emmanuelle & laurent ii.

Laurent

The butcher shop, being a butcher shop, smells of butchery.

Which is to say, in the heat of midday, it does not smell particularly fresh. It smells rich, though, and ripe -- like things freshly dead and hacked apart, like bloody meat, like organs and entrails. This smell trails from the shop out into the street; if the wind blows right, it can be caught clear at the next intersection.

The shop itself is a small storefront, no more than a few yards wide, opening into a barely-larger back area where the actual butchering is done. The man Emmanuelle would recognize as Laurent's second is, at the moment, manning the counter. Perched on a rough stool, he has a stained ledger at one hand, a messy till at the other.

In the back, chopping and slicing and hacking and dicing with only slightly-better-than-amateur skill, is Laurent himself. Both men are in shirtsleeves; Laurent's actual shirt sleeves are rolled up past the elbow, though, and a rag tied around his brow keeps sweat out of his eyes. He wears a heavy apron, leather and black, that keeps the worst of the stains off his cloths.

Something in the air seems to stir when the she-wolf enters. Almost without knowing it, the duelist-butcher looks up, and toward the door. When he sees her, his blade pauses a beat. Then he thwacks a shoulder-joint in two, looking away to bundle up the heap of meat he has created.

There is a customer in front of Emmanuelle, a heavyset man who might've started life as a fisherman. More recently, he must have come into a little money: he wears the overtly rich attire of a merchant, a gaudy ring flashing on his small finger. He even buys meat, and in great quantity, though his choice of an alleyway butcher-shop might hint at wealth somewhat less immense than he would like others to think.

Meat bound in twine is thudded down on the counter. Laurent's brother makes the calculations and trades meat for coin. A few livres clink their way into the till and the merchant huffs and puffs his way out of the shop, giving Emmanuelle a polite doff of his hat as he goes.

Now it's just the three of them. And Laurent, wiping his hands on a rag, comes to the counter. "This is the visitor I told you about," he says to his brother. "Mademoiselle, this is my brother, Gaspard. I've ... told him a little of what we spoke of. About the monster in the woods."

His eyes, his direct gaze, is an unspoken caution: he does not know everything yet.

Emmanuelle

A week, he said, and she took that to heart. She assumed he had reasons for it, assumed they were good ones. So she waited a week, and then she washed her hands and her face, braided her hair, and set off on the long walk from the caern to the edge of the woods, the edge of the woods to the city, the edge of the city to the butcher shop near the Drunken Egret. She wears no cloak, because it is warm. She wears no hat, because she has none. She wears no gloves, and only the same blue gown she wore the last time he saw her. The are no ribbons in her hair. She looks like a serving-maid, perhaps, several steps below the bourgeois ladies or the nobility but quite a few above the peasantry whose hunger grows every season.

And she is pretty. She is young, and pretty, and alone, but as she walks, those who would call out to her find their tongues stilling. There is something about her. Something in her earthen eyes, something about the unhurried way she walks, something about the comingled serenity and violence that shadows her eyes when she turns and looks at someone who might have been about to say something vile.

The ends of her skirts are soiled when she arrives, but truth be told: they were soiled before. Her cheeks are reddened from the walk, but she is not sweating or winded. She is not tired when she steps into the butcher shop, without hesitating outside, yet without impatience. Her nostrils flare at the scent of so much blood, so much meat, and her mouth waters a touch, but she simply moistens her lips and waits, just inside, as the merchant finishes his purchase. Her hands are folded. They are not, this time, covered in blood,

though Laurent's are.

The door closes beside her. She glances at it, and at the patch of sunlight on the floor from the glass, then over at the brothers. She nods a greeting to Gaspard, then returns her eyes to Laurent. Listens to him. Listens to the beat of silence after the words, and what that means, too. The look she gives him back is a small tilt of the head, a slight lift of her brows, a vaguely chiding glance, but more: a gentle question.

how long do you think that can last?

But she changes her attention. She gives a small smile to Gaspard. "It is good to meet you, Monsieur Gaspard. Are you well, since the accident?"

