“My sister intends to take advantage of the peace to go to Paris within the next several weeks,” Alexander explained. “She therefore can hardly be considered a fair commentator.”
“Surely not by herself,” George said horrified, and then he remembered that he didn't really care what she did.
“Oh no, she has a chaperon of course, and as a matter of fact father and mother have asked me to go along with her and I was thinking I just might. Incidentally if I do decide to follow along after her would you like to come along with me? You needn't worry about expenses, father has some contacts from before the war that we will be staying with and I could use the company.” The suggestion was so sudden and came in such a casual voice that it took George a second to truly digest it. He didn't have to worry about being rude because neither Alexander or Annabel seemed to even notice he had dropped from the conversation.
“Won't I be company enough for you?” Annabel asked her brother.
“Men want to company of other men just as women prefer the company of women, except when one is courting of course,” Alexander added as an after thought. George was suddenly struck by just how similar the two siblings were in airheadedness. He had always thought of Alexander as a descent sort and he was, but when he was placed next to his sister it seemed as if their heads were full of fluff in both cases. Another dance started and George was forced to press himself to the wall to get out of the way of the dancers and speak louder then he would have liked to voice his main objection to going with Alexander to France.
“Won't there be some problems with officers of the British army wandering around Paris when we were so recently at war?”
“The peasants might complain a little but if we are careful there shouldn't be any problems. We are at peace George, they can't arrest us for being English. With my father's contacts we might even be spending some time in Boney's court. It would be rather interesting to see a man that we have been fighting against for so long don't you think?”
George did not give an answer right away, he would have considered it the hight of foolishness to agree to go into what he still considered to be enemy territory without thinking about it. Alexander had ways of waring him down however. It was in the end the suggestion that George was a coward that did it. Like many members of the more impoverished nobility George was fiercely proud, he would rather walk straight towards death then get labeled a coward. So it was that the two men, now in civilian clothing, Annabel, and her elderly chaperon were met by a carriage at the dock in France.
It turned out that the connection Alexander's father had was the most famous banker in Paris. Before the war there had been great business between the two men, business that they intended to resume now that the war was over. Annabel was staying with the banker in a show of good faith, and because of this the banker was ready to show the group anything that they would have wanted to see. He was so humble that it sickened George to see, the banker might not have been nobility and therefore beneath them but in France where they had so famously done away with their nobility George felt that the man should have had a little more spine. It was only inside of the business world that the man seemed to stand up straighter and from people's reactions when the saw him the banker was himself a man of extreme power and not someone to be messed with. Alexander and Annabel seemed to take the man's servitude as a matter of course however, so George didn't mention it for fear of making a fool of himself.
Annabel seemed to come alive once they were among the shops of Paris and George flinched to see how she spent money as freely as she did, and never once did anyone else mention it. Annabel had had a classical education which meant that she spoke French like a native, and Alexander himself showed great proficiency. This only served to make George, whose family had not been able to afford a tutor or school for him, more self conscious. He was wholly dependent on Alexander and Annabel for translations of everything.
To be continued...
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