A/N: I've had this idea floating around for some time to write a Pygmalion story using F!Hawke. I couldn't figure out who would play the role of Professor Higgins until I read zevgirl's wonderful "Release from the Chains" and realized Seneschal Bran would be the perfect professor. Thank you for providing the inspiration, zevgirl!

Thank you, Lisa. You are far more gracious about beta-ing yet another story than I have any right to expect.

With apologies to George Bernard Shaw.

Saving Grace

Prologue

"He is a supercilious, condescending, arrogant, pompous…stop me if you need to be somewhere…patronizing, pretentious…" Grace began in a low growl, ticking off each point with a furious flick of fingers.

"Hawke, that's enough," Aveline said firmly, skin mottled by an unattractive flush. Gingers never blushed attractively, Hawke observed with just a smidgeon of smugness, which died away when she realized the reason for Aveline's blush.

"He's behind me, isn't he?" Grace Hawke whispered, resignation and embarrassment warring for prominence. Embarrassment was the undisputed winner.

"He is," the man in question said coldly. There was no mistaking the disdain in his voice. Or the frost. Hawke shivered, refusing to turn and acknowledge the man until she was forced to.

"I must say, I am in awe of your vocabulary, Serah Hawke," the man added, his tones indicating otherwise. "Quite impressive for a Fereldan refugee of dubious social standing."

"I wasn't talking about you," she retorted, deciding to brazen her way through the situation. The heat in her cheeks told a different story. "I was talking about some other self-important sycophant."

And where did he get off calling her a Fereldan refugee of dubious social standing? Not that she wasn't, but he didn't have any right to say so. Or, maybe he did, given what she'd said about him, but it didn't stop her turning in her chair so he could see the fierce glare she directed at him. He was singularly unimpressed so she leapt from her chair to stand in her most menacing battle-stance, which, considering her stature, was probably laughable.

He was nearly as tall as Carver and that made her even angrier because she didn't actually want to think about her dead brother. Her eyes narrowed and she wished for a minute that she had Bethany's ability to shoot lightning at fools. She knew just where she'd place it. "I was, most definitely, not talking about you," she reiterated with little conviction. What did she care if he knew what she thought of him?

"Far be it from me to impugn your reputation by insinuating you are a woman of mendacious habits, serah," Seneschal Bran began, coming into the room with a stiff gait, his shoulders, surprisingly broad for a bureaucrat, rigid with offended outrage held at bay with icy control.

"Good, because I'd have to challenge you to a duel if you impugned anything of mine," she replied and reached for her cloak. With a snap of her wrist, she settled it around her shoulders and gave Aveline a grin, pretending that she wasn't embarrassed and furious in equal measure.

"I'll see you later, Guard-Captain Aveline," she said as she started to leave.

The pompous prig who'd been the object of her diatribe stood in front of the door, arms folded tightly across his chest, nose in the air. Really, he needed to be skewered and put over a fire to roast slowly. And painfully.

"You are the most irri-" she began in a carefully modulated, if somewhat snide, voice. She pinched the bridge of her nose, trying to regain any semblance of grace, even though her theatrical departure was ruined. She tried again, delighted that the snide tone was intent on remaining firmly in place.

"Seneschal Bran, I'm sure it's escaped your notice, but I can't get through the door with you standing in the way."

An unusual and nervous titter from Aveline was quickly swallowed by a snort, which made Grace's all-too-ready smile come springing forth. She wondered, briefly, as she stood with a hand on her hip and her toe tapping, how he would look with his carefully arranged hair all mussed up and the stick out of his arse. That immediately made her want to scrub her brain with a bottle of whiskey for having any thoughts about his arse or any other part of his anatomy. He was old enough to be her…well not father, and certainly not her uncle. Whiskey. Copious amounts. She'd bloody well run to the Hanged Man.

"What charming manners," he said with a pitying smile, stepping to one side. Spiteful old bastard, she thought, reaching out and pinching his arse on her way by.

