( she takes a moment to consider what colours to pick, there are so many and she loves them all so dearly! but she also has to be able to explain them to him in a way that makes sense, nothing too visual, lots of emotion...
so, she goes with - )
Blue, first. It matches my eyes, and I used to dream about someone telling me so. "What a fine dress you're wearing tonight, Sylvie, it sure reflects your big bright blues." Now I like blue, because blue is deep and unending, vast like the Mediterranean and like that, I want to see myself with depth and no limits, too.
[ That's all he says at first. But he knows she'll want to know more, and she'll wait. So he adds: ] Blue was just our family color. My father's eyes. My perfect twin brother's eyes.
It's your colour as well. I noticed. Though, my eyes are a bit lighter than yours.
( although she had been drunk and more preoccupied by the wine last time, sylvie notices these things. she notices people's eyes the same way her aunties noticed someone's manners, like an inherent, telling part of their person.
eyes can say so much. the colour of them are part of that palette and she noticed, of course she did. )
Imagine that I carry a little more daylight inside myself.
[ He's a lonely grump and she's... well. If you could bottle sunshine in the shape of a human. ]
Your eyes are like the sky on a sunny day, then. [ He's not great at this, but he's trying! ] Or the sea just off the coast, where the water is shallow enough to reveal the life beneath it.
( she thinks he's doing quite well, actually! for someone who feels like his last reservoir of light has been long emptied. so, she's going to encourage him. )
My aunts lived not far from a beach. When the sun was out and with your feet submerged in the water, your skin took on a special shine, from below.
[ That's what it feels like, sometimes. It doesn't even have to be in the middle of the night, when he's alone in the dark; no, sometimes it happens at dinner, when his father and mother and brothers pretend like everything's normal, all the while waiting for him to crack. ]
( she doesn't hesitate to agree with him. while sylvie is unconcerned in most aspects of life, it's mostly because she knows what's there to concern yourself with and she has chosen a different approach. the sisters at her boarding school gave her too much liberty, her aunties (and charles) would say, but in reality what they gave her was strength. strength and courage.
she doesn't doubt hodr is both strong and courageous, too. but sometimes you freeze and someone has to come and unthaw you.
sylvie doesn't mind being that someone. )
But isn't the truth that monsters lurk everywhere and all we can do is learn how to fight them where they live? Inside us.
[ He almost, almost dismisses her. Sylvie couldn't possibly harbor a monster inside of her, not with all the light she still carries — a light that he feels with her every kind word, with her every touch.
But then he remembers Geiravor, and he remembers how, despite how fiercely she burned, she was afraid of the dark.
Maybe that was even why she burned in the first place. ]
It's big and bulky like a bear, but naked like the young of rats. It's ugly and has sharp claws and it tells me I'll never belong anywhere, to any home, to anyone.
( another long pause. she's staring at the message she just sent, thinking about her brother, then about armand, about armand's home that is her home now, but because she lived so long without anywhere to call her home, it takes time to believe it can be hers, too.
then, she writes - )
Just because we know something to not be true doesn't mean our hearts feel it. Our hearts are silly things, they're easily convinced of the wrong things.
( that's all she writes for some time. just letting him know she's thinking, she's considering, she's trying to make sense of her own muddled thoughts on the matter, filled with bears and brothers and ducky boys.
finally, after almost a whole minute, she continues: )
It's my fear. Of not belonging in Paris. Because if I don't belong here, I don't know where to go. Isn't that sad?
( she hopes he can hear her laughter in that final sentence. she hopes he can hear the nervousness of it. )
Is this what it feels like, having a family, she wonders, looking around the parlour where, until a few minutes ago, Countess Cowper's whole family (or, most of it, the younger of the brothers regrettably withheld from joining them) had been playing cards, Sylvie unaccustomed enough with such pastimes that she hadn't won a single round of anything, maybe she'd also been a tad too busy admiring the lighting that bathed the congregated family members in such a beautiful hue, who can really say. She used to play cards at boarding school, she shouldn't be at a total loss. Oh, but Sylvie would have liked to paint them, right then and there, although today that isn't her purpose with being present. The Countess had invited her along, because she - along with the rest of the family, obviously - is as English as they come and anything else would be improper, most likely, leaving the little artist in her rooms to contemplate nothing but her hands in her lap.
Still, if this is a normal family, then all the luck she didn't have at cards, she suddenly has in love, she thinks. Although she's only stayed at the Countess' house for a few weeks, she's already become quite attached to the whole set-up, all these people here. A mother figure. A father figure. A little sister, Frances, who's the only one Sylvie allows herself to be informal with, if only because she's never been the eldest in any constellation. Always little Sylvie with her, isn't that so?
The Countess' eldest daughter - she's brought her two boys, they're adorable, still, there's time for that all to change, of course - is at the piano, her hands coaxing lovely, relaxing music from the instrument, nothing like the Charleston on the terrace of her brother's manor house or the jazz noisily reverberating off of the walls of Parisian clubs. England is a different world, different from France in every way that matters.
Sylvie's gaze finally lands on the brother, the other and older one, and she's watched him the few times he's been visiting since her arrival. She's watched him, not with a plan but with a hope. Is it because he's someone's older brother, too, and it reminds her of the brother she herself is escaping? It doesn't feel like that, it doesn't feel like the coil and curl in the pit of her stomach that she's fought ever since setting foot in London, nowhere to turn, knowing no one, really, hardly even the language.
No, that had been her luck, remembering Countess Cowper just then. How asking just a bit insistently had led her to her door.
It has led her here.
Taking a deep breath, she moves over next to the taller man, arranging herself only slightly awkwardly, fingers buried in the folds of her tea gown. They have no nobility in France anymore, Sylvie has had to learn the ropes from scratch. While they have been introduced, Lord Melbourne and she, and while they have exchanged pleasantries, she only knows him as the one who isn't married. Anymore. The fact that he has no wife currently is the very thing that nurtures her hope. In time with more and more of her brother's letters finding their way to her, she will take it, although it isn't anything like daylight or water. Then again, Sylvie isn't a plant, and her hope isn't either. This is good enough. It has to be.
"Lord Melbourne," she says, her English pronunciation recognisably French, in just two weeks, she hasn't been able to rid herself of it, but she is practicing, Frances teaches her a little bit every day. "If everyone had the sister you do, there would be nothing but happy families."
