Maria felt her mind wandering as Robin went on and on complaining about his sisters never ending sweetness. He hardly ever stopped complaining about this, and the fact that his Maria was practically turning into Loveday. Not that he'd ever let Maria know that he referred to her as his whenever she wasn't there.
Lately his girl had started imitating her aunt's sweetness. Maria was generally a sweet but feisty girl, but of late she had started overdoing the sweetness. Sometimes Robin could admit, to himself, that he rather liked her childlike sweetness. He then had to remind himself that she was only doing it to wind him up and therefore must be punished.
He would then ignore her. Completely. To the attention loving girl, this was torture. He did have an ulterior motive for retaliating like this. Maria, in her desperation for any reaction from him, would resort to flirting, something Robin secretly rather liked.
She was debating with herself whether to turn on the super sweetness or to come up with a new way of getting back at him. An idea came to her. Without a word she got up and went into the house. Robin stared after her, the words falling out of his mouth mid flow.
"Well that was rude." He muttered.
As he was leaving the Merryweather estate he noticed Loveday and Maria leaving in the carriage. Vaguely he wondered where they were going. He didn't like the smirk Maria wore as the carriage passed him. Nor did he like the little wave she sent his way accompanied by a decidedly evil little grin.
He returned after dinner to talk to Maria and was duly told that she hadn't returned yet. Sir Benjamin invited him to wait and the two had a pleasant chat about the girls. Robin tried, in vain to work out where they had gone and why. Sir Benjamin clearly knew the answer but he wasn't telling.
When the girls did return it was clear they had been shopping and Maria hurried upstairs to try on her new dress. Robin thought it was odd that although she'd said that she had only bought one dress, her arms were full of packages. She returned wearing her new blue dress and that same smirk. What was worrying was that sweet Loveday also had that smirk. He knew from experience that this was a sign of an impending Girl Apocalypse.
He slept badly that night and in the morning he realised the Apocalypse had arrived during the night.
His hat was missing.