“Felters, sir?” asked the hacker.
“If you would,” I replied, looking at Seliora.
“Bhenyt is Odelia’s younger brother,” she replied, taking my hand as she stepped up into the coach. “I just thought it might be nice not to wait for a coach. You were very gallant,” she added.
“Thank you.” Had I had any real choice?
Once we were settled in the coach and moving south on Nordroad, I turned to her. I couldn’t help but notice that, despite the similarity in colors to what she had worn the night we had truly danced for the first time, the dress and the jacket looked fresh-and had probably just been tailored and delivered. “How did you know who my father was?”
She laughed. “I didn’t. Mama was the one who wanted to know about your family. She had you investigated as soon as Odelia admitted I’d spent all of last Samedi with you.”
“Is Odelia your guardian?”
“We’re close, but she likes you.”
“You know I’m not likely to ask for money or anything else from my parents. So why do they matter?”
“The money doesn’t matter, even to Mama. She was impressed that you made journeyman and then became an imager. She says that you come from solid stock.” Seliora squeezed my hand. “I could tell that.”
“How could you know that from a meeting a journeyman artist a few times?”
“You were always neat, clean, and with short hair and no beard, and after I saw the study you painted, I could tell you had talent to go with that ambition. I worried that you had too much ambition for a portraiturist.”
“Too much ambition?”
“I didn’t say that right.” She tilted her head slightly. “Too much honesty for a portraiturist with that much ambition.”
A faint scent of flowers emanated from her, not too much, a light scent.
Before that long, the coach stopped, we stepped out, and I paid and tipped the hacker.
Felters was ensconced in what had been a graystone row house on the south side of the lane that angled off East River Road. The oversized lamps that flanked the door were already lit, although the sun had not quite set.
The harried-looking server who greeted us looked at Seliora, then at me.
I did my best to mentally press friendliness upon her. “For two, please.”
“Ah . . . this way.”
We ended up at a small window table, crowded between two much larger tables, one occupied by three older men in suits of a cut I did not recognize, and one empty, but the smaller table was fine with me.
“What would you like to drink?” asked the server.
I inclined my head to Seliora.
“Do you have a white Sanellio?”
The server nodded.
“Cambrisio, white,” I added.
The server left a slate on which the three specialties of the evening had been written in small script-Chicken Asseroiles, Pork Samedi, and Flank Steak Especial.
“Are any of these favorites of yours?” I asked.
“I think I’d like the chicken. You?”
“The steak. I’m partial to both mushrooms and parsley.”
When the two goblets of wine came, right after two couples were settled in at the table behind me, I ordered for us, adding a crab bisque as an appetizer and choosing the walnut and shaved apple and cheese salad. They were probably winter-kept apples, but it was worth a try.
After the server left, Seliora looked at me. “You don’t have to impress me.”
“I just wanted to have a good meal with you and enjoy it. That’s not something I get to do often.”
“If you do it often, you won’t be able to afford anything else.” But her words were said warmly.
I lifted my wine goblet. “To you and to a delightful evening.”
She lifted hers. “I’ll return that. To you . . . and the evening.”
The Cambrisio was good, but looking at Seliora was better.
“Why did you ask me to dance, that first time?” I asked.
“I wanted to. Rogaris told Odelia that you were too serious for me.”
“He didn’t know you well, then.”
“Do you?” A hint of mischief colored her words.
“No, but I know that there’s more to you than meets the eye . . . and I’m interested in learning more about you.”
For just a moment, her eyes flickered past me, looking outside.
“What is it?”
“Nothing. Someone going past, but he was looking this way.”
“Do you know him?”
She shook her head. “From what I saw, he’s not someone I’d wish to know.”
The server arrived with the salads. I took a bite, gingerly. “The salad is good, especially the cheese.”
A faint smile crossed Seliora’s lips, but she nodded, before saying, “It is.”
“Why did you smile?”
“Not that many men would worry about the salad. They’d either eat it or ignore it.”
I shrugged. I wasn’t about to say I’d wanted it to be good for her. “I enjoy a good meal.”
“You couldn’t have eaten that well at Master Caliostrus’s house.”
I hadn’t. “Why do you say that?”
“Last summer, I was with Odelia, and Ostrius was talking to her escort-the one before Kolasyn-about how he skipped as many meals as he could.”
“He could afford to. I couldn’t. It wasn’t that bad.”
“I like that about you.”
“What?”
“You’re not the complaining type. You do what’s necessary until you can make things better. That’s why you’ll do well as an imager.”
“Complaining doesn’t do any good,” I pointed out. “If the person you complain to is the kind who would listen, they’ve already done what they can, and anyone else either won’t listen, doesn’t care, or can’t do anything.”
“Most people aren’t that practical.”
I’d never thought of myself as that practical. How practical was trying to be a portraiturist when you came from a family of wool factors?
The server reappeared, took the empty salad plates, and placed the entrees in front of us. I cut into the flank steak, and then ate several bites, enjoying the combination of mushrooms, buttered parsley, and seasoned tender beef. “How is your chicken?”
“Very tender, and tasty. It reminds me of Aunt Aegina’s.”
“Odelia’s mother?”
“Yes. She’s a good cook, better than Mother. That might be because she enjoys it.”
“Your mother eats because she has to.”
“You noticed.”
“She has a certain . . . determination, like someone else, I suspect.”
Seliora flushed, just a touch. Then she stiffened and looked up and out the window. “That man . . . out there, in the dark brown cloak and a square beard. He’s walked past twice, and he’s looked at you.”
“At you, I’m most certain. You’re the one worth looking at.”
“You’re kind, but he wasn’t looking at me.”
If Seliora said the man wasn’t, then he wasn’t, but why would anyone be looking at me? From what I’d seen so far since I’d become an imager, no one gave imagers more than a passing glance-and that more to avoid us than anything else. “There’s not much I can do about it now.”
“I suppose not.”
“Enjoy your chicken.” I almost added that she should enjoy my looking at her, but that would have been too forward.
“And what else? You were about to add something.”
“The company, if you can.”
“I’m enjoying that very much.”
“I’m glad.”
After several more bites and another swallow of wine, I asked, “Do you like designing the patterns for the upholstery?”
“The designing I like very much.” Seliora’s smile turned wry. “Working with some clients is sometimes less enjoyable.”
I kept asking her questions through the remainder of dinner and through dessert-an apple cream custard-and the tea that followed.
Finally, as much as I’d enjoyed the dinner, both the food and the company, there were people waiting outside, and the server kept looking at us.
“I suppose we had better go. I wouldn’t want to be accused of keeping you out too late.”
“You would have been anyway, even if we’d left a glass ago,” she replied.
All in all, the dinner cost four silvers, counting what I left for the server.