#*in character threads

The flower sellers had been absolutely abuzz with activity that morning, a veritable hornet’s nest of gentlemen rushing from stall to stall, to the point where Kate almost reconsidered her plans for the day. Almost. It seemed like the fact that the Season was already past halfway through had finally occurred to the men of London, and they were all desperate to prove their affections to their intendeds. Frankly, it was a miracle Kate was able to navigate the crowds and emerge with her own bouquet, a miracle she credited mostly to the fact that she was small enough to slip in between people, rather than worrying about shouldering her way through. Still, it took enough time that she was very nearly late to her visit, and by the time she arrived on the Hastings’ doorstep, her cheeks were flushed, her eyes bright with exertion, and her hat wasn’t sitting quite as tidily upon her head as it had that morning. Her mother, who had agreed (rather too quickly, Kate thought) to be her chaperone for the day, was trying to pin the damn thing back into place as Kate attempted to swat her away, hissing that she was fine as she reached up to knock on the door. Reluctantly, and with one last careful pat, Mary Ann stepped slightly back, letting Kate take a breath. Immediately, she wished she had not pushed her mother away; the lack of attention on her hair left her with little to think about other than her own nerves, and she cast an anxious look down at the flowers in her hands, wondering what the Lady Hastings would say. 

Windflowers, violets, lavender, agrimony, bluebells, and lemon blossoms were nearly overflowing in her hands –– symbols of devotion, of fidelity, faithfulness, loyalty, humility, constancy. For a moment, she began to worry she’d overdone it, but there was nothing to do for it now. She shot a quick glance back at her mother, looking for –– reassurance, she thought, but didn’t have enough time. The door opened to the sound of a happy set of barks, a valet on the other side of the threshold and the sound of Orion’s nails skittering across the hallways somewhere within, undoubtedly racing towards the sounds and smells of new people. “Miss Lockhart?” The valet asked, and she nodded, heading inside quickly, her eyes moving quickly in anticipation of either Will, Orion, or both. Unfortunately, the valet was incredibly efficient, and before she knew it, they’d been shown to the sitting room, where Mary Ann took a seat and Kate began to pace.

She made only one rotation before her mother’s hand shot out and yanked her down onto the settee next to her, and she smiled sheepishly at her, biting down on her lip as she did. “Sorry,” she murmured, twisting her wrist out of her mother’s grip and clutching at her hand for a quick moment, squeezing once before releasing her. “I just want her to like me,” she whispered half a second later, her voice small and vulnerable, her body abuzz with nervous energy. So much nervous energy, in fact, that she jumped into a standing position when the door opened, only to visibly relax upon seeing William walk in. Just as they had in her own home, they met in the middle, her free hand already reaching out for his before she even realized she was moving. “Hi,” she gasped, feeling, suddenly, like she hadn’t been able to take a full breath since crossing the threshold until this very moment. “It’s good to see you.” / @baronwillliam​

Spending time in Hatchard’s was, in a word, dangerous for Catherine Lockhart. Not dangerous in the traditional sense, of course; there were no dark and suspicious alleyways lurking in the bookshop, and the potential for scandal was minimal at best. No, it was dangerous for Kate because something curious seemed to happen to time when she walked through the doors of the bookshop. It seemed like every time she stepped inside, she took a step out of London and into another world, a world where she could lose herself within the endless pages of novels. And lose herself she often did –– the last time she was here, Kate was convinced she had only spent an hour after lunch glancing at the titles and taking down this book or that one to examine the first few pages, only to look up at one point and realize that the sun was setting outside the shop windows. Needless to say: dangerous. 

Still, the little wild spark in Kate that had originally belonged to her sister Amelia and the love of stories that had always been shared equally between the four Lockhart sisters had latched onto Hatchard’s, and she could not quite help herself today. There was only so many times she could re-read the well loved copies of Gulliver’s Travels or The Castle of Otranto, and her soul felt like it was starving for something new and captivating. 

