Beauty is Deceiving 2 – or What is Up With That Celiaria Chick Anyway?

Posted by Scourge on November 2, 2009

Captain Harlon kept an eye out for Celiaria over the next couple of weeks. From the beginning, she seemed to do everything a highborn lady who ran away would be expected to do: she set up in an exclusive boarding house, introduced herself to all the other ladies of quality in the city, had a tea party by the frog pond behind the boarding house and bossed her servants around something awful.

It made Harlon suspicious.

“Someone who just ran away,” he mused quietly to himsefl over his porridge one morning, “should not be as pleasantly sociable as Lady De Prisk.” He swiped a glob off his chin and wiped it on the tablecloth. “She should be… in hiding or something.”

He turned to the magpie that the missus kept in a gilt cage near the window. “Shouldn’t she be nervous someone will come looking for her?”

The magpie cast a disdainful eye at Harlon before turning back to look out the window again.

The missus came gliding into the room, twittered at the magpie and then slid over the rub Harlon’s chin with a damp cloth. “How you will make a mess, Harl!”

“Dirty pig,” the magpie agreed, shooting a splat of guana at the cage floor.

Harlon sighed and pushed back his bowl. “What do you think about this De Prisk business, dear?” he asked, squinting up at his wife.

She flapped the towel and rolled her eyes. “I think you’re too old and too married to be thinking much about it, dear.” Her tone had ice at the edges.

He waved her cattiness away. “No… no… I mean, don’t you think she should be laying low? Being as she’s on the lam and all?”

“On the lam? Oh Harlon, a young lady can travel these days, you know. Really!” Chuckling, she swished back out of the room with another twitter at the bird.

Harlon stood and pushed in his chair. His wife might think the girl was simply visiting Barend – for what reason he couldn’t imagine – but he knew different. Something stunk about it. He carried his empty porrige bowl to the sink dutifully and sloshed some soapy water over it.

“Thatta boy,” the magpie screeched and then went back to watching the street.

In two minutes, Captain Harlon was striding purposefully up the cobbled street, two things running over and over each other in his mind.