Note From Author: I worked on these chapters forever trying to revamp them.
I hope they are better! Um, please read and review! I love reviews! They
make me really happy! Disclaimer: The usual, I do not own the Newsies (can
only cross my fingers)--the lovely folks at Disney do. I own Darby
Rockwell, David Van Wyck, Katrina Van Witt, John and Ava Rockwell, and any
other characters that do not appear in Newsies. Enjoy…..
APPLE PIE AND BROKEN SHOES
CHAPTER ONE
Ways to kill David Van Wyck: One, I could hire a very intimidating thug to maul his little bottom to smithereens, or Two, I could just have an intelligent conversation with him.
Darby Rockwell decided that the better way of killing David Van Wyck would be the second plan. The poor little boy was sure to drown in an intelligent conversation.
Darby, daintily crossing her ankles and straightening herself against the hard chair, cheerfully said, "David, my isn't this a piquant repast we are having?"
David's dark brown eyes interlocked with Darby's and he stopped the picking of his teeth with his salad fork. "Darby, I know you like to show off your French lessons, but please stop."
To anyone else, this remark from David Van Wyck may have seemed like a mere ruse, but to Darby is was a showing of his true stupidity. She had to put her gloved hand to her mouth to stifle her giggles.
She watched as he sat down his salad fork and picked up one of the sterling silver spoons to check his reflection in.
"You look fine, David," Darby said sarcastically.
David, very smug as always, replied, "I know, Darby girl, I know."
At this, she once again felt his calf find its way to her leg and start the rubbing of it again.
Darby groaned and kicked his leg away with the heel of one shoe from the pair of fantastically expensive heels she wore.
David, not getting the point, leaned in closer to her, whispering in her ear. "Just think, Darby girl, in less than two years we'll be married, and you'll be impregnated with David Van Wyck, Jr."
Darby swore she felt his tongue in her ear for s split second. She felt utterly sickened by that statement. "I will never be betrothed to you, you utterly nauseating, odious..."
Her string of oaths was cut short by Mrs. Van Wyck's cooing of: "Oh, Ava, look how utterly in love they look! Just wait until they can marry, and Davey can follow in the footsteps of his father as mayor!"
Both Mrs. Van Wyck's and Mrs. Rockwell's sickeningly happy gazes locked on Darby and David, who was grinning his widest and had put his arm around Darby, pulling her seat closer to his.
Mrs. Van Wyck nudged her husband, Robert, who sat beside her. "Toast! Toast!" she whispered, pointing to the pair of future socialites.
Darby jumped in her seat. "Oh, no, please, Mayor Van Wyck, please don't give another speech..."
But it was too late. The mayor had already rose out of his seat, pushing his chair back. He raised his crystal wineglass and banged the edge of it with a spoon. Silence fell as every eye in the room fell on the smiling mayor. "Ladies and gentlemen, I would like to make toast to a very happy pair, indeed, Darby and David..."
Darby groaned and put her gloved hand on her forehead, hiding her face, David's heavy arm still around her all the same.
And Darby Rockwell wondered why she despised her mother's dinner parties so. It all fell under the same pattern: her mother would throw one more than once or twice during the week, inviting all of New York's finest, including the mayor of New York City, Robert Van Wyck, his wife, and son David. Although her mother was a very social woman and loved to show off her fine china and even finer dresses, a tacit reason lay behind it: David Van Wyck.
The Van Wycks were wealthy and the Rockwells even wealthier. The union of their offspring would mean a staggering amount of money. Darby already knew she had a sealed fate of marrying the extremely nauseating David Van Wyck. He knew it, too, and at every dinner party when he sat beside Darby, he would bring it up. As he had brought it up tonight in the fact of Darby carrying his child one day. She had shuttered. Darby would never touch David with a ten-foot stick, nonetheless have his child! It was so unjust that she was going to have to spend the rest of her days with this boar of a man. Having his offspring, tending his house, massaging his sweaty feet after a hard days work at the office...
"Ladies and gentlemen, I would like to make a toast to a very happy pair, indeed, Darby and David..."
Random coos came from the guests, making Darby want to regurgitate the wonderful lamb's leg she had just consumed.
"It isn't very often that you find a pair of human beings that know that they want to spend the rest of their life together. But that's a different story for Davey and Darby. They know what they want, and they know they love each other. When my Davey follows in my footsteps as mayor, Darby will be there every waking moment for him. She will devote her life to him and raise his children. Yes, I give a toast to the future Mr. and Mrs. David Van Wyck."
