Allied

London, 1896

Their first invite is to a ball in the London home of the Baron and Baroness de Courcy.

Mrs. Cahill is absolutely ecstatic and, as she tells Amy, she has every right to be. Their new London acquaintances have all assured them that the Baron is a very influential man, and the Baroness, despite her relative youth, is one of the foremost hostesses in the Ton. If Amy gains the favor of any of these people, she won't be considered just another American fortune hunter by the upper echelons she's (allegedly) trying to break into.

Their carriage approaches their destination, a large townhome in Grosvenor Square. A well-heeled crowd is entering the no doubt teeming house full of debutantes and aristocrats, landowners and politicians alike.

Amy's stomach flutters nervously- a rare thing for her. Her mother has impressed upon her the seriousness of behaving her best during this ball, but she's never realized the stakes until now.

Mrs. Cahill takes several deep breaths and desperately seeks to calm her jittery hands, but when she makes eye contact with Amy, she seems to steel herself, and plasters a smile onto her face. It's time to go in.

A footman inside escorts them to the ballroom, and the butler at the door announces their names.

"Mrs. Arthur Cahill and Miss Amy Cahill of Boston!"

Thankfully, nobody bothers to look at them as they descend the stairs, save the couple at the bottom, who must be their hosts for the evening.

The baron and baroness seem positively ill-matched. The baron is of middling-age and is standing inattentively next to his wife, his longing gaze going occasionally to the card room where his peers are most likely congregating. The Baroness Natalie de Courcy, on the other hand, is around Amy's age, but somehow seems much more mature as she stands proudly next to her husband, greeting every person that enters with a smile and a few words.

Indeed, it makes sense that she is the more sociable one. It has long been rumored that despite her sex and heritage (half-Indian, Mrs. Cahill had whispered, scandalized when she first came to know about the Baroness- Amy could hardly care less), Lady de Courcy is the true power behind the seat in the House of Lords that her husband occupies.

When the Baroness gets to Amy and her mother, she inclines her head as the two of them drop into elegant curtsies they had spent hours practicing.

"Mrs. Cahill, I am happy you could make it to our little party," Lady de Courcy says. The baroness is once of those women who appear so artlessly elegant that it could only be artful, Amy thinks, half-amused and half-envious. Clad in a gown of sapphire silk that sets off her tanned complexion, she appears to be almost radiant.

"Oh! And such a lovely ball too!" Mrs. Cahill exclaims in response, all aflutter, "Such magnificence! Such finery, such-"

"-Yes, we do try our best," the baroness interrupts, a sardonic little smile playing on her lips. Amy nearly snorts, but the baroness catches her, and a strange glimmer appears in her amber eyes.

"Miss Cahill, you look well," she says, turning to Amy. "Green suits you."

"Thank you, your Ladyship," Amy says as demurely as possible.

And that is the extent of the dialogue that occurs between them for most of the night.


Three dances in, Amy is hot, sweaty, and uncomfortable in the cramped ballroom. The baroness certainly knows how to entertain in style, but everything is so… much.

And the young ladies themselves are right horrors. A recent acquaintance, a Lady Teodora, had pityingly taken it upon herself to introduce Amy to the rest of her set, and Amy had been snubbed repeatedly by various titled ladies of little fortune.

It's ironic, really, she muses. Her mother had spared no expense on her wardrobe- her gown is Parisian-made and her diamonds were procured by a famous Italian jeweler, while the other girls simply wore drab English dresses and pearls, and yet, they didn't ever bother with a passing glance at her. Because to them, Amy could have a dowry larger than ten of theirs combined, and she could have been asked to dance by men of successively greater fortune, but they were still above her.

It's like Boston all over again.

It's also what prompts her to flee the stuffy room for the back gardens.

Once she is a comfortable enough distance away from the house, she pulls her shoes off, wincing as her pinched stocking-covered toes are freed from their confines. She proceeds to take out the cigarettes and a lighter she had managed to smuggle into her reticule, and lights one up. She takes a drag, sighing as her feet skim the dewy grass. She knows they will have stains later, but she is long past the stage of caring.

"Do you have a light?"

Amy gives a startled little squeak, whirling around to see a man in half-shadows, the light of distant torches highlighting his clothes enough to let her know that he is another guest. She remains on her guard even as she wordlessly extends her lighter towards him. He murmurs his thanks before lighting his own cigarette and gratefully inhaling, then exhaling a thin stream of smoke.

"It's not polite to sneak up on a lady like that," she says after a few moments, her words firm, but her tone light.

"Then you'll be happy to know I had no intention of sneaking," the man says. "I merely took a detour to the gardens before facing the hordes of ravaging wolves in the ballroom."

She giggles, despite herself. "How shameful, sir! Seeking a respite even before presenting yourself to our hosts."

A corner of his lip curls upwards in a little smile that looks startlingly familiar for a brief second. "Yes well, I have a feeling the hostess will be a little more forgiving of me."

