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In which there is a new neighbour

(November, 1814)

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"…And one thing I will say about Lord Buckston is that I have it on good authority that he's acquainted with the private secretary to the Home Secretary. And he goes hunting every year with Lord Longbottom — he's a baron, you know — and he — "

"I know who Lord Longbottom is," said Ron dully, though that was really the only bit he'd caught of Percy's words; the rest had all blended together into some kind of annoying buzz. "His son and I were at Oxford together."

He laid down his only remaining diamond card in a game they were sharing with Bill and George as the family gathered together before dinner.

"Oh." Percy blinked. "Well, good, because Lord Longbottom is cousin to the Chancellor of the Exchequer. Though I wouldn't suggest trying to speak to him without speaking to his undersecretary first. Now, I'm not acquainted with him, but if you'd like — you know, I'll be very busy, but I can introduce you to — "

"Less talk, more cards," suggested Bill pointedly, as they were now waiting on Percy to make the next play.

"All I'm saying is that if Ron insists on going to London in the spring he might as well make good use of his time — unless you've finally decided on some other occupation — "

"Mama, tell him to stop," groaned Ron.

"Ron has no need of an occupation yet; he's too young," said Mrs Weasley indulgently from across the room.

"Yes, Ronnie," contributed George, "you should just live here forever, that probably won't be odd at all."

Percy pulled an incredulous face, responding to his mother. "No, he isn't, he's the same age as we all were when we — "

"Why don't you bother George instead?" protested Ron.

"I have an occupation," was the lofty reply from George, who'd been spending time once again in Mr Lovegood's print shop.

"That isn't a fit occupation for you," sniffed Mrs Weasley, for whom this was a persistent source of agitation.

"'Course it is, and what's more, His Grace over here can't say anything about it — " George pointed to Percy — "because Lovegood ain't paying me. He can scarcely pay himself," he added in an undertone.

"I don't understand why you won't just take your orders in the Church," sighed Mrs Weasley for what must have been the hundredth time in her life. "Six sons and none ordained; must you all disgrace me in this way?"

"Have you met any of them?" muttered Bill.

"George's Latin is abysmal, anyway," remarked Percy, finally making his play.

"You know, Percy," said George cheerfully, "quidam dicunt te esse vanus, sed te dico esse anus — " He ducked as Bill swatted at him.

Bill laid down the queen of diamonds on Percy's knave, took the trick, and led with a new suit.

"It seems perfectly proper that George should lend assistance to someone who's in a bad way," mused Dr Weasley without looking up from his paper. "It's what any gentleman should do."

"Well, of course!" Mrs Weasley bristled. "But you can't take it up as a profession, George."

"And I'm certain there are better ways of going about that," said Percy, looking to his father.

"Yes," agreed Dr Weasley. "It should have been my brother's responsibility, to manage his estate in such a way that his tenants should not find themselves in difficult circumstances; but he didn't, and being high in the instep is hardly helpful."

Percy coloured and was silent for a second, and he'd just begun to open his mouth again when Bill took the opportunity to interject:

"Speaking of Uncle's estate, have I mentioned that I believe I've found a tenant for Knightley Cottage at last?"

"Have you?" exclaimed Mrs Weasley. "Oh, it will be wonderful to have some new society! Are they amiable?"

"I should imagine you will not find yourself wanting for any conversation whilst they are around," Bill replied darkly.

"Goodness, it's been an age since anyone has lived there. Longer than a year, I should think. Although it's difficult to say, because the last family who lived there did like to keep to themselves."

Ron's face warmed as he listened to this exchange, staring at his cards.

"You remember, Dr Weasley?" Mrs Weasley enquired of her husband. "The father was a surgeon, wasn't he?"

"At Knightley Cottage? Yes, yes, Granger was his name, I believe. Fine surgeon."

"That's right! They had a daughter, I think. Ginny, I believe you and Miss Granger were of an age, were you not?"

Ron swallowed thickly and laid down a six of hearts.

Ginny looked up from where she'd been showing Fleur some drawings.

