Viva (cantplaydead) wrote in shadowlands_ic, @ 2018-01-19 09:30:00 |
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Entry tags: | adrien green, biddie |
Who: Adrien Green & Bedelia “Biddie” Linden (Bonus NPC: Justine Moritz, “Hannibal”)
What: Adrien visits a sick friend; Biddie fails to suffer gracefully. BONUS: Never trust a swan.
When: January 10th, 1889 [backdated]
Where: Curtis estate (“Wit’s End”) Yorkshire
Rating: PG
It said something about the honorable Whittaker Archibald Curtis in that he'd named the family estate Endymion's Bower without a lick of irony; it said a lot about human nature in that everyone else called the place Wit's End. It had began life as an ambitious testament to one man's (questionable) sensibilities and had hosted a respectable number of Curtis generations before the family tree began to wither - much like the family funds.
By the time Victoria was snug on her throne, the Curtis fortune was down to the last descendant of dwindling means and no luck. Nonetheless, Garret Curtis was a Curtis, and he invested whatever had in keeping the estate together (if not in actually maintaining it.) Pride ruled where practicality fainted. Every neighbor of sense, and many without, reasonably assumed the name would get buried with Garret. As for the estate - well, surely someone would want something of it. Despite all those terrible rumors about the forest…
And then one day, as suddenly and inexplicably as a fairy tale, Garret had an heir. The new last Curtis. A previously unknown, untried nephew - or was it cousin? could it even be a son? - ready to carry on the name. The boy was blond, personable, and, as suitable to sudden lucky orphans, moneyed. Indeed, he was so very convenient that an unkind personage might remark that young Archibald seemed to have been authored rather than born.
(Most, however, didn't. Biddie had put in a lot of effort and funds into ensuring it.)
Now almost two decades later, the estate was restored to an odd ham-fisted elegance: overly large, overdone, unapologetic and nearly draconic in its opulence. Money had been applied in lieu of patience; the house itself was a labor of wealth and resolution, if not actually love. It was, one bemused visitor remarked, attractive in the way that rich were attractive.
Nobody, however, could fault the gardens.
At least, Biddie thought, not without giving Archie another unnecessary reason to grub about in the mud. Her godson was a wonderfully atypical magician in many ways, but he remained true to the Earth mages' unshakeable obsession with gardening. Biddie had been resigned to the fact ever since he'd finished the grotto when he was fifteen.
Even the bleak reality of an English January wasn't enough to corral the passion; Archie had apparently left reams of directions with the estate manager (a man who despite being thoroughly human was nonetheless as zealously green-handed as any Earth Master), posted weekly letters, and had somehow managed to sneak over to uproot begonias - or whatever - and haul them indoors. The fact that he'd accomplished this without Biddie ever being aware of him leaving London was impressive.
The idea that Biddie herself had been “potted” to rest indoors was less charming.
Unfortunately, she had little strength left to protest. The possession spell, and all its bells and whistles, hadn't just drained her; it'd scooped her clean. Her reservoirs were dismal. Her overall state was - unspeakable. As a final indignity, the kitchen was out of ice cream.
Frankly, it made Biddie want to curse the Russians all over again. And then bite someone.
Instead, she sat in the elaborate heart of the conservatory and fought the urge to dunk her head into the pretty pool. Drowning would be a diversion at least.
The pool's current resident, however, didn't seem likely to welcome the intrusion. The black swan had paddled and remained at Biddie's side since she first sat down. She didn't mistake it as gesture of affection; the damn beast was as friendly as, well, Biddie.
"I'm still bigger than you," she said peevishly. The swan didn't respond.
It was, Biddie reflected grimly, going to be a long, long, long recuperation.
Adrien tended to consider himself a far superior correspondent via letter. Conversations in person had a far greater tendency to be awkward. He was also still a touch more used to Xenophanes than Biddie -- he enjoyed routine, and control, and found the rhythms of writing to be a familiar, comfortable sort of exchange. Even after they’d met in person, the letters had continued to flow in a rather steady rate -- there was something to be said for knowing more of the person behind the brain, of course, and he was glad she’d suggested they meet, but letters were still his preferred medium when it came down to it.
