(2023-10-02) A Brief Homecoming (Rated A)

Details

Author:	Athena
Summary:	After his Expedition in the North to find a sea route to Icecrown, Siamus Fallon returns home with the purpose of beginning his efforts to see another uncharted route: the Stormwind citizenship of the former Alliance members of the Ebon Blade. He has, perhaps surprisingly given her feelings on the undead, the full support of his wife, as well as her on-going admiration and love. Discussion of plot, recent events, the Expedition, as well as adult themed romance and relationship. 32,000-ish words.
Rating:	A for Adults Only 18+

Chain: Siarenne

+ Show additional content warnings

contains death knight discussion (some negative/disgust), explicit sexual content, grief, crying, mathematical puns/jokes, polyamory, pregnancy, brief mention of potential pregnancy loss (no actual loss), brief mention of abusive treatment of a child (past)

The worst of the lunch rush of the Gilded Rose inn and tavern has come and gone by mid-afternoon, leaving the inn with a thrum of ambient conversation noise rather than a roar, and the heat dissipated to slightly uncomfortably warm instead of stifling. There's still a bustle of activity as the servers and occupants make their way on their business. The area designated for arrivals through the hearth stone system is, as usual, free and clear of people, in anticipation of sudden appearances.

Standing not far from it, however, is a duchess of Lordaeron, watching the room with a calm, composed expression, her hands clasped together in front of her, left over right with her wedding ring on display. The dress is a warm, darker orange suited to the season, in an empire waist that hides all evidence of her current state, the material layered silk organza, soft and gauzy, gathered around her shoulders in the suggestion of a jacket with very odd embroidery, the sleeves long and silken. It's not very extravagant, as far as dresses go, but she is clearly a noble woman. Her hair has been gathered up into a chignon, revealing small gold earrings, and a necklace of zandalari gold and jade.

A hearth portal shimmers to life, and a man in an Alliance naval officer's uniform is suddenly standing there. He has the wind-tousled look of travel, and is carrying a duffel bag slung at one shoulder.

He stands for a moment to get his bearings, then sweeps the inn room with a look and starts to move; when he spots the woman in the autumn-orange gown standing nearby, he halts again, and his dark eyes light warmly. He changes course to go to her instead.

"Your Grace."

She isn't facing him, but despite what must be genuine effort to control her face, there are slips in that cool mask, an irrepressible small smile, a lighting of her features at the sound of his voice. She subdues it down as she turns to face him, holding out her hand, palm down to him, closing the distance in several strides.

"Vice Admiral." The warmth in her voice is audible, even if little shows now in her face. There's a searching of his features, like she's recharting it, or looking for some sign of something, perhaps. "Welcome back."

He takes her offered hand lightly, bows over it, lifts it briefly to his lips. "Kind of ye, Your Grace. I'm well pleased to be back." The words and manner are formal, but there is a gleam of sly, warm laughter in his gaze. As he straightens, he holds on to her hand for a lingering moment longer than is correct. "Ye look very well, yourself." His gaze rests a moment on the necklace at her throat; he squeezes her fingers lightly, subtly, and at last releases her hand.

Is it warmer in the inn, or is that the start of a faint blush across her cheeks? "Thank you. As do you." She steps more to his side, that automatic raising of her hand for an escort. "I thought we might walk back together. The weather here has been as delightful as a well aired ballroom, and the turning foliage one might describe as absolutely floral." The tone is cool, polite. The words are an echo of a joke from many months before.

"It would be my joy," he tells her gravely, and offers his arm in gentlemanly answer to her gesture. "My lady knows how partial I am to all things floral. Lovely though the foliage may be, I admit I've most missed the alyssum at home, and have looked forward particularly to seeing it again."

He ushers her out the door of the inn and onto the sunlit cobblestones of the Trade District.

Avrenne, who knows very well that alyssum does not bloom in the fall, replies, "It has been blooming quite nicely in anticipation of your arrival. I do hope you will take some time to enjoy a bouquet of it, perhaps on the table, or for your desk, at your leisure."

He cannot conceal the twitch of a smile at that, but he keeps his gaze now fixed ahead on their course, and his tone is mild when he replies, "Frankly, I would have alyssum over every inch of the house if I could."

He tucks her closer against his side to maneuver around a crowd milling near the fountain. "How have matters been here in my absence? How is construction coming at the harbor? How are the children and Lady Moore?"

Avrenne remains closer than propriety would suggest, leaning more into him as she walks at his pace. "The two ships that were in construction have been completed and blessed, although not entirely as expected. The Lady Blache's efficiency for completion has been increased by another 17% by our calculation after the recent arrival of more experienced hands. Priscilla's Northrend exhibition in the Nexus of Art concludes tonight. Finley shall have the final numbers for me. All but two paintings went to where they were intended.

"There is…" Her lips press together briefly. "Some tension among the children. Daisy is, as expected, not renewing the wardship, and she is leaving the household at the end of the month." Her voice is even, her face composed. Only the way her chin tilts up gives the sense that she might have feelings on it. "Isla is a little upset." Isla has never been a little upset about anything in her life, but #okAvrenne. "And Finley has been quite guarded on his thoughts about it." Unlike Avrenne, Siamus has a better idea about why that is.

"How is the Fleet?" Her voice is already low, personal and directed to him rather than meant to be audible to those they pass, but it softens further at the question.

Siamus falls silent. They pass beneath the arch that leads out to the canals and his face is in shadow for a few steps. When they emerge he says, also quietly, "They're bearing up. As best as can. A brave lot." His tone is weary. After a moment, he says, even more quietly, "There are things in that water, Avrenne." He shakes his head.

And then he changes the subject. "Shall I have a word wi' the children? I'd no' fret about Finley, he's a man now, let him keep his own counsel. Isla, though —" He considers. Is he even qualified to talk to Isla? Probably not. "I'm sure ye have it in hand, mo ghrá." He drops a glance to study her profile. "How are you bearing up? About Daisy? Does it trouble ye?"

There's a flicker around Avrenne's eyes and mouth at the mention of things in the water, her other hand moving to Siamus' arm. But she holds her questions for later.

"It will just be strange, without her. She's family," Avrenne says, her head held straight and high. "But, of course, it is her choice to leave as she wills."

Avrenne waits for them to move a little more away from another couple walking along before she adds, "She has never regarded me as anything more than a…benefactor in a time of need." There, that movement around her eyes, her mouth. "I cannot and will not ask anyone who wants something else to remain with me. I hope that she will be happy. She knows she may always come back, if she changes her mind."

"It's her choice," Siamus agrees; the words are gentle. "Ye've been good to her, mo chroí. Ye got her safe through horrors and made her a home in a new land, and no one else could have done more. You're a natural mother, and ye've been as much a mother to her as anyone could. It may just be that —"

He hesitates. He hesitates for kind of a long time, clearly ruminating on something.

He shakes it off abruptly. "It may be the girl misses her natural mother and hasn't come to terms wi' that. It may be she wants to cut free of all the terrors of the Fall, and make her own life apart. I'll be honest, I'm no' inclined to excuse the lass, because I know it pains ye some and I find it hard to excuse that from anyone. But you're a lady more gracious than I'm known to be." He lays his free hand over hers briefly.

After a moment, he adds, "I may have a word wi' Finley after all." No reason. Just, you know. Check in on the lad, probably.

Avrenne can't raise a single brow, so she raises both. "He will be back later tonight, after the end of the accounting," she informs him. "Tomorrow he intended to remain here, as I understand it. He's made quite a bit of progress, recently, although I'm sure he's not so used to being in the spotlight as a matter of interest to so many now, after the latest Milady Moth."

Siamus's stride catches. "The latest — Tides below, what did she say now?"

"Oh, simply an advertisement for Finley, really." Avrenne makes that little humming sound of a laugh caught back, her lips fighting a wider smile. "A rather delightfully clever bit of it, both announcing his status and giving those who might otherwise not approach him a reason to with a tantalizing potential for gossip, all without making it seem as though it were doing so directly."

Siamus eyes Avrenne. He looks like he wants to look disgruntled, on principle. The best he can manage, at last, is, "Bloody little meddler." He doesn't actually sound all that disgruntled.

Avrenne pats his arm. "It saved me quite a lot of work, really. Very efficient." High praise, from Avrenne. "Finley will get used to it."

He smiles at her, but the expression is a little abstract now. "Remind me how long we have until Demasco expects us?"

"He's expecting us at 1700 at his Elwynn estate, which is thirty minutes by carriage, generally," Avrenne answers. She probably should have moved her hand away, but it is, instead, lightly stroking along his arm as if fascinated by the texture of the cloth, or maybe the man underneath it. She might not be entirely aware she's doing it.

"All right, good. I've some things to discuss wi' ye before we get there, about tonight's business and… tangential to it."

"Very well." Avrenne's brows are up again. "Something you would prefer behind closed doors?" They have only the illusion of a private conversation walking, with the occasional person passing them by, but the townhouse isn't far from where they are, especially at the pace they're walking.

"It's best, aye. Some of it politics and some of it — personal, I suppose." He casts a rueful smile at Avrenne. "No' the sort of personal business I'd like best to be taking to private wi'ye."

Avrenne's warmer smile slips past the mask for a moment before she catches it back. Ahem. Serious duchess. "Yes, well, perhaps later we might discuss that more at length. I have a dress I would like you to examine." Probably the alluded to Disposable Button Dress spoken of in the ancient scrolls past letter. "Business first." The other Fallon motto. She doesn't quicken her own pace, letting Siamus set it, but there is that slight squaring of her shoulders.

Siamus looks briefly distracted by thoughts of Dress Inspection, but is recalled by the other Fallon motto. "Aye," he agrees, perhaps a touch regretfully. "Business first."

The row of townhouses is just ahead; Siamus isn't quite dragging his wife along, conscious of her shorter stride and her Condition, but he's certainly not leading her on a leisurely stroll at this point.

"Would you prefer to freshen up first, or shall I have tea sent to the office directly?"

"Thirty minutes in the carriage, ye say?" Siamus shifts the duffel on his shoulder to lift his watch from his pocket with his free hand and check it. "I'll freshen and dress for dinner first, and then we can have tea in the office before we set out, and continue the conversation as needed on the ride."

"Very well. I shall need to change as well." This is a day dress, after all. One cannot wear a day dress to a night dinner, obviously. The struggle of nobility fashion is real.

He skims her with another look and his smile heats back to life. "It's a lovely gown, though." His gaze lingers a moment on the flow of the skirts beneath the dress's high waist. "The child is still well?" he asks, lower-voiced.

Avrenne's smile makes another appearance, and it's more difficult for her to repress it. Her hand moves on his arm slightly. "Quite well. Everything is proceeding nicely. That was part of my morning errands today." She looks up at him, rather than straight ahead. "I cleared my afternoon, so I might be able to wait at the inn for you. A little indulgence of mine. I wanted to see you a little sooner."

"If I were less a gentleman," he tells her very seriously, "I would kiss ye right now in the street."

That humming sound again, a laugh trapped behind those lips. "Vice Admiral," she says. It probably should have been a scold, but it comes out more like an invitation, a husky note to her voice.

"Your Grace?" he inquires mildly, a sly light in his gaze, and then he glances up the steps to the front door of the Fallon townhouse. "Ah, just in time."

In time for what? In time for him to usher his wife graciously into the house, drop his bag on the floor, and sweep her up into a passionate kiss in the front hallway.

Barbour retreats three steps and feigns an intense and discreet interest in the wallpaper; he was totally not coming to get the luggage, no sir, not yet. Have you ever really thought about this wallpaper?

Siamus is very much not thinking about wallpaper at the moment.

That wallpaper might have lost ancient scrolls in them, who knows. Not Avrenne. She has not even taken notice of Barbour. (Sorry, Barbour.)

She's managed to get both arms up and around Siamus' neck, pressing up on her tippy-toes to be able to better reach him, a hum of a deep, throaty laugh audible. In between smaller, desperate kisses to his face she says, low and warm, "I missed you."

"I missed you," he echoes, his voice husky with sudden fervency, and his hold on her tightens convulsively for a moment, some strong current of emotion running through him. "Bhí mé caillte, mo chroí, my pet, the nights — "

He catches himself and cuts off, puts his face in her hair for a single, deep breath, and reclaims his composure. "Tides, but it's good to see ye," he says, with a forced, dry lightness, as though the urgency of a moment ago was a joke of some kind.

Barbour has tragically been struck deaf and blind by an acute case of butlerly discretion and has observed none of this; he remains transfixed by the wallpaper.

Oh no, hopefully Barbour will recover.

But not for at least a few moments more. She's mostly hidden in the shelter of Siamus, so only he can feel the way her shoulders shake, curling into him and pulling herself closer with all of her very unimpressive upper body strength; only he can feel that hitching of her breath, and the way she presses her face to his chest like she's trying to crush herself into his heart through a more direct route than metaphorical. His name is barely audible, a little whisper against the cloth.

She does know, however, that they're in the foyer. Barbour exists, somewhere, actually very close by, and so do The Children somewhere in the townhouse, and so she does the same thing to conceal the intensity. The shoulders are forced back down, and she straightens out her breathing. It still takes her a second or two to lift her head up enough to look at him with a soft shining smile, and he can see the wetness of her lashes, even as she forces the tears back from the gate.

"Siamus." His name has that sound again, like she's saying something else. "Welcome home, my love." The tone is in steep contrast with her earlier statement, the vast chasm between the public Duchess and Siamus' Avrenne.

"Mo chroí," he says again, and touches his thumb ever-so-softly to her temple, just at the outer corner of her eye, as if to brush away the tears she won't shed. "Your Grace."

He looks past her then. "Barbour," he acknowledges.

Barbour's recovery is miraculous and instantaneous. "My lord," he returns, and bows gravely. "Welcome home. Shall I take the bag?" He's already moving toward the dropped duffel.

"Please," Siamus says. "And will ye have Weils ready a shaving basin and lay out a suit? I need to freshen for dinner. Have Catrin bring tea to the study in – " He considers. "Twenty minutes."

"Very good, milord," Barbour agrees.

At the mention of the shaving basin, Avrenne's hand sneaks around from his neck to stroke along his cheek, as if just looking for an excuse to touch him, her fingertips light like on something precious and beloved on the way back down as she shifts from an active embrace to be at his side in escort instead.

Siamus tips his face briefly into her touch, like a cat accepting pets, before offering his arm to Avrenne. "Barbour," he says, arresting the butler in the act of departure.

The older man turns back. "Aye, sir?"

"Will ye put about that I'll have the souls rung at Fallon Harbor, tomorrow's sunset? Before I go back narth."

Barbour nods heavily. "Yes, sir. Thank ye, sir." He turns to vanish ahead of them down the hall, bearing luggage and news to the rest of the staff.

Avrenne takes Siamus' arm more like she is hugging it to herself than a formal escort, leaning her head against him for a brief moment while they're still stationary, her eyes watching Siamus rather than Barbour, as if arrested on him like a compass pointing helplessly to north.

"The memorial for Brother Eamon is nearly complete," she says, her voice soft and solemn. "The plants were in before the first frost."

He looks down at her and summons a tired smile. "Thank ye, pet," he tells her. "I'll see it tomorrow, if I may. How is Hend bearing up?"

Avrenne sighs, meeting his smile with a soft gaze. "As well as anyone could expect," she answers, sparing both men the revelation of discussion of Feelings. "He speaks very well of Brother Eamon. I am sorry to have not have known him better."

"I'm sorry as well. He was a good man. A gentle soul, but the storm loved him." Siamus's gaze slides away from Avrenne's and for a moment he, too, stares at the wall. Have you ever really looked at these walls?

He shakes off his reverie after a moment, finds his smile again briefly, and escorts Avrenne toward the stairs. "Will ye need more time than that to be ready, yourself? Ye look fresh as the day as it is."

Avrenne's hand moves on his arm, a gentle stroking motion, as she keeps pace with him. "No. Everything is already arranged. I simply need to remove this one and put on the evening gown, change the jewelry. It should not take but a few moments, if you will do me the service of helping with the buttons. There are less than forty," she says, and there is that playful tease in her tone.

"Ah, ye tease," he chides her as they mount the stairs; there's warm laughter in his gaze. "Less than forty buttons? She's barely dressed, the saucy lass." His arm shifts beneath her hand as though he'd draw it away — possibly for saucy purposes of his own — but then a door in the hallway ahead opens and Weils the valet stands there, observing their approach blandly. Siamus recollects his manners.

"Milord, welcome home. Shall I stay?" inquires the valet. He skims a brief glance at Avrenne that suggests he does not expect to be asked to stay.

And he is correct. "No, that's fine," Siamus tells him. "I can see to myself from here, aye?"

Weils nods and steps away from the door. Of Avrenne, he asks, "Shall I send a maid, Your Grace?"

"No, thank you, Weils." Avrenne offers no explanation for why she seems confident that she will get both the dress she's wearing off and the next one on, despite the fact that both are impossible to do so without help as they are both very proper noble lady's dresses, but she's seems to think Weils has likely already done this particular math, for all of the courtesy of the asking to be sure.

Weils bows gravely. The math checks out. He remains in place as Siamus ushers Avrenne ahead of him into the room, and then he closes the door politely behind the pair.

Siamus releases Avrenne's hand to begin unbuttoning his coat, and surveys the room briefly. The bathroom door has been left discreetly ajar, and a curl of steam carries the scent of Siamus's shaving soap. The duffel bag is nowhere in evidence, having been briskly unpacked moments ago; resting on the nightstand on the side of the bed Siamus favors is the portrait-case containing his smiling Avrenne and her armful of sea lavender, newly placed there by a discreet valet.

Avrenne, by long habit born from a game, does the same, eyes flicking around taking in the small changes, breathing in deeply, hands reaching back out for Siamus to slide along his jacket; maybe she intends to help him take it off. She can't begin helping with her own clothes; the buttons for the dress are in the back, a row of a meager ten buttons, flat and covered with the same material as the dress to blend into it.

