Work Text:
The invitation arrives within a stack of official mail, sandwiched between reports on aquaculture, horticulture and human culture. The seal is Wriothesley’s, the handwriting on the envelope Clorinde’s. The address on the card, once he opens it, is Clorinde’s as well, though the Duke has scrawled We cleared your calendar with Sedene so no excuses! at an angle, accompanied by a smiley face.
Neuvillette pinches the card carefully between his fingers and imagines the scene: the two of them, strolling down the… Quartier Narbonnais, he decides, detecting the echoes of perfume coating the cover of the card. Then seated at one of the cafés, writing the contents. Likely Wriothesley would insist on paying, using the perpetual argument of having nothing else to spend his mora on.
Then, the west of the city, until the invitation passed onto Menthe to be couriered to the Palace Mermonia. A journey through the city, delivered out of love.
He leaves the card standing on the desk, visible out of the corner of his eye, and continues working through the cases.
The clock ticks by. At the appointed hour, Neuvillette arrives outside Clorinde’s house. The door swings open right as he knocks, Wriothesley pulling him through the doorway. “Good of you to join us, Iudex,” he says, an easy grin in his eyes.
“Your soup is burning!” Clorinde shouts, before Neuvillette can muster a reply. At the other end of the hallway, she presses herself against the doorframe to let Wriothesley slide past, then nods at Neuvillette. “Monsieur.”
Neuvillette finds himself smiling.
Dinner is an affair complicated by Wriothesley’s insistence they use candlelight, an insistence apparently first made by Lyney. That the ever-practical Clorinde agrees to it is ample grounds for suspicion of ulterior motives, but there’s something charming about the way the light dances across her jaw, illuminates the slightly-crooked line of Wriothesley’s nose, that Neuvillette thinks he can let this one slide.
He clinks his water against Wriothesley’s tea and Clorinde’s champagne, and tastes aching affection.