(2023-05-27) The Two Lighthouses - Weekend At The Fallons Part 5

Details

Author:	Athena
Summary:	Siamus introduces Avrenne to his lighthouse, the non metaphorical one. The affianced couple talk about current politics and their political methods, how they intend to fit together politically and romantically, and their particular perspectives on loyalty and sentiment. Things get steamy, more than once. Some discussion of plot, but predominantly a romantic RP log of two characters getting to know each other in more ways than one. 31k-ish words.
Rating:	M for Mature 17+

Arc: Ringside Seats

Chain: Siarenne

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romance, romantic touching, kissing, seduction, discussion of ethical non-monogamy, brief alcohol, brief discussion of hanging, ghost story

Avrenne does, as advertised, change for lunch. It doesn't take her especially long, but it's definitely over a few minutes. When she arrives for lunch, she's dressed in a dark green and maroon dress. The long sleeves are loose, with buttons at the wrists, the top portion of the dress in green tied with a ribbon across her collarbone, and the maroon portion beginning at the skirt, a black silk ribbon crossing over it in the suggestion of a corset. Her hair has been rinsed and rebraided, and her composure reassembled.

Siamus has not yet helped himself to any food, perhaps because the Lady is not present. He's taken a casual seat at one end of the terrace by Finley, with whom he's in genial conversation. At Avrenne's appearance, he rises respectfully to his feet. He skims her with another look and inclines his head, his smile curving back to life. "Avrenne," he greets her.

There's that undeniable brighter smile at the sight of him, her hands folded over each other in front of her. "Siamus."

Finley rises to a stand only a half beat behind Siamus and glances back and forth between the two of them. "You didn't want the other one?" He asks, as if he and Avrenne were mid-conversation.

Avrenne walks forward with intent to pick up a plate at the table. "Not today. I expect it would be too warm." She directs a small smile at Siamus and explains, "I only had two options for dresses that are fully water proofed that would be ready in time. They're both meant for the autumn rain. The other is more formal, and of heavier material. I expect I'd overheat in it." In possibly more ways than one.

"I wouldn't like to see ye overheat," Siamus agrees with mild courtesy, as though he has never heard a double entendre in his life. He moves to join her at the buffet. "It's lovely," he says of her dress. "And ye had a pleasant swim?" His tone is very Polite Small Talk; his body language is once again Unnecessarily Close. He gazes down at her steadily, the smile at the corner of his mouth, that gleam in his dark eyes.

"I enjoyed it. I haven't had an opportunity to be within the water like that in a long time. It was delightfully cooling," Avrenne says, looking up at him in between glances at the food that she may very well be selecting without thinking much about it at all. "The afternoon seems as though it will be much warmer, however, and I expect I will enjoy that as well. Summer is clearly approaching, although perhaps not quite quickly enough." She makes no attempt to put more distance between the two of them, holding his gaze as she pauses between selections.

Finley narrows his eyes at that, as though trying to hear something else.

"I find myself looking forward to the hotter season as well," Siamus agrees. "Though the weather's less amenable for sleeping." Oh gosh was that a step too far? No, look how bland he is. The man probably appreciates a good night's sleep. Maybe. From time to time.

He reaches almost past Avrenne for something on the table, nearly bumping her shoulder, and then apologetically sets a steadying hand on the small of her back, the most fleeting gesture. "I beg your pardon." His hand's already gone, and he's helping himself politely to a dish that doesn't require reach.

Even in the fleeting touch, he can feel it, the way her back arches as though he's sent an electric current through her, a soft inhale of breath, and a too long pause. "Oh, no, of course." She probably should be moving along to the next thing, her hand paused in the air. It takes another second before she lowers it without taking what she was reaching for and moving down the buffet without really looking at what her options are, her attention very clearly on Siamus even if her eyes are on the food. She's fine.

Siamus offers no further impropriety — were those even improprieties, really? who can say? — but follows Avrenne along the buffet in gentlemanly fashion. When his lunch is acquired, he suggests to her, "There's a chair wi' mine and Finley's, if you'd join us."

"Of course," Avrenne answers, smiling up at Siamus for a moment, a warm look in her eyes. Her plate is full enough. Probably. She turns her attention to the seating to walk towards it.

Finley is watching her, his expression shuttered, and then he picks up his plate before waiting for her to arrive and sit down to leave for the buffet.

Avrenne sits carefully at the seat next to where Siamus was sitting, settling a coolness over herself.

Siamus settles comfortably once Avrenne has sat, and watches Finley depart. "A guarded young man," he observes under his breath. "And protective of ye."

Avrenne smiles faintly. "He likes you," she says in a similarly soft voice. She picks up her silverware and sets a napkin onto her lap with steady fingers, spreading them over the material a little longer, a little more thorough than necessary. "He's just concerned. He hasn't forgiven himself for not anticipating what Mr. Green did, as though he should have known somehow. What he thinks he missed."

Finley is searching for the least seafood like of the seafood. Good luck, Finley. Just accept your fate. Embrace the seafood.

"Good lad." Siamus surveys him a moment longer. "I can't grudge him a commendable concern for his good lady." He arranges his own napkin and silverware and then glances at Avrenne. "And are ye still up for a lighthouse visit, then, or did Ta wear ye out this morning?"

"Invigorated, really," Avrenne says, and there's a warm note of fondness in her voice. "She makes me feel brighter, being around her, not tired. Hence the horse race back last time we had a morning out." There's a lighter, playful note in her voice, though she keeps her face controlled. "I have been looking forward to the lighthouse, even if it must be by necessity another faster ride. But I'm well prepared for it, and will be pleased to have your company."

"I'm glad to hear," he says, and flashes a smile. "I'm looking forward to it myself. And I'll do my best to get ye there and back well and comfortable." He begins to eat in a careful, mannerly fashion. "Has Sintha decided yet when the wedding's to be?" He flicks an amused glance up at her.

Avrenne smiles back warm and bright, although she tries to dim it to something smaller after a second. Ahem. "Before the end of June. Depending on the exact timing of the tides, as I understand it. It's likely the House will vote first, if I have read the political situation correctly."

Finley returns to the table with a collection of compromises to eat. He eyes Avrenne's plate and there's a look of concern, and a question in his eyes.

Avrenne looks from Finley and then at the food on her plate as though for the first time. Oh. There's a flicker of something before she starts to eat, and she seems to be eating much slower and much more carefully than before. "I expect I will be mostly in Stormwind over the next few weeks, and on occasion at the Fallon townhouse there for some afternoons, if that is agreeable. As we pack up the house to ready it for sale it will not be in any state for visitors, and I will still have a few I should see."

"Ye may be anywhere of Fallon's that ye like, it's near enough yours. Shall I move from the townhouse for the time? I've got my own city business but could take another place to stay, or come back here nights." He arches a brow. After a moment, he glances at her plate, and then at Finley.

Avrenne shakes her head. "No, please, I would not want to displace you. I will be sure to give warning ahead of time, so as not to surprise you. And it will only be for an hour or two, here and there. I need to speak to a few more members of the House mostly, and a few others." Her gaze flicks from Siamus to Finley.

Finley starts eating quietly, his eyes on his own plate.

Siamus looks between the two again, mildly. "As ye like, Your Grace." His use of the title doesn't sound like a rebuff so much as the retreat into courtesy of a man who suspects he's misstepped in some way and is loath to give further offense. He resumes eating.

Avrenne looks faintly caught off guard at the title, and there's a pause of silence of thought, another careful bite, before her expression clears a little and she sets her silverware down to reach out her hand to rest lightly on Siamus' arm. "There's nothing wrong with the food. I just wasn't thinking, when I filled my plate. My appetite is…stronger than it has been, but I will not want to eat too much for the trip to the lighthouse. I don't usually eat much at all before I travel on ships."

Siamus glances up at her, down at her hand on his arm, and up at her again. He tips up an eyebrow. "Aye, that's all right. I'd no' take offense on Cook's behalf." He looks from her to Finley again, smiles faintly, and resumes eating.

Sintha sweeps out onto the terrace, dressed in a breezy linen sundress of a sunset-coral hue, its cap sleeves and boat neck leaving an expanse of tanned arms and collarbone bare. Her hair is a loose, salt-tousled tumble.

She moves as if drawn by a magnet to where the trio of Finley, Avrenne, and her brother are seated, and drops airily into a fourth chair. "Your fork, Shay," she scolds. "Other hand."

Siamus doesn't even look up from his meal. "We're eating on the terrace, Ta. It's no' a state dinner."

"Would you change hands if it were a state dinner?"

"No."

Sintha sighs and flops dramatically against the back of her chair, insufferably burdened by her brother's low table manners.

Avrenne gently removes her hand from Siamus as he starts eating again, and takes up her own fork, in the correct hand for Stormwind table manners, to begin eating in slow, careful bites. She smiles at Sintha. "You know," she says conversationally. "I used to try to talk to our cook when I was younger by playing with the Language In Between of cutlery during the meals at home."

Finley smiles, and there's a quiet laugh that doesn't sound at all like it belongs to him, soft and without any edges to it. "What she means is she used to terrorize Mr. Lenaire with them. 'Didn't like the meal' changed suddenly to 'Paused' to 'Excellent' on her plate with a straight face. Mr. Lenaire — " He stops talking mid-sentence, looking up from his meal.

Isla Lenaire can be heard talking before she comes outside. She's dragging helpfully towing Otto along by a hand, and she waves happily to the four of them, pausing mid-thought to say "Oh, Finley, wait until you hear," and continues on, still telling Otto about the details of some decorative intent for her room.

Sintha smiles briefly in Isla's direction.

"Terrorizing," says Siamus. "I'd ne'er believe it." He glances with a sidelong smile at Avrenne.

Avrenne's own look is affected innocence, but there's a wicked tilt to her answering small smile at Siamus before she smooths it out. She definitely terrorized the cook.

Sintha looks back at her brother. "How's your head, Shay?"

He gives her a warning look, and then turns his own attention mildly on Finley. "What will ye do wi' yourself this afternoon, then?"

At the question, Finley directs his gaze to Avrenne.

She doesn't even look up from her food as she says in that cool voice, "You're not on duty, Finley. You may do whatever you like."

The words hit like a splash of water on the young man, and it's clear that for a moment, he's adrift — what do you mean do what he likes — before that Butler Face covers it up, bland and inscrutable. He addresses Siamus, a formal air covering him up. "If it's not an imposition, sir, and if there's one you'd be willing to lend, I'd be glad to be allowed a ride on one of the horses here down to your harbor. Avrenne spoke of it, and I'd like to see it, if I'm permitted, sir."

Siamus waves his fork (incorrect hand) in a vague gesture of assent. "Of course ye may. Tell the groom you're to have Leveche. Ye can keep to the road from the manor — back toward the forest, and then it branches south and back east again, skirting Thenedain — or ye can ride straight south along the cliff-edge. There's a pass in the hills."

"Thank you, sir," Finley says politely. "I'll keep to the roads. I can ride, but not like Avrenne."

Avrenne eats another bite, and glances at Otto and Isla, evaluating something there before she turns her attention back to her food. "Sintha, would you mind if Otto came along with you and Isla? I think he would like to help her collect some things for her room, and perhaps see the little menagerie."

Sintha throws another bright smile over her shoulder at the pair. "Of course he may. I'd be delighted." She rises to her feet and drifts toward the buffet to help herself to some lunch, still beaming at the younger pair.

Siamus sits back and arranges his silverware (correctly) to indicate that he's done with his meal, then lays his napkin on the table. He glances at Avrenne and smiles again briefly. "Don't hurry on my account. I'll meet ye in the hall at, shall we say, half-past?"

"I will be there," Avrenne says in that way of hers, as though now, course decided, it would take something extraordinary to either deter or delay her, and it would be at this hypothetical thing's peril to do so.

Siamus glances at the assembled, nods courteously, and rises to go back inside.

Some Time Passes

Avrenne is there at 25 minutes past, in the hall, standing with her hands folded over each other in front of her, her chin up and her bearing as though someone just off to the side is currently painting her portrait and she must hold very still in this very correct pose that will be immortalized for all time. She seems neither impatient or patient as she waits without fidgeting, her eyes on a polite point of the wall.

Siamus descends the stairs at a jog at about thirty-five minutes past. He's dressed just as he was for lunch, with the addition now of a lightweight workman's jacket; his hair is tousled and if anything he looks marginally more out-of-sorts than he did earlier, but he smiles when he sees Avrenne. "Your Grace. Forgive the delay."

Avrenne has that lighting of her face at the sight of him, as she turns to better face him, and if there's a reaction to her title this time, it's either so brief or so well hidden that it's unclear if there was one. "Easily forgiven. I don't mind the waiting," she says, and it sounds sincere, her eyes skimming briefly over his hair and the undone collar again before she returns her gaze to his face. "I knew you would be coming when you were able to." She steps in closer to him, not waiting for him to make it all the way to her.

Siamus offers his arm in chivalrous reflex. "We'll take a carriage to the harbor ourselves, and walk out along the breakwater there to the end, if ye can manage it? To shorten the trip by sea. I've left a boat moored there."

Avrenne sets her hand on his arm in a mirrored reflex of see-arm-take-arm. She moves her other hand to her dress to pull up the hem enough to show her shoes — well-made, brown boots that look suitable for outdoors, and given her choice of dress, likely waterproof, and equally made for the rainy weather than the late-spring — "I have come prepared for the walk and I will manage. Do lead on, then, Siamus," she says as she sets herself at his side.

He escorts her out to the drive, where a carriage is indeed waiting, drawn by a team of sturdy dapple horses; Shine the one-eyed footman opens the door for them, and Siamus offers Avrenne his hand up into it, waiting for her to settle and arrange her skirts before he follows to sit across from her.

Avrenne is at home in this context, moving smoothly into the carriage and positioning herself with that expertise of practiced — if not natural — elegance, looking even more perfectly like she belongs where she is, settling into that portrait pose.

"It's a shame I'm no painter," Siamus says with a faint smile as Shine closes the carriage door. A moment later they begin to move. "I should have one of ye, perhaps. For the wedding."

Avrenne looks faintly startled, an impression of the question of why? briefly written across her expression, as she turns her head to look at him, that sense that she's turning on a string holding her poise in place. "Oh. If you'd like. My friend, Priscilla, is a painter. I could have her do one of me, should you wish, if you can tell me the size you would prefer it to be. I need to speak with her anyway about adding in art of the navy for her Northrend series. If she's too busy with that, I could give you one of the others if you want one sooner. She does one of me every year on my birthday and has for, oh, many years now. They're stored in a trunk." A small, controlled shrug. "She's likely to make one of me from the wedding to remember it."

"Well, I expect Fallon ought to have one of ye from the wedding as well. A formal one. I'll commission her for it, aye? It's no hurry; if it needs to be done after ye can pose in your gown and all I expect. But the House ought to have a portrait of its lady." After a moment he remembers his flirtation to match the smile. "When she makes such a lovely picture."

Then a faint, thoughtful line appears between his brows. "Priscilla. I know her, don't I? Oh, is it — the eternal fiancee, aye? Bertrand's lady?"

There is no particular reaction to the flirtation, no impression of a compliment landing, but no sense that she's been put off either. "Yes. Lady Priscilla Moore, engaged to Lord Bertrand Aspenwood. She and I have been friends for a very long time, from even before she was engaged," Avrenne says and there is a touch of a dry tease to her voice. Yes, there was a time before the eternal ten year engagement. Her tone grows nostalgic though as she continues. "I've known her even longer than Morgauna. We met when we were children, when she arrived in Lordaeron as a refugee from the Fall of Stormwind. She and her family moved back after the restoration, and she maintained a faithful correspondence with me until, well. Until it was my turn to come to her city." From the Circumstances.

The Circumstances. Siamus nods somberly. "Ta's a friend of her sister, I believe. The rather chattering one?"

Siamus is Good at Ladies; it is no wonder he is a master of seduction.

"And will ye be having her in the wedding party, then? Or… Morgauna?"

"Morgauna, assuming she agrees. I would be pleased to have either for sentimental reasons, but Morgauna has the additional benefit of the political connotation of demonstrating our House's alliance with hers. Priscilla understands, of course. She knows all too well how often the game continues to play out, and neither she or Morgauna have any doubt to my affection for them. The first part of the wedding will be much more a political showing, useful in that way. I will have the attendance necessary for future connections." Avrenne raises her brows at Siamus, and there's a movement of her hands in her lap, a brief restlessness. "I know how cold that sounds, but I do hope you know that it's not representative of my personal thoughts on the marriage itself. It's just the practical applications of the public formalization of the finalization of our contract already signed."

Siamus looks briefly startled. He raises his eyebrows. "I'm no' — offended. It's savvy. Half the purpose of it's in… connections, and so on, aye?" He studies her briefly. "You'll find, I think, if ye haven't already, that I'm no' an… over-sentimental man. If that's your concern."

Avrenne makes that soft little 'mm' sound, adjusting her hands in her lap. "It has been my experience that there are some who find it very well and good for a man to be unsentimental, but find the same trait in a woman rather off putting." She aims a faint smile at Siamus. "I don't think you to be so, and perhaps it's even a trait you'd prefer in me for what I can accomplish with such practicality. But, I will at times be rather…cold, even in the face of emotional things, particularly when a decision or action must be taken politically. 'Circuitry instead of veins,' that sort of thing." There's a flicker of something in her expression, and a touch of a tone in her voice that suggests she is quoting something someone said to her directly, and that on some level it bothered her.