"From what I have heard, Lady de Courcy is a lot of things, but forgiveness does not seem to be chief among her traits."

The words spill from her lips, and she nearly claps a hand over her mouth to prevent them, but it's too late. Who does she think she is, insulting her host (albeit in an indirect way) like that?

But to her surprise, he only laughs a low chuckle. "As I am well aware."

Amy frowns slightly. This man- whom she realizes she hasn't even asked the name of- seems quite familiar with the baroness, and he is clearly not her husband.

"Are all Americans this open?" He gestures to the smoldering cigarette in her hand, her heels in her other hand, and perhaps he's even referring to her open manner of addressing him.

She doesn't know whether it's meant to be an insult or not, but she feels the need to defend her homeland, if not herself.

"I fear I am something of an anomaly amongst my set," she admits sheepishly, "which is why my mother persuaded my father that I must be dragged to England to make any sort of proper match."

"You sound as though this was all very much against your will," he observes.

"Women never do seem to have much of a choice, do they?" She says, sounding much more bitter than she had intended. "Just look at the baron and baroness- I wonder what the circumstances of their marriage must have been."

"Would you believe it if I told you that it was something of a love match?" The man asks dryly. "He found her amusing, and she found him… a necessary tool to become one of the foremost Liberal hostesses of our set." He takes a deep drag of his cigarette before continuing. "Women perhaps do not have all the freedom of men, but they have the power to make the best of their circumstances, and if they continue to do so, in a few generations, I believe equality in the eyes of the law and society is very much achievable."

"You are quite open-minded yourself, aren't you?" She accuses him after a few slack-jawed moments of silence on her part.

"So my opponents in Parliament have lambasted me," he shrugs and smiles.

"And you're a politician," she adds, feeling very much pleased for discovering at least a part of this mysterious, open-minded man's identity.

"You sound like you could be one yourself, Miss Cahill, although-" he turns to face her, "- if the gossip is to be believed, your family is already full of them."

She looks at him in astonishment- was her Beacon Hill accent that much of a giveaway?

"How do you know who I am?"

"Everyone does," he says simply. "The British makes it their business to know. As much as the aristocracy dislikes it, they need the money, and every crop of American girls will be snatched up first by peers of the realm."

"I am not some crop for buying," she says, more outraged than satisfied by his answer, "I am a woman, and my own person, despite whatever you people may think."

"So you have made clear," he muses, "but what will happen once some lord or another marries you and drops you in his drafty country estate? A modern girl like you surely won't be able to stand the lack of light, heating, and of course all those stuffy traditions in place, traditions you will have to rigidly have to follow."

"You don't know anything about me," she says sharply, insulted that this man- this stranger- would dare presume anything about her strength. "You don't know what I can withstand."

"I know you're fairly intelligent, well-spoken, entirely unsuited for life in this country," he responds calmly. In the back of her mind, Amy wonders how she found herself debating with a politician about her marriage prospects.

"What would you have me do, then?"

"Go back to America," he simply states, which only serves to further enrage her. "You cannot survive here, among those of the Ton and all their games and machinations."

"And what if I decide to stay and play the game- make something of myself like you said a woman could," she challenges, "or are you just a hypocrite?"

The silence that follows afterwards is probably mere seconds, but to Amy, it feels like hours as she agonizes over whether she's crossed any number of lines.

"Then," he says suddenly, his voice barely above a whisper, and he take a final drag of his cigarette before tossing it onto the grass, "perhaps you've just made yourself a new ally."

He turns to walk away, but not before murmuring, "Good night, Miss Cahill."


Amy returns to the ballroom shortly after, still mulling over the man's last words to her. An ally… that was not something a girl like herself heard every day. Ally means politicking and plotting, like the bearded men she remembers, with their brandy and cigars, who would gather in her father's study every week when Congress was not in session. She used to sneak past the study door, sometimes just sitting by it for hours on end as she listened to the voices of power, men she once believed controlled the very world- her world, at least. It was there that she had learnt everything she knew, that, and later accompanying her father on the campaign trail and her mother to women's functions. This informal education, which she had cherished every moment of, was to be capped by four years at the prestigious Wellesley College, but her dreams had been destroyed two years in. Her mother and father had other plans for her, plans to advance the family in ways required neither knowledge nor an education.

Had it been too much to hope that perhaps, she could have a role in her father's grand political empire? Had she been deluding herself all these years as she waited patiently for her time to come, while her brother Dan wasted his time away in Phillip Exeter, and then Harvard?

Her parents had clearly thought so. The mantle of the family legacy had been foisted upon Dan's unwilling shoulders, and she had been given a one-way ticket to England.

The clinking of a spoon on glass startles her from her bitter musings.

It's the Lady de Courcy, who has just gestured for the music to stop, and is now standing in the center of the grand room, about to make a speech of some kind. The crowd jostles for a better view as the baroness is a petite woman, and Amy vaguely sees her mother being shoved by some lesser viscount, but she can't bring herself to care.

