Re: The Bohemian/The Companion
As far as Charlotte Selby was concerned, the world had never been much wider than the length of the train. Doors could be walked through of course, when one walked in the wake of someone for whom the doors opened. But the world had never been particularly vast and the crevasse in it that was Charlotte Selby's own was exceptionally narrow. That didn't prevent longing. Nothing much ever could. And she was accustomed to living in cracks and spaces, containment. She was a woman economical and careful in movement, even edged out of the passage between tables and forced to sit. She looked at the table, and the spot spreading across the linen. It looked like blood, a little. Blood on the snow. Charlotte's lips paled a little, but they hadn't much color to begin with.
The man smelled heavily of spirits as if he'd bathed in them and he was intercepted by another waiter who dealt with him as only the most expensive of staff could, with quiet, un-shocked severity. It might even, Charlotte considered, give the man recollection of a nanny, the same stern serenity unyielding to either childish or drunken display. Perhaps that was why he went quietly.
She considered the virtues of her present situation and her companion. Despite the wine unsteadily near the brim of the delicate teacup, they appeared not yet inebriated. There was nothing cruel about the quirk of the eyebrow. Charlotte was accustomed to being the subject of fun, it amused bored people at times. Her burning was interior, entirely private. Charlotte's mouth was quiet, her eyes steady. "Tea, if you wouldn't mind. Thank you." To the waiter.