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Léon Belmont (ex_the_ambas216) wrote in toujoursliberer,
@ 2008-03-28 07:54:00

Entry tags:

ambassadors_ball, leon_belmont

An Invitation to the French Ambassador's Ball
Subject: The Ambassadors Ball
Where: The French Embassy
Who: Léon Belmont, the French Ambassador to the English court
Warnings: none as yet
Open to: All (all players may attend either as invited guests of the ambassador, as servants or guests of those invited, as staff, or as gate-crashers.)

The ballroom of the Embassy was already growing busy, and when Citizen Belmont paused for a moment besides one of the large windows, he could see yet more carriages pulling up outside, wreathed in the mist blowing in from the river.

The quartet had been playing now for a good half an hour, new French tunes as well as those the English favoured. His staff was busy handing out good French wine, and then refilling those glasses when they were drained.

It was going to be a good evening, and not only in the eyes of the party-goers. With some of England’s most prominent aristos on the guest list, and some than some newly arrived French nationals, tonight would be a night of information gathering, of sizing up the opposition, and perhaps even ensuring some of those French escapees were returned to face justice.

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social_climber
2008-04-21 07:25 am UTC (link)

"No, it isn't. But they seem to have gone far too far. But what else can you escape from the French?" He smiled slightly, "I don't know why they think it'd catch on over here. I can't see us guillotining the Prince of Wales, can you? We did all that before them." He adds, waving the idea away.

Harry listens silently, his eyes fixed on the rim of his champagne glass. "If only there was a way for you to pop the bubble, miss. Although with you already committed to someone else... I suppose it will be left for you to ensure your own children are not put into a bubble? If, of course, you can charm your husband into putting off those decisions to wed them off." He shrugs, "My sister, for instance, married the man she wanted. And then when he turned out not to be the man she thought he was, left, and found herself another. None of this marry who you're told."

"Tarnish his honour? I promise you, Miss Rochester, you could only had to his reputation, if you remain yourself."

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krochester
2008-04-21 10:54 am UTC (link)

"It seems they have," Katherine agreed, taking a sip of champagne, then letting out an amused chuckle. "No doubt their best ideas are results of ours, though it'd be positively ludicrous for us to want take them back."

Katherine raised her eyes to look at Harry, running her fingers around the stem of the champagne flute. He seemed to have her worries recognized from their conversation, and part of it terrified her. Uneasily, but still confidently, Katherine responded, "If only, but it is pointless to dream of it for myself. The poor fellow is old but not yet dying, but perhaps by the time my own children come of age they will not even have to consider it. Times can change, and I pray that they do." She sighed. "I can only imagine what it'd be like to be able to trust you men without faltering because of my father's murder, and then to love freely. I suppose I'll never know." She hadn't quite meant to mention her father, but it had come out.

Smiling, flattered, Katherine answered warmly, "Add to it when I marry him as an untouched little English rose. Miles fears I won't be so at my wedding, though the poor lad ought to trust me."

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social_climber
2008-04-21 01:08 pm UTC (link)

"All French ideas were originally British ones. Although they don't like to admit it. But with their pride, who among them would even allow the truth to be hinted at?" Harry says, and then shrugs, "Although they would argue the same thing, turned on it's head."

"Do times change as quickly as that, miss? In twenty years will the fairer sex have any more freedoms and liberties than it does now?" He asks, tone neutral, speculative. "At least for you, well-born women? I'm not certain, myself. The lives of women have been the same for hundreds of years, and I don't think they are much different to how they are now." He sighs, "But I'm not a scholar."

"If he is as old as you say he is, you might remain an untouched English rose for a long while after."

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krochester
2008-04-22 01:23 am UTC (link)

"But of course," Katherine agreed with an earnest laugh. "We are at constant odds, but let us see who they come crying to when Revolution is upon them!" She motioned to the room again before downing the rest of her champagne. The healthy conversation had made her bold.

Katherine rolled her eyes. "We cannot discount the possibility. Therein lies our problem, you see. By us women relegating ourselves to never rising above, we are ensuring that that is our future. If we were only to believe we might be more than what we are, perhaps we could be." She glanced flatteringly at Harry, adjusting her skirts again and saying with a warm smile, "Not a scholar, no, but one of a different type of intelligence. Not all knowledge is history and sciences. There is, too, observation, and that is the learning I find most interesting." With a bright smile she inquired, "Don't you?"

And then, with a blush, Katherine added, "Oh, for shame, for shame! A wife not imposing her wedding night duty upon her husband should he not himself wish it? Though it is not a woman's place to suggest such things, lest she be considered a wanton lass."

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social_climber
2008-04-22 08:13 am UTC (link)

"The enemy of my enemy is my friend, as they say, miss." He replies, with a smile, "They may be French, but at least they're posh French. Not Revolutionaries."

"And you believe that women can." He nods, "And for one, I think it is possible. But I don't think it will be soon, miss. Not as soon as it ought, of course. It'll take more than your voice to get you heard. It'll take you, and your friends, and all their friends, and their aunties. Then, maybe. But only if you can convince your brothers, fathers, husbands." He shrugs again, "And for one, I dunno how long that could take."

Harry laughed then, and even when the noise stopped, a wide grin remained on his features. "Observation is not quite the same as filling your head with dates and Latin phrases, miss. It's a survival skill that outside of this," he gestured to the Ballroom, the champagne, the dresses, the dancing, "keeps us safe."

