The Smaller Ladies Retiring Room, the Richelieu Residence, Uptown
She glanced through the hall, and she went, quickly, slipping down the corridor and into the powder room. The door closed behind her, and Niccolette leaned back against it with a smug, self-satisfied grin. The attendant looked wide-eyed at her; Niccolette raised her eyebrows, and the human lowered her gaze and curtsied.
“Can I get you anything, madam?” She asked, eyes still down.
“My case,” Niccolette said, with an amused little smirk. “Gold, with the initials N and I in the corner,” she paused. “And a wet handkerchief.”
“Yes madam,” the human hurried off.
Niccolette sat herself at one of the small, mirrored tables; she giggled at the sight of herself in the mirror, at the smeared lipstick against faintly swollen lips. Her dress glittered gold in the light, flowing against her skin; she adjusted the line of it with another little smile, carefully smoothing the waist with her hand. It was rutched on one side and flawlessly smooth on the other, at least in the original design.
Niccolette took the handkerchief from the made when she came; she set about carefully dabbing the lipstick from her mouth, cleaning up the smeared lines of it. Uzoji, Niccolette thought with an amused smirk, probably had only to wash his face in the bathroom before being able to rejoin the party.
Niccolette folded the handkerchief over itself. She had at least been sensible enough not to wear powder, so no one’s clothing had been too badly stained.
“Some champagne as well,” Niccolette said, without looking up.
There was a curtsy just visible in the mirror behind her, and then the door closing behind the attendant.
Niccolette set the stained handkerchief aside, to let her face dry and see there was anything else which needed cleaning up. She eased her sapphire earrings out, and set them neatly on the table; she took a small silver handled brush from her purse, and ran it slowly and evenly through her hair.
It had been a dull party to begin with. There was a lull around the middle of the rainy season when things always seemed to drag; all the politicians and hanger-ons and socialites grown bored. Niccolette understood; she herself was thoroughly bored. The parties dragged together; they blurred faintly at the edges. There were dinners and then dinners again, and breakfast came rarely if at all.
Horace and Constantine Richelieu, tonight’s hosts, seemed as uninspired as all the rest. There was very little to differentiate this party. There had been a dinner, served before; Niccolette scarcely remembered the food, if she had even eaten. There must have been conversation, naturally. Now there was dancing, and a game room, and a whole quiet house to explore outside of the ground floor – there were gardens, in the back, faintly damp from rain earlier in the day, nothing much special from what Niccolette had seen of the window. Was there a theme? Niccolette could scarcely remember. Of course there were flowers in great glittering vases, and some sort of a massive chandelier; she did not bother to try to picture them.
Niccolette supposed the absolute lack of anything exciting – no duels, no arguments, nothing publicly scandalous – was a relief to her hosts, but it scarcely helped with the crushing mid-rainy season dullness. Even the Hesseans seemed bored, and that was indeed impressive. And Uzoji? Niccolette felt a squirming unease in her chest; she brushed it aside. No, she thought, he was surely not bored tonight, not anymore.
All the same, watching herself in the mirror and brushing the tangles from her hair, Niccolette felt an odd, abrupt ache. A longing, she thought, for the Eqe Aqawe, for a simpler night when she could let Uzoji cut her corset loose without caring if it could be laced back up afterwards, and go to sleep when she felt like it. When she had time, she thought, irritably, to meditate.
Niccolette shook the thoughts away, and snorted softly. What sort of a Bastian had she become? She kept working on her hair; the feeling of it beneath her fingertips, the gentle pull against her head - she could not but grin, then. She didn’t trouble to hide it.