bait_backup | I ain't ready for the altar but I do agree there's times when a woman sure can be a friend of mine (Reply)

*Regulus is seated already when Victoria joins him in her parlor, bent over to look so deeply into the blues and curving creams of the Persian rug under his feet that it may easily be a lover or the dying face of a brother in arms. In the time of their engagement, he has hardly shown himself to be anything close to the virile catch she had been hoping for, but when she opens the door he looks the most passionate he has ever been in front of her. Though it is not, perhaps, in the way she would be most pleased by, there is a grief in the curve of his spine and the tightened grip of his fingers that Regulus only allows to be seen when quite necessary or in the company of someone quite trusted. It's unclear, really, which of these applies to Victoria, but it's much too informal and much too expressive a slouch to ignore, and there's some level of absurd intimacy in his sudden visit.

He straightens in a disjointed hurry, however, alerted by the whisper of her skirt, and hopes that he can figure out an answer before she asks him just why he is here. He hadn't planned to come here, he had intended to return to Barty's flat for what would have been the third time, to check around Brighton or London or anywhere really for a sign of him, but he had wound up here explaining to Victoria's grandmother that yes he'd like to sit down, that he'd like to see Victoria. He hadn't know that. All he does know is that a mother – not his, but a fine one – has been lost, and in the wake of it all his friend is nowhere to be found. Regulus is as unsure of himself as he is of Barty's whereabouts, thrown by a vast inability to even locate him or to be of enough importance to be the place Barty might run to to begin with. It's the third day Barty's been without a mother, and though he freezes now in front of her he's glad to know Victoria is rather difficult to lose.*