A/N: I return! In spite of not having gotten much work done on this recently, I do have this latest chapter update (and will hopefully have more soon). I hope you enjoy what I've written here…it's a bit more lighthearted than usual at points, and we finally learn what caused the Count to have to wear his mask. I know, I know – you've all been dying to hear the reason behind the whole thing…
Raal the Sword Master: I thought I'd lost you! ^_~ I am very glad to get your reviews again, and that you've liked my latest additions to this story. (And I don't mind your 'rushing' me – people saying stuff like that is part of what keeps me writing this thing…pathetic? I know, but hey…)
Rampant: Hehehe – your play sounds great! I'm on a bad streak about drama right now though…because my family's moving, I'm now unable to be in my own drama class's scaled-down production of Shakespeare's Much Ado About Nothing, and get this: I was going to be the lead! Just shoot me now. Sorry about that, everyone…I really am okay. Really. Anyways, thank you for your reviews, Rampant – I love that they're so long and tell me about what exactly you liked. You are wonderful.
Riene: Ah, one of my very favorite FFD Phantom authors! I am honoured by the fact that you've been following along with this story of mine here. Very honoured indeed. Clarice knowing about all that art stuff: well, this is the Renaissance period that we're talking about. The women back then were prided on their numerous accomplishments in the arts, and Clarice was well-schooled, in spite of the fact that she was an orphan and less than extremely wealthy in background. And she only knew about the art/history/etc. part of her work, not the languages. If you'd noticed, the Count is the one who does all the translating – the man is fluent in several languages, which is helpful… ^_~
Kate, Lis, kinder, and all others: Thank you very much for your lovely reviews – they truly make my day! And now to the story; ENJOY!
Chapter Thirteen –
Escape, Part 2
The next morning, Clarice awoke to the distinct knowledge that she was not in her own room; in fact, she had no questions as to where she now was at all, as she remembered her whereabouts quite clearly. She raised her head from the pillow upon which it had laid, half-buried in the curve of her arm, and smiled wanly but contentedly at her companion.
She had fallen asleep, half-sitting and half-reclining on the huge canopied bed in the Count's room the night before, after the hordes of doctors and their assistants had left. And now here she was: in the gray light of early morning, looking quite calmly across the bed to the Count d'Auberie himself, who was surveying her with a gentle, softly-smiling expression in his yellow eyes.
There was something special about this moment, she knew – something like she had never felt before, never thought she would feel. Somehow, she didn't feel as if she ought not to be there, with him, and she didn't feel as if she was a nameless little nothing who was being shown kindness by a man vastly her superior in every place and circumstance. Somehow, it felt right – as if they belonged there.
Almost as if he had read her thoughts, the Count smiled at her: the expression bittersweet, careworn…and almost hesitant.
"Everything's changed now, you know," he said, simply. "Everything."
Then, he reached forward with one hand – his good hand, the one that was not injured – and cupped her cheek in it. Clarice felt herself tremble and come alive with the thoughts that possessed her mind at his touch, which was strong and deft and knowing and yet uncertain and shy. She looked into his yellow eyes with her own emerald green gaze and felt her lips curve.
"Yes." she agreed. "It has."
The words were so simple – and yet they both knew that they meant so much. Finally, the Count sat back, still looking at her intensely, even though his hand did not move from her face, and then his voice drifted to her through the early morning shadows: "Say it again."
She took her eyes from him to gaze out the window, her mind overcome with the wealth of meaning – of importance and poignancy – of the moment.
"What?"
Finally, he forced himself to remove his hand and distance himself from her.
"My name." he told her. "You called me by it last night…in the fire…" He hesitated. "And I called you Clarice."
He had so indeed. She had.
Clarice smiled, the expression magnifying her beauty so that she no longer seemed a pale, fresh-bloomed white rose of spring, burst into being by a wayside road, but a diamond whose facets had just caught a full beam of the glorious sun.
He couldn't take his eyes off of her.
