Melbourne pulled out Victoria's chair at the large round table where they'd found two empty seats. The others at the table were chatting quietly, couples that seemed closer to Melbourne's age than to Victoria's. He was so nervous as he sat that he missed the way the man beside him stuck out his hand and said,
"Welcome to the table that's going to dominate trivia."
"Trivia?" Victoria's eyebrows flew up. The tall, thin redheaded woman beside the other man laughed and said, "Oh, did you not know? They introduce a variety of wine in between each trivia question. The table who's won at the end of the night gets the entire thing comped. First-timers, eh?"
"Yes." Melbourne smiled a little and finally shook the man's hand, which he'd almost put down. "I'm William Lamb. This is my intended, Victoria."
"His intended. How romantic!" The red headed woman gave a toothy grin and said, "I'm Angela; this is my husband Oliver."
"You two live in the neighborhood?" Oliver, a plump and mostly hairless man, asked. Melbourne hesitated and finally said,
"Up on Gloucester Street."
"Nice." Oliver's eyebrows flew up, and he seemed a little confused by the way Victoria was sitting so quietly. Melbourne knew why. She was young. Very young. Melbourne tried to cover quickly by joking,
"She's finally old enough to drag her to things like this."
Angela scowled, and Melbourne realised at once that he'd said exactly the wrong thing. They seemed almost repulsed, Angela and Oliver, all of a sudden. Melbourne licked his lip and sighed, and he gave a rather wretched little smile, opening his mouth to try and fix the situation.
"He's finally old enough to convince him to try a greater variety of wine," Victoria butted in, and then Angela's face softened a little. Victoria reached for Melbourne's right hand and squeezed it a bit, and Angela gasped,
"Oh, your ring is lovely!"
"Thank you." Victoria let the other woman dash up and come over and ogle the jewelry, and Melbourne said quietly to Oliver,
"We're rather awful at sociability, I'm afraid."
"Nah. Just enjoy the wine and answer the questions, and you'll be just fine," Oliver said.
The next ten minutes were spent meeting the other couples at the table, all of whom seemed terribly dull. There was a woman who was a barrister, which fascinated Victoria to the point that she asked one question after another, and finally the woman asked,
"What do you do?"
"Me?" Victoria looked taken aback. She was the queen, Melbourne wanted to say. They should all be in awe of her, in reverence of her. Victoria just shrugged a little and admitted, "I haven't... haven't quite figured that yet."
The woman barrister laughed and nodded. "I didn't go back for law until I was almost thirty. You've got plenty of time to find your way."
"Right." Victoria turned her head then as their first small sampler of wine was poured. Melbourne listened as the server explained that it was a New Zealand Chardonnay. Victoria gave Melbourne a meaningful look, and he knew why. They'd only just begun settling New Zealand in their time. Now the place was making wine. He curled up his lips a little and slowly tasted the wine like the others, munching from a cracker as Victoria spoke to the man beside her.
"And what does your... your fiancé... do for a living?"
"He's in banking," Victoria said smoothly. Suddenly a knowing look came over the man's face, and again Melbourne knew why. Gold-digger. That was the word they used now. He'd heard it in a song on the street and he'd instantly known what they meant. A young woman in search of an older man's fortune. Melbourne leaned over and said to the man,
"Just a banker from a piddling little town in Derbyshire."
"Derbyshire! What town?" The man looked astonished, and Melbourne gulped hard.
"Erm... Melbourne."
"Oh. I know the place well. Love to visit Melbourne Hall. Beautiful gardens." The man sipped at his wine, and Melbourne's heart accelerated.
"It's been some time since I've been back," he said, more truthfully than he'd intended. "Is the Birdcage still there?"
The man laughed a bit. "Well, yeah. I should hope they wouldn't muck that up."
Before Melbourne could answer, a voice came over the wine bar, amplified by some sort of artificial means.
"Welcome to social night!"
People cheered half-heartedly from the tables, and Melbourne flicked his eyes nervously to Victoria. The woman on the speaker told them to choose a spokesperson, and Angela quickly whipped out little white cards and a pen and volunteered. She'd done this before, obviously. The woman on the speaker then said to choose a table team name, and somehow it was decided that they would be "Get Your Kicks At Table Six." That made no sense at all to Melbourne, but the others seemed amused. Finally it was time for the first question, and Melbourne found himself drinking his Chardonnay down far more quickly than he was probably meant to do.
