Private The Bundling

[Lancel Atria]

The business of preparing them for the evening was conducted with such solemnity that Lancel began to suspect someone had mistaken a courtship custom for a funeral rite.

Guinevere suffered the greater portion of it. Her nursemaid fussed with the blankets, adjusted the pillows twice, and then proceeded to whisper a final catalogue of cautions into her ear with all the discretion of a woman who plainly intended every person in the room to hear them. Lancel caught only fragments, though the repeated mention of propriety required little interpretation.

He had made the error of smiling.

The nursemaid turned upon him with an expression generally reserved for men caught climbing through bedroom windows. Her silent, heavy glare nearly ruined him. Lancel lowered his eyes with as much contrition as he could manufacture...which was perhaps not very much...but he held his tongue, offering nothing more than a shallow, respectful bow to usher the woman out.

The board between the beds was inspected. The blankets were tucked. Guinevere received another whispered warning, and Lancel received a final stare suggesting that, whatever happened before sunrise, he had probably arranged it already.

Then the door closed. He listened to the latch settle.

For the first time since he had known Guinevere Cavello, there was nobody else there.

The realisation proved unexpectedly strange. Lancel had spent years in rooms where privacy required no ceremony whatsoever. He had known women without the benefit of chastity boards, nursemaids, solemn promises, or entire households bracing themselves for moral catastrophe. There was, therefore, something magnificently absurd about lying fully clothed beneath a respectable quantity of linen while a wooden partition stood between him and a woman he was apparently considered too dangerous to encounter without chains and padlocks.

For a little while, neither spoke.

He could hear her breathing.

The mattress shifted as she moved on the other side of the divider. It was a small movement, entirely innocent, and yet the peculiar intimacy of hearing it in the darkness drew his attention immediately. Another rustle followed. Lancel stared upward, a quiet amusement tugging at the corner of his mouth.

He wondered how long she could endure the silence. More importantly, he wondered how little effort it would take to disturb her composure.

The silence stretched, thick and heavy with her unspoken anxiety, until the tension in the room became almost tangible. "If I suddenly burst into laughter, dear Princess...please accept that it is entirely not of your doing...this whole ordeal is preposterous. They do realise you would not die if we should lay together this night? Do they not?"

Guinevere Cavello
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[Guinevere Cavello]

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Guinevere was fairly certain she had never been more nervous in her life. Which was ridiculous, really. Nothing was going to happen. Nothing could happen, not with half the household apparently convinced Lancel required a wooden barricade and divine intervention to keep him on his side of the room.

Yet her heart refused to listen to reason. She had been preparing for this night for weeks. Not preparing in any particularly scandalous sense, of course. Mostly she had endured the far more serious crisis of deciding what one was meant to wear to bed beside one's intended husband when said husband was not really one's intended husband at all. She had spent an embarrassing amount of time selecting pajamas, dismissing some as too childish, others as too revealing, and still others because they looked as though she were trying far too hard. Her nursemaid had been absolutely no help, save for reminding her repeatedly that modesty was a virtue and men possessed eyes.

As though Gwen had somehow forgotten.

Now, lying beneath the blankets with that ridiculous board separating them, she found herself wishing the entire affair felt half as amusing as Lancel seemed to find it.

Because once, she had imagined this night. Not this night exactly, perhaps, but something very much like it. As a girl she had daydreamed shamelessly about what it might be like to share those first private hours with the man she would someday marry. She had imagined nervous laughter whispered beneath blankets, perhaps their hands finding one another in the darkness. In particularly daring versions of the fantasy, she had even imagined gathering enough courage to steal a kiss when nobody was watching.

It had always seemed terribly romantic. One of those moments she had assumed would belong to her someday.

Instead, she was lying beside a man who did not want her, playing at an engagement neither of them truly believed in. That realization brought with it a small, unexpected sadness.

Gwen knew what this was. She knew the arrangement, knew the necessity of it, knew better than to attach childish hopes to something born entirely of circumstance. Still, some foolish little part of her mourned the version of this night she had once expected to have. None of that helped the frantic beating of her heart.

Every movement from the other side of the partition seemed impossibly loud. Every rustle of linen reminded her that Lancel was there. Alone with her. Close enough that, were it not for the board, she could probably reach across the space between them.

Her heart was fluttering so quickly she was convinced it had ceased behaving like a heart altogether and had instead become some trapped hummingbird desperately attempting escape.

Then Lancel finally broke the silence.

Gwen stared into the darkness for several seconds, mortified by the warmth immediately crawling into her cheeks. Suddenly she too felt the need to giggle at the absurdity of it all. To laugh at the fact that there they were, in this ridiculous situation, with a whole castle threatening them not to be together when in reality that was the last thing either wanted.

She pulled the blanket higher as though that might somehow protect her dignity, but it didn't truly work because a small laugh escaped her lips.

"That is not helping." She tried to close her lips over the small laughter, but it continued for a second. He was right. It was hilarious in its own mortifying way.

When the short simmer of a giggle quieted, she whispered something else, something she couldn't believe she had the nerve to even ask.

"Umm... what does happen? You know... with you... and those girls... I mean, after..."

Oh Force just kill her now. Why had she said that? Her heart felt like it might explode again.

Outfit: xxx| Tags: Lancel Atria

 

[Lancel Atria]

Lancel considered the question for rather less time than perhaps decency demanded. "Some stayed until morning. Some did not. Some returned," he said, before adding with perfect unconcern, "and there were one or two whom I decided I had understood quite sufficiently upon the first acquaintance."

He could practically feel her intake of breath through the board.

"There have been noblewomen, Guinevere. There have been women who would laugh themselves senseless to hear themselves described as noble. One duchess threw a shoe at me. A lieutenant stole my shirt and wore it back to her barracks. There was a violinist on Chandrila who refused to tell me her real name for three months, which made her considerably more interesting than she otherwise might have been."

And, having begun, Lancel discovered that he rather enjoyed telling her.

He spoke at surprising length, though never of what occurred behind closed doors. Instead, Guinevere received an improbable catalogue of personalities. He disliked affected helplessness and women who mistook cruelty for sophistication. Beauty attracted him readily enough, he admitted without embarrassment, but wit kept his attention. Confidence helped. Vanity could be entertaining in moderation. Possessiveness sent him running.

There had been women he remembered because they were beautiful, others because they were outrageous, and a precious few because conversation with them had somehow made sunrise arrive unnoticed.

After some minutes, he glanced toward the partition.

"Have I scandalised you sufficiently, or ought I continue?"

Guinevere Cavello
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