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The urge to slide his fingers around that invasive hand and clamp painfully down on it rose like bile, but Cygnus suppressed it, his shoulder held still until Gaultier moved on. Only when he was certain that Gaultier was no longer looking at him did he allow his hand to curl into a white-knuckled fist -- and then he shook his arm out, releasing the tension, and placed it around Druella's waist, barely succeeding in preventing himself from gripping her tightly as the sound of laughter reached his ears.

At some point, he'd snagged himself a flute of some clear, bubbling beverage, which he now lifted to his lips, tipping the liquid and swallowing it as would a man parched as he stared across the room at a point just above Gaultier's head. A light pressure on his elbow broke his blank concentration, and he turned to find Druella looking at him in what seemed to be concern. "Long day," was the explanation, and without another word, placed the now empty glass on a passing tray.

He then excused himself from his wife and crossed the room, where he spent several minutes talking to a cousin from his mother's side of the family, all the while casting surreptitious glances at the man he so dearly wished to throttle. Such was his distraction that he did not quite manage to catch his relative's question; with a small start, he dragged his attention back to him, what little color there was in his complexion draining away in sudden rage when the man repeated the words: "Well, is it true?"

"You'll take the words of a drunk Frenchman over mine?"

His voice was an uncharacteristic sneer, and Cygnus did not give the man time to reply -- he stepped away from him, expression hardening into something entirely closed and unreadable as his strides consumed the ground that stretched between him and Gaultier. Quietly, as the hand that had trembled earlier with a desire to inflict violence closed around the other's arm, he said, "A word, if I may?" and drew him away from the group.