Roux doesn’t go directly to them, in l’Duc’s wake.
He’s twenty-nine, an heir apparent, operating on his own say so in the imperial court; he’s not that stupid, even if he’s getting towards that desperate. No, he circulates, fully aware of where both his sister and her terrifying grandfather are in the room. Measuring the distance between them (and him); the differences between this and the last time he and Gwenaëlle had crossed paths in an Orlesian ballroom. Or had it been the gardens, that time? She’d been harder to get close to in that lit up veilfire gown of hers.
But he does, inevitably, get closer. At her elbow, in fact, pressing a glass of wine into her hand to make it difficult to hit him and only considering a moment later if he may not have miscalculated that wildly.
Her fingers grip the stem at first automatically, and then as if she is seriously considering fucking up his math,
“You don’t answer my letters, Gigi,” he says, warmly.
“You are one to fucking talk, Marcellin,” she returns, flatly, and will not look at him. Very well,
“It is the nature of the game. Won’t you introduce me to your companion? I have it on good authority you dance with this one. No, really, Gigi—”
The aborted gesture looked more as if she might elbow him in the ribs or pull his hair than reach for a knife; they really do not, on this closer impression, seem like exes.
no subject
He’s twenty-nine, an heir apparent, operating on his own say so in the imperial court; he’s not that stupid, even if he’s getting towards that desperate. No, he circulates, fully aware of where both his sister and her terrifying grandfather are in the room. Measuring the distance between them (and him); the differences between this and the last time he and Gwenaëlle had crossed paths in an Orlesian ballroom. Or had it been the gardens, that time? She’d been harder to get close to in that lit up veilfire gown of hers.
But he does, inevitably, get closer. At her elbow, in fact, pressing a glass of wine into her hand to make it difficult to hit him and only considering a moment later if he may not have miscalculated that wildly.
Her fingers grip the stem at first automatically, and then as if she is seriously considering fucking up his math,
“You don’t answer my letters, Gigi,” he says, warmly.
“You are one to fucking talk, Marcellin,” she returns, flatly, and will not look at him. Very well,
“It is the nature of the game. Won’t you introduce me to your companion? I have it on good authority you dance with this one. No, really, Gigi—”
The aborted gesture looked more as if she might elbow him in the ribs or pull his hair than reach for a knife; they really do not, on this closer impression, seem like exes.