Disclaimer: The characters of Charlotte Olafsson/Malcolm, Carl-Magnus Malcolm and Marta Olafsson do not belong to me. They are from the musical "A Little Night Music" by Stephen Sondheim (music/lyrics) and Hugh Wheeler (book). The musical is in turn based on the Ingmar Bergman film "Smiles of a Summer Night," which is where these characters first appeared. I did come up with the characters of Alrik Malcolm, Rikard Olafsson and Antonetta Olafsson. This work is written purely for enjoyment and not for any monetary gain whatsoever.

Spoilers: The entire musical "A Little Night Music" and the film "Smiles of a Summer Night

Notes: This fanfiction is set ten years before the action of "A Little Night Music" and will continue on past it by several years. There will be aspects of "Smiles of a Summer Night" worked in, particularly in the similarity of Carl-Magnus and Charlotte as characters, which I think is often not as obvious in the musical. Though it won't be evident by this lengthy first chapter, my intention is to do it in more of a stand-alone vignette style. The reason for this is that I can't always promise speedy updates these days, and I prefer to do one-shots or vignettes. They will go in chronological order, and will deal with certain events in Carl-Magnus and Charlotte's relationship.

The Lady and the Tiger

Chapter One: The Lady

How strange that one's life should change, sitting over tea in a parlor.

It was a Tuesday evening in early spring. It was not an evening that seemed to be of any particular import, yet it was a beginning. Outside the windows of the Olafsson family country house, the evening air was cool and the birch trees shone silver. Inside the parlor sat father and daughter, she with a cup of tea and he with a newspaper and schnapps.

It might have been a pleasant, cozy domestic scene – were the father and daughter in question not who they were. The truth of it was that Rikard Olafsson and his daughter, Charlotte, had not experienced a pleasant domestic scene in years. The room was silent, and not comfortably so. Though the only sound was the occasional clink of a spoon against teacup or the rustle of paper, the air was loud with unspoken expectation.

When Mr. Olafsson at last broke the silence, it was in a voice as tonelessly noncommittal as if he were reading out some advertisement from the pages in front of him. During his many years spent in business ventures, he'd developed an unreadable, concealing manner that had often proved invaluable. He fervently hoped it would prove so now.

"Charlotte," he began, turning a page, "I've invited a guest to stay with us over next week. He'll be arriving on Friday evening." His eyes did not leave the paper. "I trust you can make the proper arrangements by then." All this was delivered in a voice completely void of inflection.

Charlotte's eyebrow quirked in reply, though it went unseen behind her father's screen of newsprint. If Rikard Olafsson had mastered the art of a studiedly offhand manner, his daughter had equally mastered the art of seeing through it. What, she wondered, did her father have up his sleeve? It wasn't his request in itself that was unusual. She was well versed in the role of hostess and lady of the household; she'd taken up that mantle since the death of her dear mother eight years before. No, it was the short notice—as well as her father's skillfully vague delivery —that roused her suspicions. It was Tuesday evening now, and preparation for a week-long stay was not a task that could be quickly accomplished. Any person that her father would invite to their home would be used to the best accommodations and certain social amenities. She would have to arrange a dinner party, or at least a welcoming reception, on top of everything else. Unless her father had extended the invitation impulsively that very afternoon, he would not have given her less than three days to make ready. Her father was not prone to impulse. No, there had to be a method behind this madness, and she intended to find out what it was. Charlotte kept her expression pleasantly neutral and nonchalantly added lemon to her tea.

"Of course, Father. Though it is a bit of a… short notice?"

Mr. Olafsson caught the barest hint of baiting in her voice. She was suspicious already, blast it! "Yes, well," he replied, matter-of-fact. "I received a letter from a friend of mine…" He paused to pour himself some more schnapps.

By friend, Charlotte knew, he meant a business and/or social connection—their family had very few friends of any other type. Her father was undoubtedly courting some favor or another, though to disapprove overmuch would be a touch hypocritical. After all, she and her two younger sisters, Antonetta and Marta, enjoyed the fruits of his labor, as evidenced by the richly appointed parlor in which she and her father were now conversing.

Mr. Olafsson took a drink of his schnapps and set the glass down before going on. "…Count Alrik Malcolm," he continued. He paused, waiting for her reaction. Maddeningly, she gave none. He knew her game—she was forcing him to lay his cards out on the table. Well, so be it.

