It turns into the work of a week or so, not only shifting sodden cargo but making repairs to prevent a repeat of the initial flooding. And over the course of a week, the collection of eggs deposited on the table each morning are accompanied by small bouquets of wildflowersand once, a handkerchief with a tiny bluebird embroidered in one corner. Several small notes (The plant in the front room should be turned, if you wouldn't mind or I've nailed down the sticky board at the top of the stairs, mind you stay prepared to duck in case the house has taken it personally.) mark the passage of time.
Until Ellis does appear, slightly damp from the pattering rainstorm that started during his trip from Lowtown to the Hightown house.
"Are you busy?" comes in lieu of greeting, as he drips just inside the doorway.
If the contents of the kitchen's wide old table is any indication—covered in a great mountainous expanse of paperwork—, then yes. She is quite busy. But within the Hightown house, a great heap of documentation often means nothing at all and may bear no reflection whatsoever on the occupant's current state. For rarely is the table perfectly clear, and it has been quite a busy few weeks and no doubt a great deal of this is backlog from time spent carousing around the Free Marches.
However.
Today Wysteria does indeed seem quite preoccupied, frowning thoughtfully at a stack of papers with various offical seals and stamps from an assortment of public offices. A half dozen of them are annotated in Orlesian and she has before her a robust phrasebook with which she has been interrogating the translation amended to the various pages.
"Only a little," she answers without looking up, absent to the point of distraction. —And then a beat later blows out her cheeks and throws down her pen. She swivels in her chair toward him.
"Do you know any Orlesian, Mister Ellis? I had thought to consult Lady Asgard on the subject, but she has been so very busy lately with all the work the Ambassador has given her. I have heard that he keeps her in his office quite late, you know."
By this point, Ellis has carefully worked off his sodden coat and hung it to dry on the usual peg inside the door. Just inside the doorway, Ellis scrubs a hand quickly through his hair, shakes out the worst of the droplets, then claims the chair adjacent to Wysteria once satisfied that he is not a danger to her papers.
"I don't know as much Orlesian as Lady Asgard," is surely an answer Wysteria could have guessed. "But I've some."
In which some is a fraught, complicated thing. Ellis is too Fereldan to ever speak Orlesian passably, the thick, blunt edges of his accent ill-suited to the lilt of Orlesian turns of phrase.
"It's likely not a help for your research," he cautions, because his assumption is simply that most of her correspondence would be related to her work in some form.
"Oh that is perfectly well. It has nothing to do with my work. It is a legal matter. Here, this phrase—"
She reads aloud some bit of Orlesian. Her accent is passable, but stilted.
"I believe it is something near to 'irreconcilable differences,' yes? I am only trying to be very certain of the wording. My solicitor doesn't speak it at all and the translation was provided by a third party."
She turns the page about, reaching across the table to lay it flat before him. She partners it with a page clearly meant to translate the passage into Trade. What is instantly clear from the page—the latter, if not the former—is that the document pertains to triggering the separation of assets upon dissolution of certain forms of legalized partnerships.
Legal matter draws a slight, questioning frown, that deepens by degrees upon hearing the phrase in question. His answer is a moment in coming, stalled presumably by inspection of the papers, but largely in part while Ellis considers and then discards his own questions.
"Almost," Ellis tells her. "It's very close, what you have. But there's a different phrase for it, when you're talking about these sorts of partnerships."
Ellis speaks it aloud for her once, then a second time, slower, trying to flatten his accent enough so as not to mangle the pronunciation. It can be heard, how this is a variation on what she'd read aloud a moment ago, similar but deviating at the tail, a new set of syllables, accented accordingly.
"I can write it for you better, if you've a piece of scrap paper," he offers, loathe to make his mark on any sort of legal paper. His gaze lifts back to her, the question in his expression still there, still unspoken.
Her study of him, or rather the working of his mouth around the phrase, is intensely focused—rather akin to the fixture of her attention on some problem of mathematics or some mechanical issue she has yet to solve. A scrap piece of paper is promptly produced; Wysteria passes it and her pen to him.