Laurent

Only a handful of years separate the brothers; near enough that the difference is not immediately obvious. Yet something about Gaspard's demeanor, his deference to his brother, and his brother's protectiveness, marks him as the younger. He returns the smile, nodding hello -- the brothers, too, are some steps below the nobility, and even the bourgeoisie.

"I am better," he replies, "and glad indeed that the second beast was more preoccupied with the first, than with myself and my mount. Thank you, by the way, for healing him. We must keep up appearances for my brother's line of work, but a horse would have been a non-trivial expense."

"There's no need to bore Mademoiselle Emmanuelle with the tawdry details of our finances," Laurent says. "Didn't you say you wanted to get some clams for tonight's supper? Go on then, we'll shutter the shop for an hour."

"Ah. Excellent idea. I shall return, Mademoiselle. You will stay for dinner, yes?"

"Please do," adds Laurent.

Emmanuelle

She smiles, but it falters slightly when he mentions 'the second beast'. It's worth noting that it takes some measure of control not to flick her eyes at Laurent at that. And she tips her head as he seems aware that she healed the horse. Her confusion makes her seem a bit strange, in the moment, and it takes her a second to catch up. Thankfully, Laurent is there, shooing him off to buy clams.

Shuttering the shop. She's distracted again: Gaspard gone. The shop closed. Alone with Laurent.

She is being asked to stay for dinner. Her eyes light on that. So, too, her appetite: she nods before she realizes it. "Of course," she says, perhaps too eagerly. "I would love to. You are too kind."

Laurent

"It's the least we could do," replies Gaspard, and then he's out the back door, which shuts.

Laurent comes out from behind the counter. He shuts the front door, bolts it. Literally claps the shutters shut over the large front window, through which passersby may have otherwise caught a glimpse of the offerings within. With this symbolic gesture done, the inside of the shop is darker, lit only by what light makes it under the door, through the cracks in the shutters.

And, in a moment, by the light cast from a kerosene lamp that Laurent ignites and sets on the countertop. Between front wall and counter there are a scant few feet. There are a few stools out in that space, though, for customers to rest their feet while they await their meat. He offers Emmanuelle one.

"Are you thirsty? We have our own well behind the shop. It's clean. Cleaner, anyway. Or we might have some ale, if that's more to your taste."

Emmanuelle

Her eyes follow Gaspard briefly, and then go immediately to Laurent again when the door shuts. She has a mad urge to go to him, and embrace him, and she isn't quite sure where it comes from. She gives a small shake of her head, to herself, most likely only increasing the oddity of her behavior, here,

out of the woods.

It's dim now. He lights a lamp, and she has not moved since she came to stand inside. She remains where she's been since the merchant left, her hands still folded. She doesn't notice at first that she's being offered a stool, and simply gives a shake of her head, a polite denial.

"I am," she answers, before he finishes the question. Thirsty. "Water? Please?"

There's a pause. Perhaps he goes and fetches water for them. Or water for her and ale for himself. She drinks before she speaks again.

"He knows I healed his horse, but not that I was the... other 'beast'?"

Laurent

Water. It is water for the both of them, served in plain copper cups. It is cold, though, and refreshing -- particularly after a long hike from the woods.

Whether or not she takes a seat, he does: stool by the counter, as though they were in a tavern, at a bar.

"He knows there are monsters," he says, "because he has seen them. We started there. So far I've told him there are those who are on 'our' side as well, and that you are one of them. He thinks you are some sort of enchantress, blessed with the ability to heal. At some later date I'll tell him you also have the ability to shapeshift. I suppose until I do, he's filled in his own blanks and assumed the wolf he saw was some other form of 'monster'."

Emmanuelle

She stands, but only because it is difficult to sit on a stool in all those skirts without tipping oneself over. She sips the water slowly, rather than gulping.

Enchantress, he says, and she gives a small smile at that. She nods at his explanation, though. "I do not mean to tell you how to teach your brother. I have heard too many stories, I think, of kin left in the dark too long. Even when they are safe, sometimes they become... bitter."

