Miss Quinn

182 ~ The First Dance

Brilee and Antoine's first kiss as a married couple was met with cheers and applause from everyone in attendance. They walked together back down the aisle, hand in hand and both beaming. The witnesses followed, along with both sets of parents. After that, it was a bit of a free for all moving away from the chairs and back towards the champagne fountain and other refreshments. Emma had been warned about the hours-long cocktail hour after the ceremony, before dinner, but even that social hour had felt like a lifetime, and she was starting to get hungry.

"They'd better have snacks," Emma mumbled as she and her family followed the crowd. George snorted in agreement, but Venus just said, "I told you to eat something before we came."

"I know, I know."

Thankfully, the French Aristocracy did not disappoint: not only had wine been brought out, an entire table had assembled itself with all kinds of French appetizer-esque foods. Smoked salmon canapes, cheese puffs, baked camembert with sliced baguette for dipping, several cheese boards, fruit, meats, and more.

"Oh, thank the gods," Emma moaned as she grabbed a plate and began filling it up. She didn't even care when she got a few odd looks -- no one stood between her and food.

Venus and George were much more selective with their choices of snack, but they all filled their wine glasses more than was considered proper.

Wedding guests flowed in and out of the manor as the cocktail hour passed on. It seemed the warnings had been right about the length of it -- the sun had already begun to set and it wasn't looking anywhere close to wrapping up for dinner and dancing. Emma, Venus, George, Cadmus, and Orion had camped out in a spot in the sitting room so they wouldn't be forced to mingle, and had begun a game of Arsehole, which Emma hadn't played since her primary school days. It was a rather simple game: everyone gets dealt a number of cards from a 52-card deck, then one player leads with a single, double, triple, or quadruple card -- for example, one 5, two 4s, three 6s, or four 3s -- and the rest of the players go around trying to beat it by playing a higher value (but the same number of cards) or passing, if they can't play. Once a point is won (when no one can play on the cards shown), a new point is begun by the winner of the previous. The first to get rid of all their cards becomes the King, followed by the Minister, the Citizen, the Peasant, and the Arsehole. Then, when the next round begins, the Arsehole has to give their highest card to the King, and the King gives their lowest to the Arsehole. And then starts the game, of course.

The group had situated themselves around the coffee table in the sitting room: Orion in an armchair on one short end, Venus and George on a sofa on one of the longer sides, and Cadmus and Emma on a sofa across from them. It had taken a few rounds for everyone to really get their strategies down, but now that at least an hour had gone on, they were all laughing and teasing one another, pretending to look at one another's cards, and calling Orion a cheater because he always ended up as King.

Emma's heart skipped every time her knee accidentally knocked into his, as well as every time they made eye contact, so anyone monitoring her heart rate probably thought she had some serious heart problems. She also hadn't been able to ignore how close they'd gotten on the sofa -- an hour ago, each had been centered on their own cushions. But now... the distance between them had condensed down to mere centimeters. And she hadn't stopped smiling, either. Hadn't been able to help it. His presence just made her so... happy.

"Oh, you cheater!" Venus shrieked at Orion, who had just won his tenth game in a row. Emma's voice mingled with the others' as they all chorused "CHEATER! CHEATER!" at him. Orion just sniggered at them.

"It's not my fault you all suck at this game!" he shouted over their jeers.

"It's not our fault you're a CHEATER!" Cadmus retorted, sliding even closer to Emma as he leaned towards his brother.