The halls of chateau Rolle are slightly more busy than they were on the few nights spent here between arriving with the first round of packages and then departing again for Venice. The construction is complete, the library finished along with the final work on the kitchens. A fire crackles away in the immense hearth set into the wall, though not a high one so it simply chases out the slight alpine chill that hangs in the air with the onset of spring. And so, the dust settled and cleaned out by the more than competent staff, the chateau is, nearly, finished.
Victoria is an early riser. And because of this, she's already finished most of her business by the time nine rolls around. Fed, dressed, and out and about, she seems to be occupying her time by staring at the ceiling in the hall over the table. On the train she was confirming the plans for the installation of the chandelier which should start in the next few days. And now that she has the opportunity to view the currently empty space that it will fill, she is taking advantage.
She's really going to go through with it, and place that giant glass sculpture in the middle of this grand hallway. Mick's thoughts play through his mind as he sweeps down the various corridors. He is not a diligent explorer. He's found the basic things he needs, and occasionally will step out and about to look for something new, but for there is no plan or rhyme or reason to what he is doing. It just happens as it happens.
Tonight he happens to run into Victoria in that hallway. He's descended some staircase or other at the far end and is watching her admire her ceiling-- and the empty hollow of air.
"Helloooooo," he calls brightly down the hallway, intentionally throwing his voice to make it more echoey.
She turns, hands still on the back of the chair next to the large unused dining table. Is it one of those conventions that is simply there because one can't leave it out of the plan for a house? Or do vampires really have dinner parties? "Oh, evening."
Victoria shifts so that her back is to the other side of the long room, a hint of a grin emerging at the echoing in the large nearly uninhabited house. "So are you finding your way around? I thought you'd be out on the lake or taking in the air or something." Though why she'd think that isn't entirely clear.
And yes, of course she is. From the way she's been talking, she'll set up housekeeping in the seating area just so that she can watch the whole process as the professional team from the studio comes to hang each of the pieces that make up the sculpture. But then, that's rather like her.
"Do vampires truly have dinner parties?" Mick asks blatantly as he runs his hand over the tremendous table. The table that is designed for that very purpose. The young man looks over Victoria intently, as if by staring at her he might judge the true meaning of her words and the motivations behind her questions.
"Why might you think that?" Mick asks his second question.
"I've been to a few. Though generally they're mixed company." Not just for the vampires, but for the people the vampires are showing off for. "I've got a chef, I might actually use it at some point. And..." And she isn't so independent of social convention that she's going to buck the system and just say no to dining tables, "I liked it."
"Oh. I don't know." She shrugs, not wavering under the gaze and instead returning it, tilting her head to the side slightly as she considers, the braid hanging down her back slipping over one shoulder at the motion against her simple white blouse, "I guess I thought you'd felt cooped up in Venice for some reason."
"If only Switzerland were such a prison," Mick quips. I was only cooped up in Venice when you balked about the fact that I had overindulged slightly. Then I had to find other ways to amuse myself. But you wouldn't know that, with your elitist friends and their 'oh aren't I so above the world' attitudes. "At least here my cellphone works."
"Good." Victoria says instead of any of the other snippy responses she might have come up with to begin with. Apparently, we're playing nice for the moment. Or at least she is so far. "Have you found everything all right?"
The chair is pulled out from the table slightly and she sits down in it, arms on the table, green linen slacks matching her emerald eyes pretty as a picture. Though she nearly always is. The image of propriety, society, and all that. Nearly makes one's teeth hurt sometimes.
"Yeah, I found a place to get a decent blowjob. I'm all set." Mick scrapes a similar chair out from the table and flops into it carelessly. He sprawls. "I'm a man of simple pleasures, really."
But his interest is on her. Who is this woman that he's been assigned to like so bootlicking lackey. If he's going to get along with her, or even be something less than bored out of his skull, he should probably get to know her, right?
Right.
No time like the present.
"So tell me," he pauses to think of the proper way to address her. He decides to be conversational, "Victoria." -- "What sorts of things turn you on?"
Well. Then. That was... unexpected.
"Ah..." Victoria says with a blink, most eloquently. She was going to make some semi-constructive statement about how nice it was that it wasn't hard to find someone to be friendly with. But that seems to have been passed right on by in the conversation.
"Generally speaking?" She recovers quickly enough, eyebrows arching slightly as she continues to answer the question as though that is, of course, the intended direction. "I like history. I'm very fond of glass, as I'm sure you've guessed." Since the entire chateau seems to have it coming out all over, "Science has always been something I've studied rather closely." Psychiatrist and all. "And I'm developing more of an interest in the stock market, particularly global growth investments."
