Solae had frozen when Rene rose from his seat and joined her in the kitchen. It was this sort of stunned reaction she had around the other sex that Lord Armon had exploited more than a few times to push through her poorly construed social barrier. Of course her feeble walls had not truly existed around Rene due to the debilitating trauma of watching her co-workers die, falling on a corpse, running from armed forces, and narrowly escaping execution or worse from three soldiers. As he brushed aside her hair she rationally knew that Rene was likely trying to evaluate her wound but her heart still fluttered regardless. Rene had more than one opportunity to make a romantic overture if that was his intention, and moving her hair the way he did was not a gesture that any of the courting gentlemen she encountered had used. Cursing in a foreign language at herself she waited to see his prognosis. The Imperial Marines had more medical training in a month than she'd had in a lifetime.

"Oh you don't have to..," she began but he was already spraying the irritated and inflamed skin. Solae had been blessed with a slightly higher than normal pain tolerance but she felt the promised sting. She closed her eyes both to protect them from any errant drops and so that she wasn't staring at Rene's chest [i]again[/i]; their proximity, height difference, and the slight bow of her head so he could work more easily had put the opening of his shirt directly in front of her gaze.

Most assumed soldiers, no matter their division or allegiance, were men with brawn and little wit or intelligence. Solae suspected Rene bucked this stereotype. The soft click and whir of the device as it tugged at numbed flesh and knitted it together was unsettling. That he had waited to pose his question until she could use a distraction to be a good patient spoke more to clever planning than coincidence.

"I find language fascinating, but I wouldn't say I am striving for one particular thing," she said after some thought. It almost certainly wasn't the answer he was looking for and it didn't feel fair to Rene to let that been the totality of her response. "That's what I do, or rather did, at the Imperial Embassy. I translate documents we receive and also what we send to other planets in the sector. Not everyone's quite as fluent as with the common tongue of the Empire as it mandates we are."

"When I was really small, before I started my formal education, I know my nanny used to encourage me and tell me that old adage of 'you can be whatever you want to be.' I don't believe she meant to lie. As far as she knew I was rich, I was going to be a Marquise, and I'd never want for anything. Mother waited until I was a little older until she shut those proverbial doors for me. I couldn't be a mother who stayed home and raised her children, like the nanny raised me, because noble women were above such things. I wouldn't marry on the whims of my heart like other people did because I had my reputation to consider. Growing a garden, fixing some of our malfunctioning machines or computers, studying to be a nurse instead of a doctor, building a masonry wall near the stables, riding a horse bareback... well, you get the gist. There are more things a lady ought [i]not[/i] to dream of and seek to do than things she [i]should[/i]. Yearning for what you can't have only causes heartache."

Solae wasn't seeking his pity, just his understanding. She was not being willful or malicious in her failure to produce a wonderful goal for her life. Like so many others she was coasting through life, trying to ascertain what opportunities she could seize before they passed her by, and hoping she was not trampled by the merciless passage of time as she did so. As a woman in her twenties she could have rebelled against her parents but she would have risked severe punishment. Only someone of higher position than a Marquise, such as a Duke or the Empress, could or would have intervened on her behalf if her parents retaliated against her. Now that they were both dead she had freedom if she could survive the rebellion. What she would do with it she did not know.

"Lady Solae," Mia started, "a thunderstorm is approaching. The front door is in a state of disrepair and I am unable to mitigate the sound of thunder as you have requested prior. I recommend utilizing an upstairs room as I show all of their doors are operable and the insulation to prevent sound pollution remains intact."