With money you squeezed from the peasants (open)

[toujoursdroit]

WHO: Open to all Riftwatch agents who care to attend. Plus-ones allowed within reason.
WHAT: The duke de Coucy is throwing a celebration to mark his eldest grandson’s 18th birthday, which he would do anyway and which is definitely not a blatant attempt to keep said grandson from running off toward the nearest opportunity for combat.
WHEN: Mid-Kingsway
WHERE: The de Coucy property in Hightown. (The servants are spying in case you break anything.)
NOTES: If you’d like your character to come but think some maneuvering would be required to make it happen, hit me oocly and we’ll figure it out. Similarly, if you need or want a starter with Romain or an NPC, just let me know.

The engraved invitations only go to a select few: the division heads and project leaders, Alexandrie d'Asgard, Petrana de Cedoux and (after some deliberation) Hugo and Jehan Mercier d'Annecy. Others, without a specific addressee, are posted in common areas in the Gallows including both dining halls, the herb garden and the game room:



Those at ease enough or bold enough to take him up on the invitation arrive to find the duke’s Hightown residence lit with a mixture of opulent scones, torches and enchantments. Once admitted through the outer gates—the servants at the door have a list on which one’s name must appear, seemingly including every member of Riftwatch—guests will be ushered a short walk back from the street to the house proper. The foyer boasts more servants, ready to take any outwear (the weather does not dictate it, but fashion may), as well as any gifts for the marquis.

Guests are then shown through to the ballroom. While it is generally used these days as a training area, it has been converted back to its intended use for the evening. The space is brightly lit and features a small but talented collection of musicians. The center of the room is clearly intended for dancing, but chairs and railings along the edge of the room provide a place for those who need a breath or who simply prefer conversation to dancing. Staff circulates with wine and hors d'oeuvres (mainly local shellfish and assorted pastries from Romain’s imported Orlesian patissier). In addition to their fellow Riftwatch agents, guests may run into carefully selected individuals from Hightown society, gratified to varying degrees at having been included.



Those who find even the edges of the ballroom too much may discover that the lower level of the two-level library is open, though servants pass through with enough regularity that it is not truly private. (Assuming one thinks servants count, of course.) The upper level is roped off. Anyone attempting to make their way up will be gently but firmly redirected by the staff. The lower level, however, does offer a few tables and various comfortable chairs and chaises, good for quiet conversation or simply a break from the crush of society.

About two hours after sunset, dinner is announced. All present guests are shown into the dining room. Those few in attendance who have seen the duke’s estate in Orlais, or even his home in Val Royeaux, would know this room is smaller than either. Everyone is seated comfortably, but in addition to the long, rectangular table at the room’s center, a few smaller circular tables hold the overflow. The seating has been chosen carefully for status, affiliation and balance of conversation. The duke heads the long table, and his grandson Thomas sits opposite. Thomas, like his grandfather and younger brother, is masked, but those who chat with him will easily be able to determine his buoyant mood from his voice and manner. The food is excellent, if less varied and exotic than it would have been had supply lines not been so constrained. (Romain thought to bring a few things back from his most recent trip to Orlais and finds himself glad of it now.)



After dinner, guests may resume dancing and gossiping in the ballroom, or engaging in quieter conversation in the library. Or they can make their way out to the courtyard in the rear of the property. While Hightown’s constraints mean the outdoor space is not extensive, it is walled to offer privacy from the nearest neighbors and boasts a water feature, impressively lit in honor of the occasion.

The duke circulates throughout the party for the evening, seemingly doing absolutely nothing other than chatting with his guests. Yet somehow after he passes through, any guests with empty glasses find someone offering to fill them, any low-burning torches are promptly replaced, and any guests causing a scene are discreetly spoken to or, if necessary, shown into a carriage that will take them home. In addition to Romain, guests may have a chance to speak to the guest of honor, Thomas, or to his younger brother, 15-year-old Raoul, who has been given a special dispensation to stay at the party as long as he likes and is seemingly determined to make the most of it. The festivities will drag on until dawn, for those most committed to a bit of merriment in the face of invasion, or at least most committed to eating the duke’s refreshments and drinking his wine until they’re cut off.

