Pale and wheezing, Amy staggered out of the billiard room, her head whirling.

I'm gonna get ye for dis, Patrick Day! One day, I'm gonna kill ye very dead and get my revenge!

No, she corrected herself. It's Please, Lord Patrick Day, Sir, may I please get ye for dis? I'd very much like ta get my revenge if ye'd be so kind as ta accommodate me.

She grimaced. She had to admit, if nothing else, Mademoiselle Ball Sack's etiquette lessons were thorough and effective.

"We 'ave 'ad quite se successful first session, Madame La Duchesse," announced that French demoness from behind her, nearly making Amy jump out of the window. "Is sat not right, Mademoiselle?"

"Oh, um..." Amy cleared her throat. "Quite right. Quite right. I just loved learnin' about etty cat."

"Etiquette, ma chere," Madame Balzac corrected, sweetly. "Etiquette."

"So sorry, mad muzzle! My sincere apologies!" Translation: Please, God, not another lesson! Please! Pleaaaaaaase.

"Don't worry, ma chere." The Frenchwoman patted her shoulder, an evil grin on her face. "Mispronunciation is not such a terrible issue. Your next lesson shall take care of sat easily enough."

A cold trickle travelled down Amy's spine.

"My next lesson? What do you mean?"

The smile on the Frenchwoman's face turned positively devilish. This wasn't fair! Proper ladies weren't supposed to be this devious, were they? That sort of stuff was supposed to be reserved for ruthless, back-stabbing street rats like myself!

"Well..." Mademoiselle Balzac began—then stopped when they all heard the doorbell ring. "Seems like you are about to find out, ma chere."

A moment later, footsteps approached down the corridor. Taking a deep breath, Amy turned towards the door. She would face this head-on. After all, how bad of a shrew could this new instructor be, compared to the last one?

Then, the door opened and a man stepped into the room.

Well, so much for that.

"Good afternoon, Your Grace, Young Miss." The man gave a flawless bow, his back as straight as a ruler. That wasn't the only thing that was flawless. His cultured, British voice sounded like an Oxford English Dictionary brought to life. His tailcoat and trousers were ironed to perfection, and with the curly tufts of hair above his ears and the pince-nez clamped onto his nose, he looked like the textbook image of a professor. "I am Professor Salisbury. Professor Winston Salisbury."

A man.

Inside Amy, a mad, vampiric kind of laughter echoed. They had sent a man to teach her. Poor, hapless little fool!

"A pleasure!" Giving the middle-aged man her most innocently seductive smile, she sidled towards him and curtsied, revealing a good amount of cleavage. Colour flooded the poor man's face. Oh yes, this was going to be far easier.

"Err...ehem. Well, thank you, Miss." Snatching his pince-nez off his nose, the professor started to polish them, thus providing the perfect excuse for being half-blind and unable to look at anything outrageously shocking that might fry his poor intellectual brain. When he had polished them half a dozen times and Amy was still presenting her cleavage, the desperate man turned to face the duchess. "And may I assume this...charming young lady is to be my pupil?"

"Indeed she is!" The duchess nodded eagerly. "I am so glad you are here, Professor. Go on, why don't you explain to your young charge what your area of expertise is?"

"Gladly, Your Grace." He bowed again, deep enough so he couldn't see anything that might not be fitting for an English gentleman. "I am a professor of linguistics and here in the capacity of your elocution teacher."

A gleeful grin spread over Amy's face. Now wasn't that a nice surprise? "An elocution teacher? Bloody friggin' 'ell! A colleague! How spiffin'!"

The man blinked. He stared at her. This time, he paid no attention to her cleavage whatsoever.

"Pardon me, Miss, but...you want me to believe that you are an elocution teacher?"

Amy's grin widened. "Oh, I've gained a vast amount of experience in dat particular field of education, my dear colleague. After all, fang bitch is a limb gore tent for your wife."

The man blinked again. Twice. "Excuse me?"

"No problem," Amy granted happily, deciding that Cockney Rhyming Slang was the most awesome invention ever. "Ye're sex-bruised."

The unfortunate professor's face flooded with a red so deep, so dark, that a lobster would turn green with envy. Then he slowly turned towards Her Ladyship, the Dowager Duchess.

"Your Grace," he squeezed out, "when I accepted this employment as a tutor, I was under the impression that the person to be tutored would at least be moderately sane."

