Ari/Charity | mid-evening | complete
Noble galas were Charity Laroque's bread and butter, the most vital source of the sensitive information her criminal schemes often depended upon. Parties led to drink, drink led to impropriety, and impropriety led to sweet secrets whispered in a jewel-garlanded ear.
The ball at Countess Albrecht's had seemed, on the surface, no exception. But Charity knew something else was in the air when she received two invitations -- one for herself, in her postal box, and one through Thieves Guild channels for The Golden Girl.
That had piqued her curiosity.
The big reveal -- the lost Coulombe, the noble girl rescued from seeming death, fostered in a whorehouse -- was the stuff gossip dreams were made on. It was unfortunately of no use to The Golden Girl, since now all of Emillion knew about it. It did, however, make excellent banter fodder for bubbly blonde debutante Charity Laroque, who was being positively giddy over it at a wealthy gentleman who was pretending to listen to her but was mostly staring at her breasts in her very low-cut red gown. "Isn't it so exciting? It's like in a fairytale!" She clapped her hands together like a child.
Ari had to hand it to Charity -- the other woman had acting like a blithering fool down to an artform. It was no trouble to disengage from the woman she had been speaking with to turn and address the people conversing just behind her. “You know, Charity, darling,” she said, her voice impossibly saccharine and nearly dripping with sarcasm, “I have never heard any fairytales quite so sordid as to include whorehouses.” Unfortunate that that detail couldn’t remain private, but enough people knew that it was better to get the scandal over with now. Aud had enough to worry about. “Aren’t lost princesses generally left in the care of singing woodland creatures until a charming and domineering prince can come and rescue them from a sad fate of making their own decisions?” She pouted, tapping her finger to her lips, enjoying the way the man who had been ogling the other woman was now staring at her: with a mixture of horror and disdain. “I must be reading the wrong books.”
Charity scowled. "You're no fun," she said, turning up her nose in distaste. "The point is that she was poor and now she's a secret noblewoman. It's like that in all the stories, they get left with a goatherd or a…" She waved her hand dismissively. "A scullery maid, or something." A shrug. "Servants! You know." Poor people. It's all the same, really. Charity chucked her admirer under the chin with one hand, cooling herself daintily with a fan clasped in the other. "Say, Abergarde, could you get me another glass of wine? I'm feeling risky tonight!" She giggled.
"Oh, um," Abergarde snapped back to reality and raised his gaze to her eye level. "Sure! I mean, yes. I'll be right back."
"Thank you, dear! You wouldn't want to talk to this one, anyway," she said, eyeing Ari with a derisive snort. When the young nobleman had bounded off to secure some bubbly (and, he hoped, a place in Lady Laroque's bed), Charity lowered her golden fan and grinned at her friend. "You're very naughty, Ari, to have kept such a secret." The airy tones to her voice were gone, replaced by the steely timbre that was her natural speech. "It's my job to know secrets, you know. You're going to make me look even stupider than usual."