"All right, Ladies and Gentlemen! Tonight for our first question, we're hitting close to home! Ready? This British sovereign was king during the American Revolution and was completely insane by the end of his reign. I'll read it again. This British sovereign was king during the American Revolution and was completely insane by the end of his reign."
"Oh, it's one of the Georges," Angela hissed, and the female barrister nodded.
"Yes, that's why they call it all Georgian things. But which George?"
"The third," Victoria said, and they all looked at her sceptically. She nodded firmly. "I am very, very certain."
"It was most certainly King George III," Melbourne nodded. Angela shrugged and wrote it down and went up to the woman with the speaker, and Oliver asked,
"Big history buffs, are you?"
"You could say that," Melbourne nodded. As the answers were tallied, they were brought a Spanish Rioja to drink, along with a little nibble of cheese.
"Oh, I quite like this one," Victoria smiled. She started talking again to the man beside her. The man's wife seemed utterly oblivious to the fact that her husband was flirting with the young woman, but Melbourne pinched his lips and scowled a bit past Victoria. The man backed off after awhile, leaving alone the questions about where she'd gone to school and whether she liked to travel.
"Question Two!" The woman with the speaker was too loud all of a sudden, and Melbourne touched at his ear. He was unaccustomed to such loud sounds. He sipped at his Spanish Rioja and felt Victoria's hand rub at his knee under the table. He gave her a playful little look and popped some cheese into his mouth, and Victoria's fingers tightened. Then the woman up at the front of the bar said,
"Manchester United have won more Premier League Titles than any other club. How many have they won?"
"Oh, well. We don't know this one." Melbourne smiled down at Victoria, and she shrugged helplessly as she whispered,
"I don't even know what a Premier League is."
"Thirteen, obviously," said a bored-looking man across the table.
"You sure it's not twelve?" asked another woman, and the man glared at him. They were married, Melbourne could tell, apparently unhappily.
"It's thirteen, Doris," the man barked, and Doris shrugged.
"Thirteen, then."
Angela took that answer up, too, and the Spanish Rioja was replaced by something called a Moscato.
"So... do you and Angela come for the wine or the quizzing?" Melbourne asked, and Oliver scoffed.
"We come because our youngest is off to university now and we get very bored at home," he said.
"You have children," Melbourne nodded, and Oliver smiled fondly.
"Yes. Claire's twenty; she studies at Exeter. Going for ecology... wants to save all the endangered flowers."
"What a noble endeavour," Melbourne nodded, realising that this man's daughter was the same age as Victoria. But where their daughter was just a university student, Victoria had been a queen. Melbourne tried to listen as Oliver described their eighteen-year-old son who was 'high on rugby and everything else,' but all he could think of was Victoria's coronation. He could hear the choirs, could feel the sword in his hand. He could see the heavy crown on her head, the solemnity and weight of her responsibility symbolised by it. Now she was just a young woman in a wine bar, elegantly fending off the advances of a rather bold commoner, answering questions about her insane grandfather. She'd be going home to a tiny flat with an old man who was an alien here just like she was. He gulped hard and tried to imagine how it was that she could be happy here, how it was that she'd wanted to leave her reign behind.
"And what does he study, your son?" Melbourne made himself say. Oliver shrugged.
"English literature. How very useless, right? I'm sure he'll be back home in a few years' time."
"Question Three! More history for you!"
There was a collective groan then, and Melbourne wondered if they mean modern, recent history that would be just as foreign as Premier Leagues. But then the woman said,
"An invasion of Mexico occurred by this nation during the amusingly-named Pastry War. I shall read it again. An invasion of Mexico occurred by this nation during the amusingly-named Pastry War."
"The Pastry War?" Angela threw her hands up. "I've never even heard of that."
"It was France," Victoria said, and once again everyone seemed mildly amazed. Melbourne smirked to himself. He vividly remembered the meeting he'd had with her in 1838 where he'd explained the delicate international situation. He could still see the pale blue dress she'd been wearing that day, the way she'd frowned at the idea of a war in Mexico.
"A French pastry chef claimed his shop had been looted by Mexican officials. For years, the French demanded reparations and then more exorbitant payments. When the Mexicans refused to pay, France blockaded and then captured Veracruz, and Mexico declared war."
Angela narrowed her eyes, "Darling, however do you know so much history?"
"A very competent man informed me of that particular situation," Victoria said, and Melbourne squeezed at her hand beneath the table. She was remembering the meeting, too, he knew, but she would sounding strange without realising it. He gave a self-deprecating smile and said,
"I think Victoria is living proof that a university education can be vastly overrated."
"How very true. I'll drink to that," said the man beside her, holding up his wine.