Generally speaking? Mick scrunches up his face. Hell, no, not generally speaking. He wants details. Dirty, sordid personal details. Those are the best things to know about people. They're also the hardest to extract and Mick is trig enough to realize that one brash comment and a direct question is not going to be sufficient to pry them from Victoria's heart.
"Sure, that's fine. I was just curious," an affected air of interest, but not prying. He wants to set the tone by putting the ball firmly in her court. But the smartass New Yorker in him cannot let an opportunity like that go by without commentary.
"Yeah, I know what you mean. Accountants and lab technicians get me all wet, too."
This discussion has gone into an entirely strange alternate dimension, apparently. Victoria tilts her head to one side again, even more curious and not bothering to try and hide it at all at this point. A small line forms in her forehead between her brows, as her brain tries to wrap around the entire thing. Why bother, really, it's already passed by strange and moved on towards the next stop.
"Michael, are you trying to hit on me?" It's asked as though the thought never had even crossed her mind. Until now of course. Wasn't it just enough of a reason for him to be tailing along that Constantine had told him to, after all?
"Well, sure. I suppose. But if you're going to critique my approach, I do ask you to be kind. I'm a bit out of my league here," Mick apologizes brightly.
Curiouser and curiouser.
"Ah. Well, no... I wasn't going to do that exactly. I suppose it's just... surprising." Victoria blinks again. This was -not- what she expected to happen this evening. Snide comments directed at her home decor, digs about any number of things people say about her in New York. There is plenty of material available, theoretically.
Instead it's rather like having your somewhat geeky cousin from the city hit on you when he comes down to check out the college you're going to and your parents have told you to be nice and show him around.
"Um." Where to even start with this one. "It's very flattering, of course, but... I don't know that having a personal relationship at the moment would quite be... in anyone's best interest."
Maybe it's reassuring that she at least doesn't have more experience shutting people down than Mick seems to have trying to pick them up.
"Eh," Mick takes it in stride. Probably some part of him already realized that this was going to happen. The brush off seems to roll off of him like water off a duck's back. "That's alright. I appreciate you not sicing the Goon Squad on me at least."
Geeky, obnoxious, whatever else Mick is, those two criticisms are certainly apt. And like it or not, fabulous people like Victoria tend to attract them, their own little train of sycophants that follow them around and do things for them, just for the chance to see them smile.
Like this.
"So. Now that that is out of the way. What can I do for you, tonight?"
Victoria's still catching up to the new angle on this entire scope of events, "Sure. Nothing personal, of course."
Goon squad is right. If she wanted to have Mick yanked back to New York faster than you can say Intercontinental Flight, calling Maximilian about this would be the way to do it. He's still hooked up on the idea of her getting together with his golden boy.
"Oh, well... I hadn't really thought about it I suppose. I was trying to come up with anything else I'd need to get put together for the lighting crew. In theory the wiring's already done, it just needs to be tapped." Yes. New topic. Safer. "I finished up the business things I had on my calendar. I was going to give the library a close once over to make sure everything was done before I had the books put in tomorrow?"
Yes yes. This is all very nice, my dear, sweet Victoria. But it doesn't help me one whit. You see, I need something to do. I can't kill people. Toying with you is now libel to get me into more trouble than I really want, just now-- don't worry, we'll come back to that at some point.
I mean, seriously, if I was going to hit on you for real would I have used an opening line about how I found a great place to get a blowjob? -- Real classy, Mick.
This mental dialogue, complete with self-abasing reproach all transpires behind a practiced, patient smile. The kind that says, Oh, how nice! That's very exciting, you must be very proud.
"Oh, how nice. That's very exciting. You must be quite proud."
That, for whatever reason, brings an honest laugh from the woman across the table. Most likely the absurdity of the entire direction of the conversation and the entirely boring evening she had planned out for herself being shown in that light directly. Her nose wrinkles just slightly, self depreciating a bit herself it seems, "Yes. Very exciting."
Her tone indicates that she realizes it was really going to be anything but.
She shakes her head and sits back a bit in the seat, more relaxed than the prim board-along-spine seating she normally entertains, "We could unpack some of the boxes? I've had them stuck up in the tower until I could figure out what to do with them. I should probably make sure things aren't broken and see what's really there. Some of them I never unpacked from New York." Which would mean whatever's inside has been locked away from view for nearly a decade now, since her move to New Port after the riots.
Mick considers that suggestion a capital idea. He rises from his chair, "Shall I change?"