"To the future Mr. and Mrs. David Van Wyck." Every glass was lifted in the room to the pair and Darby didn't even want to see the look on David's smug face.
After a few moments, the random conversations had broken out amongst the guests again and the toast was all but forgotten. Darby turned her gaze to David, whose face was only inches from hers.
Her blue eyes flashed with a fire. "Get your vile arm off me, David Van Wyck!" she hissed under her breath.
That caused his smile to break out wider as he whispered, his hot breath filling ear, "And put it where, Darby girl?"
Darby groaned and in one quick motion, shook off his grasp and moved her chair as far as possible away from David as she could.
This caught her mother's attention who looked up from her conversation with Mrs. Van Wyck. "Darby dear, what are you doing?"
Darby knew her mother could see the gap in seating between she and the person she was to marry. Her gaze flickered between David and her mother. She needed an excuse. "Uh, nothing, mother, quite nothing at all. I just have to use the ladies room."
Darby rose from her chair and prepared to push it in when she caught the look on her mother's face. She looked utterly horrified.
"Darby!" she whispered incredulously. "Do not say such things like that in front of guests!"
With that, Darby could hear David burst into snickers and Mrs. Van Wyck start to fan her face.
Darby rolled her eyes and quickly pushed her chair in, spinning on her heel and exiting the dining hall, David's laughter ringing in her ears.
Infuriated, Darby stormed through the winding hallways of her father's immense palace until she reached the bathroom. And the bathroom should not have even been called a bathroom for it was far too large and far too ornate to be called one.
She strode over to the row of sinks and gazed into the looking glass that hung before her.
Darby couldn't even recognize who she was. Her blonde curls were piled high upon her head in some fancy updo that had taken four plus hours to complete. She was almost suffocating because of the constricting girdle she was forced to fit her already svelte figure in under her pale blue dress.
She couldn't even recognize the sixteen year old she was under all the make up that resembled a whore's more than a prim and proper lady's.
She felt the tears start to well in the creases of her eyes.
"It's not fair!" she cried in a shaky voice. "It's absolutely not fair! Why can I not live my life the way I want it? Why must I sit through mother's pointless dinner parties with that vile man wrapped around me? That vile man I know that I am going to marry! Is my life not worth more than that? Why must I become Mrs. David Van Wyck? Why me? Oh how I wish I could escape all this! I'd rather be the daughter of a poor beggar man and be free than be the daughter of John Rockwell and be held prisoner in this fortress!"
In all her fury, Darby balled up her fist and slammed it against the mirror, causing a rather giant crack to appear. The pain of the impact just caused her tears to be bitterer. She collapsed against the sink, trying to support herself.
Darby was hysterical for a good ten minutes before she heard a faint knock on the door and her mother's clear voice: "Darby dear, are you still in there?"
"What is it, mother?" she gritted, wiping her nose on the back of her hand—a very unladylike thing to do, but oh well, she did not have a handkerchief on hand.
"Oh, Darby dear, we all had though you had had an accident!" her mother's worried voice floated through the door.
Darby bitterly shook her head. "No, mother, I did NOT have an accident!"
"Then hurry up, Darby dear!" her mother's voice responded. "David has a surprise for you."
Darby rolled her eyes. "Oh, does he, mother? Well, it can just wait!"
"Oh, pish posh, dear! Of course it can't! Now get your little fanny out there as quickly as you can and join us at the table again!" She listened as the clicking of her mother's heels got fainter and fainter until they altogether disappeared.
Darby shook her head and cast her eyes to her reflection once again. Most of her eye make up had run off with the tears.
"Good riddance!" she cried, as she took a tissue and wiped away the last remains of the heavy make up, letting her true self show through.
"I wonder what little Davey's surprise is," she murmured. Then a sly grin crossed her face. "Maybe he's going to say that he is enlisting in the Navy. I can see it now: 'It was so tragic, Miss Rockwell, but his boat went down!' 'Oh, poor Davey!' I would cry! 'He was such a noble and kind man! It is a pity how he went down!'" She paused a moment. "Or maybe he's going to reveal his true self to us—that he is Satan in disguise."
She sighed and locked gazes with her reflection's. "Well, Darby girl, we best see what Davey boy wants from us."
With that, she turned around and exited the bathroom, not looking back at the looking glass.