"He mentioned in it that his son, Carl-Magnus, has military duties that bring him near here—he's a dragoon, you see. He'll have a week of leave during his tour here. The Malcolm estates are all too far away for him to return home in that time, so I felt it only polite to suggest he stay with us. Much nicer than one of those inns in town. I've wired them both and Count Carl-Magnus has accepted the invitation."

"Ah, I see." Charlotte paused and took a well-timed sip from her tea. "And so when are we to be married?"

Mr. Olafsson thrust down his newspaper with a loud noise of exasperation. Charlotte's words were like a starting pistol, shot into the tight-drawn air around them. The change was immediate, the tension shattered. Her question heralded the beginning of an all-too-familiar argument between them, one that had been repeated in countless tiresome variations over the past five years at least. This one, however, had a major difference, immediately revealed.

"Or did you have him in mind for--?"

"—Yes, Antonetta, if you must know, and I won't have you interfering!"

"Antonetta and adashing dragoon? It would take a herd of wild horses to interfere."

Mr. Olafsson just kept himself from swearing in frustration. It would have been giving her ground. He could feel his face growing hot, his temper rising, while Charlotte remained cool and seemingly impassive. It was her way of battle, and battling she was—he could tell by her curving smile. Here he was, a man who had remained stoic through some of the most intense business dealings one could imagine, barely able to keep his head in a disagreement with his own daughter! So it had been with every conversation they'd had on this subject in the past. He had hoped that the change of matrimonial focus would make Charlotte less difficult to deal with, but clearly he was not going to be that fortunate. She must be objecting to the idea—this semi-arranged marriage-- on principle.

While he had hoped, he hadn't really expected her to behave differently. That was the very reason he had waited until the last possible moment to tell her of the visit, rather than two weeks before when the invitation was actually accepted. He had harbored some remote hope that she might believe his story, which after all was almost entirely true. Count Carl-Magnus did indeed have military duties in the area, and there had been a letter from the elder Count Malcolm to inform him of the fact. What he had not told her, but that he knew now she had figured out, was that there had been other letters and other telegrams, along with a series of meetings between himself and Count Alrik. Their objective—to join their two families through marriage.

He knew now that he should have told her, straight out from the beginning. She would have objected no less, but at least she wouldn't have such a look on her face— a look that showed she had outwitted him. None of his similar subterfuges, designed in order to introduce her to promising marriage partners, had succeeded in the past. Of course, he wouldn't have been forced into such measures were she not so stubbornly opposed to his efforts to marry her off. No, it was almost impossible to put anything past his oldest daughter; she was sharp as a briar. There were times when he looked on that trait with pride, for he could see in her a bit of himself. After all, he had not built his fortune by being either witless or gullible. Mostly, however, he thought Charlotte entirely too clever for her own good… or for anyone else's.

It was her mother's doing. The woman had given him little but trouble while she was alive, and had left her firstborn daughter behind to continue in her place. He'd been a young man when he married, young and-- in the ways of love, anyway-- inexperienced. His wife was a Frenchwoman who had immigrated with her family to Stockholm. They'd been a rich family once—landed money, with a vast network of social connections all over Europe—while he was but the fourth son of a simple tradesman. He was also ambitious, with rapidly increasing wealth and prospects. Their fortunes dwindling, they'd been willing to introduce "fresh stock" into the family, as they put it. It hadn't been an entirely mercenary arrangement. She'd been a lovely, charming woman… while it lasted.

Now here was Charlotte, her mother's legacy—even, he sometimes thought, her revenge. Shades of Miss Havisham and Estella. Charlotte—the only one of his daughters with a French name, instead of the good, solid Scandinavian name he had wanted. She looked like her mother, with the same slim, elegant lines and sharply defined features. When he looked at Charlotte, he could almost see his wife. When he closed his eyes, he could always hear her.

"So you've given up on me at last, Father," said Charlotte. "Or is this just a temporary reprieve? After all, we can't throw away a chance on acount. A baron, perhaps, but not a count. I'm entirely too risky a venture. By the way, what is the going price for a title these days? I would think it must be reduced—we may be as rich as the nobility, but we're still conspicuously without a coat of arms."

