wanderamaranth | Garden Party

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Summary: One met the most interesting sorts of persons at Alice Kingsleigh-Hightopp's garden parties.

Rating: T

Author's Note: This is a follow-up to the one-shot Bachelorette Party.

Author's Note the Second: The Chattaway twins', in this verse, interweave their sentences so that one starts speaking, the other picks it up, and then the first finishes. To illustrate this, I've formatted their speech as follows. "What are you getting at you silly cow?" You would read that line as Faith starting to speak, Fiona picking up the narrative at the italics, and then Faith resuming talking when the text reverts to normal (or vice versa, with Fiona starting; usually I make no distinction which one actually starts, as I feel it hardly matters).

One met the most interesting sorts of persons at Alice Kingsleigh-Hightopp's garden parties. Whether this was a good-interesting or a bad-interesting depended entirely on one's perspective. In any case, to the sisters formerly surnamed Chattaway, more often than not the attendees were of the good-interesting variety, and that day was no exception.

"And just who," Fiona started, admiration clear in her gaze, "is that?" Faith finished, following her sister's line of vision until it landed on a handsome fellow (well, handsome if one enjoys their men to be of the tall-dark-and-brooding variety, which they, being creatures of fashion, both enjoyed considerably). She agreed with her sister's spur-of-the-moment assessment of him and his undoubtedly good character (for the handsome were hardly ever wicked; and when they were, it was in the delicious way) wholeheartedly.

"Oh. Him." Alice Kingsleigh-Hightopp, currently of London, did not sound nearly as impressed with her guest as the twin sisters had. "That is Ilosovic Stayne. I wasn't going to invite him at all, but Mirana insisted." Alice rolled her eyes. "Said it would be good for him to get out amongst Society." She inclined her head gently towards a woman with white hair and a blinding smile, who seemed to be the current belle of the party. A swarm of admirers nearly threatened to overtake her, but somehow never accomplished that goal.

"Hmm." Faith hummed appreciatively, a sound that Alice was all-too-familiar with. A passerby would mistake it for a general hum of interest, or perhaps even one of attraction. Alice knew better; it was a Plotting hum.

"Faith…" she said, warningly, "You are a married woman. You can't possibly be thinking…"

"Oh, posh!" Fiona cut in. "Of course she's married. Doesn't mean she's blind to all other men, unlike you, Mrs. Hightopp."

"Besides, I thought you didn't believe in impossibilities." Faith teased, causing Alice to flush. Irritated, she attempted to push a strand of hair that stubbornly insisted on coming out of her chignon back into the rest of her snarled mass, but with no luck. She huffed, and glared at the twins as if it were all their fault.

Ignoring the insinuation about her hair (for it technically was the twin's fault that Alice had such difficulties; they'd been the ones to suggest she try the new Gibson style, which unfortunately was extremely unflattering to one with Alice's unique hair challenges) Faith went back to the subject that more greatly interested her. "Of course I'm married." she agreed with her sister. "Happily, too. As Fiona said, it doesn't mean I don't have two eyes in my head, goose."

"But…"

The sisters exchanged looks, and nodded.

"Besides, we were thinking that perhaps there is someone else of our mutual close acquaintance that could benefit from taking notice of your tall friend."

"He's not my-"

"Shall we find her, then?" Fiona asked, popping the last bit of cake that lingered on her plate into her mouth.

"Yes, let's!" Faith agreed. She handed her empty ice cream dish and spoon to Alice, linked arms with her sister and set off with determination.

"Whom do you speak of?" Alice called after them, bemusedly staring at the dishes now in her hands.

"Margaret, of course!" they replied in tandem, giggling at the way Alice's head had snapped back up at their retreating forms and the expression on her face as they swaned away.

The color drained from Alice's face as she stood, stunned for a moment, imagining how very many bad, bad things could happen to Margaret if she were to…but no, Margaret wouldn't possibly…The blonde tried to convince herself of the imminent sensibility of her sister, to not have her head turned by the first rouge who winked at her, as she watched her two friends set off. Then she remembered…

Of course Margaret would faint and fawn over a Knave like Stayne! She'd been married to Lowell, hadn't she? And had she not thought of him as an almost princely sort of man? Oh, this was a disaster!