Siamus's smile flickers back to life, though his gaze remains steady and serious. "I've no' been looking for a silly girl; I've been looking to marry a lady of sense and a cool head. You're a sharp woman, and canny, and ye may recall my one reservation in our negotiations was how ye were led by sentiment in the matter of Mr Green. Not to touch a painful subject, aye? But I've no' been well-rewarded by sentiment myself.

"And even if what ye were told was true — 'circuitry instead o' veins' — I expect circuitry's the better investment."

He looks her up and down and the quality of his gaze changes; his voice becomes again that low and intimate brush from the hall earlier. "But I'll vouch for veins, aye? I find ye warm enough so far."

Avrenne's own smile forms at the compliments, and her eyes are steady on Siamus until the last, where she abruptly flicks them away on a soft quicker inhale, and she shifts in an unusual restless fidget in her seat at the tone. Her smile though hasn't dimmed. "Well." Attempts have been made to iron out that give away note in her voice, but not yet successfully done. "If it is circuitry, then I shall have to hope I was properly outfitted with pure high quality gnomish stainless steel for its resistance to fire up to 1400 degrees celsius for the fire I hold in me, or I expect I will end up short circuiting eventually."

Siamus laughs softly. He does not make a joke about how else Avrenne might be gnomelike. He is a gentleman. Gentlemen do not call tiny ladies gnomes. "Aye. It would be a shame to see a lady wi' such a fire overheat." His tone suggests it would not be a shame.

The carriage has at some point made a turn, and is now moving steadily downhill. Siamus glances out the window and his flirtation abruptly switches off, as it sometimes does. "Nearly there," he says.

Avrenne's gaze follows his line of sight, noting the scenery closely and there's a pause before she says, "Just between seven and nine minutes, if I have estimated the distances and our travel speed correctly." And it's once again unnecessary to have applied a formula to it for the guess. She could just ask the guy who lives there how long it would take, but that's no fun.

"Clever," Siamus approves, still looking out the window. He flicks a wry look at Avrenne. "Some gentlemen might take amiss a lady working out in her head how much longer she'll have to be in a carriage with them, but why take offense when ye can simply appreciate her math?" His tone is dry, but he doesn't in fact sound offended: just amused.

"Mm. She could be working out how long she'll have to be in a carriage. Or, maybe she's calculating how much longer she has with him all to herself. Maybe she likes to tease a man who has said he's marrying for math," Avrenne says, settling her hands again in her lap as she returns her gaze correctly in front of her, a small curl of a smile peeking through her poise. "Or maybe she simply enjoys the math of it for its own sake." Who can say.

"Do ye tease, Your Grace? I'm surprised at ye." He's regarding her steadily again, smiling. "Of course, if ye wanted your gentleman all to yourself for longer than seven to nine minutes, we could always just stop the carriage a time. But I suspect it's the last o' those reasons."

"Do you really?" Avrenne asks, tilting her head to look at him, and there's something approaching wistful in her expression. "I'd happily spend the rest of the afternoon here, even knowing it cannot go anywhere beyond conversation, because that alone would be worth it to spend it in your company. But, I cannot do that and also see you out on the water, in the daylight, and experience the lighthouse with you, and hear your stories there, and my time here is slowly running out. So I will enjoy the carriage ride while I can, and know that eventually I will be able to call a halt for as long as I might convince you to stay." She smiles slightly, her gaze direct. "And for teasing, well. Surely you didn't expect me to flirt with you in poetry?"

"Your time here," Siamus observes gently, still smiling, "is no' running out. Your weekend is. But I expect it won't be a season or two before ye find my company wears and be glad to see me off to sea again." He casts another look out the window, and then back at Avrenne. "And the peril of being a mathematical mermaid, I fear, is that a naive gentleman cannot tell whether he's being seduced accidentally or deliberately."

"As you know, as a rule, I don't enjoy the game of flirtation," Avrenne says, looking at him evenly, a faint smile on her face. "But, I know that you do. And with the change of our relationship of what is to come, I would like to get to know that part of you, not as what I know of you with others, but what you are like with me, and how I would speak with you in that sort of context. I find myself enjoying finding out that part of who I am with you, to know you and I a little better. And yes, it's deliberate, for the most part." A small shrug to allow for the ambiguity of sometimes not knowing what things will be heard flirtatiously.

"I'm sure you can tell that I don't have practical experience beyond a point, and there are quite a few steps I don't know of the dance beyond the words. But I don't intend to spend my wedding night thinking of Lordaeron," she says and there's a little teasing note to it, but it gentles away as she reaches out a hand to him in a way that suggests it might not be entirely intentional or driven with purpose — she isn't looking at what she's doing, and it comes to rest lightly on his arm. "But I would be just as happy to speak with you on anything. If it’s easier for you at times to play at the game, I will play it with you, but I would be even more pleased if you would like to speak about what you were working on yesterday in the office while I worked on the numbers of the navy. I’ll understand if it’s confidential, or something you’d rather not talk about, but I’m curious about your work, and if it is something I might help you with, I would like to do so."

The mask slips: Siamus's expression goes flat and bleak. It takes him a moment to fix his persona back on again, and he is obliged to look out the window once more while he attempts to reassert it.

The carriage comes to a halt, and when Siamus looks back at Avrenne he is his dry, gleam-eyed self again. He catches her light hand from his arm and lifts it to kiss her fingertips. "I am pleased," he says warmly, "to hear ye don't intend to think of Lordaeron."

The carriage door opens and Siamus shifts from his seat to step out, then turns back to claim Avrenne's hand again and help her down.

Avrenne watches him, holding onto his hand with a light touch as she steps out of the carriage with that composure wrapped around her, adjusting her skirts carefully.

When she's descended, Siamus tucks her hand through the crook of his arm. "The Harbor," he says, and gestures along a quayside road running south; it is a bustling complex of shipyard and docks at least the size of Stormwind Harbor and twice as busy. "And this way" — he turns them away from the commotion — "to the breakwater and Starm Rock."

The arm of stacked stone running out into the water is broader and less steeply-jumbled than the one farther north at the beach. The far, curving end of it seems to point to the lighthouse on its island.

Siamus leads Avrenne down from the quayside road away from the carriage, toward a little hem of coarse, stony gray sand — less inviting than the beach's sand — at the breakwater's base. When they reach the foot of the stones, he pauses. "I apologize," he says quietly. "I'd rather no' speak of it just at the moment." He steps back to usher her up onto the rocks.

Avrenne moves her other hand over his arm, curling her fingers there and shakes her head, a softer look on her face as she looks up at him. "No, please, don't apologize. I'm sorry. You don't ever need to speak of it if you don't wish to, but if you ever do, I will always be ready to listen and hear you," she says gently with a small squeeze of his arm in something like a hug before she slowly drops her hand to turn her attention to the rocks. "So," she says in a cool, controlled voice. "I should not blink today, or I don't think I'll make the return trip back until long after the sun sets."

"There would surely be talk," Siamus agrees solemnly. "We'd best no' chance it. But I promise no' to give ye cause, if it helps."

"I could promise to not use any trigonometry without an instrument out loud at least," Avrenne says and there's something approaching playfulness in it. "To make it easier." She moves forward as though with intent to help herself up onto the rocks, ready to climb as needed with boots and the benefit of the dress made of much sturdier material.

Siamus steps forward with her to offer her a hand up; he does not, this time, take her by the waist and set her on the rocks. "I'll be right behind ye," he assures her.

Avrenne turns her head back to him, eyes flicking down to his hand, and there's a warmer smile at the sight. She sets her hand in his, her other going to her dress to hold it up enough to clear the first rock hurdle, depending on his hand to keep her steady. "Of course. Thank you."

He closes his fingers around hers as she uses his hand for balance. When she's found her footing, he steps up behind her. "The path along is easier to see here," he tells her. "It's a smoother course." He ushers her forward. "You'll be able to see the boat once we round the curve a little farther ahead."

In the light of day, with solid boots on, Avrenne is clearly more comfortable on the rocks, stepping in direct lines with less hesitation, but she doesn't let go of Siamus' hand, and she doesn't move out in front except where she's meant to step up first. "I'll trust in your navigation to see us there, as you have the better vantage point and familiarity," Avrenne says, her eyes on the immediate path in front of her rather than ahead. "Although I realize the rocks, like the dancers at the Remembrance Ball, are hardly a challenge for you compared to threading the Fjord, I do appreciate your expertise."

"Dancers are easier than rocks. So long as ye move wi' purpose and make it clear the lady's in your possession, most will no' be inclined to approach. Rocks, now, they don't care about purpose or possession, I'm afraid. But I do have ye."

"Yes, you do," Avrenne agrees with a warmer note to her voice, her hand tightening slightly on his. "I'm not unused to navigating either on my own, but it's far easier, and much more enjoyable, with you with me." She takes another step and adds, "I will, however, be rather busy in the next few weeks while I thread my own Fjord. The amount of people I must speak with is growing, most of which I must approach on my own, and I won't be able to indulge myself in your company as often as I would like."

"A pity, as I do find it pleasant. But perhaps from time to time my lady might indulge me wi' an opportunity to refresh our acquaintance." He helps her up a next step, his hand firmer, his other hand rising briefly to her waist just long enough to be sure of her balance. "And it's no business of mine, but what manner of meetings are ye so increasingly pressed for? If ye care to say. If no', I'll keep myself to my business."

There's a slight tensing at the touch to her waist, a small breath. "In this case, it is primarily your business," Avrenne says, tilting her head up to him. "I'll be going on ahead to open or unlock the doors as needed for your campaign and the navy, as well as ensure that when you take your seat that you will go in with another three votes with you on the matter, no matter which three they are. So I will speak to Lady Aspenwood, Lord Lysander, Lady Barfield, Lord Amerith, Lord Ellerian, Lord Marchand, Lord Demasco, Lord Tennerow, and several others of the House.

"Beyond that, all that I will be doing that is my business will also be yours, directly or indirectly. I will begin to move the two families away from the resources we will need to get another 2% off the initial 30 ship cost. Opening negotiations with several potential dwarven manufacturing options. Speaking to the current kaldorei diplomat about their shipyards. Starting the gentle turning of the copper market we will need to get another 0.7% off where we are with the numbers for the House. And so on. The sooner I begin, the better the numbers will be for the proposal you will have to show the House.

"And I will be assisting Captain Tyrrell with the building of the WEB, the Warlock's Ethics Bureau, in the few ways I have left to me to do so. There are several practical matters of adjusting the construction of the Slaughtered Lamb to expand it into his vision of what they will do in the future, and they will need a secondary private location that must be seen to, and I know several possible sources. And every practical, realistic numbers of the cost helps turn words into action. So I will try.

"And then I must see Morgauna for her campaign and to ask her for the wedding. Priscilla for her artwork. Lady Spellbond for following up on the disappearance of her son, a warlock who went missing shortly after the news of Count Wishock's death, to support her, if nothing else."

Just a few things to do.

Siamus nods. This sounds like a normal amount of work, or perhaps would if you were also enjoying recreation with roughly thirty-three percent of those people between the work. "Well. As so much of it's to do wi' me, you'll let me know where I can help, aye? As the candidate, I do expect I should show my face in all this, and put in my share. And I'll promise to be on my best behavior."

"I will be certain to give you updates, of my opinions and my advice, of where might be best to consider moving along," Avrenne says, and there's an odd note of relief in her voice. "But I will trust you to do as you will, and I will build around that. You are the one taking the seat, not I. So I'll try to ensure you know where the rocks are and where the waters are a smoother course, but I have faith in your ability to navigate it. At the moment, you've done enough to make these next moves very easy for me. I know who needs to hear what, and the course ahead of me is clear for where I know I'm permitted to go and who will listen to my voice." A pause, and there's a bit of a fluttering of her other hand moving a little along her dress. "And, of course, if you do wish to see me for yourself for any reason during that time, you need only ask. I will always make time for you, and be glad of it."

"Ye sound relieved," says his amused voice behind her shoulder. "Is it my willingness to be involved, or my promise to behave?"

"That you will be willing to help, and accept my help, in partnership," Avrenne answers, looking back at him with a warmer smile, before she returns her attention to her feet. "I am no puppet master. It's not in my nature to force someone to do as I wish, or push them through where I know they should go. It's part of why I can go where I can. My reputation is that I am informed and fair, and that I often appear to have no agenda of my own. I will open the doors, but it is a relief to know you will agree to step through them. That is not always the response I receive, even from those who care for me personally." A brief pause. "And I have every faith in your behavior as a gentleman."

"Ah, well, that makes one o' ye," Siamus says dryly. "But as to doors — that's the why of the whole business, aye? I can't very well marry a lady for the doors she might open in Starmwend to a Kul Tiran wi' the name Fallon and then decline to step through at her advice."

"So you'd think," Avrenne says, her own voice gone dry. "But, my experience has been that even those who befriend me for my political advantage then seem to find that they do not want me to act that way at all, or consider my opinion or approach on a matter that may be different from their own. I don't expect it of you, not given what I know of you so far, but it's still a relief to hear it said. This is what I do, what I offered as a wife, and I'm proud of my work." A longer pause, and a careful tone of her voice. "Would you want me to tell you if there is a bed you should or should not be in for any political reason?"

Siamus arches a brow. "Aye, I suppose it would be best to know. No' that I plan — ye understand that I understand it's a campaign on, and I'm only just betrothed, and I've no intention o' making trouble for either. When I said it was one of ye that had faith, I meant as between you and Ta, who has none at all." He is silent for a moment, helping her to the next rock. "But if there's a bed I ought to keep out of for any reason — any at all, Avrenne, aye? — ye tell me." His tone is gentler. "I'd no' insult my lady wife any more than I'd upset our campaign." Another pause, and then with a note of some bland interest, "Or one I should be in?"

Avrenne gives him another warmer smile, and there's a gentle squeeze of her hand in his. "I told you the only ones that matter to me to not ever be in. Take whatever other lovers you wish, Siamus." She moves her head slightly side to side. "But there will be the occasional case where it will make things more difficult for you, if you do. I will be there, of course, to help you, should you find yourself stranded on the shoals of scandal, and I will sing you free again, but I expect given what I know of you, that you know very well how to avoid those ones yourself.

"I believe that your charm will serve you more in benefit than detraction, but there will be some cases where I'll know where someone will take offense, or where it may present an obstacle for you later down the line. And I will often know which ones have other…potential benefits, for those you have pursued in that way. I would be able to tell you in those cases, if you would want to know if there were other topics of interest you might present to them with that particular connection established.”

"I suppose," he says very, very dryly, "that I should not attempt to seduce the Duchess Aspenwood."

Avrenne laughs, a soft, warm sound of a fingers curling around a hand, and an invitation inherent in it to share in her laughter. "Oh, I don't know. She might find it amusing, and a little surprising that you would make the attempt, if I was already clear on the nature of our marriage. It would not work, you understand," she says, flicking her eyes to him. "But I don't think she has had many who truly gave it a try, especially not after her marriage. We both have that reputation, she and I, of frigidity, and her even more so. Her lack of expression gives people the sense that she has no feelings at all, and that is far from the truth." She shakes her head slightly.

"But, you'd make no inroads with her that way, and she will not like you better for it even if she will not like you worse for it. It would be a waste of your time with her to speak with her in those games. She's not moved at all by sentiment. She's practical. You will get her vote, because when I talk with her again, I will be able to say the exact numbers of your naval plan, that you had them ready, that you will be using third-rate, not first-rate, because it is realistic and appropriate for what we will be able to man. And, like me, that will impress her, and make her inclined to like you and appreciate your opinion going forward in the House. She cannot be seduced, however," Avrenne says, looking carefully out at the water around them, the slightest emphasis on she.

"Aye, and I'd no' make the attempt in serious, I do know enough of the lady. It was only in jest." He pauses. "I will say — allowing that perhaps my experience is unusual — I've found frigid ladies something of a myth, and a man who would declare a lady so more likely to carry the fault in himself. Ladies are no' interchangeable commodities; each has to be cultivated her own way, like a flower. And while wildflowers may run more common, there are rarer hothouse blooms wi' which more care must be taken."

"I expect you know more of the matter than I do. I don't really cultivate any gardens in that way," Avrenne says, looking back at the rocks at her feet. "My reputation as it is of that sort of…coldness serves me well for what I do, for the approach I take." She tips her head up again to look at him, dark eyes serious without a trace of laughter. "And I do trust you, Siamus, for whatever bed you may go or not, that you will see to my reputation and honor as you do, and you would never intentionally harm in any way. If someone does give me insult, I know that you will defend me as your Lady Fallon. I have no concerns there."

"I would defend ye as a lady, Fallon or no. I'd no' have seen the Duchess Esprit insulted in a ballroom or at a harborside any more than I will the Lady Fallon. I will see the Lady Fallon honored, but no' for the sake of the House alone. For her own sake as well. And the tide can take me if I ever dishonor ye myself, aye?"

Avrenne directs a smile at him, something softer in her expression as she looks at him for a long moment in silence, before she turns her gaze away. "Mm." There's a thoughtful pause. "Of insults though: be careful with Lord Ridgewell in the House. He does not like me, and he may very well attempt to…feel out your loyalties to me by a sideways insult. Do as you will according to your conscience and honor, but know that I care absolutely nothing for his opinion, and nothing he can say will bother me in the slightest."

