Marian in Ambergeldar

[kitchen_maid]

Amy ran into Marian when she took Mal -- er, Captain Sir Malcolm Reynolds -- back to Milliways after his visit.

And, after hearing about the goings on there, had invited Marian back for a short visit to Ambergeldar. (She would have invited Marian for an extended visit, especially as Marian cannot get back to her own world, but Marian has security duties, and Amy respects that. Still, even security members need breaks.)

After what happened with Mal, Amy gives Marian a letter of introduction, just in case she winds up in Loddingtop or some such place. And she takes the very simple and practical precaution of holding carefully and tightly to Marian's hand as they step out of the bar and into Amy's wardrobe.

"It's not, I fear, the most exciting first view of the kingdom. Do mind the shoes."

It's not the most convenient thing, having a doorway in your wardrobe. Things will get in the way of coming and going.

Once they're safely into Amy's dressing room, she lets go of Marian's hand. "Welcome to Ambergeldar."

Comments

[kitchen_maid]

The Minister for Foreign Affairs (for that is who the man in the green clothes is) turns and heads the other way down the hall, and Amy sighs.

"I'm sorry," she says to Marian. "But as far as I know, he hasn't anything he needs to say to me, but if he sees me, he'll feel it's his duty to think of something, and then we shall be stuck here till dinner time.

"Hello, Sir Geoffrey," she adds, to the guard.

"Your Majesty," says the guard, with a bow.

"Is the King in?"

"Yes, ma'am."

"Thank you," Amy says, beckoning for Marian to follow her. She pauses in the door to look over at Sir Geoffrey again. "You're very kind to wait until I've gone in before you start laughing."

[queenofmay]

For a moment, here and gone, or maybe it will return to linger later, Marian wonders at Amy's talking to the guard. Even though they are 'of an age,' she wonders what she will never rightly know, if her mother had been like this with people in Nottingham Castle before she was born.



But Marian had to press her lips together, at Amy's last comment to the guard. And she simply inclined her, flashing him a bright smile, before she followed the queen into the room.

[kitchen_maid]

And the Sir Geoffrey's quiet laughter will follow Marian into the room.

"Hello, Alfred," Amy says, to the man who was sitting at the desk there, but who stands when the Queen comes into the room. "Don't let us interrupt you; we're just stealing a moment of His Majesty's time."

Alfred bows. "Of course. Though I am afraid it will have to be a short moment, ma'am."

Amy nods. "Five minutes. You may throw us out after that.

"And he'll do it, too," she tells Marian, quietly, as they move through Alfred's office and into Perry's study. "He's been Perry's secretary since Perry was ten, and he's fiercely protective."

Amy pushes the door open and calls out, "Hello, Algernon."

Well, there are people listening.

[queenofmay]

Marian stayed close, taking note of the names as she went by, each time, in case. By rote and habit. You never knew when you might need someone. Duty, and the rigors and rules to the roles of it.

Even if she likely isn't required it, Marian stood straighter, walked smoother, hands folding behind her, as she was following Amy in. Somewhere between the name and the fact, regardless of everything else said before this moment, she was still meeting a King.

[kitchen_maid]

"Hello, Amethyst," Perry returns, standing, with a glance at the woman he doesn't know.

The King of Ambergeldar is a tall man with rather tousled hair and an ever so slightly rumpled doublet.

His study is rather more imposing than his wife's, done in deep reds and golds, but still clearly a workspace, rather than a room for show. Most of the walls are lined with books, but hanging on the wall opposite the desk is a massive painting showing Amy (not Amethyst) with Merry and Susan, painted just after Merry's second birthday.

"Perry," says Amy, now that the door has swung closed behind Marian, "may I introduce Lady Marian of Nottingham, who is visiting from Milliways. Marian, this is my husband, Perry."

[queenofmay]

There are the intersecting lines aren't there. Amethyst and Algernon, Amy and Perry, paintings and people. And it takes a moment to consider really. The things she would at home were she ever brought in to the presence of King Richard, subjected presence of Prince John.

