Charis Leffoy (lamerveilleuse) wrote in lightning_war, @ 2008-09-09 17:17:00 |
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Current mood: | creative |
Midday Tuesday 15 September 1942, at Malfoy Manor in Tintagel...
Charis Malfoy stuck her head into the parlour where most of the sewing was done; she was bored, because her arm still hurt a little from the wound she’d taken in yesterday’s skirmishes. Apparently the door had been closed because Liane was essentially playing dress-up with old clothes from the Malfoy attic. Bella was studying one of Dracaena’s suits to see how it was put together. Aelia was completely lost in a book, her embroidery set aside and forgotten. “Are the lot of you actually doing anything in here?”
Bella looked up. “Why, what’s wrong?”
“Nothing’s wrong,” said Charis, shrugging. “Mercutio’s the same as before, we’re not under siege, nobody’s found any dead house-elves and there haven’t been any new declarations of war. Only Liane’s father sent up her trunk at long last. He’s setting up house in Trevena, as ordered. And Pritchard just hates it.”
Liane smiled and scrambled out of the white confection she was in. “You’ll want me to open it, Bella. Nobody can but me,” she said, dressing briskly in her trousers and blouse.
“Well,” Charis allowed, “I actually probably could, but it would be bad for me and bad for your things if I made a mistake, wouldn’t it?”
Liane’s smile grew slightly less sweet. “Yes, very,” she said. “I used some basic spells for expanding negative space, so…it might be a little explosive.”
Charis stared at her. “At Beauxbatons, that’s basic?”
“No,” said Liane, and rose, and held out her hand to Bella. “For what I do it is, though.” After a moment, she frowned. “He’s not still there, is he?”
Charis shook her head. “Mother asked him if he wanted to see you,” she said quietly, “and he said that he didn’t. I’m sorry.”
“Don’t be,” said Liane. “This isn’t the first time I’ve chosen to live with someone else. Well, this wasn’t my choice, but then neither was the other, exactly. Comtesse de Marigny is accustomed to getting her way. But I wanted away, and he knew it, and he’ll never forgive me for that.” She extended her hand to Bella.
Bella took her hand with a smile and rose herself, smoothing down her skirts. “Well, now we can see what you have.”
“Not much, I’m afraid,” said Liane. “I brought mostly my practical things. The crossing from France was dangerous, even with Mr Charteris arranging it.”
“We can work on it,” Bella told her. She glanced at Aelia, who had fallen asleep over her book, and decided to leave her there for now.
“We can,” Liane agreed. “I like Lady Dracaena’s style, too, it’s a little of everything. She’s not afraid to be thought unique. I want to be able to set the styles rather than follow them someday, myself.”
Charis snorted a little. “If you are really so talented at arithmancy and gating, why the hell do you care so much about fashion?” She glanced sidewise at Liane. There had been something about her she just hadn’t liked, at the first; but she was one of the few people who lived in the Manor, other than Dracaena and Nicodemo themselves, who seemed to value the modern world at all.
“Probably for the same reason you still wear skirts, even though you’d look far more comfortable in trousers,” said Liane. “An image is important, especially when you have a lot to live down.” She glanced at Bella, suddenly realising how sharp her tone had become. “Sorry. It’s an argument I’ve had before.”
Bella shook her head. “No, it’s all right. Image is important, you’re right.”
“What makes you so sure I have something to live down?” Charis grumbled as she led them downstairs. Was Liane another blood snob?
“I was thinking more of myself,” said Liane, “but you carry yourself that way.”
Charis shrugged. “I just wonder why it is all right for you to wear trousers and blouses like that but Dalton had to dress up like the rest of them here.”
Liane glanced at Bella. “Who?”
“Her cousin,” Bella said. “The one who cut off Luce’s hair?” It was harsh, she supposed, but the truth.
“Someone cut off Lucius’ hair?” Liane blinked, then remembered the discussion earlier; Aelia’s teasing had overshadowed that part of it. “Oh, that one!” She frowned. “He’s your cousin?”
“On the other side of my family,” said Charis, scowling.
“Besides, I’m sure that Liane is more than willing to wear the appropriate things when she needs to,” Bella said, leaving the words ‘unlike Dalton’ unspoken.
“I wouldn’t want to look out of place in Court,” Liane agreed quietly. “Or anywhere, really.”