Her intended dress has already been laid out in preparation for the duchess. It is new, as her dresses are likely to be for the next several months, and of very expensive gabardine, the diagonal rib on the face of it used to guide the placement of hundreds of sequins laid out not unlike the scale of an aquatic creature, changing from a deep, dark navy and slowly changing in gradient to a dark silver at the hem. The material has been tailored to strategically have an over-skirt that flows over the lower abdomen, to create shadows and a shelf above to obscure the nature of any bumps forming. The sleeves are long, the collar very high. The buttons are quite small, and there are twelve of them, a modest amount that shows Mr. Latour's restraint, or possibly Avrenne's own hand in reining him in.

Laid out next to it is an open style jacket with flared bell sleeves, in a blue so dark that it is almost — but not quite — black, trimmed in silver.

Both speak of wealth and status, in cool, composed tones. All that remains is getting the duchess into them.

Siamus shrugs out of his jacket, with either Avrenne's assistance or encouragement, and steps away from her to drape it over the back of a nearby chair. He sets to work on his cuff-buttons, his assessing gaze on the waiting gown. "Tides ha'mercy, Your Grace. Fit for the Lord Admiral herself, that dress."

Avrenne laughs, that warm honey sound, watching him undo his buttons with obvious interest, as she moves closer, reaching up for the shirt buttons. Helping hands. "Mr. Latour has been very pleased with the options now available to him. I was forever selling his creations to find a way to buy him the cloth he needed. He seems very happy." She flicks her gaze up to his. "Thanks to you."

"I'm well glad to hear it. But it's thanks to his good Lady, who looks to her people, and whose husband would see her kept wi' all she pleases." Siamus tilts his chin down to smile at Avrenne warmly, his dark gaze glittering, and then drops his attention to her hands at his shirt-buttons. "Twenty minutes," he muses, and sounds regretful.

"And a whole evening," she adds, smiling back up at him as she works through the buttons in the regular way, moving quickly and efficiently as possible without actually ripping them off. She cannot, as it turns out, sew on a button, though she did try. "I have plans." Oh ho ho. Plans! "They have been properly logged in the ledger. In order."

"In order, ye say?" There's a ripple of suppressed laughter in his voice. "I like a lady wi'a scheme."

Freed from his buttons, he shrugs out of the shirt and turns to lay it over the cast-aside jacket, then turns back to catch her hands and lift them. He kisses the fingers of each in turn before releasing her. "Shall I see to your buttons now, Lady Fallon?"

Avrenne spends that time admiring the Vice Admiral's torso. Maybe she's saying hi to the kraken or thinking of the ledger. Who can say.

At the question, she reluctantly tears her attention away. "Yes, if you would please," she says, and turns obediently in place — and no, she doesn't really need to tip her head to the side to expose the side of her throat more, but she does. For no reason.

Siamus shifts closer behind her, and for a moment lays his hands at her hips as if to adjust her, as if positioning her just so is crucial to the process of unbuttoning.

He doesn't actually move her: just holds her by the hips for a moment. Then he bends and puts his mouth to that exposed line of throat, the soft heat of lips and breath against her skin and then the brush of his tongue. His hands tighten briefly on her hips and he kisses her neck, and then, reluctantly, he straightens away and lifts his hands to her buttons.

He undoes the first three, then bends again to kiss the newly-exposed skin beneath them tenderly, reminiscent of their wedding night. It is only a playful gesture at that memory, though; the rest of the buttons are unfastened gently but deftly and without undue lingering.

She makes a soft contented sound at the first kiss, a touch of a languor in her posture, as if his hands on her hips are keeping her steady after all.

The second kiss gets a little sigh, and the touch of a pleased laugh that he can feel more hear, deep in her chest.

She does, however, work to undo the buttons on her sleeves as he works on the others, and without preamble or hesitation, once the back ones are undone, she slips it off her shoulders. With the lack of tension, the flowing nature of the dress means it falls to the floor gently, into a pile of floof and gauzy layers, leaving a completely naked duchess behind — save for the jade and gold necklace.

Siamus puts his hands lightly on her bare shoulders, then trails his fingers downward across the wings of her shoulderblades, down the arch of her back. His hands come to rest on her bare hips, and then he slides one warm, lightly-callused palm around to splay it on her belly. He bends his head to kiss the peak of her shoulder, lifts his other hand from her hip to slip a finger beneath the chain of the necklace and stroke the place where the chain had kissed her neck.

"I missed ye," he says, and then draws reluctantly away; his hand lingers last for a moment on her abdomen. "Let me shave and then I'll see about buttoning ye into the next, aye?"

Avrenne is clearly affected by the touches, her breathing going more shallow, and quieter, as if she is attempting to hold something back even as she leans into him, with small shivers caught in a tension of holding still.

He might notice the difference in her body already. What had once been a smooth, flat — if soft, and not well muscled — expanse of her slim form, is now a sloped curve; small though it still is, on the even smaller duchess it is noticeable, a bump of her body that her dresses now are built to conceal.

Her hand moves towards his own retreating one, but she halts it from anything more than a touch of her fingers on his. "Oh, yes." The words come out steady, but low, and breathy, and the phrasing is questionable for exactly what she's agreeing to. The woman has been refined and made into a being of poise and control, however, and so she exhales, and reaches up her hands to continue the steps of the dance of readying herself for dinner, rather than another more intimate sort of waltz.

Siamus vanishes into the steamy warmth of the bathroom.

He isn't gone long; after an efficient lapse of time, he emerges, still bare chested but with a towel draped around his shoulders, blotting at the newly-neatened edge of his beard with one corner of the cloth. His hair has been raked back damply, and is even now settling into a raffish tumble of waves. He smells warm and crisply of vetiver and sea salt.

Avrenne has already shifted into the dress with its open back ready to be buttoned, seated at her small vanity table, carefully but quickly placing the silver pearl drop earrings into place, two silver pins with small bluish pearls now accenting the chignon. As he emerges, she inhales visibly, as if she can tell he's there without even looking, just by the scent. Pregnancy bloodhound.

Siamus crosses to her to drop a kiss to her ear and cast a sly look at her in her mirror. "I may as well just go like this. Demasco will pay me no mind, outshone as I'll be by Your Grace." He straightens to contemplate the buttons.

"Perhaps, but then I will be caught simply staring at you, paying no mind at all to Lord Demasco," she teases back.

These are deceptively delicate buttons — for all of their small, discreet nature, they're tough, meant to hold together the heavier material, sewn on with a thick thread. Mr. Latour was, apparently, taking no chances this time. The dress is very well fitted, and stiff. It might not be particularly comfortable to wear, but the duchess shows no notice of it.

Siamus brushes another kiss across the edge of her ear, and then sets about the business of buttoning.

When he has seen the Duchess gallantly into her gown, he manages the gentlemanly business of dressing for dinner himself with casual efficiency.

Catrin is just moving down the hall with the tea trolley when the Fallons, Lord and Lady, descend for the study, and she pauses with a curtsey to let them precede her. Siamus escorts Avrenne to the chairs by the hearth, not the ones at the desk, and waits until she's seated before settling himself. Catrin approaches with the tea service.

Avrenne sits with practiced elegance, folding the dress very carefully around her. She makes it look easy, her back very straight, her hands folding over each other in her lap, left over right, wedding ring on display. Her eyes flick from Catrin to the tea and then to Siamus once more, holding there like a fixed point, and more than a little like she's drinking in the sight of him like he's the real hot cup of fresh tea on a cold day.

Catrin presents Avrenne with a cup of tea, plain. Siamus checks his watch and then slips it back into his waistcoat pocket as the maid pours a cup for him. "Thank ye, Catrin," he says. "Phoebe is well?" He reaches to take the cup she offers.

"Yes, sir," says Catrin, and dips a neat curtsey that manages not to slosh the tea.

Siamus nods and settles back with his teacup. "Ye can leave it," he tells the maid. "We'll manage."

"Yes, sir. Welcome home, sir." Another swift curtsey, and then Catrin glides from the room and closes the doors behind her.

Avrenne holds onto her tea, not actually drinking it. She lets the silence from Catrin's exit hang for just a moment before she prompts, "You said you had something you wished to discuss about tonight's business?" Business Duchess Hat: On.

"Aye." Siamus has a sip of his own tea. "I mean to ask Demasco to draft legislation for me. I want to introduce a bill offering Stormwind citizenship — an appropriate degree of Stormwind citizenship — to Ebon knights of the Alliance. I've interviewed a couple of them on the matter."

Avrenne ordinarily controls her expressions very carefully, and deliberately. Her thoughts are not to be seen, and therefore potentially understood, until she has given them permission to do so.

But not with him. He has a blanket permission, for as much as she might control some by long habit and practice. And so he can see it, the faint surprise, the slight twitch backwards of not quite a flinch so much as an instinctive recoiling at the mention of the undead, and then the wheels beginning to turn rapidly to follow through a line of thought from one point to the inevitable next. "And if they were citizens of Stormwind, then they could be officially drafted into the Alliance army," Avrenne says, that distracted tone in her voice, of someone saying something aloud mostly to herself. She squares off her shoulders, firms up her tone. "I see. What do they have to say for themselves on the matter?"

"In favor," Siamus says. "The ones I've spoken with. They've no objection to serving the Alliance — it's what they want, the fight, they're made for it. One-man armies. But for their service, they deserve the same guarantees as our other loyal fighting men. There's already been some… bad behavior by command in Valiance, trying to throw them away. And these men, the ones I've spoken wi', they were loyal servants of the Alliance in life, and freed of the Lich King's slavery, they'd ask to serve again. But they'd ask some of the same basic protections to which Stormwind’s people are entitled. Some assurance the kingdom will stand by the King's words, aye?"

He pauses, sips tea, leans to set the cup aside. "Did ye know one of Lysander's lads is one of them? — Which does not, mind ye, endear Lysander himself to the cause, as I understand."

Avrenne's lack of real reaction indicates this is not news to her. Her lips form a grim, solid line. "Yes. The way to Lord Lysander for such a sentimental reason would be through Lady Lysander. He has never held Lord Theris in high esteem," she tells him, and that is not approval in her expression, her fingers tighter on the teacup. "But I believe there is nothing he will not do on behalf of his wife, if she were to ask him directly, and if it were to grieve her otherwise. The difficulty will be in having her do so, without doing further harm. She did not take the news of his loss well."

Siamus nods once; Avrenne's lack of surprise seems, in its turn, not to surprise him. If anyone knows these sorts of things, it's Avrenne. "I didn't know him. Lord Theris, that is; I recall the other one, aye? Kyris. And, of course, the lass is a friend of Ta's."

His expression darkens momentarily, a tightening around the eyes and mouth, his gaze drawn briefly distant. He reaches for his teacup again.

"But the two I spoke to were — well, the first was somewhat a coincidence. It was Lord Lysander's girl that first put the notion in Ta's head, I believe, and Ta who carried it to me, but I'd no' thought very far along on it until I invited the Westwind girl to speak of her uncle, and she brought an Ebon knight wi' her. A gentleman, as it happens, late of Lordaeron and the Argents. D'ye know the name Morningdew?"

This, on the other hand, is news. And not the good kind. Avrenne pales so badly that he might wonder if she's going to faint.

She doesn't faint. But her hand goes to her mouth, and those are tears in her eyes, barely halted at the gates, her expression one of horror and pain both.

"No," she says, but it seems to be in answer to something else, because she clearly does know the name. Her voice comes out small, and younger sounding. "Lord Harvey?" That's not his title, at least, not anymore. But it was when she knew him. She presses her hand harder against her mouth.

Siamus's reaction is instant: He's on his feet and then kneeling by Avrenne's chair almost before she's finished speaking the name. He reaches up, offering for her hand, but he neither takes it nor tries to draw it away — only an offer, only there if wanted.

"Ah, pet, forgive me, I should have thought to break it gentler. I'm sorry. He was dear to ye? I'm sorry, mo chroí."

Avrenne grabs for Siamus' hand like a lifeline in a stormy sea, gripping with her limited strength. "I — " Her breath catches, and she takes two quick breaths, and holds it, fighting for composure. "In another life he might have been my husband. Or a friend. We were…" She swallows, her hand holding her tea not as steady as the one in his hand. "His father set him on me for courting. Lord Harvey was kind. And courteous. Obviously uninterested in me," she says, as though the reasons would be apparent. She might be talking to the wrong man for that one, but she continues. "But, determined to make it as painless a procedure as possible, knowing how that marriage market works."

There's twitches of a ghost of a smile, but the tears build up higher, and finally spill over. "I liked him, more than many. Not as anything more, but…" She looks at Siamus, a pained smile forming. "You know, he got Abrielle to lose 'Not A Single Word' for me. 'Horses.' He didn't know what it was, or why, but he was willing to help. I told him about it, after. He might have played it, but. My father made his decision. He sent the rejection. I don't know why. I never…knew why he said no to the offers." Her voice is at a whisper by the end.

"Ah, mo chroí, I'm so sorry." Siamus squeezes her hand gently, lifts it to his lips. With his other hand he reaches up to brush his thumb through the track of a tear on her cheek.

He releases her only to take the precarious teacup from her grasp, setting it aside, and then captures both her hands in his. "He struck me as a fine gentleman even now. He's with — he means to marry the Westwind girl, so it seems, in spite of… all. And he came and sat in this very study and spoke wi' me on it all. I'd no idea ye knew him, my joy. I should have thought."

"I didn't — " She looks at the teacup like it's surprised her into existence, staring at it. "I didn't know he was dead. After the Fall, he joined the Church of the Holy Light, effectively abandoned his title with the loss of his lands and his father. I didn't think to renew the acquaintance. I didn't…" She closes her mouth to the rest of that, and he can see her doing what she's done before — pushing it down somewhere else. Her shoulders straighten, her chin goes up, that wall comes down on her face. But her hand grip his back, holding onto him as the steadying point.

Avrenne turns her attention back to Siamus, and what he's said, eyes red rimmed and face drawn into stark lines. "He intends to marry a living woman?" She seems on the verge of asking for what purpose, and then doesn't. "I see."

"I had," says Siamus, "a like reaction." His tone is dry — it's funny, ha ha, we agree this is weird! — but his gaze on her face is still somber and searching. "They've an attachment that… my impression is it's longstanding. Perhaps a touch unwholesome. He seems rather… possessive. But she'd no objection, seemed attached in her turn. Legal marriage, in fact, was one of the points we touched on, as of course they've no such right as it stands. I'm no' sure I'd have inclined to approve that particular element myself — if there are to be no children, and no inheritances, then it's purely a matter of sentiment, and strange sentiment in this case — but if the Ebons are to suffer sentiment of any sort, then entitling them to harbor the same tenderness for home and family that other men possess may be worthwhile in itself."

Avrenne's distaste shows itself briefly once more at the description of Harvey's version of that sentiment, but wheels are turning rapidly. Her hands have not ceased their grip on his, as if this connection is allowing her to keep a tight lid on a grief that she will deal with later when there is no business to take precedence.

"When he died, Lord H — " She corrects midstream. "Morningdew, would have been the last of his House. I don't believe he had any other left in line at all, and the House has fallen completely, another lost House of Lordaeron." There's a deeper ache of grief in her at that, a wound deeply scarred that has been reopened over and over and forced to heal to carry on with each fresh poison. "If he marries now, legally, what does that make of Miss Westwind? With no one else in line for such inheritance, would she be the Lady Morningdew, the House revived, back properly in the hands of a daughter of Lordaeron in some retroactive form? For surely we cannot have him hold it in any form as he is now." Her eyes are cold any unyielding. "No undead will hold a true title in the Alliance." Not so long as I am alive to oppose it goes unspoken so loudly she might as well have just said it.

Now he smiles. Good girl. "Aye, no, I've made clear in my talks wi' them that I draw a line at rights in property. We can't be miring the kingdom's economy and future to stagnate in the hands of undead land-holders. Part of the benefit, ye see, of seeing to this issue now, myself, is that I can insist on that line, and it can't be called ungenerous as I'm the one advocating for their rights in the first place. A man's got to be practical about it, is all. But allowing him to marry and thus transfer the title, perhaps, to his living lady wife, or any surrogate children, means the title doesn't die as well, and we allow for restoration of a House by the choice of its own rightful — well, late but rightful — heir. It offers an opportunity for reclamation."

The deep approval in her eyes and expression lends her smile a tenderness, as she leans forward closer to him, straight backed but bending like a sunflower turning into the light. Another might find it politically cold, the calculation of it to give only so much, but for Avrenne, if you could not hear the words spoken, only see him there on his knees, you would assume he had passionately declared his undying (ha ha) love to her.

She lifts their hands up to her mouth to kiss his fingers. "You have my full support, as always, Siamus. I expect some difficulty in the task, but the timing could not be better to strike, the Alliance in such need as we are. It is well thought, mo ghrá."

Siamus smiles back at her, his gaze on her lips, and shrugs modestly. He knows. "It won't be an easy task, no, but wi' the Fallon siren at my side, I expect…."

His tone turns more serious, edged. "And we know how willing the Horde are wi' undead already. I expect they'll be all too happy to welcome any Ebons whose heads they can turn, and be none too particular about it besides. We'd best see the Alliance secured in our own before it comes to that."

Avrenne rests her cheek against his hand. "Yes. A dangerous resource to leave on its own, or to go to the only one willing to bid on it." Her smile is soft, almost dreamy. "This is exactly why I wanted you on the House of Nobles. For this, what they have desperately needed — a man of action, who will not dither in committee or wait for someone else to do something while opportunity slips away." Pride is audible in her voice, and she could simply leave it there, implied, but she doesn't. "I am so proud to be at your side, Siamus, while you make history."

"Well, first we must make the history," he observes wryly. "And then we can be proud."

He surveys her. "The other one I've spoken with — he's a man ye knew as well, it seems, after a fashion. An identity of his, at least."

Avrenne frowns slightly. "What do you mean?" Unlike some people we could name, Avrenne does not assume everyone might be a spy in disguise.