"A woman's place, Katherine?" He repeated, and then checked himself. "Forgive me, miss."

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krochester
2008-04-22 02:57 pm UTC (link)

"Indeed," Katherine agreed quietly, "though at the very least we can appreciate the intrigue the Revolution brings. And this little...French invasion on our own shores. It could prove to be interesting."

With a passionate breath, Katherine replied, "Of course I believe it! Why would I not? To think we could not would be to disregard everything I have ever stood for. And it cannot be just words. It must, too, be actions. My mother must stop her affairs, because they make her appear an easy target. My brother must treat his conquests with some semblance of equality, not simply as a potential mother to his children, but as a life partner. And I must..." Katherine trailed off, coming close to mentioning her writing. "Well, I do not quite know what is to become of me," she concluded with what might have been a small laugh.

Swallowing down the previous emotion, Katherine responded, "Not quite the same, but that does not make it any less valuable. One might recite those dates and phrases until they he turns blue, but that does not make him a scholar, and it certainly does not make him a good man."

Katherine pressed down the heavy flush threatening to rise to her cheeks. She ought not to be talking like this about such personal matters with a man she barely knew, or with a man at all! But that did not stop her. "You needn't apologize. I meant what I said." She paused. "Come now, you know that you would be offended if you were an aging husband whose bride suggested her passions to him and he had not the stamina to agree with her."

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social_climber
2008-04-22 04:02 pm UTC (link)

"It could prove to be more than that." Harry grinned, but didn't elaborate further at the moment, only glanced back over the crowded room. "How many of them have escaped from the guillotine, do you think? 50, 60 per cent? Why would the ambassador invite them here? They're traitors or escapees, surely?"

Harry kept one eyebrow raised, amazing by the passion in the girls words. He waited until she'd finished, and he was sure she'd finished, before he spoke. "Do you think you can make them do that, Katherine? You are sounding very much like a revolutionary. What if some women are happy with their lot? If you mother enjoys her affairs, what will you do? Force them to stop?"

"It doesn't make him a good man, but it makes him seem like an intelligent man, like a man who is educated. That counts for very much in today's society. At least with those of your breeding. If someone began spouting Latin phrases on Butchers Street then he'd be dead faster than you can say sweet tea." He grinned lopsidedly.

"Still, it isn't proper. And if your brother heard me calling you Katherine it'd be pistols at dawn." He grinned, "And as for your ageing fiancée... perhaps he'll manage it. But I were he? I wouldn't have waited so long to get married. And I wouldn't force myself on a young woman than could find a husband her own age."

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krochester
2008-04-22 04:30 pm UTC (link)

"He has invited those he allies himself with, for sure," Katherine stated, perhaps a bit cynically. "Who would want their comrades beheaded? Unless he had himself other plans, but we might wish to give him the benefit of the doubt in that respect."

Katherine did not fail to notice the amazement in Harry's eyes that she dared to say what she did, and so passionately. She allowed herself a soft smile and laugh before replying, "I alone cannot. No one person can cause any great change without others to join her. Does any one of the French work alone these days to bring about their revolution?" She quieted for a moment, then continued, "Some may be happy, but if they had the opportunity, the choice, would they still have chosen this life? And if my mother did not think that giving herself to men was the only way to advance, would she still do so? If she could speak freely with them as an equal, could she not avoid living the way she does?"

Katherine took another flute of champagne from one of the servers walking by, taking a sip out of it before talking once more. "It seems that a facade is more important than legitimate kindnesses, then, if intelligence must hide a lack of character," Katherine proposed. "And if one must hide his intelligence from the rest of his class, as you suggest, to avoid being killed on the spot, then what kind of life is that?"

She rolled her eyes. "My brother is far too busy taking more liberties with women than simply using their given names to worry over me and any little informalities I encounter. As for my fiancé," Katherine paused, "my mother offered a large dowry for him to take me off of her hands, and the poor fellow's got a fortune to secure. For that he needs heirs, and what better to provide them than a young, healthy bride? And for my mother it means tying herself to another wealthy name, and so she cares not that I might have found one on my own."

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social_climber
2008-04-23 08:17 am UTC (link)

"Perhaps you're right." He agrees, thinking a moment longer on the subject silently, before letting the matter drop. He doubted it, really, that all these people here were, or could be, the Ambassador's allies. Too many of them had a grudge with the new French state to make that possible.

Harry smiles slightly, "Perhaps not, despite what the newspapers might wish us be believe." Harry agrees, personally doubting that Robespierre was the cause of the Revolution not matter that was rumoured in England. "Perhaps not, but perhaps they would have been unhappy in a new life." He paused, looked her over again, "If you were a man, would you be perusing the matter as you are now? Or if you were a woman born into my class, would you be?"

"Often money and alcohol hide just the same flaw." He points out, declining the glass that the servant offered him. "False intelligence and rehearsed wit have the same effect. Momentarily popularity." He shrugs in answer to the rest of his glass, "Not that he must hide it, Miss, but that he must have the right sort of intelligence. It is no good to me and my kin to know the names of every Emperor if you don't know the quickest way to get yourself out of a fight."

"I find it hard to believe that there was no younger man who would have happily married you, with or without the dowry. Why did your mother not pick another suitor?"

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