Gwenaëlle tilts her hand rather than outright speculate that she strongly suspects there's an element of it's a sex thing as far as goes Adenet's work and Chapentier's accolades. On paper, it's hard to imagine an elf perfectly at ease with the arrangement ... on the other hand, she had never wished for anyone to know that her poetry was her own, really, in all the years they didn't. And it isn't the same,

but they have something, the two of them. She can almost reach the edges of it. His knuckles against hers break her contemplation—

“The line between servants' gossip and Marquise Briala's elven spy network is porous,” she says, instead of anything about what love is in the Orlesian political landscape. “I think moreso now, not less.” Now that she was Marquise Briala and not just the Empress's rumoured finger-puppet. Gwenaëlle bends her knee to haul one foot up onto the end of the bed, taking a swig from the bottle and working, one handed, on removing a boot. (It's sensible. She will move more quietly in the hallways. Don't overthink it.)

Her skirts ride higher, carelessly; a blade flashes at her thigh.

“Alix was never a spy. And I'm not really,” judiciously, only she might know some spies, now, and that could be very useful. With the laces of her boot undone and loosened, “If I brace, can you give that a tug?”

(She is conscientious of what his hands can and cannot do. In fact, she specifically thinks about it a normal amount.)