Fic: You Will Always Have a Part of Me (Pink Carnation Series, Miles/Henrietta)

Dec 05, 2010 07:57

Title: You Will Always Have a Part of Me
Disclaimer: Not mine in any way, shape, or form.
Fandom/Characters: Pink Carnation series, Miles/Henrietta
Word Count: 329
Request: For katayla, who wanted Miles and Henrietta dealing with a grown up daughter. Spoilers through the second book, The Masque of the Black Tulip for sure. There may be others, but I don't think so.


When he was a young man, Miles Dorrington had thought that there was no fate worse than being trapped at Almack's with a room full of matchmaking mother's. Now, though, as he stood in the corner of the room and glowered at the simpering young men that were dancing attendance on his daughter, Arabella, he knew differently.

Bad enough that his daughter was grown up enough to be on the marriage mart, but to have to watch? No, this was the worst thing that he'd ever had the misfortune to experience.

"Stop that," his wife, Henrietta, ordered, with a snap of her fan to his arm. "You'll frighten away Arabella's suitors."

He rubbed at the spot that she'd hit. That hurt. He frowned at her. "Wasn't that what I was told to do?"

"No, dear," Henrietta said, with a mixture of fondness and exasperation in her voice. "You were to scare away the undesirable young men. Not all of them."

"Aren't they all undesirable?"

"Miles!" Henrietta shook her head. "I should have expected this, I suppose. I remember you looming over all my prospective dance partners."

"And didn't that work out well?"

She raised an eyebrow at him, her eyes dancing with amusement. "You'd rather she be compromised in my brother's gardens by her closest friend? I will be certain to inform Letty at once."

He stared at her, utterly horrified, until finally Henrietta laughed and squeezed his arm gently.

"Go play cards," she said. "Nothing is going to happen at Almack's, I assure you." She nodded her head towards their daugther. "Besides, Arabella is giving us imploring looks, which I take to mean that we are acting inappropriately close once again."

He hesitated, torn between his desire to escape and his desire to do what was right. "Are you sure?"

Henrietta nodded and gave him a little push. "Say hello to Geoff and Richard for me." She made a little shooing motion with her hands. "Go."

Miles bolted.

books: pink carnation series, holiday fic extravaganza 2010, fic by me

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