closed | si tu veux bien de moi

[coquettish_trees]

WHO: Lexie and Loki
WHAT: it's a nice day to plan a white wedding
WHEN: now!
WHERE: Gallows Courtyard
NOTES: cw: toothaches. Also, if anyone wants to do other threads with either of them, we can put those here too. :)

It is warm outside today. The sky is a cheery blue accompanied by feathery clouds that chase each other across it, lively with the wind of the sea, and Alexandrie is a small bright white spot of dress and parasol on a blanket spread amidst the emerging greenery that has been planted around the courtyard, carefully positioned so she may be easily seen at her picnicking—and her intermittent laughter heard—from Loki's office window, a living temptation to abandon whatever it is he's engaged in and join her for lunch.

Comments

[hwaaaitsme]

"Were you?" Loki asks, maintaining the facade of happenstance. "What a fortuitous turn of events, I have just decided to break for a meal before I continue with my duties."

The lie is oddly not much of a lie at all. He crosses the yard to her his expression mild and pleased, and only the slightly sly quirk of his lips give him away. He stands at the edge of her blanket, casting her in his shadow, with his hands folded delicately behind his back.

"I do not suppose, my dear Lady, that you have enough food to spare that I might join you?"

[coquettish_trees]

She looks up at him from the pool of fine fabrics she's settled herself into and taps her forefinger lightly against her lips with an excess of thought.

"Oh, I think we might be able to find something."

All artifice, of course. The basket of place settings, beverages, and their required vessels resting on the side of the blanket has been very obviously supplied for two, as has the charcuterie board Marie rises to uncover which is somehow still impeccably arranged despite its ostensible journey from Hightown (the trap driver had been promised half-again his price of passage to keep it that way). Alexandrie gestures grandly to the space beside her in invitation.

"Do sit with me," she says, her eyes twinkling mirthfully, "and I shall divulge to you a most indelicate secret."

[hwaaaitsme]

"Oh? Secrets from a fine Orlesian lady?" Loki asks and his affect is very sly, almost comically so, as he shifts and lowers himself gracefully to sit alongside her.

"How ever could I hope to resist such an offer?"

It is pomp and between the two of them it is a small wonder the servant Alexandrie has brought with her has not rolled her eyes. She is a very well trained girl and, given that they are paid wages in these parts, deserves a handsome tip for her polite stoicism.

The food is lovely, very beautifully arranged and more than sufficient for the both of them. He had been getting hungry, if the thought had only registered to him in a distant sort of way, and the sight of all of it is enough to actually send a pang through his stomach. But, of course, he will not start eating until she has divulged her secret, indelicate though it may be.

[coquettish_trees]

"You will think it unforgivably forward of me, I am sure," Alexandrie says, making play at a maiden's hesitance. She produces her fan to pick lightly at its lace before flicking it open to provide a little cover for her 'embarrassment'.

"But I cannot bear to dissemble a moment longer: I admit I knew my lord might pass by here, rendering our meeting no coincidence at all but a shameless ploy to attract your attention, the which I have long found myself helplessly desirous of." She hides behind her fan at the last, as if unable to bear her own audacity (although after a moment she peeks out at him with an impish look), and Marie ruins her tip by casting her eyes skyward again.

[hwaaaitsme]

Is this the game then? Truly? Loki's brow arches just so and he watches her as she peers over her fan, all eyelashes and coy looks. It is strange, they had not even bothered with such things when they met...but they wouldn't have, of all people. He regards her placidly and then, as he is wont to do, plays his role in their game.

"My lady," he exclaims, quietly, a note of mild chastisement in it. He leans forward, then, until he is close enough to be salacious. "What ever would the peerage say?"

His hand strays very close to her leg, his fingertips brushing her knee, as he uses his arm to steady his leaning.

"They will claim I have bewitched you...and have bent you under my will. And...wouldn't that be a scandal?"

[coquettish_trees]

"I rather imagine it will be," Alexandrie replies amenably, closing her fan and dropping the pretension as quickly as she'd summoned it. She leans across the distance Loki had made small between them to place a light kiss on his cheek, her fingers briefly curling around his in affectionate welcome.

"Do you think the peerage shall think it more scandalous or less if I publicly relinquish my claim to inherit the land and title of my family scant moments before taking you for my husband?" It's said with some levity, although the level sincerity of her gaze and the lowered volume she speaks at marks her as being in earnest. It is something she'd been considering for some time now, although she'd not yet spoken of it.

[hwaaaitsme]

"Oh less by far, I imagine."