He's once more watching her, and smiles a bit as she realizes the state of her evening's excitement is near to what he had imagined it might be. He can read the tone in her voice and nods his head, just so, to let her know it's alright.
As if she needed his approval for any of this.
"Sure. It's not dirty, but there's going to be all kinds of news print everywhere after about two boxes." Victoria says to the suggestion of changing. She stands up herself, sliding the chair back into place precisely where it was before. "I should switch into something less... white."
She glances down at her blouse briefly, wouldn't want to get it all grimy. "Meet you in my office in a few minutes? Most of the boxes are on the top floor." Of her tower, that is. The one that she's changed into a cottage sized suite for her own personal use and hiding in. Self contained little dwelling inside the castle. Hermit anyone?
~*~ ~*~
The plan was fairly simple, go change into something more conducive to unpacking boxes, come up to the second floor of her tower where the boxes are presently. And so, coming up the stairs from the office below, it isn't so surprising that there is a background of music drifting down the stone steps.
It's opera, Gilbert and Sullivan actually, and a voice accompanies the singers recorded closely enough that at first listen it might sound like it was on the track. But, instead, the second soprano melody is carried by what emerges to be Victoria's voice briefly before breaking off with the sound of box tape being pulled from cardboard.
She's presently hidden behind crates and boxes, though they're sorted into stacks of varying sizes that would indicate some order to the arrangement other than simple storage.
"How many of these are there?" How many of these god damned things are there!? Mick can't see her behind the stack. He can hear her. And that's fine. That's good. It's a nice voice. A little geeky, but still a pleasant voice. "Victoria? Are you in here? Hellooooo?"
Mick's changed clothes into something more reasonable for doing manual labor. And just for her, he left his cellphone and other irritating paraphernalia back in his rooms.
"There's more upstairs." Pirates of Penzance continues on its merry way without her, piped in from somewhere. Fancyfied sound system in this part of the chateau it seems. She likely wouldn't be mistaken for a Toreador with a specialty in singing, but she could hold her own around any campfire. Or choral society most likely. Trained but not overly practiced. "Those are more pieces from the collection though, I know which ones are where." The glass collection most likely, insurance and all.
Victoria comes around the stack with an amused expression, setting the box knife up on top of one of the shorter stacks so it's easily found again. Or, at least it should be Victoria. It sounds like her, except for the fact that she looks like she just got out of high school without her more snooty clothes and primping. Chestnut hair up in a high ponytail, a grey t-shirt with the Harvard Medical crest emblazoned on the front with it's Veritas and red lion rampant tucked into worn bluejeans.
"Don't worry, we're not going to go through all of them."
"I'm only interested in the ones that are holding the skeletons," Mick admits blatantly. Room full of boxes, there's bound to be dirty secrets in here somewhere, right?
Mick runs his hand along the cardboard, taking a stroll around the perimeter of the project. He's looking for the proper place to start. He's not singing.
"You know, if we find your old high school yearbooks in here, we could compare how well you've aged. I suspect you haven't changed a bit," they haven't been here three minutes, and already Mick's started in on the vampire jokes. This is going to be an entertaining evening.
She grins a little as though she wasn't expecting any less, "If you want to start with that batch there, I'm not sure what's in them, I don't remember packing them up. So the contents are a mystery to me." The stack she nods towards has a slightly different handwriting than her slightly rounded script, all caps and more blocky with dates and her name the only description besides the shipping labels. These obviously came over on the boat while you both were in Venice rather than the more pressing ones that flew with you on the company jet. Hard life that.
"And some, I graduated when I was sixteen, I wasn't brought into service until I was half way through my pre-med." It's fairly common knowledge that she was groomed as a ghoul before her embrace, so she had a few years of tanning without concern of melanoma before she took the big plunge. But, not aging is not aging. "Did you keep yours?" Yearbooks that is.
"Oh, would you sign it for me, please?" Mick fawns dramatically. "I always had the biggest crush on you in Mr. Peterson's Geography class."
He almost rolls his eyes. No. He did not keep his yearbooks. Or more truthfully, he hasn't a fucking clue where they might be.
That, actually, gets a light chuckle out of her as she sits down to pull the tape off one of the boxes, "I think the nuns would've frowned on seeing any of that business in my yearbook, I went to an all girls' school."
Her box has books in it. Not yearbooks, though, textbooks. Does she keep absolutely everything?
"Is there anything you actually do like? Or do you just derive joy from disliking everything around you?" Her tone is halfway between teasing and curious. More curious than anything else really as she starts to make a pile of the books out of the box off to her left, orderly and neat starting with the largest one on the bottom.