Laurent

She stands. He notices. And after a moment -- after emptying his cup -- he stands as well, to be polite, leaning back against the counter to take weight off his feet.

"I don't think you need to worry about that," he says. "Gaspard isn't the type to be bitter. He's sweet-natured. But he's a fierce rationalist; reads Rousseau and Montesquieu when he can get his hands on the books. It takes time to convince him of what's out of the ordinary."

A pause.

"You won't sit?"

Emmanuelle

Her eyes follow him up as he stands, keeping as level with his gaze as she can. It happens without her thinking. She doesn't realize why he stands, and any curiosity of it leaves her mind as they continue the conversation. His brother is sweet and rational and likes to read. Her eyes brighten a bit at that, but she shrinks a bit, too. She does not fill the silence. She takes time to speak, and sometimes the thinking takes longer than the breaks in human conversation allow. It takes some getting used to.

"Oh," she says, noting the stool, his standing. She blinks at him, then laughs softly at herself. "It is a bit... awkward, on a stool. I am all right. Sit, if you like. I do not wish you to stand on my account."

Laurent

"Oh." It is an unconscious echo. He is at a loss for a moment. "Do you want to come upstairs? My brother and I live above the shop. There are chairs there."

Emmanuelle

This makes her laugh. It's that same small, soft sound, almost a breath. "I am all right. Please." She searches; she is at a bit of a loss, too: "Tell me... more about your brother."

A flicker. Almost shyness; not quite. "Or yourself."

Laurent

So they stand. Somewhat awkwardly -- at least on his part -- and then less so as the shifting tides of the conversation take his attention.

"I ... don't know how to answer that," he admits. "What would you like to know?"

Emmanuelle

She doesn't give up, though. Doesn't retreat into shyness, apology, awkwardness. Perhaps the water emboldens her the way ale would another.

"Your brother reads," she prompts. "What do you like to do?"

Laurent

For his part, he is glad of it. Glad that she offers him something to answer; a path easier to follow than to simply speak of himself. He is no nobleman, after all. He is not accustomed to such things as speaking of himself.

"I like keeping this shop," he says after a moment's thought, another admission. "I am a mediocre butcher at best, but I am learning, and business has grown of late. I like keeping the books, and I like when we've saved enough to expand in some small way, even if we are the only ones who notice. Sometimes I think perhaps one day my brother and I will be butchers in truth."

Emmanuelle

They are both leaning somewhat on the counter between them. He leans as he relaxes. She leans into the counter but she leans, more, into the words. The truth. Just the knowing, springing out of not-knowing, as bubbling and gentle as water in the wild from a channel deep in the earth.

She seems a touch bewildered at his last comment, though. "In truth?" she echoes. It was, after all, an odd thing to say as he stands in his own butcher shop.

Laurent

Now it is he who appears at least a little bewildered.

"You don't know?" -- and immediately on the heels of that, a shake of his head. "No, of course not. I don't know why I thought you would. I..." Pause. Considers; then: "Do you know what a duelist is, Emmanuelle?"

He does not seem to notice he's forgotten the mademoiselle.

Emmanuelle

She is confused now, quite a bit, but she smiles at it, into it. Is smiling at him, enough to see her teeth, looking rather delighted by her own lack of understanding at what he's saying. The smile grows, just a millimeter, when he says her name, and it crinkles the corners of her eyes for a moment.

"No."

It's hard to say if that is true, if she really doesn't know, or she just wants to hear how he describes it. But it seems doubtful, somehow, that she'd lie about this, just to see how it plays out.

Laurent

"It is a profession," he says, "that exists partly in the shadows, much as bountymen and prostitutes and murderers-for-hire do. Specifically, a duelist is a man who settles duels for other men in return for a sizable sum.

"It is what I do for a living. My brother is my go-between; he makes the arrangements for me and serves as my second. As dueling is officially outlawed and my profession doubly so, we maintain this shop as a sort of pleasant fiction; a cover for our otherwise inexplicable income.