"Erik." she said. Then, as if the sound of his name on her lips – his true name, and not his title – somehow both startled and pleased her, she laughed, as a sixteen-year-old is wont to do, and sat up straight, her entire being seeming to scintillate with a resounding happiness.
"Erik."
An impossibly white grin splitting the face behind the mask, he sat forward, holding out his hand; she put hers within it and they faced each other, both grinning uncontrollably at this strange, wonderful new thing that they had found together.
Nothing else mattered now, she realized – not her uncle's death, not the plots and mysteries that surrounded them at court, not the whispers of others, not the memories or even the reality of her old life and the bearing that it still threatened to have on her. Nothing. Nothing but the two of them.
Erik and Clarice.
* * *
It was ordered that the Count d'Auberie should remain a-bed still a few days so that he might make a full recovery. Much as he did not like this, however, Erik obeyed – his vexation at being held prisoner because of a simple arm injury only tempered by Clarice's willing presence. She was only too happy to remain with him in his solitude, having missed him dreadfully when she had had to be always with other people during their stay in Milan.
The next few days flew by swiftly and without much event to enliven them. The Count's doctor – or rather doctors, as there were several who wished to attend upon the fantastically rich and powerful French nobleman for whatever reason they could find – gave orders that he was not to exert himself overly much, lest he relapse into a sickness, and so neither he nor Clarice saw many outsiders during his recovery. But it was no matter to either of them.
They were perfectly happy having no one but each other for company.
And, of course, every once in a while, Fabrizio would stop by to plague Erik with his lack of activity and to talk with them both, amusing them with his wit and all-around companionable ways.
There was, of course, a moment of unspoken understanding between the two men on his first visit: a sort of silent agreement, a transfer of knowledge; for now Fabrizio knew that Clarice was not in love with him, nor would she ever be. Her affections for him were those of a sister for her brother, or at the very least a dear friend. However much he might have felt for her was never a subject that they broached again – Fabrizio had seen the truth in her eyes that night, in the desperate light of their emerald depths, in the tears reflected there. And he heartily appauded her choice.
Erik was silently thankful to the boy for this display of manly selflessness and noble friendship. Any lesser man would not have given up such a jewel, such a fair prize, without a duel to the death.
But Fabrizio was young, and he knew it.
He had much time to choose his future mate, and although he wished that he could have attained the love of so dazzling a creature as Clarice Boisvert, he knew that he was not meant for her.
Meanwhile, Clarice's work on the newest piece of the artistic puzzle went on.
The piece that Erik had brought back from the castle in Germany was a huge, silvery-black mirror, one like to that the ladies of court liked to hang upon their boudoir walls. It was rectangular in shape, with a thick, much-embellished frame detailed with the shapes of scrolling vines and sharply contoured roses, with words written here and there in it, and spaces cut into it as well, seeming almost as if they had been meant to hold candles…
Clarice could not make any sense of what this object was supposed to tell her.
Where was the hidden meaning in a looking glass with nothing but roses and vines as decoration, and a few odd phrases written in their native French for words? 'Look into my depths for enlightenment,' those words told the one who viewed them…what could this mean? The phrase seemed to have no more portent to it than any other phrase that might be found written on a mirror's frame.
But examine it she did, for any other type of hidden mysteries within it or about it, although no such thing appeared wont to turn up, and eventually the presence of the huge looking glass made for a long-delayed discussion between Erik and his young companion…
* * *
"I can see you back there with this thing – making faces at me is very distracting to my work, you know."
This was said by Clarice to Erik, who was becoming bored with the silence in the room as she was hard at work examining the mirror, yet again, and had decided to see if crossing and uncrossing his eyes, and contorting the visible parts of his face into every other way would catch her attention. He shifted position suddenly on the sofa that he was reclining on, restless, and commented to her, "Well, I wouldn't be making faces at you if you would just talk to me. I fear that I am soon like to run mad with the quiet of this room. Now please!"
