A Night Like This
"Mother, do I have to go to this party? Claudia and I aren't even friends," Evelina said, though she knew that no amount of begging, pleading, or cursing the birthday girl's name would convince her mother to allow her to stay home.
"Nonsense," said the middle-aged woman as she waved the maidservant off. "Claudia has been your friend for years," she shook her head and made a comment about how the servant did not know how to properly lace a corset and undid her poor job.
"Actually, she and I loathe each other," Evelina groaned in discomfort as her mother pulled far too tightly on the corset strings. "She can hardly stand to look at me. Do you really want to ruin her birthday by making her put up with my ugly face?"
"You are going to the party tonight and that is final," Maite Smith pointed to the dress neatly laid out on her daughter's bed. "Put that dress on and do something with your hair. Our servants seem to be incompetent; you will have to do it yourself."
"Yes ma'am."
I hate parties, she had written in her last letter to her brother. Claudia Arend turns fifteen this month, and you know how much she hates me, but her parents invited us to her birthday party, so I obviously have to attend. Mother's friends are all so stuck-up and boring, and their sons and daughters are no different. I just want to run around town, barefoot, and munching on apples all day. To me, that is a perfect day. Mother drags me to these parties because I need to be social, but what she doesn't understand is that I do have friends, she just pretends they don't exist.
Leonie Pascal and Arthur Bode, for example. The boyfriend and girlfriend duo were two years older than Evelina, her best and arguably only close friends, but also servants' children and therefore were not good enough to associate with someone of noble birth. Leonie's mother used to be one of the Smiths' maids, and Arthur's mother was her nanny, but when Maite discovered that her daughter had befriended her staff's children, they were fired solely on those grounds. She has written it to Erwin many times, and truly meant it, but she would not have hated being nobility so much if her peers did not demonize the lower classes so much so that she had to sneak around to see her best friends. Wealth had its perks, not even she could deny that, and it was nice to have the option to make servants do mundane tasks, but sometimes, a girl just wants to step into the kitchen and make her own salad without it being deemed scandalous.
"Wish me luck, Mr. Whiskers," Evelina said to her tattered terrycloth cat, scratching its ears like a real cat. "I am about to walk through the valley of bullshit."
"Ev-a-leeee-na! Downstairs," called her mother from the foyer. "The carriage is ready!"
"Coming, Mother! One moment," she shouted back, hairpins sticking out of her mouth as she rushed to pin the last stubborn pieces back.
:-:
All right, she thought to herself later that evening as she stood alone by the sweets table. This could have been worse.
Claudia was still an arrogant little witch, and she always would be, but was too busy with her friends that night to bother with lighting the bitch torch. The birthday girl's decision to leave her guest of dishonor alone enabled said dishonored guest plenty of time to stand alone by the window and devour all of the sweets that the other girls were never going to touch anyway. Her father was too busy playing poker with the other girls' fathers, and her mother was preoccupied with keeping up her socialite image to dare drag Evelina into a conversation.
The Arends' home had a casement window large enough for a person to leap through that provided a beautiful view of the city streets, so Evelina stood with her back to the festivities, munch on chocolate truffles, and gazed out the window. Ironically, the event she thought she would hate the most turned out to be the only one remotely enjoyable.
"Vine, Miss Smith?"
Evelina looked over her right shoulder, fully intending to decline, but changed her mind when she saw who was offering her the drink. "Ralf! This is a surprise," she exclaimed gleefully. "I was not expecting you to be here tonight."
"I wasn't planning on it, but you know how persuasive Papa can be," Ralf ran his fingers through his tousled brown hair and joined his cousin by the window.
"Uncle Urs told you there would be free alcohol," Evelina laughed. "Typical Larsen."
"You certainly are one to talk," Ralf winked impishly and downed his glass of vine. "Smith. Though I suppose we aren't like the rest of our family."
"Our family? It will never not be weird," she said, stuffing her face with another truffle. "Hearing you say that. We are hardly related; I feel like we are good friends rather than relatives."
"My father is your mother's cousin. I guess that makes us not related closely enough for it to be disgusting if I kissed you."
"Right," Evelina snorted. "You and I both know your door opens inward. How is Sander, anyway?"
Ralf waggled his eyebrows suggestively and put on a seductive purr. "Are you asking about his health or his battering ram?"
"Why would I be interested in your boyfriend's…never mind."