"Or so it was at the beginning. But it turns out if you open a butcher shop you must hang cuts of meat, and if you hang cuts of meat then the local citizenry will buy from you. So now we have something of an actual business here. Enough that last month, for the first time, we earned more by cleaver and hook than by pistol and rapier."

Emmanuelle

The woman in his shop is no lady. Despite her rather nicely braided hair, the way it coils atop her head or curls down her neckline. Despite her rather pretty dress, nevermind the soiled edges. Despite her fair skin, despite the soft look of her hands, despite all these things that make her seem like a normal woman, even a well-brought-up woman, she is clearly none of these things.

For one: as he tells her what he does, her mouth opens in something like wonderment, and she neglects to close it. It isn't gaping or gawking, but she listens like a child, without thinking of how she must look on the outside.

And for another: there is that light in her eyes, or the way the light hits the color in her eyes, like sunlight filtering down on forest ground, mostly brown shadows, hints of gold and green.

"And you want to be a butcher," she goes on, half question. "In truth? Do you tire of settling other men's arguments? Do you tire of the fighting?"

Laurent

"I tire of risking my life over another man's bravado," he replies, with a hint of irritation: not at her, nor at her question, but at these faceless men of whom he speaks; for whom he works. "Particularly when that man hasn't the actual courage to back his words with action."

Emmanuelle

This, she seems to understand: that frission of frustration flows over and around her, not meant for her. And where it comes from, and what it means about him that he feels it. She has her hand on the counter. It shifts, moves toward him a half-inch, then stills. She thinks before she speaks, again.

"In the sept," she begins, quietly, "no one can issue a challenge and have another stand in their place. And if one tries to retreat from a challenge they issued, they loss of renown is so great that only the lowest and stupidest would dare."

Laurent

A short, humorless laugh: "Well. In the city, only the highest and richest would dare. And do."

His eyes fall to her hand; the counter. Drawn, perhaps, to that flicker of motion -- an unconscious awareness, engrained by years of fighting. After a moment, he smiles faintly.

"No blood and ash this time," he observes. "Muddy hems, though."

Emmanuelle

She shakes her head a bit at that: the backwardness of it. That the higher one rises among mortals, the less need they have for honor or wisdom, and the less they bother with it, and the more they steal glory from others. It is not so among her kind. A few, certainly, in small septs in far-flung corners where they can raise and warp other wolves to think as they do. But not in the traditional caerns. Not among those like the ones who brought her up.

His mention of blood and ash makes her look at her hand. She takes a moment to remember, then colors slightly. "Oh," she murmurs, but doesn't draw her hand back, curling in on herself. She leaves it where it is. Lifts her eyes to meet his again.

"I walked," she informs him, matter-of-factly. "I could have run," she adds, almost... not boasting, but perhaps attempting something like teasing. "I could have run all the way here on all fours. But I do not think Gaspard would have invited a wolf to dine with you."

Laurent

She colors. He, in turn, is embarrassed -- at himself, at his loutish manners.

"Forgive me," he says. "I did not mean to shame you. I was only amused, and a little endeared."

Emmanuelle

How bravely she tries to go on looking at him, that lifted chin, that playful tone. But it's not something she's accustomed to, not like this. Not in Paris. Not with kin. And the more he says in his reply, the harder it is to keep his eyes. She looks down with a soft exhale, almost a laugh.

"I am not shamed," she assures him, even if she's looking at her hand, and the table beneath her hand. "Unless I embarrass you with the mud. I do not think I do, though." A glance, then, upward, looking at him despite her slightly ducked head. Looks at him and, for a moment, forgets they were talking.

Remembers: just in time.

"How did you become a duelist?"

They are having a conversation, after all.

Laurent

"You do not."

It is an unnecessary assurance. He gives it anyway, with a quiet earnestness that belies the trivial nature of what they discuss. Mud. Hems. What are such things to the likes of werewolves and duelists?

"Luck and happenstance," he adds in answer. "My father was groundskeeper for a baron's country estate. When my brother and I were boys, we played with the baron's sons. When they learned the gentlemanly arts of riding, hunting and fencing, we learned with them -- at least until I started beating them, and then they weren't so eager to play with me after all.

