Probably should have left the alcohol to Athos, really.

[at_your_side]

Intoxicated. Yes, that was- that was the word she was looking for. Intoxicated was just the very thing she could use to describe herself...or her state...the state of herself?

While the details of it had become increasingly fuzzy with each of the delightful, oh so colorful cocktails the bartender sat in front of her (how many had she had again?), Constance was fairly certain the day had begun well enough. There had been a bath, a bath! One with an endless supply of hot water piped right into her room so she might lie in her tub with the dawn light filtering in through the glass of her colored windows and wiggle her toes in easy contentedness.

But then there- ah! There had been the issue of dressing. Or, rather, not of dressing but of what to dress herself in when her only...dress, yes, had been worn already for the day before. She could have made do with it if she had had to, had even pulled it on while not pulling too much of a face, but had been all too grateful upon meeting the lovely Ruby in the hallway not far from her door.

Never had she seen a woman who wore so little out in public. It had left her gaping in the second before she had recovered herself, to see so much skin on display with not so much a flicker of concern in the other woman's expression as she had smiled and introduced herself. Somehow - now here the details were particularly fuzzy at that moment - they had gotten onto the subject of Constance's singular dress and somehow further the conversation had become one of the other woman, still a stranger, but so earnestly friendly, had volunteered her help.

All of which led to her sitting there at the bar of the Smoking Room, wearing pants of all things while Ruby slid a drink in front of her. She was certain there had been sense behind the action, and no, she did not feel the least bit overexposed with the buttoned shirt she wore beneath her corset or the coat she wore that hung down to her knees (she tried not to giggle at the thought of needing to cover her bum, but was only partially successful). What was even more certain was that these - those little cocktails, they were delicious.

Comments

[averygoodshot]

"... I am?" Aramis steps closer, taking in her state - her very drunken state. Oh, dear. "To what honor do I owe your drinking on my behalf?" he asks, gesturing toward the barkeep, setting his hat to the side on the bar. Something tells him that this conversation might be one that doesn't warrant the loose lips of someone who might be more than a bit drunk (and unused to being drunk, like most of the Musketeers). He asks for wine for the both of them, unsure of what that concoction she's drinking might be.

[at_your_side]

Her expression was one of expecting that he should have been very well aware of exactly what she was referring to and that any other reason other than immediately agreeing was him being purposefully obtuse. Such was her rum soaked logic.

Tempted though she was to point out the fact that he was at the center of the heaviest of the secrets that she carried within her, no amount of alcohol could have let her being up something so dangerous where someone else might hear. No matter how safe the Nexus was meant to be. She lifted a hand and poked him in the chest with one finger, "You know very well why."

When a glass of wine was set before her, she turned away enough to pick it up, speaking to him over the rim, "And now I've stolen the dauphin. Again."

[averygoodshot]

"For which I am grateful," he tells her, but stops short.

Wait.

He touches her arm, albeit gently, but wanting to get her attention.

"Again?"

[at_your_side]

Constance would have done anything the Queen might have asked when she had worn that expression of worry and need so naked on her face. For all the dangers of it, she had not hesitated in agreeing to retrieving the dauphin from behind the door still accessible to her. She would have done anything to protect her friend's child (two of her friends' child, although it could not be said too loud) and had been pleased to place the baby in his wrappings in the Queen's arms.

"Mhmm," she swallowed some of her wine. "I'm going the King won't think to hang me this time around."

[averygoodshot]

"Constance," Aramis says, leaning closer, alarmed. "...what are you talking about?"

Because this doesn't sound familiar at all. Was the King going to hang her?!

[at_your_side]

"Hoping," she corrected herself, confused as to how one word slipped out in place of another, although it was a must both explained by and distracted away from by the glass in her hand.

Sober, Constance likely would not have mentioned what had happened, the memory of the King ordering her death only to rescind it a minute later being one she wished she were able to forget. Her actions did seem mad if considered objectively. Just the thought of a cloth merchant's wife stealing the crown Prince of France believing she could save him might have seen her locked away on principle.

"Dr. LeMay's cures weren't helping, and he was so sick and so small." She paused on the bubble of sadness the memory of the baby breathing so raggedly, then allowed it to slip away for the lightness of her head and what seemed then a surprising intensity rolling off of Aramis. "I had to help him, if I could. I've seen steam help before."

[averygoodshot]

Aramis had known the baby was sick; he had heard. But ...

the rest he didn't know anything about how the Constance had helped his son.

