Hi guys! So I decided to add an OC to the mix this time. And I really love him, so tell me what you think about this mysterious stranger! -(references be like)
Written for the lefties in my audience, because believe me, he knows your troubles.
Elizabeth was lost.
She really should not have exited Kympton without William, but she had felt so confident! Alas, now she was lost in the woods and meadow that was off on one side of the village, though now she could not remember which side of the area the village was on!
A faint murmur slowly became audible, and as it drew closer Elizabeth could have leapt for joy. Well, no, it was not William, but it was a fine, sharp baritone voice singing 'Rule, Britannia!' in such a soulful tone that even the whimsical strain in it and the absence of music did not detract from the performance.
"Sir!" she cried, going in the direction of the voice.
The singer halted his song. "Excuse me?"
"Sir, do you know which direction Kympton is in?" Elizabeth asked, as the singer came into gy54view. He was a tall man, perhaps taller than William, with a figure that resembled the portraits of the nobility of the 17th century that she had once admired. His blue coat – if she was being finicky she might say powder blue – matched his gloves, and his light dove-grey breeches, perfectly polished boots, and shining cane pulled off the image perfectly. His top hat, black like his boots, covered a finely poised head with dead-white, aquiline features.
Elizabeth supposed it was the white tinge that tipped her off, but she knew that the stranger was no ordinary man. Even so, she curtsied and said, "Good day, sir. Might I ask in which direction Kympton lies?"
He nodded at her curtsy, but said, without answering, "It is a good day indeed, madam, if by simply taking a stroll I meet so lovely a lady as yourself. At the risk of being impertinent, may I inquire as to the name of the gentleman who has such a creature by his side?"
Elizabeth laughed. "I suppose you may know me, especially if you live near Kympton, sir. I am the wife of Mr. Darcy, although how you knew I was married at all escapes me."
"Ah!" said the stranger. He bowed. "I dare not reveal my name, for fear that Mr. Darcy will challenge me for talking to his wife." He sounded more teasing than even Theodore! "As for your other question, why, it is a matter of probability. Such a lady as yourself would have been proposed to at least once, and chance lies in favour of your having accepted one. The ring on your finger was also quite a huge help," he added gaily. "Of course, you wear gloves, but the band is still visible."
"I assure you, sir, my husband would do no such thing. But you have not answered my question."
"Indeed not. But I had no need to, for if I am right that is Mr. Darcy himself coming this way."
Elizabeth whirled and it was indeed William cresting the hill beside the woods at a leisurely pace. "There you are!" he called archly. "Do you intend to make it a habit, Lizzy, of playing hide-and-go-seek with me?"
"What if I do?" she called back, overwhelmed with relief but not giddy. "What shall your reaction be?"
"I would chase you and let the natural consequences run their course," William said mischievously, finally reaching her side. The stranger had stood there smiling the whole time, and it was now that he sang out.
William and Elizabeth turned to him in confusion. He had sung a strange, melodious tune, one unfamiliar to both of them. He smiled and kept singing, his baritone voice lending itself as well to this alien melody as it had to a solid English anthem. It was while they were watching him, time frozen while the stranger sang his ethereal song, when both William and Elizabeth realised that he was singing in a foreign language.
Elizabeth, with her sharp mind for languages, eventually picked out individual words, and one word that sounded curiously like 'Anagoria' stood out as being the most common. She also realised that most of the words she could hear sounded like corruptions of pure Latin mixed with another.
He continued singing, his pure baritone voice all but bewitching them as they enjoyed his song.
Finally, his song ended.
William and Elizabeth came awake as if from a dream, the spell cast by the stranger's voice and grey-eyed gaze broken. "You – you sing wonderfully," William breathed, and Elizabeth echoed his sentiments, if not his words.
The singer quirked a mysterious smirk. "Did you recognize any words?"
"I recognized 'Anagoria'," Elizabeth blurted out.
He looked surprised. "I fear, my lady, that the pronunciation is /ann-a-GOR-ya/, not that. But otherwise, yes, that is the name."
"What does it mean?" William wondered.
Instead of answering, the singer said, "I am Julian Blakeley, Earl of Dashwood, at your service." With this he swept a low bow, taking off his hat. William gasped, Elizabeth's jaw dropped.
The stranger's hair was completely snow white.
He looked so young…
"Oh no," said the earl. "I am quite young, if you must know. Barely one-and-twenty."
"Then how?" Elizabeth asked him.
He laughed, fixing her with grey eyes that sparked like lightning clouds with the depth of a freshwater well. Taking a piece of paper and a pen out of his pocket he began to write against a tree. It was then that the Darcys saw something strange.
"You write with your left hand," the two blurted out.
Momentarily impatient, Lord Blakeley glanced at them, annoyed. "Well, I'm left-handed," he snapped. "It would hardly be natural for me to write with my right hand." It partly reassured them that he was irritated; it at least showed them that he was human, that he was not some dangerous faerie come to kill them with his enchanting song.
"No, but… at your age, and in this era…" Elizabeth stammered.
"You were assuming I had been bullied into using my right hand? You are partly right." With a triumphant smirk, Lord Blakeley switched hands and continued writing, handwriting identical.
"You are ambidextrous," said William, voicing what both of them had realised.
"Yes, I am," the incredibly strange young earl replied, handing them the paper and walking away.
It amazed William that such a young man – in such a time – was bold enough to write with his left hand in front of complete strangers, strangers who might antagonise him simply because of preference. William was a liberal man, but the idea of a left-handed person was in itself foreign to him, let alone one who was so unashamed of himself. Still, he admired the young man.
William frowned at the sheet, seeing looping but perfectly even cursive, with not even the blots he had come to characterise as left-handed.
Julian Blakeley; Earl of Dashwood, Colonel of the Twenty-sixth Cavalry, Knight of the Second Order, Mage of Air, former Prince of Anagoria [Anagoria was a country then, William surmised] and occasional servant of the English Crown.
Underneath it was written:
If you need a friend, I am always at hand. Either hand. ~Julian.
Elizabeth, reading it over his shoulder, laughed. And he laughed with her.