Giving Him Hope {A Black Butler Story}

Chapter 1: The Party

Hello everyone! I'm honestly not sure how this turned out, but I enjoyed writing it anyways. I didn't plan on writing something like this, but I got an idea and I ran with it. This runs sort of parallel with the short story "When Love is Kind" written by my best friend Kat. Go read that too, because she thinks it's crap, and it's not. Anyways, hope you enjoy this, and I'll get back to writing Chasing Freedom now. :P

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"Benedict, this is absolutely ridiculous," Hope muttered, staring out of the carriage window. "I don't see why I have to go to this party. There are far more important matters for me to be attending to."

Her tutor, Benedict, sighed. They were on their way to a Christmas party being thrown by some local nobility. Hope had been apprehensive about the idea, and didn't quite know what to expect. It had been a few years since she had been to any soirée, and certainly not one being thrown by a gentleman her own age. "I'm sorry, my lady. I'm sure once you get to the party you will change your mind. I'm sure Lord Phantomhive is putting on quite the show this evening. It's not often he throws parties, after all."

She shifted uncomfortably in her dress, trying to breathe despite the fact her torso was squeezed into a corset. "I suppose we will just have to see," she answered quietly.

Benedict didn't speak again, much to Hope's pleasure. While she knew he was only trying to be polite, it still bugged her when he tried to change her mind. She was not excited about this party, and it was going to take a lot more than her tutor's words to alter that. Hope had never met Lord Ciel Phantomhive, but from what she had heard from the grapevine, she wasn't so sure she was going to enjoy his company. Hope had gathered he was a bit pretentious, and was not usually very social to begin with. That had been especially true after his fiancée, Elizabeth Midford, had passed away in a tragic carriage accident earlier that year. This had been the first get-together of any kind the young man had thrown since then. Admittedly, Hope couldn't say she blamed him. He had been betrothed to her for many years; it had to be difficult to lose someone else he had been close to. Ciel and Hope were both about seventeen now (although she still had about five months before her seventeenth birthday), and she couldn't imagine losing all of her loved ones in the way he had. She was lucky to still have both parents, and not to have been promised away in marriage yet. At any rate she couldn't fathom the hell he had to have endured in his short life.

"Hope?"

She glanced away from the window, hardly looking at Benedict. "Yes?"

"Do try to cheer up," he stated.

"Mmm... not likely," Hope retorted, starting to regret the decision of having him as her escort for the evening. She pushed some of her hair behind her shoulder, trying to keep as much of it out of her face as possible. One of the servants had spent several hours curling her long, brown hair, although her efforts were surely futile. Hope's hair was already beginning to fall flat; go figure. No matter. She doubted anyone was going to care what her hair looked like anyways. She wasn't anyone that important.

The carriage approached the enormous manor, and suddenly Hope was more anxious than before. The line of carriages in front of them was massive, and being in crowded areas was generally not her thing. When the carriage came to a stop, Benedict stepped out first, offering her his hand. She lifted her dress with one hand and took his with the other, stepping out of the carriage carefully. The last thing she wanted to do was trip and tear her dress. Although Hope usually didn't like dressing up, she really did like this dress and the last thing she wanted to do was destroy it.

Benedict led her up the stairs and to the doorway, other groups of people surrounding them on all sides. Upon getting inside, Hope's eyes began wandering around the room. She had never been inside the Phantomhive estate before now, and she had to admit it was quite a lovely home, especially with all the Christmas décor. The party was already well underway, and she honestly wasn't quite sure what to expect. The last party she had attended had been with her parents, and usually they did most of the socializing. This was bound to be intriguing, to say the absolute least.