Comments

the mistress of the manor | open

[elegiaque]

Resplendent in red, Gwenaëlle Baudin does indeed expect to be praised for deigning to attend a party hosted in her own home. Even if she had been assured—sincerely, she knows—that she didn't have to attend, she's made enough of a splash in Hightown over the past week or so that it would have drawn notice if her cousin's own birthday celebrations were of visibly lower priority. So, she compromises: she puts on a fine dress, she lets one of the maids at her hair, applies fine red gems along her cheekbones in lieu of the traditional masque, makes a point of inviting Margaery early to get ready with her upstairs and arrive not by the door but the grand staircase...

accompanied by her dog, nearly so large as either of them. Hardie is her constant shadow, enforcing a certain amount of personal space, and as ever coping better with the crush and crowd than she does. When she settles in at a corner table near the fireplaces with a deck of cards and her younger cousin, he lays down at her feet—relaxed but alert, and indifferent entirely to the rigorous and involved discussion of the rules of Wicked Grace, the theory of how best to cheat, and the promise that if she sees John Silver she will wave him over to teach them how to count cards.

(She doesn't know John Silver knows how to count cards. She assumes he does.)

Gwenaëlle does not seem likely to dance, albeit less unlikely than those occasions upon which she'd been a living chandelier in the center of a dress bedecked with lit candles. She has one glass of wine next to her and drinks it slowly; surrenders Margaery to a succession of dance partners with tolerable grace; lets Thomas work the room a bit and make his way to her rather than the other way around, so she can give him his birthday gift personally.

(She had insisted that she would not give him a second birthday gift, that they had already celebrated as a family, that he had gift enough then. He is not surprised enough for it to have been convincing.)

Eventually, she slips out into the courtyard garden, and while she is not immediately visible in the pool of light that spills from the open door when it is opened or the lit up water-feature, smoke curls up into the night air from within a small maze of rose-climbers. It is not tobacco smoke.

[toujoursdroit]

At some point when Margaery is off dancing, she finds her grandfather at her elbow. His voice is quiet, but she has no trouble hearing him; long practice at judging his volume in a crowded room serves them well.

"It has been a pleasant surprise to have you so visible for so much of the party," he says. "I hope you do know I was sincere, when I said you needn't come at all." It's a little bit arch, but at the same time, he knows how he can be. (At least with his grandsons. Thomas, and to a lesser extent Raoul, are both skilled at reading the various expectations layered in a simple response, the more so for a few years at their grandfather's elbow due to the war.)

He deigns to scratch Hardie behind the ear when he pads over, a subtle gesture that might read as surprisingly affectionate to any guest that catches it.

[elegiaque]

It's a shockingly informal moment all around for the Duke, considering the way Gwenaëlle leans comfortably and companionably into the side of him; he is not demonstrative, but he tolerates the fact that she is. The truth of her parentage hadn't changed that, the way she'd expected it to, and his consistency made it a surprisingly good thing for their relationship. Him, unchanged, and her—here, being a bad influence on her cousins.

“It's not you I need to see me here,” she admits, looping her hands in at his elbow. “I know you and Thomas wouldn't have minded.”

[toujoursdroit]

"Ah." He lets her tuck herself close, as if it doesn't matter that the ballroom is full of people. Exactly like that, in fact. "Who is it that you and your friend are impressing tonight, then. Anyone in particular?" They've reached an equilibrium with one another in which he's confident that she knows he won't force the question. He is merely curious, because he cares about what she's doing. He won't even (always) offer to help anymore, as he's grown more confident that she'll ask if she thinks he can.

[elegiaque]

“Everyone. For now.”

Up to something, then, and either casting a wide net or needing her sudden interest in the social scene of Hightown to look broadly convincing to disguise specific interests. (In truth, a little bit of both.) She doesn't point out Lady Fiske, but perhaps she doesn't need to—she had added the woman to the guest list personally, but has not personally singled her out or spoken to her more remarkably than anyone else.