He knew perfectly well how he thought of his fellow letter writer, the place she held in his own esteem, but her invitation to come out to the countryside was a sort of degree of familiarity -- intimacy, even -- that he was very nearly taken aback by the gesture.
Adrien Green did not get invited to the countryside.
Let alone by an unattached lady.
But this wasn’t a lady, this was Biddie, Xenophanes, and her letter seemed even more terse and annoyed than usual, her typically precise workman’s lettering less crisp around the edges, and he strongly suspected that as much of a challenge as it had been to convince himself to go to their first meeting and the Masquerade, would be to get in a carriage and leap into something new and unexpected, it’d most likely been nearly as much of one for her to request his presence. From what he knew of her, Biddie was a woman of fierce independence.
That, and he could never turn her down.
Not really.
(She did tend to push and prod him along as a matter of course, but he came to eventually. She was very persistent.)
And so he managed to take the train to the nearest village, hire a carriage, and hie himself to the countryside.
He knocked on the door, juggling a few packages and a small valise, and feeling for all the world like a salesman.
The Curtis Earth Mages (which were impossible to weed out of the family plot) weren't exactly misanthropic, but they were like many of the type reclusive and conservative. And about as sociable as a bag of cats. This meant that while Wit's End wasn't unfriendly enough to warrant a moat, it a lot fencing and a front door heavy enough to withstand a canon.
Not to mention a particular sort of the guard dog...
"You look loaded for bear - or a merchant's ring. The illustrious Mr. Green, I presume?"
The idiom was unapologetically American; the accent was irrevocably French. The woman herself was short, pretty, almost incongruously fashionable against the winter landscape, and - as the very sharp smile indicated - a vampire.
"I'm Justine Moritz." She held out her hand; her glove was a sharply striped yellow, bright as bee. "And thank you."
“Whatever for?” He blurted out, a little too surprised to be polite. He fumbled, and somehow took the proffered hand without dropping anything. “Miss Moritz,” he managed, “pleased.” He very nearly argued the ‘illustrious’ superlative, but they had only just been introduced.
“I was not… are you with the household, then?” He said, frowning at the poor choice of words almost immediately.
He’d been expecting a servant. The sort who was quiet, and would keep whatever thoughts they had about his coming to call well to themselves. He hadn’t been expecting a French vampiress.
Justine's smile sharpened further. She had the look of a woman made of many sharp edges sewn cunningly together.
"You've won me two pounds," she said gleefully. "I had a bet with the boy that we wouldn't get anybody out here for free until late January. If le vieux crocodile can be kept in place until then."
She reached out and had half his luggage in her hold in a moment, quick as a thief. Bounty thus secured, she nodded at the left. "Come around the side. Unless you feel like trodding through ten generations of questionable taxidermy."
Turning smartly on her heel, Justine marched off around the house towards the rising dome of the conservatory.
"I'm with MPC," she said after a moment. Not waiting for this comment to sink any more than her greeting had, she went on. "So, you're the genie. Comme c'est intéressant! Pardon my curiosity, from what I’ve read of you I almost expected you arrive packaged in an oil lamp.”
There was a gate between lawn and garden; Justine opened it with a kick that’d have pleased a dressage horse. The manor conservatory squatted against the back of the house like a resplendent (but comatose) Leviathan of steel, hardwood, and glass.
Given that he technically owned a djinn (or, more politely, possessed the thing’s vessel for purposes of safekeeping), and had even suggested that it apply for employment with MPC and had given it a letter of reference, this pronouncement led to a bit of a stumble -- but he was very nearly certain that if Merrick had decided to apply, it wouldn’t have been so indiscreet as to reveal its full nature, and the finely honed Miss Moritz did seem quite fond of nicknames.
“Hardly,” he managed, with a huff, taking in the enormously tall windows, and the hints of garden that by all accounts were quite well kept. “I can only imagine what you’ve read,” he added, frowning, and was about to add on something about not being in the habit of granting wishes, or being at a body’s beck and call, but seeing as how he’d done both by coming here, he bit his tongue and scowled a bit.
“Besides,” he finally sniffed, “I’d be more likely to inhabit something significantly less showy.”
