“I know!” he exclaimed, digging into his own slice of chocolate cream pie. “Well, apparently, as rich as they were, the girl’s family kept to the old ways; leaving out milk and seeds and pretty stones on their windowsill for the fae folk, building their home with as little iron as possible, singing to the trees whenever they were outside. So their daughter was considered blessed. She had her very own self-appointed fairy godmother. And she didn’t appreciate seeing her beloved goddaughter mocked. She knew her goddaughter had only tripped because she was nervous and she wanted Seamus to know what it was like, not to be able to control your own body when your stress was high. So she came to the estate and told him all he had to do was apologize. And of course, he refused because in his opinion, the young lady in question shouldn’t take herself so seriously. The fairy was so angered by his lack of remorse that she cursed him, so that the more nervous he became, the more he fumbled. And because she wanted the whole family to know the injury Seamus had done to her goddaughter’s family, ruining what was an important social occasion for them, she cursed the entire line. Oh, and if the O’Donnells tried to do anything to remove the curse–besides Seamus sincerely apologizing–it would get three times worse.”

“Oof, that is…incredibly clever and insidious,” Charlotte marveled, her lips pulling back in a grimace. “I mean, I don’t want to sound like I admire it. But, wow.”

Come to think of it, she’d never heard of a curse working that way. But she wasn’t exactly an expert in this arena. She made a mental note to call her mother, who was much more knowledgeable about these things.