From this particular angle, there is much to appreciate about a woman who has never considered living in the Frostbacks any sort of reason to stop dressing to best show off her navel. Her silver, fur-edged silk dressing gown is knotted loosely at the waist, and the matched night-gown beneath it catches the candlelight on silver thread, and when she says: “Snug abed,” very warmly, it is not without being perfectly aware what conclusions someone might draw.
Now, if someone had seen Dorian with her as well, those conclusions get rather more exciting—but then, those saucy Northern mages have always stirred rumor in their wake. Ayse Thevenet had so successfully shed all vestiges of Tevinter only for their heritage to be thrown in sharp relief by her daughter's insistence on becoming joined at the hip with that Vint in the Inquisition.
"Would that we might all be so lucky," is as easily an allusion to bed partners as it is morose opining regarding an extremely important workload keeping certain other industrious individuals away from the simple comfort of their pillows. Why choose just one point when one can just as easily make two?
"Though I am surprised. The man always struck me as the type slow to settle, and I might have sworn I saw yourself and Lord Pavus pass that way not a full half hour ago."
Benevenuta sets her fingertips down upon his little pile of papers, as if reminded, which might be marginally less irritating if it were accompanied by, say, an illicit glance down. Some measure of interest in what might have dragged him from the comforts of his bed, and kept him up in the rotunda at this late hour.
It is not. Her foot settles more fully against the outside of his thigh, the other—knees elegantly crossed—tapping the heel of her slipper on and off as she considers her answer, smiling at him.
“We didn't wish to disturb him, in the end. But I feel certain he will appreciate the gesture.”
Or feel awkwardly obliged to leave it hanging in his office for a lack of anything else to do with it that doesn't sort of make him feel bad, whichever.
His attention flickers briefly to the pages under her hand, and then sweeps back up the length of her arm and to her face. That's fine; though for the record, that side of page two has some rather clever thoughts regarding what the Chantry's role might be at the fighting front line regarding the evident temptation of desertion among the mages working there—
But no matter. Should they bear fruit, he might later say to her 'But of course you recall the night I was working late in the library...'
He shifts his leg absently against the line of her foot. Leans very slightly forward as if to say something in confidence, though surely they have rarely together been so alone as they are now.
"It must be rather a grand one if it's pressured you into such restraint. You won't just satisfy my curiosity?"
Come now, Benevenuta. A little shamelessness hardly kills anyone these days.
“I have never taken you for a curious man, Cassius,” is not something, delivered so amiably to him slightly nearer to her now, that sounds like a criticism besides her habitual disinclination to call him Enchanter and ongoing failure to suggest that he, in turn, simply call her Benevenuta if he'd like. (It is perfectly acceptable to call her Speaker, because the Mortalitasi have not fallen with the Circles. And it is perfectly acceptable to her to call many mages by the defunct titles of the defunct Circles, but not this one.)
The tilt of her head has an air of speculation to it. As if she might in the next breath lean back and frame him with her fingers—
“I rather like it on you. No, I don't know that I shall.”
His tsk of disappointment is one of those played at things, like this is a joke they have shared with one another and not a series of little insults traded with all the effectiveness of trying to bring down a stone wall by flicking bits of gravel at it. Everyone knows there is no progress be to made with the strategy, and yet occasionally the urge to hurl even the smallest stone is a persistent one.
"What a philosophical problem. Is it preferable to be disappointed or disappointing? —I have never taken you for such a theorist."
He has not, in the entire history of their acquaintance, even once corrected her regarding the oversight she gives his title. Why, it has even stopped making his brow wrinkle. Never mind that he might as well sign his letters First Enchanter if he cared to for as long as the previous owner of the Perendale Circle's title sees fit to continue to be missing, presumed dead. That being a fact he rarely has reason to remind much of anyone of—in so many words at the very least.
(Surely it is better in some cases to simply do rather than to put such a fine point on the thing.)
![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
no subject
Now, if someone had seen Dorian with her as well, those conclusions get rather more exciting—but then, those saucy Northern mages have always stirred rumor in their wake. Ayse Thevenet had so successfully shed all vestiges of Tevinter only for their heritage to be thrown in sharp relief by her daughter's insistence on becoming joined at the hip with that Vint in the Inquisition.
no subject
"Though I am surprised. The man always struck me as the type slow to settle, and I might have sworn I saw yourself and Lord Pavus pass that way not a full half hour ago."
no subject
It is not. Her foot settles more fully against the outside of his thigh, the other—knees elegantly crossed—tapping the heel of her slipper on and off as she considers her answer, smiling at him.
“We didn't wish to disturb him, in the end. But I feel certain he will appreciate the gesture.”
Or feel awkwardly obliged to leave it hanging in his office for a lack of anything else to do with it that doesn't sort of make him feel bad, whichever.
no subject
But no matter. Should they bear fruit, he might later say to her 'But of course you recall the night I was working late in the library...'
He shifts his leg absently against the line of her foot. Leans very slightly forward as if to say something in confidence, though surely they have rarely together been so alone as they are now.
"It must be rather a grand one if it's pressured you into such restraint. You won't just satisfy my curiosity?"
Come now, Benevenuta. A little shamelessness hardly kills anyone these days.
no subject
The tilt of her head has an air of speculation to it. As if she might in the next breath lean back and frame him with her fingers—
“I rather like it on you. No, I don't know that I shall.”
no subject
"What a philosophical problem. Is it preferable to be disappointed or disappointing? —I have never taken you for such a theorist."
He has not, in the entire history of their acquaintance, even once corrected her regarding the oversight she gives his title. Why, it has even stopped making his brow wrinkle. Never mind that he might as well sign his letters First Enchanter if he cared to for as long as the previous owner of the Perendale Circle's title sees fit to continue to be missing, presumed dead. That being a fact he rarely has reason to remind much of anyone of—in so many words at the very least.
(Surely it is better in some cases to simply do rather than to put such a fine point on the thing.)