"When was this?" he asks, voice low. The baby is fine, he knows. He's seen him, held him. But still. The idea of something happening to the Dauphin makes his blood run cold.

[at_your_side]

There was an alcoholic pause in remembering that perhaps Aramis did not know the events as she had assumed he would. Beyond even that he might not know of her part, as she had been too apart from d'Artagnan when the dauphin had been ill to have even told him off what had happened, but that the time he come from might not have yet gone through those worried days.

"This was weeks and weeks ago," she told him, reaching out to lay a hand on his arm to assure him off what she said. "Before Marmion," there Constance paused and winced, "Am I allowed to talk about that or have you not met him?"

[averygoodshot]

"No, I know Marmion," Aramis says, slumping just a bit with relief. He's glad for the wine he ordered for himself, taking a great gulp of it.

When he swallows, he nods, adding, "thank you, Constance. For ... everything."

Because she has indeed been invaluable.

[at_your_side]

Well into her cups, she had forgotten that d'Artagnan had spoken of Aramis telling him what had happened between them once they had been free of Marmion. Where in the intervening time he had arrived from was still in question, her thoughts not even leaning toward the possibility that perhaps he could have come from after her and the Queen.

She patted his arm reassuringly, smiling softly at him and his thanks. Her cheeks warm for it, pinker still then she had already been painted by her drink. "I only did what was right," she demurred, but met his eyes evenly as she told him, "I will look after them however I can, Aramis."

[averygoodshot]

His expression is warm and fond as he looks back. "And for that, I thank you," he tells her, before he cocks his head. "How much have you drunk, Constance?"

[at_your_side]

Her smile was almost impish, her lips pressed tight together and curving higher on one side than the other. ”Mm," she tried to recall exactly what the number was or what she had had, buy could recall only that each one had been delicious and that she was sure to have a significantly lighter purse in the morning. "Quite a few, I'd have to say, bit they were quite lovely."

[averygoodshot]

"I'm sure they were," Aramis says, smiling; Constance is quite charming when she's sober and that doesn't seem to change when she's quite soused. "Shall I suggest that perhaps you ... slow down a bit? So as not to be too sick tomorrow."

[at_your_side]

As she didn't fancy the thought of being sick, with all the wobbliness of stomach and lightness of her that entailed, Constance had to reluctantly nod an agreement. Her aim might have been too much to borrow a page from Athos' book and forget any semblance of responsibility for a night, but she had to accede that Aramis was likely right.

"Why is it," she began, leaning on one elbow on the bar as she looked at him, "That no woman is allowed to be a Musketeer?" The facts were ones she was all too familiar with while sober, but then with her fingers slipping along the run of her glass, the inevitable truth of their time and place seemed to be a little hard to grasp. "I would have quite liked it, I think. Better than pricking my fingers on needles and sitting by the window to watch the world go by."

[averygoodshot]

"I think you would make a fine Musketeer," Aramis says and he's not just indulging her sodden whim; he means it. She is strong and courageous and quite apt with a blade and a pistol.

He waves the barkeep down for some hot tea for Constance. With honey.

[at_your_side]

The world was built for men, a construction that allowed little room for women to speak their mind and be heard. Where their value was limited to the idea of virtue and faithfulness in a way men were free of. She might have resented it then if Aramis had not agreed with her and let her forget the unfairness of the world a little while longer. It was easy to feel comfortable in her own skin when it felt as if she was actually seen in a way that had naught to do with who she was married to or what reflection she was upon her husband.

Who she had been married to. A definite past tense, and one that had added to her desire to drink her fill at the bar.

Constance did not think before she curled her hand around the mug of honeyed tea set before her. "I missed you all," she told him, reaching up another hand to pat his cheek with the remembrance but not the force of the previous times she had slapped him. "Life is more exciting with Musketeers."

Aramis [the musketeers] (averygoodshot http://averygoodshot.dreamwidth.org/profile) replied to a comment you left in a Dreamwidth entry "Probably should have left the alcohol to Athos, really." http://all-inclusive.dreamwidth.org/95931.html. The comment they replied to was:

[averygoodshot]

Smiling, Aramis has to ask, "when were you without us?" he asks, curious. "I have to think you will not be without any of us for very long, Constance." Especially if she and d'Artagnan truly find a way to be together, which he, the appreciator of Romance, does hope.

It's true that the world is uneven. It is not a world that Aramis agrees with.

