Work Text:
“But…are you certain?”
“I am.”
“Perhaps if given time, you could…become open to the idea.”
Veronica exhales slowly through her nose and tries not to glare. “I assure you, sir, it is not a matter of time. I know my own mind.”
“No, of course, I didn’t mean to imply you didn’t…but are you quite sure you know me?”
Already too well for my own tastes. “I do, and I think too well of you to wish to hold you in suspense. I have given my answer and I think you should take it as final, for your own good, Mr. Piznarski.”
He stands, looking foolish and yet still somehow hopeful, like a rather pitiful dog. “You could call me Stosh. I hope we are still friends, after all.”
She smiles, tightly. “If there’s anything that could halt our friendship, Mr. Piznarski, I can’t think of it.”
He takes her hand and clasps it between his own. Veronica curses herself for not having the foresight to hold her hands behind her back and tries to meet his eyes while maintaining a placid expression. “Miss Mars,” he says, with deep feeling, “you will live forever in my memory as the loveliest, brightest, wittiest woman of my acquaintance. Even if you aren’t to be my wife, please know that I hold you in the highest esteem, and you can always appeal to me…if you are in any need.”
Veronica can’t quite prevent the expression of indignance which crosses her face, but manages to keep her voice bland. “How very generous of you,” she says.
Piznarski looks confused, but, mercifully, recognizes the dismissal. He bows over her hand, kisses it reverently for good measure, and makes a dignified exit. As soon as he’s gone, Veronica sinks onto the nearest chair and lets out a gigantic sigh, which turns into a groan halfway through.
What must it be like to be a man? You are introduced to a young lady, you go through all the motions of paying court to her, you finally orchestrate a meeting so you can ask for her hand, and never once does it occur to you that her answer might be anything other than ‘yes, darling, I love you’, let alone that it might be that ever-impossible-to-understand syllable, ‘no’. She is prevented from sinking too far into either self-pity or derision by the interruption of a muffled clatter-thump which sounds through the doors of the study bordering the parlor she’s currently languishing in. She sits up a little straighter and holds herself very still, listening. Sure enough, there is the slightest whisper of laughter, followed by a hissed “shh”. Veronica sighs again, quieter, and toes off her slippers, nudging them to the side with a careful kick. She stands, and, avoiding all the floorboards with a penchant to creak, makes her way silently over to the study door, keeping out of what she knows is the eyeline of anyone who might be peering through the keyhole. She reaches for the door and yanks it open in a swift motion, causing the two eavesdroppers to crash satisfyingly to the floor. Miss Lilly Kane, unquestionably the most admired and sought after young lady of the local society in N-----, whose parlor they’re all occupying. And Mr. Logan Echolls, the currently disheveled and always rakish son of the knight whose estate is just over the hill, speculated to be worth ten thousand a year. If Mr. and Mrs. Kane and Sir and Lady Echolls have their way, the two of them will soon be engaged, but for years now they’ve only been using their pointedly unchaperoned time together to get into trouble, rather than to come to any understanding.
“Oh, Veronica!” Lilly exclaims, getting to her feet unsteadily, but not at all ashamedly. “I could hardly bear it! How do you stay so stoic when he was being so dreadful?”
“You’re not angry?” Veronica asks.
“Angry? My dear, no, as if I could ever let my best friend marry a man called Piznarski.”
“Stosh Piznarski,” Mr. Echolls puts in drily, standing to brush off his trousers and then immediately turning away to stand in the window as if he were somehow above the conversation, even though Veronica is sure it was his laugh she heard behind the door.
“Precisely!” says Lilly. “No, of course you couldn’t marry him, Veronica, how could you ever think I’d believe otherwise?”
Veronica glances at Mr. Echolls, who is pointedly ignoring them in order to take snuff. “You did introduce me to him,” Veronica tells Lilly, a little embarrassedly.
“Darling, I introduced you to society, it’s not my fault Stosh Piznarski happens to be in it.”
Veronica smiles. “Well, hopefully we won’t have to see quite so much of him now.”
