“Damaris—about this ball . . . I’m afraid I won’t be able to go with you after all.”
Rather than angry, her face was woebegone to the edge of tears. (A world was crashing in her thoughts.) “You don’t want to be with servant-class people?”
He reached out and patted her hand conciliatingly. “Of course I do, with you. But Damaris . . . you said it cost three spadas and I haven’t hardly any coppers, even.”
“Oh.” She perched her head on one side and looked at him birdlike under prettily arched brows. “I can let you have that much.” Then, seeing the expression on his face; “You can give it back to me when you get it from your master.”
(He did not really want to go at all, headache and the thought of his position with Cleudi and the Duke of Aggermans gnawed at him, he could not think clearly.) “I—I—”
“I don’t mind, really.”
“But I don’t want to take your money. I may—may not get any.”
She considered, looking at him sharply, with eyes narrowing. Then; “I know. You don’t want to go with me because I’m not your friend.” She tipped suddenly forward, one arm round his neck, and kissed him hard, then drew her head back, and with a long breath, said; “Will you go with me now?”
“I—”
She kissed him again, tonguewise, and as her lips clung, shifted her body, and with her free hand, guided his to the V of her dress. Her eyes said she did not want him to stop, and he did not. Near the end it came to him that the Blue Star was dead, he could not fathom a single thought in her mind.