The second of which was far more likely than she liked considering given the Black Knights. And between the two, thoughts, she settles for a step between what she would there, and wouldn't with Amy.

"Your Majesty," Marian said, with the same half move she had made early. Not a full curtsey, based on Amy's choice named as to how she introduced him. But the words came as a respectful acknowledgement of, what she wagered would be the one and only time it would happen.

[kitchen_maid]

"Perry," he corrects. "With friends of Amy's, it's 'Perry.'

"It's very nice to meet you, Marian."

[queenofmay]

"And you, as well, Perry," Marian repeated it, with a more true smile. "You have a very lovely home, for what I have seen of it thus far."

[kitchen_maid]

"Thank you," Perry says. "We're very fond of it."

Well, most of it.

No one could be fond of the Crimson State Room.

"Are you having lunch in the gardens?" Perry asks.

Amy nods. "Of course."

Perry sighs. "I'd join you if I could."

"I know," Amy says. "How was it this morning?"

Perry waves a hand at the pile of papers on his desk. "I don't know why he bothers to give me copies of the reports. He then proceeds to tell me every single thing that's in them. In detail."

"Because," Amy says, with a smile at Marian, "he thinks it's his job to think of things to say."

[queenofmay]

It may have been impossible not to smile at least in some small part, thinking of Amy suddenly pressing them to the wall in avoidance. So as to avoid a few minutes with the man who would come up with things to say, though just as sobering was that thought of how long he'd potentially been in reporting, too.

It was a sizable stack of paper there.

[kitchen_maid]

Well, there really is no such thing as "a few minutes" with the Minister for Foreign Affairs.

There's a faint knock at the door, and Alfred sticks his head into the room.

"Begging Their Majesties' pardons, but His Majesty's lunch . . . "

"Yes, thank you, Alfred, I'll be along directly," Perry says.

"Very good, sir," Alfred says, and steps back into his office, not quite closing the door behind him.

"Do give my regards to the Prime Minister, Perry," Amy says, Cheerfully, and her husband gives her a bit of a Look.

"I'll see you at dinner, Amethyst," he says, leaning forward to kiss his wife's cheek. "Marian, I hope you will enjoy your visit."

[queenofmay]

"Thank you, I'm sure I will." They are, the both of them, darling. If Marian doesn't laugh, she can't help from smiling. They steal seconds between the lines, serious and teasing, and never less than adoring of each other, even as they do what they must and what they've chosen.

"I hope the rest of your day is as little taxing as can be."

[kitchen_maid]

"Thank you, Marian. I say, perhaps I should have you speak to my councillors."

"Your Majesty," says Alfred, who has reappeared in the door, "The Prime Minister is waiting."

"Yes, yes, coming," Perry says. He make a more or less futile attempt to tidy his hair. "Sorry to leave you to show yourselves out," he tells Amy and Marian, and follows Alfred off to lunch with the Prime Minister.

Amy watches him go, and then turns back to Marian.

"And that's my Perry."

[queenofmay]

Marian watched him go, looking back to Amy at his words. She gave the woman a fond smile. "I can see the appeal."

Beat. Faintly mischievous. "And the silliness, right at the edges." Marian would not actually fear a set of Councillors, if it came to it.

[kitchen_maid]

"Most people miss the silliness at the edges."

But then, most people don't get to see the King tease his wife.

"Right, ready to meet my tiny royal whirlwinds? Or re-meet, as the case may be?"

[queenofmay]

Marian smiled, and nodded, turning back toward the door, without much more looking at the room that surrounded them. This formal standing with it's softer, subtleties. "I would be unsurprised that they do miss it, but then most people are probably looking for Algernon in him."

Which if she was being honest, she looked for both. But then she grew up knowing the difference in her father face and tone and vocabulary between The Good Sheriff and Her Father. "My Father was surrounded by people very much like that when I was young."

