#tutstarter

It was in Juliet Park that Fanny cultivated her love of botany. She would come here and dream that the whole park was hers. From the flowers, to the trees, to each blade of grass, she imagined that she had grown it all and now everyone in Herrington was able to enjoy her lovely garden. 

There was one corner of the park that she always seemed to gravitate toward for its especially flourishing flowers. She came to each flower and recited both its Latin and common name and always stopped to smell the roses. 

Fanny was doing just this when she looked up to find that she was no longer alone. “Oh,” she said, blushing. “I did not know anyone was there. Please excuse my muttering.”

Alejo stood outside St. Augstine's, bent down near the flowerbed that lined the church’s yard. David was working inside on restoring some parts of the study, the wood long since molded and weak. The priest couldn’t lie that he sometimes looked up at the beam as thought they may one day send him to heaven early, but either way, he’d decided to step outside his parish halls and have some fresh air for once. Especially since the builder kindly suggested that getting out of the stuffy church might be a good idea. 

The warm glow of summer had the father smiling to himself softly as he pulled on his gloves and tended to the soil, a Spanish navel tune passed his lips as hum, and he only stopped when he felt a shadow hang over him, glancing up and blinking at the sunlight that greeted him.

“How may I help?”

Dusk was right around the corner and Arabella was already beginning to shut down Maxime’s. The fires in the ovens were already put out, and what little staff she had, had already been sent home. Luckily, with the popularity the bakery and eating house was getting, there weren’t enormous amounts of leftovers to deal with, so she gathered what there was into a basket to take home to her siblings and set it aside.

As she was cleaning up the storefront and doing her final rounds, she caught sight of something left on one of the tables. Knowing that the customer who had sat there had vacated the table only minutes ago, she grabbed the object and dashed outside. If she were lucky, the customer might be milling about the stores nearby. If not, she’d have to hold it for them until their next visit or find some other way to get it to them.

She was just about to give up looking when she saw the very person she was looking for step out of a store a couple streets down. “Excuse me!” she called as she ran over to the person. “You’re lucky I caught you. I think you left this in my shop.” She held up the object for them to see and offered it out to them.

The Coffee house was relatively quiet this afternoon, which suited Andrew’s wants. His head was a little cluttered, and he needed to clear it. He would normally head over to the harbour with his sketch pad and his charcoal, in fact he had them on him, and draw the ships that came and went. However he found that he couldn’t focus on putting anything down on the paper.

So, he decided to visit the local coffee house, try to relax and un-jumble his mind. He ended up buried in a naval treatise that surmised most of the battles that Nelson had led, he mindlessly annotated the book as he supped at his coffee. He had developed a taste for sweetened black coffee, having drank Asian black  tea during his time in China and Korea. 

He was so wrapped up in his thoughtless note taking that he didn’t notice the shadow at his shoulder at first, starting and turning when he finally noticed.

‘Forgive me, I didn’t notice you standing there’ He apologised, turning around to greet the newcomer.

But Fanny had wanted to look especially nice tonight, for this time, Arabella was keeping the younger set company as Fanny had done for the last two dances. So each curl was carefully set, her shoes polished nicely by her little brother, and her dress (old as it was) had been carefully washed.

There was nothing more she loved than dancing. The swiftness, the grace, the giddy romance of it all. She relished it. And what made tonight particularly special was the fact that the Fitzgeralds were hosting it. They always brought in the finest musicians and chefs from London, and every party they had was always a crush.

She smoothed her dress once more and when she looked up, she realized she had lost her brother in the crowd somewhere. But she was unbothered by it, for she was in such high spirits that nothing would trouble her tonight. She took her place by one of the walls and searched the sea of faces for someone she recognized.

She sighed, inwardly cursing herself for being so lax. It was entirely her fault that her sister had had to come to the ball in the first place, their father wanting her to accompany Catherine, which he would do ordinarily. On the other hand, it would surely do her some good to get out of the house...

Her eyes fell now on the dancers, whirling up and down the room in what appeared to be a complicated jig. “My, this set is lively!”