"I believe so," she said. "But we never did speak much. I don't think she cared for society. I scarcely ever saw her dance. Always had a book — Oh, but Ron danced with her once, I think. Do you remember? Ronnie!"

"What?" replied Ron without looking up from his cards, the markings on which had now seared themselves into his vision.

"Miss Granger who lived at Knightley Cottage last year. You remember her."

"No," he said dispassionately. "Percy, it's your turn."

Ginny rolled her eyes.

"Of course, you do! She had brown hair?" she encouraged.

"Surely there are at least half a dozen girls in Devonshire with brown hair." Ron tugged at his collar. "Is it hot?"

"No," said George and Percy together.

"I distinctly remember now," Ginny reminisced, "because I hardly ever saw her dance, and she had a book with her at the assembly. Was it in Honiton? No, it couldn't have been, because I seem to recall it being much smaller…"

Ron shifted irritably against the binding fabric of his coat and glanced at Percy, who was taking far too long to play a card from his hand.

"Yes, that's right!" decided Ginny. "It was in Ottery, and it was in the spring, wasn't it?"

Ron ran a hand across his hairline. "I haven't the faintest idea."

"You're hopeless," declared Ginny. "You had to coax her to dance. You don't forget that sort of thing."

"It seems I do. Percy, some time before Christmas!" Unable to stand it any longer, Ron began undoing the knot of his cravat.

"Ron, you cannot go in to dinner in that state of undress," chided his mother.

"Well, it is absolutely infernal in here!"

"It really isn't." Percy looked askance at him. "Are you feverish?"

"No, I'm not feverish!" Ron swatted away the hand Percy had reached out to feel his brow. "Percy, the cards with the little red hearts, play one of those!"

"Don't help him," protested Bill.

"I'm not helping him, it's the lead suit!"

"Dinner is served," announced Chudleigh at the door.

"Dinner!" echoed Ron, shooting up out of his chair.

He threw down his cards upon the table and headed for the dining room, but stopped then just behind Percy, reached over his shoulder, and plucked the lowest-ranking hearts from Percy's hand, ignoring Percy's consterned "I beg your pardon!"

"There." Ron slapped the card down atop the others in the centre of the table. "Trick goes to Bill."

The three brothers still at the table sat in stunned silence for a few seconds as Ron annoyedly and haphazardly re-tied his cravat.

"So," said George conversationally, as if his younger brother had not just flown up into the boughs for no apparent reason, "who is the new tenant at the cottage?"

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"Muriel!?"

Sir Bilius stared at his nephew in stunned horror.

"Indeed," said Bill.

"What devil could have possessed you to invite that woman here?"

"Well, she is my aunt. And the cottage needs a tenant, we've spoken of this."

"There were no French spies or murderers or attorneys, or anyone else who might have been pleasanter company?"

Bill smiled patiently. "Anyway, you should plan to call on her tomorrow to welcome her."

"I'm not call— Tomorrow?" Sir Bilius froze in the act of reaching for a decanter of claret. "You don't mean to tell me she's already arrived?"

"This very morning," confirmed Bill.

Sir Bilius gawped. "Billy, this is an ambush! You…"

Bill raised his eyebrows smugly.

"You knew I'd try to thwart it!" Sir Bilius narrowed his eyes.

"Yes, I did."

With a look of consternation, his uncle unstoppered the decanter.

Bill sighed. "You need hardly ever see her. She'll spend all of her time with my mother and my sister, I'm sure. You need only call on her tomorrow to welcome — "

"Oh, no!" Sir Bilius wagged a finger before beginning to pour out a glass of wine. "You're responsible for this mess — you can welcome her."

"I'm not the master of the estate."

"I don't care, I — "

"Forgive the intrusion, sir," came the voice of the butler from the doorway. "But there's a Mrs Montague for you in the drawing room."

The wine overran the glass, spilling over onto Sir Bilius's hand as he stared, frozen, at his butler.

"Seven thousand hells," he muttered, setting down the decanter and glass and shaking out his hand to dry it.

He glanced about indecisively before instructing the butler, "Tell her I'm not at home to visitors."

"Uncle…" protested Bill.