[at_your_side]

"You used to use my kitchen for your plotting and planning," she reminded him, her words coming with more the tone of nostalgia and fondness than the annoyance one might have imagined for having Musketeers using their home to figure out their scheme to reveal a terrorist who had stolen so much gunpowder or in discovering what plot had lay behind Marsac's presence in Paris. "I saw so much less of you all after Bonacieux-" her words choked off, and she amended, "After d'Artagnan and I had to go our separate ways."

Perhaps she did not see the matter as clearly as she then thought she did, but she remembered too much of missing their presence to not speak of it in that alcohol-slip moment.

Where she did not yet begin to drink her tea, she smiled at him over it. "I would like to have the Queen and you all both. I never had such adventures before you all came crashing into my life."

[averygoodshot]

Finding her hand again, Aramis gives it a squeeze. "You are one of a kind," he tells her most sincerely. "Here, we can find many adventures. And you and d'Artagnan can be ... well, whatever you wish to be. We are all here. Together."

That is good, though that does not deal with Rochefort, which is a problem. One that weighs on Aramis a great deal.

[at_your_side]

Where she was never foolish enough to pretend she was the Queen's equal, months at the other woman's side and knowing that her presence, her advice, what comfort she might offer were valued had fought off much of the hopelessness Bonacieux had attempted to instill in her. No matter how he had pleaded with her and sworn that he loved her, that he could not live without her, he had delivered a thousand cutting words a day and left her in doubt of all that she was. Even had she not been too entirely in love and aware of her mortality too much to give up d'Artagnan once more in her attempting to leave her husband for any happiness she could find, she could not have returned to a life trapped beneath her husband's constant scrutiny and let herself wither away in hopelessness.

Aramis's words did not undo her so much as make her smile widely, her lips still pressed together as if in fear that she might cry at the sincerity of that compliment.

"How could I not love that?"

[averygoodshot]

Exactly. And really, Constance being here and her reaction to having such freedoms as she would here - ones not allowed her in their Paris - made the promise Aramis had made to the Queen, to stay here, away from Rochefort, more palatable.

"I understand," Aramis tells her, though, grinning conspiratorially, "that there is a door which, when passed through, changes one's sex. I would recommend avoiding that one."

[at_your_side]

The idea that she could sit in a bar with a drink in her hand (albeit tea with honey at that very moment) and a Musketeer at her side and there would be no repercussions for her reputation, no gossip spread among her neighbors or those in Court who acknowledged her existence, was...exhilarating. It was a freedom she had never been before allowed, and while she had made a spectacle of herself with d'Artagnan a time or two before, that new freedom had not been a part of what had had her reaching for her first cocktail.

That he did not remember or did not yet know that she was free of Bonacieux, yes. That she did not think she could tell him what had happened there, certainly.

Never that freedom.

Her eyes widened at his words, her shocked "No!" immediate. Where her voice had not risen with the quiet exclamation, Constance gaped at him before looking down at herself as if in contemplation of such a change. The sight of her own decolletage did nothing but remind her of her own shape (which she quite liked, thank you, all matters of station and freedoms aside) and leave her asking, "How?" and a moment after, "Have you-?"

[averygoodshot]

Her shape is quite pleasing; Aramis will freely tell her that should she need to know that from him - but he would doubt she needs his affirmation of that.

"I have not," he is quick to say, chuckling. "However, Porthos and your own d'Artagnan both have." And he is unaware that very soon, Athos will fall victim as well. "They were both quite striking, which, I suppose, can be expected."

[at_your_side]

Any opinion Aramis might have had about the shape of her waist or the shadow between her breasts the fashions of their day were so fond of drawing attention to would have surely have earned him a smack had he shared it. Then again, Constance couldn't be too sure he didn't enjoy her slapping him more than she had ever meant him to.

She tried to imagine either d'Artagnan or Porthos as women, but failed. Strange, considering she had no doubt that d'Artagnan would've made a pretty woman, although trying to figure great big Porthos, with his strong but handsome features through the filter of womanhood was far too much to handle. "I saw d'Artagnan only yesterday," she told him, a bit stymied over being told one thing and having seen another.

[averygoodshot]

(Aramis does enjoy a good slap by a beautiful woman. But that's private.)

"This was a bit of time ago," he assures her. "Perhaps it is that you arrived after he had reverted back to his natural form. He was quite stunning, truly. But stubborn in not accepting any help."