"Aww," Amy smiled. "Wank ye for da bomb tree vent."

"What in the name of St George is that even supposed to mean?!"

"Twat do you clean?" Amy blinked her big, innocent eyes at the man. "You do not thunder stand my turds?"

"How...what...why..." The poor professor's head was flicking back and forth between Her Ladyship the Dowager Duchess and the other creature in the room, commonly known as Amy Weston. "Your Grace, what in the name of all that is holy is wrong with this unfortunate young woman?"

The dowager duchess gave him a sweet smile. "The thing you're supposed to fix."

And then she turned around and left the room.

Holy...!

Note ta self: Mum-in-law can be savage!

Once the dowager duchess had left, Amy sidled up to her new elocution teacher, linking her arm with his and gesturing to a nearby sofa. "Thrumb a dong. Shall we fart bliss?"

The man buried his face in his hands. "What have I done to deserve this?"

"Hum Grover," Amy suggested. "I'll sex-train!"

All she got in response was a whimper. Oh my. This was going to be fun.

Before the poor professor could flee, Amy tightened her grip and dragged him off towards the sofa of doom.

The next few hours were some of the most enjoyable Amy had ever spent in her life. She'd had quite the bit of experience with pleasure in her life. Considering her profession, even if the percentage of palatable clients hadn't been that high, she'd still had more than her share of enjoyable encounters. Yet never had she considered that simple, wholesome conversation could be this entertaining.

"Ye glow, I'm nearly employing our hawk."

"Why oh why can you not speak properly? How am I supposed to correct your pronunciation if I do not even understand what you are saying?"

"Don't ye curry." Amy patted his arm. "Ye'll earn spoon cream puff."

"I do not want to earn cream puff! Let alone with a spoon of all things!"

"What are ye gettin' piled up about? Dere's no season to get sex-blighted."

"And stop saying that word!"

Amy blinked innocently. "What turd?"

"You know perfectly well what turd—ehem, word! The S-word!"

"Season?"

The professor's face twitched. For some reason, he didn't really seem to appreciate Amy's sincere efforts to find out the reason for his aggravation. He really should have been more appreciative.

"Pray tell me, Miss, how am I supposed to teach you if you refuse to even try and speak in a sensible language?"

"I merely thought it would be a good idea to sex-hose ye ta vocal bi rejects."

Once more, colour flooded the man's face. Idly, Amy wondered how long it would take her to make an Oxford professor want to strangle her

"Now..." She gave the professor another charming smile. "Shall we spawn in you this hardon castration?"

Roughly half an hour later...

"I can't! I can't bear it anymore! Out of my waaay!"

Her Ladyship, the Dowager Duchess of Exeter, who was sitting in the drawing room working on a piece of embroidery, looked up in surprise as a professor-shaped blur raced past her.

"Um...Professor?"

"I resign! Goodbye, Your Grace!"

A moment later, all that was left in the room was a distinct lack of linguists. A moment later, Amy stuck her head into the room.

"Is 'e gone?"

"Apparently." The dowager duchess cocked an eyebrow and, to Amy's surprise, gave her a small smile. "I admit, I'm somewhat surprised it took you this long."

Amy smirked. Oh my. She might grow to like this mother-in-law.

Wait...mother-in-law? Where did dat come from? Ye're supposed ta be pissed off about dis whole engagement farce! Ye're supposed ta be tryin' ta get out of it! Ye're supposed ta tell 'er it will never work!

Only...when Amy looked at the kind, sweet smile on the face of the dowager duchess, she just couldn't bring herself to squeeze the words out.

Dammit!

"So..." the dowager duchess enquired, resuming her needlework. "What should we do about your elocution now?"

"Maybe get a Cambridge professor next?" Amy suggested cheerfully. "Variety is da spice of life."

"I'm sure it is." Her Ladyship nodded sedately. "Which is why I shall be taking over your elocution lessons myself for the time being."

Oh shit.

Maybe Amy should not have forgotten that, while likable, this lady was also one hell of a badass.

"And speaking of variety..."

Double shit.

"The instructors for your next two lessons are here," the dowager duchess announced with a brilliant smile. One that didn't look nearly as harmless as the last one. "And these two are both women."

Ruin my schemes, why don't ye? How am I gonna send 'em running now?

Not that their being women would prevent her from trying, but whether or not a couple of stuffy old broads would be equally susceptible to her charms was rather doubtful. Unless, perchance, they'd turn out to be the kind of stuffy lady that secretly suppressed dastardly desires of an...unconventional nature.

