“A small price to pay for the sake of propriety, of course,” Lady Mourningwood said with absolute seriousness.
Dora caught sight of Theodora heading into the room from the other side then, on the arm of some invisible person. She wanted to go over so that she could cling to her own company, at least, but Lord Hollowvale directed her instead towards the dance floor. “I will have your first dance,” he told her. “But I am sure that there are many handsome elves who shall wish to have your acquaintance soon enough.”
The dance that he performed was far from anything that Dora had ever learned in England, and she struggled to follow his lead. It was something like a minuet, but there seemed to be another dignified bow every few steps, so that it was barely a dance at all.
But the worst part by far was when Lord Hollowvale switched partners in the middle. Dora found herself trying to dance with some invisible faerie, unaware even of the makeup of the crowd. There was absolutely no use to it—someone bumped into her every other second, and she found herself reflexively apologising with each new misstep.
Dora was only too relieved when the music finally changed, signalling a brand new dance. She tried to stumble her way towards a chair near the wall, but Lady Mourningwood caught her by the arm instead and marched her towards an unseen elven gentleman. “This is Miss Theodora, Lord Hollowvale’s English daughter,” the baroness informed the air in front of them. “Miss Theodora, this is the viscount, Lord Blackthorn.”
The air in front of Dora rippled—and then there was a tall, lithe figure standing before her. Lord Blackthorn was an elf of long fingers and very pale skin. He was dressed in a very fine black velvet jacket, and he had a long, winding rose vine twined about his body which blossomed into a single yellow rose at his throat. His posture had a cheerful cast to it, but Dora remembered just in time to look down at her feet before she could catch sight of his eyes; Dora had no doubt that Lady Mourningwood would make good on her promise to remove her eyes if she slipped up and met the elf’s gaze.
“How charming!” Lord Blackthorn enthused in a melodic voice. “Oh, she is very pretty for a human! And what a lovely gown of forgotten memories!”
“You must not be so free with your compliments, Lord Blackthorn,” Lady Mourningwood said severely. “The English generally talk about the weather instead.”
“Oh yes, where is my mind at?” Lord Blackthorn agreed cheerfully. “It is very misty out, is it not, Miss Theodora?”
“Is it not always misty in Hollowvale?” Dora asked distantly.
“It is!” Lord Blackthorn said, in exactly the same enthusiastic tone of voice. “Oh, you are very good at English conversation, Miss Theodora. I suppose it is to be expected.” He offered out his gloved hand. “May I have this dance with you?”
“You may,” Lady Mourningwood told him, before Dora could open her mouth to respond. “But you must bring Miss Theodora right back to me when you are done, or else you will be obliged to marry her.”
“Oh yes, of course,” Lord Blackthorn said, as though there were nothing strange about this at all. “I do love these authentic English balls. Their etiquette is so delightfully odd!”
“That is not how English etiquette works at all,” Dora said. But Lord Blackthorn took her by the hand and led her back out onto the dance floor, and she sighed heavily.
“The weather is still quite misty,” Lord Blackthorn told her helpfully, as they bowed to one another in that endlessly tedious sequence.
“Yes,” Dora told him. “You have said as much already.”
“It would be nicer if it were sunny, perhaps,” Lord Blackthorn said, and they bowed to each other yet again. “Do you like sunny weather, Miss Theodora?”
“English people do speak of more than just the weather,” Dora told him flatly.
“Do they?” Lord Blackthorn asked curiously. “Well what else do they talk about?”
Dora thought back on all the garden parties and balls that she had attended over the years. She was embarrassed to realise that indeed, nearly half of her interactions with strangers had been about the weather after all. Thankfully, she had many other interactions to call upon. “If one were to breed a dolphin with a horse,” Dora said ponderously, “would the resulting creature have a dolphin’s head and a horse’s end, or would it be the other way around?”
“Oh!” Lord Blackthorn said. “Well clearly, the creature would have a dolphin’s head. For dolphins must stay in the ocean, and horses are very terrible at holding their breath.”
“That is a more sensible answer than I was expecting,” Dora admitted to him. She bowed a bit more deeply this time. “It is another English tradition to trade information about one’s culture,” she lied. “I will answer another of your questions about England if you will answer me one question about faerie in return.”
“How novel!” Lord Blackthorn said. “Yes of course. Then let me ask you, Miss Theodora: who do you consider to be the most virtuous person in all of England?”
Dora blinked at that. “I... I have never thought about it before,” she admitted. “I suppose that it would be most proper for me to say it is the king, or the Prince Regent, or some figure who is otherwise above reproach, like the Duke of Wellington.”
“Ah,” said Lord Blackthorn. “But that is not what I asked at all! Lord Hollowvale keeps going on and on about his English virtue, you see, but I find myself wondering just who it is that you consider to be most virtuous.”
Dora pressed her lips together. She probably could have lied again, and the faerie would not