When Darby returned to the dining hall, she found that the servants were placing the apple pies that Mrs. Marks had baked onto the table—the very best apple pies in the world.
Unable to control herself, Darby picked up her pace and returned to her seat, plopping down and moving closer to the table. She reached, mouth watering, for a slice of the steaming pie when her mother stopped her. "Not yet, Darby dear. As I told you, David has a surprise."
She looked up and caught her mother's gaze, a gaze she knew which meant trouble. Her mother saved that look for sentimental occasions such as when Darby's sister Olga was wed or when Olga's daughter was born. She knew she was in trouble, and she sure hoped this surprise had nothing to do with weddings or babies.
Reluctantly, she turned her head to find David's chair was facing her. David was slouching in it, fumbling with something in his hand, and his father stood with one hand on his son's shoulder and one on the back of the chair. He stood proud and tall.
Darby really knew she was in trouble.
A couple at the end of the table must have grown restless, and started a conversation between them, for Mrs. Van Wyck shooshed them and, her eyes sickeningly happy, turned to David and said, "Go on, sweetheart, go on."
Darby let her gaze flicker from Mrs. Van Wyck to David. He still sat slouching and fumbling the object in his hands.
Mr. Van Wyck, a forced smile on his face, quickly stamped on his son's foot. "Come on, David," he gritted.
David looked back at his father, a look of over exaggerated pain crossing his face. "Owh, Father, that hurt!"
"Just do it," Mr. Van Wyck said in a soft singsong voice.
Reluctantly, David sighed and started to slide off his chair.
The excitement must have been too much for Mrs. Van Wyck because she jumped in her seat. "Oh, he's doing it!" she squealed, before clapping her hands together and shooshing the whole room once more.
Darby felt a large pit form in her stomach as David slid to the floor and propped himself up on one knee. "Darby girl," he said, sliding her chair so it faced him.
"Oh, God," Darby murmured. It was at that moment she knew her life was over. Her mother's look, Mrs. Van Wyck's excitement, it could only mean one thing, the thing she had been dreading ever since she knew she would have to commit herself to him forever—David Van Wyck was proposing to her.
Darby knew she was going to have to say yes. And they would be married. She would have his offspring and become his little wifey. Clean his house and take care of his children. Oh God…
"Darby girl, we've known each other for a long time…" he started, grasping her hand into his.
She was only sixteen. Sixteen. And the average person lives for sixty years, and even more if they lived a healthy life. That meant spending the next fifty years with this man. Every waking hour…Where was the rat poison that was kept to kill off the rats?
"And I think it's time that we just give in to what we know that's expected of us." David pulled out the box and opened it, revealing a blinding diamond engagement ring. "So what do you say, Darby girl?" She saw the utter smugness reenter his eyes. "Marry me, will you Darby Lynn Rockwell?"
Darby, in a state of shock, could hear the coos uttered from the guests and the sound of Mrs. Van Wyck and her mother blowing their noses.
She looked David in the eye. "Commit forever?"
David nodded. "Yes, Darby girl, forever. You and I as Mayor David and Mrs. Darby Van Wyck. And of course David Junior and the other seven children we will have."
She felt herself fantastically nauseated. "I'm only sixteen," she murmured. "Have children, now?"
David grinned and, whispering in her ear, said, "We can maybe start on that, Darby girl after the party." His hand then wrapped around her calf and was quickly gone.
Darby stared into his proud eyes, pondering how such a man could be that vile. "Stand up, David Van Wyck, and I will tell you my answer." She rose from her seat.
"Oh, she's going to say yes!" Mrs. Van Wyck cried.
David stood, waiting for his answer, his arrogant eyes boring into hers.
"Well, David Van Wyck, here is my answer."
Everyone's eyes were so focused on David and his Darby that they didn't see Darby's hand slip to the table and under the apple pie Mrs. Marks had baked.
"And my answer is," she started, fondling the pie, "This!"
In one quick motion, Darby heaved the pie directly at David, causing it to land plum on his face.
That wasn't quite the answer that the guests had expected, so the initial reaction was silence falling over the room, every mouth in the room gaped.
David quickly rubbed the pie out of his eyes.
"My answer is no, you hideous man! I would rather hang myself than be wed to you!" Darby screeched spinning sharply on her heel and storming out of the dining hall. But, before she exited, she broke one of the heels of her fantastically expensive shoes, causing her to trip.