Benjamin Twist, Fiona's husband, came up behind her. "Hullo there, Mrs. Hightopp." He saw her shocky expression and followed her gaze to the twins, chuckled and then said, "What are they up to, then?"

"Matchmaking." Alice said faintly.

"Hrm." Benjamin grunted noncommittally. "Is the gentleman they plan to force Margaret together with amiable enough to handle their…enthusiasm, about such a prospect?"

"Absolutely not." Alice replied, shaking her head.

"Then don't you think you should go after them?" he said, diplomatically. If there was one thing Benjamin had learned while being married to Fiona, it was that a man did not place himself in the path of a woman intent on making romantic connections between personages. After (what the twins considered) their success with nudging Alice towards her own happy union, they had made it their personal goal to see every unattached female of their acquaintance married off. They'd been surprisingly successful at this, spotting attractions and secret liaisons between lovers that others overlooked. Their one failure was Alice's Aunt Imogene, who had embarrassed them much more than herself with her violent refusal of a widowed vicar.

Startling out of her stupor, Alice shoved the ice cream dish and spoon at Benjamin. "I'll need reinforcements for this one, I'm afraid. Where is my husband?"

Benjamin pointed in direction polar opposite that of the one the twins had hurried off in, mustache twitching in amusement. Alice groaned. "Of course." she said. If she had stopped believing in impossible things the way the twins teased her she had, Alice would have given up right then; but she hadn't really stopped believing in those things, so she didn't.

Instead she rucked up her skirts and plowed through the crowd, a most determined frown furrowing her features. Guests gasped and went to glare at the rude person who elbowed their way through their clusters, until they saw it was, in fact, their hostess. Then a bland smile carefully pasted itself on their faces and they turned back to their conversations. Tarrant watched Alice go through this little ritual several times, outwardly unaware of her approach, pretending to listen very carefully to Hamish Ascot tell a story about a pig, a milkmaid, and a bucket that, as it turns out, was not full of slop as the pig apparently presumed.

When Alice finally reached him, she was panting and flushed from exertion. Tarrant immediately turned to her, smoothing and tidying her now almost-completely ruined hairstyle back away from her face. "What have they done now?" he asked.

"You-!" Alice puffed, took a deep breath, and then tried speaking again. "You knew I was trying to reach you? And yet you let me-?" She gestured to the party-goers behind them.

"I liked watching you push your way through to me." the Hatter murmured, then grinned unrepentantly. "You were very…muchy. The effort gave you a most becoming glow." He moved in to kiss her, but Alice drew away from him and smacked him, none too lightly, upon the chest. "This is serious!" she hissed. "They mean to introduce Margaret to Stayne!"

"And…?" Tarrant asked, not understanding the implications of her words. The Knave of Hearts was here on forbearance, but Mirana had assured them herself that she would see to it that he 'behaved himself'. Hamish, however, picked up on the nuances of such a thing much more quickly, and abruptly stopped his tale just as the milkmaid was scrambling away from the keen pig.

"The Chattaways mean to introduce Margaret to someone?" he stressed, causing the gentlemen with him to give each other knowing glances.

Tarrant startled in understanding then, as well.

"Oh…Hrm…Shall we stop them, then?" he looked uncertainly from Hamish to his wife, who nodded firmly.

"Yes. Let's." she agreed, grabbing him by the hand and dragging him off behind her.

Margaret watched Alice and her husband convene to her east, talking earnestly and shooting furtive glances in her direction. She then turned to see Faith and Fiona dragging a not-very-reluctant, extremely tall man in her direction from the west. She smirked into her sherbet and pretended interest in what Mr. Fitzherbert was telling her. This should be rather interesting, she thought.

"Alice! Mr. Hightopp! To what do I owe the honor of your company? You seem quite distressed. In the middle of your very lively soiree, to boot!"

