heorte | when i go towards you it is with my whole life.

Riftwatch has been, from the moment Ellis arrived to the present day, in desperate need of money. Normally this fact has little to do with Ellis. It's a matter for Diplomacy, and for the more impressive members of Forces. Ellis is neither, so it's a surprise when this particular mission is handed down to him.

The lady Hildred Paget is opening her winter home, and requires our assistance, the Commander had said dryly. An easy enough assignment, except that the task of "opening the winter estate" has stretched to encompass a wide array of responsibilities, up to and presently including attempting to locating the lady's cherished feline somewhere within the sixty-two drafty rooms in the cavernous building while the lady herself reclines in the drawing room with a bevvy of servants to play the harp and read aloud and transcribe her meandering replies to the basket of correspondence she had arrived with.

Wysteria's presence here is unofficial, as far as Ellis knows. And as pleased as he is to see her, his attention is regrettably split between the search for this thrice-damned cat.

At the moment, he's bent down to peer beneath a musty bed, clucking his tongue. It necessitates the question, "Sorry, what did you say happened in the workshop?" as he sits back on his heels.

Edited 2021-09-05 05:36 (UTC)

Her presence here indeed unofficial, although she had couched it in far more roundabout terms to the servant who had seen her in the estate's side entrance. She is as a clerk, she had explained, to assist the Warden in the finalization of his effort here on the grounds and also to deliver a series of notes and run whatever errands might be required by the demands of the re-opening of the house which Riftwatch might reasonably oversee and blah blah blah, so on and so forth, in a great torrent of largely unimportant sentiments until the person who had stood between her and admittance to the estate had wilted under the assault.

Before being delivered into Ellis' company, she had first been shown to the lady of the house where she made a series of similar (albeit far more respectfully and delicately worded) excuses, followed by a fairly charming conversation about the weather and only a little poking and prodding at the subject of her anchor. All this she might have handled with perfect aplomb. But as a last note, quite nearly as an afterthought, Lady Paget had remarked to her scribe that Riftwatch 'Must be in dire straights indeed, Albrecht. For look at the state of the poor girl's dress.'

So: flash forward. Wysteria is sullenly regarding herself in a slightly brassy looking glass. In its reflection, she is vaguely aware of Ellis shifting upright from peering under the bed.

"A nominal explosion," she repeats. "Mister Stark and I believe it will all be perfectly well given a week or so to air out. We have opened up all the vents and sealed the doors to the main house, but the kitchen and cellar are both quite unlivable for the time being. What do you make of this color?"

She plucks at her skirts.

Clever, to pose a question before Ellis can raise any objections or attempt to pose some suggestions as to how they might avoid "nominal explosions" in the future. (They are set aside for an opportune moment, regardless.) He slaps dust from his palms before getting to his feet, crossing over to her and taking her hands in his own.

"Pretty," is the verdict, easily given. If Wysteria was hoping for an exacting summation, she had asked the wrong man. He's been separated from her for long enough that the dress in question hardly registers. The marvel of her presence eclipses most details.

"Why?" he asks, a little bit perfunctory over the question. He's running his thumbs over the back of her hand. Wysteria's entry into the room had been met with a such a bright, pleased expression, and some of that lingers even now, frustratingly missing cat, fussy lady of the house and all.

"No reason. I was only curious."

It is a terrible color, she decides, spying her reflecting in the mirror despite the distraction of his gathering her hands up. She will not wear this shade of dark blue again. It makes her look very dour and pale and the color of her hair so dull and brassy that it might be mistaken as nearly brown. How terrible, to look as if you have hair the color of spring mud. Yet the fabric had looked so pretty on the bolt, and she had paid a not inconsiderable price to have the thing made up—

No, she will sell it the moment she returns to Kirkwall. Or give it up to the Gallows' collection for when someone requires something in which to pose as a destitute serving girl or an especially grim looking tutor.

She tears her eyes away from the mirror, both her attention and the angle of her shoulders realigning more firmly in his direction.