“Lord, wouldn’t that be a miracle!” Lilly embraces her impetuously. “I’m sorry you had to suffer through that. Rest assured, Veronica Mars, I am going to find you a suitable husband, you’ll see!”
It’s an old claim, and so Veronica doesn’t bother to protest, just offers up a smile.
“Now that that’s been resolved,” Lilly says brightly, “I really have to go. I promised Mr. Gant I’d go riding with him.”
Veronica can’t help it; she looks over at Mr. Echolls again, but if he feels his soon-to-be fiancée is showing insufficient fidelity to their soon-to-be betrothal, he doesn’t show it. “I’ll walk out with you,” she tells Lilly.
Lilly waves her away. “No, I insist that you stay! You’re always saying our library is so good, and I want you to be here when I get back!” And with one last kiss to her friend’s cheek and a wave to her suitor and co-conspirator, Lilly is gone.
Veronica looks sideways at Mr. Echolls, who deigns to meet her eye and raise a single eyebrow in response. She clears her throat. “I think I shall go the library,” she announces, nonsensically.
“This is becoming quite the habit for you, Miss Mars,” Mr. Echolls says.
“Going to the library?”
He just raises his eyebrows again, and she can do nothing but stare back in response. Finally he abruptly steps forward to grasp both her hands in his. She startles, but doesn’t move away. He takes a deep breath. “Miss Mars!” he exclaims in exaggerated tones. “You will live forever in my memory as the loveliest, brightest woman of my acquaintance!”
She sighs. Ah, I’m worth speaking to. So it is to be that kind of day. “You forgot wittiest.”
“Of course, that too!” He drops to one knee in front of her and lets go of one of her hands in order to place the back of his hand against his forehead in dramatic desperation. “Even though you expressly denied my proposal of marriage, four times before I could believe it, I will always think of you as exactly what a woman should be! Please call me by my ridiculous Christian name!”
“Of all the things to make fun of him for – he can’t even help his name.”
Echolls laughs, answers in his own blithe voice, “That cannot be a defense I’m hearing!”
Veronica extracts her hand from his. “I don’t wish to marry him, but it’s not because of his name.”
“Are you sure?” he says, standing gracefully. “Because the last fellow had a strange name as well – what was it, Vandergraff?”
“Vandergraff was up to his eyeballs in gambling debts, he only proposed to me because he thought Lilly would pay them off before the wedding.”
“So it’s a matter of prospects?”
“That’s none of your concern.”
He laughs, pulls his snuffbox out of his jacket pocket in order to twirl it between his fingers. “Were Piznarski’s prospects not good?”
She only glares at him.
“No,” he says, musingly, “that can’t be it, because I heard you could have had – all this.” He gestures expansively. Veronica’s mouth drops open.
“Nobody’s supposed to know about that!” she exclaims. “I can’t believe Lilly told you!”
“She didn’t have to tell me,” Echolls says, lazily. “I saw the way Duncan was around you, then I saw the way he left to London and never came back.” He whistles, low. “Miss Veronica Mars, penniless lawyer’s daughter, turning down the Kane heir. Thoroughly unexpected.”
Veronica can feel her face burning, but she forces herself to stay put. “Please, his parents don’t want anyone to know.”
Mr. Echolls looks at her oddly. “Miss Mars, you haven’t anything to worry about.”
“You don’t understand.”
“I understand perfectly.”
“Mr. Echolls, I –”
“No,” he interrupts her, stepping forward to take her arm, intensity blazing in his eyes. “You must know that what that worthless idiot said to you just now isn’t true. You aren’t going to need to appeal to Stosh Piznarski, or anyone else of his ilk, because you aren’t going to be in any need. Lilly cares for you, Miss Mars, and she isn’t just going to drop the acquaintance when she gets bored. She wouldn’t do that. No matter what her parents have to say about it.”
“I know that,” Veronica replies, heatedly, drawing back out of his reach. “Lilly is my friend and I wouldn’t think that of her.”
“Well then?”
“Lilly is going to get married someday,” Veronica says flatly. “And – her husband – may not wish to support her daughter-of-a-tradesman charity case.”
