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31_days2006-04-07 11:27 pm
sodzilla.livejournal.com) wrote in 31_days2006-04-07 11:27 pm
[April 7th] [The Three Musketeers] Lessons Unlearned
Title: Lessons Unlearned
Day/Theme: and venus loved mars
Series: The Three Musketeers (events referred to in Twenty Years After)
Characters/Pairing: Athos, Marie de Chevreuse
Rating: PG
Her promised month's stay at Bragelonne is only in some ways as expected.
The place itself is exactly like the image she had built of it, from subtle questions to Raoul, and somewhat more forthright ones to the Count himself. The house - a chateau only by courtesy, as even the master of the house cheerfully admits - is nonetheless well-ordered in all respects, everything well maintained, every servant courteous and conscious of his duties. The countryside is rolling and green, with a peaceful kind of beauty that is soothing to her eyes... for the moment. At length, Marie knows the place would bore her, with its steadfast refusal to pander to her taste for drama. Still, she can easily see how this country would have raised a boy like her son - God, no wonder he faces the world so wide-eyed!
Her son's father is... not surprising. Not exactly. She does know him by now, a little, and mostly from deduction. (This amuses her, because even for a woman of her admittedly questionable virtue, the usual progression is to become acquainted with a man before one takes him to bed, and bears his child.)
She is not at all surprised to find one of the house's larger rooms has been converted into a makeshift salle des armes, or that he spends two or three hours there every morning, when not diverted by his duties as a host. Once she sneaks in to watch him, sparring against his shadow as a child might, but with a deadly speed and seriousness that has nothing of the boy in it.
She is not at all surprised by the library, filling one whole room and most of another, and containing books in English, Spanish, and half a dozen other tongues besides French and the scholars' Latin. Nor does it startle her to find that the Count has read them all, and Raoul the vast majority. It seems that languages, like arms, are considered in this house to be a necessary part of a gentleman's education; speaking as someone who has spent most of her adult life abroad, even if not by choice, Marie cannot help but approve.
She is not at all surprised by what else she finds out about her son's early life - but speaking as a woman, she cannot help but be dismayed. The library holds histories, memoirs, travelogues - but little in the way of poetry, and no romances unless you count the works of the English Bard. The Count, as she finds out from questioning his servants, has had neither wife nor mistress in the time they have known him. The family's friends, invited for dinners and hunts over the period of her stay, include no girls of proper age to be flirting with a boy of fifteen.
In short, Raoul will be well prepared for every challenge of adult life, except the ones she well knows can do the most damage.
To be fair, love is not a danger that a father can easily prepare his son for. Not this father, at least. It does surprise her to find that the Count's gallantries are not meant as advances; that there is no expectation on her to repay his hospitality. In fact, it makes her almost angry - she is not so old, not so decrepit as to be beneath his notice! - except that she soon realizes he is not wholly uninterested. Simply... wary, as though the pleasure they might have together is not worth the risk.
That is enough to make her decide not to pursue him, in any sense. She knows men, knows what manner of man this is - knows he cannot take love lightly, or wisely, that he will throw his heart in the dust for a woman to trample. As Raoul will, some day soon, unless she can teach him differently. Which is at least one thing she can do for her son.
Day/Theme: and venus loved mars
Series: The Three Musketeers (events referred to in Twenty Years After)
Characters/Pairing: Athos, Marie de Chevreuse
Rating: PG
Her promised month's stay at Bragelonne is only in some ways as expected.
The place itself is exactly like the image she had built of it, from subtle questions to Raoul, and somewhat more forthright ones to the Count himself. The house - a chateau only by courtesy, as even the master of the house cheerfully admits - is nonetheless well-ordered in all respects, everything well maintained, every servant courteous and conscious of his duties. The countryside is rolling and green, with a peaceful kind of beauty that is soothing to her eyes... for the moment. At length, Marie knows the place would bore her, with its steadfast refusal to pander to her taste for drama. Still, she can easily see how this country would have raised a boy like her son - God, no wonder he faces the world so wide-eyed!
Her son's father is... not surprising. Not exactly. She does know him by now, a little, and mostly from deduction. (This amuses her, because even for a woman of her admittedly questionable virtue, the usual progression is to become acquainted with a man before one takes him to bed, and bears his child.)
She is not at all surprised to find one of the house's larger rooms has been converted into a makeshift salle des armes, or that he spends two or three hours there every morning, when not diverted by his duties as a host. Once she sneaks in to watch him, sparring against his shadow as a child might, but with a deadly speed and seriousness that has nothing of the boy in it.
She is not at all surprised by the library, filling one whole room and most of another, and containing books in English, Spanish, and half a dozen other tongues besides French and the scholars' Latin. Nor does it startle her to find that the Count has read them all, and Raoul the vast majority. It seems that languages, like arms, are considered in this house to be a necessary part of a gentleman's education; speaking as someone who has spent most of her adult life abroad, even if not by choice, Marie cannot help but approve.
She is not at all surprised by what else she finds out about her son's early life - but speaking as a woman, she cannot help but be dismayed. The library holds histories, memoirs, travelogues - but little in the way of poetry, and no romances unless you count the works of the English Bard. The Count, as she finds out from questioning his servants, has had neither wife nor mistress in the time they have known him. The family's friends, invited for dinners and hunts over the period of her stay, include no girls of proper age to be flirting with a boy of fifteen.
In short, Raoul will be well prepared for every challenge of adult life, except the ones she well knows can do the most damage.
To be fair, love is not a danger that a father can easily prepare his son for. Not this father, at least. It does surprise her to find that the Count's gallantries are not meant as advances; that there is no expectation on her to repay his hospitality. In fact, it makes her almost angry - she is not so old, not so decrepit as to be beneath his notice! - except that she soon realizes he is not wholly uninterested. Simply... wary, as though the pleasure they might have together is not worth the risk.
That is enough to make her decide not to pursue him, in any sense. She knows men, knows what manner of man this is - knows he cannot take love lightly, or wisely, that he will throw his heart in the dust for a woman to trample. As Raoul will, some day soon, unless she can teach him differently. Which is at least one thing she can do for her son.