"The man calls himself Roper now. He was an agent of SI:7 in life, and as loyal to the Alliance even since, it would seem. It was… a face of his that ye knew, in a business context. I've his permission to tell ye, having assured him you're as loyal a daughter as the Alliance has, and not likely to unmask any of his former selves for what they were. To you, he was Tibault Beringer, a young man who transacted wi'ye in military contracts."

Avrenne blinks. She opens her mouth, closes it. He can see her struggling to reconcile these two facts, a little like he's tried to explain that an image she's looking at that clearly shows wavy lines is actually straight lines whose colors create an optical illusion. It isn't that she disbelieves him, but that it isn't looking any less like wavy lines. "Mr. Beringer." She's getting there. Things are being recalculated. Extensively.

This does not, at the least, seem to cause any deep grief. She might not have been very fond of Mr. Beringer. But a thought must occur to her, because she grows very serious, and grips his hands a little tighter. "He was very close with Lady Alaisa. I don't believe she ever knew what happened to him. He disappeared from the business world some, oh, four years ago." Avrenne is only partially right.

"He and Lady Alaisa remain close. Roper and Lady Alaisa, that is. He asks that the particular identity, Tibault, not be — what do they say, 'burnt?' So that their friendship can continue."

Avrenne continues recalculating, like a GPS struggling with repeated turns on unexpected traffic one way detours. "I see." Recalculation complete. "Very well." There, again, though is that distaste evident, of realizing that Alaisa has willingly associated with an undead. Groce.

"He has a fair deal of respect for ye. Told me what a canny woman ye were, perceptive. How he had to have a care around ye. I told him that is the Duchess, indeed."

Avrenne is startled into a laugh, a flicker of a bright flash of a flame in a dark room. "I cannot even fathom how a man like Mr. Beringer as I knew him could have become one of those…of the Ebon Blade. He once spent an hour crying through a meeting of ours because he had learned that male emperor penguins take care of the egg while the female returns to eat, and the male slowly starves on her behalf," she says. "I had to come back the next day to discuss the precise terms of the contract, which he did know then. Now I wonder how much of that was a ruse."

Siamus laughs dryly. "Ah, well, to judge by the man I've met, that was… all of it. He's rather a… I won't say coarse, he's got polish when it's called for and can turn it like a tap, but I'd no' call him a sensitive creature. Still, when it's called for, he can turn the tap. I think either he or Morningdew would be a decent spokesman to testify before the House, but despite his natural tendency toward the crass, I'm inclined toward Roper above Morningdew, because he can turn the tap and maintain it. Morningdew's more… volatile. And, meaning no offense whate'er to the man, perhaps a touch less quick-witted than Roper."

Avrenne considers the math, and then slowly nods her agreement. "The Lord Morningdew I met was exceptionally courteous, and dutiful. But, yes, it is true that he was even then prone to a certain sort of…pride that was not difficult to stumble on. It was a form of honesty, really, somewhat charming for all the rest of the polish he had, that underneath there was still some part of him not entirely refined. His father was quite stern, and held very high standards." The way she says it speaks of a certain knowledge, a familiarity of someone recognizing a likeness she sees often. "Though, I cannot imagine what he is like now if things are altered." Again, that grief rising up, two sharp quick breaths held and repressed. Nope, not Feelings time. Business only.

Fathers with high standards, ha ha what's that like? Siamus has no idea. He nods sympathetically; must be rough. "He was mannerly enough. I was surprised, I'll be honest; he's the first of them I'd ever spoken with, and beyond certain… peculiarities in voice and appearance, I'd no' have taken him for anything but a gentleman of Lordaeron."

Avrenne's grip is not intimidatingly strong in the best of times, but he can feel the tightening, and she presses her face into his hands, brows drawing in enough to show a line before she smoothes it back out. "It is a tragic loss that he no longer truly is. He was a credit to his House." She's speaking about him like he's still dead. "If he has behaved well within the Ebon Blade, then he might be useful for the image, then. He always did strike a certain sort of fine figure."

Ha ha any way.

Siamus nods amenably. "Wi' some coaching for composure, perhaps. It was… no' difficult for me to find an edge on his tongue, and I hardly pressed him in our interview the way they will on the House."

He squeezes Avrenne's hands again and then releases her to rise to his feet. He moves to where his teacup sits neglected on the side table by his chair. "I'm pleased ye see the sense in the business. I trust Demasco will also, or at least enough of it to draft as I'd like him to."

Avrenne watches him, eyes following him like a fixed point. She does not go for her tea. "His personal feelings on the matter will not impact his willingness to provide you with what you ask of him to his fullest capability. We do not need convince him of anything at all, merely explain what it is we are looking for. He maintains an illusion of neutrality, though I am certain he has his opinions on matters." Like some people.

Siamus tips back his teacup, chugging it in a way hot black tea was not really meant to be chugged, but sometimes a gentleman is also a sailor who really wants his caffeine. He sets the empty cup down. "Shall we, then?"

They will, then.

---

Avrenne is not unexpectedly happily affectionate once they're secluded within the privacy of the carriage. She is perhaps slightly unexpectedly sleepy less energetic than other carriage trips, and she spends the near entirety of it curled up on his lap, napping. She gets a pass because she's baking a person.

Siamus is, for his own part, uncharacteristically subdued during the journey. He is not currently baking a person, so his preoccupation — if it is preoccupation and not simple weariness — must have some other source, but he holds a sleepy Avrenne quietly and lets her rest nestled against him. He watches the forest pass by the carriage window and sits in inscrutable silence.

The estimation of the drive out is accurate, of around a thirty minute carriage trip at a reasonable pace to the Demasco Grand House in north eastern Elwynn from the gates of the City of Stormwind.

The Demasco great house looks as though it was built by someone attempting to say, in a not at all a subdued way for those with a discerning eye, that money has been set down upon this stretch of land. Placed upon a delightful bit of elevation, just enough to make it more prominent and provide the windows with as much a view as the forest of Elwynn could provide, the white stone base and white plaster upper storey catches the lingering light of the growing evening with a pleasant glow. Someone familiar with the architectural eras of Stormwind might recognize that it must have been built long before the First War, for there are none of the defenses that became commonplace after the invasion of the orcs.

What is obvious to any with a particular mind for shapes is that has been constructed with symmetry and proportion as a predominant choice, with enough ornamentation to suggest a lack of restraint in visual ostentation, relying on the materials as well to display the wealth – Alterac white marble with cream lines and halos, likely some of the last perfectly intact in the world, with Stranglethorn Black Wood in wooden accents. Regular, exactingly cut ashlar stonework is visible as they draw closer, with mathematically applied ratios for the location and height of the windows in relation to the width and shape of the house and likely the interior structure of the rooms within.

As the carriage rumbles to a stop at their destination, Siamus moves at once, shifting Avrenne gently aside and letting himself out before the footman has even swung down to reach the carriage door. He turns back to offer her his hand.

Avrenne transitions a little slowly from sleeping to waking, but she seems present and accounted for by the time she takes his hand to descend out of the carriage.

The door to the house is already open, a warm light pouring out from it, and a figure standing there framed in it. It is not, as one might expect, a butler; it is in fact the lord of the house himself, a slight figure waving jovially. In silhouette it's a little difficult to see what he's wearing, but he motions for them to follow him as he heads back inside.

Siamus gives Avrenne his arm automatically, and follows their host.

"A fine house ye have, Demasco," he tells the other man. "Thank ye for opening it to us. I'm obliged to ye for your willingness to meet wi' me."

The interior of the house mostly matches the exterior. The ostentatious expense has continued, an overly lavish expense of an era obsessed with ratios and perfect lines and so much white that it might get blinding, but it also reveals a nature of someone not entirely familiar with the houses of long standing, old name nobility. For there is no proper foyer, no receiving room, no parlor — just an enormous room that stretches up and up, the other floors visible from the start of the entry, chandeliers dangling from the ceiling of what must be the third floor but in this room is simply part of the main room itself.

Heating this place must be a nightmare.

Standing in that room, however, the duchess' dress makes perfect sense. She looks so utterly properly in place that if one were to view the tableau as a picture, one could only assume she was the Lady of the House in question. She holds herself still, that portrait sense, behaving in such a manner that she manages to fine tune the architecture into something less garish, a little more elegant, bending around wealth more naturally instead of yelling it quite so loudly.

The actual Lord of the House, however, is doing the opposite. He isn't dressed in anything as bizarre as his pajamas, but every single part of his outfit has been stepped slightly to the left of formality — he wears a dark tan tweed jacket with a soft, shawl cardigan collar, with a shirt between red and pink and leaning more into pink, and warm looking woolen pants tailored to fit but loosely. His brown loafers are not house slippers by some few technicalities. They look very comfortable. In fact, all of Andy looks comfortable, like he's just ready to lounge and putter and not do anything particularly sharply or quickly.

"Oh, pish, posh," Andy says, waving a hand around like he's batting the words out of the air. "My father's doing. Had a lot to prove and the money to try it. Ridiculous little place, fond as I am of it." He reaches out a friendly hand to Siamus, eyes twinkling. "Glad to have the company. And once you've eaten your body weight in a man's shrimp, there's no need to stand on formalities, as I always say. 'Andy' is fine, if you've a preference for one or another."

Avrenne is not calling the man 'Andy' no matter how much shrimp he may or may not eat in the future. She stands with her head high next to Siamus, waiting for her own greeting.

"Kind of ye, Andy, and I'll be Siamus likewise, if ye please, but ye will forgive me if I lapse to 'Demasco,' I hope. Man of habits." In his warm ease of manner, Siamus manages to look nearly as casually comfortable in his dinner suit as his host does in his less formal wear. Perhaps it is the jauntiness of his cravat.

"Aren't we all?" Andy gives Siamus' hand a solid shake, and then sweeps into the correct bow for the duchess on his arm. "And Duchess Esprit, you're looking as spirited as ever." Because of her name. Not that he makes this exact same joke every time he sees her.

Avrenne's returning curtsy is as automatic as always. She is also, it seems, a man of habits. "Lord Demasco." She does not smile, and she does not laugh. There's nothing but a coolly polite expression on her face. "'Lady Fallon' if you will." An interesting distinction to insist on, one title over another.

For a brief moment there's a sharp little interest in Andy's eyes, a man catching sight of a hint of a puzzle as he passes by a window display, but no matter. He turns a jovial look on both Fallons, and beckons again. "Well, let's not just stand here thinking about shrimp. I hope you don't mind we're taking an early supper. I'm not only a man of habits but a creature of comforts, and the days I see 9pm on the clock are the ones where I wake remembering that time I once drank an entire keg of Thunderbrew on a dare in my misspent youth."

The place he beckons them to follow is to the north side of the house with very tall, evenly spaced windows, and an enormous dining room. At its birth, most of the surfaces might have been true mirrors, but at some point, someone has carefully applied some sort of finish to it that softens and mutes the reflections, like a covering of frost so that the light still bounces a little excessively, but now you cannot see hundreds of reflections of oneself all over the place.

Siamus manages not to look faintly nonplussed by the lingering, overlit effect. "An entire keg? Ye might have been cut for a sailor in your youth, Demasco."

"Might have depended on if Miss Julianne was watching at the time or not," Andy replies with an easy, light tone. Ha ha Miss Julianne. Whoever that was.

The table does not match the architecture of the house. In fact, like so many small details, it seems to be of an entirely different concept altogether. It's a well made table, sturdy and with a deep, dark finish, but it's plain. So are the settings, with simple tableware and plain napkins. If one could block out the periphery of the house, it would feel humble, as though it has nothing to prove to anyone about its merit as a place for meals.

Andy walks along to the head of the table, that spring in his step that obscures the sense of his age, implying a man closer to 50 than his mid 70s, waiting to actually take his seat for the sole lady to take hers first.

There are two settings to his right and left, across from each other rather than next to each other. Avrenne lets Siamus lead her to her seat.

Siamus escorts his wife to the setting at their host's right hand — as she would sit at his own right hand, at home — and draws out the chair for her, as mannerly as any footman and twice as solicitous. Only when the lady is comfortably seated does he go to the other setting and take his seat.

"Your father built the place? And it's — yourself and your lady daughter, now?" Siamus may or may not remember said Lady Daughter's name. "Or… no, she's in the city, aye?"

Avrenne sits with practiced elegance, composing herself to await the meal as if posing for a portrait there.

Andy beams at the mention of Winnie, sitting with a bounce of energy into his own seat. He rings a small bell at the side of his plate just once, touching a soft finger to it to halt a second ring. "Yes, that's right. Winnie's well set up in the city. She's a top notch lawyer, very independent, my Winnie. Likes her own space." Andy gestures to the mirrored surfaces. "My father had this one built after he was titled. Not quite as good at reading the room of places as he was at predicting interest rates on investments." He chuckles fondly. Haha, dads.

Siamus smiles. Dads. What guys. "Our own — Fallon House, that is — was built before we came to Starmwend, but it was hardly more than a heap of an old place. The House that held our lands before the Portal opened had been in decline a while, I gather, and after they'd gone the estate was sacked by orcs at some point to boot. My father tore down near half what had been there, rebuilt the place. We'd only just finished work on it when the narthern troubles began."

Not the current Northern Troubles. The other Northern Troubles.

Andy nods genially, leaning forward. He is happy to talk about Siamus' dad, and what he remembers of when the title passed to Fallon, and all the little alterations and touches to the old estate that have been done since. He avoids the lead into speaking of the north, or of the Troubles, both old and recent.

Avrenne does not deliberately attempt to lead the conversation in any other direction, chiming in only where she has any particular expertise to add in, such as knowing to a remarkably fine degree the exact cost of the Stranglethorn Vale Black Wood at the time when Andy's father would have bought it, and what the difference in cost would be for today, if she recalls the numbers correctly, of course.

The meal is served informally — that is, the courses come out all at once, rather than one at a time: a salad of dark, bitter greens with sweet wine poached pears, hazelnuts, and bright pops of early fall pomegranate seeds in a pear and raspberry drizzle of a dressing; a main entree of slow braised lamb in jus; and a side of smashed small baked red potatoes, roasted turnips, onions, and crisp julienned carrots. There is a lovely red blend table wine, a discreet and subtle elegant sort of wine, with many layers and just a barest touch of sweet spice.

For many reasons, some of which involve singing songs and curling up in her husband’s lap and others that involve what happens after she curls up in his lap, Avrenne does not drink any of the wine.

When the meat entree comes out there's a particular set of Avrenne's shoulders, a squaring, and she seems to be breathing more shallow than before for anyone paying close attention to such things. She eats in such a way that although she seems to have disrupted much of the plating of her meal, it's unclear how much she's actually eaten.

When Andy asks, however, how the meal is, she gives a polite answer, complimenting the choices of his chef, and continues on, eating very small, ladylike bites of things here and there.

Siamus eats quickly — too quickly, don't be a bloody sailor, Shay, and the fork goes in your other hand, a phantom Sintha snipes — but without much attention for the food itself. His focus remains amiably on the conversation — and on his wife, whom he watches from time to time.

It isn't until the meal has been cleared away, and rich chocolate and whiskey spiked coffee served next to a dessert of soft set meringue with vanilla creme, caramel, and almonds, that Andy finally sits back a little in his seat, smiling over at Siamus like a kindly grandfather. "Now. The Lady Fallon has said there was something you had an interest in discussing with me, and I can be at least a little sure it wasn't the latest on germination theories of icethorn in warmer climates." He laughs a little at his own joke. Silly icethorn.

Avrenne uses her dessert spoon correctly to portion out a very small bite of the dessert, ignoring the coffee entirely, for so many reasons. "Not at present, no, not icethorn," she agrees with Andy, her tone cool, though not cold.

"I'm afraid," Siamus concedes genially, "that I couldn't tell ye the difference between an icethorn and a goldthorn, though Her Grace will undertake to educate me." He settles back comfortably in his chair, clasping his cup of spiked coffee in both hands, the dessert itself largely unregarded before him.

Does Avrenne know the difference between icethorn and goldthorn? Possibly not, but she says and does nothing to contradict Siamus, her eyes flicking from him to Andy.

"The fact is, I mean to introduce a bill in the House, and I'd like ye to draft it for me, if you're willing. I'm no' a man wi' such a particular mind for language and legality as your own." He salutes Andy with his coffee cup respectfully. "But then, what man in the Kingdom is?"

Andy's own eyes are twinkling with good humor. "Oh, you flatter me," he says warmly, chuckling in amusement. "I'm happy to be of help. There's nothing more satisfying to do with one's mind than build a solid, well written bill, except maybe build a solid, well written contract, hm, Lady Fallon?" The comment seems to be another old one, something he's said to her more than once.

"Your assistance would be very much appreciated," Avrenne says diplomatically. Her feelings on contracts are well hidden behind that poise.

"Her Grace will attest," Siamus says, "how well I appreciate a fine piece of drafting." His gaze glitters above the coffee cup's edge as he takes a sip.

Oh, a twitch of her lips that slips past the mask, and her eyes flicking back to him like a compass pulled to true north.

Andy seems delighted by this revelation, leaning forward in his chair, picking up his mug of coffee with both hands. Will she attest?

"The Vice Admiral appreciates a fine piece of drafting to an exceptional degree," Avrenne attests, her tone not nearly as cool as it should be, even with the use of his title in place of his name.

Andy laughs, looking at Avrenne like he's not sure he's seen her before and is so pleased he was here to meet her. Isn't that interesting. He uses his mug to gesture to Siamus. "Well, well, don't keep me in suspense. What's the bill to do on? Something more to do with your navy?"

"Actually —" Siamus sits up and sets his coffee cup aside. "I'd like to propose a path to Starmwend citizenship for Ebon knights. I say a path because it would obviously have to be an unconventional citizenship in some respects."

It might be in that moment that Baron Xandros "Andy" Demasco fell in some platonic, judicial love with Vice Admiral Siamus Fallon, but we will never truly know. There is almost a jolt in the older man, as though of all the things he anticipated, this was not even on the long list. He sets down his mug, his eyes so bright he's approaching headlight beams.