Clarice stood, smoothing her skirts as she did so and chuckling as she shook her head wryly at his words. Then she came to stand over him, beside the cough.
"And this from the noble Count d'Auberie: the epitome of the ever-courteous, eternally occupied Renaissance nobleman? My lord, I'd have thought better of you!" she pretended to chide, her slender white hands flying to rest on her hips: affecting the position of a mother who was scolding her mischievous child roundly for something that he had done.
Erik grinned up at her, pleased that he had finally succeeded in getting her attention. He was, in fact, surprised at himself – at his own attitude.
How shocked would he have been several months before, when he had not yet come to know her, if someone told him the words of the conversation that he was holding with this beautiful sixteen-year-old girl right at this moment? How unwilling to believe that his life could really be changed – be made better – by anyone? And yet now it was!
Suddenly, he found himself in the midst of a complete change in circumstances. Not a month before, he had been prepared to deny everything that his heart had ever told him concerning Clarice and his feelings for her because it seemed as if she was meant for another. He had never expected that her smile – her sweet, unabashedly happy, guileless young smile – would be turned upon him, and that it would warm his heart like a shard of ice that the sun has at last found its way to.
He had never expected any of this.
Beside him, Clarice stirred and suddenly reached out to tap the tops of his knee-length leather boots, reminding him with an impish smile, "Feet off of the sofa, milord."
With a sigh and a baleful look shot in her direction, he obeyed, swinging his feet to the floor and sitting up straight as he did so, being careful not to move his recuperating arm – which had been set into a sling, so that he could walk about and live at least somewhat normally in the wake of his injury.
Then he looked across the room at the mirror.
"So, m'lady…" he said, gently: all jesting leaving his tone. "Anything?"
Clarice sighed, shaking her head wearily as she left his side and returned back across the room, to stand in front of what was the embodiment of her most furious frustrations recently.
"Nothing more than I have already seen, Erik," she said, her voice deploring the unbreakable secrets of the mirror and the mystery at that point. "I don't understand – what can I possibly be missing? I saw the clues behind the Julius Caesar statue with infinitely more ease than any in this silly mirror! What am I missing?"
She was distressing herself, and seeing her unhappiness pained him as well. Anxious to comfort her, he got to his feet and came to stand behind her, placing his good hand on her shoulder: so straight and firm and yet so delicate and small, bowed down now with the depressing weight of futile searching and effort. Lowering his head, he softly brushed the ebony-black top of her head with his lips, his fingers squeezing her shoulder reassuringly, as his yellow gaze moved to survey the flat, give-nothing silver-black depths of the mirror before them, the expanse of which was enough to hold both of their reflections.
"Hush, softly now, ma belle," he said, his voice a calming murmur against her head, although he never took his eyes from the mirror. "You'll find it – we'll find it. Together, or not at all."
Then he used his grip on her shoulder to turn her around, making her face him, and he looked deep into her eyes, scrutinizing her pale, lovely face.
Clarice drew a shuddering intake of breath, gazing up at him, and then she stepped forward, closing the gap between them, her arms coming up from her sides to lock about his waist, which was at about her reaching distance anyway, and drape there: familiar and confident. Her head buried itself against his chest, against the cool silken shirt that he wore, and Erik moved his own hand to stroke her flowing hair, even as he breathed in himself to still the frantic beating of his heart at her touch.
"Together." she repeated, breathing the word. Then, she raised her head a fraction of an inch and looked over the curve of her shoulder, back to the mirror: a suddenly thoughtful expression on her face. Erik followed her gaze and saw that she was looking at their reflection there, as he had only moments before.
"What an interesting pair they are." she commented, without fuss or preamble.
He chuckled dryly, deep in his chest, and shifted his hold on her so that they could look into the mirror together and yet still remain in one another's arms.
"You speak truly, fair one," he replied, "But I myself must ask whether the man there – the tall, thin creature dressed all in black – truly belongs there…with the angel of indescribable beauty, dressed all in white? They couldn't be more different."