“Dalton hates suits,” said Charis with a sigh, “but you do know that wasn’t the actual problem? And it was different when Don Ercole was in charge, Nicodemo’s more reasonable about things like that.”
Bella ignored the comment about her father and shrugged. “I’m sure I have no idea what his motivations or issues were.”
Liane frowned. “I can see why this would be a difficult place, if you were used to something different, but this isn’t an age in which people have choices about how or when to adapt to things, if they want to do well.”
Charis shrugged. “Your father is allowed here,” she said sourly. “Even if he has to live in the village.”
Liane made a face. “I said at breakfast that I’m done making amends for him, and I meant it. Don’t blame me for anything he does.”
“That’s not what I meant.” Charis frowned. “Your father tried to kill Yvon, and Katya was threatened with banishment just for teasing him. Dalton didn’t know the significance of cutting someone’s hair. Which I suppose is my fault.”
“You know this is all about blood,” Liane said gently. Charis wondered if the apologetic tone was ‘oh, poor dear, it’s not your fault’ or genuine sorrow that the world was set up so unfairly.
“Yes, like everything else.” Charis glanced at Bella, then back at Liane, noting the conspiratorial way they seemed to mirror each other as they walked down the hall to the area where the trunk had been left. “You two have certainly become very fast friends in a very short time.”
“Some people are just more personable than others,” Bella replied coolly.
Liane smiled a little smugly; she liked being liked, though she was unused to being described that way.
“Where are we going?” Bella asked after a moment. “It’s not in Mamma’s office?”
“Nope,” said Charis. “She didn’t want Domitian around classified information.”
“Good for her,” said Liane.
“I’ve heard of you before,” said Charis after a long moment, remembering. “From Reynard Saint-Germain and Austin Parkinson.”
Liane’s jaw tightened. “I’m sure you have,” she said coolly. “I wouldn’t believe any of it. Austin and I are something like friends, but Reynard and I…have some history.”
Charis shrugged. She wanted to be surprised, but she couldn’t. “Boys are stupid. You don’t have to tell me.”
“That’s a nearly universal truth,” Bella agreed.
“So what of my reputation has preceded me?” Liane inquired as they walked into the anteroom where her father had been a few minutes ago. “La reine des neiges? I’ve heard it before.” Her expression was world-weary. “It’s even a little bit true, I suppose, but you’d be a snow queen too if you’d been the bastard’s daughter and smarter than all the legitimate heirs.”
Charis softened a little; she knew what it was like to be a bastard. “That, yes. And other things. When I realised who you were, I thought Colette might make trouble for you.”
The trunk sat in the centre of the floor, with an old leather sack beside it that contained the things Liane had been using recently. Liane opened the sack. It held some dirty clothing, which made her a little queasy; she knew she should count it, but her father could have anything—he could have her hair from when she was a baby, and he probably did. If he’d wanted to compel or assault her, it would have been easy, and he would have done so by now; she just wondered, sometimes, what had stopped him. And there was her April Vogue. And Professor Rosenthal’s last letter was still in it.
Liane began to undo the wards, and then, what Charis had said began to sink in. “Nicolette can try to make trouble for me, but I’ll write to her cousin Lunete if she does,” she said, when she put down her pitch pipe. “But I remember her as a child.” She glanced at Bella. “Have you ever met Nicolette Saint-Germain? I’m sure she must be in school here.”
Bella nodded. “She’s one of my friends at school,” she said. “Dimity and I will make sure she doesn’t make trouble for you, I’m sure we can handle it.”
Liane smiled at her, though if Bella refused to go back, she wasn’t sure how Bella would manage this feat. “Thanks,” she said gratefully. “It would be nice, for once, to get along with girls my age. Not that I didn’t appreciate the friends I had at Beauxbatons, but really, there weren’t many.” She looked up at Charis. “Nicolette should remember, I get on very well with her cousin Lunete; Lunete was friendly with one of my teachers, Professeur de Valois, and with my favourite relation, Mlle Séverine, who is Yvon’s half-sister. Not to mention Professeur Rosenthal and his brother. If she values their good opinion—and she very well may not, but that is her affair—she will be careful of me.”
“Most of your friends are adults,” Charis said, frowning a little.
“So they are.” Liane shrugged, and looked inside the trunk. “Nothing’s been tampered with,” she said. “It’s all safe. But if you want me to unpack it we’ll have to take it up to my room. It would be very heavy if I reversed enough of the spell-work I did to get anything out of it.”