Infuriated, Darby kicked her leg as high in the air as physically possible, causing the broken shoe to land in a bowl of her mother's punch that lay on the table, splashing a few of the guests.
Darby heard her father's words as she thundered out of his palace. "Don't you dare show your face here again, Darby Rockwell!"
APPLE PIE AND BROKEN SHOES
CHAPTER ONE
Ways to kill David Van Wyck: One, I could hire a very intimidating thug to maul his little bottom to smithereens, or Two, I could just have an intelligent conversation with him.
Darby Rockwell decided that the better way of killing David Van Wyck would be the second plan. The poor little boy was sure to drown in an intelligent conversation.
Darby, daintily crossing her ankles and straightening herself against the hard chair, cheerfully said, "David, my isn't this a piquant repast we are having?"
David's dark brown eyes interlocked with Darby's and he stopped the picking of his teeth with his salad fork. "Darby, I know you like to show off your French lessons, but please stop."
To anyone else, this remark from David Van Wyck may have seemed like a mere ruse, but to Darby is was a showing of his true stupidity. She had to put her gloved hand to her mouth to stifle her giggles.
She watched as he sat down his salad fork and picked up one of the sterling silver spoons to check his reflection in.
"You look fine, David," Darby said sarcastically.
David, very smug as always, replied, "I know, Darby girl, I know."
At this, she once again felt his calf find its way to her leg and start the rubbing of it again.
Darby groaned and kicked his leg away with the heel of one shoe from the pair of fantastically expensive heels she wore.
David, not getting the point, leaned in closer to her, whispering in her ear. "Just think, Darby girl, in less than two years we'll be married, and you'll be impregnated with David Van Wyck, Jr."
Darby swore she felt his tongue in her ear for s split second. She felt utterly sickened by that statement. "I will never be betrothed to you, you utterly nauseating, odious..."
Her string of oaths was cut short by Mrs. Van Wyck's cooing of: "Oh, Ava, look how utterly in love they look! Just wait until they can marry, and Davey can follow in the footsteps of his father as mayor!"
Both Mrs. Van Wyck's and Mrs. Rockwell's sickeningly happy gazes locked on Darby and David, who was grinning his widest and had put his arm around Darby, pulling her seat closer to his.
Mrs. Van Wyck nudged her husband, Robert, who sat beside her. "Toast! Toast!" she whispered, pointing to the pair of future socialites.
Darby jumped in her seat. "Oh, no, please, Mayor Van Wyck, please don't give another speech..."
But it was too late. The mayor had already rose out of his seat, pushing his chair back. He raised his crystal wineglass and banged the edge of it with a spoon. Silence fell as every eye in the room fell on the smiling mayor. "Ladies and gentlemen, I would like to make toast to a very happy pair, indeed, Darby and David..."
Darby groaned and put her gloved hand on her forehead, hiding her face, David's heavy arm still around her all the same.
And Darby Rockwell wondered why she despised her mother's dinner parties so. It all fell under the same pattern: her mother would throw one more than once or twice during the week, inviting all of New York's finest, including the mayor of New York City, Robert Van Wyck, his wife, and son David. Although her mother was a very social woman and loved to show off her fine china and even finer dresses, a tacit reason lay behind it: David Van Wyck.
The Van Wycks were wealthy and the Rockwells even wealthier. The union of their offspring would mean a staggering amount of money. Darby already knew she had a sealed fate of marrying the extremely nauseating David Van Wyck. He knew it, too, and at every dinner party when he sat beside Darby, he would bring it up. As he had brought it up tonight in the fact of Darby carrying his child one day. She had shuttered. Darby would never touch David with a ten-foot stick, nonetheless have his child! It was so unjust that she was going to have to spend the rest of her days with this boar of a man. Having his offspring, tending his house, massaging his sweaty feet after a hard days work at the office...
"Ladies and gentlemen, I would like to make a toast to a very happy pair, indeed, Darby and David..."
Random coos came from the guests, making Darby want to regurgitate the wonderful lamb's leg she had just consumed.
"It isn't very often that you find a pair of human beings that know that they want to spend the rest of their life together. But that's a different story for Davey and Darby. They know what they want, and they know they love each other. When my Davey follows in my footsteps as mayor, Darby will be there every waking moment for him. She will devote her life to him and raise his children. Yes, I give a toast to the future Mr. and Mrs. David Van Wyck."
"To the future Mr. and Mrs. David Van Wyck." Every glass was lifted in the room to the pair and Darby didn't even want to see the look on David's smug face.