"Later, when we were grown, my brother and I came to Paris to find work. We had little money and boarded above a tavern, the sort of establishment that makes the Drunken Heron look like the king's drawing room. One night a pack of young blades showed up looking for trouble, and before long they were drunk and shouting and one of them had challenged another. By dawn the wine had worn off and the challenger was going about looking for someone to take his place. He was offering five hundred livres, then a thousand. It was more money than Gaspard and I had ever seen, so I accepted. The young nobleman showed me how to use his pistol and sent me out in the streets. I'd never shot a pistol in my life. But my foe's pistol misfired, while I managed to hit him in the arm. We were paid and lived like kings for a month.

"Then the money ran out, and I began looking for my next duel. Only the rapier duels at first; then, later, after I'd saved enough to buy myself a flintlock and learn to shoot, the pistol duels as well. The truth is most noblemen are poor duelists at best. They're hardly ever called to draw gun or blade with mortal intent, and when the time comes their nerves get the better of them. I've only been wounded twice, and I've never lost. I'd like to retire before I do."

Emmanuelle

He knows very well what she is: the thing that came out of the woods, clawing after the monster that came for he and his brother. He knows very well what she's capable of: her hands on the horse, drawing it back from the brink of a merciful death to a hale and healthy life. But they talk of bloodied hands, ashes, muddy hems, as though even the most unimportant words are still worth saying, just to have something to say to one another. Just to keep talking. Just to say, in these little ways, that they notice these things about each other.

Of course she wants to know the details of his life: what he likes to do. How his days go. What his days used to be like. What his brother reads. Anything, so long as he is telling her something. She feels as though she is moving backwards, blindly, hoping there is earth behind her feet before her heels fall, trusting it will be there,

asking him questions as if the answers fill in the gaps, and make the ground solid.

She wants to tell him that she imagined he was a good duelist, when he told her all of three minutes ago. Of course he would be, to be a professional, to be paid -- and in Paris, no less. To get away with it long enough to build a shop like this together with his brother. She wants to tell him that even though she hopes he never duels again, not for some other man's lack of honor, she would still like to see him sometime. She wants to tell him that she knows that is silly, and that makes her not want to tell him at all,

and besides, he's talking, and she can't help but listen to him.

There's a flicker of upset in her eyes when he mentions not knowing how to fire a pistol, how close he came to not walking away from that very first duel. It makes her breath catch for a moment, as if she were a normal young lady who might faint at the sight of a real duel. But that's not it. Not at all. It isn't the violence.

It's the sudden, searing thought that he may have been lost before she ever met him. The yawning chasm that opens up beneath her, like a grief she's known before, without realizing its source, and it's a dizzying and slightly horrifying solution.

Her eyes close a moment. He is saying that he and Gaspard lived like kings for a month. She opens her eyes, breathing out.

The feeling comes back, ever so briefly and less sharp than before, when he says he's been wounded.

"I..." she hesitates, then says it anyway: "I hope you do, too. Very much."

Laurent

If he notices the flicker in her eyes, the catch of her breath, he says nothing of it. Perhaps he think she, like any young woman, is disturbed at the thought of violence and death. Likely he knows better. Even the women of Paris -- the alewives and bakerswives, and even the young ladies in their salons -- are not so disturbed by blood and gore as their men imagine. How could they be, when their lives are marked each month by blood and pain, and when so many of them will yet die in childbirth?

So perhaps it is only courtesy, and a sort of shyness, that prevents him from remarking on her reactions. At any rate, his story is soon over. She expresses hope for his hopes. He looks at her; smiles.

"Well. Does this sept of yours require meat?" He is joking, of course. "Perhaps I can negotiate an exclusive contract."

Emmanuelle

If she were not just stepping back from the edge of that strange chasm, she would laugh. As it is, she exhales. She smiles, almost wryly. "You come late to that joke, Laurent," she says, his name coming as thoughtlessly from her lips as hers fell from his earlier. "My sister already said something similar this morning."

