milliways_bar | (no subject)

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[OOM: Practice talking to girls]

Trapped. That's what Harry's been these many weeks past, and of his own doing too -- that's not to be denied. The more he must smile and bow and expend his manners, the more he wishes for a horse and a sword and a Scottish border raid. When a door in Philippa de Coucy's house opens into Milliways instead of yet another solar full of nursemaids and noble daughters, to say his relief is palpable is only to concede to the limits of language.

So, though his hair is combed and he's trussed up in his finest visiting suit, it's a pretty good time to meet young Harry Percy. He's making a beeline for the Bar, intent on trying some new food or drink that's beyond the scope of his era. Go on. Ask him how his quest for a wife is going.

11 PM CST Oh no, guys! You're wonderful; I have to go to sleep. Will tag up tomorrow!

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"My home is Northumberland, and it is 1387. We've little else to do but keep Scotland from troubling England."

Well, and occasionally go into Scotland to trouble the Scots, depending on how bored/motivated everyone is that month.

"Is Charlie your father?" He snorts. "I cannot think what it must be like to live among mild folk."

She has never heard of Northumberland, but she can guess whereabouts it'd be, and she can parse the year easily enough.

"Thirteen eighty-seven," she breathes, eyebrows up in surprise. "Wow. That's... that's a long time before I show up. I'm in late 2003, myself. Charlie's my stepfather - he owns and runs the coffeehouse where I work as Head Baker."

"He's... calming to be around. Very grounded. Doesn't get upset easily. If you want upset easily, you talk to my mom," she says, wryly. "Which is why I don't, very often. If my mother's ire is the lightning, I'm the tallest tree on the plain."

Is he ever going to not get a kick out of people's reactions when they learn the year on his side of the door? Apparently not.

Harry laughs a little. "My father, why -- I know just how I will look when I am old. He is more canny and thoughtful, though. He and my mother are just alike. Whence my hot humors came, I cannot say, but we are all good roarers when we are roused."

"I know where I get mine," she grins, wryly. "Plenty of stubbornness and pride and temper from both sides. I don't remember much of my father, but I do remember the fights between him and mom."

"If I am too like a man, we will cross each other," Harry agrees. "Though, if I am honest, I am as like to cross anyone, man or woman, as I am to look at them. My nature is none so easy."

"You seem to be doing all right, to me," Rae replies, tearing off another bit of cinnamon roll and devouring it with gusto.

Yum.

"I'm one of the lucky few, I suppose."

We few, we happy few? Oh wait.

He shrugs, a glint in his eye. "I am young yet. I may grow out of it."

Sunshine glances at him speculatively, tilting her head.

"How old are you?"

"Eighteen in May, though I am a trifle loathe to tell you -- for most folk I meet here, that marks me as a child still."

He is, but he's also really, really not.

He certainly doesn't seem like any teen she's talked to before. Perhaps that explains the surprise on her face.

"You're... only as old as the elder of my two half-brothers. I had thought you at least three or four years older than that."

Not to say that he acts all grown up, but that he doesn't behave in ways the teens she knows do.

To be fair, he's been enjoying that cinnamon roll very vocally. And sloppily.

He's all business now, though, if casually and with a shrug. "My father is Earl of the northern marches. I have been on campaigns since I was 14."

He could show you some great scars if he was that kind of man.

Grizzled vets, cops, and grumpy old men also enjoy cinnamon rolls made by Sunshine very sloppily. Some have been known to lick their plates afterward.

Harry's in good company.

"Wow. Fourteen? I'm still just trying to get Kenny through school without him doing something fatally stupid - and trying to get him to change his mind about becoming a lawyer. My younger brother's thirteen, Billy, and he's... gods, he's still just a little kid."

Rae and Hotspur could compare scars.

"And how old are you?" Harry leans on his elbows. "I cannot fathom how young we are kept in other worlds. Forsooth, I am not the same man I was at thirteen, but at thirteen I was already capable."

"Twenty-six," she says with a slight smirk. "I've been the Head Baker at my step-father's coffeehouse for the past eight years, since I graduated high school."

By the skin of her teeth.

"By God!" He grins and nods at her left hand. "And not yet married off? I should cry thanks for a year to wait so long!"

Sunshine laughs. "Not married, though not for lack of impassioned lecturing by my mother."

"What, have you been getting an earful already from your parents?"

He picks ruefully at his distressingly fancy shirt. "All of England is my marketplace. Even now I've come from a visit upon Lady Beatrice Harcourt, who cannot abide dogs and thinks the world holds no greater joy than planning the names of her children."

Rae's face shows her thoughts on that.

Eeeeeeeek.

"You have my sincerest sympathies."

"Maybe there will be another war..." A guy can always hope!

"Maybe," she says, with a slight smile. "Or you might find someone you wouldn't mind marrying."

"In any case, you can't fight Scots here."

While Rae knows that Urquhart can take care of himself, Hotspur would likely find himself on the business end of a serving tray upside the head if he tried anything rash (Our Hotspur? Rash? Say it ain't so!).

His expression conveys volumes about how likely he considers that possibility.

"Nay, I have been schooled. I have no particular murderous intent towards Scotland. 'Tis only that they are who is most often there. What is a Percy without a Scot to try him?"

He's... not actually contradicting himself? It just sounds that way!

"You fight them because they're there to be fought?" she grins. Rae knows some people like that.

He smirks. "In so many words. And because they are a proxy for France, and so as an Englishman I must fight them by default."

"And why go to France to fight when there are Scots within spitting distance?"

It's... well, it's an argument she can understand, even if she has nothing against either the French, the Scottish, or the English.

"I would go to France. 'Tis not a matter of distance. Yet someone must keep the border. If we do not, it shall not be the Nevilles, or York, or any of the other families."

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sunbaked_baker - 2012-11-30 23:40 (UTC) - Expand

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