A compliment. The English like compliments, don't they?
Melbourne, on the other hand, hasn't given much thought to this young lady yet. She seems friendly enough in his eyes, and if his sister has decided she's worth her time, that's all that matters. There has actually been a fairly long time since Melbourne has met anyone completely new; he's a solitary man and lives a quiet life. Oh, there's been the occasional new spouse for his nephew and niece but even they have not been strangers but instead children of people he's already acquainted with. Upper class circles aren't that big anymore.
Ever since retiring from politics a few years ago, he has more or less spent his days at Brocket Hall, a manor house approximately 25 miles north of the capital. He can be seen in London during winter months, and now it's still early spring so he's in town. The big parties his sister Emily likes to throw aren't his scene but being amongst family is. This generation of Melbournes are close-knit, and considering his younger brother George died earlier this year, it's become more important than ever to be with loved ones.
But Melbournes are also somewhat notorious, or if one prefers to put it in kinder words, controversial. Therefore having someone new in their daily lives now creates a delicate balance. Sylvie doesn't know all the gossip that lingers in town but is likely to become privy to it if she stays long enough.
It had certainly been unexpected to have this French girl suddenly standing at the Cowper family door - even if Emily had made an invitation while visiting Paris and meeting Sylvie and her brother some months ago - but she was nonethelss willing to offer her a place to stay. Earl Cowper rather thinks it's because Emily is starting to feel the empty nest syndrome. Ouf of their five childern, there's only Frances living at home full-time. Though Sylvie is hardly a child anymore, she is still someone who seems to need help, and as such, maybe Emily found Sylvie to fulfil her own need to be useful.
"I like to think so, miss. She has a big heart, I know firsthand," is Melbourne's reply as Sylvie approaches to talk to him. His signiture smile is small, often with just one corner of his mouth tugging upward.
"And you are settling well in London, I trust? I hear you've made fine progress with your painting."
[ooc: The term 'empty nest syndrome' wasn't really used until 1970s but I couldn't think another phrase for it. Also let's assume she's not painting in this parlour, because there's bound to be several rooms in the house. So somewhere else where she can spead out her stuff.]
Sylvie was never one to listen to gossip much. Spending her late teens with her aunts in Marseille, notorious tattletales and feared in much of the city because of it, has made her used to not believing a single word anyone says about anyone else; if there's truth to it, the truth will find a way regardless. Gossip notwithstanding. Being in a new country, speaking a new language, learning new customs and etiquette in itself makes gossip difficult to pick up on. The English have another way of going about things than the French, that much she has learned already. They're a little stiffer about everything, not that she would tell any Englishmen to their faces, now. She does have manners, her mother brought her up with that for as long as she was allowed to keep her. Eight years worth of good upbringing aren't worth nothing, she thinks.
It's coming into good use now, even if she can't make herself be quite as neat and orderly about things as the family she's staying with. Lord Melbourne should see her studio, the room that Countess Cowper has put at her disposal, not as lovely as the one Armand's family had, the inflow of light not as perfect, but it's big and it has seen the life of this family which in itself gives it a magical atmosphere of its own. It's disorganized and with her painting tools spread all over, she has made it hers, because the Countess has allowed her and it was the only way she could make herself at home here. Where she would very much like to be at home.
Turning slightly towards him, she fidgets a bit uneasily, her fingers rubbing over each other in an obvious display of nerves. She could account to him all the fun she's had painting the inhabitants of this house, how she has made good work on the background especially, how it isn't her usual style (no surrealism for the Countess), so she takes a bit more care... But what she really wants to tell him is something else. Something much less flattering.
"I deliberately work very slow," she finally admits, thinking it's better to be forthcoming. Her mother didn't bring her up a cheat or a liar. Her brother didn't bring her up at all, so she hasn't become either thing in the meantime, although he might be. Her fingers still their fidgeting and she looks up at the older man. "Because I dread the time when I will have to leave here."
Please ask why, her eyes beg. Although it's obvious why, his family is wonderful and lovely, isn't it, but she'd like him to ask anyway, as she'd like for her answer to interest him.
She'd like not to be totally on her own once more.
He chuckles at the confession but the second comment gives him pause. It's not a wholly unexpected thing for her to say, after all, she cannot imagine that this will be her home forevermore. No, she will move forward with her life at some point. When? They don't know. She's a bit of an enigma to them, as welcome as she is. But if she is dreading the future, and not fine with the changes that are about to take place, that is never pleasant to hear.
Emily hasn't told her brothers all her own concerns, especially not the worry that Sylvie might be in trouble. There is of course one specific type of trouble that young women are prone to get into, and if that's the case, she can only hope Sylvie will eventually come to her about it. Emily wouldn't judge but to possibly have a pregnant young lady in her care... Yes, she'd prefer to know in advance in case something goes wrong.
Melbourne is not thinking that far at the moment, and of that Sylvie could be grateful of.
"As far as I know, it doesn't seem you need to leave quite yet, not on our account at least. Emily is not about to issue a banishment." He says that lightly, with a friendly gleam in his eyes. "Not only are we looking forward to seeing the finished painting, your presence allows my niece the opportunity to practise her French." It's a two-way street: English for Sylvie, French for Frances.
"But naturally I do not know the particulars of your plans. If you are expected elsewhere soon, we will understand."
It isn't a direct question, but it is an offer for her to speak more if she so chooses.
Oh, no. He's going all wrong about it! Less manners, more direct line, please!
Sylvie licks her lips and glances back towards the table where the two boys are engaging in their own little cardhouse game, the rest of the family scattered like merry geese around a goose house. She thinks about the latest letter from Charles, equal parts encouraging and threatening her to return or he will have to take measure, although she doesn't know exactly what those measures may be. He knows people, he has contacts far into the English upperclasses, that she knows, she's seen the correspondences in his office, the beautiful writing on the front of envolopes to Mr. this and that... Eloisa has left, he's told her in his recognisable scrawl, no trace of her.
Because of you, he hasn't written, not exactly.
And now there's only Armand left, her nice, bright and ducky guy, but even Armand is no sell anymore. Sylvie wants to live true and she wants to live free, she is tired of always being the Gallard sister, rather than her own person. Her late parents' youngest child, rather than Sylvie. She wants to be just Sylvie to someone.
