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."
"It is," Ellis agrees, more because of his investment in Wysteria's delight than any particular love of bargaining. He runs his thumb along the pages of the pamphlet, watching her expression. His smile has settled, warmed into something quiet and fond and easy.
"I'll retrieve something for you with the proper price, so you can show them how you've saved already," he promises, before considering the contents of the book, the handsome oiled stock of the prototype. "And the design will look well on the weapon. That may sway some opinions."
There are certain kinds of men who prefer a weapon if it's beautiful, as if that changes anything about what it's capable of. There's at least one figure among the Division heads who seems to fall into such a category, in Ellis' estimation.
"If all goes well, yes. I have told de Foncé that I'm a very poor artist, so let us hope that my hand is at least reliable for tracing and pattern making and so on. And that is not," she is prompt to add, all good cheer. "An attempt to fish after a compliment. It is merely a factual observation."
Wysteria straightens then, drawing her chin from out of the cup of her upturned hands. It has an air of a turning page about it; not a dismissal, but movement forward—undeniable.
![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
no subject
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.
no subject
"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."
no subject
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?"
no subject
"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.
no subject
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.
no subject
"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."
no subject
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."
no subject
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?"
no subject
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.
no subject
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.
no subject
"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?
no subject
"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."
no subject
"I'll retrieve something for you with the proper price, so you can show them how you've saved already," he promises, before considering the contents of the book, the handsome oiled stock of the prototype. "And the design will look well on the weapon. That may sway some opinions."
There are certain kinds of men who prefer a weapon if it's beautiful, as if that changes anything about what it's capable of. There's at least one figure among the Division heads who seems to fall into such a category, in Ellis' estimation.
no subject
Wysteria straightens then, drawing her chin from out of the cup of her upturned hands. It has an air of a turning page about it; not a dismissal, but movement forward—undeniable.
"Now. About these poems—"