Clarice's arms moved against him as she rearranged her hold on him.
"No…they couldn't." she agreed. "And that is why they belong together."
They belong together…
Her words seemed to magnify in volume and intensity, echoing in his mind until they became a glorious cacophony of sound within his head, threatening to overwhelm him and break down every barrier that he had ever erected there in order to keep out thoughts of that awful day, long ago, when he had first become another man. He suddenly sighed a long, shuddering sigh, full of pain, and Clarice felt it. Turning in his embrace, she looked up at him: her face lined with concern for him.
"Erik?" she asked, uncertainly almost.
Clearing off his thoughts – or trying to – he shook his head briefly, closing his eyes for a moment, and then he told her, "It's all right. It's…nothing."
Then her hand came up and gently placed itself on the side of his face, resting against the cold black porcelain of his mask. Erik closed his eyes against that touch, knowing what was now coming. How could he tell her…
"Erik." Clarice's voice said: softly and gently. "How did it happen?"
He sighed again, that sigh as deep as a storm wind, and released her, his hand moving to take one of hers within it, and he led her after him: out of the room and out of doors. The mid-morning sky above them was varying shades of gray that day; a summer storm would come sometime, and drench everything beneath the sky with the warm tears of the clouds. There was no one about on the garden paths that day. All was silent and reflective, and solemn.
At length, he stopped them: gazing ahead of himself with eyes that were hard and blank with pain and memory, staring off into a distance that was not there.
Then he spoke.
"It was…a very long time ago. Years ago – when you would have been naught but a babe." He stopped, his gaze dropping from that impenetrable distance and focusing on the ground at their feet, bittersweet and full of remembrance. "I was…in a fire."
He could be only too sure of her horror.
"It was like…like being trapped in hell…no way out: no escape, just flames everywhere, all over me, eating me…"
An awful, freezing ripple went over his skin as he remembered this, and he squeezed his eyes shut against it, as his throat tightened and closed with a knot of agonizing memory – of the pain, of the shock and denial. Of the knowledge that he was now forever more set apart from all of humanity, because he was – unlike normal, whole, and healthy people – disfigured. He managed to choke out his next words over the overwhelming pain.
"It was…horrible!"
Clarice made a sobbing sound and then they reached for one another, and held each other. And they didn't let go for a very, very long time.
* * *
The storm broke, in all its fury, and the pair was forced to run for the castle. When they had returned to the Count's chambers, Erik helped Clarice brush the raindrops from her dark hair – or helped as much as he could, considering his still-useless arm – and then he went off to summon a midday repast for the both of them.
On re-entering their suite, he found that she was sitting in the window seat in his room, where she no longer hesitated to enter since the night of the masque ball. Erik approached her silently, seeing that her profile – the part of her face that was not turned to the window, hiding her expression – was pensive and dark. Then he stood behind her, looking out the window as well, while lines of pelting rain drove across the grounds of Sforzesco Castle: lightning giving a flash every once in a while, as thunder rumbled distantly in the gray sky.
Finally, Clarice turned from her appraisal of the storm and spoke, not looking up at him. "It is awful, Erik," she said.
He felt his heart sinking, falling right out of its proper place in his chest and plummeting right into his boots. His expression mirroring what he was feeling, he sank down to his knees before her, looking up at her with worried eyes.
"My face, Clarice?"
She whirled on him, suddenly, and put both of her hands on either side of his face, turning it up so that she could look directly into his eyes. Her beautiful face was pale and, he noticed, quite livid.
"No!" she said, pain evident in her voice. "No – not your face. Never your face." She turned away from them, shame coming to join the pain in her air. "Never. I haven't forgiven myself for what I did that first night that I was with you – I can't. Erik, your face is only a part of you, and you are beautiful. But…"
And she stood, gently putting his hands away from her, and went across the room. Confused, Erik looked after her for a moment, remaining where he was. Then, he stood as well and followed her. Clarice stood with her back to him, head bowed and eyes shut. How could she explain to him how unfair she thought the world was, in keeping them separated for all of this time, and for dealing him such an unkind turn? Could words express such anger?