"Once you find Lady Paget's little cat. How many more tasks does she have arranged for you to complete?"

More or less unaware of the fashion-related calculations occurring adjacent to him, Ellis sighs over the question. But first—

"You look beautiful," is a more pleasant consideration than Lady Paget's increasingly menial tasks. He squeezes her hands slightly in his as he tells her, very solemnly, "I've missed you."

All the more so because—

"I'd meant to write you, but I think her maids open letters," Ellis says first, apologetic, before explaining, "I couldn't say how many more tasks she's arranged. I'm fairly certain she sits in that drawing room and thinks up more things she'd like to manage for her before I head off."

And Ellis has been heading off in varying degrees for almost a week now. The cat alone might be a delay of three days, considering the number of rooms in the house and the feline's aversion to treats and other things Ellis might use to bait a trap.

You look beautiful and I've missed you together in combination warrant some scoffing sidelong look. If he weren't holding her hands so securely, she might extract one to give his knuckles a little slap. Oh please.

"Well I think that's ridiculous. You ought to report the delay to the Commander and so he can give you new orders. Or we must contrive some convenient excuse which forces you to make your apologies and go. —How much money can she possibly be offering? It had best be a proper salary, at this rate. And if so why keep you rather than hire some domestic? It is all rather suspicious, if you ask me."

"Suspicious?" comes with some quizzical furrow of his brow, before Ellis shakes his head and begins to draw her from the room. One hand is released, but the other is kept, his fingers lacing through hers loosely as they move towards the door. "It's tiring, but not suspicious."

Zeroing in on this, perhaps, because Ellis has no way of answering questions about money. The Commander hadn't mentioned, and Ellis hadn't asked. Admittedly, when he'd received the assignment he'd assumed it would be the work of a day or so. There'd been nothing to warn him of exactly what kind of project he's taking on.

"She explained it all at dinner, shortly as she arrived. The bulk of her servants are shutting up her summer house. Once they arrive, she'll be properly attended to again, and she won't notice at all when I leave the estate."

Presumably there is at least one designated cat-catcher among her household. It seems an oversight, to bring the cat and not it's keeper, but Ellis has never managed a household and cannot say whether or not there was good reason for the separation.

"And when, pray tell, will her summer house be closed the remaining sum of her servants transferred here? It seems prudent to point out that the weather has hardly even begun to cool. Surely she mentioned an anticipated date. She cannot mean to keep you for further weeks on end, Mister Ellis. And even if she does, it would be a truly outrageous a misuse of Riftwatch's resources."

This, she has henpecked with as she has been led from the room with only the smallest of backward glances after the looking glass and her reduced reflection in it. Dreadful, she thinks, and is so consumed with this last mental assertion that she nearly allows herself to be taken by the hand across the threshold. It is only at the very last moment that Wysteria wrings her hand free from his with a small hiss that,

"I am meant to be here as an assistant to you. Not as your— Someone might see."

"You should have said you were my superior officer come to fetch me," is only half a joke.

But Ellis doesn't intend to give up on holding her hands so easily. He turns to meet her in the doorway, reaching to catch her by the elbows.

"I've missed you," he repeats. "And I intend to hold your hand, and steal a kiss from you while you're here."

Would Lady Paget object? Ellis hasn't considered that at all, just as he hasn't considered the possibility of ulterior motives beyond the sense that the woman is alone and thoughtless in her assignment of tasks. He doesn't care to think very much of it at all, when Wysteria is present. Her arrival brightens even this impossible search for a cat Ellis is beginning to doubt even exists.

Her "Mister Ellis," is hissed and chiding. It's also punctuated with a poke between his ribs which she is more or less perfectly positioned for given his possession of her elbows.

She has missed him too. Otherwise why would she have come all this way to makes demands that he finish his business? And obviously she would like to hold his hand and to be kissed by him, but in the corridor where anyone dispatched to send for Lady Paget's personal Warden might see?

"It is hardly appropriate. Certainly not when the door is so wide open."