"I'm no' a man who'll have his loyalties tested lightly, Avrenne," says Siamus. His tone is still gentle but there's a warning in it. "And if Ridgewell thinks either to make a target of you or a test of me — for whatever reason — he will learn it, I'm afraid. My conscience and honor have stood on questions of my loyalty in this kingdom for too long to see it trifled wi' further. Whether it's to my liege or my lady, in proof of anything."

"I know. The information is so you know to expect it, to know where the rocks are, and to be ready should he decide to act in such a way. I don't expect you to ever act as you are not. You will have my support, Siamus, without reservation, for whatever you choose to do or say. I simply don't intend to let you go in without the information you might need."

He stops walking, which — since he's holding her hand — obligates her to stop as well, tugged to a halt. "Avrenne," he says mildly.

"Yes?" She turns at the halt.

"Will ye grant me permission to kiss you?"

It's very clear that this is not the question or statement she's expected, that same level of shock at discovering that she was, in fact, mid-betrothal negotiations. She takes in a small breath, blinking up at him for a long pause, a blush across her cheeks that is not even remotely due to the sun or the warmth of the day, and it's clear that after the initial second of surprise, that she's thinking about it — it's not an immediate or spontaneous decision. Things have been weighed, and considered in some practical way. Costs, benefits, long term appraisals and applications. Decision made.

"Yes."

"Good girl," he says. "Thank you."

There's a soft, involuntary sort of sound at 'good girl,' – Avrenne freezes, breathing gone unsteady, and her hands as cool as they were a moment before. It makes her very easy to move.

He steps forward and then, rather than stooping toward her, takes her by the waist again and lifts her lightly to set her on a rock slightly above where he stands, so they are nearly face-to-face. He is very close.

He smiles at her, lifts his hands to cradle her face tenderly, and brushes a thumb across her cheekbone. He slides one hand back, threading his fingers in her hair, and leans in to kiss her.

The first kiss is soft and brief, chaste, a warm pressure of lips. To prepare her, perhaps, or gauge her response, because the second is less chaste, more ardent: He shifts closer, breathes in the scent of her skin, and then his mouth is moving on hers, lingering, the lightest, teasing trace of his tongue against her lips.

And then he lets go of her, steps back once more. He's smiling that faint smile; his eyes are black, his pupils darkly dilated. "Thank you," he says again, with utmost courtesy.

She seems relatively prepared for the first kiss, at least in terms of an awareness of the steps of what is about to happen, tipping her head at the touch of his hand in her hair. Even in the chasteness of it, there's a melting — a yearning leaning forward as though to try to make it last a little longer.

It's the second kiss that makes it obvious that her experience in the matter is much, much less than his; that there is a good chance she's never been kissed in that manner at all. There's an awkwardness to her, an instinctive attempt to respond but a lack of awareness of how, and for a moment, she seems to be entirely unsure what to do with her hands, or where to put them. In the end, though, both hands go up to his shirt to hold on tightly enough that she may leave slight wrinkles behind, her grip only loosening as he pulls away, a slight tremble in her hands.

She looks dazed, lips parted, her breathing rapid as though she's run full speed somewhere, and her hands are still out in the air for a half second longer before she lets them fall slowly. "Oh." Another soft sound deep in her throat. "Yes." Wait, is that the right word? Her voice has that huskier quality to it, a deepening of her accent. Words are difficult, please wait for the reboot.

Siamus waits gravely, patiently for language to process. "I am grateful," he tells her, "for your loyalty."

After a few moments, still waiting for her, he adds, "I'll no' take liberties, Avrenne, ye may be assured. Until they're mine to take, at least. But I'll no' be having a chaste marriage, either, and I do hope we'll enjoy each other for more than just maths."

He steps back courteously and offers his hand to her again. "The boat is nearby, and I give ye my word to be an utmost gentleman, in case ye worry now about going wi' me to the lighthouse."

There's the gathering back of herself, the putting things back in place — although for all of her careful way of reassembling her expression, there's no denying the heat lingering in her cheeks, or the way her eyes still look like too wide dark pools — and listening to him with that focused attention as though the rest of the world has gone a little fuzzy around him and he's the only clear thing.

It's the mention of the boat that finally gets her to look away from him, to remember her location, oh, right, and she nods, setting her hand back into his. "I have no fear of that at all," she says, the sincerity audible, the temperature of her skin giving the truth of it. "I trust you. And I am a woman of my word. Our agreement is for a wedding night and I will not break that contract for any reason. I may wish to give you reason to look forward to it, but I won't try to push you too far." She smiles, as her hand curls a little more around his. "But thank you. For the glimpse of what to look forward to."

"Ah," he says, and smiles, and lifts her hand for a kiss. "Ye say as though I'm no' already counting the days." After a moment he adds dryly, "Well, I'll count them when Ta tells me what the date is."

Ahead, a rowboat has been moored among the rocks, and swings lightly on the water, waiting patiently. A folded blanket and some cushions have been set inside. Siamus leads her toward it. "I can hold her while ye get in," he says. "But I'm afraid there will be some movement while I cast off and get in myself, aye? Ye'll have to bear with. But I'll make it as smooth as I can after that."

Avrenne looks at the size of the boat, the movement of the water, and then how far away the lighthouse is. Oh, boy. There's that give away of her other hand moving to her waist, steadying herself. "Oh, yes, I see." She flicks her gaze up to him, chin tilting up. "I do want you to bear in mind two, no, three things. The first, that I am choosing this, knowing that it will not be a pleasant journey, because it cannot stop me from going where I want to go. The second, that I endure far, far worse for six to seven days any time I travel by sea. And third, that I will recover. It will just take me a little time." That seems promising, if a little ominous. She turns her attention back to the boat. "I'm ready when you are."

He nods.

As he leads her down the rocks toward the boat, he begins to sing under his breath the same song she heard on the beach the night before, that peculiar, foreign lullaby. Again there is the gradual sense of compulsion, some power drawn toward him — or attention, perhaps — and as they approach the boat, the sea slides back. The small craft sits steady on a bar of stony sand, waiting.

Siamus doesn't speak — possibly he can't, he's still singing under his breath — as he helps Avrenne step into the boat and settle on a bench. The boat wobbles slightly, but it is only a slight, uneven grind against the sand and then it stills.

Avrenne's gaze is on Siamus like a steadying, fixed point, that softer look in her eyes as he sings more obvious now in the light of day. She exhales slowly, sits carefully, settling her dress around her, and sets one hand on each side of her on the bench to hold on.

As he goes around the bow of the boat to untie the rope from around the stone where he'd moored it, the sea creeps back up after him; rather than a rush, or a return to the ruffle of waves, though, it seems to slide in a smooth plane, lifting the boat in a gentle, unbroken motion.

When he returns, he stops singing to warn Avrenne, "Steady, now. She'll shift."

As he climbs in to take his own seat on the bench opposite hers, the boat does in fact dip and rock inevitably. He settles, takes off his jacket and folds it over the bench beside him, then rolls up his sleeves. "I'm no' going to make conversation," he warns her a little wryly. "Because I'll be speaking wi' her as much as can be. For your sake."

He readies the oars; the boat has already begun to drift a little. "All right?" he asks her before they move in earnest.

Avrenne's attention is on the water for a moment, as he unties the boat, a soft whispered, "Beautiful," likely barely audible over the sounds of the water.

At the warning, her gaze snaps to a fixed point in the middle of the floor of the boat, and she starts a careful, slow breathing. At each thing, she nods, a controlled up and down motion. "Yes. I won't be able to make much conversation myself, but I'm alright." Her gaze flicks up briefly to his. "I will tell you if I'm not, I promise. If I say nothing, it means I'm fine. Just focused."

He pushes the boat off and out further, swinging it slowly around with an oar against the sandy seabed, then turns to check the lighthouse distance over his shoulder. He settles, facing Avrenne again. "Here we go," he says, and as he leans into the first pull of the oars, he begins to sing again.

It's a different song this time, not the soothing lullaby, though it seems to be in the same language. It's rhythmic: not the vigorous working rhythm of a shanty, but something smooth and airy. It fits the equally smooth sweep-and-pull of the oars, even as the water around the boat settles. It isn't the still, glass sheet of the night before, but nor is it the steady movement of the harbor around them; there is a clear road of gentler, unruffled water between them and the lighthouse, which rises up ahead.

Siamus sings under his breath and rows. His gaze is intent, focused inward; there is that sense of attention gathering to him again, a hush fallen around him as an unknown audience leans in to listen. The channel of gentled water holds steady ahead of them, even as waves rock the harbor to either side.

He is clearly a skilled oarsman (and he has the back and shoulders to prove it); even after the song becomes a ragged sort of chant, his breath coming harder, the gliding rhythm of the oars stays true, and the boat pulls a swift, direct course, as if drawn onward by the lighthouse itself.

There's a soft sigh of relief from Avrenne at the first sign of the steadier water. Her eyes are locked onto the middle of the floor of the boat for only a little longer before she raises them once more to instead fix her gaze on him as the steadying point.

Even with the smoother water, it's clear Avrenne still struggles with the movement of the boat. But, judging from the soft smile that forms on her lips, it's not even remotely as bad as she feared it would be — her grip on the seat goes loose and relaxed. There's still signs of flickers of pain around her eyes after a point, and she grows slightly paler as they go, but nothing worse and nothing more. Her breathing holds steady and calm, in sync with his rowing.

The lighthouse grows ahead of them as the minutes pass. Siamus's song falls entirely silent at last, his focus entirely on muscle and motion, the cycle of his breathing, but the attentive stillness around him holds, and the smooth sea-road they travel doesn't break. The wind skims steadily across the water from the west, but even as it tugs at collars and tousles hair, it doesn't upset the surface of the sea-path.

As they enter the shadow of the lighthouse isle, though, Siamus is obliged to break the rhythm of his rowing, to slow their pace and check their course over his shoulder, check again and adjust their direction, check and adjust. The sea, unattended now, lapses back to its usual pattern of waves and swells.

It isn't for long, at least; he's rowing them around a fringe of coast, making for a narrow beach. When they're close enough, he uses his last oar stroke to drive the boat aground, straight onto the sand; he ships the oars and is out of the boat himself in a single smooth motion to seize the rope at the bow and haul her up farther onto the beach. They've landed.

Avrenne is staring at him with an intensity made much more obvious in the sunlight, as though it's very possible that nothing else exists around her except this one focal point. There's still only just that very slight paleness to her, and nothing more. It takes a moment after she's fully stopped before her hands move, both of them reaching for him in that way that seems unplanned, before she's even started to try to stand.

He's already moving back toward her, reaching his own hand out to help her. "All right?" he asks; he is breathless, his voice a little ragged, but the grip he offers her is firm and steady.

Avrenne stands, steps free of the boat, and moves immediately into him in an impulsive, fervent embrace, holding onto him as though he's the only steady thing there, pressing her face into his shirt. "Incredible." She sounds a little breathless herself. There's some possibility that the word could be interpreted to mean how she feels. She doesn't leave the ambiguity. "You're incredible. Thank you." Another beat and she starts to slowly pull away.

He catches her back before she can, and for a moment there is a strength and urgency in the embrace that suggests it might become something more. He smells of that clean herbal cologne and of salt — and, very faintly, a ghostly trace of whiskey. His shirt is slightly damp — more a soft coolness to it than actual wet — from sea-spray and (it seems likely, after the controlled exertion of that row) perspiration.

After a breath, a soundlessly sighed exhalation, his hold on her eases and he releases her. "Thank you," he says in his turn. "I couldn't hold her so still as before, nor as much, not and row at the same time. It'll be a little while before I can manage it again on the way back. But I expect we've got a little while, aye?" He puts his hands on her shoulders and gives her a searching look. "And you're well?"

Avrenne's arms are at her side by likely sheer force of will as she looks up at him. There's something a little telling in how carefully she isn't moving her head, and that slight paleness to her complexion, but she has a small, warm smile on her face, and some heat still lingering in her eyes.

"I should probably sit down for a moment," she admits, with that thread of a husky note winding through her accent, a lingering breathlessness she's clearly trying to calm. The reasons why she might want to sit down may not be all motion sickness related. "But from the size of the boat, the state of the water, the length of time, I should have been in a state of…" An ominous pause. "And instead, that was hardly worse than standing on a ship in harbor." There's a soft shining to her as her eyes trace his along his face before she drops them down to look somewhere around his chest. "So I am well. Because of you."

"I'm glad," he says, "that I could keep ye so. I wasn't sure."

After another moment, he lets go of her shoulders and steps away, moving past her to the boat. He collects the folded blanket and one of the cushions and carries both a little way up the beach to set them on the sand. "Ye can sit," he suggests. "Until you're ready."

"Thank you," she says again, moving forward with that particular walk, as though she's balancing something on her head that keeps her poised, a fine lady gliding along to a state dinner rather than a woman walking along a beach, sitting with a careful, practiced sort of elegance, with just enough of a wobble that reveals a level of imbalance lingering from the boat ride. She folds her hands over themselves in her lap, returning to that picture pose, looking out over the water.

He goes back to the boat to collect his jacket, shakes it out and folds it over his arm before returning to where she sits. "Are ye cold?" He settles comfortably beside her on the sand and offers the jacket over.

Her hands move in that reaching way, as though she would like to take the jacket — possibly for reasons unrelated to temperature — but she says, honestly, if somewhat ruefully, "Thank you, but I'm comfortable at the moment. The dress is enchanted against cold and water, meant for traveling in the autumn. I may overheat with another layer." Not that some part of her clearly wouldn't be willing to risk it, but practicality wins out in the end.

"I'd no' like to have ye overheat," he assures her gravely, and lays the jacket on the sand beside him. As he does, he flips it open to slip a flask from an inner pocket.

He unscrews the flask, tips it up for a quick swallow, and then screws it closed again and tucks it back into the folded jacket. He settles back on his hands beside Avrenne and watches the sea. The smell of whiskey is more pervasive now.

Avrenne's hands settle back to her lap, and there's that slight flutter of them as she unnecessarily adjusts her dress, the way she seemed before she offered her name. She turns her head to look at him, a faint hint of something vulnerable in her eyes. "Might I offer…that is, would you care for any water as well for a refreshment? I can conjure some, if you would like, though I should warn you it won't be particularly impressive. But it would be cold, and either sparkling or flat. I'm capable of that much, at the least."

"Water?" Siamus seems faintly startled by the prospect. "I — oh. Will it tax ye? Wi' the… magic?" He peers at her, concerned.

"Not unduly," Avrenne answers, which is not the same as not at all, but he already knows that 'none' is never the answer. "We'll be here for a while yet. It will cause a small tremor in my hands for a little while, that's all. It doesn't hurt to conjure it, and it doesn't tire me," she explains, serious and honest. "It just looks…a certain way that draws attention and seems worse than it is. But I would be pleased to make some, if you would like it. Every water by a mage is a little different, because we must hold something in mind when we conjure it. I can only make two kinds, but I can make one or the other."

He weighs it, a line between his brows. At last he says, courteously, "Whichever is less trouble for ye to make, if there's any such difference, would be my preference." He pauses. "Is it — because of the whiskey, that ye ask?"

"No." Avrenne raises her brows. "Only that if you were thirsty, and would like something cool to drink, that I would like to give you that, if I may. You're not obligated, of course, and if you would rather the whiskey, please, don't abstain on my behalf. It doesn't bother me."

"All right." Siamus nods, relaxing. "Well, then, as I said — whichever is less trouble to ye, if it makes a difference, I'd be obliged to ye for a drink. Of water." He smiles ruefully.

Avrenne smiles back before she straightens up a little more, directing her attention out to the water, staring for a moment as she goes still and calm. She raises her left hand into the air and it's as though rather than tracing a sigil, it's like she places the tip of her index finger into a groove, invisible in the air, and then slowly pushes through it, as faint sparks of many colored arcane light flicker around her skin. It's clearly taking significant concentration for her to do it. She completes the sigil, and turns her hand palm up.

There's no instant blink of it, no sudden pop of magic. Instead, there's a smudge, a blurring, and then between a moment and the next, there's a light green glass bottle with a wire twist of a cap, of an old Lordaeron style that one might get from a very nice café, the chill of the glass obvious, as though it has been kept in ice until that moment. The water inside is sparkling, little effervescent bubbles glittering within, and it has a taste to it like the waters of Tirisfal, something coastal to it.

She brings up her other hand to hold onto it carefully, and already the tremor is obvious, but she offers it out him with a warmer smile. "Here. It's what my mother's brother Uncle Fredrick used to bring with us to the beach when I was a child, one of the two I can make. It's easier to think of it here."

Siamus is still for a moment. He sits up at last and reaches for the bottle with both hands, accepting it almost reverently. "Thank you," he says, his dark gaze on her face. "Thank you."

He looks at the bottle in his hands like he's not entirely sure what to do with it.

"You're welcome." Avrenne clasps her hands back together, setting them down in her lap. The fine shake to them makes her dress sleeves flutter slightly, but she's still smiling at him. "A little memory of Lordaeron as it was. The café it came from doesn't exist anymore, obviously, but this little piece does, in my memory," she says and there's a deep, soft nostalgia in her voice.

