cookies 'n' cream and grapefruit with malt
Story: Timeless { backstory | index }
Title: Uneasy
Rating: G
Challenge: Cookies ‘n’ Cream #4: smile, Grapefruit #6: deep pockets
Toppings/Extras: malt
Wordcount: 386
Summary: Isaac Prowse delivers a letter.
Notes: Related to the Ann Bartlett thing, not that it’s important or anything to do with anything! Grapefruit PFAH: who invited Isaac?
Isaac Prowse had ridden the horse hard across London, knowing better than to linger at this time of evening, but she was a complacent creature and didn’t fuss or become overexcited. When he arrived at the back of the Bartlett home, a grand townhouse that loomed impressively through the darkness, he leapt from the mare and patted her flank, leaving her loose as he walked quickly towards the back door.
He rapped a few times and then stood back. It didn’t take long for the door to be answered by someone he recognised.
“Good evening, Miss Hartford,” he said pleasantly to the young housemaid. Joan Hartford was a frightfully skinny young woman with a narrow, rodent-like face and dirty blonde hair that she always kept tucked up under her ruffled servant’s cap. The skin of her cheeks was blemished with acne and her eyes were large as saucers.
Isaac rather liked her though it was evident that she was terrified of him.
“Evening, sir,” she stammered eventually.
“You don’t have to call me ‘sir’,” he reminded her for what must have been the hundredth time. “I’m a servant for Mr Ashdown.”
She just looked at him slightly dubiously in response. Isaac knew that he dressed better than most simple servants, but Edward Ashdown had always insisted on it. He felt like he was stuck in-between places a lot of the time: the upper classes would rather die than be associated with a man like him, and the serving classes found him intimidating or in some cases even snobbish.
Another reason for Joan’s fear, he supposed, was that his reputation as Ashdown’s pet assassin had carried somewhat. And the fact that she was naturally very short and he was… not.
“Could you give this to Miss Bartlett?” he asked after the silence had become too awkward to even think of carrying out any sort of ordinary conversation. In a leather-gloved hand, he held out a slim envelope carrying an unstamped seal, containing more information on a possible bodyguard for the young noblewoman, as she had asked him to seek out.
“O’course,” Joan said, taking the letter gingerly from him and then dropping a nervous curtsey.
“Thank you,” Isaac said warmly. She blinked at him, smiled uneasily and then scurried back indoors, closing the door hastily behind her.
Title: Uneasy
Rating: G
Challenge: Cookies ‘n’ Cream #4: smile, Grapefruit #6: deep pockets
Toppings/Extras: malt
Wordcount: 386
Summary: Isaac Prowse delivers a letter.
Notes: Related to the Ann Bartlett thing, not that it’s important or anything to do with anything! Grapefruit PFAH: who invited Isaac?
Isaac Prowse had ridden the horse hard across London, knowing better than to linger at this time of evening, but she was a complacent creature and didn’t fuss or become overexcited. When he arrived at the back of the Bartlett home, a grand townhouse that loomed impressively through the darkness, he leapt from the mare and patted her flank, leaving her loose as he walked quickly towards the back door.
He rapped a few times and then stood back. It didn’t take long for the door to be answered by someone he recognised.
“Good evening, Miss Hartford,” he said pleasantly to the young housemaid. Joan Hartford was a frightfully skinny young woman with a narrow, rodent-like face and dirty blonde hair that she always kept tucked up under her ruffled servant’s cap. The skin of her cheeks was blemished with acne and her eyes were large as saucers.
Isaac rather liked her though it was evident that she was terrified of him.
“Evening, sir,” she stammered eventually.
“You don’t have to call me ‘sir’,” he reminded her for what must have been the hundredth time. “I’m a servant for Mr Ashdown.”
She just looked at him slightly dubiously in response. Isaac knew that he dressed better than most simple servants, but Edward Ashdown had always insisted on it. He felt like he was stuck in-between places a lot of the time: the upper classes would rather die than be associated with a man like him, and the serving classes found him intimidating or in some cases even snobbish.
Another reason for Joan’s fear, he supposed, was that his reputation as Ashdown’s pet assassin had carried somewhat. And the fact that she was naturally very short and he was… not.
“Could you give this to Miss Bartlett?” he asked after the silence had become too awkward to even think of carrying out any sort of ordinary conversation. In a leather-gloved hand, he held out a slim envelope carrying an unstamped seal, containing more information on a possible bodyguard for the young noblewoman, as she had asked him to seek out.
“O’course,” Joan said, taking the letter gingerly from him and then dropping a nervous curtsey.
“Thank you,” Isaac said warmly. She blinked at him, smiled uneasily and then scurried back indoors, closing the door hastily behind her.