katabasis | [SEDUCES LILY]

She shifts - the bottle green day dress, shifting with the curl of her legs underneath her moves daylight bleached from much this singular occupation, to sit and read, listening to Thomas talk - to others before James, true, but none quite like him. "Nothing less than the weather."

An adjustment where she shifts to give the space beside her to him, a clear invitation. "But if it's purpose you stay for, then we had best give you one." She leans across and pats to follow through in case he planned on playing obstinant. Because she knows, for reason that are his own, and reasons that are to do with her, he won't walk away nor refuse. "I, too, have a matter of moderation of which we must speak."

Though, as her eyes lower to the book held between her palms, it was not as serious as the pardons sought by her husband. A devised test perhaps, to see if his would hold.

It would be better if he was firm in this. The moment he sits down beside her will be the course from which he can't correct. After all it's easy when he's standing with a heavy desk between them to be sensible; it's much, much harder to remind himself of the fact where he's close enough to touch her and there's no one to see. He ducks his head for a moment, a rueful grin there and gone again, then he raises his eyes to her. There's no arched eyebrow, but the sentiment is there in his face as he slowly makes himself around the desk with his hat under his arm.

"I see. Is it serious?"

Of course it's not serious. Even just asking is in small part a joke - as much as anything she's said in the last few moments has been.

Thomas has only been gone a minute - two. But that's apparently all it takes for her to wind him near to her, to convince James to sit beside her even when he knows there's no more reckless idea. He keeps his hat in hand though: the pretense of preparing to be away.

Her skirts froth in a crest of petticoats at the edge of her bottle green dress. White lace to waves of careful pleats that as she adjust, lap in turn at his boots. A comfortable closeness that asks no more than that as yet. Perhaps as the sea does, she will take shortly. But for now, she opens the book in her hands to the cornered page she had been reading ( a habit she had once chastised Thomas for but in the years between them, she has picked it up from him just the same ) to part it and smoothes her fingers down the page. The lettering at the top of the page, reads the Cabinet of Love.

"Quite so. An unfortunate affliction, but I am sure as such an upstanding member of the admiralty, you will be able to set me quite to rights."

Her fingers sit to obscure the verses on the page and the book is just as she said, scandalous, immodest, and naturally read and quoted word for word in all sorts of bawdy houses and lower streets and no doubt, especially, by sailors, weeks at sea with not a soft bit of flesh in sight. "If you will permit to read you such a thing, of course, so you might duly make your mind up."

He shouldn't permit anything - not under this roof, out of respect to her husband. Let them go somewhere else under the guise of a social call. There are any number of rooms they might rent for the house when Thomas is away. For some reason, he can bear the thought of Thomas returning to his wife away and knowing where she is and with who than Thomas coming back and finding him still here under the pretense of... civility.

"Of course," he says, nodding to the book whose page he has no desire to read upside down. "I'll do what I can do help."

Either in spite, or rather because of that uncomfortable she does no more than settle herself in their now shared patch of sunlight. Their scraped together place because if Thomas did come back to such a civility, there would be no pretence to it. Here, she knew, was home. A place of no shame. With Thomas and now, James.

Whether James had worked himself up to that notion yet or not, it was not her intention to push any more than he gave her leave by such indications as his shape had an exact heat, across from her. She never thought to meet another man quite like Thomas, even if he took coaxing from time to time to displaying that.

Miranda lifts the book, her fingers leafing through the pages in sound as soft as skirts, a clear lift of her voice as she begins to read.

"'Naked, she lay, clasped in my longing arms. I filled with love and she all over charms.'"

Ah.

He doesn't breathe it, but the sentiment is right there in the quirk of his eyebrow and how his smile goes all crooked. James glances up to the ceiling's study. He can feel a laugh bubbling up, sitting there at the base of his throat. Quite serious indeed.

Madame, what part of this involves moderation?, he might ask. But far be it for him to interrupt her, so instead he lowers his eyes and fixes Miranda with a look that's all the illusion of patience broken by wry amusement and a certain particular kind of affection. This woman is monstrous.

She makes no inclination to acknowledging the look upon his face, wetting her lips softly, pressing them together and parting them again as she draws up the breath, strained against the layers of her corset and pinafore. Reading herself to keep speaking - waiting, waiting for whatever that something in James' bearing came forth. He hid it well, hid it so deeply. But to draw it back up again, hold it in her hands. Watching it churn as if storm over seas.

"'Both equally inspired with eager fire, melting through kindness, flaming in desire, with arms, legs, lips close clinging to embrace, she clips me to her breast, and sucks me to her face.'"

If she were to pause and question him over his awareness of her mouth - how her tongue brushes them, the edge of her teeth, the part and press and how the words pull her attention as a magnetic pole tugs a compass needle -, he wouldn't deny it. But he is patient, even at this close proximity and under the duress of that pointed recitation of the body.

Arms, legs, lips close indeed. His knee is set just there, near enough to rustle the edge of her skirts as he shifts the heel of his shoe against the floor.

'Who is this?' he wants to ask, but doesn't. He wouldn't want to distract her.

He would not indeed, and onwards she read, her fingers smoothing over the page as her face turns to begin the next verse. If he could stay composed to the end, well she could too. The polite crinkle page, that almost not of a noise that is to begin something, waiting to see if he would do anything at all - and when he does not, she continues.

"'Her nimble tongue, love’s lesser lightning, played within my mouth, and to my thoughts conveyed swift orders that I should prepare to throw the all-dissolving thunderbolt below. '"

There must be something due him should he sit here for the length (ha) of the poem as she reads aloud, but what exactly it might be he can't very well say. His prise intact? Unlikely. In this room, that seems like such a worthless thing. Oor rather, it seems somehow different from how he understands the word's meaning in any other circumstance; that's the real secret of the Hamilton house - it's a place where the natural order of things becomes strangely malleable. Where logically his presence here beside Thomas's wife should be unspeakably deplorable, and yet-- which is worse? This or denying her invitation, knowing she gives it so very honestly?

His hand on his hat, he shifts it against his middle and clears his throat. His eyes are on the edge of the carpet, not her (or the book or her face or the swell of her pale as cream breasts), yet there can be no mistaking the direction of his attention. And after a moment he does raise his eyes to her, brow furrowed and a smile lurking in the crooked corner of his mouth.

"Lady Hamilton," -- he lays his spare hand very carefully at her knee, no sense of moderation there in the touch whatsoever -- "I'm afraid the question is lost on me entirely."

No it isn't, James McGraw you shit.

[SEDUCES LILY]

ACTUALLY HAS ICONS NOW YAY

bless they are the best

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