"If you would. I'm ashamed to that that I can never quite sort where the spaces and accents are meant to go. I have always been a rather poor study of languages, you know. It is lucky that so many people in Thedas are so well acquainted with Trade."
Inquiring looks? Those are for far more subtle minded individuals, Mister Ellis.
A flick of a smile, brief and warm, before his expression turns intent once pen and paper is at hand.
It is clear that the scratching composition is Ellis' best attempt at good handwriting. The effort is recognizable, as some of his notes to her have been very painstakingly written out, though the final outcome is still far from lovely. Lifting the parchment up, Ellis blows carefully over the letters before passing it back over to Wysteria.
"Are you assisting Lady Asgard with this?" he questions carefully. "The separation of her assets?"
For a moment, she regards him blankly across the paper. Her laugh, when it comes, is an explosive thing—high and delighted and very bright as if he has said something truly hilarious.
"Lady Asgard! No, not at all! And I entirely doubt her as a candidate for annulment. I have seen—well, I cannot say. But I daresay that the usual reasons are entirely inapplicable. Lady Asgard," she echoes and laughs again, all good spirits as her attention lowers to what he has written on the page.
"No, it is for myself and Monsieur de Foncé of course. Although presently there is a small unexpected complication which my solicitor and I are struggling to untangle. It will be resolved presently, I am most certain."
He pauses to silently mouth the phrase as noted. Yes, all right. That does seem more correct...
Of course, Wysteria says, and Ellis echoes silently, confused, Of course?
Ellis is not unused to feeling as if he's missed a step or two in the course of conversation with Wysteria. In fact, it is a familiar sensation by now, realizing she has outpaced him, or that he is lacking some vital piece of information that renders Wysteria's explanations intelligible to him. Wysteria rarely treats it as a hardship to backtrack, and so it is easy enough to mend what's missing.
However, in this matter, it is less that he's missed a step and more that he has the sensation of falling through a trapdoor.
A hand reaches across the table, fingers finding the back of her wrist to lightly. Ellis doesn't know exactly how to pose the question, so lets the expression on his face carry his confusion forward for him: brow drawn into a frown, eyes intent on her.
The touch at her wrist brings her attention from the page—briefly, as she has already made a move to make a new note on her the pages she has laid before her. It takes a most definitive double take for her to get as far as marking the exact, nearly comically sober expression he has adopted.
Wysteria sets the page aside.
"Why Mister Ellis, you look as if I've told you someone has died. Surely it comes as no surprise that—"
She abruptly grinds to a halt.
And then she colors a very bright red.
"Oh! I forgot entirely to tell you, didn't I? Ack, Maud will be so mortified. You mustn't say anything to her on the subject. I shouldn't like to look so foolish. It was entirely incidental—Oh! But that means you thought I would have de Foncé as my husband properly! Oh really, Mister Ellis."
"What was I meant to think?" feels like the best way forward, narrowing down between what Wysteria might have forgotten to tell him and Maud's involvement and his own folly in perceiving Val de Foncé as Wysteria's husband to the question that seems most relevant.
There was a wedding. Tony had made a speech. Ellis knows all of this, even if he hadn't been in attendance.
If there is some terrible, traitorous clench of feeling somewhere deep in his chest, that is besides the point. Unrelated to present confusion, Orlesian terms referencing marital separations and the bright flush of Wysteria's face.
"Well—well I would hope that at the very least you might have harbored some skepticism regarding the nature of the attachment! It is hardly as if the gentleman in question and I have been particularly—Well, no. I suppose we have been rather closely associated these many months. And I shouldn't say that there is no friendship in the thing whatsoever, as he has been most considerate and has even played his part quite well, but—"
She is growing more flush by the moment, hands falling to the papers before her so she might begin to shuffle them absently this way and that.
