rocky road and cookies 'n' cream with malt
Story: Timeless { backstory | index }
Title: Collisions
Rating: G
Challenge: Rocky Road #18: a garden, Cookies ‘n’ Cream #14: scream
Toppings/Extras: malt
Wordcount: 623
Summary: Lady Ashdown turns out to be rather more strong-willed than expected.
Notes: Malt madness begins! The immortal words of Shrek brought this prompt and this piece together. “I’m no one’s messenger boy, alright? I’m a delivery boy!” PFAH: Verity : and I promise to deliver.
The gardens of Lord Ashdown’s home on the outskirts of London were vast and beautiful. He had designed a lot of it himself; he was the sort of man who liked things just so, and didn’t want anybody else imprinting his world with their ideas, designs and perceptions of beauty. He had moved from the smaller-though still doubtlessly grand-townhouse deeper in the city upon his marriage.
With flowers bobbing in the springtime air and wrens, chaffinches and blue tits flickering through the carefully-cultivated foliage, benches sat facing beautiful views or in shadowy corners between hedgerows and a languid tone to the treacle-coloured April day, it seemed a place for serenity and calm reflection.
This illusion was shattered when piercing, raging shouts began yowling across the garden. Three figures made their way from the bottom of the garden, where horses were stabled, ready to be ridden out into the countryside that began at this very cusp of London.
Lord Ashdown was one of the walkers, hands behind his back, looking slightly fed up. Behind him walked his aide Isaac Prowse, and over one of his broad shoulders was unceremoniously slung the kicking, screaming form of Lady Verity Ashdown.
“Put me down!” she demanded, voice shrill with anger. Her face had gone brilliantly red and blonde curls hung messily about her face. “Put me down right now!”
Prowse rather wished that he could. Her squirming and kicking was quite alarming, not to mention the fact that he felt a little uncomfortably lugging a distinguished lady around like a sack of potatoes. Her husband, however, was perfectly unmoved.
“You are not getting out of this, Verity,” he said lightly. “My family will be here within the hour.”
“I don’t want to meet your family!” Verity said, voice becoming ragged from her prolonged shouting. “I want to ride my horses!”
“Well, you can’t.”
“You horrid, rotten pig! I hope you burn in hell!”
Ashdown sighed lightly, not looking back. Fists suddenly pounded into Prowse’s back.
“And you!” she spat. “You’re nothing more than a tedious little dogsbody, and an ugly one at that!”
Something in the sky caught and held Ashdown’s attention.
“I think I just saw a swift,” he murmured. “Isn’t it a little early in the year for them?”
Verity gave a scream of rage and started kicking and bucking with renewed energy and vehemence. Prowse wobbled anxiously, not that it seemed to bother the furious woman in the least. Her riding jacket carried the warm, snuffling musk of horses and her riding boots flecked mud and less pleasant things across the air in front of them.
“I don’t want to meet your Aunt bloody Ophelia!” she screeched.
“Do calm down, Verity,” Ashdown said serenely.
“I hate you!”
It was just three weeks ago that the two of them had been saying their wedding vows. Three weeks. Prowse could scarcely comprehend how things fell apart quite so fast. If anyone could manage it, however, he knew that it would be his rather misanthropic master.
When this received no response, Verity quietened down and replaced her anger with sulkiness, falling limp over Prowse’s shoulder. After a few more steps, she said-
“Your family despise me, Edward.”
“Well, I’m sure you can win them over with your boundless wit and charm, my dear.”
Prowse flinched, wondering if there was something wrong with his master which meant that whenever an argument seemed to be settling into something slightly resembling sense, he simply had to spoil it. Verity growled like a wildcat but thankfully refrained from beginning to kick again.
Three weeks down and a lifetime to go, Prowse thought with a grimace. Not that a lifetime would last very long if they continued at this rate.