she said to her mother, “It’s too late. My girlhood dreams are dead, and I like the ones I have now better,” her mother would have been horrified. But it was the truth. Like any young woman, she had once dreamed of roses and stolen kisses and a romantic suitor who would not care about the size of her dowry. Those dreams had died slowly, drowned in tears and humiliation. She had no desire to revive them.
A year past her emergence into society, with no suitors in sight, Alise had resigned herself to her fate and begun grooming herself for the role of maiden aunt. She played the harp, tatted excellent lace, was very good at puddings, and even had selected a suitably whimsical hobby. Long before Tintaglia had jolted her dreams, she’d become a student of dragon lore, with a strong secondary knowledge of Elderlings. If a scroll existed in Bingtown that dealt with either topic, Alise had found a way to read, buy or borrow it long enough to copy it. She believed she now had the most extensive library of information on the two ancient races that anyone in the town possessed, much of it painstakingly copied over in her own hand.
Along with that hard-earned knowledge, she had earned a reputation for eccentricity that not even a large dowry would have mitigated. In a middle daughter from a less affluent Trader family, it was an unforgivable flaw. She didn’t care. Her studies, begun on a whim, had seized her imagination. Her dragon knowledge was no longer an eccentric hobby; she was a scholar, a self-taught historian, collecting, organizing and comparing every scrap of information she could garner about dragons and the ancient Elderlings rumoured to have lived alongside the great beasts. So little was known of them and yet their history was woven through the ancient underground cities of the Rain Wilds and hence into the history of Bingtown. The oldest scrolls were antiquities from those cities, written in letters and a language that no one could read or speak. Many of the newer scrolls and writings were haphazard attempts at translations, and the worst ones were merely wild speculation. Those that were illustrated were often stained or tattered, or the inks and vellum had become food for vermin. One had to guess what had originally been there. But with her studies, Alise had begun to be able to do more than guess, and her careful cross referencing of surviving scrolls had yielded up to her a full score of words. She felt confident that with time, she could force all their secrets from the ancient writings. And time, she knew, was one thing an old maid had in abundance. Time to study and ponder, time to unlock all these tantalizing mysteries.
If only Hest Finbok had not stepped into her life! Five years her senior, the heir son of a Trader family that was very well to do, even by Bingtown standards, he was the answer to a dream. Unfortunately, the dream was her mother’s, not Alise’s. Her mother had near fainted with joy the first time Hest had asked Alise to dance. When, during the same evening, he had danced with her four more times, her mother had scarcely been able to contain her excitement. On the way home in the coach she had been unable to speak of anything else. “He is so handsome, and always so well dressed. Did you see the look on Trader Meldar’s face when Hest asked you to dance? For years, his wife has been throwing her daughters at him; I’ve heard she has asked Hest to dinner at her home as many as seven times in a month! The poor man. All know the Meldar girls are nervous as fleas. Can you imagine sitting at a table with all four of them at once? Twitchy as cats, the lot of them, their mother included. I believe he only goes there for the sake of the younger son. What was his name? Sedric? He and Hest have been friends for years. I hear that Trader Meldar was offended when Hest offered Sedric a position in his household. But what other prospect does the man have? The war has taken most of the Meldar family fortune. His brother will inherit what is left, and they’ll either have to dower the girls well to marry them off, or keep them all and feed them! I doubt Sedric will see so much as an allowance.”
“Mother, please! You know that Sophie Meldar is my friend. And Sedric has always been kind to me. He’s a very nice young man, with prospects of his own.”
Her mother had scarcely noticed her words. “Oh, Alise, you looked so lovely together. Hest Finbok is the perfect height for you, and when I saw the pale blue of your gown against the royal blue of his jacket, well! It was as if you’d both just stepped out of a painting. Did he speak to you while you danced?”
“Only a few words. He’s a very charming man,” Alise had admitted to her mother. “Very charming indeed.”
And he was. Charming. Intelligent. More than handsome enough for all ordinary purposes. And wealthy. On that night, Alise had been unable to divine what on earth Hest wanted of her. She had been unable to think of a single thing to say to him while they danced. When he had asked her what she did to pass the time, she told him that she enjoyed reading. “An unusual occupation for a young lady! What sorts of things do you read?” he had pressed her. She had, in that moment, hated him for asking but she had answered truthfully.
