[How often have their conversations here echoes those they may have had previously? Here, they are acquaintances at best, closer to strangers than friends if only because of how he insists on conducting himself, and yet there is so often an echo of familiarity that underscores their meetings. Now, he supposes, he understands that there's a good reason why, even if the details are still lacking.
He shakes his head at the suggestion of theft, however, refuting it without hesitation.]
However it may have come into my possession, I most certainly did not steal it.
[He sounds almost insulted by the insinuation, and yet what is he to expect? She hardly knows him well enough to know that he doesn't steal just for the sake of it.]
It's hardly my usual fare— I much prefer items that might otherwise be lost to time or forgotten in some noble's vault where none can appreciate it. This— I would have had no reason to do so.
[And when he looks at it... he knows that he didn't. He can feel that much. It was significant to him because it was hers, he thinks, and that thought in itself is terrifying.]
no subject
[How often have their conversations here echoes those they may have had previously? Here, they are acquaintances at best, closer to strangers than friends if only because of how he insists on conducting himself, and yet there is so often an echo of familiarity that underscores their meetings. Now, he supposes, he understands that there's a good reason why, even if the details are still lacking.
He shakes his head at the suggestion of theft, however, refuting it without hesitation.]
However it may have come into my possession, I most certainly did not steal it.
[He sounds almost insulted by the insinuation, and yet what is he to expect? She hardly knows him well enough to know that he doesn't steal just for the sake of it.]
It's hardly my usual fare— I much prefer items that might otherwise be lost to time or forgotten in some noble's vault where none can appreciate it. This— I would have had no reason to do so.
[And when he looks at it... he knows that he didn't. He can feel that much. It was significant to him because it was hers, he thinks, and that thought in itself is terrifying.]