"I am very surprised, you know! That only the Ambassador of all people even thought to inquire. But I suppose everyone has just been being very polite, which is indeed what Valentine and I were gambling on in the first place so that our little ruse, such as it is, would go on without remark. It was very important that if anyone were to for some reason ask friends or colleagues about the nature of our marital status that the arrangement would be confirmed without question—
"There is a loophole!" she declares, as if slicing through her own rambling with a very sharp knife. "Regarding the ownership of this property and the limitations on its use imposed by the ridiculous way in which it came into my hands. This partnership has negated some of those restrictions, and when we are annulled and the deed is passed back to me it will be with far more manageable terms. But it is a bit of legal trickery and the city is under the impression that I'm a native to Thedas, and so it was all done very plainly so as to arouse as little suspicion as possible. —Or rather, they were under that impression. It has all become somewhat complicated now."
A particular gift of Ellis': the ability to wait out the entirety of a winding explanation up until the point where description resolves into a specific answer.
It's served him well with Tony and Wysteria both, but has gone easier when the topic was less—
Well.
Fluttering of papers and exclamations dwindle down to a specific answer, one that Ellis lets sit for a few moments. His gaze drops, observing the turn of pen in his hands while he absorbs the information, realigns his perception of Wysteria's marriage in his mind. A ruse. Legal trickery.
What is there to say? The conversation he had with Madame de Cedoux is still at the forefront of his mind. (What would be different had he protested then?) The study of the pen continues a moment longer, Ellis' thumb running along the faint ridges of the grip before he draws in a deep breath.
"Complicated in what way?" comes very steadily when spoken, Ellis' eyes lifting back to Wysteria's flushed face.
Here, a marked hesitation. It stands in bold contrast to the unchecked chattering of mere moments ago. But finally:
"I have always worn very stout gloves during meetings with my solicitor or any representative from some wing of the Viscount's office. But the other day when I was discussing the subject I had a small amount of discomfort with my anchor—very slight, I assure you," she is quick to add, aggressively heading off what she suspects may otherwise be a point of content. It quickly becomes evident, given the momentum she immediately builds afterwards, that this was the item over which she had been hesitating.
"Which caused the glove in question be to removed, which then prompted a great deal of questions, and then the whole affair was revealed and now there is some debate as to whether an annulment can even be granted and if it were to be passed through, whether I would have any rights to property after or if de Foncé would be required to keep it or else forfeit the deed to the city. It has something to do, you see, with the Chantry's latest ruling regarding the rights of mages to own property. Not that I am a mage as far as anyone in Thedas is concerned, but as you know the Chantry has always put Rifters and them in alignment.
"And now here we are," she summarizes, gesturing to the paperwork between them. "As I said. It is only a small unexpected complication to a plan that you will agree was otherwise quite clever."
In spite of how quickly Wysteria moves past it, alarm still flickers across Ellis' face. The pen turns in his hands again, small fidgeting movement that absorbs the impulse to reach for her shard-marked hand.
Instead, there is a few beats of scrutiny, watching her face, before his attention falls to the papers scattered across the table, pen tapping at the webbing between thumb and forefinger as Ellis scrutinizes them again. Or appears to. His attention turns inwards, weighing up the entirety of what he's been told, setting it against the tightening clutch of reaction in his chest.
"Yes," he agrees slowly, a little absently in the response. "It was quite clever."
In which clever sits very close to foolish, to some heated, worried objection that's come far too late to be of use. If anything, Ellis has come to understand that innovation tends to occupy the same risk, or it does in the way Wysteria and Tony tend to approach it. Had it worked, he might still have told her it was a foolish risk, or been present in a room where Tony said such a thing. Ellis is suspicious of his own instincts in this, how much of his own good sense is guided by some other emotion.
"Wysteria," Ellis says, and then stops. It must be familiar to Wysteria by now, what it looks like when Ellis is turning something over in his mind, attempting to resolve it into words. He is still looking at the papers between them, her hands resting over them. "Have you considered what you might do if this complication becomes too entangled for your solicitor to manage?"
She promptly opens her mouth to answer—and pauses, as if this is the first time she has considered the possibility. Certainly she finds no immediate, ready answer, and so her attention flickers down to the papers scattered about the table as if she may find some statement prepared there. What will she do?