She would very much like to be just Sylvie to herself as well.
Looking up at Lord Melbourne, she purses her lips for a moment, pondering how to put so much thought, so much doubt and uncertainty in a single sentence, one statement that can hold all the pleasantries of this kind of light afternoon conversation, but all the depths of how she would like for them to speak to each other. Honestly, openly.
"They are not my plans, I assure you." Her voice is insistent, a little bit too much so and she looks down again, holding back on a childish urge to reach for the man's nearest hand, to grasp it in her own for just a moment, to cling to that much. To be Sylvie to someone. "My brother... He's urging me to return to Paris, because his plans are being stalled for as long as I am here. He's urging me... very strongly."
What wouldn't Maman and Papa have thought of you, acting like this, he wrote in the last short note. It was their business before it became my business. Doesn't that mean it's your business, too, Sylvie?
Doesn't that mean it's her responsibility, he's trying to say, none-too-politely. He could do to learn a bit from Lord Melbourne, really.
It's a good thing she doesn't grab him by the hand. Melbourne is not that tactile and would probably jump backwards, and by doing so possibly leave Sylvie embarrassed. Just her words alone make his initial amusement shift to a slight uneasiness. He isn't oblivious to the many hurdles and restrictions in women's lives but it's not something he actively thinks about, nor waits anyone to bring the issue to him.
Obviously he himself is privileged, and as a man, able to shape his own destiny no matter how much it is expected to follow in the footsteps of generations of Melbournes before him. His father had been a politician and so had his grandfather but had he wanted to choose another path, he could have. What he knows of women's choices (at least for upper class women) is that they are raised up to marry and have children. Many of them are accomplished in various tasks (in music or art, for example) but those things are secondary to being someone's wife and mother.
He doesn't look down on the nonconformists who choose to be independent, to live alone, or with lovers, and to dress in unconventional ways - and, to be honest, he considers the current women's fashion style with bob haircuts and short flapper dresses as revolutionary. But even though he's sympathetic to women who don't live according to the norm, he also knows how much trouble that can bring.
So when Sylvie mentions her brother and his wishes, it's not hard to understand where those thoughts are coming from: she doesn't want to follow the path laid out for her.
None of that is Melbourne's concern, really, but seeing her distress makes him willing to at least listen, even if he can't do anything else. It's odd that she would come to him about it but sometimes an outsider's point of view helps the best. Sometimes it is easiest to talk to a person who is not part of the equation. Even Emily, whom Melbourne thinks might be a better confidant in general, is someone Sylvie is relying for an upkeep.
"Would you like to sit down, miss? I could bring you a glass of... cherry? Or something else." He gestures towards a side table where his brother Frederick and Lord Cowper had just a moment ago played cards. That could be the needed cover so that no one else in the room interrupts immediately.
He pulls out the chair for her but doesn't sit down yet himself, waiting to know whether she wants a drink or not, but also because he hesitates about a certain question. He's not supposed to ask for her age but it's still relevant. "Perhaps you'll soon find yourself old enough to make up your own mind?"
[ooc: I should mention that since Queen Victoria is such a big part of who Melbourne is (in his canon), I have to keep her for our thread, too. I can't write her off, so although George V was the king during Sylvie's canon, in 1927-1929, the monarch here is Victoria, in her mid-twenties.]
Not like in France where the age of royalty and nobility is dead and gone, beheaded even, they made sure it would never rise again, didn't they, the revolutionaries? If Sylvie cared for politics and ideologies (only she doesn't), she would think it symbolic that by doing away with one Queen in France, they've stalled women's rights there for years and years, whereas in England, now ruled by another Queen, the English women have the vote and they have the opportunity to inherit on the same terms as men. Perhaps Marie Antoinette should have been allowed to stay at Versailles after all. Sylvie doesn't wonder.
She marvels.
Lord Melbourne doesn't question her implications, or her motives, or any of it. Instead he asks her whether she wishes to sit, pulling out a chair for her at the abandoned table, inviting more intimate conversation and Sylvie's fingers finally halt their fidgeting, instead she looks up at him, beaming brightly, all blue eyes and golden hair. "Thank you," she says, sitting down as primly as she can manage, which - if she's honest - isn't much in her current, slightly shaken state, her daydress at least not cutting at the knee like a flapper-style dress would do. She's not here to dance the Charleston with him. No, theirs is going to be another dance entirely.
She hopes.
"Just some water would be nice." She suppresses the second thank you, meeting his eyes when he asks the question, the completely logical thing to ask, because by all accounts, Sylvie is old enough to do as she pleases, except there is legislation and laws and money doesn't travel the straight way along those lines. And it isn't that she's afraid of losing her inheritance or her allowance, she isn't afraid of being poor, it's that she doesn't find it very fair that she should be!
So, she raises her chin a bit, lips pursing, her first show of angry defiance today, and tells him, "I'm twenty-three, Lord Melbourne. Nothing is mine until I'm thirty and even so." A brief pause. She chews her lip and shakes her head and her voice turns a little bit shrill, though she keeps it down, dutifully. "At my age, seven years are an eternity, I could as well be dead and gone by then!"
It isn't fair, she means. It isn't fair, is what she is really saying. I don't want to, I don't want to, I don't want to.
What she is really saying, begging of him, is, don't make me.
He's glad of the opportunity to briefly turn his back to her, by going to get those drinks, as the 'I could as well be dead and gone' is such an emotional statement it almost puts a small smile on his lips again. Young people. They have the right to be dramatic and he would not wish her to get the impression he's making fun of her.
There are no servants in this room, the family preferring to be casual when it's just them, so Melbourne pours a brandy for himself and fills a nice crystal glass with water and a slice of lemon for her. After getting seated, he makes eye contact and nods.
"I was young once. I understand..." he says, trying to gain her confidence, even if his tone is not as convincing as he'd like it to be. In reality those years are long gone, and he's a bit of a cynic nowadays.
Then he picks up the cards, shuffles them and deals but not with the intention of playing anything. It's just for show, he's not even specifying what game they are supposed to play. Hopefully she gets it. Besides, the cards will give her nervous hands something to hold onto.
"And what would you do if you could do absolutely anything you desire? I mean, before you reach the required thirty years." A broad question that can be taken in many ways, depending on how open the other person wants to be.
