Chapter 1-1
340 Words
Chapter One
Octavius Pryor should have won the race. It wasn’t difficult. The empty ballroom at his grandfather-the-duke’s house was eighty yards long, he’d lined one hundred and twenty chairs up in a row across the polished wooden floorboards, and making his way from one side of the room to the other without touching the floor was easy. His cousin Nonus Pryor—Ned—also had one hundred and twenty chairs to scramble over, but Ned was as clumsy as an ox and Octavius knew he could make it across the ballroom first, which was exactly what he was doing—until his foot went right through the seat of one of the delicate giltwood chairs. He was going too fast to catch his balance. Both he and the chair crashed to the floor. And that was him out of the race.
His cousin Dex—Decimus Pryor—hooted loudly.
Octavius ignored the hooting and sat up. The good news was that he didn’t appear to have broken anything except the chair. The bad news was that Ned, who’d been at least twenty chairs behind him, was now almost guaranteed to win.
Ned slowed to a swagger—as best as a man could swagger while clambering along a row of giltwood chairs.
Octavius gritted his teeth and watched his cousin navigate the last few dozen chairs. Ned glanced back at Octavius, smirked, and then slowly reached out and touched the wall with one fingertip.
Dex hooted again.
Octavius bent his attention to extracting his leg from the chair. Fortunately, he hadn’t ruined his stockings. He climbed to his feet and watched warily as Ned stepped down from the final chair and sauntered towards him.
“Well?” Dex said. “What’s Otto’s forfeit to be?”
Ned’s smirk widened. “His forfeit is that he goes to Vauxhall Gardens tomorrow night . . . as a woman.”
There was a moment’s silence. The game they had of creating embarrassing forfeits for each other was long-established, but this forfeit was unprecedented.
Dex gave a loud whoop. “Excellent!” he said, his face alight with glee. “I can’t wait to see this.”
- Writer
