The following morning Buffy was late to breakfast. She had not slept well the night before and had snored right through her first wake-up call. Actually, she might also have slept through her second wake-up call if Livvy, the ladies' maid, had not insisted her tardiness would disrupt the family's breakfast schedule. By the time she rolled out of bed, she was already ten minutes late, and it wasn’t as though she could throw on a pair of jeans and head downstairs. The Victorian dress combinations were about as complicated as an electrical schematic; she could hardly be expected to remember exactly where to put each bit of underwear when she was still sleepy. Nor could she fully dress herself without the help of at least one other person because of the stupid corsets. A couple of weeks before she had tried leaving off that particular piece of attire, but Anne had noticed it and lectured her for what seemed like hours on the importance of dressing like a lady. Her new dress would not even fit without stays, so discomfort had become a moot point anyway.
By the time she finished dressing and combing her hair, Anne and William were already seated at the table. Judging from the tension in the room, they seemed to be in the middle of an argument.
“William, please don’t be so stodgy,” Anne was pleading. “I haven’t had an evening out in so long—”
“Isn’t there reason enough for that?” he answered. “You know the doctor said night air is most aggravating to your condition…”
Embarrassed to have walked in on such a personal scene, Buffy purposely kicked the doorframe with the side of her shoe as she entered the room. She didn’t want it to appear that she was trying to eavesdrop on them.
The argument ceased and William rose to his feet, inadvertently startling Buffy, who had not expected it. The footman was there to pull out her chair and arrange her napkin; she didn’t understand why William needed to stand as well. Later, a quick glance at her etiquette guide would explain it as another meaningless gesture of respect shown by men to women, but now she decided the best thing to do was ignore it. She returned their good mornings and slid into her chair. William waited until she was comfortable before resuming his own seat.
“Elizabeth, how lovely you look this morning,” Anne complimented her. “I trust you slept well?”
“I did, thank you.” Buffy took a sip from her water goblet and then indicated the windows. “It stopped raining.”
“Not a moment too soon, either. I have a very specific reason for wanting fine weather this evening.” William shot her a disappointed look from across the table, but Anne ignored him completely, focusing instead on winning Buffy to her side. “There is a play tonight at St. James’s Theatre. A Midsummer Night’s Dream. Just the thing to warm us on a dreary winter evening, I should think. Doesn’t it sound lovely?”
Buffy had the uncomfortable feeling she had just been dragged into their argument. She glanced at William, who was staring at her. “I—I guess it sounds all right.”
“Since the rain stopped, there should be no additional problems with my cough so long as I take my syrups and bundle up well?” Anne coaxed.
Buffy understood where she was coming from. It was bad enough to be ill, downright unbearable to be ill and a prisoner in one's own house. Anyway, why would night air be worse on her cough than air during the day? How was it different? Surely, it couldn’t be as harmful as the depressing, housebound feeling she had now. Buffy raised her chin and met William’s gaze squarely.
“I think it would be perfectly all right,” she said.
There was a lull in the conversation as the footman began serving, but Buffy couldn't help but notice how annoyed William looked. Had she overstepped her bounds? It probably wasn't a good idea to send the master of the house into blind rage on his very first day back home. She glanced at Anne and was relieved to note that she didn't seem worried at all.
“Then it is settled," Anne declared. "I shall send Matthew to purchase our tickets straightaway. There should be some for sale yet, for they rarely cater to a full house this time of year. And the curtain call is not until seven, so the three of us will have plenty of time to ready ourselves.”
Buffy dropped her rasher of bacon. “The three of us?” she echoed.
“Of course, you shall go with us,” Anne said.
“Oh…of course.” Glumly, Buffy picked at her plate. She hated plays, she hated Shakespeare, and she was not feeling too fond of William. What an evening it would be.
William, meanwhile, set down his goblet with a thump that sent water splashing onto the table linen. “I really don’t think this is a good idea, Mother,” he said. He ignored Buffy completely and for some reason this annoyed her, goading her into the argument in spite of herself.
“It’s a better idea than forcing her to sit in the parlor like she's already attending her own wake,” she snapped at him. “She’s sick, not dead.”
He blanched as if the idea of her being dead was more than he could bear. “Walking about in the winter evening could make her more ill. The doctor was quite clear on this. We must keep her out of the night air. We must be cautious—”
“But we are being cautious,” Anne insisted. “William, we are in London, are we not? We rearranged our lives. We left our home. How much more careful must we be?”
“As careful as is necessary to keep you safe,” he answered.
Anne's expression softened, though it was obvious her resolve remained intact. She said gently, “I am tired of being safe, William. I want to enjoy the time I have left.”
William nodded, his eyes cast down.