After a few moments, the random conversations had broken out amongst the guests again and the toast was all but forgotten. Darby turned her gaze to David, whose face was only inches from hers.
Her blue eyes flashed with a fire. "Get your vile arm off me, David Van Wyck!" she hissed under her breath.
That caused his smile to break out wider as he whispered, his hot breath filling ear, "And put it where, Darby girl?"
Darby groaned and in one quick motion, shook off his grasp and moved her chair as far as possible away from David as she could.
This caught her mother's attention who looked up from her conversation with Mrs. Van Wyck. "Darby dear, what are you doing?"
Darby knew her mother could see the gap in seating between she and the person she was to marry. Her gaze flickered between David and her mother. She needed an excuse. "Uh, nothing, mother, quite nothing at all. I just have to use the ladies room."
Darby rose from her chair and prepared to push it in when she caught the look on her mother's face. She looked utterly horrified.
"Darby!" she whispered incredulously. "Do not say such things like that in front of guests!"
With that, Darby could hear David burst into snickers and Mrs. Van Wyck start to fan her face.
Darby rolled her eyes and quickly pushed her chair in, spinning on her heel and exiting the dining hall, David's laughter ringing in her ears.
Infuriated, Darby stormed through the winding hallways of her father's immense palace until she reached the bathroom. And the bathroom should not have even been called a bathroom for it was far too large and far too ornate to be called one.
She strode over to the row of sinks and gazed into the looking glass that hung before her.
Darby couldn't even recognize who she was. Her blonde curls were piled high upon her head in some fancy updo that had taken four plus hours to complete. She was almost suffocating because of the constricting girdle she was forced to fit her already svelte figure in under her pale blue dress.
She couldn't even recognize the sixteen year old she was under all the make up that resembled a whore's more than a prim and proper lady's.
She felt the tears start to well in the creases of her eyes.
"It's not fair!" she cried in a shaky voice. "It's absolutely not fair! Why can I not live my life the way I want it? Why must I sit through mother's pointless dinner parties with that vile man wrapped around me? That vile man I know that I am going to marry! Is my life not worth more than that? Why must I become Mrs. David Van Wyck? Why me? Oh how I wish I could escape all this! I'd rather be the daughter of a poor beggar man and be free than be the daughter of John Rockwell and be held prisoner in this fortress!"
In all her fury, Darby balled up her fist and slammed it against the mirror, causing a rather giant crack to appear. The pain of the impact just caused her tears to be bitterer. She collapsed against the sink, trying to support herself.
Darby was hysterical for a good ten minutes before she heard a faint knock on the door and her mother's clear voice: "Darby dear, are you still in there?"
"What is it, mother?" she gritted, wiping her nose on the back of her hand—a very unladylike thing to do, but oh well, she did not have a handkerchief on hand.
"Oh, Darby dear, we all had though you had had an accident!" her mother's worried voice floated through the door.
Darby bitterly shook her head. "No, mother, I did NOT have an accident!"
"Then hurry up, Darby dear!" her mother's voice responded. "David has a surprise for you."
Darby rolled her eyes. "Oh, does he, mother? Well, it can just wait!"
"Oh, pish posh, dear! Of course it can't! Now get your little fanny out there as quickly as you can and join us at the table again!" She listened as the clicking of her mother's heels got fainter and fainter until they altogether disappeared.
Darby shook her head and cast her eyes to her reflection once again. Most of her eye make up had run off with the tears.
"Good riddance!" she cried, as she took a tissue and wiped away the last remains of the heavy make up, letting her true self show through.
"I wonder what little Davey's surprise is," she murmured. Then a sly grin crossed her face. "Maybe he's going to say that he is enlisting in the Navy. I can see it now: 'It was so tragic, Miss Rockwell, but his boat went down!' 'Oh, poor Davey!' I would cry! 'He was such a noble and kind man! It is a pity how he went down!'" She paused a moment. "Or maybe he's going to reveal his true self to us—that he is Satan in disguise."
She sighed and locked gazes with her reflection's. "Well, Darby girl, we best see what Davey boy wants from us."
With that, she turned around and exited the bathroom, not looking back at the looking glass.
When Darby returned to the dining hall, she found that the servants were placing the apple pies that Mrs. Marks had baked onto the table—the very best apple pies in the world.
