Pride and Percabeth

Chapter Twenty-Three

A/N the imagine included in the media section is meant to represent Jane and Elizabeth Bennet but I thought it reminded me of a Georgian era Annabeth and Piper.

Piper walked into town with Annabeth, who had suggested a trip to the printer's shop. The afternoon was crisp and blustery. Chilly breezes whipped at their skirts, shawls, curls, and bonnets.
During their stroll, they passed trees almost completely bare of their leaves. Their fiery autumn splendor had burned out and all that remained were piles of the drab, brown ashes.

Before going into the printer's shop, Piper dropped into the post office to mail a letter to her parents, which told them of her upcoming engagement. She imagined her mother dying of happiness to hear that she was going to marry a marquis, though Piper, herself, couldn't care less about Lord Skye's title. She would marry him if he were a chimney sweep.
If only she could see Annabeth engaged to Lieutenant Jackson, then her joy would be complete.
At the printer's shop, they looked through newspapers, fashion plates, political pamphlets, and prints of the latest cartoons by Gillray and Cruikshank which lampooned notable figures, such as the King, and his fluctuating sanity, and the Prince of Wales, and his extravagance and debauchery, and current events, like the revolution taking place in France.
The ones about the French Revolution interested her the most.  These gory, barbaric images, featuring severed heads, burning buildings, and cannibals tearing each other limb from limb reminded Piper of a line from Shakespeare's The Tempest: "Hell is empty and all the devils are here."