Charis gave her an odd look. “It was heavy before,” she said. “I don’t suppose we can float it?”
“Not really, it’s unwise to layer spells,” said Liane. “But you could put it on top of something else and float that, adjusting for the extra mass of course.”
Charis laughed. “That little table, then, don’t you think, Bella?”
Bella nodded. “That should work,” she agreed, taking out her wand and summoning it over to them.
Liane and Charis lifted the heavy trunk onto the table, though it wasn’t easy. “You’re good at that one,” said Liane, as they took the trunk down the hall to the nearest of the lifts. “I’ve never seen a castle with lifts in before. I like it though.”
Charis shrugged, then frowned. “I wonder why they never had them at school, actually. It would be so convenient. We might be able to have less than thirty minutes between lessons.”
“Because that would be something sensible, and heaven knows we can’t have that,” Bella said, laughing.
Liane laughed along with her. “Sensibility and logic are very rare in this world.”
“Especially at that school,” Bella said.
“I’ve not heard good things about it from anyone, especially Austin.” Liane glanced at Charis, who was last to step out of the lift. “Did Austin speak ill of me? We were never precisely lovers, but I thought we were something a little like friends.”
Charis shrugged. “No,” she said after a moment. “Reynard was saying he ought to give up on you. That you were the sort of person who’d never admit that you needed anyone, and that you cared more about impressing your teachers than you did about any of the boys you walked out with.”
“Really,” Liane said, rolling her eyes. “Does Austin care enough about me to talk to his friends about it? Quelle surprise: he does not tell his family! He knows I’m not serious about him and that his grandmother, who still misses her home in the seventh circle of hell, would never allow him to be serious about me.”
“I wouldn’t say I’m Austin’s friend,” Charis began, but Bella cut her off.
“If you can’t be serious about him and he’s not even fun, then he’s definitely not worth it!”
Liane laughed. “I’ve got out of the habit of fun,” she confessed, her face reddening. It had been a very long time since she’d slept with a boy simply and solely because she wanted to, without any other motivation. Then again, it had been a long time since she’d wanted to sleep with a boy. Or a man. And she’d never wanted to sleep with a girl.
Bella grinned at her. “You should get back into it.”
“Yes, I should,” said Liane, grinning back at her. That was one thing school would mean more opportunities for, even if they would all be boys and in a hurry to get to the parts they liked best.
Charis raised an eyebrow. “Do I want to know what you consider fun?”
Liane opened the door to her room and they set the trunk and the table down on the floor in front of her bed. “I’m a terrible grind. You might not like it much,” she told Charis, and winked at Bella.
Bella laughed. “Horrible, I’m sure.”
“For one thing, I do maths for fun. It is fun, I assure you,” Liane said, and then began to undo the spells.
“I’ll take your word for it,” said Charis.
Liane piled her clothes on the bed and tossed her shoes into a pile on the floor. There were at least five pairs and they were all different. Then she unpacked the books: glossy fashion magazines and torrid novels, from the looks of them.
“If that’s your idea of good reading, you should talk to Maeve Pritchard,” said Charis, alarmed. “I thought you were more academic than that.”
Liane laughed. “Not all of those are what they seem,” she said. “Mrs Parkinson is very nosy.”
“Are any of them what they seem?” Charis inquired.
“Yes, several. If you can read French, there’re a few excellent pieces of one-handed reading there. Let me know, I promise I always kept my reading hand clean.” Liane sighed over her rumpled clothes. “As you can see it’s pretty dire.”
Charis was red-faced. That frank, flippant remark had summoned mental images she needed to exorcise, and fast; she had a girlfriend, and she was not going to think about how pretty her obviously heterosexual cousin would have to look while touching herself.
Bella frowned, looking at the pile. “Well, if you want things in those styles, I can take them apart, figure out how they’re made and make a few new pieces off of them. But I can salvage some of it, I’m sure.”
“Some,” said Liane. “Not all. Do you really enjoy this?”
Bella nodded. “I like clothes. Which I know isn’t as impressive as some things, but I do. And these are different, I’ve never really made anything like this before.”
