"No need to apologize," Charles said. Had he been able to reach for the ashtray himself, he would have gotten it for her. Sliding it to her would have been far less intrusive, and he felt badly for having to call attention to something as small as a cigarette... he just knew his limitations.
Elliot was fairly drenched, so much so that he was concerned that the fire would first make her condition worse before better. "Sit closer to the fire, Miss Ashdown. You may move the chair if you need to." The mansion was anti-typically free of a draft, but the human body was susceptible to all manner of things. Winter was dangerous for that very reason.
Her enthusiasm bombarded him, and he chuckled. It was a rare reaction. Most people closed off once he confessed his ability; they launched to hide their secrets (and inadvertently revealed them in the process), or begged him not to use his ability from the start. To have the thought of his telepathy appreciated, even if that appreciation was potentially premature, was a wonder of it's own. He supposed it was the human condition to question any person claiming to be a telepath. Unless Charles accompanied the revelation with a dramatic declaration, a person almost always treated the opportunity like a game. Charles wasn't offended by it, in fact her enthusiasm would have been readily apparent had he been incapable of reading her mind. Gingerly, he brought his fingers to his temple and delved into her mind, gleeful in the wake of her invitation.
The first thing he encountered was her academic scandal: Gabriel's cruel article 'Madness or Plague', but that was almost a matter of public record. Charles could have easily found the article after their brief phone conversation, and claiming intimate familiarity with it might only be met with doubt. Elliot Ashdown was a woman of many tragedies, a short life plagued by scandal and personal horrors. In that regard, she wasn't at all unlike Erik- despite the fact that their traumas had been very different. He was determined to find something more appropriate for a first conversation. Dragging skeletons from closets hardly put people at ease, now did it? There was something that caught him in passing, a gentle wisp of her personal preferences that he stumbled on with a lazy smile. "Why T.S. Eliot?"