Echolls holds her gaze for a moment, and then shrugs, elegant and exaggerated. “I’ll support you.”
Veronica’s eyebrows shoot up. “So you are going to marry Lilly?”
He rolls his eyes. “Whether I marry Lilly or not, Miss Mars, I am master of my own destiny, and I’m in a perfect position to make sure you are never desperate enough to marry the next stuffed shirt who comes along to make an offer for you.” He looks pensive. “Unless you want to, I suppose.”
Veronica gapes at him, probably unattractively. He goes on, unperturbed.
“But really, Miss Mars, I always thought you liked Duncan. If you have, hypothetically, already refused him, I really can’t imagine where Miss Kane is going to look next for you.” He appears to notice her discomfiture for the first time, and his brow furrows. “Miss Mars, are you quite well?” Veronica nods at him, but he rolls his eyes and steps too close to her again to take her arm and lead her to a chair. “I think you had better rest for a moment,” he says, then adds in a passable imitation of Lilly’s voice, smirking, “you’ve had a very trying day.”
Veronica rearranges her skirts so she can avoid looking at him, but he shows no signs of leaving, and in fact gets down on one knee again so as to be on her eye level.
In the gentlest voice, he suggests, “Shall I challenge Piznarski to a duel?”
It breaks the tension somewhat, and she laughs. “You’d kill him,” she says.
He smiles devilishly. “I would.”
“Then no, you’d better not.”
“Fine, I won’t.”
She can feel his gaze, piercing and yet somehow soft at the same time, and sighs. “Thank you.”
He grimaces, looks up at her plaintively through his eyelashes. “Please don’t.”
She persists anyway. “It is difficult to be in my position, to feel myself a burden and yet to know that anyone who makes me an offer would feel that they are both debasing themselves and doing me a favor which I could never repay. But I have done nothing wrong, and I am not sorry for my origins. I will not enter into marriage on any other basis than mutual respect.”
Echolls curses under his breath. “Duncan.”
Veronica looks at him reproachfully. “You can’t duel him either.”
He grins at her. “Miss Mars, must you spoil all of my fun?”
“Apparently, yes.” She forces herself to look him straight in the eye. “But I do thank you, Mr. Echolls. It is good to know I have friends.”
He pats her hand awkwardly. “I think we ought to find you a husband not altogether respectable himself,” he says, changing the subject. “Somebody you could go bashing around the continent together with, far away from all the people here too caught up in your origins to see you on your own merits.”
A flash of a revelation burns its way through Veronica’s heart, but it is only fleeting, and after a moment reality sets back in and she is left feeling strangely bereft. “I don’t hate it here all that much,” she says in a small voice.
“Yes, you do.” He stands, clasps his hands behind his back, apparently for lack of anything better to do with them. “Will you be alright, Miss Mars?” She nods. “Then I had better leave you,” he concludes. “The Kanes’ glorious library awaits you, with hopefully no more interruptions from soppy young men here to throw themselves at your feet.”
A smile pulls at the corner of her mouth, and she answers seriously, “One can only hope.”
He nods decisively. “Three proposals in two years is quite enough for any one person, I think.”
She stands to wish him farewell, and sees his eyes flick over her nervously, checking for unsteadiness. In the moment, she finds herself slightly overwhelmed by affection for him, this stupid, rash, man who so rarely lets anyone see his kindness, and she impulsively offers him her hand. He takes it solemnly and bows over it.
“You’ll be at the Sinclaires’ ball in a week?” he asks.
“I think so.”
“Come,” he tells her, then smiles, both disarming and somehow utterly vulnerable himself. “Save a waltz for me.”
“I will,” she answers faintly.
He looks as if he might be on the verge of saying something, but instead he squeezes her hand, then kisses it perfunctorily. “Good afternoon, Miss Mars.” And with that, he is gone.
She stands absently rubbing her hand for a long time after he leaves, thinking with dawning horror that maybe under very certain circumstances she wouldn’t mind a fourth proposal, and wishing for what she knows is utterly, absolutely impossible.
But at least there is the waltz to look forward to.