when they tell you you are different from other girls, ( closed )

[elegiaque]

WHO: Gwenaëlle Vauquelin & Araceli Bonaventura.
WHAT: Two nice young ladies have tea.
WHEN: Now-ish.
WHERE: The Vauquelin home, Hightown.
NOTES: Refers to this.

Most of the books, by the stated end of her patience with their presence, have been either collected by members of the Inquisition or carted off to the Chantry to be donated and used in whatever form their charity best fits - to be sold on to raise money or perhaps stored in some chantry sister's library. Gwenaëlle neither knows the answer nor has any interest in finding out; they are out of her house and well out of her mind. One exception is made, however, a box of etiquette books set aside for Araceli Bonaventura to collect at her leisure -

and when that leisure arrives and the young lady is announced, Gwenaëlle makes time for her, has her shown into a sitting room rather than the library (the portrait that hangs there might be considered somewhat confronting for tea), doesn't bother making her wait longer than is necessary. In her own home, on her own time, the air is informal: hair loose and curling, her dress cut in clean lines and neutral colour, with enough draped fabric to not make immediately obvious that she's not wearing any shoes. A lady, but not one who feels she has much to prove.

Which might or might not be true, but what is true is that she doesn't go about it the usual way.

"Mlle Bonaventura," she says, polite enough. "Welcome to my home."

Comments

[foxsays]

Too many things have taken up too much of Araceli's time so it's straight from the Gallows and dressed in her work clothes that she comes to the Vauquelin estate. Shades of blue as always, a dress that skims the fine line of plain enough to sit at a desk all day to read reports but with a little decoration at the wrists and the bodice on the chance someone comes to see her. The necklace and earrings might always be the most odd-looking thing about her, the interlocking pieces of metal that someone would have to look closely at to recognise them for functional, if decorative, lockpicks interwoven as she smiles politely once admitted.

"Gracia, señora Vauquelin." A moment of indecision but this is a lady with a title, that feels more fitting than to call her 'miss'. "Forgive me for the delays, circumstances and work have conspired to keep me busy until now. I've brought some Antivan brandy with me." Partly a gift, partly should they have need of it.