Were he human he might suck in his breath in fantasy of such a situation. As it is, the younger vampire can only imagine what a school full of young girls might have been like. And given Mick's predilections of late-- the sins of the flesh being something different for him now-- those fantasies are darker than one might like to imagine.
Oh look. Victoria is trying to be friends, again. Well, we'll try and indulge her. If we're an asshole all the time, without respite, she'll probably toss us out on our ear, and then we'll lose these cushy digs. Play nice, Mick. "I happen to be rather fond of horse racing." He picks up the box cutter and opens the parcel that had been assigned him, earlier.
"Really? I'd imagine there are some pretty nice tracks in Lausanne, just by reputation. I can ask Landry for you if you'd like?" That'd be her butler. Who's even more snobby than she and her friends put together. Must be because he's British.
Your designated box contains, of all things, a playstation. One of those new fancy ones. Included with it are all the controllers and several games, of various types, packed in with verve in a disorderly mess of wires and cartridges. Though safely at least with enough packing material to allow it to be dropped without damage to the precious contents.
"Oh, we're having people visiting over the next few weeks. Raymond's coming up to watch them hang the chandelier." Which we were staring at the ceiling designated to be used earlier, "And then I'm going to have a kind of open house the week after, I don't know who all's coming yet."
"Jesus, where did you get this thing?" Mick looks somewhat surprised at what is revealed from his box. Whether because of the item's age-- she did say these boxes were tucked away for a decade or more, or because of the contents themselves. Gilbert and Sullivan play Xbox! Or something.
He pulls on the cords and extracts the toy from the cardboard, and then does a half-assed job of disentangling the various cords from one another. It gets set aside in a slump and he returns to pull the games out, and stack them.
"You want I should clear out?"
That was certainly unexpected with any of her things, which causes her to turn around on the floor to look at the contents, walking over on her knees the few feet to examine them. "Oh, those must've been Ui's." She pulls out a controller as though she knows how to use one at the very least, though not as though she's really interested. "I'd imagine this stack is full of things he packed up when he moved to the lighthouse then."
Putting the controller back where she got it she looks over curiously, "Would you like it? I don't imagine I'd use it much."
"Well, if you want, I won't be insulted. But it'd be an opportunity for you to meet some fairly influential people if you're wanting to play nicely with the other children." i.e., behave. "But, you're welcome to stay."
"They only started making these things about a year ago, Vic," he shortens her name congenially, looking at her. "I thought you said all this shit was from when you were in New York. That was before the troubles. Ten years ago, at least."
He sets a few more of the smaller things aside, "Where's this from, then?"
"Well, I thought it was." She sits back on her heels, looking at the other boxes with a touch of a frown before she continues, "But, I guess Ui put some things in the store room with them when he moved out while I was in France. I just had the movers take everything in there, though if he'd wanted to keep them he wouldn't have left them in the first place. He had a better system in New Port."
Ui would be her childe, then, probably. The one Maximilian wasn't fond of, but tolerated because he didn't have much choice. They seemed to be like peas in a pod for the longest time, in fact Constantine wasn't sure if he was going to be here in Switzerland or not. There hasn't been a sighting of another young Ventrue around the building though, so either he's not here, or she's keeping him in one of these crates.
This, then, would be an excellent moment to ask that question. "And where is Ui? I'd half expected him to be at your side, when I arrived." He's back to taking pleasure in the misery of others, like the bad little leech that he is.
She stands up and goes back over to her stack of boxes, significantly larger that it is. Picking up the empty one, she cuts the tape on the bottom to flatten it and start a stack to one side, "He's in New Port and Portland, his research firm's there along with his friends and connections." She's back to regular aloof Victoria voice again. Taking the knife with medical precision to the next box top to split the flaps up with some speed.
"Like I said, you can have it if you want, it should hook into the television in your rooms easily enough. If it needs some kind of European adapter or whatever just ask Landry and he'll get one for you." She looks into the box and starts pulling out more books. How many books does she have? "The games too, of course, I'm not sure which ones are there."
"You two had something of a falling out, I take it," Mick doesn't let up. He gathers up the Playstation and sets it aside to take with him to his rooms.
One assumes that if there had not been such a change in their relationship, the peas would still be in the pod, as they say. Childe-Sire relationships can be so complicated. All mixed up in parenthood and immortality and incest. It's a delightful psychological puzzle. Mick blunders blissfully into the middle of it with Victoria, "What was it, then? Did he grow tired of always being second chair?" -- "Maybe he found a taste for Italian prostitutes? I can't believe that you would have done anything particularly mean-spirited to him. You're far too forgiving."