The crystal glass filled with chilled water and a slice of lemon lands before her gently, and she watches his hand as he lets go of it, leaving it for her to take, thinking she could have painted it, the way the difference in temperature makes the surface of the glass mist slightly, little droplets, diamonds of perspiration. It's quite beautiful. His hand, in contrast, is large and decisive and he drinks brandy out of tumbler where she would have drunk champagne from a flute in another context than this. This isn't for partying, he is offering her another degree of confidentiality. At a big enough party, you'd have to yell to make yourself heard, where he doesn't raise his voice at all. He invites her whispering.
Then, his hands begin shuffling and dealing the cards left behind on the table. Stronger and bigger in comparison to the thin paper cards. She watches quietly as he divides the cards between them, not specifying what they're playing, how she might win, because it isn't about winning, it isn't about what game. They decide the game themselves, it's all just pretend.
It'd all be just pretend, if she could decide.
So, Sylvie picks up the cards and holds them gingerly between her hands, looking them over, oh, look, an ace there! Glancing up, meeting his eyes as he asks, presents her with every opportunity in the world, as if that is hers to have... Sylvie has never been as free as in this moment. She takes a deep breath, feeling tears press at the back of her eyes, making her blink repeatedly.
If she could do anything. Anything she desires.
"I would live true. I would live, free of my brother's plans. I would paint and I would be known on my own merit, not by my family name." Without hesitating for more than a second, she picks out the ace and puts it down on the table between them, face-up. "I wouldn't wait for my brother to disinherit me. I would disinherit my brother first, but that's not how these things work, is it?"
A small smile. She pushes the ace towards him with two, slim fingers. He could be it, Lord Melbourne. He could be the ace up her sleeve. If necessary, she'd rip the fabric to make him fit, she'd tear a big old hole.
[Oh, no, here comes a lecture, wrapped as nicely as possible.]
He is not playing the same game with her yet. Not at all. Being a practical man, he's not looking for hidden messages in the cards she places on the table. An ace is just an ace, it has nothing to do with him. If he had any reason to suspect she's sending signals, that particular card could be what she just said; her desire to be an ace in her own life, but seeing as an ace can also be the lowest number depending on a game, it might just as well show her fear of having no worth or value.
It's a three of diamonds he puts down and conveys nothing with it but no one should be fooled to think his mind isn't working sharper than that. He hears all she says. Everything. The moment takes him back a few years, to conversations with Victoria at the beginning of her reign. This is an uncannily similar situation, minus the fact that Sylvie is far less important a person. That is not meant as an insult. She is being compared to a monarch, after all, but even a monarch needs advice and Melbourne was there to give it then, and he's here to give it now. The memories of those golden days make him nearly add the 'Ma'am' in the conversation as if he's still addressing the queen. He opens his mouth, considers and catches himself in time.
"Miss Sylvie, you spoke so kindly of my sister's family a mere minutes ago. As I recall you wished to have something similar. With a family comes a family name. We can never escape it but we can still be individuals. Do you image anyone in the room feeling they aren't their own person because they are Melbournes or Cowpers?" His eyebrows go up as if in saying 'don't you agree?'
But then a flicker of uncertainty passes through his expression. He doesn't want to bring up old ghosts but even just briefly mentioning his own eperiences might help her see he does understand on a personl level, not just because he's trying to be "old and wise".
"Melbourne name... let's just say it hasn't always been my blessing. It has even been a source of embarrassment at times. Everyone struggles at least a little because of their family but we shouldn't get too caught up on that."
Suddenly remembering the glass is there and his mouth is dry, he takes a sip of the brandy. He's probably stepping over the boundaries of what she wants to hear, because yes, she's telling very clearly she wants to do her own thing and not because some man is telling her to do it.
"I am sorry to hear your relationship with your brother is a strained one but you need not run away from your name. You can be proud of it regardless and even because of it, and truly I am not defending him. I don't know the man or what he has done, but I can't believe the legacy you want to leave behind is someone who disinherited their brother. That is not living true."
Maybe she was a bit too harsh before, she thinks, as she listens to him -- not reprimanding her, but lecturing her, like her father would lecture her when she was a little girl and had spoken out of line, before the big boat took her father with it into the deep.
She looks at the older man, the ace lying quietly but loudly at the same time between them, and she thinks maybe it's a poor fit, in reality. Perhaps he is the type of king that her father never had time to become instead. Although, of course, England is ruled by a Queen now and she is not Lord Melbourne's wife. So, not-quite-king, then. Almost-king. Despite herself, she smiles a little; it's a welcome reminder, that before it ever was her brother's surname, it was the name of both her parents, Gallard. If she can take it from them, rather than from him, it might lead her onwards, it might be some freedom to consider.
Then, he puts down the three of diamonds, and it looks pretty next to the ace, complimentary colours, natural numbers. She'd have painted it as well, but remembers monsieur Dubois asking her whether she painted still lifes.
I paint people, she'd replied. That was before she knew, she wanted to paint true lives and that those two could be different things.
Her smile softening, she shakes her head, not to indicate no, but to lecture herself a little as well in extension of his gentle talking-to. Neither of them are out of line, really, both of them are in their perfect place here, like this, but her discomfort at Charles' continued pressuring of her shouldn't cast shadows over everything. The sun still shines, their mother would have said, Charles' and hers. Or there wouldn't be shade in the first place, shouldn't she know as an artist? Her shading has always been top-notch.
"You're right, Lord Melbourne," she tells him, smile fading slowly - it isn't said dutifully but honestly as she places a queen on top of his three of diamonds. She's a queen of hearts, this time, same colour. It matches. Sylvie swallows once, then charges onwards as is her way, she has run from France, from Charles, but when you run from something, it's really because you're running for something. Here is what she's running for, isn't it? "But you have to forgive me. What wouldn't you rid yourself of, to avoid being forced to marry someone who'll just serve as another bar in your cage?"
Wouldn't you rid yourself of your name, too, she means. Wouldn't you rid yourself of the nation that allows it to happen? She manages a wet laugh and even though she doesn't mean to, the tears finally brim over, it's not a hysteric display of emotion, or even a very evident one, it's her eyes swimming slightly, quietly, as stoicly as you can manage when you are in fact crying and on top of that, French to the bone.