"Then..." she is slow to say. "I will seek out a new solicitor."
And then?
Another hesitation. And then all at once: "A long time ago near to when I first arrived, Mister Rutyer said something to me that I have never really forgotten. Which is that when the war ends—if it ends, but let us say that it will for otherwise why else would most of us be here—, whatever Rifters remain may be poised to find themselves in a rather awkward position. And that the friends or connections we make now while we are free to do so may go a great way to making that position less awkward. So I suppose—"
Here finally that hesitation finds Wysteria again. She trails off.
An answer lives in that quiet, regardless of whether Wysteria says it aloud or not.
She will still be Wysteria de Foncé. And maybe that will make her life more comfortable. Val de Foncé has coin, a family with some sort of power. If Wysteria's solicitor cannot argue their way past the Divine's edicts on what mages may and may not do, then she will be in the exact place she is now, a wife to a man of means. She had written he and I are in perfect understanding of one another.
Perhaps that will be enough, even if their clever plan had not come off as they'd intended.
Ellis watches her hesitating, flush still lingering in her cheeks. It is a very intent study, observation made in the same moment as a particular emotion blooms open in his chest, all that suppressed feeling rooting deep in his chest.
He reaches across the table, closes the nearest of her hands securely in his own over the papers. Draws his thumb along her knuckles. A better comfort, surely, than anything he might have said, or asked, in this moment.
"Oh come now, Mister Ellis," she chides and clucks her tongue in defense against the faintly unbalanced feeling which has secretly begun to gnaw at the edge of her awareness. She doesn't withdraw her hand from his, but she does move to pat his with her free one.
"You look so very serious. It is not at all as dreadful as all that! Why, what has even changed? It is hardly as if I am any less at my own liberty. Even better, should the thing hold I will be free to do whatever I please without fear of making myself ineligible. I realize that is hardly as much of a concern among Riftwatch, but it has long been a secret concern of mine and I would be quite pleased to be rid of it. You should save all your sympathies for poor Monsieur de Foncé who I suspect is not ordinarily the sort eager to enter into any partnership, much less marriage."
She gives his hand a soft squeeze, announcing quite confidently, "And in any case, I have full confidence that it all will be sorted directly. There is no reason to be at all concerned."
A familiar wrinkle carves into Ellis' brow. Sympathy for Val de Foncé is such an absurd concept. Val de Foncé, who tripped into a good thing, what use would he have for Ellis' sympathies? Perhaps he will content himself with a very different sort of emotion, the kind that burns quietly and tends towards a green tinge, wholly separate from sympathy.
His thumb draws carefully along Wysteria's knuckles, frown directed downwards at their hands, at the shape they make. Wysteria sounds unconcerned, light over the possibility of her plan having gone awry, but it doesn't entirely dispel Ellis' worries.
There's no way for him to help her in this. He considers that too, for a moment, before shaking his head.
"I'm not worried for Val de Foncé," he tells her, with at least a slight upturn of his mouth, near enough to a smile. "I only care that you are happy, married or no. That's what I concern myself with."
"Oh please. As if I would allow the likes of Valentine de Foncé to get away with making me unhappy. I tell you," she assures him, quite confidently. "I am perfectly well. Thoroughly annoyed that it has become complicated at all, of course. There is nothing at all enjoyable about having one's plans made significantly more difficult than intended, you know. But it hardly dire, or as if I had any plans for an alternative."
With a last pat, Wysteria begins to unravel their hands.
"But no more of this! I am quite confident, and furthermore there is no reason to waste concern on me now when nothing at all wrong has even fully happened yet. I believe we were meant to discuss that little book of poetry you brought me, yes? Or was there something else you had in mind?"
The smile on his face widens slightly, though Wysteria's confidence doesn't completely dispel his worries. But it doesn't have to. He's content to keep his concerns in check for the moment, rather than burden her with them. She has her approach well in hand. Ellis can do nothing but provide whatever she asks of him. Until they know one way or another, he will have to hold his peace.
