far it is a ducky little story with rather a lot of personality. Which is what and how and why I write. Anyway, whatever the outcome, do enjoy these snippets of story!

     “Who are you hiding from?” The governess—or whatever she was—asked. 

 Lord Blythe Halyard did not like that wicked, laughing gleam in those grey-green eyes. Her eyes were exactly the hue of that racing horse he’d lost ten-quid on at the Ascot races. He had thought at the time the horse was green but of course one couldn’t have a green horse so it must have been grey. He’d never settled the matter to his satisfaction. But whatever the outcome, the horse and this young woman’s eyes were the same color, and it irked him. Governesses had no right to look so triumphant and mighty over nothing. “I was not hiding, madam. I was resting. It’s deuced hot in this room and I was tired of standing about like a wax-figure.

-Third Time's the Charm

      He perched on edge of the ottoman like a great gorgeous waist-coated bird and contemplated her face. “You are not very pretty.”      

The woman smiled, and laughter silvered the grey of her eyes—yes, they were grey. “No, I do not have a pretty face. But I have an interesting one, and there are many beautiful women who cannot boast as much.”    

  This was above Lord Halyard’s immediate comprehension. He put up his expensive ocular-device—devil take him, he’d forgot its name again—and inspected her for the second time. Or perhaps her eyes were green. Green or grey? That was the question. They had a peculiar and irking indecision in them. “I thought it was every woman’s duty to be beautiful,” he said with an abruptness born of being conquered by a question of color.      

 “A woman’s duty? And so it is, I suppose, as much as it is every man’s duty to be polite and complimentary. Neither of us measure up to our requirements—I suppose we shall be outcasts of Society by and by.” She laughed again, and to Lord Halyard it seemed she rather relished the idea.

-Third Time's the Charm

  “So you know the Benevolent One?”      

“Know him? I’d still be Blythe Bunting of Tillburrow Topham if he hadn’t gone in and got me a lordship and a house.”    

 “Is that a correct term?” Madeleine Starr asked with a shade of indecision passing over her brow.      

“Is what a correct term?” 

  “‘lordship’ used in that fashion.”      

“I’ll be hanged if I know. But I used it and I think it stands to reason if one uses a term in a sensible way it doesn’t matter what Noah Webster thinks of it.”

-Third Time's the Charm

It had come with a bright red wafer of wax and the address in an elegant hand:          

    Blythe Bunting    

    Tillburrow Topham      

    Shropshire, England    

 He’d thought it was a condolence letter at last, letting him know that Auntie Chaffinch had died and left him his expectations at last. Only it had been pressed upon his intelligence by the stable-boy at the Plow & Onion that such letters were sealed with black wax, not robin-red. After that, he’d not been over-eager to read the letter, as he expected no money from anyone and money was the only thing he wished to receive in the mail at present.

-Third Time's the Charm

There is only one thing I ask and stipulate in this, my latest will and testament. That you will find an American heiress by the name of Madeleine Starr and ask her three questions in the first three years of your acquaintance: 

1.    Can a candle burn when the air is deep?
2.    Who can fathom the paths of sleep?
3.    Where will the trail of the future leap? 

Do this and all will be well. Fail to act in the manner I've noted, fail to help Miss Starr find the answers, and all will be lost.                               

                                               I am yours warmly,                                                  

                                                              The Benevolent One

-Third Time's the Charm

He’d often wondered why his benefactor had not christened himself ‘The Mysterious One’ or ‘The Puzzling One.’ But of course ‘benevolent’ was a much pleasanter and less suspicious word to have on a latest will and testament--whatever that was. As long as the inheritance was sound, that was all that mattered, really.

-Third Time's the Charm