OPEN
"Tom, for God's sake, I am nearly a married man."
It was an excuse only to be deployed as a last resort, but Sidney could perceive no other explanation that would allow his brother to see reason. The elder Parker, Tom, dressed in grasshopper green, and half as given to springing up from nowhere, turned back to the scrutinize the revels, and clearly found them wanting.
"But there are an abundance of young ladies with no partner to stand up with them!" he exclaimed. "It won't do. No, my dear brother, it will not suit!"
"It's still early in the evening," Sidney hissed. "Give them time. They will attach themselves sooner or later."
"Ladies are not limpets, Sidney," came Mary's gentle reminder.
"Humor me for one night, Sidney. Please." Tom regressed to pleading rather sooner than usually scheduled. "Humor this!" Implored with a grand gesture to a ballroom decorated in excess to put any reasonable man in the poorhouse.
What his brother might need most is an asylum, Sidney reflected, as he gave no answer and stalked off into the crowd. He kept his back rigid, his eyes a black beacon warning against his rocky harbor, his hands retired purposefully behind his back. Their intended mission that evening was to not reach out to any daintier figure, unattached or otherwise.
It was the sight of Charlotte Heywood, breathtaking in a blushing rose pink—wearing the dress that he had bought for her, yet dancing with a man not himself—that changed Sidney's course. He was in need of immediate distraction, and thus, immediately brought himself into the domain of the next available lady, a falcon in the dive.