Liane smiled at her, relieved that it wasn’t the grand imposition she was sure it would have to be, even if it had been Lady Dracaena’s decree that she be outfitted according to her stature—whatever that was. “I love clothes, I just don’t know much about making them. It seems like it would be mostly geometry, though, and not difficult. I just don’t have the patience to actually sew. Even with charms. Tante Victoire did try to make a lady of me.”
“I like the sewing, it’s my favourite part. After doing altar cloths for so long, anything that’s a challenge is fun for me,” Bella told Liane sincerely.
“Altar cloths?” Liane was baffled. “Were you a novice in a convent? I thought they were all pagans here, except for my uncle Yvon.”
Bella shook her head. “Never mind, it doesn’t matter,” she said quickly, not wanting to discuss the work her mother—no, Carmela—had forced her to do in Charis’ presence.
Liane frowned. “If you say so.” She took Bella’s hand, briefly, and clasped it.
Charis was staring. “Why would—?”
Bella felt her cheeks flush and she willed it away, hating the way she forgot, sometimes, and let things slip out. It was so easy to talk to Liane, she sometimes forgot who else was around. “Here, let me see one of the blouses, the skirts should be simple enough,” she said, determined to change the subject.
Liane picked up a blouse and held it out to her. “You could make three or four of these out of just one of the night-gowns your mother said I could have, I suspect. With lace, even. And I don’t need all of those night-gowns.”
“I think lace would be sweet on it,” Bella said, taking the garment and eyeing it critically. “It would make it more feminine.”
“It would,” Liane agreed, pleased with that thought.
Charis glanced at Bella. “I have loads of things like that I don’t wear any more, if you want more examples.” She picked up a black dress—there were two in the pile—and stared at it. “They’d never have let me have something like this, though. Mother said this was too old for me. And much too expensive.”
Liane stared at it, miserably. Had she really packed that? She’d always hated it—what had she been thinking, that it would be practical, a dress like that? Maybe if she wanted to hook a rich patron so she could do nothing but calculate all day long…but even so. Maybe her father had packed it. He’d always liked seeing her in it. Which wasn’t a point in its favour.
Bella peered at the dress. It looked like something Arianwen would love, she thought.
“You don’t have to copy that. It’s from Berlin, by way of Paris,” Liane said quietly, taking it and balling it up and shoving it into the very bottom of the trunk, under a couple of harmonic ephemerides disguised as comic books. “It was expensive, but I had money then. Or rather, someone else did. I suppose I do now, I don’t know…am I really a part of this family?”
“Yes,” said Charis firmly. “You are. She decided that about two minutes after she laid eyes on you. That’s how she does.”
“She’s right,” Bella said. “You belong with us.”
Liane smiled, but then she glanced down, a little nervously, remembering the discussions at breakfast. “They won’t try to marry me off, will they?”
Bella shook her head. “Mamma wouldn’t do that. She knows how horrible it is to be married off to the wrong person, she wouldn’t.”
“They wouldn’t,” said Charis. “They know I like girls.”
“I think…I think they want the alliances, but they want us to be happy more. Mamma does. And I think maybe Nico might, too. Deep down somewhere,” Bella said, frowning. She suspected Nico had more emotions than anyone saw.
“Nico is her lover? Mr Zabini?” Liane smiled. “The one who took my thesis in, right. We talked about him earlier. Aelia.”
Bella nodded. “He tries to seem colder than he is sometimes, I think.”
“I know all about that, la reine des neiges, remember?” Liane shook her head. “It’s a front. People like that…have more emotions than they know what to do with. I know I do sometimes. I master them with maths and logic and rhetoric, but they’re all still there.”
“You can cut up whatever you like of my old dresses and skirts,” Charis said after a moment. “I don’t think I can ever go back to that world. It’s not a very safe place for people like me.”
Liane looked up at her thoughtfully. “Probably not.”
“Thank you for not asking why I would want to,” said Charis, a bit more softly.
“Everyone misses their home, sometimes. And thank you for letting me have those things,” said Liane. “I bet you’re keeping the Hepburn trousers, though.”
Charis snorted. “I wasn’t allowed those, either. Do you often wear trousers?”
Liane shrugged. “Not at Beauxbatons, it wasn’t allowed; we wore breeches there when it wasn’t modest to wear skirts. But yes, often enough.” She shrugged. “I spend a lot of my time on my back with my head up under some piece of equipment and I don’t want anyone passing by to have a free show.”
Bella still looked confused. “What on earth are Hepburn trousers?”