[toujoursdroit]

"I see." He likely did.

"Your new friend Mlle. Tyrell seems quite in her element. You'd think she had been doing this for years." It was, in its way, high praise, though his attention always had a sharp element when it was turned on anyone outside the family.

[elegiaque]

“I strongly suspect that she has, bon-papa.”

As she knows to her own cost—you can take the girl out of the court, but you can't nearly as easily take what the court beat into her out of the girl. Gwenaëlle may not have the experience or the acumen of her grandfather, but she doesn't need to be told that Tyrell must have meant something, once, to someone; that it was a name with currency, albeit not one with so much currency that Margaery herself didn't have to get good at spending it.

She knows what she's looking at, with her. She doesn't trust her, but she doesn't have to.

[illithidnapped]

"Your student doesn't seem to have much of a heart for the game." Astarion comments blithely on approach, one arm tucked behind his back, footsteps so soft as to be silent, even in properly heeled boots. Few would notice that little detail of course, particularly when the rest of the estate is so aflutter with music and wine and chatter like there's no tomorrow.

And if Corypheus succeeds, there may very well not be.

His head tilts when he stops somewhere just behind her, away from Hardie's own positioning by the fire.

"I could always help with that, you know. Wicked Grace is something of a hobby of mine, after all."

By which he means he eats because of it— sleeps under a stony roof because of it: the benefit of fleecing fools.

[elegiaque]

It is not visible from the angle at which Astarion approaches her what exactly it is that Gwenaëlle's face does, but one might at least conclude from the way that Raoul looks studiously down at his cards after chancing a look at his cousin that whatever it was didn't suggest they're going to affably invite him to sit down.

She considers, briefly, demanding he be ejected immediately with such force he bounces all the way down the steps from Hightown to the docks.

“Do you want something, Astarion,” she says, flatly. “You've got sixty seconds and then if you're still talking to me and I'm still not interested, I'll have you dragged out of here by the ear.”

[illithidnapped]

“I only wanted to lend my expertise. Surely that’s not a crime, darling.”

Honestly, by his estimation he’s done nothing at all wrong.

So he bedded her estranged husband— he also confessed to the deed, and was more than willing to make room for her beside him as well. He’s even gone so far as to track her down yet again, in an entirely cordial effort to better what looks to be an utterly miserable night, considering no one’s on her arm now that Margaery’s flitting about like a songbird.

Come to think of it, she was rather enticing on the dance floor—

But no. No. By his own logic, he’s certain he’s in the right: just because they're not friends, doesn't mean he can't stand at her side for the benefit of them both.

“Besides,” he scoffs, lifting a gloved hand to admire its seams as though checking his own fingernails. “You can’t just have me thrown out. I’ve been nothing but a perfect gentleman all evening, and have plenty of witnesses to prove it— current company included.”

Raoul, he means. Party to Gwenaëlle’s idle threat. This isn’t her home or her affair. What could she do aside from claim he’s been a beast? And what could she prove, considering he hasn’t?

[elegiaque]

Astarion has done nothing wrong.

Yet, which is why he's still standing behind her, arguing with her. Astarion has done nothing wrong except not listen to her; he hears her, she thinks, but it's going in one pointed ear and out the other, filtered through whatever logic he needs to filter it through in order to make it something that suits him better.

She isn't unfamiliar with the phenomenon. There's a lot they have in common, and she's coming to suspect it's half the problem. You don't get to do it next to me—

It's not that she never confides in anyone. It's that she was afraid to confide in him, and now she's embarrassed for ever having wanted to, and having him dangle around louche afterwards like it didn't mean anything is ... worse, actually. Obviously it didn't. She'll get over it. She will, she's sure, she's got over so many things, but how the fuck is she meant to if he won't let her.

Gwenaëlle quells her cousin with a look. She says, “Guilfoyle,” and part of the unremarkable shadow has been a man the entire time, perhaps a few years the Duke's junior, dressed in well-made but severe black that communicates clearly to the trained eye: the help.

“Madame.”

