Chapter Text
Late afternoon in the summer in Abrenia is the hardest time of the day for a solicitor to keep focused and sharp and awake. Even if your office is on the riverbank, wedged scruffily between the Bridge and Rabbit and the local Church of the Light, the two largest generators of business for the streetwise and roguishly scrappy sort of solicitor, of which you pride yourself on being, if not too loudly when Marian is giving you that look.
...actually especially if you’re in a modest but comfortable office with soothing late summer warmth pervading it, soothing river sounds coming in through the window as the current gurgles past the bridge, and delicious tavern food smells drifting in the other window from the Bridge and Rabbit’s famous kitchens, and there’s been a lull in both weddings and tavern-related felony violence cases (leaving you a few stray minutes to resample one of the bottles Lord Waverley gifted you, after you helped him deal with the thing with the guy in the place, at that time you surely cannot remember). He said it was Quayforth’s finest cask-aged rum, and you are morally certain that it was in fact tenant-brewed tafia from his own estates, and moreover, by the lack of tax stamps, smuggled. Resolving this distinction is clearly an important legal point, requiring care and diligence. So it’s definitely not the case that you have oversampled young Robin’s gift and are taking a sunlit nap in the most comfortable chair in the world (or so young Collins assured you when he replaced its predecessor after that fistfight with Abrenian crown agents wrecked half the furniture in the place). You are instead resting your eyes and contemplating important legal questions (which may, your honour, be rum-related) when Robin pokes his head in the door, rolls his eyes, and pulls the unobtrusive lever on the back of the chair which folds it up and pitches you to the floor.
You stare upwards at, yes, that’s the famous Waverley chin and the famous Waverley amused stare and the famous Waverley charismatic smile and the famous Waverley here-have-a-hand-up-how-on-earth-did-you-get-on-the-floor-like-that-and-how-could-I-have-had-anything-to-do-with-it. “I need a full set of marriage papers with some custom clauses, a pen, a priest, and a second witness, and I need all of them before it starts to get dark. One of my friends has had a stroke of genius, and we have” – an uncharacteristically hurried glance at the clock in the town square – “twenty-one minutes to put all the pieces together.”
You glance across to the church – currently not celebrating anything conflicting – and up to the church’s second floor – yes, Marian is in, not riding circuit around the district – and across to the pile on the desk where your clerk has indeed stockpiled several copies of the standard proforma marriage contract, and nod. It isn’t the strangest thing Robin has ever asked you to do. It isn’t even the strangest thing Robin has asked you to do this week.
Nine minutes later, you’ve been introduced to a lovely young woman who is explaining exactly how morganatic the inheritance clauses are going to be and looks as though she changed into the gown very quickly indeed after not enough sleep to keep good track of all her weapons. You ignore the mostly-concealed knife hilts with the ease of many years of knowing Marian, scribble the addenda quickly and competently, nonchalantly fix the three loopholes and the two indirect contractual weaknesses in what the client asked for, and duly witness the signing, full names, noble seals, and all. Huh. So young Collins’ first name is short for Leopold. The things one learns. You owe Marian five silvers and a dance at the next town masquerade ball to settle the bet, alas. You were confidently certain it must be Leonidas, the way he never talks about it.
Ten minutes after that, you’re watching Mother Marian Jameson of the Church of the Light expertly vivisect the motivations and intentions of the bride and groom with a few sentences and one strategically placed eyebrow quirk. The lady is quietly resolute; the captain is eloquent and fluent in reply; the parish priest is satisfied that consent is informed and considered (but doesn't miss the bride's startled look at the groom's fluency); the vows are duly said and the wedding service completed, in the older more ritual form which the younger priests disdain but which you always thought was the more beautiful. Admittedly, that bit at the end does qualify as kissing the bride, but by the charmed and surprised smile she wasn’t expecting the back of her hand either.
“...Leopold and Rosamund Collins, husband and wife.”
Looking down from the balcony (after the last time, you’re not allowing Robin to rope you in as a witness, and one floor and forty feet away seemed a good minimum safe distance) you exchange a glance with Robin (as he comes back from putting your length of rope to good use), then another, more amused, glance with Marian and Gretel, and head down to add your name and signature to the contract as counsel, next to Marian’s as celebrant. Your pen hand and hers carefully do not touch, even if custom requires you sign simultaneously.
Twenty minutes after that, you're seated at your usual corner table, the crowd is thronging the Bridge and Rabbit Tavern's common room, and Robin is sitting next to you, pressing a glass of genuine Quayforth rum into your hand. You give him a significant look, open your mouth, and close it again as he puts the rest of the bottle (this one with a proper label and tax stamps) in your other hand and thanks you with unwonted seriousness for a job very well done. He's so palpably relieved (and he always pays your professional fees so promptly and generously from such charmingly untraceable anonymous accounts), your natural inner caution takes a few minutes off to have a glass of rum.
“Think nothing of it. If there’s anything else I can do to help…”
Six hours after that you are riding helter-skelter under a moonlit midnight sky, helping Lord Robin Waverley shake off pursuit from enraged baronial militia, and swearing for the fourth time never to take life advice from Robin.