“Trousers like Katharine Hepburn wears, in the cinema,” said Charis, with a wry little smile at Bella. “Our friend Liane here has been to the cinema.” It amused her.
“Oh,” Bella said, as if this explained everything.
Liane shrugged. “Once or twice.” She had the uncomfortable feeling that Charis was proving a point with her now, and she smiled at Bella uncertainly. “I used to go on weekends once in a while.”
Bella shrugged, giving her a little smile. “Everyone likes what they like. I’ve just never been, that’s all.”
“If you want to go, I’ll take you,” said Liane. “If not…it honestly doesn’t matter that much. We can do other things to entertain ourselves. It’s not like there’s any such thing out here.”
“That’s true, it’s not as if the opportunity will present itself here,” Bella agreed, starting to examine the blouse again, trying to imagine where to trim it with lace.
Liane smiled at her and watched, suddenly interested in the shapes and lines of things, and how they fit together. Bella could take the blouse apart, make others and put them together, then put the original back, but how to get the most pieces out of the fabric they had? She needed graph parchment.
Charis frowned and sat down on the bed. Liane had dropped that topic flat. “What’s wrong…?”
Liane glanced back at her. It was a strange feeling, that they might be competing for her friendship. “I don’t know. Bella’s my friend, and we’re cousins, and I don’t want to be in the middle of a fight that has nothing to do with me, over someone who’s not even here.”
Bella didn’t know what to say suddenly, which was a rather awkward thing and she made a little face. “We’re not fighting,” she said, which was more or less true. It was just a long-standing sort of dislike.
Liane reached out and touched her shoulder. “It’s okay,” she said. “I just…” She sighed. “I’m not good at this kind of thing.”
“Everyone’s unsettled lately, we’ll all calm down, promise,” Bella said, smiling a bit.
“I just think it’s interesting that you’re so open-minded,” said Charis lightly. “And so girlish, for someone with such serious ambitions. I’m sure you’re not in any hurry to get to the altar.”
Liane shrugged. “There’s no one I want to marry,” she said, “but if there were…I wouldn’t wait, not in times like these.”
Charis frowned. “I remember, now, what you said over breakfast. Is that why Rey has such trouble with you? Did you fall in love with someone else?”
“Certainly not,” said Liane briskly. “I’ve never been in love, and sometimes I’m not even sure that I want to be.”
“Right,” said Charis, who didn’t believe it. “I’ll go and get those other things, then.”
“Thank you,” said Liane, but after Charis had gone, she looked down at Bella. “What is it, really? You can tell me.”
Bella shook her head. “We’ve just never got along, that’s all. And I deeply dislike her cousin. Which really didn’t help matters.”
“He sounds like a slug,” said Liane, although she did think she rather liked Charis, and she was already trying to factor out what had gone wrong to see if she could get the two of them to like each other better. “How could anyone not know what it means to steal someone’s hair?”
“Because he was raised as a Muggle and shows every signs of preferring to be one. It didn’t matter what Mamma did, what anyone did, he was just a vile little thing,” Bella said, words dripping with disdain.
“Oh,” said Liane, and she sighed. “It does make a difference, but really, not much of one. Muggles still understand that cutting someone’s hair off is an insult, even if they don’t know why.”
“And he did it after he’d been here with us, and I have no idea why on earth he thought it would be fine to start a fight on the way to school in the boats and nearly get himself and Luce and some others drowned, but he seemed to think it was absolutely brilliant,” Bella told her. “Charis is just upset that I like you and I couldn’t give a whit about Dalton. She thinks I’m a snob, and maybe I am. But at least I know quality when I see it.”
“Everyone thought I was a snob, too,” said Liane in a soft voice. “I’m embarrassed about my father, and I can see why she’d be embarrassed about her cousin, but there comes a time when you can’t make amends any more, there’s nothing you can do for someone else if they’re determined…” She swallowed, hard, and her voice grew even softer and faster, trying to catch up with her heart. “People do stupid things. Even people you care for, people you love, people who even deserve to be loved. You just have to accept it.”
Bella thought about this for a moment, then nodded. “That’s true. That’s very true.”
“It’s easier when it’s someone who doesn’t deserve to be loved, because then you can judge them, which helps you detach,” said Liane, “but even with my father sometimes it’s hard. He’s done a lot of terrible things…but in the end I wouldn’t exist without him.”