“I read about dragons. And Elderlings. They fascinate me. Now that Tintaglia has allied with us, and a new generation of dragons will soon grace our skies, someone must become knowledgeable about them. I believe that is my destiny.” There. That should betray to him how hopelessly unsuitable a dance partner she was.
“Do you?” he had asked her, quite seriously. His hand pressed the small of her back, easing her into a turn that seemed almost graceful.
“Yes, I do,” she had replied, effectively ending his small talk. Yet, inexplicably, he had asked her to dance yet again, and smiled silently at her as he deftly led her through that evening’s final measures. As the last notes of the music died away, he had held her hand perhaps a moment too long before releasing her fingers. She had been the one to turn and walk away from him, back to the table where her mother waited, pink-cheeked and breathless with excitement.
All the way home in the carriage, she had listened, baffled, while her mother gloated. The next day, when the flowers arrived with a note thanking her for dancing with him, she had thought he was mocking her. And now, three months later, after ninety days of being besieged by his deliberate and carefully waged courtship of her, she still had no answer. What did Hest Finbok, one of the most eligible bachelors in Bingtown, see in her?
Alise forced herself to admit she was deliberately dawdling. She tidied away her sketches and notes with a scowl. She had been working with information from three separate scrolls, trying to divine what an Elderling had truly looked like. She knew she would not be able to get back to her work again this afternoon. With a sigh, she went to her mirror, to be sure that no errant smudge of charcoal remained on her face or hands. No. She was fine. She wasted just a moment looking into her own eyes. Grey eyes. Not snapping black eyes, nor yet placid blue nor jade green. Grey as granite, with short lashes, above a short, straight nose, and a wide, full-lipped mouth. Her ordinary features she could have tolerated, were they not dotted everywhere with freckles. The freckles were not a gentle sprinkling across her nose like some girls had. No. She was evenly dotted, like a speckled egg, all over her face and on her arms as well. Lemon juice did not fade them and the slightest kiss of the sun turned them darker. She thought of powdering her face to obscure them and then decided against it. She was what she was, and she wasn’t going to deceive the man or herself by dabbing on paint and powder. She patted at her upswept red hair, pushing a few dangling tendrils back from her face, and spent a moment making the lace of her collar lie flat before she left her room to descend the stairs.
Hest was waiting for her in the morning room. Her mother was chatting with him about how promising the roses looked this year. A silver tray set with a pale blue porcelain pot and cups rested on a low table near him. Steam from the pot flavoured the air with the delicate scent of mint tea. Alise wrinkled her nose slightly; she did not care for mint tea at all. Then she controlled her face with a pleasant smile, lifted her chin and swept into the room with a gracious, “Good morning, Hest! How pleasant to have you come calling.”
He rose as she approached, moving with the languid grace of a big cat. The eyes he turned toward her were green, a startling contrast to his well-behaved black hair which, in defiance of current fashion, he wore pulled back from his face and fastened at the nape of his neck with a simple leather tie. Its sheen reminded her of a crow’s folded wings. He was attired in his dark blue jacket today, but the simple scarf at his throat echoed the green of his eyes. He smiled with white teeth in a wind-weathered face as he bowed to her, and for just that moment, her heart gave a lurch. The man was beautiful, simply beautiful. In the next moment, she recalled herself to the truth. He was far too beautiful a man to be interested in her.
As soon as she had taken a chair, he resumed his own seat. Her mother muttered an excuse that neither one paid any attention to. It was her pattern, to leave them in one another’s company as often as she decently could. Alise smiled to herself. She was certain her mother’s vicarious imaginings of what she and Hest said and did in her absence were far more interesting than the reality of their quiet and rather dull conversations. “May I offer you more tea?” she asked him politely, and when he demurred, she filled her own cup. Mint. Why would her mother have chosen mint when she knew that Alise disdained it? As he raised his own cup to drink from it, she knew. So that her mouth and breath would be fresh, if Hest should decide to steal a kiss.
She inadvertently gave a tiny snort of scepticism. The man had never even tried to take her hand. His courtship had been painfully free of any attempts at romance.