"What an extraordinary idea," Andy says. "What a challenge! Now, are you thinking of the path of reintegration of the Stormwind citizens of the now undead back into the world of the living, of restoring their identities as they were, or are you aiming to create a new subsection of a form of, hm, racial alliance within the current structure, as an addendum of sorts of what we currently have with the tiers of citizenship distinctions between a member of a kingdom or a member of the Alliance?"

"I don't believe we can restore their identities as they were, no' precisely," Siamus says. "To extend it to late citizens of Starmwend only, wi' the implication we're restoring them to their former statuses, has precedential implications for Lordaeron and the Forsaken that I doubt any of us would willingly nod at. What I'd like is to offer Alliance-loyal Ebon knights a legally-protected status within the Kingdom, to make good on — and extend — the King's welcome to them."

Andy chomps on this mentally with more interest than he has shown for his entire meal. "How do you intend to handle the potential of dual citizenship? The Ebon Blade is currently a sovereign entity of sorts, but they could become more pending if Lord Mograine ever begins an initiative to establish additional elements of a nation-state through their necropolis."

Avrenne's face freezes, and her lips thin as she presses them hard together for a moment before she opens her mouth to take a very deliberate bite of her dessert, composure pulled so tight it might be starting to hurt a little.

"As Mograine hasn't begun such an initiative, an effort to integrate willing Ebon knights as citizens within the Alliance would hopefully forestall movement in that direction. If we open gates to them now, it makes any effort to close gates of their own against us rather pointless." Siamus makes a magnanimous, spread-handed gesture.

Andy nods. "An interesting approach. What sort of path to this citizenship are you envisioning?"

It is clear from the ensuing conversation that Andy has a deep and abiding love for the law in hypotheticals as well as theory crafting from a wide lens perspective. He's very willing to listen to Siamus' ideas, only offering his own when asked, and citing examples of demonstration of what has and has not been done prior. When left to his own devices too long, he does go on a tangent — the recommendation to consider established laws around property, inheritance, and contribution to society of people who are potentially immortal by drawing from the experiences of the kaldoerei who were immortal, and the draenei who are exceptionally long lived with very limited property, led to an long winded divergence into obscure and completely irrelevant now property laws dating back to the Arathi tribal period, which Avrenne nudges back into place to return to the matter at hand before it goes too far into it.

The dessert lasts long enough to establish the basics, and then the details, and Avrenne seems to time the exact moment when the conversation has arrived at the necessary principles to finish her dessert and signal to the waiting servant that she is done. She excuses herself afterwards for a brief moment to use the facilities, wash her hands, possibly powder her nose — lady stuff. When she returns, she remains standing, her hands clasped in front of her, the inevitable pull to end the social interaction generated by one tiny duchess.

Siamus takes his cue from his lady wife. "Demasco," he says warmly. "Andy. It's been a pleasure, as well as illuminating. I'm afraid ye may count on me to trouble ye again in future wi' legal questions and theory." He rises from his seat and offers his genial host his hand.

Andy rises, more stiffly than he sat, the spring a little less, a bit of creaking audible, but smiling as he takes Siamus' hand. "I'll be glad of it, and happy to count that among my troubles." He does get around the table to be closer to Avrenne, although he doesn't offer out a hand, bowing correctly. "I hope to see you soon as well with him, Lady Fallon." There's a sparkle in his eyes, as if there's a bit of a joke or something delightful about this thought.

"Lord Demasco." It's Avrenne's version of 'sure, I'll call you,' without committing to the actual time or place, as she dips into a curtsy with her own poise and no returning sparkle, before striding forward with a hand for Siamus' arm.

Siamus offers his arm reflexively, inclining his head with a smile for her, and then turns that smile on their host again. "We'll have ye to Fallon House again soon," he assures the man.

Warn the shrimp.

Or don't, and win Andy's undying love, either way.

Avrenne does not do anything to steer them deliberately, but she provides the reason to be escorted to a place. Her coat is collected, though not put on.

It is the butler — or someone we must assume is the butler, given his dress and manner — who sees them to the door. Andy himself remains in the dining room, or possibly withdraws to an office to begin to write things down. Who can say?

Their carriage is waiting appropriately, correctly alerted for their imminent arrival.

Avrenne doesn't rush — but there's those little signs, the tiniest picking up of her pace, the slight forward lean as the carriage comes into view, the pressing in closer to Siamus, that gives away the eagerness.

Surely the fact that Siamus doesn't wait for the footman but opens the carriage door himself is only solicitousness of his tired wife, and not unseemly haste. He hands her up into the carriage and climbs in after her, then shuts the door before the footman can do that, either.

Okay, there might be unseemly haste.

Avrenne's certainly not going to critique it.

Sintha might have, if she were there, but she isn't, which is probably for the best, given that the moment they're out of view, Avrenne is already climbing into Siamus' lap, hands reaching for his face to guide her. "Is there anything else you wanted to discuss with me regarding your business here?" She sounds a little breathless, and for all of the careful tone of ahem, serious duchess, she certainly does not look or sound like she's hoping he'll say yes, there's more business, which may be in itself somewhat shocking.

"Well," says Siamus gravely, and puts his hands on her hips. "I had wanted to speak wi' ye, actually, about the canvas costs for the Lady Blanche."

Nope, he can't do it, he can't hold that expression. His smile curls back to life, and then he laughs and bends his head to kiss her.

Avrenne rapid fire shoots out the answer off the top of her head — the cost, the source, and that's as far as she gets before she's kissing him back, a searing sort of kiss, the real one she's been saving for when she would not need to worry about pulling it back in from other's eyes or business hovering just off to the side.

Siamus is still laughing into the kiss at first, at her response, but it isn't more than a couple of swift heartbeats before he has forgotten the joke and is thoroughly lost in the kiss. He takes his hands from her hips to cradle her face, and devours her mouth with far more relish than he'd shown anything at dinner.

(No offense to your chef, Andy.)

He slides his fingers back into her hair, takes his lips from hers to kiss her cheekbone, her browbone, and then drags her head back by her hair so that he can bend to kiss her throat.

Avrenne bends in counterpoint, a languor of submission in the motion, exposing the line of her throat willingly. The high collar of the dress interferes with most of the surface area available, but they have explored more than once the solutions to that problem of how to loosen a duchess' collar in a carriage.

"Siamus." It doesn't seem to be an attempt to get his attention, more of a declaration, a simple statement of satisfaction, low and smokey.

The carriage has barely pulled out of the drive of the Demasco House, the road clear though the shadows grow and the sky darkens to twilight in the early October evening.

"Avrenne," he murmurs, his lips beneath the corner of her jaw. "Shall we see how quiet ye can be, pet?"

His fingers are on the fastenings of her dress.

She pulls away only far enough to be able to tilt her head to make eye contact, the arch of her back a tightening bow being strung, a flush already so deep across her cheeks to be visible in nearly any lighting, her expression one of someone drunk on something, though she had none of the alcohol offered at dinner. The sweet smile that curls her lips is the first hint of the boldness. "You could always give me something to occupy my mouth," she suggests. "Then I could be very quiet. Will you be?" It's a playful tease, as she runs a hand down along the length of his chest, brushing lower and lower as she speaks.

His gaze darkens as he draws in a quick, sharp hiss of breath, and his hips shift restlessly beneath her. He already has something to occupy her mouth, it seems. "Ah, the nights I've thought of it," he says in a rough whisper. "My lady on her knees."

He draws the golden strands of her hair tenderly through his fingers, and a wicked glint catches in his eyes. "Shall we have a wager? If ye can get a sound from me, what will I give ye, mo chroí?"

"Mm. Very well." The lady in question seems to be considering the prize, a matching wicked light in her own eyes, as she slides slowly off his lap, sinking down to the floor of the carriage. It creates a certain type of picture there: her hair done up in that formal style, her tastefully chosen jewelry and cosmetics, her dress fit for a Lord Admiral massed around her like two cupped hands holding her in place, all buttoned up and so very proper with her high collar and long sleeves, an exceptionally fine lady in all her finery — one of the highest ranking nobles of Lordaeron, there in front of him.

Her well manicured hands move to the buttons of his trousers, but her eyes stay on his, holding his gaze as she uses the lightest of touches, teasingly deliberately light, as she works.

She decides on her prize. "A trip. Take me sailing, on your ship with you, someday."

Another little hiss of breath, this time startled, and he reaches out to trace the line of her jaw with his fingertips. "Is that a prize for you or for me, my joy? I'd like nothing more than to take ye wi' me, but won't ye be in misery?"

Avrenne makes a small movement of her shoulders, a controlled up and down little shrug. "For a few days," she says. "And then it passes. It always does. It's simply that usually by the time it does, the journey has nearly ended. But it would not have to, not with you." Her voice is down to an intimate whisper, her hands moving along still with that whisper of a touch, so light, so careful, and she leans forward, tipping her head back more, pressing her face into his hand.

"And then I could see you there, hear you call to Her on the sea, be there to feel what it's like to be with you on those few spars of wood over miles of crushing black, to know what that holy place is like at your side. I want to know it." The words are an echo from a night long past at the shrine to the Tidemother at the Fallon House, something that has obviously been resonating in her all that time since, longing deep in her voice, desire in her expression.

A shudder runs through him, his eyes half-lidding, and then he catches her chin and tilts her face up, and bends forward to claim her mouth for another kiss. "Tides," he breathes against her lips. "Anywhere. Anywhere in the world ye like, or nowhere at all. I'd carry ye to sea and keep ye there, my mermaid, my siren. To have ye wi' me —"

He draws back, sits back slowly, his heavy-lidded gaze still fixed on her. "When the Lady Blanche is built and the child is born," he tells her, and yields the faintest, wry twitch of a smile. "If ye can win the wager."

Avrenne's breath is quick, a slight tremble to her of that over tightened bow, the fire of desire in her stoked high enough to flirt with desperation of need. The reminder of the wager is the only thing that lends a modicum of control back.

Her left hand slides back up his chest, over the suit he wears, with unerring precision to the curves of the tentacles of the Kraken tattoo, while her right hand dips lower to stroke the smooth backside of her index fingernail from the base of his cock to the tip, following along the sensitive underside. "And if I should lose?" She asks, as that same hand next slips in past the layers of clothing to gently coax him free out into the open air of the carriage. "What will you have of me, mo ghrá?"

His head drops back against the carriage wall and he closes his eyes for a moment. "I think," he says in a voice of such incongruous calm that it betrays an effort of self-control, "that I am cheating this wager. Because either way, it seems to me, I win it. Which is no' especially gentlemanly of me."

Avrenne leans forward, speaking in that intimate, quiet purr of a voice, her breath a warm tease of sensation on his bared skin, testing the limits of that self-control. "But it is a husband's privilege to see to his wife's happiness, is it not? And I shall be happy, no matter the outcome of such a wager, to play such a game, and thus win in all possible ways. It is my privilege as your wife to please you, and to set you at advantage whenever I may. I can never lose with you, and you can never lose with me." She moves closer, her fingers tracing against him so lightly that it's like the touch of a breeze.

"You might decide after what you wish if I cannot get a sound from you. It's possible that in telling you my wish, I may have given you incentive to let me win," she admits, and the teasing, light touch alters suddenly — a closed, hard grip around his shaft, a deliberate start of a pump. "But I do intend to earn it, Vice Admiral." With that, she closes her mouth over him, the heat of her a stark contrast with the cool air of the carriage.

Siamus nearly loses the wager immediately. He chokes back whatever sound he might have made, and one hand flies out to brace himself against the wall of the carriage; the other finds anchor in Avrenne's hair. He takes a deep breath and sinks lower in his seat, spreading his knees wider to afford the Duchess better access.

Avrenne has neither the skill or the experience to please just any man, but she doesn't need to. Her toolkit is one she's earned as both a quick learner and willing partner of a man very comfortable with orders who knows well what he likes. And so Avrenne does so. It might be that it is therefore predictable, a mathematical beat for beat of what he enjoys, but to add to this is the spice of obvious joy and passion, as she loves him with her mouth and hands. Having made no promises of pure silence, only quiet, and having no wager on her own sounds, she does not bother concealing her own small sighs of pleasure, or the subtle hums of pleading whimpers as she works.

Even without any cue of sound, experience has led to a familiarity with him, to know when he approaches the edge. And so it is that when it draws near, she deviates from the known path, one hand remaining on him to work just enough to keep him there but not yet push him over, pulling her mouth off with an intent to speak, but only just barely so, her lips brushing against the head of him with each word, her eyes on him looking up as she does so.

"Won't you cry out for me? Let me hear you call my name as you fill me with the taste of you. I want to hear it. Please. Siamus. Please." The tone is suggestive, begging, a siren's song, and it is all the warning he gets before she returns her attentions to him with a deep thrust, employing every skill she has for a finishing move.

He gives a ragged gasp of pleasure and relief, thrusts both his hands into her hair now to cradle her head in place. "Avrenne," he says hoarsely. "Tides ha'mercy, Avrenne —" and then a soft, inarticulate sound as he floods her mouth with the taste of his release.

It's possible the coachman didn't hear that over the sound of hooves and the rattle of wheels on the forest road. It's possible he did. Either way, he's paid well enough to pretend he didn't.

Avrenne hums her own sound of satisfaction, swallowing him down greedily. As it comes to an end, she gentles her mouth, kissing him softly, before she releases him fully to tuck him back in, deft and delicate fingers beginning to rebutton his trousers. She tilts her head into his hands, gazing up at him with open adoration, and a wide smile bright enough to light a lighthouse lamp. "Thank you," she says, because she is a very fine lady who has very nice manners.

He sighs luxuriantly and puts a hand over his eyes for a moment, catching his breath, then drops his warm gaze to search her expression. He's smiling a little. "I believe I should be thanking you, Your Grace," he says with utmost — if slightly hoarse — courtesy. "And I believe also that you have won our wager, and I must carry ye off to sea, at your pleasure."

Avrenne makes a soft sound of a happy laugh, warm and low. She stays there a moment longer, before she presses back up, moving carefully in the dress, turning once more to slide onto his lap, using Siamus as a steadying point to keep her balance rather than the carriage interior. Her arms go around his shoulders, hands to the base of his neck to stroke through his hair, as she curls up once more around him.

"Siamus." It's that deep satisfaction in her voice, pleased and content all at once. "So you must," she agrees. "I suppose I will have to find out what you would ask for the next time we play it. Mm. 'Not A Single Sound?'"

"Perfect," he murmurs, the smile still warming his voice, and kisses the edge of her ear. He wraps his arms around her. "Will I sail ye anyplace in particular, or simply to sea?"

There's a soft sigh at the kiss, a titling of her head to invite more. "Anywhere. The destination could be anything. Where I want to be is at sea, with you." She holds onto him a little tighter. "Perhaps you could help me pack my sea chest when the time comes." It's that playful tease again in her voice, paired with a restless, suggestive shifting of her hips. Mm. Siamus packing. He knows how she feels about it.

"I would like nothing better," Siamus tells her, and then obliges her with a trail of further kisses down the edge of her ear and to the corner of her jaw. The collar of her dress, it is so high! Why is it so high? He expresses these thoughts eloquently with a single, exasperated hiss of breath, and then his fingers are at the nape of her neck, deftly undoing buttons. "How much time," he asks her, "until Fallon House?"

It sounds kind of like a pop quiz, a teasing one. Go on, math girl; if the carriage is traveling at x miles per hour for a distance of y…?

Avrenne laughs, that warm, smokey sound, throaty and a little breathless. She gets that particular look in her eyes, of someone turning their attention inward, and then frowns slightly, pausing as if waiting for something. "I think we are traveling slower back than we could be," she says, that distracted tone in her voice. "We should have already hit a slight dip in the road on the right side of the wheels, and we have not, but we cannot be too far from it. If I have estimated the difference correctly, twenty minutes."

Again, twenty minutes.

"Twenty minutes," says Siamus thoughtfully. "Well. I've already shaved, I've no more need to dress for dinner — I wonder what a man might get up to wi' twenty minutes to spare?" Warm fingertips trail down the line of Avrenne's nape, where her buttons have fallen open; the dress now hangs loose across her back and shoulders.

"Suppose," he continues, "a man were to just pet his wife a little?" His other hand tugs at the full skirts of her gown, attempting to draw the hem up just enough to slide beneath it.

The material of the dress and the tailoring of it make him work for it a bit — Mr. Latour clearly had other goals in mind in the design about silly things like a silhouette, but as usual Avrenne is very willing to lend her aid to this endeavor, her left hand pulling up to gather it, spreading her legs in a careful balance on his lap. "I will not win at Not A Single Sound," she tells him, just information presented, rather than an attempt to persuade or dissuade him from a course, arching into the touch of her back, that slight quiver to her.

"And d'ye think I could make ye sing out in twenty minutes, or could ye hold out against me so long?" His hand slides up her bare thigh, a slow, meandering caress. He kisses the bare skin of her shoulder where the unbuttoned dress slips.

The soft gasp at the touch is probably already some answer in itself. Of all the things she has learned so far, how to repress her reactions or how to be quiet, is not one of them. She smiles at him, sweet and inviting, even as she shakes her head. "I will always sing for you, my tidesage. It would not take twenty minutes."

He laughs and kisses the back of her shoulder again, the smooth, golden-skinned slope down toward one elegant shoulderblade, as his hand beneath her skirt slides higher. His thumb draws teasing circles on her inner thigh. "I suppose if I coax a song from ye now, we can take a little more time with it once we're home, aye?"

Avrenne's answer is more in action than anything, pulling the dress up higher, opening her legs wider. It will not take him much longer to realize that her readiness has spread to her thighs, not caught by any impediment, with nothing under this dress. It'd be scandalous, except what Andy doesn't know can't scandalize him, and who, besides the current company, would guess such a prim and proper Duchess would wear nothing under her clothes?

Avrenne leans in closer to be able to brush her lips against his ear, her voice low and quiet, as though in a playful secret. "What will you have of me in wager?"