“I think mine made some bad choices, too, foolish things,” Bella admitted softly. “But I still love him.”
Liane leaned over and hugged her, briefly. “Good,” she said. “Don’t cut off some part of yourself that you might need later. Whatever he’s done, you shouldn’t punish yourself for it!”
Bella smiled a little. “I won’t,” she said. “I think we need all our bits and pieces.” She went back to work.
Liane rummaged through her things. There were several sheets of graph parchment she hadn’t used yet, and none of them were big enough, but she could enlarge them temporarily with a spell if she just drew to scale. “You should be a couturiere, I think. I know you’re busy, with my uncle getting married, but if I showed you a picture of something, could you figure out how to copy it?” There was a dress she badly wanted. It was an evening dress, and she really had no place to wear it…but she wanted it, and maybe if she had a proper evening dress, they wouldn’t make her wear corsets and farthingales at their Court.
“Probably,” Bella said. “I’ve never tried from a picture, but it couldn’t be much harder. Especially if the shape is at all familiar.”
“I could help you figure out the shapes. It’s just geometry and topology,” Liane said after a moment. “It can’t be that different to figure that part out. I just have no idea how to put it together, or how to make the fabric drape the way it does. See?” She found the magazine almost without looking, and it fell right open to the picture.
“Maybe if we put our heads together, we can pull it off,” Bella suggested. “I can already tell, that was cut on the bias.”
“I think so,” said Liane. “I suspect we could pull off a lot that way.”
Bella laughed. “Probably!”
Charis came back in, then. “You should probably know that Mother’s in a mood,” she said as she laid down a pile of things. “I don’t use any of this stuff any more and I doubt I ever will. You can have all of it. It probably isn’t as nice as the things you had in France, it’s schoolgirl stuff, but then we’re all schoolgirls here, and it’s a start, right?”
“Of course,” said Liane, and then more warmly, because there really were a lot of things and it had been extremely generous of Charis, whom she did like: “Thank you very much. I don’t want to seem ungrateful…I just want everyone to get on.”
“What’s Mamma upset about?” Bella asked.
“Fortune wants us all back at Hogwarts tomorrow,” said Charis. “Probably not you, you’re on medical leave. Maybe you could let her have your uniforms? Those I still need.” She glanced at Liane. “I can help you hem them,” she said. “I know you won’t want to wear ankle-length skirts, though you might want to save one or two for when it really gets cold.”
“Oh, no,” Bella said, frowning deeply. She didn’t want to let anyone go back to school. She didn’t want to let anyone out of her sight, not really.
Liane sighed. “Is she going to send everyone?” She wanted to do something—work, or school—but she wasn’t liking the things she was hearing about Hogwarts, and she was still hoping to hear from the Guild.
“I don’t know,” said Charis.
“I hope not,” said Bella.
“Well,” said Liane, “don’t borrow trouble. But if you have to go, at least you’ll be with me, and we can stick together, Bella.”
“I want to go back,” said Charis with a shrug. “Sorry, but I do. I miss Minerva, and I can’t imagine who’s taking care of my girls. Cynthia Mulciber, probably.”
“Ugh,” said Bella with feeling.
“Bella doesn’t have to go—she’s got medical leave,” Charis told Liane. “But I’ve got a girl at school, and Endymion’s got Hadrian, and Lucius has loads of friends. School is pretty awful in a lot of ways, but there are so many people there.”
Liane sighed. “That’s rather what I’m afraid of. And I can’t imagine what I’ll do about my arithmancy. My professor took me out of all his classes and tutored me the whole last year that I was at Beauxbatons.”
Bella chuckled to herself. “I am sure you must miss it. But you don’t want private lessons from Scalara. Trust me.”
“No,” Charis agreed. “We’ll see what Mother says at suppertime, or tea, but since I can’t go out and do exercises, there’s lots of work to be done right here.”
Liane winced. “I’m sorry you were hurt. I hope that if I offer to help again, they’ll take me up on it.”
“Probably,” Charis said cheerfully. “Gallinaro says I’m fine—she just doesn’t want me putting any stress on it for another twenty-four hours. Don’t worry about me. Even Mercutio’s getting better!”
“Is he awake yet?” Bella looked up from her work.
“No,” said Charis, “but he’s sleeping normally. And Yvon and Alessio ought to be home before long.”
aeliana, bellissima, lamerveilleuse and standingwave