“Who can I have thrown out of my home this evening?”

His tone does not discernibly shift, nor his expression. He regards Astarion only briefly before focusing upon her to say, “Anyone madame wishes.”

“And will his grace ask why they were removed before or after he asks me if I'm all right and if I'm pleased they're gone?”

Raoul stifles a small sound. It's suspiciously close to a laugh.

“After, madame. Do you wish the offending gentleman removed?”

“No. That's all, Guilfoyle.” She turns, cards in her hand, to regard Astarion over the back of her seat. “We are celebrating my cousin's birthday,” she says. “In my house. That my grandfather acquired so that I wouldn't have to live in the Gallows if I don't want to. And if I want you to leave, believe me, you will hit the street so hard you fucking bounce.”

G w e n

[illithidnapped]

He thinks this might be a joke. One made at his expense, like so much else.

Then he remembers who he’s talking to.

“You are an exhausting creature.”

It’s not truly resentful, that remark. Held back by a mixture of cordiality and— albeit somewhat smothered, given their prior exchange— fondness. His hand drops, sparking the faint jingle of gilded embellishments, hip now slightly cocked.

“A minute, then. Alone. You and I. That’s all I want.”

[elegiaque]

Guilfoyle does nothing so gauche as object, but he does look at her; she so plainly ignores it that she must be aware of it. Raoul, who is much younger, does begin to protest when she starts to get up (if only because he was enjoying their card game), but she says,

“I'm going to count,” she says, which likewise is probably not a joke. “And if you piss me off, I'll tell my grandfather you upset me and the only thing that will make me happy again will be his putting it about that he never wants to see you entertained in Hightown again.”

She might not mean that.

He'd probably have to piss her off more significantly than he's even come close to, yet.

[molineux]

It's easier to keep an eye on Gwen than most might think; between all the coy head tilts and the facade of giving someone her total attention, Margaery picks up on the tension between Gwen and Astarion. It's as obvious as a beacon of light in darkness, as heavy truth always is when it's surrounded by frivolous fun, and while she feels a sense of urgency to follow the luxurious red velvet out the door, a conversation with nobles is not one easily pushed aside by smooth excuses.

Especially if she means to build up a solid reputation as a sweet, naive darling who is easily impressed and titters over the smallest displays of power and wealth.

By the time she manages to extract herself to the garden, wisps of a telltale scent are strong enough to greet her before the heavy blooms of the evening. "My darling." she murmurs tenderly, when she finds Gwenaëlle's form silhouetted by moonlight, wary to drop their charade even for an instant. Her hands reach for one of Gwen's, seating it comfortably in her lap. Her affection isn't entirely false, as there is genuine concern resting on Margaery's brow as she asks, "What happened?"

[elegiaque]

It is nice, even if it isn't real, to be someone's darling. For a moment, in the smoke and shadow, she can pretend that it is: that Margaery is seeking her out because she wishes to comfort her, and not because someone will notice if she doesn't, and if she only doesn't point it out then she can enjoy it for a few moments, curling her fingers slowly around the hand that's taken hers, leaning into Margaery's warm side as much as the boning of her corset will allow her.

“Have you ever had it,” the joint is in her other hand, gesturing, “when you meet someone you think—understands you, or you understand, or at least you're humming along to the same sort of melody, and they tell you who they are over and over again and because you're stupid, you think that you're in on the joke. That you've found someone who might see you, and it wouldn't be awful.”

Probably not, she thinks. Margaery has probably not had that problem before. She can't imagine Margaery ever worrying about the mortifying ordeal of being known.

“Then you realize that you aren't. You are the joke, actually, and you should have been listening the whole time. So you say, I don't like this any more, and they're charming, so they tell you they understand and that's fair enough and then you have to realize that they didn't mean that, actually, they just think you're really stupid, much moreso, like in an hour or two you'll have forgotten. And you can just be humiliated at their leisure, whenever they like, that's how little relevant you and your stupid little feelings are.”

Gwenaëlle tilts her head back against Margaery's shoulder and blows a perfect smoke ring into the night air.