The impulse to prolong their linked hands comes and goes so quickly that it manifests in nothing but a brief tightening of his hand on hers before ceding his grasp. Barely noticeable.
"You were to tell me why you were so insistent on paying me back for your book," he reminds, considering the papers on the table before settling his elbows on the table, folding his hands over the scarred wood.
Counter intuitively to the impression that she is departing from the subject of paperwork, Wysteria turns through the folio before her. She spends a few moments rustling papers, and then produces a packet which she surrenders to Ellis with considerably more pleasure than the last set of documents.
"It is an accounting for the prototype which I mean to present the Division Heads with. I am using the illustrations as guides for embellishments on the stock, you see, and I should like to make Riftwatch reimburse the value of it. And barring that, I require the presence of a few easy sacrifices which I can pretend to be very upset about not receiving funding to cover and then heroically cut from the expenses after rigorous debate. Much better a book than the metal or pins or what have you."
She sets her chin into her upturned palms and smiles sunnily. See, she is very clever after all—complicated marriage plots notwithstanding.
The smile she receives in return is a much brighter thing, quietly pleased at the explanation. Yes, she is very clever. Ellis had never been worried about Wysteria's chances of bringing the Division heads around to the brilliance of her work, but it stands to reason that she'll likely to manage to wring all her demands from them and then some.
"You should let me get you a proper accounting of it's cost then," Ellis tells her, glancing up from the pamphlet. "I paid less than it was worth."
And if she has a record of the proper worth, then who was to say how much coin had changed hands?
Her offended gasp is the very definition of manufactured.
"What do you take me for, a scoundrel? A good for nothing opportunist? It would be highly unethical not to pass through the saving to Riftwatch. However,—" Her smile flashes wider and then is reined in to the level of self-satisfied conspiracy. "I would accept a more fair evaluation in order to include it along with the presentation. I have always been very weak to a bargain myself, and I suspect there is almost no one in the world who is immune to that particular kind of allure. It is very attractive to feel as if you've gotten away with something."
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It should be very difficult to badly boil eggs, and yet Wysteria has managed it.
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It turns into the work of a week or so, not only shifting sodden cargo but making repairs to prevent a repeat of the initial flooding. And over the course of a week, the collection of eggs deposited on the table each morning are accompanied by small bouquets of wildflowersand once, a handkerchief with a tiny bluebird embroidered in one corner. Several small notes (The plant in the front room should be turned, if you wouldn't mind or I've nailed down the sticky board at the top of the stairs, mind you stay prepared to duck in case the house has taken it personally.) mark the passage of time.
Until Ellis does appear, slightly damp from the pattering rainstorm that started during his trip from Lowtown to the Hightown house.
"Are you busy?" comes in lieu of greeting, as he drips just inside the doorway.
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However.
Today Wysteria does indeed seem quite preoccupied, frowning thoughtfully at a stack of papers with various offical seals and stamps from an assortment of public offices. A half dozen of them are annotated in Orlesian and she has before her a robust phrasebook with which she has been interrogating the translation amended to the various pages.
"Only a little," she answers without looking up, absent to the point of distraction. —And then a beat later blows out her cheeks and throws down her pen. She swivels in her chair toward him.
"Do you know any Orlesian, Mister Ellis? I had thought to consult Lady Asgard on the subject, but she has been so very busy lately with all the work the Ambassador has given her. I have heard that he keeps her in his office quite late, you know."
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"I don't know as much Orlesian as Lady Asgard," is surely an answer Wysteria could have guessed. "But I've some."
In which some is a fraught, complicated thing. Ellis is too Fereldan to ever speak Orlesian passably, the thick, blunt edges of his accent ill-suited to the lilt of Orlesian turns of phrase.
"It's likely not a help for your research," he cautions, because his assumption is simply that most of her correspondence would be related to her work in some form.
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She reads aloud some bit of Orlesian. Her accent is passable, but stilted.
"I believe it is something near to 'irreconcilable differences,' yes? I am only trying to be very certain of the wording. My solicitor doesn't speak it at all and the translation was provided by a third party."