“All right,” he said. “Do as you like.” Abruptly, he pushed his chair back from the table. “Excuse me, but I find that I am no longer hungry. Enjoy your breakfasts.”
The two women were silent as they watched him depart. Buffy knew Anne was upset, though her tone remained determinedly cheerful when she said, “It's all right. He won’t be angry for long. He is just…concerned.”
Buffy nodded in agreement, but she didn’t speak. She picked up her bacon again and nibbled at it, but she didn’t feel so hungry now.
That shouldn't be such a big deal, right? After all, he was a grown man. He could deal with a little criticism, a little brusqueness. He could—
He could totally fire her. He could toss her out onto the street to starve.
Shit.
She really needed to apologize.
Still, it was not only the fear of recrimination that sent her searching for him once breakfast was over. There was guilt, as well. Terrible, awkward guilt. Regardless of what he was destined to become, this morning he had not deserved her rudeness and he certainly hadn't deserved her cruelty. Why had she made that remark about Anne attending her own wake? Why had she thrown his mother's death in his face? The expression on his face when she said that...he had looked as though she had slapped him.
Of course, she still felt incredibly uncomfortable around him, and the idea of speaking to him alone, particularly after the scene at breakfast, made her nervous. If she could have gotten away with sending a note by Livvy instead, she would have done it.
Anyway, she understood his reasoning behind wanting to keep Anne safe at home. When Joyce was sick, Buffy had felt pretty much the same way: follow the doctor’s orders, don’t take chances, and stay inside. Rest, rest, rest. Even if this particular doctor’s orders were completely ludicrous, they were still the orders of a medical professional. After all, this was 1879. People had very limited knowledge about medicine and illness. She couldn’t really blame William for being overprotective, not when she had gone through almost the same thing recently. And while Spike might be a bloodsucking fiend, William had done nothing to suggest that he was anything but what Anne claimed: a gentle, caring, and most dutiful son. Whatever her own suspicions about him were, Buffy knew it wasn’t fair to judge him for the crimes committed by Spike. Nor was it fair to attack him for having the same fears about his sick mother that she had about hers. Whether she wanted to or not, she knew she needed to apologize for her behavior.
She didn’t have to spend a great deal of time looking for him. William was in the first place Buffy thought to check, the library. She knew the Giles-like appearance couldn’t be totally accidental. It must be a trait of British men. He probably spent all of his free time buried under books, too.
He wasn’t buried under books now, however. He was standing by the window, staring out onto the garden. Only the presence of a maid raking the fireplace allowed her entry—otherwise, they would have been alone and most improper—but Buffy wasn’t aware of any narrowly escaped impropriety. She wasn't aware of anything except her own nerves and her desire to get this over with as quickly as possible. She edged into the room, taking great care to keep a certain amount of distance between them.
William turned to watch her. Somehow, he did not seem any more comfortable with the situation than she did.
“Yes, Miss Summers?” he asked. His tone was soft and hoarse, a little sad. Buffy was surprised. She had assumed he would be angry with her.
“I—I just wanted to apologize,” she stammered. “I was completely out of line at breakfast, saying all that to you. I’m sorry.”
“Oh." He looked at the floor. "Pray don’t. It is all right. That is to say, I'm not angry. You were quite right. I do behave rather like a jailer to Mother. I am overprotective. I simply…”
“Don’t want anything bad to happen to her?” Buffy suggested. He swallowed and cleared his throat, but he did not look up.
“Yes. I’m sure you are already aware of this, but h—her chances of recovery are very small. I want to keep her with me for as long as possible, and that means following her doctor’s instructions.”
“Well, yeah. In theory,” said Buffy.
He lifted his head, his blue eyes widening with confusion. “Pardon me?”
“Well, you could do everything the doctor tells you—keep her inside and feed her medicine and all that—but if she's miserable, none of it will make a difference. When my mom was sick, I read this article the doctor gave me, and it said that the more optimistic a patient is the greater chance she has of recovery. Like, if she does nothing but lie around thinking she's going to die, she probably will die and soon. But if she thinks ‘I’m going to fight this, and I’m going to live’ then her odds for doing so are much better. At the very least, she won't die as soon and her quality of life will be better.”
Intrigued, William took a step closer to her. “I never heard of that,” he said softly.
“Well, it’s new. And an American thing, I think.”
“I see. And did your mother—?”
“She died, but not from her illness. She had can—something that required the doctors to operate on her brain. She died due to complications after surgery. There isn't much positive thinking could’ve done for her there, I guess.”
“I am awfully sorry,” he told her.
“It’s all right—” Buffy caught herself and laughed bitterly. “Well, no it isn’t. But I’m surviving, so I guess that means I’m all right.”
Another step toward her.
“My mother wrote me that you are very brave. I see now it was an understatement.”