The chiding manages to be such a welcome thing. He has missed her. Having spent a significant amount of time in this house, Ellis realizes how often he had wondered what she would have made of a certain dress or a pattern of fabric on furniture or the tableware, or the Lady Paget herself.

All of this would have been far more tolerable if Wysteria had been in attendance. This is not anything new, but it is still something that sticks in his mind, even when Wysteria jabs at his ribs.

"So you would kiss me, should I find you a room with a closed door?" is not the point Wysteria might have been making.

But there are an abundance of rooms, most all empty, and all outfitted with locks. Ellis knows because in his travels he has searched perhaps a quarter of them attempting to flush out a most elusive cat.

Her cheeks pink. She scoffs. "Well," is neither a yes or a no as her hands flap ineffectually at him.

"That is hardly the point, Mister Ellis. And are you not in hot pursuit of a straying cat? I have already distracted you from your duties. If we were discovered, it would be well within the Lady's rights to expel us from this house."

—Which...

No, surely there are simpler ways to extract him from the Lady Paget's clutches.

"I've never seen the Lady Paget leave the drawing room under her own power."

Does this mean she's carried from room to room? Maybe so.

But rather than clarify the lady's preferred mode of transportation, he draws Wysteria from the door into the hall at last, reaching back only to close off the room behind her before towing her into the drafty room across the hall.

"I'm going to check this room for the cat," he tells her, very serious in spite of the smile working at the corner of his mouth. "And then I'm going to kiss you."

Fair warning. Ellis had closed the door behind them, confident that the worst this room could contain was an irritable cat. If Lady Paget favors cursed jewelry, it's locked in her suite in the east wing of the house, overlooking the gardens.

"You are being outrageously inappropriate right now," says the very prim, well-mannered, and decidedly blushing young Kalvadan lady who has more or less followed him into this second room with its furniture draped in dust cloths very much of her own volition.

"If I didn't know better, I might blame this on your time away from the Gallows. That you have been too long away from decent company and have returned to some more basic nature thanks to the isolation."

This, as she slips her hand from his so she might begin to lift the edges of various obscuring sheets in an effort to flush out this mysterious animal.

"Are you saying Lady Paget has been a bad influence?" is said with some amusement, as Ellis drags a chair over to inspect the narrow slip of space between the top of the bookshelf and ceiling.

Tacked on as an aside, "Be careful. One of the maids told me Pouncival is prone to scratching any face within reach."

And the maid in question had Pouncival's handiwork on display, a fate Ellis knows for certain that Wysteria would prefer not to share.

She straightens promptly. When next Wysteria shifts a dust cover, she is considerably less enthusiastic about peering in under its edge.

"I'm implying that someone must have been, for I've never known you to act like such a scoundrel. Did this maid, who I'm sure you have only had the most innocent of conversations with, say anything about what color Mssr Pouncival is?"

She holds up a straight, coarse hair plucked from off some cushion beneath the sheet.

"I believe you may be heading in the correct direction."

"Calico," Ellis intones from his perch on the chair. Having satisfied himself that no feline has wedged into the far corner, he drops to the floor. "White belly, with black and orange patches."

The recitation of a man who has heard this description repeated multiple times in varying levels of distress and give reassurance each time that he had committed the description to memory.

"Are you a tracker now?" he asks, fond, as he crosses the room to close his hand gently around her wrist and turn her hand to look at her findings.

"I have always had sharp eyes, Mister Ellis." Her wrist turns gently in the shape of his hand all the better to show off the white filament of fur. "And the cushion's upholstery is quite dark."

The edge of the cloth is raised slightly higher to reveal a thick layer of the same hair adhered to the rich green velvet of the delicate chair beneath it. It would take significantly worse eyesight to miss the evidence.

"Pouncival has fine taste in furniture."

"I have been told he has his own room in the lady's wing of the house," Ellis tells her. His thumb draws up along the inside of her wrist. "And that he'll inherit all of this when Lady Paget passes."