"Your firstborn child," he says huskily. "And all of the ones after that." His fingertips trail appreciatively through the wetness on her thighs, and then his thumb brushes the damp curls between her legs. "I'm tempted to ask ye for a portrait of the sort poor Lady Moore would blush to paint."

She presses closer to his hand, impatiently, eagerly. "You have my children. In writing," she says it in a tone that implies that it's sexy, something she thinks of the highest of terms, a thing beyond a promise. Ooo, contracts.

There's a brief consideration to the second part, or possibly a slight distraction trying to get greater friction. "Mm. Priscilla is not the only artist who might paint me. Silence of a client's request can be bought, if it would please you."

"A shame," he breathes against her throat, and his tongue tastes her skin. "I do love the way she paints ye. But I'd hate to shock a gentle lady." His thumb slips through the thicket of curls to her hot center, plays slow and idly there, teasing pressure and then lightness. "I'd no' like to be indiscreet."

The sound she makes at both is already not particularly discreet. Maybe the carriage covers it. She's already lost the wager, but she never expected to win it. The way she tips back, holding herself in some careful poise to remain balanced there and yet already leaning into him so fully that if he were to move his hand off, she would fall, her eyes on him, a deep flush already staining her cheeks, her throat, the top of her chest, is its own intimate picture. "If it was what you wanted, I would find the right person. There is always someone. It would only take me time."

"Ah," breathes Siamus, and sits back to smile at her. "Wi' no offense to Lady Moore or her colleagues, I doubt there's an artist alive could capture your present loveliness. I'll have to make a study of ye to keep in my mind when I'm away, for reminiscence." As he emphasizes that last word, he spreads her open with the side of his thumb, and he pushes two fingers gently into her — not deeply, not yet.

He watches her face, his black-eyed gaze intent and glittering.

There are times when Avrenne is simply not a patient woman. But she is not in a position to easily hurry things along, at least not physically, though she tries, shifting her hips up to meet him, tightening her grip around his shoulder. She does, however, have her words, and this is a familiar game. Her gaze is direct and bold, without even a shred of that cool composure she presents to the rest of the world visible, his personal siren happily caught in the net of his arms.

"More. Please." She arches closer, her voice that low whisper, as if she was trying to keep quiet. "Ever since I heard your voice in the inn, I have had an ache within me, as though I will not be able to take a full breath, until I feel you inside me again."

He bends his head to put his lips to her throat again. "At the house," he murmurs between kisses, "I must see to ye properly, so ye have something to remember when I'm gone away tomorrow night. But for now, because Her Grace has such lovely manners and says please —"

He gives his fingers a twist as he pushes them deep, curling them slightly inside her, and his thumb brushes across the tender bud of her clitoris. As his fingers work within her — now coaxing, now commanding — in deft concert with his thumb, his mouth makes a leisurely study of her bared neck and shoulder. Only when he feels the familiar signs that she is nearing a crescendo does he lift his head again, to watch her expression as it happens.

It's mysterious how sound works. Because the driver of their carriage hears nothing, thanks to that willingness to hear nothing at all. Siamus, on the other hand, hears those telltale high pitched gasps, and then as she peaks, the helpless cry of part of his name, her nails kissing his shoulder with a pressure. That rose of her complexion deepens, a faint sheen of sweat adding to the glow of it, as she holds his eyes, letting him see the pleasure sweep through her.

She nearly collapses back as it gently recedes in pulses, going mostly boneless, eyes closing with a sigh. Her dress is a collection of loose petals exposing the woman within them, her hair mussed from its earlier perfection, deep satisfaction suffusing her as she trusts in his strength to hold her.

He gathers her against him and buries his face in her hair, breathing in the fragrance of lotus and the warm, inimitable scent of Avrenne herself. He holds her close against him for a time, and then he shifts just enough to draw a handkerchief from his pocket. He wipes his hand off and then blots carefully at her wet thighs before tucking the handkerchief away again and attempting to rearrange her skirts. He is a gemeblman.

His other hand is still splayed against the bare, silken skin of her back. "I'll button ye when we hear the Starmwend cobbles," he tells her, as his thumb caresses a slow arc between her shoulderblades. "My good girl."

There's a little jolt at the phrase, an inhale, and soft murmur of sound out, as if he's revved an engine that had been slowly cooling.

"Siamus." No longer needing to hold her dress up, she reaches her free hand to his face, that light touch skimming across his skin, gently tracing the line of his cheekbone. "Seven or eight minutes until the gates of the city, if I have estimated our current speed correctly." That touch of a tease in her tone. "But you say things like that, and I am not sure if I want it to pass faster to be at the house, or slower to stay here with you like a moment longer, until I'm caught in between wanting both, and all, wanting you."

"My lady of the in-between," he murmurs, and smiles down at her.

That hum of a laugh, as she leans forward to press a kiss to his jaw, and then another to his lips, light for the moment. "Mm. Will you not claim your winnings of the wager?" The question sounds more like an invitation than anything else.

"I have all the prize I want," he tells her. "And I'll enjoy her at my leisure." He slips the unbuttoned dress down her shoulder and arm, slides his hand beneath to cup one small breast warmly. "The color of ye right now, pet, all roses and gold."

There's a gasp, loud enough that it also is not heard by the driver of the carriage, and a pressing into his hand in encouragement. That rose color, slowly fading, halts in that fading, holding steady instead. Could she go again? Probably yes. Do they have time for another before they enter the city enough to be concerned about what might be heard by those on the street? No. Will this stop her from climbing up closer to it until that very last moment? Also no.

The smile she gives him is that private one, sweet and bright, a smile so few have seen. "You will spoil me for carriage rides," she purrs at him, shifting in his lap. She seems pretty content to be spoiled, honestly. "I spend most of them in memory already, with you here with me. And, now, it is all only…" She sighs, a touch of something passing over her face. "Carriage rides." That's odd, isn't it? She used to ride horses places as well. And it's not like she doesn't have the option of horses to ride instead. Unless she doesn't anymore. "Your company improves it beyond measure."

He squeezes her gently, bends his head to kiss her smile, a drowsy, languorous lingering of lips and breath, the teasing touch of his tongue — and then he pauses and draws back, his brows knit together. "What d'ye mean, only carriage rides? Is something amiss wi' Vesper? What's happened?"

Avrenne leans forward slightly as he pulls back, catching her balance on him. "No, no, nothing. Vesper is well." Vesper is not the problem; she is. "My doctor's orders. 'No horses, not at any pace.'" She traces a hand along his shoulder, her eyes on his cravat for a moment. "'No matter how well behaved the horse, no matter how skilled the rider,'" she says, and it has that sound of someone repeating what they've heard, "there is always a small chance that I could be thrown from the horse, and fall, and a fall like that…" She raises her eyes back to Siamus' own. "Could harm the child, at any stage of the pregnancy." Which means so long as she knows she is pregnant, there will be no horse riding.

His hand slips from beneath her dress at once and he lays it instead across her belly like a ward. "Ah, the pity. I didn't know, mo chroí. Will it drive ye to tears, being bound to carriages only?" His chagrin and concern are genuine, but naturally there is no question of contravening the doctor's orders: There will be no horse riding.

"Not when they're like this." There's that smile again, warmer, softer this time, as she sets her hand over his. "And no," she adds, more seriously. "Not even the tedious ones will do so. I would rather the carriage rides, and the children. It's not a difficult choice. I had the horses again, for at least a little while." She gave them up before, for a different child, and her priorities have not shifted, much as she loves her horses.

Her tone goes playful once more, that tease in it, as she tilts her head invitingly. "Besides, if I ever get the urge to ride something wildly and feel the wind through my hair, I have you."

That startles him into a gale of warm laughter, and he bends to kiss her again, still grinning. His hand slips beneath her loosened bodice once more. "A ride more likely to get ye a child than lose one." He nuzzles beneath her ear to kiss behind the curve of her jaw, as his fingers toy with her nipple beneath the fine cloth of her gown. "We'll have to find ye something faster and more stylish than a brougham to drive about in. A curricle or gig, if ye'd like to drive yourself — Thredd can choose one of the carriage-horses for your use, if ye know how?"

There is another speculative pause, and again he lifts his head. "Though I wonder…."

Avrenne seems to be mostly wondering about things in the vicinity of his hand, and languishing in the sensations of his lips. It's probably for the best they aren't trying to wager anything on this one, because she would have lost immediately, as high pitched whimpering sound emerges from her throat at the pause, moments before the first telltale rattling sound of the cobblestones of the gates of Stormwind, for the bridge into the city. There's that slight tremble to her, that overdrawn bow.

"You wonder?" The prompting comes out breathless, as she squeezes her thighs together. The house, at least, is not much farther.

"Let me speak to someone. I may have — another thought. But let it be a surprise." He smiles down at her, heavy-lidded. "I fear I must button ye now, Your Grace, if we're to leave this carriage wi' your reputation intact. But it means I have the exquisite pleasure of unwrapping ye again in private, and soon."

Even if he buttons her, it's for the best that it's dark, and the distance between their carriage exit and townhouse entrance short, because that blush of hers is not clearing particularly quickly.

That reminder of her unwrapping makes her smile again, as she trails a hand down along his own still very much buttoned up suit, her nails a slight pressure, a hint of that desire of someone wanting very much to rip that clothing away to get at the man beneath them, and genteelly restraining herself, as a lady must. "Oh, yes." Is she stretching herself closer to give him better access, or because she wanted to lean forward to bite gently at his ear? Maybe both. "Although, not only this one. I have one in particular I want you to undo tonight." Ah, yes, the dress of Disposable Buttons, from the legends of letters and mentions before. "It will be a small delay, but I hope worth the wait."

Siamus makes a low sound at the touch of her teeth, and exhales a laugh. "I confess I've been looking forward to it. Ye've managed to sweeten my patience, at least, on this ride, so I expect I can bide a few minutes."

He takes her gently by the hips and shifts her on his lap so that he can see the back of her gown and the delicate buttons in the low light of the carriage. He buttons them slowly, his fingers making more contact with her skin than seems strictly necessary, and just before he finishes the uppermost three, he kisses the nape of her neck lightly before securing the buttons over it.

The carriage rolls on — now crossing a cobbled plaza, now a stony canal-bridge — toward home, and the smell of the city canals yields to the sharper, fresher air of the harbor.

It is not late enough to be completely sure that all the children will be in bed. Finley most certainly is not, but he is also not at home; he's still at the last night of the art showing for Priscilla's Northrend series, and not expected for another few hours. Isla might be up, but who knows if she's about. It might depend on whether or not she's lost track of time reading or writing or both.

So it is that as they arrive, Avrenne collects herself as much as she can — her mind is clearly not so readily composed — smoothing out her dress, then her hair. She collects her jacket, without bothering to put it on; she's warm enough without it. You might even suspect from her flush that she's slightly overheated, unusual in this weather, but who can say with carriage rides. Maybe they turned on a heater or something.

An attempt at a composed duchess is made, at least, and she sets her expression into familiar lines, ready to be escorted up to their room.

Barbour opens the door to them with a bow and a murmured good evening. If he has thoughts on Lady Fallon's rather glowing appearance, he does not betray them; Barbour is not paid to have thoughts about Lady Fallon's appearance, and Barbour is masterfully discreet when it comes to not doing what he is not paid to do.

It is possible that the quiet of the townhouse as Siamus escorts Avrenne to the stairs is due to a sudden absence of servants from the family's share of the house. It is possible that the staff, aware that the Vice Admiral is home for one night only (none of them is psychic), have discreetly cleared the premises to afford the Lord and Lady Fallon some privacy. Whatever privacy Isla et al. will afford them, anyway.

Isla misses their entrance, absorbed in a book that she is allowed to scribble in the margins of — true luxury for the little heathen. Otto, occupied by his own musings, was not ever likely to notice this arrival, or Siamus' departure, had he taken it. Daisy might have heard, but for her own reasons, avoided the Fallons, perhaps due to her own more permanent departure coming in the next few weeks.

Avrenne, for her part, glides along quietly, and no, she is not rushing, she is merely walking very efficiently, thank you very much. She is a serious duchess and a fine lady and she does not rush places.

Gosh those little legs of hers can go awfully fast when she wants them to, though, it might be noted.

Siamus releases her only when they have crossed the threshold of their room, and turns to close the door behind them with a very deliberate click. And then he turns the key in the lock, for good measure.

He turns back to face Avrenne, already tugging loose his cravat. "Will ye like some privacy to change?" he asks, with a good-humored gleam in his gaze. "Or will ye need some help undressing and dressing before I undress ye again?"

Avrenne sets her hands on his chest, and no, she doesn't tear his clothes off, but she's probably thinking about it. She does make an attempt at least to start walking him back towards the bed, to have him sit there to even the height difference slightly, as she works at his buttons, helpfully, and without scattering them around. Willpower wins out. "Only with undressing the buttons on this one, but the other I can put on, in privacy." There's too much of a sultry sound to make it teasing, but her expression matches his, as though they're in on a joke. Ha ha privacy. "I want to see your face when you first see it."

Siamus, sitting dutifully for his own unbuttoning, arches a brow. "Oh?" he says. "Well, now I fear my patience is troubled again." He draws his cravat free and drops it on the bed beside himself, then tips his chin up so that Avrenne can get at his collar-buttons while he eases out of his jacket and waistcoat.

Avrenne laughs softly, a caress in the warm sound, and takes advantage of the angle to kiss him while she works. For all of the gentle start of it, she doesn't keep it so. Her own patience might be fraying slightly, as she kisses him like she's drowning, and the way to the surface and air is through his mouth, her fingers working on autopilot and by memory.

The kiss does not seem to accomplish getting that air, as it leaves her more than a little breathless by the time she's undone the shirt, her hands seeking to touch him in eager caress rather than attempting to slide it off effectively. She pulls away to study her work, of every visible bit of tanned skin thus far revealed, licking her lips in a quick motion.

"For all that you cut such a fine figure in your clothing, and it is a very fine figure," she tells him. "Nothing compares to seeing you like this."

His eyes have gone ink-black, darkly dilated, and he reaches up to catch the back of her neck and pull her down for another consuming kiss.

When he releases her, he is breathless himself. He leans back slightly to strip his unbuttoned shirt away, then reaches up for her again with one arm, and pats his knee with his other hand. "Sit, pet. I'll unbutton ye," he says, his voice rough.

In an unknown echo of a song, the duchess sits there on his knee, a warm, inviting smile on her countenance. Her hands are free, and she takes full advantage of that, tracing little patterns across his chest, across his shoulders, and up into his hair, as if trying to absorb him through her fingertips. Eventually she gives up on avoiding the urge to kiss him, pressing little ones across his cheek and jaw, up along his temple, as she pets him, holding herself straight as a board for him to focus on her buttons, for she has surely not made this a more difficult task to focus on.

Siamus is a man not easily given to distraction, but his wife has hit upon the one surefire method. Unbuttoning takes a little longer than either might have wished were it not for such a good reason. He manages it one-handed, wrapping his other arm around her waist to hold her close, making soft sounds of distracted approval.

When the buttons are undone, he slips the dress's bodice forward and down again, baring her throat and shoulders, her collarbone and then her breasts. The slow reverence with which he draws the cloth away from her skin, revealing her in stages, does suggest — as he'd put it — an unwrapping: a man who has just been presented with a long-anticipated gift, who can hardly believe his good fortune as it begins to emerge from the paper.

He leans forward, arching her back over the brace of his arm to put his mouth to one small breast.

They may not get to the other dress, at this rate.

Avrenne cries out at the touch of his mouth — no longer at all concerned about keeping quiet by any measure — one hand moving through his hair to hold him there, that flush already blooming across her face, the small bud of her nipple forming into a stiffer pearl beneath his tongue. She briefly forgets about anything beyond that for a good moment.

Her reminder comes from the sleeves ‐- long and buttoned still, the stiffness and heaviness of the dress annoyingly unwieldy.

And Avrenne, for better or worse, is a woman prone to staying on course, even in the face of obvious reasons to reconsider, and while she can be delayed, she can rarely be stopped. She slides her hand down to Siamus' shoulder. "I'm afraid I will need to trouble our patience a little further," she tells him in small pants of breathy words, withdrawing slowly, reluctantly. "I'll be just a moment."

Siamus groans as he releases her, but release her he does. "A moment," he warns her hoarsely. "Or I'll come in after ye." He may or may not be kidding.

She doesn't look like she'd mind, fingers the last to leave touching him, brushing across his cheek and jawline. She could leave it ambiguous, but she doesn't. "You're welcome to, as you'd like." It's his present, after all.

The woman still does not think entirely in deliberate seductive movements, turning and moving with that exactness of angles, that shortest distance between two points of her current location and her intended destination of the bathroom, only partially closing the door behind her.

The sounds from inside it tell a bit of a story in rustling. The dress she wears being removed, and something else being opened — a garment bag, perhaps.

And then the siren begins to sing.

It's a simple humming sound to start, loud enough to carry a hint of the vocal power beneath it, before she opens up some of the throttle, where in even the notes that soar upwards, there's a richness to them, a darker tone, something suspending the sound between a high and low note at once. It has that reaching feeling — like she's stretched an invisible hand out through the things between them to touch him again. There are no words, just that sound of strokes of her voice through the partially open door.

If he'll wait for her to re-emerge fully wrapped or if he'll come to her remains to be seen.

It does not remain that long. Soon after she begins singing in earnest, the door opens wider, and her husband steps in quietly, drawn inexorably — as any sailor must be — to the siren's song. He is barefoot now as well as shirtless, dressed in only his trousers, and he pauses just across the threshold, listening, his expression soft.

(There is evidence that other aspects of him are not soft.)

And so it is that he gets to watch, her back facing him, as she pulls the dress up over her, a soft looking grayish fabric, something that slips over her skin like a whisper. Her hair is down, in a loose tangle not yet brushed out, still clinging slightly to the curl of the chignon.

She doesn't stop singing, her head turning slightly over her shoulder, the curve of her smile visible between notes, and it might, for a moment longer, distract a bit from the dress itself. It certainly doesn't immediately seem like much. The color isn't her usual choice, and he hasn't seen the front.