She turns the page about, reaching across the table to lay it flat before him. She partners it with a page clearly meant to translate the passage into Trade. What is instantly clear from the page—the latter, if not the former—is that the document pertains to triggering the separation of assets upon dissolution of certain forms of legalized partnerships.
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"Almost," Ellis tells her. "It's very close, what you have. But there's a different phrase for it, when you're talking about these sorts of partnerships."
Ellis speaks it aloud for her once, then a second time, slower, trying to flatten his accent enough so as not to mangle the pronunciation. It can be heard, how this is a variation on what she'd read aloud a moment ago, similar but deviating at the tail, a new set of syllables, accented accordingly.
"I can write it for you better, if you've a piece of scrap paper," he offers, loathe to make his mark on any sort of legal paper. His gaze lifts back to her, the question in his expression still there, still unspoken.
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"If you would. I'm ashamed to that that I can never quite sort where the spaces and accents are meant to go. I have always been a rather poor study of languages, you know. It is lucky that so many people in Thedas are so well acquainted with Trade."
Inquiring looks? Those are for far more subtle minded individuals, Mister Ellis.
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It is clear that the scratching composition is Ellis' best attempt at good handwriting. The effort is recognizable, as some of his notes to her have been very painstakingly written out, though the final outcome is still far from lovely. Lifting the parchment up, Ellis blows carefully over the letters before passing it back over to Wysteria.
"Are you assisting Lady Asgard with this?" he questions carefully. "The separation of her assets?"
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"Lady Asgard! No, not at all! And I entirely doubt her as a candidate for annulment. I have seen—well, I cannot say. But I daresay that the usual reasons are entirely inapplicable. Lady Asgard," she echoes and laughs again, all good spirits as her attention lowers to what he has written on the page.
"No, it is for myself and Monsieur de Foncé of course. Although presently there is a small unexpected complication which my solicitor and I are struggling to untangle. It will be resolved presently, I am most certain."
He pauses to silently mouth the phrase as noted. Yes, all right. That does seem more correct...
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Ellis is not unused to feeling as if he's missed a step or two in the course of conversation with Wysteria. In fact, it is a familiar sensation by now, realizing she has outpaced him, or that he is lacking some vital piece of information that renders Wysteria's explanations intelligible to him. Wysteria rarely treats it as a hardship to backtrack, and so it is easy enough to mend what's missing.
However, in this matter, it is less that he's missed a step and more that he has the sensation of falling through a trapdoor.
A hand reaches across the table, fingers finding the back of her wrist to lightly. Ellis doesn't know exactly how to pose the question, so lets the expression on his face carry his confusion forward for him: brow drawn into a frown, eyes intent on her.
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Wysteria sets the page aside.
"Why Mister Ellis, you look as if I've told you someone has died. Surely it comes as no surprise that—"
She abruptly grinds to a halt.
And then she colors a very bright red.
"Oh! I forgot entirely to tell you, didn't I? Ack, Maud will be so mortified. You mustn't say anything to her on the subject. I shouldn't like to look so foolish. It was entirely incidental—Oh! But that means you thought I would have de Foncé as my husband properly! Oh really, Mister Ellis."
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"What was I meant to think?" feels like the best way forward, narrowing down between what Wysteria might have forgotten to tell him and Maud's involvement and his own folly in perceiving Val de Foncé as Wysteria's husband to the question that seems most relevant.
There was a wedding. Tony had made a speech. Ellis knows all of this, even if he hadn't been in attendance.
If there is some terrible, traitorous clench of feeling somewhere deep in his chest, that is besides the point. Unrelated to present confusion, Orlesian terms referencing marital separations and the bright flush of Wysteria's face.
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"Well—well I would hope that at the very least you might have harbored some skepticism regarding the nature of the attachment! It is hardly as if the gentleman in question and I have been particularly—Well, no. I suppose we have been rather closely associated these many months. And I shouldn't say that there is no friendship in the thing whatsoever, as he has been most considerate and has even played his part quite well, but—"
She is growing more flush by the moment, hands falling to the papers before her so she might begin to shuffle them absently this way and that.
