Abruptly, Hest set his cup down on its saucer with a tiny clink. Alise was startled when he met her eyes with something of a challenge in his glance. “Something amuses you. It is me?”
“No! No, of course not. That is, well, of course, you are amusing when you choose to be, but I was not laughing at you. Of course not.” She took a sip of the tea.
“Of course not,” he echoed her, but his tone said that he doubted her words. His voice was rich and deep, so deep that when he spoke softly, it was sometimes hard to understand him. But he wasn’t speaking softly now. “For you’ve never laughed, or truly favoured me with a smile. Oh, you bend your mouth when you know you should smile, but it isn’t real. Is it, Alise?”
She had never foreseen this. Was this a quarrel? They’d scarcely ever had a real conversation, so how could they have a quarrel? And, given her complete lack of interest in the man, why should his displeasure with her make her heart beat so fast? She was blushing; she could feel the heat in her cheeks. So silly. What would have been fine and appropriate in a girl of sixteen scarcely was fitting for a woman of twenty-one. She tried to speak plainly in an effort to calm herself, but found herself falling over the words. “I’ve always tried to be polite to you — well, I always am polite, to everyone. I am not a giggling girl, to simper and smirk at every jest you make.” She found a sudden curb for her tongue and forced herself to claim the higher ground. “Sir, I do not think you have any grounds to complain of my behaviour toward you.”
“Nor any grounds to rejoice at it,” he replied easily. He leaned back in his chair with a sigh. “Alise, I’ve a confession to make to you. I listen to gossip. Or rather, I should say that my man Sedric has a positive knack of hearing every rumour and scrap of scandal that Bingtown ever breeds. And from him I hear the tale that you are not happy with the courtship, nor pleased at the prospect of attending the Summer Ball with me. According to what Sedric has heard, you would rather be in the Rain Wilds, watching the sea serpent eggs hatch into dragons.”
“The serpents hatch from dragon eggs,” she corrected him before she could stop herself. ”The serpents weave cases that some folk call ‘cocoons’, and in the spring the new dragons emerge from them, fully formed.” Her mind darted frantically. What had she said and to whom, that he had come to know of her other plans? Ah, yes. Her brother’s wife. She had commiserated with her over the wasted ticket money, and Alise had carelessly replied that she wished she were going on her journey rather than to the ball. Why on earth had that stupid woman repeated such a thing; and why had Alise ever been so careless as to utter it aloud?
Hest leaned forward in his seat. “And you would rather witness that than attend the Summer Ball on my arm?”
It was a blunt question and suddenly it seemed to deserve the bluntest possible answer. She thought she had accepted her fate, but now a final spark of regret blazed up as defiance. “Yes. Yes, I would. Such was my intent when I purchased a ticket on a liveship bound up the river. But for you and the Summer Ball, I would be there right now, sketching them and taking notes, hearing their first utterances and watching Tintaglia as she ushered them into the world and up into the sky. I’d witness dragons come back into our world.”
He was silent for a time, watching her very intently. She felt her blush deepen. Well, he had asked. If he didn’t want the answer, he shouldn’t have asked the question. He steepled his fingers for a moment and looked at them. She fully expected him to rise and stalk, insulted, out of the door. It would be a great relief, she told herself, for this mockery of a courtship to be over. Why, then, did she feel her throat tightening and her eyes begin to prickle with tears? He kept his gaze on his hands as he asked his final question. “Dare I hope that the chill of your displeasure over the last few weeks has been a result of your disappointment in missing your trip rather than a disappointment in me as a suitor?”
The question was so unexpected that she couldn’t think of an answer for it. He continued to regard her with a direct and enquiring glance. His lashes were long, his brows perfectly shaped. “Well?” he prompted her again and her thoughts suddenly snapped back to his question. She looked away. “I was very disappointed not to go,” she started huskily. Then she amended it, “I am very disappointed not to be there now. It is not just a once in a lifetime occurrence; it is something that will never ever happen again! Oh, there may be other hatches — I fervently hope there will be other hatches. But none like this, none like the first hatch of dragons after generations of absence!” Abruptly she set down the cup of horrid mint tea with a clatter on the saucer. She rose from her chair and went to stand at the window, looking out over her mother’s cherished roses. She didn’t see them.