[kitchen_maid]

"People with silliness around the edges, or people who only looked for the position and not the person?" Amy asks, as they head back out into the hallway (where Sir Geoffrey is gone, as it's his day to follow the King).

[queenofmay]

"The latter," Marian clarified. "They spent their days looking for," Marian made a gracious sweep with her arm, palm up at the end, something slightly amused even at the edges of the seriously enacted gesture. "My Lord Sheriff."

Beat. "Though he was never was never My Lord, or even Sir Edward to me."
There's an unrepentantly fond, almost child-like, affection to those words.

Even if the thought is edged in an ache of sadness. It does not do to dwell, while she is powerless to the situation in being Bound, but her Father did not belong in a cell. Not for an hour even.

[kitchen_maid]

"Those people generally see what they're looking for, regardless of what they're presented with."

Unless, of course, what they are presented with is a princess with freckles and grey-brown eyes. But then, while those people don't see what they're looking for, they also fail to see what they've actually been presented with.

They're now practically back to her study. This is a change Amy and Perry made just after Susan was born -- they saw no reason the Royal Nurseries should be so far from their rooms. It makes it ever so much easier to spend time with the children when they're just down the hallway.

Amy opens the door ahead of them, and steps into the room. It's dim -- the curtains are drawn -- and there are two large cribs in the middle of it. The nursemaid sitting by the door hops to her feet as the Queen comes into the room.

"Asleep?" Amy asks, just barely at a whisper, and the nursemaid nods.

Amy smiles, and beckons for Marian to follow her over to the space at the foot of the cribs.

Completely oblivious to the arrival of their Royal Mama, the Princes Caspian and Laurence are fast asleep, thumbs in mouthes. They're not quite a year old, with fair hair (though not their older sister's golden hair).

"Caspian," Amy says, very quietly, to Marian, pointing to the twin on the left, "and Laurence."

[queenofmay]

Marian's steps became more silent, closer to as soundless as they could become with the smoothed, yet still there, rustle of skirts beyond them. Hands resting on the end of one, looking from one to the other, Marian smiled in spite of herself.

Tiny, and so peaceful looking. "They are beautiful, Amy," Marian whispered, back.

[kitchen_maid]

"Aren't they?" Amy says. "And they have Perry's eyes."

Amy touches her fingers to her lips and then very gently to her sons' foreheads.

She gestures to the door with a tilt of her head, mouths a thank you to the nursemaid, and steps back out into the hallway.

"This next room will likely not be so quiet."

[queenofmay]

Marian settled her shoulders, perhaps, like she was about to be made to stand on a scaffold again. Hands folding in front of her. As though readied for something arduous. Even as her blue-grey eyes sparkled with amusement.

"I am prepared." If her voice did not betray her amusement entirely.

[kitchen_maid]

"Or so you think," Amy says, Cheerfully.

"Hello, dears," she says, stepping into what would be, in a home other than a castle, probably called the Playroom.

"Mama!"

"Mama!"

This is followed by a great deal of running.

A second later, Amy (paying no mind at all to her dress) is down in the floor, and has half-disappeared under hugs from her two older children.

[queenofmay]

The squeals of joy, and the happiness that radiates from all three of them. Marian stayed back, leaving them to their first moments.

[kitchen_maid]

"Have you been good today?" Amy asks, and there's a great deal of nodding (emphatically, in Susan's case, and solemnly, in Merry's).

"Marta, have they?" Amy asks, of the woman who has followed the children over to the Queen.

"As good as you were, at their age, Princess Amy," says Marta. (Who knew Amy at that age, and who has not bothered to adjust her form of address).

Which would make them good, but not that good.

Which Amy thinks is about right.

"Then," Amy says, drawing the word out, "I think we shall have picnic. And I want you both to meet my friend, Marian, who is going to come with us."

Two small heads turn from their mother to the New Person.

"Hello," Susan says. "I am Susan Marguerite Ingress Calpurnia Rosemary Katharine Anne. And this is Merry."

"You can just call her 'Susan,'" Merry says. "Everyone does."