#thread: percy blakeney & chauvelin | covrroucer

[walkingshcdow]

@covrroucer | Blakeney & Chauvelin

Sir Percy Blakeney always preferred a bit of sparkle to his outfit, a pop of color, what, or else a fashionable cut. However, as everyone well knew, Sir Percy was in the north country hunting with a few of his closest and most glittering companions, until the next ball. The Scarlet Pimpernel, for as colorful as his name was, did not mind a suit of sable if it benefitted him this moonless night in Paris. Trouble was, of course, that horrid, little man, Chauvelin, would skulk about in his darkest blacks about this time of night, too. The Pimpernel already had everything he wanted from this trip. A family of aristos were well on their way to Calais and then, by way of the Daydream, to England. He’d read, committed to memory, and burned the map to the next set of prison cells. Now, he was not Sir Percy Blakeny nor was he The Scarlet Pimpernel. He was a man who wished to go unnoticed in the streets and then, once he arrived, in a local inn where he hoped to rest before tomorrow’s rendezvous.

However, for all the luck God could grant him as The Scarlet Pimpernel, He must have had a sense of humor for M. Chauvelin sat inside this very inn’s tavern. He did not have the smug look of a cat with a canary – in fact, he neither seemed to be waiting for or have noticed Percy at all. He instead had his little snuffbox out upon the table and the lack of cutlery and china indicated that if he waited for anything at all, it was supper. Percy wasted no time in finding the staff.

“I say, do you see that fellow over there?” he said to the woman who ran the establishment. “That’s Monsieur Chaumbertin of the Committee of Public Safety – a dear old friend of my wife’s. I pray you-“ Here he paused to pay her enough for not the cost of one meal, but two, with change left over for wine and obedience “-send his meal to him with compliments from Sir and Lady Blakeney and tell him a friend will be joining him soon. Whatever the house specialty is, I’ll have for myself, madame, but first might you direct me to whomever is making room arrangements?”

By the time the plates were set upon the table, Percy had changed into his own, creamy satins and an elaborate cravat. He had come in unnoticed, but he’d be demmed if he didn’t catch Chauvelin’s eye at least once. Not a scrap of evidence proved Sir Percy the Scarlet Pimpernel and the new, lacy handkerchief he carried, embroidered with his and Marguerite’s linking initials could only attest that his real business in France had been fashion and fashion alone.

“Chaumbetin!” he drawled lazily, sliding from personhood to persona as easily as breathing. Then, he slid into the chair opposite his rival and plucked up his knife at fork at his plate. “Odd’s fish, I do hope I haven’t kept you waiting long! It’s only every so often I have the privilege of shopping in your fine city. Really, it is a fine city if one looks past the blood and down to the bones of it! Marguerite will be sorry to know she missed seeing you here, though, but I certainly can’t take the wife shopping with me for her own presents, now, can I? I’d ask about your holiday shopping, but it seems your whole country has gone out and invented a new calendar! Such clever heads, the French… But enough of all that, how are you?”

The Scarlet Pimpernel could abide silence for his cause. Sir Percy, however, did not willfully endure silence or (worse) dull conversation. He hoped he left Chauvelin just dazed enough to be foxed and just foxed enough to say something that could begin a little tete-a-tete. (Such a delicious little phrase, and how very, very French!) As much as he loathed the man’s politics and as much as he despised him for all Chauvelin had forced poor Marguerite to endure, the animosity between them was complicated very much by the fact that Percy delighted in games with Chauvelin and further still complicated by the fact that, despite it all, Marguerite did not hate Chauvelin as much as anyone less than a saint would. She had abiding memories of a deep friendship and shared ideals that (despite what others might say) Percy also sympathized with. It was a tangled mess of a web. And, besides, it was very nearly Christmas. Peace on earth, good will to men, and all that had to mean something, even in France, perhaps most especially in France, where the values of the day were liberty, equality, and fraternity. La, what a silly world, where a country that purported such beliefs would make once spirited men, like Chauvelin dour, and do away with the one season Christendom actually bothered to agree with its principles!

#ch: percy blakeney #thread: percy blakeney & chauvelin | covrroucer #.001 | canon #((apologies for how rusty I am!)) #((I've been writing a TSP inspired D&D character for a while and I had to keep his voice out of it lol))