Unable to control herself, Darby picked up her pace and returned to her seat, plopping down and moving closer to the table. She reached, mouth watering, for a slice of the steaming pie when her mother stopped her. "Not yet, Darby dear. As I told you, David has a surprise."
She looked up and caught her mother's gaze, a gaze she knew which meant trouble. Her mother saved that look for sentimental occasions such as when Darby's sister Olga was wed or when Olga's daughter was born. She knew she was in trouble, and she sure hoped this surprise had nothing to do with weddings or babies.
Reluctantly, she turned her head to find David's chair was facing her. David was slouching in it, fumbling with something in his hand, and his father stood with one hand on his son's shoulder and one on the back of the chair. He stood proud and tall.
Darby really knew she was in trouble.
A couple at the end of the table must have grown restless, and started a conversation between them, for Mrs. Van Wyck shooshed them and, her eyes sickeningly happy, turned to David and said, "Go on, sweetheart, go on."
Darby let her gaze flicker from Mrs. Van Wyck to David. He still sat slouching and fumbling the object in his hands.
Mr. Van Wyck, a forced smile on his face, quickly stamped on his son's foot. "Come on, David," he gritted.
David looked back at his father, a look of over exaggerated pain crossing his face. "Owh, Father, that hurt!"
"Just do it," Mr. Van Wyck said in a soft singsong voice.
Reluctantly, David sighed and started to slide off his chair.
The excitement must have been too much for Mrs. Van Wyck because she jumped in her seat. "Oh, he's doing it!" she squealed, before clapping her hands together and shooshing the whole room once more.
Darby felt a large pit form in her stomach as David slid to the floor and propped himself up on one knee. "Darby girl," he said, sliding her chair so it faced him.
"Oh, God," Darby murmured. It was at that moment she knew her life was over. Her mother's look, Mrs. Van Wyck's excitement, it could only mean one thing, the thing she had been dreading ever since she knew she would have to commit herself to him forever—David Van Wyck was proposing to her.
Darby knew she was going to have to say yes. And they would be married. She would have his offspring and become his little wifey. Clean his house and take care of his children. Oh God…
"Darby girl, we've known each other for a long time…" he started, grasping her hand into his.
She was only sixteen. Sixteen. And the average person lives for sixty years, and even more if they lived a healthy life. That meant spending the next fifty years with this man. Every waking hour…Where was the rat poison that was kept to kill off the rats?
"And I think it's time that we just give in to what we know that's expected of us." David pulled out the box and opened it, revealing a blinding diamond engagement ring. "So what do you say, Darby girl?" She saw the utter smugness reenter his eyes. "Marry me, will you Darby Lynn Rockwell?"
Darby, in a state of shock, could hear the coos uttered from the guests and the sound of Mrs. Van Wyck and her mother blowing their noses.
She looked David in the eye. "Commit forever?"
David nodded. "Yes, Darby girl, forever. You and I as Mayor David and Mrs. Darby Van Wyck. And of course David Junior and the other seven children we will have."
She felt herself fantastically nauseated. "I'm only sixteen," she murmured. "Have children, now?"
David grinned and, whispering in her ear, said, "We can maybe start on that, Darby girl after the party." His hand then wrapped around her calf and was quickly gone.
Darby stared into his proud eyes, pondering how such a man could be that vile. "Stand up, David Van Wyck, and I will tell you my answer." She rose from her seat.
"Oh, she's going to say yes!" Mrs. Van Wyck cried.
David stood, waiting for his answer, his arrogant eyes boring into hers.
"Well, David Van Wyck, here is my answer."
Everyone's eyes were so focused on David and his Darby that they didn't see Darby's hand slip to the table and under the apple pie Mrs. Marks had baked.
"And my answer is," she started, fondling the pie, "This!"
In one quick motion, Darby heaved the pie directly at David, causing it to land plum on his face.
That wasn't quite the answer that the guests had expected, so the initial reaction was silence falling over the room, every mouth in the room gaped.
David quickly rubbed the pie out of his eyes.
"My answer is no, you hideous man! I would rather hang myself than be wed to you!" Darby screeched spinning sharply on her heel and storming out of the dining hall. But, before she exited, she broke one of the heels of her fantastically expensive shoes, causing her to trip.
Infuriated, Darby kicked her leg as high in the air as physically possible, causing the broken shoe to land in a bowl of her mother's punch that lay on the table, splashing a few of the guests.
Darby heard her father's words as she thundered out of his palace. "Don't you dare show your face here again, Darby Rockwell!"