If he were to look more closely at it, as it falls into place covering up the Almost Circinus constellation there of her back, pulled taut as she begins to button it, with a gentle looping expanse of fabric around her that covers only her upper arms and leaves her scarred forearms exposed, it might strike him that he knows this particular arrangement of color, that these grays and whites and texture are not randomly placed at all: this is the White Lady, as charted by the Gilnean astronomer Grayson Ellis, an exact replica of the print that hangs in his office.

It takes him a few moments. He is rapt: mesmerized by the song, by that half-seen smile, by the slide of pale fabric over golden skin. He's already drifting toward her — a step, another — when he halts, his expression lightning-struck with awe and electric desire. "Is that — tides ha'mercy on me. Are ye wearing the moon, Lady Blanche?"

She's watching him from the corner of her eye, and the song halts in part because she laughs in delight, obviously pleased, that smooth pour of whiskey sound. Her hands are moving quickly down her torso, with a speed that could only have come from long practice.

"Yes," she answers. She gives it another beat, as she works down the buttons — not all of them could have been undone, because even a quick worker could not have done all of them, and turns around.

The front might as well be as much of a love letter as the pattern. There's a bloody lot of buttons; that is to say, there are forty of them. Small, with delicate loops of fabric that show a barely there touch of skin. The dress does nothing to disguise her growing bump, drawing attention to it even, as the buttons swoop down along one side, and beneath the gentle swell. They lead directly to the top of her left thigh, revealed enough to show her scar where she once accidentally carved into her skin attempting to cut off a too long dress.

Lady Blanche wearing the White Lady.

It is not a dress she would wear anywhere else, for anyone else.

"Avrenne," he breathes, and then is speechless.

After a moment he moves again, another step and another, and then he takes both of her hands and sinks reverently to his knees like a man about to propose. Again.

He does not propose. He gazes at her for a moment, taking in the gown, the tapestry of the lunar chart, the clinging fit and the revealed skin. He lifts one of her hands to kiss the scarred back of her wrist, and then he drops both hands to take her by the hips and pull her closer. He kisses the swell of her belly, and then he bends to that slit in her skirt to trace the exposed scar on her thigh with his lips and tongue.

He sits back on his heels and gazes up at her. "A masterpiece."

Her left hand rests on his shoulder, as if for balance. Maybe she needs it, the way she sways slightly under his mouth, moving forward like she's being pulled by the heat of his gaze. She smiles down at him, reaching out with her other hand to trace a light touch along his cheek, a kiss of her fingertips. "For you. Always for you," she says, voice husky and sweetened with desire. She withdraws her hand from his face to the lowest buttons, following the line of them up her body slowly by feel, dark eyes on his with a growing intensity. "I have a request in how you take it off me."

He watches that gesture, that curved line her fingers trace up her own body, with a black-eyed, devouring intensity of his own. "How?" he asks hoarsely. "Tell me it's quick, pet, because I doubt I can unwrap ye like a reasonable man now."

"I think it will be." She comes to rest her finger on the top most button. "On our wedding night, you would have cut that gown off me. But I flinched, from another time." That scar stands out, a starker white against the golden ivory of her leg. "I was concerned that I would tense worse, that what happened the last time a knife was used so would overwhelm me in the moment. So you chose another way. And I would not trade the memory of what followed for anything," she says, her expression going gentle in memory.

"But I know better now." The look in her eyes is its own fire and water both, a slight shimmer of emotional tears gathering, her voice dipping lower into a near whisper. "I know that I am never more safe than when I am in your hands, that fear can find no purchase in me when I have you with me, that you would never hurt me, never let that blade touch my skin."

She takes a deep breath, lifting her hand from his shoulder to hold it out for his hand in invitation. "Cut it off me."

For a moment he stares up at her, and then there is a flicker of something hot and dangerous in his expression, lightning on the horizon. He takes her hand gently and rises to his feet. "Come," he tells her, and draws her out into the bedroom with him.

There's a small shiver at the command, as she allows herself to be led, her hand no warmer than it was a moment before.

Near the foot of the bed, he releases her hand. "Don't move," he tells her: another wedding night echo.

Avrenne follows the instruction to not move to that same degree, having not moved in the slightest from where he placed her, watching him with those dark eyes, holding so still for his perusal that she could just as easily be a statue, a three dimensional portrait placed there.

He goes across to the desk, opens a drawer and takes out an ivory-handled folding knife. He flips the blade open casually and turns back toward Avrenne, and then just stands for a moment, drinking in the sight of her. "I'd never hurt ye," he tells her. He is holding the knife in a way that, from another man, might suggest otherwise.

There's not even a flicker of unease, not a shred of doubt that passes over her expression, nor any tell tale freezing of a control. A smile curls her lips, her eyes filled with some intense emotion.

"I know." There's a world's worth of trust in the words, that sense that if he told her to jump because he'd catch her, that she would not hesitate.

For a moment, his expression shifts like wind-touched water, and reflected back at Avrenne is a look of tenderest wonder.

The ripple passes and he is once again glint-eyed and coolly confident, smiling that slight, wicked smile. He moves back toward Avrenne, unhurried, knife in hand.

He halts directly in front of her and gazes down at her. "Only the buttons," he promises her, low-voiced. "I'd hate to damage my lady moon." Is he speaking of the gown or the woman wearing it? Both.gif.

Avrenne looks up at him without moving her head, still holding very still, only moving with her breath.

He curls his free hand into the neckline of the gown, his knuckles warm against Avrenne's skin. He gives her a slight, peremptory tug, though whether it is to pull the fabric of the gown taut or simply to demonstrate his control — of her, of the moment — is ambiguous.

He lifts the knife and lays the flat of the blade gently against her breastbone. The metal is very cold.

Her pulse shoots up, visibly fluttering at the base of her slim neck, but that doesn't look like fear in her eyes, and that blush that spreads across her face, touching the edges of her neck, is very familiar. Her hands hold the truth of if fear's made its way in — and if he were to touch them, he'll feel that they're not even the slightest bit warmer — but she still doesn't move at all on her own, holding in place.

The smile quirks higher at one corner, and he drops his hot, avaricious gaze to the buttons themselves. The knife blade comes away from her skin, and then it nips the stitches holding the first button in place. It is so sharp the threads part like cobweb and the button drops away.

The knife moves down, following the curving line of buttons, the curves of her body beneath the fitted fabric, close enough that she can feel the blade travel, not close enough that it bites through the cloth. The buttons shear away smoothly and patter to the floor around Avrenne's motionless feet.

She's been wearing this dress for less than ten minutes, but it's already served its purpose. It parts away from her, the sides opening slowly like a flower blooming open from a bud.

Her breath is coming faster, but in shorter pulls, the careful breathing of someone trying not to move, the movement in her abdomen rather than her chest. Despite her efforts though, when the buttons finish hitting the floor, she sways forward slightly, both hands moving in that unconscious way, as though she hasn't given them permission to reach out, but desire for what she wants, to touch him, has overridden the internal command.

In a swift, smooth gesture, he folds the blade away and lets the knife drop to the floor among the buttons. He's already reaching up to catch her own reaching hands. "Look at ye," he says softly. "Stay still, pet. I want to look at ye."

She flicks her eyes to her own hands — oh, they've moved — and catches her breath in a hold, and soft sigh out. She blinks her gaze back up to his, that sense of a narrowing focus grows stronger, as he becomes a fixed point she steadies on, a faint quivering of halted motion as she remains suspended there, still once more.

"Good girl," he approves, and takes her chin gently for a moment, adjusting the angle of her gaze. He brushes his thumb across her lips. "All this for me?" he asks rhetorically. He doesn't seem to mean the woman so much as the whole moment: the gown, the buttons, the offering.

But also the woman.

"I suppose," he says, "that I ought to reward ye for making such a pretty present for me. But ye must ask me for what ye want. What would ye like from me, pet? What should I give such a good girl?" He moves as he speaks, pacing a slow circle around her; he runs his hands over her skin as he moves — fingers trailing around belly and hips, a knuckle drawn lightly up the curve of her spine, a palm cupping her ass — in an idle, possessive examination. "Look at your hair," he marvels.

Her hair – no longer curling just beneath her jaw, but now dips below the top of her shoulders, a near full six inches longer than it was when they first met, a softer gold from where the sun has lightened it here and there over the past four months of her time at Fallon House, on those occasions where her sunhat is displaced either through the water or by some mischievous wind.

Each repetition of good girl evokes a response, not a flinch, but something of a subdued jolt, and at last, a quiet whimper. There's a small gasp and a satisfied moan when his hand touches her lower back, a reaction stronger than usual, for some reason.

She has very clearly planned ahead somewhat for this, but even so, it takes her several breaths before she can gather her thoughts enough to speak.

"I want to feel what that look in your eyes is, how it makes you feel to see me like this, to know that it is all for you, to have that storm wash over me and through me. I want your hands, your teeth, your lips on me until you leave marks behind that will not fade for days. I want you to take me so hard that I still feel an echo of you tomorrow, with every step I take." Her voice has that sultry sound, and she's taking increasingly shaky breaths in between her words. "And I don't want you to let me finish, until you order me to, Vice Admiral."

He shifts to stand directly behind her, takes her by the hips and draws her firmly back against him. She can feel his arousal pressed hard against her through his trousers.

One hand slides forward around her hip, splays briefly over her belly, and then slips down between her legs. He lifts his other hand to draw it slowly through the veil of her hair, as if mesmerized by the texture.

Without warning, he shifts again, seizes her by the waist, turns and tosses her onto the bed behind them. He sheds his trousers urgently to come after her. When he does, a new mark on his body is exposed: an angry red weal slashed across the outside of his right thigh, a scar already knit and glossy.

On the bed, he seizes her again, pins her on her back, bends to sink his teeth into the juncture of her neck and shoulder, then draws back to kiss the same spot tenderly.

Avrenne's eyes catch for a moment on the scar, some flash of emotion through her eyes, but it's lost in the fervor.

She cries out at the contact, and it's clearer how close to the edge she already is, just from the undressing, from an onslaught of sensation, writhing beneath him eagerly, opening her legs wider.

He puts his hand around her neck, gently menacing. "No," he warns her. "Not until I tell ye."

He smiles and dips his head to kiss her softly, almost chastely — and then his tongue is in her mouth and his hand is in her hair, pinning her head down to the bedclothes, and his weight is on her, he is in her and nothing that is happening is either chaste or soft anymore.

Time Passes In A Distinctly Unchaste Manner

By the time she's been told, and allowed, Avrenne is little more than a set of quivering nerves, flushed and glistening with exertion, collapsed in an inelegant, satisfied heap. Movement beyond an inch or two in any direction is likely beyond her, for the moment.

This is fine. She lives here, and she doesn't have to get out of the bed.

She makes a languorous reaching gesture for Siamus, fingers dragging across the bed as if her arm is too heavy to lift properly, and makes a murmured, scratched velvet attempt at his name. She'll probably need something to drink, eventually, but that's Future Avrenne problems.

Siamus stirs, exhales contentedly, and rolls toward Avrenne, reaching in his turn to gather her toward him. "Here, pet," he rasps. "Mo chroí." He pulls her against his chest and strokes her hair.

"Siamus," she repeats, that deep satisfaction in her voice. She seems a much smaller thing than she was a few minutes ago, curling into him, fingers moving very slightly in her own gentle petting motion along his chest. She's silent for a time after, resting there. With her eyes closed and her breathing slowly growing more even, it might even seem for a moment or two as though she's going to drift off, a not unusual occurrence these days. But she doesn't. That's what the nap in the carriage was for.

She doesn't open her eyes even as she reaches down to his right thigh, fingers seeking the new, unfamiliar mark to touch the outline of it. "This is new." It comes out quiet, solemn, an observation made.

He tenses for a moment, bracing against an expected or remembered pain, and then relaxes again. "Aye. The battle. They boarded us." He kisses her hair, and then keeps his face there, breathing the scent of her. His arm tightens around her.

Avrenne traces the edges — quite possibly doing some math about it — and covers the scar with her hand protectively, as if she could deflect a blow from it now, a month too late. "The battle," she repeats, pressing closer, moving a leg along his. "Will you tell me what happened?"

He is quiet for so long, his face still buried in her hair, that it might seem the answer is no. At last, though, he says — muffled by her hair — "The sea up there is… she's mad, Avrenne. There are monsters in the water, in the depths. And no place to moor and shelter: It was sheer cliffs all along the land's edge, and no bottom to the sea beneath us to take an anchor. Just the black depth and the hungering things.

"We passed by — we'd made a survey of the Onslaught's strongholds, and were obliged to steer to the north of it to do it. The strait to the south, between their atoll and the cliffs, was too narrow, no way to go by unnoticed. So we went around to the north. I didn't know… I didn't realize, because the sea told me nothing, that there was another island up there, farther, too deep in fog to be spied most of the time." His silence this time is almost as long as the first one. "It's a stronghold of the kvaldir. We passed — we must have passed too close."

Avrenne listens with that quiet attentiveness of hers, no sudden gasps, no interruptions, holding her questions. There isn't much space between them, but she finds where there is, and presses closer, her hand on his chest moving in that light stroking she does, the movement a reminder that she is there with him, and that he is here with her, and not there. The hand on his scar remains carefully motionless, that protective curl to her fingers.

"They come out of the fog," he says, and then stops to clear his throat against a sudden hoarseness. "Their fog is — cold, and dead, none of us can feel anything in it. Which is its own kind of warning. But this one came up so sudden, and then —" Another silence, and then a sigh; he slackens a little in her hold, something in him unraveling. "I knew we didn't want to be caught in it, caught and becalmed, so I had us — I directed the fleet to change their headings — they herded us, Avrenne. I reacted, and they knew I would and were a step ahead, and they herded us. We sailed right into the rest of them."

She presses a soft kiss to his chest, then another, a yearning into him, quiet still, a flutter of lashes against his skin as she closes her eyes for a long moment.

When he speaks again, he doesn't bother to clear the rasp from his voice; there is a distant echo in it of his lost voice months ago, the pneumonia that silenced him for a time. "They don't have guns. But they're no' — they're galleys, they maneuvered right in along us, we could hardly have shot them. They just closed and boarded. We managed — Grace managed, and Saoirse — to fire on their boats closing wi' other ships in the fleet, and sank three of them, but Saoirse caught Maid a shot in the hull as well, trying to run off a kvaldir galley from her. It… wasn't a fatal shot, she might've fared away in the end, but…."

She doesn't try to get him to look at her, doesn't pull her head away to reveal his expression, but her hand slides up along his chest to his face, brushing against cheek on the way up with her fingertips before moving up into his hair, holding him closer, stroking her fingers through the strands.

"They're no' ghosts," he says. "I don't know what mad thing they are, but they're no' ghosts, they're real enough, their spears and cutlasses are real enough. And they die, but not wi'out — not easily. We fought — I lost track of what was happening on the others, it was all we could do to hold the deck of the Grace. The sea wouldn't answer me, wouldn't answer any of us, and by the time I had the helm of the Grace again, Kate was… taken."

He gives a shuddering sigh. "The Maid was surrounded, she'd a swarm of boats around her, I couldn't make out any of ours on her decks. There were men in the water, our men, who'd jumped or been tossed, but we couldn't lower boats to get to them."

Another pause. "And there were things in the water."

There's a quiet oh, an intake of breath and that flutter again as she opens her eyes. "Oh, Siamus." It's barely a sound, but audible in the quiet, an involuntary slip past her listening, as her head lifts to look up at him.

He isn't looking at her, but staring straight ahead at a different scene. His voice is unreasonably, unnaturally calm. "The kvaldir were — throwing harpoons. At the men in the water. For sport."

Another silence in which he seems not to be breathing at all, and then he takes a ragged breath and continues, still hoarse. "Lena Coit — was a miracle. If I'd half a dozen o' her, if I'd had a pair on e'ery ship — We got her secure on the quarterdeck, abaft the helm, and she drew up her portal right there in the fog and the chaos, and Mac and Kettering went to help her, and she started pulling them right out of the sea, the ones we could see. Thom and I were just — shouting names at her, and she stood there weaving her shadows, and men that had been sinking in the black a moment before were staggering on the deck soaked to the bone. She got — I don't know how many." The pause is shorter this time, the exhale easier. "A miracle."

Avrenne breathes with him, holding her breath when he does, in an unconscious mirror. Her hand doesn't stop moving in his hair, as if she's using it as her own anchor through the fog of memory to tether him to her. She's silent, but the tears have gathered in her eyes, held back at the gates and forbidden to fall for the moment, watching his face like she can see the scene he's set displayed there in his eyes, in the curve of his mouth.

Siamus focuses on Avrenne again, and the darkness of his eyes is desolate, the shadow of some deep, hollow place. "We ran," he says. "I signaled, and we — the Grace, Saoirse, Swift — we ran. Wi' whatever men we'd spotted and Miss Coit had seized. The ones we left — I don't know. I won't know. If we… just didn't see them in the water. Or they were still alive aboard Kate and the Maid. Or not. But the kvaldir — they were having sport enough, and let us limp away. Two boats gave chase but no' for long."

Avrenne nods, her hand moving back to his face, thumb brushing along the curve of his cheek, her eyes dark and wet, a tremble to her lips at the mention of the kvaldir's sport. She swallows before she speaks again, this time more deliberately, if a low whisper. "You came back."

"I did," he says quietly. "I have promises to keep. I'm a man of my word." He slides his hand into her hair to pull her close and kiss her brow.

"My husband of heliotrope," she agrees, a ghost of a smile passing over her face. "I know that you will always do so. If there is any possible way a man might do so, you will come back to me. And you know I will be waiting for you. Always, Siamus. Broken, beaten, scarred," she repeats from another day on a lighthouse, her hand still over his newest addition of scars, a blend of strong emotion in her voice. "I know you acted with your honor and conscience, mo ghrá. That is enough." She tilts her head up, her eyes searching for his. "I am so proud of you."