Buffy resisted the urge to back away from him. He wasn’t Spike. She knew he wasn’t Spike. But something in her just couldn’t allow her to trust him. Even if the suspicions about his character were unfair, she still had them. And there was something so strange about him, about the way he was looking at her. Something familiar in the way his head tilted and his eyes narrowed just so, as though he were trying to see something inside her, something she wanted to keep hidden. He wasn’t Spike, but the expression on his face was Spike all over. He'd had the very same expression when he chained her up and commanded her to tell him there was a chance. It was unsettling.
She brushed back an errant lock of hair and smiled nervously. “No, not really. I just do what I’ve got to do.”
He looked down again, red faced and seemingly flustered. “Still, if there is anything you need…anything I can do to make you more comfortable while you are with us...”
“Tell her you’ll take her to the play, Spi—Mr. Hartley. Please. She wants to go so much. Take her and help her have a good time. I’d give anything for my mother to be alive so I could do things with her.”
He overlooked her unintentional rudeness, choosing instead to see the sense in her words. “Of course I will,” he said. Almost as an afterthought, he added, “And you will come, too, I hope.”
After her lecture on doing what Anne wanted, Buffy didn’t really feel she could say no. After all, Anne wanted her to go with them. However, her smile was a little stiff when she told him, “Of course. Thank you.”
She left the room before he had a chance to say anything else.
That evening was clear but still very cold, and Buffy shivered inside her cloak as she assisted Anne to the carriage block. For that lady’s sake, Buffy was glad the clouds had dispersed long before afternoon. Had there been even the slightest chance of rain, she knew William would have canceled their outing. As it was, he was quietly fretting about the temperature, asking his mother over and over if she was quite sure she was warm enough and assuring her that if she did not feel up to the excursion the loss of the ticket price was nothing at all.
Anne squeezed Buffy’s arm as they settled into the plush leather seat of the carriage. “Don’t vex yourself darling,” she admonished her son, who sat down opposite them. “It is a lovely night. Cold, but I’m well bundled, and there isn’t the slightest hint of dampness in the air. Is there, Elizabeth?”
Buffy shoved her numb hands deeper into her muff and tried to answer without her teeth chattering. “The weather seems okay to me.”
“I’m sure it will be fine,” William replied, sounding as though he thought anything but. He was staring out the carriage’s small window, though how he could see anything beyond the inky blackness of the night was a mystery. His right knee was twitching, and Buffy just knew he was dying to ask his mother, yet again, if she was warm enough. To his credit, he did manage to hold back this time.
Buffy had to admit he looked rather handsome, if somber, in his dark grey suit and long black overcoat. And gloves, of course. A gentleman wouldn’t be seen on the street without them. His were made from soft deerskin dyed black. Aside from his white shirts, practically everything William wore seemed to be either black or grey. She couldn't figure out if this was because of fashion or if he possessed a depressive personality. Tonight, his only concession to color was a dark green waistcoat sprinkled with little red flowers, and it was this—and only this—that kept his attire from being completely funereal.
Still, he was handsome. Immaculately groomed to the point of overkill maybe, but that was all right. In fact, far from being off-putting, Buffy found the attention to detail oddly appealing. In a way, William was oddly—
Okay, he was staring at her. Not appealing then, never mind. Just strange and intrusive and vaguely creepy. Right.
Buffy turned her shoulder to him, focusing her attention on his mother. “So, tell me about the play,” she said. “Is it any good?”
“Haven’t you read Shakespeare, dear?” Anne was surprised.
“Yes. Well, some. In school. But that was Hamlet and Macbeth and the sonnets. I never read A Summertime Dream before, or seen the play. What’s it about?”
A hint of a smile played around William’s lips, though Buffy did not see it.
“The play is called A Midsummer Night’s Dream, Elizabeth, and it is rather like a fantasy.”
“And a romance,” added William. Buffy looked over at him, but he was staring out the window again.
“Yes, it is a romance,” Anne agreed, “and a comedy, as well. But there are delightful creatures like fairies and nymphs and a faun; it’s really very colorful. Oh, I can’t describe it. You will have to see it for yourself to appreciate it. The St. James’s players are top-rate. It should be wonderful.”
Buffy just hoped it would be warmer.
As it turned out, St. James’s Theatre was quite warm and comfortable. It was a beautiful building, not large but elegantly decorated. Although available for concerts and plays of all kinds, it catered mainly to the opera and was quite popular during the season, which did not commence for several months yet. Since it was wintertime and quite cold, no more than three-quarters of the seats were filled. The Hartleys had arranged for a private box, which meant that even though they arrived a bit late, right before curtain call, they did not have to worry about tripping over the legs of other patrons while searching for their seats.
