Maybe One Day [H.S. One Shots]

THE STABLE BOY (Harry & Emma - Part I)

[AU; third person; present tense]

A/N: After racing through the wonderful @everlasts' 1789, and far too much Bridgerton, I'm swooning for the Regency era, so here's an impromptu little throwback... I hope you enjoy it! Xx

18th April 1816

Out of sheer boredom, she tries to distract herself by tapping her silk slippered foot against the leg of her wooden dining chair, to the cadence of her mother's infernal, droning commentary from across the polished dining table.

The tinkering of silver cutlery against fine crockery and porcelain from around the table lends some light percussion.

Heavens, it feels as if they have been sitting here forever.

Every day, at precisely five o'clock, they gather for dinner; ostentatiously showy, despite it just being the four of them. Well, plus the few servants, hovering attentively against the ornate and gilded walls.

She can't even imagine how bored they must be. At least she has a chair, and food and wine to focus on to help pass the time.

The second-hand embarrassment she feels makes her cringe. What they must think of her mother, trilling on with inconsequential prattle about idle gossip from the latest lavish parties of London's high society? With the upper class all falling over themselves in a bid to impress the extravagant new King, George IV, the subjects of her frothy musings fare no better than she in the re-telling.

Repressing the impulse to swipe the remainders of her roasted venison loin off the table and on to the carpeted floor in a fit of rage, before jumping up and begging that they be allowed to discuss politics, or economics, or history, or religion, or art, or literature, or music... Gosh, anything real and meaningful?

But, having butted heads with her mother for years, she has learnt that this fight is a lost cause.

The Baroness Jemima Conway. And don't you forget it.

Her mother had only married into the title; inherited through generations of her father's family.

A Baron is admittedly the lowest rank of the peerage of the British aristocracy, but her mother is nothing if not an avid social climber.

Casting a surreptitious eye to the servants around the room, she won't for a minute suggest her family is anything but extremely fortunate. Literally just entitled; born to the right family, and the right time.

Having inherited a stately home and wealth too, her dreamy, docile father, Charles, has long been free to indulge in his beloved books. For an academic, he's actually fairly forward-thinking and liberal - well, relatively so, for his race, class, sex and age.

They are similar in many ways, and she adores him for a myriad of reasons, but she'll always be frustrated that he will never achieve or enact change, just locked in his gilded library.

She is evidently wired to be a little more action-orientated.

But, throughout her adolescence, she has learnt when to bite her tongue. Endlessly butting heads with her ever-disappointed mother just isn't worth it.

Barring their fiery auburn hair and matching temperaments, they are polar opposites.

Ultimately, it boils down to her fundamental belief that there has to be more to life, for a girl such as herself, than merely being married off, to bear children that will be raised by wet-nurses and governesses, for her to instead focus on living vicariously through others.

She can only assume that she has only one life to live, and she'll be damned if she wastes the opportunity.

Noticing one of the servants roll their eyes behind her mother's back makes her toes curl - enough to disrupt her measured tapping.