Perfect Names
Gareth and Hyacinth. Two perfectly non-teasable names. After all, nothing rhymes easily or well with either and especially not something off-color to be used by bullies. Truly, they are two names of two people destined to enjoy a life free from the pain of name-teasing. Unless, of course, one has a brother like Gregory Bridgerton who manages to cash on on that whole where there’s a will there’s a way idea:
“The lovely lithping children you could have together. Garethhhh and Hyathinthhhh. Hyathinth and Gareth. And the thublime Thinclair tots…With the thcrumptious little Tharah and Thamuel Thinclair. Oh, yeth, and don’t forget wee little Thuthannah.”
The End of Innocence
The relationship between Gareth and his father is not strong. Actually, it is the epitome of bad. Father and son have even devised a set of regulations by which contact is made. Finally, it is revealed—to Gareth—the root cause of this bad relationship and it only changes absolutely everything in an instant when his normally ice-cold father unprecedentedly becomes a spewing volcano of unleashed pent-up and beaten-down restraint:
“Rage poured forth like some hot, desperate thing, too long held captive and repressed. It hit Gareth like a wave, swirling around him, squeezing and choking until he could barely breathe.”
Double Revelation
A tiny slice of imagery, almost throwaway in nature, but not quite, is revealing of both partners in this tango of romance. It is usually better that way, though not all writers seems able to pull it off. At its most efficient, imagery can penetrate into the mind of one character and illuminate a little of themselves through how they view others. For example:
“He was a puzzle. And Hyacinth hated puzzles. Well, no, in truth she loved them. Provided, of course, that she solved them.”
Some Call It Sorrow
Mourning, loss, death, and all those various and sometimes conflicting emotions associated with the passing of someone close becomes a kind of layering to the story. Death is not really immediately impactful, but the past does inform the present. Violet Bridgerton, in a moment of confessional honesty, describes the worst sort of impact upon the living that death brings in imagery that cuts to the bone:
"`There’s a kind of grief that just eats one up. It weighs one down. And one can’t—' Violet stopped, and her lips moved, the corners tightening in that way they did when a person was wallowing...and trying not to cry. `Well, one can’t do anything. There’s no way to explain it unless you’ve felt it yourself.’”