Laurent

Strangely, it is not the joke-turned-serious that catches his attention first. It is a sense of blossoming realization and, with it, an inexplicable gladness:

"You have a sister."

Emmanuelle

A small nod, then. "Simone. She is kin, like you and your brother." A pause. "She braided my hair before I came."

Laurent

"She has a clever hand," he says. "It is prettily done."

Looks away. Clears his throat, a faint flush in his cheek. Makes a production of going to fetch the pitcher, also copper; of refilling her cup and his.

"If your people require meat," he retreats to safer subjects, "then of course I am more than happy to supply it at cost."

Emmanuelle

That's enough to make her smile. And perhaps even forget her momentary fright, her strange pain that even now is fading from memory, from understanding. She doesn't blush; she just looks pleased that he likes her hair. No one ever comments on her hair being pretty or not.

When he goes to fetch the pitcher, she carefully -- a bit gingerly -- arranges herself on the stool, carefully sitting, straight-backed, so that when he comes back she's seated. Smiles at him again when he brings her more water, thanking him quietly as she takes the cup.

Drinks.

She laughs slightly. "We... are hunters. And because we are also more than animals, we salt meat for the winter." And yet it's the second time he's offered. And as needless as it is, as much as she just told him that it's needless, she goes on to add:

"But I will have to wait until I taste what you have, before making any decisions."

Laurent

"If you're angling to sample my roasting skills, you'll have to return another night. Tonight we'll be steaming the clams my brother's buying as we speak. From Claudine's. Best on the left bank."

He pulls a stool over as he speaks. Sits. Smiles, inordinately delighted. "You've sat, I noticed."

Emmanuelle

Now they are sitting together, sipping their cold water, and he seems so pleased by her sitting, as odd a thing as his pleasure to learn she has a sister.

"You are very odd," she says, smiling at him, as though it endears her. She laughs.

Laurent

He, too, laughs a little, and self-deprecatingly. "Gaspard would say I am dull, humorless and dour. Perhaps at the moment I am simply charmed."

Emmanuelle

She feels wings beating inside her chest, like a butterfly caught between palms, aching to get out.

"Simone says I would forget my name if left to myself too long," she answers, with a little shrug, a little smile.

Laurent

Another laugh, this one a little more open than the last. "And why is that?"

Emmanuelle

"You recall when I said my duties are more of the spirit than the body? Well," she explains, "I spent a great deal of time in the penumbra -- the spiritual shadow of this world -- and sometimes farther, into realms that are not shadows but distant echos of this one. Names are less important there. The essence of a thing is... what it is, for you, not a name or a word. And even when I am in this material realm, I am always aware of these other, unseen energies. The spirits who speak to me, the spirits I give chiminage to, the tasks I perform to honor and protect them and ensure that they honor and protect us in return."

It is the most she's said since she came here. It is the most she's said to him since she explained that monsters were real, that he was blood-relative to these monsters.

She is looking him in the eyes now, without those blushes, those ducks of head, those fidgets of her hands, the incessant questions and awkward pauses that mark her as someone unused to social niceties or even general conversation.

"Simone lives with me, and fancies that I would forget to eat and sleep if she did not fret over me," she says, with a wry cant of her head, a dry cast to her voice. "And sometimes I do not think she is entirely wrong. There are days when I am, at best, only half present in this world."

Laurent

Laurent is quiet a moment. She is looking at him, and she finds him looking at her. Their eyes meet. Neither of them look away.

"It seems to me," he says at last, and quietly, "that at this moment, you are entirely present."

Emmanuelle

The smallest of nods. Anything more would move her gaze from his.

"At this moment, I am."

Laurent

Perhaps -- after some moments of watching one another -- he would have said more, or she would have. Perhaps their awkward, sweet little conversation would have continued in another vein. They are not to find out, however, for at that very moment the back door bangs open and Gaspard enters, loud and cheerful, bearing a pail of fresh clams.

So it is that the conversation expands from two to three, and shifts from ... well; all their myriad and intimate topics to the far more prosaic topics of food and drink. She is again invited upstairs: ascends a narrow, dark, wooden staircase to small, dark, wooden apartments built over the butcher shop. The smell of offal and meat is somewhat less here (though, one must admit, never fully absent), and someone has hung bunches of dried herbs in each window in an attempt to freshen the air.

