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English
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Part 22 of 2023 February Ficlet Challenge
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February Ficlet Challenge 2023
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Published:
2023-02-24
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326
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1/1
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2
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Lord High Everything Else

Summary:

Edith's wedding to Sir Anthony did not go as planned, to say the least.

Notes:

for day 22, "plenty of fish in the sea"...

(See the end of the work for more notes.)

Work Text:

Matthew sighed as he got into bed.  

“Poor Edith, she didn’t deserve that.”

“I don’t know,” Mary mused. “I think there were enough warning signs about Sir Anthony, I do wish she had given up on him before it became so public.”

“She felt desperate, I suppose.”

Mary looked over from her vanity, silently thinking. “There are fewer young men to go around, but there’s plenty of fish in the sea. Sir Anthony wasn’t the only older man who might want a younger wife.”

“Mary, you know you’ve got me thinking something entirely inappropriate now.”

Mary looked confused. “I really don’t see what I could have said along those lines.”

Matthew tried his best to muffle a laugh. “It’s just… I suddenly remembered the production of the Mikado that my college at Oxford put on… it’s all I can do not to start singing now.”

“You never told me about this.”

“I don’t exactly want to remember my brief career in operetta,” he smirked.

“So you were in this production?” Mary asked.

“Yes, I was.”

“You do know you have to tell me what role you played now, since you didn’t just say you were in the chorus.”

“I played Pooh-Bah,” Matthew admitted.

Mary chuckled, walking over to the bed. “So, you were Lord High Everything Else?” 

“Yes, yes I was,” Matthew smiled. “But, at any rate, it would be highly inappropriate to start singing now.”

“Very true.  But were you that awful?”

“Not really, but thank goodness no one thought to take photographs of us. The makeup was something hideous. I thought that part was a terrible idea, and we should have just gone with kimonos.”

“But people expect that,” Mary said. 

“That’s true.  At any rate, we should be getting to bed. Some of us will need to be fully rested tomorrow.”

“And sometime more appropriate, I would like to hear you reprise your role. Without makeup, of course.”

“Whatever you wish, my dear.”

Notes:

While trying to think of what to write for this prompt, I kept getting the line "there's lots of good fish in the sea" from the Mikado stuck in my head. I decided to work with that instead of trying to fight against it...

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