Sanctum's Child: Draft 1: Scene 1

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 Sanctum's Child: Draft 1: Scene 1

Rough Draft Version

by Jodi Ralston

2013 - All Rights Reserved

Nota Bene:  Though I tweaked for general readability, this is rough.  Also, the ideas are not set in stone, and the details especially aren't.  Given that I am using Regency as my model, those details will eventually be closer to what GH and them used, but for now, they are just placeholders.  If I make a major change, I will probably note it in a NB.

~*~

Mr. Avan "Twixt" Mannering couldn't very well admit his reason for entering into Courtesanship was because he tired of two dead men arguing incessantly into his ear.  So instead, he answered the procuress with a casual, "Oh, that.  I was bored of mortality."

Twixt was never a good liar; he was a great liar.  For some reason, upon reaching adolescence, as long as whatever he said wasn't the truth, people believed him no matter how far fetched a tale he spun.  Truths, it turned out, were a little harder to convince people of.  Lies, however, he could depend on.

But he had never tried his curse against the Vampires--or in this case, those demi-mortals, like Madam Rose Greene, who were in the business of finding the Vampires entertaining meals.

So he held his breath and waited. 

While this first lie ran its course, the procuress toyed with the chain of her emerald-studded quizzing glass.  Her preternaturally youthful brow furrowed and the green around her irises seemed to glow brighter, as if the lie were coming under inspection of some internal magnifying lens as strong as that in her gloved hands.

Normally, his first lie with a stranger took the longest, but this one . . . ?  Twixt clenched his fists, fighting the urge to fidget with the knot of the cravat, for as the seconds ticked on, the tighter the neck cloth seemed to grow.  In the same manner, he pressed his lips tight, fighting the urge to fidget, just a little, with the lie.

Just a little.

He swallowed, clenched, fisted, and at last, her brow smoothed and she nodded.  "True, true," she said, as if there had been no delay. "I cannot agree more; it is deplorable state, isn't it?"

Many are bored of being alive?  Keeping one's blood firmly in one's body, and one's soul pure, was to condemn?  He sagged in place, for whatever she heard, it wasn't what he had said.  It was what she needed to hear.  "Oh, I agree entirely, Madam."

She snapped her fingers, and he straightened instinctively.  With the quizzing glass, she gestured for him to turn about on the carpet.

"Slowly--nice cut of coat.  Blanch's?  Yes, good.  Though, but that blue-black waistcoat--good thing green would suit you, drawing out those eyes.  My people wear green.  If it doesn't suit, they don't suit.  Now those breeches . . . "

By the time she moved on to the polish of his boots, his slow spin had carried him aboutface in the parlor.  The ghosts of his father and Mr. Avanley, his father's best friend and neighbor, lounged on the sofa.  His father was currently looking at him through a black-rimmed quizzing glass. 

He scowled at them.  They had not been present when the butler had shown him into the parlor.  And he had been possessed of a quizzing glass that looked remarkably the same as the one they were currently passing between themselves.  He patted his chest and came up with an empty black ribbon.  Gone.

They chuckled.

They chuckled louder as Madam Greene's commentary moved beyond clothing to speculation on what lay beneath.

Twixt shot back around.  "That's not--" 

She cupped his damnable hot cheek and lifted it so their gazes met.  "Very prettily done, Mr. Mannering.  Very prettily indeed.  Patrons love a good blush.  How old are you?  I do not deal in minors."

"I am just turned one and twenty."

Her brow lined over that.  Perhaps he should have went with a lie.  But instead of lingering over it, she angled her glass and seemed to be enumerating his eyelashes under her breath.  She suddenly stopped herself with a question: "Do you have a relationship to the First Courtesan, by any chance?"

Ah, the one part of his curse that always fouled him up.  No matter what he answered, the querier always heard "yes" and believed it whole-heartedly.

"I would not know, Madam."

"Fustian!" Mr. Avanley spat.  "Have I not said, on numerous occasions, a connection exists?  Just not from the Mannering line.  My grandmother was Charity Violet's first by-blow.  The Vampires themselves have it written in their bloodstock books."

"There you go again, Ley.  Twixt is my issue, not yours, no matter how many times you led my wife astray while I was out of the house."

"We'll see, Manny.  We'll see."

"You can see now, without all this blood-sucker nonsense.  Here, borrow my quizzing glass, and scrutinize once more the clear line of the Mannering nose . . . "

"Mannering nose?  That is an Avanley nose, I tell you."

Lady Dark and Light, not again.  Not again.

A tap of the glass to his shoulder startled him, and he looked up into Madam Green's face.  "Do attend, Mr. Mannering.  I asked if you have abstained from magic."

He smiled and lied, "I have never even glanced a spell book, Madam."

"Yes, why, yes, all magic should be outlawed, not just the questionable practices.  Except, of course, for the Pills and the other matters patrons favor.  Nicely put, Mr. Mannering.  Nicely put."  She peered into his ear.  "No hearing problems, I dare say?  Those I do business with do not like poor quality."

"No, Madam."

She stepped back and tapped the edge of her glass against her thin lips.  "You are not quite what I am looking for, but . . . " But after a long moment, she moved over to a side table.  "How can I pass up on even a distant relation of the Violets?"  From a vase, she plucked a green, cloth rosebud and offered it to him with a sigh.  "Welcome to Green Rose House.  You may address me as Mother Rose."

~*~