I heard and it feels like a little handhold that she can grasp— charmed by the anecdote, but interested more in,
“Do you talk much still to ... anyone, I suppose, here?”
Not anyone, dismissive, but: anyone, she doesn't know who to say. She thinks, not for the first time, of Grigoire Leblanc, who may very well be somewhere in Val Royeaux even now where she might stumble across him. How much anger at Marc's refusal of her is for herself, and her own cowardice, and never giving Grigoire the chance to do better? (He did not try, she thinks, and then: there are a hundred reasons why that might be so, and among them might live, neither did she. Sometimes she imagines asking Alexandrie, and then she doesn't know what she might ask, and then she doesn't.)
no subject
“Do you talk much still to ... anyone, I suppose, here?”
Not anyone, dismissive, but: anyone, she doesn't know who to say. She thinks, not for the first time, of Grigoire Leblanc, who may very well be somewhere in Val Royeaux even now where she might stumble across him. How much anger at Marc's refusal of her is for herself, and her own cowardice, and never giving Grigoire the chance to do better? (He did not try, she thinks, and then: there are a hundred reasons why that might be so, and among them might live, neither did she. Sometimes she imagines asking Alexandrie, and then she doesn't know what she might ask, and then she doesn't.)
“Old familiar faces in your old familiar haunts.”