"An inkwell, then?" Justine suggested with good humor. But there was a chilled gleam in her eye at the joke. "Or maybe a bullet. You've such a compact resolve about you, Mr. Green. I hope they never dispatch you without care for the target."
The conservatory door was a tapestry of jeweled glass, its handle nearly indistinguishable among the similarly colored panes. Justine reshuffled her burdens to the point of seeming buried beneath them, and groped for the handle blindly. She found it on the third try.
"I swear that stupid boy moves the door every time he remodels," she grumbled - and then spun on her heel as a terrific crash sounded from inside. In the next moment, the luggage was on the ground and Justine was a short blur rushing through the humid warmth of the conservatory towards the sound of splintering wood, angry English, and a lot of hissing.
“Madame DuBosque!”
Adrien followed after with all due haste, heedless of the packages (although he knew she’d be disappointed with the state of the Mille Feuille), and if he’d had a beating heart, it would be pounding. Why would she have to stay in the countryside for a month? What had happened?
Justine arrived at the scene half a breath before Adrien and automatically stuck out an arm to catch him on arrival. Together they surveyed the tableau before them.
The first one had to notice was the swan. The stupid thing was thirty pounds at least, black-feathered and red-eyed, and from the look of currently occupied with using its massive wings to batter Biddie's ribs. Biddie in turn was attempting to simultaneously slap away the swan and extricate herself from the broken remains of high-backed wicker chair. She seemed to succeeding with neither goal.
To be fair, she was also wheezing like a landed fish and trying to curse like a sailor.
Justine had worked for the woman for nearly forty years and at time like this she couldn't help but wonder: why?
"Bordel de merde…" She looked at Adrien. "Which dumb bird do you want to wrangle first?"
"I heard that," came the harsh wheeze from within the mess of feathers and splinters. "And don't for a minute - oh, for God's sake, push off!" Biddie got one palm on the swan's head and shoved. "Shut up, nobody's dying. Someone - Justine, Adrien, can you one of you coax him away?"
Justine grabbed Adrien's arm. "Don't fall for it, Mr. Genie. That thing is hellspawn. He will eat your eye."
“Blessed baby Christ, he’s a bird not - Hannibal, atstokite![1]”
The coughed up command seemed to finally penetrate; the black swan quit trying to tenderize Biddie’s side and took a waddled step back. Every inch of the bird was aflush with deep suspicion.
Adrien had removed his outer coat with the intention of either tossing it over the creature’s head, or distracting it as if he were some sort of confounded bullfighter. There was a rather pregnant pause in the room, and he could see Justine flinch a little out of the corner of his eye as the swan cocked its head.
He took a step towards Biddie.
The bird hissed.
He hissed back, and flicked the coat a little.
"Hannibal, enough." Biddie's voice sounded about twenty years overdue for a rest. "He's a friend. A friend." She pointed a shaking finger at the bird. "Don't play dumb."
The swan looked ready to extend his wings to their full span -- half again as wide as Adrien was tall. Biddie was very much not in the mood to deal with that.
Fortunately, neither was Justine. In the moment that the swan was distracted between Adrien and Biddie, she lunged and yanked out a feather. The hiss that erupted from Hannibal was apocalyptic. The vampire dashed away from the resting nook with the swan in flapping, half-flying, half-homicidal pursuit.
"Au revoir, Mr. Genie!" drifted in her wake.
Biddie watched them go with an exhausted expression. After a moment, she sighed - it rattled - and turned to Adrien.
"Welcome to Wit's End," she said. “How soon would you like to leave?”
“I haven’t quite reached mine yet,” he replied, dryly, dropping the coat and hovering a little, awkwardly, before deciding he might as well be of some use, even if it all was more than a little undignified.
“Pardon,” he huffed, frowning, as he wrestled a bit with the ruins of the chair that’d folded around her, trying to jostle her as little as possible. He’d kept his gloves on -- he was mindful enough of how his nature tended to be aversive to her -- and with some rather creative swearing on both their parts, he deposited her as carefully as he could into the next chair over.
“You’re covered in feathers,” he said a little curtly as he straightened, because it was better than saying you look awful.