"No, not really." Victoria says easily, moving the box of books down onto the floor without much effort. The slight boost of strength you get from being a vampire comes in handy sometimes. "We still speak to each other regularly, it just seemed like it was better for him to stay there with his interests than come here. He's running the winery now." Another one of those things from Dunross that she inherited, "Which he's more suited to than me."
With the continuation of the questions she sighs, "He's been presented for years, doing very well on his own, and I thought it was time for him to get to stand on his own feet for a while." Translation: She's the one who left him, actually.
Mick calls her on it, "That's a bullshit answer and you know it." But that's about as far as he's willing to press. He is, after all, much further down the food chain than she is. He'll leave off, now that she's given him multiple indications that it's none of his business.
"It's none of my business," he lies rather politely. Even skillfully.
"Exactly. It isn't." And there is the Primogen voice. Direct, authoritative, and brooking no question. There's a reason she was asked to move up the food chain so quickly from one city to another despite her age. Along with a slight flare of power that swirls around her and goes away. And no, she's not going to rise to the bait on that one.
"You can tell my sire that I answered when you tried to get it out of me and didn't feel like sharing the details of my divorce. He's welcome to discuss it with me himself if he likes." She knows him well enough to determine that he'd be interested in that little report, which he either did get out of her and didn't tell you, or hadn't managed to extricate yet.
"So do you expect to be staying? Or should I tell Landry that your room is going to be available for other guests sometime during the week?"
Enter Mick the Bootlicking Lackey. Yes, ma'am. No, ma'am. Right away, ma'am. When he's not being a jerk, Mick is a very efficient, and effective sycophant. That's his other role. And he slips right into it, as she takes on the position of Primogen. Shoulders straight, eyes unthreatening and paying attention.
"Thank you, yes. The invitation is very kind. I would love to stay."
She nods, opening up the next box to see what it contains underneath. Leaving the previously opened box of books intact, deciding they might be easier to carry that way.
The quick response of obedience is, it seems, appreciated. Toning down the ramrod spine, Victoria nods, "Good, I hope you enjoy it. We're going to have a chandelier lighting event to open and then close out with a garden party, Landry is working on finding musicians. In between it's going to be more casual, I expect, though some of that will depend on who attends and how long they stay."
"Is there anything in particular you require from me?" Mick answers after she has presented the details of the party and the guests. He takes easily to the role of servant: it is the quality that his Sire found most flattering in its compliment to his other auspicious talents. If he could only have harnessed the presence he can give others for himself, he would have been a powerful force in his own right.
But that is not his fate. Not every player in this game can be a Queen or a King-- some cannot even be Knights or Rooks. No, some, like Michael Torrance, must be pawns.
Victoria turns back with a slightly raised eyebrow, maybe she's not quite used to that transformation yet. From badgerer to supplicant. "Ah, not that I know of, but I'll come up with something I'm sure. I haven't planned anything like this since New York, and then it was different."
Then she wasn't in charge, for one. And so she could actually see that things got done rather than having to delegate them off. Control anyone? But besides that, it's a new place. New people. And new home to show off. Along with a lack of servants so far.
"I'm going to see if William can lend me some of his people from Chinon." That'd be in France, one of those big old castles. "And we'll have a more concrete guest list soon to see what's what." She ponders again for a moment, "Have you gotten familiar at all with the yachtie schedule down at the docks?" It's not all that dissimilar from horse racing. Well, it is, but it involves gambling and racing expensive things. In this case, all the rich dilettantes from Northern France, Western Germany, and anywhere else who can swoop in to race very expensive boats around a small manmade island in the harbor.
"Some," Mick admits. Boat racing, while it has the appeal of gambling associated with it, lacks the sort of animalistic vitality of a horse race. One does not see a beautiful animal's leg break, for example, in a congenial little regatta.
"Was there something you were considering with them?"
"Mostly just to have the information for people during the week." It's an odd affair to have a country house open. And for her, that's what this is. Village just over the hill for distractions when one needs them, but otherwise quiet and peace. Surrounded by acres of land. For a girl from the East Coast by way of New York and then Portland, it's immense space.
"I'll have a practice green put together for people who want to get some golfing in. Ian likes golf." She considers, "If you think of anything else along those lines it would be appreciated." Entertaining the undead is a chore in itself.
She reaches up to tuck a lock of hair behind her ear, "I think that's all the boxes I'm up for tonight." The earlier one seems to have taken the joy out of the whole project of organizing things for her. "Thanks for the help."
Dismissal if ever there was one.
Posted by rowan at March 26, 2004 08:01 PM
