No More Champagne

[Elladora Black]

New Year's Eve, 1883

• Drusilla's husband would be away for the New Year's Eve, so Elladora had of course agreed to spend the evening with her favourite cousin. Her children were old enough to be able to hold a semi-intelligent conversation, but they were still children and Ella didn't want to leave her favourite Dru alone when Phineas and Ursula didn't have that much need of her anyway.
  
  After dinner, both Augusta and Marcus were sent to their beds and Ella and Drusilla moved to a sitting room where they could wait for the new year to arrive. There were still about two hours left of waiting, but Elladora was sure that they could pass quickly; she could never feel how time passed when she was in Drusilla's presence.
  
  "So it is probably New Year for Edmund now, is it not?" Elladora commented nonchalantly. Where was he supposed to be again? In India or something?

  

[Drusilla Selwyn]

Merlin knew where Edmund was. He had told her—that she was sure of—but Drusilla listened to Edmund merely half-heartedly at the best of times and his whereabouts were a minor detail. Besides, surely it was unwifely to keep tabs on her husband? He was probably in India. She was certain he had been there before. Either way, it hardly mattered and she was far more pleasantly engaged with her dearest cousin on New Year’s Eve than she would have been if Edmund had seen fit to be here.

Still, his absence left her particularly lonely in a certain respect (not that he would have obliged her had he not been in India, or wherever he was) but Drusilla had long since learnt to ignore those urges.

“I suspect so,” she replied, though she really had no idea. “No doubt frequenting some seedy foreign bar. I really don’t know how he finds them.”

  

[Elladora Black]

Elladora snorted at Drusilla's comment on her husband. She always found it extremely amusing listening to Drusilla talk about her husband. Or any wife talk about any husband, really. She had no interest in getting married, but from some of the ladies' stories in the club, marriage sounded as a rather amusing experience at times. Especially if the husband in question was a big-headed idiot who thought that his gender made him right about all things.

"Man can find anything if he puts his mind to it" Elladora commented and sipped from her champagne, as if she had just said some very inspiration quote. Which she probably had, was she? "Didn't someone say that? Aristotle, perhaps?"

  

[Drusilla Selwyn]

“Heaven knows!” Drusilla replied but it did sound quite familiar. If it wasn’t Aristotle it was certainly somebody else; her cousin was quite knowledgeable about these sorts of things and she was inclined to believe her. Drusilla had never been quite as radical as her cousin (women were sadly inferior to men in standing, if not in intellect) but Elladora was the equal of any man and she had always admired her for it. In fact, there was no one she admired more. She took another sip from her glass. “But it is certainly true of my husband. I have no doubt he could find a whore amidst an ocean of ladies.”