Biddie had a brief, internal spasm at having the smell of vampire - poison - so close to her. Sadly, her weakened state did nothing to dull her nose. But the moment was just a moment, and it passed without ever reaching her face. She sank into the fat-backed chair with a grimace of relief.
"I got plucked," Biddie said in an echo of the same tone. "Sit down, please. Before I get another headache." Provided the current one ever decided to quit. "Why are you so bloody tall anyway? You sound shorter on paper."
Biddie rubbed a hand over her face, then paused to pinch a feather off her sleeve. "Good grief, this is - " She looked up suddenly. "Did I forget to say hello? I didn’t. Good grief."
He looked over his shoulder at the trail of objects scattered all over the floor, and then over at the ruin of a wicker chair and bits of down still floating in the air, and sighed before sitting, figuring there’d be time enough to gather them up all up again. It was a nice room, apart from all that, and the warmth and green and the smell of fresh soil wasn’t unpleasant in the least.
He shrugged.
“You’re in the countryside,” he said, “I think that rather demands some eccentricity on your part. What happened?”
He’d been meaning to ask Justine, and knew it was most likely rude, and none of his business besides, but seeing as it was Biddie, if she wished to talk about it she would, and if she didn’t, she’d tell him so.
Biddie caught his look at the damage and smiled slightly. "I promise there is a staff on the premises. One that goes beyond provocative vampires and protective waterfowl."
"The English turn eccentric," she said. "I'm American, we're loony no matter how many trees are outside the window." She paused, face tiredly blank as she considered how - or whether - to answer the question.
It was something I ate. Well, no technically, the problem was the opposite; she'd have been back on her feet in a day if she had the proper meat. Sadly, this would involve either bagging a werewolf or hopefully stumbling over a conveniently drunken mermaid. She certainly didn't trust her luck with incubi or witches lately.
Stop me if you've heard this one before; how many dead Russians does it take to fly an airship? Tasteless.
I've been worse. Sure, but she'd half-rot rather than admit it.
"I get in a bad way sometimes," she said finally. "It's mostly stress and overexertion. The past few months have been somewhat...exerting. The race put us in the spotlight and we - my cousin and I - thought it best if I would stay out of sight until more presentable. Nothing kills consumer confidence like fainting during a meeting. Well. Almost nothing."
The soft patter of footsteps delivering on Biddie's earlier words with the arrival of a maid and footman. The latter had an armful of packages and the former had Hannibal. Which to say she was leading Hannibal, and Hannibal was generously choosing to follow without biting out of her heels. Biddie strongly suspected apples had been involved in the negotiation. There was no sign of Justine.
"Thank you, Martha, Will. Did he destroy anything?"
Martha smiled. She had the boiled clean look of a dedicated dairy maid, which, coincidentally, she was. "He was neya trouble, Miss Liddy."
"He's bound to try and fly off one day," Will added. It sounded more akin to 'e's boun' ta try 'n fly off 'un day, but Biddie was rather used to Yorkshire at this point.
"Heaven help whomever he next choose to live with," Biddie said. She nodded towards Adrien. "This is our guest, Mr. Green."
Two young heads bobbed in polite greeting, each face plainly curious. Neither was green enough to stare, thank Providence, though Biddie had no doubt there'd be a nearly Homer-esque description of Adrien floating around the village by supper. Still, she had to actively resist the urge to pat Will’s head at the care with which he set down the packages.
Hannibal half-waddled, half-flapped past the lot of them to resume his squat in the pool. Biddie resisted the urge to toss a pillow at him.
“Good kids,” Biddie said when the pair had left with instruction to prepare tea and, the unspoken instruction, to ready the rest of the household. Will had also lugged away a couple of the more prominent pieces of furniture carnage. “Their parents - grandparents? - used to work for the estate a lifetime ago. Archie hired back a lot of the relatives when he reopened the house.” Her expression turned wry. “As a result they’re loyal to him and thus fight me at every turn. I’m half afraid someone will confiscate my shoes one morning for fear I’d run back to London otherwise.”
“Thank you,” she said after another moment. “For coming, I mean. Honestly, I wouldn’t have blamed for refusing. None of this - “ she indicated the plants, Hannibal, the remaining chair debris “ - is much of a tourist attraction.”
