The War

The room was filled with over two hundred people dancing and laughing and generally enjoying themselves. Contessa Trevanni really knew how to get the best of the best to her balls. A cloud of people drifted in from the main door from time to time and just as you thought there couldn’t be anymore room yet another family or group of twenty would be announced and greeted by none other than the Contessa herself. The sea of colour swirled and on a raised platform six men stood strumming and blowing out the best Jazz tunes in the Contessa’s mind.

Of course being the best of the best, they wanted their offspring to marry the best of the best, and this being the Contessa’s annual New Years Eve Ball, was the perfect time to introduce and arrange marriages. The preparation for the nights took months, but the Contessa knowing that she was the lifeline for all the Tycoons and their heirs, painstakingly arranged every Ball.

James Wintergarden and his wife Marie, where invited every year, and this year their daughters had also been asked to attend. Rose and Thorn were twins, but they weren’t identical. Rose was 20 minutes younger and a foot shorter than Thorn, she had her mother’s red hair and green eyes. Unlike Rose Thorn had dark hair, black in fact, she also had green eyes, but despised them and wanted them to be grey like her fathers.

James was an entrepreneur, and built up his career from the ashes of his fathers old company, with the little money he had, working his fingers to the bone. As he grew steadily more famous he started to relax, and that’s when he realised, at 27, he hadn’t had a serious girlfriend in ages. Taking his colleagues out to an exclusive New York bar, he began the great search. Two weeks in and he was at an underground club, when a girl caught his eye. She was stunning. Cogs ticked slowly in the back of his mind. He recognised her from somewhere but where? A year later and James married the famous Marie Chequovere, model from Paris, the same girl who he had met in the bar. Now as they stood in the ballroom 20 years later, they looked perfect as ever. Drinking champagne and keeping a watchful eye over her daughters, Marie was as elegant as ever.

Thorn stood on the balcony, head in her hands a bored expression on her face. Balls were as boring as . . .as Christmas. Thorn hated this unlike her sister who dreamed of wearing ball gowns from the age of 3. Thorn sighed and pulled another pin from her bun. It loosened and her hair sprang from the tight coil, Jaquevert had sculpted for hours on end. Jaquevert was Thorn’s least favourite person, and her mother’s favourite, the best of the best she had said when she had asked for a personal shopper, designer and hairdresser. Instead they got Jaquevert, a artiste, he called himself. Thorn snorted

She felt a pair of hands on her hips and turned round, moody deep eyes stared out from floppy, chocolate brown hair, and his skin was warm to the touch.

“Hello there” he purred
“Hi” Thorn choked
“I saw you looking bored and wonder if I could help?”

Rose looked up at the balcony, and saw her sister in deep conversation, with the Contessa’s favourite son, every girl wanted to date him, but few did, as his appearances at balls were sparse.

“Something wrong?” Sergei, her Waltz partner asked
“No nothing” she said and continued dancing

The head butler came over, and stood close to James.
“Mr Wintergarden sir, there are two men at the door demanding that you come now, he has Italian accent and say that his boss need to see you urgently.”
“Urr . . . okay thankyou. Marie, get the girls we are going.”
“Ohh . . . but”
“But nothing come on”
James followed the butler and Marie went to find the girls who were both entwined with their newly found boyfriends.