The queen of hearts is so ill-fitting; he thinks Sylvie is far from a woman in love. Maybe that's why she gets rid of it while talking about the unwanted marriage her brother's machinations are pushing her into and in which she sees no love about to happen. It's very doubtful there's someone else she prefers, either, because if there were, surely she would have run to them, not crossed the English Channel to live among strangers. Unless the person she loves is unattainable, of course. Twice the pity in that case.
A king of hearts is just as ill-fitting yet that is the very thing Melbourne picks up from the orderly pile of the rest of the deck, hiding it among the cards in his hand. It'll hardly become useful in this game of pretend. When his eyes meet Sylvie's again, the forlorn look on her causes a missed beat on his heart-- well, mayhaps the previous thought was correct after all as he knows a thing or two about love, and the lack of it.
He leans back in the chair, pats the pocket of his waistcoat and finds what he's looking for. There's no need to make a spectacle of her teary eyes so when he places the next card on the table, it is discreetly accompanied with his handkerchief. It's nothing fancy, no silk or embroidered initials as he's over such fineries, but it's still a nice, soft cotton handkerchief with one row of hemstitching - though Melbourne would be hard-pressed to know the term.
"I don't know, to be honest. It's a difficult question. You see, freedom was never my calling. Duty to my homeland, on the other hand..." It had been a sore point with him and Victoria that he had been so devoted to serving this country. He most certainly would never rid himself of Britain.
"I would not wish you to marry out of obligation, nor for love alone, though I realise that idea is difficulf for the young to accept. Marriage is hard. There should always be more than one reason to enter such a contract."
[ooc: Fixing a sentence in previous tag: Do you imagine anyone in this room... etc.
![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
no subject
[ He used to know what colors looked like, and it was something he'd taken for granted. Now he needs her to paint pictures for him, in his head. ]
no subject
( she takes a moment to consider what colours to pick, there are so many and she loves them all so dearly! but she also has to be able to explain them to him in a way that makes sense, nothing too visual, lots of emotion...
so, she goes with - )
Blue, first. It matches my eyes, and I used to dream about someone telling me so. "What a fine dress you're wearing tonight, Sylvie, it sure reflects your big bright blues." Now I like blue, because blue is deep and unending, vast like the Mediterranean and like that, I want to see myself with depth and no limits, too.
no subject
[ That's all he says at first. But he knows she'll want to know more, and she'll wait. So he adds: ] Blue was just our family color. My father's eyes. My perfect twin brother's eyes.
I would have loved to see your eyes.
no subject
( although she had been drunk and more preoccupied by the wine last time, sylvie notices these things. she notices people's eyes the same way her aunties noticed someone's manners, like an inherent, telling part of their person.
eyes can say so much. the colour of them are part of that palette and she noticed, of course she did. )
Imagine that I carry a little more daylight inside myself.
no subject
[ He's a lonely grump and she's... well. If you could bottle sunshine in the shape of a human. ]
Your eyes are like the sky on a sunny day, then. [ He's not great at this, but he's trying! ] Or the sea just off the coast, where the water is shallow enough to reveal the life beneath it.
no subject
My aunts lived not far from a beach. When the sun was out and with your feet submerged in the water, your skin took on a special shine, from below.
Because the depths hold that kind of life, too.
( like your eyes, she means. )
no subject
[ Great, he went and ruined it. ]
The worst of them just watch while you drown.
[ That's what it feels like, sometimes. It doesn't even have to be in the middle of the night, when he's alone in the dark; no, sometimes it happens at dinner, when his father and mother and brothers pretend like everything's normal, all the while waiting for him to crack. ]
no subject
( she doesn't hesitate to agree with him. while sylvie is unconcerned in most aspects of life, it's mostly because she knows what's there to concern yourself with and she has chosen a different approach. the sisters at her boarding school gave her too much liberty, her aunties (and charles) would say, but in reality what they gave her was strength. strength and courage.
she doesn't doubt hodr is both strong and courageous, too. but sometimes you freeze and someone has to come and unthaw you.
sylvie doesn't mind being that someone. )
But isn't the truth that monsters lurk everywhere and all we can do is learn how to fight them where they live? Inside us.
no subject
But then he remembers Geiravor, and he remembers how, despite how fiercely she burned, she was afraid of the dark.
Maybe that was even why she burned in the first place. ]
What is your monster like?
no subject
It's big and bulky like a bear, but naked like the young of rats. It's ugly and has sharp claws and it tells me I'll never belong anywhere, to any home, to anyone.
( another long pause. she's staring at the message she just sent, thinking about her brother, then about armand, about armand's home that is her home now, but because she lived so long without anywhere to call her home, it takes time to believe it can be hers, too.
then, she writes - )
Just because we know something to not be true doesn't mean our hearts feel it. Our hearts are silly things, they're easily convinced of the wrong things.
no subject
You don't seem unhappy with him.
[ Just like how Nanna isn't unhappy with Baldr and had fit into the family like a glove. ]
Is it Paris? [ Not just the place itself, but society and its expectations and demands. Paris had always been hard on royalty. ]
no subject
( that's all she writes for some time. just letting him know she's thinking, she's considering, she's trying to make sense of her own muddled thoughts on the matter, filled with bears and brothers and ducky boys.
finally, after almost a whole minute, she continues: )
It's my fear. Of not belonging in Paris. Because if I don't belong here, I don't know where to go. Isn't that sad?
( she hopes he can hear her laughter in that final sentence. she hopes he can hear the nervousness of it. )
(no subject)
(no subject)
(no subject)
(no subject)
(no subject)
(no subject)
(no subject)
(no subject)
(no subject)
(no subject)
(no subject)
(no subject)
(no subject)
(no subject)
(no subject)
(no subject)
(no subject)
(no subject)
(no subject)
(no subject)
(no subject)
(no subject)
(no subject)
(no subject)
(no subject)
no subject
Still, if this is a normal family, then all the luck she didn't have at cards, she suddenly has in love, she thinks. Although she's only stayed at the Countess' house for a few weeks, she's already become quite attached to the whole set-up, all these people here. A mother figure. A father figure. A little sister, Frances, who's the only one Sylvie allows herself to be informal with, if only because she's never been the eldest in any constellation. Always little Sylvie with her, isn't that so?
The Countess' eldest daughter - she's brought her two boys, they're adorable, still, there's time for that all to change, of course - is at the piano, her hands coaxing lovely, relaxing music from the instrument, nothing like the Charleston on the terrace of her brother's manor house or the jazz noisily reverberating off of the walls of Parisian clubs. England is a different world, different from France in every way that matters.