"I confess," he tells her gravely, "I feel a little reluctant to drink it. A precious souvenir, aye?" He takes a hand from the bottle to reach for one of hers. "Will ye tell me of your uncle? Frederick? Ta said —" He hesitates, uncertain, watching her expression.

There's the faintest flicker when he says he's reluctant to drink it, but the reasoning why restores the smile as she reaches back for him. Avrenne's hand has, as advertised, a tremor running through it — as though caught in an electric current — but she slips her hand in his all the same. There's a gentle, worn grief there on her face, but nothing sharp. "Yes? What did she say? And yes, I can tell you more about him, if you'd like."

"She said" — he clears his throat and squeezes her hand gently — "that your uncles died. In the war. The Second."

"Yes. All three," Avrenne says and it's matter-of-fact, something she's said enough times to have it worn smoother. "Uncle Fredrick died at Blackrock, following Sir Turalyon." She looks down at the glass bottle in his other hand and there's a softer grief there. "Uncle Fredrick was very…adventurous. Brave. Fearless, I thought, as a child at least, though I'm certain that was the eyes of a child looking at an adult and believing them when they said they were not afraid. He taught me how to ride along the waves of the ocean like flying, and would throw me into the air to splash back down into it yelling that I was a little cannonball. He was a bachelor all his life, but he was happy that way, as the younger brother, from what I was told. I hope he was. Happy. He always seemed so to me, but I was young, and I only saw him in the summers at the beach when he would play with us, my sister and I." She blinks repeatedly and clears her throat.

"Ah," says Siamus. "He's the one that gave ye the sea." He lifts her hand and kisses it gently. "A man who died wi' Turalyon at Blackrock was a brave man indeed."

After a moment he adds lightly, a smile in his voice, "And I've heard it said that many men are happy wi' a bachelor's life."

"Mm." Avrenne's fingers twitch with the kiss, as though the current's intensity has briefly jumped, and she seems to be focusing on the bottle still before she says, "I can make another one. The water, I mean. I don't…it's best if I don't conjure more than one or two in a day, because the more I try to make, the worse and longer the tremor will last, but it's not…" A slight movement of her other hand as if she'd gesture with it, but the movement is halted. "You can drink it. It's not the only one I'll ever make for you, should you find it agreeable. You might not like it. Every mage's water tastes different."

He releases her hand to open the bottle carefully. He salutes her with it and then tips it up for a swallow. When he lowers it again, he considers for a moment with narrow-eyed thought, as though he's just sampled a wine. "That's delightful," he says at last. "Something of the sea in it, isn't there? Only drinkable." He has another sip. "Also, fizz." This is said with utmost solemnity, but his dark-eyed gaze is merry.

Avrenne's smile grows bright, a wide grin, and there's a pop and fizz of her laugh, a bright bubble, before she tries to dim it back down a little. But the moment draws attention to her face, the gradual lessening of the paleness from the boat having faded, her color restored to its usual. "Yes. I can't actually tell you what it is that makes it like that. I don't know how it was made, or precisely where the water came from. But that's part of the way the magic of it works. It's just what I remember, what I can pull through with a thought. So, it's exactly as I can recall it, the taste and feel, even the bottle." A pause and there's that touch of something in her voice, an old nostalgic tinted sorrow. "My Uncle David used to say that it was…oh, how did he put it. 'The water just has hiccups.' Something like that. I thought it was a little bit of magic, as a child."

"Well. And now it is magic, aye? By your own hand." He salutes her again, has another swallow, closes the bottle up carefully. His gaze remains on her face. "You are," he tells her, "lovely when you're happy. It's a lucky thing for us I've already promised to behave, or I'm no' sure I would."

Avrenne manages to hold his eyes for a moment more before she drops her gaze to his open collar — mistake, whoops, that's not a helpful thought at all at the moment, and the intake of breath makes it more obvious — and then she looks at the ocean water, a touch more of color to her cheeks than there was a minute ago. "Well. It won't be the only time you see me so," she says softly. "Although, I did…have a question or two about that, well, related to that, on something else you mentioned before, if I might ask."

He raises his eyebrows. "All right, aye." He turns to set the bottle of water on his jacket beside him, and then turns attentively back toward her.

"That flower you mentioned before, to Otto — the star moss, which has blooms that won't wilt so long as there's joy around them. Is that another gift from the Tidemother, like the sea stalk?" Avrenne flicks her gaze back to him at the question.

"No. The star moss? No." He gazes out at the sea again. "It's just — a Kul Tiran flower. Folk tradition. I don't… I'm no' an expert on plants and their magics like that, aye? But it's old… custom."

Avrenne nods. Her hands are still shaking, but her posture is relaxed. "Then, the next question is, would it be possible to get any here? That is, the thought of it occurred to me, that I'm not…a certain type of person, to show such feelings well, and that if you could see the blooming, then when you came back, you would know the truth of it. That I'm happy."

Siamus turns a startled look on her. He studies her face a moment. "D'ye — ah. I suppose… ye might ask Ta? She goes back. She's the one brought sea stalk over. But Avrenne. I can see well enough, I think, when you're happy. Aye? Ye don't need… signals for it. Ye just need… paying attention to."

Avrenne's expression goes softer again, a vulnerable sort of pleased, as though he's said something she doesn't hear often, but wished to hear. "Then, I'm glad of that as well. That you can see it, and would want to look." She's gazing at him a little too long like that, before she gathers herself a little again, and finally turns her attention to the lighthouse, looking up and up and up at it. "I should be well enough to walk around again. If you would introduce me to your lighthouse, I would very much like to see more, and hear another story from you."

He smiles back at her — the ghost of a genuine smile, not the usual inscrutable amusement — and rises to his feet to offer her a hand. "There's a lighthouse keeper. Clerkswell. He'll just be getting up and about now, if he's awake at all — he works over the night, to keep the light up, aye? I'll introduce ye if he's up, and if he's no', we'll be quiet as mice. I do know how ye like to raise a riot, Your Grace, so be mindful."

There it is again — a faint flicker of a blink of her eyes at the title — but it's fleeting and covered by her placing a still shaking hand in his as she stands. "Of course. If he is awake, I will be delighted to make his acquaintance."

He glances down at their linked hands and then up at her face again. "Ye sure you're ready?" he asks, squeezing her fingers lightly. There's real concern in his gaze.

Avrenne's brows raise, her expression already settling back into that cool composure, traces of laughter being carefully and purposefully tucked away. "Yes. It will stop soon, and it doesn't bother me."

He nods slowly. "Someday," he says lightly, and tucks her hand into the crook of his arm, "ye may have to teach me how to tell when you've taken true offense, Your Grace, or I shall suspect myself always."

"Oh. That is easy, actually," Avrenne says, as she tips her head up slightly, curling her arm a little more around his arm than strictly necessary. "I have a tell. It's a rather…unfortunate blushing. I've been told I look as though I have been — well, forgive the imagery — but as though I have been slapped, hard, on both cheeks. Quite red. I can't control that one. If I'm truly upset, really offended, you will know. It's impossible to miss."

He knits his brow down at her. "I would surely no' miss that, and tides take me if I should cause a lady so much offense." He puts his hand over hers and begins to lead her along the beach at a leisurely pace, toward a path that winds up the rocky slope toward the towering… tower above them. "But if the offense is lesser? Will ye tell me? I am willing to be questioned and corrected until we know each other better. I'm no' a man who holds himself wi'out blemish in all things, and I'd no' like to injure a lady unknowing. Especially no' my lady wife."

Avrenne's brows go up again, high enough to cause a faint line there before she lowers them again, and she sets her other hand on his arm again in a way that suggests she's not entirely aware that she's doing it, her eyes on the path in front of her. "I'm not certain I take lesser offense, at least by what I think you mean, as a general rule of my nature. I live in a world of politics and soldiers as a woman with a foreign title. Someone of a delicate nature would have crumbled to dust years ago under that weight. That is not to say that I cannot be injured, but you have never done me any harm in the slightest in our acquaintance.

"If there is ever any doubt, you may always ask me, or mention it, like at the Charity Gala. I will promise you my honesty at all times in that way, to explain where I might have been unclear. Sometimes I think I can tell when you are concerned that you have done so, and I will try to correct the impression I might have made. And I'd like it, if you would do the same, to tell me when I misstep. I would like to be known by you, and know you in turn."

"I'm no' a man inclined to correct a lady lightly," he says dryly. "Nor to take ready offense. But I will be sure to let ye know, if I think it's worth knowing."

Avrenne makes a thoughtful sound. "Did you think you gave an offense, just now? Is that why you asked?"

He glances up at the lighthouse tower, his eyes narrowed in thought. "I asked because I wasn't sure, and I'm no' used to being unsure of a lady." He casts her a wry sidelong look. "Ye have a look about ye sometimes, or a way of switching off what's laughing in ye. I respect the ability and need in a lady of your station and business, but I'd like to be sure it's only ever that, and no' that I'm the reason the lovely laughter goes out."

"Oh." Avrenne smiles slightly, her eyes flicking briefly to him and then back out at the direction they're walking. "Well. You are the reason for the laughter. So, no matter what I might cover it with, when I realize I have lost the refinement, you might be sure that it's still shining there, even if it's shuttered from the view of others. And if it goes out in truth beneath, I will try to tell you and why."

"Thank you," he says gravely. "Both for the laughing, and for the explaining if it's called for."

He ushers her up onto the dune path that spirals up to the tower, a narrow, sandy way that winds among rocks and tall grasses. "Now, there was a light here when Fallon was granted the land and harbor, but it was a fair useless thing, a fire-signal half her height. The harbor was rough itself; when we took the place, we rebuilt the whole of the docks and shipyard as well as building out the breakwaters, and we put up Starm Rock." He gestures up at the whitewashed stone tower. "It was my father oversaw her, and she's never needed shoring nor repair. I was the one had the lights and lenses changed out, but the rest was Admiral Fallon's doing."

Avrenne has that attentive listening of hers, as though she's filing away the details, looking closely at the materials. "She's lovely. Do you recall where the stone to build her was from? I'm just curious," she adds. "I don't know any of the specifics of building a lighthouse." And there it is again, that sense in the air after of yet.

"Quarried off the Westfall coast and carried up by ship. Naturally." He smiles briefly at her before gazing upward again. "The sand in her mortar's local, of course, but there was a barrel o' Starmsong mixed in. For luck."

Avrenne smiles at that, and it's likely just coincidence that the tremor in her hands fades, and fades, and then it's gone. She doesn't seem to take particular notice. "Is it the same stone on the inside as well, or is it only for the exterior?"

"Same all through, plastered inside. Here, ye can see." They've rounded the highest curve of the path and have arrived at a weatherbeaten wooden door, ironbound and painted black. "A moment — I'll see if Clerkswell's about or asleep, aye?" He raises his eyebrows and extricates his arm from her clasp to ease the door open.

Avrenne nods, her hands going back to fold over each other in front of her as she stands there, that cool mask well in place now.

Siamus ducks inside the shadowed interior.

He returns a moment later and holds a finger to his lips with a smile. "Asleep," he says quietly, and opens the door wide to admit Avrenne. He gestures to a closed door on the right. "The keeper's apartment. He's no' stirring, I don't think. Come this way."

Beginning on the left wall, a spiral stair winds up and up against the smooth-plastered interior wall. The air within the lighthouse is cool and slightly damp, salt-rich, and there is a single unlit lantern hanging on a nail on the wall. Most of the light at present is misty sunlight spilling from above.

Avrenne enters, walking carefully and quietly in that manner of hers, and looks up and up, and there's that brightening of her face as she takes in the sight with obvious interest in particular at the spiral stair. "Oh. Look at that."

"Can ye manage a climb?" he asks, smiling.

Avrenne smiles back, one hand going to the skirt of her dress to ready it to not get in her way of her boots. She keeps her voice low and soft. "Yes. I hadn't thought it would be a spiral, for some reason. I think I pictured a ladder, or multiple floors. It's delightful. The math of the angles for the rise of it within the 360 degrees…" Avrenne trails that thought off with a soft murmur to herself.

Siamus laughs quietly. "She's beautiful, isn't she? Outside and in. I'll let ye go first, and I'll be behind, aye?"

"She is," Avrenne agrees, turning to the spiral with that avid interest, moving forward with purpose, and a direct line through the near center of it, looking in particular at the shape of the turning, the way it fits within the lighthouse, and the structure of it, repeatedly glancing down at where she's going and up and up into the light above.

Siamus follows close behind her. His smile is directed entirely at Avrenne herself, and occasionally he lifts a hand to let it hover by her hip, in case she should need steadying. He does not touch her. "At the top we'll come to the watch room first — that's the room just below the lantern room, wi' the windows, for the keeper to mind the weather — and a door that lets onto the parapet, so we can walk out if ye like. There'll be a hell of a wind at the height. The lantern room's above the watch, and we can go up there as well so ye can see the lamp mechanism and the lenses."

"Oh, I would be curious to see the parapet, even with the wind," Avrenne says and looks over her shoulder with that bright glow to her. "I'll admit I am a little impatient to see the mechanism and the lenses, but I'm not in a rush. Just eager to see it up close." She turns back to watch where she's stepping. There's a practiced sort of elegance to her walk, as though she's ascending a grand staircase in front of an invisible audience judging her for her ability to glide gracefully upwards.

"I don't work much with glass in general, but I've always found the concepts around how to project the light fascinating for the math of the focal points of converging lenses in particular. Mostly I only need information for scopes on guns and spyglasses, and the purpose to create the desired convex lenses to enhance the ability to see clearly into the distance, so." Avrenne looks up again. "I don't even know how big I should expect it to be."

"The lamp herself is an eight-day lamp, wi' a tank for oil above, so she only needs refilling once a week or so. The lenses are the impressive part. They're more than 600 prisms, set wi' gypsum plaster in layers into forty-eight brass frames. It's a hive-shaped housing, eight and a half feet high and six feet wide, and the prisms at the top and bottom are precision-cut to refract the light narrowly; the center lenses magnify it. The whole thing rests on a revolving housing powered by weighted clockworks. Clerkswell winds it twice each night." Siamus's enthusiasm is palpable, boyish. "It was a gnome in Ironforge devised it, Franklin Lenswell; ours was the first on the mainland coast."

He pauses and adds modestly, "I'm no' sure Kul Tiras has a lamp so fine. It's the advantage of shared innovation, aye?"

Avrenne half spins in place just to smile back at him, and there's a humming sound as she holds back a laugh of delight, to remain quiet. "Incredible. I can't wait to see it." She spins back, and although she's still careful to keep her walk controlled, graceful, there's an increase in speed all the same lending a literal truth to the words. "Where did you source the glass for the lenses from? I don't deal with that market significantly, but I can remedy that if there's expected replacement or maintenance anticipated over the years."

"For that, ye'd have to talk to Lenswell himself. It's his trade secret. We've a ten-year contract wi' him for maintenance and replacement o' lenses, which came quite reasonable on account of our being the first. A model piece, aye? But I can show ye the contract at the house later, and ye can talk wi' him in Ironforge sometime I'm sure. The man knows his bloody prisms."

Prisms, says Siamus's tone, are very cool. A gnome who knows his prisms is basically an A-list rockstar.

"Oh, even better. I do love to deal with an expert in their field," Avrenne says. "I'll be sure to get the introduction and cultivate that relationship. I wonder if he's a peer of Cranksplat," is a softer mutter to herself. There's even more warmth in her voice as she adds, "I'd be very happy to see the contract. I'm sure it's lovely. A model piece and established maintenance and replacement is very clever. And the long term benefits of being able to show proof of concept are especially important for the advancement of the science behind it."

Siamus laughs. It is a laugh of pure, delighted ebullience: This dame gets it. "I'll be pleased to introduce ye, and I'm sure he'll be equally glad to meet the lovely Lady Fallon."

Just above, the stairs let onto a landing; the daylight is stronger here. "Now we've come to the watch room," he tells Avrenne. "Ye can have a look at the view, and from there we can go up to the lantern room if ye like before coming back to the parapet."

There's that humming sound again as she looks up at Siamus. "I would like that, to see the lantern room sooner. I'll be a little impatient today," she says and there's a playful sound to it.

He raises his eyebrows, smiling at her. "Well, that's the pair of us. We'll try no' to lead one another astray, aye?" He ushers her up.

The landing above is a circular room offering a glorious 360-degree view from an encompassing band of curving windows. There is a table and a pair of chairs; a tiny oil burner on the table holds a battered kettle. Mostly it's the view.

Avrenne turns in place slowly, and it's clear that while she's enjoying the view, it lacks that same level of excitement for the technology of the lantern. "Oh, we are rather high up already, aren't we?" There's interest there, of someone who enjoys heights and views from such places.

"No' all the way yet. Let's show ye the lantern and the lens-housing, and then we can enjoy the view at leisure." He smiles at her and ushers her toward another spiral stair set against the windows, this one a narrow iron spiral.

Avrenne follows, moving with that same careful poise up the stairs as though the Russian judge is watching. Waiting. Looking for any reason to dock a point.

It's a 9.7 from the Russian judge. It's a 10 from Siamus, who may not be using the same scoring criteria.

