benedict bridgerton has been looking for a new muse, where better to look than the delicate fingers of the new harpist who he keeps seeing around town?
if he is apollo, then maybe this time he will catch this falling icarus
| benedict bridgerton x...
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The Beaumont's country house towers over the Travelling Opera Company as they gather on the white-painted steps leading up to the detached villa. Every window has a wrought iron balcony that it leads onto and their heads crane back as they count the floors. One. Two. Three. Four. Five. Cornelius cannot begin to imagine how long it has been since he was last in a house with this many windows, this many staircases, this much marble everywhere. He can almost imagine the delicate columns inside separating every room. When he walked out of the Howe's house for the last time around three years prior, he never expected to be stepping back into a house like this again, whose presence seems to be almost unbearable when you feel this small in your black boots.
"I cannot believe there are people who can live in a place such as this," Ellen comments, nose turning up at the maids scurrying about carrying all sorts for the ball tonight.
One small woman whose back seems to be aching if her groans are anything to go by is carrying a planter all by herself even though her arms do not seem to be long enough. Bringing the outside in for tonight's ball, it seems, a common theme for those of the Ton who have their own country houses just outside of town. Cornelius wishes he could drop the handle of the trolley he has used forever to transport his harp to help the poor woman, but he cannot leave his harp unattended while outside. It is his greatest treasure, the gilded mahogany, the beautiful strings, the way it feels sitting between his thighs. If he was to lose it, it would be like losing an extension of himself, one of his limbs, one of his organs.
Most simply, if his harp was taken from him, so too would be his heart.
Adelaide twirls in front of them, skirts billowing around her feet. She smiles and it lights up her face. "I think it would be lovely to have this much space." The front garden stretches out for miles ahead of them, the gravel driveways giving just enough space for the number of visitors they will surely have tonight. No other ball has managed to employ the Travelling Opera Company despite the excitement that has followed their first public appearance two weeks prior when the new season was merely days away.
Invitations to play at ball after ball after ball keep falling onto the doorstep of the small townhouse that Siena's benefactor is paying for them to stay in. And every time, Frederick keeps waving them away, not caring to stray from the stage of the opera house until an actually exciting opportunity comes along. What is more exciting than the first public appearance of the Prussian Prince? According to Frederick, who forced Cornelius to trim the loose hairs of his beard an hour before they had to leave while Lavinia sewed new gilded buttons onto his waistcoat, quite frankly there is nothing of the sort.
