ummer-weight. He looked suspiciously at the green cloth, maybe a little lighter than his lightest Anaxi frockcoat, the furrow of his brow deepening. Whose summer? he could’ve asked, but he reckoned they both knew the answer. He was thinking there were probably a few more layers underneath her coat than Isu’fo’s, if he knew anything about ladies’ dress. (He knew a surprising amount about ladies’ dress for the kind of man he was; though perhaps not, having grown up in a tumble hut.)
The snort had thrummed warm through him; he couldn’t’ve said why. It hadn’t brought the smile back to his face, but it’d softened something of the frown.
He was careful not to glance up at her hair when she touched it again. He said nothing of losing, either, for all it made him think of. He didn’t think she’d welcome the attention, or his input on it, for that matter, either.
Still, his frown twisted at the edges when she admitted she’d not eaten, and he looked away at the same moment she did, at the shadows the sun shafted over the courtyard.
“It does not do,” he said, with a shrug to mirror hers, “to go dueling on an empty stomach.” He’d a strange sort of feeling rattling through him, creeping along his spine, like he’d said something like those words before.
He shrugged again, shoving the memory back down inside him. He glanced back at her, sharp, raising an eyebrow when she spoke again.
He was still holding Mircalla, he realized; he ran his fingers over the cover, shifted it in his hands, held on still. Give it to her and go, some part of him said, and you’ll be cut free.
He glanced up at the sky, then back over and up at her. “I happen to know a place,” he said, careful to keep his tone as light as hers. He didn’t smile; he wasn’t frowning anymore, either. “Not too far a walk from here, in Dejai Point. Should be open for a while yet.”
He hesitated, turning. The last of the Brunnhold team were filtering back out into the gardens; he felt a twinge, spotting a lass with thick, straight auburn hair disappear behind a spill of greenery, a grin on her face. She was talking intently to another of the lads. She cast only one crisp, bright-blue glance over her shoulder at Cerise and her father before she went.
A lopsided kind of smile crept to his face. He looked over at her again, patted the cover of the book, and offered it to her. “But I think you could catch up with them. If you wanted, still,” he said.
I didn’t think, he wanted to say. Before I showed up. At least, he thought to joke, I didn’t run up and throw my arms around you, like…
“If this overcooked vegetable hasn’t embarrassed you too badly,” he cracked instead, still smiling lopsidedly, not quite able to laugh. He wasn’t sure what this was, but it felt damned strange.