Sylvie's gaze finally lands on the brother, the other and older one, and she's watched him the few times he's been visiting since her arrival. She's watched him, not with a plan but with a hope. Is it because he's someone's older brother, too, and it reminds her of the brother she herself is escaping? It doesn't feel like that, it doesn't feel like the coil and curl in the pit of her stomach that she's fought ever since setting foot in London, nowhere to turn, knowing no one, really, hardly even the language.
No, that had been her luck, remembering Countess Cowper just then. How asking just a bit insistently had led her to her door.
It has led her here.
Taking a deep breath, she moves over next to the taller man, arranging herself only slightly awkwardly, fingers buried in the folds of her tea gown. They have no nobility in France anymore, Sylvie has had to learn the ropes from scratch. While they have been introduced, Lord Melbourne and she, and while they have exchanged pleasantries, she only knows him as the one who isn't married. Anymore. The fact that he has no wife currently is the very thing that nurtures her hope. In time with more and more of her brother's letters finding their way to her, she will take it, although it isn't anything like daylight or water. Then again, Sylvie isn't a plant, and her hope isn't either. This is good enough. It has to be.
"Lord Melbourne," she says, her English pronunciation recognisably French, in just two weeks, she hasn't been able to rid herself of it, but she is practicing, Frances teaches her a little bit every day. "If everyone had the sister you do, there would be nothing but happy families."
A compliment. The English like compliments, don't they?
no subject
Ever since retiring from politics a few years ago, he has more or less spent his days at Brocket Hall, a manor house approximately 25 miles north of the capital. He can be seen in London during winter months, and now it's still early spring so he's in town. The big parties his sister Emily likes to throw aren't his scene but being amongst family is. This generation of Melbournes are close-knit, and considering his younger brother George died earlier this year, it's become more important than ever to be with loved ones.
But Melbournes are also somewhat notorious, or if one prefers to put it in kinder words, controversial. Therefore having someone new in their daily lives now creates a delicate balance. Sylvie doesn't know all the gossip that lingers in town but is likely to become privy to it if she stays long enough.
It had certainly been unexpected to have this French girl suddenly standing at the Cowper family door - even if Emily had made an invitation while visiting Paris and meeting Sylvie and her brother some months ago - but she was nonethelss willing to offer her a place to stay. Earl Cowper rather thinks it's because Emily is starting to feel the empty nest syndrome. Ouf of their five childern, there's only Frances living at home full-time. Though Sylvie is hardly a child anymore, she is still someone who seems to need help, and as such, maybe Emily found Sylvie to fulfil her own need to be useful.
"I like to think so, miss. She has a big heart, I know firsthand," is Melbourne's reply as Sylvie approaches to talk to him. His signiture smile is small, often with just one corner of his mouth tugging upward.
"And you are settling well in London, I trust? I hear you've made fine progress with your painting."
[ooc: The term 'empty nest syndrome' wasn't really used until 1970s but I couldn't think another phrase for it. Also let's assume she's not painting in this parlour, because there's bound to be several rooms in the house. So somewhere else where she can spead out her stuff.]
no subject
It's coming into good use now, even if she can't make herself be quite as neat and orderly about things as the family she's staying with. Lord Melbourne should see her studio, the room that Countess Cowper has put at her disposal, not as lovely as the one Armand's family had, the inflow of light not as perfect, but it's big and it has seen the life of this family which in itself gives it a magical atmosphere of its own. It's disorganized and with her painting tools spread all over, she has made it hers, because the Countess has allowed her and it was the only way she could make herself at home here. Where she would very much like to be at home.
Turning slightly towards him, she fidgets a bit uneasily, her fingers rubbing over each other in an obvious display of nerves. She could account to him all the fun she's had painting the inhabitants of this house, how she has made good work on the background especially, how it isn't her usual style (no surrealism for the Countess), so she takes a bit more care... But what she really wants to tell him is something else. Something much less flattering.
"I deliberately work very slow," she finally admits, thinking it's better to be forthcoming. Her mother didn't bring her up a cheat or a liar. Her brother didn't bring her up at all, so she hasn't become either thing in the meantime, although he might be. Her fingers still their fidgeting and she looks up at the older man. "Because I dread the time when I will have to leave here."
Please ask why, her eyes beg. Although it's obvious why, his family is wonderful and lovely, isn't it, but she'd like him to ask anyway, as she'd like for her answer to interest him.
She'd like not to be totally on her own once more.
no subject
Emily hasn't told her brothers all her own concerns, especially not the worry that Sylvie might be in trouble. There is of course one specific type of trouble that young women are prone to get into, and if that's the case, she can only hope Sylvie will eventually come to her about it. Emily wouldn't judge but to possibly have a pregnant young lady in her care... Yes, she'd prefer to know in advance in case something goes wrong.
Melbourne is not thinking that far at the moment, and of that Sylvie could be grateful of.
"As far as I know, it doesn't seem you need to leave quite yet, not on our account at least. Emily is not about to issue a banishment." He says that lightly, with a friendly gleam in his eyes. "Not only are we looking forward to seeing the finished painting, your presence allows my niece the opportunity to practise her French." It's a two-way street: English for Sylvie, French for Frances.
"But naturally I do not know the particulars of your plans. If you are expected elsewhere soon, we will understand."
It isn't a direct question, but it is an offer for her to speak more if she so chooses.
no subject
Sylvie licks her lips and glances back towards the table where the two boys are engaging in their own little cardhouse game, the rest of the family scattered like merry geese around a goose house. She thinks about the latest letter from Charles, equal parts encouraging and threatening her to return or he will have to take measure, although she doesn't know exactly what those measures may be. He knows people, he has contacts far into the English upperclasses, that she knows, she's seen the correspondences in his office, the beautiful writing on the front of envolopes to Mr. this and that... Eloisa has left, he's told her in his recognisable scrawl, no trace of her.
Because of you, he hasn't written, not exactly.
And now there's only Armand left, her nice, bright and ducky guy, but even Armand is no sell anymore. Sylvie wants to live true and she wants to live free, she is tired of always being the Gallard sister, rather than her own person. Her late parents' youngest child, rather than Sylvie. She wants to be just Sylvie to someone.