His indrawn breath of outrage was music to her ears as she made her way out of the keep. That the arse had been surprisingly firm only made her decide more than one bottle of whiskey might be necessary to scrub that additional information from a brain already in crisis.

~~~oOo~~~

The next time she saw the high-and-mighty seneschal was two weeks later in the Blooming Rose. She'd made an appointment with someone named Serendipity on Isabela's recommendation. They had just returned from a week of sleeping on hard-packed sand out on the Wounded Coast and her neck and shoulders were as knotted as a pine panel. Isabela assured her that no one's hands were as skilled as Serendipity's, not even her own.

She entered the brothel late in the evening, a few minutes before her appointment, studiously ignoring her uncle, who sat in his customary place, elbows propping up his head. Madame Lusine was busy with a patron who wore the familiar sneering condescension of the seneschal. He seemed to be in lengthy negotiations with the madame. In a fit of impatience, Grace cleared her throat and politely interrupted, using her not inconsiderable charm.

"Only you would haggle over the price of a prostitute," she said, rolling her eyes for effect, with all the grace of an invidious adolescent.

That's when she discovered that it wasn't just gingers who blushed badly. She should have known it was redheads in general. She snickered as Seneschal Bran's skin broke out in splotchy blobs of red that moved slowly and steadily up his neck to roost in his cheeks. He looked down his straight, aristocratic nose at her, unconcerned by the alarming bloom of unhealthy color in his cheeks. His auburn brow rose and she was tempted to push it back down with the point of her dagger.

"I expect no less from the niece of Kirkwall's finest citizen," he replied with that haughty disdain that made her want to box his ears. They both glanced over at her uncle, still propped up at the bar, nursing a drink.

"And yet, I don't see him caviling like a fishwife over the price of pike," she sneered.

"As I am not bartering for a night with you, Serah Hawke, I believe our discourse is at an end," Bran finally replied, as cold as a frost-bound night. His golden brown eyes narrowed and his jaw twitched, but he maintained his self-important pose as he continued to look down at her from on high, and she wondered, briefly, what his nose would look like with a bump right in the middle of it because she wanted very much to break it.

"Serah Hawke, Serendipity is expecting you," Madame Lusine said, with a majestic inclination of her head, which was only inclined so graciously because Grace had paid in advance. Without quibbling. She barely restrained herself from sticking her tongue out at the arrogant arse of a seneschal as she swept past him; chin inclined at what she hoped was a regal angle and not a pugilistic point. Fussy old man.

~~~oOo~~~

The third time she saw Seneschal Bran was five days later when she was asked to look for the viscount's son. Not by the seneschal, of course; he would as lief eat a hare's balls than ask anything of her, she was sure. But she marched up to him and demanded to know why the viscount, if he wanted to keep his son's disappearance a secret, had hired the loudest and most vulgar group of mercenaries in Kirkwall to do the deed.

"Yes, it is difficult to believe anyone could possibly be louder or more vulgar than you, Serah Hawke," the seneschal said disdainfully.

"Why, you self-important, jumped-up, smug little man, I can bring Saemus's arse back here before those idiots find their way out of the city."

"How very surprising of you to overstate your abilities in so brash and uncouth a manner," he replied with a cutting little smile that begged to be removed. Her fist volunteered for the honor, but Fenris, apparently sensing where it wanted to go, put a restraining hand on her arm.

"Varric, Fenris, Anders, you're with me," she growled and swept out of the keep with enough energy to create a small windstorm in her wake. She was only sorry that the keep door couldn't be slammed. Damned guards anyway.

Two days later, having walked her poor companions and Saemus into the ground, she stormed the viscount's keep. Her leather armor was filthy, crusted over with blood and other bits of things she didn't want to analyze. Her hair, normally said to be her finest feature, was a dark brown mass of tangles, straggling down her back like wet swamp grass. There was a gash over her right eye, which was swelling shut, and her lip was three times its normal size because she'd been smacked in the face with the hilt of a sword by that calumniator of a mercenary, whose name she couldn't, or wouldn't, remember.