One look at her father and Charlotte knew she'd pushed things too far. She'd meant what she said in jest—only, not quite. Not for the first time, Charlotte thought to herself that she was not a particularly nice person. It was better for their relationship for her to believe his intentions weren't completely mercenary. While it was perfectly true that he was doing little more, in her opinion, than auctioning off she and now her sister like prize mares at market, he probably believed it was for their own good. How he could feel that way considering his own loveless marriage was beyond her, but there it was.

She also, however, knew that he coveted the nobility, even if he wouldn't admit it to himself. He prided himself on being self-made, but if he could join the family line with noble blood, he'd do it. Now, it seemed, he was actively seeking it. The real mystery was why the Malcolm family was amenable to the arrangements. She knew they must be involved, or at least approving, unless they didn't have half a brain of sense among them. A young, eligible count invited to stay the week with a man's two young, unmarried daughters? It was simply too obvious. Perhaps the Malcolms were property-rich but cash-poor, desiring to join their noble lineage with the wealth of a respectable—though not titled—family. It was not an uncommon practice. Surely this Carl-Magnus was not so distasteful to every noblewoman in Sweden that the family was forced to look elsewhere—or was he? She'd heard talk of the Malcolm family at more than one social gathering, but nothing about its specific members. Anything she had heard could be put down to gossip, which Charlotte had little taste for and avoided when she could.

"And how does the Count Carl-Magnus Malcolm feel about these arrangements?" she asked. "Not the first for him, either, I'm sure."

Her father, openly angry now, was inclined to be forthcoming. "The same as you do, the way his father tells it! He's even more averse to marriage than you are, if that's possible."

"I'll have to watch myself—I'm beginning to like him."

"Well, that would certainly be a first!"

It would be, truly. She knew what people said of her—that she hated men, that she never wanted to marry. Neither of these things was true. She was not opposed to the idea of marriage, but not when its purpose was some monetary or social gain. She wanted to marry someone she could love, or with whom she could at least share mutual respect. So far, no man she had met qualified, and her prospects showed no signs of improving. The so-called courtly ways of her suitors both amused and often disgusted her. Manners hid so much. There were men who could barely manage two words to her, so afraid of her lancing sarcastic wit. There were others who would pointedly avoid speaking with her, not willing to risk being shown up by a woman. She admitted that she often overdid it, but to her way of thinking, any man who couldn't handle some verbal sparring wasn't the sort of man she wanted. Others used smooth manners and a gentlemanly veneer as a mask for what they really wanted—whether that be her acquiescence or the promise of her father's wealth. She didn't know which was worse. It was all sickeningly shallow, and Charlotte had seen through it from a young age. It was almost alarming how fast her state of nearly constant cynicism had come on.

"I can't help it if the men I meet can't look past your money and actually see me. Or if they're so unsure of themselves that they're put off by a woman's intelligent remark."

"Intelligent? Cutting is more the word I'd choose!"

From behind her teacup, the corners of Charlotte's mouth lifted into a slight smile. "True enough, Father," she said with a tinge of self-satisfaction.

The girl, thought Mr. Olafsson, was entirely too pleased with herself. "You don't seem to realize this, but you're fast approaching a time when they won't try for you anymore! You're already nearing 23 years old, and--"

"Ah! And that's the trouble isn't it? I can hardly be expected to chase after every passing young man when I have one foot so firmly lodged in the grave. By next year I'll scarce be able to manage a hobble. But not to worry, Father. I imagine I'll marry someday, when I'm a wealthy old spinster… some impoverished but devastatingly handsome man half my age, without a thought in his pretty little head. Agrateful, devastatingly handsome man. Yes, that would suit me very well."

Mr. Olafsson was not amused, but he knew he was defeated—just as he had been time after time again. There was no use carrying on with this—not now. "Beserious, Charlotte!"

"Oh, I am. The truth is, I'll have to find a man clever enough to keep up with me, one brave enough not to be terrified of me, or one too stupid to know the difference."

Mr. Olafsson pushed away from the table, tossing down his newspaper. "That's enough of that! We'll deal with your marriage later. Tomorrow morning you're going to begin preparations, and that's an order, Charlotte! When the Count arrives you'll act the good hostess and that is all. Do you understand?" He stood over her imperiously.

She looked up at him, the same infuriating little smile on her lips. No matter how it might appear, she'd had the last word—and they both knew it. "Yes, Father."

"Very well, then," he replied gruffly, and turned to leave the room.

Count Carl-Magnus Malcolm was going to marry Antonetta, and as heaven as his witness, Charlotte was not going to do anything to stop it!