<div class="floatleft">(https://i.pinimg.com/564x/c4/a2/eb/c4a2eb3622a5fd5f4149b8e094a22fa3.jpg)</div><strong>Name: </strong>Danae Vine-Lott<br/><strong>Location: </strong>The Charlotte, Saloon<br/><strong>Wearing: </strong>White cotton jodhpurs, loose grey muslin riding shirt with collar open and sleeves rolled up, barefoot<br/><strong>Content: </strong>Introducing Danae to the Saloon<br/><strong>Tagging: </strong>Open<br/><br/><hr/><br/><em>What did the alienist say?</em>The heat was overpowering her waking senses, and stirred the echo of memories.<em>I am to take a period of leave, and recuperate in the sea air.</em><br/><br/>She sat on a wide, polished leather armchair.  Smell of oiled mahogany and good calfskin. She hadn't ridden in three days and the sensation of the boat rocking was a poor substitute for the sheer kinetic joys of her canters through the Mordentshire countryside - even if it was ever cold and miserable, it would surely have been preferable to the intolerable heat.  She had her legs propped up on the matching leather ottoman, a tankard of cold and dark claret cup.  She brought the frozen pewter to her throat and drew it over bared collarbone.  Her shirt was sheer and good for summer, but had begun to cling in the humidity.  The Ezraite girls were all a-chatter, and their knowing grins had something of the ghastly visages of the Church-ladies back home.  Yes, those knowing, accusing gazes.  Let her without sin...<br/><br/>"You lost your train of thought, Madame?" Smoky-eyed and buxom, Garsenda was perched on her lap, beestung lips pursed in irritation, shift clinging to improbable curves: heavy breasts, rounded belly, magnificent thighs.  She smelled of sparkling cremant wine and cassis, and had doubtless spilled some on herself, whether by accident or by design. One never knew with these loose Dementlieu girls.<br/><br/>"Ah, quite - the goblins," that word righted her train of thought, and she began her narrative anew, this time parsing the saloon with her gaze.  The dark-haired woman in the exotic crimson wrap had something of an experienced look about her.  She, too, was surveying the room with expert eyes - that was not the gaze of the curious, but of one subtly gathering information. "Well," she raised her voice a little, "there were about two score and two hundred of the green-skinned wretches encamped up on Argyle Hill in the dead of night, gibbering to heir heathen gods.  We surprised them by darkening our breastplates with soot and charging into their rear, dismounted.  I brought down twenty-one by my own hand.  No prisoners were taken.  The trick with goblins, you see, is you need to aim<em>low</em>."<br/><br/><em>Oh, really dear, you're such a bore!</em>Danae took a sip from her tankard and felt the cool kiss of soda water and the heat of wine and brandy.  She instinctively twirled her silver poesy ring. She needed to take it off.  It reminded her of Abigail and hidden whispers.  There had been fevered chanting from the cellar the night she left the manor, she was sure of it.  Was their journey cursed?<br/><br/>"Oh, Madame," Garsenda feigned shock at her fellow-passenger's truculent tale.<br/><br/>Danae clapped her hand indiscreetly on the woman's tan thigh, for her shift had ridden far enough up to bare more than she may have intended had she been sober.  She gave a knowing nod in the direction of the dark-haired stranger and introduced herself as Lieutenant Vine-Lott.  Garsenda was a distraction - her companion, however, was a woman of substance.  Still, there was no reason they could not share a complicit moment with a tipsy exponent of Dementlieu's demi-monde.<br/><br/>The noblewoman with the fan was overdressed.  Danae had long shed any pretense of being  fully attired as an officer of the Household Guards, but since the Dementlieuse was a native to these balmier lands, she was doubtless better accustomed to the heat. A fan, though, was an effete affectation.  Warmer climates bred indolence and wantonness, or so her tutors at Ezra's Hospital Grammar School had taught her.<br/><br/>"Venturing off strikes me as an excellent idea, my lady." It was a lapse in protocol, but she did rise to greet her eminent fellow-passenger. Garsenda was rocking almost hypnotically against her thighs, vetiver-perfumed hair elegantly curled and pale drifted before her like a forest she would traverse galloping on her favourite stallion.  "The air would do us good."<br/><br/>Was that a<em>mole</em>on the small of Garsenda's back, just above the full curve of her arse? That was a<em>sign</em>.<br/><br/>"Air," she murmured, and drank again.  They couldn't<em>all</em>be in league with the darkness...that, the alienist assured her, was just nonsense.