"Hustle! Hustle!" Matilda steered a group of kitchen maids into the servants' hall, where footmen and parlour maids readied themselves to waltz another fresh bounty of toasty trays. "These ain't exactly gonna serve 'emselves, and we can't keep da guests waiting!"

"Sweet Merthingham above! Why can't these people just go without it."

"And why can't money just fall from the sky, Auclair?" Elizabeth Durrell eyed the inexorable deviant who, although appearing passive and mundane, failed to minimize her wit—and volume—exponentially. "See who'll be footing your bills then."

Why, the sky! Lucy fought an urge to riposte, answering instead with: "I'd rather not be paid at the moment, madam," fully aware that even the upper staff would agree that they've had more than their fair share of the 6-day fiesta. The all-prudent Durrell wouldn't dare wield impracticality to perfection, was she withholding a pocket change worth of strength—leftovers for admonition—when every other servant was equally exhausted.

Unless...

Lucy dreaded aloud, cursing how, unerringly, she was right.

"One more reason to forever be wary of the woman's eagle-like mettle in addition to her razor-sharp ears?"

"It'd boil any sane person's blood, without a doubt." An emphatic voice tickled her eardrums as she picked up her flounces and fell in line with eight similarly groom girls wearing uniforms fit for the day's royal processions, so deciphering who exactly proved impossible. Each girl squeezed into layered green dresses embroidered with unalloyed gold; white laced aprons with surplus flounces at its edges; the fanciest pair of golden laced Camille boots; and carefully hand-crafted lace caps.

However, ordinarily dressed was a hazel-eyed maid Lucy knew too well. Lucrecia—a chambermaid loitering about the busy kitchen when there was a surplus of chamber pots needing to be emptied, bedsheets changed, lady's maids in need of acquainting with the palace or her many other pending duties. If anyone needed reprimanding, it should've been her. Durrell wouldn't miss an opportunity to berate an unlucky deviant, yet the housekeeper went about as if nothing were amiss, causing Lucy's blood to simmer to the subtle verge of boiling.

She simply walked into the kitchen, leaving her girls behind to beckon some subservient someone; a tool who'd transmogrified down the hall adjacent to the kitchen, gleeful at the prospect of finally being paid attention.

"Yes, good madam?" After many years of boot-licking, too, it'd appear. That much desirousness is distasteful on any person.

"Switch out with Lucy."

"P-pardon me, good madam?"

"WHAT!"

The maid blanched; shocked then amazed, as her head, stiff in its movement, creaked along her shoulders to shoot a picture-perfect visage of evil at her nonplussed foe. Happening within trying, elongated seconds, it pushed Durrell to roar a beastly: "Now!" seething with a tenor of which she habitually expressed heavy derision. Then in sensing the situation's severity—"Yes ma'am!"—Lucrecia speedily rushed over indulgently to Lucy's side, nudging the tense figure who, fighting against a growing lump of shock, voiced a foolhardy protest.

"I-is this not against household decretals? Madam, as the installed second parlour maid—"

"I do not care what you are or what you are not!" Durrell shot a finger at Lucy's affronted expression, screeching with a voice steeped in raucous decibels and laced with baleful intent. "I've had it up to here with you, Auclair! Why Mr. Laurence is taking so long washing you off my hands with all your arrogant atrocities, whatever the ruling circumstance, is above me! But young lady, this is my service! A duty which, unlike you, I take very seriously!"

"I do, too," Lucy tested another approach; a sympathetic one. "However—" She'd let her mouth run off the rails again and there was no one there to help, neither was she willing to drag them into a mess she made. Expulsion hadn't been the end goal, considering how little an income she managed already. Therefore, placating this in any feasible way possible was top priority... even if it meant capitulating to penitence.

Before she could complete her sentence, brusquely, Matilda annulled the vain attempt, eyeing the callow 17-year old—a charming but rambunctious individual who, sadly, failed to straighten up with time, thereby elongating the game of resolving avoidable conflicts; previously better-dispersed occurrences.