"Come with me, Margaret. It's a matter of some urgency." Alice grasped her sister's arm and attempted to tow her away, but Margaret Manchester was made of sterner stuff than she had been even a year previously, and she stood firm.

"Dear sister, I was in the middle of a very interesting discussion with Mr. Fitzherbert here." Margaret nodded to the gentleman in question, who beamed in the general direction of her décolleté. She hoped she'd not be required to recite just what she and Mr. Fitzherbert had been discussing, as she'd honestly not been paying a whit of attention to him, instead splitting her time between watching the Chattaways, her sister, and dodging Fitzherbert's random attempts at clumsily groping her. (Honestly, there was only so many times the man could 'accidentally' trip and use her body to gain purchase upon the ground once more before any believability as to the reality of his affliction was gone.)

"The last time you came to me in such a tizzy, it was only a matter of letting your staff know that it was time for the dishes to be cleared away. You remember, at your first dinner party? You will not become proficient in the art of hostessing unless you at least try to apply yourself."

"No, Mrs. Manchester, I'm afraid you don't understand! It really is rather-"

"What, Mr. Hightopp? Have you come to assist your wife in pestering me when you both should be among your other guests?"

Margaret's words were harsher than she'd spoken in the past; it wasn't that she disliked Alice's husband-quite the contrary. It was only that losing Lowell and facing the prospect of raising their son on her own had left her rather more bitter than she'd been before, especially when face-to-face with her sister's happiness and good fortune.

Without a rogue to reform, she was just plain old Margaret, a title she was coming to resent very much.

"Now, madam, there is really no reason to be quite so severe on my husband! He was simply-"

"Enough!" Tarrant broke between the two females, and from the look upon his face after doing so, Margaret fancied he realized just what a precarious situation that could be. If Alice had not managed to draw her ire with so few words, she might have even found it comical.

"Alice, dear…" Tarrant took one of her gloved hands in both of his and kissed them, one after the other. "You have my full permission to scold Meg as harshly as you may wish…later. Right now we need to focus on getting her tucked out of sight before the twins arrive!"

A blanket of silence met this declaration, as Margaret and Alice were both too focused on what was beyond his shoulder to properly reply.

"They are standing just behind me, aren't they?" Tarrant asked, a sort of resigned weariness not suited to him coloring his tone.

Alice bit her lower lip in an obvious attempt to not laugh. Margaret likely would have been engaged in doing something similar, had she not been busy staring up (and up, and up, and…goodness, she'd have a time of it climbing him, wouldn't she?) and blushing at her runaway thoughts. The man that the twins had somehow gotten to agree to trail after them looked down at her, his single blue eye shining in a suspiciously bright manner.

"That's a fine and well way to treat a pair of dear friends that are just being helpful-like at this dull little party of yours! Doing what you ought to be doing and introducing guests to one another and such."

Tarrant lifted one overgrown eyebrow (and really, why the man couldn't trim those beastly things was beyond Margaret; when she'd suggested doing so to Alice, she'd actually looked horrified and said that she liked his eyebrows that way. There were some things that Margaret feared she would never understand about her younger sister) to no doubt inform the twins of some sort of folly in their logic (the man was maddeningly good at such things) when a smooth voice spoke out, stopping anyone else from throwing any of their words or opinions out.

"Forgive me for being forward." Stayne stepped around both Alice and Tarrant with one long swing of his legs and placed himself next to Margaret. She had to strain her head upwards in order to still look him in the face, but she didn't mind in the least. "This fine pair of ladies have introduced me to many at this" here the Knave made a moue of distaste to show what his real opinion of the gathering was, despite his polite words, "…party, but may I be so bold as to say that none of them have been as lovely nor as poised as you, Mrs. Manchester."

"Too true!" Fiona agreed.

"But then, we only introduced him to Peterson, stuffy old Mrs. Fitzherbert-no offense, George-and that dreadful bucktoothed Miss Snavely-"

"Faith!" Fiona interrupted her sister, stepping on her insole for good measure. She smiled in a sickeningly sweet manner as her twin hopped up and down on her uninjured foot. Ilosovic and Tarrant turned and, for once, seemed to be in perfect agreement about something: the twins were rather frightfully like another pair of siblings that they were acquainted with.