The room they enter smells more distinctly fishy than the clean, marine scent of elsewhere, courtesy of a brass eight-day tank of thresher oil. Vents in the eaves of the place — narrow slots above the glass walls and below the conical roof — alleviate some of the worst of it, as the sea wind occasionally mutters and whistles its way through. These can be shuttered with steel in case of Weather, and the roof itself is reinforced with girders of some metal that resembles steel but with a brighter, bluish sheen.

At the center of the room is the massive lens housing set around the lamp. Even in daylight with the lamp currently unlit it is dazzling to gaze at directly, as it fractures and refracts sunlight to brilliant kaleidoscope effect.

"Oh, look at you," Avrenne says, that sound of almost reverent delight, her eyes on the lamp with that bright attentiveness, shining with her own sort of brilliance as her eyes rapidly move along the edges of the glass, as though mentally tracing lines and angles. She steps forward, clasping her hands together in a way that suggests it may be more because she's trying to ensure she doesn't reach out and touch anything.

Siamus steps up close behind her and lays a hand on her shoulder absently, the companionable familiarity of shared enthusiasm. "Ye can touch her if ye like, only mind the prism-edges. The brass housing is safe enough. She's a beautiful lass, aye?"

"I've never seen anything like her before," Avrenne says, and she seems acutely aware of him there at her shoulder, moving her other hand up slowly to reach for the edge of the lantern, fingertips barely skimming along, very mindful to not touch anywhere near the prisms, and he can hear her murmuring very quietly to herself the overall dimensions he mentioned of the height and width of the lantern before she goes quiet again. Math is being done internally.

Siamus watches Avrenne do internal math, wearing that slight, ironic smile again. "I have," he says. "In fact, I believe I saw another no' so long ago. I've a pair of precise and lovely ladies now, and I fear she's no' the lovelier of the two."

Avrenne keeps her hand lightly on the edge of the lantern, gently skimming along the brass almost more just above it than along it, her smile unchanged, neither brighter or dimmer than it was a moment before. "Thank you for introducing us," she says, her eyes roaming still along the curves of the prisms, heedless of the dazzle of the light of it.

"It's my pleasure to," he says, softly serious. "And I'll hope ye don't mind if I do flirt wi' my lady wife on occasion, even if it's no' her preference. I find it hard to resist a lady wi' such interests and intelligence. I do hope you'll be as pleased wi' our arrangement as I find myself."

Avrenne turns her attention from the lantern up to Siamus, her hand reaching up for his hand on her shoulder in the same way as she reached for the lantern — a delicate, feather-light touch, fingers barely making any contact at all — and a warmer smile, her eyes on his. "I am extraordinarily pleased, Siamus. I don't mind your flirting with me, and I'm happy that you are interested in doing so, given the nature of our arrangement. I could flirt back if you'd like, except that just now I was a little distracted considering the question of where you might be sourcing the thresher oil and if I could recall all the locations across Azeroth where they produce it in what quantities, and if I knew which one would be lowest overall once I included shipping costs. I think Darkshore, if I have recalled the market fluctuations correctly, but I'd need to know the quantity and regularity of the demand you require, and I may want to check my book. Because it could be possibly be Menethil, in fact, because of transportation…" There's that distracted tone entering her voice again as she trails off.

He laughs at her. "Some from Westfall, in fact — the local economy there needs supporting — and some from Menethil, aye. I'd buy from Darkshore but…." His expression shadows as he trails off for a moment. "Kalimdor product often ships through Theramore, so."

"Well, I can look at my book for Menethil. I might know how to work those two a little better, and keep it local," Avrenne says easily, her hand settling more on his, a soft pressure. "That's particularly important for Westfall. A healthy market benefits everyone in the long run."

His smile warms to life again. "Aye," he says. "I agree." He pauses and then adds thoughtfully, "And for our present purposes, it might do well if word got to Ellerian and Lady Barfield, aye? No' to be too… calculated about it. But useful, as a change we'd make anyway."

"Lord Ellerian, yes, it will be of interest, but Lady Barfield would be more impressed to know that you would have me send the trebuchets to Amberpine Lodge, because they are closer to the hostile orcs there, and I will mention that to her that I am doing so, and why," Avrenne says, her eyes on his. "I will mention it to both, though, when I speak with them. They will want to know about you in that way, of your willingness to work with local infrastructure for a healthy economy to fund the war efforts. It is easy enough to weave into a conversation."

"Easy enough for you, aye," Siamus agrees with a wry, deprecating smile. "I'm no' sure either would give me the hour o' day on my own. If it's no' one reputation o' mine, it's the other."

Avrenne smiles, and leans her head a little closer to Siamus' hand, fingers curling around his. "Maybe not yet. But you have me now. And I will unlock those doors for you. I just need time to get us where we want to go."

"I do have ye now," he agrees. "And I expect you and I will go a very long way together, Lady Blanche. Fallon will go a long way. To what it's meant to be."

Avrenne's smile goes bright, and there's a bit of a too long lingering look in his eyes, before she drops her gaze back down to his chest. "I'm looking forward to that, as well."

He draws his hand carefully from her shoulder, from beneath her hand. "Will ye come down to the parapet now, or d'ye want to continue communing wi' my other lady light? I should advise ye now, in case it affects your decision, that I'm hoping I might kiss ye again, and I'd no' like to make this lady jealous."

Avrenne slowly drops her hand down, clasping them together, as a different sort of smile crosses her features. "Mm. Yes, that does affect the decision," she admits, and flicks her eyes back up to his, dark and intense, and a heat in them enough to hope that if it is circuitry, that it's stainless steel in there. "I'd prefer to go down to the parapet." Maybe she just likes parapets. "And I would very much like you to kiss me again." It's probably not the parapet.

"I am very pleased to hear it," he says with utmost courtesy, and ushers her toward the narrow stair down.

There is a door in the outer wall of the watch room below that lets onto a sturdy iron-railed balcony that circles the lighthouse tower. To the north and east along the cliffs, Fallon House is just visible in the distance; to the south and east, Fallon Harbor's moorings and shipyard are an anthill of activity. To the west is only sea and sky. The sea is a glittering, wind-ruffled plain of deep, gemstone blue, the waves gilded by the afternoon sun.

At this height the wind buffets them, seizing the door from Siamus's hand to snatch it wide open, and then slamming it shut again when he closes it behind them. He laughs and says, "Shhh, shh shh," and as though it were a fractious child, for a moment the wind does drop, becomes only a shoreline breeze.

Avrenne's own laugh rushes out in a sweep of sound, warm and sweet as a summer evening, the ring of it reaching through the air as though with both hands open in invitation to laugh with her, to be caught up in the same surprised delight.

Before her laughter dies, Siamus steps swiftly to her and seizes her by the waist, pressing her back against the glass of the watch room window to kiss her as though he means to drink in her laughter. His fingers dig into her waist for a moment, his grip strong and possessive, and then he releases her to slide both hands into her hair and tip her head back tenderly, deepening the kiss.

The wind rises to a rush again, and rocks them both firmly into the glass, as if it means to pin them there to the lighthouse wall.

Avrenne's kiss is fairly clumsy, the fumble of someone learning the steps of a dance by doing it, but she is clearly trying to follow his lead, her returning enthusiasm obvious, a pliant melting with an eagerness of seeking something more. Her mouth feels warm, a hint of the fire she holds in her, but her hands are no warmer than they have been — there's not even a flicker of fear in them. She grips onto his back like he's the only steady thing there and she desperately needs him closer.

Siamus is a man who keenly appreciates competence, but there are those occasions when enthusiasm counts above experience, eagerness above skill, and this is one of those. The fingers of one hand tighten in her hair; his other hand trails down the back of her neck, fingertip-tracing her nape, his thumb brushing the corner of her jaw and down the pulse in the side of her throat. The kiss slows and gentles, becomes a lingering series of kisses, a patient gauging of her reactions and responses. (Science!)

For his own part, he responds willingly to her grip on him, pressing closer still. He's a warm and solid shelter from the wind's clutches, and his back and shoulders beneath his shirt are planes of lean muscle carved by decades of agile shipboard labor, of rigging and rowing, of hard combat and athletic leisure.

Avrenne is obviously a woman willing to learn as she goes – there’s nothing passive in her response, although it becomes clearer that she does nothing he doesn’t do first; there’s no improvising, but once he’s introduced a concept, a demonstration of how to touch him this way, the pressure and slide, the push and pull, that she will mimic it back as well, trying to match the pace he sets, responding eagerly to it all. As with the telescope, the awkwardness is fading the longer it goes, the more information and practice she gets, pleased to be taught and eager to learn.

There’s a particular sort of languid tension at the touch of her neck, a needy sound in her throat, and an arching into him. Her pulse is wild and racing, a strong gallop, but it’s palpably not fear, easy to know with her hands on him. She mirrors him with her own exploration, holding one hand against his mid-back, as her right hand slowly and deliberately traces upwards in precise angles of lines across the expanse of his back, taking the fewest amount of paths to cover the maximum surface area in a way that suggests she’s studied the math of him, the way she would touch him if she could, and now she can.

The scent of her skin and hair is stronger this close, that floral sweetness with a sharp green spicy, earthy note floating just below it, perhaps more recognizable as something of the lotus flower, a flower blooming on the water, tied to the earth below, in between both and neither.

Her hair and skin are soft as the well-taken care of a noblewoman, the strands of her hair fine, and the wind and movement of his hands tug more and more free from the braid. Although the planes of her are lean, angular, sharp lines, there’s that layer of softness of someone who is neither soldier or sailor. The illusion of her height and impact from her sense of presence breaks with the physical touch of how slim her neck is, revealing how small her body is against his, fitting neatly into the shelter of him.

When Siamus takes his mouth from hers at last it is to kiss her cheekbone, the corner of her jaw, the side of her throat, warm lips and breath trailing across soft skin. At last he lifts his head to press a kiss to her forehead, and lingers there a moment, breathing in the scent of her skin and hair. His hands drop to her waist again, skim the shape of it lightly, come to rest on her hips.

After a moment he says, "Every time I touch ye I'm surprised again at how small ye are." He inhales again and draws back. "And ye smell so lovely."

There's an audible gasp, a catch of her breath at the kiss of her neck, and it takes a few heartbeats of time before she resumes breathing with a soft exhale of his name, barely audible.

Avrenne's hands drift to his lower back, resting there with a soft pressure, as though she's prepared to let go, but reluctant to do so first. Her expression has gone soft with a blend of satisfaction and still hungry desire. Her eyes are dark, nearly black pools, lips slightly swollen and a darker pink, and there's a light flush across her cheeks like she'd been running. She gazes up at him as though there's nothing there but him, her focus gone narrow to an extreme.

It takes her a second or two to process the words. "Oh. Thank you. I…" There's a distinct sultry quality to her voice now. The hair that has escaped from its confines swirls around her, tendrils of gold catching the light. "Thank you," she repeats. Clearly, word thoughts hard.

That slow, slight smile curves back to life. "Ah," he says softly. "Won't ye be a treat?" He lifts a hand from her hip to brush strands of hair back from her face, slip them behind her ear, and then tip her head to one side so he can bend to kiss her throat again. Lips and then tongue trace a heated path. "And ye like that," he murmurs against her skin. "And I'll learn ye a little at a time, and I think we may find ourselves wi' a most satisfactory arrangement, Your Grace."

Avrenne most definitely likes that. There's a soft sound, and it's for the best he still has both hands on her as she goes briefly unsteady on her feet, swaying into him, eyes closing again. She may not entirely remember exactly where they are anymore.

Siamus catches her weight against him easily, with a laugh. He kisses her throat again and then gently tugs aside the high, ruffled neck of her dress just enough to kiss the base of her throat where it joins her shoulder. The fingers of his other hand skim up her back, tracing the delicate line of her spine.

He lifts his head just enough to say quietly, his lips at her ear, "Tell me to stop, if ye like. I only mean to learn ye a little before the night. Makes it go easier."

Avrenne's hands clench against his back, fingers digging in slightly. It takes her a moment and two sharp intakes of breath before she says, "I like it."

He laughs again, a soft exhalation in her ear. "Good girl. I'll take proper care of ye, aye?"

There's a faint tremble, a soft exhale, as she takes a shaky breath, moving in closer to him in a more purposeful embrace. "I know." It's quiet but there's a thread of heat winding through her accent. "I trust you, Siamus." She's clearly trying to pull some of herself back together, piece by piece to think thoughts. "And I will learn you, too. I promise."

"You will," he assures her, and tips her chin up to kiss her again gently. "But I'm a fair easy man to please, and I find ye pleasing already." She can probably feel his smile against her lips.

"I'd like to ask to loosen your collar, but then again it may be I should stop, aye? What'll ye have?" He draws back to gaze at her gravely.

Avrenne is smiling back, soft and pleased, and she glances down at herself — she has a collar? a dress on? — and he can likely see the sudden water splash of awareness of location again, several blinks as she realizes she is on a parapet, on a lighthouse, there is a lighthouse keeper potentially wandering around; her head turns to glance behind her at the glass, and then back up at Siamus, lips parted and a brief war of desire and practicality indecision before practicality wins out. "I would very much like to do so, but I think…perhaps, this is not the time or place that I should." A very brief pause, and something tentative in her voice. "There is, however, still the matter of a carriage ride back to the house."

For a moment there is that wicked gleam in his dark gaze, and then he nods solemnly and takes a step back. "As it please Your Grace," he says, the smile still in his voice.

He half-turns and gestures out at the view. "And what do ye think of your lighthouse, then?"

Avrenne smiles, moving her hands slowly from his back, and her left hand sliding to his right to hold as she pulls herself back into something resembling the vicinity of composure, but there's still a soft blush to her face, and that warmer glow to her. "I love it here. It's wonderful." She looks to the edge of the parapet, no fear at all in her at the sight of how high up they are.

He smiles at her. "Ye do take to it all like a proper mermaid, Avrenne."

Avrenne seems pleased. "I will be happy here, Siamus."

"I'm glad. I hope ye will be. I've never had much hope to be a fine husband, but so long as my lady wife is content wi' what I can give her, I'll be glad."

Avrenne turns to look at Siamus, and there's that reaching for him, her hand moving as though by its own to touch his cheek. "Why wouldn't you think yourself a fine husband, Siamus? I…" An adjustment midstream, a soft sigh, her expression serious. "I cannot tell you how pleased I am by you. I could not imagine a finer choice for myself for a husband. A man of honor and loyalty, gallant and charming, whose mind for figures and passions for the world I enjoy and admire, whose opinions align with mine in a meeting of minds, who will trust me to take care of what's his, and who will take care of me in turn. You are all that I have needed to find. I don't need you to be anything other than exactly who you are. I have secured my fair share of excellent contracts, but I am very aware that I have signed the best I will ever make."

He exhales, a barely-perceptible loosening of some tension in his shoulders, and then smiles that slight, ironic smile down at her. His gaze doesn't quite align; it's softer, somehow. "I admit I never thought to find myself such an ideal match at such a bargain myself. An excellent contract indeed, wi' a most excellently like-minded lady. I am honored, truly, to hear ye pleased by the match, and I hope to go on wi' pleasing ye. I do mean to honor and keep ye well, and I've no doubt you're a lady I'll be glad to come home to when I do, wi' all your conversation and intellect. I've no doubt Fallon will thrive wi' ye." He pauses. "It means a great deal, aye? That ye respect our customs. That ye've been glad to learn of them. I admit it's more than I expected of any mainland wife."

He searches her face briefly. "But ye know I'll no' stay, aye? That is — ashore, at home. I’ll stay more, if the House seat comes through, but I'm no' a man who stays, Avrenne, and I don't want ye feeling neglected for it. I'll be your husband till my last breath, but I'll sometimes be your husband on the other side of the world and in someone else's bed. It won't mean I don't honor and respect ye, and it won't mean I'll no' come home gladly to you and our children every time."

Avrenne smiles warmly at him, moving her fingertips lightly along his cheek. "I know. I'm not really…" That slight movement of her head. "I've been told I am too independent. I don't need other people the same way that I think some people like to be needed. It doesn't mean I won't be happy to see you, to enjoy having you here, but it's something I want more than something I need. I won't ever despair of you leaving, knowing that you will come back." Her expression grows serious, as she turns more to him, that solemnity not quite covering the light of her, her hair moving around her in bright flashes of gold.

"I need you to know that what you said that night of the gala, about the home of those who fight for us all, that it's what I believe in with all my heart. No matter what happens to you, no matter what choices you make, act with your conscience and honor, and come back.

"Come back scarred, beaten, broken, missing pieces – I will hold your place wherever I am, and I will stand by you no matter what. I will never let the Alliance abandon you. You will never be barred from any shore upon which I stand. I will bring the full force of all that I am against any who dare try to keep you from me." There is something dark and dangerous in those eyes, a sense of something cold before she blinks it back. "I don't ever abandon those who are mine." And she has the scars to prove it. There's a deep, dark intensity to her. "So go as you will wherever you wish, be who you are, and know that I will be here for you, always, shining the light home for you."

He gazes down at her for a long moment, puzzlement in his black gaze, as though he is not a native speaker and is trying to parse the syllables of everything she's just said into words; as he stares, he tilts his head slightly, involuntarily, into her touch.

After a moment, he lifts his hand to catch hers and draw it away from his face; he takes her other hand in his other. Facing her, holding both her hands, he folds to one knee before her. His gaze doesn't leave her face.