She marched straight into Bran Drummond's office without so much as a by-your-leave and pointed at Saemus, who was looking on with a bemused and befuddled expression on his face. Her smile was so large it threatened to split her already split lip, but she didn't care.

"I believe, Seneschal Bran, that the reward for the safe return of Saemus Dumar is ten sovereigns."

"Yes, and by the time I take out the cleaning fees for the carpets, the reward will be considerably less," he replied coolly, surveying the carpet with disapproval.

"You wouldn't dare," she hissed, planting her none-too-clean hands on his desk and leaning across it, trying not to blush as a seashell dislodged from her hair and fell onto the wooden expanse with a loud clatter. So much for intimidation.

"It is never wise to antagonize the viscount's office," he responded with a flash of…was that amusement? Oh, what she wouldn't do to reach across and smack his smug little face, although from her vantage point just inches from it, she realized he actually had very nice bone-structure – oh no. No, no, no! Her mind was not going to go there, no it wasn't. More whiskey was called for. She spun on her heel, grinding sand and bloody bits into his precious carpet, and swept out of his office.

In the end, she received twenty gold sovereigns from a very grateful and charming Viscount Dumar. She marched back into the seneschal's office to perform her "little dance of gloatiness" as Anders referred to it.

"When I get back from the Deep Roads expedition, I will have enough to pay any outstanding taxes on the Amell Estate. Get the paperwork ready," she said on her way out, shaking her coin-purse at the exasperated seneschal.

~~~oOo~~~

The fourth time she saw him, she was so dispirited and depressed she couldn't be bothered to even be upset by his presence. The memorial service for Bethany was concluding and she sat on the low wall that separated the garden behind the chantry from the main courtyard, watching the roses grow through a haze of tears and a wee dram of whiskey, as Sebastian called it. Or perhaps more than one wee dram. She was a bit fuzzy on the details. However much, it wasn't enough to stop the dark thoughts trapped in her head, but she was bound and determined to try to ignore that quibbling detail.

"Serah Hawke," the seneschal began and she waved him away with a grand flourish, nearly sending herself head over heels into the garden with her extravagant gesture.

"Go away before I…you know what? I'm too tired to spar with you tonight. You want to tell me you're sorry about the loss of the only good and decent Hawke, stand in that line over there," she said, pointing to her mother, who stood with Grace's friends.

"I came to tell you that the viscount extends his deepest…"

"I. Don't. Care. He can extend his deepest whatever and I won't care. He can hand me a million sovereigns, the keys to the keep and my very own pony and I. Still. Won't. Care."

"Yes, I can see that, Serah Hawke. However, my duty dictates that I deliver Viscount Dumar's condolences."

She glared at him as he sat down beside her and pulled out a small silver flask. "You need this more than I," he added and placed it in her hand.

She'd be double damned by the Maker himself before she'd thank the fastidious, finicky…he certainly was handsome in a certain light when his face wasn't all pinched and prissy…seneschal. Obviously she wasn't drunk enough, so she gulped the fiery liquid in the silver flask and shivered as it hit her stomach, burning the entire way.

"It won't work," she muttered, thrusting the container into his hands and storming away. She didn't know what wouldn't work, and she regretted not taking another nip before returning the flask, but she kept walking until she found herself in the square in front of the Amell Estate that was now in her possession, and she let out a scream that relieved the tension in her shoulders and made lights come on in every estate facing the square, even her own, which made her wonder who, exactly, was in the estate.

A hand on her shoulder, too light to be Aveline's and too heavy to be Varric's, squeezed gently. "Go to bed, Grace. Things will look just as grim tomorrow, but you will be sober enough to deal with them."

She swung around, ready to put her fist into the mouth of the man who dared insinuate she was drunk. She drew her arm back, curling her hand into a fist and then found herself kissing the man instead, her hand fisted in his doublet.

He stood stiffly, his hands dropping to his side, his posture rigid, but his lips were warm and seemed willing enough and she was well and truly drunk so what did it matter, and then she felt a hand at the back of her neck, soft and unscarred. Her eyes snapped open and she pushed him away, glaring at him, wishing she had her daggers with her.

"How dare you attack me…you…you overblown, conceited, pompous jacka…"

But he was already walking way, his unhurried gait infuriatingly insulting. In the morning she convinced herself it had been a bad dream. There was absolutely nothing about the seneschal she found in the least attractive. She had stumbled, he had caught her, their lips had accidently touched, nothing more. Yes, that's exactly what had happened.

"I'll just avoid the man, that should be easy enough," she announced to her bedroom, but quietly as loud noises made her head very unhappy.

The Fates laughed at that. Apparently they thought otherwise.

