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Prompt: LOTR, Éomer/Lothíriel, meet ugly
“Lady,” he murmurs, executing a bow from the waist, stiff as though he still sits on horseback. “I would take your hand, but I fear I am in no condition to touch such a pristine lady as yourself,” he offers as explanation, nails rimmed with dirt, the creases in his palms outlined, straw caught in his hair and the scent of the stables clinging to the sweat of his skin.
“Are you certain there exists a time you may be otherwise?” she says before she can think better of it, one hand flying too late to her mouth, as if she might catch the insult before it finds the ears of the king; Éomer merely laughs, a chuckle that bursts from his mouth as though he, too, cannot contain himself, and says, “Not likely - but perhaps one day, lady, I might find you less pristine.”
“Is it your wish then to put me in the same condition as you find yourself, sire?” she responds, aiming for asperity and falling somewhat short, her breath stolen by the tug of his smile.
So slowly she would take it as a grave insult from any other man, his eyes travel the length of her body, from her dark hair caught up within its silver net to the tips of her pearl-grey boots, peeking from beneath soft blue skirts, the river-mouth’s daughter laid out like a flood before the horse-tamer’s king.
“Lady,” he says, stepping nearer still, the heat and hay and horse not entirely unpleasant to her senses, “I do not think I could, though dearly would I love to try.”