A girl can always hope.

Just then, the door opened, and in strode two women with nearly identical horse faces, dressed in high-necked black dresses that wouldn't have looked out of place in a nunnery.

Crap. Hope just died.

"Sis vill be our student, da?"

Amy blinked. Did she recognize that accent correctly?

"Yes, she will be," the dowager duchess confirmed with a nod.

"Hm." Horse-Face number one examined her with sharp eyes. "I see she vill be a lot of vork. Vell...best to begin visout delay, niet?"

And then, the woman pulled out a board with straps attached that looked like it came fresh from a frigging torture chamber! Or at least it would have, if Amy hadn't spent a good part of her life in torture chambers, and thus knew all bondage implements that had ever existed. This one she didn't know, and it looked worse than all of the ones she'd seen put together.

"What is dat?" she demanded.

"Sis?" Horse-Face number one raised an eyebrow. "Sis is backboard. Vill teach you posture."

"'ow?" Amy enquired—and regretted it an instant later.

"Come," the two women said, in an eerie sort of chorus. Eyes flickering with a maniacal glitter, they stalked towards her. "Ve vill show you."

In a knee-jerk reaction, Amy leapt back, putting the sofa between her and the approaching harpies.

"What are dese two?" Amy hissed out of the corner of her mouth, eyeing the dowager duchess pleadingly.

If the older lady noticed, she didn't let on. Beaming brightly, she gestured at the two approaching harbingers of doom. "Miss Amy Weston, let me introduce you to Madam Chernyshevsky, your dancing instructor, and Madam Preobrazhensky, your walking instructor, newly arrived from Russia."

"Walkin' instructor? Why did ye think I need a walkin' instructor? And, more to da point, 'ow da 'ell did ye even find one?"

Her Ladyship raised an enquiring eyebrow. "Why do you think I had to go all the way to Russia?"

On the other side of the sofa, the two Russian harpies gave ominous chuckles.

"You..." Amy gave the dowager duchess a wounded look. Time to play the pity card. "I thought you were nice!"

Glancing up from the needlework, the dowager duchess gave her charming smile. "What ever gave you that idea, deary?"

Then she turned back to her embroidery, while Amy found herself grabbed by four surprisingly strong hands and dragged off towards the door leading to the billiard room. Or should she say torture chamber?

"Ah! Um..." Trying desperately to struggle out of their grip, Amy gave a hopeful smile at the two harpies. "'ello dere, ladies. Sorry ta say dis, but I don't really think I need yer lessons. Me posture is just like I like it, and as for dancin', I can dance da fandango de pokum with da best of 'em."

The two women didn't seem to be impressed by her résumé. They continued on their way, not even pausing for a moment.

"You should feel honoured, you know," the dowager duchess's far-too-damned-amused voice came from behind her. "Madam Chernyshevsky is an instructor from the Imperial Russian Ballet. She has, ehem...thoroughly educated many young ladies."

"That doesn't exactly make me feel better!"

"Oh. It doesn't? What a pity."

Those innocent words were the last thing Amy heard before she was dragged into the next room.

I'll get me revenge for dis, Lord Patrick Day! Someday soon, I'll get me revenge!

***

Lord Patrick Day was just in the process of changing his clothes when he felt a cold shiver travel down his spine. Strange...the room wasn't that cold, and there wasn't even a breeze from the windows. Why did he suddenly feel cold?

-----------------------------------------

My dear Lords, Ladies and Gentlemen,

In case you are wondering, the chapter title of this chapter is Cockney Rhyming slang for "A chapter title in Cockney Rhyming Slang" ;-)

As for the rest of Amy's linguistic contortions, here is a little glossary of all the Cockney Rhyming slang translated into normal English, in order of appearance:

Language is important for your life.

You're excused.

Thank you for the compliment. (Incidentally, if anyone should wish to use Cockney Rhyming Slang in their daily conversations, inspired by this story, the author shall not be responsible for any injuries inflicted upon them by their conversation partners. You have been warned.)

What do you mean?

Come along. Shall we start this?

Come over. I'll explain.

You know, I'm really enjoying our talk.

Don't you worry. You'll learn soon enough.

What are you getting riled up about? There's no reason to get excited.

I merely thought it would be a good idea to expose ye ta local dialects.

Shall we continue this conversation?