Victoria ducked before a shoe hit her in the head for the second time.

"Cheney, really," she started, picking her way around the shoes and dresses scattered all over the floor. "I understand you're upset, but surely you -"

Another shoe came sailing across the room, followed by a jewelry box. They crashed into the wall behind Victoria and fell to the floor.

"Upset?" Cheney Duvall exclaimed, turning away from her ransacked closet to face her friend. "Upset doesn't begin to describe it, Victoria. I'm furious. Outraged. That they think they can do this to me, after all I've done for them..." She picked up a glove, shook it in frustration, and tossed it down again. "I simply refuse," she said decisively, ripping more dresses from the closet and throwing them on the floor.

Victoria considered this for a moment. "Cheney," she said gently, "don't you think you'd -better- marry him? You have all the fans to consider, and -"

"I hate fans," Cheney said petulantly. "I'd much rather have air-conditioning."

"It hasn't been invented yet," Victoria said dryly. "Cheney, it's –Shiloh-. It's not like you're marrying...Jeremy Blue or...or Sweet! It could be much, much worse. Maybe you should simply make the best of the situation. He is, after all, quite rich." She pondered this. "Perhaps I shall marry him. Dev is attractive enough, but quite tragically poor."

"He's a doctor, Victoria. He has money. -You- have money."

"I'd like more of it. I've been thinking about collecting it. Wouldn't that be lovely?"

"Charming," she said absently, going to the window and peering out. "But no, my mind is made up. Bain and I are eloping tonight. I'm going to climb down the trellis. I simply won't marry Shiloh, and everyone shall have to find some way of coping with that."

"You don't have a trellis," Victoria said, giving Cheney an odd look.

"I'm getting one built. By SHILOH! Isn't that delicious!" Cheney grinned evilly. "It's simply too perfectly convoluted and ironic. Climbing down a trellis built by one's fiancé, only to elope with the fiancé's fabulously handsome and devastatingly villainous cousin..."

Victoria joined Cheney at the window, where Shiloh was hammering away at the trellis. "But...you're an adult. Can't you just walk out the door? Why must you sneak out the window and down the trellis?"

"Walking out the door wouldn't be any fun at all," Cheney replied, thinking it was quite obvious. "Really, Victoria. If a person is going to elope, one may as well do it right. Walking out the door is dreadfully anticlimactic. No. It simply won't do. Bain is going to come stand under my window tonight, and he's going to sing. Upon hearing him, I shall open the window and climb daringly down the trellis, and we shall escape to Paris or Hawaii or Simbaloringadum or some such place."

Victoria snorted. "Bain's going to come and -sing- under your window?"