(121-04-17) The Bloom is off the Rose
The Bloom is off the Rose
Summary: The honeymoon appears to be over for Laurent and Angharad
Date: Date of play
Related: Related Logs
Players:
Angharad..Laurent..

Dinner has come and gone, and evening finds Ser Laurent Tyrell in the suite of rooms he shares with his wife, his stitches being seen to by an acolyte of the citadel. The Thorn is stripped to the waist, his dressings laid aside to show two wounds on his chest, one long and the other deep. Both are stitched neatly closed, but neither will heal without leaving a scar on a torso that is quickly becoming a palimpsest of old injuries. His left forearm, too, bears a shallow red line from where the skin was split by the blade of Ser Maelys Targaryen. The Thorn bears the acolyte's ministrations, though he complains all the while, and foully. Close to hand is a goblet of strong red wine.

Angharad has spent a great deal of time away from the Garden Isle manse, these past few days. There's a great deal of work to be done in making things ready at their new home, and she's seeing to it all first-hand, putting to work the other part of the lady-lessons her mother drilled into her. A Great Noble Lady is castellan of her home, overseeing all, so their lords can oversee the lands. Life goes on.

Tonight she comes back, however, wearing her red hunting habit, still carrying her quiver and bow. She glances up at Laurent and his wounds as she enters, going to the corner of their suite that's become a makeshift armory, betwixt the accoutrements of their respective martial pastimes. "That's looking better."

Laurent's first words at Harry's arrival are to the acolyte, a simple, "Go." He waves the young man away from himself, looking to Harry as the young maester candidate packs his things. "Thanks to Jacsen, it is," he agrees, staring down at the wound. "It's stiff, but that's to be expected," he says with a shrug that only raises his right shoulder, furthest from the two wounds. "If they mean to kill me, they'll need to do better."

"Well. Everyone needs something to aspire to, I suppose," says Harry, unstringing her bow and unshouldering her quiver. "The furniture arrived from Highgarden, today. It fared a good deal better on the long road, in carts, than the things that were moved from here, by hand. I swear, with a pike they're so adept, but put a box of porcelain in the men's hands and they might as well be wrestling a greased pig."

"I'd rather have them agile with the pike and clumsy with the pots, if it comes to it," Laurent says with a frown, tucking his chin close to his chest so that he can stare at his wound while he speaks. With the young acolyte of the Citadel taking his leave, the Thorn begins picking at the edges of the longer cut the moment he is alone with his wife. "We'll have new plates, if need be. Are there enough rooms? We've inherited a ward from my father, it seems." There's no small measure of irritation as he says that, though it's followed by a wince as his thick fingers find a sensitive piece of skin at the edge of his wound.

"Don't pick your wounds, Laurent," Angharad says with some impatience, barely glancing up from unlacing her bracers. "Dying of an infection because you can't leave your scabs alone like any half-grown boy would be — somewhat less than impressive." Setting aside her bracers, she opines, "Quite enough rooms, I think. It will make a handsome home."

"I'm sure," Laurent growls, the words punctuated by a soft thump as his hand falls back to the table. He looks up from his chest with a frown, finding Harry with his dark eyes. "The Blackrood means to join us there, I think. This Baratheon girl my father left to us, of course. And my youngest brother arrived last night, from Highgarden, just in time to see the end of Lord Garvin's play." He lists off the others with no particular inflection to say he prefers one over the other, each is an inconvenience.

"I'll be glad to have them," says Harry, unlacing the cincher about her still-narrow waist. "You needn't trouble yourself. Seeing to their comfort as members of our household is my job." She sits to take down her hair. "I believe Lady Johanna, Ser Quill's sister, will also be coming. I like her."

"Is that so?" Laurent's heavy brow lifts at the news. "Fierce, isn't she? Reminds me of her brother, more than a bit." He thinks it over a moment, and must decide it's no less inconvenient than the rest. It gets a scowl from him, but he moves on. "I wonder if my mother will join us or, I pray, remain in Highgarden. I've had no word from her, nor has Leire, so far as I know. Have you spoken with my sister since the trial?"

"I haven't." She unpins her coif and unplaits her braids, picking up a brush to draw through her hair. "I imagine she's very busy, at the moment. I like your sister, but I get the uncomfortable feeling she wants to pray with me — and I'd just as soon delay having that awkward conversation."

Laurent looks for a moment as if that particular problem had not occurred to him, but he shrugs it off. "I'll tell her, if you like. None of her damned business anyway, is it?" Though he is undeniably fond of his sister, she apparently warrants no more consideration than anyone else when stacked up against his wife. He reaches for the glass of wine he has kept at hand, and drains what remains of it at a single drink before laying it aside once again. "Quill's hostages haven't troubled you at all, have they?"

Angharad shakes her head. "Please don't. It's not necessary. It'll happen in time, and I'm entirely capable of speaking for myself." She glances at him in the mirror, still drawing the brush through her hair in sections. "I believe he's been keeping them in some disused rooms off the barracks. I haven't seen or heard them at all, whatever the case."

"Mmm," Laurent nods his wordless agreement to some, or perhaps all of that, then pushes himself to standing. Slow steps carry him across the floor to stand next to his wife, and he reaches out with his left hand to follow the brush through her hair with his fingers. "I'm not sorry, you know," he says incongruously, his dark eyes on her work with the brush.

