GBVE: Colleen Gleason

ATTENTION: Before reading, get information about the Great Blog Voice Experiment here.

The topic: “A young woman confronts her parents after discovering she has inherited telekinetic powers.”
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Prudence

Prudence set her fork down and drew in a deep breath. “Mama, Papa, I have something I wish to tell you.”

Her mama, Lady Harriet Pintwiddle, peered at her from the end of the long table. Despite there being no other family members in attendance—Thurston having gone off to fight Napoleon and Benjamin off raising hell, or perhaps studying; one could never be too sure about him; at Oxford—Lady Harriet preferred to utilize most of the expanse of the large table. She sat at one end, her husband at the opposite, and Prudence, their only daughter, smack in the middle betwixt them. With space for at least four other people on either side of her.

“What is it m’dear?” Her papa’s moustache twitched as he bit gustily into a crust of bread. “Some confession about the mess at Lady Blanthorpe’s fete, I’ll wager.” He chuckled and wheezed, inhaling a breath of crumbs, and resorted to gulping down half his glass of wine in order to stop coughing. “It was quite a sight, it was! Can’t remember when I’ve enjoyed anything more than seeing that Blanthorpe chit brought down a notch.”

“Pintwiddle, don’t be ridiculous. Our Prudence would have had nothing to do with the events at Blanthorpe’s last night. Why, she sat perfectly poised on the side chairs whilst that ridiculous Blanche Blanthorpe made a fool of herself. How could our Prudence have had a hand in her unfortunate experience? If you ask me, Miss Blanthorpe brought it all upon herself, with her airs and that tiny pointy nose always lifted so high!”

Prudence’s stomach twinged and pitched. It only made it worse that her parents disliked Blanche as much as she did. But she hadn’t meant to let things go so far! What were they going to say? Would they send her to Bedlam? “Mama, Papa, please…may I–?”

“Served her right, it did, after the way she treated our Prudence.” Papa, who had recovered from his bout of coughing, winked at her, then set to the leg of lamb that glistened on his plate. “If she’d have been a man, I’d have called her out.” Scrubbing at the jus that dribbled down his chin, he nodded firmly, as if the matter were settled.

“Well, I don’t disagree, Pintwiddle, but there’s no need to make jests about Prudence having anything to do with Miss Blanthorpe’s gown flipping up like it did. It was no more than a gust of wind from the patio, or that it caught upon the buckle or button of one of her admirers.”

“Never seen such knobby knees in m’life,” chortled Papa.

“Pintwiddle!” Lady Harriet gasped, her face blossoming puce.

Prudence wished to be anywhere but there at that moment. Her own face was burning, and her parents weren’t listening, and this was difficult enough as it was. It had been rather satisfying to see Blanche’s own face turn white, then pink with mortification as her skirts billowed up around her bosom, up and down, up and down, as if a gust of wind was swirling up and under them.

The consternation on the girl’s face as she tried to plaster the filmy, frothy yards of material back down over her lower appendages had more than made up for the pain of the subtle cuts and not-so-sly insinuations she’d liberally spread about Prudence and her family. It had been that last comment about Lady Harriet’s parentage that had clipped the final string of Prudence’s control.

But until she’d actually done it, Prudence had had no idea her powers, as she supposed she should call them, could do more than flutter the pages in an open book or lift a quill from the table.

Her parents were still distracted—Papa was chuckling into his lamb leg, and Lady Harriet was proceeding to lecture him about propriety at the dinner table and subjects that were not appropriate in front of young ladies—ergo, their daughter.

Prudence realized she was going to have to take matters in hand in order to gain their attention.

She narrowed her eyes as she had done last night, focused on the candelabra that sat in the middle of the table (her mother preferred the atmosphere of candles as opposed to gas lamps for dinner), and lifted it.

It wobbled a bit—she was still getting her bearings with this strange ability of hers—but the heavy cluster of candles rose straight from the center of the table to hang above them, casting her parents’ shocked faces into a strange glowing light.

Lady Harriet stopped her lecture. Papa set down his own fork and napkin, staring.

Then they both looked at Prudence, who sat perfectly still, her stomach in knots.

“Well I’ll be demmed,” Papa said, chuckling happily.

Lady Harriet’s eyes were glistening with proud tears. “We’d about given up hope, my dear Prudence! But now we know for certain!”

“What do you mean?” Something strange was happening inside her.

“You’re a Pintwiddle Witch!”
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Get more information about Colleen’s upcoming regency vampire slayer series and erotic retelling of Phantom of the Opera at http://colleengleason.blogspot.com. The Rest Falls Away, the first book in the Gardella Legacy series, will be available in winter of 2007.