~~~oOo~~~

"So, it would seem she has quite a temper," Viscount Dumar stated. "I am quite surprised. Her mother was always a biddable young woman of impeccable manners."

Bran eyed his friend and viscount with disbelief. "Would that be before or after she ran off with an apostate, leaving young De Launcet at the proverbial altar?"

A smile lit the viscount's eyes. "I always admired her mettle. De Launcet would never have survived a marriage with her."

"Perhaps, Your Grace, but his fortunes would have."

The viscount laughed outright at that remark. "True enough. Now we need to decide how to introduce young Grace into society. With her wealth, she'll be asked to attend the usual affairs, but with her political naivety she will be easily influenced. I would much prefer it is our influence that she succumbs to and not some handsome, feckless noble's."

"Shouldn't grooming her to take her place in society fall to her mother?" Bran asked, a trifle quickly. He paused and walked around his desk to stand at his window, hands clasped behind his back as he surveyed the placid square below him. He was much too busy and much too jaded to remember a drunken kiss now a week old. Instead, he concentrated on Dumar's words.

"Under normal circumstances, but there is bad blood between the two, and, with poor Leandra in such a state over the younger daughter, I don't foresee that happening. No, we must look to another for her education."

Bran nodded, considering a short list of people he would deem worthy of training the fractious young woman in question. "Perhaps Lady Eliza Mumford? She has an unimpeachable demeanor, although her knowledge of politics is rather - understated."

"Whoever instructs her will have to be a very intelligent and patient person," the viscount said pensively. "She obviously needs lessons in elocution, comportment, dancing, politics and history. She'll need someone to take her in hand with her grooming as well."

"You sound as though you're schooling her to become the viscount," Bran remarked far less casually than he'd intended. He couldn't imagine a more ludicrous idea; she was as feral as a she-wolf.

"She would be a suitable match for my son, given proper instruction."

Bran's derisive snort got away from him before he could rein it in. "She's a bit old for him, don't you think?"

With his gaze still locked on the square below him, where a young woman stood arguing with a City Guardsman, he didn't see the viscount's appraising stare.

"All this training would have to be accomplished by the First Day Festival and Ball."

Another derisive chuckle escaped and Bran finally turned to eye his friend with a raised brow of disbelief. "Tell me you do not intend this miraculous transformation to be completed by this First Day."

"Six months is quite long enough, Bran, provided the proper tutor can be found. I doubt you'd be able to accomplish the task, however. I shall have to give this more thought."

His ego winced at the slight and he found himself responding with cold dignity, "I assure you, Marlowe, that I will not only have her ready to take her place in society by then, but she will be the most sought after partner at the ball."

"Indeed? You seem very confident of your abilities. Perhaps a wager, for old time's sake?"

Bran's pride agreed before his mind had time to consider the matter, and he found himself accepting the terms with alacrity.

"I will speak to Leandra about this arrangement tomorrow," the viscount promised. "Best not to mention the wager, however."

It was only as Dumar left, chuckling, that Bran realized he'd been played like a well-strung lute.