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Your breath falters and catches at the question, and entwined as close and as tight as you are, you have to imagine that the Taker noticed it. Well ahead of the little island of illumination coming off of the 'stick in Sulphreme's hand, down what might be a hall, you can see a door, with faint light and fainter sound seeping out from around it. If you can time your explanation so you end it more or less satisfactorily by the time you arrive at the door, he shouldn't have the opening to put any questions to you - which means you will have markedly fewer opportunities to put your foot in your mouth. You do what you can to keep yourself slack, lest he sluice out the truth from your body. You let the question hang for as long as you dare, then you break the silence by allowing yourself a tired-sounding sigh as you throw yourself bodily - figuratively bodily - into the breach once more.
"Yes, I am. I do know that is ... that is to say I shouldn't, but ..."
Hanging that in the air, you turn your head away from the Taker, feigning embarrassment. From the corner of your eye, you watch as the door draws nearer and nearer. You let the moment draw on for another few steps, then you face front once more.
"My father, and both of our menservants besides, have taken ill - the crossing was not kind to any of them. With the three of them laid up, it fell to me to conduct business on his behalf while he recovers."
"No, truly?"
"Yes, truly. It has fallen to me, as we are without family or friends in the Mount.”
You cannot help the twinge of pride in yourself at just how clever you can be when you are on the anvil like this – deliberately saying 'in the Mount' as opposed to 'on the Mount' as someone who has lived here for half her life might. Though that pride sours and becomes heavy as lead in your breast once you come to your senses over it; how far gone does one have to be to be <span class="mu-i">proud</span> of how well they can lie and deceive?
“But be that as it may, surely you could have availed yourself of <span class="mu-i">someone</span>, a solicitor or someone of that sort?”
A fair point.
“A fair point. But … ”
You hang this half-finished thought in the air while you let the 'keeper wind down – and to tell it true, here you need the time. The play is obvious on the whole – you are your fathers heir, you wanted to prove yourself to him, lest he worry about you. But the specifics of it … how can you make it believable and sympathetic?
“Yes?”
Shit! Easy, just … contrite. Yes! Framed as a mistake.
“It … it so happens that I am my father's heir. I had thought – it seemed to me that this was a perfect opportunity to prove myself to him, that I could do this, only my own. Only … once it started to wear on, and things got harder and more complicated did it occur to me that if I truly wanted to prove myself I would have - ”