Presently, she was thumbing through a copy of The Castle of Wolfenbach, brows pulled together and head tilted slightly to the side as she read brief sentences here and there. Normally, Kate would have retreated to one of the settees near the front of the shop, rather than crowding one of the narrow aisles of bookcases, but she had (as per usual) lost track of time. At the sudden sound of someone snapping a book shut an aisle over, she jumped, shutting her own book guiltily, and pressed the novel to her chest, glancing at the shelves again. Ah! There! Near the topmost shelf, a few copies of The Necromancer, translated from German into English. Her heart sank when she realized that even if she were to locate a stool, the book was too far out of her reach; while most of her peers had shot up even slightly in height during their early teenage years, Kate still stood barely above one and a half meters, much to her own personal consternation. 

At the sound of footfalls coming from one end of the aisle, Kate’s head shot up and the air left her chest in a sudden sigh of relief. “Pardon me!” She called, her voice pitched just barely above her normal speaking tone, The Castle of Wolfenbach still pressed to her chest like a dearest possession and a hopeful smile gracing her features. “Terribly sorry to bother you, it’s just –– could you perhaps help me retrieve a book?” 

She tries to be stately when she walks; really, she does. If Elizabeth could see me now, she’d pinch the inside of my elbow until my posture improved, she thought wryly. Still, her pace didn’t slow. Instead, Kate’s steps were as close to leaping as her skirt would allow as she hurried off of the well trod and densely populated park path. If she looked behind her, she’d see that her chaperone was struggling to keep up while hampered down with the bulk of her art supplies, but, as was typical, she did not look behind her. Instead, Kate’s eyes focused ahead, scanning the gentle slope of the grass and well kept flowerbeds before her, searching for familiar dark curls among the soft colors of spring in London. It took her a handful of minutes as she rushed along, her skirts lifted just enough to keep them out of the damp grass, but when she finally spotted her friend, all the air seemed to rush out of her lungs in a grateful sigh of relief. 

Her steps were light and rapid and somewhat graceful ( if one could ignore the absolute neglect of decorum, of course ) as she crossed the last bit of distance and stopped in front of Jacqueline, bobbing into a quick curtsey as she did. The effect was marred by the fact that the grass was covered with the same gentle dampness that seemed to permeate so much of London, which meant that Kate didn’t stop so much as she slid, grinning all the while. “My lady,” she intoned, trying in vain to school her features into something somber, and failing miserably. Her mouth split back into a smile in less than the span of a heartbeat, and she all but collapsed onto the other woman’s neatly arranged blanket. Kate reached forward as she sat, pressing the palms of her hands into the soft fabric, feeling the gentle give of the earth beneath it, and inhaled the warm and familiar smell of her friend; the freshness of rosewater, the spicy scent of cardamom, rounded out with the depth of vanilla. Where so many ladies of the Ton –– Kate herself included –– tended to favor soft florals, Jac always seemed to smell like she’d just emerged from an exotic and specialized bakery, and the heady perfume put Kate instantly at ease. 

“It is good to see you, my friend,” she said, still smiling as she straightened up her spine and tucked her legs beneath her. “Are you well?”  

Getting her parents to agree to letting her out of the house after the delivery of the latest Whistledown sheet had been difficult to say the least, with Kate saying the bare minimum to her father and enduring her mother’s reproachful look the entire time, until finally, finally, they agreed to allow her to visit an old friend under the watchful gaze of her mother. 

They had not, of course, expected Henrietta to be shut up inside of her room and taking shelter under no less than five blankets (she’d always had a flair for the dramatic), proclaiming loudly that she was not feeling well, thank you very much, and please go away. Kate, undeterred, kept knocking on the bedroom door without pause or hesitation until Henrietta finally shouted that it was unlocked, and she burst inside, leaving her mother on the stairs without so much as a by your leave. 

Locking the door behind her, Kate toed off her shoes and tugged off her gloves, dropping them without care on the dresser as she passed it and lifted one edge of the blankets, peering into the darkness beneath in search of her friend. “Hen? Are you even in there?” Kate hissed, her eyes adjusting to the dim light of the room and the dimmer light within the blanket pile until, finally, she located Henrietta’s large greenish blue eyes, blinking at her balefully. 

