Closed RP: Lord Roxbury's Questionable Guest

[nothingupmysleeve]

London had changed a lot since the century turned, Daimon thought as he stepped out of his hired coach and looked up the grand sweep of stairs leading to Lord Roxbury's mansion. But some things never changed. Here in the Year of Our Lord 1903, rich Westenders still offered up their children to each other like they would any other bribe--selling off daughters and occasionally sons for the sake of money and connections. Granted, they packaged each step of the transaction nicely. Like tonight's gathering: young ladies swanning around in ball gowns, alcohol flowing, more food laid on the dining tables than the whole of the East End saw in three days. Awkward interactions between teens and twentysomethings--and the occasional aging and somewhat predatory widower, whom the girls often tried unsuccessfully to avoid. Lord Roxbury, a skinny half-Frenchman with floppy dark blond hair, a prissy mustache and an annoyingly nasal voice, would be out tonight in force, leering at women a third his age. This despite his fourth wife being in the ground for barely a month. Men like Roxbury were why Daimon hated the rich with such passion. And tonight, he intended to take the bastard down several pegs. 

He tipped his driver well, instructing him in low tones to return at eleven sharp and wait near the servants' entrance at the back of the building, and then loped athletically up the stairs with his cane under his arm, earning a few gasps and comments from the hoi polloi. Let them fuss a little, he thought as he smirked to himself. It was the only warning they were getting of what was to come. His plan was simple: quietly run a telepathic con game against the worst people here, take them for whatever he could, make sure they didn't remember him--and then cap the evening by humiliating Roxbury as an amusing distraction, while he quietly slipped upstairs to replace some of the man's jewel collection with glass replicas.

He heard a few comments on his race as he topped the stairs, and made a mental note of the speakers--an older woman and a nervous redheaded man who turned out to be her son. Hearing "Shouldn't that wog be going in the servants' entrance?" was common to him, but nowadays he didn't have to just put up with it. He paused near a pretty brunette and glanced back at them, a sly smile on his face. Tonight the two were going to get ridiculously drunk and air every bit of dirty laundry their family had gathered for three generations, and she would develop a lingering impulse to punch police officers in the face. He looked between them as they stared at him, and then he turned on his heel and headed inside, pausing only to tip his hat to the young lady.

"Did you see how that bloody Wog looked at me? The nerve of him!" The woman had swelled up to half again her size, looking a bit like an angry pigeon in her lavender and grey ensemble. 

"Yes, Mother, I know, that was terribly rude." The redhead raised his hands in a conciliatory manner, just trying to calm her down before she made a gigantic scene. He was clearly terrified of her.

"I should summon the police at once! People like that should know their pl--" She paused. A puzzled expression crossed her face, and her features and manner relaxed. "...I...Cecil, what was I talking about?"

Cecil looked relieved for a split second--and then the strange confusion settled into his features as well. "I um...well...honestly I can't remember. I must have gotten distracted."

She scowled at him. "Well, come on, then, don't dawdle about like an idiot. We'll catch our deaths out here!" She heaved her way up the stairs, brushing rudely past the young lady near the entrance as she did so. "Mind where you're walking!" she snapped at the girl.

Comments

[nothingupmysleeve]

His eyebrows lift slightly, and he snickers. "Punch! I'm not dealing with this insane crowd without a drink. Come, let's get at the bowl before our host swills down half of it." He starts leading the way over to the extremely lengthy drink table.

"That is how it works. Poets call it "the gilded cage"--if it's luxurious and pretty enough, most people won't protest being there or ever seek their freedom." He notices her discomfort and subtly shifts himself between her and the Duke's line of sight. There are advantages to being big.

"Right then." He leads her around a gaggle of mums and their frightened-looking offspring, glancing around. "First however I should ask you a question. How much do you dislike our host?"

[good_at_heart]

It's unladylike of Amelia to wonder, but she can't help the fleeting thought that maybe some trickster had taken it upon themselves to spike the punch - she wouldn't mind if they did, as anything to make her forget how dreadful these soirees could be would be nothing short of a miracle. She sighs, following along, keeping her voice down, even though she's certain that nobody is bothering to try to listen in to their conversation. "That man is absolutely a pig."

And then, he's taken his place in order to block her from the Duke's view, and she's grateful for the gesture. This was far more interesting and pleasing a conversation than anything the Duke would speak about. And that's not taking into the account the fact that he'd be speaking to her chest, rather than to her. "I can't imagine that they're truly happy. They have to know, on some level, that all of this means nothing."

Amelia smiles at anyone who looks her way, raising an eyebrow as she ponders the question. "He always looks at me as though I'm nothing more than a ... a piece of meat. Not even as a prize to be won. I despise the man."

[nothingupmysleeve]

"Sometimes wealth makes a pig of a man. Sometimes because he was raised that way, sometimes because the moment money protects him from life's troubles he forgets those still plagued by them. He gets full of himself. He gives no care to how his actions trouble others." Daimon's lips twist.

"My father is the Maharajah of Ceylon. Like our friend here, he takes the 'noble' right out of nobility." His eyes narrow as they follow Roxbury around the room. He keeps himself carefully interposed between her and the man's line of sight as they head for the punch table. "Such people not only deny their misery but take it out on others."

He draws near the punchbowl, taking note of a gaggle of girls huddling together like frightened chickens nearby. Roxbury is headed for them like an arrow. "The man is diseased, in more ways than one. When he's not sending his latest wife into an early grave with pregnancies, he's abusing the whores of Whitechapel." One of the reasons Daimon had decided to avenge the whole East End against him.

He takes up two glasses and ladles up some punch as he watches the wormy noble's invasive attempts at flirting. "I'll keep him off you, don't worry."

[good_at_heart]

Amelia could pinch herself, at least to prove that she isn't making all of this up in her head, so desperate is she to have someone who understands her. Surely, this can't be a figment of her imagination, no matter how vivid it might be.

But she's taken out of her thoughts at the mention of his father's title, surprised that someone of such lineage feels much the same as herself - just a simple lady, and slightly impoverished, at that, no one special. "I am not the only one, then, that wishes to be seen as something other than a selfish mans' legacy - ", she starts, only pausing to peek around Daimon's shoulder to see where the disgusting older man is, quickly standing straight and hiding as he comes nearer, thankfully not catching sight of her.

"We should all be so lucky to have someone like you watching out for us. I wish I could thank you properly for what you've done for me tonight."