Kneeling, still gazing up at her, he lifts one of her hands and then the other to his lips, kissing each in turn. "I am," he tells her, "whatever people may say, the most loyal of men. And I will be your man, by law and by my own fealty both, and I will come back to ye. Wherever I go, and whoever with, you will be my homeward star. And I could no' ask for more in a lady, so I'll count myself the most fortunate of men."

There's a faint flicker of surprise as he kneels, but she watches with that solemn air, something inherently regal in her posture and bearing as she holds steady, but her expression is soft and shining. There's no relief or surprise at his words, only that smile of happiness, a glow of surety. She holds back onto his hands.

"That is all I have ever needed. Not a man who stays, but a man of loyalty and honor who will come back. And it's why I tell you, I only need you to be as you are, and that I will be happy with you, Siamus." And then softer, harder to hear perhaps, "And I will hope you will be happy with me."

He turns one of her hands over to kiss her palm, and rises to his feet again, smiling. "I am already better pleased wi' ye than I could have expected when Ta first mentioned to me a duchess in straits. I confess ye've proved more than I expected at every turn."

Avrenne steps in closer, looking up at him. "Mm. More texture to me for you to enjoy charting now that you are looking closer," she says and there's a playful note to her voice, and that lingering look. But this time, instead of dropping her eyes she asks, "May I kiss you once again, before we go back inside?"

His expression, looking down at her, is solemn, but his eyes glimmer with amusement. "Ye may indeed, and thank ye kindly for asking." He makes no move himself.

Avrenne gently frees her hands from his to set them on his shoulders, likely for balance as much as anything, pressing in very close. There's a glance at his open collar, and then his lips, and there might be math being done in a decision. She rises up on her feet, stretching up against him to her fullest height at the most direct angle to meet his lips — but it won't be enough. She won't quite make it without him bending towards her, and there's something faintly vulnerable in her as she does so, her eyes on his face.

He catches that glance, the calculation happening, and there is the flicker of that smile again; perhaps the continued stillness of the next moment is a calculation of his own. But at the look on her face, his gaze softens and he relents, bending toward her, his hands returning to her hips.

There's a soft sigh as she makes contact, a tightening of her hands on his shoulders, and she kisses him with a demonstration of what she's learned so far, a soft, repeated stroking of her mouth over his, gentle and lingering in the touch.

He makes a low sound of approval and bends closer, more intimately; one hand slides from her hip around to the small of her back, and the other lifts to thread fingers into her loosening braid. That braid is not going to last much longer.

There's a soundless gasp against his lips as his hand settles on her lower back, but she doesn't break the kiss, increasing the pressure of her lips more insistently as her body trembles slightly like a bow being strung tighter as she holds onto him. The braid is an inevitable casualty, the tie eventually slipping off the ends of her hair, caught in the wind and carried off, as the fine strands blow free in full in the particular waves of hair dried in a braid. She doesn't seem to notice it in the slightest.

A kiss on the parapet.

He draws his fingers through the loosened waves and then closes his hand on a fistful of her hair to draw her head back farther, pulling the bow taut. For a moment, with his hand tangled in her hair, her hips pressed close against him, his own answering kiss sure and insistent, it seems that something else might be on the verge — but then he breaks away, draws a sharp breath and takes his hands from her, stepping back. "Your pardon, Your Grace," he says, in that light, ironic tone, and smiles wryly at her.

Avrenne catches her balance with that automatic, practiced sort of elegance, as though her mind is actually a half step behind for a moment, but rapidly figuring out what just happened for what her body is doing. She lowers her arms, and sets her hands in a clasp in front of her, blinking once or twice as reality reasserts itself, still only that gentle flush on her cheeks. "I don't — there's nothing to — " She clears her throat and offers him a small smile, her eyes still warm and inviting. "There's nothing to pardon. Thank you. For the kiss." Her hair is a chaotic shimmering wave of gold around her, soft and flowing, lifted easily by the wind. She turns to look at the door. "Should we return inside then?"

He nods gravely and moves past her to open the door.

The wind, still buffeting, attempts once again to snatch the door from his grip and fling it wide. He says, "Shhh, shh shh," again, like an indulgent parent, and makes a gesture with his free hand; the wind drops obediently. A single, playful eddy of breeze brushes Avrenne's hair back from her cheeks, lifts it from the back of her neck, teases it out like the running of invisible fingers through it. Siamus watches her, black-eyed and smiling.

It makes her laugh again, head tilting up into it exposing more of the line of her throat, the warm sound unfolding around her, soft and floating with a sultry quality in the delight, as she steps forward to pass through the door.

Siamus steps in after her and secures the door behind them as the wind rushes to a gust again.

There is a man standing on the next-to-top step staring at them.

He is a wiry, wizened figure with an unruly grizzled beard and piercing blue eyes. He wears a grey knit watch cap and cabled sweater, and he's holding a tin cup of tea cradled between his hands. He stares blankly at Avrenne.

She startles faintly at the sight of Clerkswell, gathering herself up rapidly into some quick version of composure, hands clasping together tighter.

"Clerkswell." Siamus moves to Avrenne's side and places a light hand on her lower back again. "I hope we didn't trouble ye."

The man knits his brow and shakes his head. "Nahtall, Ar'mahl, sar," he says.

Siamus hesitates. "It's Siamus, Clerkswell."

"Oh, aye." The man nods agreeably. "Sar." His gaze skims Avrenne again with interest. "Ewzabard?"

Siamus clears his throat. "This is the Lady Fallon. Ye'll be seeing her about."

Clerkswell cants his head and squints dubiously at Avrenne. "Saoirse?"

"Not Saoirse. I'm Siamus, this is Avrenne. My lady wife."

"Oh, aye." Clerkswell nods agreeably again. After a moment's consideration, he bows to Avrenne, a little awkwardly over his tea mug. "M'leedy."

As they speak, there's a soft comprehension in Avrenne, her gaze flicking from Clerkswell to Siamus and back, understanding in her eyes. She dips into the appropriate return curtsy, her manner gentle rather than cold. "A delight to make your acquaintance, Mr. Clerkswell."

Clerkswell smiles broadly at her, revealing two missing upper teeth on one side. He makes another slightly wooden bow and comes up the last step to skirt aside so they can descend.

"Thanks kindly, man," Siamus tells him, and ushers Avrenne to the stairs.

"Sar," agrees Clerkswell, and drinks his tea.

As they descend, Siamus says under his breath to Avrenne, "He's only just woken. He's… more easily confused then. He'll remember later on. The man's sharper at the middle watch than most men are at the forenoon. It just… takes him a while, to come out o' the past."

Avrenne nods, her own voice quiet, with that gentle understanding rather than pity. "I understand. I don't doubt his ability. My tailor is…it's not time of day, exactly, for him. He has good days and bad days. But on the bad days, I am my mother, and it is fifteen years ago, or more. He's a brilliant tailor, always, even on the worst days. He's a good man of Lordaeron. He just needs care, and a place he can work without too many…confusing elements. It's why I must return home tomorrow though. My fittings for what he's working on are on Mondays, and it helps him…place the time in the week. When I was gone in Northrend, it was very hard on him. He lost track."

Siamus nods sympathetically. He glances up the stairs now that they've descended further. "I'll have to have a younger fellow in to… help him wi'it, take over eventually. But for now, he can do the keeper's job blindfold, and out here minding the light, it hardly matters what the day or the year is." He glances sidelong at Avrenne wryly. "And today ye got to be my mother, for a change of pace. Rather awkward one at that."

Avrenne shrugs, unbothered, and aims a different, brighter smile at him. "I also got to be introduced as your wife today. So I'll take the sweetness of that in trade for the oddness of the other."

Siamus laughs and touches her back again lightly, an absentminded brush. "It seemed easier to skip ahead wi' the explanation, aye? And true enough, wi' the contract signed and all." He glances sidelong, ruefully. "But it's small wonder he confused himself. Ye don't look a bit like my mother." He pauses. "Also, I apologize for his… language."

There's still a small reaction to the touch, a faint arch, but she laughs with him, a closed mouth humming. "For calling me a 'bird,' was it?" She sounds a little unsure. It's a heavy accent. "I really…I spend a lot of my time around soldiers, Siamus. I'm familiar with the distinction of respect and manners. I've been politely addressed incorrectly, but meant with respect, and I've had my correct title hurled at me like an insult. He clearly meant no offense by anything. I won't judge him for any lack of social polish."

"Aye, 'the bird,'" Siamus affirms, and smiles at her. "Ye'll be among sailors, and while all o' mine are fine lads and mean well, they don't all have the polish. So I thank ye for your grace wi'it, Your Grace." He inclines his head to her.

She looks up at him, brows raising briefly. "'Matter, not form.' Some things are important, but 'polish' for polishing sake isn't one of them." She turns her head to face ahead, her expression falling a little into more composed lines again. "My father called it 'refining.' That it was what I needed, when I arrived in The City. As though I was a gemstone that he needed to…cut pieces away from, and grind down the 'impurities' in order to make me shine properly. How to walk, and how to talk, and how to be the way he believed a lady should be. Not 'Avrenne.' 'A Lady.' I've never shared his opinion on the matter."

"Matter, not form," he agrees, and stoops to press a kiss to her temple. "I prefer my people of substance, no' for show."

"As do I." Avrenne flicks her gaze up at him at the kiss, a warmth shining through the composed lines of her face, and then she drops her eyes back down. "Will you tell me a story for a lighthouse? I really am curious to know another."

"A story for a lighthouse, or of one? Is that the same thing? I'll warn ye I know stories of lighthouses, but they're tragic, e'ery one. The lighthouse is a fair lady and a sailor's savior, but she's also a defiance of the sea, aye? Which is well and proper, mind: The sea wants your courage and your skill, as I said, and there's no mercy in her, and we survive by defiance when it's her due. But she's a lady jealous o' what's hers, and she will battle back, and I believe it's why so many lighthouse tales are tragedies, and so many lighthouses haunted."

"Which kind would you rather tell me today?" Avrenne asks, tilting her head a little up again at the chin. "I'm not one to shy away from the tragic, as a rule. But whichever one is easier for you to tell today is the one I will want to hear most."

"Ah, there's no kind of story difficult for me to tell, so long as the listener is willing." He smiles down at her. "Now, there's a lighthouse — there was — off the northwestern point of Drustvar, called the Waypoint Light. She was named in part for the Waycrests, the family that governs Drustvar, and ye've never heard of a place so ill-fated."

Avrenne nods, listening with that solemn attention of hers.

"When she was being built, they'd no sooner finished her than she was struck by lightning — for the first time — and burned. So they rebuilt her of stone. Her first keeper was a man called Mardon. He'd no' been there half a year when the light went out.

"They sent people out to learn why" — Siamus pauses to open the outer door for her, to exit onto the sandy dune path again — "and found the place deserted, the door standing open. It looked to have been left in a hurry — there was still a half-eaten supper on the table. But no sign of the man.

"They found the keeper's logbook, and the last entry in it, done in haste, said that a ship wi' a broken mast had come close by in the storm, signaling distress, so he was rowing out to see whether he could pilot her in. The trouble of it was, there'd no' been a storm on the date of the entry, nor anywhere around it. And there was no sign of any ship — no wreck, no one turned up in distress at a harbor nearby, nothing. The man went out to tend a ghost ship, and vanished himself."

Avrenne's hand comes up automatically for an escort as they leave the lighthouse, her attention still clearly on Siamus. There's only the quiet reaction of her brows lifting briefly at the mention of the lack of a storm, but it's curiosity in her expression, rather than skepticism.

Equally automatically, he gives her his arm. "They sent another man out to tend the place. Smythe, I think? By winter, they found he'd run quite mad — claimed Mardon wasn't disappeared at all, was still in the house wi' him causing all manner of torment. They took Smythe back, and before they could replace him, the place was struck wi' lightning again. The roof burned and she had to be repaired again — over what turned out an ugly winter for it. Two ships wrecked on the point in storms wi'out the light there."

There's a soft look of sorrow at the mention of the wrecked ships, and a subtle movement of her hand curling a little more around his arm, but she doesn't interrupt.

Siamus puts his hand over hers again, that absent, possessive gesture. "When they sent out the next keeper, they decided it ought no' be a man on his own, so they sent a fellow called Dearborn out wi' his family — a wife and daughter." He glances down at her to see if she knows where this is going.

"Now, Dearborn's wife was woken one night by an ill feeling, and went out to find the door standing open, and her daughter Amalia no' in her bed. She fetched her husband down from the watch room and they went out to search, and found Amalia — a pretty lass, sixteen or seventeen years old — on the beach, barefoot and in her nightdress. She said she'd been talking wi' a man called Mardon." He arches a brow at her significantly.

"The girl might have been dreaming, walking in her sleep, or it might have been some mischief afoot. Whatever case, her poor mother panicked, and insisted they'd no' stay — so a few days later, Dearborn set out to row his family back to shore." Siamus shakes his head. "They ne'er made it. The boat ran aground, empty, wi' the wife and girl's baggage still aboard, no sign of any o'the family.

"After that, they couldn't find a soul willing to keep the Waypoint watch. She stood empty for months, and local people say that on some storm-nights the light burned on its own, a weird ghost-blue — Mardon's Watch, they called it — and some say that on clear nights ye could see a young maid in a white nightdress walking the shore. But in any event, at the end o' that summer, lightning struck the tower a third time, and they didn't rebuild it. They were already putting up a new light at Candle Rock, and the Waypoint was left to her ghosts."

He tips his head. "Some say the Tidemother took an especial grudge against her because the Waycrests are converts to the mainlander Light faith. Drustvar's got its share o' Light-worshippers, the only one o' the islands that does. Some people say it was to do wi' witchcraft, that there was a hex on the place or some such — they're odd about witchcraft in Drustvar. And some people say ye may call it witchcraft if ye like, but it's on account of the old Drust roots o' the place, that Waypoint was built on an old Drust ritual site." He shrugs. "I couldn't tell ye myself, but I will tell ye I'd be just as mindful of the lights off the west edge of Drustvar as I would the shoals."

There's that longer pause after he's finished the story, as though waiting to be sure, and then a thoughtful sound. "Do you know if anyone has ever done any investigation to temporal anomalies at the site? Quite a few of the most haunted places in the Plaguelands, for example, are where time has been altered. It creates the ghosts there. I ask in part because of the storm that was and was not there. That can happen when time is not a single line. A storm from the past or future that then causes the future."

Siamus glances down at her again, startled. "I don't — no' that I'm aware, no." He studies her a moment and then breaks into a wry smile. "And that's your mainlander showing. We'll talk of ghosts or witchcraft or the Drust, but I don't know that it would occur to a Kul Tiran to ask about 'temporal anomalies,' let alone investigate them. The sea is full of hauntings and strangeness, and sailors are a superstitious lot."

"Oh." Avrenne offers a shy sort of smile back. "Well. The reason I would wonder in particular is that the rumors of the hexing, or even a ritual site, and the lightning…well, if I'm being honest, my first instinct would be to suspect a mage had done something they shouldn't have at some point. We don't have the best record with messing with time and space," she says in a dry voice. "And when we do go too far, the arcane can manifest in particular as lightning, and we can rip holes through the fabric of reality of this plane of existence. So. I wondered. But, I understand that it's my background that suggests the idea, and I'm truly not familiar with how something like the wrath of the Tidemother might manifest, and that I may be looking for explanations where there's a simpler one."

He laughs. "Well, now, I can't tell ye the truth of it one way or the other, only the story, and it's sharp o' ye to think on the angles of it, e'en if it's no' how a Kul Tiran thinks. Maybe because it's no' how. A new idea can be a useful one." He drops his voice conspiratorially. "Don't tell them in Drustvar, though, or they'll see ye hanged for a witch." His tone is dry and unserious.

Avrenne raises her brows. "Well. I…don't expect to ever be in Drustvar, but I will keep that in mind." She moves her other hand over to his arm in an unconscious gesture. "I don't know if it's any consolation to point out that it's very difficult to hang a mage. There are very few things that can hold us, and rope is not one of them. You could wrap me in them and chains and it wouldn't hold me. But, of course, if I have gotten to that point where I need to escape a noose, I have likely already gotten to the point where that sort of technique is moot. Better to avoid it with diplomacy, and I am familiar with keeping my opinions on certain matters to myself."

Siamus laughs again. "Well, that makes one of us, then, and a neat pair we'll be. Ye can woo them all wi' diplomacy and good sense, and where it fails ye'll have a husband to put a fear of the storm in them." His smile is a sardonic, deprecating twist. "Though more likely the other way, I admit, when diplomacy may be called to the storm's aid. But in either case, I'd never worry ye were a lady for the noose, mage or no'."

"Well. There are times when diplomacy and connections are of no use whatsoever," Avrenne says looking out at the water. "I'll never be able to fight the way you can, to go to Northrend and fight this war. The storm that you can bring there is part of what will win this, and all I can do is hope to give you what you need to do it as best as you can. But that is what we each bring, you with your element, and me with mine, and we're stronger together for it."

He turns his gaze outward as well, to contemplate the sea. "Aye. A fine partnership, I expect." His smile takes on a different, softer quality. "Ta will be insufferable."

After a moment the smile fades, and he adds, "The pair of ye can look after each other as well, when I'm north again. It'll be good for her. To have someone else around." He casts a sidelong look down at Avrenne. "Don't tell her I said it, mind."

