Oath of Steel

17 |Outlander|

She didn't like people touching her without her consent, she didn't like people touching her in general without her expressed consent. She loathed having hands over her, touching her in places where her eyes could not reach, and the same had happened when taking the right measurements, when the palm of the seamstress had flattened the back of the dress she was sewing on Rosalynde before the latter turned around without warning - knocking the seamstress on the floor, needle in one hand and pincushion in the other.

"Well, now that you are the banker of the Imperial Family you'll have to get used to attending events such as this one," Rosalynde called out to him after a brief moment of silence, hands sliding under her chest as she made them curl on each other, relaxing her shoulder until she reached a comfortable position to remain with.

"Yes, both her highness and Lord Regulus were pretty clear on that part," he seemed everything except unperturbed by what had happened merely minutes ago, his gray eyes never leaving her seated elegant figure.

"What is it that you found?" Rosalynde asked immediately after, making sure to not give him time to reply to his own previous statement before.

Grey tilted his head aside, mimicking her stance as some dark locks of hair fell beside his face.

He looked different too today, but still Rosalynde couldn't guess if it was because of the clothes he'd decided to wear that exalted his eloquent body, or if it was because he'd decided to comb his hair backwards, but both final results had merged into a singular one at the end - and that had had the effect of nearly taking away her ability to utter even a single banal word.

The memory of their first meeting flashed for a brief second inside Rosalynde's mind, making her stretch her back by pulling her shoulders upwards, releasing the building stress before answering his question.

She told him of what happened in Mary Clark's storehouse, of the gutted swan sitting under the windflower.

"You don't seem particularly surprised by it though," Grey stated without half-terms after she finished narrating her tale, his reaction making her roll her eyes up towards the moon before making his words sink deep.

She'd indeed expected something like that to happen, especially after all that'd happened in the last month.

"No, but you don't seem surprised by it yourself," she firedback, taking a lock of silver hair in her hand, pulling it twice before wrapping it around her finger.

"Verity is targeting the Des Reslows, and that is something that can't be looked over, they already asserted their dominance in more than one subject."

"Then what if I told you I know exactly what provoked the explosion that killed Claire Adeline?" Rosalynde said nothing, letting him know that he had free reign to speak.

Could that discovery be considered a useful clue? Would that new undiscovered path he'd sought out change anything at all? The Smiling Dame hid her faltering thoughts as he squared her once again, as if sensing that she'd just hid something from him that she did not want the rest to find out.

Uncertainty crossed the mind of the personal attendant of the next crown bearer, her face relaxing with palpable difficulty.

"Claire Adeline was approached by someone before the start of the performance, it appears what caused the explosion was the headpiece she was wearing. A fine piece of jewelcraft that was taken off the market years ago for safety measure," Grey told her, the invisible gears inside her head turning non stop as she absorbed the information like a sponge did when coming into contact with a single droplet of water.

"Then the question is how did the security checking the workers backstage not localize it." Grey shook his head, denying her thesis.

"Actually, I can't really blame them, you see there's only one way to set off the jewel, and that's directly related to its composition," Rosalynde had read somewhere that certain minerals found in nature had properties to say the least... explosive. Deemeding them too hazardous after witnessing the side effects that'd happened on previous occasions.