“Hm,” Adrien snorted. “I’ll admit, if I’d been aware there was a swan, I would’ve kept my distance. And I am a rather miserable tourist, all told.”
He indicated the packages neatly stacked on the side table with a tip of his head. “You can blame him entirely for the state of the sweets,” he added, “although I’m sure they still taste decent even if they’ve been somewhat jostled.” He frowned, looking over at the swan. “And don’t be ridiculous. Of course I came.”
He knew Biddie to be a woman full of energy -- very nearly crackling with it -- a dozen pokers in the fire, and devouring any information she could get her fingers on with a nearly bottomless appetite. Seeing her so diminished was hard, and he could only imagine how bored she was.
“I brought Bly’s report of being in Mexico, Twain’s latest set of essays, and Maxwell’s Treatise on Electricity,” he said, “and the last issue of Science, and that Bellamy book everyone’s talking about. God knows if it’s any good, but I’ve been meaning to read it, and might as well do so out loud.”
"Someone I worked with was reading that. She got about halfway through, I think?" Biddie said. Not for a lack of trying admittedly, although Kathy was seriously unlikely to finish it now. "It's something about time travel, isn't it? The future. Well, a future." She didn't have to fish deep to find the story's date in her memory. "The year 2000, there's a hell of a thought."
"Do you think about it?" Biddie asked curiously. "In personal terms, I mean. Barring grievous accident or angry mob, there's no reason to believe you won't be there to see it. To interact with it." Her eyes, brown as brandy in the conservatory's filtered light, studied Adrien. "You're not particularly prone to risk or vanity. Your ambitions are insular, the physical aspects automatically second to your sense of academic order. You're careful. Patient. It's not infeasible that you'll be on hand for the third millennium as well."
There was an open sketchbook resting on the pool's edge. It showed an incomplete sketch of a dahlia, the half-hearted attempt clearly abandoned in favor of the precise lines of rudders, fins, and propellers. A column of figures was scrawled at the bottom corner of a page along with an underlined check with Walton!!! Hannibal drifted closer, long neck stretching towards the paper's edge. Biddie tsk'ed at him in warning.
Adrien frowned in thought. “I’ll admit,” he replied, “when I do think about it, it is sometimes a thing to be anticipated, a point of curiosity, of discovery, even, to… to see what the world can make of itself. It is a fascinating exercise, and I have seen enough innovation and progress to want to see what comes next, and to have some hope for a better future. But there are…” he brushed the arm of his chair lightly, not quite catching her eye. “There are other days where such notions can be a source of dread. An unending life is not always a blessing, and I find it a rather uniquely lonely prospect at times.”
He looked over at her. “I suppose we’re all ships sailing in a vast sea, occasionally lucky enough to encounter a fellow traveler worth one’s while, but I’d made a choice to set out on this particular journey with certain expectations of a life shared, and I’ve had to re-imagine my own purpose, my… my reason for continued existence.” He shrugged. “I’ve found it, for the time being at least, but it is not an ‘ever fixed mark’, as it were.”
He thought then of Miss Ward’s mysterious letter -- one he was fully intending to ask Biddie about at one point or another -- and wondered (not for the first time) whether Biddie’s life would be similarly endless, or simply long-lived.
"I don't believe in luck," Biddie said. "Or let's say I don't consent to it. Awful or wonderful, the chance happenings in our lives are never truly accidental, surely. We arrive at each point in time as a consequence of our actions. At worse, we suffer the consequences of others' choices, but even that is a result rather than some inexplicable fortuity."
She shook her head as if refuting some unsaid point, then had to stop and touch her forehead with a grimace until the dizziness passed. God, what she wouldn't give for a nice werewolf loin about now…
"We are here now, as we are, because of choices. Doesn't that prove that choice is stronger, more influential than expectation? When I wrote to you the first time that was because of what mainly you had said, and only secondly of what I'd hoped to gain if you'd responded. It doesn't - doesn't - "
She put her hand over her eyes. There were fine, nearly unnoticeable, white rings of scar tissues around three of the fingers. They were much too thin to be marks from jewelry and much too faded to have healed over the past year.
