Social calls were the bedrock of Court Society during the Season. Ladies, with a smattering of gentlemen, would go around to the houses of their various associates for gossip, to follow up on a flirtation from the night before, or just to acknowledge a relationship by sending in a card. Since different people would attend different events and entertainments, these morning calls served as a kind of after-action report between those who had different pieces of information so that by the time luncheon rolled around everyone who was anyone knew everything that had happened to anybody else.
The gossiping, tattlemongering, one-upmanship, and backbiting that went on at these calls was well-lubricated by coffee and tea, keeping the chatterers' whistles wet. This, however, could occasionally have unfortunate consequences. And so it was for the Baroness Carmenere, who found her call on the Mage Consul, Lillet Blan, interrupted by the need to use the necessary.
Quite frankly, the Baroness did not feel comfortable inside the Blan-Virgine household. The Mage Consul herself was a pleasant enough person, but the plain fact of it was that it was hard to feel at ease in the home of a woman who told the basic laws of reality to perform at whim like the troupe of performing seals that had appeared at the Marchioness of Livingston's latest wildly-overdone ball (sharing the details of which being Baroness Carmenere's reason for calling).
The fact that the maid who showed the Baroness the way to the room in question was an elf just seemed to drive home the point that she was in a house where dragons were stabled next to the horses, the little girl's dog was a fire-breathing beast the size of a pony, and the family members talked with the cat like it was a person. Sitting in the drawing room and chattering over tea with Lillet was one thing, but being alone in the washroom left her with a bad case of the shivers (even though the pitcher that refilled with warm, soapy water automatically was really very handy). It was actually reassuring to have the three-foot-tall figure in green skirts walking along at her side on the way back, which was a lowering feeling.
You have to stop this, Rose, she told herself firmly. You are a noblewoman of the kingdom. How can you be responsible for your estates and the people dependent on you if you can't face walking down a hall?
And what was the big deal anyway? It was just a hallway, after all! The floor was polished parquet with a strip of carpet down the center, the walls were paneled, and a couple of occasional tables bore vases filled with flowers no doubt taken from the gardens she could see outside the open windows to her right. There was a light breeze outside, and it carried the scent of more flowers in through those windows. Baroness Carmenere inhaled, savoring the sweet aromas that shifted slightly with every change in the breeze, feeling her tension start to drain away.
Until something else came through the window.
~X X X~
Lillet Blan sipped her tea, feeling slightly guilty that the Baroness's bathroom break was proving to be the most enjoyable part of her visit. Court Society's routines weren't natural to the Mage Consul, and as an outsider only looking in because of a role she'd earned through her professional talents, she didn't feel that they had anything to do with her.
Besides, Royal Magician Emily Livingston, the Marchioness's daughter, was a good friend of Lillet's who'd helped her many times over to keep from embarrassing herself at a social function during Lillet's own Royal Magician years. And Amoretta had thought the seals were cute, which ended any concern over them being silly to have in a ballroom.
Lillet couldn't even afford herself the slight pleasure of acquainting her caller with these facts and watching her wrestle with the realization of "Oh, God, I've just insulted someone who can turn me into a frog!" Baroness Carmenere clearly hadn't approved of the overblown theatricality at the ball, but she hadn't been cutting or judgmental, either, so it would have been bullying instead of justice to be excessively disapproving.
She'd considered doing it anyway, just to cut the visit short, but Amoretta had a way of finding these things out.
So, Lillet was left to work on the puzzle of why so many people spent so much time on something as meaningless and boring as society gossip, and drink tea. She was just lifting the cup to her lips for another sip when a woman's scream echoed through the house. Lillet's head jerked, and she was lucky the cup had been only half-full or else she'd have added it to her dress and brown really wasn't her color.
She set the cup aside at once and rushed towards the door. Lillet was just opening it when a near-hysterical Baroness all but charged into her arms.
"It attacked me!" the woman screamed. "It jumped through the window and attacked me!"
"Are you all right? Are you hurt anywhere?"
"N-no, I screamed and ran before it could do anything, but it nearly landed on me!"
"What was it?" Lillet asked. She was genuinely concerned; it shouldn't be possible for a hostile familiar to break through her wards without her knowing about it, and she didn't have any experiments running presently with her own familiars that might be dangerous or run out of control. And Baroness Carmenere knew Shuck, who was the usual source of 'giant monster!' false alarms, so even if she'd been frightened by the barghest she'd have identified him as the culprit.
"I don't know! It was so sudden—I was walking down the hall, and it jumped through the open window at me!"
"What did it look like, then?"
"It was round and jet black, about this big." She held her hands about fifteen inches apart. "It was all covered in hair—I felt it brush my shoulder, so I just screamed and ran."
"What about Aila?"
"The maid? I don't know; she was right behind me—"
Lillet didn't listen any more, but stepped around the Baroness and out the door. There hadn't been any additional screaming, which was a good sign, but not necessarily proof that everything was okay. If there'd been a sudden attack...
"Aila!" Lillet called. "Aila, are you all right?" Had the maid been a summoned familiar she would have known at once, but most of the house elves were hired retainers like the human servants and so there was no magical bond to tell Lillet where they were or what was happening to them.
Then the elf girl walked around the corner.
"You can relax, ma'am; it's only a false alarm." She paused, then went on, "Most of the time I like dogs. We've got one of our own back home, and it's not a big deal that old Shuck is a little larger than most. But when he starts shedding his winter coat, well!" She held up the foot-wide hairball she was carrying. "Even when Miss Cressidor properly combs him outside it doesn't keep the fur from getting everywhere!"