Ch 1 - The gala

1283 Words
It had been a long night of forced smiles and faking an interest in everything these powerful, if not full of themselves, men had been saying. Yes, they were powerful and rich and many a woman would cosy up to them and fluttering their eyelashes at them hoping to gain their favour. Some wanted to be a prized mistress, adored in their gilded cage, others wanted a rich backer for their newest play or project, hoping to become a Star. Some, not many but a few, just wanted to be able to further their careers, stand toe to toe with them and be an equal. Lily fell into none of these categories. She was there to see her idol, one Ariadne Arvenal, who was the guest speaker and benefactor of tonight’s event. Tonight, was the opening of a new exhibit at the British Museum . One made up completely from items brought back by Lady Ariadne from her expeditions and donated to the museum. Lily adored Lady Ariadne and wanted to be like her, Free, powerful and able to set her own life path. Alas, lily thought, I can never be like her, I could never go against my families wishes, I would be disowned and then where would I be. “Lily……Lily, flower, are you listening to me?” her fathers query brought her back from her thoughts. She apologised to her father,” I am sorry daddy but I just saw Mr. Winters arrive and was thinking on our upcoming nuptials and what I still need to do, it is only a fortnight away and my dress is yet to be finished” She felt bad for lying about her thoughts, but her father would never understand her dissatisfaction with her lot in life. Lily was 27, a beauty by any man’s estimate but old, too old to marry, many thought. Her 3 younger sisters had all married and had children by their 19th birthday. At first, she had had many men trying to catch her eye. Any event her family hosted was treated as a chance to win her hand. But Lily had refused everyone. She could never quite put her finger on the reason but every man who offered had something missing, something she yearned for but could not name. As time went on the offers dried up. The men wanted a young beautiful wife and she was not young enough in their eyes. Too Old, too stubborn, too Spoilt they said. Lawrence Monroe had indulged his eldest daughter and against his wife’s wishes never pressured her to marry, that was until he became deathly ill four months prior. The outlook was grim, no doctor could find what caused his illness and he was deteriorating rapidly. Resigned to his fate Lawrence had put into motion a plan to secure his beloved flowers future, worried about what would become of her after he passed and could no longer provide for her. Society was not kind to spinsters, and he would do anything to protects her even if she hated him for it. And so, her marriage to Edward Winters, the wealthiest self-made man in the country was arranged. Mr. Monroe leaned over to his daughter and softly said. “Go welcome Mr. Winters my flower, he will soon be your husband and people should get use to seeing you on his arm” Giving a small curtsy she left her father side and made her way to the circle surrounding Lady Ariadne, where Mr. Winters happened to be. Her father’s insistence that she go to Edward had worked out well for Lily as she desperately wished to get close to her idol and hear the fantastic stories, she undoubtedly was relating to the group. “Mr. Winters” she greeted as she curtsied. “Edward my dear, we are to be married” “Yes, Mr. Winters, and when we are, then I shall call my husband by his given name. Before would be to assume a level of familiarity which would be unseemly between and man and a woman” Mr. Winters shook his head and smiled; he would never get use to all the formalities of the upper class. He was an Orphan who had gotten by selling newspapers and matchsticks on street corners and living in an ally, until the local priest, after seeing him every Sunday morning at the dawn service toke pity on him and taught him to read and write. Edward got a job writing filler articles for a little-known newspaper that needed some fluff to fill its pages and make it more appealing to the average person. His column had gotten so popular that he was given a full page, then 2, then 2 more. Within 4 years he was the editor. He saved every penny he could and bought himself his own printing press, a fourth or fifth hand one, but it still worked. He hired a few orphans to help him, as he knew their prospects where bad, and they were cheap, two birds one stone he thought. He wrote every article himself with help from his orphans, who would come back every night from all over the city with snippets of overheard rumours and news. He would then stay up until 4am composing the content of his 12-page newspaper before rushing to print it and have it out of street by 6am. His paper was small, only 12 pages a day, but wildly popular. Soon his new newspaper became more popular then the small newspaper he had worked for, though nowhere near the widespread popularity of ‘The times’. His paper was called The Winter News and as his paper grew and became widely known, he thought it about time the orphan Edward, with no last name acquired one, and so Mr. Edward Winters was born. “As you say Miss Monroe” Mr. Winters murmured as he took her hand and placed it in the crook of his left arm and turned back to the circle around Lady Ariadne. “you see it was my brother Orion who stopped that arrow trap I had so carelessly sprung” Lady Ariadne exclaimed raising her champagne glass in the air and laughing. “to my dear brother, wherever he may be, and his quick thinking which prevented my lovely self” “Hear, hear” the men interrupted “oh hush you lot, you’ll make a woman blush. Now what was I saying…. Oh, yes, to my dear brother wherever he may be, and his quick thinking which prevented my lovely self from coming back with more holes then the gods gave me.” "To Orion" they all toasted, raising their glasses. Lily clapped and smiled as she didn't have a champagne glass to toast with. "Did Lady Ariadne say Gods, no God?" Lily wondered while she clapped along. No one else seemed to pick up on Lady Ariadne's blaspheme so lily concluded she must have been mistaken. Ariadne saw the slight furrowing of Lily's brow and chuckled to herself. Lily had always been smart, noticing the things others did not. Yet somehow she never gave herself enough credit and always assumed she had misheard or was mistaken never the pompous jackasses that made up the men of the aristocracy. Lily was her biggest fan and probably the only person she considered a friend even though their interactions where small and brief. She trusted no one with her secrets, no one was allowed too close to her. Everyone knew her, everyone could name her works and galas and charities, everything she did in public. But if they stopped and thought about who her confidants and friends were, who the people she socialised with and entertained in her home were, they would come up blank. If not for Lily's self doubt her secrets would have been discovered long ago, little did she know tonight would be the night Lily started trusting herself.
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