People sometimes ask what our roleplaying games look like, the ones we write books from. They look like this. (This scene is from a game set in the same background as Rachel Griffin, but in England in 1803, during the Regency era.)
Imagine you, the player, are the girl beholding this scene, and Bors Norgales, Lord Sidi is…well, he looks like this … he is a calm man of cool temperament, who is seldom ruffled, and he matters to you, very much:
As you start to cross the room on the conversation side, you can see Caledon, Devon, and Sidi speaking together on the far side of the room, near the buffet board. Caledon catches sight of you and points you out to the other two. They say something and nod, and Lord Sidi starts across the room toward you.
Before he gets very far, the younger of the two conniving Scottish girls happens to drop her fan right in his path. She must have practiced this quite a bit—and must be a true mistress of pratfalls—because it actually looks convincingly as if she just fumbled and dropped her fan.
Though you know otherwise.
Lord Sidi politely stops and picks up the fan. The girl leans down right as he is rising so that her not-particularly-ample-but-still-charming assets are right where a man's eyes would be as he is straightening up.
She straightens up rapidly. Her eyes get large. As she takes the fan back, she exclaims loudly, "Milord! One should not look at a lady that way. 'Tisn't done!"
She brings her hand right to the top of her decolletage as she declares this, thus drawing attention to just what kind of looking shouldn’t be done.
Bors Norgales blinks for a moment as if stunned. He opens his mouth to make some kind of cool set down*---and nothing comes out.
Because he can't talk.
The girl looks surprised and then blushes prettily. She, of course, has no idea why he's not talking. [He lost the use of his voice for a week by using a dangerous cantrip to save the life of the Duke of Devon. ]
She says, "Speechless? Am I as lovely as all that?"
She turns and runs, amidst pretty tinkles of laughter, back to her sisters.
Lord Sidi stands there, the whole room staring at him, his brow dark with fury, his color high, looking as annoyed as you have ever seen him. To anyone who doesn't know—which is most people outside your group—it looks as if he was bowled over and undone by the charms of a debutant and could not think of anything to say.
Then he breathes out and shakes his head and keeps walking.
Only you, and anyone else who was looking closely, know what really happened. He wasn't stunned by her beauty...he was confused by her words—because he had no idea what she was talking about … because, despite her leaning over at just the right moment, he hadn't so much as glanced in her direction—because he was looking sideways, at you.
*—So in the first version of this scene, he gave her a cool but cutting set down...and then I remembered that he couldn't talk, due to having just used the voice-shattering Word of Destruction. Poor Bors. This turned out much worse for him than it was meant to be.
If you cannot see the pictures, try here:
https://www.ljagilamplighter.com/some-pictures/
This sounds fun, but the Pinterest links don’t work for me...anyone else have that problem?