“If he comes anywhere near me again tonight, I'll ask my grandfather to personally remove him.” Violence is such a small thing, and Astarion so strong. No; the humiliation of being publicly set down by the Duc de Coucy, deemed unacceptable. That is a cruel enough thought to ease this hurt.

[molineux]

She shifts closer, and she listens. While her own heart has been shattered in many different ways, Margaery can only vaguely imagine the pain that Gwenaëlle speaks of. In this way, having had a love life dictated by the whims of her father and others is a blessing. She also knows that she cannot begin to imagine what Astarion could have done for Gwen to react in this way - almost resigned, with a duller spirit that is discomforting to see because she's seen how colorful it can be. A betrayal, certainly, but it has been too long since Margaery has allowed anyone close enough to remember how the sharp edge of that feels, too.

"But whatever they might believe is not true," she says gently, running her thumb across the back of Gwen's hand, turning her head to speak softly against pretty, dark hair. "The choice you made to trust them reflects who you are, not their decision to betray you or consider you or your feelings to be irrelevant."

Astarion may be a beacon of selfish desire and self-centered drive, but he reminds Margaery of a hurt child more than anything - someone who is so afraid that he creates facade after facade. All so he can say that any disappointment like this was to be expected, to shift the blame on others' expectations rather than his own actions.

But can she truly blame him, as a fellow, willing dealer in half-truths and manipulation? At her core, Margaery is as much of a coward as he is.

"We've only been entangled for a few weeks, but I believe you are someone who does not know how to do things halfway. Your heart goes into everything you choose to do, to all you decide to befriend. Astarion should have known better than to underestimate how deep your loyalty runs, even if he never meant to be as loyal to you in turn."

And after a pregnant pause, "Tell me how you do it, please. Tell me how the possibility of pain does not deter you from being so generous."

[elegiaque]

Her heart twists unexpectedly at hearing her own words to Kitty—delivered briskly sincere then, and warmly gentle now—returned to her, and she has missed her so long now but it sharpens, sudden and fierce. She wishes Kitty was here even to tell her she's being stupid and dramatic; the pair of them talking past each other half the time, and trying so hard all the same.

It has been worth it, to try. It'd have been easier to give up, but she's never regretted trying to keep her close, instead.

She wants to say, I'm not generous, but it sounds petulant even before she's said it aloud, so what she says is,

“Pain isn't something you get to choose or not,” which might not be what Margaery was expecting or hoping to hear. “If you shy away from doing anything because you're afraid it's going to hurt, you're going to live a sad, pathetic little half-life and you're still going to get hurt—it will creep up on you, and it'll take your breath away.”

She delivers it the same way; resigned, like a promise.

“And, worse, there'll be nothing to show for it. You won't be able to say, at least I tried or at least I loved or at least I was brave. You'll just be alone, and in pain, and no one will care because that's what you protected yourself from. Not from pain. From comfort. You can dull everything else, isn't that funny? You can dull the gloss of joy and you can pick apart love until you can barely see what it's meant to be, but a gut wound is a gut wound. Love is handing someone a knife, knowing they might push it into your stomach. But something's always going to, you know?”

[molineux]

Gwen's words make her smile with the unexpected memory of her grandfather. As much as Olenna Tyrell loved to mince at his character and the stupid manner of his death, Margaery could also tell that her grandmother had loved him deeply. Perhaps that was why she had turned out to be even better at the game - even the strongest person in her life had succumbed to love and its pains and Margaery had learned from her mistake.

There is logic that Margaery cannot deny, the everlasting question of bravery in the face of loneliness, and the choice they must each make. But something in her heart remains steadfast, stubbornly wrapped with the instinct of masking vulnerability out of habit. She's kept her heart trapped for so long that if she lets it out now, it'll be weak and soft. Tender, like a baby bunny blissfully unaware of the stalking wolves.

"You're right. The only things we can be certain of in our lives is death and pain," she says instead, putting her own ponderings on hold for later in the evening, in her own company. "Does that mean you don't regret any of it, as much as it hurts you now?"

you know.

