mirror shards // matthew fairchild {1}

eight // scandal, scheming, and tea

Târgoviște did not have a streetcar, so Sydney kicks her feet up and enjoys a trip to Anna's on a publicly funded transport that neither snuffles, shits, nor is a cause for worry about bolting. The streetcar will not stop so its driver can get in a fight with a nearby milk truck driver, either.

She's dressed up for tea with Anna, because just like her friends, fashion is one of her great vanities. Considering that she makes her dresses herself, and what she'll sometimes do for new patterns or fabric, you can almost call it a vice.

She walks the length of the block from the streetcar stop to Anna's and finds a complete disaster on the stoop: a bawling young thing in hair ribbons, a perplexed Cordelia, and Anna nowhere to be seen. And here she thought she was done with melodrama for the day after Charles chewed her out this morning for letting James make an utter fool of himself at Chiswick last night. Dear Charlie narrowly escaped getting punched in the face.

The girl looks up at Sydney with tearful eyes. "You're Anna's sister, aren't you? You've got to be, you look just like her. Maybe you can talk some sense into her, then."

"What's this?" Sydney asks, glancing at Cordelia.

"It's Anna!" the girl cries. "I loved her – I love her still! I would have given it all up for her, all of it, polite society and all its rules, just to be with her, but she has thrown me out like a dog on the street!"

Sydney frowns.

"Now, Evangeline," drawls Anna, leaning out of an upstairs window. "You can't say you've been thrown out like a dog when you've got your mama, two footmen, and a butler coming for you." She waves. "Hello, dear cousins."

"Oh, dear," says Cordelia. She pats Evangeline gently on the shoulder.

"Besides, Evangeline," says Anna. "You're to be married Wednesday. To a baronet."

"I don't want him!" Evangeline springs to her feet. "I want you!"

"No," says Anna. "You want a baronet. Not to live in my messy little flat. Now go on, Evangeline, there's a good girl."

Evangeline bursts into a fresh spate of tears. "I thought I was the one," she wept. "After all the other girls – I thought they didn't mean anything –"

"Now listen to me," says Sydney, cutting off Anna before she can say anything worse. She's not going to screw up this heartbreak like she did with her own. "Evangeline. I've never had Anna break my heart, thank goodness, but if I wasn't a close relative and I had a shot, I think I would rather love Anna and have her break my heart than never love her at all."

"What?" Evangeline says indignantly.

"Yes. Anna says you're to be married to a baronet on Wednesday, yes?"

"I don't care!"

"You do. See, once you're married, your reputation will be much, much harder to ruin. You can go where you want, do what you want, and spend that baronet's money on some pretty jewelry to give to another beautiful, scandalous woman who will certainly come your way. And now that you've loved Anna, you'll know which women to seek out, and which to avoid. And you'll know how to seduce them...and exactly what to do with them once they're seduced." Sydney drops Evangeline a sly wink, then looks up at Anna and grins.

"My dear," says Anna, "be careful, Melbourne, you may become Evangeline's first target."

Evangeline leaps to her feet. "How dare you!" she screams at Anna. "How dare you insinuate something so –"

Here comes the sound of hoofbeats pounding along the road, growing rapidly louder. A light carriage screeches up the street; a sharply beautiful middle-aged woman in a perched upon the driver's seat. She skids to a stop in front of the house and turns a furious face toward No. 30.