She would very much like to be just Sylvie to herself as well.
Looking up at Lord Melbourne, she purses her lips for a moment, pondering how to put so much thought, so much doubt and uncertainty in a single sentence, one statement that can hold all the pleasantries of this kind of light afternoon conversation, but all the depths of how she would like for them to speak to each other. Honestly, openly.
"They are not my plans, I assure you." Her voice is insistent, a little bit too much so and she looks down again, holding back on a childish urge to reach for the man's nearest hand, to grasp it in her own for just a moment, to cling to that much. To be Sylvie to someone. "My brother... He's urging me to return to Paris, because his plans are being stalled for as long as I am here. He's urging me... very strongly."
What wouldn't Maman and Papa have thought of you, acting like this, he wrote in the last short note. It was their business before it became my business. Doesn't that mean it's your business, too, Sylvie?
Doesn't that mean it's her responsibility, he's trying to say, none-too-politely. He could do to learn a bit from Lord Melbourne, really.
no subject
Obviously he himself is privileged, and as a man, able to shape his own destiny no matter how much it is expected to follow in the footsteps of generations of Melbournes before him. His father had been a politician and so had his grandfather but had he wanted to choose another path, he could have. What he knows of women's choices (at least for upper class women) is that they are raised up to marry and have children. Many of them are accomplished in various tasks (in music or art, for example) but those things are secondary to being someone's wife and mother.
He doesn't look down on the nonconformists who choose to be independent, to live alone, or with lovers, and to dress in unconventional ways - and, to be honest, he considers the current women's fashion style with bob haircuts and short flapper dresses as revolutionary. But even though he's sympathetic to women who don't live according to the norm, he also knows how much trouble that can bring.
So when Sylvie mentions her brother and his wishes, it's not hard to understand where those thoughts are coming from: she doesn't want to follow the path laid out for her.
None of that is Melbourne's concern, really, but seeing her distress makes him willing to at least listen, even if he can't do anything else. It's odd that she would come to him about it but sometimes an outsider's point of view helps the best. Sometimes it is easiest to talk to a person who is not part of the equation. Even Emily, whom Melbourne thinks might be a better confidant in general, is someone Sylvie is relying for an upkeep.
"Would you like to sit down, miss? I could bring you a glass of... cherry? Or something else." He gestures towards a side table where his brother Frederick and Lord Cowper had just a moment ago played cards. That could be the needed cover so that no one else in the room interrupts immediately.
He pulls out the chair for her but doesn't sit down yet himself, waiting to know whether she wants a drink or not, but also because he hesitates about a certain question. He's not supposed to ask for her age but it's still relevant. "Perhaps you'll soon find yourself old enough to make up your own mind?"
[ooc: I should mention that since Queen Victoria is such a big part of who Melbourne is (in his canon), I have to keep her for our thread, too. I can't write her off, so although George V was the king during Sylvie's canon, in 1927-1929, the monarch here is Victoria, in her mid-twenties.]
no subject
Not like in France where the age of royalty and nobility is dead and gone, beheaded even, they made sure it would never rise again, didn't they, the revolutionaries? If Sylvie cared for politics and ideologies (only she doesn't), she would think it symbolic that by doing away with one Queen in France, they've stalled women's rights there for years and years, whereas in England, now ruled by another Queen, the English women have the vote and they have the opportunity to inherit on the same terms as men. Perhaps Marie Antoinette should have been allowed to stay at Versailles after all. Sylvie doesn't wonder.
She marvels.
Lord Melbourne doesn't question her implications, or her motives, or any of it. Instead he asks her whether she wishes to sit, pulling out a chair for her at the abandoned table, inviting more intimate conversation and Sylvie's fingers finally halt their fidgeting, instead she looks up at him, beaming brightly, all blue eyes and golden hair. "Thank you," she says, sitting down as primly as she can manage, which - if she's honest - isn't much in her current, slightly shaken state, her daydress at least not cutting at the knee like a flapper-style dress would do. She's not here to dance the Charleston with him. No, theirs is going to be another dance entirely.
She hopes.
"Just some water would be nice." She suppresses the second thank you, meeting his eyes when he asks the question, the completely logical thing to ask, because by all accounts, Sylvie is old enough to do as she pleases, except there is legislation and laws and money doesn't travel the straight way along those lines. And it isn't that she's afraid of losing her inheritance or her allowance, she isn't afraid of being poor, it's that she doesn't find it very fair that she should be!
So, she raises her chin a bit, lips pursing, her first show of angry defiance today, and tells him, "I'm twenty-three, Lord Melbourne. Nothing is mine until I'm thirty and even so." A brief pause. She chews her lip and shakes her head and her voice turns a little bit shrill, though she keeps it down, dutifully. "At my age, seven years are an eternity, I could as well be dead and gone by then!"
It isn't fair, she means. It isn't fair, is what she is really saying. I don't want to, I don't want to, I don't want to.
What she is really saying, begging of him, is, don't make me.
no subject
There are no servants in this room, the family preferring to be casual when it's just them, so Melbourne pours a brandy for himself and fills a nice crystal glass with water and a slice of lemon for her. After getting seated, he makes eye contact and nods.
"I was young once. I understand..." he says, trying to gain her confidence, even if his tone is not as convincing as he'd like it to be. In reality those years are long gone, and he's a bit of a cynic nowadays.
Then he picks up the cards, shuffles them and deals but not with the intention of playing anything. It's just for show, he's not even specifying what game they are supposed to play. Hopefully she gets it. Besides, the cards will give her nervous hands something to hold onto.
"And what would you do if you could do absolutely anything you desire? I mean, before you reach the required thirty years." A broad question that can be taken in many ways, depending on how open the other person wants to be.
no subject
Then, his hands begin shuffling and dealing the cards left behind on the table. Stronger and bigger in comparison to the thin paper cards. She watches quietly as he divides the cards between them, not specifying what they're playing, how she might win, because it isn't about winning, it isn't about what game. They decide the game themselves, it's all just pretend.
It'd all be just pretend, if she could decide.
So, Sylvie picks up the cards and holds them gingerly between her hands, looking them over, oh, look, an ace there! Glancing up, meeting his eyes as he asks, presents her with every opportunity in the world, as if that is hers to have... Sylvie has never been as free as in this moment. She takes a deep breath, feeling tears press at the back of her eyes, making her blink repeatedly.
