“Here, let me,” said Shane behind her. She hadn’t heard him move. “It’s caught up on a hairpin.”
Gods above and below, he was using the voice. Marguerite let her hands drop as the words poured over her, soothing as warm honey.
If I could bottle that, I would make so much money.
“Just a bit of a tangle,” he murmured, coaxing the pin loose. “I don’t want to take half your hair out with it.”
“That’s fine,” said Marguerite, with only a vague idea what she was agreeing to. His fingers were very deft and she felt a shiver going through her as he worked. Oh yeah. That’s the stuff, right there.
If I was a cat, I’d be purring.
He removed the offending comb and then carefully began to pluck out the remaining ones. Her hair fell down across her neck, and she shivered again.
When the last one was out, Shane rested his hands on the back of her chair. She tilted her head back slightly, looking up at him, wondering if he was going to do anything, or she was.
If he’d kissed her then, she would have dragged him into the bedroom, never mind how tired she was or what Wren might think of the noises.
But he did not, and the moment stretched long enough for Marguerite to remember that he did not approve of her, and also for her feet to remember that they ached. She sighed and patted one of his hands as if she were an old lady. And at the moment I feel like one. “Tomorrow,” she said wearily.
She got to her feet, wincing. “And maybe we’ll be lucky and out of the blue, there’ll be a click.”
“May the gods will it so,” said Shane politely. Marguerite felt his eyes following her as she went to the bedroom, but he didn’t say anything more, and neither did she.
TWENTY-FIVE
THREE DAYS LATER, Marguerite’s feet hurt and her back hurt and she was tired. Again. Story of my life, really. Although usually my feet aren’t in quite this bad a shape.
She had spent most of the evening at a ball thrown in honor of somebody powerful by somebody even more powerful. (She had notes somewhere, but had filed the people involved as not currently my problem.) Normally mere merchants wouldn’t dance at such an event, but unfortunately the honoree actually was a merchant, so the entire event had been arranged to allow nobles and bourgeoisie to intermingle. Marguerite had only danced when asked by someone that she either wanted to cultivate or didn’t want to offend, but unfortunately that was a rather large number of people, and two of them had stepped on her feet.
She envied Shane. He was on an upper balcony, alongside the wallflowers and pet duelists.
Nobody stepped on his feet.
That’s got to be enough dancing, she thought, as she let an eager young puppy escort her from the floor. No one had spilled any immediately relevant information, although she’d picked up the latest scandal from one dance partner and was fairly certain, by the way that one of the others had been staring at another woman over her shoulder, that he was trying to make someone jealous, which was worth filing away for later use.
He’d been one of the ones who stepped on her foot. Several of her toes felt as if they were permanently flattened.
She limped up the steps to the balcony, looking for Shane. He was never hard to find, but this time, it was particularly easy, because everyone around him had drawn back and a chevalier was gesticulating furiously at him.
Oh gods of my mothers, what now?
She recognized the chevalier immediately as Sir Lawrence of Elked. Too hot-headed for his own good, and far too old for that to be cute any longer. Aching feet forgotten, she rushed forward to save her paladin.
She arrived within earshot just in time to hear Sir Lawrence say loudly, “I demand that you give me satisfaction, sir!”
Light sparkled on the rows of earrings in both ears as he turned slightly, making sure that the crowd heard him. His rapier handle was encrusted with tiny gems and the scabbard was inlaid with a dozen brilliant colors.
Shane said, in halting Dailian, “Your pardon, sir, I do not understand what you ask.”
“You have offended my lady’s honor!” Sir Lawrence informed him. “I demand satisfaction!”
The third person in this little drama stood off to one side, wringing her hands. She could not have been more than eighteen and looked as if she wanted to sink into the floor, die, and then have her body shipped somewhere very far away.
Shane’s eyes lit up with relief when he saw Marguerite. Possibly the first time he’s ever been genuinely glad to see me. “Thank the Saint,” he said. “This man keeps asking me for something, but I don’t know the word.”
“Satisfaction,” she translated.
His eyebrows lifted. “I don’t know how to satisfy men. It’s never come up.”
Marguerite coughed to cover up the giggle that threatened to escape. “Vocabulary issue,” she said, while the chevalier scowled at them both. “He’s asking you for a duel.”
“Oh. Your pardon, sir.” Shane inclined his head to the chevalier. “This is not my language.”
This explanation did not seem to mollify the man at all. “Understand this, then! I am calling you out!”
Marguerite was not an expert in fighting men, but could not see this ending well for the chevalier.
The man was at least twenty years older than Shane and two-thirds his weight, if that. He was very tall and could look down on the paladin, which possibly had led him to over-estimate his chances, but Marguerite was guessing that Sir Lawrence had found courage in the bottom of a bottle.
“What seems to be the problem?” Marguerite asked. “This man is in my employ, and if he has offended, I wish to know how!”
Sir Lawrence drew himself up to his full height. “He cruelly rejected my lady’s offer to dance, and then had the nerve to slander her character!”
“I didn’t offer,” mumbled the horribly embarrassed woman somewhere behind Marguerite. “I just said it might be nice to dance and then you said you would find me a partner and then you grabbed that man and I don’t even want to dance now…”
Marguerite’s heart bled for the poor girl, who had clearly been caught up in some misguided and possibly drunken chivalry on the part of Sir Lawrence.
“What man would speak of a lady so?” thundered the chevalier, drowning out the girl’s explanations.
“He grabbed you, I take it?” Marguerite murmured to Shane.
“Yes. I shook him off. He shouted something in Dailian and kept pointing to the girl and he was talking so fast that I couldn’t understand a word. It sounded like he was accusing me of something, so I kept shaking my head and saying no, I had never touched her.”
Marguerite sighed. She could see how it had all fallen into chaos. “He was telling you to dance with the girl over there.”
“That is not what it sounded like.”
“Enough talk! I will not allow this insult against my lady to stand!” Sir Lawrence drew himself up to his full height, one bony hand settling over his sword hilt. “I challenge you to a duel!”
“No,” said Shane.
There was a long pause. The chevalier was obviously thrown off stride. “What do you mean, no?”
“I will not fight you.”