"...lost the plot, sorry. My thinking isn't. I don't know." The fingers flexed, roughly rubbing her eyes. There was a wet slap from the fountain and Biddie cracked open one eye to see Hannibal out of the water and dripping on her sketchbook bloody achin' hell.
"How many times - it's like you've gone senile," she hissed at the bird. The swan’s odd dark, red eyes peered at her accusingly before switching focus to Adrien. Wings folded, but attitude no friendlier despite that, Hannibal slapped closer to stand in front of the man.
Biddie's noted that he'd deliberately stomped over the sketchbook's pages in the process.
"Whatever you do," Biddie said dryly, lowering her hand, "don't try to pet him. He nearly lopped off a banker's thumb last week." She gave the wet pages a resigned glance. "If I ever find a pot big enough…"
“Hm,” Adrien snorted as he caught the thing’s eye. “Wouldn’t dare.”
“And I suppose it was rather badly stated, but I have made a choice, you know. And continue to do so. Which in a certain light is very nearly empowering, I suppose.” He shrugged a little. “You might call it ‘luck,’ I call it ‘randomness,’ a universe full of random particles happening to collide in a certain way, a beautifully impersonal chaos we try our best to make sense of, and exist within with as much grace as we can manage.”
The swan cocked his head, and Adrien folded his hands in his lap, looking over at it mildly. “Stubborn little creature,” he said, with what might be very close to fondness, or at least a certain mutual understanding. “I don’t care much for bankers either,” he added. “It has good instincts. I am glad you wrote, by the way,” he added. “That you took a risk, when I wouldn’t have.”
"Wasn't my banker," Biddie drawled. She doubted Lou was foolhardy enough to pet a wild bird, especially one that was heavier than most dogs. "Hannibal's not used to vampires. None have been employed on the estate since he's been here. Same for visitors. Well. Visitors that are more polite than Mademoiselle Moritz."
"Why did you reply?" Biddie asked, snapping her fingers four time in an odd tempo. Hannibal puffed up at the sound, but didn't abandon Adrien. The gloomy beast was becoming horreoundly stubborn with age. Biddie repeated the snapping in the same tempo, her own gaze sticking to Adrien with nearly as much resolution as the swan's. "You couldn't have been that bored or lacking in academic equals. Is that place - " Biddie wouldn't mark the Institute by name, " - so bereft in conversation partners?"
“I wonder if it would prefer I pretend to be more like a person, or were less like one?” He replied, thoughtfully, keeping his gaze on the bird. “I suppose there’ll always be that lingering sense of uncanniness regardless. Animals are harder to fool.”
He pondered her question. “You and I both know the value of anonymity,” he finally said, quietly. “I am a rather useful tool at my place of employ, a clever oddity, a point of curiosity, and I am often spoken to, not spoken with. I suppose it’s a rather good judge of a person’s character, but there are times I’d rather not be a cipher. That, and there’s something to be said for writing for a general audience, which is rather like shouting into a void at times, and having someone answer back.”
He was reminded just then of Una’s rather bold assessment -- that he was the sort of person the Institute assumed would not be missed -- and sighed.
“If Miss Moritz has made a habit of pulling on its tail feathers, I’m afraid there’s simply too much bias to swim upstream against, and I shall have to make my peace with it.”
Biddie made an amused huff in the back of her throat. (Ignoring the fact that it made her sound like a somewhat distressed piglet.) "He'd mostly prefer you give him an apple, the sodding glutton. I wouldn't concern yourself with passing for normal; Hannibal's a familiar. 'Uncanniness' is the reason he exists, let alone how he's lived so long. Ol’ rooster is older than Big Ben."
She leaned back in her chair, fingers lacing over her stomach. Her expression was, for lack of a neater word, speculative.
She leaned back in her chair, fingers lacing over her stomach. Her expression was, for lack of a neater word, speculative. She didn't want to ask why do you stay because that was a stupid question and she didn't ask what do you want from them because that was a dangerous one. She most definitely didn't ask why are you meeting with Arabella Ward.
Instead Biddie said: "Still, there must be some comfort in the idea that you could simply eat the smug bastards."