It is a clever enough plan and, apart from the sense in avoiding angering Orlais, her family fortunes are not required. True, Loki has less here than he would if he had access to the Asgard estate, but his father wouldn't cut him free. That would be too dangerous for Odin.

"Which I why you should absolutely reserve such news for the reception toast."

[coquettish_trees]

Alexandrie laughs, musical and delighted, and hits him gently with the now-folded fan. "Do take care, luna mea," she warns, "or one might develop the idea that you dearly enjoy being shocking."

Which of course, he does. As does she.

"Scant moments after taking you for my husband it shall be, then," she remedies as she unfolds a cloth napkin to drape across her lap, and then a second to pass to him. Then, with exaggerated nonchalance, as she prepares a plate for him from the selection, "And when shall that be?"

She's not impatient, per se...

[hwaaaitsme]

He watches, idly, with mounting eagerness, as she prepares a plate for him. She picks and chooses from the carefully arranged meats and cheeses, from the nuts and breads and all the little extras she has packed along with her. It is a thoughtful thing and he finds himself smiling just so without his realizing he is doing it.

"An old acquaintance of mine is traveling abroad," he says and sits back, leaning back on his hands and into the sunlight. "I'd already sent him a letter, but he walks rather slowly in his old age. The very moment he is within the city, I would merrily contract him for the purpose."

[coquettish_trees]

Attention drawn by Loki's movement, Alexandrie catches the smile out of the corner of her eye and pauses briefly in her task to regard him in return with the sort of soft sentimentality she once would have quashed immediately. Now she lets it linger before she finishes arranging her collection and offers him the plate, tilting her head inquisitively as she does so.

"I did not take you for one who had acquaintances within the ranks of Chantry Fathers," she replies amusedly, her eyebrows beginning to slowly loft... and then making the rest of their journey with alacrity as she abruptly recalls that the invocations of the divine she sometime draws from him are not ones of the Maker.

Her laugh sounds much like it might have had he suggested they abandon lunch to tryst in the scant cover of the nearby trees.

"Quelle audace!"

[hwaaaitsme]

"You disapprove?" Loki asks, his expression sly but intentionally so. If she demands they wed in a Chantry, any Chantry or under that supervision he will be...not put out, but deeply unenthused. Still, he will consider it.

The plate in hand is briefly ignored as he levels his smug look at her.

"Is this the line the fair lady shall not cross?"

[coquettish_trees]

"I yet to see the line that is not improved upon by the addition of a slipper-scuff," she replies, her brows now lofted over her own self-satisfied smile.

Alexandrie is not religious. The thought of a liege-lord who must be begged and cajoled to do his duty by his wards has never appealed. Although she attended services at the Grand Cathedral as diligently as any other nobly born woman, it had largely been to watch the fluctuations of power in both pew and pulpit. And to show off new hats.

"You know well enough, I think, the measure of what I would trade away for a life at your side," she says, and the softness of it is velvet that wraps a conviction of iron. "I should stand in front of anyone and swear it so..." But, continues her light grimace. "Consider that the Grand Cleric most favoured now--" Void take whoever murdered Agathe, and may an Archdemon crack their bones for marrow there, "--is like to call an Exalted March upon Corypheus and your homeland, and that it shall march from mine with an excess of celebration. To be wed shortly thereafter by your old acquaintance shall set us in opposition, and perhaps, given the claims our enemy has made," to being, in fact, a High Priest of the very cultus they'd be marrying under the auspices of, "we may face further accusation. Especially if we should like to have any degree of public ceremony.

"It is for these reasons that I must insist upon disinheriting myself first," Alexandrie finishes mildly, beginning to fill her own plate as if blistering heresy were as normal as birdsong.

[hwaaaitsme]

She agrees, with however many reservations, and Loki finds himself relaxing just so. His shoulders are not held in a tight line, his smile is a little less artifice. He regards the plate in hand and then plucks up a fig. It is delicious and gives him a moment to ponder his reply.

It is exceedingly ill advised, this ceremony, or any ceremony, or this engagement as a whole. There are more reasons than he can properly address to avoid the whole thing. And yet, here he is.

"A pity, I should have enjoyed their shock....but an understandable condition."

[coquettish_trees]

And yet, here they are.

"I think it shall engender shock enough," she replies with a low chuckle, "but perhaps it may satisfy your desires for further surprise if we were to issue our invitations as if they were merely to a perfectly ordinary celebration of the return of what passes for fine weather here in Kirkwall?" Alexandrie's smile is near beatific enough to put her in the running for the Sunburst Thone.