Re: The Companion/The Regret-me-not
She had no real experience with the inebriated. Parties, that kind of thing were not the sort that the young and impoverished were invited to. Charlotte had nothing to wear, and in society that was everything. She had nothing to wear and thus she was denied. She estimated his inebriation purely on the basis that either the foolish, the mad or the drunk stood in the snow half-naked. And he was. Charlotte's gaze, plain and frank assessed his face - a little too handsome to be truly kind - and then an ugly flush climbed her throat, her chin, her cheekbones. Half-naked. Charlotte had little experience enough with men.
She breathed in. The cheroot. She breathed in and inhaled and the breath hit her in the back of the throat, bulky as if the air were too great for the room she'd given it. Charlotte coughed. It wasn't entirely ladylike, in fact it was entirely un. It was a hawking cough, one in which her eyes streamed, and she inhaled once again and it was better. The cheroot was plain tobacco, and she looked at him, fairly and openly. "I'm afraid I have no other to offer you." That was the done thing, wasn't it? She'd seen men do it.
Her lips were thin and bluing. Charlotte felt cold, but she felt it sear her spine, shear away the last of the frustrated humdrum. "I'm freezing, aren't you? But it's bracing. It reminds you of what it means to be alive. But I'm dressed." The polite implication being that he was not.