"Clarice." he said, and took her hand in his.
Ashamed, she wouldn't look at him, and he finally had to resort to using gentle force to make her gaze meet his. And then he looked deeply into her eyes: into the face of the one that he had come to cherish so passionately.
"The world isn't fair, if that's what you are thinking – I know that is what lies in your mind now. The world has never been fair. Awful things happen to people who may or may not deserve it…but who can say why? We can't. We are not the creators of our own destinies. Such things have been…foretold, for us, from before the beginnings of time. The choices we make are our own, and yet they have been already set out. No one could have stopped what happened to me; it was meant to be. And in the same way, all that has happened to you has been meant for a reason as well…and, my dear, I think that, whether you believe it or not, it is a good reason. We have but to accept this…to accept the truth. We are not asked for more."
His yellow eyes pierced into hers, seeing into her mind, her heart, her soul itself.
"It is destiny, ma belle."
"Destiny." she whispered.
Suddenly, there was a rain of frantic blows on the door just beyond them, and the two whirled as one towards it, startled by the unexpected noise. Erik gave Clarice an apologetic look and went across the room to answer it himself, as there were no servants about, calling as he went, "All right! Calm yourself, please – the world's not coming to an end about us!"
He opened the door, and stepped back in surprise.
"Fabrizio – hold a moment, what's wrong with you, my friend? You look like you've just had a run-in with the Grim Reaper himself!"
The handsome young nobleman himself entered the room quickly then, shutting the door behind him, and faced both the Count and Clarice with despair and fear dark in his eyes. He did indeed look as if he had just encountered someone – or something – absolutely dreadful.
"You may well believe that I have seen just such a thing when you hear what I must now tell you," were his words, said in a breathless, cryptic tone.
Erik raised his eyebrows beneath the mask, moving to lean up against a nearby pillar with his arms crossed nonchalantly across his chest, one ankle hooked over the other with that leg supporting him. "Let's have it then," he said.
Fabrizio looked at him as if he were mad.
"Erik, by Heaven, can't you see that I am here on an errand of desperate, perilous urgency? There's an interrogator come to court, at the behest of none other than your mortal enemy the Marquis de Mercier, and his orders are to arrest and try you, privately – for murder!"
The Count d'Auberie's air abruptly went serious: deadly serious and dark. He left the pillar and went to his friend's side, his good hand moving to grip the younger man's arm with a vice-like hold.
"Who? Who do they say I've killed?"
Fabrizio's eyes were as dark as the other man's, and knowing.
"A sailor who had been in the Marquis's service, and a French merchant."
He paused and looked at Clarice.
"Your uncle."
She felt her entire body go rigid with a cold, numbing feeling, and she felt behind herself for the couch – for anything – to sit down before the whirling of her mind caused her to leave consciousness entirely. She only dimly heard the rest of the conversation.
"That's impossible!" Erik was saying, clearly infuriated.
"I know!" came Fabrizio's strangely wearied, defeated voice. "But somehow they've got a witness – someone from the Marquis who said he saw the whole thing happen – and he's willing to stand as witness, along with that villain of an innkeeper who was there that day at the inn, when they tried to kidnap Clarice. They said that you murdered both of the sailor and the merchant in cold blood, and the Marquis seems set on proving you guilty by a private investigation – with his man standing as judge, prosecuting lawyer, and jury!"
"They can't do this!" Erik fumed, only barely controlling the anger that had festered within him for so long against the Marquis. "I have my own sort of power and there are friends of mine in many influential circles who would be glad to stand for me—"
"He's spread rumors about you, Erik." Fabrizio cut in. "There are stories about you going around all the court, and since this seems to be a private battle between two of the French nobility…"
"Is there no way that this blackguard can be denied his wish for blood and violence? Will the world stand by while innocents are ensnared and destroyed? What can we do?" There was no mistaking the fury in the Count's voice. The fury or the bitterness. A long, long silence stepped into the room, filling it.