"I am very surprised, you know! That only the Ambassador of all people even thought to inquire. But I suppose everyone has just been being very polite, which is indeed what Valentine and I were gambling on in the first place so that our little ruse, such as it is, would go on without remark. It was very important that if anyone were to for some reason ask friends or colleagues about the nature of our marital status that the arrangement would be confirmed without question—
"There is a loophole!" she declares, as if slicing through her own rambling with a very sharp knife. "Regarding the ownership of this property and the limitations on its use imposed by the ridiculous way in which it came into my hands. This partnership has negated some of those restrictions, and when we are annulled and the deed is passed back to me it will be with far more manageable terms. But it is a bit of legal trickery and the city is under the impression that I'm a native to Thedas, and so it was all done very plainly so as to arouse as little suspicion as possible. —Or rather, they were under that impression. It has all become somewhat complicated now."
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It's served him well with Tony and Wysteria both, but has gone easier when the topic was less—
Well.
Fluttering of papers and exclamations dwindle down to a specific answer, one that Ellis lets sit for a few moments. His gaze drops, observing the turn of pen in his hands while he absorbs the information, realigns his perception of Wysteria's marriage in his mind. A ruse. Legal trickery.
What is there to say? The conversation he had with Madame de Cedoux is still at the forefront of his mind. (What would be different had he protested then?) The study of the pen continues a moment longer, Ellis' thumb running along the faint ridges of the grip before he draws in a deep breath.
"Complicated in what way?" comes very steadily when spoken, Ellis' eyes lifting back to Wysteria's flushed face.
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"I have always worn very stout gloves during meetings with my solicitor or any representative from some wing of the Viscount's office. But the other day when I was discussing the subject I had a small amount of discomfort with my anchor—very slight, I assure you," she is quick to add, aggressively heading off what she suspects may otherwise be a point of content. It quickly becomes evident, given the momentum she immediately builds afterwards, that this was the item over which she had been hesitating.
"Which caused the glove in question be to removed, which then prompted a great deal of questions, and then the whole affair was revealed and now there is some debate as to whether an annulment can even be granted and if it were to be passed through, whether I would have any rights to property after or if de Foncé would be required to keep it or else forfeit the deed to the city. It has something to do, you see, with the Chantry's latest ruling regarding the rights of mages to own property. Not that I am a mage as far as anyone in Thedas is concerned, but as you know the Chantry has always put Rifters and them in alignment.
"And now here we are," she summarizes, gesturing to the paperwork between them. "As I said. It is only a small unexpected complication to a plan that you will agree was otherwise quite clever."
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Instead, there is a few beats of scrutiny, watching her face, before his attention falls to the papers scattered across the table, pen tapping at the webbing between thumb and forefinger as Ellis scrutinizes them again. Or appears to. His attention turns inwards, weighing up the entirety of what he's been told, setting it against the tightening clutch of reaction in his chest.
"Yes," he agrees slowly, a little absently in the response. "It was quite clever."
In which clever sits very close to foolish, to some heated, worried objection that's come far too late to be of use. If anything, Ellis has come to understand that innovation tends to occupy the same risk, or it does in the way Wysteria and Tony tend to approach it. Had it worked, he might still have told her it was a foolish risk, or been present in a room where Tony said such a thing. Ellis is suspicious of his own instincts in this, how much of his own good sense is guided by some other emotion.
"Wysteria," Ellis says, and then stops. It must be familiar to Wysteria by now, what it looks like when Ellis is turning something over in his mind, attempting to resolve it into words. He is still looking at the papers between them, her hands resting over them. "Have you considered what you might do if this complication becomes too entangled for your solicitor to manage?"
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"Then..." she is slow to say. "I will seek out a new solicitor."
And then?
Another hesitation. And then all at once: "A long time ago near to when I first arrived, Mister Rutyer said something to me that I have never really forgotten. Which is that when the war ends—if it ends, but let us say that it will for otherwise why else would most of us be here—, whatever Rifters remain may be poised to find themselves in a rather awkward position. And that the friends or connections we make now while we are free to do so may go a great way to making that position less awkward. So I suppose—"
Here finally that hesitation finds Wysteria again. She trails off.