Avrenne smiles at that, and makes a soft sound that is probably agreement. "It'll be good for me as well. I don't have many close friends, and none who I have not known since I was a child. Even if you had not offered for me, I would have come back solely for her sake, in the hopes that we might be friends in truth. I do truly enjoy her company, and," she gives a soft, exhaling laugh, a little shimmer of light in the air of camaraderie. "It's very rare for anyone to play a good enough game to catch me in it, mostly unaware. She's a delight."

"Oh, aye, ye must watch her for her schemes. She'll lay traps to a purpose, but she'll lay others purely for the laugh. Scheming is her element." He pauses, ruminating on the water again. Eventually he says carefully, "There's more to it, but I don't believe I ought to tell ye. You can ask her, aye? She'll know what I mean. Tell her if you're to be family now, ye may as well know it."

"Does it have anything to do with why if I need an assassin in the future that I should speak to her?" Avrenne asks, her voice a little quieter.

Siamus drops a startled glance to her. "Did I tell ye that? Ah, ye see, there I am talking too plain and wi'out thinking again. She'd assassinate me." He pauses, clarifies: "Ta's no' an assassin. Just to make clear. But aye, ye'd better ask her. And ye can tell her I raised it — it makes her more likely to answer, and gives her a reason to be cross wi' me, which is her favorite sport."

Avrenne pats Siamus' arm gently. "You're welcome to say anything of it you'd like. But, I'm more likely to play it far more subtle and let her come to me, unless you think it has some immediacy to it. I would rather her choose the time and place to show me a piece of herself, because she knows she can trust me, rather than corner her. It just needs time for her to get to know me as well. I will no sooner betray any secret of hers than yours, not for any reason."

He laughs softly. "Ah, a pair o' subtle ladies. I'll find myself in dangerous waters, I expect."

Courteously, he turns her in the direction opposite their initial approach, and begins to escort her down the path to the other side of the little lighthouse island.

Avrenne's hand tightens a little more on his arm, and she shakes her head, her hair flowing in gentle waving lines around her angular face in the movement, as she looks up at him with a soft smile. "No. No water of that nature that I am in will ever be dangerous to you, Siamus."

"A faithful mermaid," he says lightly. "In truth I'd no' doubt either of ye, except in what mischief amuses Ta."

"Well, she's a very clever and intelligent woman masquerading as a frivolous socialite. If she didn't enjoy the game of mischief, she'd have never survived so long in it." Avrenne smiles fondly. "It's probably for the best that we didn't know each other in Lordaeron, in society. I was far more interested in mischief then, because the great game of society was sometimes still a game of frivolity. I was secure in my place, with no particular responsibilities, and the ballroom was a boring place that I tried to make more amusing for my sister and I. But that was a long time ago, and that woman no longer exists." A pause and rueful, self-deprecating sort of sound. "Except on special, single night occasions. And even then, nothing but a ghost of it."

"I believe I met that fair lady," Siamus says. "At the Thenedains', perhaps? And no' a ghost, I think, though she may have felt herself a pale shade of what went before. I found her vivid enough for intrigue, and I daresay we can summon some more color of her yet, wi' time."

Avrenne's expression does something, a brief look of something like grief, before she moves her head enough to look out around them, covering it enough to make it unclear with a soft smile. "Well, I was lucky that you found my conversation charming. I had recalled the mannerisms as best I could, but I lacked the knowledge I once had to lead a conversation in what is imagined to be proper delightful ballroom topics. In the end, I worked with what I had."

"I'll thank ye no' to spoil the pleasure of a number of my ballroom companions by sharing the word, but I don't mind telling ye that 'proper ballroom topics' will lull a man to sleep. I much prefer a vivacious lady who can hold forth on logistics and mathematics."

"Mm." Avrenne tips her chin up slightly, and there's a brief drift of her other hand as though it might go to her waist, but she simply brushes it against the skirt of her dress. "Well, you will get to see me in action more as time goes on. The ballroom is where I do quite a lot of my political work, including connections to various elements of the logistics of the different markets of resources in particular. I do usually avoid dancing though. It's tedious and rarely do the benefits outweigh the drawbacks, and frankly, I've never had the skill of it."

"And I've ne'er had a knack for politicking and business in a ballroom, so if ye manage that side of it, I'll manage the dancing and the charm. Between the pair of us, we'll manage the whole affair."

They have reached the bottom of the downward dune path and are approaching a massive stone that juts up from the earth and at an angle toward the water like a ship's prow. All around the foot of it grows an unfamiliar dune-grass or reed: it has sturdy, reed-like stems, green streaked with red-violet, and many of the stems are topped with a spike-petaled coneflower-like bloom in the same shade of red-violet.

The stone itself wears a brass plaque that is engraved at the top with the name ADMIRAL SIMON AUBREY PARRISH FALLON. There is substantial blank space on the plaque below that inscription.

Avrenne's free hand goes once more to his arm, curling around it. She may not know she's doing it. "Oh," is a soft exhale of sound.

"So," says Siamus quietly, and stops a short distance from the stone. "That's — well. Ye see it. The Admiral's Rock. And the sea stalk."

"It's beautiful," Avrenne says, equally quietly, that solemn, steady air to her as she halts with Siamus.

Siamus takes his arm from her grasp gently and moves forward toward the rock and the reeds. He takes a whalebone-handled penknife from his pocket, unfolds the blade, and looks back at Avrenne. "D'ye have a blossom of choice, Your Grace?"

Avrenne clasps her hands in front of her, looking over the blooms. "I don't really know much about flowers aside from their meanings and how to place them in an arrangement. I suppose I would want one that is healthy and fully blooming. Unless there are different meanings to them, of the choice?"

"No," he says, and offers a fleeting, distracted smile before turning to survey the flowers around him. "Only whether there was one ye like the look of best. But here — we'll take this one. She's only just opened, by the looks of her, and nice and healthy."

He crouches to take hold of the flower carefully by its reedy stem, and cuts it sharply about twelve inches down. He rises with the cut blossom, and trims a length of four or five inches from its stem at the bottom.

He folds his knife again deftly one-handed and tucks it back into his pocket, then steps from the reedy border to where Avrenne stands. He stops before her, very close, and gazes down at her, his dark eyes solemn, no trace of smile in his manner. "This is yours," he says, and offers her the flower.

Avrenne reaches out with both hands for it, her palms forming a gentle cupping around it, and her gaze moving from the flower to his eyes as though pulled by a magnet to hold there as she folds her fingers around it as though he's offered her the world to take care of between her palms. "Thank you." There's that same intensity in her, quieter but a heavy weight to it.

Siamus smiles down at her, the expression still grave. "You are welcome. And this is mine." He shows her the stem-piece he still holds, and then bends to her; with his free hand he takes her chin lightly to tip her face up, and kisses her equally lightly.

There's a soft sigh at the kiss, and that gentle melting into it, her hands still holding onto the bloom.

When Siamus draws back, his face is somber again. "Was there more here ye wished to see or ask? And if no', are ye feeling well enough for the row back?"

Avrenne looks down at the bloom, holding it carefully with one hand as she moves the other to her waist to unfold a part of her dress in the center that looks like a corset — revealing a small pouch like pocket, and she gently, as though it was something fragile, sets the bloom in it. "I am quite well for the row back," she says. "And I think you may be able to go slower, and possibly to the shore, if that is easier. I had much longer than ten minutes, and I will be able to sit again in the carriage."

"Oh," he says — still seriously, but now with that glint back in his eyes — "but I do want ye to be well for the carriage ride." For Reasons, aforementioned.

"Mm." Avrenne smooths back down her dress, and tips her head up to look at Siamus, serious and soft. "I would be pleased to carry more of it to ease your burden if I might do so. But, I will leave the decision to you."

"My lady is considerate," says Siamus lightly, and offers his arm again.

Avrenne places her hand with familiarity, turning her head to look in the direction of the blanket and his jacket. "We mustn't forget to collect your jacket and the rest." A brief pause, and a tone of something apologetic. "The water may be gone though. I never know how long they will stay when they're not with me."

"Ah," he says, with that smile. "Well, best I didn't try to keep it for a souvenir, aye? But ye promised ye can make me more, so."

He leads her down from the little rise where the rock and reeds stand, around a gently-sloping bend in the path down to the beach where they'd landed. The boat is still drawn up on the sand, higher aground than it was previously; the tide is drawing out, leaving a line of weed and shells behind it to show its high mark on the sand. The jacket and blanket remain where they were left, nearby.

And there is the bottle of water, persisting in existing.

Avrenne moves forward in a quick step before she remembers herself, and her face lights up again in surprised delight. "Oh! It's still here. I might have been close enough or…there was enough attention on it to anchor it maybe. The nuances of conjuring are always a little…" She makes that circular pattern in the air with her other hand. "They always eventually disappear, but when can vary significantly. I never know with mine. But this one is still here," she repeats, turning that bright look up at him.

Siamus smiles down at her. "Then special indeed. A souvenir for as long as it will last." He lets go of her to cross to where the items on the beach lie, picks up the blanket to shake sand from it lightly, and carries it and the cushion both back to lay them in the bottom of the boat. He returns to collect his jacket and carefully tucks his sea stem into an inner pocket before bending again to pick up the water bottle.

The bottle is still exactly as cold as it was, that sense that it was pulled fresh from a bucket of ice, and the water inside as fizzy. Magic!

Siamus considers the bottle and glances at Avrenne. "It'll no' disappear in my hand now, will it? I ask to spare myself a shock." He arches an amused brow.

Avrenne makes an amused sound as she shakes her head, her hair moving gently in the motion. "Mine don't. Some mages' do if you finish the water inside. Others you need to finish the water and then stop touching the bottle. Mine are the latter. As long as you have a hand on it, it will remain. Well," she pauses, thinking. "It might not if you were to fall asleep, even if you were still holding it. There's often some level of attention to it that seems to keep the object here. I haven't ever tried with mine though."

Siamus opens the bottle and tips it back to drain it in a few long, smooth swallows. He lowers the empty bottle and regards it for a moment — just in case? — and then stoops to tuck it carefully back in the sand. He straightens and moves to lay his jacket on the forward bench in the boat, checking over his shoulder once or twice at the bottle in the sand. Science.

Avrenne looks at the bottle in the sand, her hands folded over each other in front of her as she crosses over near the boat, and for a moment there's something soft and sorrowful to her, but then a blink — and without real warning beyond that beat of a pause, she suddenly tips her head back and laughs, sweet and clear as a cloudless summer sky, as though in realization of a punchline to a joke long in the telling, her right hand going up to her cheek.

Siamus turns a startled look to her, already smiling himself at the sound of her laughter. "What is it?"

Avrenne's laugh is still in her voice and on her face as she turns to look at him. "I was just realizing…" She shakes her head a little. "Earlier today Isla found some sea glass, as I understand it's called, and I remembered that I used to find some myself, as a child, on the beach." She pauses and there's a wide grin on her face as she gestures back at the bottle. "Green sea glass. And I realized looking at it there, that I must have done the same — left bottles behind, as a child might, and they would have been swept out with the tide, broken, and polished, and I would find them again later in the pieces come back to the shore. A mystery of where the sea glass came from, solved at last."

He laughs too, softly. "Coming back to ye? The sea remembers, and perhaps even returns. But no' without changing a thing, first."

He considers the boat and the waterline. "Bide a moment, aye?"

He bends to take hold of the boat and slide it heavily down the sand to the waterline and into the water until it floats, rocking ever-so-slightly with the ruffling of the wavelets on the sand. He returns to offer Avrenne his hand and lead her out to the boat; as he does, again the water draws back from around it, leaving the boat grounded temporarily in wet sand, surrounded on three sides by the waiting sea.

Avrenne smiles at it, as she uses his hand to balance and step into the boat. She adjusts the skirt of her dress as she sits, setting her hands not to the side of her to grip onto the boat, but instead folded in her lap, posed for a picture rather than preparing to brace herself against something.

Siamus smiles at her. "I will have to have a picture of ye. Maybe no' one so formal, after all, but wi' you like this, wind in your hair."

He steps in to take his place at the bow and adjusts the roll of his sleeves, then readies the oars. He narrows his eyes, scans the waters between them and the mainland, eyes the distances to the breakwater and then to the harbor shore itself. "If I row ye the whole way, ye think you'll be all right?" he verifies. "Because I can take us back to the breakwater, if no'."

"I am certain that I will be well enough to the shore, if you can hold the same or near it as before for so long. I would expect, if you triple the time that, oh." She considers it, moving a hand slightly in a vague motion. "I'll be rather more unsteady on my feet, and I'll want to get out of the light, but I will have both a place to sit and the darker interior in the carriage. I'll recover easily."

Siamus studies her a moment more, and then nods. "To the shore, then. And I'll go as fast as I can, but it'll be a balance between holding the tide and the rowing. Ye let me know if we're moving too slowly or the sea's too rough, aye? And ye will have to let me know; I won't be able to mind ye myself as well as I might, wi' all the other minding I'm doing."

"I will tell you. I promise," Avrenne says, and there's a softer look to her there.

He smiles briefly at her, his manner already a little distracted as the water closes in beneath the boat again and lifts it gently. He brings the vessel around in the water, gauges the shore's distance and his landing point over his shoulder, and then, as he leans into the first stroke of the oars, he begins again to sing.

Avrenne is quiet for the journey, watching him as though he is a steady point to fix her eyes on.

By the time they arrive at the shore, his voice is a hoarse thread, just above a whisper, and his shirt is beginning to cling to his shoulders with perspiration, stray, damp curls of his hair likewise plastered against his forehead and temples. He drives the bow of the boat up onto the sand again, mooring it aground, and then takes a moment to sit and catch his breath before sitting back and shipping the oars. He smiles wryly at Avrenne and sweeps his damp hair back with one hand.

She looks only a little paler than before, but her manner is the same — a soft sweetness rather than stress, smiling at him with an obvious brightness — her eyes on him as though nothing else currently exists. "Incredible," she repeats.

Siamus dips his head in modest acknowledgement, his smile taking on a deprecating curve, and then rises to climb from the boat and offer Avrenne a hand out. "Steady?" he asks, surveying her.

Avrenne reaches up for his hand, stands — there is a slight wobble to it, and an answering determined set to her shoulders as she forces her balance — and steps out of the boat, closer into him for a slower, clearly more purposeful embrace. "Yes, thank you."

Siamus wraps a gentle arm around her waist, a moment's reflexive support or reassurance, but then he releases her and steps courteously away with a glance up the beach slope toward the road where the footman and driver wait by the carriage. He gathers his jacket from the bench of the boat, and checks carefully to see that the sea stem is still tucked away in the inner pocket before stepping back and offering Avrenne his arm. "Shall we?"

Avrenne uses the embrace to pull everything back in — by the time he steps to offer his arm, there is nothing of the laughing woman of the lighthouse in her manner. Cold, composed, collected, a proper duchess and serious lady, as she sets her hand into his arm, squeezing gently. "Yes. Do lead on, Siamus," she says and despite the coolness of her face, her voice is warm and soft.

He draws her up the pebbled sandy verge to the road, attentive of her footing on the uneven ground. The carriage driver has already retaken his seat, and Shine the footman waits at the open carriage door, politely making no facial expression whatsoever.

Siamus pauses at the step up into the carriage to hand Avrenne in first.

Avrenne moves with less elegance than usual, her grip on Siamus' hand tight as she steps up and into the carriage, settling herself carefully. There is not as much a sense of a picture, her posture more determined than graceful, but there's a curve of a smile around her lips and a warmth in her eyes as she looks back at him from the interior.

He regards her for a moment, glances at Shine, and then climbs into the carriage himself, decorously opposite Avrenne.

Shine closes the door, and a moment later there is the slight shift of the footman taking his position at the back of the carriage. Siamus asks Avrenne quietly, "May I join you?" and gestures to the bench beside her.

Avrenne holds out both hands to him, a warm smile on her face, and a light in her eyes, and not a trace of anything cold in her at all now that the only one to see her is him. "Please, do."

He rises, ducking in the low interior, and moves to take a seat next to her. As the carriage begins to roll, he glances down at her, a gleam in his gaze. "And how are ye feeling now, Your Grace?" he inquires.

Avrenne reaches up a hand slowly, something slightly tentative in the motion, to his hair on his forehead to touch it lightly. "I'm feeling as though I would very much like you to loosen my collar, if you still wish to," she says and it's too quiet, too soft to sound playful or confident.

"I do wish to," he tells her, also quietly, and a little solemnly despite that light in his eyes. "So I'm obliged for your permission."

He turns toward her on the bench and lifts his hands to undo the top button of her collar gently. He pauses, watching her face, and skims the side of his finger lightly across the newly-available expanse of her collarbone just within the collar's open edge; the gesture is suggestive of a loosening or brushing-aside of her collar, except the collar is definitely already loose at that juncture and his touch is definitely on her skin rather than the cloth.

Avrenne's eyes flutter closed as her lips part on a sharp, quiet inhale, leaning forward as her hand comes to rest on his shoulder as though she needs it to hold steady.

He undoes a second button, drawing the delicate fabric open wider, and bends his head to press a kiss to one fine wing of her bared collarbone.

Avrenne exhales a soft sound as her head tips back, her hand moving along his shoulder to the back of his neck with the gentlest pressure of encouraging him closer.

