E is for Elena

6 Obligation

As it so happened, my father was more than pleased for an excuse to leave the ball early. I, however, was not. Despite the fact that I was restricted from taking part in the true meaning of the ceremony, I enjoyed being present for it all the same. My mother knew that. And so she'd known it would be the perfect punishment to banish me from the ball that promised to be one of the best of the season. And it seemed it had.

Anne had written to me the morning after to describe the events which I'd missed in great detail as a true friend would. It seemed that Sir Dabney had taken an interest in Katherine Morris, a fact which had surprised no one. What had surprised everyone, however, was that it seemed that his advances were not at least entirely spurned. Some couple had already announced their engagement but Anne did not know enough about them to even supply me with names. There was also a fight that had broken out just outside the manor but since Anne's description stated it as between "the fellow with the strange damask lapel and the other with the long beak-like nose", I hadn't the faintest clue what the scrape was about or who had come to blows. I set the letter aside with a frustrated huff as the door to my bedroom creaked open behind me.

"What's got you so upset?" Alexander's voice inquired from behind me. I turned around, frowning.

"Mother had no right," I started and he held up his hands as if in mock surrender before I'd even begun.

"It was just a ball, Elena."

"Maybe for you!" I scoffed. "You spend your days running businesses and furnishing manors. I spend my days here, in this room, wearing pretty dresses and waiting for the opportunity to show them off. Without being properly debuted, those opportunities are few and far between and then, when they happen, she has the audacity to rip them from my hands? How could she?"

"I understand that it may feel as though these balls are a matter of life and death but-"

"Are they not? Alexander, if I don't marry, I have nothing."

"That isn't true, Elena. Don't say that."

"A woman is only as good as her husband, only as respected as her husband, only as worthy as her husband. So without a husband-"

"That isn't right, Elena."

"I didn't say it was right, Alexander. I just said it was."

He stepped forward at that and, taking my shoulders in his hands, sat me down on the edge of my bed in an effort to calm me as he so often did when my future became the subject of our conversation.

"I won't let anything happen to you," he vowed, more quietly now as he sat beside me on my bed.

"I know," I answered just as quietly, with a nod.

"So don't be in such a rush to marry. Just take things slow and see where that goes."

"Like you?"

He smiled at that, "Yes. Like me."

We both grinned at the thought of how crazy it would drive my mother to hear him speaking of marriage in such a way, as if it were a distant dream and not an impending reality.

"What have you and Nathaniel been doing in town?" I asked then, pushing my back against the headboard and settling in more comfortably.

"Getting his business up and running. He's got the office space. Now, he needs the clients. I thought he would need my experience for that, my connections, but it turns out my friend is more charismatic than I give him credit for," Alexander answered and I thought that he might not know just how right he was.

"Mother didn't know about the office," I told him in a whisper. He frowned.

"I suspected father might not have told her."