I logged into the Lady Love Tumblr account and stilled. There were more than five hundred asks since I’d last logged in before the storm, and that didn’t even include the actual website where I blogged answers and took questions.
Crap.
I was going to be here for-bloody-ever.
The only problem with being the first person to wake up was the lack of ready-made tea for one to pour.
Sigh.
I chose the lazy route and fetched the carton of orange juice from the fridge with a glass. It wasn’t quite the same as a nice cup of tea, but it would have to do for now.
I got to work on the ask box on Tumblr. As I’d suspected, a good portion of the asks were either follow-ups from the anonymous askers, spam, or nice men in various countries proclaiming to be African royalty or the executor of an estate from a long-lost relative.
They all wanted my bank account details, naturally.
After deleting all the ones that didn’t need my help, I went ahead and got stuck in to responding to the people who did, starting with all the people who wanted to know where they could find out their love language. After replying to a few and linking them to my pinned post—where they could find the website—I was finally able to help actual people who could use their eyes.
So many of these messages didn’t need help, per se, but reassurance. Reassurance that they thought they were doing the right thing; was this the time for that conversation? Was dinner the right thing for a first date? Was being honest with a friend the right choice?
The thing was, most people already knew all these things. At least subconsciously. Wildheart_risk, for example, one of the rare non-anon askers, already knew that she needed to be honest with her friend and tell her that she’d kissed her brother. She simply needed someone who she deemed an expert to tell her. And one anon who admitted they were fifteen and from somewhere in the United States needed reassurance that they didn’t need a big, flashy promposal—that a small bunch of their favourite flowers was more than enough.
I’d had to Google what a promposal was and then I’d fallen down an Instagram rabbit hole.
I still wasn’t entirely sure I understood it.
Seemed like a lot of work for some social media clout, if you asked me.
I liked Tumblr for this. These were always the easy requests, ones that didn’t need a lot of thinking about. It was a lot like Googling, except it was a real person—me—giving the answers on the other end.
Like the anonymous woman who wanted to propose to her girlfriend who was about to turn thirty. She’d let it slip to her future mother-in-law, who wanted her to do it at the birthday party in front of everyone, but the anon knew how shy her girlfriend was and how badly she didn’t want the party in the first place, so was doing it at home on their sofa with their two dogs the right choice?
Yes, in my opinion.
A thousand times yes.
Put the ring on the dog’s collar if you wanted to make it fancy.
“Good morning, Lady Gabriella.” Arthur strolled into the kitchen, adjusting the collar of his shirt. “You’re up early today.”
“Catching up on some studying,” I replied, quickly changing to the other browser window and clicking a random menu page. “Is nobody else awake yet?”
“Just your father, milady. Would you like some tea?”
“Oh, I’m fine with my juice, thank you.”
“Your father has requested a pot in here with his morning paper, so it’s no bother.”
“Well, if you’re making some, I’d happily take a cup.”
“Of course, milady.” Arthur busied himself at the counter by boiling water on the old kettle on the stove.
I don’t know why he didn’t use the electric one. I suppose he was a little bit old school like that, and it did make better tea, somehow. Although the whistling was a bit much early in the morning…
“Good morning, Gabi.” Aunt Cat strolled into the kitchen in her cat slippers. “You’re awake early.”
“That seems to be the general feeling this morning,” I said, trying to navigate the website.
Good God, it was a mess. Where was everything? I just wanted some ideas before I got my grade for my garden design this morning. The next step was to actually create the garden, and I’d already gotten permission to create mine here on the estate like Dad had asked.
And I really needed an A.
“You look annoyed.”
“This website is from the eighteen-hundreds,” I grumbled. “I can’t find anything. How do they sell anything?”
Aunt Cat peered over my shoulder at the screen. “I don’t think they had the internet in the eighteen-hundreds, dear.”
“They didn’t. I was exaggerating.”
“It doesn’t become you.”
“Coming from you, that’s rather rich.”
“Your tea, milady.” Arthur set a cup down in front of me. “Lady Catherine, would you like a cup?”