Charmed, Lord Ardeyn said absently, then resumed his conversation with Katarina, who had no need of cosmetics or jewels to enhance her beauty.
I'm very pleased to make your acquaintance, my dear, Lord Edres said, taking her hand as quickly as Lord Ardeyn had dropped it. The wrinkles around his eyes deepened as he smiled at her. I hope you will enjoy our little fete. He actually kissed her hand, as Rena blushed with confusion, then released it and turned to her father.
You have a most charming child, Tylar, the old man said, transferring his smile from the daughter to the father. Sweet, modest, fresh and innocent I am sure she will make a good match for you.
That was clearly a dismissal, and Lord Tylar was not too dense to know it
That is my hope, my lord, Lord Tylar replied, and with a tug on Rena's arm, took her out of the circle of Ardeyn's intimates.
She cringed inside, waiting to hear his immediate censure, but to her immense relief, Lord Tylar was not ready to take her head off for not captivating the guest of honor.
That went better than I expected, he said quietly, as he continued to draw her along to some new destination. Fortunately for her neck, he was important enough that people noticed her trailing train, and did not step on it. Lord Edres seems to like you. I suppose you must remind him of his daughter.
Oh, charming, I remind him of a half-wit, who can't even dress herself without help.
I didn't really hope that Ardeyn would pay you any attention; it seems that other girl was one of the first to arrive, and he hasn't left her side all evening. Lord Tylar made a sound that for any other man might have been taken as a small sigh of regret. Well, I can't fault his taste. You're hardly any competition for that beauty.
Even though she had thought that herself, it hurt to hear it from her father. Now she blushed again, but this time with shame.
Never mind, there are plenty of other young lords here, and I haven't seen one of them that would make a bad alliance. He stopped, and gave her a brusque push in the direction of another group, this time of dancers. Go on, get over there, let yourself be seen, talk to people. You know what you have to do, or you should by now.
With those gentle words, he left her, striding purposefully after another knot of men with that indefinable air of importance about them, leaving her standing stupidly at the edge of the group of dancers.
This time someone did step on her train. Fortunately, she wasn't moving.
Oh, bother, I've gone and done something stupid again! the young man said, a little thickly, and she immediately suspected he'd been drinking too much. He managed to get himself off the train without tangling his feet in it, and turned toward her, giving her a better look at him.
He wasn't very handsome, and his eyes had the sort of vagueness about them that she tended to associate with too much to drink.
In other words—he's the same version of Lord Ardeyn that I am of Katarina. A bad, blurred copy, and rather flawed.
Excuse me awfully, would you? Terribly sorry and all that. I'm a clumsy brute, or so they all keep telling me. He laughed a little, a high titter, and she realized at that moment that it wasn't the wine that was making him silly—he was that way all on his own.
Correction. On his copy of Lord Ardeyn, they forgot to pour in the brains as well.
I don't suppose you'd care to have a dance with a clumsy brute now, would you? he asked hopefully, with another titter for his own cleverness.
Perhaps if you'd loop up that tail thing, I wouldn't get tangled up in it again, and we could have a pleasant turn or two around the floor, eh? He stared at her hopefully, and added, They say I'm a silly ass, but they all admit I'm a good dancer.
Under other circumstances, she might have declined his awkward invitation, with an awkward refusal of her own. But she felt rather sorry for him—here he was, quite probably dragged here by his father as she had been dragged by hers, and for the same reason. He was supposed to be making the acquaintance of eligible females with good alliance potential.
In fact, it has to be harder for him! I just have to stand here, properly modest, and hope someone notices me. He has to make advances.
So she smiled kindly at him, and his dull eyes lit up with pathetic cheer as she nodded.
He must have been turned down an awful lot this evening to be so happy to dance with me. I'm not exactly a prize beauty.
His name, it transpired, was V'keln Gildor er-Lord Kyndreth; scion of one of the older and more powerful Houses. And he was probably quite a disappointment to his noble High Lord father. Everything he said to her about his lord father indicated that the patriarch of the family had more than once wished there were some way he could prove poor Gildor was someone else's offspring. She felt so sorry for him that she even danced with him again, several times, and let him bring her wine and a few refreshments.
He wasn't a really good dancer, although he wasn't a bad one, either. Passable ; that was what her own dancing master would have called him. He didn't know anything but the most old-fashioned of dances, either, which left them standing on the sidelines watching, more often than not. He tried to make clever conversation, but he was, unfortunately, just as dull and stupid as she had feared he was. Still, he was company of a sort, and be seemed to like the tame animals—though he kept talking about how exciting it would be to hunt them instead of petting them. And as long as she was with a male, she was obeying Lord Tylar's orders, and he certainly couldn't take exception to that.
Finally, though, he spotted an older man making his way purposefully toward them, and said, with a trace of apprehension, Oh, curse it. There's my lord father, and it looks as if he wants me. It's been grand—
And he was off like a called dog, bumbling his way through the crowd as if summoned to his father's side by a whistle, without another word to her.
She sighed, and worked her way back through a thin crowd of onlookers toward the edge of the illusory forest. Evidently her lack of charms—or perhaps, lack of status—was noticeable even to a dolt like Gildor. He hadn't even offered to introduce her to his father, which probably meant he didn't think she was worth introducing to him.
Well, the rabbits and birds didn't care if she looked like a wax doll in an absurd costume—and while she stood here, in the shadows of the overhanging boughs, there wasn't anyone treading on her train.
If this had been some other occasion, she might even have managed to enjoy herself. The birds and animals were very sweet. The expected headache did not manifest itself, due either to Myre's careful work with her hairdressing, or to the rather excessive amounts of wine she'd been drinking.
In fact, she felt very flushed, and not entirely steady, now that she came to think about it. Maybe all that wine had been a mistake.
I'm not used to drinking this much, but Gildor kept pressing wine on me. Rather desperately, actually. I think perhaps he'd been told to make sure whatever lady he was with always had a glass of wine in her hand when she wasn't dancing. That was probably a good idea, really; if he made sure his partners were tipsy enough, they might not notice he was such a dolt. Anything seems amusing when you're intoxicated.
She thought seriously about asking one of the servants to find something for her to sit on, and was just at the point of intercepting one, when her own father came striding through the crowd, clearly looking for her.