He shifts toward her obligingly, even as his fingers nimbly undo a third button, and then he drops one hand to her waist. His thumb describes that curve there against the fabric of her dress again: possibly an absent caress, possibly reexamining her previously-noted corsetless habit of dress.

His lips move along her collarbone, drawing a leisurely trail of kisses toward her shoulder until he meets the border of cloth, and then he lifts his head slightly to nuzzle her neck just beneath her jaw, breathing the scent of her, his own breath warm on her skin. He kisses her there, tastes her with his tongue, and his hand deftly undoes another button. Now he takes his other hand from her waist to fold her open collar back further, tugging a little at its resistance as he tries to draw it wide enough to bare her shoulder.

Avrenne's breathing has gone unsteady, and there's another soft sound at the kiss to her neck, an exhale of his name as her fingers travel up into the hair at the nape of his neck. The blush is back on her face, a warm pink across her cheeks, her pulse wild, and her eyes still closed as she holds onto him.

The dress has no natural stretch to it, and it's exactingly tailored to her, but her shoulders are narrow, and the curve of her shoulder makes an appearance. And only her shoulder — it's clearer with the expanse of skin on display there isn't any sign of any other upper undergarment beneath her dress. The skin exposed isn't anything more than what he's already seen, courtesy of the Thenedain Remembrance Ball, but there's the innate difference between a dress made to be revealing, and a dress undone, and Avrenne allows it.

Siamus does pause to make sure she will allow it, though the presence of his lips at her earlobe and then the delicate outer edge of her ear may have distracted somewhat from the unspoken question. And then, once permission seems implicit, he kisses his way softly down the thread of the pulse in her throat, kisses her collarbone, kisses the bared point of her shoulder. At the same time, his fingers slip a fifth button. The bared expanse of shoulder widens, and is likewise kissed.

There's a soft tremble of an exhale at the kiss of her shoulder, a breathy version of her laugh, as she shifts slightly away and then forward again. "Your beard tickles a little," she murmurs in explanation, and there's a pleased delight in it. "But you feel lovely on my skin." There isn't any shyness in the words or in being revealed, although she's clearly not familiar with what she might be doing in return. It doesn't seem passive, so much as inexperienced — where her hands might go, or what she might do to entice further are uncharted waters.

"Your skin feels lovely," he murmurs against same. "For as stern a lady as ye may seem, Lady Blanche, you're a warm little creature beneath."

Five seems a courteous allowance of buttons — at least for the moment — because his hands return to her waist. If one of them, in passing, happens to brush the soft side curve of one small breast, surely that is an accident.

Accident or no, as his hand grazes her breast, there's an audible gasp, an involuntary arch into the touch, and her eyes snap open. Very uncharted waters.

At her gasp, his grip on her waist tightens and he draws her closer on the carriage bench, even as he bends further to press a kiss to her breastbone, just above the next closed button. It cannot yet be called her cleavage, but it is somewhere at the entrance of that little valley.

One of his hands slides around to the small of her back and pulls her nearer still — if she gets any closer, she will have to sit in his lap (which, let it be said, may not be beyond the bounds of his intentions) — and arching her over the press of his palm and splayed fingers.

She moves willingly forward, bending with a pliant eagerness, as her other arm comes up to hold against the back of his neck. The thought of moving into his lap has clearly not yet occurred to her though, because she doesn't move there, though there is once again that sense of a bow being tightened — a trembling, arching forward as her breath hitches and holds at the kiss to her breastbone, a paused step of uncertainty of where to step next in the dance.

His tongue flickers briefly, hot against that more intimate skin, and the hand still at her waist slides upward to span the side of her ribs instead, his thumb brushing against the outer swell of her breast again. Okay, so perhaps not an accident.

Her breath starts and stops, and there's a louder sound at the touch of her breast — not loud enough to likely be heard by someone outside the carriage, but it's not quiet either.

"You've no' got much in the way of underpinnings," he observes, and though he doesn't lift his head she can surely hear that smile in his voice.

"I…" The pause seems to be the stuttering of gears in her head cranking to life — how would he know that? Oh. There's a hotter flush to her. "The silhouettes. And I don't. It's…the dress is warm already. I don't need…" And she doesn't need much seems to be the implied rest of the sentence, given both her naturally slim figure, and her small bust. The dress fits her as she is, and the fabric around her bust seems reinforced enough for most purposes.

"It is," he assures her, "as delightful as the rest of ye." He lifts his head to meet her gaze; his eyes are inky-black, his pupils darkly dilated, and he wears that gently ironic smile. "I've no' met many noble ladies who go without. But a gentleman does enjoy it. Gives a few less things to do, and a few more things to think about." His smile takes a slow, wicked curve for a moment before softening again. "Also," he tells her, "the shape of ye is lovely. It doesn't call for bindings and artifice. A pleasure to look at ye and know I'm seeing ye."

If not for the coolness of the carriage, and the fact that her dress is partially opened, one might assume the duchess is overheating — there's a warm flush across her face and another soft bloom on her chest, visible against the golden ivory of her skin — her lips parted and eyes widened, dark as a moonless clouded summer night sky. As he speaks her arms pull at him, and there's something almost on her lips, words that rise up, a powerful emotion, and instead of speaking them, she leans forward to try to kiss the smile on his lips.

Siamus leans willingly into the kiss, his lips parting to make leisurely assessment of hers. At the same time — as the lady seems willing — he gives up on the power of suggestion and shifts to slip his arm beneath her, lifting her to arrange her in his lap.

There's a brief sense of surprise at the movement and placing, but it doesn't last more than a heartbeat or two.

Once she's placed, he smooths her skirts courteously over her thighs again, by the expedient of, you know, running a hand down her thigh. With his other arm he gathers her securely against his chest.

He can feel her smile as she settles against him before she returns her attention to attempting to kiss him with more skill than she had that morning — it's slow but insistent, and she seems easier with the leisurely pace, better able to match it and attempt to mirror it back. At the touch of her thigh, there's a small darting of her tongue to touch against his lips in answering stroke, a questioning exploration of her own.

Siamus makes a soft, approving sound, and squeezes her hip gently: good girl.

Positive reinforcement seems to be particularly effective, if what he wanted was for her to try again, slower as she asks the question for Science!, moving against his chest closer to try to press her skin against him more fully, one hand moving back to his hair to stroke gently through the windblown curls.

He tilts his head slightly, a compromise between leaning into the touch of her fingers in his hair and continuing the kiss.

She is fully in control of the kiss, definitely kissing him rather than the other way around; he is not passive, but is clearly patiently reacting to her Science! Ladies must be freely allowed to conduct such important research. She can assess his approval via that hand on her hip, the thoughtful stroke and press of his thumb: It's not quite Morse code, but conveys useful information just as clearly.

He shifts beneath her, perhaps also attempting to accommodate that closer press of bare skin, or perhaps attempting to conceal some less gentlemanly approval from her detection.

It's a mimicry still, her kiss, there's nothing he hasn't demonstrated, but she's clearly trying out the pieces, adjusting as she goes until it's less tentative, less awkward, growing in confidence. There's a growing insistence though in the kiss, and she starts asking for more in unspoken ways as she slips her hand to his open collar, fingertips stroking a question at the skin there. It is very likely she has forgotten exactly where she is or that there's a time limit to how long she has with him like this.

Siamus answers her question by lifting a hand to his own open collar to slip another two buttons, offering to her exploration a broader expanse of warm, sun-bronzed skin, smooth muscle and a firm ridge of collarbone, a light scattering of fine hairs. He shifts to cradle the back of her head, now deepening the kiss purposefully, instructively.

Avrenne's hand is soft, and although not cold, her skin isn't warmed by the fire in her veins as she touches him, gentle strokes as though he's something precious and beloved that she can absorb through her fingertips. There's a deeper relaxation to her as she opens more for him, awaiting a new lesson in how to touch him this way.

He makes that low, soft sound again at the touch of her fingers on his skin, a warm and wordless appreciation, and he breaks their kiss to arch her back over his arm so that he can press his lips again to the bared skin of her breastbone just above the last closed button. His fingers find that button and undo it, too. He draws the bodice of her dress open wider; it falls easily from her shoulder now, and he turns his face against her skin to kiss the exposed inner rise of one breast — and then he lifts his head and glances out the carriage window.

"Ah, hell," he says feelingly.

Fallon Manor is rising ahead of them.

Avrenne's answering sound to the kiss of her breast is his name on a gasp, and an obvious, complete lack of awareness of time and space.

The words land like a dash of cold water. "What — ? " Oh, yes, it's a carriage. Traveling towards a place. Towards people. Reality reasserts itself. "Oh, yes."

Avrenne closes her eyes, and there's a precious second or two of feeling before she opens them and looks down. Well, that is a lot of buttons undone, and she's not in her seat. She carefully slides off him back onto the seat of the carriage, and she clears her throat before she moves her hands to her dress, rebuttoning it with such speed that it's clear that despite the fact that she has a lady's maid, she likely does most of the dressing and undressing herself.

Siamus settles back from her casually and buttons his own shirt — well, the two buttons he'd undone. He drags a hand through his hair, smooths an end of his moustache, and then just as casually shifts to reclaim his seat decorously opposite her. He folds his hands in his lap and regards her with a glint in his gaze.

Avrenne settles her dress around her, but there's still the warm glow to her. She hasn't tucked away the brightness yet, smiling at him with that blush on her face for a little while longer. She glances at the window and then back at him, and her voice is warm and low, that sultry sound to it persisting. "I am glad that it will be you," she says, holding his eyes. "That I will get to be your wife, and have you for a husband. And the laughter is still there, even if it's not for everyone to see." One final warm smile, and then, there it goes.

The wall comes down. It's the facial expression first, as before. Then the shoulders, squared. Her hands fold together, and it's a picture again, a cold, composed duchess of Lordaeron sitting opposite him, except that her hair is still unbound and flowing around her face in gentle, soft waves.

He smiles that slight, ironic curve of a smile. There's a note of conspiracy now in its inscrutability: a sense that he's smiling over some shared secret between them, a warmth intended only for her understanding.

"I'm glad to hear it, Avrenne," he tells her, low-voiced. "Ye honor me. Both wi' the marrying and wi' the lovely laughter." A pause, and then, even softer, "And I'll be very glad to have you, as well." A further pause, just long enough for the entendre to settle, and then he adds decorously, "At my side."

Okay, one more bright smile — and a twist of low, warm laughter like a gentle lapping of a wave against him, that inherent sound in it of a welcoming invitation — and she forces it back, controlling her expression with that cold, iron grip. Ahem, serious duchess. So severe.

Siamus turns his head to gaze mildly out the window. He looks for all the world as if he'd just passed the carriage ride with the Serious Duchess in cordial silence, contemplating the scenery.

If Shine the footman knows or suspects otherwise, there is absolutely no suggestion in his manner when he steps down to open the door moments after the carriage rolls to a halt in the gravel drive.

Siamus steps out first, then turns back courteously to offer Avrenne his hand.

Avrenne takes it, curling her fingers around his, and the practiced elegance is back. The Russian judge is welcome to pass judgment, as she descends carefully down.

Not even the Russian judge can find fault with her poise, though he deducts a tenth of a point on principle. Siamus loses two entire points for releasing her hand immediately to step back and lean into the carriage to collect his nearly-forgotten jacket, which contains the sea stalk's stem in a pocket.

Avrenne waits for him to get the jacket before she raises her hand for an escort back inside, her eyes flicking from the jacket and back up to him.

Siamus drapes the jacket over his arm and turns back to give his other arm to Avrenne's hand. He offers down to her a brief, warm-eyed smile, and then glances up and toward the house and the smile fades to that slight, cynical edge.

Ahead of them, beneath a live oak offset from the edge of the drive, a table has been set on the grass, and around it are arranged several blankets heaped with cushions. On the table is a tea service, accompanied by trays of fruit and small sandwiches, scones both sweet and savory, and little cakes.

Sintha stands near the table in her sunset-colored sundress, talking animatedly with Isla; she cuts off abruptly as the arrivals approach and surveys them with a radiant smile and a shrewd eye. "Oh, gosh, look at you two! You were gone ever-so-long, we thought perhaps you'd eloped." She laughs gaily.

It does not seem likely that anyone actually thought this.

Or at least didn't until that minute, anyway. Some of them might be wondering at least now.

Avrenne's people are staring at her.

Finley has stopped halfway through a motion, looking at Avrenne as though someone has hit him hard over the head from behind and he's struggling to make sense of why he's seeing two of her.

Sir Somer has a small smile on his face, although there's something in the look of his eyes as though he might cry, but it's a happy sort of cry. He gives Siamus the sort of manly nod that suggests well done for some reason.

Otto and Isla gasp so close together that it almost sounds in sync. Isla's hands go to her chest as though she's been struck by something wonderful there, while Otto blinks wide-eyed at Avrenne.

Avrenne endures the reactions with that calm surety, standing there as though nothing is odd, and addresses Sintha. "It seems we are just in time for tea," she says with a small smile.

It's Otto in the end who gives the reason for the stares as he says in a shy, wispy voice, "Avrenne? Your hair is down." A pause, a little head tilt. "Are we at home?" There's a sense of someone trying to come to terms with something he knows is a rule, and making the information he's seeing fit it.

Avrenne gives Otto a real smile, a brightness to her as her hair moves gently around her. "Yes. We're at home, dear."

Sintha's smile curves upward, that gleaming, catlike Smug. She clasps her hands in front of her and looks from Avrenne to her brother and back again. "You are," she says with a sort of rapturous breathlessness.

Siamus returns Sir Somer's nod, a little bemusedly, and then surveys Finley with the same bemusement. He is missing some context. "Of course ye are," he agrees politely with his sister. He glances down at Avrenne. "Will ye have tea, then?"

Finley's expression grows guarded, a bland, non-expression butler face. He and Shine will need to have a competition. Loser buys the other dinner.

Sir Somer stands up straighter, losing pleased as punch.

"Yes, please," Avrenne says to Siamus, looking back up at him, and her voice is warm even if she's holding onto that composure like a security blanket in the face of scrutiny, still holding onto his arm despite the fact that they've come to a full and complete stop.

Isla claps her hands together. "Oh, Avrenne, how was it? Did you get horribly seasick?" That comes out a little too enthusiastic, but the way she's looking at Siamus is as though she's imagining that he carried her around in his arms while Avrenne recovered, possibly with a hand dramatically over her forehead in a swoon.

"No," Avrenne says. "Tea would be lovely though."

Siamus takes his arm from her grasp gently. "Enjoy, aye? I'll see ye later." He smiles, perhaps as reassurance: It's that same slight, conspiratorial gleam he showed her a few minutes ago in the carriage.

"Shay, you beast, aren't you staying?" Sintha scolds.

Her brother shakes his head as he steps away. "Some matters to see to yet, from this morning."

Avrenne moves her hands into a gentle clasp in front of her as she nods to him, and there's no dimming to her, no change at all in her manner. "Of course."

Isla watches Siamus with that rapture and leans in closer to Sintha to whisper conspiratorially, cupping a hand around her mouth, "Joran never saw her hair down. Not even once."

Finley's jaw clenches but he says nothing to stop Isla's whisperings, his attention back on what he was doing before.

Avrenne steps forward to the party, turning her attention to Sintha, that poise as perfect as ever, ready to make polite conversation. "What sort of tea do we have today, then?"

Sintha is watching Siamus, her gaze a little shadowed. She offers an absent flicker of a smile to Isla's imparted confidence, and then shifts her attention to Avrenne when the other woman speaks. "Oh, gosh, yes, you must have the tea, it's the loveliest stuff, just a little snap of ginger in it for a summer afternoon, awfully refreshing." She pauses again a moment to watch Siamus stroll toward the house and vanish inside, and then turns her full focus back to the group and ushers Avrenne toward the table.

"What did you think of our lighthouse, did Shay bore you miserably with his talk of lenses and whatnot?" She smiles her sly little smile again, but leans toward Avrenne a moment later to offer in a soft murmur, "He's tired, I expect is all."

Avrenne reaches out to touch Sintha's hand with a small smile. "It's alright. I'm sure he is," she says back in the same soft sort of murmur. A little louder, but not by much, "The lighthouse was wonderful. I cannot wait to meet the creator of the lenses. It was utterly fascinating to see in person. A description could not do it justice, and I'll be hoping to charm Mr. Lenswell into at least describing the math of the focal points he's achieved with such reduced mass of the glass. Siamus described the contract he secured for it. Very, very clever." Yeah, she was not bored. There's two of them. Nerds.

Sintha lifts her gaze to the sky in a mild ugh, nerds expression, but her smile remains. "Well, gosh, aren't the pair of you just fish of a school?" She helps herself to a scone. "I did have a look at the tide charts, by the way, and I think we're looking toward the end of June, the twenty-sixth or twenty-seventh?" She looks Avrenne over with bright curiosity. "Did he give you a flower?"

Avrenne lights up like a Lenswell lens, touching a hand to her waist with a gentle, light touch where the blossom of the sea stalk remains safely in its little pouch. "He did, yes."

Sintha's smile takes on a moment's soft sincerity.

Woop no there it goes, moment over. "Well, that's sweet," she says airily. "Shay's awfully superstitious about some things. Come and sit down and tell us all about your adventures." She skims the other woman with a knowing, amused look that suggests she has Suspicions about the reason for Avrenne's undone hair, and that the emphasis on adventures is meaningful.