"Elizabeth, I'm sure she didn't mean it," Matilda beseeched mercy with the intimate use of her first name. "Lucy's just tired."

"We are all tired!"

"But da celebrations aren't even 'alfway done," she fought on. "And there's always work ta be done."

"Three impudent nights are as much of her I will permit, Matilda; short-staffed, no staff, or a prolific of men notwithstanding!" Eerily sensing Lucy about to input again, "NO!" The woman's scleras coloured blood-red, revealing several layers of ugly, contorted wrinkles which in turn bore definitive, stark valleys, stretched across her temple and forehead. "YOU DO NOT GET A SAY IN ANY OF THIS! KEEP YOUR TINY MOUTH SHUT, YOU HEAR ME!"

Further painting Durrell the picture of blatant evil—and sending a ripple of nonplussed gasps through the servants' hall, kitchen, bedrooms— "IMMEDIATELY, GO MAKE YOURSELF USEFUL IN THE SCULLERY!"—even the scullery itself—the real show-stopper fulminated.

But she didn't seem to care, disappearing with victuals and servants after backing her verdict with: "There is dignity in all labour! So get back to work before you sample it! All of you!"

* * *

His eyes, ever so dynamic, wore several themes tonight; bathed in the yellows of the room, it appeared almost greenish-blue, then a grayish-blue when displaced from light, echoing a calm before a storm. Clearly, he was discontented, and Cecilia saw it yield ridges on his velvet-smooth visage.

"Perhaps the meringue isn't to your liking?" she mustered some courage to stir conversation which, upon re-evaluation, was improper; discussing the richness of a host's courses fell shot of decorum. For him, however, she hoped to afford some humor.

"I dislike this formality," Deidrick flashed the Riamond a practiced smile—the type of a rake's whose jaded pursuits caused his eyes to shine less, brows barely rise above its temples, or mouth curve quite enough to reveal a charming set of white teeth. Then, suddenly bubbly with questionable interest, "Isn't it too fucking sweet?" his eyes latched onto her mystified, ocean-blue pair.

Noticing his whisper inch a tad bit close, a perplexed tint flushed Cecilia's porcelain skin. "I am rather impartial towards it," she replied, recovering from the ungentlemanly comportment which she inwardly enjoyed—in stingy doses, however. Governess Shawl, a decrepit elder who taught of all society's demands of a well-bred noblewoman, would certainly be anything but pleased hearing she mingled with uncivil persons after 10-years of study.

"Well..." at her boring response, the grayish-blue revived his previously aloof eyes. "That's no fun."

His deadpan interlocuter indulged further in the pastry, its texture (seemingly) melting wonderfully on her tongue, and the lemon tang balancing out its sucre. "What isn't?"

He replied a candid: "You! You're no fun!" bothered that she derived simple pleasures from a cloying piece of pie when many exhilarating worldly options one could pursue in its stead lay desolate. Folding his serviette, he beckoned a footman with a menacing stare for another refill of the only stuff remotely getting him through the perpetual evening. "Neither is your fiance. Where has he been the past few days, by the way?"

Cecilia felt her utensil slip from her grip. "Do you think..." she first eyed him dubiously. "Assuming you are his brother and you know each other quite personally—"

"Assuming?"

"I meant n-no offence—"

"Are you implying something, princess?"

"I... well—"

"Do you insinuate I am illegitimate or of the sort?" His voice lowered again to a medium, not too hot nor too cold, eliciting an embarrassed gasp from her genteel-bred disposition which in turn was instinctively muffled with a pair of hasty, slender hands.

"Your highness, that is hardly an appropriate conversational topic for the breakfast table."

Drawing a contented sip from his goblet, Deidrick smiled—a more genuine kind this time, which nonplussed Cecilia further. "Dear pet, you started it."

_ _ _

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