"I've never known you to be sorry for anything. Why would you start now?" says Harry, with a light and simple neutrality that's worse, from her, than angry censure. She sets down the brush and moves away from the vanity — and him.

He frowns as he considers that, moving away from the bench himself to stand in the window. Surely he has been sorry for something, but apparently nothing springs to mind, so instead of arguing the point he counters with, "I just told you that I won't start now. The man was wrong, and lucky I was in such high spirits. Else I might have cracked his skull."

"So very lucky for all of us," agrees his wife, mildly, shaking out a nightshift from the chest and draping it over a chair, then setting about unlacing her gown.

Laurent puts his back to the window, wincing as he crosses his arms over his chest. He's stubborn though, and holds to it though it hurts, lowering himself to sit in the window and watch Harry undress. "If you meant to marry someone as would bear that old man's badgering in silence, Harry, you've the wrong Tyrell. Lord Garvin's suite is just down the way."

"No. He would have been equally arrogant and high-handed, just in an annoying falsetto," says Harry, shrugging out of her bodice and tugging the drawstring on her skirt. "A completely unbecoming lack of humility is one of the things that actually breeds true in this family."

"Mayhaps," Laurent allows with a single, heavy nod. "Though if we're honest, it's a thing that draws you to me, often as not. A man can't do what I do, Harry, and be humble about it." He casts his eyes down at the wounds on his chest, and snorts a laugh. "A humble man as thinks to face the likes of Ser Maelys Targaryen or Ser Arrick Garagalen is just a corpse waiting to fall."

"That's a fine excuse to tell yourself. Your mean and bullying behavior is the source of your power. Obviously." She steps out of her skirt and pulls her shift over her head. "When you're the victor, the stronger, the higher in station — when you have every blessing in the world — " she pulls her nightshift on, pushing her hair back after, "you don't need to bully and berate and provoke and threaten. You don't need to because they are beneath you, because their words are as nothing — because you are the better man." She casts him a wounded glance. "You're better. In every possible way." She turns toward the bed. "Gods, how I wish you'd act it."

"You know nothing of it," Laurent says, his tone suddenly dark. "I have the blessings I take, Harry. Those people are beneath me so long as I remind them of it. If a man slanders me, and I stand for it, then I am less." He stands from the window, his arms falling away from his bare chest. "I am a horse, a sword, and a reputation. Nothing more," he growls, shaking his head as he starts across the room toward her. "You, and the child inside you, depend on that reputation as much as I do. So I'll not see it soiled, even if you find its maintenance distasteful." He sneers the last word, shaking his head.

"Is the Maiden's Knight less skilled because he's humble? Was Ser Osric Dayne less mighty because he was kind? I wonder what you think your reputation really is — if you actually know how men regard you." She snorts. "Ser Laurent the Mighty — He Does Not Brook Challenges from Feeble Old Men! Huzzah."

"The Maiden's Knight," Laurent sneers, "Has never fought a fight that mattered, where men could see," Laurent says, drawing up a step away from Harry. "Ser Osric Dayne is dead, while I yet live." He shakes his head, anger flushing his cheeks. "I'll not bear such treatment from an old man or a young one. Feeble or hearty."

"Then save it for them — young and hearty and some kind of threat. He was right to scold you, trying to pick another fight over the body of the one man who'd fallen, a GOOD man — I don't even have words for what you were doing." Harry takes a breath, shaking, her fists clenched at her sides. "A rutting cunt of a lawless sellsword kicks his opponents when they're defeated. A Great Lord quits the fucking field!"

"I have words for it," Laurent seethes. "Defending Ser Quillian's sister from a tongue lashing by that Dornish bastard." His head tilts to the side, and he turns away from the table to stalk across the room toward the arming racks, "Who is staying here, isn't he? And who I had almost forgotten, invited me to pursue the issue later just before he tucked tail and made off."

"Lady Johanna was handling herself with grace and dignity — she didn't need your fucking help," says Harry, thowing back the covers and climbing into bed. "And you didn't give it to be noble, or chivalrous, or out of any concern for her. You stepped in because you still wanted to fight. You weren't done yet — I could practically see you go hard for it."

Laurent snatches his scabbarded sword from its stand in one hand, turning back toward the door. "The why of it hardly matters," he says with a single shake of his head before Angharad's words catch him in his tracks, and bring a cruel smile to twist his lips. "Jealous, were you, Harry?"

"Then don't tell me it was defending Lady Johanna, if it wasn't and you know it, too. Gods, at least be honest!" It's not until 'jealous' that her eyes fill with tears, catching even her off-guard. "Gods," she husks, finally looking away. "If that's the mistress you want, Laurent — the pursuit of violence over mercy, sense, nobility… character — then I am sick. For I certainly cannot compete with her. Nor do I want to."

"You knew my character before we wed, Harry," Laurent says, a sneer curling his heavy features. "Don't pretend at surprise now. It doesn't suit you." For a moment it seems he might step toward her, but at the last second he turns on his heel to stalk out of the room, sword in one hand as the other reaches to pull open the door.

She says nothing to stop him, head still turned until the door shuts on his departure. She leans over to blow out bedside candle, then lays down in the shadows of their splendid bed. Even her tears are silent.

~Fin

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