Tarrant recovered first with a visible shake. "Yes, yes, how remiss of us not to make the proper introductions." Leaning towards Alice in a manner that no one would ever think to be subtle, he said, "We shall have to take it upon ourselves to make sure that nothing like this ever happens in the future, but for now, this most perilous present, we shall simply have to muddle through the best we can." He turned and addressed Stayne. Alice sputtered, trying to stop her husband, but it was clear his mind had been made up.

"Sir Stayne, it brings me no pleasure whatsoever to introduce to you Mrs. Margaret Manchester. Mrs. Manchester, this is Ilosovic Stayne."

Flicking a brow of her own at the contempt Alice's husband seemed to hold for the tall man, she said in the manner of one stupefied, "I had never thought to meet one of the Nephilim in my lifetime, Mr. Stayne. It is a pleasure."

Alice choked once more (only this time she'd not had any foodstuffs to blame, and it was clear that she was simply disgusted), Tarrant looked puzzled, but the twins gasped and nodded to each other approvingly in turn.

"I told you she'd approve, dear sister." Fiona gloated.

"No, I told you!" Faith corrected.

Stayne inched closer to Margaret, brow crinkled. He leaned in closer to her, and she could smell faint traces of whiskey on his breath. He'd been indulging at a garden party! How terribly wicked!

"I take that the words you've spoken were complimentary, then, Mrs. Manchester?" One hand reached out and ran itself down her arm. "Perhaps, dare I even say, approving?"

When Stayne had the temerity to actually reach out and touch her sister, Alice had witnessed enough. "Ok, how wonderful, everyone is introduced now, goodbye!" she said in a rush, grasping Margaret's other arm and towing her unwilling form after her like a particularly determined tug boat. The twins shrieked after her, and even Tarrant, who had himself come and absconded her away at one point in time (and oh, her mother's reaction to seeing him for the first time had been decidedly delicious!) looked shocked at her behavior. Surely he could recognize that gleam in Stayne's eye as he gazed down at her sister, could he not? He was supposed to help her prevent another Chattaway success story, not aid in it! The words spoken by the gentleman they passed as Alice continued to drag Margaret away reflected much of what Alice felt herself-but she still had to try, didn't she?

"Look at the way Kingsleigh-Hightopp is dragging her sister about! As if that will help, now that the twins have had a hand in things!"

"I say look at the way he's staring after them! Franklin Chattaway's girls have got a gift most frightening to any happily single man, do they not?"

"Poor blighter. Too right you are-his days as a singleton are over, mark my words!"

As they reached their ultimate destination, Alice almost felt badly for drafting whom she was into her new-found cause, but desperate times and such (hopefully Margaret would forgive her someday) were guiding her.

"Alice, whatever is going on? You've managed to throw your entire party into chaos!" Helen Kingsleigh stood, taking one of each of her daughter's hands in her own. While the party was not chaos per say, it was certainly a bit more disorganized than it had been even a half-hour previously. "I wasn't the one who set it arrears." Alice insisted. "You may blame the positively occult matchmaking skills of the Mrs. Twist and Roux for that!"

Helen had experienced first hand with Alice-and with subsequent other acquaintances' sons and daughters-to be sufficiently alarmed at such a statement. "I should think you'd be safe from them, Alice, married to your Scotsman as you are!" (To Helen, this was one of the most shocking things that her younger daughter had ever done-gone off and married a Scotsman in trade. If she'd known the truth of his origins, no doubt she'd be even more undone by the entire situation than she'd had been, but Tarrant and Alice had decided, through mutual design, to never reveal that particular truth to her mother. There were some things, they'd agreed, that were best if mother-in-laws never knew about their new sons, and Tarrant's true homeland was one of them.)

"Not me!" Alice hissed, and her mother turned wide eyes to Margaret. "But you're still in your weeds!" she admonished her.