In hindsight, the stupid questions might've been wiser.
This led to a rather complicated expression -- part disgust, part resolve -- and his layered emotions about both the notion of feeding and his true ambivalence about the Institute were simply too messy to bother wading into at the moment.
“At the very least,” he replied, “they have a halfway decent library. And it has afforded me a certain access to resources and inquiry I would not otherwise have.”
He tipped his head towards the swan. “No wonder it’s disconcerted, then,” he added. “I can understand a creature who does not care for change, whether it be the state of one’s mistress, or the presence of unanticipated guests. I shall ask the cook for an apple, then.”
Circling back around to the notion of what he’d gained by the Institute, he paused, and then shrugged. In for a penny, and Biddie didn’t seem to mind leaping from topic to topic, either in her letters, or in person.
“Miss Ward showed me your letter,” he added, looking over at Biddie carefully. “I didn’t tell her that I was aware of the provenance, but I’d recognize the hand that drew the schematic anywhere.”
The moment that filled the air at Adrian's words was long and silent, and waiting. The mild splash of the pool's decorative fountain suddenly held the tense cadence as a ticking clock. Biddie let it "tick" for five full breaths, before she spoke.
"That's not the reason she engaged your services, though. Considering that you began meeting long before I sent the monograph." Biddie cocked her head, looking curious as a sparrow and expressionless as a pike. "Has she figured out what you are yet?"
There was a great deal buried in all of that, and he chewed over it a little before tipping his head in the affirmative.
He’d keep what she was to himself for the time being -- that was a matter for the Fae, and he thought it a touch untoward to spread such a personal matter before the person herself knew of it in its entirety.
“I am her Librarian,” he replied. “I find her projects worth providing whatever support I might, and she in turn finds me useful.” There was more to it, of course there was, but he had a difficult time putting it into words. “I consider her a colleague,” he finally managed. “One I hold in high esteem, and one who holds me equally in hers. I take it you were acquainted with her grandfather.”
He wasn’t certain if Arabella was indeed related to the man by blood, of course, but that would be the easiest way of putting it. The rather large elephant in the room, of course, was why Biddie knew so much about their having met, but he wasn’t quite ready to look at it head on just yet.
"Slightly more so than he was with me," Biddie said still with mild and careful inflection. "Winston assumed I was a man. And possibly Belgian. I didn’t take it personally."
"You mentioned projects. Not ones actually sponsored by the Institute, I take it? She goes about as an independent..." Biddie’s tone warmed with interest. Independent meant unattached. Easier to pry loose. "I was hoping that'd prove the case. Her sort are wasted when forced into the fold."
And the young Ms. Ward, Biddie reflected, had the makings of a singular mind. Biddie appreciated unique thinking. As well as she should, really, after spending so many years cultivating and collecting specimens of the type. It was something of a pity that Arabella didn't seem to show a heavy interest in biological fields...but then again, perhaps that was for the best. Winston had been a good friend in his own way; Biddie would've truly regretted being forced to...discharge...his granddaughter.
She'd be much safer being invested in a matter less ‘close to home’ - like the Fae business. Biddie didn’t foresee needing to dispose of anyone regarding the Fae business.
Speaking of matters at home...Biddie looked down at the hands peacefully laced over her middle as if idly pondering foreign samples rather than her own - at this point - damn hands.
"I find myself in an odd pinch between honesty and security," Biddie said. "On the one hand there are things I didn’t plan to tell you during our acquaintance. Of course, one of the reasons what that I didn’t think that acquaintance had the potential to be as...long-lived as you have the potential to be. On the other hand there's much that I fear it'd be impossible to keep you from figuring out on your own. So. Does one resort to half-truths and sacrifice purity of discourse, or display the guts?”
There were, in fact, a great many other factors to consider with the situation but Biddie only had two hands.
(Well, okay, she had five hands and three thumbs in the cold room hidden under the western pantry. But that sort of thing only reinforced the need for tact.)
“If this was a letter, Lucretius, how would you advise me to proceed?”
“Hm,” Adrien replied, quietly pondering for a good minute. The swan grew bored at this quiet contemplation and waddled back to the pond, stepping once more on the notepad in the process before slipping into the water with a surprising degree of grace.