"I would first like to say that I am very happy to see so that so many of us could make it to our little party before the lot of you retire to the country with your horses and your hounds-" Lady de Courcy begins, and the crowd chuckles all too knowingly- "but I find there is nowhere quite like London."

"Here here!" Someone in crowd cries and they raise their glasses to their hostess.

"And I am especially pleased to announce that His Grace the Duke of Rutland has recently arrived back from his tour of the Continent, and he has decided to honor us with his presence," the baroness continues, the first real smile of the night gracing her features. At her announcement, Amy hears hushed whispers and more than one matchmaking mama exclaim in glee and tell their daughters to stand straight, adjust their bodices, or pinch their cheeks for some color. In the meanwhile, Amy's mind frantically combs through every page of Debrett's she had been forced to memorize during the trip here, trying in vain to remember a "Duke of Rutland".

However, she doesn't have to think too much, for the man himself strides into the center of the ballroom. It is only after he faces the baroness that Amy can clearly see who this illusive duke is.

It's him.

Now that the light has thrown sharp relief onto his features, Amy sees the same elegant stature, ink-black hair, and amber eyes she could vaguely make out in the shadows. He speaks quietly with Lady de Courcy for a moment, and they embrace. Amy is close enough to hear the baroness murmur an affectionate "brother."

Then, Lady de Courcy goes on: "My brother believes himself to have become quite adept in the dances of the French mademoiselles, the Spanish se?oritas-" she pauses as the crowd titters approvingly at her double entendre, "-and of course, the Viennese waltz, which he has been asked to demonstrate the finer points of." At that, the baroness casts a look of mild distaste towards a triumphant-looking Lady Teodora, who Amy assumes was the one bold enough to ask the duke for a dancing lesson.

The duke steps forward.

"The Viennese waltz is a simple enough dance," he says. "The man positions himself slightly to the right of the lady, he places his right hand on her back and takes her right hand with his left, and the lady places her left on his right shoulder-" he suddenly pauses to survey his audience, who are clearly bewildered by these "simple instructions", and he smirks slightly- "but I fear I am getting ahead of myself and confusing you all."

"What makes a perfect waltz," the duke says, his eyes roving the crowd as if he's looking for someone, "- as I have been assured by the fair fr?uleins of Vienna, is the perfect partner."

At this, Lady Teodora puffs up with pride and nearly trips over herself in eagerness to dance with the duke, but he isn't looking at her.

He's looking at Amy.

He comes to where she is standing and extends a hand in invitation. "Would you be mine?"

The room falls deathly silent, and Amy lets her gaze flick downwards towards his outstretched hand. She chooses that exact moment to wonder what her mother must think and almost laughs, imagining Mrs. Cahill's histrionics at her daughter, a mere Boston Miss, being chosen by the Duke of Rutland for a dance.

It is at that instant that Lady de Courcy strides forward, clearly ready to do some damage control.

"Ian," she hisses once she's close enough, "What will people think, you dancing with her? You haven't even been introduced to her! It's not proper-"

"-Then perhaps you will do us the honors, Natalie," the duke interrupts her loudly.

The baroness sighs, knowing she has been outmaneuvered by the duke- after all, who would refuse to make introductions?

"Very well," she says, and begins the introductions in exaggerated monotony. "Ian, this is Miss Amy Cahill from Boston in America. Miss Cahill, may I present His Grace, the Duke of Rutland."

"Your Grace," Amy murmurs, sinking into a very proper curtsey. She dares to look up slightly, watching his expression for any sign of change from the stoic mask he has on.

"Miss Cahill," he says sotto voce, and through the mask she sees his amber eyes gleaming with mirth, "I don't believe we've had the pleasure."

She rises and her lips curl upwards in a slow smile as she meets his gaze head-on.

Something tells her that he will like it- her boldness. Indeed, something tells her that this man will like a lot about her. She may be the bluestocking bookworm, the brash American, but she knows that in her, he has found a challenge- he did the moment he called himself her ally.

And whatever challenge he issues her, she will rise to the occasion magnificently.

"No," she says, beaming brilliantly as she takes his hand and he escorts her onto the dance floor for all the world to see, "I don't believe we have."


This is a rewrite I decided to post once more, because it has gone through a lot of revision recently. It has based on my story "To Love, Honor, and Obey" as a sort of AU where Amy would have met Ian first (rather than Jake), and they'd have gone onto become quite the political power couple.

In addition, I vividly remember an original reviewer questioning why I'd white-washed Ian (and, I suppose, by extent, Natalie), which really did strike a chord within me. The truth is, I could think of no conceivable, historical way that a half-Indian man could become a duke, so I decided that in the rewrite, I'd explain it as little as possible.

If you are looking for some kind of explanation, however, lets go with Isabel being a daughter of a duke, and she marries an Indian man (Vikram). But when Isabel's father is dying finds himself without any other male heirs, he has no choice but to bestow the dukedom upon his grandson, Ian.

Anyway, review and let me know what you think!