There are several rooms upstairs, none of them large: two bedrooms for the brothers, a small kitchen, and an open area that essentially serves as living space. Here, there is a small table, large enough perhaps for two brothers and a friend or two. There is a bookshelf with a few tattered, treasured books. There is a keg of cheap ale in the corner; also some dried foodstuffs that did not fit in the kitchen.

Gaspard cooks, which is to say he steams the clams, which is to say he fills a large pot with a small amount of water, sets a grate inside the pot's mouth, and places the clams there before lidding the pot. While their dinner cooks they converse, and Gaspard has all manner of questions about her magic, half of which are near-rhetorical as he attempts to drill down, understand, fit this 'magic' of hers into his broader rational world. He has some theories about phlogiston and ether, but before he can expound the clams are done.

Dinner is simple, but thoroughly filling: clams, mostly, with butter and a single precious lemon that they slice very thinly; a loaf of bread, too, from the baker on the corner. Ale from that keg, neither terribly cold nor terribly good, but passable. Over food, the conversation drifts, and at some point Emmanuelle is essentially asked what she does when she is not being the good witch of the forest. But by then Gaspard is somewhat tipsy, and whatever answer she gives passes muster.

Eventually, they are sated, and Laurent cleans up while Gaspard goes down to the shop at his behest, carving and wrapping a choice cut of beef for their guest to bring home.

"I'll see you home," Laurent offers, the dishes clean and stacked, the silverware washed. "We can ride -- it'll cut time from your journey."

Emmanuelle

Emmanuelle is quieter, when Gaspard is back. The awkwardness and uncertainty about her becomes more awkward, more uncertain, with a third person, and one who knows even less about her true nature. She speaks very little, her earthen eyes wide and observant as they go upstairs, as the younger brother cooks. She eyes the bookshelf with a mixture of interest and trepidation, but does not ask about it.

When Gaspard starts asking about her "magic", she looks often at Laurent, not because she is not sure what to say, but because she is not sure what he wishes her to leave out. He is, after all, his brother's keeper. At least he is in her eyes. A few times, Gaspard's skepticism makes something flash in her eyes, something defiant and perhaps a touch frustrated. He starts using words she's never heard, and she frowns a bit as he goes to the clams.

Her eyes remain on Laurent for a time, but then there is food, and it turns out that their guest is very hungry. She eats whatever is given to her, a touch too fast, does not ask for more, accepts anything further that is offered and gives that the same borderline ravenous treatment. She continues taking water rather than ale, and Gaspard asks her what she does when not being a 'good witch', which is apparently close enough to the line of disrespect for her that her answer is given flatly, if not sharply:

"I kill monsters."

Perhaps that does, in fact, pass his tipsy muster.

While Laurent cleans, she remains seated, unsure of what else to do and knowing only that if she gets up to try and help, they will step all over one another. So she sits, quiet again, her hands folded on her lap, looking at the empty shells of clams on her plate. She's never had so many at once. Nor with lemon. There are no lemons in the caern. Not naturally.

He speaks to her. And she looks up.

"I do not mind the time," she says, because it is true. And adds, perhaps because politeness demands it: "You need not trouble yourself."

Laurent

Early in the meal the brothers notice she seems ravenous, but will not help herself, perhaps out of shyness or politeness. So they pile clams onto her plate, again and again, rarely letting her go unfed for long. It is a good thing Gaspard bought a good amount of clams. A huge amount, actually; enough ordinarily for two meals. They eat them all, however, and if either of the brothers are amazed at the amount she puts away, they are at least polite enough not to mention it aloud.

Then the meal is done, and Gaspard is downstairs, and Laurent is offering to see her home, and she is being polite again. He shakes his head:

"I'd like to see you home, if you do not mind."

Emmanuelle

She looks vaguely nervous, somehow. "...why?"

Laurent

The question has him at a loss. He casts around a moment:

"Because I enjoy your company."

