(no subject)

[butdeeplyfelt]

Vanessa Ives, coming home late at night -- she lowers herself slowly from a hansom cab, wine-red skirts gathered up for safety from the muck that already soaks through their hems, and the thought of home lies uneasily beneath her skin. If she had ever wanted a home on earth, it would not, she thinks, have been Grandage Place; but nothing else has so deserved the title. She belongs in such a place, half-rotting, clinging onto gentility through its name and nothing else.

And she lives there with Sir Malcolm Murray, and on that... on that she keeps her own secrets, even from him. She's been out in his place tonight -- tracking down a man rumored to have certain abilities beyond the worldly -- and she had hoped, not for his sake, to bring him better news.

Her bootheels strike across the creaking floor as she lets herself in, and she shivers; the night is cold for early autumn, and the house colder still in its open spaces.

Comments

[excepthelast]

Sir Malcolm sets down his glass with such care that it's obvious just how much frustration and pique is being contained within his form. He stalks his way around the desk, his gaze sizing up Vanessa in a manner eerily similar to the way he would regard his prey during hunts during his travels.

"Your life is only endangered if you continue to take foolish risks with it," he nearly snaps. Although what he would make of her demise is the darkest of mysteries. Part of him knows it would rid him of a burden and a weakness he's been carrying too long. The rest of him cannot imagine existence without her, as contentious as that existence might be.

"And what inadvisable behavior would that have been, hmm?"