"He's fine," Ralf chuckled and stepped forward to sit on the windowsill. "What about you? Still like boys, I assume? Because if not, then I know a girl you would hit it off with and-"
"Ralf! There you go," Evelina threw her head back in laughter and playfully punched his shoulder. "Arthur and Leonie have been trying to set me up with Arthur's brother for years, and now you are trying to set me up with girls? Can't a girl just be single and enjoy it?"
The older teenager leaned further back against the window and let out a yawn. "At your age and in our society, it is kind of a thing to gossip about."
"Then be my beard if you're so concerned," Evelina snorted and stuffed a truffle into his open mouth. "Like you said; distant enough relatives for it to not be considered incest, yeah?"'
Ralf made a face and rolled his eyes, raised his arms in the universal surrendering gesture, and bit off half of the truffle and shoved the other half in Evelina's mouth. "Nice try kid, but I had to suffer through years of inquiries and matchmaking attempts, and dear cousin, I love you, but it simply would not be fair to spare you from the torture. Think of our other cousins, the ones we are too related to, the ones we cannot even think of bearding for. How you could even think of us rubbing this unfair reality in their faces is beyond me, Evelina. I have always operated under the assumption that you were the nice Smith, but I suppose that designation belongs to Uncle Otto, since you are clearly the adversary of all things pure and just."
"I hate you right now," Evelina said, polishing off the last of the chocolate truffles. "Do you think my mother would notice if I skipped out and went for a walk?"
"The sun is almost set, where were you thinking of walking?"
"The Arends have a large enough garden to stroll through," she answered, grabbing a square of peppermint bark. "Besides, if I do not get out of this stuffy room, I will either leap from that window and purposely break my legs for the sake of entertainment, or, eat the entire sweets table and gain ten or twenty, so I will ask again. Do you think Mother will notice?"
"The more she drinks the less she cares, and I saw her finish at least three glasses of something clear, and we both know Auntie Maite does not drink water in public."
"Nor does she drink it in private," Evelina snorted before leaning forward to kiss Ralf on the cheek. "Thank you so much. If she asks you where I went, make something up."
"I'll tell her you are closed for business and you went to find some sort of blood-catching apparatus," Ralf said, gladly taking over her position as sweets eater.
"Closed for bus – ? oh. Disgusting, very disgusting, but believable."
As inconspicuously as she could she tiptoed to the glass door that opened up into the Arends' backyard. From inside, she surveyed the area and pieced together how she would run across the patio, down its shrubbery-lined brick path, and into the flower garden. Evelina casted a final precautionary glance over her shoulder, and once certain her mother was not watching her, slipped through the doorway and dashed across the moonlit patio. Halfway down the off-shooting path, her left heel caught on a raised brick and her face became acquainted with a thorny shrubbery.
"Dammit," she swore, angrily yanking off her shoes and throwing them into the shrubs, not caring where they landed. "Please don't fall off," she begged her feet. "I am not mean to you on purpose. Those shoes are too small, I will talk mother into having larger ones made, but you have to promise not to fall off."
:-:
Flowers, though they made her sneeze, were indisputably better company than the people at Claudia's party. She never terribly minded her own birthday parties, because although she could never invite her two best friends, she had some acquaintances within the nobility whose company she enjoyed, and when it came to parties in her honor, her mother always gave her full discretion over whom to invite, but other people's parties were case-by-case situations. At least for the duration of that evening, she would rather take her chances with her allergies than with her peers.
Hello old friends, she humorously thought, giving an ostentatious wave to the plants. She sat in her favorite spot in the Arends' garden atop a large rock among the white amaryllises, orange begonias, and red zinnias, and set to dissecting specimens of each. Her governess, if she bothered teaching science anymore, would have been impressed with her willful explorations into the field of biology. Unfortunately, she had her last science lesson shortly before her eleventh birthday when her parents (read her mother) insisted that science was of no importance to a noble girl, and even her governess thought it was a shame to stop teaching Evelina's favorite subject. The teenager liked to think that in the end, she had the last laugh, because as long as somebody knew how to read, they only had to find books to educate themself about a topic.
From the pages of botany books, she learned about the parts of a flower and how the male and female reproductive organs differed from species to species. For example, each amaryllis flower contained both stamens and pistils, meaning both male and female reproductive parts, and begonias only had one or the other at the center of the flower. She knew botanical vocabulary words such as sessile, spadix, and inflorescence, words that most of her peers had never heard before. Her passion for biology was something she kept close to herself both because her mother would disapprove and because most of her peers would check out at the mention of any scientific terms, except, ironically enough, the uneducated Arthur and Leonie.