“Oh, Hen,” Kate sighed, and began to crawl into the bed herself, the blankets weighing down her progress until she was laying down beside Henrietta and all light had been extinguished by the thick layer of linen and wool above them. “How are you breathing in here?” Kate asked after a heartbeat’s worth of silence, tugging down the blankets above them until both their heads were exposed to the semi-fresh air of her friend’s bedroom, taking big gulps of air as she did. Her head flopped down onto one of the pillows and she stared at Henrietta, sighing heavily as she did. “I’m sorry,” she murmured. “I can’t believe she said that.” She didn’t need to explain who she was. / @springslate​

Kate had been on the boat for less than an hour, getting settled in for the trip, making sure she knew where everything was, trying to locate her book, only to abandon it in favor of a few peppermints to keep any nausea at bay. There was a frenetic sort of energy to the voyage, an anticipation that seemed to crackle through the air like ozone just before a lightning storm, and she was not immune to it. It felt like every moment she needed to be moving, to explore, to wave at the people left behind, to gaze ahead at the opposite shore, cultivating a landscape painting in her mind. Then, of course, the most dreadful of horrors: the bow of her bonnet, freshly loosened after her mother’s ministrations, was loosened further by a sudden breeze. Then the breeze got stronger, and suddenly the bonnet was gone, flying haphazardly across the deck of the boat, carried on that dreadful, clandestine wind. 

This was the worst case scenario: her mother had been right. 

Absolutely and utterly mortified, Kate took off after it with all due haste, her eyes wide in near panic, because good god, if it were to fall in the river, she’d never hear the end of it from her mother. Besides that, she’d have to dig one of Elizabeth’s old ones out of the attic and refresh it, and she’d worked so hard on this one. She was not quite quick enough, however, hampered by her skirt as she was, and the breeze carried it barely over the railing. Just as she was sure she was about to witness the drowning of her poor bonnet, a gentleman’s hand snapped out with all the quickness of a striking snake, snatching it neatly out of the air with only moments to spare. The ribbons hadn’t even gotten wet. Kate skidded to a stop, sagging with relief, her face flushed with embarrassment, and looked up to thank her savior, only blink and then smile, broadly. Dahlias. “It’s you!” She said, delighted, before catching herself and shaking her head at her horrible manners. “Thank you for saving my poor bonnet,” she smiled, still flushed as she spoke. “My mother would have scolded me for weeks if I’d lost the thing.” 

The flower sellers were a riot of colors and smells, and while not one of Kate’s usual haunts, she was greatly enjoying her time walking amongst the stalls this morning. Her fingers twitched every now and again, clearly itching for her sketchbook as she examined this bloom or that one. There were so many she couldn’t even identify; here was a flower that looked very much like a daisy, but with darker petals and streaks of black near the center, and an abundance of stunningly large blooms in various colors, from the softest pink to the most flamboyant sunset orange. Her head tilted, and she inhaled slowly, taking in all the mingling scents of the blooms. It was nearly enough to make her dizzy. 

Ostensibly, Kate was here to gather up a bouquet for their drawing room, and perhaps a posy for Jacqueline, to apologize for her presumptuous behavior during the picnic auction. In actuality, she was looking for any excuse to spend some time away from home –– not that she and her mother had fought, but her lack of callers had begun to distress her mother just enough that Kate could not focus on her book due to her mother’s constant drawn out sighs. Had she any amount of forethought, she’d have slipped her book into the folds of her skirts and found a park bench to spend her morning in peace. Instead, here she was, lamenting that she had not at least grabbed her sketchbook and a handful of conté crayons, and wondering if Jac would prefer hyacinths or jasmine flowers. 

After a quick perusal –– and realization that the heady scent of jasmine was making the edges of her temples start to ache –– Kate decided to return to the unusual flowers that had initially caught her gaze, only to nearly collide into a gentleman who was approaching the same stall. 

“Oh!” She gasped, skidding to a quick halt and pressing a gloved hand to her chest as if to calm her racing heart. “My apologies, sir –– I did not see you.”