Paul Bennett
April 24, 2013 9:21 PM
Introducing myself (Arabella) by Paul Bennett
All things considered, their family hadn’t really done that badly for itself. The Bennetts had been building up their resources and image for years, with one of the better catches recently being Paul’s own mother, and since they were good enough at negotiating convenient enough arrangements with their spouses to have three or four sons each, they were able to recover from slight mishaps. Great-Grandfather had spent years grooming Vic into a golden boy, but when he’d lost his mind, he’d had brothers, and his father had had brothers, and it hadn’t really slowed down the family’s progress at all. Neither, insisted Eliza, would an alliance with the Brockerts, however much they seemed to think they owned the west. Their line ran to girls, the Bennetts to boys, and Arabella was a distant cousin to the people in charge. All things considered, as long as she was reasonable and discreet, their father hadn’t made Paul a bad match.“Besides,” Eliza had finished up, “she’s cute. Way better than you could do on your own.”
He had no idea what he would do without his sister to explain things for him. Truly. Lize was so good at explaining things, he wouldn’t be surprised if she told their parents she was going to be a professor someday, rather than going north this summer to ostensibly spend time idly with some girl cousins on their mother’s side but really to learn about banking from their uncle and grandfather. That last bit, he thought, had been a particularly nice touch. If accurate. Paul had gotten his father’s darker coloring, but most of his mother’s features – nondescript face, sharp nose, thin mouth, lack of height – and was on the heavy side. He didn’t fool himself that he had a great personality to make up for any of that, either. His sole attraction lay in that he was the eldest son of Orson’s favorite grandson.
He was okay with that. Whether Arabella was okay with it was a different question. Not one that really mattered, but he found it mildly interesting, and had to make his introductions anyway – not to do so would, after all, be rude, and he recognized some major practical drawbacks to offending her at this early stage. So, taking the initiative - if you ever feel like you’re trapped, Paul, act like you’re not was one of the pieces of advice his father had given to him the night before he started at Sonora – he walked over to where the one a review of last year’s yearbook had told him was her was sitting and made a small half-bow.
“Miss Arabella Brockert, right?” he said to confirm it. “Pleasure to meet you. I’m Paul Bennett.” He stuck his hand out to shake, at least half to see how she would react. That kind of thing, he thought, would be a lot more useful for giving him clues about what a person was like than what she said to him would be.
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Paul Bennett
Introducing myself (Arabella)
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Arabella Brockert
May 09, 2013 11:53 PM
Pleased to meet you. by Arabella Brockert
When it came to marriage, Arabella was a rather practical sort of girl. She knew from the time she'd been able to understand that she'd probably not be picking who she'd be married to. All the Pecari hoped was that when the time came, she was not betrothed to a monster, particularly someone who cheated on her or treated her or their children poorly. She would not stand for her child being treated the way Ryan had been by his mother.Love and romance, on the other hand, were things that Arabella would find nice but wasn't really expecting. Not right away with someone she really didn't know that well and she'd never spoken with Paul Bennett before. She hadn't really heard anything much about him at all. Last year's yearbook had him down as Quidditch Obsessed, Biggest Brain-which worked well with her Most Logical one-and Most Well Behaved. The fourth year figured these were perfectly respectable awards to get. It wasn't as if Paul had been given something like Criminal, which was a plus.
That was really about all Arabella had to go on when it came to her betrothed, the previous year's yearbook and the fact that neither Alex nor Ryan had spotted him doing anything too strange in the Crotalus Common Room. Carrie, of course, had mentioned that Paul was fat and his family was so beneath the Brockerts, that he was the best Arabella could do. Well, if her cousin was going to insult him, then the fourth year certainly wanted to discover all Paul's wonderful qualities. If Carrie had nothing positive to say about him, than the fifth year was certainly brimming with excellent traits.
As far as society was concerned, Paul was not a bad match for Arabella either. She thought he might be his family's heir while she was the elder daughter of the oldest son of the youngest son of the Patriarch's younger brother. When respective positions within their respective families were discussed it came out rather well despite the differences in the actual statuses of the families themselves. It didn't truly matter, everyone was to get whatever they wanted from this-which Arabella assumed was control of a family on the rise from Uncle Clifford's point of view-and seeing as Paul seemed fairly low key, nothing too horrid could come of it for the Pecari either, especially given that nastiest comments she'd heard about him were on his figure and status of his family and came from Carrie, hardly a source that Arabella paid much attention to-and if she could make the best of having that for a cousin, she would certainly be able to make the best of it with Paul too. Doing so had always been her way anyway.
In fact, she hoped they could at least find common ground, something to bond over. Something that would help them become friends someday. Not everyone had that instant magic of Uncle Seth and Aunt Lilac or that Ryan and Sophie so obviously had that everyone but them seemed to see. Arabella couldn't fault her cousin for not seeing it, she supposed. Thanks to Aunt Pearl, it was highly unlikely that Ryan would ever truly guess anyone was interested in him, unless it was clearly spelled out for him. Hence Arabella's yearbook plot. The one where she got people to vote for Ryan and Sophie for Best Couple so they'd realize and admit their feelings for each other. There was no way that her cousin would ever have the confidence to tell a girl that he liked her without a push and as for Sophie, well, Arabella didn't know. She didn't seem to care much about propriety in general but she apparently didn't think a girl should be the one to admit her feelings first? Did she think it would put Ryan off because of the values he'd been raised with?
Of course there was that possibility that maybe Sophie didn't like Ryan that way, but it was so obvious that the fourth year seriously doubted that. Of course, if she was somehow wrong-which she wasn't -it would be dreadfully humiliating for her cousin and she'd be to blame.
“Miss Arabella Brockert, right?”
She turned her head to face her betrothed. The Pecari did know him by face, as they'd had class together before. "Yes, pleasure to meet you." Arabella shook his hand. "You may call me Arabella." She hoped that he would take that as an indication to allow her to call him by his given name too. It would be very strange to address one's future spouse by a formal title.
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Pleased to meet you.
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