There were four more rounds, but neither Victoria nor Melbourne knew the answers to them. The table got two questions wrong in all, and so they all had to fork over money for their wine samplings.
"Always leave these social nights completely buzzed, you know?" Oliver said from beside Melbourne. Melbourne nodded and glanced over to Victoria, who was smiling just a little too broadly at the flirtatious man beside her.
"When's the next one of these?" Melbourne asked, and Oliver shrugged.
"They have them every month or so. You know, you two should come for drinks with Angela and me sometime. She misses Claire; I'm sure she'd like to spend some time with a young woman like Victoria."
Oliver seemed to realise at once that that had sounded wrong, too, but Melbourne nodded and said quietly,
"It is easy to get lonely, isn't it?"
"Very easy." Oliver held his hand out again as he stood. "It was good to meet you, William. Oh, look. The girls don't need our help; they're exchanging contact information already."
Melbourne turned to see that Victoria had handed over her iPhone to Angela, who was explaining to 'text' her if they ever wanted to 'grab a drink or three.' Victoria took her device back with a nervous smile, and she tucked it into her black leather handbag that had been mysteriously waiting in the wardrobes for her.
"When's the wedding?" Angela asked, and Melbourne shrugged a bit.
"We haven't set a date. It'll be very small."
"Well, best of luck. It was a delight to meet you." Angela took her husband's hand and walked out of the wine bar, and Melbourne did the same with Victoria after he set some cash down on the table. Outside, in the cool night air, he said carefully,
"That went well, I think."
"The man beside me... his name was Geoffrey. He wanted us to come to their house and... swap, he said."
"What?" Melbourne stopped and scowled down at her. "Swap. Swap what?"
"Each other, I think," Victoria hissed, and Melbourne's eyebrows flew up. He shook his head wildly and declared, "I do not suppose I will ever fully understand these people."
"Angela and Oliver seemed nice enough," Victoria said. "She rather reminded me of Emma Portman. Emma was always so caring to me, and..."
She blinked quickly, and Melbourne told her quietly,
"It is good and right that you should miss certain people and things."
"Everything we told them was a lie," Victoria pointed out. "Almost every word from our mouths was a complete lie."
"With every passing day, I think, it will feel more like truth," Melbourne said, waiting for the walk symbol at a crosswalk. He'd learnt the hard way that the black cabs, in particular, were not wont to stop for people who crossed at the wrong moment. He shrugged down to Victoria and said,
"We can always try again elsewhere for friends, Ma'am."
He hadn't called her that all night, he realised. He could scarcely do so in front of the others. That thought made him chew his lip hard, and his breath shook a little as they began to cross the street.
Later that night, Victoria sat up in bed on her iPhone, and she told Melbourne,
"I've done a search for 'London Social Events.' Did you know there's a costume ball on Friday? Everyone comes in costumes and dances and... you know, socialises."
"And you'd like to go in our clothes from home," Melbourne nodded. He licked his bottom lip and rose from the bed, going over to the wardrobe and saying softly, "I'm not quite sure why I didn't tell you this was here. In fact, I'm not quite why it's here. It seems very out of place among the jeans and new shirts."
"What are you talking about, Lord M?" Victoria frowned from the bed as he opened the wardrobe and pulled out a black jacket from inside. It wasn't just any black jacket. It was a Windsor Uniform jacket, and more specifically, the one he'd worn at Windsor, embroidered with his own initials on the inside. It even had the little spot of wear on the right sleeve that it had had in its own time. He held it up to Victoria, and her mouth fell open.
"Oh," she said quietly, and for a while she said nothing after that. Then she murmured, "Well, there could be no... no more elegant costume than that."
"It won't be like home, Ma'am," he said. "They'll all look like jesters, and they'll dance terribly, and we'll still feel like birds without wings."
"I don't care," Victoria whispered from the bed. Her eyes locked onto the gold braiding of his coat, and then flicked down to the diamond ring on her finger, and Melbourne realised she was utterly lost. He could not marry her at home. But she would become homesick just the same. How could she not? She stared at her ring for a very long moment and then back up to the Uniform, and he told her,
"I shall wear it with pride, Your Majesty."
Author's Note: What's a girl to do when she misses parts of her life as queen and yet adores parts of her new life? Hopefully seeing her Lord M in his Windsor Uniform and waltzing with him with help a little. ;) But don't get too comfortable - whatever force has sent them here has a little too much access to their lives, don't you think? Thanks for reading and please do leave a comment if you get a moment.