“The fact that you’re asking in the first place rather implies the answer, I should think,” he finally replied, “and treating it as a purely academic exercise is difficult, because it requires reading the tea-leaves of an uncertain future that involves an interaction, which will always have the potential to be volatile.”
He looked over at her. “I don’t require you to bare your soul as a prerequisite for continued acquaintance,” he added. “We’re both creatures of habit, and that habit tends to demand a certain degree of deception, for purposes of survival, to… to make one’s way through a world that is incapable of understanding. With all that,” he continued, frowning, “...that is to say,” he fumbled a little, “I cannot claim to have…” his frown deepened. “Letters are a great deal easier,” he finally managed, a bit peevishly.
He leaned back in his chair. “If it makes a difference, whatever it is, I should rather hear from you than elsewhere,” he ended with a sniff.
Biddie make a noncommittal hum and remained studying her hands. In the next breath, she seemed to come to some sort of resolution. She got up, somewhat creakily, and reclaimed her sodden sketchbook. A number of the top pages had to stripped before a suitably dry strata of paper was found. There was a small vase of pencils by the table; she picked up the sharpest and wrote.
After a moment of scratching paper, she passed the pad to Adrien. The familiar spiky cursive read: I'm not a threat to Arabella. Or you. But if I were to tell you the truth, the real thing as befitting a scholar, it would sound threatening. If nothing else, then your awareness of certain facts would be a threat to me - even if you chose to be charitable in the keeping of such intelligence.
And is there anything more dismal than charity from a friend peer? I’d rather regurgitate a live lobster than be pitied.
Adrien huffed, and snorted a bit upon getting the pad, but he took the pencil readily enough. “The macarons shouldn’t be too badly squashed,” he said, “in that striped box, there, and there’s some fruit tarts next to ‘em.”
Hannibal fluffed up at the mention of tarts, and was (rightfully) ignored.
He frowned at the pad, and when he finally passed it back to Biddie, it read:
I’ve had my fill of charity and pity both, and if I am to be considered your peer and you mine, that would rather presuppose equal footing. I’m reminded of Aristotle’s view of pity -- that it comes from a lack of closeness, of kinship -- and as a result, pity, fear and contempt are far too easily interchanged. I tend to agree with him, and find those who tend towards pity to be less than useless.
So perhaps it’d be more suitable to call it trust -- trust of discretion on one part and an attempt at empathy on the other -- and a state of mutual respect.
When you claim you are not a threat either to me or a person whose wellbeing I care for, I am willing to trust that.
(I’d rather like to know your reasons for keeping such a close eye on the connection I have with Miss Ward. But that desire can come from a place of curiosity rather than suspicion. I find her fascinating; I am unsurprised that you do so as well. You have excellent taste.)
I suppose the question would be, then, whether you trust me.
If you do not just yet, I would do my best to not take it as a personal slight. It is a process rather than a constant, after all, and has yet to be tested. And if this is the test, if you wish to tell me you have a secret and would rather I not pursue it despite my curiosities, so be it.
He reached for one of the books he’d brought and started thumbing through it, more to give his hands and eyes something to do than anything.
He frowned. “You are currently recovering from an ordeal,” he added, curtly. “Whatever it is, it can very well keep if needed.”
Biddie considered the circumstances of her "recovery" - which, in Biddie's opinion, was as much of an ordeal as the original process of injury. At least that had been a method of achieving goals.
She's was stuck on the corner of God's green acre in a house that looked like a monstrous planter, being lovingly bullied by voluntarily deaf servants. Until an hour ago, her most interesting company included a villainous bird. Her head ached. Her toes ached. Her belly - well, that was dangerous even when she was full fig. She was, for moment, the unknown owner of the acknowledged fastest transportation in the world, and this morning she crashed head first into a vase trying to bend for her slippers.
Life, on the whole, felt like too much work.
Biddie tossed aside the sketchbook and slumped into a position that made her look like so much expensive laundry.
"Maxwell before the macaroons, I think," she said. "I've a craving for peculiar doctrines."
The rest, as Adrian had said, would keep.