The fact that the poor servants' children were more willing to listen to her rattle on about angiosperms, evergreens, and nomenclature than educated people never ceased to amaze her. Leonie always joked about how the scientific names for some plant species would have made fun names for children, jokes which never failed to make Arthur blush a hundred shades of red.
Evelina was so engrossed with playing with the amaryllises' anthers that she almost ignored the clip-clop, clip-clop of horseshoes against the cobblestone street. The only thing that made her stand up and run to the wrought iron fence by the street was the realization that she heard not one, not two, but at least three horses. Members of the military police either patrolled on foot or in pairs of horseback riders, and at that time of night, anybody in the capital who owned horses were at home or at Claudia's party. To her right, she saw a group of no more than ten riders sporting black capes. As her eyes better adjusted to the darkness, she saw that the capes weren't black, but rather, a dark shade of green.
"Scouting Legion," Evelina exclaimed in a whisper. Members of the Scouting Legion were rarely seen in Sina in-uniform, but she recalled from her brother's latest letter that since his scouting formation was still a new implementation, a handful of members were to report directly to Generalissimo Zacklay.
If they are on their way to meet with the Supreme Commander, then they are going the most roundabout ass-backwards way imaginable, his office is behind them, she thought before it dawned on her that they must be coming from the meeting rather than heading to it. That meant…
The wrought iron fence in front of her had rhombus-shaped holes large enough for her to fit her feet through them and she used those to stand so that her head was over the top of it. She scanned the group of soldiers until, to her relief, the person she was searching for came into view.
"Erwin! Hey, Erwin," Evelina used what little upper body strength she had to propel herself over the top of the fence, earning herself a massive tear in the back of her dress in the process, but at least she landed on her feet. She held her dress up to her lower thighs to make it possible to run and sped toward the group on horseback. "Oh, you're okay!"
The soldiers all halted their horses and tan man with dark hair and facial hair, who must have guessed Erwin and Evelina were related, smiled just barely and nodded to Erwin to grant him permission to briefly converse with Evelina. Erwin, however, despite always being happy to see her, did not seem too impressed with the state of her.
"Inna, what are you doing out here alone at night? It's dangerous, someone could grab you and you coud have really hurt yourself jumping over that fe-"
"Relax, big brother," she sighed, finally reaching his horse. "I'm hardly out wandering the streets. I jumped that fence right there, see, you just saw me do it. I was escaping from Claudia Arend's party by mutilating plants in her garden – for science, I don't just go around dismembering other people's flowers for the hell of it – and I heard the horses so I…assumed it was you. Tore my dress in the process, but it's not like I was ever going wear the ghastly thing again anyway. You know I like dresses, but there's a difference between a dress and an instrument through which death by asphyxiation can be carried out. Are you going to hug me, or are you going to sit on your fancy horse so you'll look cool in front of your Military friends?"
Erwin glanced to the man on his left as if to request permission to dismount his horse and leapt to the street once it appeared to be granted.
"I will not keep him talking for long," Evelina said to the man, whom she assumed was Commander Shadis. "I only want a minute."
The commander smiled lightly and told her to take her time. Behind his smile, Evelina got the sense that with the high mortality rate among members of the Corps, chances for any of them to witness a happy reunion were few and far between, so of course he was happy to give her a small block of time to talk to her brother.
"Come here, kid," Erwin said gleefully, grabbing Evelina and pulling her into a bear hug.
"I'm so glad you're okay," she said, but it was muffled because Erwin stood over twenty centimeters taller than she did and her face was buried in his chest. "I missed you so much."
"What was that?"
"I said," she turned her head to the side so his chest wouldn't muffle her again and clung to him like a child would their security blanket. "I'm glad you are okay and I missed you."
"Is everything okay at home? I will march in there and threaten Mother and Father if I have to," he said, jovial, but also completely serious.
"Father drinks, gambles, and makes lewd comments to Mother and she gossips, drinks, fires and hires staff because who needs a reason, certainly not Maite Smith, and corrects every last thing I do. I would say my home life is pretty stable, considering it has not changed since, oh, I don't know, birth? Other than –" Evelina's sentence was interrupted by a man atop a horse leaning down and sniffing her like a bloodhound.