"What the devil does that termagant mean by — "

"Bilius!" interjected a voice from the doorway.

A bony woman of some seventy years, wearing a fur-trimmed velvet pelisse and far too much rouge, shooed the butler out of her way with her cane and swept into the parlour.

"Muriel," replied Sir Bilius through a grimace masquerading as a smile.

"Did you mean to keep me waiting in there forever? My God, I could die tomorrow, you know."

"Oh, surely not until Wednesday at the earliest," he responded decorously.

Muriel ignored him, turning her attention to her nephew.

"Well, William, come and give your aunt a kiss!"

Bill obliged with a kiss on her cheek. "I hope you've had a pleasant journey?"

"Pleasant journey? Good Lord, I've travelled from Kent! You couldn't have invited me during a drier month?"

"If it please you," suggested Sir Bilius, "you could go home and come back in the spring. Of 1850."

Before this could escalate, Bill interjected, "Is the cottage to your liking, Aunt?"

"The parlour is very small." Muriel sat down without being invited. "But I suppose it's better than living with my son and his horrible wife forever! On the subject of which, William, where is your wife? I wish to be introduced!" She thumped her cane on the floor for emphasis.

"Oh, she's not far, I'll ask her to come in." Bill headed for the doorway, ignoring his uncle's murderous look at the prospect of being left alone with Muriel.

"I dare say she's wandering around disoriented," mused Muriel. "This place has more mirrors than a harlot's boudoir!"

Bill brought a fist to his mouth to stifle a laugh and disappeared into the hall.

"You look well, Bilius," declared Muriel.

Discomposed, the gentleman replied, "Ah… thank you, Muriel."

"I had not known you could make a waistcoat out of curtains. Well, I'm glad to see you're economising!"

It was with no small amount of trepidation that Bill escorted Fleur into the parlour to meet his great-aunt. He'd warned Fleur not to take anything Muriel said to heart, but part of him was convinced that within a sennight his wife would be on a boat back to the Continent.

"Aunt," he said as Muriel rose from the sofa. "Allow me to present Mrs Weasley."

Fleur curtseyed, and Muriel surveyed her imperiously for a silent few seconds.

"Well!" she said at last, breaking into a smile.

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"Lovely!" Muriel declared with a thump of her cane as Molly poured her a cup of tea at Burrough House the following day. "Absolutely lovely, your daughter-in-law! I'm glad to see one of your children has some sense!"

Molly's mouth twisted as if she'd just tasted something sour, and she forced the look off her face as she handed the cup and saucer to Muriel.

"Fred is engaged now, you know," she offered, for something to take her mind off Muriel's baffling compliment of Fleur.

"Is he! To whom?"

"Miss Johnson. She has been a friend to the twins since childhood."

"How utterly nonsensical! Romantic ideas put into his head by the Army, no doubt."

"She's a lovely girl. She's been a ward to Colonel Weasley these fifteen years at least. And — " Molly dropped her voice to a significant whisper — "she has fifteen thousand pounds!"

"Ah! Not so nonsensical, then. Good for him. But wait — Godfrey's ward? I remember that girl now. My God, she must be positively ancient!"

"She is the same age as the twins," affirmed Molly in a neutral tone, raising her own teacup to her lips.

"Good heavens! Well, every five thousand pounds takes off a year, so I suppose it's all right. Speaking of running out of time, where is your daughter?"

Molly choked a little on a mouthful of tea.

Before long, Ginny appeared, and the three ladies sipped their tea and talked for some time about all manner of things — everything except, to both Molly's and Ginny's confusion, Ginny's marital status.

After Verity brought in a fresh pot of tea, however, Muriel changed course.

"Molly, I should like to speak with Ginevra. Have you something you can occupy yourself with?"

Molly blinked. "Well, certainly…"

She retrieved some embroidery from a table across the room and then returned to her seat.

Muriel sighed impatiently. "Not here."

When Molly looked up in confusion, Muriel added, "The girl will hardly speak candidly with her mother in the room, will she?"

Molly gawped in protest, but Muriel merely glared, and eventually Molly stood, grumbling, and took herself off, closing the door behind her. Ginny was too bemused to protest any of this.

