Still, they’ve probably seen it a hundred times. Probably admiring views is unfashionable.
Wren turned away from the window and ran her eye over the crowd, looking for anyone that she was even remotely acquainted with.
No one. Bah. Well, what about secret assassins? Surely there must be a couple in the Court of Smoke. I saw one fellow yesterday who was dressed as one of those chevaliers, but if he didn’t know his way around a garrote, I’ll eat my fan.
She tapped the fan in question on her wrist. It was made of vellum held between two carved wood sticks, meant to be folded and unfolded with an elegant flick of the wrist. Wren didn’t know if her flick qualified as elegant, but she could deploy the fan with enough precision to kill flies, which she was secretly rather pleased with.
There was supposedly a whole language to fan signals and where you carried it and how you fluttered it and where your gaze went while so fluttering. Wren had no idea how you learned that language. Her fan had bluntly pointed wooden handles and she was fairly certain that if she held it right, she could jam the closed fan into someone’s eye socket with enough force to break through to the brain.
She looked around for potential targets, but if there were any assassins in the room, they were hiding it well. Everyone here moved like…well, like fashionable women in uncomfortable shoes.
Small steps, constrained by the hems of the gowns. A sway in the walk carefully calculated to be attractive but not pronounced enough to be scandalous. Wren was doing her best to imitate that walk, and was pretty confident that she had the shoe part down, although the sway was probably a lost cause.
She ambled to the refreshment table. The bowl of wine had fruit floating in it to sweeten the taste, and had been watered down heavily enough that alcohol was a distant memory. Wren would have had to drink her own bodyweight in the insipid stuff to become inebriated. Lady Coregator carried a flask with her and liberally topped up her drinks. Lady Coregator was extremely intelligent. Wren hoped that she would finish her morning ride soon and come up to the court. Then she could talk to someone, or at least stand on the outskirts of the conversation, listening and smiling pleasantly, without anyone looking at her and wondering what she was doing there.
She had just filled a cup with watered wine when something struck her shoulder from behind.
Wren spun, started to drop into a crouch—when you were short, coming up from underneath was usually your best bet—saw a sea-green gown and the tall, giggling woman inside it, and had to devote most of her concentration to not slamming her elbow into the woman’s solar plexus and following up with a fist to the jaw.
Unfortunately, this left limited energy for holding things, like her fan and her wine cup. The cup fell, splashing across Wren’s bodice, and the fan hit the floor.
“Oh, I do beg your pardon,” said the woman in the sea-green gown, while her two companions murmured behind their hands. “I don’t know how I didn’t see you down there!”
Like hell you didn’t. Wren produced a grunt worthy of Shane. No, dammit, say something else.
Courtly manners. You have them, remember? “Please don’t trouble yourself,” she said, trying not to grit her teeth. “Accidents do happen in such close quarters.”
“And I’m certain no one will even notice the stain,” the woman said brightly.
Given that it had been red wine, however watered, and that Wren was wearing a blue dress, this was absolutely a lie. Wren simply met her eyes steadily. The woman smiled and flicked her fan, and her two companions tugged her away. Giggles erupted as soon as they were out of immediate earshot.
“I hate this,” Wren muttered to no one in particular.
“Understandably so,” said a man’s voice beside her, though not so close as to be alarming. Wren turned, resigned to the fact that her gown probably looked as if someone had put a knife in her ribs, and met the stranger’s eyes.
He was taller than she was, although that didn’t count for much, since almost everyone was. Not nearly as broad as Shane, and he looked unarmed. He had dark hair and amber skin, and his eyes were nearly black. She took a step back as he bent down, and for a confusing moment, she thought that he was kneeling at her feet, which made no sense at all.
Then he picked up her fan and offered it back to her. Ah. Yes. “Thank you.”
“It’s nothing.” He picked up the cup as well, which had broken into several pieces. Wren tried not to feel guilty. The tableware in these rooms was all unglazed bisque from the pottery at the base of the mountain, handsome enough but made to be used only once.
“May I?” he asked, taking a handkerchief from his surcoat.
“May you…？”
“Your dress,” he said gently. He had a pleasant tenor voice. Wren watched him dip the corner of the handkerchief in one of the carafes of water on the table. He turned toward her, making a dabbing motion, and she finally realized what he was doing.
“Oh! Err…yes, I…thank you…”
Had she still been that young girl in her father’s house, she absolutely should not have let a strange man wipe a cloth over her bodice. But she was a grown woman, dammit, and there was nothing remotely erotic about scrubbing out a stain. Even if it meant that he was bent over her, and that she could feel his breath across the tops of her breasts. Or that he had his other hand on her waist, as if they were dancing, to hold the fabric in position.
“It’s fortunate that this wine is so weak,” he said, darting a quick smile up at her. “If they were serving the good stuff, it would be another matter.”
“If they were serving the good stuff, I would be much less put out by the stain,” she said. “At least I could drown my sorrows that way.”
He laughed. “Fortunately, my lady, we’ve caught it before it set.” He stepped back, dropping his hands, and Wren felt a pang of disappointment.
“Thank you so much,” she said. “I have other gowns, of course, but I suspect that the laundresses
in this place are overwhelmed.” Was he handsome? She had never been a good judge of such things.
Being surrounded by a great many large, muscular men who treated you as a younger sister meant that you developed a somewhat skewed view of masculine beauty. She thought he might be, though.
Certainly he was attractive, which was something altogether different.
“Dreadfully so,” he agreed. What is he agreeing to? Oh, right, laundry. Something like that. His dark eyes held hers, and there was a slight smile on his lips.
“I…ah…” She could feel herself flushing. I am a grown woman, dammit. “Forgive me, I’ve forgotten my manners. I’m Wren. Of Sedgemoor.” She thrust out a hand, realized it was the one holding the fan, and switched them awkwardly.
He took her hand in his. His fingers were warm and ungloved. She could feel calluses at the fingertips, but not at the base, where a sword’s would be. A musician, perhaps? She wasn’t sure.
She had expected him to bow over her hand, as men were supposed to do, but instead he brought it to his lips. The actual kiss was so fleeting that she barely felt it, but he rubbed his thumb across her palm in an unexpected caress before he released it. “Lady Wren,” he said. “It’s been a pleasure to make your acquaintance. I very much hope that I will see you again…soon.”