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She will still be Wysteria de Foncé. And maybe that will make her life more comfortable. Val de Foncé has coin, a family with some sort of power. If Wysteria's solicitor cannot argue their way past the Divine's edicts on what mages may and may not do, then she will be in the exact place she is now, a wife to a man of means. She had written he and I are in perfect understanding of one another.
Perhaps that will be enough, even if their clever plan had not come off as they'd intended.
Ellis watches her hesitating, flush still lingering in her cheeks. It is a very intent study, observation made in the same moment as a particular emotion blooms open in his chest, all that suppressed feeling rooting deep in his chest.
He reaches across the table, closes the nearest of her hands securely in his own over the papers. Draws his thumb along her knuckles. A better comfort, surely, than anything he might have said, or asked, in this moment.
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"You look so very serious. It is not at all as dreadful as all that! Why, what has even changed? It is hardly as if I am any less at my own liberty. Even better, should the thing hold I will be free to do whatever I please without fear of making myself ineligible. I realize that is hardly as much of a concern among Riftwatch, but it has long been a secret concern of mine and I would be quite pleased to be rid of it. You should save all your sympathies for poor Monsieur de Foncé who I suspect is not ordinarily the sort eager to enter into any partnership, much less marriage."
She gives his hand a soft squeeze, announcing quite confidently, "And in any case, I have full confidence that it all will be sorted directly. There is no reason to be at all concerned."
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His thumb draws carefully along Wysteria's knuckles, frown directed downwards at their hands, at the shape they make. Wysteria sounds unconcerned, light over the possibility of her plan having gone awry, but it doesn't entirely dispel Ellis' worries.
There's no way for him to help her in this. He considers that too, for a moment, before shaking his head.
"I'm not worried for Val de Foncé," he tells her, with at least a slight upturn of his mouth, near enough to a smile. "I only care that you are happy, married or no. That's what I concern myself with."
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With a last pat, Wysteria begins to unravel their hands.
"But no more of this! I am quite confident, and furthermore there is no reason to waste concern on me now when nothing at all wrong has even fully happened yet. I believe we were meant to discuss that little book of poetry you brought me, yes? Or was there something else you had in mind?"
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The impulse to prolong their linked hands comes and goes so quickly that it manifests in nothing but a brief tightening of his hand on hers before ceding his grasp. Barely noticeable.
"You were to tell me why you were so insistent on paying me back for your book," he reminds, considering the papers on the table before settling his elbows on the table, folding his hands over the scarred wood.
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Counter intuitively to the impression that she is departing from the subject of paperwork, Wysteria turns through the folio before her. She spends a few moments rustling papers, and then produces a packet which she surrenders to Ellis with considerably more pleasure than the last set of documents.
"It is an accounting for the prototype which I mean to present the Division Heads with. I am using the illustrations as guides for embellishments on the stock, you see, and I should like to make Riftwatch reimburse the value of it. And barring that, I require the presence of a few easy sacrifices which I can pretend to be very upset about not receiving funding to cover and then heroically cut from the expenses after rigorous debate. Much better a book than the metal or pins or what have you."
She sets her chin into her upturned palms and smiles sunnily. See, she is very clever after all—complicated marriage plots notwithstanding.
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"You should let me get you a proper accounting of it's cost then," Ellis tells her, glancing up from the pamphlet. "I paid less than it was worth."
And if she has a record of the proper worth, then who was to say how much coin had changed hands?
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"What do you take me for, a scoundrel? A good for nothing opportunist? It would be highly unethical not to pass through the saving to Riftwatch. However,—" Her smile flashes wider and then is reined in to the level of self-satisfied conspiracy. "I would accept a more fair evaluation in order to include it along with the presentation. I have always been very weak to a bargain myself, and I suspect there is almost no one in the world who is immune to that particular kind of allure. It is very attractive to feel as if you've gotten away with something."
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