A minute passed in silence as Ginny poured out more tea for the both of them.

"Molly," called Muriel, "I know you are at the door listening. Stop it."

Molly, who was indeed listening, threw an affronted look at the door before reluctantly retreating.

"How old are you now?" Muriel demanded of Ginny, who sighed.

"Twenty."

"I see. Well, I won't dance around the matter: Your mother tells me that you refuse to marry, for some reason."

"What?" Ginny set down her cup with a clatter.

Muriel did not respond immediately, and as soon as Ginny had collected her wits, Ginny rose.

"Forgive me, Aunt," she said with every ounce of restraint she had in her. "But my mother has spoken to me about this hundreds of times, and I'm certain there's nothing you can say that I haven't already heard from her."

"What an absurd assumption," declared Muriel as Ginny headed for the door. "Why do you think I asked your mother to leave? Sit down."

Ginny froze but did not face her aunt quite yet.

"I am too old and haven't the patience to pretend to be scandalised by anything anymore," continued Muriel. "If you told me that you were rolling around in the hay with the stable boy every night I wouldn't bat an eye — "

"How dare you!" exclaimed Ginny, whipping around, flushing to the roots of her hair.

" — though I would tell you that you were being foolish." Muriel eyed Ginny with satisfaction. "Ah. So she does have shame."

"I have never — "

"I didn't say you had; I said you are capable of shame."

"I have dignity."

"Don't quibble with me about details. The point is, you seem to place some value in being respectable."

"Are you suggesting that because I haven't married I'm some sort of… trollop?"

"No, I'm suggesting that you may be something far worse: a romantic. Trollops are capable of being quite pragmatic, actually. Don't gawp at me, child. Sit down."

Ginny did not sit down but allowed herself to drift back towards her aunt. She came to a stop behind the chair she'd just vacated, clutching the wooden backrest.

Her jaw clenched under Muriel's appraising stare, as Muriel twisted her cane a half-turn this way and that.

"So which is it?" asked Muriel at last. "You've yet to find one acceptable individual amongst your legions of admirers? You are waiting for some prince? Or you have formed an attachment, but with someone beneath your station?"

"Neither," protested Ginny. "And I don't have 'legions of admirers.'"

"Faradiddle! Is your mother lying to me when she says you can barely move a foot in any direction without running headlong into a man falling over himself to make addresses to you? Genteel or otherwise?" Muriel ignored Ginny's scowl of grudging acquiescence. "Or when she says that you attend every party and dance every set? Twice with many of them? Are you telling me that in all your time out, you've never developed a tendre for any of them?"

"I'm not heartless!" Ginny argued. "I like some of them very much."

"And yet you are, what, opposed to marrying entirely?"

"Not at all," Ginny replied honestly, if petulantly. She never could force herself to write off the idea entirely.

"Really."

"Someday." Ginny shrugged. "Perhaps."

"'Someday,'" Muriel echoed dryly. "What is it that you are doing now that you cannot continue to do whilst you are married?"

Ginny pursed her lips and looked anywhere and everywhere except at her aunt.

"Good Lord, girl, don't tell me that you are foolish enough to put off marriage simply because you are enjoying the attention! That's terribly short-sighted of you."

"I don't enjoy the attention!" Ginny countered fiercely.

Muriel rolled her eyes. "Yes, that is the answer you are supposed to give me, but I've already told you I don't care about that. Of course you enjoy the attentions — as well you should! You don't think I was eighteen once?"

Ginny hardly knew what to make of this.

"You think me vain," she said in disbelief, her mouth hanging open a little.

"I've said no such thing. I said you find being admired enjoyable. Anyone who says they don't is shamming it."

When Ginny looked at her aunt as if Muriel had grown a second head, Muriel continued, "Oh, we are supposed to pretend we do not. The last thing your husband, whomever he is, will want to think is that you ever enjoyed anyone's company but his. They are fragile creatures.

"I don't find it foolish that you enjoy flirtations," she clarified then. "I find it foolish that you would avoid marrying for that reason. Do you think you will be sought after forever?"

"I'm hardly old," scowled Ginny.