If she could do anything. Anything she desires.
"I would live true. I would live, free of my brother's plans. I would paint and I would be known on my own merit, not by my family name." Without hesitating for more than a second, she picks out the ace and puts it down on the table between them, face-up. "I wouldn't wait for my brother to disinherit me. I would disinherit my brother first, but that's not how these things work, is it?"
A small smile. She pushes the ace towards him with two, slim fingers. He could be it, Lord Melbourne. He could be the ace up her sleeve. If necessary, she'd rip the fabric to make him fit, she'd tear a big old hole.
Crawl out into freedom that way.
no subject
He is not playing the same game with her yet. Not at all. Being a practical man, he's not looking for hidden messages in the cards she places on the table. An ace is just an ace, it has nothing to do with him. If he had any reason to suspect she's sending signals, that particular card could be what she just said; her desire to be an ace in her own life, but seeing as an ace can also be the lowest number depending on a game, it might just as well show her fear of having no worth or value.
It's a three of diamonds he puts down and conveys nothing with it but no one should be fooled to think his mind isn't working sharper than that. He hears all she says. Everything. The moment takes him back a few years, to conversations with Victoria at the beginning of her reign. This is an uncannily similar situation, minus the fact that Sylvie is far less important a person. That is not meant as an insult. She is being compared to a monarch, after all, but even a monarch needs advice and Melbourne was there to give it then, and he's here to give it now. The memories of those golden days make him nearly add the 'Ma'am' in the conversation as if he's still addressing the queen. He opens his mouth, considers and catches himself in time.
"Miss Sylvie, you spoke so kindly of my sister's family a mere minutes ago. As I recall you wished to have something similar. With a family comes a family name. We can never escape it but we can still be individuals. Do you image anyone in the room feeling they aren't their own person because they are Melbournes or Cowpers?" His eyebrows go up as if in saying 'don't you agree?'
But then a flicker of uncertainty passes through his expression. He doesn't want to bring up old ghosts but even just briefly mentioning his own eperiences might help her see he does understand on a personl level, not just because he's trying to be "old and wise".
"Melbourne name... let's just say it hasn't always been my blessing. It has even been a source of embarrassment at times. Everyone struggles at least a little because of their family but we shouldn't get too caught up on that."
Suddenly remembering the glass is there and his mouth is dry, he takes a sip of the brandy. He's probably stepping over the boundaries of what she wants to hear, because yes, she's telling very clearly she wants to do her own thing and not because some man is telling her to do it.
"I am sorry to hear your relationship with your brother is a strained one but you need not run away from your name. You can be proud of it regardless and even because of it, and truly I am not defending him. I don't know the man or what he has done, but I can't believe the legacy you want to leave behind is someone who disinherited their brother. That is not living true."
no subject
She looks at the older man, the ace lying quietly but loudly at the same time between them, and she thinks maybe it's a poor fit, in reality. Perhaps he is the type of king that her father never had time to become instead. Although, of course, England is ruled by a Queen now and she is not Lord Melbourne's wife. So, not-quite-king, then. Almost-king. Despite herself, she smiles a little; it's a welcome reminder, that before it ever was her brother's surname, it was the name of both her parents, Gallard. If she can take it from them, rather than from him, it might lead her onwards, it might be some freedom to consider.
Then, he puts down the three of diamonds, and it looks pretty next to the ace, complimentary colours, natural numbers. She'd have painted it as well, but remembers monsieur Dubois asking her whether she painted still lifes.
I paint people, she'd replied. That was before she knew, she wanted to paint true lives and that those two could be different things.
Her smile softening, she shakes her head, not to indicate no, but to lecture herself a little as well in extension of his gentle talking-to. Neither of them are out of line, really, both of them are in their perfect place here, like this, but her discomfort at Charles' continued pressuring of her shouldn't cast shadows over everything. The sun still shines, their mother would have said, Charles' and hers. Or there wouldn't be shade in the first place, shouldn't she know as an artist? Her shading has always been top-notch.
"You're right, Lord Melbourne," she tells him, smile fading slowly - it isn't said dutifully but honestly as she places a queen on top of his three of diamonds. She's a queen of hearts, this time, same colour. It matches. Sylvie swallows once, then charges onwards as is her way, she has run from France, from Charles, but when you run from something, it's really because you're running for something. Here is what she's running for, isn't it? "But you have to forgive me. What wouldn't you rid yourself of, to avoid being forced to marry someone who'll just serve as another bar in your cage?"
Wouldn't you rid yourself of your name, too, she means. Wouldn't you rid yourself of the nation that allows it to happen? She manages a wet laugh and even though she doesn't mean to, the tears finally brim over, it's not a hysteric display of emotion, or even a very evident one, it's her eyes swimming slightly, quietly, as stoicly as you can manage when you are in fact crying and on top of that, French to the bone.
no subject
A king of hearts is just as ill-fitting yet that is the very thing Melbourne picks up from the orderly pile of the rest of the deck, hiding it among the cards in his hand. It'll hardly become useful in this game of pretend. When his eyes meet Sylvie's again, the forlorn look on her causes a missed beat on his heart-- well, mayhaps the previous thought was correct after all as he knows a thing or two about love, and the lack of it.
He leans back in the chair, pats the pocket of his waistcoat and finds what he's looking for. There's no need to make a spectacle of her teary eyes so when he places the next card on the table, it is discreetly accompanied with his handkerchief. It's nothing fancy, no silk or embroidered initials as he's over such fineries, but it's still a nice, soft cotton handkerchief with one row of hemstitching - though Melbourne would be hard-pressed to know the term.
"I don't know, to be honest. It's a difficult question. You see, freedom was never my calling. Duty to my homeland, on the other hand..." It had been a sore point with him and Victoria that he had been so devoted to serving this country. He most certainly would never rid himself of Britain.
"I would not wish you to marry out of obligation, nor for love alone, though I realise that idea is difficulf for the young to accept. Marriage is hard. There should always be more than one reason to enter such a contract."
[ooc: Fixing a sentence in previous tag: Do you imagine anyone in this room... etc.
Also you can check wikipedia if you aren't already familiar with the term hemstitching:
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hemstitch ]
(no subject)
(no subject)
no subject
( <- )
Make it to me doubly. I'll trust you even more, in that case.