"Mother, it was only an introduction! Besides, Mr. Hightopp was the one that actually introduced me to Mr. Stayne. I believe he may be a friend of his." These words were spoken innocently- a shade too innocently-and Alice narrowed her eyes at her sister as she continued to talk. "Besides, mother, weren't you just telling me the day before last about how you thought Alice had made the best match for herself that she could have in terms of her own personal happiness? If the twins are able to inspire such matches, should you not be pleased for me?"

"You said that, Momma?" Alice asked, momentarily flummoxed. She'd always the impression that her mother-while not outright saying it-disapproved of her union with Tarrant. It had been a point of contention for some time between them, and the reason why they'd moved to London for the time being. Tarrant had insisted that she attempt to form a stronger relationship with her mother "while she was still living for her to enjoy it". Alice had not the heart to refuse him, and the desire to be with her own family again had been strong, so they'd moved back from "Scotland" three months past.

"I…I did." Helen released her hand to fumble for a handkerchief. "That does not mean, however, that-"

"Hello, sorry to intrude," a musical voice said behind Alice, and she turned to see Mirana bobbing gracefully. Margaret, for reasons unknown, was frowning in a significant manner at the White Queen, causing Alice to frown herself. She'd thought when she introduced them three months prior (when she and Tarrant had first moved to London-town) that they'd gotten along swimmingly-had they a falling out of some sort that she'd not heard of?

Mirana was not wearing her crown, per Alice's request, but still had an aura of regal command about her. A small trail of suitors were struggling through the crowd to reach her side once more, but she simply smiled sweetly, seeming not to notice at all. "Have you decided to give them the good news?" Mirana burbled, and Margaret's black look grew exponentially worse.

"There is nothing for me to tell," she gritted out through tightly clenched teeth, causing Mirana's dark brows to draw together in confusion. "But I saw you speaking to him in public; I thought you said that when you were able to do that you'd announce your-"

"Mirana!" Margaret interrupted, but it was too late. Alice saw all the implications of the White Queen's speech, very clearly. Her eyes grew wide and she desperately wished she had not left her husband behind in her quest to pry her sister from the Knave's grasp; she could very much use his support (if in no other way than holding her upright) at that moment.

"You knew," she said to Mirana. "You knew, and that is why you insisted on Stayne's invitation to this party!"

Helen Kingsleigh, however, did not see what was before them. "She knew what?" Looking between the three women before her, she searched their faces for answers that she was not readily finding. "She knew what?" Helen repeated, and in that moment, Alice almost felt sorry for her mother. If this was how Helen felt when Alice had introduced her to Tarrant in the manner she had, she could now very well understand her upset in the weeks that had followed.

"Have you decided to finally tell them, dear heart?" Stayne sidled up to Margaret's side, grasping her waist with one great hand.

"Well, I was going to wait at until at least a day after the twins 'introduced' us, darling." Margaret placed her hands over top of the Knave's about her middle. "They do so enjoy their reputation. I thought that perhaps helping it along a bit could be great fun."

"What have we missed?" the twins in question huffed over, clearly having just caught up to Stayne's long-legged strides. Tarrant trailed behind them, apologizing profusely to every guest that they'd managed to unbalance in their quest. Fiona spotted the placement of Stayne's hand on Margaret first out of their late-arriving trio, and chuffed her sister upon the elbow, pointing excitedly and without restraint at the casual show of affection.

"We are getting rather frightfully good, would you not say, sister?"

"You haven't missed anything, yet." Alice ignored their self-congratulatory giggles to instead focus upon the expression on her sister's face. Had she worn such a look of mischievous glee when calling Reynolds to fetch her mother, the day she'd become engaged to Tarrant? She caught her husband's eye over Fiona's head, and his lopsided grin in her direction was answer enough: yes, she had. That blasted man of hers was enjoying this display! He'd always told her that he believed Margaret to possess just as much muchness as herself, and he'd be unbearable to live with for a few days now that he'd been proven right.

"No, nothing, yet." Margaret agreed, leaning her head back against Stayne's chest. "You would have, however, missed this, had you not arrived when you did: Mother," Helen Kingsleigh's oldest daughter looked her in the eyes, and said, with a grin that would do Chessur proud, "I have news for you."