"Oh, that's Mike, I told you about him before, right?"
"Depends, is this Mike-from-your-trainee-days Mike?"
Mike grinned, seemingly pleased that his friend and comrade found him interesting or important enough to tell his sister about, and nodded with a 'hm.'
A bespectacled brunette chuckled and feigned flattery. "Erwin, you love us so much that you include us in your letters to your sister? We are touched."
Erwin ignored her – or him, Evelina was uncertain – and pushed a piece of Evelina's hair from her face while carrying on with the conversation. "And you're staying out of trouble? I love you unconditionally, blondie, but if you embarrass me I might have to give you a hug quota next visit."
"Anything but the hug quota!" Evelina exclaimed, attacking her thirty-some-odd year old brother with another hug. "Of course I stay out of trouble, what kind of reprobate do you take me for?"
"Still building your vocabulary, I see. Tell me, how many time per letter do you grab a dictionary, now?"
"Erwin dear, you're lucky if it's once these days."
"I've raised you right," he bragged mostly for his own reaffirmation. He, not their parents, encouraged her love of learning. "But it would seem I need to step up my vocabulary game. Before I go, are there any boys - or girls for that matter - I need to be scaring away?"
"Right," Evelina snorted. "People being attracted to me, Erwin, that is a good one. If my face doesn't scare them away then the fact I am more intelligent does," she joked. She was no Aphrodite but she was content with the way she looked mostly because the last thing on her mind was physical appearance. "Books are better than kissing, anyway. Are you staying in town for a few days, or are you on your way back to Wall Rose?"
"Sorry, Inna," he said, pulling her into another hug. "I can't stay this time."
"Oh," her face fell. "That's okay. As long as you don't forget to write…I'm glad I happened to catch you on your way out of Sina, I was afraid that today would be the day you met with the Supreme Commander and I would not get to see you because of that stupid party. By the way, did you get my last letter yet?"
"Not yet; it should be waiting for me at HQ. Will I finally learn the conclusion to the Betty Freeh drama?"
"You mean did I put that unbearable little blabbermouth in her place? Damn right I did, and I'll tell you now," she grinned maliciously and made an evil finger pyramid of victory. "Betty will not be trifling with me again anytime soon. Nobody fu – whoops, there are other adults besides you present – nobody messes with a Smith and gets away with it. I won't tell you more because I literally gave myself a wrist cramp writing that part of the letter; I left nothing out so it will feel like I'm telling you in person. I'm sure you can imagine the vocal inflections and wild gesticulations that would accompany an in person explanation."
"I'm looking forward to it," he said, patting his horse in a subtle 'I-should-go-now' gesture.
Evelina nervously ran her fingers through her blonde hair and reached out to touch her brother's horse. "I suppose I should let you go. Otherwise your friends will be here all night and will all want to punch you more than I imagine they want to on a daily basis," she turned to Mike, Commander Shadis, the grumpy man behind him, and the person with the glasses and said, "He's not always a pain in the ass, he has his moments, and I tell him him to play nice, but -" she shrugged and turned back to Erwin. "Hurry back for a visit, I could do with more brotherly corruption, and I miss almost kicking your tail in chess."
"We'll see, Inna," he kissed her forehead before he turned around to mount his horse. "Maybe."
"Mother is doing all she can to make me into the perfect little socialite housewife since her first child decided to go rouge and join the Scouting Legion," Evelina teased, standing on her tiptoes for one more awkward hug. "Hey, one question before you go, and please don't laugh at me because it is an absurdly stupid question."
"Ask away."
"Our cousin Ralf is at the party as well and about two hours in, he came to talk to me and mentioned that he saw Mother down three glasses of clear liquor. Given her usual drinking rate at parties, the total number may be as high as five plus her standard minimum two glasses of vine, so do you think she is drunk enough to be gossiping too hard to notice if I just go home instead of go back to the party?"
Erwin tried, but failed to stifle the laughter. "You have no idea how to get back over that fence, do you?"
"No, I could definitely jump that fence again. I just do not want to go back to that party, so do you think she is drunk enough for me to have a reasonable chance of successfully sneaking home?"
"You do not know how to get back over the fence, and I say risk it anyway," Erwin said, moving his horse forward as the rest of his comrades began to move. "Life's too short to always worry about what Mother will think, is it not?"
"Yeah," Evelina said once he was out of earshot. "It is."