Finally, Fabrizio spoke.
"You must get out of Milan."
Clarice looked up suddenly, upon hearing this, and gazed at her two companions: one, who was surely one of her first greatest friends, and the other, whom she cared for more deeply than anything else in the world.
Then she noticed that there was a tray with a covered silver platter on it that had been set on the low teakwood table before her. She stared at it bemusedly, not recalling having heard a servant come in and left it there. Clearly, her mind was in even more turmoil than she had thought, if she had become so oblivious to reality. It didn't seem as if Fabrizio or Erik had taken much notice of it until now.
Suddenly, there was the sound of something moving…
From underneath the platter.
It was a sound that vaguely reminded her of the hiss of a garter snake that she had once come across in her daily sojourns about her family's manor, before all of this…
Across the room from her, Fabrizio and the Count seemed to have heard it as well. Without a word, Erik had then suddenly bolted across the room to her and was whisking the tray up and off of the table, carrying it away and to the window, which he opened and then dumped the tray – silver platter and all – out of.
Fabrizio gave an inarticulate exclamation of surprise and Clarice stood, racing over to stand by the Count, who was looking down at the ground below with a look of both rage and disgust in his eyes.
"So it comes to this," he was saying in a low, deadly voice as Clarice caught sight of a very large, hooded serpent in the grass below: its beady black eyes staring up at her with the hollow gaze of death. "First the threats, then the plots…and now the attempts on our lives. And it has only barely begun."
He turned away from the window, silently compelling Clarice to do so as well, and they faced the center of the room, and Fabrizio: their one true friend amidst all of the death, plotting, and murder that surrounded them.
"We must indeed leave."
* * *
It was agreed between them that Fabrizio would help arrange for the two of them to leave Sforzesco Castle without alerting anyone of their departure. If the Marquis de Mercier was to discover their plans, the Count d'Auberie would be captured and rendered unable to escape a truly nasty turns in events at the hands of his dastardly nemesis, who – it seemed – would stop at nothing to see him either dead or imprisoned.
The Marquis wanted the prize at the end of the puzzle as well; Erik knew this. He had tried to get his hands on the Windsor Castle painting, but to no avail, and now, his thought was to incarcerate the Count and, quite possibly, the young artist who was the only key to unraveling the clues of the puzzle. If he could capture the Count and Clarice, he would find the jewel at the end of the mystery. That was why there had been an attempt at kidnapping Clarice, a plot to waylay the Count on his way back from Germany, the 'accident' of the fire at the masque ball, and now not only the appearance of a ruthless, professional interrogator, but a venomous snake as well – which, Erik later informed Clarice, had been a kind of serpent known as a cobra.
All reason enough indeed for them to make their best effort to evade the Marquis de Mercier and those employed by him.
They could not leave until nightfall, however. Thus, they had time to gather the belongings that they wished to take along with them to wherever they might be headed now – and they did not have to bring much, owing to the Count's great wealth – and to make a plot of their own.
Fabrizio and Chlöe would stay behind in the Count d'Auberie's chambers and move about, in plain sight of the windows, so that it would appear as if two people, a man and a young woman, were there. Chlöe would, of course, have to hide her hair, as it was significantly lighter in colour than Clarice's ebony locks, and Fabrizio would done his mask from the ball those few nights before, but their ruse would work for long enough a time to allow Clarice and Erik a head-start on their escape.
And during the time in which they had to wait for nightfall, Clarice set to work desperately on the mirror, determined that she would unravel its secrets before they had to depart. Erik, Fabrizio, and Chlöe joined her, and all four of them worked over the reflective piece of glass for the next several hours, sometimes silent, sometimes talking, but always searching…
It was Fabrizio who served as the inspiration for the finding of the answer.
