Ah, I was trying to hard as I assumed it was accessible explicitly.
I did a quick test and got it to work via parameter to the static method. However, if I want to have different logical setting classes for different utilities (say, one for email, another for caching) I'm guessing I'm out of luck with my current approach. Not the end of the world since I can always use the out-of-the-box app settings via the .net framework.
Thanks for the help. I'm in the midst of tearing out nhibernate and putting in dapper-based custom code, so I have bigger fish to fry :)