Siamus flinches slightly, a shadow crossing his expression. "I'm no' sure," he says, "that the lost men or their families would say the same."

"Perhaps some will not. Sometimes it helps, to have someone to blame. But, I have spoken to some of those who lost theirs. Do you know what Mr. Larabie said to me? 'The will of the sea.' He doesn't blame you, Siamus. And even if he knew every detail, I cannot believe he would condemn you. No one whose opinion is worth anything would ever expect absolute perfection." This includes dead fathers, but she doesn't state it out loud.

"The measure of a man is not what he does in his successes, but what he does when inevitable loss strikes. No commander will ever only succeed, will never lose those under his command. A good commander tries, he acts with honor, and he cares for what is his to protect. When someone must bear the burden of loss, he carries that weight. And you are," she says, her voice stronger, firmer. "A good commander, and even better man."

"It matters to me," he says at last, "that ye think so. And if ever ye stop thinking it, I pray you'll tell me, so I can find your standard again. I'd fail a thing a dozen times if I must, but I'll no' disappoint my guiding star, tides help me."

Her brows move slightly, as she holds his gaze, her fingers moving across his face like she's looking for something. "You said something like that once before, in Wintergarde. That you worried you might have been a disappointment to me. When I received your letter after the expedition, that was my only fear. That you had thought, for even a moment, that perhaps you had done so, disappointed me in some way." She doesn't quite ask it, but the question is there in her expression.

Siamus is silent under her scrutiny. At last he says quietly, "I did fear to be, aye. To no' be the man ye hope ye married, to fail at a task we'd so much hope of — and fail sa badly, at such a cost, on the heels of promotion…." He shakes his head just slightly. "Ye've tied yourself to me, self and name, House and future, and I was frank wi' ye — or tried to be — in our arrangement, but I'd hate to come up short in your hopes, for ye to find yourself tied to a man ye'd no respect of."

Avrenne's chin lifts, ever so slightly, but her expression grows softer, warmer. "Siamus. I have not known you for long, but I have known of you for so much longer. I was there to hear of your exploits, of your courage and your conviction, for years, with each letter that you sent Morgauna. I admired you then, for that, as I would any man so dedicated to the Alliance. And since I have known you, truly known you, as a gentleman and a soldier of the Alliance both, that admiration has only grown. I know your ledgers, and the stories they tell, of your generosity and your commitment. I have spoken to those who have known you for decades, who have watched you become the man you are, and what they think of you, and what you have done for them.

"I do not only admire you as a fond wife, happy with her marriage, but as a woman who sees an extraordinary man, a man who would have her favor no matter what contract was between them, no matter if she was tied to him or not. So hear me when I tell you that you will never disappoint me. You can never disappoint me," she says, that intensity in her eyes, as though through enough eye contact he will see directly into her somehow. "For it is not success or failure, win or loss, that is my hope for who I have married, but the man himself, through every change of the tides, in the calm or the storm. That is the only condition I will ever set, that you be Siamus Fallon, as he is. So long as you are Siamus Fallon, and you always will be, then you will have my admiration and my love both."

"Avrenne," Siamus says. He looks stricken, and stares at her for a long, uncertain moment as though trying to translate her words. Then he wraps a hand gently around the back of her neck and kisses her again: her forehead, her eyebrow, her cheekbone, her lips.

And then he draws back, his brows knit, and gives her a quizzical look. "My letters to Morgauna? I'd no idea you and I were so long acquainted."

“They were always a favorite of hers, your letters, whenever they would arrive. Sometimes I was there, and she would speak on it, of you, of particular flirtations and turns of poetic phrases that she found delightful. Such details are important for what I do, and so I paid attention to the connection.” A small, rueful smile flits across her mouth. “And if I had but asked for the acquaintance, to be introduced properly, how much might have been different. But I did not think it necessary, as I already had the connection through Morgauna, and I assumed I had nothing that would interest you, as someone not playing the same game. I was mistaken."

"I can't remember now if Morgauna mentioned ye to me in her letters. She talked of… parties, amusements, friends from time to time. I confess I never retained much of that sort of detail." He smooths her eyebrow idly with his thumb, traces the curve of her cheek to the line of her jaw. "If only she'd told me she knew a girl who was maths-mad."

Avrenne laughs, a warm sound of something unfolding, tilting her head into his palm. "Is that what it would have taken?" It's a playful tease. "I doubt it would have ever come up. Morgauna and I do not speak of such things. I avoid certain subjects as a rule." Her expression grows more serious, a slight pinch around her eyes. "I learned quite early on that some things one must not speak of within the walls of Lady Evelaine, for they are never truly private, no matter how alone one seems." She brushes away the pinch with a small shake of her head. "I doubt there would have been much cause to speak of me in any letter, or conversation."

"Lady Evelaine is a formidable woman," Siamus says. It sounds rote: a well-worn, reflexive response to any mention of that lady. It is also about as transparently diplomatic as Siamus gets.

It makes Avrenne laugh again, louder, her head thrown back to expose the line of her throat. "Do you know — I said that exact same thing to Lord Ference at the Charity Gala when he and I spoke of his reservations because of Lady Evelaine? Precisely that: 'Lady Evelaine is such a formidable woman.'"

Siamus grins back at her. "Ah, I've been saying it or its like to Morgauna herself for… I can't tell ye how many years. I'll chance any manner of ordinary hazard, but the redoubtable Lady Evelaine as a mother-in-law…." He shakes his head wryly.

Avrenne settles more comfortably against him, that little controlled up and down shrug of her narrow shoulders, a smile on her face. "Well, I cannot say I blame you for it. Even had Morgauna been a man, and eligible for my purposes, I expect I would have come to the same conclusion. Lady Evelaine's loyalties are narrow, and known, and therefore predictable, but even so." A shadow grows over her expression, her eyes focused on some memory, or thought. Her voice grows quieter, speaking into his chest rather than up at him. "There are times when I feel as though I am nine-years-old again, and the great lady is upset with me, and I am wondering what she will tell my father this time, and how disappointed he will be in me." She tips her head back up. "Which is ridiculous, of course, but some things linger I suppose."

Siamus tilts his chin to peer down at her. "… what was it ye did, at nine years old, pet? To upset the great lady?"

"Spoke my mind a little too freely, and wrongly, repeating something I had heard about her, when I thought she would not know of it. I learned better. I remember my father's punishment more than anything else." Her hands curl in on themselves, in some reflex, as if she's trying to hold something, or possibly shield her fingers. "I was meant to be cultivating the connection with the Thenedains. And I was failing at it. I did not make the same mistake twice." She meets his eyes. "It was a long time ago."

"You were a child," Siamus says; the reproach in his tone is not directed at Avrenne. He takes one of her hands, uncurls her fingers enough to fit his larger hand in her grip. "Tides below. I expect I was blessed to be cut out for a marine from childhood and no' a politician. My own father had no sense for it himself. Politics, I mean." He studies Avrenne's gaze, squeezes her hand gently. "Did he hurt ye, mo chroí?"

Avrenne blinks. "No, not that — " There's a silence for a beat, a conclusion to that statement hanging in the air not that time, and for a moment her eyes drop to somewhere around his chin. "My father only raised his hand to me once, and never again after that, and I was not…I was older." Odd though, that she doesn't say she was not a child.

"No, my father preferred the punishment of the privilege of ownership. Anything that could be given, could be taken away from disobedience or disappointment. I lost my collection of sea glass from the incident." At nine, it would have been a year after the death of her uncles, the ones who helped her find that sea glass. "It was something I cared about, and so my father knew it would be effective. And it was. He always knew what would be most motivating. That's all. He did not hurt me." Physically, at least.

"Your sea glass," Siamus repeats. "When ye were nine." He's good at math. He does not speak the sum of that equation aloud, but it hangs between them in his silence.

"Mo chroí," he says at last. "I think he did hurt ye." There is a taut thread of pain in his voice; it sounds more like anger than grief. "I'm sorry for it." He interlaces his fingers with hers. "When did he raise his hand?" he asks quietly. "If you're willing to tell."

Avrenne's eyes go to their linked fingers. She doesn't speak immediately, possibly from gathering her thoughts. "I don't know that I have ever spoken of it," she says quietly, not meeting his eyes. But, she continues, speaking low as if to soften a blow of words. "When I was 16, we learned I was a mage from an…incident, with a Mr. Archer, of a wealthy bachelor affiliated with House Oustric. I had been trying not to make a scene, but I did in the end. I damaged my reputation as a debutante. That following year, the same ball would be given, and Mr. Archer was expected to attend. My father informed me that I was to…placate him, and restore the reputation of my behavior."

She drops her eyes further, her lashes covering the look in her eyes. "I refused. Adamantly. I could never recall my exact words." That, in itself, may say something. "Something to the effect that Mr. Archer was no gentleman, and my father had — had no right to forc…" Her voice trails off into a breath. She clears her throat. "I cannot recall the blow itself. Only that I was speaking one moment, and my jaw hurt the next and I was staring down at the floor. Before I even understood what had happened, my hands burst into flame."

She doesn't try to withdraw her hand from his, but she does curl her fingers, a reflex. "I remember the look in my father's eyes. He looked at me as though I were a monster in the place of his daughter." There's a slight shake to her, but it is buried rapidly, her chin lifting, her tone going far away, brisk, like she's talking about someone else, not herself. "He never touched me again. I found a way to placate Mr. Archer, and learned the value of turning a potential enemy to advantage. And afterwards…my father's preferred way to remove something of mine was to burn it."

Siamus's grip tightens, implacable and iron, until he is nearly crushing her fingers between his. He doesn't seem to notice this; all of his black-eyed attention is on Avrenne's face, her expressions and subtle deflections.

"He asked ye," he says at last, his tone courteous and careful — as though Avrenne is testifying before the House and he needs her to go back and clarify a particularly abstruse point of law — "to placate a man who'd been no gentleman to ye. For the sake of… your reputation? And then he struck you?" No, there goes the courteous and careful tone — his voice rises sharply on the last.

Avrenne's own touch is softer, brushing her fingers along his own, leaning into him rather than away. For a moment she looks uncertain, as if she might argue a point, but in the end she nods. There's still that faraway sound to her tone — this is a story about someone else, someone she doesn't have much attachment to. "For the disobedience. My father's will was meant to be inarguable. And he arranged his strategies accordingly. I was not moved or frightened by his voice being raised, and so he tried another. It did not work, and so he altered tactics."

"If the man were still alive," Siamus says, and he's back to that Reasonable Voice, "I'd challenge him. But then again, if he were still alive, I expect ye'd no' be my wife."

Her expression dips into grief, conflicted as it is. "But he is. And I am." She presses small kisses to his fingers. "It was a long time ago," she repeats. "I have no fear of such a thing now, that someone might speak to me in that manner, or lay a hand on me in that way, and I have not since that day in Stormwind Harbor." Her eyes seek his, dark and warm, that same trust and surety in them, that he would not allow it.

He smiles faintly at her, though his own gaze is still troubled. "It gladdens me that ye know how I care for your honor. But did ye fear it before then, pet? That someone else might dare?"

"There's always some. It is part of the reason for my reputation as it is. Cold. Unassailable. A lesson I learned well from Lady Evelaine. Be formidable enough, and few will ever dare. But I have known since the Fall that it was only myself that could dissuade another. When I agreed to the engagement with Mr. Green, I had no reason to think that such would alter. I expected to deal with it myself, as I have done for years." Avrenne rests her cheek against his fingers. "But not anymore, not since the day I met you."

Siamus shifts, leans in again to kiss her forehead tenderly, gathers her closer against him. "Not anymore," he agrees. "I promised ye were in safe harbor now wi' me, and ye will be always. Ye'll no' stand alone in anything again."

He is not aware of the recent scene at the gallery, because he does not read the wiki.

Avrenne doesn't either, but she was there for that one.

"I know you are with me, even when you are not here. I miss you when you are gone, but I do not need you to stay always. I am pleased when you do stay, but it does me no harm to watch you leave to your own business each time." She is, after all, a Lady of the In Between.

She curls into him a little more, that narrowing of her shoulders, and gentle tucking of her chin down. "It is easier now, too, with your portrait with me, so I might look on you as I wish. Priscilla finished it for me last week after a particularly long evening with quite a lot of chocolate."

Siamus's hand moves smoothly on her bare back. "I confess — and I hope ye'll no' take it amiss — that I miss ye more than I'd expected, when asea. But it only means I'm gladdened all the more by your letters, and it's sweeter still to know ye wait at home for me."

He draws back just enough to peer down at her. "Ye have the portrait done? May I see it? And why so much chocolate? Was it a taxing job to finish?"

"Of course you may see it. The chocolate was the result of another sentiment. We were pining, you see. It was the opening of her show, the Northrend series, and it was a long night. There was some…impertinence of a man taking a small liberty he had not been allowed," she says, and there's a particular, possibly unconscious, arching of her back into his hand. Her eyes go colder, darker, for a moment in memory as she continues. "And another man who revealed his opinion freely enough to make it clear that he is no ally of House Fallon and shall be treated accordingly. Sintha and I are handling it." It sort of sounds like she's going to have him killed.

She probably isn't going to have him killed. Maybe.

The cold leaves her expression though, blinked away, as she smiles up at him. "I missed you terribly. Priscilla understands it well, having much experience with long separation from Lord Bertrand, and how to manage such pining. It had been growing since your letter of the Expedition, that I could not go to you. If not for the child, I would have begged a summoning from Miss Coit, even if only for a single evening."

Siamus's expression smooths and he surveys Avrenne in silence for a long moment. "A liberty?" he inquires at last, mildly. "I fear I'm accustomed to talk of House Fallon, and I've no doubt you and Ta will manage it. But a liberty? By whom?"

O no, there might be a duel.

Avrenne raises her brows. "Lord Abellard, an acquaintance of mine, and a reliable ally for support of a re-established navy. It was small, intended as an expression of interest in me, which was the unexpected part." Unexpected, at least, by Avrenne. "There had been a gradual escalation, a faint brush of lips on my hand in greeting, a flirtation of a compliment, and at last a hand on my lower back, as though he had a right to touch me so. I did not care for it. But, if there is one thing I have quite a lot of practice with, however, it is in rebuffing men, and it was handled, without a scene. He bought the painting of the Silverwind."

Siamus searches her expression for, it seems, signs of lingering distress. Finding none, he relaxes a little, though his tone is disgruntled when he observes, "The fact that he is — it seems — a man of sense and fine taste doesn't excuse him laying hands on my wife wi'out her assent." He leans in again to kiss her forehead once more. "I do trust ye handled it well, better than I would have no doubt, but I'm grieved ye must handle such things, after all my promises to protect ye. I'll no' have men making a liar of me in my absence."

"But you do protect me, in that absence. The likes of Lord Abellard are no threat, only an irritation at times, easy to manage. They have never taken anything from me, and they never will. That is not true of the Scourge. I am safe here, in your House, and in your care, and all that you do for the Alliance to hold the war in Northrend keeps me so."

He touches her cheek with gentle fingertips. "I'm sorry ye pined, my joy, but grateful I have a lady both too sensible to chance the child and wi' faith enough in me to wait, knowing I'll be back to her as soon as I can come."

She smiles back at him, with such warmth and light that it makes the chill a moment before in remembrance of another seem as difficult to compare as summer green grass and frozen tundra. "Even if I pine, you must not think me unhappy." Her eyes flick from him in an unerring line to the stainless steel portrait, resting on Siamus' side nightstand. "It was why that portrait. It is how I want you to think of me, when you do. Happy, with the wind in my hair, and missing you, with fondness." She flicks her gaze back to his, a wicked light playing on the edges of her expression. "Are you certain you do not want another? One for day, one for night, perhaps?"

"Oh," he says, that smile in his voice. "I carry a portrait of ye for the night already, most vivid." He taps his temple, and then the smile grows. "But if ye can find an artist ye'd no' mind to paint one, I'd be most pleased wi' such a token."

Oooh, magic words. The slight blush to her cheeks is not likely to be an attack of sudden shyness, not based on the smile that grows on her lips, or the movement of her leg along his, suggestive and inviting both. "I will make time for it, then." She brushes a hand along his chest, light and slow. "There has been something of a delay on Zath's, for you."

"Oh, aye? What's that, then?" He raises his brows. "Is he well? They've no' sent him off again, have they?"

"No, not to Northrend at least, though as of today he is somewhere else, confidential. No, he has been…" There's a brief pause, possibly selecting a word specifically. "Shy, about it, the portrait. No matter what time I have proposed, he is always somehow busy, even outside the times demanded of him. And I have the feeling that if I were to say I was visiting instead, that he would find himself no longer 'busy.'

"There was some misapprehension that you had possibly changed your mind, though I disabused him of that notion," she says, incorrectly, but confidently. "He thought perhaps things might have altered, but I reminded him that you are always on your way back to him." She smiles at him, hand on his chest. She did do that, to be fair. If she believes she was persuasive, that may be in error.

"Good girl," Siamus approves, and draws his fingers absently through her hair. "He is peculiar shy about some things, the poor lovely man." His expression is wryly fond. "If they've sent him off someplace just now, I expect I'll no' see him before I go tomorrow, but perhaps I'll send round a note for when he's back."

He focuses on Avrenne again. "He's keeping well, though?"

"Mm. He is not eating as well as I would like to see." Which is diplomatic for he's lost even more weight, from places he didn't have much to lose from. "But no new scars. I don't know much for what has happened with the 7th for training new recruits, or what business they have him on. You know how they are." A controlled shrug, for the mysteries of the 7th Legion. "He misses you terribly though. I think he was pleased by the portraits. Priscilla finished them, and he opened ours immediately, to see you."

"To see me?" Siamus laughs, but it's a pleased-sounding laughter. "Ah, there's a lovely golden-haired lady in that painting as well, if I recall aright." He smiles at her. "Did he notice the colors? And the stars?"