[luaithre]

There comes a point where Marcus wears out his own welcome. It happens slowly but surely, like water boiling, and is so understated that even he doesn't quite know it's happening until it happens, which is when every click of glassware and every floating laugh and every whirl of movement out the corner of his eye seems to ring through his senses. It all becomes too much to the point of discomfort, and he realises he doesn't know what to do next, or say next.

So he leaves, exiting a loose circle of conversation without a word, moving directly for the courtyard garden.

The quiet is an immediate improvement. It's well lit, walled off, there's a water feature, and only one other person, whom Marcus doesn't feel compelled to greet right away as he instead tips a look upwards towards the night sky.

From Gwenaëlle's perspective, a man she's not exchanged words with before but probably by now must recognise appears to move into the gardens with an air of purpose, and then stop, seemingly having completed said purpose. He's well dressed in shiny blue fabric, embellished, lace at the collar and sleeve, nothing really wallflower about it despite his everything. It occurs to him late that he ought to have picked up a drink on his way out and hadn't thought to, and quests a hand to his coat pockets until remembering he'd left his case behind at the Gallows.

Maybe Petrana brought hers. But he's here now, with no desire to retreat.

[elegiaque]

Off the top of her head, Gwenaëlle doesn't know Marcus Rowntree's name; she thinks of him as that one, you know which is also how she thinks of a lot of people she hasn't properly met in Riftwatch, although in his case he is also classified as 'Julius adjacent, she's pretty sure', so if she ever does learn his name she'll probably at some point write it in a letter to her uncle, still occasionally inquiring after the enchanter's personal life even as it has become apparent that she knows less and less about it.

The familiar gesture of someone patting themselves down looks like a solid opening to what immediately feels like a great idea, the sort of curiosity that would never have sufficiently moved her to seek him out but which can hardly ignore having him dropped in her lap—

“Do you want to share it?” she offers, gesturing with the lit joint in her hand. A fair warning: “It isn't tobacco. I was about to cause a scene in there and bon-papa isn't putting out anything strong enough to fix that tonight.”

[luaithre]

Likely Marcus should turn it down, go back inside, but the math doesn't work. Either contend with one of them outside, smoke in his lungs, or fifty of them, inside, with no such crutch. It's too quiet and still out here for him to want to leave it behind, and Marcus reaches out and takes the offered smoke.

He brings it to his mouth, loose particles catching fire and breaking off from the end to spiral and die. The taste of this different kind of leaf is odd, sweeter, but not bad for it, and he feels better for having it fill his lungs, to breathe it out again.

A nod to her in thanks, offering it back.

[elegiaque]

Gwenaëlle doesn't ask more of him, for a time, than the companionable silence of passing a joint back and forth in the shade of the rose-climbers,

so he's probably not expecting it when she says, “Did your Enchanter tell you he used to live here?”

wicked grace.

[hornswoggle]

Yes, John Silver knows how to count cards.

A man must make a living, by any means necessary, after all.

"Have you been instructing him?" John questions, occupying one of the empty chairs. The young cousin in question is entitled to his easy sprawl on the floor. These days, John very much prefers a chair. "It's best to learn early."

What exactly, who can say? The rules? How to cheat them? Both?

/slides in here

[toujoursdroit]

Raoul considers the man in the chair from his position on the floor, curiosity evident behind the half-mask that would almost count as daring if Gwen weren't his cousin. "We play sometimes. Thomas used to play with me too, before he lost interest in my company. One of the footmen will play with me, but it is not much fun because he always lets me win."

He doesn't give the impression of being a young man who'd demand it. On the other hand, it isn't hard to imagine how "winning money off the duke's younger grandson" wouldn't seem like a path toward continued employment.

[elegiaque]

“If Kieran were still here,” Gwenaëlle sighs, “he and Thomas could occupy each other, it'd solve a lot of problems.”

For starters, Kieran would also be here again, and therefore probably his mother. She always misses the Morrigan, but lately—predictably—it's a little more acute.

“Now, you know how to count cards, don't you? Because I don't.”