Word of the Day: Patrician
January 3, 2018: patrician \ puh-TRISH-uh n \ noun;
1. A person of noble or high rank; aristocrat.
2. A person of very good background, education, and refinement.
Iris shifted awkwardly in her seat, wishing she had chosen something a little less fashionable and a little more comfortable to wear. But then, a meeting with the patrician wasn’t the time to break out your flats and summer dresses, so her aunt had said. So instead she sat sweating in the summer heat, nearly swallowed in mounds of taffeta and silk, hoping desperately that she hadn’t annoyed the patrician enough that he’d keep her waiting in his sweltering sitting room for too long. As the seconds ticked by, though, she became more and more sure that she had clearly displeased the patrician somehow or she wouldn’t be so close to melting. Because the patrician, her aunt told her firmly, was a paragon of politeness — he would never stoop so low as to directly insult anyone — but he certainly wasn’t above letting them stew in their own juices while they awaited an audience with him.
Iris was just thinking about taking off her voluminous pink hat when the man in question finally appeared. It couldn’t be anyone else, he looked exactly like the portrait that hung in her aunt’s drawing room. She was so shocked that it was him and not a footman that had arrived that she sat staring at him with wide green eyes and didn’t say anything at all for what she would later recollect had to be at least a full minute.
“Oh dear, are you quite all right, Miss Wellsbee?” The patrician finally broke the silence, his brow creased with worry.
Iris sprung to her feet clumsily, only just maintaining her balance on the four-inch heels she’d selected to impress the patrician, and offered him a somewhat frazzled smile. “Perfectly, patrician. Only a little dazed.”
“The heat is beastly,” the patrician agreed, pausing a moment to let his eyes run up and down her form, taking in the piles and piles of fabric that made up Iris’s very chic outfit. “I can’t imagine all of that is helping much. You needn’t have dressed up on my account.”
The patrician smiled inscrutably at Iris and she could only stare in shock, quite on the edge of bursting into tears. Needn’t have dressed up on his account? Who in their right might would dress up like this on any other account? He must be winding her up, there was absolutely no other explanation for it. Because everyone knew that you presented your best self to the patrician or you found your place in society suddenly much less comfortable.
Iris swiftly plastered another frazzled smile on her face, hoping the patrician hadn’t noticed her shock and said, “this old thing? Not a bother at all. It practically floats.”
The patrician only a quirked a brow at her. After an awkward moment, he inclined his head in a nod and motioned towards the door before making his way out of the sitting room himself. Iris staggered after him, daydreaming briefly about throwing one of her four-inch heels at his head.
“I appreciate you coming on such short notice,” the patrician said over his shoulder as he guided her out to the luxuriously appointed main hallway.
“Not at all, not at all,” Iris assured him with a tight smile.
“How long have you been in the city, Iris?” the patrician asked, glancing at her as he ducked through a large oak doorway into another hallway.
“Only a fortnight,” Iris said, trying very hard to keep her huffing as dainty as possible — did the man not realize what an effort keeping up such a pace on four-inch heels required? Probably not. The patrician wouldn’t be used to having to set his pace by anyone. He was the patrician, after all, as her aunt would have reminded her.
“Yes, you only just arrived before we were forced to close the gates, didn’t you?” the patrician asked, continuing his trek through the mansion.
“Only just,” Iris agreed, her effort forgotten for a moment as she wondered whether it would be proper to ask what the closure had been about. No one was quite sure. The gates of the city has simply shut two weeks ago and hadn’t been opened since. No one in polite society really talked about it.
The patrician mumbled something to himself and before she could think to stop herself, Iris said, “I’m sorry, what was that?”
The patrician stopped abruptly and turned back to her and for a horrible moment, Iris thought she had crossed some boundary of politeness and infuriated the patrician. But abruptly she realized he was smiling sheepishly, and looked rather more embarrassed than infuriated.
“That was terribly rude of me, my apologies. I said…” he paused and took a breath. “What I said was, ‘thank goodness.’ Which I imagine must strike you as a little ominous.”
It did.
“You see, he was threatening to close the gates for at least a month, raving about it, even. But the time was never right, that’s what he kept saying. Until abruptly, two weeks ago, he stormed into the assembly hall, shouted, ‘about time! Close the gates!’ and that was that. We’ve been trying to puzzle it out and finally we realized that maybe the last person through those gates might know something, only it took us a whole week to track down who that might be — a lovely young lady in ridiculous travelling attire, coming to see her aunt.” He at least had the courtesy to blush when he realized that he’d called her ridiculous, but barreled ahead anyway, “and so when we at least found you, we asked you here immediately.”
Perhaps what should have bothered Iris was being called ridiculous, but what did bother her was the patrician spouting all of this at her as if she should have the faintest idea of what any of it meant. And perhaps if she hadn’t been kept waiting a full half hour in the sweltering sitting room before the patrician fetched her, she might have been able to keep a better hold of her irritation. But as it was, she was hot, tired, and just about through with putting up with all this nonsense just because this man was the bloody patrician.
“I hate to disappoint you, patrician, but I have no idea at all what you’re talking about, least of all who ‘he’ is,” she said, rather more loudly than she meant to, her cheeks now a shade of pink that rivaled that of her enormous hat.
The patrician winced apologetically, “of course.” He cleared his throat. “Of course.” He started off down the hallway again, leaving Iris with nothing to do but follow him, exasperation mounting, until he finally stopped in front of the most ornate set of doors she’d ever seen.
“He,” the patrician began dramatically, pushing open the doors at precisely the right moment, for effect, “is the patrician,” the patrician finished, and there, sitting in a plush bed under a pile of blankets was a man who looked exactly, down to the very last freckle, like the man standing next to her.
“About time,” the patrician said grumpily from his bed.
“I don’t suppose you know what that means?” the patrician at the door asked, looking hopefully at Iris.
Iris just glared at them both.
Let’s try this again, and see where it goes. 😀 Let’s do this, 2018!
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