She smiles back, an echoing smaller, humming laugh at the sound of his. "I think so, yes. He said he could tell that quite a lot of thought went into it. But I believe the only golden haired lady he was particularly looking forward to seeing in portrait was the other of Lady Cressidha, and he did not look then. I expect he meant it as a kindness." It's something of an odd thing to say, if one is missing some context. Why would Zath not looking at Cressidha's portrait be possibly a kindness?

Siamus pauses a moment, as if attempting to process new data for which he has not got preexisting ledgers. "Lady Cressidha?" he repeats; his tone makes clear this is a total non sequitur to him. What does Lady Cressidha have to do with anything? "Why would he — why wouldn't he — what?"

Avrenne searches Siamus face, her brows going up briefly. Some math is going on, as she adjusts some things. "Has he… has he never spoken of her to you, of Lady Cressidha?" She sounds like she's confirming a part of an equation.

"No." Siamus is still plainly baffled. "I know he's a friend of Bertrand, but beyond that — no, the Lady Cressidha's no' come up."

She strokes a light path up and down, an unconscious movement of her fingers. "Mm. I don't believe he would have intentionally kept it secret from you. I suspect a habit of manner, as a private man. And given your own interest in her, as a beautiful and intelligent woman, I would not want you to be without pertinent information." There's no sound of jealousy or warning in the tone, merely an observation. "Zath is in love with her. He wanted to marry her, as the only woman he has ever wanted to marry."

He shifts a little restlessly at her idle touch; it has, after all, been like forty whole minutes.

"My interest in her?" Siamus arches a brow. "Mo ghrá, I'll grant ye she's a lovely girl, but I've no' had an interest in her in… five years or better? No' since it was made clear to me that neither of them" — he must mean the twins? — "has an interest back, and while I'm a man enjoys a challenge, I don't persist where I'm no' wanted. I'll keep company where I'm welcome; I'm no' much one for carrying a torch, aye?" He smiles at her, though his gaze is still a little quizzical. He draws his hand through her hair again and then touches fingertips to the nape of her neck, gently traces the line of her spine downward between her shoulderblades.

"You, now — I saw ye in that gown at the Thenedains and thought ye were surely a hot-blooded little creature underneath all the manners, a lady who'd come dressed to make such a statement. Lady Cressidha, as best I can tell, is a chilly little thing all the way down." He pauses, his gaze briefly unfocusing at the distance, and then asks in a slightly baffled tone, "Tyrrell's in love wi'her? To marry? When he might've had ye?"

The touch does one thing — a faint tremble of a shiver, the start of the bow being drawn, a touch of warmth beginning to bloom on her cheeks once more as he speaks.

The question does another thing — her expression going, for a moment, terribly vulnerable, in a way it has not since the day he first called her mo ghrá. Then it gentles, melts into a loving smile, her hand moving up to touch his face like it's a priceless artifact she's somehow allowed to touch.

"The perfect Lady Fallon," she says, so quietly it's barely an audible breath, an affirmation that very obviously pleases her, and something she might think to herself from time to time. She continues, more clearly, "That was the reason he rejected my first offer of an unsentimental marriage of a business arrangement. He was attempting to court her, in Northrend, for a love match.

"He is the one who bought the auroraweave, that we spoke of when she visited. It went to auction for an absurd amount, and he gifted it to her. I was there, in Dalaran, and happened upon them. I noted his interest, and that a man does not buy something of that nature for a woman for no reason, particularly after he has said plainly a day before that his feelings were spoken for. Though I saw nothing obvious in her, I did check. I do not, as you know, outbid those connected to me by a friendship, and so I turned the conversation to marriage. She spoke quite freely that she was very pleased to not have any suitors, there in front of him, as though comfortable in speaking so, and she is not an inconsiderate person to say such to a man's face unless she had no reason to suspect he was interested in her at all. And thus, revealed her own complete lack of interest in him.

"That was her one flaw, in an otherwise perfect woman, that she had no desire for him. She was otherwise all the things that I no longer am, or never was to begin with: young, stunningly beautiful, unscarred," her voice grows quieter, a note of grief threading through it. "The third daughter of a duke and duchess of a thriving, influential, wealthy House, who might wield enough of a political connection while remaining untainted by the game of politics herself." She moves her hands both to his chest, looking at them, rather than him. "And a mage of exceptional power and control, capable of using her power directly in action, to save the world itself with her own two hands." There's no envy in the tone. Whatever dreams of magical power she had once had are long gone, and what remains is only an awareness of her own limitations. "The only thing we have in common, as a weakness of his, is the color of our hair."

Siamus shifts, rolling further onto his side toward her, nestling closer. "My joy," he says. "My homeward star. Will ye go on believing yourself outshone by her because Tyrrell would ha'e chosen her? Ye know the man loves ye. And I chose you, for the perfect Lady Fallon, as ye say." He brushes her hair back from her cheek, slips it behind her ear tenderly. "Ye're brilliant, Avrenne, my Lady Blanche. A brilliant mind, the finest conversation I'd had in any ballroom in… ever, most likely, and as strong and capable a lady as the world's ever shaped. Ye're loyal and fierce, and it's only an embarrassment of riches that ye should be so sweet and hot and lovely besides."

He studies her face, his dark gaze soft and a little troubled. "But will ye linger in regretting it if Tyrrell should ha'e prized another lady alongside — or e'en above ye? There's no accounting for taste, mo ghrá, and for myself, I prize ye above the rest and would call her a poor shadow of the like of you."

She looks up at him, and one might think she was about to cry, but the brightness of her eyes is tempered by the smile pulling at her lips, of someone overwhelmed with feelings, happiness among them, but not surprise. “It was a lesson I learned a long time ago, that there were some women that men married, sensibly, that inspired a mathematical accounting of their value, and there were women that men loved, with great sentiment and devotion, that inspired poetry. Women like Abrielle, Morgauna, Priscilla, Lady Cressidha of the latter; and I was of the former.

"But I held no resentment of it. I have always been a woman inclined to prefer mathematics, than poetry. My own ideal was a man who would see the brilliance of that math, of what I offered as a wife. The woman was incidental, and I held no expectations otherwise of her appeal.

"I cannot express adequately in words what it meant to me to hear your proposal. That you had looked so closely, so thoroughly at my offer of marriage, and understood with such depth the value that it held. No one else had ever seen it so clearly, to understand me so well, of that particular mathematical accounting. That alone, and of your good opinion, would have been enough for me.

“But then the way you looked at me, on our wedding night, with such desire. The way you looked at me at Wintergarde, and again when I told you I was with child. The way you speak to me, have always spoken to me. The way you touch me." Her eyes drop briefly to her arms, before she flicks them back up to his, her lashes darker with unshed tears and a smile bright enough to be its own light. "For the first time in my life, I know myself loved and wanted, as I am, not only for my marriage but as a woman, that there is no part of me that you would cut away to better refine me into something more perfect, for I am already there.

“So, no, I hold no regrets at all, no envy or jealousy of another, nor will I with any interest that they may hold, for you, or for Zath. I would rather be your ideal wife, and prized as I am for that by a man I so admire and love of my own ideal husband, than any other man’s ideal woman. Let the others shine like the aurora in the sky, dazzling and beautiful, and appreciated for what they are, but I know I need not be like them, for I am my bold sailor’s brightest star home, and I do not wish to be anyone else but his Lady Fallon for all the rest of my life."

"You are," Siamus tells her softly and very seriously, "my homeward star, my lady moon, my mermaid, my joy, and the finest Lady Fallon there could be. I chose ye at first for a dozen good reasons, and then after we were betrothed ye startled me wi' a hundred more. Every day I'm married to ye, I'm only gladder to be married to ye. I can't imagine a lady or a partner more ideal, a delight in every particular. Lady Cressidha is a pretty lass, but she's no Lady Fallon. If she's an aurora, then you're the star that shines bright e'en through it, a singular, dazzling thing."

He lays his fingers gently on her cheek and gives her a hint of that sly, slant smile. "I know ye don't care for certain kinds of flattery, but I hope ye'll indulge me now and again, as it's in earnest and ye deserve to be told."

Another thought strikes him and the smile fades a little in recollection. "Is that why the flowers, then? The justicia, at the beach?"

"Yes," she answers, turning into his hand to kiss his fingertips. "And perhaps a little for myself, in memory, of someone I once was, or might have been in other circumstances, though that is not now, and never has been my flower." He knows the one she would choose for herself, and it is not 'Justicia: the perfection of female loveliness.'

"I wish her happiness. For all that she seems most content in her industry," and who wouldn't be is her tone, "she has never seemed particularly happy, to me. And such a lovely woman deserves to find that, wherever that may be. Alyssum has hers." She stretches up to be able to reach his mouth for a kiss, not yet pressing forward. "And you may always indulge in whatever flattery or poetry that strikes you and still please me for it from you, for you always give me the mathematics I have always wanted." Maybe she's thinking about his ledgers right now, who knows.

He smiles at her again and closes the little distance to bring the kiss to her.

When he draws back, he says, "No' particularly happy, no. Perhaps someday she'll find something to make her glow as ye do, and I'll wish that for her as well. A pity it's not Tyrrell, if he had earnest hopes in that direction. She's an intelligent young lady and attractive, but." He shrugs amiably. "And as to saving the world wi' her own two hands — well, we both know what comes of mages who believe they can do that, aye? I expect you wi' all your canny threads and siren's songs can do more in that direction than a single lass wi' her hands full of ice or fire."

After another thoughtful moment's study of her face, he asks gently, "Do you find her interesting, pet?" Something in his tone implies he doesn't mean, like, for a conversation at the beach.

There's genuine surprise at the question, a moment where she might be checking it against a tone to be sure she's caught his meaning. She's caught it.

Is…is she even allowed to find women interesting? That way? Some women do that, but does Avrenne?? This might have not ever occurred to her as an option.

She might be thinking about it now that it's come up, but the conclusion of this one at the least is clear. "No," she answers, some thread still of faint bafflement in the answer. "Nor any of her brothers. Lord Bertrand is not unappealing in his own way, but if not for Priscilla's interest in him, I doubt I would have even bothered with a greater acquaintance." He is not, after all, politically useful, or interested enough in the same hobbies for friendship. "I suppose the family is pleasing enough to the eye, but no, I do not find any of them interesting. Or any other that I know at present.

"Though, as a lover, Lady Cressidha does have some benefits," she adds, in the same tone as when she asked him if he would like her to tell him which beds he might find politically useful to be in or out of. "I find it unlikely though that she would take one. The Aspenwoods are very…Stormwind about it all sometimes. Lord Bertrand has not even kissed another girl since meeting Priscilla, and even then, not her either." The man has gone ten years without kissing or anything. It's like a Hallow's End horror story. She should have a flashlight under her chin and a spooky voice.

Siamus grimaces expressively. Too spooky, brrrrr. "Aye, well. There ye have it. The lot of them, pleasing to the eye but no' so deeply interesting. I like Bertrand well enough, but were we no' both military men and of an age, I don't know we'd ha'e drifted together as friends on our own." He pauses. "I did… attempt to see whether Bertrand might be more interesting, once upon a time, but the answer was no." He sounds neither disgruntled nor embarrassed about this fact.

But now he considers Avrenne again. "D'ye think ye might find a lady interesting, in a general way?" The question doesn't seem salacious or leering; the notion has clearly just occurred to Avrenne, and Siamus just wants her to sit with it for a few. She is still, after all, relatively new at all of this.

Well, she's definitely thinking about it now, the look on her face as though a professor has flipped a blackboard around with a brand new, difficult to solve theorem, and asked her if she thinks she might apply what she knows of other formulas to solve this particular one.

She's working on it. Her brow has furrowed enough for the very faint lines starting to form there to show, her eyes on his chest more as a place to set them, looking inward more than outward, though perhaps by idle reflex or soothing physical exercise while the gears turn, her hand begins tracing out geometric shapes from chest hair to chest hair, in straight little lines and angles. A triangle here, a pentagon there, and so on.

"I suppose I never really thought about it," she answers eventually. "A woman had nothing of the marriage I was looking for, and a lover had no benefit at all before, particularly with my reputation, and to what purpose would any woman have in that way that a friendship could not as easily accomplish. But now, I…mm." The gears are spinning more in place. "I am not certain I could say 'no, I would not,' any more than I can say with certainty 'yes, I could.' I will think on it. It may be a question only answerable in practice." Science!

"Perhaps," Siamus suggests gently, "I could find an agreeable lady we might share sometime." Okay now it sounds a little salacious.

Avrenne laughs, a warm, wrapping sort of sound, pressing into him, her expression fond. "Perhaps you might," she agrees. "I suppose I might put some things I have learned for myself into practice for another, and you could teach me what else I might do." Salacious Science!

"If there is a lady who engages your interest in such a way, will ye tell me, then?" His smile has curved back to life. "I'm glad to choose one, but I'd prefer to see ye find someone who might please you." He does not suggest Priscilla, for several reasons, much as he might like to.

"Of course I will tell you. I promised you that I would speak my mind to you, much as I am accustomed to keeping much to myself." She kisses the edge of his mouth, where his lips have begun to curl up. "But someone who would please me I expect would need to be someone I could trust, of a loyal demeanor, whose company I find pleasant and stimulating to be in, of humor and intelligence that I might enjoy as I would any friend. Someone like — " Oh, goodness. You know. Someone like Priscilla. The shock of that conclusion is like a wave, splashing her in the face, and she flounders for a moment with it. She could brush it under, could hide it from him. She doesn't. "Well, I suppose, someone like Priscilla."

That, out loud, elicits a blush across her cheeks. A familiar sort of blush. Goodness. Well, she's thinking about that now. She shifts restlessly against him. "But, of course, that is not a possible choice. She is devoted to Lord Bertrand, and would not consider a lover. Or lovers. Or…and of course, she would not think of me in that manner, I expect." She doesn't say that Priscilla wouldn't think of Siamus in that way because, gosh, who wouldn't. Avrenne might be biased. "That may be, rather, the sticking point if you were to wait for such a thing. I have never held much appeal for myself, from any source."

Siamus looks intrigued by the restless shift; this is an interesting data point. He slides his hand down leisurely toward her hip. But: "Ah," he says regretfully. "Lady Moore’s a lovely woman, and I expect the two of ye could please each other very well" — or maybe that's just how it goes in his imagination — "but aye, I fear if she's no' even kissed her fiancé of a decade in a decade, it would be an awkward proposition." Literally and figuratively.

He squeezes her hip gently. "But why would ye say it of yourself? Ye've managed to collect a husband and a lover in the space of a few months, and from the sound of it, ye might have had another willing in Abellard. I expect ye might be surprised, pet, at what a discerning eye sees in ye."

Her voice has a touch of distraction to it, that sense that she's reporting information as she has gathered, but her attention appears to be more on his hand on her hip than what she's saying. "In Lord Abellard's case, it was not personal. Or least not by much. According to Finley's investigation into it, he seems to have a preference for married women. He is a man of attractive enough features, and well connected as an investor in the shipping industry who might be willing to do more out of sentiment for a lover, though I do not find him interesting in a personal way. If he is interested in men, he is even more discreet about it. Finley believes he is, but he said it was only a feeling." And without concrete data, Avrenne remains unconvinced. She's not suggesting Siamus take the guy out for a test spin to find out one way or another, just presenting information for his perusal and consideration. The fact that she had Finley attempt to check for that consideration probably says something about Avrenne, and her willingness to have Siamus bed people for convincing potential investors in the navy.

The shift of her hips, and the movement of her legs spreading wider, are a different sort of presentation of information for his perusal. "I like what your eye sees in me. It pleases me, more than I can possibly say in words."

The heat in his gaze flares to life again, and his hand trails from her hip down the front of her thigh and then up again to slip between her legs. "Lie back," he tells her.

Avrenne, to no one's surprise, does exactly that, stretching out leisurely, deliberately arching her back, her arms traveling slowly up towards the headboard, wrists gently tapping together in suggestion of invisible cuffs holding them there. Her answering smile is sweet, and knowing, and she is already running hot and wet, pressing eagerly and impatiently against his hand.

It has been, after all, almost an hour.

He makes a soft sound of approval and then — perhaps to her transient disappointment — draws back, propping himself on an elbow to gaze down at her. He takes his hand from between her legs to splay it on her belly. "Look at ye," he says. "Look at the shape of ye."

It's mostly rectangular, as a shape, but some people like rectangles. Particularly naked ones, of smooth golden ivory, little golden pink pearls already stiffening into peaks, her hair spread out on the pillow and across her shoulders in a bit of a wild tangle.

At the perusal and the words there's a deeper softening of her features, a greater tightening of her body arching up a little further into his hand, the small rounded curve of her pregnancy firmer under his fingers. Her face and neck are already going warmer, that flush starting up, stronger and sooner than before. "'A series of rectangles,'" she says. "So I have been described, more than once." The words might have stung once, possibly audible in the light, almost-distancing tone she says them in, but if she thinks of them as true now, well, she might also think that the man in front of her has a thing for rectangles and so, really, what does it matter?

Siamus shakes his head. "I will say that a rectangle's a fine shape in itself, an elegant one, and ye build a strong foundation of them. But I'd no' describe ye as entirely rectangles yourself, mo chroí. You're a neatly-made lady." He bends down to kiss one rosy nipple, flick his tongue across it. "That's a sweet little curve there," he observes, and then his hand moves on her belly. "And so is this. And the way ye arch when ye want it — the whole of ye making the prettiest curve there is. Ye've a fine and subtle geometry for an intelligent man to appreciate, Your Grace."

She inhales sharply at the attention to her nipple, and sighs when he withdraws. She holds her hands where she put them, for the moment, but tips her head to the side, exposing that side of her neck, while she sets her feet more deliberately, to raise her hips up slightly, an unabashed and open sign of her desire, the positioning of her legs forming an acute angle at the junction of her thighs.

"I am well served then in such a husband to savor an opportunity to appreciate such midpoints, and knows quite well how to calculate interior angles of rectilinear figures." Oh, it's the flirting in math again time.

Siamus's smile is slow and decidedly wolfish. "Ah, listen to the filthy mouth on her," he says, and rolls over to fit himself between her legs again.