"You're hardly young. And hardly rich. And let's not mince words: you're a hoyden, and men are apt to find that less endearing the more time passes. Don't gawp like a fish. You may have another good year or two left in you, but in my understanding you've also issued a number of rejections, so you can count those bridges burnt. How many offers have you received this year?"

Ginny shifted from one foot to the other, thinking.

"None," she answered at last.

Muriel's gimlet eyes widened. "I beg your pardon?"

Truth be told, Ginny had been a little surprised herself at hearing the answer coming out of her own mouth.

"None this year." She counted back through the months, her lips moving silently. "Yes, none."

"Have you been ill? Shut up in the house for months with some terrible ailment?"

"No," said Ginny sullenly.

"And how many offers did you receive last year?"

Ginny thought for a few seconds. "Four."

"And the year before?"

"Three."

Muriel puffed herself up with a great inhale. "Don't tell me you can't see the problem here."

Ginny sighed. "Aunt, you've just said yourself that I have legions of suitors — "

The look on Muriel's face was an infuriating mix of irony, concern, and self-satisfaction.

"It seems you may no longer have suitors, my dear; you have an audience. They are diverted by you. They find you amusing. That does not mean they want to marry you. They have already begun to write you off."

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"And then she asked me, what is my plan, in the event that I never do marry."

Ginny stabbed a flower stem more forcefully than necessary into a posy of fresh blooms she'd brought over for Luna, which she was now arranging to satisfaction in a chipped vase.

"And what did you say?" asked Luna, who was sat on her sofa with one leg tucked underneath her.

"What could I say? That I supposed I would find a lady companion, take up employment, and live on perhaps fifty pounds a year?"

Her arrangement now complete, Ginny flopped onto the sofa next to Luna, rumpled and slouching like a coat with nobody in it. Thinking, she puffed up her cheeks and then blew out the air with an unladylike pop of her lips.

"Suppose I should practise my sewing, then," she mused wryly. "I'm a little better, though — you can hardly notice where I had to redo my hem, look!"

She raised one leg straight out in front of her to display a bit of the hem of her dress. Luna gave her an indulgent look.

"Suppose I should also be nicer to my brothers," Ginny grinned, "because my other idea was to hope that one of them becomes very rich and very generous."

She twirled a stray bit of hair around her finger. "Why can't everything just stay exactly the way it is now?"

"Like a painting," mused Luna. "Only alive."

Ginny giggled, protesting, "Oh, but that would be even worse, I would be stuck in one place, truly in a box!" She formed an imaginary frame in the air with her hands.

"Perhaps you could visit other paintings." Luna tilted her head back, eyes closed. "I would hang your portrait right next to a painting of a horse so you may ride whenever you like. And on the other side a grand party scene. And below it, perhaps… hmm… a still life of just… cakes."

Ginny laughed in delight. "Lots of cakes, all different sorts. Very important."

"And then above it…"

"A portrait of you," said Ginny suddenly. "So I could see you whenever I like."

She looked over at Luna, who merely smiled her agreement and slid her hand under Ginny's, their fingers interlacing between them on the sofa.

"I wish that you would always be here," Ginny admitted. "Then I would have that, at least."

Luna's kind smile did not leave her, but she gave Ginny a significant look, tapping Ginny playfully on the tip of her freckled nose.

"Yes, I know," assured Ginny softly.

Luna was never meant to stay in Devonshire forever. Nor even England. And Ginny had known this for a long while. Luna could be kept in a cage no more than Ginny could.

"I wish… " Ginny searched her mind. "I wish that I didn't like society so much."

Though she said it in a way that didn't quite convince herself.

"Why?" asked Luna.

"Does it seem silly to you?" Ginny answered. "Doesn't it make me seem like… all the other girls?"

"Is that bad?"

"I don't know," Ginny murmured. "Sometimes I think that I shouldn't be. That I should try to be different."

Luna's placid voice displayed genuine sympathy when she remarked:

"What a terribly unfair rule."

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Notes:

"quidam dicunt te esse vanus, sed te dico esse anus" - "some call you vain, but I call you an ass"