After his encounter with Milo fucking Mallory-Hayes, and the texts that blew his phone nearly out of his hands mere moments after he had stormed out of the guest wing ( “m8 u wouldn’t believe what just fcking happened” ), one could certainly say that Hale’s night was rapidly declining, plummeting into a deeper abyss by the minute. He felt both mentally and physically peeved, and self righteousness followed on his heels: it was aggravation on a leash. A rare inclination to punch a wall was tremoring through him. He felt like the world was picking him apart by the seams, and at the centre of it all was that fucking American call-boy. My god. He’d take it up with Zephora Villiers herself if Milo so much as breathed in his direction again.
The worst part of the situation was that he’d left the bottle of champagne behind. Milo was probably going to pawn it now. Bloody fantastic.
Smooth steps harried, Hale descended the spiral staircase, his Oxfords clicking smartly against the alabaster, coat draped about his shoulders. He hadn’t grown up in this chateau, unlike Adelaide, he had always been the lesser familiarized cousin. But nonetheless, he knew it well; enough so to have several rooms and niches that hid his secrets - and certainly, he knew where the Beauregards kept their goods. Nothing as good as the Armand - the cellar was the true treasure trove - but enough to take the edge off. Though, to call his current state merely an edge was an understatement.
He enters the kitchen with the same hurricane-esque brusqueness that has characterized his path, and unexpectedly finds Xanthe already sitting at the bar, looking half-devastated but fully devastating in her evening gown. A bottle of wine rests on the black granite counter; it’s open.
“My god, do I. You read my mind, sweetheart.” He moves to join her, filling a goblet to the brim with a tactless twist of his wrist. He downs a large gulp, faster than he should: but what is tradition in these dire times? “And-” A long, pregnant pause. He’s still angry. “You wouldn’tbelieve what just fucking happened to me.” He takes a breath, the type of breath a child takes before he’s about to go on an hour-long rant.
“You do know that Milo fellow, don’t you? The one with the orange mop on his head? Of hair, I mean.”
Hale. Her loud, obnoxious and self-involved cousin was exactly what Xanthe needed in that moment. A bombastic distraction was what she hoped and prayed for, aside from much needed alone time; Hale clearly was blissfully unaware of the demise of her father, and she would fill him in. Eventually. Right now, however, she would drink with the arrogant cousin that she loved and bask in his tales of anger and woe.
“What happened to you, Hale?” she asked in mock concern, following his example and downing her glass. “Did a woman, God forbid, reject one of your advances?” She fit in her little witty remarks in the time it took for his quick intake of air; Xanthe wouldn’t be surprised if her words went unheard.
But, rather than dive right into his story, that he was clearly itching to tell, Hale asked a question. One that spiked her interest further. Milo. Xanthe knew Milo Mallory-Hayes better than Hale might have thought. He was a fun little toy; a man who was more sensitive than brutish. Xanthe loved to play with the Villiers’ pet.
Xanthe almost felt bad, playing her game with a true romantic. He was an easy target. A man she could call any time of night and he would come to running to her bed. “Oh, I do,” she replied to his question, a smile forming on her face that told the tales of kisses and heat. “Milo is a sweet boy, Hale. Tell me you haven’t ruined him.”
Xanthe sat back in her seat and crossed her legs, poised to listen to her cousin’s no doubt ungodly tale of how Milo somehow disrespected to great name of Rothschild. With her drink in hand, Hale would prove to be the best entertainment she could hope for.