He noticed the strange spaces that had been left in the mirror's frame, and commented that they looked as if they should hold candles. Clarice replied that she had seen this before…but then it dawned on her that this might indeed mean something. Many mirrors had placed for candles to be set in them, but with this mirror, there could very possibly be another reason for this being so.
Quickly, they found a number of candles and lit them, placing them in the designated spaces…and the mystery was solved.
When the mirror was illuminated, it showed itself to be no typical mirror. With the candles' light falling upon its silvery depths, the mirror revealed itself to be a map. In the glass had been painted a depiction of the landscape of a part of Spain, with the outline of a large jewel drawing the eye to the city of Roses.
For his brilliance, Fabrizio was made much of by a jubilant Clarice and Chlöe, which seemed to put him in high spirits indeed.
And so it was there settled: Erik and Clarice would depart from Sforzesco Castle that night to evade the clutches of the Marquis de Mercier and his interrogator, who would have the Count brought to justice for a crime that he had not committed. They would then take the Odyssey from the port of Genoa to Roses, in Spain – and there, they would, in all likeliness, find the next piece of the puzzle…
* * *
By a few hours before midnight that night, Clarice stood on the deck of the Odyssey watching the coast of Italy, with the dark outlines of Genoa's seaside city, drift away from her. She smiled softly in the darkness to herself.
Perhaps one day she would return to Milan.
She certainly had reason to, now that she had such a good friend there as Fabrizio, and she really did love it the city and all of its attractions. But she was at last moving on to her next adventure, to the next step in her journey with her Count…and she was ready for whatever would come to her now.
There was a step on the deck behind her, and she turned around, the playful sea winds catching her hair up within them and blowing them around her head and shoulders like any number of dark streamers. Erik smiled wryly and approached at her beckoning, coming to stand beside her at the ship's edge, leaning against the ledge that surrounded the deck and looking out to sea for a moment. Then he turned from it and looked at her.
"So…we leave." he said, and she nodded.
"We do indeed, my lord."
There was silence between them for a moment, and then he said, "Will you miss it…there?" In his voice was a wealth of unspoken questions, and Clarice felt compelled to relieve him of any doubt that he might have in his mind towards how she felt.
"Yes, a little bit…but I am glad to be moving on…glad that we will eventually turn our course back towards home. France."
It felt as if it had been a lifetime since she had been in the country of her birth…months had passed, and yet she felt as if an eternity had gone by…
Erik made an appreciative noise and she suddenly remembered something that she had wanted to confront him about for quite a long while – and that now seemed to be the perfect time to broach it with him.
Turning on him quickly, she stabbed a finger towards him, emerald green eyes flashing with mock reproach and said sternly, "But know this, my lord Count d'Auberie – no matter where we go, I will stand by you as your most staunch and loyal companion…just don't you ever try to match make me again!"
He stared at her blankly for a second, seeming to have become numb with shock, and then he threw his head back and laughed: clearly, warmly, happily. When he came back down to earth and looked at her again, shaking his head and still laughing, his yellow eyes were alight with both pleasure and wry self-effacement.
"Discovered! I should have expected as much! All right then, milady, I swear: I will never try to match make you again." he promised, pulling on an attempt at a solemn face, although his eyes were sparkling too much for it to even somewhat pass as genuine. He held out his hand to her, as a means of sealing the vow, and Clarice put her own hand into it, only for him to lock his fingers around hers and pull her close to him, grinning down at her from his still-alarmingly tall height.
"Somehow I don't believe you." Clarice said, and then she pushed herself away, trying to give him queenly, dismissive look but not succeeding.
He only grinned at her again.
"Fine then, don't."
* * *
A/N: Ooh, and he's got a rather devilish sense of humor too! Well, like I said, a bit more lighthearted, with some explanations of things. Hehehe. And now we're off to Spain, and I am free to begin truly tossing things up even more than I have done previously! I advise you to buckle your seatbelts and hang on to your hats; it is now going to be a wild ride, ladies and gentlemen… (As if it hasn't ever been just that!) R&r, and I luv you all!
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