Is Ellis joking? Maybe, maybe not. Having spent so much time with Lady Paget, Ellis himself can't be sure the rumor isn't actually true and he's seeking out the heir to a significant amount of wealth.

"You haven't told me what you make of her. Lady Paget."

Apart from suspicions, which Ellis doesn't count as an impression. Wysteria surely isn't serious in her aspersions.

The dust cloth is allowed to fall back down over the cat fur covered chair. Her attention—

Wavers from his face to his thumb at her wrist, and then back up again. She adopts a smoothly cool look. Without dislodging his hand, the white hair is flicked away.

"I imagine the Lady Paget is one of those women who one might describe as formidable if you were to meet her at some gathering. Why? What is your impression of her?"

"Lonesome."

Maybe a generous summation, considering the amount of menial labor that's been put to him over his time in her company. He's yet to tell Wysteria about the ordeal of the curtain hanging, after all. A whole day she spent, despairing over the drape of the cloth.

The motion of his thumb at her wrist is far too deliberate to be mistaken as an absent tick.

"Did she invite you to dine with her tonight?"

"Yes. Although I will say that it seemed to me a very absentminded sort of invitation like the sort of thing one does because they imagine they ought to. I understand that it must be very rare for a Lady to do anything she doesn't expressly wish to do. But out of habit? That is certainly quite possible. 'Lonesome' indeed."

Why yes of course a guest must come to dinner no matter how shabby that guest might be.

(Wysteria tipping her chin up just slightly has nothing to do with habit at all; that is strictly done on purpose.)

There is a temptation to take advantage of her upturned face. It would be very easy to lean down to her.

Instead, when Ellis bends it's to meet her wrist half-way, having lifted it to his mouth to put a kiss where his thumb has tracked.

"You'll see it if you spend a day or so here."

Not that Ellis is inviting such a thing. One trapped member of Riftwatch is quite enough for Lady Paget's purposes.

"But you'd be such a distraction to me that I don't think we should allow it," is also said with great seriousness. Ellis' mouth moves against her wrist to impart this concern, as he moves in a step closer to her.

The tinge of color which had begun to fade flares back again with renewed vigor. She can feel it warming her neck and passing into her face thanks in no small part to the gentle heat of his mouth. When he speaks just there at the skin below the edge of her sleeve's buttoned cuff, she can feel just the faintest edge of his teeth. The soft humid shape of his voice so near.

She's missed him too. At least when it is a matter of swords then at least she may then distract herself with all manner of very reasonable worries, but this? Knowing he is perfectly well, just removed, is a very intolerable kind of absence. There is no good reason for it when he might instead be in her company in Kirkwall, and so she has spent a series of days growing increasingly sullen over his absence. Here are all the books she would like to discuss with him if he were in Kirkwall still (she had written him on the subject, but it isn't the same), and here is all the gossip she would like to share with him (she had lift messages on his crystal for him to review when the time allowed). If he were in Kirkwall she might be greeted at the ferry slip in the morning by someone willing to warm her autumn chilled hands or walked home to the house in Hightown. In the little garden under the brisk snap of fall air, he might kiss her goodnight. His hands would be at her waist, and he would be very warm in the dark, and she might—

Well, it was all nonsense. And now here they are in some miserly old woman's drafty winter house (one would think the winter house would be more robust against the wind), so it hardly matters.

"You truly are acting the beast, Mister Ellis. I'm appalled to discover you in such a state."

Appalled. That's one word for it.

"Which state is that?"

His mouth remains at her wrist while his hand finds her waist, only lifting once alternately anchored. Ellis looks her over, smiling a little at finding her face so flushed.

Once, he'd told her exactly how much he missed her when their work takes them in opposite directions. He's thinking of it now, of all this time with her letters and her voice on the crystal like a tether, stretching thin between her in Kirkwall and him here, in this cavernous estate. He thinks to say it again, and does, soft against the palm of her hand:

"I missed you."

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my fuckin lol

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