Buffy was so busy studying the details of that beautifully decorated large room she didn’t realize she was falling behind until suddenly she felt a hand on her arm. Victorian England was a very anti-touch establishment, so she was startled when William took her by the elbow to assist her into the box beside his mother. Not that she needed assistance, but she supposed it was some type of social statute that a man must help a delicate little woman find her seat. She allowed him to do it, but it was a strange feeling: Spike’s—no, William's—fingers lightly closed over her elbow, gently guiding her into her chair. To her relief, he sat down on the opposite side of the box, placing Anne between them. Both of them sat razor-straight, their backs barely even touching their chairs. Buffy felt like a slob and immediately adjusted her own position.
The gaslights dimmed, and the velvet curtains opened to reveal a brightly lit stage with colorful, hand-painted scenery. Buffy leaned forward in her plush seat. So far, it did look somewhat promising. The male actor was handsome and richly costumed, and if his gestures and facial expressions were a little over the top, well, that was all part of the Victorian era, wasn’t it? Everything was over the top.
“Now, fair Hippolyta, our nuptial hour
Draws on apace—”
At this first bit of dialogue, Buffy sat back in disappointment. Now she remembered why Shakespeare had always seemed so appallingly dull to her: she couldn’t understand a single word he’d written. Apparently, hearing the language spoken aloud wasn’t a whole lot better than reading it on a page. If anything, it was even more difficult to understand because the actors all had very thick accents and no sound equipment to help their voices carry across the room.
Bored, Buffy began to gaze around the auditorium at the other patrons. She tried not to gawk rudely and embarrass Anne, who was watching the stage raptly, as if in the presence of something grand; but it was difficult not to stare. Most of the people in the theater were clearly members of the elite, and they dressed accordingly. For a moment, Buffy felt almost embarrassed by her own attire. The silver dress was pretty, but it was far simpler than the rich evening gowns worn by the other women. Their fancy lace and silk trimmings alone probably cost as much as her whole wardrobe, and the jewelry! Victorian women sure did know how to accessorize. Gorgeous jewels in heavy gold settings were clasped around almost every woman’s neck and hung from every small feminine ear.
It had been a long time since Buffy seriously cared about fashion. In Sunnydale, she wore stylish clothes that looked well on her, but always in the back of her mind was the issue of practicality. She couldn’t very well go slaying in a fancy dress, and a lot of heavy jewelry would just give a vampire or demon something to grab hold of and hurt her with. The sudden dart of envy she felt for these elegantly dressed women was something she had not felt in a very long time, something almost alien. Immediately afterward, she felt guilty. After all, she was a slayer. She had more important things to think about than clothing. Like how to get back to where she belonged.
She did not allow herself to consider how long it had been since she had actually slain anything. Not since her arrival in London, that was certain. Whenever shame pricked at her, she told herself that there had been no opportunities for such activity, that she had seen no vampires in London and perhaps there weren’t any here at all. But she knew that wasn’t true. The real reason was that she was tired of the game, tired of hunting and killing, tired of worrying about the end of the world. There was already a Slayer in 1879, and Armageddon was not at hand, because she knew the world had survived far longer than that. So was it her responsibility to prowl the streets, destroying demons? Of course not. Let the current slayer handle it. Buffy was too busy for that kind of thing now. And she was having a hard enough time fitting into this time without having Anne walk in on her stabbing somebody with a wooden stake. She pushed the thought from her mind.
By now, the first act of the play had ended and the curtains were closing for a scenery change. As they waited, members of the audience milled about, greeting people they knew and discussing the virtues of the performance. The room soon filled with a low hum of voices.
William did not leave his seat, nor did he acknowledge that he knew any of the well-dressed men and women who passed by their box. Buffy couldn’t help but wonder at that. According to Anne, they used the London house for several weeks every year during the “social season," so it would seem that they must know many of the people in London’s high society. If so, William didn’t seem inclined to approach any of his acquaintances, although several men did glance at him as they went by, suggesting some kind of familiarity. Even during the longer break of Intermission, he remained in his seat, silent and thoughtful, talking only when his mother prodded him into conversation. Buffy guessed he was probably about as popular and socially adept as his vampire equivalent.
Intermission ended shortly, and then the second half of the play commenced. As boring as the story was to Buffy, the time went by quickly. Almost before she knew it, the play was finished. The Hartleys, fearing that Anne might be jostled or injured in the rush to the exits, remained seated until most of the audience dispersed. When it was time to leave, William stood up first and helped his mother into the aisle. Then he extended his hand to Buffy. She was already well on her way out of the box, but she took it anyway so she wouldn’t look impolite. His hand was surprisingly hot, even through his glove, and she thought it trembled slightly as he drew her into the aisle. However, when she looked into his face his expression seemed composed, almost detached. He released her the moment she cleared the step, as was proper, and did not look at or speak to her again. Not even on the ride home.