“Ornate in ormolu?” It was the American again. Of course.

“Ormolu,” Augustus repeated. “Ormolu?”

Emma Delagardie gave a little bounce that made her silver spangles scintillate. “Just helping out. You are doing Os, aren’t you? “

Augustus would have loved to tell her exactly what she could do with her As, Es and Us—in prose—but he had spent years perfecting his pose of poetic otherworldliness. He wasn’t about to ruin it for one noisy chit from the colonies. The former colonies, that was. If Emma Delagardie was a representative example, good riddance to them.

“If I may continue?” he said.

Emma Delagardie fluttered her fan. Augustus sneezed. The fan was made of feathers. Feathers with silver spangles. They had a long reach.

“Oh, do. Please do,” she said, far too enthusiastically for Augustus’s peace of mind. No one wanted to hear his poetry that badly. In fact, no one wanted to hear his poetry at all. This boded ill.

Augustus brooded. He did it quite well. He bloody well ought to. He had spent hours practicing. “My soul shies back! To flourish, the delicate blooms of poetry must be gently nurtured and watered from the well of an understanding spirit, not withered in the harsh glare of unfeeling criticism.”

“Do go on, Mr. Whittlesby,” said Miss Wooliston soothingly. “I assure you, we are all attention to hear how Cytherea comes about.”

“All thirty dithery cantos,” added her friend cheerfully.

Did she think it was easy to consistently perpetrate works of such poetic awfulness?

He could have told Emma Delagardie a thing or two about that. Years, it had taken, years of grueling practice and downright hard work. It was a hard balance to maintain, writing poetry dreadful enough to be laughable but just credible enough to be believable.