The breakfast room of Gearhart House resembled an ambush disguised as a buffet. Silver chafing-dishes steamed politely, yet the true centrepiece was a parchment scroll unfurled across the linen like a boa constrictor digesting its lunch. At its head, Duchess Euphemia Gearhart smiled the smile of a banker scenting compound interest.
"Your new schedule, dearest Hal," she trilled, tapping the scroll with a butter knife. "Six hours per day of refined deportment until the ball. Madame Primrose begins at nine."
I followed the knife-point down a column of crimson ink: Salutatory Theory, Practical Inclination, Glove-Slip Drills, all marching in regimented blocks that trampled the study hours I had ringed only last night. Somewhere in my skull a gasket popped. I envisioned my careful calendar flung beneath an elephantine timetable and flattened to confetti.
Mabel's ocular lenses dimmed in sympathy. "Recalculating available revision minutes," she murmured, gears whirring. "Result: tragic."
"Six hours?" I managed, voice crackling like a sparking coil. "Every day?"
"Only until you bow without imperilling the crown jewels," Effie said, ladling porridge as though she were bestowing favours. "Society expects precision, and my investment shall sparkle, not stumble."
Investment, again. I speared a kipper with academic resentment and resolved to survive whatever contortions the Gesture Mistress devised.
The ballroom—usually a cathedral of chandeliers and parquet—had been converted into an etiquette laboratory. Mirrors lined the walls, turning one nervous rare chap into an infinity of them. Madame Primrose Gravité awaited at the centre, a monument of mauve taffeta and swan-like neck. Her lorgnette glinted with clinical promise.
"Subject presents with promising malleability," she announced. "We shall commence with the Guardian-Chaperoned Half-Incline."
She executed a flowing bow of eleven degrees—precise, effortless, fatal if misapplied. I imitated her. My reflection bent forward like a crooked measuring stick and lurched back, nearly overturning a hat-rack disguised as a ficus. Primrose clucked.
"Again, Mister Forsythe. Imagine you are a hinged teapot, not a jack-knifed scarecrow."
"I shall endeavour to pour more elegantly," I said, cheeks aflame.
From the sidelines Mabel extended a telescopic pointer and activated her new Etiquette-Coach plug-in. A holographic silhouette sprang up, repeating the correct motion. Above the silhouette, however, floated Claribel's contribution: glowing runic cues that labelled each bow. SAFE hovered in green as the hologram dipped; AMBIGUOUS flickered amber when I wobbled; and when I over-corrected, the rune flashed ENGAGEMENT in scarlet letters the size of dinner plates.
Madame Primrose yelped as though the word had bitten her. "Extinguish that scandalous signage!"
Mabel tried, but the rune clung to the air like gossip. Apprentices giggled behind gloved hands. I apologised six times, which, according to the handbook Primrose brandished, constituted an informal proposal to apologise again. The lesson continued in a blizzard of terminology—Unescorted Quarter-Dips, Prosperity Sweeps, Consolation Curtsies—until my tendons felt braided and my mind begged for calculus.
After luncheon the drills escalated. Mabel deployed a brass pendulum that ticked across my chest; at each swing I was to incline exactly eleven degrees, no more, no less. Too sluggish, and Primrose's primrose-pink buzzer screeched. Too eager, and a safety cushion shot from the floor and rebounded me upright like a shuttlecock. The ballroom filled with squeaks, buzzes and the repeated fwomp of cushions deploying.
"All very educational," Primrose declared, nose high enough to risk altitude sickness, "but a gentleman must bow whilst serving."
She produced a silver tea-tray laden with cups of scalding oolong, a mountain of scones and a wobbling dish of jam. "Balance this, execute a Half-Incline, and return the tray unspilled."
The tray's weight surprised me. I stepped forward, centred my gravity, bent—eleven degrees, precisely, thank you logarithms—then straightened. The cups clinked, the jam quivered, yet nothing fell. Success! My grin lasted until physics reminded me of momentum. The tray slid, its edge clipping Madame Primrose's feathered plume, and a crimson comet of jam described a perfect parabola before detonating upon her bodice.
Silence fluttered down like confetti.
Primrose's voice emerged, soft and dreadful. "Extra drills, dawn tomorrow."
Effie applauded from a balcony as if the entire spectacle had been orchestrated for her amusement.
Night smuggled itself into the guest wing. My desk resembled a war-room: etiquette manuals on the left, Guild regulations on the right, cold espresso—standard issue—in the centre. Claribel's face blinked from the mirror rune, hair undone and eyes alight.
"We'll treat bows as mechanics," she said briskly. "Each angle a function, each flourish a derivative. Eleven degrees equals tan⁻¹ (2 / 10); remember that and your spine will obey."
We scribbled equations, turning curtseys into sines and proposals into cosines. Mabel hovered, feeding me espresso via thin silver tubing. The caffeine hissed through veins already buzzing with panic, yet the method worked: numbers behaved when words snarled.
By two o'clock I could recite the safe bow taxonomy without prompting. By three, exhaustion crept in and painted hallucinations on the wallpaper—owls chanting bylaws, Effie pirouetting atop a mountain of coin. Mabel cut the espresso feed, lowered lamplight and pronounced a six-minute restorative nap "essential."
When I woke, Claribel had vanished from the mirror, leaving a stack of mnemonic flash-cards shaped like miniature top-hats. On the first she had drawn a tea-tray balanced upon the symbol for equilibrium.
The sun climbed, uninvited, into the final afternoon rehearsal. Madame Primrose stalked the polished floor, jam-stain miraculously expunged. I wore the quilted mittens and, newly presented, a pair of monogrammed silk gloves—H.F. in looping embroidery—Effie's latest flourish.
"Begin," Primrose commanded.
I bowed. The pendulum of memory swung true: eleven degrees, no more, no less. No cushions exploded, no runes screamed ENGAGEMENT. I performed a Quarter-Dip, a Guardian-Chaperoned Half-Incline, even a daring Prosperity Sweep (sans tray) and emerged upright, unbetrothed and unsued.
Madame Primrose studied me through her lorgnette. "Barely presentable," she decreed, which, in her dialect, equalled a fanfare.
Effie materialised, hands clasped. "Splendid! I have booked the Royal Aurora Ballroom for a dress rehearsal tomorrow morning. Real string quartet, real debutantes—nothing sharpens form like an audience."
Tomorrow. Twenty-four hours before the true ball, and another six-hour chunk to be sliced from my dwindling study loaf.
Primrose pressed the silk gloves into my hands. "Do not remove these unless your guardian instructs you," she warned. "A gentleman's fingertips communicate intention; gloves mute dangerous signals."
I flexed the pristine fabric, wondering how many dangerous signals could hide in ten pale fingers.
Effie shepherded us toward the exit, her voice a cheerful whip. "Rest, hydrate, practise. Tomorrow we bow for blood."
As I stepped into the corridor the ballroom doors thudded shut behind us with the finality of a vault.
Mabel's gears hummed a worried lullaby. "Probability of catastrophic etiquette failure at public event: twenty-two percent and rising."
I swallowed. "Then we rehearse all night."
"Very good, sir," she said, extending the espresso tubing like a knight presenting a sword.
I accepted the chalice, tasted ambition and dread, and marched for the study like a condemned mathematician.
Tomorrow the rehearsal; the day after, the ball. And somewhere between angles and derivatives, I still had to become a licensed engineer.
Outside, a lamplighter sparked the boulevard lanterns. Their glow danced on the silk gloves in my pocket—white flags or loaded weapons, depending on the angle of the bow.