Emmanuelle

"Oh."

She takes a breath, exhales: "I enjoy yours, as well. I feel... tenderly, towards you. I do not know why."

Laurent

Not knowing quite what to say to such a thing, Laurent breathes a laugh, then gestures to the stairs.

"Come. We'll take the horses. And perhaps next week you will come again, for dinner."

Emmanuelle

She doesn't rise, but it isn't to be defiant or difficult. She's watching him, piercingly. There's something almost insistent about the way she watches him.

"I thought you were going to come see how we live, next week."

Laurent

His brow furrows -- he senses it, that insistence, but does not understand it. "Yes. I did not know these plans were mutually exclusive. I thought perhaps we could make this ... a regular occurrence. Dinner."

Emmanuelle

Her brows flicker together at something in his words, draw apart again. "Of course," she says, and glances down, then scoots her chair back, carefully. Rises, walking towards the top of the stairs where he stands.

Laurent

But he doesn't step aside to let her precede him down the stairs, as a gentleman should. He doesn't move to go down the stairs at all.

"What is it?" he asks: gentle, but insistent in his own way.

Emmanuelle

So they stand, rather awkwardly, and she's looking at her hands where they're folded in front of her, like concentrating on them will keep her from fidgeting. It is working, so far, and there is the added but unintended benefit of hiding the anxious coloring of her cheeks at his question,

and at her own nature, compelling her to answer.

"Do you not feel... something for me, as well?"

Laurent

Now they are both looking elsewhere. She at her hands. He -- also at her hands, the demure fold of them belying what they can do. The awesome powers of healing and harm, both.

He wants to put his hand over hers. Yet she is standing, and her hands are so close to her body, and it would be thoroughly inappropriate. He is no nobleman, true, but his life has been entwined with those of the quality. He has learned their rules and their chivalry perhaps better than they have.

"Of course I do," he says, softly. And again running out of words, stops there, uncertain.

Emmanuelle

Now she looks up at him, not quick but sudden, all the same. Sees him, at least for that moment, when he isn't seeing her. He's looking at her hands, which are far too soft for a lady who lives in the woods and kills monsters.

"Does it trouble you, that I say it?"

Laurent

"I..."

He is at a loss; uncertain of what to say. More profoundly, uncertain of the answer. After several seconds go by, he shakes his head.

"No. But it is ... unexpected. You are so direct. Most ladies -- most women of good repute are not."

Emmanuelle

"Oh."

Sometimes she says this. It isn't a shrinking, shy, self-recriminating thing. This time, she doesn't blush. She says it like she honestly didn't know. She says it like the implication that she is not a lady of good repute is not present, or as if it is simply unimportant.

Whatever she thinks of this knowledge, however, is left unsaid. She does not promise to be less direct. She does not apologize for having been so direct in the first place.

She would have, if he'd said it bothered him. But that is neither here nor there.

There's a silence between them, and perhaps it is awkward, but she doesn't feel it so. She's quiet, and still, and after a few moments, she gives him a small smile.

"I would like to repay your kindness by welcoming you next week. You can eat with us, too. But it is very different, and will -- most likely -- be after dark.

"Perhaps... I could visit you here again, while it is still light. Then you could go with me." The cast of that small smile turns hopeful. Hopeful, but not fragile.

Laurent

"I would like that," he says, and is surprised to realize it is no mere pleasantry but the truth. "Though it seems quite unchivalrous to ask you to walk to and fro on my account."

Emmanuelle

She's pleased. He can see it in her eyes, that little spark. And then she laughs, lightly, at his comment. "You came back," she says, somewhat incredulous. "When you saw a monster, when you should have stayed safely away... you came back. I do not think your chivalry is in question, Monsieur."

Laurent

"That was only foolhardy curiosity," he disagrees, smiling. "At any rate, I would feel better if you came at noon and stayed for lunch. Then in the afternoon we can set out together to see this home of yours."

Emmanuelle

"All right," she says softly, still smiling up at him. "I would like that."

And she is not surprised at all to feel, in her heart, that it is the truth.