“Others will be there. I just know it. And they will sketch it and write of what they see, at first hand. Their knowledge will not come from musty bits of calf-skin with faded letters in a language no one knows. They will study what happens there and they will become known for their learning. The respect and the fame will go to them. And all of my studies, all of my years of puzzle-piecing will be for naught. No one will ever think of me as a scholar of dragons. If anything, they will think only that I am the dolly old woman who mutters over her tatty old scrolls, rather like Mama’s Aunt Jorinda who collected boxes and boxes of clam shells, all of the same size and colour.”
She halted her tongue, horrified that she had just revealed such a thing about her family. Then she clamped her jaws tightly. What did she care what he thought? She was sure that sooner or later, he would realize that she was an unsuitable bride and be done with her. He would have trifled with her just long enough for her to lose her single opportunity to make something of herself, to be something besides the old maiden aunt living off her brother’s charity. Outside the window, the world basked in a summer that was full of promise for everyone else. To her, it was a season of opportunity lost.
Behind her, she heard Hest give a heavy sigh. Then he took a deep breath and spoke. “I… well, I am sorry. I did know of your interest in dragons. You told me of it, yourself, the first night I danced with you. And I did take it seriously, Alise, I did. I just didn’t realize how important it was to you, that you actually wanted to study the creatures. I’m afraid that I have been thinking it was just some eccentricity of yours, just an amusing hobby perhaps that you had taken up to occupy hours that I, well, that I hoped I might soon fill for you.”
She listened, caught between amazement and horror. She had wanted someone to recognize her studies as more than an amusement, but now that he did, she felt humiliated that he knew how serious she was about them. It suddenly seemed a foolish, no, an almost insane fixation rather than a legitimate study. Was it any better than letting oneself obsess about clam shells? What had she to do with dragons, what were they to her, really, other than an excuse not to engage with the life fate had given her? She felt first hot, then faint. How could she have ever imagined that anyone would consider her an expert on dragons? How foolish she must appear to him.
She had not turned to him nor made any reply. She heard him sigh again. “I should have known that you were not an idle dilettante, waiting for someone else to come give shape and purpose to your life. Alise, I apologize. I’ve treated you badly in this regard. My intentions were good, or so I thought them. Now I perceive that I have been only serving my own ends, and trying to fit you into a space in my life where I thought you best should go. I’ve experienced the same sort of treatment from my own family, so I know what it is to have one’s dreams trampled.”
There was so much emotion in his voice that she felt shamed by it. “Please,” she said in a small voice. “Please, don’t let it concern you. It was an idle fancy, a cobweb dream that I have built too large. I shall be fine.”
He seemed not to hear her. “I came here with a gift today, thinking that perhaps I might persuade you to think better of me. But now I fear you can only see it as a mockery of your true dreams. Still, I pray you will accept it, as small reparation for what you have lost.”
A gift. The last thing she wanted from him was a gift. He’d brought her gifts before, the expensive lacy handkerchief, a tiny glass vial of fine perfume, fancy candies from the market, and a bracelet of seed pearls. Gifts that were all the dearer, procured as they were in a time of war. Gifts fit for a young maiden, gifts that had seemed to mock her, a woman on the verge of spinsterhood. She found her tongue and made it move to say the right things. “You are too kind to me.” If only he could understand that she meant the words with her whole heart.
“Please, come back and sit down. And let me give it to you. I fear you will find it more bitter than sweet.”
Alise turned away from the window. After staring out at the bright day, the room seemed dim and uninviting. Until her eyes adjusted, Hest was just a darker silhouette in the gloomy room. She didn’t want to sit down near him, didn’t want to take the chance of his reading on her face what she truly felt. She could make her voice obey her; it was harder to keep the truth from her eyes. She took a deep breath. She hadn’t cried, not a single tear. There was that to be proud of. And the man in the chair might represent the only other path fate was
